Scattered Bones (30 page)

“So, you will always remember me,” she said with sad eyes.

“Why would you say that? We will never be apart.”

“You never know,” was the reply that wrenched my heart.

I knew that her parents had died suddenly in a boating accident when she was only four years old, and put her fatalism down to that. Still it bothered me. I vowed that no matter what, I must make her feel safe.

Our reunion with the Blackfishes and Charboyers was a joyful one. They all adored Marguerite, and had come to respect me, if somewhat grudgingly. By marrying one of their own, I had become one of them. Even Grandfather smiled a little. There was no mention of hand grenades or Pelican Narrows being blown up. I was thankful for that, but, of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Forget about strychnine poison or bombs – those were white man’s weapons. Grandfather had decided that the massacre must be conducted in the old-fashioned, Indian way, with hatchets, knives, bows and arrows. But also firearms. “Our people have been using guns for so many centuries, they’re as much ours as the white man’s,” he said. We were to wear war paint and feather headdresses. “We will wait for a moonless night. You will be our guide, leading us along the paths to the white bastards. Then we will slaughter them in their beds.” I was revolted by what he was telling me. If anything came of it, I would have to contact Father Bonnald. Meanwhile, I hoped that it all was just another pipedream.

That autumn, the hunting returned to normal. My shy cousin Leon, now seventeen, had turned out to be a superb shot, and he killed the first moose of the season. We all congratulated him. But all of us hunters did well. I bagged two woodland caribou, the meat of which was considered the sweetest in the world.

Marguerite and I were given a rare privilege, we were assigned our own wigwam. It meant more work for both of us, tearing down the household as we travelled and setting it up again, but we liked the privacy. Our lovemaking was beyond anything I had dreamed of. Marguerite’s ecstasy was greater even than mine. Some mornings I awoke thinking that I would die of happiness.

Her studies had advanced so that I could now read to her in English, and I had brought a few books I thought she might enjoy. Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
was her favourite.

“A rabbit hole, what a wonderful place to be,” she said. “But would there be enough to eat?”

One morning at daybreak, three weeks after we started out, I was shaken awake by Grandfather Blackfish. “Important business this day,” he barked.

I hadn’t noticed the night before – too tired I guess, but a makeshift trail had been cut through the bush. We men, all six of us, walked single file, one behind the other, until we reached what looked like a small hill but turned out to be a roughly-hewn shed covered with branches. There was a door of sorts which Grandfather pulled open. What was inside shocked me.

Stacked in one corner were a half dozen rifles. “Three Enfields, a Winchester, and two Remingtons,” Uncle Raymond explained. “The handguns – a couple of Colts, a Lancaster and two Smith & Wessons. That one over there? That’s a Lewis automatic machine gun, designed by the Americans but used by the British. All materiel left over from World War One. Your grandfather somehow got his hands on them.”

These were the guns, as well as our hatchets, knives and bow and arrows, we would use to slaughter the white people, all eight of them, residing at Pelican Narrows. But not right away, thank God. The real event would take place in the spring. Today would be a trial run; a chance for us to get a feel for our weapons.

Each of us armed ourselves with one rifle and a pistol. We marched single file along the path until Grandfather sang out, “Ready!” We dropped onto one knee, steadied our guns. “Aim! Fire!” Followed by silence. This was only a pretend exercise as Grandfather’s rifle was the only one equipped with live bullets and he didn’t want to use them up.

The fifth time we all knelt as ordered, but rather lazily, as all of us except Grandfather were growing tired of this charade. Suddenly there was a rustling sound and the shrubs quivered. We couldn’t make out what was there, but it’s shadow loomed large. A moose or a bear probably. Grandfather fired. A blood-curdling scream rang out.

We raced over. On the ground, blood pooling on his chest and in his grizzly beard, lay an old white man. I bent over him, but his eyes had already glazed over. In a few seconds he was dead.

