I remembered Wendy with her own medicine. When we still lived in Rae, Ehtsi took us out to Trapper’s Point. She had the feeling. Her palms were burning. Gran showed us both what bear root looks like and asked us to find some while she pretended to pick cranberries. I went into the clearing first and came back empty-handed. Wendy went in and returned with an armful.
“Bear root is what the bears love,” Ehtsi said. “It’s medicine for the heart. It can clear arteries and make the heart muscles strong, but she only shows herself to a few.” So the root blossomed because it knew Wendy was coming near.
Most times – well, sometimes – whenever I’d see Wendy at school, I’d say hi. “Hi hi,” she’d say and squealed with joy. It was like she couldn’t contain the life inside her. She was a kid really. Her black Dogrib hair to her shoulders, her big Dogrib eyes, that big Dogrib smile. The teachers had to watch her because she was so friendly. She’d want to run to wherever the most students were. She wanted to play. And with a body like hers, no one wants to play with you anymore. They want to fuck and feel and finger.
But our Shiver Ceremony – when we knew we were moving to Simmer for school, we knew we had to break her to trust me and only me. Standing in the abandoned DPW warehouse, we tied glass Coke bottles to fishing lines. There were eight of us boys, five of whom were cousins. We brought her in and she was scared. Wendy stood in the light. Looking down. Feet turned in. Alone.
I walked into the light in front of her and held my hand out. “Wendy,” I said. “Zunchlei. Come.” The boys shifted in the shadows. Luke coughed and I was scared she’d bolt. Once she started running it was so hard to catch her. She tried stepping left. “Hi hi.” And the boy closest to her started shivering his fishing rod quickly, so that Coke bottle rattled. Then the other boys did it. Tukkatukkatukkatukkatukka.
The place sounded haunted with eight poles shivering their Coke bottles and she didn’t like the sound. I was worried she’d flee, but she stepped towards me and they stopped. She looked around and stepped to the right, and the boys started again with the Shiver Ceremony – tukkatukkatukkatukkatukka – and she stepped towards me and we were quiet.
“Come, Wendy,” I said. “It’s me. I’m your cousin, Bear – remember?” And she ran to me quickly and hugged. We did this for seven days. That’s how we broke her. To me.
The longer school went on the less she showed up. I never asked why. I was too busy living my bullshit life here. A town Indian. Like a white.
I do know that the teachers had to watch her for a reason. Her body. That trust. That everything inside her was just bursting to get out. You could do anything to her and she’d never tell. She was working on her words, but she was still like a baby.
So there I was, outside of Brian’s house. It was like a castle it was so big. I could hear the bass inside and laughter from an open window. Could I really fit in here? With my torn face and my shy ways. I held my Ninja side sack as the smell of town filled my nostrils –
“Whatcha doin’?” someone asked. I looked. It was Marvin. In the path by Brian’s driveway. His toque was still on and he was having a smoke while he straddled his bike. In a second, I knew: he was waiting for someone, anyone, to see him outside Brian’s and invite him in. He was lonely.
“Hey,” I said.
“What you doin’ there?” he asked again.
“Brian invited me to a party.”
He looked at me suspiciously. “A freak party? That must be the same party he invited me to when I first moved here.” I looked at him.
He shook his head. “How fuckin’ retarded.” He spat. “They trick you. They either get you to play seven minutes in heaven with one of the girls and she tells them everything after or they get you drunk and leave you naked somewhere.”
“So what did they do with you?” I ask.
He shook his head. “My dad told me about it just in time.”
Shit! I thought. I knew he was speaking the truth. I would never fit in. Ever. “Why are you here?”
“Cruising. You’re psycho, hey?”
I nod. “Can be. Yeah.”
“Wanna cruise?” he asked suddenly.
I relaxed and looked into his eyes. Fuck it. “Okay.”
“Get on.” I did. We doubled and raced through town.
“Where do you go at night?” Marvin asked me.
