Born with a Tooth (24 page)

Cindy and Sam nod respectfully as I walk from the pulpit. “Drink to me and I'll drink to thee,” I shout at the bottom of the altar, tipping my head and drinking as much of the red liquid as I can. I smash the bottle on the ground, and it feels as good as anything I've done in a long time. God knows I'm not dishonouring Him. Sam and Cindy and me head back to the sacristy to drink more and wait for the law.

But they don't come. We drink and shout and drink some more. Bottles lie everywhere. We've smelled the place up, so I open a window for air. Cindy nods off. In a rare mood he saves just for me, Sam sings me a Cree song he learned from his grandmother when he was little. His voice carries me up to somewhere soft and I lie back and let it hold me.

I dream a good dream, a strange one. There are many images, lots of dreams swirling around one another like the northern lights do at this time of year, just above your head so that you feel you can jump up and touch them. At one point there's me and Sam and Henry and Cindy and Linda and a halfdozen other Indians, including some of my old motorcycle gang members, sitting around a long wooden table with the Man
Himself with his long hair and robe. He's not saying who he is, but he's got nobody fooled. There's a halo on his head. There's no mistaking him. We're all about to eat. He picks up a big silver lid in the middle of the table and a Canada goose pops out and struts about the table, ruffling its feathers. The goose stops in front of Linda and honks and Linda stands up. I'm happy I can picture her face again. She climbs onto the table and begins to grow small, shrinking before our eyes. She climbs up on the goose's back and it flaps its wings and flies off as Linda looks back at us, smiling and waving.

We all feel good and Jesus mutters, “Goddamn, that was a big goose.” Then he looks at me and says, “Legless Joe — can I call you Legless Joe? This is a pretty easy dream to read, I mean your niece flying off into the sky on the back of a goose. You don't need too much of a tricky mind to figure that one out. I know you are mad at me for some past wrongs done to you in my name, but let me tell you not to lie there sleeping any longer, because that Father Jimmy, he's a prick, and he'll make sure you go up the river for a long time. So in my name, get up, walk, be free. Hit the road before dawn.”

Jesus turns his head to look up at the sky and Linda is still in the picture, on the goose's back, getting smaller and smaller, looking over her shoulder every once in a while, smiling shyly and waving. Then Jesus walks to his waiting helicopter and climbs in. The blades start turning in a
thump-thump-thump
and I wake up to the thumping of the sacristy window we opened for air last night banging in the wind. I get up quick and grab Father Jimmy's robe and begin wiping off all the bottles and doors and the altar, the spy music pounding in my head. I'm not too worried about fingerprints. Sometimes I think the police around here couldn't find the river if they had to. I wake
up Sam and Cindy and scoot them downstairs and help push them through the basement window. I use a chair for a boost and the sun is just starting to break as we make our way to the school where we can get out of the cold for a while and drink a cup of coffee.

It's been two days and I haven't had a drink in that whole time. The elders tell me that alcohol and drumming are like a hard frost and a flower, or a cock and ice water. Father Jimmy knows I'm responsible for the break-in but can't prove it. Last night I found my grandfather and asked him to do a sweat lodge with me, to purify me. Then I sat by the river and drummed a long time.

All my relations are here and I walk into the church carrying my big drum in both arms and sit down at the back. Everyone is turning their heads and looking at me. Linda's casket is in the middle of the aisle, up front, by the same altar I preached at two nights ago. It arrived later the same morning we got safely out of the church. The whole reserve turned out at the airfield, and we watched as her casket was unloaded off the plane and we all followed the chief's big red pickup as it drove her slow from the runway to my sister's house. It was the most powerful, quiet thing I ever saw, that long line of people walking behind her. They had the official wake that evening, but I stayed away, sat on the river with my grandfather, drumming and thinking.

Father Jimmy enters from the sacristy followed by two altar boys. He blesses everyone and says some prayers and reads from scripture. When he's done that, he starts his sermon.

“All of you know by now the crime committed against this church the other night. Most of us have a good idea who's responsible.” I can tell by the way Father Jimmy says this that
he doesn't even realize I'm here. “This crime has put a further damper on our community. I came close to not being able to perform this funeral mass today, I was so upset.” The whole congregation's eyes are looking at the floor. He doesn't even realize that he speaks to them like little children, I see.

