Born with a Tooth (28 page)

The sonofabitch
Weesageechak
followed too. He'd shapeshifted into the form of a one-toothed mutt with dried shit hanging from the fur below his tail. He darted out in front of the pickup, made it hit the brakes hard. The casket slid a little

off-centre.
Weesageechak
started yapping at it crazy, like the mange rotted his brain. He stopped when he saw me and pulled back his lips so I could see his one tooth and bleeding gums.

Me, my fingers are all bent now and my eyes get foggy in the morning, and at night too. That trickster
Weesageechak
likes to bother me, likes to remind me that life is a lot of laughing, even if that laughing is all at me. Sometimes he's a crow in the trees watching me with his black pebble eyes, cawing at me with his silly laugh when I stop on the road to catch my breath. Mostly he's a dog, one in particular. Ugliest dog in the world. Sometimes he's a wind and puffs up his cheeks and blows a cold breeze down my back that makes my hands shake and spill hot coffee onto my lap. I'm so old now that he is my only friend left. All the others dead. I'm not sure how old I am, me. My granddaughter, Mary, Linda's mother, says I'm a hundred. That sounds like a good age. Nice and round for a skinny old man.

Lots of family. So many I don't know all my great-grandsons and granddaughters. But I knew Linda. She looked after me. I told her stories in exchange. Gave her her first pair of rain boots that she wore all through childhood.

I had my nephew Remi drive me over to Mary's to visit with her family. This was before they were able to fly Linda's body home, I think. I look out the car window and think of my old life. I had lots of children. Thirteen. Twelve are still alive. My wife is dead a long time. We were happy living in the bush. Daytimes spent trapping and hunting. Nights telling stories and making babies. I'll see her again soon.

When I lived in the forest, everyone knew me as the man who could heal sicknesses. My wife and me would collect roots and plants, keep certain parts from different animals, dry them out and crush them up. Cured lots of people. Nobody
knows that about me anymore. I protected family and friends. My daughter Minnie, my oldest, she was the only one I could not protect. When the government told me one day that they would take my children to teach them, that's the day I began losing my power. It's the day I gave up living in the bush to be close to my children. I'd still go out, take my children when they were not in school. But that wasn't too often. The less I went out in the bush, the more the sonofabitch
Weesageechak
came to visit me. He loves it when someone catches me talking to him. People think I'm a crazy old man talking to dogs and crows. That's OK. Maybe, if they live long enough, he will come to visit them too.

When Remi drove me to Mary's house, it was before Linda came home on the plane, before we walked her casket home. It was the night after Linda took her life. Mary told me her body would be home in a day or two. It's the small things that confuse me now. I can't keep order of all the events. Linda was down south in a school. Linda took her life. I went to her mother's house the next day. Lots of people there. Linda came in on a plane three days later and we walked her body home. The funeral a few days after that. I think that is how it went. Me, I try to remember these things so I can tell the story proper. I think it's
Weesageechak
taking my memory and shaking it up before he gives it back to me. I'll have to scold him when I see him.

At my granddaughter Mary's house, lots of people. Much of the reserve, all of Linda's friends. But Linda wasn't there. Mary reminded me that they couldn't get her body home for a day or two. So I pictured Linda in my head instead. I could still see the little girl I took out to the muskeg in autumn for the hunt, the girl I called Little Goose, the same name I called
my own daughter Minnie years before that. Linda was one of the last of my relations still wanting to learn the old ways. So I taught her. She was just like Minnie.

Mary started crying, so I reminded her of the pet goose I used to have when she was a little girl and my daughter was still alive. It was a good goose. I'd canoe up to the marshes that I knew would be busy with birds ready to fly away for the winter and my goose would swim behind me. All the other hunters figured I had some magic they didn't know about, and some were jealous enough they threatened to eat my bird.

I told this story and from wherever he was hiding,
Weesageechak
blew hot air into my stomach and I made a loud fart. I grinned and this made Mary laugh a little through her tears. I told her the rest of my story, of how I would get out decoys and when the geese swung low to investigate, I'd send my pet bird out to swim around and draw them in the rest of the way.

