Indian Country Noir

Helper by Joseph Bruchac

Adirondacks, New York

The one with the missing front teeth. He’s the one who shot me. Before his teeth were missing.

Getting shot was, in a way, my fault. I heard them coming when they were still a mile away. I could’ve run. But running never suited me, even before I got this piece of German steel in my hip. My Helper. Plus I’d been heating the stones for my sweat lodge since the sun was a hand high above the hill. I run off, the fire would burn down and they’d cool off. Wouldn’t be respectful to those stones.

See what they want, I figured. Probably just deer hunters who’d heard about my reputation. You want to get a trophy, hire Indian Charley.

Yup, that was what it had to be. A couple of flatlanders out to hire me to guide them for the weekend. Boys who’d seen the piece about me in the paper, posing with two good old boys from Brooklyn and the twelve pointer they bagged. Good picture of me, actually. Too good, I realized later. But that wasn’t what I was thinking then. Just about potential customers. Not that I needed the money. But a man has to keep busy. And it was better in general if folks just saw me as a typical Indian. Scraping by, not too well educated, a threat to no one. Good old Indian Charley.

Make me a sawbuck or two, get them a buck or two. Good trade.

I was ready to say that to them. Rehearsing it in my head. For a sawbuck or two, I’ll get you boys a buck or two. Good trade. Indian humor. Funny enough to get me killed.

I really should have made myself scarce when I heard their voices clear enough to make out what the fat one was saying. It was also when I felt the first twinge in my hip. They were struggling up the last two hundred yards of the trail. That’s when I should have done it. Not ran, maybe. But faded back into the hemlocks.

Son of a bidgin’ Indin, the heavy-footed one said. And kept on saying it in between labored breaths and the sound of his heavy feet, slipping and dislodging stones. The other one, who wasn’t so clumsy but was still making more noise than a lame moose, didn’t say anything.

I imagined Heavy Foot was just ticked off at me for making my camp two miles from the road and the last of it straight up. It may have discouraged some who might’ve hired me. But it weeded out the weaker clientele. And the view was worth it, hills rolling away down to the river that glistened with the rising sun like a silver bracelet, the town on the other side that turned into a constellation of lights mirroring the stars in the sky above it at night.

The arrowhead-shaped piece of metal in my flesh sent another little shiver down the outside of my thigh. I ignored it again. Not a smart thing to do, but I was curious about my visitors.

Curiosity killed the Chippewa, as my grampa, who had also been to Carlisle, used to joke.

For some reason the picture of the superintendent’s long face the last day I saw him came to mind. Twenty years ago. He was sitting behind his desk, his pale face getting red as one of those beets I’d spent two summers digging on the farm where they sent me to work for slave labor wages — like every other Indian kid at the school. The superintendent got his cut, of course. How many farm hands and house maids do you need? We got hundreds of them here at Carlisle. Nice, civilized, docile little Indian boys and girls. Do whatever you want with them.

That was before I got my growth and Pop Warner saw me and made me one of his athletic boys. Special quarters, good food and lots of it, an expense account at Blumenthal’s department store, a share of the gate. Plus a chance to get as many concussions as any young warrior could ever dream of, butting heads against the linemen of Harvard and Syracuse and Army. I also found some of the best friends I ever had on that football squad.

It was because of one of them that I’d been able to end up here on this hilltop — which, according to my name on a piece of paper filed in the county seat belonged to me. As well as the other two hundred acres all the way down to the river. I’d worked hard for the money that made it possible for me to get my name on that deed. But that’s another story to tell another time.

As Heavy Foot and his quieter companion labored up the last narrow stretch of trail, where it passed through a hemlock thicket and then came out on an open face of bedrock, I was still replaying that scene in the superintendent’s office.

You can’t come in here like this.

I just did.

I’ll have you expelled.

I almost laughed at that one. Throw an Indian out of Carlisle? Where some children were brought in chains? Where they cut our hair, stole the fine jewelry that our parents arrayed us in, took our clothes, changed our names, dressed us in military uniforms, and turned us into little soldiers? Where more kids ran away than ever graduated?

You won’t get the chance. I held up my hand and made a fist.

The super cringed back when I did that. I suppose when you have bear paw hands like mine, they could be a little scary to someone with a guilty conscience.

I lifted my little finger. First, I said, I’m not here alone. I looked back over my shoulder where the boys of the Carlisle football team were waiting in the hall.

I held up my ring finger. Second, I talk; you listen.

Middle finger. Third, he goes. Out of here. Today.

The super knew who I meant. The head disciplinarian of the school. Mr. Morissey. Who was already packing his bags with the help of our two tackles. Help Morissey needed because of his dislocated right shoulder and broken jaw.

The super started to say something. But the sound of my other hand coming down hard on his desk stopped his words as effectively as a cork in a bottle. His nervous eyes focused for a second on the skinned knuckles of my hand.

Fourth, I said, extending my index finger. No one will ever be sent to that farm again. No, don’t talk. You know the one I mean. Just nod if you understand. Good.

Last, my thumb extended, leaning forward so that it touched his nose. You never mention my name again. You do not contact the agent on my reservation or anyone else. You just take me out of the records. I am a violent Indian. Maybe I have killed people. You do not ever want to see me again. Just nod.

The super nodded.

Good, I said. Now, my hand patting the air as if I was giving a command to a dog, stay!

He stayed. I walked out into the hall where every man on the football squad except for our two tackles was waiting, including our Indian coach. The super stayed in his office as they all shook my hand, patted me on the back. No one said goodbye. There’s no word for goodbye. Travel good. Maybe we see you further down the road.

The super didn’t even come out as they moved with me to the school gate, past the mansion built with the big bucks from football ticket sales where Pop Warner had lived. As I walked away, down to the train station, never looking back, the super remained in his seat. His legs too weak with fear for him to stand. According to what I heard later in France — from Gus Welch, who was my company commander and had been our quarterback at Carlisle — the superintendent sat there for the rest of the day without moving. The football boys finally took pity on him and sent one of the girls from the sewing class in to tell him that Charles, the big dangerous Indian, was gone and he could come out now.

Gus laughed. You know what he said when she told him that? Don’t mention his name. That’s what he said.

I might have been smiling at the memory when the two men came into view, but that wasn’t where my recollections had stopped. They’d kept walking me past the Carlisle gate, down the road to the trolley tracks. They’d taken me on the journey I made back then, by rail, by wagon, and on foot, until I reached the dark hills that surrounded that farm. The one more Carlisle kids had run away from than any other. Or at least it was reported that they had run away — too many of them were never seen again

That had been the first time I acted on the voice that spoke within me. An old voice with clear purpose. I’d sat down on the slope under an old apple tree and watched, feeling the wrongness of the place. I waited until it was late, the face of the Night Traveler looking sadly down from the sky. Then I made my way downhill to the place that Thomas Goodwaters, age eleven, had come to me about because he knew I’d help after he told me what happened there. Told me after he’d been beaten by the school disciplinarian for running away from his Outing assignment at the Bullweather Farm. But the older, half-healed marks on his back had not come from the disciplinarian’s cane.

Just the start, he’d told me, his voice calm despite it all, speaking Chippewa. They were going to do worse. I heard what they said they’d done before.

I knew his people back home. Cousins of mine. Good people, canoe makers. A family peaceful at heart, that shared with everyone and that hoped their son who’d been forced away to that school would at least be taught things he could use to help the people. Like how to scrub someone else’s kitchen floor.

He’d broken out the small window of the building where they kept him locked up every night. It was a tiny window, but he was so skinny by then from malnourishment that he’d been able to worm his way free. Plus his family were Eel People and known to be able to slip through almost any narrow place.

Two dogs, he said. Bad ones. Don’t bark. Just come at you.

But he’d planned his escape well. The bag he’d filled with black pepper from the kitchen and hidden in his pants was out and in his hand as soon as he hit the ground. He’d left the two bad dogs coughing and sneezing as he ran and kept running.

As his closest relative, I was the one he had been running to before Morissey caught him.

You’ll do something, Tommy Goodwaters said. It was not a question. You will help.

I was halfway down the hill and had just climbed over the barbed-wire fence when the dogs got to me. I’d heard them coming, their feet thudding the ground, their eager panting. Nowhere near as quiet as wolves — not that wolves will ever attack a man. So I was ready when the first one leaped and latched its long jaws around my right forearm. Its long canines didn’t get through the football pads and tape I’d wrapped around both arms. The second one, snarling like a wolverine, was having just as hard a time with my equally well-protected left leg that it attacked from the back. They were big dogs, probably about eighty pounds each. But I was two hundred pounds bigger. I lifted up the first one as it held on to my arm like grim death and brought my other forearm down hard across the back of its neck. That broke its neck. The second one let go when I kicked it in the belly hard enough to make a fifty-yard field goal. Its heart stopped when I brought my knee and the full weight of my body down on its chest.

Yeah, they were just dogs. But I showed no mercy. If they’d been eating what Tommy told me — and I had no reason to doubt him — there was no place for such animals to be walking this Earth with humans.

Then I went to the place out behind the cow barn. I found a shovel leaned against the building. Convenient. Looked well used. It didn’t take much searching. It wasn’t just the softer ground, but what I felt in my mind. The call of a person’s murdered spirit when their body has been hidden in such a place as this. A place they don’t belong.

It was more than one spirit calling for help. By the time the night was half over I’d found all of them. All that was left of five Carlisle boys and girls who’d never be seen alive again by grieving relatives. Mostly just bones. Clean enough to have had the flesh boiled off them. Some gnawed. Would have been no way to tell them apart if it hadn’t been for what I found in each of those unmarked graves with them. I don’t know why, but there was a large thick canvass bag for each of them. Each bag had a wooden tag tied to it with the name and, God love me, even the tribe of the child. Those people — if I can call them that — knew who they were dealing with. Five bags of clothing, meager possessions and bones. None of them were Chippewas, but they were all my little brothers and sisters. If I still drew breath after that night was over, their bones and possessions, at least, would go home. When I looked up at the moon, her face seemed red. I felt as if I was in an old, painful story.

I won’t say what I did after that. Just that when the dawn rose I was long gone and all that remained of the house and the buildings were charred timbers. I didn’t think anyone saw me as I left that valley, carrying those five bags. But I was wrong. If I’d seen the newspapers from the nearby town the next day — and not been on my way west, to the Sac & Fox and Osage Agencies in Oklahoma, the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, the lands of the Crows and the Cheyennes in Montana, the Cahuilla of California — I would have read about the tragic death by fire of almost an entire family. Almost.

I blinked away that memory and focused on the two men who paused only briefly at the top of the trail and then headed straight toward me where I was squatting down by the fire pit. As soon as I saw them clearly I didn’t have to question the signal my Helper was giving me. I knew they were trouble.

Funny how much you can think of in the space of an eyeblink. Back in the hospital after getting hit by the shrapnel. The tall, skinny masked doctor bending over me with a scalpel in one hand and some kind of shiny bent metal instrument in the other.

My left hand grabbing the surgeon’s wrist before the scapel touched my skin.

It stays.

The ether. A French accent. You are supposed to be out.

I’m not.

Oui. I see this. My wrist, you are hurting it.

Pardon. But I didn’t let go.

Why?

It says it’s going to be my Helper. It’s talking to me.

They might have just given me more ether, but by then Gus Welch had pushed his way in the tent. He’d heard it all.

He began talking French to the doctor, faster than I could follow. Whatever it was he said, it worked.

The doctor turned back to me, no scalpel this time.

You are Red Indian.

Mais oui.

A smile visible even under the mask. Head nodding. Bien.

We just sew you up then.

Another blink of an eye and I was back watching the two armed men come closer. The tall, lanky one was built a little like that doctor I’d last seen in 1918. No mask, though. I could see that he had one of those Abraham Lincoln faces, all angles and jutting jaw — but with none of that long-gone president’s compassion. He was carrying a Remington .303. The fat one with the thick lips and small eyes, Heavy Foot for sure, had a lever-action Winchester 30–06. I’d heard him jack a shell into the chamber just before they came into view.

Good guns, but not in the hands of good guys.

Both of them were in full uniform. High-crowned hats, black boots, and all. Not the brown doughboy togs in which I had once looked so dapper. Their khaki duds had the words Game Warden sewed over their breast pockets.

They stopped thirty feet away from me.

Charley Bear, the Lincoln impersonator, said in a flat voice, We have a warrant for your arrest for trespassing. Stand up.

I stayed crouching. It was clear to me they didn’t know I owned the land I was on. Not that most people in the area knew. After all, it was registered under my official white name of Charles B. Island. If they were really serving a warrant from a judge, they’d know that. Plus there was one other thing wrong.

Game wardens don’t serve warrants, I said.

They said he was a smart one, Luth, Heavy Foot growled.

Too smart for his own good.

My Helper sent a wave of fire through my whole leg and I rolled sideways just as Luth raised his gun and pulled the trigger. It was pretty good for a snap shot. The hot lead whizzed past most of my face with the exception of the flesh it tore off along my left cheekbone, leaving a two-inch wound like a claw mark from an eagle’s talon.

As I rolled, I hurled sidearm the first of the baseball-sized rocks I’d palmed from the outside of the firepit. Not as fast as when I struck out Jim Thorpe twice back at Indian school. But high and hard enough to hit the strike zone in the center of Luth’s face. Bye-bye front teeth.

Heavy Foot had hesitated before bringing his gun up to his shoulder. By then I’d shifted the second stone to my throwing hand. I came up to one knee and let it fly. It struck square in the soft spot just above the fat man’s belly.

Ooof!

His gun went flying off to the side and he fell back clutching his gut.

Luth had lost his .303 when the first rock struck him. He was curled up, his hands clasped over his face.

