Painted Tongue walked to the liquor store with his back a little straighter. I will get a bottle and pray for the spirit in that bottle to release itself and talk to me, he hummed. The best spirits are in vodka because vodka is distilled from potatoes and potatoes are the fruit of the earth and live under the ground with other spirits of the earth, he hummed, walking into the liquor store. But the man at the counter wouldn’t let him come inside, so Painted Tongue had to give him his money first and point to the row of shiny vodka bottles. The man handed him a bottle in a bag along with the change, and Painted Tongue left for the Beaches in search of Kyle Root.
A small crowd had gathered on Queen Street near the Beaches. Painted Tongue watched from a distance as a man on a box in a shabby black suit screamed at the people gathered around him. The Lord told me last night, the man shouted, looking at the crowd with fiery eyes, that there is no place in sweet heaven for those of you who sin. There is no room in the sky for those of you who gamble, who drink, who find false love in a married woman’s arms. The Lord will purge the wicked from the earth. He will cast out the cheaters, the homosexuals, the unbelievers. He spoke to me in a dream last night, and told me to pass the word.
Painted Tongue left the crowd quickly. He’d heard those words before. Now the man in the black suit had forced him to remember.
A new world is coming, boys, Mr. Grainger, the white teacher, used to shout out the window of the rez school when he caught Painted Tongue and Kyle behaving badly during recess, chasing girls with garter snakes or taking the air out of their enemies’ bicycle tires. A new world is coming, and this one will erupt in flames. There is no room for your heathen beliefs in God’s heaven, boys! he’d shout louder from his window, his face red and shaking when Painted Tongue and Kyle laughed at him. The innocent will perish because of the wicked, and the wicked will gnash their teeth in hellfire. Hellfire will burn your heathen ways from your bodies and minds! Think about that next time you act heinously against Janine or Tom. The Lord is watching!
Kyle would talk to Painted Tongue about the cuckoo teacher after school. Even the students he gave A’s to thought he was mad. Even though they agreed the teacher was a crazy old bastard while they sat out at the dock puffing cigarettes stolen from their parents, Crazy Old Grainger still scared Painted Tongue horribly, the way his face turned red and shook when he screamed about burning death, the spittle flying from his mouth. Kyle thought it was good that Grainger always separated him and Painted Tongue from the rest to scream at, but Painted Tongue, in some small way, started believing that he was worse than the rest. Sometimes even now he’d wake up sweating, the ghost of Grainger’s face come to remind him of the Second Coming of the Lord.
Kyle was nowhere to be found. Painted Tongue walked west on Bloor with the setting sun, stopping in doorways of shops to take a swig of vodka. The nothing smell calmed his stomach, gave him courage enough to wander along Bloor. He could tell by the crowds that it was Friday night, the streets busy with students finished with school and people who liked nights late in the spring. Painted Tongue walked by the bars and stores with his mickey snug in his belt. There were a few good gulps left. He’d make it through to midnight when people were everywhere and easy with their spare change.
I will count coup on this man-made turtle, Painted Tongue hummed as he walked. I will count coup on the god with the white beard who wants me to burn in hell. I will find a thousand kilos of dynamite and blow you up, motherfucker. Kyle will help me and call it art. I will seek revenge for the gay who was stabbed in the park. Repeat two hundred times. Write it on the blackboard two thousand times then you can drink the rest of your vodka.
When Kyle was found, Painted Tongue would get him to take him to the police and Kyle would draw a glorious picture of what Painted Tongue had seen in the park. The men would be caught, and Kyle would sell the picture for thousands of dollars and give the money to Painted Tongue so that he could buy enough explosives.
At Bloor and Clinton, Painted Tongue spotted a man from behind that he thought must be Kyle, a man walking with his arm around a woman with blonde hair. He ran towards them as they climbed into a car, the man holding the door for the woman, then shutting it and walking around to the driver’s seat. Painted Tongue tried to shout his friend’s name, but only a hot wind came out. The car pulled into traffic just as Painted Tongue reached the passenger side. He pounded on the window and the woman looked up at him through the glass and wailed. Painted Tongue strained to look in the window as he ran beside the car, trying to see Kyle’s face. The car veered sharply away and sped up until Painted Tongue was left gasping by the curb.
