Motorcycles & Sweetgrass (31 page)

“Aangwaamzih,” he whispered to himself. “Watching out for yourself.”

For a little while, all worries about a certain blond man of mysterious origins were no longer at the forefront of his mind.

Toward the end of the meal, Wayne was halfway through saying, again, “Ah, Shake ’n Bake, one of the three greatest…” before a dishtowel hit him flush in the face. Once he removed it, he found he couldn’t tell which of his relatives had tossed it; both had extremely innocent “wasn’t me” expressions on their faces. In retaliation, under the table he slipped off his shoes and pinched both mother and child with his toes, making them yelp and scurry away from the table.

“No fair!” yelled Virgil.

“Fairness is a relative concept, especially when it comes to relatives.”

After dinner, the dishes were washed and put away, and the television turned on as Wayne indulged a seldom-enjoyed treat. Maggie, however, had other plans for her and Virgil.

“Virgil, my son, let’s chat.”

Words of such a nature, spoken by a mother he knew was angry with him, were enough to make Virgil’s recently descended testicles want to rise back up into his body. He took a seat next to her at the kitchen table.

“Well?” she said.

“Well, what?”

“You know what. Skipping school yesterday? Canoeing alone across the lake. Do you know how dangerous that is? Ms. Weatherford and I had a very long chat today.”

“It’s okay, Mom, really it is. Ms. Weatherford and I worked it out. No problem.”

“No problem that you might be failing? I think that’s a problem.”

Virgil, eager to placate his mother, shook his head vigorously. “Really. I have to do an essay for her. That’s all.”

Maggie eyed her son with suspicion. “An essay. One essay. That doesn’t sound so difficult.”

“Mom, it has to be three thousand words. I don’t even know if I know three thousand words. That’s going to be tough.”

“Uh-huh, and what does it have to be on?”

“I don’t know. Something to do with being Native. I can pick my topic, but it has to be… What was the word she used…? In depth.”

“When do you have to have it done?”

“By the end of the school year.”

“You do realize that’s in three weeks? Less than three weeks. Do you even have any idea what it might be about?”

“No, not yet. But I’m thinking. I really am.”

In fact he was. The whole conversation with Wayne had whetted his appetite. Wayne’s fancy martial art might just be the thing to get him out of repeating grade eight. But three thousand words… he’d have to use a lot of adjectives. “I’ll do it, Mom. I promise.”

Maggie did not look overly convinced.

TWENTY-ONE

The night was dark, with the moon, just beginning to wane, hidden behind distant trees. In the last hour, out of nowhere, rain clouds had materialized along the opposite horizon. Within half an hour, the storm clouds had swallowed the moon. This was a good thing, because mischief is best done in the dark. In the deeper darkness of a nearby tree, John sat amid the branches, waiting for the city to go to sleep.

He waited as people wound their day down and hurried home for the night. Silently, he watched a group of teenagers walk right under him, talking about an action movie they had just seen. A few minutes later, a couple, still reeking of garlic from an Italian dinner, held hands and planned for the future. At one point a stray dog approached the tree, interested in relieving himself. For no reason in particular, John growled his best wolf growl, sending the dog running and yelping into the nearby park. A little while later, he noticed a police car cruise by, and one of the officers seemed to glance directly into John’s eyes, but he was well hidden behind leaves and branches.

Finally, the street was calm. Except for the figure of a man jumping down from the limb of a tree. Purposefully, he crossed the street, ignoring the do not cross sign, and stood in front of the museum. First, he tested the front doors, which, of course,
were locked. But he had expected that. Anything else would have been too easy.

Stepping back, he surveyed the whole exterior surface of the museum, his eyes tracing the structure and making note of where everything was. He repeated that with the other three sides, until he knew the building as well as the architect who had designed it. Barely above a whisper, the man said to himself, “Now, to work.” And with that, he smiled what some would call a mischievous smile, for he knew something most people didn’t. Museums were like icebergs. What you saw was only about ten percent of what existed.

Somewhere in the cavernous vaults of this museum was at least ten times what was on display. That’s what he was after, because if he took something that was on display, it would be missed immediately and things could get dicey and potentially screw up his plans. But if he took something that was buried deep in a box, among a hundred other boxes, in some climate-controlled room or from the back of tray #38763-A-88C, it could be days, weeks, months, even years before somebody took inventory and noticed it missing. Yes, he’d thought this all out. It was like old times. In fact, it was like olden times. Once more, he felt he was back in the game.

For a moment, the moon peaked out from between the clouds, as if it were signalling its approval. Then the rain clouds opened up, and rain began to pour, almost as if it were signalling its disapproval. Regardless, the man knew the rain would muffle sounds and wash away evidence. All was good. The elements were with him for sure.

