The Essential W. P. Kinsella

by W. P. Kinsella

  “What do you think makes a man do something like that?” one of the reporters ask.

  Mad Etta give a real answer to that question.

  “Why shouldn’t he? Here, if you or anybody else want to call themselves a doctor, it is okay. You just have to find people who trust you to make them better. Maybe he wasn’t a doctor, but he had the call. There ain’t very many who have the call.”

  “Then it didn’t matter to you that he had never been to university or medical school?”

  “People believed in him,” growl Mad Etta. “He had the right touch and loving heart. If you like your doctor, you is halfway better. Most sickness is caused by what’s between the ears . . .”

  There was sundogs out this morning when we were putting the coffin in the grave, shimmering like peaches there in the cold pink sky. I imagined for a second that I could see Dr. Don’s face in one of them, but only for a second.

  Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour

  One of the weird things the government does for us Indians, not that everything the government does for us ain’t weird in some way, is they provide money for us to have our own Indian radio station. The station is KUGH, known as K-UGH. The call letters were chosen a long time ago by Indians with a sense of humor. The white men are always a little embarrassed saying the name, so they call it K-U-G-H.

  A year or so ago I read a letter in an Indian magazine, maybe it was the Saskatchewan Indian, where some woman was complaining, saying it was demeaning for it to be called K-UGH. One of the problems of Indians getting more involved in the everyday world is that they lose their sense of humor.

  To tell the truth no one I know on the reserve pay much attention to the radio station. It originate in someplace like Yellowknife, which is about a million miles north of us, and instead of playing good solid country and loud rock ’n’ roll, it is mainly talk, in a lot of dialects. It is a place for people to complain, which is the national pastime in Canada, the one thing whites and Indians, French and English, and everybody else got in common. And it seem like the smaller the minority the louder they whine.

  It does have a news program called the “Moccasin Telegraph,” where the title been stolen from a story I wrote quite a few years ago. People send messages to friends and relatives who are out on their traplines or who just live hundreds of miles from anywhere and they can’t get to pick up their mail but once or twice a year.

  “This here’s to Joe and Daisy up around Mile 800. Cousin Franny’s got a new baby on the eighteenth, a boy, Benjamin. Oscar wrecked his car, eh? We’re doin’ fine and see you in the spring. Sam and Darlene.”

  There would be an hour or more of messages like that run every night.

  K-UGH would have gone on forever with only a few people noticing it, but somebody in the government get the idea that things got be centralized. That way everybody get to share in the money the government waste.

  First we know of it is when one morning a couple of flatdeck trucks arrive at the reserve loaded down with concrete blocks. They followed by another flatdeck with a bulldozer and three or four pick-up trucks painted dismal Ottawa government green, full of guys in hard hats who measure with tapes, look through little telescopes and tie red ribbons to willow bushes and to stakes they pound in the ground.

  That first night it is like a pilgrimage from the village to the construction site, which is on the edge of a slough down near the highway. By morning almost everybody who need concrete blocks have a more than adequate supply.

  People got their front porches propped up, and I bet twenty families have concrete-block coffee tables. A couple of guys are building patios. I helped myself to a few pieces of lumber as well and my sister Delores and me made some bookshelves for the living room. Me and Delores each own about two hundred books at least, and until now they been living in boxes under our beds.

  Nobody bother to tell the construction people that the place they planning to build on will disappear under about three feet of slough water when the snow melt in the spring or when we get a gully-washer of a thunderstorm, which happens about twice a week through the summer. But it is fall now and the grass is dry and crackly, and there is the smell of burning tamarack in the air, and the sun shines warm.

  The construction men get awful mad about all the concrete blocks that disappear. They yell loud as schoolteachers, but we just stand around watching them, don’t say nothing. A guy in an unscratched yellow hard hat say he going to send a truck through the village pick up every concrete block he sees.

