Sufferance

by Thomas King

  Before long, Reggie had a large and passionate following, with people stopping in from around the world to eat at the Piggy.

  And then he died.

  FLORENCE TAKES A DECK of tarot cards out of her apron and slaps them on the table.

  “Shuffle and cut,” she says.

  Florence doesn’t believe in tarot. It had been Reggie’s obsession. Every morning, he would start his day with coffee, toast, and the cards.

  “Day he had his heart attack,” Florence tells me for the umpteenth time, “he got the Nine of Cups. Happiness, wish fulfilled, physical well-being, love of sensual pleasures.”

  Florence kept Reggie’s deck, along with the guidebook that explained what the cards meant.

  “Nine of Cups. Lot of good it did him.”

  Today, I pick the Seven of Disks. Failure.

  Florence holds the card up to the light. “It’s reversed,” she says, “though it ain’t much good either way.”

  The card is an ugly thing. A dark grey pile of grass with holes.

  “Despondency, deterioration, cut your losses, avoid gambling,” says Florence. “Maybe you should have stayed in bed.”

  Yesterday, I picked the Ace of Swords.

  “Nutty’s under the weather.” Florence puts the cards back in her apron. “Might consider stopping by and saying hello.”

  I finish the coffee. Then I lean back and close my eyes. I feel Florence push out of her chair.

  “That old school ain’t going to protect you,” she says, her voice sad and flat. “You can close the windows, lock the doors, and the world is still going to come calling.”

  I stay where I am, push brownie crumbs around on the plate, and let the shadows fill in around me. There’s no place I need to be, so here is as good a place as any.

  BY THE TIME I LEAVE the Piggy and get back to the plaza, the town’s transient families have begun to filter into the park.

  The Neighbours.

  They’ve spread their sleeping bags on the grass and are making themselves at home. Wes Stanford and Autumn Dare are sitting on a blanket with their three children.

  Autumn is passing out sandwiches and apples. Wes is watching for trouble to arrive.

  At the bakery, Swannie Gagnon is busy setting up tables on the sidewalk, so customers can sit in the fresh air and pretend that they’re in Paris on a trendy street in the Marais or the Latin Quarter, or at a small café just off Canal Saint-Martin.

  On the far side of the plaza, Dino Kiazzie and his son Javi are putting out boxes of fruit and vegetables in the hopes of coaxing warmer weather out of its hidey-hole, while the front of Matthews Hardware is awash in wheelbarrows and garden hoses.

  Even the Bent Nail has a festive look to it. Someone has hung a Canadian flag in the window of the bar.

  A reminder of the close relationship between patriotism and drinking.

  I stand at the corner and take my time. Delivery truck, couple of bicycles, people on the move. A dog licking itself in the shade of the bandstand. Four motorcycles with custom paint jobs, wide tires, and ape-hanger handlebars parked in front of the Nail.

  I don’t see the SUV.

  And I don’t see the guy at the hippo can. Either he’s moved on or he’s fallen in and can’t get out.

  2

  At one time, Gleaming and Cradle River First Nations were distinct communities, but over the years, Gleaming has grown, and now the only thing that separates the town from the reserve is the old riverbed.

  “If the houses don’t have wheels and you got concrete under your feet,” Ada Stillday will tell you over coffee at the Piggy, “you’re in town.”

  Just above the reserve and the town, the Cradle River used to split into two branches. The main branch ran alongside the reserve, while the smaller branch cut in between the two communities.

  The earthquake of 1944 changed that.

  It was not a strong quake, but it altered the level of the riverbed, and overnight, the branch that had separated the reserve from the town vanished.

  Like a moat that had been drained.

  “And if you’re standing on dirt in the middle of a beat-to-shit trailer park, you’re on the reserve.”

  For as long as memory, the reserve had been a loose collection of split-plank houses, heavy tents, and half a dozen seasonal tipis. And then Indian Affairs decided to modernize the community. Shiny new trailers were brought in from Quebec, and the plank houses and the tents were bulldozed and hauled away.

