Motorcycles & Sweetgrass (29 page)

John cleared his throat. “Hi, my name’s John Savage. You don’t know me but…”

Two hours later he was back on the road, heading north. Mission accomplished. Using every fibre of charm and eloquence all his years of experience had given him, he had swept the young Cree woman off her feet. Literally. He had amazed even himself. Of course the blond hair and hazel eyes had helped. Native people were suckers for that. There was a tiny corner of his conscience that felt bad for sneaking out while she was in the washroom, but why hang around for long goodbyes? So, after quickly making himself a sandwich—unfortunately Angela seemed to be a vegetarian but there was nothing he could do about that—John quietly closed the door behind him and left.

He’d enacted his revenge, and had had his morale boost. Now he had things to do. It would get dark soon and he was already running behind schedule.

Back to the plan.

TWENTY

Wayne was in a funk, a deep one in fact. So was Virgil. They were sitting side by side, in two lawn chairs, in the Second backyard, shaded by a large flowered patio umbrella. Between them was a small garden table on which sat two half-empty glasses of iced tea. Deep funks don’t have to be uncomfortable ones.

It had been a long hard day for both. On top of the conversation with Dakota being so unsettling, a twenty-minute meeting with Ms. Weatherford had resulted in the threat of Virgil having to repeat a year of school. If he hated going to class in the grade he was in, it would be a dozen times worse if he had to be in the same grade two years in a row, surrounded by all those sucky thirteen-year-olds. And all his friends would be bussed off the Reserve to begin their first year of high school. Virgil had truly painted himself into a corner.

How does one get oneself out of a huge corner? One takes a huge friggin’ leap.

“Ms. Weatherford, is there anything I can do so I won’t fail this year?”

“Like what?” The glasses on her nose had slid down to near the tip.

“I don’t know. What are my options? My mother, the chief, she always tells me there are options.” In reality, she never had but
Virgil felt in times like this it never hurt to casually mention the fact his mother was indeed the chief.

“Yes, I already talked to your mother, the chief. She knows the situation. I’m sure Chief Second will want to have a chat with you herself when you both get home.”

So much for that. “Ms. Weatherford, I really don’t want to fail. It might scar me for life. Both you and I don’t want that. There’s gotta be a way we can meet somewhere in the middle. So I missed a few classes. People in jail get diplomas and degrees all the time, having done a lot worse things.”

Virgil’s teacher looked thoughtful as she assessed the young man’s argument. He was indeed a bright boy, he just needed to focus his energy. Maybe she’d give him something to focus on. That had often worked in the past.

“Very well. I have a proposition for you, Mr. Second.”

The way she smiled was not exactly reassuring to him.

Wayne’s day was not all strawberries and cream either. First thing was to deal with the blisters on his feet from all the walking he and his nephew had done the night before. Second, he wanted to keep tabs on John, so he made the pilgrimage to Sammy’s house. You can never have too much information about an adversary, especially one as unusual as this one. Since it was daylight, he took a small shortcut, trimming about ten minutes off the trip. Once there, however, he was annoyed to see that the motorcycle was gone and all was quiet.

On his way home along the shortcut, he bumped into Sammy, wandering the trees. It was difficult to say who was more surprised at their sudden woody meeting but it was Sammy who shook his head, dismissively. As he passed Wayne, he could hear the old man mumbling to himself in his peculiarly accented
Anishnawbe, something about what fools mortals are. Then, without turning around he yelled to the young man to get out of the woods or he’d be chased by a bear. Wayne thanked him respectfully, as was the Anishnawbe custom toward Elders, then continued along the path. The thought of how close his mother had come to ending up like Sammy always sent a shiver down Wayne’s spine.

Halfway home, Wayne bumped into an old classmate near a construction site, a big guy named Dan. They’d been best buds all through grades nine and ten, before their differing tastes led them in different directions. It had been a few years since they’d last had a conversation.

“Hey, Dan, I heard you were in jail?”

“Nah, not for a while. I thought you were living across the lake on Western Island.”

“Yeah, still am. Just running some errands. Hey, what happened to your cheek?”

“Some jerk sucker-punched me, right into my eggs.”

“Sorry to hear that. Well, take care.”

“Thanks, you too.”

And Wayne continued walking, all the time wondering about destiny. Dan, who had once had an unnatural ability to mimic the accents of people on every Reserve in a six-hour radius, and could unerringly imitate all the characters on
Star Trek: The Next Generation
, now had arms covered with tattoos and worked on a construction site. He himself was no better, concluded Wayne. I live by myself on an island, working on something nobody cares about, chasing after a mythical man, on the outs with my family, when all I really wanted was to sing with AC/DC. Ah, he thought wistfully, the dreams of adolescents, and the realities of adults.

It was just after lunch when Wayne approached the Band Office. He dreaded what he was about to do, but it needed to be done. And he needed to do it. Marching past the receptionist, he knocked on Maggie’s door and opened it.

“Yes?” came the answer, then Maggie saw her brother. This could be good or bad, she thought.

“Maggie, I need to talk to you.” He entered and closed the door behind him.

During the next half hour, he became the little brother and Maggie the older sister, a relationship that had been very spottily embraced over the years. He apologized and grovelled, saying that much of his silliness was a reaction to Lillian’s death. He didn’t want to lose his favourite sister.

