Born With a Tooth

  Crow climbs up onto a car, stomping up the hood and onto the roof. Crow leaps and flies off, flaps his thin wings and takes flight for a moment. He lands in a bush and can feel its sharp branches sticking him. Rolling onto his back, he stares at the stars. He needs to find more gasoline.

  When he closes his eyes, the stars remain, tattooed on the inside of his eyelids. He can feel the prick and needle heat burn on the insides of his lids, the heat burning brighter as his head begins to thump and shriek. It used to take longer before the crash. It’s time to break into the tank of a car or snowmobile and resoak his rag.

  The crunch of tires on gravel sends stones popping and ricocheting in his skull. Truck doors slam. Feet pound. Hands grab. Crow opens his eyes and his rigid body goes slack. Jack and Ron pull on his ears, slap his face.

  “How you feeling, Crow?” Jack asks.

  “You huffing again tonight, Tonto?” Ron asks.

  Crow knows it’s best to become a turtle with the police.

  He sinks into himself. If he says nothing they can’t hit him as hard, charge him with more charges, threaten more punishment. Jack-ass and mo-Ron. Hands rifle his pockets, pull his secrets from him.

  “What’s this? Something you found for show-and-tell come Monday?” Ron asks. He’s Mohawk from somewhere way down south. Not Cree at all.

  “Or part of a Molotov cocktail in a plastic bag? You weren’t thinking of firebombing the police station, were you?” Jack asks. He’s Metis, looks white as the judge that flies up to Sharpening Teeth every month. Crow shrinks deeper into his jacket. “Let’s take him in,” Jack says. “Destruction of private property, for one. Look at the dents on the hood of that new Blazer. Trespass to boot.”

  “I hope he doesn’t shit himself in lock-up again,” Ron says. “I hate cleaning that up.” Crow sometimes wishes he remembered how to speak his language. Snatching phrases from old women and men walking by like he’s pickpocketing them, he listens to the harsh syllables and light tongues that make Crow remember when he was a baby, a year old. His first memories, his great-grandfather talking to him about trapping brother beaver and drawing his shotgun on sister goose. Old man is crazy now. Talks to dogs. Crow steals change from his money jar whenever he goes over. Oldest man in the world. What a family he is from. As if the old man isn’t bad enough, his uncle is Legless Joe, the town drunk. So drunk all the time he doesn’t even notice he’s got legs.

  “Full name,” mo-Ron asks Crow from across the metal desk. Crow slumps in his chair, tries to focus hard on the pain in his wrists from the handcuffs.

  “Francis Cheechoo,” Jack-ass answers for him. “Come on, Francis. Cooperate with us so we can get on with our lives.”

  “Age?” Ron asks. The harsh lights of the station burn Crow’s eyes. His head aches fierce. “What are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “I am sixteen today,” Crow answers quickly.

  “Jesus, Francis, you still look fourteen,” Jack says. “You better quit the huffing and start eating proper. You’re a skinny little bugger.”

  “Sixteen today, huh?” Ron butts in. “Well, I guess we got to charge you like an adult.”

  Crow’s been in more fights than he can remember. He’s got a knife scar on his neck from juvie hall in North Bay. More broken-bottle cuts than he can count on his arm. Had his leg broke in a fight once. Got it stomped on. Not his right leg. The other one. But it isn’t called the wrong leg, either, although that’s how he thinks of that side of his body. He can’t remember what you call the other side. Crow forgets the simplest things now. It’s not right, it’s wrong.

  He’s been in lock-up for three days. When he’s not huffing, Crow becomes Francis again. He doesn’t know why. His mother hasn’t come that he knows of, and neither has his mother’s cousin, his Aunt Elise. Nothing to huff for three days. Nothing to do in the cell but tell the old drunks next door to fuck off and quit stinking up the place, or shout at them to speak English, goddammit, because Cree sounds like fucking Chinese. Francis is shaking all the time now, like it’s cold in here, even though the few others who pass through complain of such heat in September.

  “The geese don’t know to fly south,” one old drunk tells the other. “Suddenly it will be cold fast and then they’ll be in trouble.”

  “Indian summer, eh?” the other one says. “That’s what I think we should call this drunk tank, ha!” Both men laugh loud. Francis thinks they’re stupid.

  Aunt Elise shows up but doesn’t have bail for him. Rules change at sixteen, she finds out. Bail is higher. Everybody knows Elise has no money. The bingo hall and Meechim Store have her money tied up.

