The Silence

by Karen Lee White

  Haywire had said they would all sober up when the money ran out. I hope so; I want things to be the way they were. No doubt, so do the kids.

  October 19, 1993

  I had the weirdest thing happen last night I was terrified! First there was a pounding on the door in the middle of the night. Nobody had heard a car or crunching footsteps. Haywire yelled out, “Who’s there?!” Nobody answered.

  Then I dreamt I was flying – looked down and saw three empty coffins, open, lying in a row.

  The next thing I knew I was woken up by someone weightless sitting on my chest, talking to me. I felt it was someone I know. I could see this little grey shape. I froze and couldn’t breathe! I woke up Haywire and told him. He didn’t say a word, just held me tight. This morning we got up, and damned if both of the bolted doors weren’t wide open! Doris just looked at Haywire. A strange look passed between them, but neither said a word. Then Doris went and closed the doors. It’s like they think they know something. He’s been quiet, and alone in his thoughts.

  l

  Today

  I had this dream between this world and the next: A dragonfly dances in front of me. In that space between, it floats, and there’s a shimmer trail behind it of colour. Gold, blue, green, pink. As it dances to and fro, I watch and listen. It’s dancing and singing for me.

  I need to be very quiet and listen to the song to understand what I need to know. I’m listening as this creature round-dances, side to side. I’m getting the message when I am called back.

  l

  Leah recalls the events that followed that entry and cannot stop weeping. She writes in the new journal to stop.

  Today

  I don’t get it. The robins are still here. What made them decide to stick around for the winter? Does it mean winter will be mild, or are the robins confused?

  I haven’t seen the swans in such a long time. There are four, coming in their usual direction down the lagoon, west to east, which means they’ve had two young this year.

  The mother is graceful. She is in front, followed by a young one, I think, because it’s smaller. Behind is another small swan, and the father is at the end. I imagine it’s the father, since he is largest.

  I love to watch them from a distance, moving as though the current is taking them along. When they are closer, I can see the heads moving slightly forward and backward with the motion of their swimming feet. I love the soft, perfect white of them against the steel grey of the water. It gives me, if only for a few moments, deep peace.

  l

  Leah feels deep sadness but cannot stop reading. The old diary thrills and devastates her.

  l

  October 20,1993

  I can’t stop sobbing. We got home after setting up the line in the meadows. Doris was sitting at the table crying, cutting up moose fat. Tears pouring down her chubby cheeks. Haywire asked her what was wrong. It was as if she didn’t want to hurt us. She could only say “I heard it on the radio.” Then she quoted CBC.

  “Samuel Johnny and John Charlie died in a house fire last night, in a home that burned to the ground in Whitehorse. The fire was believed to have been started by a cigarette.”

  We were just stunned. How could this happen?

  Why Sammy and Johnnie? They never hurt a fly.

  l

  Leah brewed Labrador tea. The amber colour and fragrance spoke in whispers of the land she loved, that was so far away.

  l

  October 21, 1993

  Today we have to help Uncle haul down meat from the top of a mountain. The moose are taking their time coming down from up high this year. He says it’s because it’s still fairly warm.

  He had skinned and butchered it, and packed a hindquarter out, but needs all of us to hike up and get the rest down. Haywire says they don’t usually do this, because animals may get at it. He wants to give it to the Johnny and Charlie families in Whitehorse for the potlatches.

  October 22, 1993

  We went up the mountain yesterday, and they all got ahead of me. My lungs won’t let me climb as fast. It started to snow. Those huge flakes, that covered the path. So here I was alone, walking through heavy falling snow and absolute silence, and losing their tracks. I just kept going. I figured they would find me if I lost their trail. I remembered everything Haywire taught me about tracking, and I didn’t lose them. I encountered a mean, mangy-looking little coyote. It was breathtaking and terrifying, because I didn’t know if he would attack. I thought I was in danger. He must have smelled the meat. I called for Haywire and was relieved when the coyote bolted off. Haywire didn’t hear me (the snow sucks up sound), but I finally caught up to the rest of them because they had stopped.