Some little boys hid behind the
TV
listening so I took out my pretend shotgun and tracked the geese. The boys' heads followed along the arc of mine and when my head was just slightly ahead of the geese I said, “
BANG BANG!
” loud enough to make the little boys jump, and everyone who listened to my story tracked the geese falling like feathered V's to the earth where they splashed in the marsh outside Linda's window.

The hunting moon rose above Linda's house, as big and orange as anyone had seen it. It would be a good night to drum and sing a mourning song but I didn't know if anyone knew how to anymore.

Some of Linda's brothers got into the booze and took their long hair out of their ponytails and they grew louder. Their mother told them to go outside and the boys told her Linda was
their sister they grew up with and played with and fought with and she would want them to tip a drink in her honour. Linda's father is no longer here. Drowned a few summers ago. It was dark now and the crowd was bigger. They spilled out the front and back doors and everyone talked and some cried and some laughed for the sake of Linda.

Before Mary left me I told her the story of my daughter Minnie, my Little Goose — how, many years ago, when my hair was still black and thick, I brought her and my pet bird to autumn camp and left them there for the day while I checked the traplines. It's a story everyone has heard a hundred times from a hundred mouths, but it was good right then for Linda's mother to know that another knew her suffering.

“When I returned, my Minnie was gone,” I told her, holding my hands out and weighing empty air. Hours later I noticed that my bird was gone too. Both of them, gone without a trace. When the Mounties came out days later they said she was dead and drowned in the swollen river. Some older ones on the reserve still tell their grandchildren when they stray too far from home that the
windigos
, the forest cannibals, got her. My wife's heart cracked from the weight of our Little Goose being gone.

I let Mary go by telling her I had to get some fresh air. Outside I could feel
Weesageechak
's eyes staring at me, but I couldn't locate him in the crowd of people talking and gesturing and wiping eyes. I made my way over to Linda's friends. They were the closest to her of anyone gathered there. I could tell by the way they'd separated themselves from the others, how they talked quietly and had shut themselves off. I found a seat on a snow machine waiting for winter and listened to them.

“She was a fucking bitch,” one of the girls said. She had short hair, and a black leather jacket on. The other two girls and the two boys with them nodded angry, puffing on cigarettes.

A second girl said, “Only a bitch doesn't call when she's feeling down like that.”

“Especially when the last thing she says to you before she leaves is that she loves you like a sister,” the first one said.

The two boys in the group stayed quiet, let the young women say what they needed to.

“If she was a sister the bitch would have called one of us,” the first girl said. “Stupid slut.” The boys just nodded and looked at their shoes, smoking their cigarettes quickly.

“I'd call you first if I was going to pull some shit like that, wouldn't I, Minnie?” the second girl said, nodding to a silent third girl standing closest to the boys. “I wouldn't go pull no shit like Linda,” she said in her sing-song way of talking. Her words made the first, tough girl begin to cry. The others didn't know what to do.

I looked up at the third girl, Minnie, and it was my Minnie I saw in the darkness. She looked over at me and her eyes were black pebbles. She was still young and beautiful after all these years. She was upset that Linda took her own life. Minnie so desperately wanted to keep hers. One of the boys reached out and hugged the tough girl. If I went to hug Minnie, I thought, she would disappear. A dog on a leash yapped somewhere behind the group. I saw that Minnie had permed her hair just like Linda.

I know just what
Weesageechak
was trying to get me to do. He was taunting me to cry and shout to this girl who was my daughter's ghost. He wanted me to make an old fool man of
myself. Sometimes he's as easy to read as a north wind carrying snow clouds. His jokes have turned cruel lately. The dog that'd been yapping began to howl and pull on his leash. I recognized the voice. One of the boys in Minnie's group walked over and swatted it on the nose. This gave me an idea.

Standing up, I walked over to my young Minnie's group. It felt like I was young and drunk on rye for the first time.
Weesageechak
couldn't believe my nerve. He barked when I came near. The young ones looked at everyone's shoes but mine when I said
wachay
to them.

