The 53rd Parallel

by Carl Nordgren

  “What the feck are you doin' bringin' a pistol with you to Innish Cove?”

  “I always wear one when I'm back in the bush and there's plenty of lumbermen who do.”

  “So there's a bunch 'a idiots we have to worry about, is that what you're tellin' me?”

  “Look, Burke, I didn't shoot anyone. Your Indian—”

  “His name is Mathew Loon.”

  “He jumped us from behind, and he took my pistol and shot my brother. Then when I tried to disarm him, and we were fighting over the gun, I tell you, I wasn't turning it on him, I was trying to take it away from him to keep him from shooting me, well, that's when he got shot, accidentally, and it was his finger on the trigger when it happened, not mine.”

  Mathew's body had to be moved right away. Everyone gathered round him understood that guests couldn't see a dead Ojibway lying in a pool of blood in front of the lodge cabin. That wouldn't be good for anyone.

  The women and children had come down from their hiding place to join them, and with Simon interpreting for Naomi, Brian and Maureen learned that all of Mathew's possessions were laid out next to the fire circle in the Ojibway village, as if waiting for the return of his body, as if preparing for the beginning of a journey along the Path of Souls.

  Tommy stayed kneeling at Mathew's side, praying in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  This Man stood at Mathew's head, his arms raised to the sky, singing of the boy's life in these forests so all the ancestors and the Great Creator would hear.

  Brian hooked his arms under Mathew's arms and lifted his torso off the ground; Naomi and Simon each grabbed one of his legs. Maureen was right behind Brian, followed by the other women, and then Dutch, Tommy, and the children.

  This Man preceded them as they headed through the forest across the open beach where they could hear faint rumblings of distant boats returning. They were silent now.

  The youngest brother waited for a moment, examining the scene one more time, then followed at a distance.

  They laid Mathew in the middle of his things, his head on his blanket, his bow and arrows on one side, his trap on the other.

  Naomi folded Mathew's arms across his chest. The other women sat close by and began a chant to call Mathew Loon's spirit to rest.

  The children stood back and some joined in the chant.

  This Man was silently waiting.

  Maureen had been fighting tears since she learned of Mathew's death. Seeing him lying there in his blood-soaked clothes, she was suddenly knifed by the guilt of having set this all in motion and she fell to her knees and sobbed.

  Brian put his hands on her shoulders then turned to the youngest lumber mill brother, who stood back from the scene.

  “Whatever it was actually happened, you had your hand in the death of this boy. Now what are you goin' to do about it?”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “For now, I expect you to be civilized an' show some respect.”

  Brian knelt to pray beside Maureen, and the youngest brother came up closer to stand behind Brian, bowing his head.

  The guests and guides had returned from fishing the River and its lakes. Brian met the guests at the dock and quickly led them to their cabins where he told them that a young Ojibway boy had been killed in a shooting accident. The guests were left stunned.

  The Ojibway continued to pray and chant over Mathew's body, and Tommy prayed without ceasing.

  Maureen exiled herself to her cabin. She was lying on her bed, crying into her pillow.

  The youngest brother and Dutch were in Brian's cabin, silently awaiting the next move.

  Some of the Ojibway men returned from their wigwams and tents with their rattles and drums, wearing feathers or a bit of buckskin or fur. Joe Loon listened closely to what the spirits might say about what it was that happened here.

  This Man stood with his head bowed in honor of a fallen warrior.

  Brian quickly visited all the guests again in their cabins, apologizing for supper being delayed. He left them drinking quietly from personal stocks, watching the light leave the sky, first above the forests, then above the River, and wondering at the saddest sounds they had ever heard coming from the Ojibway village camp.

  Then Brian checked on Maureen. They were alone for the first time since they returned from Kenora to find the dock filled with five strange men. Brian sat on Maureen's bed and held her in his arms.

  “It is not your doin'. Why does this fool bring his gun into our home?”

  “It's because I brought a knife into their home.”

  “Jesus, Maureen, you were miles away in a bush plane when the gun was fired.”

  The mourning song from the Ojibway camp cried a new grief.

  “I'll be hearin' their sad song all my life, Brian… Was me called this down on us.”

  “I won't rest until I convince you otherwise but I need you to set it all aside for I am in need of you here. I need to hear your thinkin' about how we proceed in this important moment in our life together. I need you to guide me through it.”

  Her sobs subsided.

  “I've given it a look from a couple of angles an' have a first idea or two.”

  The youngest brother looked out the cabin window to the east, then turned back to Dutch.

  “If they have any more questions, you know where I am.”

  “Right.”

  “So we need to leave now.”

  “Brian'll tell us when he's ready for us to go.”

  “The sun'll be setting soon.”

  “Our window to leave ended about thirty minutes ago. So settle back, they'll make up a cabin for you to stay the night, serve us a nice breakfast, and I'll have you on the float plane docks in Kenora in the morning.”

  “You're holding me against my will.”

  “Don't you understand how suspicious this all is?”

  “It was an accident. Or he killed himself.”

  “We have an interest in considerin' all possibilities. Seems you need to be here for that.”