It could not have been Kyle. If it was Kyle, he did not see his old friend Painted Tongue. He walked back along Bloor.
His nose was itchy, the stitches drying into his skin. He sneaked into a bar with a loud band and went into the washroom. He stared into the mirror and picked at the stitch knots, six of them in a crooked line that ran the bridge of his nose. One by one, he found a good enough hold to yank five of them out. I will not go back to do battle with that fat nurse, he repeated over and over again in his hum. The threads burned as they exited. The skin on his nose mostly held together, but beads of blood popped up and ran in little lines to his mouth. The last stitch held stubbornly, so Painted Tongue took a gulp of vodka and walked outside.
He found an empty paper coffee cup. He squatted by the bar’s entrance and held it out in front of him for coins. When the loud band took a break, the people poured outside and stood talking around him. A group of boys in baseball caps gathered near and talked loudly about Painted Tongue. The one with bright eyes looked down at him.
Are you an Algonquin? he asked. Painted Tongue looked away. Are you Cree? the boy continued. Painted Tongue pretended not to notice him. The boy’s friends stopped talking and looked down at Painted Tongue.
Do you want a beer? another asked.
Of course he does, another said, and they all laughed.
Are you Iroquois? the one with bright eyes asked. Painted Tongue stood up angrily. His head was spinning, and now off the sidewalk he felt unprotected. He pulled his bottle from his belt and drained the rest.
I will count coup on you, baseball cap motherfucker, Painted Tongue hummed. The tones of his war chant came to him. I will take a knife and cut your scalp from your skull for calling me Iroquois. I will rip your ears from your head and eat them in front of you. He let his hand drop, dangling the bottle. The boys backed away a little.
Lookit that! He’s got attitude, one of them shouted as they formed a circle on the sidewalk around him.
Painted Tongue began to pace slowly around the inside of the circle. He felt a warrior’s control suddenly, all eyes upon him, watching closely his every move. When Painted Tongue walked by one of the boys, he’d stare at the boy’s eyes until he recognized the wolf spider of fear in them. He walked carefully, slowly by their feet, watching their faces pass his. The boys widened the ring. Painted Tongue concentrated on his own feet moving. He picked up the pace. He could hear the pound of the drum in his head. The boys began clapping in time. Check it out, one said. He’s on the warpath.
Painted Tongue reached out and touched each boy as he passed. He counted coup upon every single one in the group and watched the look of shame and disgust on their faces as they shrank away from his outstretched hand. He was happy. He was a warrior. He moved faster, bent far forward, lifting his knees high. He closed his eyes and danced the circle. It was effortless, like a strong wind picking him up and carrying him. He saw red behind his eyelids, then yellow and blue. In his mind it was he and Kyle running fast, chasing their shadows on a bright day in the tall grass, their shadows stretching in front of them and trying to get away.
They ran across the field that turned into a hill that got steeper and steeper. Kyle caught his own shadow and Painted Tongue could see Kyle’s body now, his thin brown back, his red shorts, his skinny legs pumping. Kyle was always the faster one. The circle of boys sped up
their clapping in time with Painted Tongue. The hill grew steeper and the grass thinned out to smooth grey stone. Kyle was getting away. He was near the top where the hill curved round. Painted Tongue’s chest heaved with the effort of catching up. He looked behind him for a second and could see the field far below. He was so high up it made his head spin. Painted Tongue reached the top and it was the stadium, a colourless turtle shell he was running upon. Kyle was gone.
Just when Painted Tongue knew he could dance no longer, he felt one of the boy’s boots catch his foot. Painted Tongue was happy for it. His dance was over. He stumbled over the boot and the momentum carried him forward with arms outstretched, one hand still clutching the empty bottle. He really was flying into the air now, off the stadium roof, off the turtle’s back. I am flying, he tried to hum. Oh shit, I am flying high.
