Up Ghost River (17 page)

“Mar-rah-kash. That sounds like
mamaskatch
!”

“What's that mean?”

“It means unbelievable or incredible.
You're
incredible.” I wasn't normally this forward, but the homebrew had given me a spurt of confidence.

“Uh … thanks, Ed.”

“Can we do this again?”

“Of course. We'll see each other around.”

“No, I mean, can we do
this
again?”

“Have another lesson?”

“This! Me here. You there.” I pointed to the space between us. “Walking.”

“What a flirt!”

I grinned.

“Yeah, do you mind?”

“No. I like it.”

I spent a sleepless night trying to think of ways to impress her, this tall woman who seemed to have everything. When dawn broke, I decided to make her a wood sculpture of a wolf, and I climbed over my brothers' sleeping bodies to work outside. After a few
hours, the temperature had warmed and I could see the first puffs of smoke as the town came to life.

Ever since I could remember, a wolf had guided me. My manitou. The animal represented the first of our Seven Sacred Teachings, a lesson on humility. She embodied the virtue, by living for the pack and walking with her head down. Her instruction was the most important, and Papa had taught me to remember it with the dawn of each day. To see the sun rise in the east, and know that you are a small part of her larger power, a speck on this great Earth, is a humbling daily practice. I wanted Joan to start to see the world like this, so I carved my feelings in wood.

“Oh my God, it's beautiful,” she said when I brought over my gift a few days later.

“She's my guide,” I said.

“This sculpture?”

“Her wolf spirit. A manitou.”

“What's that?”

“Sometimes we natives have animal spirits to guide us when we need help. Just something that we do. It goes way back.”

“Really? I thought that was just in the movies.”

“No, it's deeper than that. Animals are our teachers. Their spirits live with our ancestors and the Great Creator Gitchi Manitou in the Spirit World. Each of them offers a Sacred Teaching about how to be in the world.”

“What did the wolf teach you?”

“Lots of things. To try to be there for my friends. To put my head down and keep going.”

“Keep going where?”

“Wherever you need to be. Right here.” I blushed and she smiled.

“It's funny,” she said. “When I was a kid I used to have my own spirit. Not really a spirit, but an imaginary friend. Her name was Jodi. When I was thirteen I told my best friend about her.”

“What happened?”

“I was a bit old for an imaginary friend. At least she thought so. She told the whole school. I never lived it down.”

“Kids can be really mean.”

“Tell me about it. After that I used to spend more time at home. I started writing and reading lots.”

“You did?” I said. “Me too.”

“When?” she said.

“After I got to high school in Kirkland Lake. I started reading more. I wanted to make it to the academic stream. And I was lucky. The Ryans had lots of books.”

“The who?”

“The Ryans. They were my first foster family. They were … like … parents to me.” I looked at her hands. I saw a flash of a man's fingers reaching toward me, and felt a rush of panic.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. Just thinking of something that happened a long time ago.”

“What?” I looked at her hands again. It was only Joan. Such slender, gentle hands. “Nothing.”

“You seem upset.”

“It's nothing. Where was I?”

“We were talking about our childhoods.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“I … sometimes I get …” I wasn't sure what to call my lapses into my past “… distracted.”

“That's okay. I get it.”

“Can I take you out on the Albany sometime?”

“I'd like that.”

Over the next few days, Joan didn't have time for our river trip, as she was filling in for a colleague who was sick, so I decided on a different tactic. To spend more time with Joan, I needed to befriend her roommate, Donna, so she would look the other way when I came by the house. I already knew what the wemistikoshiw missed most. They all talked about it once they got off work: booze. It was more precious than caribou heart on our supposedly dry reserve.

Was our reserve ever dry? Booze was illegal on the reserves until 1951. One of Ottawa's many laws. Then the federal government decided that the laws weren't doing any good, so they legalized it on the reserves. Our local band council decided that the loosening of the laws didn't help our community, so they brought in their own anti-booze rule.

Not that any of the regulations made much difference. We ignored them. Just made homebrew instead. Pa had the best recipe in the whole of James Bay. He never had enough because he shared it around with other families, so I had to be careful how much I took. Too much and I had to dilute the brewing bucket with water. Too much water and there would be trouble.

“Here. A present.” Standing at Joan's door, I handed her a metal flask full of homebrew. She peered outside, to see if anyone was watching. No one was on her street.

“You wanna come in?” she said, pulling me inside and shutting the door.

“Is Donna here?”

“No, she's out, thankfully.”

“The gift is for you and Donna.”

“What is it?”

“Try it.”

She took a small sip. “God, it's strong. Ah. It burns the throat.”

“Does the trick, though.”

“Where did you get this?”

“My dad made it.”

“Really? Isn't it banned?”

“Yeah. But they banned a lot of things. Best to ignore the rules.”

“Ha. It reminds me of when we used to drink behind the sheds in the schoolyard.”

“You did that?”

“Sure. We all did. Until my dad found out.”

“How'd he find out?”

“He went through my bag one morning. I didn't realize until afterwards. And then he just came into the school. Marched right through the playground and confronted us all. Everyone got into big trouble.”

“Oh. What happened to you?”

“I was suspended for two weeks. After that, my parents thought it was best if I went to a new school to get away from ‘bad influences.' ”

“I'm a bad influence,” I said. I took out my cigarettes and lit one.

“I know,” she said. “Can I have one?”

“I didn't know you smoked,” I said, and gave her the packet.

“I don't normally.” I lit her up.

“I had my first cigarette at twelve,” I said. “We smuggled them into St. Anne's.”

“Tell me about that.”

“About what?”

“St. Anne's”

“I went to school. I stayed for eight years. Then I came out.”

