The doctor sits on my bed one morning, talks to me in a loud enough voice that I can hear him.
I have crutches for you, Corporal Whiskeyjack. It is time for you to try to begin walking again.
I see him as if from a long way away, watch his lips moving, then turn my head.
The nurse with the pretty mouth makes an effort to befriend me. She wants me to try to get up. She talks to me as she sits at my bedside. She realizes my ears trouble me. One morning I awake and she holds a board to my face, English words written on it. I shake my head and look instead at her eyes. They are grey, but the grey of the sky after a rainstorm before it becomes blue again, not the grey of the sky outside this place.
“Can’t,” I whisper.
You must get better, Corporal Whiskeyjack,
she says to me, her lips moving slowly so that I can understand.
You are a good man. You are so brave that they want to give you another medal
. Her expression is sad then.
Your friend, Xavier. He is dead
.
I stare at her mouth.
But you tried to save him. Soldiers saw you walk from safety and into a bombardment trying to rescue him. They say you were looking for him. That is the most any man could do for his friend.
I’m awake one night, sweating. I’ve not called out for the medicine for a whole day. My body radiates pain. I need my head to be
straight, to be clear. I need to figure out this horrible joke being played on me. I try to sit up. The pain shoots through me. I try again, and then again. I feel for my leg and find a stump. That is all. My arm does not respond when I tell it to move. I roll over to my side, see the bedstand. It is empty. I reach with my good arm and feel for a drawer. I pull it open and feel inside. A soft pouch. My medicine bag. I pull it out and an ID dangles from it. I pull it close to my eyes in the low moonlight from the window. The English words for my name are not on it. I recognize the shape of these ones, though, the order of them. Elijah’s name. That is when it comes back, roaring through my head like a bush fire. I see Elijah dead in the crater, see my own hands taking Elijah’s medicine bundle, his ID from around his neck, sticking them in my pocket. I threw my own away. A moan begins deep in my chest, finds something inside that helps it to grow until it is a cry, and then finally a howl.
A long time has passed. Many days. I don’t know how many. I’ve made the decision to live, and each morning crawl out of my bed and pick up the crutches beside it. I am able to hobble down the hall now. The others pay me little attention.
I do not know how to make them understand who I am. To them I am Elijah Whiskeyjack, sniper and scout. Hero. When I want medicine, I tell the pretty-mouthed nurse that the pain is too bad, that I need a little of it. She leaves for a short time, comes back carrying a needle. I spend hours staring out the window, rubbing at the stub of leg through the pinned-up material of the pajamas, feeling the warm river rushing below me. It is easier not to tell them anything, easier not to explain at all. I allow myself to believe that I am Elijah. In this way he is still alive.
One morning I walk along the same hall that I walk every morning, crutches swinging forward, followed by leg. I see the door that leads out to a street, a place filled with people. I’m tempted to go outside and lose myself in the rush of bodies, but know that I’d be
sorry I did. For the first time in a long time I think of home. No one is there for me. I cannot live in the bush like this by myself. The thought of living in the town is punishment. Maybe they will let me stay here. The nurse with the pretty mouth, the grey eyes, maybe she will look after me.
On an afternoon not long after, two officers come to my bedside and salute. I look away. The past has caught up with me. One opens an envelope and reads it. I watch his lips carefully. The officer is telling me that I am to return home at my earliest convenience, that I am a decorated soldier of the war and will be afforded comfortable passage on a steamer.
It still rains in this place on the morning that I am dressed in a new itchy uniform. The nurse with the pretty mouth helps me into a chair with big wheels, helps pack my duffle and places it on my lap. Tears well in her eyes.
She bends to me.
How is the pain?
she mouths.
I stare back at her, my eyes filling too. I need to tell her that I want to stay with her.
She slips an envelope into my lap, takes my face in her hands.
Use these carefully. Only take a little when you need it, when the pain is too much
.
I need to tell her that I wish to stay with her, but can’t find the English words. I think I can hear the clink of needles in the envelope as I am pushed away from her.