His hands hit the pavement first and the bottle shattered. The long broken neck of it pointed up to him like a skinning knife. He wanted to keep flying but the earth was pulling him down, wanted to say that the circle had not been completed yet but there wasn’t enough time.
BEARWALKER
I don’t know whose story this is. All I know is that my oldest friend — the one I first rode bicycles around Annunciation House Reserve with; the one who, too shy to ask Pam Tozer for a date at the age of twelve, got me to ask for him; the one I shared my first beer with — is after me with a big Buck knife. His name is Dink and the Nishnabe-Aski Police Force told me to take this serious. They’re blaming him for one stabbing already on reserve. As much as I don’t want to believe he stuck Antoine Hookimaw through the lung and the liver, there’s no denying Dink snapped not long after his trip to the Big Smoke, the megacity of Toronto. He has since disappeared into the bush. The doctors say Antoine is going to die.
The trouble started shortly after Dink and my little sister, Gloria, his girl, returned from Toronto. Their plan had been to live there and become, over time, city people. People of the Smog, my father calls them. But they ran out of cash after a couple of months and took their time returning home. I could see how easy it would be to run out of money there. I was told once that a bottle of beer at some nightclubs can cost you five or six dollars. Five or six dollars! Can you imagine? To tell you the truth, I can imagine that. There are desperadoes up on those
dry reserves on James Bay who’ll pay a hundred dollars for a mickey of vodka. When Dink came back from the city, he was so broke that people claimed he was sniffing glue and gasoline, and that accounted for his behaviour. He’d changed from a quiet kid, the best tracker on reserve, to a crazed bastard who beat up Gloria. Worse even than that, Dink made no secret of it that while down south he’d learned from a dark Ojibwe shaman on Manitoulin how to shape-shift.
I’ve had the ability to talk from the age of seven months. Full sentences in both English and Cree. I’d often, and still do, mix them up in the same sentence and not even realize it. My mother told me when I was still a young geegesh that I was on this earth to be the one to tell the tipachimoowin, the stories. This is because my mother is polite and could never get me to shut up. But her little announcement stuck with me, her saying to me, “Xavier Bird, I thought your father was a talker. But you! You I cannot make stop your foolish talk.” She actually said this, “foolish talk.” In Cree it’s pukwuntowuyumewin. Maybe I remember my mother’s words too fondly sometimes, more fondly than the reality. But it was her telling me that I was the talker, the storyteller, that made the biggest impression on me.
It was Antoine Hookimaw who explained to me that the next logical step for the right storyteller is to become a shaman, a healer. “It is one thing to talk to entertain, Xavier,” he told me. “But it is a more powerful menewawin, a more powerful gift, to talk in order to teach. If you become a good teacher, you are on your way to healing some of the things that have gone wrong.” It was old Antoine who was trying to show me that way. And it was Dink, my best friend, who stabbed Antoine and wants to do the same thing to me. I’m only twenty-six. Far too young for nipoowin. Who ever wants to die, anyway? When Dink and Gloria came back from that trip, they were driving an orange Pinto with a big red heart painted on the driver’s door, a diamond on the passenger side, a black spade on the back hatch, right below the fishbowl window, and a large black club like an ominous clover on the hood. Thinking about it now, I guess he was trying to send all of us a message. He’d gone into that big world with nothing and come back having gambled, gambled with the omosomuk, the grandfathers, and won some of their secrets. Dink even went so far as to strut around the reserve and crow about his new specialized talent. Of course nobody believed it, and of course we called him on it.
The day he got back, the moment he arrived in town, he was bragging. Even before I had a chance to see my little sister, Jeremy and Christine and Elijah and me were cornered by Dink. He brought with him a case of beer and this helped take the edge off his new-found ability to inflate himself. We sat at Christine’s table and before the first beer was drunk Dink blurted out, “I’ve learned the art of bearwalking.” We all just looked at him for a while, then went back to drinking our beers.
“You’re a bearwalker?” Jeremy finally asked. Jeremy is 380 pounds, and when he breathes he sounds bearlike.
Dink nodded.
Jeremy wiped the corner of his mouth. “Well, turn yourself into a cow, because I’m starving.” That started the fun rolling for a little while. Dink hated to be teased.