I picked up both guns before I did anything else. Shucked out the shells and then, despite the fact that I hated to do it seeing as how guns themselves are innocent of evil intent, I tossed both weapons spinning over the edge of the cliff. By the time they hit the rocks below I had already rolled Heavy Foot over and yanked his belt out of his pants. I wrapped it around his elbows, which I’d pulled behind his back, cinched it tight enough for him to groan in protest.

I pried Luth’s hands from his bloody face, levered them behind his back, and did the same for him that I’d done for his fat buddy. Then I grabbed the two restraining belts, one in each hand, and dragged them over to the place where the cliff dropped off.

By then Luth had recovered enough, despite the blood and the broken teeth, to glare at me. But Heavy Foot began weeping like a baby when I propped them both upright at the edge where it wouldn’t take more than a push to send them over.

Shut up, Braddie, Luth said through his bleeding lips, his voice still flat as stone. Then he stared at me. I’ve killed people worse than you.

But not better, I replied.

A sense of humor is wasted on some people. Luth merely intensified his stare.

A hard case. But not Braddie.

Miss your gun? I asked. You can join it.

I lifted my foot.

No, Braddie blubbered. Whaddaya want? Anything.

A name.

Braddie gave it to me.

I left them on the cliff edge, each one fastened to his own big rock that I’d rolled over to them. The additional rope I’d gotten from my shack insured they wouldn’t be freeing themselves.

Stay still, boys. Wish me luck.

Go to hell, Luth snarled. Tough as ever.

But he looked a little less tough after I explained that he’d better hope I had good luck. Otherwise I wouldn’t be likely to come back and set them loose. I also pointed out that if they struggled too much there was a good chance those delicately balanced big stones I’d lashed them to would roll over the edge. Them too.

I took my time going down the mountain — and I didn’t use the main trail. There was always the chance that Luth and Braddie had not been alone. But their truck, a new ’34 Ford, was empty. An hour’s quiet watch of it from the shelter of the pines made me fairly certain no one else was around. They’d thoughtfully left the keys in the ignition. It made me feel better about them that they were so trusting and willing to share.

As I drove into town I had even more time to think. Not about what to do. But how to do it. And whether or not my hunch was right.

I parked the car in a grove of maples half a mile this side of the edge of town. Indian Charley behind the wheel of a new truck would not have fit my image in the eyes of the good citizens of Corinth. Matter of fact, aside from Will, most of them would have been surprised to see I knew how to drive. Then I walked in to Will’s office.

Wyllis Dunham, Attorney at Law, read the sign on the modest door, which opened off the main street. I walked in without knocking and nodded to the petite stylishly dressed young woman who sat behind the desk with a magazine in her nicely manicured fingers.

Maud, I said, touching my knuckles to my forehead in salute.

Charles, she drawled, somehow making my name into a sardonic remark the way she said it. What kind of trouble you plan on getting us into today?

Nothing we can’t handle.

Why does that not make me feel reassured?

Then we both laughed and I thought again how if she wasn’t Will’s wife I’d probably be thinking of asking her to marry me.

What happened to your cheek? Maud stood up, took a cloth from her purse, wetted it with her lips, and brushed at the place where the bullet had grazed me and the blood had dried. I stood patiently until she was done.

Thanks, nurse.

You’ll get my bill.

He in?

For you. She gestured me past her and went back to reading Ladies’ Home Journal.

I walked into the back room where Will sat with his extremely long legs propped up on his desk, his head back against a couch pillow, his eyes closed.

Before you ask, I am not asleep on the job. I am thinking. Being the town lawyer of a bustling metropolis such as this tends to wear a man out.

Don’t let Maud see you with your feet up on that desk.

His eyes opened at that and as he quickly lowered his feet to the floor he looked toward the door, a little furtively, before recovering his composure. Though Will had the degree and was twice her size, it was Maud who laid down the law in their household.

He placed his elbows on the desk and made a pyramid with his fingers. The univeral lawyer’s sign of superior intellect and position, but done with a little conscious irony in Will’s case. Ever since I had helped him and Maud with a little problem two years back, we’d had a special relationship that included Thursday night card games of cutthroat canasta.

Wellll? he asked.

Two questions.

Do I plead the Fifth Amendment now?

I held up my little finger. First question. Did George Good retire as game warden, has the Department of Conservation started using new brown uniforms that look like they came from a costume shop, and were two new men from downstate sent up here as his replacement?

Technically, Charles, that’s three questions. But they all have one answer.

No?

Bingo. He snapped his fingers.

Which was what I had suspected. My two well-trussed friends on the mountaintop with their city accents were as phony as their warrant.

Two. I held up my ring finger. Anybody been in town asking about me since that article in the Albany paper with my picture came out?

Will couldn’t keep the smile off his face. If there was such a thing as an information magnet for this town, Will Dunham was it. He prided himself on quietly knowing everything that was going on — public and private — before anyone else even knew he knew it. With another loud snap of his long fingers he plucked a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to me with a magician’s flourish.

Voilà!

The address was in the State Office Building. The name was not exactly the one I expected, but it still sent a shiver down my spine and the metal spearpoint in my hip muscle twinged. Unfinished business.

I noticed that Will had been talking. I picked up his words in mid-sentence.

... so Avery figured that he should give the card to me, seeing as how he knew you were our regular helper what with you taking on odd jobs for us now and then. Repair work, cutting wood... and so on. Of course, by the time he thought to pass it on to me Avery’d been holding onto it since two weeks ago which was when the man came into his filling station asking about you and wanting you to give him a call. So, did he get tired of waiting and decide to look you up himself?

In a manner of speaking.

Say again?

See you later, Will.

The beauty of America’s trolley system is that a man could go all the way from New York City to Boston just by changing cars once you got to the end of town and one line ended where another picked up. So the time it took me to run the ten miles to where the line started in Middle Grove was longer than it took to travel the remaining forty miles to Albany and cost me no more than half the coins in my pocket.

I hadn’t bothered to go back home to change into the slightly better clothes I had. My nondescript well-worn apparel was just fine for what I had in mind. No one ever notices laborers. The white painter’s cap, the brush, and the can of Putnam’s bone-white that I borrowed from the hand truck in front of the building were all I needed to amble in unimpeded and take the elevator to the sixteenth floor.

The name on the door matched the moniker on the card — just as fancy and in big gold letters, even bigger than the word INVESTMENTS below it. I turned the knob and pushed the door open with my shoulder, backed in diffidently, holding my paint can and brush as proof of identity and motive. Nobody said anything, and when I turned to look I saw that the receptionist’s desk was empty as I’d hoped. Five o’clock. Quitting time. But the door was unlocked, the light still on in the boss’s office.

I took off the cap, put down the paint can and brush, and stepped through the door.

He was standing by the window, looking down toward the street below.

Put it on my desk, he said.

Whatever it is, I don’t have it, I replied.

He turned around faster than I had expected. But whatever he had in mind left him when I pulled my right hand out of my shirt and showed him the bone-handled skinning knife I’d just pulled from the sheath under my left arm. He froze.

You? he said.

Only one word, but it was as good as an entire book. No doubt about it now. My Helper felt like a burning coal.

Me, I agreed.

Where? he asked. I had to hand it to him. He was really good at one-word questions that spoke volumes.

You mean Mutt and Jeff? They’re not coming. They got tied up elsewhere.

You should be dead.

Disappointing. Now that he was speaking in longer sentences he was telling me things I already knew, though he was still talking about himself when I gave his words a second thought.

You’d think with the current state of the market, I observed, that you would have left the Bull at the start of your name, Mr. Weathers. Then you might have given your investors some confidence.

My second attempt at humorous banter fell as flat as the first. No response other than opening his mouth a little wider. Time to get serious

I’m not going to kill you here, I said. Even though you deserve it for what you and your family did back then. How old were you? Eighteen, right? But you took part just as much as they did. A coward too. You just watched without trying to save them from me? Where were you?

Up on the hill, he said. His lips tight. There was sweat on his forehead now.

So, aside from investments, what have you been doing since then? Keeping up the family hobbies?

I looked over at the safe against the wall. You have a souvenir or two in there? No, don’t open it to show me. People keep guns in safes. Sit. Not at the desk. Right there on the windowsill.

What are you going to do?

Deliver you to the police. I took a pad and a pen off the desk. Along with a confession. Write it now, starting with what you and your family did at your farm and including anyone else you’ve hurt since then.

There was an almost eager look on his weaselly face as he took the paper and pen from my hands. That look grew calmer and more superior as he wrote. Clearly, he knew he was a being of a different order than common humans. As far above us as those self-centered scientists say modern men are above the chimpanzees. Like the politicians who sent in the federal troops against the army of veterans who’d camped in Washington, D.C. this past summer asking that the bonuses they’d been promised for their service be paid to them. Men I knew who’d survived the trenches of Belgium and France dying on American soil at the hands of General MacArthur’s troops.

The light outside faded as the sun went down while he wrote. By the time he was done he’d filled twenty pages, each one numbered at the bottom, several of them with intricate explicatory drawings.

I took his confession and the pen. I placed the pad on the desk, kept one eye on him as I flipped the pages with the tip of the pen. He’d been busy. Though he’d moved on beyond Indian kids, his tastes were still for the young, the weak, those powerless enough to not be missed or mourned by the powers that be. Not like the Lindbergh baby whose abduction and death had made world news this past spring. No children of the famous or even the moderately well off. Just those no one writes about. Indians, migrant workers, Negro children, immigrants...

He tried not to smirk as I looked up from the words that made me sick to my stomach.

Ready to take me in now?

I knew what he was thinking. A confession like this, forced at the point of a knife by a... person... who was nothing more than an insane, ignorant Indian. Him a man of money and standing, afraid for his life, ready to write anything no matter how ridiculous. When we went to any police station, all he had to do was shout for help and I’d be the one who’d end up in custody.

One more thing, I said.

You have the knife. His voice rational, agreeable.

I handed him back the pad and pen.

On the last page, print I’m sorry in big letters and then sign it.

Of course he wasn’t and of course he did.

Thank you, I said, taking the pad. I glanced over his shoulder out the window at the empty sidewalk far below.

There, I said, pointing into the darkness.

He turned his head to look. Then I pushed him.

I didn’t lie, I said, even though I doubt he could hear me with the wind whistling past his face as he hurtled down past floor after floor. I didn’t kill you. The ground did.

And I’d delivered him to the police, who would be scraping him up off the sidewalk.

Cap back on my head, brush and paint can in hand, I descended all the way to the basement, then walked up the back stairs to leave the building from the side away from where the first police cars would soon arrive.

I slept that night in the park and caught the first trolley north in the morning. It was mid-afternoon by the time I reached the top of the trail.

Only one rock and its human companion stood at the edge of the cliff. Luth had stayed hard, I guessed. Too hard to have the common sense to sit still. But not as hard as those rocks he’d gotten acquainted with two hundred feet below. I’d decide in the morning whether to climb down there, so far off any trail, and bury him. Or just leave the remains for the crows.

I rested my hand on the rock to which the fat man’s inert body was still fastened. I let my gaze wander out over the forested slope below, the open fields, the meandering S of the river, the town where the few streetlights would soon be coming on. There was a cloud floating in the western sky, almost the shape of an arrowhead. The setting sun was turning its lower edge crimson. I took a deep breath.

Then I untied Braddie. Even though he was limp and smelled bad, he was still breathing. Spilled some water on his cracked lips. Then let him drink a little.

Don’t kill me, he croaked. Please. I didn’t want to. I never hurt no one. Never. Luth made me help him. I hated him.

I saw how young he was then.

Okay, I said. We’re going back downhill. Your truck is there. You get in it. Far as I know it’s yours to keep. You just drive south and don’t look back.

I will. I won’t never look back. I swear to God.

I took him at his word. There’s a time for that, just as there’s a time when words end.

Osprey Lake by Jean Rae Baxter

Eastern Woodlands, Canada

A frosty halo circled the moon. It was going to snow. Eight inches by morning, the 6 o’clock forecast had predicted. Heather hoped it would hold off until they got wherever they were going. So far, the roads were bare.

“Turn right at the crossroads,” Don said.

She touched the brake. Signs nailed to a tall post pointed to cottages east, west, and straight ahead. Some signs were too faded to read, but on others Heather could make out the lettering: Brad & Judy Smith, The MacTeers, Bide-a-wee, The Pitts.

“Are we going to one of those?”

“No. Our sign fell off years ago. I know the way.”

The ruts were four inches deep. Frozen mud as hard as granite. Wilderness crowded the road. The bare twig ends of birch and maple trees and the swishing boughs of spruce, fir, and balsam brushed the Mustang’s sides.

The track was getting worse. Heather leaned forward, high beams on, studying the ruts. “Are we nearly there?”

Don’s lighter flared. “Ten minutes.”

“There hasn’t been a turnoff for half a mile.”

“That’s right. We’ve passed Mud Fish Lake. That’s as far as they’ve brought the hydro. Osprey Lake is next.”

“Does anybody live there?”

“There used to be Ojibwas, but we cleared them out years ago. Now it’s just cottagers in summer.”

“What about winter?”

“There’s a permanent village at the far end of Osprey Lake. Maybe fifty people. What’s left of the Ojibwas.”

The car jolted in and out of the ruts. She pulled the wheel to the right to miss a rock outcrop twenty feet high. Just in time, she saw a tree with a two-foot-diameter trunk lying across the track. Heather braked hard.

“ Shit!” Don said.

“What now?”

“We walk.” He picked up the gym bag and opened the car door.

She wasn’t dressed for this. Pant boots with three-inch heels, jeans, and a leather bomber jacket. Walking bent over, hugging herself for warmth, Heather couldn’t see any path. Don walked purposefully. She stumbled after him.

