by Thomas King
“I’ve got both,” I said. “Whatever you like.”
“See?” said Harlen. “Rich and generous.”
I brought the coffee out on a tray I had bought at a yard sale. It wasn’t exactly a tray. It was the top of one of those stands that you eat off while you watch television.
“Say look at this,” said Harlen.
“Looks real good,” said Lionel.
Lionel put three sugars in his coffee. Harlen put four in his. Harlen held up the cream carton and looked at it the way you look at a glass of wine. The cream had been in the refrigerator for over a week. Bertha Morley had brought it by when she came to ask me if I knew anything about instamatic cameras. Hers wasn’t working. I didn’t use cream, but I fixed the camera. I hoped it was still fresh.
“Real cream, Lionel,” said Harlen. “Not that white powder you get at the truck stop in Reynolds and not that cream substitute you get at the Lodge. Boy, I’ll bet you don’t get real cream for your coffee every day.”
“That’s right,” said Lionel, “only at home.”
I didn’t know Lionel James very well, but I had heard stories. Harlen said he was almost one hundred years old. Bertha said he was about sixty-nine. Harlen said Lionel had been a great athlete when he was young, could run for miles. Bertha said he had had a bad drinking problem, spent some time in jail. Harlen said Lionel had been to some of the old-time Sun Dances and had the scars on his chest to prove it. Bertha said he got those in a car crash. But whatever he had been in his youth, he was one of the most respected men on the reserve.
“You got any cookies, Will?” said Harlen. “I’ll bet Lionel would like some cookies. Those black ones with the cream centres.”
“You mean Oreos?”
“Maybe some bread and jam, if you have any,” said Lionel.
“Lionel would like some bread and jam, too,” said Harlen. “What kind of jam you like?”
“Don’t matter,” said Lionel. “They’re all good.”
Mostly I kept film in the refrigerator, but there were some cookies, oatmeal with raisins, and I had some bread and butter and swiss cheese just in case I got hungry at work. There wasn’t any jam.
“Looks like I’m out of jam,” I shouted.
“No jam?” said Harlen.
“That’s okay,” said Lionel.
“I’ve got some cheese.”
“Cheese is real good, too.”
George’s grocery was just across the alley, and Harlen was right, it was windy. Harlen and Lionel were still talking when I got back. They never even knew I’d gone.
“Hey, I found some jam. Had some after all…strawberry.”
“Great,” said Harlen. “It’s Lionel’s favourite.”
So we sat there in the shop, the three of us, and ate bread and butter and jam, and drank hot coffee. The wind picked up, and the gusts rattled the front window.
“You know, Will,” said Harlen, “Lionel travels all over. He knows everyone.” Harlen finished his bread and licked his fingers. “Did I tell you Lionel and your father were friends?”
“Your father used to rodeo,” said Lionel. “One night in Calgary, after that big rodeo, he took me and Sam Belly out to dinner.”
“So, you knew my father?”
“You bet,” said Lionel. “You don’t look much like him.”
“How well did you know him?”
“You look more like your mother.”
“Lionel goes everywhere,” said Harlen. “Tell Will where you’ve been.”
Lionel laughed. “Boy, you know, I never thought I’d go some of the places I’ve been. My mother never left the reserve. I was in Calgary a few times and up in Edmonton once, but that was before my wife died. Last few years, I’ve been all over.”
“Lionel’s been to Germany, Will.”
“Yes,” said Lionel, “that’s right.”
“And he’s been to England and France.”
“I was in Ottawa just last week,” said Lionel.
“Lionel’s been all over the world, Will. That’s what we came to talk to you about.”
“Need some publicity pictures, huh?”
Harlen looked at Lionel, and Lionel looked at me.
“What are those?”
“Will means pictures of you to advertise what a famous person you are.”
“That’s real nice of you, Will,” said Lionel, “but I’m not famous. I just travel a lot.”