  Only the tipis were left standing. Part of the provincial master plan to encourage tourism in the area.

  The trailers had arrived one hot July. A ministry official came in from Ottawa, made a speech about the band’s bright future, cut a ribbon, and opened the door of the first trailer.

  That’s when things started to go sideways.

  The trailers reeked. The ministry official assured everyone that the smell was temporary and posed no health hazards, that leaving the doors and windows open for a few days would solve the problem.

  Then she had her picture taken with the chief and council.

  Then she got back in her car and left.

  But the problems didn’t stop with the off-gassing. By the end of the first week, the band discovered that the hydro service to the reserve needed to be upgraded in order to manage the trailers with their new electrical appliances. And while there was municipal water, there wasn’t enough money to pay for all the hookups.

  The council wrote a long letter to Indian Affairs detailing the problems, and Indian Affairs wrote back asking that the band fill out a survey so the ministry would know how they were doing and in what ways their services might be improved.

  Two years after the trailers arrived, they began to leak. By the end of the third, the mould appeared.

  NUTTY MOOSONEE IS sitting outside in her red recliner. She’s wrapped up in a quilt, enjoying the sun. Nutty’s trailer has a blue tarp slung over the roof and tied down with rope and bungee cords. There are official-looking stickers stuck to the side of the trailer that warn against entering the premises.

  The tarp is new. The stickers are not.

  I set the grocery bags on the ground.

  “That peanut butter I hear?” Nutty’s voice is raspy, and her breathing is laboured. “And pie cherries?”

  I fish the jar and the can out of the bags, hold them up for Nutty to see.

  Nutty licks her lips. “Put those good things in the icebox.”

  The air inside the trailer is old and swampy. Brown stains climb the walls and fan out across the ceiling. The linoleum floor moves underfoot, an uneven surface of bubble-wrap lumps. The counter around the kitchen sink has begun to lift off at the seams, and there is a thick line of mould that runs out along the windowsill.

  I’m tempted to get a knife and lift it off in one piece. Like skinning a snake.

  I open the refrigerator. There’s a can of instant coffee on the top shelf along with two hard-boiled eggs, a carton of vanilla yogurt, and three rolls of toilet paper.

  I get a bowl from the cupboard and a spoon from the drawer. I move slowly so that I can conserve energy and get out of the trailer without having to take another breath.

  NUTTY HASN’T MOVED. I put the bowl on the table next to her.

  “Harold and Ester are leaving. Going up to Croker.” Nutty stirs the cherries into the yogurt. “Ester’s cough ain’t getting better.”

  I pull up one of the orange plastic chairs.

  “Roman’s back,” she says. “Figures he’ll fix my roof.”

  A skinny crow lands on the garbage can with a thud.

  “That’s Slick,” says Nutty. “Bon-Bon’s kid. Flies okay, but he’s still working on the landings.”

  Nutty takes a peanut out of her pocket and holds it up. The crow begins to squawk and dance about along the rim of the can.

  “He hasn’t learned patience just yet.”

  Nutty tosses the peanut. The bird catches it in mid-air, gives it a shake, shits on the edge of
the can, and flies off.

  “Manners need some work, too.”

  Overhead the sky is clear, but the air remains unsettled. Nutty puts the bowl on the table, pushes the quilt to one side, and finds her cane.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s take a wander.”

  I grab my grocery bags and follow Nutty as she makes a slow circuit of the reserve. The trailers look sad and tired. Nutty stops at one that is pitched to the side, threatening to tip over.

  “Those Indian Affairs people promised to put them all on blocks, nice and level. Finish them off properly with wood skirting. Like in the pictures.”

  That didn’t happen, and over time, the tires have gone flat, the rubber has rotted away, and the trailers have slumped onto their axles and rims at alarming angles.

  “Ada figures that the government never had any intention of making the trailers permanent. Wants to keep the reserve mobile. In case we get in the way and they have to move us somewhere else.”

