The Night Wanderer

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  And that’s how Tiffany found him, still sitting on the couch, when she got home an hour later. Sitting there like a deer with an eighteen-wheeler barreling down on him. Claudia had gone over to Kim’s to tell Tiffany what was happening. Together they sat in silence, for hours. The sun disappeared, then reappeared. Granny Ruth, not feeling well, had gone to bed early. And it was there, on the couch, early that next morning that she found them still sitting there, and learned how their family had changed forever.

  Not really caring about the Pandora’s box he had just opened, Pierre was unsure how to respond. Instead, there was an awkward silence in the room.

  “I see. I’m sorry,” was all he could muster.

  Clearing his throat, Keith went back to preparing for his day. “Well, yeah. Like I said, things happen. So not a lot of strangers come to Otter Lake. Something to do with your family?”

  Pierre seemed puzzled. “My family?”

  “Yeah, the ones that went over to fight in the war and stayed behind.” A car was coming down their road but instead of turning into their driveway it kept going. Another duck hunter, no doubt. Getting that early start. “Damn that Charley,” Keith muttered.

  Grabbing his things, Keith went to the front door and headed out. Midnight saw him emerging onto the front porch and started to wag his tail. Then he saw the tall, dark stranger right behind him and the wagging tail was quickly tucked between his legs. Several whimpers followed as Midnight backed into his little doghouse, almost pushing it over.

  “Yes. Of course. Actually it was my father, I mean, great-grandfather who participated in . . . um . . . the First World War, not the Second. My roots there go way back.”

  Keith took a seat on the steps. Pierre, however, preferred to stand. “Wow, your family’s been over there for a long time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you sure do look full-blooded to me. You could almost pass for my father or uncles.”

  “Actually, I have a lot of different types of blood flowing through my veins. But I still consider myself Anishinabe.”

  Reaching back, Keith slapped him on the leg. “Well, good for you. We get a lot of people around here who show up claiming to be one-sixty-fourth or something like that, and looking whiter than a ghost. Your great-grandfather’s genes were sure strong.”

  Pierre thought for a moment, assessing everything that had just been said. He decided to solidify his story. “I should also mention that my grandmother on my other side was also Anishinabe. That might account for my more Aboriginal appearance.”

  Keith turned around to look at him. “She was? She couldn’t have been in the army too.”

  Silently, Pierre considered his options. It had been a long time since he had to explain his supposed background in such a detailed manner. “She was part of a dance troupe—traditional Native dance troupe—that was touring Europe at the time. And she met my grandfather, and the rest, as they say, is history . . .” He hoped that would be enough to satisfy the hunter. His explanation was getting far too complicated. Lies, like stories, should be simple.

  Now it was Keith’s turn to be silent. He absentmindedly flicked the safety off, then on once more. Then, after some thought, he spoke up. “Wow, that’s some story. Your life is a lot more interesting than mine, that’s for sure.”

  The lonely sound of a motorboat drifted in from the lake. More hunters, less ducks, Keith thought. Then a second motor could be heard starting up. Because of the peculiar shape of the village of Otter Lake, a bulge of land surrounded by water, sound carried quite a distance. It seemed the world was waking up to the lure of duck for dinner.

  “Damn it! Where is that Charley?” Keith grumbled in frustration.

  Not really caring about this Charley fellow, Pierre turned toward the lake that lay hidden by trees, and took in a deep breath. The aroma of pine, fresh water, wood smoke, all the familiar scents of home flooded into his lungs. “Can’t you just smell that lovely breeze? It carries the memories of this land.”

  Almost immediately, a pair of headlights turned into the Hunter driveway. The tardy Charley had finally arrived. Keith grabbed up all his gear and made his way down the short flight of stairs.

  Pierre watched him go. “I take it that must be your ride.”

  Keith threw his stuff into the back of Charley’s truck. With a wave of his hand, he said good-bye to Pierre, who remained standing on the porch. “Well, gotta go. You best get some sleep. Don’t want you getting sick and dying in my basement.”