“No,” said Harlen quickly, “we don’t need pictures.”
“Pictures would be nice,” said Lionel. “Your father got his picture in the Calgary Herald when he won the all-round title. He used to carry it in his wallet. Do I need a picture for a credit card?”
I was used to conversations with Harlen that didn’t make much sense and didn’t seem to go anywhere.
“That’s what we came to see you about,” said Harlen.
“My father?”
“No, credit cards,” said Harlen. “You got one, don’t you?”
“Sure, I have one.”
“See, Lionel? Will knows all about them.”
“I just have one.”
“Good enough,” said Harlen. “Tell Will what happened, Lionel.”
Lionel smiled and leaned back in the chair. “Boy,” he said, “it’s good to talk about things like this. You know, first time I went to fly somewhere, I had to walk through this fence, and the police made me do it again, and then I had to take off my belt buckle. You know what? There was this woman who waved this stick all around me. She waved it around my arms and down around my boots. She even waved it up between my legs. Said she was looking for metal. I was real embarrassed, you know. I had to hold my pants up. It’s real bad over in those European places.”
“Lionel has been to Japan, too,” said Harlen.
“That’s right. I’ve been to Japan. People want me to talk about what it’s like to be an Indian. Crazy world. Lots of white people seem real interested in knowing about Indians. Crazy world.
“So, I go all over the world now, and talk about Indian ways and how my grandparents lived, and sometimes I sing a little. I used to dance, too, but my leg hurts too bad now. Most of the time, I tell stories.”
Lionel paused and looked out the window. The sky had darkened, and the buildings on Second Street hunkered down before the storm.
“This is real good jam,” he said.
Harlen helped himself to a piece of cheese. “What kind of credit card you got, Will?”
“It’s a Visa.”
“Those are good.”
“There’s MasterCard, too.”
“Those are good, too,” said Harlen.
“You also have American Express,” I said.
“See, Lionel,” said Harlen. “Will knows about these things.”
“I’m sure glad someone does,” said Lionel. “I don’t want to cause any problems.”
“Tell Will what happened in Ottawa, Lionel.”
“There was this big conference, you know, on Indians. Maybe two weeks ago. My friends asked me to come back and tell some stories. So I went to Ottawa. Real nice place. Hard to say no to friends. They had to work all day, so they said to take a taxi to this hotel, big one. Real nice one.
“I went up to the place that said Reception and said I had a reservation. So this young boy looks up in that computer, and he says, yes, I have a reservation. He gives me a form, and I fill it out. And then he asks me for my credit card.
“I don’t have one of those, and I told him that I didn’t have any credit card, and the boy said they couldn’t give me a room unless I had one. You know, I told him I had cash, and he said cash wasn’t any good.
“I hadn’t heard that before, but we don’t hear everything on the reserve. So I said, what do you use instead of cash, and he said, credit cards.
“So I figure I better get a credit card. You know, be a modern Indian.”
I looked at Harlen.
“Lionel needs someone to help him get a credit card.” Harlen p
ut a piece of Swiss cheese on some bread and folded it over. “You know how these things work. Would you believe it, Will? The bank messed up my account last week. This is the third time.”
“It’s not hard to get a credit card,” I said. “Generally, you just apply for a card at the bank where you have your chequing account.”
“Lionel doesn’t have a chequing account, Will.”
“How about a savings account?”
“Don’t have one of those, either,” said Lionel.
“I think you’ll have to have a chequing account before the bank will give you a card.”
“You got a chequing account, don’t you, Will?”
“Sure, over at the TD.”
“I used to have an account,” said Lionel. “But I don’t know what happened to it.”
“If you like,” I said, “I can take you over to the TD and see if we can get you an account.”
“And then I can get a credit card?”
“I think so.”
Lionel leaned back in the chair. “Boy, hard to keep track of this world. You know in Germany I told the story about how Coyote went over to the west coast to get some fire because he was cold. Good thing he went travelling in the olden days before he needed a credit card.”
