by Muriel Gray
“Love me dearly?” Sam snorted unpleasantly and lowered his voice to a pitch that was barely audible over the crackle of the fire. “I’m giving you a minute to get out of here.”
Calvin looked back unmoved. So it was time. The tired old man who wanted to rekindle a love must give way to the shaman at last. Sam’s dark, raging face stared at him over the flames, the heat of its hate upstaging that of the burning pine.
Calvin raised his arms and in a voice stronger than any young man’s he shouted suddenly and alarmingly straight into Sam’s face.
“NO! You are the impure one! You will listen! The spirits care little for your childish anger. They care only for your purpose. Be still.”
Sam jumped at the shout and now he sat breathing heavily, gawking at the man opposite him who was exuding a power he had long forgotten, a power he had felt from Calvin so many times and been both awestruck and frightened by. Suddenly Sam was a teenager again. He could smell the grass and the blowing honeysuckle, and his heart was being released from its heaviness. He gazed more softly at Calvin, sensing the power that bathed him, and he gave himself up to it as though he had waited to do so for two decades. Calvin stared at him for a time, then spoke in that new quiet, strong voice. The voice of restrained power.
“Your impurity. Name it.”
Sam blinked. Calvin waited for him to speak, and when he did Sam heard his own voice far away as though someone else were talking. “I am a murderer.”
“Who did you murder?”
“My father.”
Calvin’s face moved only slightly, as though his thoughts were wrestling behind his eyes. He set his lips tightly and then spoke calmly. “Tell me.”
Sam Hunting Wolf closed his eyes. The honeysuckle smell was not imagination. No. It was in his nostrils now, pungent and real. As real as that morning when he had woken in the woods. He had run from Calvin so fast the night before, crying in horror and shame, weeping at his betrayal, at the loss of his only loved one, and had hidden beneath a juniper wrapped in the sweet tangle of yellow and white honeysuckle. The morning sun had touched the dew on its delicate blossoms and it was the scent more than the light that woke him. He was there. It was real. He spoke of it now as if in a dream.
“I hated you, Calvin. You know I loved you so much before you touched me. Better than any father. Better in every way. Kinder. Wiser. But it was over that night. You left me alone again.”
Calvin was listening as if he was merely a prompt, but his steady face and unwavering eyes did nothing to sway Sam from his dreamlike recollection.
“So I went home. I remember looking down on the cabin from the edge of the aspen woods and there was smoke coming from the chimney. I knew Moses was home. Normally I would have run. But you’d left me alone, Calvin. There was no one to run to. Nowhere to go. I wanted to die, and the surest way to die was to walk back into that cabin when the smoke was coming out of the chimney. So I walked real slow down the hill to the paddock and waited outside to see if he would come out. He didn’t. The sun was hot already and everything seemed more real than real.
“The grass was bending in the wind, showing its shiny side underneath, glinting in the light. And the pines. The pines were poking out of the mist by the river, sticking their heads up like they wanted to see the sun.
“It was so beautiful, and I felt it was being beautiful for me, kind of saying good-bye to me. ‘Cause I didn’t care what Moses did to me no more. I’d made my mind up I wasn’t going to run. I pushed the door open and it was dark like it always was, but this time much darker. Took me an age to let my eyes see. But when I got used to it I saw that Moses was kneeling in the middle of the floor, and there were blankets nailed over the windows.
“He was butt-naked and he’d cleared all his stuff, all the bits of old table and chairs, the magazines and rugs, all pushed up to the walls. He was just kneeling there, staring up at me like he’d been expecting me, and I stared back at him like he was a mad animal, but he didn’t get up to run at me or anything, just knelt there like a crazy man. Then I saw he was in a ring. A ring like you used to make of blessed herbs.