  Once more, Pierre smiled his closed-mouth smile. “I am on my way to bed as we speak. Good hunting, sir. Duck was a favorite of mine as a child.” He opened the door and disappeared inside.

  As Keith slid into the passenger seat, Charley asked, “Who was that?”

  Doing up his seatbelt, Keith’s only reply was, “Just a guy staying in my basement.”

  Charley put the truck into reverse and started backing out of the driveway. “Looks kind of weird to me.”

  “Yeah, he’s from Europe.”

  THIRTEEN

  IT WAS SATURDAY and Tiffany had it all planned out. It was going to be a full day. Breakfast with Granny Ruth, then some television, and of course one or two phone calls to Tony. Maybe bike up to the store, just for something to do. Maybe get some junk food that her grandmother would never buy for the house. Try as she might, Tiffany could never convince her pickles were just junk food too. “Pickles are cucumbers and cucumbers are vegetables. They’re good for you. Here, have a pickle.” Some sour cream chips would hit the spot.

  Tiffany finished off her two pancakes, noting with annoyance that they were almost out of maple syrup. Her father, no doubt. Every since he had quite smoking, coffee and maple syrup were his weaknesses. He’d even tried pouring some maple syrup in his coffee with mixed results. It created the necessary sweetness, but the aftertaste was too much. Regardless, he was happy to have tried the experiment. Should there ever be a sugar shortage in the village, he knew he could survive with just maple syrup.

  Granny Ruth took Tiffany’s plates away to wash. “So, what you got planned for today, young lady?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Granny Ruth snorted. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years is that there is a world of difference between a sixteen-year-old’s nothing much and a seventy-four-year-old’s nothing much. To me, when I say I’m going to do nothing much, nothing much is going to get done. But when you say it, that can mean anything. So, how much of nothing much do you plan to do today?”

  Tiffany loved her grandmother’s screwball yet functional logic. It was part of what made her Granny Ruth. And as always, she was right. “Visiting. Talking. Stuff.”

  Drying the dishes, she gestured to Tiffany to help her put them away. “Stuff, huh? Always stuff. I had stuff to do when I was your age. Same stuff too. Visiting, talking. I guess stuff never gets old. Just people who do stuff.”

  Tiffany smiled. She thought there must be a book with these kinds of observations somewhere. A sort of elder’s handbook. Tiffany tried to picture her grandmother getting into trouble, hanging out with teenaged girlfriends, all the stuff she did. But try as she might, she could not imagine Granny Ruth as anything but her widowed grandmother.

  Granny Ruth had been married only once in her life, for forty-three years, until her husband, Albert, had died of cancer. She missed him terribly still but knew there was nothing to be done about it. She had her precious photos of him, some of his clothes still in her closet, and the ring he gave her on their twentieth wedding anniversary. He’d been too poor to buy her a decent one when they got married so he tried to make it up two decades later. For some reason, that made the gift all the more sweeter.

  Granny Ruth missed the long conversations they would have in Anishinabe. He was such a good talker. Albert knew the Anishinabe language like nobody else, just like the way English scholars know English. But they didn’t give out degrees to Native people for their mother tongue. Sometimes, when she was lonely, Grann
y Ruth would replay conversations she had with Albert fifteen or twenty years ago, just to hear him talk in her head.

  “Before you go off and do your stuff, Tiffany, can you take the basket of laundry downstairs to the washer? It’s too heavy for me. And be quiet, that Mr. L’Errant is probably still sleeping. I heard him and your father talking early this morning and he’s probably dead to the world.”

  Carrying the laundry, Tiffany stood at the top of the stairway. The basket probably weighed a good third of her body weight and she wanted to navigate the stairs properly. She was way too young to break her neck. She was tempted to turn on the light switch but was worried the sudden flood of hundred-watt reality might wake their guest, regardless of his carpeted walls. Enough light leaked from the kitchen to light the stairs anyway. As always, the boards creaked ominously as each foot established hers and the basket’s weight. Dad always talked about doing something about these damn steps, but he’ll never do it, until one of them breaks. Probably under her.