Heather tripped. Don didn’t notice; he kept on moving. She struggled to her feet, tripped again. The heel of one boot had snapped off. On her knees, she fumbled amidst the pine needles lying on the frozen ground. When she found the heel, she shoved it into her jacket pocket and lurched after Don.

The cottage’s tall windows were what she saw first, a dull gleam of glass facing the lake. Trees and shadow obscured the rest of the structure. Behind it rose a wooded hill.

“Here we are,” Don said.

“How do we get in?”

“There’s a key.”

He disappeared into a grove of evergreens and emerged with a key in his hand. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, motioning her to follow.

“It’s colder in here than it was outside,” she said.

“That’s because you expected it to be warmer.”

Don set down the gym bag and pulled out his lighter. Its brief flare revealed a massive stone fireplace. He stepped across the room, lit a candle that stood on the mantel.

The room came more clearly into view. Open rafters. Walls paneled with wide boards. Pictures on the walls. A plank table and half a dozen wooden chairs. A cluster of tubular furniture with loose cushions.

“Hasn’t changed,” he said.

“Since when?”

“Eight years ago. The last time I was here.”

“Who owns it?”

“My grandfather’s estate.”

So that was the connection. A loser like Don had summered here as a child. It didn’t fit.

“This way,” he said. She hobbled after him into a room at the back. He closed the door. “If we stay here in the bedroom, nobody out on the ice can see a light.”

“Who’s out there to see anything?”

“You never can tell.”

“At 4 in the morning when it’s ten below?”

A squall of wind rattled the windows.

She looked around. There was a double bed with an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, and an open closet with wire hangers on a rod.

He set down the candle. Pulling two sleeping bags from the closet shelf, he thrust one at her. The fabric was riddled with tiny holes.

“You take the inside,” he said.

“Okay.” Why the inside? Because it would be harder for her to escape? But she wasn’t going anywhere. Not tonight.

Heather spread out her sleeping bag but made no move to get into it.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Bathroom!” he snorted. “There’s a privy outside, if it hasn’t fallen down.”

“Where?”

“Up the hill. I’ll show you.”

She limped after him back to the main room.

“Did you twist your ankle?” he asked.

“Thanks for finally noticing. The heel broke off my boot.”

“Huh!” He started to laugh, and then seemed to change his mind.

The back door was to the right of the fireplace. Don pulled the bolt. “Straight up the path.”

Through the darkness Heather could see a shed. That must be it. She scrambled up the path on hands and knees. When she reached the privy and pulled on the latch, the door fell off, knocking her backwards.

She pushed the door aside and hauled herself to her feet.

No time to be squeamish. Heather pulled down her jeans and panties and lowered her bottom over the hole in the board seat. Gasping at the blast of frigid air, she imagined monsters with icy fingers reaching up from the dark lagoon.

When she returned, Don was sitting on the side of the bed, smoking.

“How do you like our privy?”

“The door fell off and knocked me over.”

“Is that right? When I was a kid, I thought the privy was haunted. I never went there at night.”

“First time I ever heard of a haunted privy.”

“Family secret. When my grandfather dug the pit, he uncovered a skull and a bunch of bones. Old Indian grave. There were arrowheads and shell beads and a clay pipe.”

She shuddered. “Under the privy?”

“It wasn’t a privy then.”

“All the same, he should have put it someplace else.”

“Anywhere on that hillside would have been the same.” He tossed his cigarette on the floor and ground it out.

Heather kicked off her boots, crawled into the sleeping bag, and pulled up the zipper. She didn’t stop shivering until her body heat had finally warmed the narrow space. That was when the smell took over. Mouse dirt and mold. Her throat tickled and her breath wheezed.

Don went outside, but not for long enough to go up to the privy. When he returned, he pinched out the candle and lay down.

The mattress sagged. Heather had to hold on to the edge to keep from rolling into the hollow in the middle. Sometime during the night, gravity won. Her grip on the mattress loosened, and she woke up to feel Don’s body against hers. Then she went to sleep again.

The mattress creaked. Heather half opened her eyes. It was morning. Don was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette.

“Are you awake?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look out the window.”

Rising on one elbow, she peered through the dirty glass.

Snow filled the air with feathery clumps. It would already be over the tops of her pant boots, and it was still falling.

“Do you know how to light a Coleman?” Don asked.

“A what?”

“ Jeez! Don’t you know anything? It’s a stove. It’s for cooking.”

“You mean there’s food?”

“Look in the kitchen.”

“Where’s the kitchen?”

“In a three-room cottage, you should be able to find it.”

She unzipped her sleeping bag and crawled past him. Christ, it was cold! With the sleeping bag draped over her shoulders, she tottered into the main room. The gym bag was no longer there.

Daylight brought to life the pictures hanging on the board walls. Some were the usual Canadiana: water, rocks, and trees. Others were blown-up snapshots of people having fun. A laughing girl in a canoe. A raccoon accepting food from a woman’s outstretched hand. A boy holding up a string of fish. She took a second to observe the boy. A skinny kid with narrow shoulders and fair hair. He might have been Don at twelve or thirteen.

He came up behind her as she studied the picture.

“Is that you?” she asked.

“My kid brother.”

“I never heard you mention him.”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

The kitchen was a narrow room with a door at the far end and a window that overlooked the lake. On the counter was a chipped enamel sink with a rusty hand pump mounted beside it. Also on the counter stood a metal object that looked like a hotplate crossed with a barbecue.

“That’s the Coleman,” Don said. He fiddled with a knob and flicked his lighter. A ring of blue flames spurted.

“Cool. But what’s there to cook?”

He pointed to a row of large, dusty jars labeled with masking tape, all empty except for Sugar, Rice, Flour, and Macaroni.

“That’s it.” He picked up a pail. “I’m going outside to get snow we can melt for water.”

“Doesn’t the pump work?”

“ Jeez, at ten below?”

Heather boiled rice for breakfast. Don smoked right through the meal. After eating, he brought in logs from the woodpile outside the back door and lit a fire in the big stone hearth. Heather stretched out her hands to the warmth.

“Enjoy it while you can,” he said. “When the snow stops, I’ll have to put out the fire. Smoke from the chimney is a dead giveaway somebody’s here.” He dragged a chair to the hearth and settled himself.

Heather looked at her surroundings. The dark blue seat cushions were stained. Dirty white stuffing bulged from their burst seams. Dust covered everything.

“Doesn’t anybody ever come here?” she asked.

“A guy from the village checks every so often.”

“I mean come for a vacation.”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“There was an accident.” He paused, shook his head. “Sooner or later the place will be sold. My dad and uncle are suing each other over the estate. Both their lawyers told them to stay away.” His lank hair fell across his eyes, and he pushed it back irritably. He hated questions, but if she didn’t ask, how would she find out anything?

“What are you going to do about the car?”

“Nothing, right now.”

“You can’t just leave it there. It’s covered with DNA.”

“I’ll figure out something.”

She suspected that Don hadn’t a clue what to do next. They were both in a bad spot. But Don’s was worse. What would he face if he got caught? Life? Twenty-five years? That was his problem. She wasn’t the one who had killed the Paki. Her smart idea was to turn herself in.

All this trouble to steal a few lousy bucks from the till of a corner store. Why had she let him talk her into it? Why was she such a fool?

Heather sat in front of the fire on a love seat with dirty cushions and stared at the flames. Don was dozing in his chair with his skinny legs stretched toward the fire.

This might be a good time to do something about her boots. She pulled the broken heel from her pocket. To make the two heels match, all she needed was a knife. This would be simple. She stood up, wincing when her feet met the cold floor, and carried her boots into the kitchen.

Don sighed, shifted in his chair.

In the drawer that held the cutlery, she found a knife with a saw-toothed blade. That should do. Holding the unbroken boot firmly against the countertop, she started to saw. The knife squeaked as it chewed.

Don must have heard. He bounded across the floor.

“What are you doing?” His fingers squeezed her wrist so tightly she dropped the knife.

“Fixing my boots.”

“Leave them.”

“I want to walk like a normal person.”

“You aren’t going anywhere.” Wrenching one arm behind her back, he propelled her to the love seat and dumped her onto it. “If you’re thinking of running away, forget it.” He stalked back to the kitchen, picked up her boots, strode across the room, and hurled them into the fire.

“No!” she yelled. Jumping up, she made a dash for the fire-place tongs. Before she could fork her boots from the fire, Don grabbed her shoulders. He held her fast while tongues of blue and green flames licked the leather of her boots. The soles peeled away from the vamps, and the heels sweated beads of glue. He didn’t let her go until two charred lumps were all that remained.

Morning sunshine sparkled on the lake. Around the cottage, evergreen boughs bent under their burden of snow. Don put out the fire.

“We’re going to freeze,” Heather whimpered.

“The fireplace will hold heat for a couple of days.”

“And then we’ll freeze.” The food wouldn’t last more than a few days anyway. Freeze or starve. What difference did it make?

She padded across the cold floor to the windows. Now that the air was clear, she could see the village at the end of the lake, smoke rising from snow-covered roofs. There was a tiny island in the middle of the lake. The only tree on the island was a dead pine. A rough platform of sticks balanced on the top, capped with snow.

“What’s that thing on the dead tree?”

“Osprey nest.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why should I be kidding? This is Osprey Lake. Ospreys live here.”

“It doesn’t look like they live here now.”

“They fly south for the winter.”

“They’re not so dumb. At least they’re smarter than the people in those houses, stuck up here in the snow. What do they do all winter long?”

“They tend their trap lines. Except for Rosemary Bear Paw. She’s a bootlegger. When we were kids, she supplied us with smokes and liquor. She never asked questions. Never told secrets. Her house was painted blue.”

“Why blue?”

“So people would know which house was hers. There are no street addresses up here, you know.”

This was interesting. Rosemary Bear Paw must own a snowmobile. What would she charge for a lift to... where? Huntsville? Anywhere with a bus station. Heather had ninety dollars in her wallet. Would that be enough?

But first she would have to walk to the village — one mile across the frozen lake.

There was a junk room on the far side of the kitchen door. Heather had looked in several times, but never entered. Maybe the next time Don dozed off, she could search there for something to wear on her feet. She might even find the gym bag. Don must have hidden it somewhere.

She would like to know how much money was in that bag. She was entitled to half, wasn’t she? She had driven the car.

“Tell me about your brother,” she said as they sat at the wooden table eating their supper of boiled rice. “The boy in the photograph.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Just wondered. Was he a lot younger than you?”

“Five years younger. He was twelve when he died.

“You told me there was an accident. Was that it?”

“Yeah. Charlie drowned.” Don set down his spoon.

“Poor kid.”

“He bugged me to bring him up here fishing. I used to come up with some other guys. We didn’t want Charlie along, but Dad said we had to take him. We paddled over to the village and bought a couple of forty-ouncers from Rosemary Bear Paw. Charlie never had a drink before. The guys thought he went outside to throw up. Drowned in six inches of water right by the shore.” Don banged his fist on the table. “It wasn’t my fault. What kind of parents would throw out a seventeen-year-old kid because of an accident? When I phoned my grandfather, he hung up on me. It’s their fault I ended up on the street.”

“You weren’t exactly on the street when I met you,” she said. “You had a job pumping gas. As I remember, you had big plans.”

“I was waiting for a break.”

It had been a warm July day when Don first came into the drugstore where Heather worked. He had bought toothpaste. She remembered that because of his smile — the kind of smile that sells toothpaste on TV. Their fingers brushed when she handed him his change.

Next day he was back buying condoms. When she saw what they were, blood rushed to her face and she couldn’t meet his eyes.

“When are you done working?” he had asked.

She didn’t answer. But at 4 o’clock, the end of her shift, her heart beat fast to see him leaning against a black Mustang in the drugstore parking lot. He wore tight jeans and a dark green shirt open at the neck.

“Can I give you a lift?”

“No thanks. I don’t have far to walk.”

He had smiled. “We can go for a drive.” Something shivered in the air between them.

“All right.” I shouldn’t be doing this, she told herself as she climbed into the car. From the beginning, she couldn’t say no to Don.

“Name’s Don,” he had said.

“I’m Heather.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Your badge.”

“Oh. Of course.” She had felt her cheeks redden.

He drove fast, with the window open and one arm along the back of the passenger seat. They had stopped for a hamburger at a crossroads restaurant, and then kept on going. He’d parked his car down by a river just past a little town. It was very quiet, almost as if the town were miles away, not barely out of sight behind a hill.

He removed a green plaid blanket from the trunk. Heather, pretending she didn’t know what was coming, wished that she were wearing sexy underwear instead of cotton briefs. As he pulled her down onto the blanket, she remembered the condoms. Don was prepared. But he took a lot for granted, didn’t he?

With her next paycheck, Heather had purchased five pairs of lace panties at La Senza. For the rest of the summer, she and Don had made love a couple of times a week, either on the plaid blanket or in the backseat — depending on the weather. In November they rented an apartment together.

To help out with expenses, Heather stole things from the drugstore: condoms, toothpaste, aftershave, deodorant. It was easy.

While they were sharing a joint one afternoon, Don said, “I’ve figured out a way to make some real money.”

“How?”

“There’s stuff with street value in that drugstore. Uppers. Downs. Dexedrine. Cold remedies. We can make crystal meth out of cold remedies right here in the kitchen.” His eyes locked on hers. “What about it?”

She had felt scared. “I can’t. I don’t have access to the dispensary.”

“I don’t see any bars keeping you out.”

“Only the pharmacists ever go behind that counter.”

“Come on, Heather. Don’t tell me you can’t.” A deep sigh. “This is the first thing I’ve ever asked you to do.”

