by David Bergen
The road she walked on was narrow, and with each step dust rose and then settled onto her runners. Clouds of mosquitoes floated above her and occasionally some would find and circle her, and then rise again. She could hear birds in the bushes and other sounds that might have been made by larger animals. She did not think of fear, because if she allowed that, then anything might be possible in this place that was unknown to her. She heard a vehicle approaching, and as it came up behind her, she stepped down into the ditch to let it pass. It halted and from the driver’s window a man in a straw cowboy hat studied her and then asked if she wanted a ride. The man’s face was in the shadows and she could not see his eyes. She shook her head. She said she liked walking. The man, as if understanding her unease, removed his hat and she could see he was elderly. He said that his name was Joe and he lived on the reserve and he was going up to Bare Point. She could take a ride, or she could walk, it was her choice. She stepped up onto the road and came around to the passenger’s side and got in.
The man didn’t say anything more, in fact he didn’t really look at her. Lizzy glanced at him and she saw that a finger was missing on his right hand and that his face had deep lines. She told him that she was thankful for the ride, and she hadn’t realized the road would just keep on going. The old man nodded at this as if what she had said had been well thought out and then offered for him to ruminate upon. He said, “Roads,” and he nodded again. They rounded a curve and he slowed and stopped before the lane that led up to Raymond’s cabin. She got out and closed the door and it was only when he was gone that she wondered how he would know her destination. She climbed the grade towards the cabin, thinking that she had just had a dream in which an old man named Joe appeared and had given her what she wanted but not asked for. Raymond’s pickup was parked in front of the cabin. There was a car there as well and a dog lying beside the car. Lizzy said, “Hey, girl,” and walked around the dog and hesitated at the door, and then knocked. When it opened, Nelson was standing there, blocking the light from the oil lamp and his face was hidden. He said her name and then stepped back and she saw into the room where Raymond was sitting with two men. The two men were drinking beer and Raymond, when he saw her, raised his head in recognition but said nothing. One of the men, who had been speaking, stopped and looked at her.
“Hi,” Lizzy said. “I walked up.” She shrugged.
Nelson pulled her in and gave her a warm beer and introduced her to the men, Lionel and Gary. He sat down and lit a cigarette. No one spoke, and then finally Nelson said, “It’s okay, you don’t have to worry about her.”
She sat at the edge of the room, her bare knees touching, feeling that she was too dressed up in her short skirt and tank top, and also feeling that she was not trusted. She said, “I’m sorry, I can go.” Raymond said that she should stay. He would drive her back in a bit.
Then the man named Lionel turned away from her and said that they were a bunch of shit, you know, because they still weren’t getting anywhere and all they wanted was to identify with the white man. “With his money,” he said. “Always knocking their ass off for money. For money. For money. This is why we need to organize. If we are going to get killed here, I want to know that I’ve asked for everything. I want to die right. I’m not just going to ask for a piece of bread and then get shot without even getting that much.”
The other man nodded and then looked straight at Raymond and said that big things were going to happen up at Anicinabe Park. “We want you to join us. Both of you,” he said, turning to Nelson.
Nelson, his feet resting on a chair in front of him, drank and didn’t respond. Lionel said that Judge Nottingham had to fucking go. That would be one demand. “And we won’t get any demands met until a lot of white people out there sit up and say, ‘Well fuck, look at that blanket-ass Indian. He’s starting to figure out where his head’s at and he’s starting to know what the fuck’s going on.’ ”
Raymond grinned and looked over at Lizzy. There was a wine bottle hanging from a rope above the table and there was a candle in the bottle. A moth banged against the bottle. Outside, the dog barked briefly and then stopped.
Gary stood. He looked at Raymond and walked outside, followed by Lionel. Raymond went out as well and Lizzy could hear Gary’s voice and then Lionel’s, but she didn’t hear Raymond say a word. Nelson was still sitting. He said, “You watch. Ray’ll get sucked right into that shit.” Nelson put his bottle on the table. He said, “And your brother?”
