Then came the accident. A simple fishing trip with tragic results. Tim, Maggie’s brother, had been out with him. A sunken tree stump and a motorboat at full throttle in the fading evening light had combined, with devastating consequences. Tim had swum to shore on a nearby island, but Clifford had gone down with the boat. The result was a spring funeral.
Maggie had mourned, as had Virgil. But in many ways, Clifford had not been part of their lives for much longer after his death. Their normal routine had resumed only a month or two after his funeral. And for reasons neither could explain, Maggie and Virgil both felt guilty for carrying on so easily without him. As a result, Maggie had hated the Band Office and everything it stood for: the responsibilities that had taken her husband away from her, but also management by the three colonizing levels of government, paperwork that would cripple a small South American government and the challenge of dealing with the wishes of individuals within a disparate community.
Not twelve feet away, Clifford Second lay buried, possibly laughing at her in some ectoplasmic way. See! Now you’re chief! Now you know what I had to go through! I bet you’re sorry now!
Virgil was having different memories. He had heard the news of his father’s death early one morning, and a succession of aunts and uncles had hugged him in sympathy. Yet, he hadn’t known what to feel. Of course he was sad and depressed that his father had died, but there was none of the wailing or thrashing about that he had learned to expect from movies and television. He just felt… numb. For the last third of his life, Clifford had been somebody he’d seen at breakfast and then just before bed. Occasionally, the peace was punctuated by arguments between his parents.
Twice a year now he came to pay respects to his dead father. Meanwhile, he saw his mother being drawn into the same lifestyle that had engulfed his dad. And this made him apprehensive.
Thoughts of his father were still in his head when Virgil saw, parked casually on the road running parallel to the graveyard, a familiar red-and-white vintage motorcycle. Leaning against it was the blond stranger. Maggie noticed something had caught her son’s attention, and turned to look as well. “Mom…” Virgil began.
“I see him, honey.”
“Did anybody ever find out who he was?”
Maggie, still studying the man, shook her head. “No.”
“I wonder how grandma knew him.”
The stranger seemed to be staring straight at her, she thought. “It seems Grandma had a much more interesting life than we thought. Now, shh, listen to Father Sauvé.”
Maggie forced her attention back to the service, but it was a little more difficult for Virgil. He noticed that across from him, Dakota too had spotted the stranger. Everyone else seemed too engrossed in the funeral to raise their heads.
Across the fence separating the graveyard from the land of the living, the man leaned against his motorcycle, watching the proceedings. His expression did not reveal his thoughts. He recognized some of the people he’d seen briefly in Lillian’s kitchen, including Lillian’s daughter. He was sure it was her. She was an apple fallen from the Benojee tree. Lillian’s beauty was too strong to be diluted by someone else’s DNA. He’d also seen a family photo hanging on Lillian’s wall and that woman had been in it… along with the boy. He knew the boy had peeked in the window and realized what he’d seen must have confused him.
The man had to decide what to do now. He had crawled out of his self-imposed purgatory to say goodbye to Lillian. Now what? Go back into what had been his life (if it could be called that) again? The idea did not thrill him. Take his new motorcycle and ride off into the sunset? No, too melodramatic, and eventually he would hit an ocean, no matter what direction he went. Settle down, set up shop somewhere and learn to live a middle-class Canadian life, go from being an Anishnawbe to an Anish-snob? That was not in his nature.
There was also, of course, Lillian’s last request. It was complicated, but most things with women were, he thought. Still, it might be fun. Could be interesting too. And he had all the time in the world. For someone like him, fun and interesting trumped most things.
Once more his attention turned to Lillian’s beautiful daughter. He’d only glimpsed her back at the house. Tallish, long dark-brown hair, the cutest little pug nose, and just the right amount of curves to make her alluring. Well, that was something to keep him busy, he thought. It had been a while since he’d enjoyed the company of a pretty woman… hell, any woman… and it was always best to start off by setting attainable goals. Now he had a purpose, and he was happy.
Virgil could see the man watching them and smiling. And for some reason this made him uncomfortable. Though he didn’t know why, he took a step closer to his mother.