“What happened in the middle?”

“Lots of things.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“There's not much more to say.”

“You mean there's nothing about your time there that you want to tell me?”

What happened? Everything happened. Nothing happened. The wemistikoshiw had so many intrusive questions. What did she want me to say?

“Can we talk about it later?” I said. We heard a key in her front door. It was Donna.

“You should go,” Joan said, looking at the door.

“Can I come back?”

“Sure. But let me work on Donna first. She's not much of a drinker. We'll have to be discreet.”

Donna didn't want to break the rules, either on drinking homebrew or letting me into the house, so Joan and I decided to spend time together out on the land. Over the next few weeks, I taught her to shoot and how to gut fish. I tried to teach her how to skin a rabbit but she didn't take to that one too well, said the blood made her feel sick.

“The thing about being sick is the taste. You never forget what it feels like to eat it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking about school.”

“What happened?”

“Oh you know. They whipped us and …” I thought about being forced to eat my own vomit. The memory rushed through me, and I could almost taste digested porridge and carrots in my mouth. “And stuff.”

“Whipped you?”

“Yeah, it happened a lot.”

“At St. Anne's? Where I work?”

“Yeah, but it's different now. At least, I hope it is,” I said.

“We're certainly not allowed to whip anyone.”

“Yeah. Well. Times have changed.”

“Were you ever whipped?”

“Yep.” I took out my flask of homebrew. “You want some?”

“No thanks. What for?”

“For talking. For running in the school. For asking for more food. For not understanding what was going on. Lots of stuff.”

“God, that's so awful. Why did they do it?”

“I don't know. It was their job, I guess.”

“It was their job to whip the boys?”

“Kill the Indian, Save the Child.”

“What?”

“That's just what we heard sometimes. The school policy.”
⁵

“What does it mean? I don't understand.”

“Get rid of the Indian inside of you.”

“How do they do that?”

I sighed. “They just …” I remembered standing in the line and being given a number, then stripping naked and being deloused. I felt trapped by a wave of sadness, and I wished it would all go away—I just wanted this moment to be about me and Joan. “They just … I don't know.”

She smiled sadly, and took my hand.

We didn't have cars in Fort Albany, so Joan had bought a new Ski-Doo from the Northern Store. Cost her three months' salary, and she'd only had it a few days but already said it was worth it. Like me, she loved the feeling when everything fell away in the speed of the moment. You opened up the throttle and the wilderness rushed toward you and life fell behind.

It was a Saturday, just after the first snowfall, and Donna was away. I had come over to Joan's house to help her adjust the muffler. Afterwards, we went to her bathroom to wash up.

“You look beautiful this morning,” I said. Being out on the land with her on her Ski-Doo had made me feel free and given me a rare boost of confidence.

“I do?” She put out her hands, which were covered in brown smears of oil. I took them in mine. She had smudges of oil on her face too, and I loved the way that black brought the creaminess of her skin into focus.

“Your green eyes make me feel like I'm standing at the Albany, looking straight down.”

“How's that?”

“Well, they change constantly. They change with the light and the shadow, and how you're feeling.”

“So how do I feel right now?”

“Well, you're a little embarrassed about the oil on your face.” She laughed. “And that I'm standing in your messy bathroom.”

“You're good!” she said.

“And you're wondering if you remembered to make your bed. You know, just in case.”

She blushed. “No I wasn't.”

“So can I see?”

“What?”

“Your bed.”

“You're terrible!” Her eyes laughed, and we kissed.

“Ma, can you make something special for dinner on Wednesday?”

Ma was in the kitchen cooking scrambled eggs with moose meat for breakfast. Pa was showing Marcel and Danny how to clean a gun.

“What's happening Wednesday?” Ma said.

“A friend is coming over.”

“Who?”

“No one. Just someone I like,” I said, smiling coyly.

“A girl?! What's gotten into you?”

“Nothing. I just like her.”

“What's she like?”

“Well, she's uh … she has green eyes.”

“She's wemistikoshiw?” Ma said. Pa stopped what he was doing with the boys, and he and Ma exchanged looks.

“Uh, yes.”

“Who is she?” Ma asked. “Do I know her?”

“She teaches Mike. She has straight hair, parted down the middle.”

“Oh, her! Yes. She's good. A real lady.”

I had been nervous about bringing a wemistikoshiw home, but suddenly the tension fell away, just like it did when I stood beside my beauty the Albany.

Joan was at our door. She stuck out her hand. Pa shook it.

“Now you wanna see how we greet each other?” he said.

“Sure!”

“Put out your fist.”

He fist-pumped her, then they rubbed elbows.

“Oh, my grandma's going to love that,” Joan said.

“Your grandma?” Pa said.

“Yeah, she loves hearing stories about up north. She says I've been given the key to a different world.”

“Your
gookum
said that?” Pa said.

“Gookum
?” Joan asked.

“That's Cree for grandmother,” Ma said.

“Oh yeah. She's great. I really miss her up here.”

Pa smiled and looked at me. “This one,” he said, and gestured toward Joan. “She's a keeper.”

—

We were at Joan's house, lying on her bed, listening to the wind. It was hammering loud on her metal roof.

“Is it ever going to let up?” she asked.

“I like it. It sounds like drumming.”

“It makes me afraid that the whole roof is going to come off.”

“We have a story about that. About how the wind destroyed the house of a bad man.”

“Oh, great.”

“No, it's a good story. He was cruel. He got too greedy. He went out and killed a bunch of birds just for the fun of it. So the wind took revenge.”

“So how is this a good story?”

“Because it shows us to respect life.”

“I see,” she said, bemusedly. “Where did you learn all this stuff?”