Motorcycles & Sweetgrass (37 page)

Oh shit, thought Virgil. His uncle had recommended a direct approach to dealing with the stranger, but the boy had not expected an old-fashioned, down-and-dirty, drag-out, bar-room fight. That had taken him by surprise. Now Wayne was missing, and that was not a good thing.

“Virgil, how do people fight in the trees?” Dakota still seemed a little confused.

“I don’t know…” Then, “Uncle Wayne!” he yelled again to the silent woods.

Almost directly above him a supple and pliant weeping willow branch groaned softly. Virgil looked up to see Wayne floating down to the ground, both hands gripping one of the tree’s whip-like extremities. He landed not ten paces away from his nephew. Virgil and Dakota rushed to his side.

“Well, that didn’t go exactly how I’d expected,” said Wayne. “Wow. That guy’s pretty good. Man, I could use some aspirin,” he said, trying to smile through a fat lip.

Neither Virgil nor Dakota had ever seen somebody who’d been in a real knock-down, drag-out fight before. Well, now they
had, and it wasn’t pleasant. Most of his hair had slipped from the neat ponytail he normally wore, and morphed into a twig-infested, leaf-inhabited shambles. Both hands and feet looked cut and bruised, as did his right cheek, and he was developing a black eye. There was also a large budding bump along his hairline. The right knee of his pants had been torn, revealing a nasty scrape. He was favouring his left leg, and one finger on his right hand looked like it might be broken. Add to that the plethora of scratches, cuts and blood spatters across most of his visible skin.

His clothes didn’t look much better. His jacket was ripped along the left shoulder seam, and the sleeve was completely missing. There was a tear along the middle of the jacket’s back.

“But, all in all, all things considered, when you take everything into consideration, under the circumstances, I feel great!” Wayne grinned, showing some blood on his teeth.

“Uncle Wayne, are you really okay?”

Wayne took a deep breath before answering. “You know, they always say there’s a world of difference between training and the actual thing. I think I get the point now. He threw a raccoon at me. He actually threw one at me. How do you train for that? Oh, hi, Dakota… glad we found you. You look good. By the way, have you seen the sleeve of my jacket?”

Virgil, too stunned to reply, just shook his head.

“Hmm, I had it on this morning. It must be around here somewhere.”

To the boy, Wayne’s voice sounded oddly detached.

“Uncle Wayne, what happened up there? Where’s… you know… John?”

Absentmindedly, Wayne looked up into the trees whence he’d just dropped.

“Did you win? Did he? What happened?” prodded Virgil.

“I think…” Wayne found himself sitting on the ground before he could summon the energy to finish his sentence. “… it was a tie. I think. I’m… just going to take a little nap now. Okay, Virgil? Wake me up before dinner.” Curling up into a fetal position amid the fallen debris, Wayne went to sleep. Almost instantly he started snoring, his right leg twitching.

“Maybe we should get some help, Virgil. He doesn’t look so good.”

“Uncle Wayne? Uncle Wayne, what should I do?” His uncle didn’t respond. Dakota was right. He didn’t look good. Now Virgil truly felt he was in a pickle. Everything was out of his control. “John!” Virgil called his name a few times before accepting that the man was no longer around. At least he wasn’t here to gloat. Maybe his uncle had given as good as he got, and the man with the motorcycle was licking his wounds somewhere.

The motorcycle headlight! Virgil’s head jerked toward where John had put down the light. It was gone. So John had been here on the ground too, collecting his prize. But where had he gone? And what should Virgil do now, with his unconscious uncle a few metres away?

“Come on, give me a hand.” Somehow, Virgil and Dakota managed to lift the sleeping Wayne, each of his arms over their much smaller shoulders. “We’d better take him to some help. Maybe the clinic.”

“Virgil, what happened to John?”

“I don’t really know, Dakota.” Slowly, they dragged the unconscious man through the woods.

“Can you tell me more about this Nanabush now?” asked Dakota.

If there was one thing history had taught the stranger, it was that he should never plan for victory until it was fully achieved. Stories from many different cultures, including the Anishnawbe, told of fools who anticipated one thing, and through their own hubris, achieved the exact opposite. Now here he was, hiding on top of Sammy’s roof with a detached headlight in one hand, and cradling a sore, perhaps cracked, rib in the other. His nose was bleeding, and his elbow was swelling up. Whoever that Dwayne guy was, he was tougher than he had anticipated. The Indian fought like an animal. Regrouping, John opted to hide from the two kids and his unconscious opponent on the other side of the roof until things settled. He couldn’t hide, though, from the pain in his left shoulder. Somehow, he thought, fighting a great battle used to be a lot easier. And less painful. Maybe he was getting old.

