His most lucid scribbling was a full note taped in the cupboard, which I would never have found had I not been cleaning so thoroughly that day. “The old man who talks to dogs called me over this morning. I was surprised, for we rarely even wave to one another. I was even more surprised when he spoke English to me. He called me Black Robe and told me this: ‘You think us Indians are children with little hearts, and your heart is big. Listen careful, Black Robe, for I want to help you understand these people. Their hearts are bigger than you know, and they know more about things than you guess.’ Then he walked away, with a mangy, toothless dog following and growling behind him.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that particular note. I know who the old man is that he speaks of, and the note was the most sane of any of his writing. But the words of the old man echoed in my head for a long time.
SEPTEMBER 4
I ran into the wino Legless Joe Cheechoo and his gang of miscreants again today. If there is someone who embodies all of the poorest qualities of the Cree more than this one, I have not met him. They were sitting in their usual spot on the picnic table by the Meechim Store, Joe and that ugly tart Cindy groping one another in plain view of whoever wandered by. When he saw me, he dared offer me a drink from his bottle of cheap wine. “Good day, Father,” he said to me. “Sit down and have a swig.” My declining seemed to egg him on more. “Oh, there’s going to be some loving tonight, Father,” he continued, kissing Cindy full on the mouth. “This one, she’s a warm one. Oh yeah, Dad,” he said. I simply walked away. I had no other choice.
I wanted to help him. Back when I first arrived here, he expressed to me that he’d been abused by a priest in his youth. I told him that I’d pray for him, and that expressing this was the first step on the road to healing. What I thought were kind words seemed to anger him more. It was my first taste of befuddlement when trying to understand these people, in trying to relate to them so I can begin the process of leading them back into the fold.
At dinner tonight I again broached the topic of Father Wilkes and his actions in his last months on the reserve that seemed to so alienate the people here.
“It wasn’t his actions, only,” Sister Jane said. “We never had the majority of the reserve coming to church at all.” I don’t believe her. She seems to have a chip on her shoulder. Maybe she’s been here too long.
When I first arrived here to Sharpening Teeth and I’d had my first encounter with Joe Cheechoo and his disreputable bunch, I made the mistake of telling Sisters Jane and Marie about it at the dinner table that night. None of us was talking. I’d already learned that Sister Jane had a dirty mouth. Sister Marie is the shortest, fattest woman I’ve ever seen. She has these horrible, supposedly uncontrollable gas attacks that leave me gasping for air. But I told them of the hulking, long-haired Indian sitting on a picnic table by the Meechim Store. I told the sisters of how he’d waved me over and introduced himself as Legless Joe and blurted right out, as if I’d known him forever, that a priest in his youth had sodomized him. “I didn’t know what to say,” I told the sisters at the dinner table that long-ago night. “He offers me a sip from his wine bottle. I turn around and tell him that the only wine I drink is on Sunday during mass. I can tell he’s a scoundrel, and I don’t really believe his talk.
“Anyway, the older one with them, who has only a few teeth, asks, ‘How do you manage to keep it hidden from the congregation?’ I’m not sure if he’s trying to pull my leg so, as earnestly as I can, I explain to him that my sipping the wine is not something to be hidden but to be shared, that it is a celebration of the Eucharist, that it represents Jesus’ blood.” I remember looking at the sisters at this point. Sister Marie listened intently, her big eyes opened wide. Sister Jane sat with her hands folded in front of her mouth, staring at me as if looking for the opportunity to catch me in a mistake. I continued telling them my story.
“They all look at me oddly for a moment and then this Legless Joe character pipes up, ‘So you’re one of them watchacallits? One of them vampires or something?’ They all laughed at that one, laughed at me. I realized I was wasting my time with them, so I stood up, wished them a good day and walked away. Later that day, when I saw them again, they looked at me and held their hands over their necks.” It was a simple story I told to the sisters, one meant to be entertaining as well as educational about one of my first days on this reserve. But Sister Jane made it into something very different, and right then was when I realized that she was a troublemaker, that she was far too liberal.
“Well, you damn well better believe that Joe Cheechoo was a victim of sexual abuse up in Fort Albany. The government formally charged a number of the sick bastards who were responsible, including a priest. If you want my opinion, Father James, what the people here need is someone who listens to them, who tries to understand that they’re not of our white culture — not someone who walks away.”
Sister Marie looked horrified at the attack on me. But I took it in stride. I’d already researched these two nuns, and I knew Sister Jane was of an order that didn’t look down on nuns smoking cigarettes and using foul language. These nuns were well known for living in the inner cities and trying to convert drug addicts and prostitutes with education and handouts. That was all fine and good, but I was of the other school, the more conservative of the Jesuits who’d witnessed these lax policies for over a decade and had watched as the Church lost its grasp on its people. What both the converted and unconverted needed was a dose of reality, of what Sister Jane would call tough love. Obey God’s Law or pay the consequences of an eternity of suffering. What the world needs — what this reserve needs — is a dose of simplicity, of someone telling them what is right and what is wrong, not being told that their godless actions are fine and dandy. Sister Jane and I are diametrically opposed. As for Sister Marie, well, she’s a bit of a simpleton.
