Three Day Road (19 page)

Openly, I followed his trapline in my snowshoes, knowing he would follow. I led him to a copse of cedar where I’d placed a rope high in a tree from which I could swing clear of my own tracks, leave him wondering how I’d disappeared. From a hiding spot I’d built, I sat and waited for him to take my bait. It did not take him long to come.

He might have been an Indian in his fur and hide, his beaver hat tied down and covering most of his face. But when he came to the place where my prints disappeared, he pulled off his hat and scratched his pretty head. One hand went to a lean, bearded jaw as he studied the scene carefully, so carefully that I worried for a moment that I’d not been wily enough in playing my trick. Then he looked around him, his copper eyes flashing. My heart beat so wildly I thought he might hear it, but if there’s one thing in which I excelled, it was becoming
invisible. He moved on after a while, and I was tempted to follow, but I knew he’d be back. He was as intrigued as me.

I continued my game through the rest of the winter until I was sure he’d grow bored of it, but still he’d follow my tracks out. And every time he appeared, I felt that same aching pull in the pit of my stomach so that I thought I might go mad.

With the spring thaw coming, I knew he’d be prevented by the sucking muskeg from travelling out this far into the bush and it was because of this that I decided to snare him. For weeks I’d schemed and figured, but still nothing came to me. I could dig a pit and have him fall into it and in this way capture him. But he might injure himself in the fall and be very angry. I could snare him with a vine about the neck, but surely that would kill him. And then it struck me. The simplicity of it was perfect. I was the bait, and my
askihkan
was the snare. I saw no point in denying it any more. Soon the water would be flowing, the sap trickling, the bear waking.

I prepared my
askihkan,
paying attention to what I’d need. The herb that would make him sleep deeply, the length of rope to tie him, dried berries and moosemeat to feed him, my knife carefully tucked by my sleeping robe if all did not work as planned. The thought of my removing his clothing as he slept, of exploring his pale body, made me want to rush.

On the day that I did not hide my tracks but instead walked carefully about his lines and then straight to my
askihkan
a wind blew that was as warm as any wind I’d felt in months. I crouched and waited inside, worrying that the weather was all wrong and he would not come. That is when I heard him walking toward me, whistling a song that I’d heard the children sing at the residential school. I looked up to my door as he threw it open, the light silhouetting him so that he was featureless. He said nothing, and neither did I.

He came in and closed the flap behind him. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I watched him remove his coat, and then his boots and
rabbit fur pants. He wore cotton pants beneath them. I couldn’t move. That’s when it dawned on me that maybe I was not the hunter any more.

I look over at Xavier lying by the fire. His eyes are closed, but I’m not sure if he sleeps or not. The rest of this story belongs only to me, and so I let my voice rest for the night, float back to that time when I was young. I remember how the trapper came into my lodge that first time, how he began to speak in French, words that I did not understand. He spoke in a quiet voice, staring at me boldly with his golden eyes. Although I did not understand the words, I understood the tone. He was asking me, gently telling me. I stood up in front of him, stood there for a long time. He wore a slight smile on his lips. I could feel that my face was flushed.

As if in a trance, I stared into his eyes and then removed my shirt. I slowly unstrung my own hunter’s pants and removed them too. I was naked now, stood there in front of him, the smell of my own musk touching my nose.

He stood as well, removed the rest of his clothing until he also was naked, close enough to touch. There was a light fur on his chest so that immediately I thought of a wolf, long and sinewy. Hungry. His cock stood out straight in front of him and it bobbed slightly as if it had a life of its own. It seemed very big for a man whose frame was so slight. I’d seen many men’s cocks. We Cree are not a shy people. But I’d never seen one in its hardness, in its desire for me. He pulled me to him and he brushed his lips against mine, then over my cheeks and neck. The lightness made me shiver. He brushed the hair back from my face and stared boldly into my eyes, smiling slightly. I looked up at him then, and took his cock in my hands. It made him jolt. He moaned out, and so I rubbed him slightly up and down until he moaned louder. I knelt before him and licked him gently.

