Truth and Bright Water (23 page)

S
leeping in a tipi is different from sleeping in a room without windows. For instance, in my bedroom at the shop, I don’t have to worry about where the sun rises or just how bright it can be.

When I wake up the next morning, auntie Cassie is sitting on the edge of the mattress, feeding a piece of wood into the stove. “About time you got up,” she says. “Coffee’s on. Fruit’s in the cooler. After that, you’re on your own.”

The whole east side of the lodge is golden and warm, and I have to squint as I roll out of the blankets. “Where’s everyone?”

“Gone,” says auntie Cassie.

“Where’s mom?”

“Didn’t come home.” Auntie Cassie closes the door of the stove and pours herself a cup of coffee.

“Dad got the car fixed.”

“So he did.”

“She out with dad?”

“Wouldn’t put money on that.” Auntie Cassie sits on the mattress with both hands around the cup as if she is trying to warm her fingers up. The tattoo is darker now, more purple than blue. I’m not trying to stare, but she catches me looking. “Here,” says auntie Cassie, and she tosses me a pen. “Give it a try.”

I make a fist and print AIM in thick block letters on my knuckles. “Is this how you did it?”

Auntie Cassie ducks down behind her cup of coffee, but I can see she’s smiling. “No,” she says. “When I did this, I was drunk. And I did it in a mirror.”

“But this looks pretty close, right?”

I’m just getting ready to ask auntie Cassie about the suitcase with
the baby clothes when the flap is pulled to one side and my grandmother ducks in. She sees my hand right away and makes a noise like a whale coming up for air.

“It’s just ink.” I hold my hand up so my grandmother can see, but you can tell that it’s not me she’s after. I wet my knuckles and wipe them on my jeans, but the ink doesn’t come off easily.

“Leave him out of it,” snaps my grandmother.

“He’s not in it,” snaps auntie Cassie.

My grandmother hangs over the coffee pot like a weasel watching a trout. “We’re going to need some more wood for the stove,” she says to me. “Try to get the smaller pieces. They burn better.”

“Don’t worry,” auntie Cassie says to me. “It’s not serious.”

“You talk to him yet?” says my grandmother.

“I guess that’s my business.”

“Suit yourself,” says my grandmother.

“I will,” says auntie Cassie.

Auntie Cassie and my grandmother settle in and square off like turtles. I’m a little nervous standing between the two of them.

“Better get the wood,” snaps auntie Cassie.

“The skinny pieces,” snaps my grandmother. “The fat ones won’t fit.”

I don’t mind getting the wood, and with the current state of things, I plan on taking my time. I look around for Soldier, but he’s off trying to impress the tourists. The fog is gone, and the sun is out, and everyone is walking around in shorts and colourful shirts, with black camera bags slung over their shoulders. They look like an army on the march.

I stop at Skee Gardipeau’s booth just to say hello. Skee is scooping up potatoes and shiny corn, and fishing pieces of fried chicken out of a plastic bucket. “Who’s got the special?” he shouts.

“Hi,” I say.

Skee gives me a wink and drops the special in front of a tall man with glasses and a canvas hat, the kind you can fold up and shove in your pocket. “You hear about your father?”

“What?”

“He’s getting pretty good at that.”

“What?”

“Messing up.”

A short guy and a skinny woman come up to the booth. They’re wearing tan shorts, matching blue shirts with red parrots, and those sandals you see in the magazines my mother has in the shop. The sandals don’t look like much, but they’re really expensive because they mould to your foot and last for more than one summer. And, if you want, you can wear them with socks.

“Business calls,” says Skee. “If you see your old man, tell him I’m still waiting for my chair.”

I work my way through the crowd to my father’s booth. “Hey, stranger,” he says. “You’re just in time.” He still has the dark glasses on, but he doesn’t look like Elvis Presley anymore.

“Lots of people,” I say.

“And they’ve all got money,” says my father. He spreads the wood coyotes out so you can get a good look at them. “You should buy one of the mirrors for your mother.”

“She has one,” I say. “A bear.”

