Born With a Tooth

by Joseph Boyden

  Father Jimmy walks out of the Meechim Store, pretending not to notice us. But then he turns around and walks straight to me.

  “There’ll be no drums or chanting at Linda’s funeral,” he says to me. “This is a Catholic mass.” I turn my head away from him. I can feel the anger like a heat coming from him. He thinks I’m a devil, that we’re all devils. “It is hard enough on her mother that she committed suicide. You know what the Church says about suicides,” he whispers, his face close to mine. “For the sake of the living, don’t even show up at the church, Joe Cheechoo.” He turns and walks away quickly. Cindy makes a twisted face at his back and sticks her tongue out at him.

  I look over to Silent Sam. “He smells like Father McKinley back in Fort Albany,” I say. Sam just looks away. Sam has the same recurring dream. He told me once. The scrapes of Father McKinley’s feet as he climbs the stairs to our dormitory room, my eyes wide with the fear he would pick me again that night.

  It is night and I’m drunk by the time I decide to go to my sister’s house to help her prepare for the wake and the funeral. When I walk in the door, the number of people standing and sitting in the house makes me very nervous. Linda’s brothers stand around, their hair out of ponytails. They talk to one another and sway to some music only they can hear. They are drunk too, which surprises me. But Crow, my youngest nephew, Linda’s little brother, is nowhere to be seen. He was sitting in the reserve jail last I heard, charged with one thing or another. Friends and neighbours stand everywhere, most choosing to ignore me, but I get dirty looks from some of the old ladies. The house is so crowded it is like the whole reserve is here. Someone mentions that Linda’s funeral won’t be for almost a whole week, time for faraway relatives to get to Sharpening Teeth. I hear someone else say that Linda’s body is in a freezer down in Timmins, and that they will fly it up in a couple of days.

  My grandfather, Linda’s great-grandfather, stands in the kitchen by himself. He is an old, old man now who spends much of his time talking to stray dogs and to birds. He sees me and smiles kindly. I’m a little shocked. He is the first person in a long time to do so.

  I make my way through the crowd and see my sister sitting on the couch with Father Jimmy. He is holding her hand. He stands up when he sees me.

  “You’re not welcome here right now,” he says. “You gave up the right to your sister’s house when you picked up the bottle.” My sister won’t look at me. Everyone knows that Father Jimmy’s favourite drink is Scotch on the rocks. His face is red from it now.

  “I’m here to talk to my sister, not to you,” I tell him, trying to hold in the shouting that hisses up from my stomach and burns my throat.

  “You’re here to try and talk your sister into a past that is gone forever,” Father Jimmy says.

  “Talk to me, sister,” I say. She doesn’t look up. “Talk to me, sister.” Everyone is quiet, looking down at their feet. My sister won’t look at me. I turn and leave.

  There is nothing in me for a while, maybe two or three days. My insides are a hot, black cave. I lie in the blue tarp teepee and refuse to talk or eat. I only accept the half-finished bottles of Cold Duck that Cindy brings. I can smell autumn in the air and I know the leaves will change their colour overnight very soon. Whenever my eyes close in this blue teepee and I fall into sleep, I dream my autumn dream. I am on the back of a huge snow goose high over the swampy muskeg. I can feel the power of this goose as it flaps its wings. Below us I see a hunter aim his shotgun. He fires and the snow goose begins to fall to earth like a spinning feather. I hold onto its neck and wait for the impact. I see my frightened face reflected in the snow goose’s black eye.

  By the third day I know what I must do. I call a meeting. “What we’re going to do,” I tell my little gang, “will put us away for the winter, probably longer. You don’t have to do it, but I’m going to.” They ask me what, so I tell them. Cindy and Silent Sam agree but Henry is scared.

  “I won’t join you in this one,” he says. “What about the third strike?” He is afraid for a big white prison. “I left the south and I don’t want to go back,” he says. But me, I no longer care.

  When I commit a crime, I hear music. It’s music I heard in a spy movie once, slinky sounding, with lots of drums and pianos.