Maggie listened to the rain falling. Normally she loved the sound of drops hitting the roof and the trees. It was calming and peaceful. But tonight, she was distressed. Her afternoon encounter with John had left her uneasy. She had been out of the dating scene so long that she hoped and prayed it was just a normal dip in a growing relationship—if that’s what this could be called—and that it didn’t foreshadow anything more ominous. Add to that the fact her brother was once more sleeping on the couch. Why was he still here? She didn’t believe his casual answers, let alone that business about Nanabush. Smartly, they had not said anything about the topic tonight at dinner. Something was up with him and her son. So here she lay, a woman in political power but apparently having absolutely no control over what was going on in her life.

Tomorrow afternoon there was to be a press conference about the official handing over of land. The local MP, MPP, the reeve and a few other local dignitaries were to be there, smiling and placating Native and non-Native people alike about the land issue. Many felt three hundred acres was a lot of taxable land to lose to an Indian Reserve that didn’t pay any taxes. More money out of their pocket was the common people-of-pallor consensus. She hated appearing on television, felt she looked too haggard and worn, like a character from a Margaret Laurence novel. But there was no way to get out of it. Thy chief ’s job will be done.

As a result, she was hoping for a good night’s sleep to limit the size of the bags under her eyes. After all, there were bound to be cameras of all sorts. But once more, for the hundredth time, she glanced at the clock on her night table. It read 2:33 a.m., and she wasn’t the slightest bit tired.

Idly, she cradled a pillow and wondered if John was over at Sammy’s, lying in his bed, listening to the rain like she was. In a
way, it was romantic. But just as she thought that, there was a loud crash of thunder that shook the house, and made her digital clock blink out, leaving the room in total blackness. A power failure. Wonderful. Now, in more ways than one, she was in the dark. Hopefully, things would be better in the morning.

The loud crashing of the thunder didn’t completely wake Sammy from his usual fitful sleep. As on every other night he tossed and turned, locked in a bygone era, unable to process or cage the memories. The thunder made things worse. It reminded him of the sharp crack of a yardstick hitting a desk, then soon afterward hitting flesh. Each peel of thunder reawakened not-so-dormant memories and shoved them mercilessly into his mind. And no amount of bottles and their contents could drive away the demons; it could merely mute them for short periods of time.

He would sweat and mumble, his fingers gripping the sheets, and he would roll over, as if trying to escape something. But he never could. Occasionally, the word “gawiin” would escape his mouth, “no” in Anishnawbe. Every night it was the same, sometimes a little better or a little worse. Sammy was a true survivor, in every sense of the word.

For over a hundred years, scientists and science-fiction writers all over the world had debated the possibility of time travel, the ability to instantly place oneself in a different decade or century. All they had to do was come to this small house, located along a quiet country road, on an obscure Native Reserve in Ontario, and they would find evidence it was possible. It existed in the mind of a seventy-three-year-old man who, every night, was once again barely seven, or twelve, or fifteen, trying to
survive in a place that had once been several hundred kilometres away and a long time ago, but now was as close as his pillow. He cried now as he had cried then.

Time travel was not a thing of wonder, of amazement and opportunity. It was an inescapable and soul-wrenching reality: a curse. Luckily, every morning when he woke up, it was rare that he’d remember the images of the preceding night. The only evidence of his time travel were the sweat-soaked sheets, occasionally wet with urine, and his sore gums from grinding non-existent teeth. For decades those nights had caused him to grind his teeth, until there was little left and they had to be removed.

Tonight, as the thunder and lightning tore across the spring skies, Sammy Aandeg mumbled in his sleep, “Jinibaayaan. Kanamaa ndaabiwaajigeh. Enh, kaawiin goyaksenoon sa iwh.” Loosely in English, it went something like “To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,” but there was nothing lost in the translation.

It was done.

All things considered, it had gone smoothly enough. No alarms had gone off, no security guards had noticed him. It has been said that in a different time and different place, John was so stealthy he could dye the quills on the back of a porcupine without the animal even knowing. On both sides of John Tanner’s Indian Chief, above the rear wheel, his saddlebags were laden with treasure of an unusual sort. Beneath his visor, he was smiling. Even the tenacity of the spring storm did little to dampen his mood. Somewhere high above him hot and cold air masses were fighting it out. Ions raced through the atmosphere. Rain poured down on the highway ahead of him.

He throttled back on the gas, aware that the rain was impairing his vision and the water-soaked pavement might not afford his motorcycle the texture necessary to remain upright at an accelerated speed. Now, barely doing sixty kilometres an hour, he took the time to watch the lightning stretch across the morose sky. As with Sammy, the volatile elements brought back distant memories for John. Anishnawbe legends told of ancient and immense thunderbirds, their actions responsible for the kind of storm he currently found himself driving through.

The thunderbirds, like dinosaurs, were now creatures of the past: lost long ago, with the coming of disease and famine brought by hairy strangers. Except, in today’s world dinosaurs were celebrated by palaeontologists and thunderbirds by cultural anthropologists. But John still remembered them, those magnificent creatures. Some had been his friends, others he’d battled, others he’d avoided due to personal disagreements.