At first it wasn’t clear to Lizzy what Nelson was asking and she began to say, “What,” and then Nelson laughed and said that he’d been lost when he was seven. “Ran around in the bush for three days, crying like a little shit. My brother Marcel found me and hit me across the head and called me stupid. Learned my lesson.”
The dog barked again, wildly this time, and then an engine started and idled, and finally there was the sound of their car driving off.
When Raymond came back, he motioned for Lizzy to come outside. She followed him and they got into the pickup and Raymond rolled down the window. The two of them sat looking out over the hood of the pickup into the darkness. Raymond reached out a hand and put it on her neck and pulled her close and she didn’t resist. Her head rested on his shoulder. Beyond the windshield, framed in the light of the doorway, she saw Nelson looking out at the pickup, and then he disappeared from view. As if this were a signal of some kind, Raymond leaned forward and turned the key with his left hand and in doing so she felt the movement of his body against her chest.
She thought about her father, who was sleeping alone. She thought about her mother’s red dress, which Lizzy had in her own bag back in the cabin. She’d taken it on a whim one night a while ago. She had imagined that Raymond would like the dress, like the shape of her long legs falling below the hem. She felt an urgency pressing down on her, which was perhaps what her mother had felt before she left; the sensation that danger or something necessary and calamitous lay just around the next corner and that action had to be taken. It was like walking into a clearing and understanding that of all the numerous directions to take, only one could be chosen. She told Raymond this. She offered him the vision of the open space and the choices encountered while crossing that space.
Raymond said, “Maybe there’s only one path and that’s all. No choice. Ever think of that?”
“I don’t want to think. I want to feel and then act. Or maybe act and then feel. Thinking makes everything far too complicated. Like now, I’m thinking too much. Next time I won’t talk so much.” She laughed weakly and said, “You think there’ll be a next time?”
Over the following week she saw him almost every night. He picked her up, or she met him out on the highway, standing in the ditch until she saw the one headlight of his pickup approaching, and she felt as if she were moving into the outer dark, a new and exacting place where others might have gone before but no signposts had been left to guide her. They stopped one night in town for condoms. They had discussed who would go in and buy them, and grudgingly she agreed to because he said that everyone knew him in town and it would be too obvious. So she stood at the counter and an older man took her money and looked at her and then away and then studied her again with what seemed a slight smirk. She was wearing her mother’s red dress. She’d changed into it out near the road, slipping off her jeans and T-shirt and putting it on while she waited for Raymond. The brief act of being nearly naked in the ditch at the side of the road had left her giddy. The dress was tight and the man behind the counter was looking at her breasts. Beyond the store window, in the darkness of the outside, she saw Raymond sitting in the cab of the pickup. He lit a cigarette; the brief flare of the match and then the glow. She bought a chocolate bar and a small tin of baby formula as well in order to appear wholesomely purposeful, or domestic, as if she’d stepped out of her own home and was running an errand. She blushed, took her change, and left the store.
They went up to the dump. Nelson worked there and Raymond had the
key to the padlock that held the gate. It was north of town, up past narrow roads and clear-cut paths that the hydro workers had made, and down a rutted drive to a chain-link fence, seven feet high. Raymond got out of the pickup and unlocked the padlock, removed the chain, and swung the gate open. His outline, the thin shape of him, moved in and out of the beam from the headlight. There was a song on the radio by Pink Floyd, and the sound of it made Lizzy’s heart ache, and she knew that whatever she might want, she could get.
