by Muriel Gray
The boy could have been the most powerful of them all, so strong and pure was his heart. But his weapons were blunt without that belief. He was as a white man now, weak and childlike, his belief only in what the eyes could see and the empty religion of science could explain.
It was no use blaming Moses. Calvin was to blame long before that nightmare afternoon. Calvin could have stopped him: he knew what was in Sam’s heart, and what was worse, why it was there. But he did not stop the boy from doing what he did, and he was as guilty and responsible for it as any. But the boy must know the truth. It was not as Sam thought, and the importance of that information was everything. Everything.
With a huge effort, he uncrossed his legs and stood. Every muscle and bone in his body protested, and he left the sweat lodge with difficulty to tend the fire and replace the stones. Outside it was light. Had he been among the spirits all night, or was this the same day? The fire would not tell him. He had placed four slabs of cut turf over it to keep the fire smouldering in secret for days, and now he knelt and shifted the snow-covered turf, and there indeed were the glowing embers he had left. He bent and blew on them, watching the red glow increase and sparkle with life, then reached into the pile of sticks by the fire and threw on a handful of twigs. An orange flame danced about them, and he fed it with more wood.
Now for the stones. He took off his buckskin loincloth, standing naked in the snow, and walked back into the sweat lodge. With the cloth, he lifted the first of the warm stones, prayed over it and carried it to the fire, careful to walk clockwise, with the sun. Twenty-five times he would have to do it. Alone.
Sam was the one who used to reheat the stones, allowing Calvin to remain in the lodge, his concentration unbroken and his sweat still running. Calvin thought of the boy’s eager and earnest face as he prayed and heated the stones, and his heart ached for him. Sam moved like a young deer, and oh, those shining eyes and that determined pink mouth. Calvin could have watched his young apprentice forever. And then he thought of the face he had seen from his flight with the eagle. Sam, the adult, standing on that ski hill, staring up at an empty chairlift. Calvin knew the spirit was there. But he could not see what Sam saw. That came from inside Sam’s head only, and it must have been something that filled him with dread. His face was contorted with pain and shame and fear.
Why had Eden not been the one chosen to deal with this? Eden would have laughed in the Trickster’s face, Calvin was sure of it. Because Eden knew what it could and could not do. It was not knowing that made the man weak, made it possible for the Trickster to crawl inside its keeper, take his human strength and use it elsewhere for something that was most certainly not an illusion.
He placed another stone on the fire and retraced his steps for the next, gulping at the memory of Sam on the hill.
If he could be so easily frightened by an illusion, he would also easily be goaded into doing what the Trickster needed him to do. And Calvin knew that the goading had already begun. And it knew now, even if Sam did not, that he was coming.
Another stone, and Calvin was starting to feel the cold, his sweat having evaporated, and the snow now getting a grip on his freezing naked flesh. No rest. There was no time. He dropped the rock on the heating pile, and laid more wood on the flames.
He stopped and looked at the flames, enjoying their heat on his legs, and before he could beat it back, he remembered his folly.
It was the firelight. How could anyone who had seen the boy’s perfect skin lit by the glow of the fire not have wanted to touch it? He screwed his eyes shut tightly, as if that would keep back the pain of memory, but it was there. Back again to haunt him, to torture him.
They had been in the woods for hours that day, he and Sam, collecting fungi and roots. Sam’s laugh was merry when he was with Calvin in those days. He hung on his words as if they were precious gifts, and Calvin was careful to make sure they were words that merited such attention.
“Here. This one, boy!”
Calvin had called him over to a shrub with bright red berries. He plucked at a maple-shaped leaf without tearing it off the branch. “This here be devil’s club, and it be used for so much stuff I lost count.”
Sam nodded, taking it in and fingering the leaf as though its touch would help him understand its powers.
“The Crow Indians rub these here berries in their scalps to chase off lice. Say it makes the hair shiny too.” He looked at Sam. “Not that you need that, huh?”
