by Muriel Gray
Right now, as he leaned against a mailbox on Center Street, watching passersby alter their route to walk around him like there was an invisible, semicircular fence ringing his sixty-one-year-old body, he thought it was a cruel and terrible place.
Five hours to go before the hostel opened up. That meant five hours trying to panhandle a few coins that could get him inside somewhere out of the biting cold that was threatening to lose him a few more fingers. The fact that it was around minus ten even here on the sunny street meant nothing to these folks. They’d just stepped out of a heated car or a heated building and were experiencing the cold as a minor inconvenience until they were back in their offices, their shops or their vehicles, and warm again.
To him the cold was a very real enemy. It had nearly killed him a couple of times. Worst one was two winters ago, in that alley in Chinatown. He’d hung around the trash cans behind a restaurant, hoping the men who came out of the kitchens for a smoke would give him food, tobacco or, in his wildest dreams, a drink. A Chinese guy in the hostel told him they sometimes did that. The manager had come out, and, seeing Calvin, pushed him roughly against some crates by the wall. The push had made him topple and fall heavily behind the crates. That’s all he remembered.
The eagle had woken him up. Told him he was going to die if he didn’t try and move. He’d been comfortable and warm there, lying on the ground in the alley, but his spirit guide was real insistent. They’d flown together for a while, low over the reserve, where the children were playing by the river, and then high up into the mountains, circling in the sun with the snowy peaks glittering beneath them, until the eagle had said it was time to go back.
And he had come back, drowsy with hypothermia, two of his exposed fingers lost forever to frostbite, but alive. He’d stumbled from behind the crates, out of the alley into the street, where someone had found him and called the cops. Calvin’s left hand was now like a pig’s trotter, a remaining thumb, first and little finger serving him as best they could.
But then it was never required to do much more these days than hold the brown bag while he unscrewed the top of a bottle. Not like the old days, when his hands had had many tasks to do. Then, they gathered herbs for his magic in the woods. They cast bones and mixed powders. They took the gifts that people brought and handed over the potions they needed. Often they ran over his wife’s body and gave him pleasure. But they never held his children. The eagle had told him many times that there would be no children. Maybe children would have stopped what had happened to him on the reserve. But maybe not.
Two businessmen were getting out of a cab on his side of the road, and Calvin hoped they would come this way and give him money. He held out his hand as they passed and the older man hesitated, put his hand into his big, warm, brown coat pocket in a hurried gesture, and threw him a dollar. The men looked away, embarrassed, as the tossed coin tinkled onto the sidewalk and Calvin bent his stiff, sore body to retrieve it. A drink would help him now, easing both the cold and his humiliation, but he hadn’t had a drink in a week. The eagle had been quite clear about that. He had to be strong now. There had been enough self-pity, enough hiding in the sweet, deadening anesthetic of alcohol. He needed thinking time to decide what he was going to do about the Hunting Wolf boy.
Forty years ago, of course, there would have been little to consider. He wouldn’t have taken a week to think and act: he would have known exactly how to handle this emergency. Calvin Bitterhand had been the only medicine man on Redhorn, the twenty-five square miles of Kinchuinick reserve. Sure, the white man had corrupted the tribe with his bribes and lies, turning the chief and his flunkies into puppets for their own political use. But the rest of them, the five bands who lived out their lives there, they were still Kinchuinicks, still knew who they were.
Life had been good for Calvin. He’d learned his art from the greatest of medicine men—a shaman—Eden James Hunting Wolf. When Calvin’s prayers at puberty for a spirit guide had brought him the eagle, Eden James Hunting Wolf had sought him out and taken him away from the Bitterhand band to train as his assistant. There was never any question that Calvin would be the next medicine man, since the eagle had chosen him. It had hit Eden’s son, Moses, pretty bad, though, and Eden had to sit Moses down and explain that the spirits chose whom they wished. Moses said he’d dreamed the eagle had been his guide too, but Eden said he was lying, and Calvin could see from Moses’ face that he had. Eden had been harsh with his son.
“The wolf is your guide, son of mine. The wolf and nothing else. You deny him at your peril. Go now, fast for four days and run with him across our land, listening to what he tells you, seeing what he shows you. Then return and we will speak again.”