  She put the basket down just in front of the washing machine. Turning to leave, she saw what had originally been her new home, the carpet palace. Pierre L’Errant was in that room, sleeping. Unable to stop herself, she inched her way closer, consumed with curiosity. What a strange guy he seemed. Tiffany had never met anybody like him. He seemed so worldly, yet he had a tiredness that seemed oddly out of place.

  It was almost noon and not a peep from him all morning. Even her laziest relatives usually made an appearance by now. If for nothing else but to use the washroom. There was no such convenience down here, and she was certain that he hadn’t been upstairs since she woke at about 8:30. But her grandmother had said he’d been up earlier chatting with her father.

  Now she was only a step or so from what in normal circumstances would be called the door of the room. She listened intently but heard nothing. No breathing, no bed springs, no rolling over. It was silent, dead quiet in there. Then Tiffany felt the urge to take a peek. Just a tiny peek. Practically a mini-peek. A peek-ette, in fact. Tiffany thought you can tell a lot about a person by how they sleep, not that she spent hours pondering the topic. She noticed her father was a restless man at night, constantly rolling and tossing, trying to find the right position to lose consciousness. Tiffany guessed that even after all this time, her father was still uncomfortable sleeping single in a queen-sized bed. Her grandmother was a lot more peaceful. In fact, Tiffany often wondered if she moved at all from the time she crawled under the covers till when she got up in the morning. Tiffany was somewhere in the middle, her only major quirk being a tendency to wake up and discover an arm or a leg dangling off the bed. What did this all mean in the larger scale of things? Just that she was a curious sort, regardless of what her teachers told her.

  Tiffany was close enough to smell the mustiness coming off the vertical green carpet. The first thing she noticed was that there was no light coming from the room. Only darkness. This in itself was not all that unusual, considering it was a windowless part of the basement. Still, it was an odd darkness, like the difference between Coke and diet Coke. It was . . . unusual. There was still no sound so she decided to chance it and take that peek. Why, she didn’t know. Her hand brushed the border of the carpeted door as she began to push it aside. There’d be no harm done.

  “Tiffany!” her grandmother whispered harshly down the stairs. “Ambe dash bizhaan!” Tiffany’s hand jerked away from the flap and she backed up, almost running to the steps across the small basement, her heart beating furiously.

  She could see her grandmother standing at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the kitchen lights. “What’s taking you so long down there? Leave that poor man alone.” Halfway up the stairs, the teenager tried to avoid looking at her grandmother. She had been caught in the act. How embarrassing!

  “I . . . I just saw a mouse. That’s all.” She rushed past the older woman, quickly looking for her coat in the closet. It wasn’t there. She looked harder. Coats are supposed to be in closets. That’s why they were built. Why wasn’t her coat in this closet where it was supposed to be?

  Granny Ruth watched her peculiar granddaughter for a few seconds as she ransacked the closet before picking up Tiffany’s dark blue jean jacket from a kitchen chair.

  “Looking for this?” the old woman asked.

  It was indeed what Tiffany was looking for. Grabbing it quickly, she muttered a quick, curt thanks and rushed out the door. As she jogged down the driveway, she put the jacket on. Granny Ruth watched from the kitchen window.

  It was about an hour later when an exhausted Keith got home. As was his luck of late, he had no ducks to please his mother with. It had been an unfruitful morning of huddling down in a cold, damp blind with nothing to show for it. Not even a small glimpse of the waterfowl. Just empty sky. Now he came home to what seemed to be an empty house.

  “Mom? Tiffany? Anybody?” He could hear his voice echoing back and forth. Automatically he reached to turn on the light switch because the house seemed unusually dark. Click, click. Nothing. Puzzled, Keith flicked the switch a third time and the lights still refused to go on.

  “Power failure, about half an hour ago,” came the voice of his mother from out of her room. “And keep your voice down. That Mr. L’Errant is still sleeping. You’ll wake him.” To anybody who’s lived in the country, power failures were a common experience in the non-winter months. Usually during thunderstorms, but they could happen anytime. Granny Ruth held up what appeared to be a flashlight in the dim light. “I’ve been waiting for you to get home. We got no good batteries. Do you have some anywhere?”