Sam looked embarrassed and tugged at his leaf again.
Over the fire that night, Calvin had cooked at least twenty different types of fungi, wrapping the delicate flesh in birch bark first, then an outer layer of damp leaves, so that the concoction steamed and didn’t burn.
He’d watched Sam’s face as he ate and was delighted he could give the boy some pleasure. Then it had been time to talk more of the past that would be their future.
“You know Moses has the key now, don’t you?”
Sam nodded.
“But he don’t know first thing ‘bout how to use it. Only you and me be knowin’ that, Sam, now that Eden be gone.”
A nod again, and a wide brown hand reaching for more fungi.
Calvin ate a little more and looked into the fire. “So, what you gonna do when Moses be tryin’ to get that outta you?”
Sam looked up at him with those glittering black orbs, and made that thin mouth he did when anyone mentioned his father. “He won’t.”
Calvin leaned forward, his arms hanging over his knees. “You remember what I told you ‘bout it, don’tcha?”
“Sure.”
“And you believe it with your heart?”
Those eyes had looked into his so trustingly. “Sure. I guess it be true.” Sam had looked down at the fire, avoiding Calvin’s eyes. “You be my real pappy, Calvin. I believe everythin’ you told me. Even more than the stuff Eden said.”
“That’s dumb, Sam. He knew more than anyone. He was there.”
Sam’s face hardened. “Well, he ain’t around to say it no more, is he? The son he be never keepin’ in line saw to that.”
Calvin knew Sam’s hurt at Eden ignoring his grandson’s plight ran deep as a river, but he’d thought at that moment that maybe Eden had a plan, that he’d known all that stuff had to happen and he couldn’t lift a hand to stop it in case his love got in the way. Because Eden had loved Sam. Calvin knew it. He’d seen the pain in the old man’s eyes when Sam came in like a beggar looking for food or shelter, but he never showed it to the boy. And that was real dangerous. If Sam didn’t believe in what Eden told him, out of some adolescent hurt, then Sam was going to be in deep trouble if the thing ever came back. No. When the thing came back.
“You got to believe in Eden, Sam. You gonna be the keeper one day.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe. For sure.” A sulky silence, then Calvin looked straight into the boy’s eyes. “You know what the key does?”
“Sure I do.”
“Then you be a liar. No one knows what it does, they just be knowin’ how to make it call what needs to come.”
Sam’s eyes had flashed with boyish anger. “I know what comes. Eden told me.”
“No, you don’t. You should listen closer. It be different every time. Eden told you what came to his pappy. Might not be the same to you.” Calvin had looked into the fire and spoken more quietly. “And I be real sure it wouldn’t be nowhere near the same for your pappy. Nowhere near.”
Sam had squinted at Calvin, as if something had occurred to him, and then quickly looked away into the flames.
They finished their meal and then Calvin smoked a little, enjoying the sweet, warm evening air on his face. Sam had lain down in front of the hot fire on his torn and dirty jacket, and taken his T-shirt and pants off. The warm night needed no fire except for cooking, but Sam had banked it up into an inferno and the boy basked in front of the tall flames like a cat. He lay on his side, staring into the fire, scratching his long muscular brown legs
and plucking occasionally at the grass with a lazy hand. All he wore were a pair of mangy-looking gray shorts with a hole in the butt, but as Calvin’s eyes roamed over the beautiful brown body, he had thought he looked like a sleek and rare animal. Sam’s pubic hair just poked from the waistband of his shorts, and the large but gentle swelling beneath that filthy gray fabric told Calvin that at least one part of Sam Hunting Wolf had reached maturity.
He’d stayed smoking until Sam’s eyes got heavy and he rested his head on one arm to sleep. The firelight. It was just the firelight. The shadows flickered across that lean body, dancing over shapes and cavities that Calvin wanted desperately to touch. That’s all. Just to touch and stroke. Not to hurt or dominate. No, never that. He loved that boy, and he just wanted to feel that warm brown flesh beneath his own fingers, and maybe, for a moment, softly cup that swelling between Sam’s legs in his hand.
