“Yeah.”
“He was a good boy,” he said softly. “Where did they bury your brother?” he asked.
“Right next to my mom,” I said.
Just then, Stephanie came skipping into the room with her juice. “You’re a hero, Torchy. Did you find my Goofy toothbrush?”
“Sorry, baby girl,” I said. “It went up in the fire, but it saved my life.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you about it some day, okay?”
“Sure, but you owe me a new one.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
“Aunty says she’d like to make us all supper when you’re better.”
I smiled. “Sounds good to me.”
Snowbird sniffed and sneezed. “What’s burnt?”
I looked at the gym bag and at the cheque Jeremiah signed for me. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
Snowbird put his hands on mine. “Try me.”
Jeremiah and his boys had done a good job of replanting the bodies and coffins of the previous townies of Fort Simmer. There were new pine crosses on every grave I could see. To the left were a pile of old rotted-out white crosses that were off to the dump to get burned.
The family crosses of some of the biggest townie families were grouped together: the Snuffs, the Otters, the Red Hats. My brother and mother were buried together at the very south of the boneyard.
On my way there, I saw a lot of “In God We Trust-s,” “Loved By All Who Knew Him-s,” and an “Our Pride and Joy.” To my surprise, I remembered after Mom died, Sfen and I carved “We love you Mom” into the back of her cross, but I saw it had been replaced by a new pine one. And right next to it was Sfen’s.
I hadn’t been here in years. Last time was on my eighteenth birthday when I got good and drunk and told my mother I hated her for leaving us. I cried. Oh I cried, but then I told her how good Sfen was doing, how hard he was working to get his business going, and I kept quiet about me. I didn’t want her to know about how I’d turned and started my own private war with God for all He took from me. I told her that if I did go to hell, I’d see my father there and finally know who he was. For I was a product of rape. I was the son of force and take.
So much taken, so much lost. So much pain and misery. But that would be another story. Right now, here we were, on a beautiful day. Snowbird and Stephanie were to my right. Jeremiah and Country were to my left. I had only been here once before sober and that was to watch the gravediggers put my mom in the earth after she died. Sfen had been with me and we had cried so pitifully together. That was the day we promised to look after each other no matter what.
Trucks had been cruising by since we got here, slowing down and watching. I didn’t care. Some trucks stopped. Others sped up to spread the news. I was sure that more trucks would be coming as word spread. For some reason, I was picking up Gunner strong and fierce. I had a feeling he and I weren’t done with each other yet and, when I was stronger, I’d deal with him and that nail gun situation. He kept jumping into his punches and it was always so easy to time my strikes, but that would be later: another time, another place.
Snowbird began singing a soft song, one that brought tears to my eyes. I watched him move and drop tobacco to each of the four directions. He looked sharp, dressed in new clothes. So did Stephanie in her pretty summer dress. I stood in some new duds and I had to smile. My cast was so big I had to cut the arm off my new shirt to get it on. But there we were honouring my brother’s new resting place, and my mother not being alone on the other side. It was a beautiful day to say goodbye.
I don’t know where she learned this, but Stephanie had cut three ribbons for each of us. They were red. She’d pinned them with little clothespins to our shirts and they looked sharp.
Off in the distance, a horde of about twenty kids on bikes sped by yelling but stopped when they saw Snowbird dropping tobacco. The leader pointed with his chin to our group and all twenty of them turned to get a closer look. One wrong move from any of them and I’d be over that fence so fast it’d make their heads spin.
Nothing.
They all watched in awe as the old man blessed my brother and my mother and I saw two of the boys take their caps off in respect for our gathering. Maybe there was hope for our future yet. I looked east and there was Andy sitting in his truck, watching from a safe distance. I knew in the south our new house stood waiting for us to have a feast after, and what a house it was. I had buried ten thousand dollars in the backyard. The move hadn’t cost a lot, but buying grub and clothes for everyone hadn’t been cheap.