He picked me up and held me to him, leaning me back so that my weight rested in his arms. He bent forward and began to lick and
nibble me so that a small bolt of lightning ran from my breasts to between my legs. He continued to kiss me lower so that I found myself upside down, supporting my weight with my arms, the blood rushing to my head. I wrapped my legs around his neck and he kissed me there, slipping his tongue into me as he did it so that I cried out. His slight beard rubbed against me. Behind my eyelids the world was blue, red, orange. I felt fire in water. I was flame in water. Something inside me ignited, then melted, and a great shudder racked me so that my arms went numb and we collapsed together on my soft sleeping robe. I slipped into dreams then.

I awoke with my back to him, his arms wrapped around me. He’d nudged my legs apart and was gently pushing his hardness against me. He whispered in my ear and I let myself relax so that suddenly I was full of him. I gasped. So much. He cupped my breasts in his hands and went deeper so that I thought I might scream. He whispered again, and although I did not know his tongue, I understood. I arched my back and pushed against him so that he filled me again. I clamped myself to him and rocked slightly so that he wouldn’t leave. His breathing shortened and quickened. He called out, and I felt him flood me, the pleasure mixing with the sudden fear, the immensity of what I’d just let happen. Again I fell asleep.

When I awoke a short time later he was gone.

MOOSASINIWI PASKISIKAN
Rifle

A
UNTIE CRAWLS INTO HER TEEPEE
. I open my eyes and stare at the fire a while longer, and in its flame I remember Sergeant McCaan. I remember how McCaan liked to boss Elijah because he’d seen how Elijah didn’t like being told what to do. He wasn’t a bastard about it, not like Lieutenant Breech who bossed us with a sneer. McCaan ordered Elijah with a slight smile on his lips, enjoying that he could madden Elijah easier than lice could.

I remember the evening of the day I killed the sniper. Everyone around us speaks about it excitedly.

McCaan tells Elijah that he must take Corporal Thompson out into no man’s land with us tonight to frisk the dead man.

This bit of news angers Elijah, but he doesn’t let it show. “Yes, Sergeant,” he says. “Yes, Sergeant.”

I can see that he’d rather go out alone. He’d rather leave Thompson in the trench, and me too, for that matter. Elijah likes to go out of the trench at night and do his own patrols. Just him and the mud. He’d get court-martialled if Breech knew. But he must take me out with him tonight. The kill was mine after all, wasn’t it? My first as a sniper. Elijah can’t believe he didn’t get the shot. He told me himself he was more surprised than anyone.

“The lads down on the line are happy about this new bit of news, though,” Elijah says. “Bloody fine shot, that sniper used to be. No longer!”

Elijah complains that his sight’s a little blurry from the dirt spray of the bullet so close to his head, but it’s dark out anyway, and he likes to rely on the other senses at night. Elijah claims that he can smell Fritz from a long way off, swears that Fritz smells differently than an Englishman or a Frenchman or a Canadian. Elijah says he picks up a vinegar smell when one’s close. He always knows.

Thompson comes by our little dugout near two a.m. and whispers through our blanket door that it’s time to go. Elijah picks up the wooden war club from beside our door. He made it himself. Thompson has one and he showed Elijah how to make it. Heavy hardwood driven through with hobnails. He’s dying to try it out on a Boche skull. Bash a Boche.

“Bloody good,” Elijah says, exiting our blanket door and pulling his black wool cap low over his eyes. His good-luck sniping cap. McCaan gave one to me and one to Elijah when we first started our specialty work. “Can’t very well be wearing those shiny tin pots,” Elijah says. The army issued us helmets a few months earlier. They are terrible, uncomfortable things. “A soldier might as well wear a beacon on his head!”

Thompson, Elijah and I sit together, away from the others, and charcoal our faces. It’s our ritual. It’s what I call a
wemistikoshiw
smudging ceremony. Elijah laughs at me. No Indian religion for him. The only Indian Elijah wants to be is the Indian that knows to hide and hunt.

“Jolly good night for a little snooping, eh, Thompson?” Elijah says.

Thompson shakes his head at the words, and his teeth are white almost to a glow. “You do a better British accent than a Brit,” he says.

“Right-o,” Elijah answers. He began talking this way to get the others to laugh, but he likes it now. Makes him feel respectable. He told me there’s a magic in it that protects him. Elijah told me the accent came to him while deep in a slumber. “Woke up speaking like a lord,” he said.

