Whenever he says that, I know that he’s going to finish his talk. He reminds me that Indians consider me a Frenchie, and whites look at me like I’m Indian. But I imagine I don’t feel different from most of the rez kids. Maybe I’m lonelier. My best friend has a husband and a baby now, and another friend moved to Thunder Bay. Tonight Lucky says he is not here enough to watch out for me and I should be careful with the city boys.
Michael has him somewhere in his house. I want to sit by Michael’s stove and look at him. Michael talks a lot when we go out to the coffee shop. He tells me about Toronto, the woman mayor, the Canadian National Exhibition, the men who sleep on heating grates in the middle of winter underneath huge glass buildings. He tells me about his little brother and parents. Michael asks if he can come over to my house for dinner. He says he’s writing a paper on the Aboriginals of Northern Ontario. But I can hear Lucky saying, “Do you want another potato, cocksucker?” so I say I’ll go to Michael’s house instead.
It’s a small cottage on Ministik Road, outside the rez boundary, just a clapboard living room and a kitchen with dried flowers on the tiny table and a wood-burning stove. I help him carry wood in, and we leave our coats and boots by the stove. He cooks dinner and fumbles with the plates while setting the table. He talks a lot, asks a lot of questions about me and Moose Factory. I tell him my daddy was a full-blood Bear Clan Cree. That he worked in the bush and was the son of a hunter. I lie and tell Michael my father was killed while hunting. I don’t know why I say this. I look down at the floor, then at the walls. I don’t see him.
After dinner we sit on the sofa and listen to music, drinking beer.
“You’re not the most talkative person,” Michael says. “Aren’t there things you want to know about me?” He leans in closer and takes my hand in his. It’s sweaty.
“So you have a girlfriend in Toronto?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “There’s a woman I like, but …” and I stop his talk with a little kiss.
Lucky would be angry if he knew I was alone with Michael in his house. But Lucky’s on the train tonight, somewhere near the Soo.
I want to tell this one about the other. About how close we were by the second winter. How he’d come up to me in the middle of the night almost as friendly as a dog and take gifts from my hand, then go back to the edge of the bush to eat. He wouldn’t let me touch him, didn’t want the smell of human on his fur. I want to tell him about that time when the ice was beginning to break up on the bay and even snowmobiles weren’t crossing any more. It was late and I offered him a strip of venison. He walked up and ignored my hand. Instead he nuzzled me hard between my legs. He could smell my blood. I felt his hot breath and tongue against my jeans for just a moment.
Michael looks awkward pulling out the sofa bed. “If I had known I’d be living like this,” he says, “I’d have shipped my futon up with me.” He’s holding onto me and unbuttoning my shirt. I want to know what a futon is, but I lie back and let him struggle with my jeans.
I can feel his tongue and his breath in the dark. He’s come back to me, nipping and licking, tasting me. He slides up and I can feel the hair of his chest on my belly, on my breasts. He is hard against me and pushes inside for my first time, his shoulder across my neck. The white flash of pain is his smile and dark lips. He nudges my legs wider. I bite his ear and he yelps and I can feel him release inside of me.
Michael mumbles and half talks in his sleep, so I quietly get up and pull my clothes on. The stove’s gone out and I can see my breath, so I squeak the stove door open and fill it with wood. I leave and walk down Ankerite Road, listening to my boots crunch in the snow and trees moan in the cold. Tonight it’s so dark and empty I wonder if anything is alive.
The days are getting longer again. Michael and I don’t go out for coffee much any more. People in town started talking, asking why the teacher and a seventeen-year-old half-Indian girl were hanging out so much. Michael ran into Lucky and thought he was a big bearded lumberjack come to chop him down. Lucky says he didn’t say a word to him. Just looked. When we do meet for coffee, this teacher doesn’t look at my eyes any more, just mumbles into his cup and watches out the window, then kisses my cheek and leaves. I wanted to tell him he was the first, but I can’t now.
Sunny days leave the ice highway slushy and dangerous to cross. I only asked Michael about my wolf one time, a little while ago. I tried to sound casual and like I didn’t care, but my voice came out squeaky and tense.