“The Church has taken your hand and led you a long way,” he continues. “But there are those among us who would take your other hand and pull you in the opposite direction. You get nowhere that way. You must decide on your path and stick to it. Do not become tempted by Satan, for he can only lead you to harm. Satan comes in all forms, in the bottle, in the drum, in the form of pre-marital sex, in drugs. Look for him, and be on guard against him.” The congregation continues staring at the floor, everyone but me, it seems. I stare up at Father Jimmy.

“In her depression and drug- and alcohol-induced haze, Linda Cheechoo committed a mortal sin,” Father Jimmy says. “She took the life God gave her and threw it back in His face. Without realizing what she was doing, she spat on Him. I tell you with a sad heart that this is precisely the behaviour that bars a person's admission into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

I see my sister's head move, way up front in the first row. It turns to look at Father Jimmy.

“I thought long and hard about what to say to you today in this time of great sorrow. You all know me to speak my mind, and know that I believe in tough love. I offer you all a warning.” Other heads rise up to look at Father Jimmy. My grandfather's, my nephews', my aunts' and uncles'. “What Linda has done is reprehensible.” He says this word carefully. “It was an act of cowardice.” More heads turn up to him. “Yes, I am a believer in tough love, and these are tough words and, if we are to believe scripture, Linda must now spend eternity
in purgatory as payment for her sins.” Everyone is now looking up at Father Jimmy. “If all of you take this as a hard-earned lesson, the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and live your lives according to the Bible, you can still enter heaven. Poor Linda Cheechoo will only be able to peer through the gates like a child outside an amusement park, desperately wanting to get in but having no admission ticket. You must live God's Law or suffer His consequences.”

I lift my big drum up from the seat beside me and carry it to the centre of the aisle at the back of the church so that it is lined up with Linda on the other side. I kneel by it, lift my stick and bang the drum once, hard. It echoes in the quiet church. Father Jimmy looks back to me, his face turning red. He shouts, “There will be no blasphemy here, Joe Cheechoo!” but I cut him off with another hammer of the drum. It travels well in here, like a strong heart.

I bang again and then pick up a rhythm, the rhythm of the river. My funeral song. Father Jimmy rushes from the pulpit. In the aisle he is cut off by Linda's brothers and my uncles and my grandfather and some cousins as they make their way back to me.

They kneel around my drum in a circle just as I begin my best wail. It is pure and true and rises to the rafters and sends a shiver down my back. The others join in the drumming, picking up the beat with hands or shoes tugged off their feet. I constrict my throat more and the song sails higher, bringing others in the church to stand in a circle around us. My grandfather answers my wail and the others in the circle join us too, eyes closed and throats tight. We sing high and drum hard. We sing for Linda's
uchak
, her soul, our voices rising to pull it from
her quiet body at the front of the church and carry it, protected by her relations, to its resting place.

Father Jimmy retreats to his pulpit, his face flushed, a look of fear in his eyes. He turns and goes back to the sacristy. The rhythm comes faster and I think hard of Linda, of her as a little girl running around wearing rain boots too big for her small feet. I think of her flower-patterned dress, of her red bike, of her drinking one night with me, of her laugh, the sadness that dulled her eyes the last time I saw her. I look up to see my sister, her mother, looking down at me. Her eyes are Linda's, a little of the spark returned.

GASOLINE

C
row swears he's been growing whiter over the last year that he's been huffing. Not white like a white person, but like a ghost or a vampire. Crow kind of likes that idea. He sways on the road, talking out loud to the ghosts, laughing spittle, snot running from his nose. He holds his arm in front of him, lines it up with the road, stares at what lies ahead. The streets of Sharpening Teeth look as long and skinny to Crow as his own arm. Especially at night with the few streetlights spaced far apart, brightening the pale dust and gravel like a thin scar running into the black. He stumbles and falls down, laughing at the scrape that starts to bead droplets of blood on his palm.

