by Thomas King
“Hmmmm,” says Coyote. “How disappointing.”
Eli opened the book and closed his eyes. He didn’t have to read the pages to know what was going to happen. Iron Eyes and Annabelle would fall madly in love. There would be a conflict of some sort between the whites and the Indians. And Iron Eyes would be forced to choose between Annabelle and his people. In the end, he would choose his people, because it was the noble thing to do and because Western writers seldom let Indians sleep with whites. Iron Eyes would send Annabelle back to the fort and then go to fight the soldiers. He’d be killed, of course, and the novel would conclude on a happy note of some sort. Perhaps Annabelle would find that her fiancé had not been killed after all or she would fall into the arms of a handsome army lieutenant.
Chapter ten.
Eli opened one of his eyes. Then again, this one might be different.
Eli avoided the question of Karen’s meeting his mother as long as he could. He wasn’t sure why he was reluctant to take Karen with him back to the reserve, but he knew in his heart it was a bad idea.
At first, he didn’t say anything, hoping that Karen would forget about it.
“When was the last time you were home?”
“Few years ago.”
“You ever phone?”
Karen never came out and said that they should go to Alberta. She just let Eli know that she hadn’t forgotten. Then one morning, as Eli was getting ready to go to class, Karen poked her head out of the shower.
“When am I going to meet your family?”
Eli waved at her and smiled.
“I mean,” said Karen, leaning out and dripping water on the floor, “your mother’s not an Indian or something like that, is she?”
Eli laughed and pulled a towel off the rack.
“Come on,” Karen said, running her hands over her soapy breasts. “I showed you mine. You’ve got to show me yours.”
Eli should have kept his eyes closed.
Chapter fourteen.
Iron Eyes and Annabelle were standing on the bank of a beautiful river. It was evening, and in the morning, Iron Eyes was going out with his men to fight the soldiers.
“It’s such a beautiful evening,” said Annabelle, brushing a wisp of hair from her glistening cheeks. “I don’t want to leave,” she said, trembling. “I don’t want to leave this land. I don’t want to leave you.”
Eli shifted his body on the sofa. His left leg was going to sleep.
“Tomorrow is a good day to die,” said Iron Eyes, his arms folded across his chest, etc., etc., etc.
Eli flipped ahead, trying to outdistance the “glistenings” and the “tremblings” and the “good-day-to-dyings.”
Flip, flip, flip.
In April, Eli wrote his mother, suggesting that he might come out to Alberta in early July, that there was someone special he wanted her to meet. It was a long letter, eight pages to be exact, and the information on coming out and on Karen was buried in the middle.
At the end of May, he got a letter back from Norma that simply said, “We’ll be at the Sun Dance, your sister, Norma.”
“The Sun Dance!” said Karen. “I didn’t even know you guys still practiced that. Is it true?”
“I guess.”
“That’s really nice of your sister. I mean, she doesn’t even know me, and she invites us to the Sun Dance.”
Eli agreed that it was nice of his sister.
“Can whites go? I mean, aren’t some of those ceremonies closed?”
“No, you can go. It’s no problem.”
“I’ll borrow my father’s camera.”
“You can’t take a camera.”
“Really? Well, I guess that makes sense.”
Karen’s father paid for the flight to Alberta. Said it would do them good to get away from the city, and they could think of it as a prehoneymoon.
“Isn’t Herb progressive?”
At the Calgary airport they rented a car, a four-door De Soto, and drove the three hundred kilometers to the reserve without stopping. Eli liked being behind the wheel of the De Soto. There was no need for a car in Toronto, but if they ever got a car, this was the kind of car he wanted. It flew along the roads, floating over the landscape like a bird in flight.
Eli was having such a good time, he flew right off the asphalt and onto the lease road and the gravel and ruts before he had a chance to slow down.
From there, the De Soto became a different car. It lurched and wallowed through the potholes, slid on the gravel and the dirt. Karen had to brace her hands on the dash, the car pitching forward on its nose, as if it had been shot. Even slowing down didn’t help a great deal. And behind the car, a huge, towering dust plume rose off the road into the night sky.
“How much farther?” Karen shouted over the bang and scrape and thump, thump, thump of the road.
The car windows slowly filmed over with dirt. Eli turned the windshield wipers on and cut tiny fans in the glass.
Just before dawn, Eli pulled the De So to off to the side of the road. He got out and raised the hood to let the engine cool, and sat down on the bumper. Karen was asleep in the car, and Eli sat there for a long time and watched the circle of lodges in the distance slowly turn from blue to pink to white as first light gave way to the sun filling up the eastern sky.
The women’s lodge was up. It had already started.
Smoke was rising from the tepees. There would be the horses moving on the prairies and the camp dogs nested beneath the wagons and the cars and the trucks, waiting for the day to begin. And the children. All the sounds and smells, all the mysteries and the imaginings that he had left behind.
It was cold still. Eli wrapped his arms around his chest and leaned against the radiator to stay warm. And as he sat on the bumper of the De Soto and watched the world turn green and gold and blue, he tried to imagine what he was going to say to his mother.
Eli flipped his way ahead almost to the end of the book.
