When Alice Lay Down With Peter

by Margaret Sweatman

  An elder interrupted. “Sit down. Your feet stink.”

  The younger man sat.

  For a moment, it seemed the story would die with the fire. Then the elder said, “Tell. Tell what you tell.” But he looked through narrow eyes, a warning. There are limits to what can be told to the white policeman.

  Twisted face shrugged. “Ahhhh, it was an asshole half-breed working for the police—that’s who shot Assiyiwin. Assiyiwin came in kindness, an old man, nearly blind. Métis and the police, they want to fight on our land. Our chief, he says, ‘No, we don’t want Riel’s fight.’ Assiyiwin is a warrior when he is young. He’s not afraid to fight. But he goes with the chief. The half-breed traitor, that McKay, he points his gun. Assiyiwin says, ‘Why have you so many guns, grandson?’ Fucking McKay shoots Assiyiwin in the stomach. A good man, an old man.” His body seemed to shrink, a certain helpless smirk. “What is a warrior now anyways?”

  Clark went pale. “I’m so sorry, dear chap.” The young men finally broke up laughing, rolling back, mimicked “dear chap.” Clark blinked and smiled. He enunciated carefully. “But could you,” he said, trying to be heard, “tell me what is going on? Please. If your… if your people did not want to fight, then why was your man shot?”

  The older men were silent. Too many secrets and no one to trust.

  Eli rose and walked away from the fire. Clark was acutely aware of being white. The silence was so prolonged that even the Indians, who weren’t normally anxious to fill space with speech, began to sniff and twitch. Clark cocked his head to one side, ears perked hopefully. Finally, an elder smiled kindly at Clark and said, “Itineesit atim.” This broke everybody up. Twisted face pointed and laughed. “Itineesit atim!” Patted Clark’s head. “Smart dog!”

  The elder pulled himself wearily to his feet. Passing, he too gently patted Clark’s head. “Good night, Smart Dog.” As he disappeared from the light, the old man said, “Maybe Eli will tell you why our land is now our prison.”

  THE HEAT HELD and the meat dried. Eli was a favourite with the women, and they’d let him take the willow flails from their hands, flirtatiously, as if they were handing him their last remnant of clothing, and they’d walk a little behind to get a better look at the muscle on his thick brown arms when he drummed at the hide-threshing basin. The wing-beat of air when Eli hit the shingles of meat was an intimate sound, and the women watching him found a warm rock to sit on, distracted, daydreaming as the dried meat gave way beneath Eli’s flail and broke into a pigeon-grey powder. He held the pot of hot, melted fat for them, tipped it into the basin while they stirred. Such affinity is reserved for men in the kitchen. That’s where you find the men who love women. The gossipy side of men is a great aphrodisiac. I forgive Eli. Really.

  The pemmican was ladled into the hide sacks, pounded tight, sewn up into big boulders cooling in the evening of the last day of Eli’s bachelor life at Duck Lake.

  Eli had abandoned me fifteen years before, the heroic fool. For fifteen years after the rebellion, he’d worked at the ferry at Gabriel’s Crossing. A decade and a half spent looking after a dozen horses. He didn’t marry. Clark, enviously watching the women watch Eli, asked him about this. Clark himself was badly smitten in several places, admiring this woman for her grace, that girl for her ankles. I don’t know what Eli said. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Maybe the occasional visit, maybe some degree of intimacy. Never mind.

  Despite himself, Eli got involved in local politics. He fought every speculator, every railway official, every local commissioner working for Ottawa’s “Indian Affairs.” He didn’t know how to read. He used his voice, and his sadness. Eli’s sadness hurt the world into laughter. He filled the wintering kitchens of his neighbours with intoxicating nostalgia.

  Five years earlier, Eli had acted for Riel, worked like a missionary to make the Northwest Rebellion a real Indian—Métis movement. At the Cut Knife camp, Eli and Riel’s Métis agents had tried to persuade the Indians to join them, singing the praises of the future, which was a return to the past—the police evicted, their land returned to them. Almost all the Indians were disinclined to go Riel’s way, but a few of the young men went out and murdered some whites, a selective revenge upon local enemies.

