Savage Dawn (2 page)

Not that his father had ever even remotely been what
one could call a ‘father’, of course. At first he was there, and Chris
remembered how he would come home from work and talk of the great building
projects. Chris had been fascinated, and back then there had been love among
them,
they had been a real family… Chris shook his head,
kneeling beside his mother, pushing away the rubbish that littered the floor
and carefully removing the needle that still hung from her ruined flesh.

He had been through this same ritual on countless
occasions and had become numb to it. Once upon a time, tears would have fallen
as he first placed two hundred dollars of his earnings in his mother’s purse
before kneeling at her side and removing the tainted tools she used to lose
herself. Those same tools introduced by his father, Richard, who had long ago
abandoned them both. Lifting her arm, he prepared to remove the belt she had
fastened there when he noticed how cold she was.

She wasn’t just cold, but ice-cold – stiff and her
arm refused to bend. He froze, eyes immediately moving to her face, searching
for the signs and as he stared, his heart sank into a sour pit of sudden
despair.

No.  Please God.

As he held his mother’s lifeless body to him, he
shook with barely contained rage.  

He had known this day would come eventually. Instead
of facing it and doing something, he had ignored the signs … he had hidden from
the truth.

Chris knew the pain would inevitably catch up with
him, but for now his eyes remained dry as he spent his last moments with his
mother, gently cradling her for the final time.

Two days after his mother, Nita, passed on to the
other side, Chris finally managed to motivate himself to pack up her things and
try to get his life back to some semblance of normality.  

Not that it had been normal in the first place.

He had ventured out shopping earlier and managed to
get some cardboard boxes from the local mini-mart. That had been the easy part.
Now he stood in the living room, the place that had become his mother’s den,
where she spent most of her time, awake or not. He stood and surveyed the
scene, realizing it was going to be a very long day.

He would start with the living room first, then her
bedroom, and then he finally felt a shred of emotion as the realization hit him
like a punch to the abdomen – this was it – she was gone forever. Once he
packed up her things, there would be nothing left to remind him of her. He
would be alone, but he knew it wasn’t the loneliness that scared him, his
mother had been lost to him long ago. He already knew what it was to be alone.
Shaking his head, his long black hair gently falling into his eyes as he did
so, he swept the emotion to the side. He had better things to do than get all
melancholy now.

Chris picked up one of the boxes and chose a corner,
where he began placing his mother’s possessions into the box, gently.  He
was careful to be respectful of her things. As Chris worked, he spotted the
potted plants on the windowsill, now fading in color and beginning to wilt from
lack of care. He nodded and sighed, if there was one thing his mother had been
skilled at, even as she succumbed to the poisonous grip of heroin addiction, it
was tending to her garden and house plants. She always said she had been born
with a green thumb and Chris smiled as he recalled how she always managed to
keep her flowers colorful and plants green, but whenever she left home for a
day or two when he was younger she always entrusted him to care for them. He
laughed as he began placing the plants on the floor by the sofa, ready to pack
away, without fail whenever she came home, no matter how hard he tried the
plants and flowers would be wilting and half-dead. She had the green thumb
alright.

After another thirty minutes Chris took a little
break and sat on the edge of the sofa, as he perched and wiped away the sweat
of another scorching afternoon heat wave, he noticed something jutting out from
under the sofa. Picking it up, he stared at it for a long moment, memories
flooding his brain and filling his mind’s eye with images that played like
miniature movies.

The object was a handmade bone necklace, with
bluebird feathers and wooden beads that had been given to his mother by her
father. He held it up before his face, remembering how it had looked on her the
first time he ever saw her wear it, during a funeral for his uncle at the
Wahyani
reservation. He had only been a young boy at the
time and it was the first time he had visited the sacred ground of his mother
and grandfather – Chief Thunder Bear.

A small tribe, the
Wahyani
was a proud collection of warriors. A century earlier, their people had banded
together with the other tribes to fight off the hordes of European invaders
that threatened to overwhelm them and their way of life. As a boy, Chris had
been in of awe of the warriors that day at the funeral, remembering the stories
his mother had fondly regaled him with.

Even with their land long gone and their culture all
but wiped out, his people had never given up, joining others to make a stand at
Wounded Knee during the uprising in 1973. His grandfather and some of the other
warriors present had been a part of that legendary stand and he had great respect
for them.

Back then he had considered himself a
Whayani
tribe member, despite living a modern city life
with his mother.  However, his first visit to the reservation as a boy did
not provide the welcome he expected.

Chris felt a pang of regret as he remembered the
abrasive looks
he
and his mother received from some of
the other more traditional tribe members. Throughout the long funeral ceremony
for uncle, and afterwards, Chris had been saddened and confused by their
refusal to speak to him or his mother, as if they were alien visitors.

Chris placed the necklace around his own neck at
that point and held it close to his chest. What was he? Was he an Indian
warrior or was he a white man? Did he represent the people who had stolen the
Whayani
way of life or those who it had been stolen from?

He didn’t know then and he still didn’t know.
Nothing had changed.

Chris leaned back, resting his head against a
cushion, and once again recalled the memory of his uncle’s funeral.  It
had been an ancient ceremony.  He allowed himself to feel as he had then,
as a little boy, captivated by the Shaman conducting the ceremony that would
ensure the safe passage of his uncle’s spirit to the afterlife.

