Fat keeps tripping and falling, and Elijah turns to him. You will kill us all if you keep this up, his dull eyes say. The rest of the original section is dead. I find it hard to believe that Fat is the only one to have survived this long. None of our dead friends would have believed Fat would outlive them.
The crack of rifle fire echoes back, bouncing through the trees. We crouch and continue. We are close. Elijah stops and motions for us to split into two groups. I watch Elijah telling me to take one and go fifty yards up the right flank. A pocket of Hun wait ahead, his lips say, holed up in a deadfall. I will know it when I see it. Both groups are to lob Mills bombs into it, and then Elijah’s side will advance to mop up while my soldiers offer covering fire.
Just as Elijah called it, I find the deadfall ahead. It is as if Elijah’s been here before, has seen the lay of the land.
I let Elijah’s side throw the first bombs, and I follow suit. Screams and shouts and the muffled racket of Elijah’s group charging in travels my way. The sharp smell of cordite tingles my nose. I see movement through the mist, bodies advancing toward me from the deadfall. They are running from Elijah. I point for the others to see and they shoulder their rifles, kill the first few who approach us. Their startled eyes. The stragglers that follow throw up their arms and we quickly take them prisoner and collect their weapons.
“There is no time for prisoners,” Elijah scolds when he comes up to me and sees the men I’ve captured.
A dull anger thumps in my rib cage. “Would you rather I kill them, Corporal?” I ask.
Elijah looks at me, something like sadness in his eyes. “X, you’ll have to take them back. Fat, you go with him.”
I am satisfied to do this. I no longer have the stomach for what I do. Fat and I begin the journey with our prisoners back behind the line. Five of them walk along, three very young-looking, one my age, the fifth old enough to be the father to all of them. Blood runs from the old one’s ears. Our Mills bombs must have popped them. Rumour on both sides is that we do not take prisoners, that they are killed on the spot or taken back and tortured. I offer these five cigarettes, place the cigarettes in their mouths and light them, smile so that they know I mean no harm. Their eyes have the look of long and terrible fighting, of seeing things that men should not be witness to, the same look that is in my eyes, I should think. For them, at least, the war is over. I wish I could say the same for myself.
An idea comes to me late at night when I’m most vulnerable. If I’m wounded badly enough, they will send me to Blighty, maybe even home. But how to accomplish this? I could ask Elijah to do it. No, not a good idea. In his blood-lust Elijah would probably kill me. I laugh to myself. Am I a coward for thinking such thoughts?
The air in the mornings is sharp, the smell of hardwood fires travelling for miles across the open country. We’ve broken through the Marcoing Line and stand before Cambrai. The city is important, Fritz’s major rail centre. To take Cambrai is to be a short way to victory. At least this is what the officers tell us.
We make our final preparations on an October evening. I watch as men write last letters to wives and children, clean rifles and check gear, pray silently with moving lips or just stare up at the sky.
Elijah and I are sent in before dawn. We are to be advance scouts, report back on what we find, on troop movement, on how well fortified the city is.
We sneak into the first crushed outer buildings of the city just as the sun is threatening to rise. We crawl over rubble, keep one eye out for the enemy, one out for a good place of cover, and steadily move into the town. It is deserted. Elijah stands up from his crouch and boldly begins to walk along the street that we’d been leapfrogging along. I tense, ready for the shot of a sniper to ring out, but nothing happens. Elijah walks further down the street and I follow. The sun is up now. No one’s here. They have abandoned the city.
Elijah is ahead of me and his shoulders are shaking. I think he must be upset. Me, I’m happy that we’ve not had to fight any more today. Elijah turns around, but anger is not on his face. A smile broadens it. He looks young again, like himself.
“What is wrong with them?” he laughs. “They are not ready to give up already, are they? They are going to do this to me?”
He begins to laugh louder and I want to believe it’s a crazy laugh. Elijah walks away from me, back toward our line. I follow at a distance.