  Muttering to himself about the continuing poor quality of the day, Keith started looking through kitchen drawers, searching for D-cell batteries, but had no luck. “Already looked. What, you think I’m stupid?” commented his mother. “Hey, what about all those CD player things Tiffany’s got? They got batteries. Maajaan wih naabin.” A pretty good suggestion, Keith thought as he made his way to Tiffany’s bedroom. Not far behind came Granny Ruth.

  The racket of a stubborn drawer led the old woman to her son. There, Keith found a multitude of pens, hair clips, coins, some makeup, and finally batteries. At first, they all seemed to be the AA variety, but deep at the back, near some computer disks, he felt the reassuring heaviness of the D batteries for her portable stereo. It wasn’t long before Keith had them in the flashlight and her room was bathed in limited light.

  “Miisago I’iwh wenzhishing!” said Granny Ruth, pleased at being able to see again. “But no duck, huh?”

  “They haven’t arrived yet, Mom.” Annoyed, Keith leaned over to close Tiffany’s desk. Then, sticking out of a history book, his eyes caught something that looked oddly formal. Professional, in fact. From her school.

  Grabbing the book, he opened it and removed the piece of paper. His eyes darkened and if his day could have got worse, it just did. Quickly, he started rummaging through all the other drawers and books in his daughter’s room, hunting. For what, he wasn’t sure. Just anything else she might have neglected to tell him.

  “Hey, wagnen ezhichkeyan?? You shouldn’t be doing that. Them’s her private things.” The old woman could tell Keith was angry but not about what.

  “She ain’t got any private things while she’s living under my roof.” He was now looking on the shelf high in her closet.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Other things she might have covered up,” said Keith, handing his mother the piece of paper. “I knew it was due. I was waiting for it, but I just never knew exactly when they issued them.”

  Granny Ruth read the letter. It was Tiffany’s school progress report—the mid-semester assessment. And it was not good. Tiffany was failing practically everything in school, except art. It was a well-known fact that gym and art were the hardest to fail, but somehow Tiffany had managed to get a failing grade in her gym class. And the report was dated more than a week earlier. She knew her grades were bad and she knew Keith would get mad. So she hid
the report. “No’oshens,”said Granny Ruth, sympathetic to the plight of her granddaughter.

  “I bet you it’s that Tony’s fault,” growled Keith.

  “You think everything is Tony’s fault. Maybe it’s closer to home.”

  Keith looked at her, perplexed. “Closer to home. What does that mean?”

  Shrugging, Granny Ruth took that paper back from her son. “Maybe it has something to do with Claudia leaving. Being Tiffany’s age is difficult enough, but add your mother walking out . . . it’s hard to study your geography with that rolling around in your head. And you don’t make things any better with your yelling.”

  “I don’t yell!” he yelled. “And Claudia left more than a year ago. Tiffany should be over that by now.” Fuming, Keith stamped out of Tiffany’s bedroom. Granny Ruth watched him go.

  “Are you?” the old woman said quietly.

  FOURTEEN

  PICNIC TABLES WERE designed for two things—to have obscene words and initials carved into them, and for eating in the great outdoors. Darla and Kim, Tiffany’s best friends, had long ago accomplished the first and were continuously working on the second. French fries were the delicacy of the day, and the two girls were in deep-fried conversation when Tiffany approached them. She could hear them clear across the road—Darla’s nasal voice making her distinguishable from Kim—talking about their favorite subject, what to do when they got out of school.

  “The minute I graduate, I’m out of here. I’m going to hitchhike across Canada, to Vancouver, get a job, a better boyfriend, a life. And I’m never coming back.” It was no secret that Darla was a pretty bad student, worse than Tiffany. She was lucky if she went to class three days a week. “Why should I care if I go to school, my parents don’t care, so why should I?” she would ask. To her, school was just a means of transportation off the reserve.