At that moment, just for the duration of the
ceremony, Chris had felt like a spirit was bubbling up within him.  He
stood among his people to bid farewell to one of their lost brothers. The
Shaman had uttered the prayers that would protect his uncle’s spirit, as his
body lay wrapped there in its coffin, an eagle feather blowing softly in the
breeze that swept through the area like so many spirits traveling to the
afterlife.

When the prayers were over, and the body was carried
to its final resting place, a huge bonfire on a hill overlooking a grassy meadow
that sang to them as the winds kicked up, Chris’ grandfather gave a speech in
honor of his people.
A speech that made him proud to be at
least a half-blood.
Those words, whether Chris has realized it or not,
would stay with him for the rest of his life, a reminder of what his people
stood for – honor, balance, loyalty and the spirit that lived in all things.

His mother’s hand had tightened around his as her
father spoke of the tribe’s way of life and of their legacy that would remain on
long after the old ways had gone. The
Whayani
were
the guardians of all things on earth, from the rocks to the trees, to the
myriad of creatures that coexisted in harmony with them. They were responsible
for maintaining the balance that held everything together and kept the Gods
satisfied.

Chris smiled; a feeling of pride began welling up
inside him with the memory of his grandfather’s words and it suddenly dawned on
him what he needed to do. He would take his mother’s body back to the
Whayani
reservation where she could receive a proper burial
in the traditional manner.

Nodding, he stood up, feeling more certain than he
had about anything in his life, he knew he owed his mother at least that much.
She had died tormented, a shadow of her former self but he would make sure her
final resting place was with her people where she belonged and where her spirit
could be guided safely to the afterlife.

“I’m sorry but arrangements have already been made
for the burial of Mrs. West.”

“What do you mean?” Chris couldn’t believe what he
was hearing; his mother was his, and only his, responsibility. There must have
been a mistake.

The medical examiner continued, “A Mr. West, the
deceased’s husband, came in yesterday and made arrangements for the burial.”

The name reverberated around his mind for a few
seconds, Mr. West … his father… After years of not being there for them, after
abandoning them and discarding them like old boots that no longer served his
purpose, that dick had the temerity to consider it his responsibility to
arrange the burial?! 

Chris’ hand tightened around the phone as the
all-too familiar feeling of rage coursed through his veins once more, the
plastic receiver groaning under the strain of his strong hand, threatening to
buckle. Several years earlier, he recalled a conversation with his mother,
during one of the rare times she had been lucid. She had told him the divorce
had gone through and that they were finally free, just the two of them. He had
no reason to question the truth of her words back then. He had simply been
relieved, relieved for his mother.

A small part of him had vainly believed that with
Richard gone his mother might at last be released from the darkness that had
poisoned her soul for so long. He had been wrong. The heroin abuse had
continued and Chris had allowed it to… the phone was beginning to crack in his
hand and the voice of the medical examiner on the other end began to grow
impatient.

“Sir, are you still there?
Sir?”

Chris shook his head and took a deep breath, his
iron grip relaxing, sparing his house phone what would have been a messy end.
“Yes, I’m still here…
I was just thinking, that’s all.”

“What is your relationship to the deceased, sir?”
The examiner enquired.

“I’m her son.” Chris said.

“Ah… would you like the contact details of Mr. West;
perhaps you can discuss things further with him directly?”

As much as he hated to have to communicate with his
father again, he knew he had no option. His father had long ago relinquished
his responsibilities and left Chris to clean up the mess he had left behind.
Chris knew he had failed in that. He hadn’t been able to save his sick mother.
His mother’s burial was his responsibility though; he would have to call the
devil of a man and set him straight about that.

“Yes, please.”

*
* *

Chris had sat by the phone for over an hour,
thoughts of his father flashing through his mind one by one, starting from the
days when his father had seemed to be a simple construction foreman. Back then
he had been different. He would come home from work, in his jeans and vest,
covered from head-to-toe in dust and dirt but beneath the grime and dust of the
day’s work would always be a smile and a pair of eyes that sparkled with mirth.

There had been love in the West household many years
ago, and Chris was a happy child, basking in the warmth.

His mother hadn’t worked; instead she had been a
loyal and loving mother and wife. The house had been filled with an array of
plants and flowers that seemed to be in full blossom throughout the year, alive
and feeding off the vitality his mother possessed in abundance.

It was a good time, the happiest of his life but it
had all gone wrong. His father had ‘changed’ somehow. Or maybe he hadn’t
changed.  Maybe he was always this way, and a young boy is able to blind
himself to a lot of terrible things.

His dad would come home late at night and lash out
at his mother, screaming at her to leave him alone, but he would never hit her.
That came later, along with the strange men in suits that started to accompany
him at night. They would disappear into the kitchen and close the door,
sometimes not coming out for hours. When they were having their ‘meetings’ in
there, Chris wasn’t allowed to go into the kitchen.  If he did, he would
get a beating for it. 

Later, once the men had left, his father would
appear in his bedroom doorway, his muscular body outlined in the darkness by
the light in the hallway. It had become a nightmarish sight.

Then he began to beat Chris’ mother, each time more
savagely than the last.  The demon would take out his fury upon her with
the tough leather belt he wore to work each day.

The bruises… they had been horrific.

Filled with fury once more, Chris picked up the
phone and dialed the number the medical examiner had given him. As the phone
rang, a strange feeling washed over him, causing his breath to catch in his
throat… fear, he noticed his hands were trembling slightly as he held the phone
to his ear, waiting. Even after all this time, the fear was still there.