Snowbird, Country and Jeremiah were invited back to the house after the funeral. They promised to help build picket fences for Sfen and Mom’s graves in a year, as was the Dogrib custom. I told Andy he could bring his wife if he wanted to visit.
But here, in this place, lay my brother and my mother.
I could hear an ATV zipping around in the distance, and I saw a jet flying overhead. I was about to trance out when Snowbird looked at me and handed me some tobacco. I took some, took it to my nose and inhaled before dropping it softly on the earth. It was then a full wave of sadness got me.
“Sfen, my brother, you left too soon,” I said and started to cry. “You were buried Dogrib-style with your feet closest to the cross. This way you could pull yourself up to the sky. You can soar to heaven, brother.”
The last time we were here was the last time I cried, and I am crying now, years of hate and steam and hurt and the cocaine gland discharging like invisible trumpets, all let loose, all set free. I’m reaching for your hand.
You were too young, so impossibly beautiful to die like you did, and I’ve always pretended you were on a trip, somewhere, never too far away and you’d call, you’d write, you’d show up when I was sleeping and we’d go. We’d go wherever you wanted and I’d cook for you, make you coffee, bring it to you in the sunrise or late afternoon and we’d laugh, like brothers, like sons together and you’d be there for me. Isn’t that the promise every big brother makes?
“You’re safe now, Sfen.” I listen to Steph read the Bible and the words bring comfort. They blanket us. I lean into those words as they rise and rise and I’ll never stop loving you no….
The Contract
We stand outside the principal’s house where Wendy was raped. I can smell the river grass and winter’s on her way. Here I am again, this time with an ally.
“What’s the name of this ceremony?” he asks.
I hold the last rat root I was ever given by my ehtsi and light the end until it starts to smoke by itself.
“Blessing Wendy,” I say.
In my Ninja side sack were the ways I was going to kill the principal when he came back for court. I had a hundred yards of nylon fishing wire I could see through. And I had red spider venom.
I had stolen the venom from the doctor who used it for a wart on my thumb. The shaving and peeling with a razor and then attacking the wart with liquid nitrogen for the past three months hadn’t worked, so he’d brought out the ultimate wart remover.
“If this doesn’t work,” he said, “nothing will.” He touched my wart with the end of a toothpick laced with the venom for a full second. Four hours later my thumb swelled to twice its size. I thought for a week that my thumb had become egg filled with thousands of red spiders, ready to burst out if I pressed down too hard. My entire arm felt as if I’d been Hiroshima-flashburned and my shirt had melted through my skin. But it worked. It worked so well that when I went back to the clinic for a check-up, I stole the bottle, and now no scar remains. None.
My wish was to burn the principal from the inside out alive in his sleep. I was going to find him, open his sunroof wherever he slept, lower the fish wire over his snoring mouth and drip the stolen venom down his throat. He would gag to death on fire.
The wart had come from the same locker room where Marvin, tw
o days after he arrived and began beating us all at break, walked out of the shower naked (the only boy in the history of PWS to ever use the shower) and said, “That’s right, boys. Have a good look. Most of youse don’t have hair number one yet, but I got more than all of youse put together.”
It was true: hair on his face, chin, sideburn, chest, nuts, balls, man fur. His cock hung curved and darker than the rest of him. His was a man’s cock in a room full of boys – boys who changed quickly under towels from home, boys who’d rather go to class with sweaty asses and dink grease from their own musk glands than shower and change.
“That’s right,” he smiled and looked around. I hated his yellow spike teeth and the shadow of his mustache. “I’ve already gone through puberty, and I already had my first period.” Half the room started laughing while the others got up and left, only to burst out laughing outside the room.
When Barnes walked Marvin into the class and announced he’d been transferred from Fort Smith, I knew Marvin was trouble. He was taller than all of us and he was built like a man. I sniffed the air and could smell something sweet and high from him.
All suspicions were confirmed when he started beating us all, especially me. And there were no teachers anywhere. Another staff meeting, I guess, to deal with what the principal left behind.