  Mad Etta, our medicine lady, stand up slowly from her tree-trunk chair, her joints cracking like kindling snapping. She waddle over to the foreman.

  “You got a brand on your concrete blocks like the farmers over west of here have on their cattle?”

  The foreman scratch his head. “No.” And after he think a while he decide that collecting back concrete blocks ain’t such a good idea. But that foreman have a long talk with someone on his cellular phone and the next load of concrete blocks have a big red R stamped on them that there is no scratching off.

  “By the way,” Etta say to the foreman, “what is it you’re building?”

  Rumors been going round that they gonna build public washrooms like they have at highway rest stops. Somebody else says the government going to build a Petro Canada service station, though the spot ain’t within two miles of any kind of regular road.

  “We’re buildin’ a twenty-by-twenty concrete-block building,” says the foreman. “What they do with the building after we’re finished ain’t no concern of ours. Our department just build.”

  “I’m sure you do,” says Etta, which the foreman take as positive.

  The building seem too small to house anything important.

  “I bet they gonna store nuclear waste, or a whole lot of these here PCBs,” me and Frank say to Bedelia Coyote, knowing this will send Bedelia’s blood pressure up about 100 percent. Bedelia belong to every protest group ever march with a clenched fist. She been out in British Columbia picketing the forest industry for cutting on Indian land, and down in southern Alberta trying to stop the dam on the Oldman River. Bedelia turn paranoid if you even hint somebody might be doing something not good for Indians or the environment.

  “Her natural shade is green as I feel after partying all Saturday night,” Frank say.

  Bedelia kind of scoff but it’s only a day or two until her and her friends is investigating like crazy, trying to find which government department is building the concrete-block building and for what.

  “If you want something done all you got to do is delegate somebody to do it for you, even if they don’t exactly understand that they been delegated,” say Frank, smile his gap-toothed smile.

  By the time Bedelia and her friends pin down what the building is for, a couple of flatdeck trucks is bringing in pieces of skeletal metal that eventually going to be a tall antenna with a red light on top to keep away airplanes.

  “It’s going to be a radio station,” Bedelia shout as she crash through the door of the pool hall. “They’re going to move the Indian radio station here to the reserve.”

  We didn’t suspect it then, but those words were going to change the lives of me and my friends forever.

  After the construction workers leave, a group of men in white coats arrive, unpack boxes full of electronic stuff. By peeking through the only window in the building we can see them with little soldering irons, hooking all this stuff together. There is a couple of snow-white satellite dishes set behind the building. The installers push some buttons, and the satellite dishes hum and turn, pointing their centers, which have a big stick like in the middle of a flower, at different parts of the sky.

  There are boards full of flashing red, green, and blue lights that run the whole length of the building, which is divided into three cubicles, one big and two little, each one outlined by thick, clear-plastic walls.

  One of Bedelia’s “friends in high places,” as she calls them, sends her a press release all a
bout the Indian radio station K-UGH being moved to our reserve. It’s part of a process of centralization of federal government and Department of Indian Affairs affiliates, whatever that might mean.

  Painters turn up and paint the building all white on the outside (not a good sign, Bedelia says) with the call letters K-U-G-H in big green letters with red feathers, like part of a head dress, trailing off from each end.

  At night we are able to receive K-UGH on our radios, but it still broadcasting from Whitehorse or Yellowknife, or one of those places with an Indian name. And it’s still mainly talk and go off the air at 11:00 P.M., just when real radio listeners are waking up.

  Frank, who is able to open doors by not doing much more than looking at them, let us into the radio building. Frank push every button he can reach, but nothing appear to be hooked up. We all go into the room with the microphone and Frank sit himself down in front of that microphone and pretend he is on the air.

  “Good evening, all you handsome people out in radio land. This here’s Frank Fencepost, a combination of whiskey, money, and great sex, all things that make people feel good, just waiting to make you happy.”

  “Makeup,” say Frank’s girl, Connie Bigcharles. “I need lots of makeup to be happy.”