We all laughed.
Lionel straightened his jacket and smiled. “Well, you know Coyote ran along until his feet hurt real bad, and pretty soon he was in the trees and the prairies were behind. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘I’m real sleepy. Maybe I’ll just lie down here and sleep for a while.’ But you know, Raven saw Coyote, and she flew down, and sat on a limb near where Coyote was trying to go to sleep, and she said, ‘You can’t sleep here unless you got a credit card.”
Harlen slapped his knee. “You’re a good storyteller, Lionel.”
“You know, sometimes I tell stories about today, about some of the people on the reserve right now. I like to tell about Billy Frank and the Dead River Pig. All the people back home like to hear that story. When I was in Norway, I told the story about the time your father and mother went to one of those chicken restaurants after a rodeo. Your mother was pregnant, and I guess the smell of all that fat and grease made her sick because she threw up.”
“Threw up. At the restaurant?”
“That’s right. She was sitting near the window, and she couldn’t get out. It was real messy.”
“My mother did that?”
“So your father, quick as he can, said in a real loud voice, ‘Hey! what’s in this chicken, anyway?’”
“Sounds just like your father, don’t it, Will?” said Harlen.
“The manager came over with a bucket and a mop, and he was all apologetic. Nice fellow. Young boy. He even bought our meal for us, and your father gave him two free tickets to the rodeo.”
“What else did my father do?”
“But those people in Germany and Japan and France and Ottawa don’t want to hear those stories. They want to hear stories about how Indians used to be. I got some real good stories, funny ones, about how things are now, but those people say, no, tell us about the olden days. So I do.”
“It must be exciting to go to all those places,” Harlen said. “See all those people. I’ll bet they really like your stories.”
“The travel is okay, but I’ve been thinking maybe I should just stay home. This credit card thing is real confusing.”
“We can get you a credit card, Lionel,” I said.
“People are real curious, you know. When I was in Japan, I told them the story about Old Man and Old Woman, and when I was done, everybody stood up and clapped.”
“You’re a good storyteller, Lionel,” said Harlen.
“You know, it was my wife who knew all the stories. She used to tell them to the kids. Crazy world. Everybody on the reserve knows that story. Those people in Japan just got up and started clapping. Same thing happened in Germany.”
“Tell Will what happened next.”
Lionel smoothed his braids. “Well,” he said, “everyone left.”
“No,” said Harlen, “before they left.”
“Oh. Well, they gave me one of those boards with a piece of metal on it that said I was in Japan.”
“A plaque?”
“Something like that, I guess. They gave me other presents, too.”
“Cause you’re such a good storyteller,” said Harlen.
“I don’t know,” said Lionel. “Maybe cause I’m Indian. You know, I didn’t see any white storytellers over there. I saw a Mohawk fellow in France. He was telling stories, too.”
Lionel put his coffee cup down and looked out the window. “That travel is pretty tiring. Those jet planes don’t have much room to sleep. Some of those hotels are real noisy, and everyone wants to take you out to dinner. Maybe it’s okay I don’t have a credit card. Maybe I should stay home.”
“I’d like to hear some of your stories when you have time,” I said. “We could talk about other things, too.”
“Sure, Will. That would be good. Maybe you want to come to my house, have a meal. I tell those stories to my grandkids, when I’m home. Maybe you can come out.”
“I’d like that.”
Lionel leaned forward in his chair and got up. “Boy, that was good bread and jam. Good coffee, too. I guess I don’t need that credit card, after all.”
“Hey, Will,” said Harlen. “Maybe you should take Lionel’s picture while he’s here. You could put it up on the wall. People who come in could see a real world-famous Indian.”
So I took some pictures of Lionel, and they turned out good. I put one up next to the picture of Harlen and the basketball team. The next week, I took four of the best pictures out to Lionel’s house. I had never been out to that part of the reserve. Harlen gave me directions, and I got lost. By the time I found the house, everyone had eaten, but Lionel took me in the kitchen and warmed up some of the moose-meat stew that his daughter had made.