  By way of a response, the Canadians hanged eight Indians—six Cree and two Assiniboines. On November 27, 1885. Wandering Spirit, Miserable Man, Little Bear, Bad Arrow, Round the Sky, Iron Body, Itka and Man Without Blood. Hanged them all from a massive scaffold, in unison, at the barracks at Battleford, on the North Saskatchewan River. They were not buried on their own reserves; the government did not wish to foster ghosts. The hangings were witnessed by families from the reserves surrounding Battleford. Our beloved prime minister, Sir John A., had written to the Indian commissioner, Edgar Dewdney, that the executions “ought to convince the Red Man that the White Man governs.” Very subtle. Miserable Man had asked for a pair of thick-soled shoes for “the long walk between this world and the Other Side.” I wonder if this wish, too, was denied. Likely. They didn’t want Indians going far. Even dead ones.

  The rebellion in ’85 had left the Indians with nothing but a death chant in their bellies. Sir John suspended the annuity payments to those “rebel” bands. He starved them out, all the way to Montana.

  People mistook Eli’s regret for idealism, and voted for him in elections he never even ran in. He gained himself a campaign manager, Randy, a racy little fellow with a typesetting machine who dreamed up Eli’s campaigns while the candidate himself was in the barn or on the ferry, unaware there was an election. “BETTER DAYS!” was Eli’s campaign manager’s slogan. And Eli always thought it referred to the lost past, and it always made him wonder why people insisted on voting for what was missing, expurgated, extinct. The politics of regret made him sadder and sadder, and the people adored his sorrow and elected him to municipal council.

  They were loading the pemmican, the whole crew, chatting, a lot of teasing, especially for Clark, who was by now so full of gentlemanly desire he seemed always on the verge of tears. Clark got all misty-eyed and pulled Eli to the side and said, “I’m thinking of staying.” The two men looked at the scenery. “I love it here,” said Clark. There was a nuptial quality to this confession, a sense of commitment mixed with virginal ardour. “I’m thinking I should leave the police. These people know something. I can’t explain. I want what they’ve got.” His earnest seal-face blinking. “I hear you’re the man I should talk to.”

  Just then, the sound of a horse. Eli and Clark watched the stranger ride towards them. It was obvious from the way the man sat in his saddle, like a mechanized gopher, that he was military. Clark actually whimpered, he was so excited to see one of his own kind. And yes, on the brink of betrayal, he wiggled and wagged and finally collected himself to raise a stiff salute as the officer rode towards them.

  “Good Lord! It’s Roberts!” The puppy tail wagging as if it would come off. “Roberts! Good Lord!”

  “Hello, Clark,” said Roberts. The Indians stopped work. Stood quietly, wary as a chain gang at head count. Roberts had a silk-lined voice in a steely body. Great military bearing, the puffery of the second son, Ontario-bred, British by choice. Wore a moustache similar to Clark’s, but bigger and loopier and toplofty. He looked down upon the Indians from his horse. Clark, underfoot, barking as pleasantly as a golden retriever, tried to introduce Roberts to his new Indian friends. Without even a glance around him, Roberts announced, “I’m on my way to Winnipeg. Then to Paardeberg. South Africa, you know. I suggest you join me.” He turned his horse, as if setting off at once.

  “I say,” said Clark. He followed Roberts a short distance and then hesitated, looked back longingly at his new friends, who suddenly seemed very shabby. Roberts dismounted. Brought Clark close, spoke in his ear, but his voice carried on the wind. “See here, Clark. A great many of our men are going,” Roberts said. “Buller’s on top. And a lot of the lads from Cut Knife have gone over. In fact, it’s Otter’s command.”

&nb
sp; Eli walked towards them. “Otter,” he said.

  “Oh!” Clark nibbled. “Eli, I’d like you meet my good friend Roberts.”

  Standing in the piddle pool of Clark’s enthusiasm, Eli drew in a breath. “Otter’s the fool who attacked Poundmaker’s camp,” he said.

  “Fought the Indians in ’85,” said Roberts. “Five hundred Indians.”

