THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  “Need the air. My ass is numb.”

  The two men got out of the car and crossed the road to the house. In front of the peeling blue door, the shaman, Hunting Wolf, stood watching them as they approached. The men walked on either side of him, instinctively giving that three square feet of seemingly empty snow a wide berth, although neither would have noticed that they did or be able to say why. They stamped their feet on the step and rang the bell.

  Sam watched them as if in a dream. Policemen, ringing his doorbell again. His state of purity was so intact, he felt no fear standing here beside them. As they waited, both men could smell delicious things. The smell of sweet grass, the delicate scent of wild roses blowing and clover trembling beneath a dew. Spring smells that had no business wafting on the snow-filled air of winter. Neither mentioned it. It was crazy.

  There was no reply. While Sam watched, Jarvis rang again and blew a low meaningful whistle at his partner. “Looks like Mrs. Hunt’s being pretty helpful with old Craig’s enquiries, huh?”

  Eddie gave a short snort of a laugh. “Blame him? You seen her?”

  Jarvis rang again and this time put his face against the door and hollered, “Mrs. Hunt! Police here. Not the press. Please open the door.”

  Eddie smiled at his partner and said in a stage whisper, “And do up the buttons on your pants first, Craig.”

  They sniggered, stopping abruptly when the door was opened by Katie.

  And as they explained their quest, no one noticed the shaman walk up the steps between them and into the house.

  She shut the door on the men and turned around. Sam’s heart beat in his throat. That face. She had been crying, but the puffiness around her eyes just made her more beautiful, made him want to grab her face and kiss away the redness, to hold her and feel the warmth of her sweet, earnest face against his chest.

  Those men, they had done something to his state of purity when they had laughed like that. Sam was confused. He felt his power diminished. What was it? Doubt? How could he doubt Katie, with her messy blond hair and brilliant blue eyes, and those lips, pink and slightly ragged from the cold? He wanted to kiss them so badly. Katie raised her head slightly, as if she could smell something on the air. She looked around the foyer, her eyes lighting up with love as though she had glimpsed something precious. For a moment, Sam very nearly spoke her name.

  But he had a task. And as she stood with her back to the front door, Sam moved toward the stairs. He stopped at the bottom as he saw Craig McGee come out of the den. Katie’s expression of dreamy ecstasy faded. “They need you back at the detachment.”

  He nodded, putting his hat on and making for the door. Katie looked at his face and put a hand out to his arm as he reached for the handle behind her. “Are you OK, Craig?”

  Sam held his breath. Craig? Since when was his wife calling this policeman by his first name?

  McGee looked at his feet and shrugged. His face had lost all color. It was the gray mask of an ill man. Haunted, tired and fighting an internal battle for his reason. He looked up at her and tried to smile.

  “Guess so.”

  Katie kept her hand on his arm, and for a moment she knew how sore his heart must be. How lonely and sad and lost he was. She leaned across and kissed him. Craig McGee looked at her without expression, opened the door and left.

  The feeling was like a numb leg coming back to life. Sam felt his blood return to his nerves, and the heady concentration that was keeping the prayer alive, keeping the pulse of his spirit pure, drained from him as if it were being sucked by a pump. A woman and a man could do to the shaman what the Trickster with all his grisly visions could not.

  They had broken his faith in himself. Broken the prayer with their betrayal.

  Katie raised her head, looked across at the stair and her mouth made an O. She pressed herself back against the closed door again, this time with her arms across her chest.

  “Sam.”

  He looked at her coldly, turned and walked up the stairs.

  It was under the bed where he’d left it. Nothing more than a piece of circular bone on a leather thong. Sam picked it up and held it in his palm for a moment, his eyes closed against the pain of what he had seen. There was no time for this. He must return. Must regain his cleanliness. The squalid stench of betrayal and vengeance would taint him as much as the guilt he had harbored for twenty years. Calvin had removed that guilt and made him pure again, made him an Indian once more. This new nightmare must not pull him back into the material, spiritual desert of the white man. There, he would be powerless. In that place he was no more than a poor Indian who shoveled snow. Not a shaman who could command it.