“Linda was a good girl,” I said. “She should have stayed with us longer.” Her friends didn't say anything, just stared at the ground. “I don't know why she took her life,” I said. “I don't know if anyone knows.” The dog strained on his leash and whined, on the verge of a howl. I forced myself not to look at my daughter. “Linda should have stayed to experience what all of us older ones have experienced. I want all of you to stay here a long time and see all of the things I have seen,” I told them.

I reached out to feel each one's warmth. Minnie shivered when I touched her last. She was cold in her T-shirt. “I'm sorry I left you to check my lines,” I told her. Words I waited sixty years to speak. “All I want now is for you to still be here.” The dog lurched at his chain, howling, and Minnie jumped. My hand was left shaking in the cold air.

“I'm cold,” she said. “'Scuse me, Grandpa, I'm going to get a smoke and a coffee inside.” The others mumbled and left with her. I sat down by the dog.

“I said what I needed to,” I told him. He whined and licked my hand. “You are a sonofabitch,” I said, and he howled. I unlatched him from his leash and he trotted off. I looked up at the big moon and laughed.

Inside, I saw the priest sitting with Mary now. Before he came to this reserve there was another black robe who treated us like we were little children. He could not see the size of our hearts and, because he didn't understand us, believed they were small. I remember him. I actually told him one time that he didn't know us, that he did not know how big our hearts were. That made him angry. I watched this one get angry at my grandson Joseph because he drinks and wanted Linda's funeral to be Indian. I watched as this priest told Mary not to talk to her own brother, and I watched as Joseph left Mary's house. This priest thought he had no heart at all. This priest is no better than the other. I went over and told Mary to remember the old ways with the new. I told her that we are a people with a heart strong as a drumbeat. I said this in our language because this belongs to us. Poor Mary. I could see she felt pulled in two.

After that night I didn't see
Weesageechak
for a couple of days. I'd gotten him good at that wake by doing what he didn't expect me to. It is a good feeling to trick the trickster.

Seeing my grandson Joseph again made me start thinking about drumming and singing. He was once the best singer I had ever heard. He looked like my father and had his size. But Joseph lost his path somewhere along the way. That he wanted to drum at his niece's funeral was a good thing too, on a bad day.
Gitchi-Manitou
makes it so that there is always some reason for the death of a relation. In Linda's death I was able to say what I needed to say to my Minnie, and my grandson saw hope.

Joseph came to me after the wake and asked me to go to the sweat lodge with him. We got some rocks hot on the fire so they glowed red. Then we brought them in the lodge and
closed the flaps up tight and sat naked together, praying and singing, pouring water on the stones so that the heat burned our lungs and all of the bad poured out of our bodies. After, I teased him that I got drunk on his fumes in there, that he'd lost all the weight of his liquor. He smiled and looked happier than I'd ever seen him. I was happy too that in our loss, good things began to come.

That night I sat by the river and listened to him drum again. I let the sound of his voice carry me up above the river and onto a cloud where I dreamed I was with Linda and she told me that she was OK and that she was sad for what she had done and how she had hurt her mother. I held her hand and we smiled at one another. Before she left me in my dream, Linda told me that the drumming and singing were a good thing to hear again, that the drumming was our heart, our little heart growing big, that the singing was the children not born yet, talking to the Grandfathers who were gone. It was our way of surviving through everything we had to survive. Linda had grown wise since crossing over to that place where I visited her.

As I stood outside the church before her funeral,
Weesageechak
showed up in his ugliest-dog-in-the-world costume, but he kept a distance, worried I had another trick up my sleeve. I waved to him and he barked. An old nun I'd known for many years came up to me and we talked a short while. I said to her, “Hello, Sister Jane,” and she said, “Hello, Mr. Cheechoo,” and we talked of Linda when she was a little girl, and how she always wore her rain boots, rain or shine. That nun and me, we had a good laugh together. She asked me to sit with her during the mass.