Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

  “He called for ya,” he said. “Got a letter in the post last time I was to town.”

  “Eldon?” the kid asked.

  “Yeah. Says he wants to see ya. Don’t know why. But we’ll be busy as a bugger in a few weeks and there won’t be no time fer ya to go. Now’s best.”

  “Good thing you know where to go.”

  “Mill town. Parson’s Gap, she’s called. We never been there. Never had no call for it. Till now, least ways.”

  “What does he do there?”

  The old man laughed and kicked his horse up to a trot. The kid urged the mare up and they trotted side by side. “He does a lot of things. Kinda sets his own pace through the world. I kinda admire the fact he’s made it this far along.”

  “What am I supposed to do when I get there?” the kid asked.

  “Visit, I expect.”

  “How’s that done?”

  The old man snorted. “Damned if I know. I was never much cut out for it. You sit and talk, maybe go fer a walk and talk some more. Always seemed to me to be an occasion for chatter is all.”

  They crossed a creek and the old man led the way up a ridge. He relaxed in the saddle and let the horse pick its way and the kid did the same. They rode that way until they had crested the ridge and started down the other side. “What are we gonna visit about?”

  “He wants to know ya.”

  “We met already.”

  “I mean, that he wants to know ya like a father knows a son.”

  “And how’s that?”

  The old man rubbed at the back of his neck. “Can’t say, really. Me, I was raised to the work. Bustin’ sod, plowin’, handlin’ stock, stone boatin’, that sort of thing when I was smaller’n small. That’s what my dad and I done. Weren’t time for talk. Not much, least ways.

  “But now and again we’d fish. Head off to a spot he knew and we’d sit there all day long sometimes and just fish. Every now and then he’d tell me somethin’, about himself, about where he come from, some of his adventures. An’ because they were so rare, I held on to them. Every word. Like I could say ’em back to you right now like they come to me. I guess ya get to know a father like that.”

  The old man kicked his horse into a canter. The kid rode easily beside him and they let the horses have their head through the lighter bush and on into the scrub of a mountain meadow.

  They made Parson’s Gap by early evening. The Métis friends of the old man helped them bunk down in the barn and when the horses were tended to they ate together. The kid enjoyed their talk. They laughed a lot and the old man seemed in high spirits. The food was good and hearty and tasted of woodsmoke from the wood burner they used for a stove. He liked it. Later, the old man and he sat on the rail fence and watched the moon rise. They slept beside the stall where the horses were put. He drifted off with the smell of horse and dung and straw at his nose and he thought he’d never had such a comfortable bed.

  In the morning they walked through the town. The kid was fascinated by the knots of people moving along the sidewalks. The town near the farm was smaller, without industry, and most of the people were farm folk who never had much time for town but for supplies, the post, and snatches of gossip at the mercantile. He could smell the mill here. It was everywhere. The high, astringent pinch of it. The town seemed to be encircled by ridges, the flanks of them dimpled with thin trees, and the rockface was grey, veined, with running splotches of dull orange where iron talus had spilled. The sky was a cap of grey. Where the streets slid down to the river, the houses were bigger, older, sturdier, and he liked the set of them, proud like roosters, with wide sidewalks and sculpted trim. The verandahs looked perfect for sitting.

  “Does he live in one of these?” the kid asked.

  “Not likely,” the old man said. “Got me a street number here on the envelope. Said it’s closer to the mill.”

  The land flattened out into a wide flood plain. The mill stood at the far end, sullen, industrial, dirty, and the clang and rumble of it hurt his ears. The houses were smaller here, unkempt, and there were skeleton frames of old cars and trucks strewn in yards and empty lots. Dogs slunk by with their heads down and growled at them as they passed. He could smell grease and cabbage and fish and here and there the foul air of untended latrines. Laundry hung out on lines above sullied kids’ toys in yards more dirt than sod. The streets were rough, cracked, with potholes, and the edges of the sidewalks crumbled and the slumped power lines seemed so low he felt as though he could reach up and touch them. They came to an intersection and the old man peered at the envelope in his hand and then gazed off down the street to their right.

  “This is her,” he said. “Stepney Street. Now we got to find number nineteen.”

  There was nothing to distinguish the street from the one they turned off of. There were no trees. There were runs of ragged hedges and the occasional hump of flowerbeds laying untilled and grim with withered weeds. Number nineteen was clapboard, whitewashed, with a crumbling chimney and a gate hung by wire to rotted and canted wooden posts that were all that remained of a fence. They walked around it into the yard and they could hear the sounds of yelling and the crash of a bottle against the wall. Then a woman’s voice high in the morning air. “I ain’t cleanin’ that no how.” Another bottle smashed against the wall followed by wild laughter.

  “This is her,” the old man said. “Room three.”

  There was a small sun porch with a busted sofa where a man slept, his head flung back, gape-mouthed, and he had no teeth. The old man put a hand between the kid’s shoulder blades. They stepped through a door that had once held glass but was now just the frame. The main floor was divided into rooms with a dim hallway marked by peeling wallpaper. A stairway led to the second floor. The first door had no number but the next one had a number two hung upside down and held by a pin. Number three beside it was where the ruckus was coming from. It sounded like wrestling: feet lurching about, the slide and crash of furniture, grunting and moans. The old man knocked.