“That pelt, the damaged one?” he said. “I sent it out on the mail plane to my woman friend in Toronto. She loves northern stuff.”
I try not to think of my wolf any more, sent to hang in that woman’s house.
Michael calls me today after the first canoe race of the year, the one from Moose Factory to Moosonee celebrating the spring. He asks me to meet him at the usual place.
“I’m leaving, back to TO,” he says as I stare out the window at the bay and people on the ferry dock. The trees will bud soon. He lights a smoke. “I thought I might want to renew my contract and stay through the summer. But I’ve got business to take care of back in the city.” He smiles. A casual smile. “Besides, I hear the blackflies drive you crazy in the spring. Don’t worry, though. I’ll write. Maybe you can come visit me sometime.”
He always talks too much. I light a smoke and look him in the eyes. He looks back for a second, then looks down and plays with his cigarette pack. I stare at him till he gets up and leaves.
The last night he visited me a few months back, I knew my wolf could smell the evil in the air. He was jumpy and his yellow eyes looked dull. I was tired and didn’t want to get out of my warm bed. But I knew he was there, looking up at my window from his shadows at the tree line. I knew he wanted to see me. There was no food to offer so I poured him a bowl of milk and went outside. He sneaked up to me, then looked over his shoulder. He sniffed the saucer but let the milk freeze. I wondered what he had done all day, if he had caught a hare or run from his enemies. Half awake and not thinking, I reached out to scratch his torn ear. I lazily ran my fingers over his scruffy head and scratched his neck. Just as I realized what I was doing, he nipped at my hand and walked away, looking back over his shoulder at me until he disappeared into the dark. He had the smell on him.
I don’t like coffee any more, but I still go to the coffee shop and drink it. When Michael left, Lucky said that the city fuck was worried the blackflies might chew his cock off if he stayed any longer.
My stomach’s getting puffy so I try not to smoke, but it’s become a habit. It won’t be long before Mom and Lucky notice. It won’t be good. I’ll have to tell them soon.
When it comes, the pain will be like that night with him, and worse. I will open my legs wide and scream and curse and howl.
Then the midwife will back away, muttering prayers and crying. My baby’s grey furry head will enter this world. He will bare his white teeth and gnaw through our cord. He will look at me and smile with black lips and yellow eyes. He will run off into the bush, and he will cross the ice highway.
Joseph A. Dandurand
Please Do Not Touch the Indians
This drama premiered at the Museum of the American West’s Wells Fargo Theatre in Griffith Park, Los Angeles in March of 2004, produced by the Native Voices at the Autry under the direction of Randy Reinholz with dramatology by Bryan Davidson.
CHARACTERS
WOODEN INDIAN MAN
WOODEN INDIAN WOMAN
SISTER COYOTE
BROTHER RAVEN
MISTER WOLF
TOURIST
SETTING
A painted backdrop of the HANK WILLIAMS SR.’S BAIT AND GIFT SHOP. There are some fallen leaves on the ground. Centre stage there is a wooden bench and sitting on the bench are two wooden Indians. Their clothing is simple and not quite traditional but more of a Hollywood taste. WOODEN WOMAN is holding flowers that someone has put in her hand. WOODEN MAN sits with his eyes closed and around his neck is a sign that reads
: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE INDIANS.
ACT ONE
Scene 1
Lights come up as music begins: Hank Williams Sr.’s “Kalajah.” Music ends as French TOURIST comes out and sets up a camera and tripod. French TOURIST sets the timer and sits between the two Indians. As the timer beeps, the WOODEN MAN opens his eyes and sticks out his tongue. French TOURIST looks at WOODEN MAN but he has already closed his eyes and has returned to being wooden. French TOURIST stands, gathers the camera and tripod, and exists as lights fade to black.
Scene 2
Lights come up. Night. More fallen leaves on the ground. In the distance we hear squealing tires and screams from teenagers as they cheer on the drag-racing cars. WOODEN WOMAN begins to move as noise fades. WOODEN WOMAN looks at flowers in her hand and screams as she throws them to the ground in front of her.
