by John Smelcer
“. . . and eighty-seven rifles.”
Many of the elders leaned back and nodded. Eighty-seven was a good number. They had seen higher, but usually at a potlatch for a chief. Several elders recalled the potlatch for the chief of a neighboring village where over two hundred rifles were offered in respectful memory. It was said that the chief was 117 years old when he died.
Having read the list of gifts, Sampson’s widow stood and, in her native language, thanked everyone for coming. She spoke briefly about how long they had been married and what a good man her husband had been. She talked about how much he loved his family and how much he loved the wilderness.
Denny and her mother wept as she spoke, though Delia, like most of the guests in the hall, didn’t understand a single word she said. When the hostess was finished, she gave a similar speech in English, talking about how, when she was a little girl, potlatches used to go on for days and only in the summertime, when it was warm and they could be held outside in a big field. She talked about how there would be tents everywhere.
Once the speech was over, the handing out of the gifts began. Only members of the family could hand out the gifts to the guests, and gifts could only be given to people who were not related, particularly to those belonging to a different clan, which was determined by the mother’s side. Because of this, Denny was Tsisyu clan, while her father was Talcheena. Knowing who was related to whom was very important. Indians introduce themselves based on kinship, the way some people introduce themselves with business cards.
“I’m so-and-so’s cousin on his mother’s side,” someone might say.
“My father is such-and-such, who used to be your uncle when he was married to your mother’s oldest sister,” another might say.
It was the job of the host elder to tell what to give to whom. Denny and her mother awaited instructions.
“Give three blankets, one of them rifles, and fifty dollars to that man there,” she said, pulling money from the thick envelope and pointing to the man sitting patiently, waiting to be recognized properly as a guest.
Denny gave the gifts to the man, who nodded and quietly said tsin’aen, thank you.
And so matters proceeded.
And although kinship is based on the mother’s side of the family, men and women are awarded gifts equally, women receiving rifles as well—though, in truth, not as often as men. Denny’s grandmother also made sure to reward the young men who dug the grave, giving them each a rifle and some money. She also gave a rifle to each of the four pallbearers.
For almost two hours, the gifts were distributed in such a manner, until the floor was empty and almost everyone in the audience had a neat pile of gifts in front of him. Some of the elder men, especially the ones who would sing and drum later, had as many as three or four rifles.
In preparation for the dance, called the hwtiitł c’edzes, the blue tarps were folded up and put away, the floor hastily swept, and a string stretched about seven or eight feet high across the center of the room, over which were hung hundreds of colorful handkerchiefs. Several elder men with traditional skin drums, called ghleli, took their special place and began to beat their drum and sing in their native language. And while most people danced, almost no one understood a word of any of the songs.
Denny sometimes worried what would happen to the potlatch when, in a matter of a few years, none of the elder men would be around to sing and drum. As far back as she could recall, women never sang or drummed. Who would take their place? Who would tell the old stories and teach the old ways? As the only young person who could speak the language, she wondered what her role would be in the uncertain future. For years, she had been writing down the words she learned from elders, hundreds of words, perhaps a thousand. Would they call on her to help carry on the language and customs? Or would they turn their backs on her because she was a blue-eyed half-breed with light-colored skin whose father didn’t love her?
Already, some Indians wouldn’t have anything to do with Denny, no matter how nice she was to them, like Alexie Senungutuk, who was almost the same age, but from a different tribe.
“We true skins ain’t gonna have nothin’ to do with someone like you, someone with an eyedropper-full of Indian blood!” he had once told her, his voice as vicious as a wolverine with its paw stuck in a steel trap. “We’ll never accept you! You ain’t nothin’!”
After that, Alexie did his best to convince other Indians to exclude Denny from everything. He tried to turn her into a cowering shadow for other Indians to stomp on. For the most part, it worked. Denny learned the hard way that whoever said words can’t hurt was wrong. Alexie wielded his tongue like a switchblade that he flicked open to cut anyone in his way, and his sharp-edged words left scars.
The rejection Denny felt was like a hole in her chest big enough for a moose to step through. Lots of people are like Alexie—figuring the only way they can elevate their standing in society is by destroying others, even in such a small, closed group. Truth be told, Alexie wasn’t full-blood either, but he liked to think he was. He liked to think he knew everything and spoke for all Indians. But he didn’t. He was a big bully who didn’t even speak his grandmother’s language or hunt and fish like other men.
He had never caught a salmon in his life.
The summer before he and Denny were to start high school, Alexie drowned when his uncle’s boat capsized on the river.
But the scars he left never went away.
With a handkerchief in each hand, Denny danced the way her grandfather had taught her, stomping the floor hard, the way boys and men did.
“You have to stomp so hard that the floor shakes,” she remembered him once telling her. “If your feet don’t hurt, you not doin’ it right.”
