by Ron Thompson
Jackie Lynn brought our drinks, and we fell into separate conversations, Victor with me, Genny with Tammy. I heard snippets about law school, Genny’s doctoral research, social justice and the like. They both seemed oblivious to everything else, including us. Victor noticed it, too, and took the opportunity to fill me in on a recent controversy involving Idaho Jack’s.
According to him, the waitresses at Jack’s all had to be called Jackie-Something, and they all had to dress like cowgirls in lowcut blouses. The formula was a hit in the States, but a court case had been launched in Canada when it became clear that the chain was only hiring attractive, big-busted women. The case had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Idaho Jack’s could impose a dress code, but could not discriminate against plain or flat-chested women. “The whole thing was stupid,”Victor said. “I mean, we’re becoming a nanny state. You don’t need to institutionalize these things. Just let the market work. The waitresses will figure out what works best for tips.” He drained his mug and signalled Jackie Lynn for two more Red Indians.
He observed me closely for a moment before continuing in the same low voice.
“Well, of course, the ruling was controversial in this country . . .” Plain and flat-chested women’s groups, he said, had protested against Idaho Jack’s and its dress code by marching through the streets of Toronto. Their numbers were disproportionately large there, according to him.
“Huh. The place looked fine when we were there a coupleweeks ago. Pretty good in fact. But we weren’t there that long. And we never got out to the suburbs.”
He watched my face, his own expressionless. Then he grinned and reached across and gave me a gentle noogie, the gentlest he’d ever delivered. “It’s good to see you, man,” he said.
This unsettled me so much that I was unsure if what he’d just told me was true, so I grinned like I was distracted or hadn’t heard it all and was being polite.
“Look at you two,” Genny said. “Getting all affectionate.”
“Well, I won’t be able to do it much longer,” Victor said. “You’re taking him off to darkest Africa tomorrow.”
“That’s going to be an amazing experience,” Tammy said to me. We talked about Africa for a few minutes, mostly about how much we still did not know, then Genny excused herself to the loo (“The ‘loo’?” Victor asked.) and Tammy went along.
“You know, they do look a lot alike,” Victor said when they were out of earshot.
We both turned to look just as they entered the corridor to the washroom.
“Naw. I don’t see it.”
“Why do girls always go to the can in twos? Is it tag-team in there?”
Jackie Lynn arrived with our beers and lingered to banter with Victor, long enough for even me to get the message; then she was gone.
“So,” I said. “Jackie Lynn.”
“Yeah,” he chortled dirtily. “Nice, eh?”
“But what about Tammy?”
His grin faded. “Ah, well. Very nice girl, Tammy. Very nice. We’ve been taking our time.”
“Ah.”
He considered, leaned closer, and gestured me in. “Truth be told, I’m in what you might call ‘social quarantine’ right now.”
“Social what?”
“Quarantine.” He made a silent clapping motion with his hands. When he saw I did not understand he beckoned me closer still, and when I was just a few inches away he murmured, “I’ve got the clap, stupid.”
I recoiled so fast that the table shuddered and we both grabbed our glasses to prevent them from spilling.
He laughed. “Relax. I’m not contagious. At least not from talking. See, a couple weeks ago I was at this ‘team building’ event in Winnipeg, and there was this absolute babe from Thunder Bay. We ducked out of the presentations to do some team building ourselves and one thing led to another and, well . . .” He leaned in towards me again. “The girl was an acrobat, I kid you not. Double jointed. Well, a few days later, I’m back here, and Peter Johnson’s got a cold. The drip, razor blades. Classic. So I nip into the doc for some meds, but they take their time to work. So what with that going on, I haven’t, you know, been actively pursuing things with Tammy.”
“I see,” I said.
“Fact is, I don’t think she’s quite my kind.”
“Huh.”
“I think she’s decided that, too, although she never really got to know me.”
“Ah.”
“In the biblical sense.”