  It was hard work to get that meat down off the mountain. I’m filled with wonder at how the Indigenous people here have survived for centuries in this harsh climate.

  I was given the ribs, because they know I am not as strong as a Northern woman. They allowed me to pull it down with a rope.

  They were laughing and saying to make sure it didn’t get ahead of me.

  December 30, 1993

  All the funerals are done. They were so hard. The people here bury their beloved up high. I don’t want to think about all that happened. Sammy had a Catholic funeral and was buried up on Grey Mountain. I’m glad because that’s where the wild roses grow in the spring.

  Johnnie went to his Mom’s village, Champagne. It’s tiny, on a corner on the road to Dawson. We had the service in a leaning Anglican church, and walked up a steep hill by the river to bury him. They will put a tent over him. I can’t think about that right now.

  We finally checked the traps today. They were all sprung, there was blood around them, and coyote tracks. One had a squirrel’s foot in it! There’s a coyote who has been robbing the traps. We didn’t catch him. Haywire says this one is very, very smart. He also says it’s like Coyote is playing with us. He wants to catch him so badly.

  l

  LETTERS FROM BABYLON, Verse Two

  One plus one is two, one take away one is nothing

  I used to be a poet, but man I ain’t no poet now

  But I know that tears are sacred

  and rage is sacred

  and fear is sacred

  and losing is sacred

  And all this was so beautiful,

  it does not seem beautiful now

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  February 1994 (don’t know the date; we don’t have a year calendar). Haywire has been gone a month. I miss him so much. I cry myself to sleep at night. On Haywire's last day off he moved me back to Little Annie.

  I was visiting Uncle each day, and helping him at the cabin, and with whatever he was doing. Now he keeps asking me where the bruises came from. I can’t say it. I can’t.

  I only remember that Coyote came and caught me when I was alone at Doris’s. I couldn’t fight; Coyote is too smart and too strong. I heard something tear inside my head when he had hold of me, like fabric ripping. I have not told anyone. I have been very sick, and Doris has just left me to myself.

  I can’t stop hating. How can I love so much and hate so much? Mostly I hate myself, because I thought I liked that Coyote, and maybe that’s why he keeps coming!

  Two weeks later

  Haywire came home. He won’t speak to me. He knows. He says I cheated on him. That’s crazy talk! I can’t believe he could think that of me. I can only cry. He’s so angry, and Doris heard him, so I’m guessing she is too. She hasn’t said much. Haywire started drinking. I am scared, so scared! I can feel his seething and I’m waiting for him to blow.

  Uncle is the only one who isn’t mean. He doesn’t say anything, just loves me how I am.

  l

  An undated entry, on the page stains, drops that look like rain, that have run the ink. She knows it is her old tears and feels a deep sense of loss before she sees the words.

  She sobs uncontrollably as she reads, fear roaring in her ears. She must know.

  l

  M
e and Haywire buried the treasure under a tree in the meadow. I am still weak. We left a sign there, so we will always know where it is.

  l

  There are no dates from here on in.

  What is this ridiculous mention of treasure she has no memory of? All she feels is a terrible sense of dread.

  l

  Coyote came again. How can he know when I’m alone? I hate myself for not knowing he was waiting for me. Why did I go use the outhouse? I hate myself for not being able to fight. It took longer this time, a couple of days. I couldn’t walk for a long time, and I look worse this time. His bite marks are on me from head to toe. I have other marks, black and purple. I’m praying I have no broken bones. The rips in my brain don’t heal. There’s a larger tear each time. They stop me from feeling.

