Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (37 page)

One of the soldiers took a second glance at Thomas as he marched by and stopped. “The 107th?”

Thomas noted the other’s rank and saluted. “Yes, sir. Corporal Thomas Greyeyes.”

The lieutenant saluted back. “The Indian battalion. You did your country proud at Hill 70. Scared the Huns right down to their boots, I’m told.”

Thomas didn’t bother to correct him that half the 107th had been white. “Thank you, sir.”

The officer extended his hand. “Lieutenant Alexander Mackenzie, Fort Garry Horse.”

Thomas nodded. The dark circles beneath Mackenzie’s eyes that matched those on Thomas’s face spoke for them.

“I hope you’re here to show your support,” said Mackenzie.

“Actually, I’m looking for someone, sir.”

“Eh? Who?”

“A Mrs. Alan Fotheringham. She sent me a letter about my children, but I don’t have an address.” He showed the letter to Mackenzie.

“This is to your wife.”

Thomas clenched back a sob. “She died. Tuberculosis.”

Mackenzie’s face smoothed. “Terribly sorry to hear it. All we hear about is so many ravaged by the ‘flu.”

Thomas bit his tongue to keep from shouting. It might not have been Mackenzie’s fault the reserves didn’t have proper houses or enough doctors to treat the epidemic – but he still had no polite response.

Mackenzie handed the letter back to him. “I daresay some of Fotheringham’s employees might be here today.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas.

“Why not stay for a while – right ’round here, where I can find you, and I’ll see what I can do.” He saluted, which Thomas echoed, and then marched off.

Stay for a while
, thought Thomas,
so it seems you are standing with us
. A sea of soldiers and women surged around him.

The sun crept overhead as the leaders of the event took the stage, and Thomas threw himself back to memories that had kept him sane during the war: the pleasing, awkward weight of his newborn son when his wife first handed her to him, swaddled in cotton and rabbit fur. That memory seemed more distant now than the bite of his shoulder stock when he fired into the darkness from the trenches, and it echoed more deeply through him. His children grew whenever he returned from the trapline. They tottered on pudgy legs across the bare boards of the space that served as kitchen, dining room and bedroom, little moccasins slapping the wood with every uncertain step. Then they were gangly coyotes, eager to join him in the woods, listening to stories about the Creator, the animals, and man’s place in the world – and especially, as his grandmother had told them to him, tales of the mahiinkan, the wolf. Those moments were a different world.

After three years in the service, he’d finally gotten to see his daughter and son again and they were strangers to him. Worse, since his son looked so much like Thomas’s own mother – the same long face, high cheekbones – it seemed she looked at him through his son’s eyes. The silence between Thomas and his children became stiff, uncomfortable. The way they avoided his eyes now didn’t seem a mark of respect, but shame. Could they see the invisible hole in his chest, which ached when the whine of a mosquito triggered the memory of an incoming shell? The way he felt blown apart without so much as a scratch on him? His son and daughter had stood across the room from him, the gulf between them as wide as the Atlantic. He was back in Canada after years in France and Belgium but it was like coming to a new country again, one in which he no longer belonged.

When the speeches were done and the cheering crowd began to disperse, it was late afternoon and Thomas’s uniform was damp with sweat. Lt. Mackenzie appeared again, as good as his word, with a woman in tow who gave Thomas directions to the Fotheringhams’ home.

The western sky was fading to orange when Thomas found 96 Balmoral Street, a dark red house that towered above the elm saplings on the boulevard. The row of two-storey mansions faced across a grassy expanse where scaffolding and cranes loomed against the enormous new Legislative Building.
How many families could fit into just one of these places?
Thomas wondered. The house on the Red Sucker Lake reserve where he and his wife had lived – and where she had died – was little more than a shack.

Thomas steadied himself with a quivering hand on the rail and crept up the stairs to the gabled front porch.
They’re my children
, he told himself.
They’ll come
.

Inside, he heard voices, plates clanging together, suitcases dragged up stairs, and closets opened and shut, punctuated by hurried footsteps. He heard a woman’s voice, calling instructions, the notes high, even shrill.

