Motorcycles & Sweetgrass (9 page)

The funeral reception was held at the community centre. Virgil watched everybody milling about eating sandwiches made, for the most part, of white bread, butter, baloney and processed cheese. He knew the traditional soup and chili would be served later, but a quick shot of carbohydrates was what was needed to take people’s minds off the solemnity of the day. He was off with his cousins of the same age, talking about the stranger. Everybody had seen him ride in but nobody had seen him ride out. Three days had passed since his first appearance and Reena Aandeg, Sammy’s niece, who lived along the main road near the highway, swore up and down that neither she nor her family saw him leave.

“Then he’s still here on the Reserve somewhere,” reasoned Virgil.

“Where would a guy like that stay? It would be kind of hard for him to hide,” said Dakota. “I wonder if he gives rides on that motorcycle. That would be so cool.”

To Virgil, she sounded like a silly girl. You didn’t go for rides with strangers on motorcycles. Everybody knew that.

“What if he’s a mass murderer or a rapist?” he said.

Dakota shook her head. “I doubt it. He has kind eyes.”

“Oh yeah,” agreed Jamie, a cousin of both Dakota and Virgil.

“It’s always in their eyes. I read somewhere that eyes are the window to the soul.”

“His are blue! Really blue! So blue” gushed Dakota.

“Wow!”

Speaking of eyes, Virgil was busy rolling his. At least he didn’t have to try to get out of going to school today. He knew that was an incredibly inappropriate thought to have at his grandmother’s funeral, but even more so when he could see his mother dealing with band politics across the room. She couldn’t even take a day off for her mother’s funeral. That was really inappropriate.

Sitting at a scarred wooden table, trying to enjoy the bland-ness of the sandwiches, Maggie recognized that her momentary respite from Reserve political intrigue was drawing to an end.

“Maggie, I know this isn’t the right place to discuss this but I need to talk to you.” It was Anthony Gimau, a big man with even bigger opinions. Back in the sixties when he was growing up, he’d wanted to be a radical, anything to shake up the system. Being Native automatically gave him ammunition to be an annoying gadfly. Therefore everything “White” was evil, except of course his Jimmy 4-by-4, which he adored, almost as much as he adored his wife, Klara, who was German. In his personal philosophy, there was a yin and yang kind of thing to people who orbited the Native community. There were the “wannabes;” people who were, for one reason or another, fascinated with Native culture and
wanted to be
Native. These types generally annoyed most Native people, including other wannabes. But that was the yin. The yang, Anthony believed, was the “shouldabeens;” those who were unfortunate enough not to be Native but who
should have been
Native. His wife, Klara, though born and raised in Jena, Germany, was a shouldabeen.

In his earlier years, Anthony used to sport a Mohawk haircut as a statement, but as time passed, his male-pattern baldness reduced him to shaving only the sides of his head, and leaving a one-and-a-half-inch strip of hair on the very back of his head as a somewhat diminished political statement. Somehow, he blamed White people for that too.

“What is it, Tony? I’m not in the mood to discuss anything.”

“I know, I know,” he said, nodding, then swallowing. “However…”

Maggie shook her head. “No however. Tony, we just buried my mother. Now is not the time.”

Tony’s eyes brightened. “I know. I know. When then?”

Maggie knew she’d walked into a trap. He wanted to talk about the plans for the new land they’d bought, and now he’d cornered her into setting a specific time and place. Everybody in the room had an opinion and was dying to share it with Maggie. Tony had just beaten them to it.

Sighing, Maggie said, “I don’t know. Day after tomorrow. Eleven o’clock. How’s that? Can I finish my sandwich now?”

“Yes, yes, of course. My thoughts are with you and your family. But wait ’til you hear what I have to say!” Anthony trotted off in search of some traditional corn soup or sauerkraut. Maggie sighed, dropping her unappealing sandwich onto the plate. Her husband was dead, her son was retreating into himself and the acquisition of all this new land was proving to be the hottest political potato the community had seen in a long while.

Maybe she should have cut Clifford more slack, back when he was chief. He had been dealing with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, affectionately known as the RCAP, an attempt by the federal government to address many of the problems being
complained about by Canada’s Native population. And it took years. Clifford had spent many nights in Ottawa, and many more nights at the Band Office or on the phone. In her imagination, Maggie began to imagine the RCAP as a woman, her husband’s mistress. A big fat woman, a selfish one, always wanting more. She promised so much, but in the end, she delivered so little. Every night Clifford would come to bed with Maggie, but he was always thinking about “her,” the other woman, the RCAP. And now the legacy of that relationship was Maggie’s cross to bear.

Some wanted the three hundred acres used for new housing. Others felt the time was right to install a water filtration plant, which in turn could mean somebody (quite probably the woman who had made the suggestion) could open up a laundromat, and all those who either didn’t have or couldn’t afford a washer/dryer wouldn’t have to drive forty minutes into town and stand around for two hours waiting for their clothes to be cleaned. And they could stop worrying about their town dying off like what happened in that Walkerton place. There were proposals for a golf course or a casino. Of course it wasn’t solely Maggie’s decision; there was the Band Council to go through, as well as a bunch of committees and boards to deal with. White people may have invented bureaucracy, but their relationship with the Department of Indian Affairs had taught the First Nations people of Canada how to excel at and, in their own way, indigenize it. All land utilization ideas and economic development schemes started their journey on Maggie’s desk. And she was getting tired of it.