After Cambrai we are relieved, given time to recuperate and prepare for our pursuit of the Germans. The others talk of how Fritz retreats further back toward his homeland, refusing to surrender. The Germans still have the capability to keep this war going for months, even years. The thought depresses, then infuriates me.
Telling a superior about the murder of Grey Eyes and the lieutenant begins to appeal to me. Telling might purify, something that the matatosowin, the sweat lodge, can no longer do. Elijah crossed the line, crossed it long ago. He won’t stop. Is it up to me to stop him? I wish that I had you here to ask, Niska. You are the only one who might help me figure this out, but you are gone. I’m alone. It’s as if I’ve lost my way in the bush, and the panic is starting to flash its ugly face from behind the trees.
We’ve been surrounding, then attacking villages for the last couple of days, clearing them of our enemies and liberating the towns. The villagers are ecstatic at our arrival, dance in the streets and give us flowers and wine. Elijah fights hard, takes many chances. Sometimes I find myself hoping that Elijah will go too far, will be killed in action. I will be able to rest easier then, my conscience clean enough at least to turn myself in for what has been done, to the woman and child, to Grey Eyes and the lieutenant, to the countless others Elijah has surprised and massacred in the night. The others watch Elijah in action, say that he is brave, a warrior of the highest order. To me he is mad. I am the only one now to know Elijah’s secrets, and Elijah has turned himself into something invincible, something inhuman. Sometimes, though, I feel as if I’m going mad too.
On a beautiful morning we’ve advanced as far east into France as any of us has been. I am once again alone with Elijah, advance scouting and looking for enemy movement. We come out of a stretch of trees and to the beginning of a pretty meadow. I find it hard to believe that a war ravages it. The meadow rises slowly and becomes a slope, the top of which is covered in trees. Perfect place for an ambush. I can see that Elijah senses this too.
“I’ll go up twenty yards and stop. You cover,” Elijah says. His hair has grown longer. It is dirty and matted. “The grass is tall enough to disappear into if I come under fire. Just try to mark where you see it coming from.”
“Why don’t we just wait until the others get here?” I say.
“No time. No time.” It seems as if Elijah knows that something approaches. An end to this, maybe.
Elijah slips into the grass, and I can follow his movement a little way before he disappears completely. I wait tensely for a minute, then for another. A rifle shot cracks out and I hear a shout, and finally silence. Quickly as is safe, I move along the small indent of a path that Elijah’s left.
Elijah kneels in the tall grass, a young German pinned below him. The German is bleeding but still alive, looks up in shock and fear at Elijah. Just as I approach from behind, Elijah cuts hard into the soldier’s solar plexus with a knife, muttering. I can’t make out what he says. The man below him writhes and screams. I watch as Elijah plunges his knife once again into the man. I can see the horror in the eyes turn to the dullness of death as Elijah’s hand moves to his own face.
“Elijah,” I mutter.
Elijah turns to me. Blood is smeared across his cheeks. His eyes are wet with tears.
“Why did you kill him?” I ask. And why is his blood on your face? I want to ask him.
“What do you mean why did I kill him?” Elijah asks calmly. “Moments ago he was trying to kill me.” He tries to wipe the blood from his mouth, but smears it more.
Our company has been moving so fast that we must wait for our own artillery to arrive. A cavalry com
pany is camped by us. This is one of the only times in four years of fighting when they have been able to advance and be used as intended. I can smell the horses. I’m reminded of the Exhibition Grounds in Toronto, of the ship over.
I sit by myself and look at the horses in the dusk. They are tall, healthy animals pawing at the earth, some with noses to the wind, a few with heads bent to eat. Elijah suddenly stands beside me. I did not hear him approach.
“I was talking to you,” he says. I am used to reading lips now to compensate for my ears. “I stood behind you and spoke to you but thought you were ignoring me. Your hearing has worsened, X.”
I nod to him. I don’t want to be around him right now.
“If you desired, we could go see the medic together. We could explain to him that you cannot hear properly any more. They can do tests. The medic will see that it’s the truth and they will send you home as a hero.”