All this stirring of memory has left me a touch frazzled. I look forward to my glass of Scotch tonight, my one indulgence. Keeping it hidden from the sisters is wrong, I know, but all I need is to hand ammunition to Sister Jane, to have it known on the reserve that I imbibe the occasional drink. I’ve even gone so far as to work it so that I receive my supply directly from Toronto, on the mail plane.
SEPTEMBER 7
It was warm today, on my daily walk. Hot, actually. The sun beating down on my head and neck was a wonderful mood elevator. I will try to enjoy these last days of summer, these days that are truly becoming an Indian summer, to their fullest.
I decided to treat myself to a soft drink and so I walked into the Meechim Store. That pretty, young Indian woman, Elise Cheechoo, was at the counter, talking to a friend. I hovered close to them, pretending to decide on a choice of potato chips, in order to see what they were talking about. As it turns out, Elise’s young nephew, Francis, whom most of the young people around here refer to as Crow, had been arrested and was languishing in the reserve lock-up for one petty crime or another. He is one of a number of youngsters on the reserve who’ve reportedly been involved in the behaviour of sniffing gasoline in order to get high. I’d read about this practice in remote northern communities while preparing to move up here. Another sign that these people are wandering aimlessly and need the Church for guidance. I made a mental note to try to fit this development into my homily on Sunday.
I’ve been having troubling dreams lately. After each one I pray to You for them to stop. They involve myself and that young girl Elise. They are the first erotic dreams I can remember since my teenage years. She truly is a striking-looking woman, long black hair and the noted high native cheekbones. She is slim and well-groomed. But it is her eyes and her smile that get to me. The combination is at once innocent and provocative beyond explanation. She always greets me with a shy “Hello,” and I become like a chattering schoolboy in her presence. Sometimes it’s almost as if she knows that I dream lewd dreams about her, which leaves me red-faced and departing her store quickly. To make matters worse, she’s now working at the Sky Ra
nch Restaurant as well, and I catch myself admiring her figure when I stop by for a cup of coffee. I’ve taken to calling her Pocahontas on account of her beauty, which sometimes makes her smile. I pray to You for a little advice. Self-flagellation is too extreme, I think.
Elise’s family is an interesting and large one. As with many Cree families, it is nearly impossible to keep track of full brothers and sisters, half-brothers and half-sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Virtually everyone on reserve seems to be a cousin or distant relation of some sort. Elise’s cousin Mary Cheechoo is one of the regular flock at mass on Sunday.
That number remains at around eighty to one hundred. On a reserve with a population of close to eight hundred, that is a pitiful number, especially considering that most were at one time or another baptized. Mary’s brother, coincidentally, is the infamous Legless Joe. Whether or not he is a half-brother, or even possibly a stepbrother, I am not sure. Mary has a daughter, Linda, who is off down south in Timmins studying at college. She seems to be a success story on reserve. Linda has a number of brothers, Crow among them. Some of the brothers still trap furs for much of the year, with their uncles. As sometimes happens in large families, it works out that Elise is Crow and Linda’s aunt, although she is not much older than them, maybe a couple of years older than Linda. I’ve tried to work out the family lines in my head and on paper, but it still mystifies me.
Who I assume is the patriarch — the Old Man, I call him, for I’ve never learned his name — is Mary’s grandfather. Quick calculations put his age at right around a hundred, which is astounding, considering his physical condition. He walks the reserve daily, followed by at least a few stray dogs, one among them the ugliest beast I’ve ever laid eyes on. His mental health is sadly not up to his physical state. He’s known to everyone as Old Cheechoo who talks to the dogs. I saw him as well today, taking advantage of the beautiful weather. He was walking slowly down Maheegan Street. Normally he doesn’t seem to notice me, but today he greeted me, saying, “Wachay.” I answered him with a “hello.”
Twice now I’ve caught him standing and puffing, shaking his fist at a large crow on the wire above his head, speaking to it in his strange-sounding Cree dialect. Obviously, he doesn’t reserve his talking for dogs. Once I watched as he tried to hit a crow on a wire above him with a stone, but it arced feebly and the crow cawed raucously, as if laughing. That wretched mutt that sometimes accompanies him followed him today. Its mouth appears stuck in a horrible snarl, exposing its red and bleeding gums and a few black teeth. It apparently has the mange or some other ailment, much of its raw skin exposed through matted, dandruff-flecked fur. This mutt yelps constantly at the old man, and the old man will talk to it as he walks. I only wish I knew what he was saying. Although I am not positive, it seems obvious that this is the same old man Father Wilkes wrote about in the note I found, the one in which the old man talked about the size of hearts and of the Cree as children. They are children. Your children.
SEPTEMBER 9
Turnout for Sunday mass today was the worst I’ve seen since I arrived. Fifty souls at best, spread throughout the pews so that their number actually looked smaller. In my homily I discussed how our youth become more and more dispossessed and how they need the Church for guidance. It was not a fire-and-brimstone sermon, I’ll be the first to admit it, but I actually caught Sister Marie yawning and Sister Jane picking at her nails. I wish for the fire of my youth back, sometimes, for the times I could take the plainest subject and become Your voice with it.