The mirrors look nice hanging from the top of the booth. The wind isn’t crazy the way it sometimes is, and the mirrors turn slowly, flashing in the sun. When my father first started making them, he stuck pretty much to bears and buffalo and eagles. But there were a lot of calls for things like moose and beaver, too, and before long, he was making up turtles and rabbits and dogs and cats as well. He made up an elephant for one customer and a giraffe for another.

The three Germans dressed up as Indians come to the far side of the booth. The guy in the beaded leather shirt has one of Lucille Rain’s medallions around his neck.

“Holy,” says my father. “Those boys sure know how to dress.” And he says it with a straight face.

“They’re Germans,” I tell him.

“No shit,” says my father. “Boy, these days Indians are everywhere.”

The Germans are looking through the coyotes, and my father is telling them how the coyote is a trickster and how coyotes are good
luck and how a medicine bag isn’t complete without one. Some of the stuff I’ve never heard of before, but if anyone knows about coyotes, it’s my father.

I turn towards the mountains and let the wind pass over my face. It feels clean and powerful, and I’m thinking maybe Lum is wrong. That maybe Monroe and auntie Cassie didn’t come home because they had no place else to go or because they were crazy, but because there was no place else in the world they wanted to be.

I watch the Germans wander over to Carleton Coombs’s table and begin looking through the furs that Carleton gets from a white guy in Los Angeles.

“They buy anything?” I ask my father.

“Fussy assholes.”

“They didn’t like the coyotes?”

“Wanted them made out of turquoise,” says my father. “The big guy had a vision.”

“A vision?”

“Said he saw a blue coyote with ruby eyes.”

“Neat.”

“More likely something he ate.” My father coughs and his whole body shakes a little, and I can see that he’s still not feeling too well.

“How’d mom like the car?”

My father stops shaking and his eyes harden up. “You seen her?”

“No.”

“She took off in the car,” my father says. “Haven’t seen her since.”

“Must have really liked it.”

My father reaches up and adjusts a couple of the mirrors. “I figured we could go for a drive,” he says. “Maybe sneak over to Prairie View and stay the night. Like old times. I mean, you think she’d be a little grateful.”

“Skee said there was trouble?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

A roar goes up from the buffalo corral. My father and I turn to see what’s happening, but all we can see is the crowd of tourists packed in against the orange mesh and the cars and the long cloud of grey dust kicked up by the buffalo and the motorcycles.

My father rearranges the coyotes so that they are all pointing east. “Cops got nothing better to do than hassle small businessmen.”

“Smuggling?”

“Hell, I’m public enemy number one.” My father is smiling now. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”

A truck leaves the buffalo run and comes tearing up the hill towards the big tent. The tourists begin milling around and pressing against the cars. Some have their cameras held high over their heads. Parents with children on their shoulders are jostled out of the way.

“That a tattoo,” says my father, “or you just practising?”

“What do you think?”

“Here,” says my father, and he takes down one of the mirrors. “See for yourself.” The mirror is shaped like a coyote or a wolf or a fox, and it’s one of my father’s best-sellers. I hold my hand up to the glass and make a fist. My father leans on the edge of the booth. “Those things are permanent,” he says. “Not easy to get rid of.”

It doesn’t look too bad. I squeeze my fist so that the letters stand out.

“Feel tough, do you?” says my father.

I don’t know why I don’t see it right away, but it’s only when I look a second time that I notice. MIA. It’s supposed to say AIM, but what it says in the mirror is MIA. I pull my hand back and turn it around.

“I don’t know,” says my father. “If it were me, I’d probably get an eagle.”

A couple of tourists come by at a dead trot. The man is red-faced and sweaty. The camera around his neck swings back and forth, thumping him in the chest like a rock on a string. The woman looks fresh and is pulling ahead as they get near the booth.

“Tell her to bring the van,” shouts the man.

The woman runs on ahead, loping across the prairies like an ostrich. The man slows and grinds to a stop in front of us. He’s breathing hard and has to bend over and brace himself on his knees.

“You’re just in time,” says my father. “All the coyotes are half-price.”

While the man catches his breath, I look at my knuckles again, and now I can see what has happened.

“You should have seen it,” says the man. “Christ, what a mess.”

“If you buy three,” says my father, “you get two dollars off.”

