Motorcycles & Sweetgrass (4 page)

Then, from the recesses of his damaged mind, she appeared. The face that had once stopped him from wandering the country, the body that had made him forget all the others (at that time anyway) and the smile that had made him hold his breath. He had known from the moment he met her, so long ago, that he could never be the man she wanted, needed or deserved, but so long as he could fake it, he had figured they would both be happy. She must be old now, he thought. Like him. Well, hopefully not like him. His eyes popped open. He hadn’t allowed himself to see her face for decades. Why now? he thought. He propped himself on
his elbows, perplexed. He shook his head, trying to remove the cobwebs from his mind. This was more than a flashback. It was more than an idle memory. This—she—was real. For some reason, he looked out the window again, this time to the horizon, his eyes gazing to the far north where he had once roamed the forest, and had swum in the lakes. Something was calling to him.

Once more he managed to achieve a standing position. Like a compass, his attention never wavered from the north. A dozen or more seconds passed as he debated his options. Glancing back over his shoulder he saw again his reflection in the mirror. This time he wasn’t surprised. This time he felt the beginnings of a new confidence. Having a purpose could do that to a man. Turning to face the mirror, looking deep into his bloodshot eyes, he shook his head.

“That… will not do,” he said to the reflection, knowing he now had an appointment to keep.

But first, he vomited.

THREE

Virgil was concerned, but didn’t want to be. Everybody was rushing about, talking in hushed tones, looking downward in a respectful manner. It was true that his grandmother was dying, though nobody would admit it in exactly those words. His entire family had spent the past two weeks hovering about her house, bringing in food, taking out dishes of half-eaten casseroles, all frustrated by their inability to do anything to help Lillian Benojee.

Virgil loved his grandmother. But he was one of eighteen grandchildren and never quite knew were he stood on the totem pole of her affection. One grandchild, about ten years older than him, was well on his way to becoming a successful lawyer. Two others had started up a popular restaurant in a nearby town, providing Nouveau Native cuisine to all the American tourists. Kelly, another cousin who was only five days younger than him, had won some speech contest or something, and had just gotten back from Ottawa where she’d met the prime minister. And then there was Virgil. And there was nothing particularly bad about the boy, but neither was there anything notable about him. He wasn’t as good as some, nor was he as bad as Chucky or Duanne, whose names were frequently found on the police flyer. Virgil was just a grade-seven student who
acknowledged that vanilla ice cream, ginger ale and bad sitcoms were the highlights of his existence. The bell curve was invented for boys like him.

Oh yes, except that most bell-curve graphs don’t include a mother named Maggie Second who happened to be the chief of the First Nations community known as Otter Lake. Virgil’s father, dead from a boating accident three years ago, had been chief before her. Seeing how hard his mother worked, and how miserable the work made her, he was grateful that chiefdom, as applied under the Indian Act, was not dynasty-oriented.

Sitting on his grandmother’s deck overlooking Otter Lake and oblivious to the warm spring air, he watched the comings and goings of his grandmother’s house through the big see-through sliding doors. Food being put out, people eating, occasionally somebody going into his grandmother’s bedroom. It had pretty well been the same since she collapsed. At the moment, there were about a dozen people in the living room, getting in one another’s way.

Then he saw Dakota, yet another of Lillian’s descendants, who was exactly two months older than him. She opened the door and let herself out onto the deck, and she was carrying something. Dakota had two brothers and a sister, named Cheyenne, Sioux and Cree. Dakota always believed the naming of her and her siblings said more about her embarrassing parents than it did about any of them. Especially since
their
names were Fred and Betty.

“Didn’t see you at school yesterday.”

“Wasn’t there.”

“I kind of put two and two together. Here—you don’t come inside any more,” she said, sitting in the chair beside Virgil
and placing two bowls on the deck table between them. “So I thought you might be hungry.” She slid one bowl across the table toward Virgil.

There was a reason she was his favourite cousin. Virgil sniffed the bowl. “More corn soup?”

“My English teacher calls it ‘the Native chicken soup.’”

“What does that mean?”

Dakota shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s a Jewish joke or something, ’cause he’s Jewish.”

Virgil picked the bowl up and began to slurp away, his spoon spilling more than it carried to his mouth.

“Did Aunt Julia bring this?” he asked.

“Yep, a whole big pot. How did you know?”

Virgil shrugged. “She always puts too much salt in it.”

Dakota slurped her soup too, seeming to enjoy the salty flavour. She paused long enough to say, “Yeah, but you’re eating it. And it’s supposed to be salty.”

The two ate in silence for a while, watching the activities in the house through the large plate of glass like it was a huge television with the sound turned down.

“Are you gonna go in and see her?” asked Dakota.

“Grandma? I wanna but…”

“But you’re kinda scared. Right?”

Virgil nodded and went back to his soup. He
was
scared. He’d never seen anybody real sick and close to death before, and even though this was his grandmother, he wasn’t sure if he was up to it. His father’s casket had been closed.

“I was too. She’s okay. Smiled, and even told me a joke.”

They both smiled, remembering Lillian Benojee’s silly jokes.

“The one about Native vegetarians?”

Dakota nodded. “Yep, that one. Heard it a dozen times but she still makes me laugh.” She put her now-empty bowl down on the table and got comfortable in the deck chair. “Haven’t seen your mother here today. She coming?”