  The police let her talk to Francis. “Look at you,” she says. “Ever sick-looking, you. You’re going to end up just like your uncle. It runs in your blood. You want to be the second Legless Joe on this reserve?” Aunt Elise is nineteen and works sometimes at the Meechim Store and the Sky Ranch. She is the reserve beauty, and all his friends want to be with her. She spends money on girls’ magazines and makeup.

  A couple of days pass and Francis’ stomach gets worse and worse. He can’t hold anything down. He shakes and shivers. The old men in the cell next door get released. One, then two new ones arrive. Francis realizes that one of them is the same old man.

  “Hey, let’s call this place Indian summer, ha!” he laughs. Francis takes to walking up and down in his cell. It is six steps by six steps. At nighttime he dreams of taking a five-gallon red plastic container of the ultra-super unleaded gasoline that makes boats, cars, trucks and snowmachines run clean, raising it above his head and pouring it on himself. A shower of power. The pure burn of gasoline in his eyes and in his throat turns to fire. A cold blue fire that shimmers and splashes around Francis, altering him, burning him so hot he glows white, pale white like a ghost. Crow’s arms stretching up higher until feathers made from that stuff that doesn’t burn sprout from his arms, then his chest and shoulders, feathers sprouting on his ass, even, and on his legs. The feathers singe black and he lets out a mighty caw that swallows up the blue flame and Francis is Crow. Black Crow. Burnt by fire and slashed by knives and indestructible, flying up above Sharpening Teeth and across the river, free.

  A week after Crow gets busted, Great-grandfather shows up and pays his bail. He buys Crow lunch at the Sky Ranch and laughs at nothing, like a crazy old bugger. Crow excuses himself as soon as he can, to look for gasoline.

  Crow is with Jerry Meekis by the river a couple of days later when his Aunt Elise finds him. Crow is buzzing hard. Elise is crying. “Your sister Linda is dead,” she says, looking down at him. “She OD’d on sleeping pills last night, down in Timmins.” Crow looks up at his aunt, her head is framed by the sun. Her lips move but he doesn’t get the message real well. Doesn’t want it right now. Elise walks away, crying. Jerry stares at Crow. Crow picks up his plastic bag and takes deep breaths. Jerry doesn’t take his eyes from him for a while.

  Edwin Blueboy invites Crow over to his house that night. Crow knows that Edwin thinks Crow’s cool because Crow told Miss Lanscomb to kiss his balls and was suspended from school for it and never went back. Edwin is three years younger. He informs Crow that four times now he has told different teachers to kiss his balls, but all he gets is months’ worth of detentions. Mr. Hughes the gym teacher actually laughed when Edwin said, “Kiss my balls, Mr. Hughes.”

  After he stopped laughing, Mr. Hughes said in his Scottish accent, “I’ll bite the wee buggers off, ya little bastard. Go to the vice-principal’s office.”

  Crow is on Edwin’s porch after dark, with all six hours of The Stand on videocassette and a two-and-a-half-gallon red plastic container filled with super unleaded. Over at Two Bays Tackle he slipped the three cassettes one at a time into his pants whenever Maggie the cashier wasn’t looking. When he saw how easy that worked, he picked up the red plastic gas can from a pyramid of them in the middle of the store, walked out the door, walked up to the gas pump outside, filled his can with the high-grade, put the nozzle back, wave
d to Maggie as she chatted on the phone, then walked away. He really is becoming invisible.

  “Where’s your mom?” Crow asks.

  “She’s at your mom’s house with everyone else. What happened to your sister?” Edwin asks, looking nervous. “Did she really kill herself?”

  Crow ignores him and walks into Edwin’s room. He rummages around and finds a white T-shirt.

  “Don’t use that,” Edwin says, standing behind him. “That’s my new shirt.” Crow walks to the kitchen and pulls a Northern Store plastic bag from the cupboard. He opens the gas can and pours a good amount on the shirt, Edwin whining, then places the shirt in the bag. He hyper-breathes into this new bag until he falls flat on his back, like he’s been hit in the forehead with a long board.