  Me and Cindy and Sam try to bust the church basement window quietly. There is no moon tonight, and in two days when it begins coming back, all my relations will be here and the funeral will begin and end. The window doesn’t want to give so I kick it as quietly as I can but it smashes, cracking, then tinkling onto the basement floor. The police station is next door and I’m surprised they don’t hear it. It’s a sign I’m doing right. The three of us slide in, clumsy but safe.

  All the excitement gets Cindy going. Soon as Sam makes his way upstairs, she pulls me to her and starts whispering unchurchy thoughts in my ear. She knows this might be our last chance for a very long time. But this church basement brings back memories of another church basement long ago and my throat gets tight. I whisper, “Can’t,” and push my way upstairs.

  Sam has already found the sacristy and the Halo Vino and we thank the Lord the bottle caps twist off. It’s no Cold Duck but it does the trick and within an hour we’re talking and laughing. We know this is the party of the season and soon it will be over so we go hard.

  I’m pretty drunk when I put on Father Jimmy’s vestments. I lead Cindy and Sam to the altar and say a few words. I get rolling into my sermon with a bottle in one hand and it’s not long before they’re rolling in the aisles and I’m shouting out that they’re blast-femurs and devil’s spunk and children of the corn. “In the name of your father,” I say, “and the sun, and the holy mackerel, bend over, because this priest is going to drive.”

  The more they laugh and the more we drink and carry on, the more hard thinking I do. Maybe it’s because we’re drinking red wine and I’m not used to it, or maybe it’s because I know this is my last night of freedom for a long time, but suddenly I realize that this collar and black robe and the gold chalice and the white Host are like a costume an actor uses in a movie to make himself fit the part. All my life I been told that these things are what gives a priest his power, that they’re his medicine. But that’s not it at all. What you got, good or bad, comes from inside. A simple realization, I admit, but it makes me start looking in a new light at what a long-ago priest did to me. He wasn’t the Church. He was a bad man acting like he was good. As for Father Jimmy, all I can say for him, standing here looking down from where he normally stands, is that he really believes what he does and says is right.

  Oh, drinking the Halo Vino and sermonizing to Cindy and Sam, I really did begin feeling the warmth of that righteous light. Maybe I wasn’t ready to forgive the world for all its sins, but I got a glimpse into the understanding, the thinking behind forgiveness. There’s these two nuns that live by Father Jimmy, who help him with his work and cook and clean for him besides. A good deal if ever I heard of one. Sister Jane, she can swear like a sailor, and Sister Marie is all fat and smiles. It used to be I’d sit long hours and chat with them, back before Father Jimmy came to the reserve. We’d sit on my picnic table by the Meechim Store and soak up the sun and talk. They’re good women. I’m sad we don’t see each other much anymore. But it was them who first talked to me about it being impossible to be perfect, to instead try to be like God wants us to be, which is always trying to be better. Suddenly I know how to end my sermon.

  “Pass me another bottle, Cindy, and I will sermonize thee further,” I say from the pulpit. Cindy struts up, trying to do a sexy wiggle, flashing me her saggy breasts after she hands me a fresh bottle. She goes to sit back down with Sam.

  “There are many things us priests know,” I begin. “There are many secrets of the world we possess, secrets like how to get into boy-sized pairs of underwear.” Cindy and Sam hoot at that one. “We know things you don’t know. We got a direct phone line to God.” I take a gulp of wine. “I will keep this short so we can socializ
e after mass. As Jesus said, wherever two or three of you Indians gather in my name, get loaded. What I must tell you is that man makes mistakes. He is not perfect. Look at Father Jimmy. Look at you and me. We get drunk, we fall down. We do bad things, we’ve got to take the fall for doing them. In other words, man is fallible. But God, Gitchi-Manitou, the Great Spirit, now there’s someone who is perfect, who knows everything, who makes no mistakes. Hey, way up in those clouds, he can’t afford to fall, because it’s a long way down to earth. So God’s gotta keep his balance. In other words, God’s pretty much infallible.”

  Cindy and Sam nod respectfully as I walk from the pulpit. “Drink to me and I’ll drink to thee,” I shout at the bottom of the altar, tipping my head and drinking as much of the red liquid as I can. I smash the bottle on the ground, and it feels as good as anything I’ve done in a long time. God knows I’m not dishonouring Him. Sam and Cindy and me head back to the sacristy to drink more and wait for the law.