  “A CD player,” add my girl, Sadie One-wound.

  “A credit card,” say Rufus Firstrider.

  “With no credit limit, and they never send a bill,” say Rufus’ big brother, Eathen Firstrider.

  “And one of them Lamborzucchini cars that go about a thousand miles an hour,” says Robert Coyote.

  “World peace,” say his sister, Bedelia.

  “Boo!” we all say.

  Then Frank ask the question that in just a few months will make him a little bit famous, and maybe gonna make him real famous.

  “What do you need to make you happy? Tell Brother Frank, my friends. Brother Frank can make your dreams come true.”

  He repeat the question.

  “I want you to pick up the phone, brothers and sisters. I want you to pick up a pen and write to Brother Frank in care of the station to which you are listening. I want all you wonderful people to let me know what it would take to make you happy.”

  “You’re crazier than usual,” we say to Frank.

  “Thank you,” says Frank. “But I think I’m on to something here. I sure wish I could figure out how to turn this equipment on. I really want to talk to people.”

  “Get a life,” somebody says.

  A few days later the radio station go on the air. One afternoon two cars pull up and park in front of the concrete-block building. A thin Indian with a braid, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, get out of one, and a hefty Indian, look like he could be a relative of Mad Etta, get out of the other car.

  “We been expecting you,” Frank say, sticking out his hand to the thin Indian. “I am Fencepost, aspiring broadcast journalist. Me and my friends are at your service.”

  Both guys look at us real strangely. The thin one is Vince Gauthier, the announcer. The fat guy is Harvey Many Children, the engineer.

  That’s it. Takes just two Indians to operate K-UGH. Vince open the mail, decide which letters get read on the air. He do all the talking. Harvey make sure what Vince says gets out over the air. Other people, maybe in Edmonton or somewhere, sell advertising, fax in the commercials and the times when Vince is supposed to read them.

  The station only open from 3:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M. Monday to Friday.

  “If there’s a holiday, the station ain’t open,” Vince tell us. They can only afford two employees. When Harvey go on holidays, I have to do both jobs. You think that ain’t fun. . . . When I go on holidays the station shut down for three weeks.”

  Vince and Harvey ain’t very friendly at first, but Frank just study them and, as he says, figure their angles.

  “Everybody wants something. Harvey’s easy. We just bring him food. McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried, chicken fried steak from Miss Goldie’s Café. That will get us in the door. But Vince is the important one. I can’t figure his angle yet.”

  It sure ruffle Frank’s feathers some that I am the one Vince invite to be on the air.

  “I know your name from someplace,” he say to me the second day we hanging around while they is working.

  “America’s Most Wanted,” say Frank.

  Vince stare Frank into the concrete floor.

  “I’ve written a few books,” I say.

  “Okay, you’re that Silas Ermineskin. How about I have you on the show tomorrow? Bring your books in and we’ll talk about them. I’ve always meant to read one of your books, but I never got around to it.”

  “That’s what everybody say,” I tell him.

  “What about talking to me?” says Frank. “I’m the one inspired Silas to write. ‘Sit down at your typewriter for three hours every day,’ I tell him. Besides, I’m the one got him to learn to read and write. Also, I’m the handsomest Indian in at least three provinces . . .”

  “This is radio,” says Vince. “Girls think I sound handsome. And I never discourage them.”

  Now Vince is a scrawny little guy with a sunk-in chest and a complexion look like it been done with a waffle iron.

  “I just figured me an angle,” says Frank.

  One thing that puzzles me is how many people actually listen to the radio. I mean really listen. We have the radio for background in the truck or on portable radios.

  “Sometimes we have over twelve thousand listeners,” Vince tell us. “For an area where trees outnumber people a hundred to one, that ain’t bad.”

  We try to behave ourselves when we’re at the radio station, and Frank coach Rufus Firstrider, who have a natural talent for electrical things, to see what it is Harvey do to make the station come on the air every afternoon and shut off at night.