The road into the dump was rough and the pickup jolted and threw her about. Raymond stopped at the edge of the pit, which dropped down below them. The one light probed the darkness and fell onto the trees on the far side. Raymond killed the engine. He said, “Wanna hear something funny?” And then not waiting for her answer he said that his last year in high school his science teacher, Mr. Schneider, had hit him. One time he had forgotten his textbook and Schneider came at him with a ruler and hit him across the side of the head. “He said I would make an excellent garbage collector. That’s what he said, and then he looked at the class and asked if he wasn’t right and some kids laughed, but nobody said anything. I thought of standing up and walking out, or maybe grabbing his ears and banging his head against the desk, because I’m bigger than Schneider and could’ve done that, but I didn’t and later I wondered why not, what stopped me.” He shrugged and said it was funny, because Schneider was right. Here he was, sitting by the garbage dump.
“So,” Lizzy said. “That doesn’t make him right. You should’ve clocked him.”
“Yeah, should’ve. And then I’d’ve been charged.”
“Was he charged for hitting you?”
Raymond laughed and looked over at her. “Come on,” he said, and he took her hand.
They walked down the path to where the Caterpillar was crouched. Raymond climbed onto the tread and then reached out his hand and said, “Here.” Her dress was too tight. She was wearing runners, so her feet were okay, but she couldn’t stretch her legs in any way. Finally, she hitched the dress up over her hips and stepped up onto the tread. She was wearing white underwear and she told Raymond not to look. The cab was small, with little room for two, so Lizzy sat on a side console while Raymond fired up the Cat. There was no steering wheel, just a number of sticks that Raymond moved back and forth. As they crawled down into the pit, the Cat’s spotlight fell onto the space before them to reveal the garbage and the movement of rats.
“My brother and I sometimes come up here to shoot raccoons,” Raymond yelled. “It’s easy at night. Sitting ducks, eh?”
He taught her to operate the Cat. Let her sit between the sticks and showed her how to advance, reverse, and turn. She rolled the Cat up out of the pit and stopped just before the pickup, which appeared toylike in front of them. Later, back in the pickup, the dim light of the dashboard reflecting his face, she saw his teeth appear and then disappear, and she was struck by the brief image of something animal-like and feral in him. She pressed a hand against his mouth.
He said that they should go into town for a drink. Then they could go up to the cabin, later. Nelson had gone to Winnipeg, so they would be alone.
“You don’t drink,” she said.
“True. But that can change. For tonight.”
Lizzy said fine, if he wanted. She leaned back and said that she liked it when he liked her. That he wanted to be seen in public with her. “Who do you want to show me to?” she asked. Then she said that it went both ways. She wanted to show him off too. With her index finger she touched his forehead and said, “I love this,” and then she touched his chin and his jaw and she said, “And this, and this.” He stopped at a bar on Main Street. Parked down by the wharf and they walked up past a patio full of people and then around to the front door. They sat in a corner booth, looking out at the crowd. Lizzy ordered a beer and Raymond a whisky neat. Lizzy looked at him when he ordered and she raised her eyebrows.
There was a band playing country music and Lizzy asked Raymond to dance.
He shook his head.
Lizzy grinned. She tugged at Raymond’s left hand. “Come on.”
“When I’m drunk,” he said.
“You’re embarrassed.”
They sat and watched the crowd, and the people dancing, and Lizzy took Raymond’s hand and played with his fingers until he laced them into hers. She said her mother used to play this game with her, when she was younger, where she would fold her hands together and ask Lizzy to close her eyes and count her fingers to see if she could find all ten. Sometimes she got nine, sometimes eleven, rarely ten. “I couldn’t do it.” She paused and said, “She went away. She’s done this before. We wake up and she’s gone. She doesn’t leave a note, doesn’t come and say goodbye. It’s like she doesn’t have children. I’m okay, but I feel sorry for my brothers, they’re too young to understand.”
Raymond watched her, and then he said, “You still have a dad.”
Lizzy smiled, and then began to laugh. She said, “Stupid me.” Then she said, “I like you.”
A girl in a tam walked past their booth, looked at Raymond, and stopped.
“Hi, Raymond,” she said.
Raymond lifted his head and said her name, “Alice.”
Alice looked at Lizzy and then back at Raymond. She smiled and in the smile Lizzy sensed a possible threat.