  But they don’t come. We drink and shout and drink some more. Bottles lie everywhere. We’ve smelled the place up, so I open a window for air. Cindy nods off. In a rare mood he saves just for me, Sam sings me a Cree song he learned from his grandmother when he was little. His voice carries me up to somewhere soft and I lie back and let it hold me.

  I dream a good dream, a strange one. There are many images, lots of dreams swirling around one another like the northern lights do at this time of year, just above your head so that you feel you can jump up and touch them. At one point there’s me and Sam and Henry and Cindy and Linda and a halfdozen other Indians, including some of my old motorcycle gang members, sitting around a long wooden table with the Man Himself with his long hair and robe. He’s not saying who he is, but he’s got nobody fooled. There’s a halo on his head. There’s no mistaking him. We’re all about to eat. He picks up a big silver lid in the middle of the table and a Canada goose pops out and struts about the table, ruffling its feathers. The goose stops in front of Linda and honks and Linda stands up. I’m happy I can picture her face again. She climbs onto the table and begins to grow small, shrinking before our eyes. She climbs up on the goose’s back and it flaps its wings and flies off as Linda looks back at us, smiling and waving.

  We all feel good and Jesus mutters, “Goddamn, that was a big goose.” Then he looks at me and says, “Legless Joe — can I call you Legless Joe? This is a pretty easy dream to read, I mean your niece flying off into the sky on the back of a goose. You don’t need too much of a tricky mind to figure that one out. I know you are mad at me for some past wrongs done to you in my name, but let me tell you not to lie there sleeping any longer, because that Father Jimmy, he’s a prick, and he’ll make sure you go up the river for a long time. So in my name, get up, walk, be free. Hit the road before dawn.”

  Jesus turns his head to look up at the sky and Linda is still in the picture, on the goose’s back, getting smaller and smaller, looking over her shoulder every once in a while, smiling shyly and waving. Then Jesus walks to his waiting helicopter and climbs in. The blades start turning in a thump-thump-thump and I wake up to the thumping of the sacristy window we opened for air last night banging in the wind. I get up quick and grab Father Jimmy’s robe and begin wiping off all the bottles and doors and the altar, the spy music pounding in my head. I’m not too worried about fingerprints. Sometimes I think the police around here couldn’t find the river if they had to. I wake up Sam and Cindy and scoot them downstairs and help push them through the basement window. I use a chair for a boost and the sun is just starting to break as we make our way to the school where we can get out of the cold for a while and drink a cup of coffee.

  It’s been two days and I haven’t had a drink in that whole time. The elders tell me that alcohol and drumming are like a hard frost and a flower, or a cock and ice water. Father Jimmy knows I’m responsible for the break-in but can’t prove it. Last night I found my grandfather and asked him to do a sweat lodge with me, to purify me. Then I sat by the river and drummed a long time.

  All my relations are here and I walk into the church carrying my big drum in both arms and sit down at the back. Everyone is turning their heads and looking at me. Linda’s casket is in the middle of the aisle, up front, by the same altar I preached at two nights ago. It arrived later the same morning we got safely out of the church. The whole reserve turned out at the airfield, and we watched as her casket was unloaded off the plane and we all followed the chief’s big red pickup as it drove her slow from the runway to my sister’s house. It was the most powerful, quiet thing I ever saw, that long line of people walking behind her. They had the official wake that evening, but I stayed away, sat on the river with my grandfather, drumming and thinking.

  Father Jimmy enters from the sacristy followed by two altar boys. He blesses everyone and says some prayers and reads from scripture. When he’s done that, he starts his sermon.

  “All of you know by now the crime committed against this church the other night. Most of us have a good idea who’s responsible.” I can tell by the way Father Jimmy says this that he doesn’t even realize I’m here. “This crime has put a further damper on our community. I came close to not being able to perform this funeral mass today, I was so upset.” The whole congregation’s eyes are looking at the floor. He doesn’t even realize that he speaks to them like little children, I see.