WOODEN WOMAN
Geez, who put flowers in my hand? Don’t they know that’s bad luck? Holding flowers is a sign of death. Hey, you listening? Are you awake?
WOODEN MAN does not move, nor does he speak.
You just going to sit there all night and not say a word? Don’t you get tired of not moving your mouth? Geez, I’d go crazy not being able to talk. You better move your mouth or else you’ll never be able to talk. That’s what happened to old Charlie Ketchup. He never spoke to a soul for the last twenty years of his life. When the doctor went to see him on his deathbed, Charlie couldn’t even tell him where it hurt. I bet he’s talking up a storm in the spirit world. Old Charlie Ketchup. I knew his wife; she was crazier than he was. Betty Ketchup. A big woman, she must’ve weighed about three hundred pounds. No wonder Charlie never spoke, she’d come screaming out of the house after him if he ever spoke a word against her. Never seen a woman move so fast, never seen a man move faster.
WOODEN MAN scratches his nose as a raven caws in the distance.
Betty Ketchup sure was a big woman, but she would never hurt anyone. I remember going to her house to borrow some wood one day and she was running around trying to catch every fly that came into her dirty house. I’d say, “What’cha doing with them flies, Betty Ketchup?” And she’d turn and look at me with that little mouth of hers trying so hard to suck in enough air to breathe, and say, “I’m catchin’ ’em for my supper.” And she laughed so hard, I was afraid she’d swallow more than she caught.
WOODEN MAN scratches his left knee.
She never did eat any of them. She was really catching them because she could never kill a fly. She’d spend the whole day catching them and storing them in an old jar that she kept on the kitchen sink right next to her set of false teeth. I followed her one day, you know, to see where she went with them flies. She must’ve had a hundred in that jar that day. She waddled her way to the cow field and here she came across the biggest cow patty that she could find. It was real fresh, the steam still rising. Betty Ketchup opened up her jar of flies and let them fly right on to the patty. A hundred flies with a new home. Those flies never came back to Betty Ketchup’s house. They stayed on that cow patty for the rest of their lives. Betty Ketchup saved millions of lives in the ten years that I knew her. Never a dead fly in her kitchen. A place to live was all they wanted. She was a big woman and her heart was just as big.
Lights fade as a coyote barks. Blackout.
Scene 3
Stage lights come up. Night. More leaves on the ground. WOODEN MAN snaps awake and stares at WOODEN WOMAN.
WOODEN MAN
Are you awake? I had a vision: I was on the river, my boat was filled with fish. I had started home when a coyote began to follow me from the shore, he was smiling at me, you know, with them yellow eyes, he’s smiling with his crooked teeth. He took his time, stopping every so often to rest his ragged paws, he knew my boat couldn’t get far with all that fish. My boat was pushing slowly up to our home, the coyote watched from the shore and then the raven came and joined the coyote, they both watched from the shore: the raven with his red eyes and his torn feathers, the coyote lights a cigarette and blows the smoke toward me and my boat. The raven smiles as coyote offers him a drag. They both sit there on a log and they laugh at me. The fish begin to dance, they want to go back to the river, they do not want to be eaten by the coyote, nor do they want to be picked at by the raven. The fish begin to sing to me, they tell me to throw them back: “Please throw us back, we will come back next year.” Over and over they sing this to me. The raven and the coyote are laughing at me as they begin to share their bottle. And then I begin to throw the fish back to the river, the fish throw kisses to me as they swim back to their homes, they promise to name their children after me, they turn and disappear. The raven and the coyote stand there on the shore, their mouths open with confusion. They try and catch up to me but my boat is empty and goes like the wind. I hear their howlin’ and cawin’ at me as I disappear around the mountain… I don’t think they will name their children after me, I thought to myself, and then I woke up. Hey, are you awake? Did you like the flowers?