I’ve been perusing my copy of the Jesuit Relations for the first time in many years. The writings of Brébeuf and LeJeune are stimulating and intense. Their bravery in travelling into the Canadian wilderness and converting the Huron, and their eventual martyrdom at the hands of the Iroquois three-and-a-half centuries ago, was what gave me strength to pursue this path. I hate to say it, but 350 years, and so little progress has been made with the Ontario Indian. That fact saddens me.
An epiphany of sorts today. I am lonely. Sister Jane and I only argue when we talk. Sister Marie is not what you’d call a deep thinker. Speaking of her, I am convinced that her gas attacks at the dinner table are on purpose, that she is trying to draw attention to herself. I had to actually get up and leave the table tonight, she was so explosive. Perhaps Sister Jane is not the only one up here too long.
About my epiphany. Not only have I realized that I am lonely but, with my forty-fifth birthday approaching, perhaps I am having some sort of mid-life crisis. This very conveniently explains my lustful infatuation with Elise Cheechoo, as well as my general malaise. I find myself turning to my Scotch more nights than I ever used to, but can I be blamed? We all need ways to vent, a little escape. A drink right now sounds like just the thing. I’ll have to remember tomorrow to order another case.
SEPTEMBER 10
Some very sad news arrived this morning. I received a call very early informing me of the death of one of the band members. Mary Cheechoo’s daughter Linda, who was away to college, apparently took her own life yesterday. It seems out of the blue, as I’m sure most of these tragedies seem. I went first thing and spoke to Mary at her home. It was the least I could do. She has been a loyal churchgoer since my arrival. Linda apparently took a large number of sleeping pills washed down with a bottle of vodka. A sadly stereotypical way to commit a mortal sin. From what I could gather, Linda was not doing well at school there. I can imagine. There is no way the schools on reserve can prepare young adults for college in the bigger world. I’ve sat in on classes in the grade school and high school, talked to the teachers. They teach the children spoken Cree and Cree syllabic writing when the children cannot even speak English properly. Linda had gained weight and had not been calling her mother much, both signs of depression.
There seems to be much tragedy in the Cheechoo family. Mary’s husband drowned out on the river two years ago. There is young Crow, who seems headed for certain trouble. And of course there’s Legless Joe. Apparently, Mary’s husband was somewhat of a traditionalist. He drummed and sang in a group called the Black Water Singers (with Legless Joe, of all people!) and kept a sweat lodge in their backyard. Mary told me that she wanted his spirit there at Linda’s funeral mass. I was shocked. Here I was, thinking she was a solid Catholic, but she doesn’t even realize that she asks for pagan ritual to be included in one of the holiest of Catholic masses. I very carefully and sternly explained to her the inherent problems with this. She remained quiet, but I think she understood.
Walking home from her house, I realized suddenly that I had been presented with the perfect opportunity to turn tragedy into something positive. Here was a chance to galvanize the reserve, to give the people a necessary focus, to bring everyone together. It was time to gather the scattered flock from the bars, the traplines and sweat lodges, to shepherd them back into the fold of my small church. You work in mysterious ways, and I was afforded a brief glimpse into Your workings.
Later this morning I had a run-in with Legless Joe. I’m sitting in the Sky Ranch, having a cup of coffee and admiring Elise’s work habits, when he rolls in menacingly and sits down at my table. At first I was a little concerned for my person. He is a big man, well over six feet and two hundred pounds, with long, black, unkempt hair and a little scruffy goatee that makes him look quite frightening. Apparently he was in some sort of motorcycle gang in his youth. One that tried to convey Christian ethics. How bizarre! Sister Jane talks about it as if it were the greatest thing she’d ever heard of.
“My niece is dead,” he blurts out to me. “I want to drum at her wedding.” I must admit that catches me off guard. I begin to laugh.
“If she’s dead,” I ask, “why does she want you drumming at her wedding?” He gets this funny, flustered look on his face. Apparently he has no answer to that. Alcohol abuse can do horrible things to a person, and Joe Cheechoo must learn that. He gets up and leaves.
I’ll be damned if there will be any heathen worship practised in my church.
I sat beside her on her couch, holding her hand for the evening, speaking encouraging words. Many, many people came up to her and either said a few words in Cree, looking down at their feet, or just took her hand in theirs for a moment and said nothing at all. The old man showed up and he and Mary spoke for a long time in their language, the old man nodding to me once in a while. I don’t think they even realized that what they were doing was rude. I made sure after he was finished, in case he too was trying to pressure Mary into heathen funeral practices, to explain once again to her exactly what the Catholic funeral mass dictates.
Getting Linda’s body back to the reserve and the funeral itself are both being handled in a typically Indian fashion, which is to say slowly. The family will fly it up in a couple of days on a charter flight and won’t hold the funeral until all her relatives arrive a few days after that. I’ve got the work week to prepare a sermon. It will be difficult considering that this was a suicide, and the Church’s view of such.
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