Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

  “Think the weasel’s worth it?”

  “I figure.”

  “Got you a lack of friends, I guess.”

  “Don’t need friends. Not in this.”

  Dingo laughed. He raised himself to his full height and he could see from the corner how small Bunky was in comparison. Dingo cracked his knuckles. Bunky stood his ground. The two men stared at each other and Eames crawled up to a seated position and watched gape-mouthed and wiped at his face. Silence. They could hear the shift-whistle from the mill peal across the flat. Dingo grinned. “Screw it,” he said. “You wanna hang with the mooch, hang with the mooch. Just get the fuck outta my face.”

  “Fair enough,” Bunky said. He stepped up to Eames and lent him a hand to get to his feet. Then he led him to the bar and sat him down on an empty stool and waited while the bartender got him a whisky and a beer. The room slowly began to fill with talk and someone plugged the jukebox and Bunky stood by Eames while he gulped down the whisky and washed it down with a swallow of beer. Bunky whispered something to him and clapped him on the back then made his way across the room in front of the lumberjacks, who watched him gravely but did not offer a word. He sat back down at the table and sipped at his drink.

  “I was afraid you’d be half killed. That’s one big son of a bitch,” he said.

  Bunky wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Half ain’t so bad,” he said.

  “It ain’t the beatin’ so much as the comin’ to and havin’ to deal with it.”

  “Got some history with that, do ya?”

  “Taken a few lickin’s in my time. I don’t favour it.”

  “Most don’t. But ya gotta be willin’ to take a few if you’re willin’ to throw a few.”

  Neither of them noticed the woman until she stood at the table, looking down at Bunky.

  “That was the kindest and bravest thing I ever saw,” she said.

  “Wasn’t nothin’,” Bunky said.

  “Sure was,” she said and pulled an empty chair over and sat down. “Angie Pratt,” she said and held a hand out to Bunky.

  He took it and held it and shook it firmly. “Bunky,” he said. “This here’s Eldon.”

  She shook his hand but her attention was all on Bunky and he sat there and watched her while she talked to him. She was an inch away from beautiful. He noticed everything about her. Her face was a marvel. It was wide with a bold cut of a mouth and full lips. Behind the scarp of her cheekbones were eyes the rich black of obsidian, so that when her gaze fell on him he felt absorbed. Her hands created a parallel language in the air as she talked, drawing him and Bunky into the centre of her words. He was in love before he knew it as such. He only knew that what he felt shamed him and he looked at the floor. She leaned in when she talked to Bunky and the older man seemed to bask in it. He drank off the last of his beer and stood. When she looked at him there was the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. She took his hand. Velvet. He grinned, nodded at Bunky, and left them.

  19

  HE SAW THEM AGAIN A WEEK LATER. He was at The Dollar Holler, hungover and bleary as the fog and wet he stood in. There were only two trucks. They were in the second. He heard his name and recognized Bunky at the wheel. She sat beside him and leaned forward in the seat and waved. They parked and he shambled across the road. “Got a couple weeks’ work, maybe a little longer, if you’ll have it,” Bunky said. “I’ll throw in a roof and a cot, meals and a bag lunch. You let me know what it’s worth when you’re done with it.”

  “Doin’ what?” he asked.

  “Got ten acres needs fencing. Post holes, wire, the works.”

  “I can do it. But I could really use a drink. Just to settle my guts is all.”

  Bunky squinted at him. He didn’t speak until she put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He looked at her and then turned back to him standing in the road. “I’ll do ’er this one time. But I need a fence plumb and squared. Got no time fer foolishness.”

  “Shakin’ it kinda rough today is all. I can do the work.”

  “Get in then. I’ll see ya get yer drink.”

  He started toward the back. He had his hands on the rails of the box when Bunky called to him. “Not there,” he said. “Up here with us.”