“What?”
“I’ve been tracking you. Why do you go to that house?”
I’m shocked. Tracking or hunting? “My cousin was raped there.”
“She’s the one, huh?”
“What?”
“The one who was raped. Everyone’s hush-hush about it. She was your cousin?”
“Yeah.”
“My sister died when I was five. I still remember that. So what do you do there?”
“I bless it.”
“With what?”
“Light.” I tapped the middle of his ribs and that felt wonderful. “From here.” I pray with my body is what I’m trying to say.
“What the fuck?” Marvin stops pedalling, and I look ahead. Here, six kids walk towards us staring straight ahead.
“Children of the Corn, or what?” he asked. The children walk towards us quietly and I’m speechless. I put my feet on the ground to balance the bike. They come towards us and one boy leads the pack.
“Hey, you little shit monkeys,” Marvin says. “What’s going on?” The leader raises his right hand and it’s covered in blood.
“Holy shit,” Marvin says.
I look at the rest of the kids and their hands are covered in it. “What are you kids up to?” I ask.
The boy looks at me. “Orders from Torchy and Sfen,” he says. “Leave your mark on any house you’ve been touched or raped in. They’ll take care of the rest.”
“Sfen and Torchy,” Marvin says. “The dog killers?”
The boy nods. “Use red paint or blood.”
“For what?” I ask.
“We do what we’re told,” he looks back at the group. “Let’s go.” The group move on without a word and I see as they pass they have packsacks. One of the kids is carrying a bucket of red paint.
“Freaky,” Marvin says. I watch them leave. “Sfen and Torchy. I heard they’re bad news.”
“They love being dog killers a bit too much.” He looked east. “Wanna see a cool hiding place?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go.” Marvin doubled me to the high school and ditched his bike behind a wall of fibreglass. They must have been doing renovations up top. We climbed the huge pink pillows of fibreglass. They were the perfect stairs to the roof.
“Hurry,” he says. “Cops patrol by all the time.” We climb. We’re up in no time. We sit up top where it’s cool. “It’ll be dusk all night,” Marvin said, looking over the town.
“Ever smoke up?” he asked.
I nod. “Not in a long time.”
“Do you believe what I said about them tricking you?”
I look around: there’s the water tower with the red light at the top blinking away. I nod. “Yeah.”
“You were deceived by wolves.” There’s the church steeple. There’s the hockey arena.
“Read the latest National Geographic?”
“Nope.”
“It says wolves are born knowing not to trust strangers.”
“Why?”
“They’re pack animals. They can’t afford to trust anyone outside of their own.”
I nod. Luke and I used to be like that. “You’re smart, hey?”
“Have to be,” he said. “Dad’s a cop.”
“No way.” He nods. I let my breath drain from my lungs.
“I could use a friend,” he said. “I think you could too.”
We look at each other sideways. He’s right. “I’m sorry about your sister,” I say.
He nods. “Sorry about your cousin.” He pulls out a small pipe and takes out a bag. Looks like weed. He makes preparations and I can see the town. I squint and see that on the water tower, someone’s painted Grad 2012 already on the sides in huge letters –
“Well, well,” a voice says from the darkness behind us.
I jump and look. From the shadows step Torchy and Sfen. Banned for life from school. Banned for life from every bar in town – and they’re not even legal yet. Shit. My spider venom is in my side sack and I have four sticks of rat root in my pocket –
“What do we have here?” Sfen asks as they surround us. Marvin is holding his breath, sitting very still. I can’t meet their eyes. I’m scared by what I feel from them.
“It’s a Tlicho and a whitey,” Torchy says. “How cute.” They have us.
“Lucky for you,” Sfen says. “We’re Dogrib, too. What you got there?”
Torchy took Marvin’s dope and sniffed the bag. “Oh dear,” he said. “Someone’s sold you oregano. This is not grass.”