“How’ve you been?” Alice asked. She was wearing tight jeans that went wide below the knee and she wore a vest over a plaid shirt. She looked like a cowgirl. Her mouth and eyes were small.
“Okay,” Raymond said.
Alice nodded. She didn’t say anything more, but she made no move to leave. Finally, she said that it had been a long time.
“I guess so,” Raymond said.
Then Alice stuck out her hand at Lizzy and said, “My name’s Alice. Alice Hart.”
Her grasp was poor and slightly off-centre and Lizzy thought then that this might be a girl that Raymond had known quite well. She said her own name and took her hand back.
“You’re not from here,” Alice said.
“The Retreat,” Lizzy said. “That’s where.”
Alice nodded and then her eyes brightened and she said, “Uncle Earl told me about you. Your family. It was your little brother who got lost, right?” She seemed happy to have situated Lizzy in this way. She said that her uncle Earl had been the policeman in charge of the search. She didn’t look at Raymond as she said this, but she turned at some point and faced him and said that she was getting married. Maybe next month.
“Really,” Raymond said. “That’s fine.”
“’Course it’s fine. Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
“I guess that depends,” Raymond said.
“On what?”
“On who you’re marrying.”
“Vernon.” The corners of her small mouth lifted. “He’s here, you know,” and she looked over her shoulder, then turned back to Lizzy. “Ray and I knew each other in high school. Didn’t we, Ray? Very good friends.” She waited, as if there were more to add. Then she told Lizzy that Vernon was a constable on the police force. Just like her uncle. “But then you know that. Vernon helped look for your brother, right?”
Lizzy nodded and said that she remembered him.
Alice went pensive and leaned towards Raymond and asked him if he had a joint. Even half a joint. Or some crumbs. “You got some?” she asked.
He said he didn’t. He said she should ask policeman Vernon. He probably had lots of prime confiscated shit.
Alice’s mouth drew into a neat pucker. “You don’t have to make fun.” And she turned and walked away, disappearing through the crowd on the dance floor.
Lizzy watched Raymond. “She calls you Ray,” she said.
“True.” He drank the remainder of whisky and when the waitress passed by he asked for another. He studied Lizzy.
Lizzy smiled briefly.
Raymond’s shot glass arrived. He drank it in one go, grimaced, and set the glass down.
“
She was your girlfriend?” Lizzy asked.
Raymond seemed to ponder this question, as if he wasn’t sure of the answer. Then he said, “For a while. Last fall.”
Lizzy touched Raymond’s fingers. “Your hands. They’re shaking.”
He stood and reached into his jeans’ pocket and took out some cash and laid it on the table. He walked out and Lizzy followed him down the hill to the pickup, stumbling slightly in her shoes, unable to keep up.
“Hey,” she called.
Raymond didn’t answer. He got in the pickup and sat there. Even after Lizzy had climbed in he made no move to start the engine. Just sat and looked out the windshield at the harbour in front of them. The float planes, the slips of the dock, the barrels of fuel.
“What’s going on?” Lizzy said. “Was it Alice?”
He started the engine and drove up the hill, past the bar, and down Second Street. They crossed over the intersection near the baseball diamond. Up past the prison and down onto the flat stretch towards Raymond’s turnoff. Lizzy said that she didn’t know what had happened back there in the bar, but she didn’t care about Alice. Not one bit. Anyway, Alice was getting married and she didn’t seem that smart and what frightened her, she said, was that Raymond might not know the difference between her and Alice. “You know? What do you see when you look at me? A white girl? Because if that’s all you see, then there’s a problem.”
“That’s not all.” He said that Alice had been his girlfriend in high school. “Her father wasn’t happy with this, but I didn’t give a shit. Alice was this girl who had pointed her finger at Raymond Seymour. I wasn’t very bright back then.” He poked around in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “Wanna?” he asked Lizzy. She took one and waited. He struck a match and held out a shaky hand. She held his hand as she bent to the light.