  Eli turned back to the wagon. Everyone there was watching quietly. The fun had gone out. The grasses blew, each blade divulged by yellow daylight. “Was no five hundred—” He stopped. Where was he to go? He looked back helplessly at the people loading pemmican—not real pemmican, not really five hundred men, no real soldiers, no true story, no home here for such a man as Eli. He tried again: “Poundmaker…” A very tall, very handsome man, dead, like Marie, with tuberculosis, soon after his release from prison. Eli turned back to Roberts, who looked at him somewhat more openly, quizzical, and Eli saw that even Roberts was not a bad man. “Chief Poundmaker saved Otter’s life,” Eli said.

  Roberts winced. He did not like debate. The Indians read the futility in his face and were poisoned by a terrible fatigue. They abandoned their work then and there, leaving the rest of the pemmican on the ground. Clark said, “Oh.” The kindly elder turned to him and smiled a little and joined his people in their modest protest, walking off the job. That left Clark and Roberts and Eli sitting on five tons of pemmican destined for the Yukon.

  Roberts wanted to be happy. He poked Clark’s arm. “Are you with me?” he asked him. “We’ll join Strathcona Horse and go to South Africa.”

  Eli said, “You’re going to Winnipeg to join, are you?”

  Otter was fighting the colonials in South Africa. Eli had let himself assist with a bit of bureaucracy, exacting slave labour from regretful Indians. He realized that if he himself wasn’t extinct, perhaps he should be. He smiled. He smiled and decided to die.

  The best way for a hero to die is to challenge the element most dangerous to his soul. For Eli, that would be a British cavalry fighting a colonial war.

  “Do you think this Strathcona Horse outfit could use some pemmican?” he asked.

  Roberts and Clark suddenly looked roguish and young. Boy, this was real frontier stuff! Clark and Roberts and Eli sat down on five tons of pemmican no longer destined for the Yukon. They crossed their legs. Roberts offered them cigars. They sat and smoked, the three men, and looked to the west. All they got was sun in their eyes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I KNEW ELI WAS COMING, in a blind and deaf way. The soles of my feet knew it, skin dry and flaking and cracked so badly I had a recurring nightmare about baby spiders living in my feet. My only exercise, the few steps from bed to desk. The back of my knees knew it because the eczema got hot and itchy, a rash that splashed across the back of my legs, dry and festering. My crusty hands knew it, and my sore pink eyes blindly discerned when I looked up from my desk by the window and imagined three scruffy wise men approaching. The sunlight seared like a flashlight in the eyes of a caged rat.

  Except for distracted visits to the backhouse, I hadn’t been outside in fifteen years. My father brought my books home from the post office. The last batch was delivered on May I, in spring rain on a day greyer than an old woman’s whiskers, and I’d shuffled out in Dad’s socks (the same) to fetch them from the porch. I had a quick look around. The world was messy. I took the books inside my cave to maul them.

  I had not been eczematous for all of the fifteen years of Eli’s abandonment. It was a gradual thing. At first, I’d flourished on my diet of ideas. Back in ’85, I’d started out with Coleridge and his gang, and it was great for a while because I’d concurrently developed a taste for dandelion wine and I made my way through De Quincey’s hallucinations on friendly terms, eye to dilating eye. Even Tennyson, though sober, lured me down leafy paths of learning. I always felt like I was nearly There (so long as There was not Here; I kept my oath of allegiance to the Imperial Empire of Irrelevance). Just one more book, one more month at my desk, yet one more season eating paper. I was the teacher’s pet, the most obedient student in the Commonwealth. I ploughed through Longinus’s On the Sublime, plodded through Plotinus’s “On the Intellectual Beauty.” Burped through Edmund Burke’s “The Sublime and Beautiful Compared.” Stolid, stubborn, strict in my categories. Under my bed remained hidden my treasure box: Walden, the photographs of Big Bear, the petrified tusk. But I never once touched them during my long tenure as gullible student. As the eggs would never touch the jam on my plate, Thoreau’s Walden would never touch Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The tusk would never touch Sir Francis Bacon. And Blondie McCormack would never touch another man.

  I was a retroactive virgin. There was no map for a farm girl in St. Norbert, Manitoba, at the end of nineteenth century. History was a whiteout, a tomb full of wig powder and scurf. I nearly cauterized the hunger in me for green things, for belly laughs. After a while, I forgot why I was pursuing the gaunt bums of geniuses. Lost in the blizzard blanketing the real estate of the Commonwealth, I’d aim for any grey shape looming up from the pages of the bug-eaten books.