  Nutty stops at a white single-wide with red trim and an official-looking seal across the front door. “Empty,” she says. “And those two over there. Empty.”

  The ground is rough and broken. I walk close to Nutty, in case she stumbles and starts to fall.

  “Empty trailers are bad luck. Government sees empty trailers and pretty soon they’ll start thinking we don’t need the land we got left.”

  Nutty leads me through the rows of trailers to the large double-wide that serves as the band council office, to the circle of open ground that’s used for powwows and ceremonies. There’s an arbour and a wood bench at the far side.

  “Powwow was supposed to be at the end of the month.”

  Nutty makes her way to the bench, sits down, stretches her legs, turns her face to the sun.

  “But we got no money for prizes. Don’t even have money for the drums.”

  Somewhere in the cluster of trailers, a portable generator kicks in, its rackety clack disturbing the peace.

  Nutty leans on her cane. “Tell me what you hear.”

  Other than the generator, the powwow grounds are quiet. The trailers are quiet.

  “Children,” whispers Nutty. “You should hear children.”

  On the far side of the powwow grounds, I see Ada Stillday erupt from a row of trailers. She’s a substantial woman, but she moves quickly and with purpose.

  Like a boulder falling off a cliff.

  Nutty taps her cane on the ground. “Be nice to hear a baby cry. Be nice to hold something soft and sweet-smelling.”

  Ada’s shadow arrives before she does. It’s long and heavy and pushes through the air with unexpected force.

  “Nutty Moosonee, we got to talk.” Ada looms over Nutty, blocking the sun. “You hear what that lump for a mayor is up to now?”

  Nutty waves Ada to the bench under the arbour.

  “Not enough that he wants to have us moved. Now he wants to put those hippies in our trailers.”

  The Neighbours. The transient families in the park.

  “Don’t think they’re hippies,” says Nutty. “They’re just poor. Like us.”

  “This is Indian land,” says Ada. “Cradle River First Nations land.”

  “Nothing wrong with being generous.”

  “Since when have Whites been generous with us?” Mrs. Stillday rocks from side to side. “You tell me that.”

  “Not about what other people do,” says Nutty. “It’s about what we do.”

  “World’s falling apart.” Ada shakes her head. “Crazy man living in our school.”

  Nutty pats my hand. “Jeremiah’s family,” she says. “He was born here. Just like you.”

  “Him being Ruby’s boy don’t make him family,” says Ada.

  “Ruby was your cousin,” says Nutty. “You two grew up together. That’s blood.”

  “So why’d she leave off?” Ada doesn’t look at me. “You tell me that.”

  “Had her reasons.”

  “Takes off. Waltzes back in all pregnant, hangs around looking for tea and sympathy, then takes off again? What does that tell you?”

  “Tells me some folks don’t have it easy like us,” says Nutty.

  “And she never came back.”

  “People come and go all the time,” says Nutty.

  “I hope this ain’t about my daughter.” Ada clenches her hands. “Emma ain’t in Winnipeg ’cause she wants to be in Winnipeg.”

  “Thought you said she was coming home,” says Nutty.

  “What if she is? Ain’t nobody’s business. And if she does come back, what’s she going to do?”

  Ada pauses for a breath.

  “Hippies trying to steal our homes. My daughter’s a lawyer and she’s working at a restaurant in Winnipeg? What the hell is that? You know how many times I’ve seen my granddaughter?”

  Ada holds her position for a moment.

  “Every winter, my water line freezes and the toilet backs up. Anyone care about that?”

  And then she turns and stomps off across the powwow grounds, kicking up clouds of complaint as she goes.

  Nutty watches her. “Ada means well, but she’s got no stretch left.”

  To the southwest, clouds have begun to form at the edge of the escarpment. By evening, there could be rain, but there’s little chance that the rain will last, little hope that it will fall out of the heavens without pause and flood the world. Still, a second apocalypse is a pleasant thought, and I roll it around in my mouth, try to make the taste last as long as possible.

