Finally, she snaps. She says, “That’s it!”
She scoops up the big pile of toenails and doesn’t say a word. Oh, it stinks, eh! She hides this big yellow pile of scraggly toenails in the Lazy Susan, right at the back. The next morning she makes his lunch. She decides to teach him a lesson. She has bread and butter, mayonnaise, baloney – because he is quality, eh! Quality knows quality. Five stars all the way. Then, as he sings a love song for her from the shower, she takes his toenails and sprinkles them all over the baloney. Then she takes some cheese, then some lettuce, now some mustard and some butter and another piece of bread. She pushes it down and the toenails poke right through the bread like thick barbed thorns. She wraps the toenail sandwich in Saran Wrap and then she gets a little juice box, a little chocolate pudding, a thermos of tea, and she puts it in his lunch box. She gives him a little kiss and says, “Baby, baby, baby, have a good day baby, baby. I love you, I love you. You’re the love of my life. Bye.”
And her man goes to work. About five minutes later, she goes, “Oh my God! What if he chokes on his own toenails! Oh my God!” She calls his boss. She says, “Whatever happens – as soon as my husband comes in – just get him to call home. It’s an emergency.”
The boss says, “Oh, ah, oh – I won’t forget.” Well guess what? He forgot.
Her husband worked out in the bush. Just like I told you. He’s a heavy-machine operator in great big sweaty clothes all day, and lovely wool socks to get his toes just nice and stinky, hey. His wife is sweating bullets all day, worried her hubby will choke on his own toenails. She’s in agony with worry!
Well, he comes home at six o’clock. His wife is running around the house. Oh thank God! He’s alive; he’s safe.
“Baby, baby, baby!” She said, “You’re the love of my life! You’re my lighthouse! I have tea; I have coffee; I made buffalo chili here with bannock. I even have Kraft Dinner because it’s your favourite. I made apple pie for you because I love you so much baby, baby, baby. How was work?”
“WOW!” her hubby said. “All right! I could get used to this. This is great! Wait – is it your birthday?”
“No!” his wife said.
“Our anniversary?” he asked.
“Nope,” his wife beamed.
“What’s the big occasion?” he asked.
“Our love,” she said. “Our love is the big occasion! What other reason do I need to spoil my man?”
“Oh hey!” her husband said. “That sounds good. That sounds really good.”
“How was your lunch?” his wife asked.
“Lunch?” he asked. “What lunch?
“The lunch that I made you,” she said.
And he went, “Oh, I don’t know. I had a tummy ache. I gave it to Tony.”
His best friend ate his toenails! Hoo hoo! Can you imagine? Can you imagine his best friend Tony munching on his sandwich going: “Wow this is so crunchy. Wow! Oh that crunch. Oh yeah. So good. Oh wow. Are those chips or fish bones or what? Oh so good. So good! Mmmmm.”
And now you know how Tony Toenails got his nickname. We’re so very proud to add another nickname to the growing pile around here.
Love Song
Ray Pearce and I were at Town Hall watching the proceedings – mainly we go for the free coffee and bannock, but we also go for the free entertainment as the mayor and the ex-mayor go toe-to-toe on some of the problems facing our community in the land of “Wah-s,” “Take it easy-s,” “Cheap-s,” and “Fuck sakes anyways-s.” For example, the bison issue in Wood Buffalo National Park is a very prickly area when it comes to politics. Charles Chaplin, the mayor of Fort Smith, wanted to leave the bison alone. That’s just fine except that the bison have bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis. They’re bleeding from themselves and they got pus in their knee joints. If we see one staggering out on the highway, we – wah! I mean the hunters – usually shoot so as to put it out of its misery, and if you’re a hunter handling the meat and you got a cut on your finger you can get what they got. Anyway, Oops!, the ex-mayor of Fort Smith and now chief, started to hoop and holler about what was going to be done about the bison.
Mayor Chaplin, I guess, is ready for any such opposition. He starts off real slow and stands up to greet the crowd. He says, “Ladies and gentlemen, as mayor of Fort Smi –”
“BULLSHIT!” somebody snaps from the crowd. We all look and it’s Oops! who leans heavy on one knee and glares at Mayor Chaplin.