I’ve got my animal
manitous
. Elijah’s got his voices. He says he couldn’t speak in his old voice even if he wanted to now. It’s gone somewhere far away.

Word moves down the line that a patrol’s going out. We don’t need our own firing upon us. We go over the top at the designated place where a rise in the field keeps us hidden from the other line. Thompson signals for me to take the lead. It was my kill. I know best where to find it. I know that this must sting Elijah a little.

According to the others, he is the resident expert, although I am a fine shot too. As fine as Elijah. But I don’t have the killing instinct for men. I believe that Elijah sensed my hesitancy to shoot the sniper, even when our lives were threatened.

We keep our rifles loose in our hands and run, bent at the waist. A good shell crater looms twenty yards out. The big guns of the Somme pound in the distance. The sound that has been with me so long now that I rarely notice it any more. It has become, for me, the sound of Belgium and France.

Flares go up from Fritz’s side, and we hit the mud, lie flat as bright light hovers overhead. It’s too early to tell if Fritz knows we’re out here or if it’s coincidence. Elijah knows as well as I do that the three of us work well together. We press ourselves to the ground at the same time and rise at the same time and know which direction the lead man is going to head before he does it. When the white flare light dies away, I rise and in a crouch run to the next crater. The bottom of this one is filled with stinking water, and so we lie along the side of it. The smell suggests bodies rotting in the bottom, a smell I cannot grow accustomed to. We move out when it is safe and make our way like this—leapfrogging, Thompson calls it—until Elijah and I can make out the hump of the horse he shot earlier. Elijah signals to us. The smell of vinegar must have risen to his nose. He tugs at our tunics to let us know we should stay put in this crater for a little while. We trust Elijah.

Sure enough, three shadows catch my eye. This is just on the Fritz side of no man’s land here. I’ve never known a sniper to work so far out from his line. That explains this one’s excellent record. And Elijah tells me later that this sniper’s boldness gives him some ideas.

The three shadows crawl into a crater and are obviously scanning the area best they can. Fritz must have really cared for their dead sniper to send a party out to investigate his bad luck. The urge to shoot them all and be done with it is hard to wrestle down. We’d be giving up our position then, though, and all that would do is get us blown to bits and pieces. The Germans crawl out and head in the wrong direction. Thompson lets them pass. They have no idea where their dead man lies.

We can smell the horse from here. The rotten meat smell of it is different than the smell of dead human, much gamier. Elijah whispers, says to me again that the unlucky Fritz was a special one, that he must have been a lover of the dead. He could lie with them for long periods. Stay as still as them.

While Thompson and Elijah offer cover, I go out to where the dead man lies. I know my slight form is swallowed up by the darkness.

Elijah told me later that when I was gone, he closed his eyes to rest their soreness, his nostrils flaring for any warning scent. He said I was gone for too long and that he wanted to go out and look for me and to see the dead sniper up close. He hoped that I would get a good souvenir from him.

And I do. When I find the sniper, I see in the darkness that his face is a black smear. I had hit him dead on the nose. I go through his pockets. Except for cigarettes and a nice brass lighter, they are empty. I cut his stripes from his uniform and take his rifle and bayonet.

I slip back into our crater, smiling. Elijah says later that he sees why. I am cradling the Mauser. Elijah can see even in this darkness that the gun is a very good one with a scope. Wrapped in cloth like
we keep ours when we are working. He can smell the gun oil on the cloth, and just below it the stink of dead animals. The rifle is one Elijah’s wanted for a long time. He’s angry with himself that he didn’t grab one back in the big crater. All he took back was the old helmet. I can see that he begins to think of things he might trade for it.

Thompson tenses and pats my side, points toward the Hun line. He sees or hears something. He has noticed even before Elijah. Under the sound of the big 5.9’s in the distance we pick it up. The sound of shovelling, dull yet steady. How did Elijah miss it? Me, my ears have troubled me more and more in this place of noise, but I know Elijah will be hard on himself for relaxing. Obviously a Fritz work party. Thompson makes the gesture for Elijah to investigate while he and I offer cover.