“Yeah, I get it, Vic. I understand. I get it.” He shrugged. “Her loss. But she seems to consider you a great pal. And you see how she’s hitting it off with Genny?” He leaned in towards me again. “I’m pretty sure you could talk Tammy into a threesome. You two and her. It’d be smoking hot, right? Like with twins. Whadaya think?” It was my face that grew smoking hot.
He grinned, pleased with himself. “Hi, fellas.”
We both looked up at the voice. Willie Parnell, great-grandson of Little Trickster, was wearing the same cap and sun glasses he’d worn at the mall. He pulled up a chair and sat down.
“You know each other?” Victor asked me.
“We met the other day.”
“You guys look so much alike,” Willie said. “At first Ithought he was you.”
“Did you close that deal you were telling me about?” I asked.
“Just tonight.” Willie looked around. “I just popped in here to see the manager for a minute.”
“That’s great news,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“You know about the deal?” Victor asked me.
“Yeah. Willie told me about it the other day.” Suddenly I caught the connection. “Is it the one you and Tammy have been working on?”
Victor and Willie exchanged looks. Willie had told me that the band was planning to open a casino. They had found a site and were negotiating with its owners. It was complicated, because there was a heritage building on the property. “So where is it?” I asked. “Can you tell me now?” Everybody had signed a confidentiality agreement, Williesaid, but he didn’t mind telling me if I’d keep it secret. It was downtown, by the old railway depot. There was an old freight warehouse and grain elevator on the site.
The town’s last remaining elevator—the one the town wanted to tear down as an eyesore; and the old Bugelmann bottling plant, one-time home of the Prairie Pure Drug Company.
“It’s a good site,” Willie said. “It never floods there like itdoes in the rest of downtown. Tell you the truth, I’ve had my eye on it for a while.” He took off his sunglasses and polished them on a cloth pulled from his pocket. His wild eye wandered the room. “It’s been kind of a moving target—”
“You do that on purpose, Willie,” Victor said. “All the way through the negotiations, you’d pull that one whenever you weren’t getting your way.”
Willie’s laugh was a gleeful tee-hee-hee, and his shoulders shook with it. He wiped his other eye (the watery one) and put his glasses back on. “Maybe I had a bit of fun with it,” he admitted. “That elevator complicated things, eh, because it’s a designated heritage building, but we’re not going to tear it down. We’re going to renovate it, and the warehouse, too, and put up a big glass atrium between them.” There would be the casino, of course; and a restaurant, a place for shows, and a boutique hotel in the elevator. In Phase II, they would add a convention centre and a larger hotel. They already had an option on the lot across the street—the site of the old Deeside—for that. “We’re going to create a lot of jobs around here.”
The deal had required a lot of dominos to fall. There was a new policy, Willie said, that would allow the band to get the property designated as an urban reserve. That way the casino would get business tax exemptions as though it were on reserve—legally, it would be reserve land. Willie was negotiating the specifics with the town and the feds. An
d there would beother sources of support. The band would get funding from the Department of Indian Affairs for start-up costs, and the federal and provincial industry departments would chip in with capital dollars. All the banks had First Nations lending programs and were eager to support a high-profile aboriginal business, especially one with a safe, dependable cash flow like a casino. The federal and provincial governments would both provide training grants. There would even be a wage subsidy for the first couple of years to cover aboriginal employees. But the operation wouldn’t only hire aboriginals; there would be plenty of jobs for townsfolk too.
“I don’t want to sound crass,” Willie said, “but we can do the whole thing with other people’s money.”
* * *
With an urban reserve in the very center of town, the Cree were coming back to Poplar Lake. And now Genny and Tammy were back at our table. Willie and Tammy greeted each other with a hug, and I introduced Genny.
Willie looked from her to Tammy, from Victor to me, and laughed. “You know, I never believed it till now, but all white people do look alike.”
“Have a drink to celebrate with us, Willie,” I said. He hesitated. “Maybe a Coke, eh?” “What are you celebrating?” Genny asked.