Later, we sat around in the back yard, and Lionel told stories. There were some about Old Man and Old Woman, and some about Coyote and Raven and the rest of the animals. Lionel told a story about a white fellow from Cardston who tried to sell Alfred Yellow Rabbit a horse that was blind in one eye. He told me about the time my father hid me in a clothes basket at the laundromat and tried to convince my mother that he had put me in with the wash by mistake. And he told the story about the fence at the airport and the kid at the hotel.
“It’s a crazy world,” Lionel said, as he walked me out to my truck, “them people living in the past like that.” He looked back at the kids, who were playing on the porch. “They all got up and clapped, Will. Just stood there and clapped. Like they never heard that story before.”
13
Bertha Morley was a thick, handsome woman with a talent for rescuing the truth from falsehoods and flights of fancy. There was no finesse in Bertha. The minute she heard an exaggeration buzzing around, her head would snap up, and her tongue would flick out and slap it against the wall.
“Person would have to be all blind and mostly dead to believe that,” she told Eddie Weaselhead, after Eddie finished his story about outrunning six police cars and a helicopter in Winnipeg. “Good thing they don’t put you in jail for trying to sell them mouthfuls of garbage to honest people.”
Harlen, who had a great respect for the truth, though on occasion he had difficulty finding all the parts, tended to be more temperate in his insistence on the whole truth all at once. “Bertha’s an honest woman, Will. No one can take that from her. But you know, the truth’s like a green-broke horse. You can come running out of the barn and throw on a saddle, leap on its back and plant your heels in its side, but you never know which way it’s going to run or who it’s going to kick. Sometimes it’s better to walk up slow, you know, with a carrot or an apple. Let it smell the saddle for a while, before you pull the cinch and slide up.”
Bertha worked at the Friendship Centre, and every time the centre needed some publicity photographs, Big John would send Bertha o
ver to see me. “You got responsibilities, you know,” she’d say. “The centre needs some of them photographs, and we can’t afford to pay anyone to take them.” So when Bertha came to the studio on Thursday, I figured it was time for the office photograph. She was wearing a print dress filled up with tiny flowers, and she had on high heels.
“Looking good, Bertha,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”
“I need some photographs, Will. You got time to take some?”
“This for the centre?”
“No. These are for me. For the advertisement.” Bertha took a clipping from her purse and put it on my desk. “They want a picture of me to pass around.”
The advertisement was for the Calgary Centre for the Development of Human Potential. It was a glossy advertisement that showed a couple walking near a lake holding hands. The caption beneath the photograph said, “Develop your potential with that special person.”
“This is a dating service.”
“That’s right,” said Bertha. “You pay them some money. They find you a man. Here, you got an education. You think this is okay?”
Bertha handed me a form that said “Confidential” across the top in large red letters. It asked for the usual information: name, address, phone number, all of which Bertha had filled in. But under weight, height and date of birth, she had printed “NOYB.”
“NOYB?”
“That’s right. It’s none of their business, that stuff. They got a picture. They can see what I look like. The rest of that stuff is just nosy.”
Under “General Description” Bertha had written: “I’m a Blood Indian woman in good health with lots of friends who say I’m good-looking. I’m not a skinny woman, and I graduated from high school. I got a good job and I’ve raised four kids and have no objection to a couple more. I got my own car. I like to go fishing and hunting, and I play bingo every Thursday.”
“You don’t need a dating service. You’re a good-looking woman.”
“Got nothing to do with my looks. Just tired of what’s available around here.”
Under the section, “Your Description of an Ideal Partner,” Bertha had put down: “No drinkers or cigar smokers. Whites are okay. Should have his own job and not be married. I’d like someone tall so I can wear heels when we got out, but short is okay, too.”