But at the moment he had more important things to worry about than this little tussle. Besides, he was a fast healer. At least he used to be. John knew the press conference would be starting any minute. He wanted to be there when all the fun began and, internal injuries or no internal injuries, he couldn’t miss it for the world. Luckily, all three of his uninvited guests were leaving. The two youngest seemed to be supporting Dwayne as they half carried him away. And there, just below the sore and impatient John, waited his precious Indian Chief.

A few minutes after the sound of the Chief faded into the distance, Sammy came running into his house, out of breath and in a panic. As always, the first thing he did was grab a beer. This time
it was two, then he hustled his aging and damaged body into his room, slamming the door behind him. Huddled in the corner, on the floor, he drained the first beer without tasting it. Things were happening. If the teachings of the residential school had stuck in him, he would have called it the End of Days—for just half an hour ago, he was sure, positive, one hundred percent convinced that he’d seen the marching of Birnam Wood. What else could it have been?

Out wandering, he’d been up on a grassy rise when Sammy saw what he saw. There, down below him, the trees were moving. Bushes were waving, leaves were scattering, the forest (a small part of it anyway) was swaying, no doubt getting ready to march. He could even hear the trees shout out in anger, scream in rage and yell in pain.

He stood there, wondering if after all these years the gods had indeed intended to destroy him by making him mad. After twenty seconds Sammy could take it no more, and with a small scream, he went running back to the relative sanctuary of his home. The night before had been the tempest.

What was happening? The only answers Sammy knew involved five-percent alcohol, and he planned to ask a lot of questions that day.

TWENTY-FOUR

It was showtime. The media, which consisted of one local television station and one cable station, the official city newspaper, the weekly supermarket coupon paper and two radio stations, were ready and waiting. Some were thinking,
This is what my career has come to, covering a minor Native land shuffle in the middle of nowhere
. They had been milling about for half an hour, waiting for the show to begin and carefully avoiding the water-filled potholes that dotted the landscape.

Crystal and Maggie were off by the MP’s Saturn, discussing this afternoon’s protocol and the need for arranging a meeting with the local reeve and MPP once the dust settled. Kait was busy handing out the official press release to all interested members of the fifth estate. All in all, it was a boring, typical press conference that would be lucky to make the tail end of tonight’s newscast.

Already in town that day there had been an attempted bank robbery by a meth addict that had been foiled easily by the local police—the man had locked himself out of his car. In the north end, a pine tree had been blown over by last night’s thunderstorm, trashing the mayor’s brother’s RV. So the line-up for tonight’s news was pretty much already set, and a news story about Native land claims just didn’t compare in excitement. Still, everybody had to go through the motions.

Maggie whispered into Crystal’s ear, “I’ve been thinking. I know you were going to speak first but maybe I should say a few words of introduction, just to set things up, and then you can speak. Is that okay?”

“Perfect,” responded Crystal, with her professional smile on full wattage, though she preferred being the opening act.

Maggie stepped up to the mike. “Excuse me, I suppose we should get started before all these trees die of old age,” she said. She had managed to get somebody from Otter Lake’s community centre to set up a mike and loudspeaker system, attached to a small portable generator. Though there were scarcely a dozen people there, this made things look more official. “I want everybody here to take a good look around them, at the trees, at the land beneath them. This is why we are here.”

Under normal circumstances, Maggie hated public speaking, detested it in fact. She considered it the least enjoyable, or perhaps a better expression was the
most unenjoyable
, part of the job of being chief. But today, before everything took place, she wanted these people standing before and beside her, and hopefully the people watching and listening later that night and reading the newspaper the next morning, to know what all the fuss was about.

“This is the land of our ancestors. We have been here anywhere from ten thousand years ago to time immemorial, depending on whose calendar you are using. We have always considered ourselves a part of the land, so you will have to excuse us if we get a little ornery when it comes to deciding what to do with that land. Our legends say the ground is Mother Earth’s skin, the trees and grass her hair, the water her blood. It’s hard to bargain away or discuss appropriating land when you think of it in that way. Otter Lake was originally founded almost two hundred years ago when…”

Crystal whispered to her daughter, “This is what you call a few words?”

Behind her, leaning hidden against a tree, stood John, listening. Even in this time, Native people still knew how to talk and think like the Native people he remembered. He nodded in agreement, and privately wondered how long it would take for these people to do what Maggie had suggested. Specifically they needed to take a good look around them, at the trees and, more important, at the land beneath them. Because unless somebody did that, he would have wasted an awful lot of time and energy.

“There’s been a lot of discussion over what to do with this land, both inside our community and outside. The issue has been controversial, and caused some disagreements. But remember, we are neighbours, and whatever happens, this land, this ground you stand upon, will be here long after you and I and everyone we know will have passed on.”

Terry Nash, radio reporter for CNDN, unconsciously glanced down when Maggie mentioned “this ground you stand upon.” He was off to the left, his mike held high, trying to catch cleaner sound as he had been taught in community college the year before. Arriving late, he hadn’t been able to leave his tape recorder on the lectern where Maggie was speaking.