Eden had then dismissed his son and his protestations with a wave. But Moses did not build a sweat lodge or fast. Moses had sulked like a child half his age and grew distant from his father and resentful of Calvin. How he would laugh if he could see the great medicine man now, scrambling on the concrete for a thrown coin, nearly dead with cold, hunger and a liver that was ready to explode. But it was unlikely that Moses Hunting Wolf would laugh, unless laughter could come from the grave.
The wind, as if reminding him of the present, caught the hem of Calvin’s matted, stained coat and made it flutter like a diving kite.
No point in thinking about the old days and how he was respected and revered. It was now he had to think about, the last act perhaps he could perform for his people, and possibly the most important. Why, he had asked the eagle, why would you ask an old drunk to do this? What use am I to my people? My powers have long since drowned in my impurity. But there had been no answer. It was essential. He was the only one left, and he must do it. He must do it soon.
Calvin held the dollar in his good hand and thought about how to spend it. There was a coffee shop over on First Street that wasn’t fussy who they let in. He would go in there and get warm. He needed to be warm to think.
Calvin walked like a cripple, his feet dragging from ankles that were swollen and bitten by vermin, but he clutched the dollar, still warm from the businessman’s pocket, as though it held the secret to life.
The girl in the coffee shop thought about not serving him for a moment, then thought again and took his money. He found a stool in the corner and waited. She took her time, watching him out of the corner of her eye, and after what seemed like an eternity, sauntered down to his end of the counter with the jug and poured him his coffee.
Calvin cupped the mug in both hands, feeling its heat before he put it to his lips. He swallowed the hot liquid, savoring the delicious sensation as it slid down his throat into the freezing empty core of his body. He would be able to think now. He had to decide today. He knew he was already late.
It had been a week now. Seven days since he’d blacked out and had the vision; but its pungency had left a mark on his heart and on his dreams. The problem was how to get to Moses’ son before the evil went too far. That was his task. He’d flown with the eagle to where Sam and his family lived in Silver, soaring high above the town until he’d spotted the Hunting Wolf boy going about his business, and he’d seen the great and terrible blackness there. It had been like looking down on a great black hole in the land, shooting up from the ground in a column that was growing and extending, threatening to darken the entire town. But it was two hundred miles away. And what use would he be if he got there?
Calvin looked around the room from behind his mug of coffee. None of these people would ever be safe again if he didn’t act. That darkness would reach them all eventually, one way or another, once it had been released for good. Did he care? They certainly didn’t care about him. He saw himself through their eyes: a useless, drunken, old gray-haired Indian, stinking of his own dried urine, a face lined by abuse and tragedy, wearing clothes that were like diseased and peeling skins instead of fabric. He was no savior. But the Great Spirit, he knew, cared about them all; the girl behind the counter, the two surly young men in the corner in leather jackets a
nd jeans, the working man on the next stool wearing the overalls of an elevator company, and Calvin Bitterhand. Loved them without question or prejudice. Prejudice was man’s invention.
He must go to Silver and he must go now. But he was not pure enough to face what he knew was waiting for him. Nineteen years had passed since he’d left the reserve, and in all those years he’d never performed a sun dance, or fasted, not even prayed. He was tainted with self-abuse. Broken by booze. There was only one solution. Penance. He would walk. If he didn’t make the two hundred miles, then the Great Spirit had other plans for him. But he was going to try.
Calvin swallowed the last of his coffee and managed a weak smile at the girl moving some cakes around the display.
“Want another, Chief?”
He shook his head, climbed slowly and painfully off his stool and walked over to where she stood on the other side of the plastic-covered counter. She stopped toying with her cakes and straightened up to confront him. Calvin put his hands on the counter to steady himself, noticing her eyes flicking to the gaps where his fingers used to be. He held up his head and spoke to her softly.
“I have a long journey now. No more money. You give me food?”
The waitress, Marie-Anne MacDonald, looked back at him and found herself hesitating. Normally she gave old bums the treatment they deserved. If they couldn’t pay, they hit the street. You slipped one of them an old Danish or a stale doughnut, and before you knew where you were, you had a string of them hanging around the door expecting to be fed like dogs. It was her butt on the line, and if Jack came in and saw her giving charity to any old scrounger it would certainly be her who’d get it in the neck.