“For shame.” Sfen swiped the bag and the pipe away. “Was your dealer Kevin Garner?” Marvin nodded.
“Tell you what,” Torchy said before we could answer. “We’ll talk to him for you and make sure you are compensated for this obvious miscommunication.”
“Look likes that boy needs to be taught,” Sfen agreed.
Torchy snickered. “Sometimes a small town boot fuck reminds us of what is important.” Sfen took out his own bag and sprinkled something on the pipe and began to light up. Torchy gripped my shoulder hard. His grip was iron. I saw a cross tattooed across the length of his forearms. I couldn’t read the writing on it but it said something. “Is it true the young girl that principal raped was one of us?”
I nodded.
“Any relation to you?” he asked. His grip grew harder.
“My cousin,” I said.
His grip softened. I could hear Marvin dry swallow beside me. “Any relation to my brother and me?”
I looked. “You’re Dogrib? What are you doing here?”
“Answer the question. Was she any relation to us?”
“Who’s your mom?” I asked and there was power in this. Maybe this would save us. Sfen spoke their mother’s name, and I knew of her family. They were from Snare Lakes, Wekweti. In my mind I touched the branches on the family tree. “Wendy was your second cousin.”
Torchy dropped his hand and looked at his brother who whistled. “Is it true she needed surgery after he raped her?”
The question floored me. Tears came to my eyes. “Yes.”
Torchy let all of his breath out and looked at the night sky. He closed his eyes hard and swallowed. I saw his eyelids tremble and his face harden with a decision.
Sfen looked at Marvin. “Is whitey with you?”
I looked at Marvin who was frozen with fear. “Yes.”
Torchy leaned into him and spat on Marvin’s shoe. “Lucky bitch.”
Sfen lit the pipe again and thought for a while. “Let us not be enemies,” he inhaled.
“We know who the true enemy is now,” Torchy agreed. He held the pipe above his head and took a drag. He then handed me the pipe. “I wanna see your breath to know you ain’t lyin’.” I gulped and looked around. Torchy and Sfen were watching me intently. Marvin stared at his shoes. I took a hit and the smoke filled my mouth like murder. I was immediately blown over by an invisible snowplow. My soul shot out of my body, up into the sky, way past the faint feathers of the growing northern lights and I swirled around for a bit. I fell so carefully down into my body that when I came back I had to sit down. I couldn’t even hand the pipe to Marvin. Torchy did it for me.
Marvin took a hoot and looked down. “Whoah,” he said. “Whoah.”
“Kevin Garner may have sold you oregano,” Sfen said, “but he deals good coke.”
“What is this?” I asked.
Sfen handed the pipe back to me and smiled. “Good medicine.”
Torchy and Sfen walked up to me and knelt down. Torchy lit a smoke. “You’re new here, so listen up. You can trust the Slavey, maybe the Gwich’in and the Hare, but stay away from the Chipewyan and the Crees.”
“Chipewyan are famous for being jealous,” Sfen said.
“And Crees are always horny,” Torchy warned.
“Yeah,” Sfen said, “this ain’t their land but they want it.”
“It’s all buddy-buddy until the back alley,” Torchy said.
Torchy walked up to Marvin and blew smoke in his face. “They say they got the first part of Indian country with the bottle and the second half with the Bible.” He looked at me and pulled out a long knife. He then looked at Marvin. Marvin’s eyes widened and he froze. “And never trust the whites. Look at what happened to our cousin.”
Marvin started to kick and whimper and Torchy made the motion of slicing him slowly up and down in the sign of the cross. The last slash would be across the throat, and I yelled, “Wait!” Torchy stopped and saw my hand held out with three of the four sticks of rat root. He motioned to Sfen to go see.
Sfen walked up to me, knelt down and carefully picked up the three rat roots I carried since being here. “Brother,” he said. “Medicine from home.”
“Na,” Torchy said. “Let’s see.” Sfen handed the gnarled roots to his brother who sniffed them. They both looked at me with respect. Torchy nodded. Sfen did too.