Calvin was sweating with excitement and he got up and quietly lay down behind the boy. At first he had just watched the rise and fall of Sam’s shoulder as he breathed, tracing the outline of his back and hips with his hand an inch away from that elegant body. And then it had been too much. Calvin had slipped his arm around the front of Sam’s waist, and running his fingers lightly over that hard, flat belly, he had arrived at and caressed the part of Sam that was making Calvin’s heart beat in his ears. He closed his eyes with the pleasure of what he felt there, and then it was over. Sam woke.
The violence of his reaction was intense. He threw Calvin’s hand off with a strength that nearly broke the shaman’s wrist and leaped to his feet with his teeth and fists clenched, eyes ablaze and his breath panting from him like a caged beast’s.
“Sam. I only…”
The boy was close to tears through his rage.
“You dirty scum!”
“Sam. Please!”
Calvin held a pleading hand out to him. Sam kicked it away with a foot.
“You gonna teach me ‘bout that next? Huh, Calvin? You gonna tell me that this be part of the magic?” Tears spilled down his furious face. “I should have known it all be bullshit. You be just like my pappy, don’t ya! You be makin’ up all that stuff ‘bout the Trickster and the key an’ all that crap, and now I know it’s all fuckin’ shit so you can get up my ass! Huh? Is that it? Is it?”
Calvin had sobbed then, clutching at the ground in his misery.
Sam held him in his tearful glare, then he grabbed his clothes from the ground and ran off into the dark. Calvin heard a wail from the boy, like an animal in pain, receding into the woods. And then there was no sound or sight of him.
Calvin was crying now as he dropped the second to last stone on the flames. It had been the firelight. That was all. He loved Sam.
He shivered as the wind bit into him, and he did nothing to control his tears as he retreated into the lodge for the final stone. Had he had that transgression purified out of him? That unspeakable betrayal of trust? He doubted if it ever could be. And in his heart he knew it had been more than a mistake. It had been the disaster that could lead to their defeat.
Calvin lifted the last stone from the hole in the ground, and this time in his prayer, he muttered in that ancient tongue that called the spirits from the rocks and made the sap stir in the trees, “Believe, Keeper! Believe!”
What lunacy to try and stop him going up there. But Becker tried. “I think it’s best if you stay calm and stay here, Craig. Remember, this is not your investigation.”
Craig was standing up, leaning forward on straight arms that propped up the top half of his body on the table like he was going to do a handstand, his head hanging down between slumped shoulders. Becker was talking down to the top of the man’s head and the back of his neck and getting no response. Craig fought a battle against tears that were far from manly. He wanted to wail and shout and tear his breast. But he just hung there on his arms, his eyes shut and his mouth a tight slit like a closed razor. Bell was gone to the car, waiting for the Edmonton officer to follow him.
“We’ll keep you well informed.”
Craig spoke in a choked voice without changing his position. “I’m coming with you, Becker.”
“I can’t stop you. I’m merely advising you.”
“Then don’t.”
“Craig. This is why we’re here. To avoid personal involvement.”
Craig’s head surfaced and he looked at Becker with eyes that were way too old for his face. “Yeah. It’s real personal now.”
Air moved between them and Becker backed off. “We’ll go with Bell. When you’re ready.”
He left the room quietly and Craig opened his mouth in a silent scream that would have broken windows if it had a voice.
The dumb bastards had churned up the snow in the driveway, making such a mess that if there had been telltale tracks of any kind, they were gone now. The snow in the drive was flashing red and blue and Craig felt sick.
“Where did the son of a bitch get in?”
“We can’t say, sir. There’s no prints from the back door here, ‘cept for a coyote. And it’s a dead coyote.”
Craig looked up at him sharply. “Where is it?”
The officer pointed through the kitchen window. “In the woods there.”
