“As have you. Tell me,” he asked. “What is your faith?”
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“You have the peace pipe, don’t you?”
I started to laugh. “That’s the Crees.”
He started to laugh so hard he snorted. “Well, what are we doing this for?”
I couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed so hard I actually slid off the fibreglass. “It was your idea.”
He reached over and handed me gum. “Was it?”
I started to float, felt like. I looked at the gum in its wrapper and had no idea how to open it. “Okay okay. We take from the best.”
“From what?”
“Well,” I say, “we have our own ceremonies. Like we feed the fire. We have rat root. We pray.”
“Go to church?”
I nodded. “But we don’t believe in original sin.”
“How’s that?”
“No guilt.”
“What?” He pulled me up.
“Jesus didn’t die for me. You’re gonna tell me Wendy or your little sister was born with sin?”
“Go on.”
“Why live in fear and shame?”
“God doesn’t make junk.” He nodded. “Give me that.” He unwrapped the gum I had and put it in my mouth.
“So where is she now?”
“What?”
“Where is Wendy now?”
I closed my eyes. “Home. With our grandma.”
“Shouldn’t you be there?”
I shook my head and started rocking. “I can’t… I can’t face them.”
“So you’ll kill the principal and go to jail and never see them again?”
I pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re, what, sixteen? Why not let the cops and judges do what they’re supposed to do?”
I looked at him and he looked back. He was being totally serious. Maybe he was right. I felt lighter when he said that, like maybe it wasn’t all my problem.
“Are you sure the Dogribs don’t use the peace pipe?” he asked.
I let my breath out. “I don’t know….”
“Sorry I called you a harelip,” Marvin blurted in a whisper and looked away.
I stopped mid blink. My head snapped up. “It’s better than cunt mouth.” I looked at the northern lights. They were growing now. I could whistle with my sharp teeth and call them if I wanted to.
“I’d like to help you,” he said quietly. I looked at him and he was trembling. “I’d like to help you,” he said again. “Let’s go bless that house.” I nodded and thought of his dead sister. Had he ever put her to rest? Marvin looked at me with concern in his eyes. He did not stare at my lip, and so we left for the rape house.
I remember my promise. My contract. Ehtsi spoke English so softly. “Sah, you will go to where the school is. In Fort Simmer. The principal has agreed to adopt Wendy. He met her this week. She’s your cousin. You will protect her.”
I looked at her and Wendy smiled, rolling her eyes up and to the right. That meant she was happy. To the left meant she was scared. Her eyes were to the left a lot before she left because the by-law officer had started hunting her. He even chased her into the bush a few days before, but she knew to hide. This man was the son of the chief, so we couldn’t say nothing.
“Education,” Grandma said, “is what you need these days for work. It makes you strong like two people.”
“I’ll protect her, Ehtsi,” I said. “I promise.”
I was given two boxes filled with rat root, dry meat, dry fish, and pemmican. I finally felt like a man. I had wanted to be there for Wendy when we moved here, but I wasn’t. The truth was it was a relief to not have to worry about my cousin and watch her all the time. The principal never invited me over to his house once I came to town. I got caught up in school. I’d see Wendy, happy and wandering. I knew she was okay. I trusted. You were the principal. You had a wife.
Marvin doubled. In my T-shirt, I raced with Marvin down Main Street and now as we stand outside the rape house, I think of what Marvin said, about the body of your enemy floating down the river. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I don’t have to kill my contract. Maybe the Creator or jail has something worse for him. I have heard that Wendy is back in Fort Rae, safe with Ehtsi. Mending. I’m sure they’re wondering when I’ll return.
“Can we pray for my sister?” Marvin asks as the smoke blankets me.
“Sure,” I say.
I hold the rat root up and he puts his hands over it, to catch some of the smoke. He then washes his body with it, over and over, turning and turning. He washes his face with it; then his hands; his mouth. He must have learned this from the Crees, I think. That’s how they smudge.
“You?” he asks.
I shake my head. This is not our way.
I don’t pray to God here. I pray to our ancestors who knew how to purify where someone had died or suffered. I pray to our mother who gave birth to six dog pups.
I look at Marvin and nod. We then start walking around the house as the little stick called rat root smokes and smokes. We circle the house without talking and it hits me halfway through that Marvin is praying. It’s the Lord’s Prayer and then a few Hail Mary’s in whispers.