  Brian got up at the knock on the door and Albert entered. Albert touched Brian's arm.

  “Mathew Loon's spirit has returned. My son's spirit has spoken to me. All of his people have heard it.”

  “What does it say?”

  “His spirit says my son gave his life. To protect the River. The white man with the gun did not take my son's life. Mathew Loon gave his life. This is so his spirit will be a fierce warrior spirit protecting the River.”

  “What do you mean, Mathew gave his life?”

  “Now the white man will know the power of this great spirit protecting the River. When they know what my son did here today, they will not poison our River. That is why my son gave his life.”

  Maureen listened from the bedroom, then came to the door.

  “Are you sayin' that man didn't kill Mathew?”

  “That white man did not kill my son.”

  “Mathew wanted to die, to save the River?”

  “No young man wants to die. But to protect the River for his people, my son gladly gave his life.”

  Maureen began to cry again, and Brian took her in his arms, speaking over her head to Albert.

  “Tell me what you would like us to do for you, my brother.”

  “At sunrise we load our canoes and boats and take my son's body to the burial grounds. You will join us.”

  Maureen turned back into the bedroom and cried softly as she wondered still about her role in Mathew's death.

  Kevin spent the day in Sligo, listening at the pubs, asking a few questions that would identify any lads from the local hurling clubs. He found four of them at the third pub he visited. He sat close by, sipping his pint, waiting for the next reference to the sport.

  “You lads play the Irish game?”

  “Aren't ya lookin' at the heart an' soul of the Sligo club, mister?”

  “An' Sligo Hurling A.C. has won the Regional Cup two years running.”

 
“I've heard it said on the streets in Dublin and pubs in Cork that the fellows 'round here are known for the quality of their midfield play.”

  “We're strong up and down that line an' none says different around here.”

  “So let me ask you about a young fellow, quite good at the game himself, yeah. He's from a small farm outside of Cong, quite a stick man.”

  The procession of canoes on the River's lake spread all the way across it, from Albert paddling Nigig to the channel at the far shore. Mathew lay on a pallet on the floor of the birch bark canoe.

  He had been dressed in the pieces of traditional clothing that he owned. He was wearing the moccasins his grandmother had made for him. He wore the cowry-shell necklace his grandfather had handed down to him. Above his left ear he wore the eagle feather with a beaded crest that Albert had made for him when he became a man of the clan.

  Around him were his possessions.

  Just behind Nigig, Joe Loon paddled his square-end canoe, the motor removed and left behind; Simon paddled from the bow, Naomi added strokes from the middle, and two young children, a boy and a girl, sat behind her.

  Their canoe carried some of the supplies needed for a three-night camp as did most of the dozen canoes that followed.

  The canoes of Joe Loon's clan were closest behind Albert and Mathew.

  This Man paddled his canoe among them.

  Then came the canoes of other Keewatin River clans and camps. One canoe was paddled by a hermit trapper, an old Ojibway only ever seen by anyone when he visited the Hudson Bay Post trading his furs. At the far edge of the lake appeared the first mourners from Grassy Narrows Reserve. They traveled in outboard motor boats for theirs was the greatest distance. They throttled down as they approached the line of canoes.

  Up and down the River's channels and across connecting lakes more Ojibway were coming in canoes and boats.

  With Brian at the stern, Tommy a priestly presence at the bow, and Maureen amid, their canoe traveled with Joe Loon's people. They were quiet, the only sound the paddles' splash, then a raven's echoed call. As the canoes formed a single file to paddle up a narrow River channel to the burial ground, they began a lament.

  Nigig was beached on shore and many canoes and boats lined up on either side, covering the open River bank. Mathew's pallet was set down under a grove of aspen. He had been propped up in a sitting position and was being wrapped in birch bark.

  Behind the grove was the opening in the forest where the Keewatin clans had buried their dead since the first days they came to the river. Totem posts and wooden Christian crosses marked generations of graves. Grasses and wildflowers covered the low earthen mounds. There were gifts left to honor ancestors' spirits—pots and pans, a rusty rifle barrel, and a broken fishing pole. A plastic baby doll marked one grave. There were strings of shells and necklaces of beads, and on older graves soft circles of each remained where the rawhide cords were lost to many years of weather and rodents. A shiny ceramic northern pike leaping into a fighting pose sat at the base of one cross.

  The two men who had been digging Mathew's grave were finishing as more people arrived to set up camp, pitching tents, making shelters, greeting old friends solemnly, saying little as they set up cook fires.

  They waited for a man of a Red Lake clan, a Fourth Order Midewiwin. He would lead the burial ceremonies. The ceremonies would last two days, and many people would stay for three.

  As Brian, Maureen, and Tommy pitched a tent, Maureen told them her decision.

  “I am goin' to Ireland… After we've laid our young hero to rest, I'm goin'.”

  “Sounds like you're sayin' you're goin' alone.”

  “I need to stand away and see what it is I just did here.”

  “Then I should go with you. You might need remindin' of what actually occurred.”

  “You tell me how being alone when you were banished from your village was the only way to see honestly what you'd done.”

  Tommy looked at his father to see his response and noted his acceptance.