Chapter twenty.
Iron Eyes was dressed in feathers and war paint and Annabelle was dressed in a beautiful white buckskin dress.
“Go,” said Iron Eyes, stretching his arms out and pointing over Annabelle’s shoulder.
“No,” said Annabelle, flinging herself into his arms. “I want to stay with you forever.”
Iron Eyes held her for a moment, and then pushed her away. “No,” he said, his proud face turned toward the rising sun. “I am a warrior and a leader of my people. I cannot turn my back on them. I must fight and you must go.”
“But I love you,” said Annabelle, the tears forming in her eyes.
Just then, a runner came into the camp to say that the soldiers had been spotted, and the teakettle on the stove began whistling. Eli put the book down and got off the sofa.
It was a black, moonless night. Eli stood at the window and dipped the tea bag in and out of the cup, listening to the water swirl past the cabin in the dark.
Eli waited until Karen woke up.
“My God,” she said. “That’s beautiful. It’s like it’s right out of a movie.”
It took a while for the De Soto to negotiate the track that led to the camp. As they got closer, Eli could see people moving among the lodges.
“It’s enormous. There are hundreds of tepees.” Karen leaned against the door as Eli swung around the circle. “What happens now?” she said. “You’ll have to tell me what to do. I don’t want to make a mistake and embarrass you.”
His mother’s lodge had always been on the eastern side of the circle. If it wasn’t there, he would have to ask, but he wanted to avoid that if he could.
“It’s like going back in time, Eli. It’s incredible.”
The lodges were six to eight deep, but he found his mother’s lodge without difficulty. It looked deserted. As he pulled the car beside the tepee, the flap was drawn back, and Norma stepped out. She looked at the De Soto for a moment, shook her head, and went back inside.
“Who w
as that?”
“One of my sisters.”
“I really want to meet her.”
Eli opened the door of the car. It was getting warmer. The lodges cast long shadows on the land. Off to the right two dogs were arguing, and in the sky above a lone bird floated in the morning air.
“Is that an eagle?” asked Karen.
“No, it’s a vulture.”
Karen gestured toward the tepee. “Do we knock or something?”
“No, we just go in.”
“Herb would like that.”
Karen pulled the flap to one side and she stepped in.
Eli started to follow her. But for a moment, for just an instant before he stepped across the threshold and into the warmth of the lodge, Eli had an overpowering urge to lower the flap, get into the De Soto, and drive back to Toronto.
Chapter twenty-five.
The exciting part. Eli rolled up on the sofa with his tea. Iron Eyes and the other warriors rolled through the valley, driving the soldiers across the river, trapping them against a cliff. The scout, a tall man, stood up, took off his leather jacket, and waved his hat at the Indians.
Iron Eyes twisted around on his horse. The sun was at his back. As the light dropped into the eyes of the soldiers, Iron Eyes raised his rifle and swung his horse into the water.
Chapter twenty-six.
Eli’s mother wanted to hear all about Toronto, what the city was like, where he lived. Norma took Karen around the camp and introduced her to Eli’s relatives. Neither his sister nor his mother said anything about how long he had been gone or why he hadn’t written.
Each day, friends and relations dropped by the lodge for coffee and conversation.
“Here’s your boy all grown up,” Eli’s auntie told his mother.
“How’s that Toronto, Eli?” his uncle wanted to know.
“When I get to Toronto, I’m going to come by and visit you,” Eli’s cousin Wilbur told him.
At first Karen was silent, content to listen as Eli’s mother ran through the families. The babies who had been born, the young people who had gone away or come back, the elders who had died or were sick. Each one was a story, and Eli’s mother told them slowly, repeating parts as she went, resting at points so that nothing was lost or confused. And then she would go on.
When Karen began to talk, she did so in short, abbreviated conversations that began apologetically and ended in mid-sentence. But by the third day in camp, just as the men began to dance, Karen found her voice, and Eli, who had been content to lounge on the blankets and drink coffee, was flushed from the lodge.
“Go on, Eli,” Norma told him. “Go outside and chop some wood or chew some grass. Us women got talking to do.”
There were other men outside, standing in groups, sitting in the grass. Eli stayed just outside the lodge. Every so often he would hear Karen’s voice and the low muffle of laughter above the wind.
They stayed until the men finished dancing. And then Eli helped his mother take the lodge down.
“You going to marry her?” Norma asked him as he packed the suitcases into the De Soto.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been back for a while.”
“Rita Morley was asking about you.”
“With any luck, we’ll be able to get out here again next year.”
“She wanted to know if you were married, and I told her I didn’t know.”
“Thanks for looking after Karen.”
“You know Rita.”
Eli’s mother gave him a blanket and a braid of sweetgrass. She didn’t ask him to write or to come back soon or to call. She kissed him, held him for a moment, and then she shook hands with Karen. Eli got into the car and started the engine.
Norma leaned in the window. “Camelot said to say hello. She couldn’t make it over.”
“Sorry I missed her.”
Norma walked back to where their mother was standing, leaning on her cane. Both of them waved.
“We’ll be here,” Norma shouted over the roar of the engine.