Mayor Chaplin takes a long, slow swig on his coffee and swishes it through his teeth. He’s got a trumpet mouth happening; nobody says a thing. He stands up and glares at Oops!. Mayor Chaplin starts up again with a cheesy smile on his face, one that says he can take a little heckling. “Please,” he says, sticking his hands up, showing he’s a friend of the people. “Please understand that this issue is not black and whi –”
“BULLSHIT!” Another cry from the audience and, sure enough, it’s Oops!. This time he glares right back at Mayor Chaplin whose lips are twitching with that crazy vein of his under his left eye throbbing. He swallows hard and pulls that cheesy grin tight. It looks like he’s either in sweet agony or he’s in the throes of a lengthy bowel movement. Everybody in the room knows he wants to give Oops! a lickin’, but it’s election year and the press is in the room. He tightens his belt and tucks in his shirt. He says, “Order! Order. I’m trying to explain the direction of movement on the issue.”
He tries to say more but Oops! stands and yells, “YOU WOULDN’T MOVE IF SOMEONE STUCK A FIRECRACKER UP YOUR ASS!”
“THAT’S IT, YOU SUMABITCH!” Mayor Chaplin roars and charges. Everybody stands and holds him off. Oops!, seeing that it is now safe to do so, charges too and everybody in the middle gets squished. Ladies run around all panicky. Me and Ray crack jokes and wait for someone to call order. It can get pretty hairy sometimes, but it’s cheaper than bingo and the mayor’s wife makes damn good bannock.
Fuck sakes anyways: I know exactly how this re-election’s going to go. The Chaplins are the biggest family in town and Oops! knows it. So he gets great business out at his hardware store by sniping from the sidelines. In fact, it’s safe to say he’s built his business by going after Mayor Chaplin for years. Cheap.
So Ray Pearce and I, we’re sitting together waiting for everyone to cool down when Conrad Blitz walks in with one of the prettiest women I have ever seen. This woman that Conrad has is Asian, and she is something bee-u-tee-ful. We’re talkin’ walkin’ porcelain. Her face is so pretty, her hair a running black. She’s so tiny. Her head is bowed, looking only at her feet. She keeps herself close to Conrad who sticks his ape face out at anyone who’s checking her out. He looks like a mean old gorilla walking around. He has three big rings that look like gold nuggets. He has his shirt buttons undone so we can practically see his belly button, and he wears that big key chain that makes lots of noise whenever he walks into the room.
“Jeezus,” Ray says to me. “Will you look at her? My oh my, Grant, I ain’t never seen someone so lovely. Look at her.”
Every man at the meeting who’s been rolling cigarettes or sipping coffee eyeballs her really soft-like. Conrad sits down with her and she sits quick, kinda like she’s shy to be there.
Conrad works at Stud Concrete. I don’t know what it is he does over there. I only know that he caught my cousin siphoning gas from one of his haul-trucks and Conrad put him in the hospital. I heard he also got one of his men to hold Ronny’s head up while he brought those rings down and down into his face. Shattered his jaw. Cut the inside of his gums up. Deviated his nose. Charges were never pressed despite me begging. The family swore to keep it quiet. That was a year ago and I’ve been biding my time to get him back. I just can’t figure on how he got this lady cuz she sure is something.
Blitz grunted something to the lady and she shot up real quick and got him a coffee. All the while she only looks up once to see where the coffee maker is. O
ther than that, she keeps that pretty head of hers down. Damn she’s tiny. Jet black hair pulled tight in a ponytail, pouting lips and huge eyes, something that you’d see on a doe: scared, alert. Blitz grins wide and shows us he’s the boss.
“Jeezus, will you look at that. Conrad Blitz got himself a slave,” I say to Ray.