  “This ain't a place nor time for debate,” Maureen added, “I just thought once I was certain I was goin', alone, I should tell you.”

  “It don't take a debate to be clear what I did deserved bein' banished an' is nothin' like any role you're claimin' for yourself here. I had intent.” Brian looked at Tommy. “I meant to strike Patrick, an' I had control over each blow.” Tommy's eyes began to tear, so he walked away a few steps. Brian turned back to Maureen. “But it was that lumber man, an' it was Mathew, that's who acted here, not you, an' if you try to say otherwise you empty his action of any of the meanin' his people are askin' we give to it.”

  “That's your say on the matter, an' it brings some comfort when I think upon your distinction. I will keep it in mind.”

  Kevin pulled his car in front of the cottage on Lough Arrow.

  The old man stepped out to meet him.

  “So it's done?”

  “He'd left town before I could find him.”

  “How's that?”

  “He told his lads he was going to Derry, and listen to this now. He has a cousin in the Royal Irish Fusiliers at Ebrington Barracks. He's planning on enlisting.”

  The two men looked at each other a moment, then began to laugh.

  “It don't usually make me smile to hear of an Irish lad fightin' for the British crown, but that just might be the safest place for him.”

  “I've got to return to Dublin tonight, so it's a loose end dangling for now.”

  “Ah, no, see loose ends, they just make you stumble. I'm afraid your hurlin' lad here, he could still bring you down so hard you hain't gettin' to your feet thereafter.”

  After the old women had lined the bottom of Mathew's grave with a mat of woven rushes and wrapped his body in birch bark, the men slowly lowered him into his grave to rest on the mat. They chanted their prayers and cried their grief.

  The body had been placed so Mathew faced west. On his right side Albert laid his son's bow and arrows and a trap. At his left side his other possessions were stacked.

  The Midewiwin chanted above the rest.

  “Our Brother, you leave us now. Our Brother, see it there before you. See the Path of Souls before you. You see it. Do not stumble. Our Brother, the River will sing to the People of the courage of Mathew Loon. The River will sing this song of the warrior Mathew Loon as long as the People are here to listen.”

  As the Midewiwin chanted, each of the men took a handful of soil and, one at a time, stepped to the edge of the grave and tossed the dirt, calling out a sharp cry or releasing a low moan when the dirt bounced off the birch cover.

  The first to step up to the graveside were drummers, and after they attended to the grave they started a steady beat on the drums.

  Soon the women rose and began the Burial Dance.

  When Tommy saw that crosses were also used to mark graves he was glad he'd brought his Bible, and when the Midewiwin ended his chant Tommy held his Bible to his chest while he spoke.

  “These words I speak to you are from the Gospel according to Matthew. When Jesus the Christ saw the crowds He went up into the mountains, and His disciples came to Him so He could teach them… This was what He said to them. He said the Good Lord blessed the poor in spirit and would prepare a special place for them in his Heaven. He told them those who mourn will be comforted. And Jesus told them blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger an' thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. And blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure a' heart, for they will know the Great Creator. Blessed are peacemakers, for the world will see they are children of the Great Creator. And blessed are those persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”

  Many of the Ojibway crossed themselves as Tommy finished, and Maureen and Brian and others said, “Amen”.

  Then Brian heard an Ojibway cry that sounded out his own pain, and he shouted a Gaelic ech
o. The drumming started again, and the Burial Dance continued.

  Soon fires were started, for meals and for dancing, and the River bank was aglow.

  Many of the Ojibway prayed and danced and feasted in honor of Mathew Loon's brave spirit for three days, but after two, Brian and Maureen returned to Innish Cove to prepare for the arrival of guests. Joe Loon promised he would send some of the men back to Innish Cove to guide the next day.

  Maureen and Brian were in the bedroom of her cabin. Dutch was headed in to camp with guests, and Maureen was packing her suitcase to head out with him. Brian had been sitting on the bed watching her, but when they heard the plane approach, she slowed her preparation enough that he had to head down to the dock without her yet ready. He kissed her on the head as he walked past.

  “When you've packed, leave your bag here an' I'll come back for it.”

  “I'll just be a few more minutes.”

  She waited until Brian was well down the path before she pulled the trunk out from under her bed and quickly retrieved five Colt pistols and six boxes of .45 caliber shells. She unloaded the Colt she kept at the ready, then wrapped the guns in dresses and sweaters at the bottom of her suitcase, folded two nightgowns over them, and finally covered it all under her bras and panties.

  She closed the suitcase, picked it up to shake it a couple of times, then left it at the front door when she headed down the path to the dock where Brian was welcoming their guests.

  After the guests were settled, Dutch told them that on his way in he'd received a radio call from the Chairman of Abitibi himself. He wanted to speak with Brian and Maureen.

  Tommy had stayed behind when Brian and Maureen left the burial ground. He found that if he kept close to Simon he would translate for him, explaining in whispers what was said and helping him understand the meaning of the ceremony.

  The grave fire and the cook fires were burning.

  Albert stood at his son's grave, silently. He had left the site for only a few moments since Mathew's body had been covered. He placed his sleeping mat there and slept at the side of his son's grave.