But, the man thought, first things first. His eyes wandered over to Sammy Aandeg, standing by himself. The man knew Sammy’s type; even from here he could practically feel the alcohol and anguish steaming off him. After all, he’d been there himself not that long ago. And this man could be put to good use. They spoke the same language, in more ways than one.
Not more than seven kilometres away, across the lake, a thin man named Wayne sat on the shores of a small island. The water lapped at his bare ankles. He was looking toward the mainland. Wayne wished he could be over there, saying goodbye to his mother. He had almost gone to the funeral, but something had prevented him. He didn’t like strangers, and even though he probably knew every single person at the funeral, they were still strangers to him. In many ways, he felt a stranger to himself. Unconsciously he picked up stones in the water using only his toes, tossed them into the air, and caught them with his hands.
He sat watching the sun shine down on Otter Lake. He had been mourning the passing of his mother in his own way, as tradition dictated. And when the time was right, he would go to where her body had been placed, and say goodbye. Until that time, he would sit here and brood. Over the years he had gotten pretty good at it. He had received the message Willie had left him, and understood what Maggie had told him over a week ago. Part of him felt bad about not going immediately to his mother’s side, but in his mind, there had been no need. Lillian knew he loved her and treasured her. Watching her die in that painful way wouldn’t have changed anything. As for the rest of the family, they considered him the weird brother, he knew, as did most of the community. Even the really weird people in Otter Lake thought he was weird. And that didn’t exactly make him feel sociable.
Idly, he grabbed another smooth rock from just below the waterline, this time with his hand. After weighing it, he threw it and watched it skim across the surface of the lake, just as his mother had taught him. By the eleventh skim he had lost interest and was again looking toward the mainland.
Though his thoughts were of his mother, this was just the latest in a series of events that seemed to be testing him. He had lived on this island for four years: training, practising and developing his art. But admittedly, he got kind of lonely. And what exactly was he practising and training for? Originally this had been a great idea, refining his philosophy and technique with isolation, as had all the great martial artists. But the enthusiasm that had led him to this monastic existence was beginning to wear thin. He missed showers. He missed television. He missed the scent of perfume lingering on the neck of a woman. He missed ordering pizza.
Maybe I am weird, he thought.
SIX
The funeral reception was held at the community centre. Virgil watched everybody milling about eating sandwiches made, for the most part, of white bread, butter, baloney and processed cheese. He knew the traditional soup and chili would be served later, but a quick shot of carbohydrates was what was needed to take people’s minds off the solemnity of the day. He was off with his cousins of the same age, talking about the stranger. Everybody had seen him ride in but nobody had seen him ride out. Three days had passed since his first appearance and Reena Aandeg, Sammy’s niece, who lived along the main road near the highway, swore up and down that neither she nor her family saw him leave.<
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“Then he’s still here on the Reserve somewhere,” reasoned Virgil.
“Where would a guy like that stay? It would be kind of hard for him to hide,” said Dakota. “I wonder if he gives rides on that motorcycle. That would be so cool.”
To Virgil, she sounded like a silly girl. You didn’t go for rides with strangers on motorcycles. Everybody knew that.
“What if he’s a mass murderer or a rapist?” he said.
Dakota shook her head. “I doubt it. He has kind eyes.”
“Oh yeah,” agreed Jamie, a cousin of both Dakota and Virgil.
“It’s always in their eyes. I read somewhere that eyes are the window to the soul.”
“His are blue! Really blue! So blue” gushed Dakota.
“Wow!”
Speaking of eyes, Virgil was busy rolling his. At least he didn’t have to try to get out of going to school today. He knew that was an incredibly inappropriate thought to have at his grandmother’s funeral, but even more so when he could see his mother dealing with band politics across the room. She couldn’t even take a day off for her mother’s funeral. That was really inappropriate.
Sitting at a scarred wooden table, trying to enjoy the bland-ness of the sandwiches, Maggie recognized that her momentary respite from Reserve political intrigue was drawing to an end.