Don had pushed her for a couple of weeks before giving up. A cloud settled over their relationship. She had let him down.

A few weeks later, Mr. Stonefield, the drugstore owner, caught her sneaking a bottle of aftershave into her handbag. Peering at her through his trifocals, he said she was lucky he didn’t press charges. This was true. But now she had no job, no income, and no chance to pick up little extras for Don. Again, she had let him down.

While Don napped — all he ever did was smoke and sleep — Heather grabbed her chance to rummage in the junk room. There she found a man’s rubber boot mixed up with rusted buckets, fishing poles, kerosene cans, and coils of rope. Embossed in the boot’s red sole was the number 13. Further searching produced the boot’s mate. When she turned the second boot upside down, mouse dirt and popcorn kernels rained onto the floor.

Gingerly she pulled on the boots and took a few steps. It was like trying to walk with her feet in a pair of cardboard cartons.

Don opened his eyes as she stomped into the main room. “You look like a circus clown,” he said.

She didn’t care what she looked like, as long as he didn’t take away the rubber boots. For the rest of the day she tramped around the cottage, bumping into furniture and tripping over her own feet — sometimes on purpose, to demonstrate that she couldn’t run fast enough to escape with them on her feet. He let her keep the boots.

An airplane droned in the distance, louder and louder, coming from the south. Heather, wrapped in her sleeping bag on the love seat, looked up. Through the tall windows she saw the plane’s black shape against the gray sky.

“Cessna,” Don said. “Single engine.”

“Is it coming here?”

“How would I know?”

“It is coming here!” As it descended, she saw that the plane was yellow, not black, and that it had skis instead of wheels. Heather’s heart pounded. She wanted to run out onto the snow-covered lake, wave her arms, and shout: This way! Save me!

But before reaching Osprey Lake, the plane dipped behind the trees and disappeared.

Don walked over to the window. “Not coming here. It’s landing on Mud Fish. Could be the air ambulance.” He lit a cigarette, smoked it to the butt, and then lit another from it. The engine’s drone continued.

“He’s not sticking around or he’d have killed the engine,” Don said. “He’s picking up somebody or letting somebody off.”

The air rumbled as the plane took off. It reappeared above the trees, circled, and headed south. An ache of loneliness came over her. She felt abandoned, like a castaway on a desert island who watches a ship draw near and then sail away. She squeezed her eyes shut to stop her tears as she listened to the receding drone.

Don flopped into a chair. “How about something to eat?”

“There’s nothing left but sugar and flour.”

“Can’t you make something out of them?”

“Such as?”

“Bread, maybe?”

“Christ! And you think I’m dumb!”

Heather pulled on the rubber boots, clomped into the kitchen, and lit the Coleman. A skin of ice had formed on the water that she had melted from snow two hours earlier. She broke the ice, poured water into a saucepan, and stirred in half a cup of flour and a spoonful of sugar.

While she was bringing it to a boil, she heard Don go out the back door. It sounded like he was straightening the woodpile, which was pointless since he wouldn’t let them have a fire anyway. By the time he returned, the liquid in the pan had thickened enough to coat a spoon. She sipped a few drops, added a dash of sugar, then sipped again. Slightly better. After filling a couple of mugs, she carried them into the main room.

Don stood by the windows, staring south at a pillar of black smoke that funneled into the sky. Something was burning, back there along the track.

She handed him a mug. Don cradled it in his hands.

“Looks like a big fire,” she said.

“Yeah. Somebody’s torched the car.” He raised the mug to his lips, grimaced as he swallowed. “What do you call this stuff?”

“Gruel, I guess.”

“It’s disgusting.” He put his mug on the table. “We have to clear out.”

“When?”

“First thing in the morning.”

It was pitch dark outside when she heard the creak of the mattress. She knew that sound — how the mattress squeaked when you sat up, squeaked again when you rose from bed. Why was Don getting up?

The floor now creaked. He had left the bedroom. He had reached the back door. Maybe he just needed to pee. She turned her head, looked out the window, and there was Don, the gym bag in his hand. For an instant she could not believe it. Don was taking off with the money, and he was leaving her here alone.

She pulled herself out of the sleeping bag and, draping it over her shoulders, stumbled into the front room. She could see him from the window, heading toward the road.

“You greedy bastard,” she said, right out loud. What kind of boyfriend would leave his girl to starve or freeze? Should she go after him? For the past six months she had been trotting after him like a love-sick puppy.

The thought filled her with sudden disgust. Let him go. He was welcome to the money in the gym bag. Providing she got out of here alive, she would be happy to never see him again.

I can walk to that village, she told herself. Find the blue house. Ask Rosemary Bear Paw to help me. She might know when the bus goes through Huntsville. Or maybe there’s a closer stop, a depot in some country store along the way. Heather glanced at her wristwatch. Nearly 7 o’clock. It would soon be light.

Between the cottage and the hill there was shelter from the wind. But the moment she turned the corner, the wind slammed into her face. It howled across the lake, lashing her cheeks with icy grains that stung like tiny needles. The osprey nest at the top of the dead pine rocked in the wind.

Heather plodded on, her head bent to the wind. When she got back to Toronto, she’d find a job. Any kind of job. She didn’t need much — a small apartment with a bathroom. Tub and shower. Lots of fluffy, warm towels. She wanted a kitchenette too, with a microwave and cupboards to store the delicious food she would buy. Kraft dinners. Chocolate chip cookies. Tim Hortons coffee. Would she tell the police about the hold-up? Definitely not. She never wanted to see Don again. Not in court. Not in prison. Not anywhere. If love was a sickness, she was cured. How could she ever have cared for such a loser?

Nearing the village, she saw that each snow-topped shanty had a snowmobile parked near its door. Except for one, the houses looked as if no paintbrush had ever touched them. That one house was blue.

Heather stumbled onto the shore and reached into her pocket for a tissue to wipe her dripping nose. She hadn’t a clue what to say to Rosemary Bear Paw, beyond asking for a lift.

There was no sign of life in any of the houses. Outside the blue house, a scruffy brown dog lifted its leg against a yellow and black snowmobile. When the dog finished, it trotted to the house, acknowledging her with a glance over its shoulder. At the door it gave a sharp bark. The door opened just enough to admit the dog, then closed.

At her knock, the door opened again with a blast of warm air that smelled of tobacco and smoked fish. In front of Heather stood an enormous woman wearing a lumberjack shirt. She had a neck like a bull, and her shoulders sloped. Her face was coppery brown with wide cheekbones. Not an ancient face, but a face out of an ancient time. Beady eyes embedded in fat pouches regarded Heather with more suspicion than surprise. At her feet, the dog growled.

“Where’d you come from?” The woman had a tiny Cupid’s bow mouth that scarcely opened when she spoke.

“Across the lake. I... uh... need a ride to the bus.”

The woman eyed Heather from head to foot. She saw it all: the bomber jacket, the tight jeans, the rubber boots.

“I’ll take you over for fifty bucks.”

“Fine.”

She opened the door wider. “Come inside before all the warm air gets out.”

Heather stepped into a small room that was almost filled by the woman’s bulk. In one corner stood a cast iron stove. On top of it a copper kettle steamed. A bed covered by a red blanket pressed against one wall. Near the opposite wall stood a wooden table and three chairs that did not match.

“Are you Rosemary Bear Paw?”

“You know my name? You come from Lawfords’ place, I think.” She took a green mug and a bottle of rye whiskey from a shelf, poured a shot, and handed it to Heather. “This will warm you up. You drink, then we go.”

Heather did not want it. She had tried whiskey before — nasty stuff that tasted like nail polish remover. But as the warmth slid down her throat, she changed her mind.

Rosemary Bear Paw’s dark eyes studied Heather’s face. “I knew somebody was staying at the Lawford place. It don’t take much to show me that. I don’t ask questions. Been plenty trouble there already.”

She lowered her bulk onto the bed and pulled on her boots, huffing as she leaned forward to lace them. “That hillside — in the old days, we buried our people there. Sacred land. My father told old man Lawford not to build there, but he don’t listen. There’s a curse on that place.” With a grunt, she stood up and pulled her parka from a hook. “That Lawford boy and his friends used to come up here to get drunk. They said they come to fish, but I don’t see nobody put their line in the water. Then the little kid drowned. That killed the old man.” She wrestled her arms into the parka’s sleeves. “For eight years, I don’t see no family there.” She finished with a pucker of her lips and a popping sound, like a kiss. “Huh! I tell you, the ancestors never leave this land.”

I’m glad I’m leaving, Heather thought. The ancestors can keep it. I never want to see Osprey Lake again.

The woman held out her hand, which was dimpled and remarkably small, considering the size of her body. “Fifty dollars.”

Heather handed over two twenties and a ten. The money went straight into a coffee tin on the table. Rosemary Bear Paw pulled on a pair of leather gauntlets decorated with bright beadwork — red, green, black, and white.

“We go before anybody else wake up.”

Heather looked around but saw no sign of another person in the house.

“I mean neighbors. They’re still sleeping. Nobody needs to know you been here.” The dog followed them to the door. “Not this time,” the woman added. The dog trotted over to the stove, turned around three times, and flopped onto the floor.

The snowmobile looked like a monster insect. No, not exactly an insect. More like that contraption the Space Centre sent up to Mars. It was a new machine, and probably worth more than all the houses of the village put together.

“You like it, eh? Ski-Doo Skandic SUV. Electric starter. Never stalls in the cold.”

“Very nice.”

“Hop on,” the woman grunted. “We don’t have all day.”

For a moment, as she climbed onto the seat, Heather thought of asking if she could first use the bathroom. But the thought of another hole in a board over a stinking pit was too gross.

“Is it far to the bus station?” she asked, conjuring in her mind a modern facility. Shiny ceramic tiles. Flush toilets. Sinks with hot and cold running water.

“Not far.” Rosemary Bear Paw started the engine.

The hills that rose up on either side seemed to channel the Ski-doo from lake to lake. The wind screamed in Heather’s ears. This won’t take long, she thought. But one lake led into another, and then another. No sign of a highway, a road, or a town. Where was this woman taking her? Heather saw nothing but rocks, trees, and the occasional boarded-up summer cottage.

If she had known it would take this long, she definitely would have asked to use the washroom. Her bladder pressed sorely. The vibration of the machine made it worse. She panicked. What if she wet herself? She would rather die than go into a bus depot with pee leaked all over her pants.

By the time she let go of the right-hand grip to thump Rosemary Bear Paw on the back, it was nearly too late.

The snowmobile stopped, its motor still turning over. The woman shouted over her shoulder, “What’s your problem?”

“I need to pee.”

“Help yourself.” Her tiny mouth spat out the words.

Heather dismounted and waded off through the snow. When she was a few yards behind the snowmobile, she unzipped her jeans. Rosemary Bear Paw swiveled on her seat to watch. Did she expect Heather to pee while being stared at? Why was she looking at her like that, taunting with those beady eyes? Heather felt like screaming: Turn your goddamn back! Not until Heather’s panties and jeans were around her ankles did the woman avert her eyes.

Such a relief to release the flow, to feel the pressure ease! Heather relaxed as much as anyone could relax while squatting bare-bottomed in the snow.

The revving of the motor took her by surprise. She was still peeing when the engine roared and the Ski-doo sped away.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” she shouted, as if the snowmobile’s departure were mere carelessness — a failure to notice that the passenger was not on board.

It took Heather ten seconds to realize that the snowmobile was not going to stop, another ten to claw her clothing into place. She stumbled through the snow, hollering, “Don’t leave me here!” She chased after the Ski-doo, the diminishing roar of its motor humming in her ears even when it had disappeared behind a hill.

After disbelief, shock set in. The truth swept over her, buried her like an avalanche. She was alone in the middle of a frozen lake. The Ski-doo’s track, a long scar in the white snow, was the only sign that it had ever been here. Everything else seemed like a bad dream. Only the track was real, and only it could save her. She had to follow that track, and quickly, before drifting snow erased it.

Which way should she go? Forward or back? It must be twenty miles back to Osprey Lake.

Forward, she decided. There would be a town beyond the next hill. She would come upon it soon. Snow swirled in every direction. Soon it covered the snowmobile’s track.

Heather walked and walked until she lost all sense of time and place. There was a buzzing in her head. Images swam vaguely in her mind. For a while, someone seemed to walk beside her, a presence felt rather than seen. When she turned her head, nothing was there but swirling snow.

Then a heavy drowsiness came upon her. She felt her knees give way and her body sink into the softness. Rest and sleep, she thought. Rest and sleep. Memories passed like strands of mist, like fragments of a dream. It was summer, and Don lay beside her on the plaid blanket, down by a river, just past a little town that was out of sight behind a hill. She made an effort to touch his face. But she was too tired.

There were voices in the wind. They came from above her and from every side, chanting in a language she did not know. She heard drums too, but that might have been her blood beating in her ears, fainter now and far away.

Dead medicine snake woman by Gerard Houarner

New York, New York

She was a different kind of incoming, bursting like a hungry T-Rex through the City Hall subway platform crowd thick from track pit to tile wall with suits and stiffs. Her eyes zeroed in on half a dozen guys, me included, for a split second before dismissing us all. We weren’t on the menu. I wouldn’t have minded, even after she near knocked me over chasing a train that hadn’t come in yet.

Funny how little of my life sticks with me. But, of course, things sticking to me isn’t the problem at all.

She put a good lick into me with her shoulder. Played some games, that one. Curtain of black hair had my heart racing before I remembered her lips, thin because they were pursed, and her small nose, nostrils flaring like a horse in full gallop. I liked the way her hips shoved the sides of a loose cotton top out as she bulled her way through a New York crowd that really didn’t give a shit about being pushed around by her.