  He slipped the amulet over his head and walked quickly out of the room into Jess’s bedroom. He had to see his children. Maybe for the last time.

  She was in her cot, her head on its side, the mouth open and her closed eyes almost hidden by a mop of black hair. Sam bent and kissed her fat cheek, paused to look at the tiny face for a moment, then left the room. Katie was on the landing, staring up at him.

  She was so beautiful, and her face was so confused and wounded, he struggled to curb his longing for her. He looked away and stepped into Billy’s room, closing the door behind him, a statement.

  The boy’s eyes glittered in the dark. Sam put a hand out and switched on the lamp.

  “Dad.”

  He ran forward and wrapped himself around Sam’s sore body, his head buried in the torn plaid jacket, the arms circling his father so tightly Sam had to fight for breath.

  Sam unravelled him, bent down to take his son’s face in his hands and kissed him slowly on the forehead.

  “I felt you coming.”

  Sam nodded. “I felt you watching.”

  “Are you going away again?”

  Sam nodded again. Billy looked serious, and Sam raised an eyebrow at the old expression that came into his son’s eyes. Suddenly there was an adult in there.

  “There’s two cops out there at the back. Behind the log pile. I’ll get them to come around the front when you’re ready.”

  Sam held the boy close again. “I love you, Billy. I love you all.”

  “I know, Dad.” The boy pulled out of his father’s arms and crossed to his bedside cabinet. He opened the door, fished something out and brought it back across the room. “This is for you.”

  Sam opened his big palm and watched as Billy dropped a flat saucer of shiny metal into it.

  “Queen of Queens. The biggest ever. Remember when we did it?”

  Sam nodded, swallowing. He looked back up from the flat dollar into the jewels of his son’s eyes.

  “You must take care of them both. You understand?”

  Billy nodded, that grown-up in his eyes returning. Sam slipped the dollar into his pocket and stood up. Billy pulled on his sneakers and looked across at his dad once more.

  “Mom still loves you. I told her everything.”

  Sam looked at him and lowered his head. Billy looked uncomprehendingly at the sorrow on his father’s face for a moment, then opened the door and left. Sam heard him thump down the stairs past Katie with a few boyish words of explanation, then watched as her figure slid into view, standing in the doorframe.

  “Sam. Speak to me.”

  She breathed rather than spoke his name, and he stood by the window gazing at her, longing to speak to her and hold her. But he could not risk the questions he might ask, nor bear the answers if they were not the ones he had to hear. His power was his purity of heart, and already he had broken his prayer to go unseen. He would have to return to Calvin by his wits, not with the powers of a shaman. There was no time to pray again, to chant and prepare. She had broken him. For now.

  He looked at her for a long time, and when the screaming that Billy started at the front of the house sent the two cops at the back running around to assist, Sam lifted the window and flung his legs over the sill. He looked back at his wife, frozen in the doorway as if she were in a dream.

  “I l
ove you more than my life,” he said, dropped ten feet into the thick snow and slipped away into the night.

  Craig McGee blinked at the windshield, trying to keep his aching eyes open as he turned out of Oriole and onto Lynx. Everything would change, he had said to Katie. It had. Except that he knew somewhere deep in his heart that it had always been like this. Nothing had changed at all. The only change was that he was admitting it was true.

  He had thought when that first shard of belief wedged in his soul that the policeman in him had died. But it hadn’t. The reverse was true. It was the policeman who listened to what Billy had told Katie and knew that there were too many answers to the impossible questions in that tale to be ignored. Bizarre answers, but answers nevertheless. Everything the boy said had a kind of deadly logic. It was the policeman in him who knew that Sam hadn’t killed his dog. The boy’s outrageous explanation of what happened answered the riddle so neatly, linking those animals at the murders in the way he knew something would; only a fool would refuse to give it brain time.

  And yet…

  Where did it get him? Fast lane to the nuthouse? What now? Was he driving back to the detachment to tell Becker that they should be hunting down a malicious spirit as old as the earth? One that was going to destroy them all unless Sam Hunt sacrificed himself?