“Maggie, I know this isn’t the right place to discuss this but I need to talk to you.” It was Anthony Gimau, a big man with even bigger opinions. Back in the sixties when he was growing up, he’d wanted to be a radical, anything to shake up the system. Being Native automatically gave him ammunition to be an annoying gadfly. Therefore everything “White” was evil, except of course his Jimmy 4-by-4, which he adored, almost as much as he adored his wife, Klara, who was German. In his personal philosophy, there was a yin and yang kind of thing to people who orbited the Native community. There were the “wannabes;” people who were, for one reason or another, fascinated with Native culture and wanted to be Native. These types generally annoyed most Native people, including other wannabes. But that was the yin. The yang, Anthony believed, was the “shouldabeens;” those who were unfortunate enough not to be Native but who should have been Native. His wife, Klara, though born and raised in Jena, Germany, was a shouldabeen.
In his earlier years, Anthony used to sport a Mohawk haircut as a statement, but as time passed, his male-pattern baldness reduced him to shaving only the sides of his head, and leaving a one-and-a-half-inch strip of hair on the very back of his head as a somewhat diminished political statement. Somehow, he blamed White people for that too.
“What is it, Tony? I’m not in the mood to discuss anything.”
“I know, I know,” he said, nodding, then swallowing. “However…”
Maggie shook her head. “No however. Tony, we just buried my mother. Now is not the time.”
Tony’s eyes brightened. “I know. I know. When then?”
Maggie knew she’d walked into a trap. He wanted to talk about the plans for the new land they’d bought, and now he’d cornered her into setting a specific time and place. Everybody in the room had an opinion and was dying to share it with Maggie. Tony had just beaten them to it.
Sighing, Maggie said, “I don’t know. Day after tomorrow. Eleven o’clock. How’s that? Can I finish my sandwich now?”
“Yes, yes, of course. My thoughts are with you and your family. But wait ’til you hear what I have to say!” Anthony trotted off in search of some traditional corn soup or sauerkraut. Maggie sighed, dropping her unappealing sandwich onto the plate. Her husband was dead, her son was retreating into himself and the acquisition of all this new land was proving to be the hottest political potato the community had seen in a long while.
Maybe she should have cut Clifford more slack, back when he was chief. He had been dealing with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, affectionately known as the RCAP, an attempt by the federal government to address many of the problems being complained about by Canada’s Native population. And it took years. Clifford had spent many nights in Ottawa, and many more nights at the Band Office or on the phone. In her imagination, Maggie began to imagine the RCAP as a woman, her husband’s mistress. A big fat woman, a selfish one, always wanting more. She promised so much, but in the end, she delivered so little. Every night Clifford would come to bed with Maggie, but he was always thinking about “her,” the other woman, the RCAP. And now the legacy of that relationship was Maggie’s cross to bear.
Some wanted the three hundred acres used for new housing. Others felt the time was right to install a water filtration plant, which in turn could mean somebody (quite probably the woman who had made the suggestion) could open up a laundromat, and all those who either didn’t have or couldn’t afford a washer/dryer wouldn’t have to drive forty minutes into town and stand around for two hours waiting for their clothes to be cleaned. And they could stop worrying about their town dying off like what happened in that Walkerton place. There were proposals for a golf course or a casino. Of course it wasn’t solely Maggie’s decision; there was the Band Council to go through, as well as a bunch of committees and boards to deal with. White people may have invented bureaucracy, but their relationship with the Department of Indian Affairs had taught the First Nations people of Canada how to excel at and, in their own way, indigenize it. All land utilization ideas and economic development schemes started their journey on Maggie’s desk. And she was getting tired of it.
All around her the community swirled and flowed, everyone except Tony caught up in mourning. She thought of her family, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins. She couldn’t comprehend how families with only one or two kids functioned.
Maybe that was why Maggie was such a good chief. She had been forged within the anarchy and chaos of a large family. Each brother and sister had made her stronger, both by love and by torment.
The chair beside her scraped on the tile floor. “I don’t suppose anybody has seen Wayne?” said Diane, Maggie’s eldest sister. Wayne was Maggie’s youngest brother, three years younger than her, the youngest of the Benojee brood.