Almost like they forgot she’d been there as soon as she passed. But I didn’t.

Wake up, white man, and see what’s coming.

That’s what Grandpa said, inside my head. Normally, I’m sleeping when I hear him. Usually, I’m dreaming when I see the world so sharp it hurts, in a quick-cut slide, down a looping water ride that doesn’t ever want to stop. Like a house-to-house fire fight. Or an RPG blazing a smoke trail for a Humvee parked at a market.

Grandpa says I should take up the pipe if I want to understand where I’m going and what I’m seeing in these dreams. Then he laughs when I think about it, and tells me I don’t have enough First in me to handle a pipe. Yeah, and you weren’t there when I needed you, ghost warrior.

I couldn’t remember the last time he warned about something in real time.

I turned, a little slow because I didn’t want to let go of her, and looked. Got two looks in, really. First take was of a big, goofy, golden-haired boy with porcelain skin and muscles on top of muscles packed under a shiny custom suit, slipping and sliding his way through the crowd like a king snake with a thousand excuse-me’s slithering from his mouth in a few different languages. Pretty. Officer candidate material. The type that goes down hard and doesn’t bounce. People didn’t look twice at him either.

Second take went toward the same place as Grandpa’s voice.

I never saw nothing in any dream like what was coming on my second take. Sure, I’ve spent time with ravens, cougars, coyotes, rabbits, squirrels, even talking water bugs. Trees and leaves turning into freaky faces, speaking words I can’t understand, and even when I do, I still don’t get what’s up — yeah, plenty of that.

But this check-off got me a vision full of toothy, mangy, wild-eyed wilderness surging like a market crowd running from a bomb blast. Where the eyes were supposed to be in the lump that might have been a head, there were holes, red-rimmed fire pockets like sniper muzzles loaded with bullets with names on them.

Two faces. Walking in the waking world.

Something inside me felt cold, but it wasn’t really me. Grandpa was upset.

The station already smelled like meat turned bad from the mass of sweaty bodies perfumed for the day at the office, but what I saw pushed out a shockwave stench like a body cooked in burning wreckage. Or a fresh, dug-up grave stacked with the dead.

Two-face didn’t single me out. It was stalking the woman.

I moved. Didn’t think twice. Not scared. Hell, Grandpa’d been talking to me since I was a kid, saying he’s in my blood and telling me I should do this or that crazy thing. Scared always bounced off of me, even in that shit-and-rock country they sent me to after I enlisted. This was just one more dream I was walking through.

I left a wake of curses. Guess I was the only one running who wasn’t invisible. Put out a hand, caught a flap of cloth that felt slippery. Kept the other tight for a punch to what I hoped were ribs.

Two-face raised an elbow and I barely cleared a broken jaw. The thing shrugged and I heard the buzzing of a nest full of hornets barreling into my ear drums.

I went down, sparks flying. No concussion or ringing eardrums, no smoke curling from singed cloth. No flashbacks either. Got up quick. People muttering didn’t bother me. I’m used to folks thinking I’m crazy. Best four years of my life were in the service. I was normal there. Bugfuck as I wanted to be. Grandpa didn’t visit me. Not even in dreams. No signs or warnings. Reality was the dream. I’d been sent all alone to the mountaintop in a shit storm to find my way, my tribe, my vision.

You had to make it on your own, is what Grandpa told me when I came back and he started speaking to me again.

Where’s my way, my tribe, my guide?

You on the path for it now.

Thanks for nothing.

I followed in the big man’s wake, catching up, thinking about what I was going to do — jump up and grab the choke or go low and take out the knees. He stayed mostly man, which made it easier to think. Of course, when you have to think about these things before you do them, they don’t turn out well.

I wasn’t fast enough. Good thing, or else I wouldn’t be talking about it now. And the woman, she’d be dead.

He caught up to her and shoved. She screamed as she went flying into naked air, and when she stopped flying she vanished into the track pit.

A gust of warm, humid air blew in, then surged out of the tunnel.

The man kept moving on through the crowd as I came to the platform edge. A few suits shouted, stirred from their iPod cocoons by a sense of having just missed something. I knew the feeling. A young girl in a school uniform pointed down at the tracks. A knot of teenage boys whooped and laughed. Maybe there was something down there, maybe there wasn’t. A fat rat plodded away to the other side of the station. Fast food wrappings and newspaper pages danced in the air. A roar was building.

The big man wasn’t so big anymore, like he was making his way down a different horizon line than everyone else. He looked back at something way behind me, maybe the distant crowd of us and his victim, and then he dipped below the range of shoulders and was gone. There was no two-faced man. No woman either.

Grandpa settled down inside me. I never knew he could get upset like that.

On the uptown side of the station, a twenty-something who looked like he’d stayed up from a night of clubbing broke into a free-form flow like he was the headliner and we’d all come to hear him and the sound of that train coming was our love and adulation taking him higher and higher. I have no idea what he was rapping about.

So I jumped.

The lights of the lead subway car were the eyes of that thing I’d seen on the second take of Mr. Muscle, only they were flashing with the fire from full clips being dumped on me.

My hand settled on something warm, soft. Moaning. There she was. I grabbed an arm, pulled. Got hold of her hip, slid my hand up under the other shoulder. There was space below the platform. I dragged her to cover.

Happened to me once. Small, smelly guy, spilling blood himself, pulled me from a burning wreckage over stone and dust and sheet metal, through a tangle of poles and beach umbrellas and plastic sheeting, to a quiet little spot underneath sides of meat quietly flaming. We listened to gunfire crackling and kids crying for a while. Don’t know what happened to him after the evac.

I held the woman tight against my chest, legs around her hips to keep her from rolling. Her hair flew and crawled all around my face and head as the train blasted past us inches away. For a second I didn’t know where I was anymore. Too many dreams, too much reality.

She was a warm, trembling bundle against my beating heart. I closed my eyes, and turned my head so her hair could get all of me, neck, ears, eyes, and lips — like she cared — and her fingers were memorizing the shape of me and I was something special to her.

But the train screeched to a stop and we choked and coughed on a burnt, electric stink and dust and she broke free but knocked her head against a car’s undercarriage and stared at me like I was the one who’d thrown her down there.

Her face was rounder than I thought, now that I could see it with her hair flowing away, reaching for the light and the air and freedom.

“Sorry,” I said, pulling my legs away from her because I was afraid that even with everything going on I’d get a hard-on and that would make the situation a complete cluster fuck.

People were shouting above me and I thought I was okay, though my knees and hips were singing like an out-of-tune choir. I thought we could crawl to one end of the station and get out, so I pointed and started moving. If there’s one thing hearing voices, much less combat, taught me, it was recovery. If you just lay there, you’re screwed. Keep moving.

I grabbed her arm. She brushed me off. “Don’t touch me,” she said, like it was the worst thing that had happened to her so far that day.

You can’t touch the moon.

Great, Grandpa.

I said, “Hey, I just saved your life.” Getting pissed now. Like when you take fire from people you’re supposed to be saving and you want to lob a few shells back to say, You’re welcome.

Somebody with training interrupted from above and got me to answer her questions: no blood, moving my limbs, breathing regular. “The woman’s fine too,” I added.

All I got back was “What woman?” and “Stay calm” and “Help is coming.” After a few whispers, the voice asked, “What meds are you on?”

My heartbeat woman was still staring at me, hard, reading between my lips and holding on to steel-smoking motor mounts that looked hot to me. But her skin wasn’t blistering and I figured, well, I don’t know what. She had to be in shock. I was. So I told the voice from above, who identified herself as a nurse, what had happened: I saw a man chasing a woman through the crowd, tried to stop him, couldn’t catch up, and he pushed her into the train tracks. I jumped down after her.

I didn’t mention the vision I had of that man, or that I was in love with the girl in the tracks.

This is the stuff of heroes, I was thinking. I mean, I’m a Marine. A vet. Doing my warrior thing. That meant name in lights, spot on the Late Show, cash rewards. I’d have to play down the Java programmer angle, though. Nobody wants to know about a smart vet.

“You saw the monster,” my heartbeat woman said.

“Yeah. If that’s what you call it.”

My father killed something on high steel when he was young.

Thanks, Grandpa, but I’m busy right now.

“I’m real to you.” She looked into my eyes like she was trying to see through them.

“Shit, yeah.”

He killed something like that. And afterwards, the bridge came down.

Yeah, Grandpa. Quebec Bridge. Mohawk disaster. I remember. Can we talk about it later?

“You’re not afraid to die.”

“Right.” Easy to stay loose about the death end of life when the living part doesn’t stick.

Its blood’s a curse. Mixed with ours. The dealing with it is our duty. Even down to you.

Blood? What? Never told me that one, Grandpa.

“I can’t save everyone,” she said, and in that dark place tears shone in her eyes. “I can’t do more for you. I have others to take care of.”

In that small space she seemed to be crawling backwards away from me. I reached for her again, but this time I missed, like my hand went right through her.

I thought it had to be that thing’s blood that drew me to you. Hard as it is to believe.

And here I thought I was special.

You are. Though I’ve been wondering if that thing was ever going to show up. You carry the responsibility.

What responsibility?

There aren’t many descendents left. Seems like you’re all that’s left.

For what?

Did my best to show you the way. Wish your father’d lived long enough.

And then she was already halfway under the subway car, folded over but still facing me almost between her own feet like a circus contortionist, sliding back without making a sound or moving a muscle. Her eyes were darker than any space in the tunnel or under the train, darker than a night without stars and moon, or a dreamless sleep. But when I looked into them, I gave that darkness a touch of light and she nearly cracked a smile. That’s when I knew I’d been talking to the wrong ghost. Family just never knows when to get out of the way.

“Wait, what’s your name?” If this had been a Manhattan lounge maybe she would have said something like Cinderella and I’d never have seen her again.

“Medicine Snake Woman.”

“What the hell kind of name is that?”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and flashed me a small, sad smile like she’d already read everything she needed to know between my lips and she was moving on to bigger and better things.

Then she was gone, and it hit me. She was the one who should have said thanks, and “You’re welcome” should have been my line.

I woke up dizzy back in the real world underneath a train with police and EMTs talking to me through the crevice between the platform and the train, rats piling up around the third rail wondering if the lunch buffet had arrived.

Sucks to be you, don’t it.

At least I’m alive, Grandpa.

Alive. Yeah. That woman, she made me feel alive. I didn’t care what was happening or if I was finally coming down with PTSD. Screw all that. I needed her.

I crawled out on my own while they warned me to stay put. The rest of the day was a fancy necklace of diamond reality moments strung on a flimsy line of breaking-heartbeat woman dream — emergency room, police report, psych eval, criminal and military record check, even a call to my old foster home to confirm I had no psychiatric history. There was also that golden call to the boss saying I wouldn’t be working the Java today because I just jumped in front of a train.

Through it all, I couldn’t get Medicine Snake Woman out of my mind. When we married, what would I call her — Medicine? Med? Snake? What would we name our kids? How would we be in bed — a dance, a firestorm, a tsunami? Would I be able to support her, or was I expected to stay home while she went on with whatever it was she did for a living?

Would my mixed heritage be a problem for her family, who obviously took pride in their lineage? What would it feel like to be scared of losing her?

Hell, I already knew that answer.

The dream came apart and was replaced by another when I fell asleep after a beer later that night.

Bet you think you’re something special.

Grandpa likes to talk from out of trees most times, but this night he was a big-ass bear standing on two legs taking a dump in the woods. His paw was bigger than me. So was his dump.

I studied the acorns by my foot and said, No, just crazy, like everybody says I am.

You can’t let her go, can you?

I didn’t answer because I knew it was going to be one of those dreams, like the one that took me to Afghanistan for four years to make a warrior out of me. Or the time in junior high when I landed in the hospital for standing up to older bullies picking on a skinny black kid who was also in a foster home. Or, best yet, who can forget popping my nine-year-old dream cherry the first time Grandpa paid a visit and convinced me my real mother lived in the next town over and I needed to see her because blood called to blood. Maybe I’d seen her last when I was two or three. Couldn’t remember her much, or my father.

Things didn’t stick to me even back then.

Grandpa even showed me where my foster parents kept the real cash stash and what bus to take when and where and the best time to go over to catch Mom. Ran away on a Friday night with a forged note for the bus driver just in case, and sure enough I found my birth mother, who told me about how my daddy died in the service with honor even if it was an accident. How she fell apart and had to give me up and was too ashamed of letting me and her husband and their families down to ever stay clean long enough to take me back. So she left me with people who could love me the right way until she got herself together.

Said she’d been trying. Told me, “You know how it is.”

By Monday I was back in my foster home, and we all knew that was the best place for me after that weekend. She gave me up for adoption. My foster parents made me theirs.

After the Marines, I never went back. Sent them a postcard every now and then. Guess they didn’t stick either. Sweet folks. They were a comfort, making me feel like I was loved. And I thought Mom loved me still, so that made two places. But not everything that loved was true.

Not sure what exactly made me stop owning my life and maybe my death. Might have been seeing my mother in her drunken junkie glory. Could have been afterwards, when Grandpa sent me to my father’s military cemetery and I saw Dad standing there on a Sunday morning, trees and grave marker visible right through him. Looked like he’d been waiting for me, seeing me coming from years away. Didn’t say nothing. Not that kind of spirit, Grandpa said. Killed before his time came to pick up the fight.

I never asked what Grandpa meant by that. I mean, bad enough I was doing whatever a voice in my head told me to do. Dad looked at me like he knew what was coming and couldn’t do anything to protect me. We couldn’t talk no matter how hard we tried, and Grandpa didn’t translate or act like a telephone between us. Dad did try touching my face. All I felt was cold. Wish it was him in my head instead of Grandpa. But apparently there wasn’t enough First in him to carry on that part of the tradition either. Well, I guess that was Grandpa’s fault.