But that was the rule she lived by normally. This guy was different. When he looked at her just then, his black shiny eyes fixing her with a stare, there was no self-pity in them, no pleading or cajoling. More like defiance, as if he were ordering her to do something she knew she had to but had forgotten.
And she caught a strange scent from him, not of piss and liquor, but of a fresh wind and trees, the way washed sheets smell when they’ve been out on the line blowing in the spring breeze.
Marie-Anne, still looking into Calvin’s watery black eyes, put a hand absently into the refrigerated display case in the front of the counter, scooped eight cling-wrapped sandwiches into a bag and handed it to him.
Calvin took it, nodded to her and slowly, wearily left the shop. She watched him go, transfixed as his hunched figure pushed the door open and shuffled past the window out of sight.
Eight sandwiches. She was in for it if she couldn’t account for how eight sandwiches walked right out of the cool shelf. Each one was worth a dollar sixty; in fact, one had been a jumbo shrimp mayo, worth two seventy-five. Without thinking she went into her pocketbook under the coffee machine, took out thirteen dollars and put them in the register. Jack would never know. The elevator maintenance man called for another cup of coffee, and Marie-Anne went to pour it, with a smile on her face that would last her until closing, although then, as now, she couldn’t tell you why.
15
Alberta 1907
Siding Twenty-three
No Indian blood. At least there had been no Indian blood. The Reverend James Henderson had prayed as the men dragged Hunting Wolf and his men off the mountain. God must have answered, for the Indians had not resorted to violence, and ugly and undignified as the scene was, there was no bloodshed. At least not then.
Henderson’s heart was heavy now as he stood among the large group of natives, all of them staring up at the newly blasted hole in the rock.
Three men dead. Killed by the unexpectedly fierce power of the blast, which despite the men’s experienced calculations, did not allow them sufficient time to retire from danger. They were blown apart and the gaunt, harrowed minister would be burying them tomorrow. After the successful removal of the Indians, Angus McEwan had crowed about his triumph. Then he had raged at the accident. How could his men have made such an error in the quantity and positioning of the explosives? Obviously they had, and his work gang was now three short: two Scots and a Chinaman who would never see their homes and families again.
The natives had watched impassively as the body parts had been gathered like berries and brought back to the camp, and now they congregated at the base of the rude scaffolding, keeping vigil over what amounted to no more than a jagged black tear in the rock.
Henderson spoke to Chief Hunting Wolf at his side. “You go home now?”
The chief’s gaze remained on the black hole. “No. I cannot go. We must wait. And prepare.”
The minister was weary. He nodded as if he understood, which he did not, and left the band of natives to their vigil. The snow could not possibly become any heavier without falling as a single, unbroken sheet. Henderson swept his frozen hat away with a hand and started back to his cabin.
McEwan’s foreman, Duncan Muir, was waiting for him. Henderson was relieved it was not McEwan himself. His energy for confrontation was low, and unlike his superior, Muir was a civilized and pious man.
“May I come in, Reverend?”
Muir stood at the door of Henderson’s tiny cabin, which, like all the other cabins, had no lock. McEwan would have been in there by now, his feet on the stove. Muir had more manners.
“Of course, Mr. Muir. Please.”
They entered the small hut, its bare wooden walls boasting a single decorative fancy: a cross made from birchwood and twine. A bed, table and two rough stools were the only furniture Henderson possessed. A battered storm lamp and a stove provided the luxury of heat and light.
Muir stood by the stove, his fur hat in his hands.
Henderson wiped the snow from his black coat and closed the door against the colorless desert outside.
“I’m afraid I can offer you little refreshment, Mr. Muir. The supplies are low, as you are aware, and my few edible conceits have already been donated to Cook for the benefit of all.”
“I am not in search of sustenance, Reverend. It is matters of the spirit I wish to discuss.”
“Be seated.” The foreman’s reply was a surprise. Henderson had assumed Muir was here on McEwan’s business. Another order, perhaps, to make the Indians move away from the blasting site.