For over an hour Denny danced in the inner circle, where only boys and men usually danced. Girls and women usually formed a large slow-moving circle around the center. Out of the corner of her eye, Denny saw her father dancing his way toward her. For a long time, they danced side by side, each bent over, trying to stomp out all the hurt and grief inside. It was as if they were both trying to stomp the past into dust.
Finally, her father leaned in close.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” he said just loud enough to be heard above the drums and singing and stomping. “He was a good man.”
Still dancing, Denny nodded in a way that merely acknowledged that she had heard and agreed with his words.
But no matter how hard she tried to hold back her feelings, no matter how much she tried to redirect the hurt through dance, she couldn’t control the emotions rising in her like a flooding river. Halfway through the song, she ran out the front door without her coat.
The temperature outside had fallen to -40 degrees.
Johnny Shaginoff, Norman Fury, and Mary Paniaq were standing in the shadows at the corner of the building sharing a near-empty bottle of liquor. None of them was wearing gloves or hats, despite the bitter cold.
“Hey, man,” said Johnny, offering a drink to Denny. “I don’t mean to disrespect your grandpa or nothin’, but this party blows.”
Then he had a coughing fit.
“Yeah,” agreed Mary, snatching the bottle from Johnny and guzzling a mouthful. “This is boring.”
Norman Fury took the bottle from Mary, held it up as if making a toast, and bleary-eyed, proclaimed, “Here’s to the old man.”
Without saying a word, Denny walked away from them, past the parked cars, past the green dumpster, past the stop sign at the end of the driveway, until she was standing alone in the freezing darkness. She looked up at the clear sky with the starry arms of the Milky Way spiraled above, wrapped both arms across her chest with each hand tucked under a warming armpit, and as she wept she told the stars how much she loved her grandfather and promised to remember everything he had taught her and to live her life much as he had done his—close to the land. In
the biting cold, her tears froze on her cheeks like jewels.
Far off in the hills a wolf howled, his lonely call followed by a long, hard silence.
Sometime around midnight, though exhausted from the long, crushing day—while the wood stove slept with a warm bed of ashes in its belly, and while her mother and grandmother snored in the adjoining room—Denny turned on the little night light beside her bed to read The Old Man and the Sea, which her teacher had assigned to read over the vacation. In her imagination, Denny couldn’t help but see her grandfather as the old man. She read for half an hour before putting the book away to write in her diary, stopping at times to wipe her eyes and steady her nerves.
Dear Nellie:
It felt like this day would never end. We had a potlatch for Grandpa. You should have seen all the people. I don’t think we could have fit ten more bodies into the building. Mom and I handed out all the gifts, which made me feel proud. I think Grandpa would have liked it. My dad was there, or should I say the guy-who-knocked-up-my-mom was there. For the first time I can remember, he actually talked to me. He said he was sorry about Grandpa. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about that. Grandpa was a thousand times more a father to me. At the potlatch, I promised to try to live my life the way he taught me. I miss him already. I feel alone. Who’s going to teach me now? I was going to write this poem in the morning after a good night’s sleep, but I’m afraid I’ll forget it by then, so here it is.
Yours,
Denny
p.s. I know poems aren’t supposed to rhyme nowadays, but it’s only at the very end. Maybe that’s okay.
Potlatch
All day long guests arrive in our village
huddled along the frozen river
to mourn Grandfather’s death.
From the sacred circle of our clan
skin drums echo and elders sing:
‘Syuu’ nac’ełtsiin yen
“A potlatch is made for him.”
Pulses quicken to the rhythm
dancers stream like vibrations
across the wooden floor
heavy with rifles and blankets.
‘Unggadi kanada’yaet yen ne’et dakozet
A potlatch song is sung for him in heaven.
Tonight I have learned there is an end
to everything, to every light
where even the falling of brittle leaves
breaks the solitude of night.
8
‘Ałts’eni na’aaye’
January
On her way home from school three days after Christmas vacation ended, Denny saw a white truck parked in the driveway to her house, the chained dogs in the yard barking furiously. Lincoln Lincoln was trying to load her sled into the back of his truck. Kilana was standing on the bench seat, trying to wriggle his head out the window, which was partially rolled down.
“What are doing?” she demanded, when she got to the truck.
Lincoln sat the back of the sled on the ground.
“Your mother sold me the dog and this sled,” he said. “Sorry about your grandfather. I heard you did pretty good in the race, but your mother said she didn’t need the sled no more, so I bought it for a hundred bucks.”
Denny dropped her backpack full of school books and mustered all her menace.
“You can’t take the sled! It’s mine!”
“Like I said, I already gave your mom the money for it,” replied Lincoln, lifting the back of the sled again and trying to shove it into the truck bed.
Denny balled her hands into fists, wanting to flail out at Lincoln with both hands. Instead, she grabbed the sled and pulled it backward, wrestling with the man who was bigger and stronger. They pulled at the sled in a kind of tug-o-war. Denny was losing.
“Wait right here!” she finally yelled and then ran into the house, bursting through the door.