  He walked around the front of the truck and climbed in and sat beside her on the bench seat. He could feel the warmth of her leg alongside his and she smiled at him. He stared out through the windshield but he could smell the soapy, smoky haze of her. She offered him a smoke. He fumbled at the pack and she took it back and drew one out and lit it for him and held it. He took it with shaky fingers. Bunky drove hard and deliberate. The road curved and wound through bush cut with wide green spaces where farms sat in sudden bursts of space strewn with the humps of cows, pigs, and horses. After a while they pulled into a long, rutted driveway. Bunky parked the truck beside a barn and there was an open trailer hooked to a rickety old tractor. “She’s packed with rolls of wire, posts, the post hole digger, nails, and staples. She’s your kit,” Bunky said.

  They walked into the house. He felt awkward. Angie took a bottle down from the cupboard and poured a generous slug and held it out to him. He took it and drained it in one gulp and she smiled and poured some more into the mug. He sat at the table and nursed it. She doled out some stew that had been burbling on the stove and two hunks of bread and butter. “Get ’er into ya,” Bunky said. “That ground tends toward rock an’ you’ll need all the grit ya can muster.”

  “Wanna thank ya for the work,” he said.

  “Was her said we should find you.”

  “Thank ya,” he said to her.

  She smiled and sat beside Bunky. He took another slurp of the whisky and then bent to the food. The hooch had settled his gut. He ate hungrily. She refilled the bowl and he sopped up the gravy with the bread. When he was finished he slid the chair back and sat there a moment looking at the two of them. Bunky stood and nodded at him and the two of them walked out the door. They walked, without speaking, to the tractor. Bunky fired it up and he just stood there, watching him. “Ya know how to drive one of these, don’tcha?” Bunky asked.

  “I got it,” he said. Bunky slid from the seat and stood on the tongue of the trailer a foot behind him. He eased it into gear and thumbed the gas lever up a notch or two and they rumbled across the yard.

  “Gates open to yer left,” Bunky said, and he steered through the opening and out into a long, wide field. Bunky leaned forward and flapped a hand to indicate straight ahead and he drove easily through the field. His head was clear. He felt better. When they got to the far end of the field there was another gate and he drove through it and Bunky slapped him on the shoulder to halt him. “Dang cows got a nose fer bush an’ I can’t keep ’em outta there. So I need ya to fence it right up to where the trees start back there. Savvy?”

  “Two sides and the back. Figure around a hundred posts.”

  “She’ll definitely keep ya occupied.”

  “How ya gettin’ back?”

  “Man can’t walk man got no business on the land.”

  “She’s a piece.”

  “Ah, it’s a stretch of the legs is all. Ya need anything just drive back an’ look about. I mean to be off soon. Got trees to buck and stack for a friend down the line. I’ll see ya near sundown.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Thank me with the job.”

  “I will.”

  Bunky stomped off and he busied himself with sorting out the supplies. When he’d got it arranged he took a big roll of twine, tied the end to a post, and walked it out and staked it to the ground when he had it straight and true to the post. Then he stepped out the spacing for the new posts and marked them with a scuff of his boot and a stone. He took off his jacket, picked up the posthole digger, and went to where he’d marked the first set and got to work. The ground was stony beyond the scrim of topsoil. It was gravel, mixed with sand and rocks the size of bread loaves. He bashed away at it and had to get a pick from the trailer and h
e swung it hard, the clink and the clip of its bite echoing dully off the trees. He’d broken a sweat by the time the hole was cleared enough to get the post-hole digger at it. There was a water jug in the trailer and he leaned against the fender of the tractor and he drank and splashed water over his head and let it trickle down his neck and back and chest. The morning had cleared. The sun had burned the fog away and there were tendrils of it rising like smoke into the hazy near blue of the sky. The grass looked plump with moisture. He set back to work again and lost himself in the feel of his muscles, in the effort of plunging the digger.

  He had seven holes dug by the time the sun climbed to noon. He was hungry. He set the digger down beside the last hole and turned to the tractor to find her sitting in the seat. “You work like you mean it,” she said. “I brought your lunch.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I was meanin’ to walk in.”

  “I needed out anyway.” She held up a canvas sack and a thermos.

  He went to the tractor and drank some more of the water. He rinsed his face and neck and wiped himself with his jacket. She sprang down from the seat and set the sack on the top of the fender. Then she reached into the pocket of her shirt and drew out a flask. He looked at her and she smiled. “He’s a good man,” she said. “Best I known my whole life. But he doesn’t understand a lot of things.”