  The problem with static electricity grew so acute that I could touch no one, even in summer, for fear of an electric shock of sufficient magnitude to inadvertently erase their memories. It was a living hell, but I remained dedicated to my own cloister, my prison of split ends and paginated dreams, a starving person convinced that everyone else is a glutton, that joy is a bad joke, that we live alone and die alone. I was a teenager until my fourth decade, a pathetic figure in a flannel nightgown and my father’s socks in June 1900, when Eli returned to me.

  I was reading Descartes that afternoon, the twenty-fifth of June 1900. Learning the principles of radical doubt. When I dared look out my window into the chaos of real life, I simply practised my lessons on Eli, doubting with a novice’s talent the possibility of his existence. But when I saw him dismount and stand in the yard on his wishbone legs, holding his hat with his attitude of perplexity that is both courageous and shy, I held my hand against the light and looked through the skin to the red blood inside and I could see the white stems of my fingers under my own marsh water, and then I looked between my fingers at the dazzle of sun and Eli, still there, persistently fleshed, holding the end of the reins, his long arms at his sides.

  I stood, tipping over my chair, and walked on scabby feet away from my desk and through the kitchen, a room that seemed glaringly loud, and out the front door and noticed for the first time that Alice had brought foxglove to grow in the mud by the porch. A meanness rose in me, the meanness of a war vet who returns to find there are no jobs. I walked towards Eli like a martyr, like a liberator. I reached to touch his dusty blue shirt, holding its thick grainy blue between my fingers. His shirt was warm in my hand, and it felt clean to touch, sandblasted. We stood like that in the dust, with sweet tufts of quack grass sawing the air of the fenced yard, my hand on Eli’s shirtsleeve. I looked at Eli’s short brown eyelashes; he glanced at me and looked away.

  It was confirmed. I had saved him. All those years of toil had preserved his life, though he’d certainly aged. But age became Eli. How a face like an abandoned barn could be so handsome is beyond me. I said, “You must be forty years old.”

  He said, “You must be Blondie.”

  It was only then I noticed the other two men, Clark and Roberts. How do you do, Ontario types but nice enough. I asked them in. Said I’d feed them. And the soldier boys removed their hats. Their boots made a nice mallet sound on the kitchen floor. They were tall and fine-looking. Their long ride in fair weather had tanned them; their eyes were bright, their lips were red, and their moustaches were waxed into two points, blunt and kind as butter knives. The kitchen filled with the fragrance of sun-washed manhood. I excused myself and went to my bedroom, closing the door.

  I stood looking through the crack between the oak slats of my door. I could make out a long masculine leg here, a muscular neck there, where it ran broadly into a collar. Strains of their chest
y voices drifted on beams of light through the rough wood door. I was breathing hard. My flannel nightgown gave my chest, my ribcage, my backside keen pleasure. Oh, to be touched. I wanted to get dressed. No. I wanted to take a bath. I reopened the door. Eli was sitting in the same corner where the ghost of Thomas Scott had drooled protoplasm so many years before. He saw my uncertain haste. And stood to say, “Why don’t I find something to feed these gentlemen.”

  “Good,” I said. “You do that. I’m going for a swim.” I stopped on the porch and said loudly, “You have to stay here.”

  Down to the river I went, and out to the dock that Peter had constructed out of whisky kegs and fence posts. Precarious affair. I sat naked on the edge. To my right, at the river’s edge, silent as the water itself, stood a whooping crane on stick legs the colour of driftwood, its huge tufted body with long white feathers that curled down over the black tips of its wings. My dad had told me the cranes were all gone, turfed out since the time of Marie and her grotto. This one seemed forgotten. I pushed myself away from the dock, wondering if it would fly off. The water was cold and full of tiny living things. I swam as close to the fast current as possible, just till I could sense its muscle wrenching my arms, then I skimmed back off it like a swimmer at the end of the pool and raced back. With each stroke, the scales were falling from my body. Water was a palm or a tongue or a paw, and when I stood on the floating dock, my rash had been cured and my skin purified by its gentle abrasion.