  One afternoon when I walk down to the station about an hour before opening time, I find Frank Fencepost sitting in the sun reading the Bible.

  “Once you learn there’s no telling what you’ll end up reading,” Frank say, smile kind of sickly. We’ve had lots of people who flog the Bible, from Father Alphonse, who come pretty close to being human, to Pastor Orkin of the Three Seeds of the Spirit, Predestinarian, Bittern Lake Baptist Church, who hate everybody who don’t believe just like him.

  “You know what I done?” Frank ask.

  “Applied to have a sex change?”

  Frank stare at me in surprise.

  “A lucky guess,” I say.

  “I got out my Webster’s dictionary and I looked up the word gospel. We think of it as all the ‘you can’t do that or you’ll go to hell for sure’ stuff. But it really mean ‘good news.’ I got me some really strong ideas. I just got to figure how I can get Vince to let me talk on the radio.”

  The day Frank got his Webster’s dictionary, about a dozen of us go into the bookstore in Wetaskiwin. Everybody is looking at something different. I’m actually buying the new book by my favorite author, Tony Hillerman, who write about a kind old Indian policeman, Lt. Joe Leaphorn, who remind me of Constable Greer, the one really good RCMP in our area. Frank stuff a big dictionary with a rainbow-colored cover under the raincoat he borrowed from Mad Etta without asking and boogie right out of the store.

  “I’m the one who needs a good dictionary,” I say to Frank in the parking lot.

  “Steal your own,” says Frank. But later on he get softhearted, like Frank usually do, and let me keep the dictionary near to my typewriter, though Frank spend a lot of time at my place reading in it. Frank try to learn a new word every day, and use it in a sentence, which get pretty tiresome when he try to use words like gleet, which mean sheep snot, or sutler, which mean a person who follows an army and sells them provisions. Not words for everyday conversation.

  Every night at suppertime, Rufus Firstrider make a run into Wetaskiwin and come back with lots of fast food. Those forays sure cut into our spending money, but we’re willing to help Frank as much as we can. Harvey, when he’s full of fatty fo
ods, take Rufus under his wing, and in a week Rufus knows how to turn on the radio station and get Frank’s voice out on the airwaves.

  We watch the station close up at 11:00 P.M., wait an hour, then Frank open the door like he never heard of the word lock.

  Before we turn on the lights we hang a heavy blanket over the window.

  Rufus fuss with some switches. Then, from his glassed-in cage he signal Frank that it is okay to talk. A big red light come on over the door, say “In Use.”

  “K-UGH is going to present a special program one hour from now,” Frank say. “‘Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour’ will ask the question, ‘What does it take to make you happy?’ Be sure and tune in.”

  He make announcements like that every five minutes from midnight to 1:00 A.M. Then at one o’clock he cue up some music that he had me hunt up. The station have only about a hundred tapes. This one’s some outfit with bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace.”

  “Welcome to ‘Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour.’ Brother Frank wants everyone to feel as good as he feels, to be as happy as he is . . .”

  And he’s off and running.

  “Silas,” Frank has been telling me for weeks, “I’m gonna combine theology, mythology, history, ritual, and dream. Seems to me that covers everything. Got to have some Christian connection in order to get money, people will give to anything that they even suspect of being religious. And dreams is how we work in the Indian part.”

  Frank talk for a while about how everybody deserve to feel good, to be happy, to have enough to eat, a dry place to sleep, good friends, and happy dreams.

  “Now, what I’m wondering, as I talk to this big, old microphone, is, is there anybody out there? If you’re listening, call Brother Frank on the phone,” and he give the area code 403, and K-UGH’s telephone number. “We accept collect calls. Just let us know you’re listening. Tell us what you need to make you happy. And if you got an idea, tell us how we could improve ‘Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour.’ Remember, gospel means ‘good news.’ And Brother Frank is gonna make good news happen to you.”