An English TOURIST enters and sets up a camera. He sets the timer and sits between the wooden Indians. As the timer beeps the WOODEN MAN and WOODEN WOMAN open their eyes and smile. WOODEN MAN also puts his around the English TOURIST, he puts a sign on the English TOURIST’s back. Both Indians freeze as the English TOURIST looks at them as if they did truly move, he shakes his head and goes to gather his camera, he turns his back to the audience and we see the sign on his back – KICK ME! Blackout.
Scene 4
In the dark we hear a coyote bark followed by a voice yelling: “Get outta here, you stinking coyote!” A spot comes up downstage centre. SISTER COYOTE walks into the spot, she is beautiful, but she has been crying and her makeup has run down her face, so now she looks somewhat clownish and sad. In the background we hear sounds and music that you would hear at the circus or the carnival. SISTER COYOTE reaches into her purse and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, takes a huge drag and exhales it into the air. She does this again and tries to act cool and special, but inhales down the wrong pipe and begins to choke, and her eyes bug out and she appears even more clownish than before.
SISTER COYOTE
Nothing like a good smoke. You know I first started smoking when me and my sister went to the carnival that would come to our reserve every summer. We really went with our parents but as soon as we got there we would run away and disappear into the crowd, and our parents were going to the beer tent anyway so they didn’t miss us much. We would run straight for the far end of the carnival grounds. We would always go to the far end of the grounds, you see, this is where the freaks and the scary rides were.
She puts cigarette out and takes out a mickey from her purse, looks around to see if anyone is looking and takes a sip. Puts the bottle back into her purse and smiles.
My sister and I had both started to wear makeup, not very well I may add, not like I wear mine now. We didn’t know a thing back then, but we didn’t care because we were thirteen and we were away from the rez for a day, and we had a pack of Marlboros that we had stolen from Dad and we were looking to smoke and act cool and we were looking to see if there were any cute guys that had come with the carnival. We didn’t see any, they were all fat, ugly guys with a lot of tattoos and they smelled like horses. We walked around and smoked our cigarettes, and we ate junk food and sipped Cokes, and we walked like we owned this land, well we did, well our people did, but we walked like we owned it, and we let people know that we were smoking and we were cool.
Spot changes to blue and SISTER COYOTE sits down in the pool of light. She digs into her purse for a compact and begins to fix her makeup.
As the day wore on and the sun got hot and we became kind of sick from all the food and the pop and the Marlboros, my sister said she was going to find Mom and Dad, and I told her I wanted to check out more of the freak shows and maybe see if there were any cute guys hiding in the Haunted House. I was making my way toward the Haunted House when I saw IT.
Stage lights come up as SISTER COYOTE st
ill sits in the blue spot. WOODEN MAN stands and stretches and reaches underneath the bench and takes out an old baseball glove and ball and begins to throw the ball up into the air and catch it.
There I was in big red letters on a black sign: SEE THE TWO-HEADED BABY. I freaked out. I reached into my pocket and dug for the quarter that I knew was there and then I ran up the stairs that led to the TWO-HEADED BABY. When I got to the top of the stairs, a man who smelled like horses took my quarter and told me to go on in and to leave out the other side when I had had enough. I went in and it was dark and smelled like horses and over in the corner there was a table and on the table there was a jar and in the jar was the TWO-HEADED BABY. And I walked up to it and looked at it and it turned and it looked at me. I screamed but no one could hear me over all the noise on the rides outside. I wanted to run but I couldn’t look away so I stood there and it stared back at me and I stared back at it. I moved closer to see if it was really alive but how could it be alive, right? I mean it was floating in some sort of liquid in a jar and it was a two-headed baby, so how could it have lived in the first place, right? But when I went up to it, it moved again, but not real movement, more like floating movement like it was in space or something, and it just spun around and around inside that jar and I just stared at it and stared at it and as its heads would spin around, the eyes would stare at me and they were looking at me like they wanted to come out of that jar and play. I wanted to run and I wanted to scream but I just stood there and stared and then someone else came in and they wanted to stare at the two-headed baby and I let them and I went outside and I never went back, and as I went down the stairs I threw up all over some cute guy who was combing the BEARDED LADY’s beard.
The Exile Book of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama Page 9