I would leave to go home as soon as I could to be with Ehtsi and Wendy, but why did I have the sense that this was not finished? Torchy had made up his mind about something. I could see it. Feel it. Perhaps he and Sfen would take care of the principal.
I think of the blueprints for a room I will design. I will design it for Wendy in my mind only. It will be a room for night angels. People from all over the world will go there. Into the room you enter. In darkness. You can hear breathing. There are angels hunched and waiting there with folded wings. Waiting with their mouths and their deepest wishes for you. Their perfect mouths are open and waiting. And you enter. And the room pulls you away from yourself. And you feel with your hands for the perfect mouth for you. And you can kiss and kiss and kiss. With tongue. With breath. You can kiss angels forever. You can kiss until you faint. You can kiss until you’re clean. You can kiss as many mouths as you hunger for, and the angels will never stop being there, and you can kiss every filthy thing away. And in this room stands Wendy. She is standing in the middle. She is surrounded with the angel-light of herself as we surround the rape house with the light of two. She is standing there with her own sweet smile holding the small hand of Marvin’s little sister. Angels will protect them always. And from there my cousin’s light will glow.
And there my love will be…
Feeding the Fire
From the shadows of the spruce trees, we waited until the last of the trucks passed while Sfen stood with two slop pails full of sawdust. I held two jerry cans filled with leaded gasoline. Each one was mixed with flour for a little bit of stick.
“Ready, Torch?”
I nodded. Then we made our way up the cul-de-sac with our workboots crunching anything under us. That crunching reminded me of the night I had my arm broken by my mom’s boyfriend. That was the last time I let anyone touch me. Me and Sfen signatured a few hematomas across his head, and I know my mom’s ex – years later now – thinks of us every morning when he has to put his teeth in. We always had a Plan B for him and, sure enough, we got a Plan B for Mister Principal when he comes back tomorrow for his trial. Our faces were painted with bear grease and dog blood because of it.
The moon was full and we’d shot out all the street lights around the house with dusk-feathered arrows. Revenge soon and I was thinking about how most girls start to menstruate when they hit 105 pounds. I wondered if the principal kept our cousin at 104. I was thinking about how when the doctor was mixing my cast, he told me that when a bone’s broke, the body circles a ring around it and after it heals, it’s the strongest part of the b
ody. That’s what happened to us, I thought, with the residential schools and all the rape and grief that followed after. Mister Principal was no different: just another white man in a long line of takers. There’s a circle around all of us now and no one will ever touch us again. Warriors make sure of that.
But who calls the warriors forward? Is it the Creator? The land? Those who can’t fight back? The sinners or the sinned against?
We’d told our apostles, “Leave your mark on every home you were touched or raped in. Leave it with a handprint and we’ll take care of the rest.” As we came around the back of his house, we saw all of the recent renovations on the principal’s property: a new deck, new fencing. They say Wendy needed stitches for what he did to her, and he’d need a lot more than that after we were done with him.
Sfen handed me some well-worn work gloves out of his packsack as I produced an axe handle out of mine. I then rolled up my sleeves to reveal the tattoos my bro had given me for my birthday. The tattoos were crosses and two words had been carved into the bone-meat of my arms. When facing a mirror, with my arms in a cross, you could read the words: “Dogrib Forever.”
“Tell me again how God cleans?” I asked Sfen, for every time my bro said it I got the shivers from head to toe.
“With fire, brother,” he smiled. “Our god cleans with fire.” We were godless but loyal to heaven and the handcuff key that I kept in the hem of my sock started to heat up. In fact, it started to burn with the promise of unleashing Plan B on the principal tomorrow. I started to shiver with the thought of us burning every marked house in town down to the ground tonight. There were more than one hundred handprints on the doors here in the village of the child hunters.
You see there was an island where we put all the dogs that bite children. They hadn’t eaten for a week. I looked forward to saying, “We have brought you something to kill,” when we turned the principal loose on the island of his kidnapping. That was gonna be stellar, practically Biblical.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Sfen asked.
“Some people need killin’,” I said. I then proceeded to smash in all of the principal’s windows while Sfen nodded and calmly lit a smoke….