“Except this was just grain or tea or cereal or something. Yeah. That’s what it was. I can see it now. There was a carton of tea lying spilled in the doorway to the kitchen. The stupid old shit. I could see he was drunk. There was booze spilled all around the pile of his clothes and one of those stinking jars on its side. He made me sick, but I was confused. I never saw him doing anything crazy like this. Usually, like you know, he just got mean. He never got crazy. But here he was, kneeling in a ring of tea leaves in the dark, the oil-drum stove going like it was February, even though the sun outside was already splitting rocks.
“All he had on was Eden’s amulet around his scrawny neck. The Isksaksin. He was clutching it in both hands and he had an erection. He was like a totem of a dog spirit, an ugly, shriveled demon with its charm held in its claws for protection, and he was staring at me like we were both made of wood.
“I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run for a minute. Then I remembered why I’d come home and I did what seems crazy, considering it was Moses in that room. I just put my hands on my hips and I laughed. I laughed at him and pointed at his prick, tears running down my cheeks like I’d never laughed before, and even though I could see him getting ready to go nuclear I just kept on laughing.
“I said, ‘Calling up the spirits, Pappy?’ and I laughed so hard I could hardly say it, and slapped my leg.
“I don’t remember much about how he moved across the floor, except next thing I was on my back and he was kneeling on me and smashing my face with that fist.”
Sam looked across the flames at the stony Calvin to see if he was still listening. He was.
“How’d he get that strong, Calvin? I always wondered that. He was so strong and fast for a drunk. I never could fight him. Anyway, this time, I didn’t bother.
“I couldn’t move my arms, and I wasn’t even trying. I just let him keep crunching that fist into my face, blinking through the blood and still coughing and laughing at his prick that was resting on my chest like a skinned skunk while he hit me. And then suddenly he just stopped and stared at me from up there, panting like a horse, and looked at me real close with those scheming eyes. I could hardly see for the blood. All I could smell was the raw alcohol off his breath, and the blood from my cuts, and I just lay there quietly waiting to see what he was going to do next.
“ ‘You’re goin’ to make it work. You be making it work right now or I kill you.’ I looked at him like he was mad. He was meaning the Isksaksin, of course, and when I realized suddenly what all that tea and the stove and his being naked was all about, I couldn’t stop myself. I just burst out laughing again, even though my face was so swollen I could hardly move my mouth.
“He went crazy then. He tore at my hair with one hand and then started hitting me again with his other hand. He was shouting at me, just guttural noises this time, like he was too angry to form words. And then…”
Sam stopped speaking suddenly as if a thin tape had broken. He focused eyes that had been glazed during these words, and looked back up at Calvin. The old man was still and quiet across the fire, a shaman listening rather than a man. Far down into the tunnel, a drip fell into some dark pool and gave birth to a forlorn echo. Calvin kept his eyes unflinchingly on Sam’s until the younger man swallowed and spoke again.
“He stopped hitting me and touched his cock. He looked at me in a real crazy way, then he grabbed my face with one hand, turned me over and put my arm up my back. Everything changed. All I could think of was you, Calvin. I knew what he was going to do and I just thought of how I loved you and trusted you, and as I felt him tearing at my pants this deep anger that was bigger than anything I ever had before in my life just welled up in my throat and exploded in my head.
“I moved so fast he didn’t know what happened, but I roared like a bull and the anger in my head went into my body. And in a couple of seconds the role
s were reversed and I was on top of Moses, my hand at his throat, my knees nearly bursting his chest. I just looked down at him then, spots of blood from my face dripping onto his, and I felt this thing happen in me as I looked into that face that was now frightened and weak instead of strong and cunning.
“It was evil I felt. That’s the only way I can describe what it was. It was a warm, dark thing that crept up my spine and touched a bit of me I didn’t know was there. What will I do with him? it made me think. I can do anything I like. I can torture him, kill him, make him suffer. Anything. It was such a dark, warm feeling, a feeling of power, and I guessed that’s how Moses must have felt all along with me, and it made the darkness worse. Made the hate worse. He just lay there whimpering, drooling from the corner of his mouth, and I was about to hit him real hard when I stopped. I looked at Eden’s amulet around his neck and I just stopped.
