Scattered Bones (19 page)

Étienne invested some start-up money of his own, and the business is doing okay, but the stupidity of Ottawa’s bureaucracy continues to enrage him.

Once the band’s concerns have been heard, Taylor announces that the election is under way. The chief’s position is much sought after, not only for the prestige, which is considerable, but for the $25 cash and the spiffy new suit of clothing handed out every year.

Taylor hushes the crowd, and then announces that each of the three candidates will be allowed to speak once. Since similar occasions have gone on for three or four hours, Étienne is not unhappy that a time limit of fifteen minutes will be strictly enforced.

First up is Alphonse Custer. He is a thin, shaggy-headed man of thirty-eight, the bread-winner of a large family consisting of his six children – three of them Izzy’s students – his wife, his mother, his wife’s mother, his wife’s sister whose husband had died three years ago of tuberculosis, her brood of four kids, and his wife’s crippled cousin.

“Good thing he’s such a good hunter,” Étienne thinks to himself.

Alphonse begins his speech by thanking the Indian agent, the doctor and the two special guests from America for attending. He then commences to harangue his fellow Cree. “You are all over-trapping. The truly valuable furs, red fox, cross fox, ermine, mink, are disappearing. The beaver is all but extinct. Even muskrats are small in number. This is foolishness.”

A voice from the crowd yells out, “It’s the white trappers’ fault. They come into our country and take everything they can get their hands on without a thought to the coming years.”

“This may be so,” replies Alphonse. “But we too are careless, taking too many, especially the young, trapping the same territory year after year.”

The speech will not sit well with the voters, Étienne predicts, but it doesn’t matter. Alphonse is an Anglican. He doesn’t have a hope in hell of being elected amongst all these Catholics. He’s simply using the campaign as a soapbox to trumpet his favourite cause. Good for him, the priest thinks.

Next up is Angus Highway. This is the candidate whom Étienne and the rest of the white establishment whole-heartedly endorse. He is a heavy-set, bulky-featured man with a large head of brown-black surprisingly curly hair –
how this happened, nobody knows – and handle-bar moustache trimmed regularly by his aunt, who cuts the hair of all the pretty boys on the reserve, including Joe Sewap’s. Angus wears a dazzlingly white shirt and a maroon tie with pink polka dots. Where on earth did he get that? Étienne wonders. Probably an Anglican handout. Angus is a devout Catholic but his wife has decided, for some strange reason, that the Church of England suits her best. This didn’t please Étienne, of course, but today it might be fortuitous. The Anglicans might be prepared to vote for the most suitable candidate.

Years before, Angus built a cabin at Sandy Narrows, about twenty miles across the lake from Pelican. The earth there is remarkably fertile, and his garden, full of cabbage, carrots, potatoes, beans, is a wonder. He also grows hay, which allows him to keep three horses and one cow. And he has chickens, the eggs so greatly prized by Pelican Narrows’ citizenry that they will undertake the three-hour canoe trip to fetch them.

Étienne thinks Angus’s speech is well prepared, although he has an annoying habit of dropping English jargon. “Holy Mackinaw” is his favourite, as in “Holy Mackinaw,
mackachisitino ana
he’s trouble,” or “Holy Mackinaw,
wicikisiwak kinosiwak
, the fish stink.”

Angus begins by laying out his vision of a rosy future. A road will be constructed connecting Pelican Narrows with the outside world. Tourists will flock from all over to rejuvenate themselves in the unspoiled wilderness by fishing, hunting, trapping, trying out basket-making, birch-bark chewing, hide stretching. Tepees and sweat lodges will be built for all those thousands of white tourists who, Angus is sure, dream of becoming Red Skins, at least for a few days.

Fish processing plants and fur marketing organizations will be established. Schools and hospitals will spring up like mushrooms in September. Electricity and radios and hydroplanes – all are part of his dream.

“There’ll be a grocery store to compete with the HBC and Arthur Jan’s. Bring prices down,” Angus promises.