Afterwords
On the Wings of this Prayer
This was written in Pangnirtung in the summer of 2010 when I ventured to Nunavut for the very first time. When the Wheetago return let it be the old ways that save us. This story is for everyone in Pangnirtung. I love your community so much. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and spirit with me. I could not have written “On the Wings of this Prayer” without the inspiration of Sherman Alexie. Mahsi cho, Sherman. Thank you, as well, to Michael Callaghan of Exile Editions for publishing it in the CVC Anthology – Book One upon being selected as one of ten stories shortlisted for the Gloria Vanderbilt/Exile Short Fiction Competition in 2011; he also printed it in volume 35, no. 4 of Exile: The Literary Quarterly.
The Fleshing
This is a “what if?” story that I was asked to write by Dr. Pamela Sing for a Rougarou anthology she’s working on for the University of Alberta Press. In 1866, Father Émile Petitot transcribed a story told to him in the NWT by a Dene man of a shape-shifting man who, the night of his marriage to a woman of the “Copper people” or Yellowknives, reveals his true nature. Petitot’s French translation was published in 1886. I was asked to modernize this encounter. What would you do if you entered a room where a Wheetago had taken hostages and you were passed a note: Don’t let it make the sound? I want to dedicate this story to Edna Beaver, Earl Evans and Irene Sanderson for terrifying me with Wheetago stories. Eee!
Children of the Sundance
I love this story because it solidifies why Clarence and Brutus are so close in stories like “Let's Beat the Shit Out of Herman Rosko” in Angel Wing Splash Pattern; “Dogrib Midnight Runners” in The Moon of Letting Go and “Love Song” in this collection. This is a going back in time story and I'm so looking forward to writing more about this trinity of brothers, friends and streaking warriors.
Tony Toenails
Ha ha, you know how they say the rumours are always true in Indian Country? Well, this is based on a true story and was a hoot to write. It was published in Up Here’s December, 2011 issue. This is for everybody in Fort Smith because without all y’all, I wouldn’t be me.
Love Song
This was the first short story I ever published. It appeared in Descant: Vol. 24, No. 3, Fall 1993. I’ve tweaked “Love Song” a bit for this collection, and I’d like to dedicate this story to Ivan Coyote because Ivan makes me want to be a better storyteller all the time. I can’t wait for you to read the new stories I’m planning for Grant, Clarence and Brutus. There is so much magic coming their way. I know I call them streaking warriors, but they’re more than that: they’re prayer warriors. They just don’t know it yet.
Devotion
Dedicated to Mr. Chris Trott who inspired this story. Also, with thanks to the people of Pangnirtung. I want to thank Bill Street for working on this with me as we performed it for the public in January of 2011 along with sixteen superb musicians all playing along for a performance at the University of Alberta. Thank you to the editors of Prairie Fire for publishing it in their special issue “Boreality: Listening to the Heart of the Forest” (33.1, spring 2012).
Lizard People
I love this planet and her people and, sometimes, you just have to laugh and give thanks for the abundance and hilarity that surrounds us all right now. This story is for Omer and Jennie.
Godless but Loyal to Heaven
You’ve met Torchy before in “Mermaids,” published in Angel Wing Splash Pattern. I’ve always wondered what happened to him, Stephanie and Snowbird six months after, and this is their story. I’d like to dedicate this to all my brothers: Roger, Jamie, Johnny, James, Mike, Jon Liv, Junior, Marty and Trevor.
The Contract
Anyone who knows me knows I’m working on a novel called Sword of Antlers. This is the perfect excerpt behind the novel that introduces Bear from “The Fleshing.” He’s my new gladiator and if anyone can defeat a Wheetago and walk a path that leads to forgiveness, it’s him. This story was published in Exile’s spring issue in 2012. I’d like to give thanks to Mary Koyina Richardson for her wisdom on how to purify a haunted place using traditional Tlicho medicine. Mahsi cho, Mary! I’d like to dedicate this to Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair because he inspires me so much.
Mahsi cho for reading my stories. I am indebted to the University of Alberta’s Writer-in-Residence program, where I was Writer in Residence for 2011–2012. Thank you for welcoming me to Edmonton with so much respect and community. I’d also like to thank Lee Maracle for sharing with me that in writing we can find what has been stolen, repair what has been disfigured, and heal what has been damaged. Mahsi cho, Lee. Your words guide me every day.
A huge mahsi cho to my editor, Maurice Mierau, and my agent, Janine Cheeseman. Thank you!
Dreams are contagious and this collection is a dream come true for me. Thank you for sharing this with me, and may these dreams and stories inspire you with your own.
Thank you to everyone who believes in me. You bring me strength and grace. Mahsi cho.
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