He talks as if he is the Elijah I once knew. I feel drawn toward his concern, comforted in this place of loneliness. I struggle not to fall for it.
“I’m not crazy,” Elijah says. I continue to stare at the horses. “You must listen to me, X. This is war. This is not home. What’s mad is them putting us in trenches to begin with. The madness is to tell us to kill and to award those of us who do it well. I only wish to survive.”
“You’ve gone beyond that,” I say.
Elijah kicks at the ground. “Listen to me, X,” he says. “I should never have gotten in that aeroplane. Before that I believed nothing could hurt me over here. But I lost something up there is what it feels like. I need to get it back.” Elijah reaches his hand out to a horse. It shies away. “I can see that I went too far into a dangerous place for a while. But I see that.” He stops talking, then starts again. “Does that mean something?”
I’m not sure if he wants me to answer. I’m not sure of anything any more.
The sun is behind Elijah now, and his face is in shadow, light shining brightly about his head. “Do you know what I think?” I say softly. “I think that you did more than just kill that young soldier yesterday.” I look at Elijah as I say this to see his eyes, but he remains a shadow.
“Why do you say that?” he says. He speaks loudly so that I can hear him.
When I do not answer, he seems about to walk away, but then looks in my eyes, makes sure that I can see his lips, see what he is saying. “I came to talk to you to offer you help. We have a great future after this war. We will return home as heroes. I will become a great chief. I won’t let you or anyone else take that away.” He turns and walks away before I can answer, hands in his pockets.
My stomach cramps again and makes me cry out. I lie on my side in the sand, staring out at the river and the late afternoon sun sparkling on it. Niska, what am I to do?
ONIIMOWI PINESHISH
Little Bird Dancer
I DRAG WHAT I NEED out of the bush. Willow branches the width of my fingers, hardwood for a hot fire, roots of secret plants, bark from a tamarack. I don’t see Nephew immediately, and so I go to collecting the stones that speak to me. None of them are very large, but all of them have a character of their own, call out to me as I pass them. Niska, choose me. I will give off heat without cracking. I will spark in the darkness and tell you of your grandfathers. I am older than the others. I make a pile of them and build a fire nearby, use the hardwood I have gathered so that it burns hot and bright.
Only then do I begin to wonder about Nephew. I look around, see his odd tracks in the sand and mud, the solid, single boot print, heavy on the heel, the two deep holes off on either side of it made by his crutches. His step is unsteady, and I can see clearly that he has fallen while trying to walk and dragged himself toward the river. I panic for a second, imagining him pulling himself into the river and drowning in the current, but then see that he has crawled into the canoe. I walk to him.
He lies in it, sweats and shakes without control. He crawled into the canoe for protection. I bend to him but he looks at me with eyes that don’t seem to recognize me. He is close to leaving me for good and all I want to do is hold him, but he weakly pushes me away. I let him lie in the canoe and I sit on a rock beside it, my fingers worrying themselves. He looks like he is caught in a bad dream. He calls out English words I do not know, covers his face as if shielding it from danger. He dreams of his war, and this causes the fever inside him to burn.
I leave him and build up the fire again. Carefully, I place the rocks into the centre where they will heat. The coals glow white and red. Heating the rocks properly will still take hours. It is only late afternoon, and the sky will stay bright long into the evening.
I construct a willow frame carefully, weaving the thin branches into a suitable length, then digging the butts into the earth so that in the end I have built what looks like the skeleton of a small wigwam. In the centre I dig out a pit for the rocks, fill my bucket with river water and put it beside the pit. I take the canvas from the canoe and place it over the frame, pile more rocks around the edges so that no heat will escape and no light will come in. In the end the lodge is just big enough for Nephew and me to crawl into and sit comfortably.
I check the rocks heating in the coals of the fire, then I leave to search out some spruce boughs and to fill my medicine bag with twists of sweetgrass.
When Nephew is more conscious and is calm enough, I pick him up out of the canoe and lay him down on a blanket by the fire. His weight is that of a child. He can’t eat, and the tremors continue to shake his body.