“I am sixteen today!” he shouts. “I am sixteen and today I am a man.” He pulls the plastic shopping bag out of his pocket and places it over his nose and mouth, then hyperventilates. He thinks he must look like a bullfrog, white bag of throat expanding and collapsing. A mighty, mighty bullfrog, able to leap over cars and fences and bushes. He can leap so far he can fly.

Crow climbs up onto a car, stomping up the hood and onto the roof. Crow leaps and flies off, flaps his thin wings and takes flight for a moment. He lands in a bush and can feel its sharp
branches sticking him. Rolling onto his back, he stares at the stars. He needs to find more gasoline.

When he closes his eyes, the stars remain, tattooed on the inside of his eyelids. He can feel the prick and needle heat burn on the insides of his lids, the heat burning brighter as his head begins to thump and shriek. It used to take longer before the crash. It's time to break into the tank of a car or snowmobile and resoak his rag.

The crunch of tires on gravel sends stones popping and ricocheting in his skull. Truck doors slam. Feet pound. Hands grab. Crow opens his eyes and his rigid body goes slack. Jack and Ron pull on his ears, slap his face.

“How you feeling, Crow?” Jack asks.

“You huffing again tonight, Tonto?” Ron asks.

Crow knows it's best to become a turtle with the police.

He sinks into himself. If he says nothing they can't hit him as hard, charge him with more charges, threaten more punishment. Jack-ass and mo-Ron. Hands rifle his pockets, pull his secrets from him.

“What's this? Something you found for show-and-tell come Monday?” Ron asks. He's Mohawk from somewhere way down south. Not Cree at all.

“Or part of a Molotov cocktail in a plastic bag? You weren't thinking of firebombing the police station, were you?” Jack asks. He's Metis, looks white as the judge that flies up to Sharpening Teeth every month. Crow shrinks deeper into his jacket. “Let's take him in,” Jack says. “Destruction of private property, for one. Look at the dents on the hood of that new Blazer. Trespass to boot.”

“I hope he doesn't shit himself in lock-up again,” Ron says. “I hate cleaning that up.”
Crow sometimes wishes he remembered how to speak his language. Snatching phrases from old women and men walking by like he's pickpocketing them, he listens to the harsh syllables and light tongues that make Crow remember when he was a baby, a year old. His first memories, his great-grandfather talking to him about trapping brother beaver and drawing his shotgun on sister goose. Old man is crazy now. Talks to dogs. Crow steals change from his money jar whenever he goes over. Oldest man in the world. What a family he is from. As if the old man isn't bad enough, his uncle is Legless Joe, the town drunk. So drunk all the time he doesn't even notice he's got legs.

“Full name,” mo-Ron asks Crow from across the metal desk. Crow slumps in his chair, tries to focus hard on the pain in his wrists from the handcuffs.

“Francis Cheechoo,” Jack-ass answers for him. “Come on, Francis. Cooperate with us so we can get on with our lives.”

“Age?” Ron asks. The harsh lights of the station burn Crow's eyes. His head aches fierce. “What are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

“I am sixteen today,” Crow answers quickly.

“Jesus, Francis, you still look fourteen,” Jack says. “You better quit the huffing and start eating proper. You're a skinny little bugger.”

“Sixteen today, huh?” Ron butts in. “Well, I guess we got to charge you like an adult.”

Crow's been in more fights than he can remember. He's got a knife scar on his neck from juvie hall in North Bay. More broken-bottle cuts than he can count on his arm. Had his leg broke in a fight once. Got it stomped on. Not his right leg. The other one. But it isn't called the wrong leg, either, although
that's how he thinks of that side of his body. He can't remember what you call the other side. Crow forgets the simplest things now. It's not right, it's wrong.

He's been in lock-up for three days. When he's not huffing, Crow becomes Francis again. He doesn't know why. His mother hasn't come that he knows of, and neither has his mother's cousin, his Aunt Elise. Nothing to huff for three days. Nothing to do in the cell but tell the old drunks next door to fuck off and quit stinking up the place, or shout at them to speak English, goddammit, because Cree sounds like fucking Chinese. Francis is shaking all the time now, like it's cold in here, even though the few others who pass through complain of such heat in September.