For the second time, Virgil shrugged. “Don’t know. Band Office business, as usual. Said she’d try, but who knows.”

To Virgil, “Band Office business” was a four-letter word. Last week it was a meeting of chiefs in Halifax, tomorrow it would be a conference with the Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa, and next week something about those negotiations with local municipal governments over that boring land thing. It was always something, and usually it had nothing to do with him. He was a latch-key kid with no latch. Or key, as most homes in the village were kept unlocked.

“I’m bored,” he said in a monotone voice as he fit his empty plastic bowl neatly into Dakota’s.

Somewhere far to the south, other people were bored too. On the side of a lonely country highway north of a great lake and south of the Canadian Shield, Bruce Scott sat patiently, surrounded by his economic bread-and-butter: about a half-dozen handmade birdfeeders and bird baths. His car was neatly parked on a little driveway entrance to a field. He’d been here every weekend, and a few days midweek when the weather permitted, for the past month, same as with the year before. His wife made the feeders and baths, and she couldn’t find anybody else to sell them, so he did this himself, half out of love and half out of necessity. Bruce would sit there in a lawn chair for about eight hours or so at a stretch, reading book after book, listening to his oldies radio
station, generally feeling at peace with the world. On a good weekend he’d sell maybe three, making a cool tax-free ninety dollars.

It was a hot day, for May, and though he wore a hat and sometimes brought a large umbrella for shade, he was tanned a nice dark roast-turkey brown, which was odd for somebody of Scottish descent. Today was no different than yesterday, or the day before. Around him, the spring insects buzzed the way they only buzz on really hot days. Bruce took his final Diet Pepsi from the cooler and opened it, enjoying the satisfying hiss of released carbonated air. Holding its cool surface to his forehead, he gazed down the road. About two hundred kilometres in that southerly direction was the big city. That’s where all the tourists came from—good or bad. On a day like this, all their windows would be rolled up, air conditioning going strong, and they’d be reluctant to pull over and exit the artificial environment of their cars into this sweltering atmosphere.

The pavement of the highway shimmered in the unusual spring heat, waves rising from it and creating what appeared to be either wet spots or black ice on top. A mirage, he knew. He kept watching, especially the part where the road dropped about twenty-five feet into a bit of a valley and then rose again.

“What the hell…”

Rising suddenly from the little valley in the road was a vague figure. It was difficult to see properly, with the heat radiating off asphalt. What was surprising was that although Bruce had been watching, he hadn’t seen the figure coming. It was as if it had just appeared on this side of the little valley.

Maybe, Bruce Scott thought, I’ve been sitting out here too long.

As the figure drew closer, gradually emerging from the wavy lines, Bruce was able to make out more details. The figure was
riding a large red motorcycle. An old one too, it appeared. And it was wearing black leather and a dark helmet with an equally dark visor. Now Bruce could hear the distinctive sound of the engine. As it approached him, it slowed down, and Bruce got a good look at what was moving north. It looked back.

This wasn’t something you saw every day.

“Nice bike,” Bruce Scott muttered to himself, but his voice was lost in the sound of the already departing vehicle.

Elizabeth and Ann Kappele were twins. They lived with their parents in a small nesting of houses and businesses just outside the Otter Lake Reserve. Most people in the county called the smattering of homes Roadside. Barely seven years of age, Elizabeth and Ann were happy to be out of school and were enjoying the spring day. That consisted of throwing a big blue ball back and forth, singing “Ring of Fire” at the top of their lungs. Johnny Cash was practically the only music their father let in the house. Maybe some Randy Travis, the occasional Garth Brooks, but deep in his heart, Daniel Kappele felt there was no music like the old music.

“Higher!” squealed Ann, caught up in the moment of ball frenzy.

Elizabeth threw the blue ball high over Ann’s head, half by accident and half on purpose. Twins are like that. Ann turned and chased after the ball that bounced along the driveway and was rapidly rolling toward the highway and, across the road, the Setting Sun Motel. It was the Kappele family’s financially dubious business. Both Ann and Elizabeth had long ago been taught the dangers of living so close to a busy road, so Ann instinctively slowed to a walk and looked both ways as she prepared to cross
the road in search of her ball. It had come to a rest halfway across the pavement, just past the parallel yellow lines.

Darting out, Ann grabbed the ball and was about to turn back when she noticed something hazy in the distance. And she heard something too. A far-off buzz that grew into a deep growling coming from somewhere up the road. Puzzled, she watched for a few seconds, her eyes squinting in effort.

“Ann, get off the road. You know what daddy says! You shouldn’t be standing there! Throw me the ball.” Elizabeth, even at her age, felt waiting was for people who had nothing more important to do. Frustrated and worried, she ran to Ann’s side and grabbed the ball roughly. “If you’re not gonna throw it, then I will!” she shouted.

But then, she too saw what was coming. It was a motorcycle. Both had seen plenty in their day, their father had even owned one a few years ago, but this one seemed different. It had a different design to it, sounded different and had a rider who was definitely different in the way the helmet was designed, and the way the motor cyclist’s head cocked like a bird when the machine slowed to a stop a few feet from the girls. One black boot slid off the pedal and touched the ground, a bright blue handkerchief tied just above the knee.