The dusk of high summer approaches. I have thought hard for the last hours. I have tried to figure out what Nephew needs, what will help to staunch his wounds before it is too late. I know of roots and stalks for headache, for stomach sickness, for infection. I know to use the skunk’s glands to cure snowblindness. But what Nephew suffers from has been inflicted in a place I do not understand. What he has gone through I will never fully understand. For much of my life, during many of my fits, I have seen flashes of the killing and of the earth exploding in fountains of mud, but that is a small taste of the reality, even though the images haunted me for days. A fever is eating him alive.
I remember when I was a child and came to my father scared or hurt. I remember what he would do to help me. He made stories for me. About me. About how he imagined me before I was ever even born. I have no medicine that will help Nephew, but in these memories I find something.
Nephew continues to shiver in his blanket by the fire. Sometimes he calls out names and words. His dreams are bad. Maybe he won’t last through the night. I cannot let him go without telling him his story. I lie down with him and gently place my arm over his thin frame. Our relationship has never been one of physical closeness, and it feels strange to mother him in this way. I put my mouth close to his ear so that he can hear me whisper. His skin burns. He doesn’t respond, but I don’t let that worry me. If I choose my words right, and speak from that place inside that tells no lies, he will hear.
Nephew, before I ever knew you, I had dreams of you. I dreamed that I used to take you out hunting before you could walk. I would bundle you tight in your tikonoggan and carry you on my back through the bush. You were very good. You watched everything. And when we came close to game, you knew to stay quiet. Even then in my dreams I knew you would one day become a great hookimaw.
He stirs a little, tries to push me away, but I hold onto him and keep whispering in his ear. His sweat begins to soak through my shirt too.
I dreamed that when you were old enough to walk, we would go out into the bush for days. We’d take only what we could carry in our mewutikans. In winter we would strap snowshoes to our mukluks and your body grew strong from this weight on your shoulders and legs. When I dreamed, I saw from the first time you pulled a bow or fired a rifle that you had something more than others, a calmness of breath, an eye that saw for great distances, steadiness.
He moans out loud and begins to shake. I cling tighter to him and hold back my tears. I am afraid of losing hi
m. I don’t want to lose him.
Listen to me, Nephew, when you were no more than five winters I came and took you away from their school, from them. I didn’t have to live in visions any more. And this story that I tell you is the story of you.
I stop for a moment and listen to his breathing. It is panicked and shallow.
Your first winter with me we followed bull moose tracks through deep snow. We followed them for miles. You held me up with your short steps, even though I cut a good path through the powder in front of you. Slowly, I got further and further ahead until I disappeared from your sight. You were left alone for the first time in your life. Your sobs echoed in the frozen air. But you kept walking.
I cry as I tell him this, but I keep my voice firm and slow.
You crossed a long, open plain and my tracks led you to a place of thick undergrowth, so thick that you must have wondered how even my small body could make it through the tangled branches that reached down and grabbed at you like bony fingers. You kept walking through trees that grew so close they sucked the sun’s light into their black bodies. You had to strain to see my tracks below you. You crouched and listened for the sound of me ahead. But you only heard your own breathing. You had no choice but to push on.
I can feel his heartbeat through our thin frames.
The bush began to open up and you saw in the better light that you were not following my tracks at all. You were following the long ragged drag of the bull moose as he fought his way through the snow. A fear you had not known before must have bloomed low in your stomach then. It must have rushed up until it flooded your mouth like the taste of bad meat.
You squatted and held onto your knees so as not to fall down. When the dizziness left you, you stood up again. I’d warned you before of panic’s danger. It comes quick like an accident does, out of nowhere. Even then you knew not to let it take you. You stood there for a while and you must have thought of the stories I had told you around the fire, of men deep in winter being eaten alive by their own fear, men who tried to run away from it and grew hot from their running so that they tore their clothing off to cool down and help them run faster, men who were found half naked in the dead of winter by hunters, their faces stiff in a grimace at the sight of their fear catching them.