I get no answer from Ray so I look over. Ray’s got an expression on his face like he’s a school kid who’s fallen in love. His big puppy eyes have little hearts in them and he sighs loud and slow. Blitz sees Ray looking and leans towards him, giving him the buffalo-eye, but Pearce keeps on starin’. About that time the lady, who looks like a China doll, brings Blitz his coffee. She keeps standing, looking down with that cup in her small hands. Blitz goes to turn and shoulders the cup. A lot of that coffee runs down his shirt and he shoots straight up slapping it like it’s liquid fire. His little China doll tries to help but Blitz slams his fist into her.
“Get me something to wipe it with!” Everyone stops talking when he raises his voice to her. Mrs. Chaplin helps her with the paper towels. Others move the chairs aside and Blitz doesn’t like all of the attention so he ups and stomps out of the room without saying anything to the lady. She’s on her knees wiping it up like real quick. She uses one towel and then another. She’s getting soaked cuz she’s on it but all the while she cleans. Ray Pearce up and bolts over; he kneels down beside her and says something. China doll keeps working and Ray helps her out. Then he takes her tiny hand and helps her up. He says something soft and she smiles. Even with her head bowed, that smile lights up the room. Everybody’s happy after that and people come up and introduce themselves hoping to find out more about her.
“Tansi! Hello. How are you? Where you from? What do you think of our little town?”
She shakes all their hands and bows. She smiles and talks quietly. Ray Pearce stands beside her and he’s beaming a smile from ear to ear. He’s all proud and introduces her to everyone. Turns out her name is Swee-Sim Blitz. We all get a handshake and a look when Blitz comes back. We hear his steel-toed boots and the ching ching ching of that big key chain. He pushes through everyone, grabs China doll and takes her outside. She has her head back down and her ponytail goes up and down, up and down as she gallops behind him.
Everyone goes back to quiet in their seats. Oops! and the mayor settle down and call the meeting to a close, but Ray Pearce is shaking, his lower lip trembling. The look in his eyes makes me remember something I almost forgot. When I was a kid, I used to play this game called “Let me be you for a night.” In it, I’d always fantasize about being a woman’s husband for one night. The things I’d do… well, let’s just say if I had that inkwo I bet I could save a lot of marriages. The look in Ray’s eyes, though. I think it was safe to say he wanted to play that game and break whatever Blitz had brewing with Fort Smith’s new secret. And me? I’d help him every step of the way. This was my ticket to retribution for Ronny.
We all go out to the driveway. There’s a fresh bed of snow out in the parking lot, but we’re all too quiet to care. The snow looks blue at night and I’m bundled up pretty good. The way it’s falling, it looks like thousands of moths dying, falling to earth – sky feathers, I’m sure our ancestors called them. I walk home and Ray roars by in his truck. He peels out of that driveway and heads way out of town to where he stays.
Within a day, I hear through the moccasin telegraph that Blitz got himself one of them mail-order brides. I guess you get a catalogue and you just fill out an order form. The funny thing is, she’s been in town about eight months. Usually, it’s advertised in the paper when someone new comes to town, but I guess this is hush-hush as Blitz lives in Border Town, a small mysterious settlement across the highway towards the park. We streaked by there a few times this past fall and it always struck me as a good place for a bear attack or an ambush of muskets and arrows. That dirty fucker. Can you imagine that first night he got her in his house? The things he made her do? Imagine his big fuckin’ beer belly bouncing off her forehead every night. Fuck him. I fuckin’ hate Conrad so much. This gives me more fuel for my plans.
Friday night rolls around and we have our annual talent show contest. Brutus and Clarence don’t show so they must be tokin’. Ever since Clarence became a dad, well, I don’t really see him anymore and when he does go out, it’s with Brutus to Panty Point for a hoot. Why do they never call me? And Brutus and Sheri are shacked up now. They’re probably just barebacking it around in their home right now. Man, I miss streaking with my dog brothers through the night. I am so fucking bored at night now that I actually floss.
The talent contest is always held in the church basement. The parking lot is full of trucks and skidoos. Every year, it’s the same: Buckets and his wife jig to fiddle music. Buckets’s wife beat cancer so we all stand and cheer her on. Plus, the Red River Jig is a crowd pleaser every time. Their little feet shoot out from under them real quick and everyone claps and cheers them on. Some of the teenagers put together a band called Savage Society. They pull out electric guitars and start jamming real loud. That’s when the judges and elders go for a smoke break.