Willie sat back and let me explain. He had his sunglasses on, but I could tell he was watching her, and I saw her looking at his knuckles, at his homemade tatts that read LOVE and HATE. When I finished talking she asked him what was going to go onat the casino.
“We’ll have blackjack and craps, poker, that kind of thing. And lots of slot machines. Old white people love their slots. We’re going to be a magnet for the town. People will come from all over. Why go to Vegas when you can come to Poplar Lake?”
It was hard to tell what Willie was looking at through those reflective lenses, but I thought he was studying Genny’s face, those high cheekbones. Her expression was impassive, and I knew what that meant. For all my difficulty reading others, I knew that look in her, and it was trouble. Victor and Tammy must have seen it, too. They seemed to be waiting for her to speak, but she did not.
“We’ve put a lot of work into this,” Willie continued at last, still addressing Genny. “We’ve talked a lot about what we’re doing, and about the future. We’re not Silicon Valley here. We have to face reality. We’re going to make a go of this, and it’ll be good for our people. Take a look at it through my eyes. We’re going to be in charge here. We’ll be on our own land. We’re going to be the ones calling the shots and selling the booze and raking in the cash. The one-armed bandits will be our one-armed bandits. This time, we’re the house.”
After a moment a smile came to Genny’s lips.
A few minutes later I excused myself to go to the toilet, thinking Willie and his people had come a long way; and it had not been a pleasant journey.
The washrooms were down the corridor beside the stage, past the old saddle I had noticed on the way in. I stopped to read the tarnished brass plaque on the pedestal on which it was mounted.
THIS SADDLE WAS PRESENTED TO CHIEF CHARLES PARNELL
(“LITTLE TRICKSTER”)
BY THE GREAT WEST COLONIZATION & SETTLEMENT COMPANY ON THE FOUNDING OF POPLAR LAKE
(ORIGINALLY “POPLAR PLAINS”), 1887
“This is why I came by tonight,” Willie Parnell said, startling me by appearing out of nowhere. “They want to renovate in here, eh? The manager called out to the reserve to tell us we could have this if we wanted it. Otherwise it’s going to the dump. Well, I got just the place for it, right in the casino entrance. In the big glass atrium.”
“That’s a great idea.” I ran my hand across the saddle’s old leather, reflecting on its original owner’s life and times. “This old saddle’s seen a lot of miles, hasn’t it?”
“Hah. It’s seen a lot of A-holes. The old fella never used it. He gave it to the first Indian agent they sent here, and it kept getting passed on from agent to agent.” He was wearing sunglasses, yet I was certain he winked at me.
“By the way, what are you going to call the place?”
“We’ve been bouncing ideas around. I like ‘Little Trickster Casino’ but some people don’t like the sound of it. Casinos and tricks, you know? My wife—you saw her, eh? The other day? The redhead? She’s pushing her own idea. Her great-great granny lived to be a hundred and five. She was a wise woman, ahealer, and she loved to play cards. The wife wants to name it after her. Her name was Rolls With Thunder. What do you think of the ‘Rolls With Thunder Casino’?”
“Catchy. I like it.”
* * *
After Willie left we finished our drinks and called it a night. We paid Jackie Lynn (“See you around, Vic . . .”) and walked together out to our cars. It had rained while we were inside, and the wet pavement reflected Idaho Jack’s neon sign. Thunder rumbled in the distance but the rain was not over. The air seemed charged with the expectation of another deluge. “I’ll see you in the morning before you go,” Victor told me. Genny and Tammy exchanged hugs. “I hope I’ll see you again,” Tammy said.
“I hope so too. That would be so nice,” Genny replied. Victor and Tammy said goodnight with professional formality, two colleagues parting until their next business meeting, and then it was my turn to say goodbye to Tammy. We stood awkwardly for a moment. We had barely spoken all night.