“There was a voice in my head like Eden’s, but not Eden’s at all. It was only like his voice the way a peach full of maggots is like a peach. Moses looked up at me like I was mad while I listened. I must have been straining my ears or screwing up my eyes, ‘cause he thought I’d let up and forgotten about him, and he made a pretty good go at getting loose.
“So I hit him. The first time I ever hit my pappy. It was like it happened real slow. I saw my fist swing down and the knuckles smashed into the side of his nose with a snapping wet noise. Soon as I did it, it was like the voice got some new strength. I could hear the words this time, I didn’t have to strain to listen. It was real simple. It just said, ‘Show him how to use it, Sam.’ Like I say, it was Eden, but I knew it wasn’t. Worse thing was, I didn’t care. I looked down at Moses’ bloody face and I felt how sweet that dark feeling in my spine was again. ‘Pappy?’ I said right into his face, my mouth inches from his broken nose, ‘Promise not to hit me no more?’ He nodded at me, gurgling on his blood. Then I said, ‘Then I be showin’ you how to use it. We goin’ to use it together.’”
Calvin held a hand up suddenly, gesturing Sam into silence. There was a scuffing noise behind them in the tunnel. A tiny scratching of claws. Both men stiffened, listening with more than their ears. The silence was profound, broken only by another lonely drip falling to its pool like a lost soul. Calvin let his hand fall to his knee once more, and looked back at Sam.
“No matter. We are both awake.”
Sam looked back at him with horror, but despite his instant instinct to deny the truth of what the shaman implied, he nodded. He took a breath of cold air and resumed his tale.
“I told him, Calvin. I told him everything and watched him prepare. He was like a kid and I still had this big dark thing sitting on my heart that was screaming I was doing wrong. But I hated him so much I just wanted to hurt and destroy. I didn’t know what I was doing. Do you understand that? I didn’t know.”
Calvin neither nodded nor spoke. He watched Sam carefully, and when the scuffing started again behind them, nearer this time, he merely leaned forward and threw another branch on the fire, letting the hiss of the wet wood drown the sound of those tiny claws on rubble. He looked up from the fire at Sam’s twisted face and made a small gesture with his hand that meant continue.
“You know how we prepared. You taught me well. It seemed like blasphemy, though, letting Moses do it, and because he was doing it unpurified, making it for bad medicine, it stank of evil, of a badness I could barely comprehend. But I didn’t care. I told myself I didn’t believe in it, not really. I had decided the night before that this was all bullshit, tossed on the hard ground telling myself over and over again that my curse was not only to be born Indian but to be born at all. That this shit was all made up to keep us pegged down to our grubby beliefs, to keep us out of the white man’s hair and away from his rockets and his computers and his money. And I hated the whole fucking thing.
“So I just watched him, telling him the next step each time he completed a prayer, believing nothing except that I had my pappy in my power for the first time in my life. He was so hungry for whatever it was he thought the Isksaksin could do for him, he was like a child. Eager, wild-eyed, listening to me like I was special. I tell you, Calvin, I enjoyed it. And then we were ready. He put the Isksaksin between his teeth like I told him, and I waited for a moment before the last prayer. He looked so small and thin, Moses, standing there naked with that piece of bone gripped in his teeth. I thought about Marlene then. Wondered what she’d have been like if he hadn’t turned her on his skewer. Would she have loved me and held me, stroked my face and sung to me on the porch like I saw other Kinchuinick mothers do to their children?
“And I looked at his filthy greedy face, and I believed for a second that she could have loved me. That I could at least have had a mother if he hadn’t wrecked her and killed her like he killed Eden. Like he killed everything. And my hate was so intense I could feel it inside me like a hard nugget. I clenched my fists and said the words that completed the calling, watching him while he repeated them through his yellow teeth.”
Calvin nodded as though there had been a question. “She did love you. She was weak.”
Sam’s eyes were clouding. He stopped speaking, looking up at Calvin with a face that said there was no more to tell. Calvin prompted him. “What then?”