Eli circled the camp. Most of the lodges were down. By nightfall the grounds would be deserted.
“It was wonderful, Eli. I’ve never been to anything like that.” Karen drew her feet up on the seat and snuggled against the door. “Your mother and sister were great.”
The De Soto made its way to the gravel road. Karen watched the camp through the rear window until the hills rolled up behind them.
“You must miss it.” She put her head against his shoulder.
Eli drove the car through the gravel and the ruts and the washboards until he caught up with the main road to Calgary. And all the way across the prairies, he never looked back.
Chapter twenty-six.
Channel twenty-six.
On the screen, the chief and the captive white woman were in each other’s arms. It was standard stuff, but Charlie found himself watching the romantic tension that was building and wishing that Alberta were here in the room with him tonight. He suddenly felt lonely, terribly lonely. The kind of loneliness he hadn’t felt for a long time. Not since his mother died. Not since he and his father had gone to Los Angeles to try to out-distance her death.
Portland had run into difficulties early. The matter was a simple one. No one would hire him as an actor. Or more properly, no one could hire him as an actor.
“You got to be a member of the union,” Portland told Charlie.
“You going to join?”
“You have to have acting experience to join.”
“You used to be an actor.”
“Doesn’t seem to count for much now.”
There were a few nonunion jobs that Portland tried for, but everyone wanted young, muscular men with small butts and broad shoulders. Charlie had never thought of his father as middle aged or overweight. He wasn’t. But he wasn’t twenty, either.
“Remmington’s is hiring,” Cologne told Portland. “It’s a shit job, I know. But, hey, the hours are flexible, and maybe someone sees you. Like the old days.”
“Christ, C. B., I’m too old to do that.”
“What about Charlie? Father-and-son team. They’d love it.”
Portland continued to go to the studio, but each day he came back a little earlier. One day, Charlie came home and found his father sitting in front of the television. Portland had the remote control in his hand, but the set was turned off. He looked as if he had been sitting in the chair for a long time.
“You okay, Dad?”
“Sure, son.”
“Maybe it’s time for us to go home.”
“You know how I got my start in the movies?”
“I mean, we’ve seen Disneyland already.”
“Remmington’s. I worked at Remmington’s. I even worked at Four Corners for a while. I met C. B. when I was working at Four Corners.”
“And there’s nothing much for us here.”
Portland put the remote control down and got to his feet.“It’s how I started, and I can do it again.”
“I’d like to go home.”
“Come on,” said his father. “We’re just getting started.”
Maybe what Charlie and Alberta needed to do was to start over. Charlie could see that he hadn’t been as attentive as he might have been. Even cavalier. She was a professional, and he should treat her as such. Teaching was a fine profession, especially at the university level.
“My darling,” the woman on the television was saying, “I don’t ever want to leave your side.”
“As long as the grass is green and the waters run,” said the chief, holding her in his arms.
Charlie didn’t need that kind of romance from Alberta, but it would be nice if she was more attentive, too. And supportive. His job was tough enough without the woman he wanted to marry criticizing him. Sleazy. She hadn’t meant it. Slick. Slick.
Charlie looked at the clock. It was two in the morning. The movie wasn’t getting any better. And he wasn�
��t any sleepier. Charlie closed his eyes, folded his hands across his stomach, and waited.
Remmington’s was a steak house. It was done up to look like an Old West boardinghouse. The waiters all wore cowboy hats and cowboy shirts and chaps and cowboy boots. They all had bright colored bandannas tied around their necks and holsters hanging off their hips. Most of them wore mustaches. It was sort of like Disneyland with food.
“You friends with C. B., that right?”
“That’s right,” Portland told the man in the cowboy outfit.
“Okay, we can use a couple of guys. You worked here before, that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Check in with Doris. She’ll give you your gear.”
“Right.”
“You dent any of the cars, it’s out of your hide.”
“Right.”
The cowboy outfits weren’t bad. Charlie hoped he’d get one with a blue shirt and a red bandanna. And like his father said, parking cars was an honest living. Lots of actors did it to get through the hard times.
“The cowboys work inside,” Portland told him as Charlie squeezed into the flesh-colored tights. “It’s the Indians who park the cars.”
Charlie had to admit that he felt foolish standing around in front of Remmington’s in tights, a beaded vest, and a headband with a brightly colored feather. The worst part was the fluorescent loincloth that hung down from his waist. “Remmington’s” was written across the front.
“Remember to grunt,” his father told him. “The idiots love it, and you get better tips.”
At first the job was great. Charlie got to drive all sorts of really expensive cars—Mercedeses, Porsches, Lincolns, Jaguars, Ferraris. And the people were nice. Every so often a movie star would stop in. Once John Wayne came to Remmington’s and Charlie got to get his car for him. Charlie grunted and handed Wayne the keys, and Wayne told Charlie not to order the prime rib and gave him a five-dollar tip.
After the second week, Portland caught him at the locker.
I’ve got another job that pays better. But it’s only for one.”
“Where?”
“The Four Corners.”
“Parking cars?”
“No, it’s a strip joint.” Portland smiled when he said it, as if he had just made a joke.