Wish I’d cared enough to run away again and look for my daddy’s family. Ran away for everything else that popped into my head. But Grandpa told me they had enough problems without me, and I still believe him.

Wish a lot of things I can never have.

So here I was again in dream time, feeling Grandpa trying to steer me away again, but this time I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t letting life go through me again. And I wasn’t going to wait for that blood-cursed monster to hunt me down somewhere down the road. It was here, and so was I. I was going after it.

You’re going after it, aren’t you.

I still didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask about responsibility either. I knew I’d get a load of tradition and spirit talk. Grandpa came down on all fours with a thump that almost woke me up and stared at me through one eye, up close, so that it seemed I was peering through a furry porthole at a wooded landscape of rolling hills and bright streams under a golden full moon. I wanted to hump the moon.

What’s wrong with that?

You can’t have her.

Why? Because I’m not Indian enough?

Nobody gets her. She’s from the other world.

Same place as the monster?

Yes.

So the ones from the other world get us but we can’t get them?

That getting is a transgression. That’s why the ones who get us are monsters. If one of us caught her, that one would become a monster.

I held her.

That’s sweet. But it wasn’t getting. Do you need a talk about the difference?

I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I climbed up on to Grandpa’s back and rode while he walked through the woods, grabbing a beehive full of honey and gurgling up fish by dipping his jaws into a stream and snapping them closed when they swam over his tongue. Didn’t mind the fishing, but the pissed-off bees were a pain.

She likes me.

She likes everyone who’s brave and strong and full of medicine.

She ever like you?

Never saw her in my life.

Then you’re just jealous.

She’s going to be the death of you. Or the life. Either way, it’ll be the hardest thing you’ve done with your life yet.

Why?

This time it was Grandpa who didn’t answer. He shrugged me off on a hilltop and left me sitting on a rock. Waiting for a vision.

You ever fight the monster? I asked Grandpa.

But he didn’t answer that question either.

I woke up too late to get to work on time and thought I deserved a sick day to recover and said so when I called in. Showered, dressed in the nice jeans and shirt, the clean boots, just in case I found her. Put the 1911 .45 under my shirt, just in case I found the monster too. I call it a memento from the service, but of course they don’t issue .45s anymore.

I went out into the busy city day looking for my heartbeat woman.

I started at the train station where I’d made my jump. Scene of the crime. Works in old movies.

The train was pulling out just as I went through the turnstile. After rush hour and a train, the platform was empty, except for the requisite homeless guy on a seat with a bag between his legs, head down, asleep.

I walked yesterday’s walk. Saw her running through again, and the thing. Felt her bump. Smelled her smell. Retraced the path I’d taken to the edge. Went back down, slow and easy this time. Looked for clues. A scarf. A shoe. A tiny stone from a piece of jewelry. A purse with ID. The kinds of things left behind in old movies to get the hero to the woman who was going to be the death of him.

No train was coming, but the minute I spent down there was sad and crazy and made me feel as vulnerable as a blasted bleeding body in a combat zone. I struggled to get back up on the deck, searching for the Homeland Security camera and thinking I’d better use the other exit, when the homeless man hooked me under the armpit and helped me up.

A sign of life. Maybe this station was home. He could’ve seen something. The clue.

I brushed myself off. “Thanks, guy. I know this looks weird, but I was here yesterday, the guy who jumped down there, maybe you saw me? I’m trying to find the girl,” I explained, reaching into my pocket to pull out a fiver, whether he knew anything or not. “She fell down first, but nobody believed me—”

“So am I.”

Yeah. It was that kind of movie.

The homeless man looked like a braided rope of sinewy, dried meat nearly lost inside a soiled overcoat, face hidden under a massive beard, smelling like an open sewer. He picked a crisp, fresh shirt and pants out of the shopping bag next to him, slipped out of the coat, started changing.

I headed back the way I’d come, figuring the token booth clerk had already called the cops about the terrorist on the tracks who he’d spotted in his monitors. But the booth was closed. Could have sworn it was open when I came down. I went for the exit, but the gate was locked into place. Darkness flooded the stairs leading to the street. The lights went out on the MetroCard machines, then in the overhead fixtures. Something pushed my chest and I fell back into the monster, fully dressed and itself again: overlapping out-of-synch images of a blond slab of muscle and a thatch of shadows grinning teeth and blazing laser-painting eyes.

What was I thinking? These are the moments I need Grandpa, I said to myself. What good is not being afraid if you can’t figure out what needs to be done.

I pulled the gun out — what I should have done in the first place — and stuck the muzzle in the vague borderland between the monster’s neck and head. “Where is she?” I demanded, keeping the question as simple as the threat of a released safety.

“I don’t know.”

I lowered the gun and put a round in its kneecap. The explosion was muffled, the kick subdued. The monster didn’t fall, but its blond mask hair ruffled. I put one in the hip. Nothing. Elbow. Shoulder. Sternum. I finished the clip into its head out of sheer defiance. When I was done, I dropped the gun. It felt like I’d been firing a .38.

“You didn’t die, so she didn’t,” the monster said.

“Is that important?”

“Yes.”

The strong arm ending in a big bruiser hand grabbed me by the material at the back of my neck like a kitten, lifted, and carried me off. Except the fingers felt like claws scratching the bones of my spine.

We went off into the subway tunnel gloom, monster feet splashing through puddles and kicking refuse. My head got knocked into a few caged lights along the way.

As a warning gust of air blew at our backs, a side tunnel opened up. The tracks ended, the lighting dimmed. The monster’s footsteps were drowned by the screech and grind of a train turning out of the station.

Someone cried out from a niche and scuttled away as we passed.

We entered another station, the mix of raw rock face, rusted wrought-iron gates, and bare sculptured sconces and pendants telling the sad story of abandoned visions of grandeur. Faded graffiti peppered tiled walls curving into the arched ceiling decorated with an incomplete mosaic. Something mythological. Modern banks of lamps set high on the wall at each tunnel mouth defined the boundaries of the excavated cave. The monster threw me onto the steel and rotten wood platform and hopped up after me, making the floor tremble.

It was the laser-pointer eyes pricking the back of my eye-balls with burning needles that made me blink and flinch. Not fear.

Looking back on the situation, the smart move would have been picking up right away on the monster not knowing where Medicine Snake Woman was and blowing its eyes out to buy time to get away. But I wanted her. And this thing was my only connection to her. The way to my Medicine Woman was through it. Plus, it tried to kill her. And I never got an actual clean shot at the monster.

And here was my true warrior moment. The one that came after the last ass kicking. And the best I could do was say, “What do you want?”

“Her.”

“Can’t help you there, big fella.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Because she’ll come for you.”

See, in the movies and books, this works the other way around — she’s supposed to be the bad guy’s prisoner and I’m the one who’s supposed to do the rescuing. Of course, that’s when I stumble into the setup and maybe I die but for sure I lose the woman and the bad guy puts a hurt on everybody.

I remembered that look she gave the bunch of us in the station when she was running, and wondered if she’d been searching for a chump. I like to think it was a warrior she’d been after.

But right then I felt like my long-lost cousins and distant great-uncles walking high iron without nets or cables. Only on this job, I’d run out of bolts and there was no way off the beams, and that iron was shaking and it was 1907 and the Quebec Bridge was falling into the St. Lawrence River all over again. Grandpa told me everything he could about living through that terrible day, losing his father, mourning with the rest of the Kahnawake Mohawks, but this was the first time I’d connected with the words he’d whispered in my head.

This time, the past was sticking to me, and it weighed more than all the steel that fell into the river that day. That past, it was as heavy as the spirits of the men who died under the steel, and the sorrow of their families, and the strength it took for those left to keep living another day.

The monster, it watched me like it couldn’t decide if it was time for me to die yet. So I did the only thing there was left to do.

Sat down. Not so hard, carrying that weight. Waved a hand at the space in front of me. All I needed was a pipe to share a smoke with a monster.

“Why her?” I asked, like I had something to trade of equal value.

The monster grumbled and clicked. Tree trunks snapped somewhere inside it. I think it was laughing. “Medicine.”

“Yeah, everybody wants medicine.”

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t know me, doesn’t even like me. You’ve got a long wait coming.”

“No.”

The thing became its stubborn resolve, standing by the rusting iron gate to a shadowy set of stairs, arms by its sides, blond hair and coal-fire eyes fading, until it was just a part of the background — another ruined, incomplete part of the city’s foundation. Trains rumbled in the distance. Traffic sounds from the street above filtered through air vents. I watched a water bug dart in spurts around me.

Then she was there. Standing next to me. Out of nowhere.

“Get out of here!” I yelled, and then I cursed, because if the monster had been sleeping, he was awake now.

Of course, it had always been awake.

It rolled great shoulders and shifted forward like a landslide, its porcelain mask of skin breaking, shattering the illusion of humanity. The brooding muscle man became a mountain of broken stone, an avalanche of pebbles that might have been the calcified souls of the dead, on which floated a thatch of pale wood that, if alive, would have been a badge of life in a cold and forbidding world, but since the wood was bare and brittle, could only be a sign of death.

And I waited for her to fold us out of there, or produce a magic gun, or call on some other kind of moving monstrosity to do her dirty work, but no, she just stood by my side and the monster took her in both its great paws and lifted her high overhead until she screamed.

Her voice cut into me, clean and fast, a saber slice through the heart, and my blood ran ghost cold and my muscles stiffened hard as roadside dead and my brain sizzled like a ball of dough in burning oil.

And I saw, as clearly as the city spread out under me from the high steel, that Medicine Spirit Woman wasn’t there to save me. No. She’d come to see if I could save her.

And I wanted to. With that need, I was alive, more than I’d ever been. Everyone I’d ever known and left behind — from my quiet and steady foster parents to my scarred, bony mom to that asshole whose ass I kicked in junior high and even that Taliban bastard whose head I opened up real wide with four from the 9mm when he came at me through a window — was alive, inside, welcoming me back to my own life with arms spread.

Where are you, Grandpa?

No answer. No words of wisdom. Again. But I thought I understood. Fighting was for the living, and that’s what I had to do for her. No gun, but I was a warrior. Maybe I should have brought a knife.

Jump in. Just do it. That’s what warriors do.

I tackled the thing low and from the side, wrapping arms around hips in a solid tackle. Figured Medicine could take the fall. But I grabbed a crumbling pile of debris and landed flat on my face. It stomped on my back once before I rolled and kicked, ducked a sweeping arm that managed to clip my knee.

The good news when I got myself standing was that Medicine was free. But she wasn’t running away. No, she was standing there, watching. Waiting for me to be all I could be.

The monster’s first punch sent my flying into solid rock wall. The second broke a couple of ribs. The third spun me into a heap that fell through rotten boards and left me hanging ass high halfway down a pit, a horn screaming in my ears and an earthquake rocking my head. That one brought me back to the war.

The thing dragged me out and whipped me into tile work hard enough to chip teeth and ceramic.

This was when I found out it wasn’t only the past that could stick to me. Fear could too.

Things weren’t going right. Not such a big deal. Didn’t know what to do. No news there. Pain. I’d had plenty of that before.

Too much white man, not enough Indian, Grandpa might have said if he’d been talking. If you say so. None of that was what was making dread creep out my gut to squeeze my heart.

I was scared because I was losing her. My Medicine Snake Woman. She was the future, a hope, the breath of life. I didn’t care what she really was or where she came from, I just needed her.

Suddenly, I felt bad for my real mom. She’d come to need what was the death of her, just like me. Medicine was all inside my head, sticking hard, making me think, holding me back. I lost that space of doing something when you’re ahead of fear, when it just can’t catch you. Couldn’t walk the heights no more.

The monster wasn’t done with me, but its priorities were clear. Medicine Snake Woman came first. Blood curse — curse duty-bound man later. It went back after her.

And Medicine didn’t move. Didn’t look to the monster for mercy or to me for help. She stood her ground, full of her life, her strength, standing or falling to whatever came, whether it was musket fire, cavalry charge, flood, or fire. Or a monster. Leaving it all to me to do what had to be done. But I had nothing.

Maybe she loved so much she was setting me free by dying.

No.

How much do you love her?

His voice shocked me. I hoped I was in a dream, but my body told me otherwise.

Grandpa, help me.

Do you love her more than anything?

Do something.

More than yourself?

Yes.

The monster picked her up. Twisted an arm. She cried out. It liked the sound, shuddering and rattling as if laughing. If there’d been a fire, it might have stuck Medicine on a spit and watched her roast. It slapped her with a finger. Poked her. She sagged, shuddered, a doll in a fighting pit. She was already dead, but her death hadn’t caught up to her yet.

And even on the precipice, half-broken but still breathing and peering out at the world through eyes that didn’t seem able to close, she was larger than anything I’d ever known, full of promise and beauty, a treasure fallen from the sky, a thing no man, not even all living men put together, could wrap their arms around and hold.

Then the questions hit. Not as hard as the monster, but they hit. They’d both warned me. Loving the moon was one thing, but wanting to possess something that wasn’t mine, that was bigger than me and the monster and the whole damn city, country, world — that was a problem. A transgression. It wasn’t her, and it wasn’t my own life sticking to me, slowing me down to a stop. It was my need for her, for all that love I thought was missing, that was keeping me down.

Well, that and a royal ass kicking.

I had to get back to having no fear. I had to put all of that crap about wanting and losing out of my mind. Be strong. Be alive. Now. Not in the past or in the future. Just alive walking on high steel like I was on solid ground getting the job done. A part of everything, holding on to nothing.

I would have to kill her, in my heart.