“Hey, harelip,” Marvin said as he came up behind me to give me a kidney shot. The pain broke me. My legs gave and I dropped my side sack. I crouched, then collapsed, shouldering my own weight into my locker. Dizzy with pain, my stomach rolled. I started breathing out of my nose as Marvin curled his lips back. “Tomorrow you’ll bring me a pack of Export A’s. King size.”
He wound up to knuckle my face. “Okay?” I nodded, speechless from pain, held my hand up and fell to the floor. Brian and his posse turned the corner towards us at the worst possible second. Brian was gorgeous. The white wolf. Marvin dismissed me and charged, an ape charging a wolf pack.
“Hey –” was all Brian could say before Marvin attacked. Brian’s pack of four fanned out and ran from the doors. Marvin hit him a lot harder than he hit me and Brian held his chest and started to cry. Marvin whispered an order into Brian’s ear, and Brian nodded and sobbed before Marvin charged out the door.
It took me a while, but I pulled myself up. I grabbed my side sack and my Book of Plans and put it in my locker. I felt like a pack of huskies had attacked me and my legs were tingling. When I went to see if Brian was okay, he looked at me and looked away. “Fuck off,” he said. I did.
Next day, Marvin was the king. He chain-smoked and slurped Dr. Pepper and counted his cash. He kept digging into his ear with his free hand and that’s when I noticed that the toque he wore to class was actually quite stinky. I wrote, “Marvin’s wearing a toque in class” on a piece of paper and left it on Barnes’s desk. He read it as he was taking attendance.
“Marvin,” Barnes looked up from his note. “Hats off to education.”
“What?” Marvin said. Everyone sat up.
“You’re new here, but we have a school policy that applies to all students.” His eyes fluttered like dragonfly wings as they always do when he’s nervous and he pointed to Marvin’s head. “Hats off.”
Marvin looked around. Bruised and stinging, we glared at him. “I got a doctor’s note,” he said. “Ear infection. I got to keep them covered.” He pulled out an orange pill container from his breast pocket and shook it. The pills sounded plastic as they rolled around in the container. There were lots of them.
“Fine,” Barnes said and folded my note into his pocket without looking around. “Let’s get back to work.”
Ninety percent of assassination is gathering information, so after school I raced home and asked Rob, the house parent of the Northern Leaders program, “Tell me everything you know about ear infections.” I pulled out my Book of Plans and took notes, lots of them. And true to Rob’s words, Marvin’s strength faded as every day I trained harder. I was doing push-ups, pull-ups, crunches and stretches.
I waited for Brian at his locker. For once he was alone. His pack of four were probably smoking by the swimming pool. In the past, Brian’s ignored me. I know he’s made fun of me at the bush parties but I didn’t care. “You’re in my way,” he said and went around me.
“We can hurt him,” I said.
He started doing his combination. “Who?”
I wanted to cover my lips with my hand, but I looked away. I couldn’t look at his lips or teeth. They were too beautiful. “I, uh, know how to get Marvin.”
Brian stopped. “How?”
Sensing weakness, we waited a whole day. I asked to go to the washroom and was given the nod by Mr. Kenny. I went through Marvin’s locker and horked all over Marvin’s pills before adding a little bit of water and placing the lid back tightly. Marvin wasn’t Treaty so he had to pay for his meds, and it didn’t look like he was rich. I came back and nodded to Brian who then nodded to his pack. They all nodded back to me, wolves nodding to a bear.
Marvin didn’t even check his pill container when he changed. He didn’t mention a thing the next day at school, but I saw him peeking around, searching for a giveaway in the eyes from the one who ambushed his meds.
“What do you think?” Brian asked at my locker.
“Not yet,” I said.
“You sure?”
I nodded. “Positive.” There were a few more beatings from Marvin for the few kids too slow to sprint away at break but his reign was over. Brian and his pack walked in groups to their classes. I patrolled and watched Marvin lean hard against the walls at break, looking up at the lights, weak from sickness inside his skull.