“And a marina where you could get your outboard fixed,” Joe interjects.

“That too.”

The crowd, which has sat in silence, some half dozing in the hot sun, seem entranced by the speech. Then Angus’s tone of voice abruptly changes.

“All this will come to nothing,” the candidate suddenly bellows, “if our young people continue to give in to the devil’s temptations.”

Everyone knows what he is talking about. Some of the boatmen –
Please, not Joe, Étienne had prayed – had recently returned from a trip to The Pas with liquor in their packs. There followed a raucous party during which a fight broke out. One boy was stabbed – thankfully the wound wasn’t too deep – and one girl was later found to be pregnant, although whether it had happened during the debaucheries was hard to ascertain.

“I will put an end to this,” Angus shouts, “if I have to patrol the beaches and bush myself. The Lord is sure to punish those who offend Him.”

Étienne wonders if this harangue might not irritate the electors. But it’s the truth after all. And he knows many Cree elders feel the same way. “Good going,” he mouths at Angus.

The third candidate is the jaunty Noah Ballendine. His government-issue gabardine suit, allotted during his term as councillor, has been altered by his wife so that it nicely sets off his slim frame. His silver-white hair curls under a fashionable fedora. His small goatee is heart-shaped, his silky grey moustache and splendid sideburns well-trimmed. He sports large, wire-rimmed sunglasses, and carries a cane made of driftwood, the head of which has been carved into a bear’s claw. A rake, thinks Étienne, but admittedly an intriguing one.

Noah speaks with absolute conviction. All the ills that afflict the Cree, the poverty, the sickness, the spiritual malaise can be laid at the feet of the white man.

“We signed the treaties in good faith and every promise made has been broken. Time and time again.

“Where is our medicine? Under lock and key at the priest’s house.” Étienne blushes at this. “Where are the provisions that were guaranteed us? We’re lucky to get a piece of fishing line. Our land has been stolen, and now they are threatening to kidnap our sons and daughters, lock them up in a white man’s school. We were once proud warriors of the forest, now we’re nothing but slaves and toadies to our white masters.”

Étienne, along with everyone else, is shocked. The passion, eloquence, militancy – nothing like this has been heard at Pelican Narrows for a long time. It’s certainly irresponsible to fan the flames of discontent among the natives, but in his heart the priest can’t help agreeing with at least some of what Noah has said.

Bob Taylor’s face is screwed up in irritation, but he manages to spit out, “Thank you, Mr. Ballendine. I now declare that the election for chief of the Peter Ballendine Band is underway.”

The three contenders stand in a line about three feet apart facing the Indian agent.

“The vote is called,” Taylor bellows.

Everyone bustles about, lining up behind the candidate of their choice. When the dust settles, Noah Ballendine’s row is obviously longer than anyone else’s. Taylor, looking very displeased, reads the final tally – fifty-five for Noah, forty-eight for Alphonse Custer. The favourite of the white establishment, Angus Highway, has managed only ten votes.

Étienne feels irritation growing in his belly – this is not the first time his flock has ignored his advice. His one compensation, if you can call it that, is that Indian Affairs will certainly nullify the election and name Angus Highway in Noah’s place. But that is hardly something to take satisfaction from.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The priest doesn’t feel
like socializing
– there’s such a racket going on with the crazy American writer waving his arms and bawling out war whoops while the real Indians roar with laughter – so he quietly extricates himself, and makes his way to his sanctuary hidden in an enclave of spruce and white birch on a plateau overlooking Pelican Lake.

One day years ago, wandering along a path that runs into the bush, he had come across a granite protrusion covered with emerald-green broom moss and silver lichen. He’d painstakingly dug up rocks and stacked them in a semi-circle in front of the outcrop. Slowly a grotto emerged. It has been his refuge ever since.

The insects are as ravenous as usual. After all the years of being attacked by mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, and God knows what else, you’d think there’d be some immunity, some respite, but Étienne is as tormented as ever. He sighs with relief when he reaches the top of the hill – here there is breeze enough to keep at least some of the wretches away. He sits down heavily on the rock he uses as a prayer bench.