The ship is as big as the one I sailed on years ago. But instead of being led down below the deck with the horses, I am kept up high above the water, put in a room of my own with a window from which I can stare out at the water. Officers come to visit me, lieutenants and colonels and even a general. They want to meet me, this Indian sniper of supreme talent whose reputation matches that of the one they call Peggy. They have learned that my hearing is mostly gone, speak to me in great loud baritones, bring bottles of rum and cigars.
The winter ocean is rough, and they try to keep steady as they stand and talk down to me. I stare at them, try to smile, wait for the one who will discover my secret, this lie.
On the nights, the nights that stretch on forever before dawn comes, on those nights when the rain pounds at my little window and the waves rock and beat the ship like Elijah coming to haunt me, I reach shakily into my duffle and feel for the envelope, feel the warmth of the sunlit river coming to lift me up.
NTASHIIHKEWIN
Home
T
HE NIGHT IS UPON US NOW
and the stones have heated. I pick them up from the fire with two sticks and carry them into the
matatosowin
one by one. They pulse in the darkness. I wake up Nephew then and let him gain his senses a little. He holds his stomach and leans on me as we go to the river. I help him remove the
wemistikoshiw
clothes that he has worn so long, and wash his body in the cool water. I remove my clothing too, and then take him inside.
In the
matatosowin
the heat is good. When we are ready I close the flap tightly. The darkness is complete.
“I am glad you are here with me,” I say loudly enough that he might hear, as I pour water on the stones. They hiss alive and glow and a wave of steam washes over us. “Tell me if it is too hot or if you do not feel well.”
I acknowledge the four directions and then the earth, the sun, the sky and the moon, sprinkling a little sage onto the rocks as I do. I thank
Gitchi Manitou
for Nephew’s return. I sit and breathe the steam, open myself to the
manitous
.
I know that Nephew will have trouble hearing me and so I feel no need to talk out loud. The heat is pleasant, relaxing, a good first round. The rocks dull a little and so I sprinkle more water on them. As I stare at them the image comes to me of Nephew leaving that morning with Elijah so long ago. I tie a medicine bundle around each
of their necks, kiss each of them on the forehead. I stand on the riverbank and hold my hand up to them. Xavier and Elijah turn and smile at me as they paddle away. I smile now in the darkness, remembering.
When the time comes, I crawl to the flap and open it, and we lie outside on the cool ground and breathe the air deeply. After a time, I open the flap and crawl back in. He follows me.
Once more I welcome the
manitous
and then pour a little more water on the rocks, make it hotter inside. I sprinkle more sage onto the stones and it sparks and dances. I know that Nephew stares at the glow as well. I chant my prayers, and as I do I see flashes in the darkness, the shouts of fury and of killing. I see the confusion, feel the anger, but mostly the fear. My body shakes with the vibration of their bombs exploding. I watch as men fall dead with bullet holes in their foreheads or are blown to pieces by great blasts. I watch as green gas crawls across the ground, seeking out all the breathing things so that it might choke them to death. Pain. So much pain. But it is their fear that leaves me weak. The fear of crawling over the sandbags and running headlong into the enemy. I talk out loud then, ask that men be forgiven for their mistakes. I sprinkle more water onto the stones so that the steam may carry it away. When it is time, we leave once more and drink in the cooler air outside.
The third round I am consumed by Nephew’s pain. I can feel it settle on my chest as surely as if someone is sitting on me. I pour water on the rocks and the steam rushes into my lungs like poison. It is difficult to breathe. I begin to feel panic, something I’ve not felt in this place since childhood. I want to rush out of the
matatosowin
and breathe fresh air. The heat sears my lungs, and so I bend to the ground and try to breathe the cooler air there, whispering words over and over to
Gitchi Manitou
. Nephew is chased by something horrible, even in here. And it threatens to take me too. I am a child again and this is my first time in the
matatosowin,
the darkness and heat and hot moisture making me desperate to get out.