I slipped past the smiling faces of the welcoming committee to my life, headed for the back room where the mother who gave me up hides out, along with the father who couldn’t keep himself alive for me. There was a blackboard back there full of rules. Along the walls stood a police lineup of white, black, brown people, Indians, Asians, a motley mess of mutts like me, all proud and pissed. There was that hard-ass DI who smelled Indian on me and didn’t like it. Shadows in the mountains lobbing mortar shells and setting off IEDs. And there was her.

I dove into my life. Went deep. Drowned in all the pain and hurt I’d been through, the bugfuck craziness of talking to a ghost in my head and being blown up and falling in love with the moon.

Went quiet. Silent. Dark. Closed the door to that back room, and when I did another opened with stairs moving up to a light.

Went up high, walking on girders across the sky, not afraid. Doing what I had to do. Walking in the steps of my ancestors.

I had to kill Medicine Snake Woman in my human heart to keep her in my spirit’s heart. To walk without fear in the sky. To perform my duty to all my people.

I stood. Rattled, creaked, and bled. Walked the broken bits of my body step by step to the monster, staring hard at its back, not listening to Medicine’s panting, her small cries, the rustle of her blouse, the sounds her bones made.

She didn’t belong to me. She was everybody’s.

Easy as stepping through clouds, I reached the monster while it played with its catch and slid my hand through the gravel pit of its back, sank my arm deep, to the shoulder, until I touched what I knew I’d find. Everything alive has one. Even the ones who’ve transgressed, just like the ones who stay pure and true.

It was small and wet, but it beat hard and fast, like mine had when I’d held Medicine in my arms. The monster stiffened, squeezing Medicine to screaming and locking my elbow to the breaking point. Another moment and my arm would have been dead, and so would I.

But I’d already closed my hand, crushing the monster’s heart until it was mud dripping through my fingers. The avalanche of calcified souls collapsed, sending me flying back to keep from being buried and crushed. I landed bad and took another knock on the head. Decided to lay for a while and dream.

If Grandpa was there, he wasn’t talking first.

You warned me, I said.

Nothing.

You helped me.

He was playing hard to get.

Why this time? I asked, spinning in my little lonely world. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but there’re about a hundred times I could name where I could’ve used the help. Like that RPG in the market.

This time, you were working with something from my world. You needed more than dreams.

You sorry I didn’t listen?

You do what you’re going to do.

Well, I got myself a monster. Does that make me a monster too?

Grandpa didn’t answer right away, so I did it for him: I guess that’s why they call it a curse. Or responsibility.

Maybe you got some First in you after all.

I gave her up. Killed her inside me.

She’s still with you. With everybody. She’s carrying the medicine of our return from where the First came from. All the First, and not just for one man, but for everybody. For everyone you’re keeping inside you, and the ones you let go.

That’s some powerful shit.

Best there is.

Something caressed my face, and I thought it was Medicine Snake Woman saying her farewell. But her touch was cold and then I thought she was dead. I opened my eyes, resolving not to let my heart break again when I looked up at her face. Instead of her, I saw the head of a giant white snake over me, tongue tasting the air, one cold eye fixed on me.

Your great-grandfather died because he killed his monster.

Snake. Talking. I wasn’t having it.

That bridge collapse wasn’t his fault.

No, but battle has its cost.

The design was flawed. The builders didn’t correct it. I looked it up.

If your grandfather hadn’t fought as long and hard as he did to win, the weight would have held long enough for the men to leave at day’s end. But if he’d lost, far more terrible things would have come to the Kahnawake. And to more. Your grandfather, he was killed by the one that came for him.

My heart jumped. Grandpa? You never told me.

And terrible things followed. Fire. And blood. For the world.

And Dad — my dad...

Your father was killed before his time came. You carried his burden, as well as your own.

So, what’s the cost of my winning? Am I going to die? Is my apartment building going to collapse—

You paid your price, in your heart.

I didn’t like the way that sounded. Already, I was feeling like I needed a way to let everything slide off of me. Maybe even lose Grandpa in my head. So I said, Am I done? Is the blood and the duty part of my life over?

You’re not that special.

Ideas burst out of the little boxes I’d tried keeping them locked up in. They chased each other around in my head like mice running from a cat, and the circle of my little life suddenly grew bigger. Medicine Snake Woman. Monsters. Dead people in my head. A burden of duty. I got a little cold thinking about how lucky I’d been, with Grandpa in my head and Medicine Snake Woman being there to give me a way to come out on top. And then I was cold as the far side of the moon, thinking of Great-Grandpa all alone on high steel against something like that. And Grandpa, going down, then Dad, never getting the chance to even fight, having to watch me come to his grave searching for answers and not being able to give me any.

Then I remembered it wasn’t Grandpa talking. It was the damned snake.

“What the hell are you?” My question echoed in the big empty train station, and I looked to the tunnel entrances for someone new to come into my life.

That’s your animal spirit, boy. Snake. Must be the white man part of you.

Grandpa.

I gave a look back into that snake’s eye. Why?

Gift from Medicine Snake Woman. Consider it your love child.

I pushed myself up and saw her standing on the platform edge smiling at me, though her face was bruised. She favored one leg and kept her hands behind her back.

“Thanks—” I started to say, but she was already gone.

And then I remembered, she’d already said, “You’re welcome.”

The snake curled around me, gave me a squeeze. I saw stars. Python, boa constrictor, I couldn’t decide. But after the thing finished hugging and sliding over me, I felt a lot better, though by the end the snake was down to the size of a string I could tie around my finger.

I picked up the little snake, which wriggled in my palm, and asked it, “How did you know that stuff about my father and grandpa?”

Of course, there was no answer. Still, I was grateful. For a little while.

Medicine Snake Woman was already fading from my heart. She was dead, at least to my flesh-and-blood heart. I’d done a good job killing and burying her. Pretty soon, the surprise and sorrow and pride I’d felt knowing what happened to my ancestors would slide off of me too. Because nothing sticks with me, not for long.

But the circle I was running in was still bigger. My life was taking a turn. I figured maybe I’d finally found that path Grandpa liked to talk about, yet the crossroads I was bound to run into looked like it was going to be serious trouble, if this monster was just the start. But I was sure the snake was going to come in handy.

Just shows you can’t always be right.

I talked to the pale string of wriggling meat in my palm. “So you’re supposed to be my guide, my medicine, my healer? White snake for the white man in me. Very funny. So what do you have to say, Snake? You and Grandpa. Who am I? What am I here for? What’s next?”

It wasn’t one voice that answered, but two, both in my head. Yeah, I was on the path, all right, walking through high places and sure to see more and bigger monsters in days to come. And for a long time to come, I knew I’d be hearing Snake and Grandpa saying just what they said when I asked them all those stupid questions: You ain’t that special.

Indian time by Melissa Yi

Ontario, Canada

I “Thanks.” I look behind her for my boys. I’m not here to fight. I’m here to take my boys out.

“I kept them in their rooms. I didn’t want them to be disappointed.” She lets her voice drift off, and I’m sixteen again, and Noelle and me are shooting up till nothing else matters. I shake that off. Noelle’s dead, her mother’s standing in the doorway, blocking me from seeing my sons, and as their dad, I’m not going to let her.

Mrs. Saunders shades her eyes. It’s October in Cornwall, Ontario, so the sun’s not blinding her. She’s making a point. Noelle used to say you could tell a lot about someone from the hands. Mrs. Saunders’s hands look pretty young for a woman who’s almost seventy. Plus, she still wears her wedding ring even though Mr. Saunders has been dead for at least twenty years. She asks, “Who’s that in the car?”

“My girlfriend Shana.” I told her to stay outside. I knew it would get too messy. I raise my voice. “We’re here to see Jake and Tommy.”

The Buick door slams. I whip around, but Shana’s already striding up to the porch with her best waitress grin. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Saunders. My name is Shana—”

“I’m sure,” says Mrs. Saunders, letting Shana’s hand hang in the breeze. “So nice of Fred to bring his latest girlfriend to meet the boys.” I see her taking in Shana’s brown skin, big nose, and bigger tits.

Shana doesn’t get rattled. Like I said, she’s a waitress. “I feel honored.” She doesn’t sound funny when she uses big words. She’s saving up to go to college.

“Well, these courts think it’s quite fashionable to give visitation rights, no matter what kind of parent it is. Jake! Thomas!” Her voice is like a rawhide whip and I’m not surprised when my boys’ feet thunder up behind her. “My goodness. You sound like a herd of elephants! Let’s try that again.”

While she pushes them back, I squat down on the step with my arms out. I don’t care what I look like. I haven’t seen my guys in two years and I’m not about to let a stupid thing like pride trip me up. I’ve always been a big target for the world, but I’m not going to hide from my only two fans.

I call out, “They’re just happy to see me, aren’t you? Thing One and Thing Two?” That’s what Noelle and I used to call them. It was a joke. But a bad one. I can see Mrs. Saunders filing it away to tell the lawyer. “It’s from The Cat in the Hat,” I tell her. Just then, I finally catch a glimpse of my boys’ faces. They’re both staring at me like they have no idea who I am.

Jake, my older guy, is five now. Way taller than I remember, and so serious, so skinny. Where’d his baby fat go? No smile either. Just arms dangling in a white dress shirt. Khaki dress pants and shiny shoes. They’re wearing shoes inside? No wonder they sound like elephants. Kids should be playing, skidding around in bare feet or socks. They should be hugging their dads. They should be something.

Tommy. Tom Thumb. Two and a half, always our little smiley baby — at least that’s how I remember him. But same as his brother, hair combed back like a ’50s throwback, same white shirt and khaki pants and black leather lace-up shoes. He starts to put his thumb in his mouth and I smile cause at least that’s the same, it’s even his left thumb, I remember—

“Thomas!” Whip voice again. “What did I tell you?”

Tom’s face crumples up. Jake stands a bit in front of him. Tom drops his eyes and says, “Sowwy.”

Still can’t say his Rs. At least I haven’t missed that.

“Pardon me?” from the Ice Queen.

“Pa-don me,” Tom parrots, and it just breaks my heart.

I’m not a big fighter. Hell, most addicts would rather hurt themselves than anyone else. But I’m willing to beat up this old lady who’s been sucking the life out of my boys. I take a step forward and something must show in my face, because Mrs. Saunders squares her shoulders, plants both feet, and smiles a little. A knowing smile. An I-knew-this-was-coming smile.

“She: kon skennen kowa ken?” Shana’s cool voice drifts in between us.

I stop right there.

“Shay-cone?” repeats Mrs. Saunders, as if Shana has just sworn in Martian. Of course she doesn’t know this most basic Mohawk greeting, but I’m too busy checking Jake’s face to see if he remembers. I was no hell at Mohawk, but I did say a few nursery rhymes to him and stuff. Even for Tom, I sang lullabies before I got locked up.

Jake looks blank. Tom’s staring at the ground. My throat chokes up, but Shana’s already explaining. She squats right down on the porch too. She doesn’t care if the white woman doesn’t ever let us into her house. She gets down on their level so she can look them in the eye and she says to them, “It’s our language. We say that instead of ‘Hello, how are you doing?’ A lot of people just say ‘She: kon,’ like your grandma just did, but that’s like saying ‘Hey’ instead of the whole greeting. And I wanted to say the whole thing the first time I met you two very important people.”

Jake stares at her like he can make some sense of it through the steadiness in her eyes. Tom hovers closer to her, like he doesn’t get it but he likes her open face and lightly balanced feet.

With Shana by my side, I feel my anger start to drain and I can talk to my boys again. “Skennen means peace. And she: kon means still. So it means ‘Do you still have the Great Peace?’ Are you all right? Are we still friends?” It means more than that. It’s asking if they’re still part of the tribe, if they’re okay not just in their bodies, but in their minds and spirits, but I’m trying to keep it simple. Shana’s right. It’s the perfect way to greet my boys, instead of calling them Thing One and Thing Two and beating up their grandmother. Thank God Shana’s here.

Something flickers in Jake’s eyes before he says, “We don’t do any of that Indian stuff.” He looks to his grandmother for approval.

Somehow, it hurts even more that I thought I was getting through to him. It’s like a meat hook in my chest.

Tom stares from me to his brother to his grandmother. He doesn’t know what to do.

Mrs. Saunders does. “That’s right, Jake. You know that if your mother hadn’t gotten mixed up with any of that stuff, she’d be alive and taking care of you today.”

That stuff. That Indian stuff is me. Their father.

So that’s what she’s been doing. Poisoning them against me and making them hate themselves and their weak, dead mother.

I know this. I know this like I know which way is east even when I wake up after a bender. I’m a sorry excuse for an Indian and maybe even for a human being, but I know people. I know evil.

“ Tohsa sasa’nikon: hren,” says Shana. Don’t forget, she is saying. And I know what she means. Don’t forget yourself. Don’t forget you are on probation. Don’t let the woman rile you up even as she’s stealing your children away.

But I am riled. I’ve spent most of my twenty-five years hating myself and I don’t want my boys sucked into the same rigged game. I stand up straight. I keep my gaze on Jake and Tom. “I’m Indian. You guys are Indian too.” Mrs. Saunders makes a noise, but I talk over her. “You may not think that’s a good thing, and maybe it’s not. People either think you want a handout or they want you to teach them some great big secret New Age woo-woo bull—” I catch myself just in time “—pucky, and they think you get everything for free. But we founded this place and we’re not going anywhere. We’re Mohawks.” This time Shana makes a noise. She calls us Kanien-kehaka, which means People of the Flint, cause Mohawk means “man-eater,” but I don’t have time to explain that to the boys. “We’re tough. Some people say we’re the most stubborn tribe around.”