Marvin’s stink became rotten. Pus leaked from his ears. He wore his toques to class to cover this, mop the drainage up and hold it. This was it.
I ran by Brian at lunch. “Now.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Positive. Call your pack!” I dropped my side sack and ran behind Marvin who was limping home and kicked his leg out from behind him. He buckled and collapsed.
I turned and Brian led his pack. “Come on!” he yelled. “Get him!” My job was done. Brian pushed me out of the way and the crew took over.
“My ear’s infected!” Marvin cried as they laid the boots to him. “No fair!”
The pack had him. Shane and Barry took his legs. Tony and Marcel took his arms. They looked at me. Brian yelled, “Get him, Bear! He hit you first.”
I sniffed the air. I could smell the high, electric buzz of terror. I began to breathe through my mouth and swerve my head. My neck bristled and I made claws with my fingers. I showed my teeth, incisor to incisor.
“What the fuck are you?” Marvin screamed.
Horror spread across the faces of Brian and his crew. I began to look this way and that, licking my lips quickly. “I’m a bear,” I whispered and ran my tongue over my teeth. I ran, jumped and brought my curled fist down on his balls again and again while he kicked and bucked.
“Yeah!” Tony cried.
“Fuck him up!”
“Get him, Bear. Sic him!” I attacked and mauled and roared through my bear lips.
I blurred out and saw my grandma. She had a harelip too. She pointed to her lip and then to mine and said, “Sah” which means “bear.” They say she had bear medicine, just like Wendy.
“Whoah! Whoah! Hey!” Brian yelled and grabbed me. I was punching Marvin so hard in the balls I could feel the coiled root of nerves at the base of his scrotum. I had punched through his balls. The boys who’d been holding his legs apart had stopped and were pulling me off.
“Cool it, man,” Tony said. “The new VP’s coming.”
I looked, cleared my eyes, snorted. The new vice-principal was coming all right, but not in any hurry. He was smoking and walking leisurely towards us. He knew Marvin deserved this.
I could hear sobbing and looked down. Marvin held
his nuts and rolled slowly back and forth.
“Now boys –” the VP said.
“Fuck you!” Marvin cried out suddenly. “I’ll kill all of youse!”
The VP put his hands on his hips and assessed the damage. “What happened here?”
Tony pointed to Marvin. “Marvin’s been bullying us since he’s been here.”
I didn’t need to listen. I started to walk away. I grabbed my side sack and made sure my Book of Plans was inside. I looked back only once and saw nothing but pride in Brian’s eyes. Marvin’s reign of terror had only lasted a week. He was fuck-all now. Word was out: if you dropped him, you could hurt him. And you could take your time doing that.
To my surprise, Brian called me that night.
“How you doing?”
“Good.”
“What you doing this Friday?”
“Not much.”
“We were wondering if you would like to come to my house. My folks’ll be out of town.”
I couldn’t say no. This was what I wanted. I had earned something today and maybe it was time for me to not be different anymore. If they accepted me, the school would accept me. “Okay.”
“See you at ten,” he said and then he hung up.
The sad thing after the mauling was that after that you could nudge Marvin and he’d topple. He had no balance anymore. The students now dropped him for sport. When he did show up for class, he’d stay late after school, begging to do his homework in the library with the detention kids while a small pack of former victims waited to down him outside.
I went to Brian’s locker to wait for him, but felt stupid, waiting there like a puppy, so I left. Neither him nor his crew said a word to me Wednesday or Thursday.
After the principal was captured in Calgary, he was charged for abusing Wendy. He’s supposed to come back for his trial this month. Once it made the paper, people seemed to move in slow motion everywhere I looked. They closed the school for three days, made the vice-principal the principal and hired a woman from the south to help out. They brought in counsellors for the students. I played hooky for a week and nobody called.
Godless But Loyal To Heaven Page 18