My father’s words come back to me. I concentrate on my racing heart and ask it to slow down. I breathe shallowly from the ground and let the heat burn my back. I whisper over and over. The pain that Nephew has carried inside of himself for so long is leaving his body and swirling around in this place. It swooshes and screams and scratches at me until I think I am bleeding. It tries to enter me, first through my mouth, but I purse my lips and spit out a prayer at it. It slips down my breasts, my stomach, my thighs, a tongue of fire, searching. It tries to slip up inside me between my legs but I cover myself with my hands. It bites my fingers with sharp teeth. I want it to be burned up by the heat.
I pour more water on the rocks, and then more. Nephew bends to the ground too, moaning and crying and whispering. I am worried for him, that his body is not strong enough, but if the illness stays inside him it will kill him.
With the squeal of stone splitting in half from the heat, the presence is gone. A rush of cool air comes as if the flap has opened and closed quickly, and I suddenly feel something else inside, sitting down beside us.
Nephew begins talking into the ground and it is hard to hear what he says. The other presence in the
matatosowin
isn’t threatening. It neither challenges nor calms. The other is pure, and it fills this space. It is a young man I once knew who loved to talk. Nephew speaks, then stops as if listening.
“Ponenimin,”
Nephew says. “Forgive me. I had no choice.” He speaks more, says
ponenimin
again for killing his friend over there in that place.
I am sad to hear this, but it is no surprise. Nephew was never one to keep secrets. A long silence, and then I listen in the wet heat as Nephew accepts forgiveness too.
“But I cannot forgive everything you did there,” he says. “It is not my place to do so.”
He speaks again softly. I can’t make out the words, nor do I want to. He cries, and in it I hear the fear of his loneliness. I lean down into
the ground and hug this presence that has joined us, hug Elijah like a baby in my arms, holding on as long as I can before I must let go. The
matatosowin
goes still. Over the murmur of hot stones Nephew whispers goodbye to his friend, and then it is just the two of us here once again.
I crawl to the flap, open it and carry Nephew out. We collapse on the ground. Above us, the sky has settled into the long black of night. It will be a clear morning. My body tingles. My skin is reddened from the steam. I look over to Nephew and see that his is too. He is so thin now. I can see his ribs. I see where his leg was severed. The cut is clean, but the skin all around it is purple and angry. The scars are thick and ropy and run up his thigh like lightning bolts.
I lean close to him and whisper directly in his ear. “Just one more round, Nephew. It will not feel as painful or as hot.”
I crawl back in first, then help him inside. I pour more water onto the rocks and once again I’m embraced by the heat. The feeling is good after the coolness of the evening air. Almost immediately the heat brings visions. Children. I see children. They are happy and play games by the bank. The bank of the Great Salt Bay. They are two boys, naked, their brown backs to me as they throw little stones into the water. Their hair is long in the old way and is braided with strips of red cloth. But this isn’t the past. It is what’s still to come. They look to be brothers. Someone else besides me watches them. I sense that he watches to keep them from danger. I am no longer on the ground with them at all but above, looking down at this whole scene. I am not able to see the one who keeps his eye on them, and do not want to see. I know who he is, and who these boys are too.
The
matatosowin
is filled with this good vision and I let myself drift in it, in the smell of sweetgrass and the sigh of the old stones. Soon a lightness I’ve not felt since I was young tells me that we’re finished. We crawl out.
It is the dark before dawn. I am surprised at how time passed so quickly. We lie beside one another, our skin as tender as newborns’, steam rising from us like we are on fire inside.
On the edge of the evening sky I watch a white mist of washed-out
Wawahtew
begin to pulse. It is too early in the year for their colours to shimmer. For the first time in a long time I think of my father. Something of him is in those lights, the way they pulse slow and even, like a strong heartbeat. He has been all around me all my life, never really left me. It has taken most of my years to realize this. He is in the sky at night. He walks silently beside me when I stalk moose. He follows me even when I go into that
wemistikoshiw
town that he hated so much, the same place that he was taken to and where he died.