“You know he won’t be here. He’ll probably come tonight when nobody’s around.”
“Or when the moon’s full.” Diane, her plate a mound of triangular white sandwiches, began to feast. “Willie dropped by his island a few days ago. Couldn’t find him, so he left a note. Geez, you’d think he’d be here.”
“You know Wayne. He’s got his own way of dealing with life.” Maggie couldn’t help noticing the pile of processed food on her sister’s plate. This was not the diet the doctor had prescribed for her diabetic sister.
Diane noticed the look and scowled. “Don’t you dare give me that—there are no calories, sugars and starches at funeral receptions. You know that.” To illustrate her point, she stuffed a whole sandwich in her mouth, and grinned.
Maggie couldn’t help but smile back. As for her younger brother, it wasn’t uncommon for Wayne to go missing for weeks, even months at a time. An isolationist and contemporary Native—mystic, for lack of a better term—Wayne led a strange and separate life and there were always rumours about what he did over on his island. People fishing just offshore of his island would occasionally hear strange yells. Family, when visiting, said the place looked like a primitive gym, with homemade punching bags constructed from canvas and stuffed with leaves and sand. Her brother rarely came to the mainland, and if he did, it was usually for supplies and to visit his mother. Though he was the youngest, he spoke the best Anishnawbe—like his mother, strong and without hesitation.
And then, of course, there was the famous rumour, the stuff of legends. Supposedly a few years ago, some rowdy boaters had landed on the shores of what had once been called Western Island, but was now more frequently known as Wayne’s Island, intent on building the world’s biggest bonfire. They started foraging for wood, and soon discovered the island was occupied. According to the story, Wayne disagreed with their starting a fire, and his disagreement
was strong and severe. Exchanged words and issued threats developed into an altercation. Five drunk White guys against one lone Indian. This had the makings of a pretty good civil rights case.
The next morning their boat was found drifting a kilometre offshore of the island. Inside that boat were many bruises, one dislocated elbow, numerous lacerations, seven cracked ribs, four black eyes and at least a dozen missing teeth. The White men said everything was a blur. One guy mentioned a crazy Ninja Indian on the mysterious island, but the others shushed him up, embarrassed.
“Mom?” Virgil was standing beside her.
“Yes, honey.”
“I’m gonna go now. Okay?”
“Did you have something to eat?”
He nodded. “Three sandwiches, one apple, a grape juice and some cookies. Okay?”
“I guess so. Where’re you going?”
“Dunno. Probably home.”
“Tired?” she asked.
“A little.”
Behind Virgil, she could see Duanne DeBois hovering, waiting for his chance to speak with her. God only knew what he wanted to do with the land.
“Well, go get some rest. Hopefully I’ll be home in a few hours and will make you a real dinner. Something with vitamins and fibre maybe. Sound good?”
For a moment, Maggie saw the saddest smile on his face. She realized she’d said this before. Many times. And she’d often failed to keep her promise.
“Sure,” Virgil said, and then quickly left. Maggie watched him walk through the hall doors.
“Maggie, good to see you. You got a second?” said Duanne DeBois as he sat down beside her and opened a colourful flow chart.
SEVEN
About half an hour later, Virgil was walking toward the railroad tracks that ran through the Reserve’s northern border. He had lied to his mother once again, only because he knew that she wouldn’t understand and that it might start an argument neither of them wanted. Virgil knew he was running late and he had increased his pace. About twice a day, a passenger train would speed through the forested hills as if afraid to stop—rumour had it there were Indians about. Frequently, Virgil would be sitting there on a large flat-topped rock set about ten feet back from the tracks, watching the train thunder past on its way to wherever it was going. He’d done some research on the computer and most of the trains were heading to Toronto, or out of Toronto, several hours to the south. He would catch a glimpse of faces in those windows, some looking out at him, others engrossed in a book or laptop. Where were all these people going? Who were they? What did they do?
Motorcycles & Sweetgrass Page 6