  She handed him the flask. He unscrewed the top and took a sip. He closed his eyes and breathed deep and he could feel the burn in his belly. “Thanks,” he said.

  “I know about the need,” she said. “Done my share of hurtin’ too.” She took a nip from the flask and smiled at him again.

  He gazed at her. Then he reached for the canvas sack and opened it. There was a bundle of sandwiches, a container of soup, pieces of carrots and celery, cheese, and an assortment of fruit. He took a sandwich, opened the soup and drank some. He sat on the running board with the sack at his feet. She moved to sit beside him as he drank more of the soup. They both looked down the line of post holes. “Hard job,” he said.

  “You seem up to it.”

  “Didn’t figure at first.”

  “You did good.”

  “You from around here?” He bit into a sandwich and chewed and looked at her.

  “I’m Cree,” she said. “Well, half. I come from a place called Long Plain, west of Winnipeg.”

  “Never got out that way.”

  “You’d like it. Lots of sky.”

  “Seen me some sky a time or two.”

  She reached into the bag and took some of the vegetables and ate. He took another slug from the flask and screwed the top on and handed it to her. She squinted at him and he waved his hand. “I’m good,” he said.

  “What about you? You’re from here?”

  “Sorta,” he said. “Spent a lotta time around here. I’m Ojibway. But I’m half too. I don’t have any idea whereabouts I’m from.”

  “That’s sad,” she said.

  “When you ain’t got somethin’ it’s a waste of time to try’n miss it is what I figure.”

  “Feels good to miss things.”

  “Oh yeah. Why would that be especially?”

  “Well, it makes you know you’re livin’. That you touched something. That something touched you.”

  He finished the sandwich and took another from the bag. There was coffee in the thermos and he poured some into the lid and blew across it and then drank. He ate a second sandwich and a handful of berries and a chunk of apple. “That’s good,” he said.

  “You have family?”

  “You got a smoke?”

  She smiled her wide smile again. She fished a pack from her coat and they both lit up and he smoked a while, looking out along the ridge line where it became the backcountry. “No,” he said. He ground the butt out on the running board and stood and drank more of the coffee. “Job’s callin’,” he said.

  “You could talk to me, you know.” She stood up beside him. She was almost his height and she didn’t have to raise her head to look at him. He could feel the strength of her. He wanted to touch her and his hand trembled at his side a little. He trailed the toe of a boot in the grass.

  “Not a real good thing,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Work. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Everybody needs to talk.”

  “Everybody needs to work. Seems to me ya can talk yer way outta work real easy. I can’t afford it.”

  “You can’t afford a friend?”

  He looked at her and she returned it and they stood there and he could hear the sound of the wind in the aspen trees. His heart hammered like a piston. She didn’t blink or turn away, just stood there gazing at him, and he could see the tiny images of himself in the shine of her eyes. The idea of being held there pleased him. He walked off a few steps, stopped, then faced her again. “Appreciate the lunch,” he said.

  She tilted her head and folded her arms across her chest, the wind riffling her hair. He found he couldn’t move. “I’ll ring the supper bell when it’s time,” she said. “Unless you come in before.”

  “I’ll work to the bell,” he said.

  “All right.” She turned and walked away across the field and he watched. The sway of her like tall grass. He picked up the digger and slammed it into the earth, the solid thud of it jarring the length of his arm.

  They ate by candlelight and the glow from a fire in the woodstove. She’d roasted deer meat and served it with leeks, mushrooms, and potatoes. There was wine but he noticed they barely touched it so he held back. One glass. Slowly. He saw Bunky watching him. The deer was succulent and he found he had a wild hunger from the work so that once they’d all started he bent his head and dug in and when he raised it again he saw them looking at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Good to see ya chow down is all,” Bunky said. “Good day’s sweat’ll do that fer a guy.”

  “He’s doing a great job,” she said.

  “You seen?” Bunky asked.

  “I walked his lunch out to him.”

  The older man nodded and set his fork down beside his plate. “That ground hard enough for ya?”

  He chewed and looked at them. He took a swallow of the wine and set the glass down gently on the table. “Like tryin’ to poke through a mountain face,” he said.