At first, Maggie didn’t know how to react. This was not the brother Wayne she knew. But gradually, she softened, and a few minutes later they hugged, tears in their eyes.

“Can I stay a little longer? Please?” Wayne asked. “At your place. I don’t want to go yet.”

“Of course,” his big sister answered. “But none of that silly talk. Okay?”

“Okay.” For the second time, they hugged. Most of what Wayne had said to his sister had been the truth, but only he and Virgil truly knew the score. They had only each other to talk this out with. So that last promise had been a little tarnished. Still, they were brother and sister again, and they were speaking, and that was always a good thing.

So now Virgil and Wayne sat, late into the afternoon, taking stock of their lives.

“What should we do now?” the boy asked.

“About John? Your mother doesn’t believe it. That’s a problem.

She’s so stuck in the White man’s world, this whole possibility is inconceivable. Momma, your grandmother, always told me magic was possible.”

“I didn’t believe you either, until I saw him do those things. I’m still not so sure. Hey… maybe we should show her?” Virgil was excited about the idea.

Wayne, however, wasn’t. “Right, make her wait in the bushes until he decides to dance under the moon? Or maybe we’ll be lucky enough to catch him arguing with the raccoons again. I can’t see her willingly doing that. We just lucked out. I doubt he will be that accommodating again.”

“So what now?”

“I don’t know” was his only response.

They watched a butterfly flutter by.

“Uncle Wayne?”

“Yeah?”

Virgil seemed to choose his words carefully before speaking. “If he does exist, I mean Nanabush, if it is him, doesn’t that kinda open the door for a lot of questions? Scary ones.”

“What kind of questions?” asked Wayne as he sipped his iced tea, another one of the three great inventions of White people. “Well, if Nanabush does actually exist, who else from stories and legends might also exist? I mean, you know that whole argument about, is there life on other planets? There’s like a billion other planets out there in this galaxy alone, and it would seem kind of silly to think that if life… like us Ojibways… popped up here on Earth, that they or other similar kinds of beings couldn’t pop up somewhere out there. I was told that rarely do things happen just once.”

“Where are you going with this, Virgil?”

His iced tea forgotten, Virgil was lost in the possibilities of his argument. “Well, if he really is Nanabush… what if there really is a Santa Claus? Or a Tooth Fairy. Or Dracula. Or the Bogeyman. Or the Devil. Or…”

“Virgil, I get your point. You’re right. That is one scary question.”

“I mean, I doubt if our people were the only ones to have a magical being. It wasn’t guaranteed in any treaty or anything, I don’t think.”

Now, that truly formidable thought hadn’t entered Wayne’s mind. He had been too nearsighted. But his nephew was right. To borrow another culture’s metaphor, Nanabush’s possible existence did open a veritable Pandora’s Box of possibilities. His mind became flooded with a host of other exotic Anishnawbe tales told to him by his mother and grandparents, all peopled by a bizarre assortment of less-than-charitable characters, such as the Wendigo and the Elbow Sisters to name just two. Immediately the world became a much more interesting place, and, at the same time, a substantially less safe one.

“Virgil,” Wayne said, draining the last of the iced tea, “I realize you’re my nephew and that I love you as such, but sometimes… sometimes, I really hate you.”

“Is that your plan? Hating me?”

“No, but it’s as good a beginning as any. Virgil, this is a complicated issue for sure, and I am contemplating a more direct approach with our friend. But for the moment, if you’ll excuse me, I must use the bathroom for it is definitely one of the three greatest inventions of White people. I’ll get us some more iced tea too.” Grabbing both cups, Wayne disappeared into the house.

Things in Virgil’s life seemed to be careening out of control. His mother’s present ill nature, his less-than-stellar academic situation (it was official, Virgil really hated Ms. Weatherford), Maggie’s growing infatuation with the man called John, as well as Dakota’s, added to the sense of chaos that permeated his mind. That wasn’t even factoring in the whole land issue that had everybody on tenterhooks to begin with, not that he really understood it. Adults were very complicated, Virgil thought. He couldn’t quite comprehend why so many of his cousins were in such a hurry to grow up and achieve that level of complication.

Virgil just wanted this man John out of his and his mother’s life, and for things to get back to what could pass for normal. He didn’t think that was too much to ask. And all that stood in its way was him, a thirteen-year-old boy, and his unusual uncle Wayne. He wished he knew what Wayne planned to do.

The museum was immense and well funded for such an average-sized town. Just recently a special archaeology exhibit had opened in the left wing, showcasing burial rights down through the ages, encompassing several thousand years of different civilizations. There were Egyptian sarcophagi, Incan mummies, bones from the catacombs of Rome, Jewish ossuaries and a dozen other unique examples of ways to dispose of human bodies. It was one of the finest collections of remains in that part of the province. Evidently, thought John, all those poor people who thought their spirits and bodies would be crossing over into the next world, Heaven, Paradise, the hereafter, would never have surmised that the Happy Hunting grounds, eternity, Nirvana, Kingdom Come, was a county museum in an economically
depressed Ontario city. The Creator surely did have a sense of humour.

John had raced back from the city, aware that his little detour was placing his big plan in jeopardy. He needed to see the museum from the inside, and he needed time to coordinate things from the inside. So he sped along on his Indian Chief, weaving in and out of traffic. Lucky for him, the police were busy elsewhere, and he arrived back at the museum just in time for a quick tour of the building.