  He stopped the car, watching the snowflakes settle on the glass between the intermittent wiper sweep.

  What was his part in all this madness? He leaned his head forward and touched the wheel with a hot forehead.

  Sylvia. The fucking thing had abused the memory of Sylvia. He hated it then, with a hatred deeper than his grief. He pulled his head up and concentrated on that hate, pushing his fear aside with the intensity of the emotion. Because under all this stuff there was a pit of fear so profound he dared not peer over into its abyss.

  The wiper blades swept an arc across the snow-dusted windshield, and in that two-second gap, Craig McGee saw him.

  Sam Hunt. Running across Lynx Drive and heading for the railroad.

  The tracks were easy to follow. Sam was a big guy. He left big, deep footprints. As soon as the tracks hit the railroad line, Craig hardly needed to look at his feet. The footprints ran straight up the center of the rails, heading for the Corkscrew Tunnel. Craig slowed his pace, panting with the effort of wading through deep snow. He wasn’t going to lose Sam now. The dark holes in the snow his boots had left would take hours to fill up again, even in this storm. Craig hung back and took his time.

  So he’d been hiding in the tunnel? Neat idea. Hardly any freight came through at night. Anyone in Silver knew that. The perfect refuge from Becker and his useless posse.

  But the thought of that tunnel made Craig’s spine crawl. That thing again, that he’d spent a lifetime ignoring. It had gone off like an alarm last week when they’d gone to collect the bits of the ski patrol boys who’d blown themselves up above the tunnels. Craig had walked down to where the landslide had partially blocked the entrance, just out of curiosity and to get a breather from the carnage, and he’d wanted to run. Very fast and very far away.

  The tunnel was like a mouth. A great yawning, hungry mouth. Craig had stared up at the icicles hanging from the roughly hewn arch and been repulsed by how much they looked like teeth. He had shivered and returned to his men, leaving the tunnel to drip and echo on its own.

  Now Sam Hunt was running toward it. Craig sat on his fear again and walked slowly and silently between the tracks.

  Twenty feet behind him a tiny chipmunk, torn violently from its winter slumber, walked equally slowly and even more silently.

  He could feel the bone circle pressing against his collarbone. His sweat was making it slide around just as it always had, and Sam clenched his fists, resisting the urge to put his hand in his jacket and rip it from his neck. What if Calvin had gone? What then?

  He staggered on through the snow. Headlights lit the sky and he fell to his face between the rails, waiting for the car or truck, or whatever it was crawling through the snow along the Trans-Canada, to roll past and leave him alone.

  He felt the light from the road sweep over him and he stayed on the ground for a few moments, listening to the imagined voices of the snowflakes as he lay there. His prayer was short and fast but it thanked them for their beauty and their coldness and promised them life when it was their turn again to be part of an animal with warm blood and a beating heart. An old Kinchuinick prayer.

  He lifted his head and got to his feet, sweeping the snow from his jacket. There was a figure up ahead. Something writhing on the tracks only yards ahead.

  Sam swallowed, bracing himself, and walked on.

  No. Not a figure. Two figures. Two naked figures having vigorous sex. Sam’s throat was dry as he approached what he knew would be Katie, lying on her back in the snow, grunting in pleasure as Craig McGee on top drove into her.

  He gasped for a moment, swallowing back the bile that had risen in his throat, and when he opened his eyes there was nothing in the snow at all. Sam spun around to see if there was more. New tableaux for his amusement. Nothing.

  But a voice in his head said quietly and seductively, “Then destroy me, scum.”

  Sam dug his nails into the palms of his hands and walked on, fighting back his rage, while far behind him Craig McGee heard the shout in the muffled night air and quickened his pace.

  The tunnel mouth was ahead. The steep bank that ran up to its right was black with pines, darkening the white strip of track with their gloomy bulk. Sam staggered on toward that deep black arch.

  “Calvin?”

  His shout was sucked into the night and ignored. Sam’s breath clouded out in front of him, and his heart became so heavy he felt it beating in his stomach.