Sam looked back at him with glistening eyes. “You know what then, Calvin. You were there. I killed him.”
“How so? When did you kill him? What with?”
Sam’s tears fell, running over his bloodied cheeks in thin, snaking rivulets, falling to rest in smudges on his filthy jacket.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I only know I passed out and then he was there… like that… the way you saw him when I came around.” He buried his head in his knees again and gave voice to his tears, sobbing deeply. “Dear God. That I could have done that to any human being.”
Calvin leaned forward and picked a smouldering twig from the fire and, with an astonishingly nimble movement, swung around and threw the burning wood at something behind him. Sam snapped his head up at the action, and as the twig spun into the dark its flames momentarily lit up the marten that was crouching against the rough wall of the tunnel before striking it squarely on the back.
The animal growled with a noise too deep for its size and bared its teeth, and both Sam and Calvin had time to see the dark whorls of the obscenity shine behind its eyes before the flaming wood extinguished and plunged the tunnel into darkness again.
Calvin turned back to Sam, who was looking into the blackness with horror. “Did you think he would let us be?”
Sam sniffed and wiped his face with his sleeve. “It let me be last night. I hoped it was over.”
Calvin gave a wry half-smile. “It had other duties last night.”
The light dancing on the old man’s deeply lined face showed just how sick and broken he was. Sam felt cold fingers of horror on his spine at the thought of what those duties had been, and how Calvin might have dealt with them. He looked for the first time at this figure from the past with something approaching sympathy.
If Calvin caught the look, he did not respond. His voice was still flat, emotionless. “Now it has just one.”
The tunnel remained silent. No claws scuttled away in fear of another blow. No clattering gravel betrayed an animal retreating. The men looked at each other and both knew that when dawn pushed its thin light into the tunnel mouth it would describe the body of a dead marten. Used and now discarded, its heart or liver burst inside it, its veins opened or its spinal cord snapped. Something invisible and malevolent had stopped its small life in spite now that there was no more use for it. Calvin lifted another branch, stirred the fire and placed his hands back on his knees as if nothing had happened.
“Moses’ death. You know more. Remember.”
Sam’s reply was almost sulky. “I’ve told you everything. I killed him. I just don’t remember how.”
Calvin sighed, and after watching Sam’s face for a few moments he put the branch down, shifted on his cro
ssed legs and reached to his waist for his medicine bundle. With cold fingers he opened its neck and started to finger the contents. It seemed almost as though he had lost interest in Sam’s confession, but then he raised his eyes to meet Sam’s and answered the question in them. “We will pray and eat herbs. The eagle can make you see what you cannot speak. The foul one cannot hear our thoughts when we are joined.”
Sam swallowed, his mouth already dry at the thought. He knew what these herbs and that joining could do. Calvin had made him see many things in the past. The white man he had become told him it was no more than a drug trip, the mind-bending trick of a toxic plant. But the wire that had sung in the wind of his soul earlier was telling him different. The ancient voice buried deep in his soul, that was proud to be Indian, sure of its hold on the earth and its place in the spirit world, was saying yes, it’s true: the Trickster could have no entry into their joined minds when Calvin and Sam dreamed together.
But Sam was afraid of what he would see. More afraid than he had ever been in a life that had held so much fear.
Calvin was laying the blackened pieces of foliage on a stone in front of him, carefully, meticulously, almost artistically. He glanced up at Sam as he arranged the leaves and stopped. “You know the prayer. Begin.”
The man who only weeks ago had sat in his bath flicking through a truck magazine, dreaming of a holiday in Europe with his family, this man dug around in his mind and found those ancient and sacred words that had stayed buried for so long under a stone he had constructed from hate. Hunting Wolf, son of Killing Wolf, father of Running Wolf, opened his mouth, closed his eyes and began to chant. “Sikoch Pik-sik-see… Pachitia Inustanatkini: … Natomachestai…”
Calvin was closing his eyes, swaying with the rhythmic chanting of his companion, holding his hands above his shoulders and joining in the prayer.