Her mother was washing dishes.
“You have no right!” yelled Denny.
“Calm down,” said her mother. “Let me explain.”
But Denny wouldn’t listen.
“There’s nothing to explain. How could you?”
“Listen,” said Delia, “we need the money. I have bills to pay. Lincoln paid a lot for that dog, and he offered a hundred bucks for the old, beat up sled.”
“But it’s not yours to sell!” cried Denny. “It’s mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“Grandpa gave me the sled.”
“But it’s too late now, Honey. I’ve already sold it. I have to sell all the dogs. I can’t afford to feed them. Besides, it’s time you got that sledding nonsense out of your head.”
Denny heard the truck bed gate close. She ran outside. Lincoln was just climbing into the cab, roughly shoving Kilana aside.
Denny grabbed the man by the arm and pulled him from the blue seat.
“What the hell are you doing?” shouted Lincoln, breaking free.
Denny began crying.
“You can’t have the sled. It’s mine!” she sobbed.
Her mother came out.
“Denny!” she exclaimed, trying to pull her daughter away. “It’s too late. Let it go.”
“Wait one minute,” she pleaded with Lincoln before running into the house again.
Moments later, she came out with a handful of money, mostly fives and tens.
“Here’s a hundred dollars,” she said pressing the money into the man’s hands. “It’s all I have left from the money I won. Take it! The sled wasn’t my mother’s to sell. It’s mine. My grandfather gave it to me. You can have the money. Just leave the sled!”
Lincoln eventually agreed to return the sled, but he kept the dog.
As the truck drove away, Denny pushed the sled to where she always kept it and put it back on the wood blocks, while her mother watched with her arms crossed, shaking her head in disbelief.
Afterward, Denny sat at the small kitchen table by the small window looking at the sled and the seven remaining dogs and thinking about what her mother had said about having to sell them.
How can I race without dogs? How can I afford to keep them all?
She sat for a long time, trying to read The Old Man and the Sea, but she couldn’t keep her mind on the book. Her thoughts always fluttered back to the dogs and the sled, the way flocks of small birds suddenly reel and turn back in the same direction.
Finally, the answer came to her.
She would enter the Great Race, one of the last great races on earth, a punishing race that pits man and dog against some of the roughest landscape on the planet. The prize money for any team finishing in the top ten would be enough to support her family for a year; maybe longer. The prize money for a top three finish could support them for years.
Denny told her mother the idea, knowing it would be a hard sell. Her mother listened with her mouth agape the whole time.
“But, Mom, if I place high enough, I can pay to feed the dogs with my own money,” she pleaded.
“But, Deneena, dear, that race is for grown-ups. Only the best athletes enter. You’re a 16-year-old-kid, for god’s sake.”
“But what if I win?”
“Denny, I need money to pay our bills now. I don’t have enough to feed all those dogs,” she said, looking out the window at the dogs sitting in or on their dog houses. “What if you don’t win? What happens then?”
Despite Delia’s arguments, Denny eventually convinced her mother to give her a couple months, until after the race in early March. In the meanwhile, she promised to earn enough money doing odds jobs to pay for dog food. Besides, there was still quite a lot of dried salmon in the shed.
Excited by the notion of running the race—the longest and toughest in the world—Denny called a couple of pilots who flew supplies into the village to find out how much it would c
ost to transport herself, the dogs, her sled, and other gear, as well as all the food required to feed the dogs for the duration of the race. The cost was well over a thousand dollars . . . one way! It would cost a little less coming home because the load would be lighter, the dogs having consumed all their food during the long race. But Denny didn’t worry about the cost to come home. In her mind, she would place high enough among the finishers to earn the money to pay to bring her team back to the village. In her mind, all she had to do was get to the starting point.
But at that moment Denny had no money. She had spent it all on the rifle for her grandfather’s potlatch and buying back the sled, which was hers in the first place. She sat on her bed thinking how she could raise the money she needed to enter the race.
Then she got an idea.
Denny gathered several empty coffee cans, rinsed them out, and cut a slit in each of the plastic lids. She made signs asking people to donate money to help pay for the transportation costs to be in the Great Race, and taped the signs around each can. The next day, after asking permission, she left the cans all over the village: at the general store, at the village tribal office, the school, the church, the tiny post office, the medical clinic that was only open two days a week, and at the community hall where elders played bingo on Fridays and Saturdays.
After a week, Denny went around checking the coffee cans. At the store, Valerie Charley stood behind the counter and watched as Denny picked up the can and shook it.
“Sounds pretty empty,” she said, timid as an owl hoot.
Denny opened the lid and poured the contents onto the counter. Only a handful of coins spilled out, mostly nickels and dimes and a couple quarters. But there was also a tightly folded piece of paper. She opened it and read the misspelled note that had a penny taped to it:
Dog Sleding ain’t for gurls!!
After reading the note, Denny handed it to Valerie, who also read it.