  “Christ, Henry, just bring that fresh hooch in here.”

  The old man opened the door. His father and a woman reeled about the room in a parody of dance to static-ridden music from a radio on a table. It was the only piece of furniture that wasn’t spilled over or pushed into a corner. “What this?” the old man asked.

  “Foxtrot,” his father said over his shoulder.

  “Who’s the kid?” the woman asked. He let her go and she tumbled against the table and the radio crashed to the floor.

  “Oh shit,” he said, turning to face them in the open door. “Didn’t expect you.”

  “You wrote,” the old man said. He had a hand on the kid’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t mean …”

  “Mean what? For me to bring him?”

  “No. I mean, yeah, just …”

  “Just what?”

  “Just wasn’t thinkin’ it was gonna be today.”

  “Today is a lot diff’rent than other days, you’re sayin’?”

  “Well, yeah. I’m paid. I’m just lettin’ off a little steam is all.” He fumbled two chairs upright and slid them over toward the door with a foot. He lost his balance and reeled and bumped into the woman, who was busy trying to right the table. They both fell. They laughed and then he clambered to his feet and stood there rubbing at his head with one hand, eying the kid and the old man and grimacing. “Fuck,” he said. “Shoulda wrote and said when you were gonna get here.”

  “It wouldn’ta been no diff’rent. No matter what you say.”

  “Hey, I had plans.”

  “Yeah?” the old man said. “Like what?”

  “We was gonna go eat somewheres. Maybe picnic out somewheres too. Buy him somethin’ nice.”

  “Tell him that.”

  His father looked at the kid. He seemed to have trouble focusing. He scratched at his head and grabbed the back of one of the chairs and spun it and sat down hard. He shook his head to clear it and mopped his face with the palm o
f his hand. The back of it was grimy and the fingernails were rimmed with black. “Well, shit, kid. I dunno. I kinda thought we’d just find out what you wanted to do most. Wanda here’s a friend. We’re kickin’ up our heels some. Work hard, play hard, you know?”

  The kid stared at him. The room was quiet but for street sounds and the dull clump of footfalls on the second floor. His father was flustered and he hitched about in the chair and the kid watched him eye the bottles on the counter. He sweat. His eyes were webbed with red and the kid could see the yellow pall of tobacco on his fingertips. “You’re supposed to try to get to know me like a father knows a son,” he said quietly.

  “Jesus. I know that. Think I didn’t want that? Think I’da asked you here if I didn’t wanna get to that?”

  “You lied. All you wanna do is drink and dance and break stuff.”

  “Wanted to see ya, was the point of it all.”

  “Well, you seen me.”

  “I’m your dad.”

  The kid shook his head. “Ain’t got one. Never had one. Wouldn’t know what it’s supposed to mean ’cept what you show.”

  “Hey, I’m workin’ at the mine now. I got money. I could give you some. You could get you somethin’ nice.”

  The kid looked up at the old man. There was a stern cast to his face and he eased the kid back through the door and stood facing his father, who looked up with his mouth hung open. He seemed dumbstruck and simple. “He’s got no call for your money. He come here wantin’ some of you. Not yer money. Any fool can give cash.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Tell him that.”

  “I’m sorry, kid.”

  The kid only stared. The old man turned his head and regarded him a moment and then put his hand on the door. “Wait for me outside, Frank,” he said.

  The kid turned and walked down the dank hallway and through the busted door and out into the yard. A fat tomcat sat cleaning his paws on the sun-warmed walk. He could hear raised voices. He felt awkward as though there was something expected of him that he had no idea of. It made him feel sad and he wanted to cry but he didn’t know why. So he shifted his feet and kicked at loose pebbles of cement. Some of it rattled by the cat and he sprang to his feet and rolled his girth down the walk and down the street. The kid held a breath in his cheeks and stared back at the house.

  After a while the old man came out and stood beside him. “Sorry you had to see that,” he said.

  “He’s just lettin’ off steam is what he said.”

  “I mean I’m sorry you had to see him like that.”

  “Drunk.”

  “Yeah. It ain’t proper.”

  “What’s proper mean?”

  “It means ya come to kids clean. Not slopped-out drunk. I apologize for bringin’ ya so you had to see that.”

  “So there’s not gonna be no stories, no picnic, nothin’.”

  “Not this time, no. But I spied an ice cream joint on our way through town. How’s about you’n me treat ourselves to a big dish of that?”

  “Okay. But you know what?”

  “What?” the old man asked.

  “We’re both kinda at the same spot, him’n me.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Well, he don’t know nothin’ about bein’ a father and I don’t know nothin’ about bein’ a son. Kinda makes us even, I figure.”

  The old man pinched his lips together solemnly and then leaned down and put both hands on the kid’s shoulders. He looked at him openly and the kid felt uncomfortable. “You know everythin’ there is to know ’bout bein’ a son. Trust me on that.”