I recognized him immediately. Once a year Daniel Whitton showed up at Pelican Narrows to trade his fur catch for provisions at the Hudson’s Bay post. I remember seeing him scrambling out of his canoe, a large man with an enormous white beard and long hair tied back in a pony tail. He was surprisingly neatly dressed for someone who was known as the Mad Trapper. Then, about five years ago, he disappeared into the bush, never to emerge again. It was thought he was dead until Xavier Morin had spotted him, approached him, spoke a few words with him. Hunting for rabbits and any other creatures, fishing, picking edible plants, he was managing quite well, thank you. And he definitely wanted no company.

The soil in these parts is so thin, it was hard to find a suitable place to bury the body. Finally, some boggy land near a stream was deemed suitable. Charlie and I set to work digging the old man’s grave. As we rolled the shaggy figure into his last resting place, I thought, the first victim of Grandfather’s revenge. For a massacre that happened two hundred years ago. How ridiculous! How evil!

~•~

Izzy’s mouth
has fallen open, her eyes are bulging. “Did you tell anyone?” she gasps.

“No, I didn’t, and no one ever questioned Daniel Whitton’s disappearance. I knew when the truth came out that you would despise me. I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you tell the authorities.”

“It was hardly your fault, Joe. After all you didn’t pull the trigger.”

“I might well have if my rifle had been loaded. I will say this for myself, though. I made a pledge right then, that the moment I got back to Pelican Narrows, I would straight away tell Father Bonnald what was going on. Warn him and everybody else. But that never happened. Do you want to hear why?”

“Yes, of course. Go on with your story.”

~•~

One evening,
at the beginning of December, stretched out before the fire, I happened to pick up Marguerite’s notebook. By now her handwriting was neat and legible. “Baby, infant, child, tot, toddler” I read. “Have you got something to tell me, wife of mine?” I asked.

“I’ve made a decision,” she replied. “If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Clara after my great grandmother. If it’s a boy, he’ll be called George after your late father.”

I thought to myself, what have I done to deserve such incredible good fortune?

Later, when I forced myself to remember, I realized that the Spanish flu struck on the very day that Marguerite had told me this good news. I was the first to fall ill– probably I caught the sickness from the returned soldiers I met that summer – and passed it on to the others. The symptoms were the same for us all – a sudden exhaustion so overwhelming you took to your bed, fierce diarrhoea –you tried at first to make it to the latrine, but soon gave up and used the bucket if you could – vomiting your guts out, a cough so intense you were sure your ribs were cracking, a headache so excruciating you wanted to die, sweating until you soaked the blankets through, and then shivering with cold until your teeth rattled. Luckily, maybe because I was young and strong, I recovered quite quickly, and so could help the others.

I ran around doing what I could, delivering cups of water, mopping foreheads, emptying pails of throw-up and shit. But I knew that my efforts were basically useless. People either died or they didn’t.

Great Grandfather Blackfish was the first to go. This wasn’t a surprise since he was so ancient. Then Aunt Charlotte passed, followed by my seventeen year old cousin, the crack shot, Leon. I carried the bodies outside so they could freeze. They’d be buried as soon as the ground could be worked. I had no time for tears.

Marguerite seemed lethargic, but I was so busy with the others, all I could do was keep a watchful eye on her. The first warning was the blue-black patches on her round cheeks. I could do nothing but hold her as blood gushed from her ears, mucus flowed from her nose, the frothy liquid boiled up from her lungs. Of course I knew what it meant. For an hour I cradled her in my arms. Finally she whispered, “Love, spelled L-O-V-E,” closed her eyes, and died.

Grandfather, too, was sick – within minutes he would be gone – but he managed to grab my hand as I walked by, and gasped, “Do you understand now, Grandson. The white man brings us only death. Unless we fight back, we as a people are doomed.” I didn’t give a damn what he said. As far as I was concerned, my life was over.

~•~

The dawn
is breaking a pale red and yellow.

“I have to go,” whispers Joe. “It’s only a few hours before we leave.”

Izzy looks up at him. She is weeping uncontrollably.