He knocked once on the solid-wood door. A small, white woman in a housemaid’s uniform opened it and said, “Finally–” She cut herself off and stared at him.

He swallowed. “My name is Thomas Greyeyes. I came to get my children.” He wanted to add, “Can I see them?” as he would with dealing with any white person of authority, but he bit the words back. They had taken his children away. He was through asking.

“I, that is, who are you?” said the woman. Her face was flushed and she seemed out of breath. A door slammed somewhere upstairs.

Thomas pulled the letter from his pocket and unfolded it. “Is this the home of the Fotheringhams?” He knew some white people didn’t know whether to trust you unless you had a piece of paper or a document to prove what you were saying.

“Agnes!” came a woman’s voice from the floor above. It echoed through the porcelain-tiled lobby.

The maid glanced at the letter in Thomas’s hand and then over her shoulder. “Just a moment,” she said, and closed the door.

He waited.

When the door reopened, the maid stood behind a taller woman wearing her chocolate-brown hair up and clothed in a peach and grey dress. Her eyes were green and dark and fixed on Thomas, glancing up and down before she spoke. “Can I help you?”

Thomas took a deep breath and spoke the way he used to with the Hudson Bay Company man when he wanted the best price for his fox and mink furs: polite and firm, no smile. “I’ve come for my children, Marie and John. I understand you took them from the school they were in, but now it’s time for them to come home.”

“Shall I call the police, ma’am?” said the maid.

The woman turned to her. “The police are still on strike, Agnes. It’s the special constables now. But no. I see no need for that.” She turned to Thomas. “Won’t you come in? Perhaps we can discuss this to everyone’s satisfaction.”

Thomas didn’t like the sound of that – he caught the hard tone in her voice – but he nodded and stepped in. The maid closed the door and locked it.

“See to the luggage, Agnes, and remind the children they’re to make themselves presentable.” Her voice trailed off. Agnes waited a beat and then scurried up the stairs.

“Please join me,” the woman said. She gestured into a candlelit room off the main entrance. The air was hot and muggy. “I’m Gladys Fotheringham,” she said, extending her hand.

Thomas shook it. Her skin was soft and smooth, no calluses. “Thomas Greyeyes.”

The room’s dark walls were lined with bookshelves. Two deep green wingback chairs flanked a massive fireplace. Mrs. Fotheringham gestured to one as she sat in the other. “Please have a seat.” Thomas did. “I wish I could offer you some tea – do you drink tea? – but with the water pressure so low due to the strike, we’ve been running short. I’m sure you understand.”

Thomas nodded. “I’d like to see my children.”

Mrs. Fotheringham cleared her throat. “Yes, I understand. May I ask how you heard they were here? We had no idea how to reach you when we received word your wife had died.”

The lump in Thomas’s throat made his words thick. “I asked around.” He swallowed hard. “I’d like to see them. They need to come home.”

“When was the last time you saw them?” she asked, an edge to her voice.

“Wintertime. At Christmas.”

“I see.” She smoothed a crease in the lap of her dress. “I don’t believe that school was a good place for them.”

Thomas’s heart began to pound. Was it really going to be this easy? “We’ve been trying to get them home for years,” he said. “For good. But the priests and the government men say we can’t, not even when I’m making good money. How did you come to take them here?”

Her smile was brittle. “My sister is a nun who teaches at the school.” He face fell and she looked to the empty fireplace. “They had… an outbreak of tuberculosis.”

Thomas didn’t need the keen nose of a wolf to tell him her scent was off, and so was her story.

But the mention of the disease brought back the thought of his wife and a roaring filled his ears. He saw his wife Clara’s face again, pale and still. He wiped a sweaty hand over his eyes.
Stop it. She’s gone
.

Mrs. Fotheringham’s voice slowly intruded. He’d missed what she had been saying. “–seemed for the best. We had made arrangements for them to have a tutor – as we would if we had children of our own – but recent events have made that difficult.”

“What did you say?”

“We planned to continue their education. Of course, you may–”

Thomas gripped the wooden corners of his chair’s arms and leaned forward. “What happened?”

Mrs. Fotheringham licked her lips. “Where?”