  The kid nodded. When the old man straightened and took a step down the sidewalk the kid stood there and stared at the house. It seemed to sag like it was tired, as though it had borne weight for far too long and needed to slump to the ground. There were cracks in all the windows. Shingles had come loose and blown away in the wind. Down the one side was a tangle of lilacs, un-pruned and ramshackle, old and uncared for, scraping against the side of the house, and there was only one bloom. It sat high at the point farthest from the house. A small dab of colour. It made the house more sullen, bleaker, and the kid wanted to pluck it and carry it somewhere where it would not feel alone, save it maybe, in a jar in the sunlight, and he felt the tears come until the old man walked back and put his arm around him and they made their way back to the barn where they’d left the horses.

  He didn’t go again until the next year. It was his birthday. The old man rode along but stayed at the farm with his friends and the kid walked to his father’s place alone. There had been no letters, till the one recently asking for him to come. Whenever he thought about him he felt sad and remembered the drunken dance he’d done with the woman named Wanda and the dumbstruck look on his face when the old man had faced him down. His father was like a photograph that had been in the light too long. He was a stranger. But the kid felt a tie to him and there was a dull ache when he thought of him so he didn’t lend much time to those thoughts. Still, there were fathers around the school, families, and the talk of them, and he was embarrassed at his lack. It made him more of an outsider. The old man taught him the word “guardian.” It meant protector. It meant that as long as the old man was around there was nothing for him to be afraid of. It meant he was safe and cared for. But it didn’t mean “father.” The definition of that word was left to his observation. The men he saw around the school were quiet in the way of country folk but bearing a strength and resiliency he could see in the way they walked and held themselves. He never saw them drunk. He never saw them in a light that was less than predictable and he came to believe that fathers were made of trustworthy stuff, heroic in quiet ways, strong, made up of a thousand small details. He wondered if time was what held them in place long enough to get to know those details. So when he was asked to share a birthday with his father he was gladdened and went eagerly.

  “See here,” the old man said, showing him the words on the page of the letter. “He says that he promises to be straight. Says ten is a mighty important age and he wants to be with ya.”

  “You figure he means it?”

  “As much as he can, I guess.”

  “Kinda wonder how much that is.”

  “Can’t know. Up to you.”

  He was suddenly big for his age. Heavier, bulkier than the skinny kids at school. The work around the farm gave him a rugged, tensile strength that showed in his walk and the slope of his shoulders. He didn’t look ten. When he walked through the town people studied him for a stranger and he kept his head high and walked purposefully. His father had moved and the kid found the street a few blocks away from where he’d last seen him. It was a brighter neighbourhood. The homes were neat and groomed and he liked the way the lawns framed for the verandahs and porches and the grand three-storey cliffs of them. The smells of paint, mown grass, and baking hung in the soft, unmoving air of morning. His father’s place was at the far end of the wide street.

  At first it struck the kid that maybe he had the number wrong. The house was painted a pale orange with blue trim. There was a truck in the driveway. There were flowerboxes hung along the length of the verandah and there was a swing rocker and deep wooden deck chairs. The main door was open. Through the outside screen door he could see people moving and heard the sound of laughter. He looked at the paper in his hand and then opened the gate and walked down the walk toward the front steps. A tall woman with white hair and blue eyes answered his knock.

  “You’d be Frank, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

  “Ma’am,” the kid said.

  “I’m Jenna. Your father is so excited you were coming I swear he bathed twice.”

  “That’s good, ma’am. It’s my birthday.”

  “I know, and we are so glad to have you. Come in. I’ll call your father.”

  The house was cool. The wooden floors gleamed with waxing and there were thick carpets everywhere. The kid had never seen plants indoors but the front room was filled with them. The furn
iture was pillowed and sturdy. He sat on the edge of a sofa and put his hand down and rubbed at the material. The place seemed to shine with care. Several men drifted down the hallway and then back and up the stairs where the woman had gone. They looked at the kid quizzically. They were big, muscled men in work socks, flannel shirts, and jeans. None of them said a word.

  His father walked down the stairs behind Jenna. She was smiling when she entered the room and went to a chair beside the sofa and sat. His father stood in the doorway leaning against the jamb. He’d shaved and scrubbed his face ruddy. He wore jeans and a white shirt. He had his hands folded in front of him and the nails were trimmed. His hair was freshly cut and slicked back and when he looked at the kid he had a surprised look as though he were unused to appearing like that. The kid smiled.

  “You ride them horses here again?” his father asked.

  “Yeah. It’s what we like best.”

  “Long ride.”

  “Yeah. But good.”

  “This here’s Jenna. She’s my landlady.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Means I’m a roomer. Me an’ all the other guys work at the mill and rent out rooms here. She cooks for us, bags us lunches. It’s a good go.”

  “I’ve packed a whopping picnic for you two,” Jenna said. “It’s such a grand day you’ll have a wonderful time.”

  “What are we doin’?” the kid asked.

  “Expect you’ll have to open yer gift in order to know,” his father said.

  “You got me a gift?”

  “It’s yer birthday isn’t it?”

  “Yeah but …”

  “But nothing. Birthdays are for presents and if you go into the kitchen it’s on the table waitin’ fer ya.”