“You stole my dope,” Marvin said suddenly. Both Torchy and Sfen were surprised by his courage.
“Better than your ass cherry,” Sfen said and the brothers snickered. They then motioned to each other and Sfen handed me the pipe. “We’re telling everyone we meet to leave a red handprint on any house you’ve been touched or raped in. Do it before the principal comes back for his trial.”
“Why?” Marvin asked.
Torchy looked at Marvin and shook his head. “Never you mind, buttercup.” Torchy looked back once and held up Marvin’s dope. “Fair trade for the rat root, eh?”
The brothers then jumped off the roof and vanished. Marvin and I were quiet for a very long time. I was kind of floating and falling at the same time.
“What the fuck was that?” Marvin asked with his eyes closed.
“Magic,” I said.
“They stole my dope,” Marvin said. I was rolling backwards within my own body, just circling and circling within my own shell. Better than your ass cherry, I wanted to say and then I started to giggle.
“What did you give them?”
I tried being serious. Why were my hands tingling? “Rat root.”
“What?”
“One of the five most powerful roots in the world.”
“What does it do?”
“It saves lives.” Then I burst out laughing.
“Oh. Hey. You said you were a bear,” Marvin says. He’s smiling, dizzy eyed. “Say more about this.”
I smirk. “You’re stoned.”
He shrugged and smiled. “I confess that I am.”
It tasted like someone put a light bulb in my mouth and turned it on. I started to cough. There was no spit left on my tongue. “A bear always knows what you’re thinking.”
He nodded. “I understand.” Then he, too, started laughing.
I giggled in spurts. “A bear is blind for three days after he claws his way out of his den in the spring.”
We started laughing together. I turned to him and he aged in front of me. I saw a handsome man instead of a bully. “The words you say are wise,” he giggled. “Who taught you?”
“My gran.” I suddenly sense there is a tap somewhere on this roof. I start looking for it. I really need to drink something – now.
“Were we ever enemies?”
“Only strangers.”
We start laughing again and, to my horror, there are no taps on the
roof. How fuckin’ dumb, I thought. We’re retarded now. “Hey. How’s your infection?”
“Fine,” he said and his head fell forward. “Thank you for asking.”
“Did you really have your period?”
He smiled. “There is power in deception.” He turned to me with his eyes closed. “Was it you or Brian who fucked up my pills?”
I looked at him dead in the eye. “Me.” We burst out laughing.
“Ah.” He bowed. “Your strategy of sabotage worked well.”
“What happens when you’re better?” I dry swallowed.
He was going through his pockets. “I have gum. What do you mean?”
“Will we fight again?”
He made the motion of holding an arrow and snapping it over his knee. “This is us alone.” He then motioned that he was holding a quiver of arrows. He motioned that he was trying to break it over his knee but couldn’t. “This is us together.” He held his right hand in front of his face and made a splashing motion with his hand while staring at it. “Dust in the wind.”
I started laughing. I’d seen this in a hundred movies and he looked stupid acting it out – then I remembered: “I wanted to kill him,” I say.
“Who?”
“The principal.” I nod. “I made a promise to protect her.”
“I figured you were different.” He shrugged. “I’m a Newfie. My dad’s a cop. I have an inner ear infection. My eardrum almost popped because of you. That’s all. What do I have?”
“There’s only four Dogribs in PWS. Well, five including her.”
“Don’t kill him,” he said suddenly.
I looked at him closely. “Why?”
“They say if you wait long enough, the body of your enemy will float by you down the river.”
I stop. Look at him. “What’s the story?”
“I read it somewhere. East Indians, I think.”
“Where’d you read this?”
“Library,” he says. This filled me with something sweet. It was a soft power that rose from inside me. Is this wisdom or smoke?
I think about this and say, “You have given me strength.”
Godless But Loyal To Heaven Page 19