Next up is a girl group called GLOSS. The girls all look thirteen and are all wearing what looks like their mothers’ makeup and high heels. “Want to know what GLOSS stands for?” the lead singer asks the crowd. “Guys Love Our Sassy Stuff!”
The crowd laughs and they cover a Britney Spears song but half the band forgets the lyrics and runs off the stage and then the lead singer realizes what’s happened so she runs off the stage too, and well, that was interesting.
Then some other people get up on stage. They come from Fort Chip and Fort Fitz. This one guy comes up on stage and plays a saw like a violin. It sounds all weepy and sad. He plays “Amazing Grace” and we all stand. Don’t ask me why we stand; it just sounds so good.
I look around for any potentials, but no dice. A few new faces but not my type. Cheap.
After that, Mayor Chaplin crawls up on stage and asks us how we’re doing. He starts talking about how nice it is to see everyone lending support to the local talent and our visitors from other communities. Then he starts talking about all the things he’s going to do if he gets re-elected, like pave the highway clear to Enterprise, like set up another baseball diamond (we already have five but everyone cheers anyway) and on and on.
He would’ve kept on going if Oops! hadn’t yelled, “Keep it short!” Everyone claps because what he hollered is what we all were thinking. He stands up and takes a bow. Mayor Chaplin cuts it short and introduces the next act. “Okay, okay,” he says, waving his hands. “Coming to you tonight, for your evening pleasure, for the first time ever, our very own Fort Smith historian – the man who knows it all: Ray Pearce!”
Everybody claps and I spit out my coffee. Ray? Jeezus, I’ve known Ray for about five years and I know how he hates crowds. The spotlight shines on the stage and there he is. He stumbles to the podium and Mayor Chaplin adjusts the mike. Ray looks pretty fancy up there in a moosehide jacket. He must be pretty hot but I don’t see any sweat. He composes himself and takes a deep breath. Everybody takes one with him and we see this is mighty important. We’re all quiet and everybody hushes one another.
“My first story tonight is about how the Dogrib people came to be,” he says, making eye contact left and right like a lighthouse, making sure everyone understands what’s going on. I take a big breath. The Dogrib are outnumbered here in Smith: a town that’s Dene, Cree, French and English. If anyone heckles him, I might have to go bazook –
“A long time ago, when medicine power was the law and the way of the Dene people, a woman gave birth to six dog-pups. This woman was very beautiful. Nobody knew who the father was so she lived all alone in the bush. She was very happy to be living by herself because she loved her children very much.
“Every day, before she would go out to check her rabbit snares, she would put her pups in a bag and tie it up so they wouldn�
�t get into trouble while she was gone, and every day she would come home with her catch and she would see baby-human footprints in the snow outside her camp. She would rush inside her tent and check to see if all her pups were okay. They were still tied up in their little bag and they would all start to yap so she would feed them.”
Ray pauses and takes a sip of water that someone brought to him while he was talking. “So one day, she decided to see who it was making the baby tracks outside her lodge. A little while passed and, sure enough, she could hear children laughing and playing. But it was not from outside the tent. It was from inside. And then, from the moosehide teepee, six young children came running out. They played naked outside in the snow and they were just as happy as could be. The mother watched this and sprang from the bush. She chased them back into the tent and caught the last ones before they could leap into the bag. The other babies turned back into dogs but the ones she captured stayed human. And those were the first Dogrib Indians. As you know, they call themselves Tlicho.”
People look at each other with wide eyes and clap like thunder. I puff my little bony chest out and nod. Yup, that was our creation story, our beginning story. The way my mom told it though: the woman grabbed two boys and a girl and they never changed back, but I hear there’s three versions of our story. Ray takes another sip from his water and he begins again. “The second story I want to tell you was told to me by the chief of Hay River. It’s about a spring ceremony and women.”
Everybody gets quiet again and listens. I notice the kids are all sitting down. Some are with their parents. A bunch sit down at the front.
Godless But Loyal To Heaven Page 7