  “Better get back.” Nutty sets the cane in front of her and stands up. “There’s a baseball game on television. Spring training. Ada likes to watch that baseball, but she don’t like to watch it alone.”

  I walk Nutty to Ada’s trailer. The ball game has already started. I can see the television through the sliding glass door. Ada is sitting on her sofa, a pot of tea and two cups on the coffee table.

  “I’ll be fine,” says Nutty. “Ada likes to bark, and she chews a bit. But she don’t much break the skin.”

  I figure I’ll wait until the two women are settled, until tea is served, and a new inning begins.

  Nutty slides the door open. “If you see my grandson,” she says, “you might ask him about the roof.”

  3

  The residential school was built in 1903 and given over to the control of the Catholic Church. It was in operation for sixty-two years, before it was abandoned to time and the elements, before a fire destroyed everything except the main building.

  I didn’t buy the property. But now, it’s mine.

  At its peak, the school housed some 124 students, ages eight to sixteen. Eighty-five boys. Thirty-nine girls.

  In 1929, a young priest, Father Edward Hinch, was put in charge, and he remained in charge until the school closed thirty-six years later.

  Now, all that remains of the facility is a large, two-storey building, fifteen rooms in total. Kitchen, dining hall, bathrooms, classrooms, dormitories.

  There is a large room on the second floor. In the southeast corner. Separate from what used to be the boys’ dormitory. There had been an old spring bed-frame leaning against one wall, so in all likelihood, the room had been used by someone in charge of the floor. Not a guard watching prisoners exactly, but an overseer, a supervisor, a monitor to make sure that the children did not mistake the grant of civilization for assault, or the gift of christianity for punishment.

  It would have been an easy mistake to make.

  Now that room is my living quarters. A bed, a rug, an easy chair, and a floor lamp. A desk and a bookcase. My mother’s old Lone Ranger lunch box on the windowsill. Ruby Camp. “R.C” is scratched into the edge of the lid.

  The room is small, but I can sit in the chair and see the river, watch the crows as they arrive each morning to discuss their plans for the day.

  THERE IS THE STORY of a farmer in Saskatchewan who decided that he would shoot crows, knowing that if he shot one, others would come to be with the injured bird.

&
nbsp; So it would not die alone.

  And when they did, the farmer shot those birds as well. When he finally got bored and went in for the night, he had killed over two hundred crows. The local newspaper sent out a reporter to do a story on the massacre, and the farmer became a minor celebrity.

  A week later, he woke to find his truck and his farm equipment covered in crow shit. He sat out all that night in a chair with a shotgun on his lap, waiting for the crows to return.

  But they didn’t.

  The next day, he went to town, and when he came home and pulled into the yard, he found that the crows had returned, had picked up rocks and dropped them from height on his greenhouse, smashing the glass panels.

  A few days after that, the farmer went to help a neighbour with a tractor that had become stuck in a field, and the crows used his absence to break into his house through an open window. The flock tore at his furniture and smashed the Hummel figurines that the man had bought his wife, one for each year that they had been together.

  After the massacre, the farmer never saw another crow on his farm, but all that year and the next, in small and large ways, the crows wreaked havoc on the man and left his farm in ruins.

  Crows see everything, and they remember everything. They can be the best of friends, but they do not forget. And they do not forgive.

  WHEN I GET BACK to the school, I lug the bags into the kitchen and put the groceries away. Butter, eggs, bread, bananas. There were no grapes at Dino’s, not even the balloon variety that is shipped in from Chile. The broccoli from Mexico was already on the wilt, and the hothouse tomatoes were soft and translucent. There was a bin of cabbages, but I don’t trust a vegetable that can be shredded and boiled without changing its disposition.

  I’m exhausted even before I finish arranging the food. It’s probably just age. Or something equally serious.

  When I arrived at the old school, there was a cat in residence. An orange tabby, lean and watchful. She disappeared the moment I stepped through the front door, but slowly, by degrees, she has made her presence known.

  And her needs.

  Now we’re friends, or more to the point, we’re able to inhabit the same space at the same time.