“At the school. They weren’t happy about going there but they stopped talking about it, to us. We heard they were beaten if they spoke our language, or sang the songs we taught them. We saw the marks on my daughter’s back. Now she won’t show us. Me. She wouldn’t let us see, the last time they came home.”

“I’m sure I don’t know anything about that.”

Thomas surged to his feet. “You’re lying!”

Mrs. Fotheringham shrank against the back of her chair. “Mr. Greyeyes, please–”

The clack-clack of shoes announced the arrival of the maid. “Ma’am?” she said sharply, darting her face into the room.

Mrs. Fotheringham waved her off without looking away from Thomas. “When visiting my sister there last month,” Mrs. Fotheringham said in a low voice, “I could see the children were unhappy. Whether it’s because they aren’t used to a civilized education or due to something else, I could not tell. The sisters and the principal said they were doing their best to teach them. I offered to take some of them should the need arise. And when we got word–”

Thomas shook and spoke through his teeth. “They let a white woman walk in and take our children when she wants to, but not their own parents who have been trying to get them back for years?”

Mrs. Fotheringham’s eyes glistened but her mouth was set in a straight line. “I am not in charge of the schools, Mr. Greyeyes.”

He stalked to the door, reentering the electric glare of the lobby. “They’re coming with me,” he said over his shoulder.

“Wait–”

But Thomas was already heading up the stairs. “John! Marie! It’s your–” his voice gave out suddenly when he saw their beautiful faces peering down the staircase from the second floor. He spread his arms even though his chest suddenly ached. “Niniichaanisak!” he said. They both flinched at the sound of his voice, throwing their hands up as if to ward off a blow. He hesitated.

“What is it?” he said.

Neither of them spoke. They looked older now, especially his daughter, even though she was the younger of the two. Something about her eyes – the deep brown in them used to sparkle, but now it just seemed dark and hollow.

Mrs. Fotheringham came to stand in the middle of the lobby, waiting silently below Thomas.

“Kipaapaa niin,” he said. They flinched and turned their faces, taking a step back. “I am your father,” he repeated. “I’ve come for you.”

His son glanced down as if he could see through the floor to where Mrs. Fotheringham stood. Thomas knew that look: it was the same face a junior soldier made when he didn’t know which commanding officer to listen to. Thomas turned to Mrs. Fotheringham. “I’d like to speak to them alone.”

“Children,” called Mrs. Fotheringham, “show him to the room where your things are. But make sure you’re all packed.”

Marie looked at him, her head bowed, then turned and went through a door near the edge of the second-floor landing. John did the same. Thomas walked up the second set of stairs and followed his children in. He closed the door behind them.

The drapes were closed and only light in the room came from a kerosene lamp, its glass flute already blackened with soot. John and Marie huddled next to a dresser with its top drawer empty, a half-packed suitcase by their feet on the hardwood floor. The flame cast deep shadows up the sides of their faces as they stared at him.

It had been more than three years since the Indian Affairs agents had come with the representatives from the school to take away his children and many of the others on the reserve. Thomas’s tongue felt thick with all the words left unspoken since then. They were strangers now, and yet so clearly descended from his people, and Clara’s; his ancestors’ voices seemed ready to burst forth from their mouths. But they had shied just now when he spoke in their native tongue. Clearly at the school they had been taught to keep those voices silent.

He pulled up a chair draped with unpacked clothing – there seemed to be mountains of it in the room, more than he and his family had ever owned – and sat, leaning forward as he had when they used to sit around the campfire. They stared mutely back at him. “I would like to invite you to come home.” He tried to speak the way his grandmother would, not the demanding way that worked better with city-dwelling white folks.

He paused but the two barely breathed, their nostrils twitching.

“There are some things I would like to tell you–”

Marie jerked forward. “Why didn’t you come to get us?”

“I was unable to leave when, when your mother died.” It was only partly true, but there were only so many things he could tell them about at once.

“No, before!” she said, tears welling in her eyes. Her beautiful black hair, still cropped short the way the nuns had cut it, was a jagged raven’s wing of shadow in the lamplight. “You never came! They said we’d never go home until we could learn to be good! Why didn’t you come?”

“I was away–”