I asked Dink to turn into a crow. Christine asked him to turn into an elephant because she’d never seen one in real life. Elijah asked Dink to turn into a beluga whale because the sight of a beluga always made Elijah happy and giggly like a schoolgirl. With each request Dink just shook his head and looked at us like you look at little children who are stupid.
“OK,” I finally said. “Something simple. How about a bear? After all, doesn’t that Ojibwe guy, Oliver Sandy, down on Manitoulin claim he’s a bear man?”
At the mention of this, Dink bristled, and I thought to myself, huh! Maybe he’s going to turn into a porcupine. But he didn’t.
“Don’t ever speak the name or mention the likeness of Oliver Sandy in joking, or even at all, Xavier Bird. He has more power than you could ever imagine, more power in his foot than some storyteller,” he spat the word out, “some storyteller with big dreams of becoming a healer.” And with that, he stomped out of Christine’s. Oh, we got a good laugh out of that. You don’t grow up around here making big claims and not being able to live up to them. Annunciation House is a rough reserve. And after all, the four of us had helped raise Dink.
Dink’s real name was Francis, but he grew up with the nickname Toad Boy and, when he was older, Toad Man. Poor Francis was born ugly enough to be given many ugly nicknames. One time a girl he was trying to pick up in Cochrane said, “Get away from me, you dink,” and his new name was born. When Dink was a child, the white schoolteachers thought he was slow, maybe a little retarded. His drooling didn’t help. Most of the other kids pelted him with dog shit, soft and stinking in summer, hard as the hardest rock in winter. So Elijah and Jeremy and Christine and me took him under our wing in grade six. He was such a pathetic little sight. We taught him best we could how to walk like a warrior, to never take an insult but to strike back blow for blow, even if it meant he was lying unconscious in the schoolyard with the nuns hovering over him tsk-tsking like a gaggle of grouse hens. It was the only way to survive. Slowly Francis toughened and drooled a little less often.
He moves slowly, as if he is under water or always walking in a strong headwind, and maybe this is why he is so good in the bush. My mother used to say that Gitchi-Manitou never once created a person without giving him or her some special talent, and Francis’ is knowing the ways of the bush. He can sneak up on a moose or caribou and practically touch its ass before that animal even knows he’s around. One of the craziest sights I ever saw was way up north in the bush, hunting one winter. I watched as Francis ran through a herd of caribou like he was one of th
em, the caribou ignoring him the way you ignore a bothersome friend.
Dink can live in the bush for days, slowly, quietly picking his way through the thickest brush, eating edible plants and berries as he walks, spotting animals even before the elder hunters are sure what’s around. He has the gift in a dying culture. Once that gift would have been worth everything but now it’s worth a few hundred dollars a week to Yankee hunters up from Michigan or Minnesota. Dink isn’t an ugly kid in the bush, he is the man.
It’s hard to travel anywhere within three hundred kilometres of Annunciation House and not find someone related through blood or marriage. But Dink was double cursed. He came from a dead family line. He was the last man named Killomonsett that anyone knew of. His father drowned seven months before Dink’s birth. His mother died during it. He had no brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins. In the rough country of Northern Ontario where family is granted one of life’s few comforts, Dink was alone, raised by nuns. The belief around the reserve was that when Dink’s mother saw what she’d brought into the world she couldn’t live with it, and any other living relatives died of the shame of him.
My family, we’re big and noisy. I’ve got seven older sisters and six older brothers. When I came out, everyone figured I was the last for sure. My mother was in her mid-forties by then and, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, I was an accident. But really, who isn’t in this world? My mother was forty-nine when she found out she was kekiskawusoo, pregnant, once again. “Thirtythree years of pregnancy!” she shouted at my father when she found out. “You’re cut off, you!” One month to the day shy of fifty, my mother had Gloria. She celebrated a half-century of life with yet one more child attached to her breast. “I can’t even have a cold beer to celebrate,” she growled at my father. But my mother loves Gloria. She’s always been the special one in my mother’s, in my family’s, eyes.