“How may I help you, Mr. Muir?” Henderson sat opposite his stocky, gray-haired fellow Scot.
Muir cleared his throat and looked grave. “I fear for the men’s morale, Reverend.”
“The deaths.”
“No. Well, yes. The deaths. But more than that.”
“What then?”
“They are becoming superstitious.”
Muir said this as though he had admitted that the men were ready for the madhouse.
“Is that so unusual? Especially in a wilderness encampment, cut off from the world by this infernal weather?”
“The manner of their superstitions is becoming unusual. Yes.”
James Henderson looked at the weather-beaten man on the other side of the stove. This was not a man who was frightened of anything. Respectful of the elements, yes, but unsettled by the unknown like an Aberdonian fish-wife, no. He was baffled. “I am afraid I do not understand, Mr. Muir. What precisely is dismaying the men?”
Muir leaned forward slightly, his hands still turning his hat. “The Trickster.”
Henderson was now astonished. “The Trickster?”
“The thing the Indians say was locked in the mountain.”
Henderson was annoyed now. “How can the men know of the Indians’ fears, Mr. Muir? To my knowledge I am the only Siouan speaker in this camp, and the Indians have no English whatsoever.”
“Mr. McEwan told Bailey about it, in preparation to remove the natives from the rock. He told the rest of the men.”
This was unfortunate. Henderson had indeed related the whole ridiculous and primitive myth to McEwan, in order to let him understand these people’s deepest fears and the reasons, in fact, why they were adamant that the blasting be canceled. He had not
expected McEwan to be foolhardy enough to repeat the nonsense to a gang of simple, uneducated men. Muir’s face was testimony that it had been an error.
“And do they believe this nonsense?”
“They would deny it, Reverend, but I know it is coloring their behavior.”
“What do you wish me to do about it, Mr. Muir?”
“You need to settle their minds at the funeral, Reverend. Could you find a way in your sermon of reminding them that the Christian man has no room in his heart for such heathen beliefs?”
“It is affecting their work, I trust.”
He hadn’t meant the comment to be barbed, but Muir took it that way.
“I would ask you even if it were not, Reverend. I care about their souls as well as their labors.”
Henderson was sorry to have his remark draw blood from this man, but somehow the request to bury the Indians’ beliefs along with the bodies of the three men made him defensive and irritable. It was his own fault. He should never have told a man as deceitful and untrustworthy as McEwan anything about the Indians at all. If McEwan had hoped the men would find the Kinchuinicks’ legend amusing and idiotic, then it had rebounded on him.
There was irony in the fact that Henderson may even have relayed some of the details incorrectly. Trickster, for instance, was the best translation he could come up with. It was most likely incorrect. His grasp of the language, after all, was primitive in the extreme. Hunting Wolf had squatted with him for two hours one dark, cold night, explaining the nature of this thing, the four-named demon, and he thought he had mostly made sense of it. But he could not be sure.
Creator and destroyer. It could be both. There were many Tricksters, apparently. Some were figures of fun, who could be deceived in a hilarious fashion as well as deceive, providing endless stories of great ribaldry, almost always involving sex or defecation. Others were figures of the deepest terror, demons who destroyed and murdered as naturally as a mortal breathes in and out, clever, shape-shifting, vengeful, evil beyond imagination. Hunting Wolf told of the latter. Henderson had listened politely and not without interest. The demon described was not unlike those of early Christian belief. Certainly it was as grotesque and terrifying in its true form as those nightmares dreamed up by the medieval Jesuits to petrify their flock. The physical description Hunting Wolf gave made Henderson uncomfortable—if he were honest, it made his shoulders crawl like a child being told a ghost story. But it was an animal-like cunning, twinned with human intelligence and adherence to a strict pattern of the elements, that separated the heathen demons from the Christian. Hunting Wolf explained that their Trickster was of winter. Colder than ice. A heart harder than rock. Their demon was clever to conceal its true form, enjoyed shifting shape. And it loved to taunt and tease. Oh, it could be tricked, and sometimes defeated, but only by the Keeper. At that point Henderson lost his way in the maze of alien words.