  “I hear that,” Bunky said. “Why you figure I hired it out?” He laughed.

  “Coulda got you one of them post-hole diggers that run off the tractor.”

  “That’s not how man’s work gets done.”

  “Easy to say when you ain’t the man doin’ it.”

  They laughed. She poured him a little dollop of wine and he looked at her but her face remained neutral, not meeting his eyes and looking at the tabletop. They ate in silence. She ate in small bites, chewing thoughtfully, and it made him slow and set his fork beside his plate between bites. He finished off the wine and she rose and got him a second plate of food. Bunky eased his chair back from the table and set to preparing a pipe. She looked back and forth at the two of them and he felt awkward so he concentrated on the food and long moments passed without any word said. When he finished he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and pushed his chair back and stood as if to go.

  “Appreciate if you’d tell me where I’m to sleep,” he said.

  “Ain’t no mad rush,” Bunky said. “I aim to smoke this bowl an’ hear a story.”

  “Story?”

  “Angie’s a whale of a storyteller. We sit by the fire an’ she’ll tell ’em after we eat. A pipe goes good with a story.”

  He stared at the floor. “I ain’t really much for it,” he said.

  “Frig, it’ll do ya good to sit a while.”

  “Stories work to calm you down,” she said quietly.

  He looked at her but she kept her gaze on the tabletop. She stood and gathered the plates and took them to the sink and set them there to soak. Then she walked over and took Bunky’s hand and he stood and they went into the living
room, and he followed them and took a seat on the floor with his back to the front of an armchair. Bunky sat on the couch. She took a rocker from the corner and set it to the side of the fire and settled herself. He couldn’t stop watching her. She closed her eyes. He glanced at Bunky, and the older man was entranced by her too. His pipe sat in his hand unlit and only when she opened her eyes and looked about did he strike a match and puff it alive. He felt the need of a smoke too and he fumbled out his makings but she reached a package over. “Stories go better with tailor-mades,” she said.

  He let his fingers trail on hers a second, feeling the electric thrill of it. She smiled. “What’s this tale to be then?” she asked.

  “I favour a story about the sea,” Bunky said. “Never been out to sea. I seen it once though. Kinda always liked the feel of it.”

  “What are ya talkin’ about?” he asked.

  Bunky leaned forward on the sofa. “She’s a tale spinner,” he said. “She spins ’em right outta the air. Tells ’em whole so’s you’d think yer readin’ a book. You’ll see. Flummoxed me the first time she did it.”

  “You make ’em up?” he asked.

  “It feels like they were always in me,” she said. “I just reach in and find them and they tend to tell themselves.”

  She sat back in the rocker and folded her hands under her chin and looked upward and away to the far corner of the room. The two of them watched her and the flicker of the firelight on her face lent it a wavering cast as if she were a shaman or a spell-caster. When she closed her eyes he could feel her go somewhere like stepping through a curtain. He was captivated before she said a word. The unlit cigarette dangled from his fingers and he let it drop to the floor and he crossed his knees and listened.

  She told a tale of a being from the sea who lived in the great underwater world. This being yearned to see the colours and hear the sounds of the world above her. But she couldn’t figure out how to get there. She tried many ways. Finally she latched on to the tail of a passing whale. When the huge creature breached the waters and then dove lazily back into the depths, the being clung to the tail and let the mystery of the great world above fill her senses. She was dazzled. She let go of the tail and drifted on the crests of waves, looking out across the blue ocean of the sky and feeling the wind on her face and the taste of the breeze. She landed on the beach of a tiny island. She walked there in the thrall of a whole other experience until she longed for her home in the underwater world. But she had to find a way to get back. She swam out and waited for another whale. None came. She became sad and lonely and filled with dread that she might never return to her home. The salt of her tears merged with the salt of the sea and a dolphin came to comfort her. She found she could speak to it and told the dolphin of her journey. The dolphin carried her back down to her home beneath the waves. The being was overjoyed. The dolphin left her with the message that since she had already experienced the air world she could always return there in her mind. The being lived for the rest of her life telling tales about the world above to all who would listen.