Tom’s got his forehead puckered like he can’t figure out what I’m saying, but he wants to. And I feel a flicker of interest, or at least not hostility, from Jake, my big boy. I smile at him until he says, “Is that why you’ve got hair like Anne of Green Gables?”

Mrs. Saunders smothers a laugh, but this time I’m ready for it. I may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but you can’t hit me the same way twice. Not even if you’re my son. “Yeah, pretty much, only mine’s nicer. I use better conditioner.”

The corners of Jake’s mouth twitch. “Do you really use conditioner?”

“Only the best.” I toss my braids and make a serious face, my Indian chief statue pose. Shana giggles and Jake starts laughing. Even Mrs. Saunders defrosts a bit. She can let me have this role, the Indian clown part. That’s the part I used to play with Noelle too.

Tom titters. He’s checking his brother and grandmother, but he wants to join in the fun. I ache to scoop him up and kiss his chubby little cheeks. But I keep smiling through my pain. “Now. Why don’t you all come out with me and Shana? Tell me what you want to do. You want burgers?”

“Yeah!” Jake slaps his hands together before he remembers to look at the killjoy.

“I don’t allow the boys processed meat. We have organic beef or chicken once in a while, but we try to eat legumes and tofu instead.”

Is she for real? My eyes bug out a bit, and I see the spark in Jake’s eyes before he hides it again.

Shana says, “Well, they have salads now at McDonald’s. Would you like to come along?”

I steel myself, but after a long moment Mrs. Saunders gives us the fish-eye and says, “Oh no. This is supposed to be your time.” She smiles a little. “Indian time.”

Jake grinds his toes in the floor. He knows it’s an insult, but he doesn’t know why. Just that he’s ashamed.

“Right on,” I say, too loud. “Indian time.” And I usher the boys into my black Buick, trying not to think about the rust around the wheels or the cracked taillight and the bumper held on with a rigged-up coat hook. I was proud of that coat hook when I thought it up. Auto mechanics will hose you when all you need are elbow grease and quick thinking. But seeing my car through Mrs. Saunders’s eyes, I feel the same thing as Jake. Shame.

“Can we do the drive-through?” Jake asks after I pull up to the McDonald’s parking lot.

Shana and I exchange a look. I thought for sure they’d want to play inside. “Don’t you want to jump on the balls and stuff?”

“Well, yeah, but—” He glances at my braids, and my heart just about stops. He doesn’t want to be seen with the Indian.

Shana puts her hand on mine. “We can do whatever you want,” she says. Jake relaxes in his booster seat and my throat closes against the pain.

“Your hair is almost as long as hers.”

I turn to see Jake trudging behind me. His foot slips, but he catches himself on one knee and glares at me like it’s my fault he’s wearing sneakers on a hike in October. Shana thought fresh air would be better than McD’s this time around.

Jake and I’ve got such a love-hate thing going on. I just stop and say, “Yeah, it’s probably longer than Shana’s.”

“Why?”

Tommy’s easier. I can chase him around and he shows me his big baby belly and I make giant raspberry kisses on it. Shana’s carrying him on her hip right now and he’s looking at the leaves, trying to touch one.

I drag my eyes away from Tommy. “Why not? What’s the big deal about my hair?”

“It looks dumb! You look like a cartoon! You should at least, like, have a Mohawk!”

I sigh. I don’t want to fight with him right now.

Shana catches up to us and sets Tommy on the ground. He toddles over to a puddle and tries to stamp in it.

“Hey, Jake. Did you know your dad does have a Mohawk?”

He scrunches up his face. “He does not!”

“What do you think a Mohawk haircut looks like?”

He rolls his eyes. “Are you gonna tell me it’s a Mohawk because he’s a Mohawk? That’s lame.”

She shakes her head. “For Indians, long hair is sacred. Men and women have long hair because that’s what our Creator gave to us.”

“It looks okay on you.” Always the poison saved for me. “But everyone knows a Mohawk is that punk thing, you know, where you shave the sides and the middle sticks up in spikes.”

Tommy slips and lands in the puddle on his butt. Man. We’re going to have to change him on the trail. I pick him up and spin him around to get him to stop crying before I tackle his change. I can still hear Shana explaining.

“That haircut was like the army haircut. Going to war and taking someone’s life was against everything the Creator, Shonkwaiatison, taught us. So if the people had to take a life, they’d cut off their hair. When they returned from war, they’d let their hair grow back.”

I don’t look at them. I pull a clean diaper and a pair of pants out of the diaper bag, even though Shana is way better at changing Tommy. I don’t want to break the spell.

Then Jake bursts out, “I don’t care! I’d rather have the army haircut!”

Shana laughs, and I do too. Laughing over the hurt. Laughing while I try to pull off Tommy’s play pants with him wiggling like a minnow.

Shana says, “At least you’re thinking about getting an Indian haircut now. So you wanna figure out what a puffball mushroom is? I can see one from here!”

She’s so good with him. Jake’s bouncing around now. He finds this giant puffball. It’s as big as a bear paw, if a bear had a white Ontario Place dome mushroom kind of foot. And she’s explaining how it’s good to eat, but you want to eat the smaller kind because the big ones get yellow and mushy inside.

“You should only get mushrooms with me or your dad, because you could get mixed up with other ones, like the Death Cap or Destroying Angel.”

“Destroying Angel! I want that one! I’d bring it to school!”

“No, you wouldn’t. It would make you throw up and then it would kill you.”

Tommy’s pants aren’t so bad under his play pants. I pull the play pants back up and let him splash in the puddles again.

I touch my hair. I don’t know why I grew my hair after I got out of jail. It just seemed like the most rebellious thing I could do when the rest of me was heading mainstream. I’ve lost jobs because of it. But I never thought it might make me lose my son. I don’t know why things are so hard between us. I don’t know how far I would go to keep him.

While I’m thinking this, Tom yelps. He’s wandered away from me to the edge of the trail and he’s skidding on a fallen branch.

I dive. Yank up on his arm. He screams like I’ve ripped it out of its socket and falls in another mud puddle anyway.

Shana sprints to our side with Jake behind her yelling, “What is it?”

Tom is bawling and trying to fight me off. I’m doing my best, but he is damn strong for a two-year-old and it’s all I can do to hold onto him when he’s muddy and slippery and screaming.

Finally, he calms down and lets me hold him, but he’s not using his left arm. It’s just hanging there.

We take him to the emergency room. Wait there for three hours. Jake gets bored. He keeps asking for stuff, so Shana brings him magazines and candy bars and answers his nonstop questions, everything from “Why is your nose so big?” to “You think there are any of those destroyer mushrooms around here?”

Jake sure talks a lot for an Indian. I didn’t say a word until I was two and neither did my brothers. Maybe that’s his mother’s side coming out. He always talks to Shana, though. It’s like he doesn’t know what to say to me, or maybe his grandma has his head turned too far against me.

I keep holding Tom. He drinks some 7-Up and wanders a bit, touching magazines and toys with his right arm, but he mostly just wants to sit in my lap. I’m okay with that.

When we finally get to see the doctor, a pretty Asian woman in glasses, she talks way too fast and I don’t get most of it. She pulls on Tommy’s arm and twists it at the elbow and he gasps, but then she’s like, “Can you use it, Tommy? Wanna touch my stethoscope?” After a minute, he reaches for Jake’s toy motorcycle with his left arm. She says something about how one of Tom’s arm bones isn’t grown and something about a ligament slipping, but I don’t care what except Tommy’s arm is okay.

He turns to me and says, “Burger?”

When the phone rings and it’s my lawyer, I know it’s a problem. He sighs down the line. “What happened to your son Thomas?”

I explain about the fall and the emergency room and how he was fine and ate two kid’s burgers afterward. But my stomach has more knots than my old golden retriever’s tail.

“You have to tell me about this kind of thing.”

“Why? He was okay.” My heart is pounding even as I say it.

“Because your ex’s mother already has her lawyer organized on charges of physical abuse—”

“Abuse?” My parents were so screwed up after being beaten up at residential schools, I would let my boys run me over with a truck before I raised a hand to them.

He says more stuff, like the boys were dirty when they came home and we feed them junk.

I can hardly talk. Shana takes the phone away from me and scribbles notes. She’s good at stuff like that.

Dumb old Fred. Dumb old Indian. Suckered by the system again.

Before we can figure it out, Mrs. Saunders has it rigged so we have to have “supervised visits” with my boys. We’re even supposed to pay for some chaperone. We don’t have the money.

“So I can’t see my boys?” I ask my lawyer.

He sighs and says, “I know some supervision visitation providers who don’t charge that much. Maybe your band council can help you out.”

I press the phone against my jaw. The construction season’s almost over and Shana’s saving up her waitress tips for school. I wouldn’t ask her to spend more on my boys anyway. We could hardly afford the Happy Meals, but we did it because the toys made them smile and maybe think of us a little before they broke. I can hardly get the words out. “I don’t think so. Can’t you fight this?”

“I’ve got a lot of cases on the go, Fred, but I’ll try and make this a priority. At least get you down to nonprofessional supervision provider so you don’t have to pay for it.”

Great. I start squeezing the phone receiver so hard I imagine the plastic splintering in my fist. “How ’bout the fact that I didn’t do nothin’!”

More sighing. “I know, Fred.”

Sure you will, white man. It’s a real “priority” for you. I got to do my own thing.

Shana puts up with me for the next week while I try to figure out what to do. I’m not eating, I can’t sleep, I’m walking around in the middle of the night and getting up at 6 to work. I even try to split up a tree that fell down two years ago in Shana’s backyard. It’s a messy job. I break the chain saw. I’m pretty useless with an axe. But I’m not drinking. And I’m not using.

“Sorry,” I tell Shana when, for the first time, she wants to have sex and I just want to crash.

“It’s okay.” She kisses my cheek. “Just do the dishes for the next week and I’ll forgive you.”

That makes my eyes pop open. But she simply laughs and drags the covers over me. The quilt is soft. I sleep. And Saturday morning, when I should be seeing my boys, I know what to do instead. Go see Phil.

White people love to talk about native elders, but they’re hard to come by. My parents were so screwed up by the schools where nuns beat them for speaking Mohawk or priests raped them just because they felt like it. My grandparents are dead and I don’t really know the elders. They probably wouldn’t understand my baby Mohawk anyway.

But I know Phil. He’s a smart old guy. He used to have a job at CN Rail before he worked his way up at the paper mill and then retired on good money when the mill closed. Now he writes for the local paper. So I drop by the diner. Shana brings us coffee on the house.

Phil pushes his paper aside and asks, “What can I do you for?”

In a low voice, under the grill’s sizzle and plates clattering and chairs bumping, I tell him what’s going on.

He pours two creams and two sugars in his coffee and stirs it around until he finally answers. “She’s in a lot of pain.”

“Who?” For a second I think he means Shana, whose long legs just walked by.

“The grandmother.”

“The grandmother? Come on, Phil, you going to side with a white woman instead of me?”

He shakes his head. “Not taking sides. I think she just has a lot of hurt and she’s taking it out on you. Probably ever since her daughter died. She had Noelle late, a change-of-life baby, if I remember right.”

I stare at him. Who is he, Sigmund friggin’ Freud? Who cares how old she was when she had Noelle? “So what do you think I should do?”

“Get rid of that hurt. Then she won’t hate you so much.”

What a wise guy. I feel like hurling my coffee cup at him. I only put it down gently because it’s Shana’s place. “Thanks a lot.” I sling a ten on the table.

“You’ve got to solve this yourself,” he calls to my back.

Yeah. I knew that already.

It should be a good Christmas. The best ever, in fact. One of my buddies gave me a tree, said it was a cast-off because of the dead needles. Shana rigged it so you can’t even see the brown bits. She and Jake are hanging the balls, and Tommy and I are throwing tinsel at it. Mel Tormé’s roasting chestnuts over an open fire, and things would be just perfect except for a few things.

I was going to take care of Mrs. Saunders. I really was. I wanted to bash her head in, but in the end I decided Phil was right. I set up an appointment with one of our mediation counselors. Mrs. Saunders would never set foot in Akwasasne, let alone allow an Indian tell her what to do, but all I could do was try.

Until she upped and died. She seemed okay, or at least her normal mean self, sending the boys to bed without any veg stew supper after Jake gave her “too much lip.” Then she made them go to church the next morning with a neighbor. Said she wasn’t feeling good.

They came home to find her dead in her own puke. The neighbor called 911, but it was too late; they took her to the emergency room anyway. We asked for no autopsy. Because she was almost seventy and had a heart condition, the coroner dropped it.

Sometimes I wish he hadn’t.

Maybe I’m too suspicious. But I looked up what mushrooms do to you. The real deadly kind. You feel okay for twelve hours and then you start puking. You end up going pretty quick.

“Daddy!” Jake hollers, holding up the box of my mom’s old Christmas stuff. “This one stinks! I think it’s the candle!”

“Throw it out, then,” I suggest. I’m looking at how he and Shana have their heads close together. Their hair is growing back, but Shana shaved both their heads after Mrs. Saunders died.

“I’ll just throw out the candle,” Shana says, and I smile at her because I still love her and she’s such a good mother to my boys, even though I get goose bumps every time I see her butch hair.

Tommy tugs my pants. He wants me to kneel down. I do. He clambers in my arms and I lift him up to hang tinsel on high. His prickly little hair stands straight up now. He asked Shana to cut it off when she did his brother’s.

I’m the only one who kept a crew cut. I feel really guilty. I don’t know why. But when Tommy hugs me and Shana asks me to help Jake with the star, I can’t help humming along with old Mel Tormé. Shana looks cute with short hair, kind of ’80s punk rock. And Jake trusts me enough to hold him high while he crowns the tree with a silver and gold star.