“It was good to see you,” she said at last, and suddenly stepped towards me, slipped into my arms, and hugged me tightly, her head on my shoulder. We stood that way until she looked up at me and whispered, “Do you wish sometimes you could forget?” Then she kissed me and slipped away; and I caught or imagined the scent of cherry ChapStick. I realized my eyes were clamped shut, and I opened them to see her moving away, across the neon lot, towards her car, which she opened, and entered, without looking back.
Genny stood watching me. Behind her stood Victor, grinning manically, and holding up three fingers.
* * *
“Tammy’s wonderful,” Genny said. “I like her. I can see how you might’ve had, you know, a crush on her.”
We were in our bedroom, getting ready for bed, stepping around half-packed suitcases. My mother had done our laundry and folded it neatly on the counterpane.
I stooped to stuff clean shirts into my suitcase. “Have you seen my other Levis?” “In the closet.”
“Thanks.” I walked over to the closet and looked back to see her watching me. Outside, it was raining again. Rain splattered against the window. “You were going to tell me how you did it. With my mom.”
She contemplated me silently, her eyes shimmering in the dim light of the bed lamp. “Leave that stuff, baby. Come to bed. I have to tell you something.”
It was the family album—Genny had found the key to Edie in the family album. Specifically, it was in one photo, a picturefrom 1963: Edie is pregnant. Her hand is on her tummy. She smiles serenely at the camera. She knows what this one is.
“I know that picture. It’s me,” I said.
“No.”
“Sure it is.”
“No. That’s early ’63. You were born in June of ’64.”
I just looked at her. “That’s your sister.”
“That’s crazy. I don’t have a . . .”
I felt my stomach fall. My eyes seemed suddenly to focus, as though they had never seen anything before. And I knew.
* * *
Edie had never known such sorrow until her little girl was born. The baby only lived a week. She never even made it home. During her daughter’s entire short life, Edie was in intensive care. She had haemorrhaged during the birth and nearly died herself. She recovered slowly, physically exhausted and devastated by the baby’s death, and by the news that she could never have another child. Her own life would be at risk if she ever conceived again.
And then she got pregnant with you, Genny said. And she knew you’d be special. That’s what she calls you. S
he wanted a girl, but when you were born she was just relieved that you were alive and healthy. And she was surprised to be alive herself. She had been certain she would die.
She goes to the cemetery, Genny said, to the baby’s grave. She goes all the time, but she makes a special trip whenever one of you leaves. She doesn’t go for coffee with the church women like you always thought she did. I always wanted a girl, Edie told me. I wanted a girl. She was crying then, this morning in the kitchen, and I reached over and gave her a hug. And then she folded into me and we both had a cry. She’s weeping, I’m weeping, and she says, I’m sorry about the underwear—the devil made me do it! We laughed then. We laughed, and we cried. We both blubbered for your little lost sister and she said, and now I’m losing him, and I said, no, no you aren’t, Edie, you haven’t, you won’t, and you never will. And then she said she’d been rotten to me and knew it but she couldn’t help herself—and I said it’s that devil again, he made you do it, didn’t he? We laughed. We laughed till our sides hurt and then we cried some more.
Later (Genny said) we had tea and talked. A real woman to woman talk. She asked me about home—about my family in Antigonish. She told me all families go through difficult times. She said you’d had some dark times, too. But then you came in and we got busy with lunch.
What did she mean, Genny asked, about dark times? What was she going to say? What happened here?
* * *
I was still stunned by the revelation that I had a sister, and grappling with its ramifications. Was it her death I had always sensed? Was it her absence? Was this the reason I felt so alone? And was her death why I existed at all? Was her death why my mother had always been over-protective? Or was there something more, something about me in particular, as I had always suspected? My oddity.
“What was so dark?” Genny asked. “What’s been bothering you here? What have you been dodging? You’ve been deflecting me from something.”
“What’s the point in talking about the past?”
“Mister History! What’s the point in avoiding it? Tell me, baby. Tell me what happened.”