“Real stupid,” says the man, and he waves his camera at us. “That’s what it was.”

My father pushes the coyotes forward a little, but I can see he’s starting to give up.

“Should have seen the blood,” says the man.

“Coyotes are good luck,” says my father.

“Never saw anything like it,” says the man.

I look over at the buffalo run. The ambulance is just pulling up to the corral and is trying to work its way through the crowd, but no one wants to move.

“Anyone hurt?” I ask.

“Oh, hell,” says the man. “They’ll be lucky to live out the day.”

I look at my father. He runs his hand through his hair and shrugs. The man straightens up and wipes his face with a handkerchief. “And I got it on film,” he says, and he gives us a thumbs up and heads for the big tent.

As soon as the man is gone, I turn to my father. He’s sorting through the coyotes again and turning them all to the south. “That doesn’t sound too good,” I say.

“What the hell do they expect?” says my father. “It ain’t Disneyland.”

I help my father at the booth for a while, and we sell six of the mirrors and a couple of coyotes, so he’s a little happier and doesn’t get back to complaining about my mother’s running off with the car right away. I’m tempted to go down to the corral to see what happened, but the way things go, I figure I’ll hear about it soon enough. My father starts talking and laughing with a family from Kingston, Ontario, who normally spend their summers on Prince Edward Island but decided to come west this year to find the real Indians.

“All the ones we hear about,” says the woman, “are in the penitentiary.”

I find Eddie Baton’s truck without any problem. Eddie likes his trucks fancy, and he likes them red. He gets a new truck every year or so, and all of them have chrome running boards and chrome
exhaust stacks that wrap around the bed and stick up in the air like ears or antennae. Eddie and Wilfred are sitting on the shady side of the truck having a beer. The back end is filled with cut poplar. “Help yourself,” says Eddie. “You hear about your old man?”

Wilfred sips at the beer slowly as if it’s the last one he’s going to get for a while. “Cops,” he says. “They love sticking it to Indians.”

“It’s not even our shit,” says Eddie, and he drops the can on the ground and crushes it.

“Hell,” says Wilfred, “the government should give us all medals for public service.”

I load the wood into Eddie’s pushcart.

“What the hell they want to bother Elvin for?” says Eddie.

“Right,” says Wilfred. “He’s just doing their dirty work for them.”

The siren makes us all jump. Eddie and Wilfred stand up and shade their eyes. “Who the hell they after now?”

But it’s not the cops. It’s the ambulance that was down at the buffalo run. It swings up through the grass, skirts the big tent, hits the lease road on the fly, and disappears in a thick rooster tail of dirt and gravel.

“Couple of guys got hurt at the buffalo run,” I say.

“Their own damn fault.” Eddie shakes his head. “But they’ll probably try to sue the band.”

“Sherman saw it all,” says Wilfred. “These two guys began fighting over one of the big cows.”

“Then they began shooting at each other,” says Eddie, and he starts laughing as he thinks about it. “Should see the mess one of those paint pellets can make on a nice shirt.”

“Totalled both motorcycles,” says Wilfred. “That’s what happens when you think with your dick.”

“You ought to know,” says Eddie.

“That’s what your wife said,” says Wilfred, and he opens another beer and hands it to Eddie.

When I get back to the lodge, nobody’s home. I unload the wood and help myself to some iced tea and wait. I want to talk to my mother about the car, and I want to ask auntie Cassie about the
tattoo. I hardly get settled on the mattress when I hear Soldier outside the tipi, and he reminds me that we’re supposed to be at the church helping Monroe.

“I remember,” I tell him through the canvas. “I was just waiting for you.”

Soldier complains until I come outside and scratch his ears and rub him all over. The crowd at the buffalo run has started to thin out. I can’t see anything that looks like an accident, but I hear several of the cows bellowing, and I wonder if they can remember the good old days when they had the place to themselves, before they had to worry about Indians running them off cliffs or Europeans shooting at them from the comfort of railroad cars or bloodthirsty tourists in tan walking shorts and expensive sandals chasing them across the prairies on motorcycles.