  Uncle came and found me, said he was worried I didn’t come down to help him. He looked at me and he knew. He kept shaking his head, looking at the floor. He looked angry; I have never seen him like that. I couldn’t stop telling him I was sorry. He cried. Still I could not feel. That was the worst thing.

  l

  Leah is light-headed. She doesn’t recall coyote attacks, she has a terrible feeling something beyond those words happened. Trying to remember, she takes extra-strength painkillers.

  l

  NAVAJO RIVER, Verse Two

  There’s a mystery here I cannot understand

  Messages and signs that came when I was sleeping

  The song you sing echoes across the river

  And is carried by the birds far above

  There’s a band of turquoise reaching between us a colour very old

  I see this colour when I think of you

  Standing in that river alone

  I see you standing in the river of love

  I see you calling me to you I see your long hair flowing

  And I see you standing in that river alone.

  l

  Leah reads an entry she has made in her new journal. These are not her words. Her stomach lurches as she understands whose words these are.

  l

  Don’t play with fire. It’s powerful. It can hurt you. I told you that. And I died by fire. Sammy was tryin’ to wake me up. They found him kneelin’ beside my bed. They say he looked like he was prayin’. Maybe he was.

  I laughed a lot. I liked Player’s cigarettes, beer, and women that weren’t Indian. I joked when people criticized my life, “Hey, I’m here for a good time, not a long time.” I was right. So I’m glad I smoked so many cigarettes, drank so much beer, had so many women, and got into fights when I was drunk.

  Now I have no cigarettes, no women, no beer. Nobody sent any over for me. I try to talk to those livin’ and ask, but they don’t hear me. Too busy worryin. They can’t hear. Me, I never worried; just laughed and fooled around.

  Called myself “Sundance Kid.” Got that from a movie. Didn’t know it was a sacred ceremony. I was alive when CB radios were cool. That was my CB name. Sundance. They called it a “handle.” Didn’t have an Indian name, but I had a CB name.

  Talked on that CB when I worked way up on the Dempster Highway. I surveyed that road people drive. All the way to Inuvik. We signed our name on the survival-shack walls, all us road crew. My cousin Lorna found it after I was dead, and she cried. She didn’t remember I worked up here until she saw my name. I was behind her yelling, “Hey, Cuz – it’s me, Johnnie!” And she didn’t hear me when I said I loved her and please not to cry.

  I was a city Indian. We called the real Indians “Stick Indians” when they called us “Cities.” It hurt, so we had to call them a name back.

  I liked that they knew Indian stuff and it bugged me I didn’t. My bush cousin Haywire taught me to track my City cousin from bar to bar in Whitehorse. It impressed the white women. He taught me to memorize his boot tracks in the snow and follow them. It was tough in the city, where so many boots walked over those tracks. But it was like Sammy knew, and just when I’d lose his trail he’d walk off the sidewalk into unmarked snow and there I’d catch his trail again. ’Course he could have been staggering, too.

  l

  Us cousins were close – the Cities and the Sticks. Sammy and I died together. He coulda got out. Couldn’t let me go alone, I guess. But the cousins left behind still have a hard time.

  We used to protect each other’s girlfriends. I remember Haywire – he’s a Stick – went to jail for the winter. We looked out over his girlfriend – maybe a little too much.

  We fooled around some but after he got out and got mad, he got mad at her – not me. He never got mad at me. He only said, “Well, at least I know whose hands were on her.”

  When we drank we would say how much we loved each other. That we were like brothers. Then we’d start fighting – beat each other up bad. Wreck whatever place we were in. The next day we’d wake up stinkin’ of booze with it coming right out our skin. We’d see each other’s black eyes and laugh. Those bruises told the story we couldn’t remember.

  l

  Leah was confused. Haywire had gone to jail? She had fooled around with Johnnie? No! This cannot be true! Her head pounded, and her throat ached.

  l

  That Stick, he still hunts, still runs fish nets. He still knows the old stories. Now he’s a father and is teaching those little ones. I didn’t even have a kid. Least not one anyone told me about. I knew nothing about my culture except one song – a Tlingit song, from my dad. It was about bein’ homesick and longing to go back to your home country.

  Once, some of the boys and I were in a bar in Alaska. Cousin Stick called me City. Said I knew nothing about being an Indian. I stood right up in that bar and sang that Indian song. Everybody stopped talking and listened, even the white people. And I sang real loud. The Stick’s mouth was wide open. He didn’t know even one song.