  When he is feeling able, Crow goes through Edwin’s four-room house, looking. Edwin follows, acting afraid and talking. Crow finds her stash of booze locked in a wooden box. He carries it to the kitchen and smashes the box apart with an electric can opener. Edwin tries to tell him no, but Crow gets Edwin to shut up with a mouthful, then another, of rye. In an hour, Edwin is so drunk he throws up in his little sister’s room. Claire is eleven and Louise is nine. They peer into the kitchen from the hallway at Crow and their brother sitting at the table.

  “You’re a pussy,” Crow says to Edwin. “You never even taken a little sniff in your life.” Crow holds his bag out to Edwin. Edwin shakes his head. Crow places the bag over his nose and mouth to prove he’s bad to the bone, and breathes in and out quickly. He hears little popping sounds in his head now whenever he huffs, hundreds of little bubbles, like bubble bath popping inside his ears. Edwin’s sisters stand there in the doorway in their nightgowns, watching with big eyes. Edwin keeps sipping on the rye bottle, making a gagging noise in his throat each time.

  “Here, try it,” Crow says to the girls, holding out the bag. “This is the same stuff that makes cars run, boats float and people fly.” He laughs hysterically at his words. Edwin’s sisters duck away quickly into the hallway. But then the oldest one, Claire, walks into the kitchen and over to Crow, her hand stretched out to the bag.

  “Claire!” her sister hisses from the doorway. Edwin is so drunk all he can do is laugh hysterically.

  “Let me try it if it’s so good,” Claire says. Crow sees his sister Linda in her eyes, hears her voice in Claire’s.

  “You’re at home safe with Mom right now,” Crow says. “You can’t have any.”

  “Gimme, Crow!” she says, holding out her hand to his hand clutching the bag.

  “Only if you put my movie on,” Crow says. Claire darts off to the living room and digs through the pile of videos until she finds it. She slides it into the VCR and The Crow pops up on the screen. Brandon Lee, son of Bruce, dodges bullets, bleeding, living on although they shoot him and stab him. Crow is drawn to the pure sounds of violence on the flickering walls. Claire sits cross-legged in front of the screen, transfixed on the men shooting guns and Brandon Lee’s pale ghost face.

  “That is me,” Crow says. “I am Crow. I am invincible.”

  “He is Crow,” Edwin says from behind, drawn too to the sounds and shadows. “This is Crow, the invincible, invisible man. Stabbed one hundred times and still alive!” Edwin begins to giggle uncontrollably. Claire doesn’t seem to hear her brother, her mouth half open, eyes fixed on the screen, unblinking. Something pops loud in Crow’s head.

  “Look at me, Linda!” Crow screams at her. “Look here at me!” He runs to the TV, picks it up and smashes it onto the floor. Claire screams and jumps up, runs away. Edwin begins laughing harder and falls down. Crow wants to stop, but he can’t. He grabs pictures from the walls and hurls them, runs to the kitchen and rips cupboards open, smashes the cups and bowls and plates. He runs back to the living room and upends the couch, throws the coffee table against the wall. He runs to the window and pulls the curtains down, then grabs a chair and hurls it against the glass, the window shattering. “I am Crow, Linda!” he screams. “I am invisible, not you!” Then he remembers his can of gasoline.

  He walks around with it, sloshing floors and walls until the little house stinks with the fumes. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his lighter, flicks it and touches off the gasoline. The blue flame runs quickly away, the blue licking the orange carpet and yellow walls, the blue licks disappearing into the walls and blowing out smoke. The smoke gathers quickly on the ceiling, then drops down onto the rest of the house like a choking fog. Claire and Louise scream and run for the door, but the blue licks pop up in front of them, turning to an angry black and red on the front door. Crow runs to the girls, his eyes stinging, and grabs one under each arm. He blindly stumbles over the mess he’s made, tripping over the giggling Edwin. Crow drags the girls to where the now black smoke runs out of the house. He lifts and pushes each girl through the window and onto the lawn.

  His eyes are useless now. The house roars yellow and red and black. He can’t breathe, crawling on his stomach, his hands groping for Edwin. “Edwin!” he screams in a cough. There is the roaring sound of big things cracking open, wooden walls going up. Crow is scared. A little boy. He gives up to the smoke, thinks of black scorched wings and dead Cree boys, burnt and oozing. He slips into a nap, barely feeling Edwin’s hands pulling at his feet, Edwin laughing and choking, the shouts of Edwin’s sisters on the lawn.