H
alfway across the river, I realize that we are in a little trouble. Soldier doesn’t notice right away because he is concentrating on keeping the bucket from swinging, but by the time we get to shore and look around, he clues in.

“Where’s the church?”

Seeing that it is gone is one thing. Finding it now that it has disappeared is something else. I try looking past the bridge, measuring out the church’s approximate location, but the bluff above the river stretches out in both directions and the church could be anywhere along the way.

“Maybe we can find our old trail.”

We try that and it doesn’t work, and in the end, we’re reduced to climbing to the bluff just below the bridge and then walking back along the ridge, keeping our eyes peeled. “If you see it, let me know,” I say. “And watch out for the platform.”

Soldier and I begin weaving our way through the grass. I hold my hand out in front of me like a blind person with a cane, just in case I find the church all of a sudden.

I look around for Monroe, but he could be anywhere, and if he’s in the grass, swimming again, we could walk right by him and not even notice. I look back at the bridge every so often to try to keep my bearings, but it doesn’t help much.

“It should be right around here.”

Soldier is in front of me, and when I hear him bark and see him leap out of the grass, I figure that he’s found it.

“Good boy!”

Soldier comes wiggling back to me with something in his mouth. At first, it looks like another bone, but it’s just a piece of cut poplar,
the kind my grandmother would like for her stove. Soldier drops it at my feet and waits for me to throw it.

“We’re looking for the church.”

Soldier turns and dives into the grass, barking as he goes. “That’s right,” I shout, and I toss the stick behind me. “Find the church.” I look around, but everything is pretty much the same. It’s as if the church has never existed, and I can see now why Monroe is so famous.

Almost immediately, Soldier is back with another stick in his mouth. This one is almost the same as the other one, and for a minute, I think he’s circled around and picked up the first stick, just to be cute. But this stick is thicker and fills Soldier’s mouth. He drops it at my feet and sits down. It’s a little weird to find firewood scattered about on the prairies, but I don’t think much about it until we find the next piece and then the next.

The prairies can fool you. They look flat, when in fact they really roll along like an ocean. One moment you’re on the top of a wave and the next you’re at the bottom. Soldier and I walk up a slight incline, and when we get to the crest, I see it. Soldier leans up against my leg the way he does when he’s done something good and I’m supposed to praise him.

“It’s interesting,” I tell him. “But it’s not the church.”

Below us, someone has cleared out a large circle of grass in the middle of the prairies, and at the centre of the circle is a pile of firewood. From the top of the rise, the pile of wood looks large enough, but it is only after we walk down and stand beside it that we realize just how enormous it really is. Soldier walks around the pile, drooling, trying to decide where to begin. “It’s got to be Monroe,” I tell him.

Soldier isn’t listening. He turns his face into the wind and perks up his ears. He hears the sound before I do, but that’s only because he’s a dog. Monroe’s truck comes over the crest of the hill and bounces its way along the ridge. In the back end is a load of wood.

I nudge Soldier with my foot. “What’d I tell you?”

Monroe is all smiles as he backs the truck up against the pile and gets out of the cab. “Just in time!”

He drops the tailgate and begins tossing logs onto the pile. Soldier jumps on the wood in the truck and begins passing pieces down to Monroe. I stand at the side and throw the smaller pieces as high up on the pile as I can.

“It’s a pretty big pile of wood,” I say.

“Yes, it is,” says Monroe.

It doesn’t take us long to empty the truck. Monroe is hot and sweaty and covered with sawdust, as if he’s been cutting and loading and stacking for days. “That’s the last load,” he says.

“Neat,” I say. “What’s it for?”

“Now all we have to do,” he says, “is find the church.”

Yesterday, when Monroe told me he had lost the church, I thought he might be kidding, fooling around. But when he says it this time, I can see that he’s telling the truth.

“Maybe we should drive around slowly, and see if we can find it that way,” I say.

“Tried that already,” says Monroe. “Didn’t work.”

“We could lay out a grid the way they do when they’re digging for dinosaurs and prehistoric stuff.”

“Take too long.”

Monroe rubs Soldier’s neck and talks to him until Soldier begins to moan and slobber all over Monroe’s hands. “Okay,” says Monroe, and he gives me a wink. “He says he’ll do it.”