  An old Tlingit guy came up and asked, “Who’s your mother?” That’s their way of placing you. I told him he wouldn’t know her – she was Southern Tuchone, from the Yukon. But then I said who my dad was. He knew our family was one of the coastal Tlingit ones who long, long time ago went overland into the Yukon and stayed.

  That trip, we sat around a fire on the beach with that old man. He got crabs and put them on the fire, alive. They kept walkin’ out, he kept throwin’ ’em back.

  He teased us, that old guy, said, “You Yukoners gotta chase game all through the mountains to get something to eat. We just pick our food right out of the water.”

  I said, “Yeah, but when we put our food on the fire, it don’t walk out of it!” Boy, we busted a gut. And I knew it didn’t matter I didn’t grow up there. Those people were my relatives, and they felt it too. It was the way we laughed together over that joke. Like we were hugging in a mountain pass after not seein’ each other in a hundred years.

  l

  March, 1994

  I’d like to meet the Old Ones from long ago. I bet they were earthy, real, gritty, and had some Medicine People humour amongst themselves. Like emergency-room humour. Uncle still looks serious, between laughs.

  People who are practising ceremony now are like Catholics and Protestants. Or they’re every kind of religion. The “every kind of religion” Indians are ceremony junkies. Those who go to every healing circle, sweat lodge, potlatch, Big House gathering, or healing ceremony they can get their desperate mitts on. Worse, there are those who run every kind of ceremony imaginable. Experts in them all. Uncle says I have a funny way of looking at things. He did finally start smiling again. It was hard to see no smile. I wonder what is up with him?

  l

  A strange cry launches Leah out of deep sleep, surfacing from deep water. She shoves flattened hair from her face, feels tears on her cheeks. Disoriented, drunk from lack of sleep.

  “Not again,” she sobs. She needs to see the time. Why is it 3:00 a.m.?

  Breathing deep, she fights to sit up. She pulls her long hair back and holds it off her neck to cool her skin.

  By moonlight she finds her journal on the
table. What matters now is to write or this dream it will possess her for days. The words move across the page as she tries to render the dream story. Sammy’s story. She still hears his voice.

  Why are all these people from the other side talking to her? Sobs surge and overtake her. Why? She howls, her face deep in her pillow hoping she cannot be heard.

  l

  My name is all my parents gave me. I grew up with my brothers and sisters in Whitehorse. Our foster parents were white. And Catholic. That was okay. Except they didn’t like Ind’ns. At least us kids had each other. There was seven of us. We looked out for each other.

  When I was fifteen, I went to party on the riverbank. Cops couldn’t see us there, ’cause it slopes down to the Yukon River. There was this smartass guy there, and he was pissing me off. “Who does this guy think he is, anyways?” I said to the guy next to me. He said, “Oh, that’s Johnnie, we call him “Dean Martin” because he’s so entertaining.” Then he burst out laughing, and I got that he was being a smartass.

  Later I found out Johnnie was my cousin. I never had a cousin before. I liked the guy. Once I got him over thinking he was the coolest guy around, he was the coolest guy around.

  I started hangin’ around Johnnie every day. Him and I, we got along good. I had a better time because he knew different Ind’ns.

  He used to call my girlfriend the A&W Rootbear. That’s because she was big like that bear and she worked at the A&W when it was open in summer. Maggie the Rootbear, he called her. Yeah, that and her uniform was just what that bear was wearin’. Every time we were watching TV and that commercial came on, with that Rootbear waddlin’ his fat ass around, he’d start laughing with a smartass grin and say, “Hey, look, Sammy! It’s Maggie!” Man, he never got sick of laughing at that Rootbear.

  Once, he got me real good. We had a couple of bucks. We were hungry. Went to Dixie Lee Fried Chicken. There weren’t too many places open in the winter up here.

  I got a joke. “Hey, how do you know you’re in Whitehorse in August? Easy, because the Dairy Queen is closing down for the winter.” Why that’s funny? Thing is, it use ta!