Florence’s Farewell Breakfast

Sunday morning

Chapter Thirty-Four

Florence Smith has finally managed
to escape
the square dance and is making her way home. It’s 4 a.m., and the sky is the colour of lemon juice.

The moment she steps in the door, she’s accosted by her husband’s raucous snoring. How infuriating! It was Russell who, with great fanfare, invited everyone to a Farewell-to-the-Famous-Author breakfast, but it will be she who ends up doing everything. It’s been like that her entire married life.

There she was, eighteen-years-old, the naive daughter of a hard-bitten prairie homesteader. Russell Smith arrived on the scene an up-and-coming employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, dapper, cheery, certainly the most eligible bachelor around. Everyone was astonished that, with all those pretty girls hanging on his every word, he had chosen plain, big-boned Florence. She thinks now it was probably her strong arms, muscled from years of labouring on the Saskatchewan farm, that attracted him, because, from the moment she pronounced, “I do” all those years ago, she’s done all the hard work.

She knows the post’s inventory like the back of her hand. The guns, the kettles, the frying pans, the dog harnesses, the whips, the snow shoes, the toboggans, the tea, the HP sauce, the canned beans, the baking powder, the beads, the thread, the fancy ladies’ hats – she can locate them with a snap of the fingers. Not only does she keep the books, and very well too, but manual labour isn’t beneath her, manhandling the heavy press used to bale pelts for shipment, for instance.

There’s an ancient birch bark canoe strung from the rafters of the store, proudly emblazoned with the HBC’s crest, a talisman of the Company’s glory days, and this Russell conscientiously keeps free of dust and bat droppings, but that’s about all he does. It’s just as well they don’t have children. All Florence’s energy goes into looking after her husband.

Something else is rankling her this morning. Sinclair Lewis is a drunk, a fool, a clown. And, judging from the conversations she’s had with him, he has no understanding of the Cree way of life. Yet he is threatening to churn out a novel about his “exotic adventures in the Canadian north.” The people of Pelican Narrows will be slandered for sure. So why are the Smiths celebrating The Great Writer? Because Russell thinks it will impress the idiot Indian agent. He bows to authority, no matter what. And, no question, she too must do her duty.

Yesterday, Florence had asked Lionel Bird to take her by motor canoe to Angus Highway’s little farm and there bought several dozen eggs and a few quarts of fresh milk. She takes these from the icebox and, from the pantry, flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, sugar. She also plans to retrieve from the storehouse the ingredient that makes her pancakes famous – a cup or two of Russell’s homemade beer. She’s about to start mixing the batter when she hears a loud bang at the dispensary door. Oh drat, she thinks to herself, just my luck.

What greets her is two drunken Indians, their faces a bloody pulp of black eyes, swollen lips, scraped cheeks. In English that they don’t understand, she demands, “What now, you numbskulls?” In Cree she says, “Okay, tell me what happened.”

There had been a brawl, a real dust-up, instigated by Bibiane Ratt and Sinclair Lewis.

“Any white man can drink any goddamn Indian, any half-assed half-breed, under the table,” The Famous Writer had challenged. The two other white men there, Arthur Jan and Bob Taylor, had winced.

“You gotta be kidding!” Bibiane scoffed.

The two sat down with jugs of homemade hooch, and the contest was on. Soon every adult male in Pelican Narrows was engaged in what The Famous Author slurred, “is our interesting little experiment in eugenics.”

“You’re lucky you’re both not dead,” butts in Florence.

“Yah,” says Gordon Ballendine. “One of the guys yells, ‘An Indian could do any damn thing better than white scum.’ Fists started to fly then. Redskins and whities – all were drunk, ready to fight. I got punched maybe a dozen times. It was too bad.”

“And, of course, you two just sat there with your hands under your asses.”

The men attempt a guilty smile but their puffed up mouths make this impossible.

As Florence cleans off the matted blood, applies antiseptic, stitches the wounds, she thinks, it used to be so peaceful here in Pelican Narrows. People were nice to each other. Now the booze has come, and we, Indians and whites alike, have descended into hell.