Soldier jumps off the bed of the truck and begins sniffing through the grass. He sweeps to the east of the woodpile, works his way back, and then heads south. Every so often, he stops and pushes his nose into the dirt, and then he’s off sniffing again.

“That’s a great dog,” says Monroe, and he sits on the tailgate of the truck. “Have I told you about why I’m famous?”

“You worked at museums. Restoring things.”

“Did I tell you about the boxes and the drawers and the things tied together with string?”

“At the museums?”

Soldier is moving off to the west now, looking for all the world like a tan vacuum cleaner on legs. Monroe shades his eyes and glances up at the sky. “We have time,” he says. “No point in starting too early.”

Soldier starts barking and racing through the grass in long, loping runs as if he is chasing something.

“Aha!” says Monroe. “I think he’s done it.”

“Probably just a rabbit,” I say. “He likes chasing rabbits.”

“Does he ever catch them?”

“He caught a skunk once.”

Monroe pushes off the back of the truck. He stands in the grass and sniffs the air. “It’s not a skunk.”

By the time we get to him, Soldier has stopped running and is rolling around in the grass. Monroe squats down next to him and rubs his belly and tells him what a good dog he is.

“So, where’s the church?” I say.

Soldier gets to his feet, trots out into the middle of the prairies, and sits down.

“This way,” says Monroe, and he stomps through the grass, swinging his arms as if there’s marching music playing in his head. I tag along behind, but I know he’s not going to have much luck following Soldier.

When we reach Soldier, Monroe turns around in a circle, looks at Soldier, and then thrusts his hand into space. “Hmmmmm,” he says, and he feels around in the air. Soldier snorts. Monroe takes a step forward and feels around some more. “How about here?”

Soldier cocks his head to one side. I know he’s guessing, but I have to admit that, over the years, he’s been one lucky dog. Monroe takes a couple of steps to the left and slowly feels around with his hand. “Aha!”

I don’t see a thing, but Monroe turns his hand as if he’s twisting a knob, and he pushes, and the door swings open. “After you,” says Monroe. He bends over at the waist, throws his arm out in an arc, and Soldier trots past him into the church.

I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but inside the church is pretty much the same. The paintings and the sculptures, the rugs and the bookcases, the couches and the chairs and the piano are all there. There are more fresh flowers in the kitchen. They stand up straight in the vase, full of colour and grace. My mother would be impressed.

Monroe looks around and rubs his hands. “Okay,” he says, “let’s get started.”

“Doing what?”

“It’s moving day,” says Monroe.

“You’re moving?”

“Just all the stuff.”

“Where?”

“Outside,” says Monroe.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“We’ll start with the big stuff,” says Monroe, “so we don’t wear ourselves out too soon.”

The big stuff is the piano. “We going to try to move this?”

“Nothing to it,” says Monroe. “It’s got wheels.”

Monroe and I each take a corner and brace our shoulders against the wood. It doesn’t move right away, but as we lean forward and use our legs, the piano finally breaks free from the floor and begins rolling towards the front door.

“Now what do we do?” I say.

Getting the piano to the door is one thing. Getting it down the steps is another. I don’t see any way that this is going to happen unless someone shows up with a crane. Monroe goes into the church and comes back with two long, thick planks. “You know how the Egyptians built the pyramids?”

“Lots of big guys?”

“Physics,” says Monroe. “Grab a couple of those two-by-sixes.”

He backs the truck up, and even though you can’t see the porch, he gets the bed almost level with the top step. Then he lays the planks between the truck and the door. “Okay,” says Monroe. “Time for some more physics.”

I’m sure the planks are going to break, and the piano will wind up in pieces scattered about the landscape. The planks bow, all right, and they make angry noises, but they don’t break, and Monroe and I push and sweat as we shove the piano onto the back of the truck.

“There,” says Monroe. “The rest is easy.”

The rest is not easy. Monroe drives the truck to the far side of the woodpile. At first, I think he’s going to try to skid the piano off into the grass, but instead, he leaves it in the truck. “What do you think?” says Monroe. “This is fun.”