  “CALVIN!”

  Nothing.

  Sam took a few more faltering steps toward the archway. His foot kicked something in the snow. He stooped and dug into the soft white blanket. His hand met cold, hard leather and he closed his fingers around the object and lifted it. Calvin’s medicine bundle.

  The young shaman dropped to his knees with the pouch held out in front of him like an offering. His voice was a croak.

  “God. No. No.”

  That would be too much. To lose someone, find them again, then have them taken away once more. The bitter cold of loneliness blew in his soul and he bent his head to weep, and the snow he had prayed for fell on his head like a betrayal.

  Then a noise made him look up. There was a small, staccato crack from the tunnel mouth. Sam held his breath and struggled to his feet. With that breath still held prisoner in bursting lungs he walked a few more paces forward until he could see the arch full-on. There was a faint orange glow from that black hole. A fire. A fire cracking with life in the heart of the blackness. Sam let go a huge gasp of air, nearly laughing in his joy. He ran forward, slipping and stumbling as he went, and skidded into the tunnel mouth.

  Behind the flames, against the wall, the old shaman sat staring into the fire, not looking up when Sam made his boisterous entrance. Sam cared little about the coolness of his reception. Calvin was here. Alive.

  The old man spoke quietly, in ancient Cree.

  “You fetched the Isksaksin?”

  Sam fought to regain his breath, holding his hands to the flames.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let us use it. Now.”

  Sam spoke in Cree too. This time as a mark of respect as much as anything. “But I must prepare. I am not pure yet.”

  The figure on the other side of the flames lowered his head further.

  “You are pure.”

  Sam wiped his eyes with a hand. He was so very tired. “No, Calvin. I am still full of hate.”

  The old man shifted on his crossed legs, bowing his head wearily to the flames. “This is what you must understand, Sam. The hate in your breast does not kill your purity. It is a righteous hate. There was treachery waiting for you at home, was there not?”

  Sam closed his eyes and remained silent. �
��Then you must give that hatred life. Think of it. Feel it. Make yourself pure by remembering the corruption of it. That is what will make you strong to fight this monster.”

  Confused and aching from the memory of seeing his family, Sam opened his eyes. “I understand nothing, Calvin. The years you taught me, I learned nothing. I believed my purity would be an absence of hate, a love of myself and all living things.” He rubbed his aching eyes again and bowed his head in a gesture that was almost defeat. “You confuse me, Soaring Eagle.”

  The old man’s voice grew urgent, almost angry. “I came to give you the truth, Hunting Wolf, and that truth is that you must hate the Trickster as you hate yourself. And hate yourself, you must. You killed your father. What man could love himself who has taken the life of the one who gave him life? And you should hate your wife. She has stolen your love. Hate, hate, hate. That is the trick. Now use the Isksaksin. Quickly. Do not prepare.”

  The flames between them flared, almost as if they echoed Calvin’s sudden anger. Sam wrestled with the old man’s ugly words, words that sounded so alien on the shaman’s tongue. Calvin’s power was of love. Now he was here to help Sam hate. He reeled from it as he sat staring into the orange dancing flames.

  The flames that were so bright.

  The flames that were giving no heat at all.

  His eyes slowly lifted to the figure opposite and as they did so the heatless flames seemed to grow higher, stopping him from seeing Calvin’s face. Sam’s eyes traveled down the old shaman’s body. The wool jacket, the cord trousers, the Timberland boots. Calvin’s jacket was open, just as it was when he went to fetch wood, and on the thick leather belt around his waist Sam could see the medicine bundle hanging. The image of this same bundle that he held in his hand now, on the other side of this pretense of a fire.

  He wailed and leaped to his feet, and the height let him look directly down into the face that had been talking to him. It started to laugh. That filthy noise again, touching the inside of his head like a rapist stroking a tethered thigh.

  Sam gaped for a moment, defiled and violated by its trickery, then ran from the tunnel, gasping in the freezing air, his eyes swiveling in the dim, snow-lit night, searching in between those dark tree trunks for what he dared not see.