  Crow was lucky, the doctor says. He is lying in a bed in the little hospital beside the church. He’s having a hard time breathing. There is oxygen and a mask beside his bed to help him when he needs it. Jack-ass the cop is posted at his door until he’s well enough to fly out to Cochrane for court. “There’s no getting out of this one with easy time,” Jack tells him. “No more juvie hall for you. You entered the big time.”

  Crow’s mother comes to visit, and his Aunt Elise and uncles and cousins he hasn’t seen in a long time. They’ve all gathered for Linda’s funeral. “This is not what I needed at a time like this, Francis,” his mother tells him, her eyes red and puffy. “They’re going to take you away.” His mother cries some more. Crow wants to cry but can’t. His mother talks to the doctor about Crow’s huffing and the doctor starts giving him medication that makes him feel light-headed, maybe a little better. But he sucked up so much smoke he still can’t stand up. He thinks of his sister Linda, of when they were little kids out at the goose camp. He misses her. Her laugh. Her eyes.

  A couple of days later, Crow hears the commotion outside. The plane with his sister’s body has landed at the airport and everyone on reserve has gone out to meet it. All Crow can do is look from his window on the second floor at all the people walking around below. Then the chief’s red pickup passes by with Linda’s casket in the back. Crow tries to call out and coughs up black soot and blood.

  That night he wakes to the sound of a drum and Indian singing on the river. He wants badly to be where the sound is coming from. It is music he can imagine Brandon Lee as the Crow listening to. It matches the beat of his heart under his hospital gown. The medication makes him fall back asleep.

  On the day of his sister’s funeral, the doctor refuses to give the family permission to bring Crow to the church. “He’s too weak,” the doctor says. “He suffered severe smoke inhalation to the point he’s permanently damaged his lungs. Not to mention all the damage he’d already inflicted with gas sniffing.”

  Crow stares out the window at the church spire. He hears the drumming again, but this time he’s sure it is not a dream. He hears one voice, Indian singing, then many. The song is coming from the church.

  Tears come to Francis’ eyes. He feels a little relief, is able to sit up in his bed now. He taps his hand on his thigh in time.

  GOD’S CHILDREN

  SEPTEMBER 1

  I’ve been here a year, and a lesser man would have been driven mad or been driven away by now. These people are obstinate, stubborn creatures for the most part, who smile and nod at me when I offer advice and then do just the opposite. I never asked to be sent to this parish. Th
e middle of Northern Ontario is worlds away from my beloved Toronto. Today, despite the warm spell, is, after all, the harbinger of autumn, which means that the snows and arctic winds are not far behind. Perhaps this is the reason for my blue mood.

  Father Wilkes, God watch over the mad old bastard’s soul, did more damage on this reserve and drove more Cree from the Church than a plague of locusts could have. Over the last year, Sisters Jane and Marie have filled me in on his behaviour, how it became more and more bizarre, how he turned mass into rude and scatological monologues, how he railed against everyone. As Sister Jane put it, “He’d say a whole lot of fuck, shit, piss, heathen and devil worshipper in his homilies.” I was taken aback by the language, I must admit.

  In his defence, it isn’t hard to see how one can go mad in such an isolated community. Satan comes in many forms here — in the sweat lodges, in the bottle, in the Cree drumming and dancing. Although I consider myself a modern man, it isn’t difficult for me to slip into pre-Vatican II mode, sensing the devil’s work all around, feeling the need to fortify myself against it. Although Sisters Marie and Jane sometimes offer decent conversation, it isn’t enough. I need to find another outlet for this malaise that builds inside me.

  SEPTEMBER 3

  I discovered another of Father Wilkes’ mad ramblings this morning, this one scribbled in black felt-tip marker in the strangest of places. My dresser drawer was sticking, so I removed my clothes and took the drawer from the dresser. On the bottom of it I found this note: “The Indians don’t take me seriously. I can hear them laughing at me from as much as a half kilometre away.” Clearly, he’d lost his senses by this point.

  In the first month or so, I found his notes everywhere. One of my favourites is “These nuns are trying to poison me with their blueberry pies and farts.” Why he had it taped on the back of the television remains a mystery. Another one, scribbled in the coat closet by the mud-room, reads, “Indians purposely created the canoe to be a giant replica of a woman’s holy place. I know now why they sit in them and laugh and point fingers at me.” One that was a little spookier read, “The flies, no matter what I do, return to this house. I’m hearing voices of the damned most nights when I close my eyes.”