We spend the rest of the day hauling everything out of the church and arranging it in the grass. We put the rugs down first and then the couches and the chairs. Monroe places the lamps among the furnishings so that if we had electricity, we could sit on a couch and read.

“Where should we put the bed?” Monroe asks me.

“Why are we doing this?”

Soldier curls up on one of the big Persians and goes to sleep. I know that there’s not much he can do, but I’m cranky with him anyway.

“Could sure use some walls,” says Monroe. “I guess all we can do is prop the paintings up in the grass.” We lift and carry and sweat and grunt, and by the time we empty the church and Monroe finishes decorating the area around the woodpile, it is evening.

“We still have that bentwood box.”

“Time for a break first,” says Monroe, and he flops down on one of the couches.

The fog begins to form on the river, and it looks as if it’s serious tonight. Overhead, the stars are beginning to show themselves. Monroe leans back and looks at the sky. “Don’t see this in Toronto,” he says.

“What if it rains?”

“You cold?” says Monroe.

“Wind comes up, and you’ll get dirt on everything.”

Monroe stands up and rubs his arms. “I’m a little cold.”

Below us, you can see Truth all lit up. Across the river, you can see the lights at the big tent and the RV park. The drum is going, and it sounds like Red Bull. “Time to get started,” says Monroe, and he walks over to the truck.

I’m hoping Monroe’s not thinking of trying to move the piano, so when he comes back carrying a grocery bag, I’m relieved. When Soldier sees the bag, he scrambles to his feet and sucks his stomach in. I don’t think it’s food, but with Monroe you never know. “Here,” says Monroe, and he reaches into the box and comes up with a handful of flares.

Soldier sniffs at them to make sure that they are not hot dogs.

“Stuff them in as far as they will go,” says Monroe, and he heads for the woodpile.

Monroe and Soldier and I walk around the pile, cracking flares and wedging them under the logs until the stack is ringed with glowing red lights. When we’re done, the whole thing looks a little like a spaceship getting ready to explode into the sky. Monroe wipes his hands on his pants and sits down on the couch. “What kind of music do you like?”

“My mother plays a lot of opera,” I say. “Anything but that.”

Monroe leans over and puts a CD into a portable stereo. “Don Ross,” he says. “He’s a great guitarist.”

Soldier likes the music, and I have to admit that it’s a lot better than opera. Monroe stretches out on the couch. I sit in the chair and watch the flares set the woodpile on fire. Soldier settles down on a rug.

In no time at all, the entire woodpile is ablaze. Soldier sits next to Monroe and we watch the sparks leap into the sky. “Come on,” says Monroe, and he runs to the truck and comes back with two fire extinguishers.

“We’re going to try to put
that
out?”

“No,” shouts Monroe, and he jogs out onto the prairies and begins blasting the larger embers that have been thrown off by the bonfire. Actually, it’s a lot of fun. Sort of like laser tag. An ember flies loose from the pile and floats into the grass, and I race over, level the extinguisher, and blow it to bits. We race around the fire like madmen, shouting, barking, chasing comets in the night. We only stop when the fire settles down and we run out of extinguishers.

“All right,” says Monroe after we catch our breath. “Let’s get the place cleaned up before company arrives.”

The fog has closed in tight. I can still see part of the bridge, but Truth and Bright Water have all but vanished. Which is why I don’t see the car until it pulls up next to the fire.

“Company!” shouts Monroe, and he and Soldier head for the car.

It’s Skee and Gabriel.

“Skee, you old son of a bitch,” says Monroe. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

I push off the tailgate and head on over to say hello just as Eddie Baton’s truck comes out of the fog with my father and Wilfred in the front seat.

“We saw the fire,” says Skee. “Figured we’d come over and say hello.”

“You’re just in time,” says Monroe. “We’re almost ready to start.”

“Hello, Monroe,” says Gabriel. “Damn nice fire.”

More cars and trucks arrive, sliding out of the fog like ghosts. Lucille and Teresa Rain pull up in their Chevy. Sherman Youngman and Carol Millerfeather swing around the fire and park their cars at the edge of the light. Lucy Rabbit arrives with my grandmother and Edna Baton. I look to see if Rebecca is with them.