Craig was keeping going. That was good. Just keep it together, and don’t think about who’s lying there on that kitchen floor. Don’t think about anything except the facts, and that murderers can’t fly, or appear and disappear at will. They make mistakes, because although their actions are inhuman, their weaknesses are human. He walked around the bloody surface and went into the yard. He found the animal’s body easily in the trees, following the flash made by a lone photographer taking shots of the coyote. Craig joined him. This was almost worse than Daniel. He had been prepared for Daniel the moment Bell burst into that bright office with darkness on his lips, but he was not prepared for an animal that seemed to have died ripping its own heart from its chest.
“Never seen anything like that,” gasped the photographer as he focused on the twisted heap of blood and fur. Neither had Craig.
Prints. No human ones, just coyote prints. Deer prints. Just deer prints.
He made a noise in his throat to the photographer by way of a reply, walked back to the kitchen and called Jeff Bell to the door with the wave of a hand. Bell nodded and left the room.
“The prints at Bradford’s murder.”
“Prints?”
“The deer prints, Bell.”
The grim-faced policeman nodded quickly to say he understood. He had been crying. McGee could see the staining on his cheek, the puffiness of his top lids.
“Did you find the deer that made them?”
Bell looked at him dumbly. “Uh, no. I don’t believe we did.”
Craig blew steam out of his nostrils and looked toward the photographer still firing his flash in the trees. “Well, actually, maybe someone did. The whole wood was swept for clues. I don’t know. It might not have seemed important. You could ask Simon, uh, Constable Ross, in there. He was on the sweep.”
“Get him out here.”
“Sir.”
Simon came out with an expectant fire in his eyes.
“Did you find the deer that made the prints around Sean Bradford?”
“Yeah. We did. It was half-buried in the snow near the top of the wood.”
Craig’s antennae started to twitch. “Did you have it photographed?”
Ross got nervous. He guessed he’d done something wrong now. “No, sir. It was just a dead deer. We left it.”
Craig kept his voice very still and calm. “And did you see what it died of?”
“No. It was half-buried, like I say.”
“And that didn’t worry you? That a deer had sniffed around the remains of a murdered human, then walked a few hundred yards away and also dropped dead?” He motioned behind him. “Like that.”
Simon Ross knew what was being photographed in that wood. He also had never seen anything like it. But then, he’d never see
n anything like the remains of his colleague in the kitchen either. “I’ll report it to Staff Sergeant Becker right now, and get someone to go back and get it.”
“Uh-huh.”
With an embarrassed lowering of his eyes, the young man left McGee alone on the step. The photographer finished up and walked very quickly to the kitchen door.
He’d had a tail on Hunt all last night and today. That was something. Maybe he could rule him out of the picture. But somehow, although he couldn’t say how or why, he knew Hunt was part of something. What the fuck went on in that wood yesterday? A man blacks out, a deer dies and a kid gets killed by something that leaves no trace. What the fuck was going on?
He was weary with unexpressed grief, and his mind was clouded with it. He heard a commotion in the kitchen, and the voice of Ernest Becker cutting through it.
“Keep them on the highway. On no account let them up here, do you understand? Now move it.”
So now the bored cop had his job back for sure and would be happily stringing striped incident tape from the trunk of one tree to another. Craig wished he could tape it across their goddamn mouths. He hated the media.
He remembered that woman, the one from, where was it, News International, that had been in Daniel’s car. It might be useless, but he was going to pull her in. She might know something. Anything. He tried to remember her name but it wasn’t there anymore. That was weird. He always remembered names and license plates. And she had made a big deal about saying her name to him. Come to think of it, he could hardly remember her face either.
No matter. It would take seconds to track her down. She was probably knocking back her third Bloody Mary in a hotel in town somewhere, crunching the celery and trying to get a cab to bring her up here and get the story.
He knew he’d see her again.
40
“I wiped out. That’s all.” Sam’s voice was low and sullen.
