Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past (15 page)

Better to be back on the water. Anything I could do, someone else could do just as well or better. Except for navigation. I was one of the best. The men treated me with respect when it came to that. And my uncle was proud for what he had taught me. I went back to the docks. We were making our last run before freeze-up.

That's what I was thinking of as I walked the dirt path down to the river where Adolphus had his work shed, a mug in each hand. The sun was
already back behind the poplars, and I could hear the loons calling to one another on the lake. There was a peace in Adolphus's easygoing ways that I needed right now. He hadn't said much over dinner, leaving the news catch-up to Adeline.

He gave a little whistle of greeting when he heard my approach.

“There's the boy again. Something put a smile on your face, there. Is that mine?” Adolphus was mending his nets, sitting down on an old stump next to the shed with his moccasin rubbers off and the cloth jacket Adeline had made him lying on the grass beside him. He took the steaming mug into his hands and blew across it.

“Thinking about the old days on the water,” I said.

A smile lit his face. “Those were old days.”

“Remember when you had me here?”

“Yeah. About every time your grandpa threw you out.” He laughed.

“You always treated me good.”

“Well, it's always good to have another pair of hands. You chopped enough wood for your food. And this shack …” He patted the shed. “Adeline didn't even have to yell at you to get the job done. And the boys weren't old enough back then, Catherine was just a girl—it was always good having you around.”

“I remember one day when two of the mares had got through the fence and were gone, and Grandpa—he was so hot he came after me with a whip. And after that I followed their trail—”

“And here they were!” Adolphus laughed. “I remember seeing them walk up the trail and I said to Adeline, ‘Put down some more settings, we got two more orphans for us to look after.'”

“I guess they were tired of Grandpa too.”

“When your grandpa was around, even the mosquitoes tried to move in with us to get away from him.”

“I remember when I came to catch them, Adeline came out with some cookies that she had baked. She said to me, ‘I know your grandpa's mean to you,' she said. ‘It's not right.' I remember that—that was the only time I'd ever cried in front of a woman, besides my mom.”

“She has a good heart.”

“I wouldn't come here enough to visit. I always—I didn't want to bother you. But just to know that someone else was there …”

“We prayed for you. Still do. Figured you need it, especially since you've been riding the rails.”

“Prayed? I've never seen you in church.”

“Just because we don't go in the church doesn't mean we don't pray,” he said.

Adolphus knew so much about a world I knew nothing about. Old stories, things people didn't talk about any more. When I was a kid, he'd mostly tell me about the animals and how they behaved. He would show me things that would tell you what the weather would be like. He was always watching, always aware. All that he would show me came in handy when I went out into the world because I came to recognize “the weather” in some people. I guess my grandpa helped to put me on guard too. I could tell when someone was going to turn stormy or if they were bad terrain. Most people are warm but I learned not to let my guard down, watch the signs.

That's why it surprised me when Adolphus got hurt when we were back at the dock in Lac La Biche. He and Pierre had been unloading some crates when one fell on Adolphus's leg and broke it. The nuns fixed him up; we borrowed a team from Bertrand, and I drove him home to Adeline and Catherine. I drove up to their house with her dad in the back of the wagon. I remember seeing that there was this beautiful young woman at the place, looking up at us from cutting up moose meat for drying in the smokehouse.

Adeline was standing out on the front step. I could see she recognized Bertrand's horses but she was surprised to see me driving the team. Adolphus was laid out in the back of the wagon drinking whisky to deaden the pain. “Adelines out here,” I told him. He groaned, emptied the last of the bottle, and tried to shove it under his blankets.

“Hello, this house,” he said, and then he passed out.

Adeline came up to take a look at him. He didn't do it often, but
she'd seen this before, especially when he got off at the end of the season with the rest of the boys. She was going to let him sleep it off in the wagon. Then the girl joined her. I didn't recognize her for Catherine at first, she had grown so much. Last time I'd seen her she was a seven-year-old girl with tomboy knees. She was beautiful now, and something else. I felt she could tell something was wrong with her father just from looking at me.

“What's wrong with Papa?” she asked.

“Well, he emptied that whisky bottle for one,” Adeline said.

“He's got a broken leg,” I told her.

Adeline pulled off the blanket to see the brace the nuns had put on Adolphus's leg.

“All right, let's bring him in.”

Adeline collected a couple of tent poles from the house. Catherine grabbed a blanket from the wagon box. They threw together a stretcher and we all three manoeuvred Adolphus onto it and into the house. Seeing him cared for like that, I thought how lucky he was to have a family like that. No wonder he wouldn't let the nuns keep him overnight. He wanted to get home to these women who loved him. Catherine and her mother worked together like veterans, sharing few words and getting everything done. Adolphus didn't come to in the whole trip to his bed.

“There, let him rest now for a couple of weeks maybe. That's a long time for Adolphus to hold still,” Adeline said after they were finished.

“They told him at the mission to stay off it for a month at least.”

Adeline just laughed.

I had thought about staying around and helping out so Adolphus could rest easier. But then again, things were well looked after as it stood, and neither Adolphus nor me had been here for weeks. I wanted a reason to stay but couldn't think of one, so I went out to take the team back to Bertrand. It would be dark soon but the horses knew the way. I figured I could camp at Bertrand's and head out to Prudens' ranch in the morning.

Adeline caught me heading out. “You stay here tonight,” she said. “Bertrand's got lots of horses. He doesn't need to see them tonight. You can take them back in the morning. You have something to eat and rest up.”

Adeline went to the stove as Catherine went into the sleeping room and came back with some blankets. She began fixing me a bed on the floor on the far side of the room.

“Was he drinking when he got hurt?” Adeline asked me.