All around her the community swirled and flowed, everyone except Tony caught up in mourning. She thought of her family, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins. She couldn’t comprehend how families with only one or two kids functioned.

Maybe that was why Maggie was such a good chief. She had been forged within the anarchy and chaos of a large family. Each brother and sister had made her stronger, both by love and by torment.

The chair beside her scraped on the tile floor. “I don’t suppose anybody has seen Wayne?” said Diane, Maggie’s eldest sister. Wayne was Maggie’s youngest brother, three years younger than her, the youngest of the Benojee brood.

“You know he won’t be here. He’ll probably come tonight when nobody’s around.”

“Or when the moon’s full.” Diane, her plate a mound of triangular white sandwiches, began to feast. “Willie dropped by his island a few days ago. Couldn’t find him, so he left a note. Geez, you’d think he’d be here.”

“You know Wayne. He’s got his own way of dealing with life.” Maggie couldn’t help noticing the pile of processed food on her sister’s plate. This was not the diet the doctor had prescribed for her diabetic sister.

Diane noticed the look and scowled. “Don’t you dare give me that—there are no calories, sugars and starches at funeral receptions. You know that.” To illustrate her point, she stuffed a whole sandwich in her mouth, and grinned.

Maggie couldn’t help but smile back. As for her younger brother, it wasn’t uncommon for Wayne to go missing for weeks, even months at a time. An isolationist and contemporary Native—
mystic
, for lack of a better term—Wayne led a strange and separate life and there were always rumours about what he did over on his island. People fishing just offshore of his island would occasionally hear strange yells. Family, when visiting, said the place looked like a primitive gym, with homemade punching bags constructed from canvas and stuffed with leaves and sand.
Her brother rarely came to the mainland, and if he did, it was usually for supplies and to visit his mother. Though he was the youngest, he spoke the best Anishnawbe—like his mother, strong and without hesitation.

And then, of course, there was the famous rumour, the stuff of legends. Supposedly a few years ago, some rowdy boaters had landed on the shores of what had once been called Western Island, but was now more frequently known as Wayne’s Island, intent on building the world’s biggest bonfire. They started foraging for wood, and soon discovered the island was occupied. According to the story, Wayne disagreed with their starting a fire, and his disagreement was strong and severe. Exchanged words and issued threats developed into an altercation. Five drunk White guys against one lone Indian. This had the makings of a pretty good civil rights case.

The next morning their boat was found drifting a kilometre offshore of the island. Inside that boat were many bruises, one dislocated elbow, numerous lacerations, seven cracked ribs, four black eyes and at least a dozen missing teeth. The White men said everything was a blur. One guy mentioned a crazy Ninja Indian on the mysterious island, but the others shushed him up, embarrassed.

“Mom?” Virgil was standing beside her.

“Yes, honey.”

“I’m gonna go now. Okay?”

“Did you have something to eat?”

He nodded. “Three sandwiches, one apple, a grape juice and some cookies. Okay?”

“I guess so. Where’re you going?”

“Dunno. Probably home.”

“Tired?” she asked.

“A little.”

Behind Virgil, she could see Duanne DeBois hovering, waiting for his chance to speak with her. God only knew what he wanted to do with the land.

“Well, go get some rest. Hopefully I’ll be home in a few hours and will make you a real dinner. Something with vitamins and fibre maybe. Sound good?”

For a moment, Maggie saw the saddest smile on his face. She realized she’d said this before. Many times. And she’d often failed to keep her promise.

“Sure,” Virgil said, and then quickly left. Maggie watched him walk through the hall doors.

“Maggie, good to see you. You got a second?” said Duanne DeBois as he sat down beside her and opened a colourful flow chart.

SEVEN

About half an hour later, Virgil was walking toward the railroad tracks that ran through the Reserve’s northern border. He had lied to his mother once again, only because he knew that she wouldn’t understand and that it might start an argument neither of them wanted. Virgil knew he was running late and he had increased his pace. About twice a day, a passenger train would speed through the forested hills as if afraid to stop—rumour had it there were Indians about. Frequently, Virgil would be sitting there on a large flat-topped rock set about ten feet back from the tracks, watching the train thunder past on its way to wherever it was going. He’d done some research on the computer and most of the trains were heading to Toronto, or out of Toronto, several hours to the south. He would catch a glimpse of faces in those windows, some looking out at him, others engrossed in a book or laptop. Where were all these people going? Who were they? What did they do?

Virgil had never been on a train and his dream, mundane as it might seem to others, was to book himself a ride when he got older. Those trains reminded him that there were places to go, beyond the Reserve. The next train was due by in about six minutes, though the exact time was always a rough estimate, with VIA Rail’s record. The engineer had seen him sitting there
so often, it had become his habit to blow the train’s horn as he went by. It was a loud noise, one that Virgil had become used to and enjoyed. It was an acknowledgment of his existence by somebody other than his family. At least some things in this world could be counted on.

Virgil often came here instead of the classroom. He knew that his skipping school upset his mother, and perhaps somewhere down the line he would pay for it, but right now, he didn’t care. Maybe he should be more like Dakota. She went to school religiously and took to each subject like a kitten to a ball of string. But school was almost out for summer anyway, weakening his educational resolve.