It’s such a relief to escape the pandemonium below, if only for a half hour. Pelican Narrows is usually a quiet place, nothing much happening day by day. Except for once a year, when the Treaty Party sets up camp. In only a few days every important decision affecting the lives of every single individual must be made. All under the command of the Indian agent, a tin pot dictator who gives not a fig for the welfare of the Cree, or anybody else for that matter. And this year, the inclusion of
The Famous Writer has resulted in a whirl of social events, including St. Gertrude’s tea this afternoon. Étienne will have to endure the madness, but he can hardly wait until the whole kit and caboodle take off. In the meantime, he savours these few moments of calm.

On a ledge of quartz, protected from the elements, sits his most precious possession – a rough but lovely statue of the Madonna and Infant, carved from a piece of driftwood years before by a Métis parishioner. As if to salute the Mother of God, prickly roses, fireweed, and yellow aven had taken root at the base of the shrine.

His supplications to the Mother of Missionaries, as he thinks of her, come easily, his old rosary, with him since his days at Collège de l’Assomption, sliding effortlessly between his fingers. “Mary, Mother of God, have compassion on me.” He asks once again that she intervene with the Sacred Heart to forgive his many trespasses, most of them to do with his impatience with Ovide. His mortal sin, the slayer of his soul, he refuses to discuss with her. But he will not, here in this his private place, pray directly to the Almighty. Étienne believes Him to be a cruel, unjust and vengeful God. He doesn’t deny His existence. He just despises Him.

The priest’s disillusionment began to incubate shortly after his arrival at Cumberland House, his first posting as a missionary. Word came one day that a Diphtheria epidemic had broken out. He rushed to his parishioners’ hunting camp about ten miles away. Hell on earth was what he thought as the stench from the first log hut accosted him. A dozen people, rolled up in soiled, tattered blankets were stretched out on the ground – he had to watch that he didn`t tread on an arm or leg, they lay so close together. Two of the bundles turned out to be corpses, the others hovered near death. Having long
ago vomited everything in their stomachs, several of the ill were retching painfully. A high-pitched keening – like a fatally injured dog –
was the most unsettling sound of all. When Étienne was finally able to pry the baby from the grieving mother`s arms, he found that the infant had departed this life some hours before.

The priest ran around administering last rites, although few of the victims seemed to have any idea what he was doing. He tried to help, cleaning up the putrid throw-up, washing faces and bodies, trickling water down throats. But he knew that in this, his first test as a missionary, he was an utter failure. No one was comforted by his words because he spoke no Cree. Right then, he pledged that either their way of life would become his or he would give up his vocation.

His study of Indian languages – he is now fluent in several of them –
was the easiest part. Far more difficult was overcoming the scepticism that took hold in his mind, like bindweed choking a rose bush. What kind of God would inflict torture on such guileless people? If he had had time to ponder the question, he might have given in to despair, but all his energy went to surviving the brutal country.

His first posting, St. Joseph Mission at Cumberland House, had consisted of a single log shack, twenty-two feet square, with the interior partitioned by a blanket into a small room for the priest’s bed and his few personal effects, and a larger space for the chapel. There were no pews. Worshippers stood, jammed together during services, one body resting on another. Not that Étienne celebrated mass for his flock that often. The only time his congregants came to Cumberland was during the summer months and, in the heat, nobody felt like being packed like sardines into what was jokingly called God`s House.

His congregation consisted of twenty families of Swampy Cree living in the vicinity of Cumberland, fifteen families at Le Pas forty-five miles to the east by winter road, 100 miles by canoe, and another twenty located at Grand Rapids, another 145 miles to the southeast. It was Étienne’s duty to visit them in their various camps, so that, during the twelve long years he served at St. Joseph’s, he journeyed thousands of miles through the dense boreal forest. He always travelled by himself.