  “The Church has taken your hand and led you a long way,” he continues. “But there are those among us who would take your other hand and pull you in the opposite direction. You get nowhere that way. You must decide on your path and stick to it. Do not become tempted by Satan, for he can only lead you to harm. Satan comes in all forms, in the bottle, in the drum, in the form of pre-marital sex, in drugs. Look for him, and be on guard against him.” The congregation continues staring at the floor, everyone but me, it seems. I stare up at Father Jimmy.

  “In her depression and drug- and alcohol-induced haze, Linda Cheechoo committed a mortal sin,” Father Jimmy says. “She took the life God gave her and threw it back in His face. Without realizing what she was doing, she spat on Him. I tell you with a sad heart that this is precisely the behaviour that bars a person’s admission into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  I see my sister’s head move, way up front in the first row. It turns to look at Father Jimmy.

  “I thought long and hard about what to say to you today in this time of great sorrow. You all know me to speak my mind, and know that I believe in tough love. I offer you all a warning.” Other heads rise up to look at Father Jimmy. My grandfather’s, my nephews’, my aunts’ and uncles’. “What Linda has done is reprehensible.” He says this word carefully. “It was an act of cowardice.” More heads turn up to him. “Yes, I am a believer in tough love, and these are tough words and, if we are to believe scripture, Linda must now spend eternity in purgatory as payment for her sins.” Everyone is now looking up at Father Jimmy. “If all of you take this as a hard-earned lesson, the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and live your lives according to the Bible, you can still enter heaven. Poor Linda Cheechoo will only be able to peer through the gates like a child outside an amusement park, desperately wanting to get in but having no admission ticket. You must live God’s Law or suffer His consequences.”

  I lift my big drum up from the seat beside me and carry it to the centre of the aisle at the back of the church so that it is lined up with Linda on the other side. I kneel by it, lift my stick and bang the drum once, hard. It echoes in the quiet church. Father Jimmy looks back to me, his face turning red. He shouts, “There will be no blasphemy here, Joe Cheechoo!” but I cut him off with another hammer of the drum. It travels well in here, like a strong heart.

  I bang again and then pick up a rhythm, the rhythm of the river. My funeral song. Father Jimmy rushes from the pulpit. In the aisle he is cut off by Linda’s brothers and my uncles and my grandfather and some cousins as they make their way back to me.

  They kneel around my drum in a circle just as I begin my best
wail. It is pure and true and rises to the rafters and sends a shiver down my back. The others join in the drumming, picking up the beat with hands or shoes tugged off their feet. I constrict my throat more and the song sails higher, bringing others in the church to stand in a circle around us. My grandfather answers my wail and the others in the circle join us too, eyes closed and throats tight. We sing high and drum hard. We sing for Linda’s uchak, her soul, our voices rising to pull it from her quiet body at the front of the church and carry it, protected by her relations, to its resting place.

  Father Jimmy retreats to his pulpit, his face flushed, a look of fear in his eyes. He turns and goes back to the sacristy. The rhythm comes faster and I think hard of Linda, of her as a little girl running around wearing rain boots too big for her small feet. I think of her flower-patterned dress, of her red bike, of her drinking one night with me, of her laugh, the sadness that dulled her eyes the last time I saw her. I look up to see my sister, her mother, looking down at me. Her eyes are Linda’s, a little of the spark returned.

  GASOLINE

  Crow swears he’s been growing whiter over the last year that he’s been huffing. Not white like a white person, but like a ghost or a vampire. Crow kind of likes that idea. He sways on the road, talking out loud to the ghosts, laughing spittle, snot running from his nose. He holds his arm in front of him, lines it up with the road, stares at what lies ahead. The streets of Sharpening Teeth look as long and skinny to Crow as his own arm. Especially at night with the few streetlights spaced far apart, brightening the pale dust and gravel like a thin scar running into the black. He stumbles and falls down, laughing at the scrape that starts to bead droplets of blood on his palm.

  “I am sixteen today!” he shouts. “I am sixteen and today I am a man.” He pulls the plastic shopping bag out of his pocket and places it over his nose and mouth, then hyperventilates. He thinks he must look like a bullfrog, white bag of throat expanding and collapsing. A mighty, mighty bullfrog, able to leap over cars and fences and bushes. He can leap so far he can fly.