“No, working,” I said. I told them what had happened while they fixed the table with moose stew and bannock. Adeline caught me up on all the news. I can't remember everything we talked about. That was around the time that my cousin George took over grandpas homestead and started farming. He did that for a year before he was back to building boats. And the train was running passengers in by then, it was the start of harder times. There were so many white people around; it was tough for a Métis to get a job. “White people stick together,” I had told them.

“Maybe it's because they have more schooling,” Catherine said.

“Then they would be hiring the Treaties if that was it,” said Adeline. “A lot of Treaties have schooling. It's true; they stick to themselves if they can. Before, they used to make sure they were our friends. They needed us. They didn't know their way around the bush like us. Remember those pitiful people that came and settled just west of us here by the river? They could farm all right, but they weren't that good at hunting. They were so happy when we would drop some meat off for them every once in a while. I guess they were getting tired of fish.”

“Maybe it's good there are so many white people here,” said Catherine. “They built a school now.”

“I don't know about that,” said Adeline. “Most of them still think we're too stupid to learn. They still act like they're better than us.”

“Not when they need us,” Catherine said. “They don't think we're too stupid when they're sick or having a baby, eh? Remember when Mr. Lafontaine came pounding on our door in the middle of the night?”

“That poor woman, I had to reach in for that baby. Now that little boy is always hanging around with George's boys. He thinks he's Métis. He talks Cree pretty good too, eh?”

By now the table was cleared. Catherine poured tea for us and picked up the moccasins she was working on. I could see that she did
beautiful, tight beadwork. She could get a good dollar for that. Catherine was so attentive to whatever she was doing, so skilled. And she had the kindness of her mother and her father. I couldn't stop watching her.

“Do you have the medicine you need to make sure Papa heals in a strong way, Momma?”

“Yes. Remember the plants I had you dig when we were out picking blueberries the last time? Those are the ones we will use tomorrow.”

“You said they were for blood.”

“For bones too.”

I figured I could head out in the morning, but I still didn't want to. When I woke up the next morning, Catherine was already building the fire in the cookstove. Adolphus and Adeline were already awake; I could hear them talking in the next room. It was a little embarrassing—I should have been the first one up and building the fire. I put my boots on and joined Catherine. She just smiled at me and handed me the water pail without saying a word.

Later that morning I paid Adolphus a visit. He looked like he had been doing some thinking.

“How you doing, partner?” I asked him.

“It looks like I'm tied up to the post here for a while. It's a bad time of year to be held up.”

“I'm not in any rush to get out to Prudens',” I told him. “I was thinking of coming back to see how my cousin George is making out. Adeline was telling me he might be having a hard time. Is there anything you need me to bring back for you from town?”

They needed a few supplies since we hadn't stopped to pick any up. Adolphus was in too much pain to think about it at the time. Catherine offered to follow me. We hitched up the teams. Having her behind me, driving the team, it felt like we were already together. Even then I felt like we belonged to each other. She was sweet to watch, so shy in town. I felt like I should protect her. I felt then that I had to have that woman in my life. When we got back, that's what I told Adolphus.

“You will have to show me how you are going to look after her,” he said. “You have no house. You have no horse. You have no boat. You have nothing.”

I told him, “I can work. I have never had anybody I cared about. I want to be with her. I want to take care of her. I want to see that no harm comes to her.”

“I believe you,” he told me, taking hold of my arm and looking up at me. “But you'll have to show me.”

So I started to work. It was easy when you could see why you were doing it, and with each day I got to know Catherine, the surer I was. Adeline told me, “She has a gift. The Spirits love her well. She helps me with my medicines. She has dreams. Sometimes that's not easy to live with. You might want to run away.” Catherine said, “I know you belong to me. You will think it through.” I would go through each day thinking about how I could show them that I was the man I needed to be.

Catherine and I looked after the trapline until Adolphus was back on his feet, then it was he and I that worked it. It was the start of more rough times. White trappers were moving into the country in bigger numbers than there had ever been. They would poach our traps, fix their own with poisons. Adolphus was angry and disgusted. He couldn't just give up trapping, because it was the way he had always supported his family through the winter, but by the end of the season he was planning on moving further north to get away from them.

By then I had developed a plan. I had helped my cousin George build a few skiffs, enough to earn my own, and went to Adolphus with my idea. We went into business. We would trade up and down the river from our skiff. Adolphus knew furs and I knew the water. We would trade goods for furs and dried fish. We bought and sold with trappers, farmers, and ranchers all along the river. We did a good business. I earned my way into the family. Catherine and I were married that December.

We were so happy. I had never been so content. I was a new man. Jean Francis was born in October of the following year. We continued to do good business on the river. Soon Catherine and Adeline were travelling and trading with us as well.

When Jean Francis was two we had a hard time when Catherine miscarried. Adeline was the strength for us. She had been through this before. You never forget it, but we moved on. Two years later we had Daniel. This time all went well, we thought. We had taken such good care of Catherine to be sure the baby had the best chance. But when he was about ten months old Catherine began to feel weak. She and Adeline stayed home with the children that summer. By the time Adolphus and I came back from our trading trip, Catherine was bedridden, coughing, pale and weak. She had consumption. Nothing Adeline could do was helping. That's when I saw Flora again. She was now a nun and had come to help with Catherine full-time.

I was stunned and in shock. I was numb. I didn't know what to think. How was this possible? Adeline had medicine. Flora had another medicine, and Catherine was so strong. She didn't want to leave us. She had her family to live for. We told ourselves she would make it.

That last night I had fallen asleep on a chair with my head on her bed. I awoke at the feel of her fingers stroking my head. I looked at her. Her eyes were filled with the deepest sadness I had ever seen. Tears were flowing down her face.