THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  There was a truck up ahead that had slewed off the road. The Ski Company pickup his dad drove around town sometimes. Billy had been in it plenty of times, sitting proudly on the long, slippery bench seat, messing around with the CB till his dad told him to quit it. And he knew that his dad was in there now. It was silent, the lights still on, its nose stuck harmlessly in a big soft drift at the side of the road where it had so obviously swerved.

  Billy wanted to rush forward to the truck and check out his dad but there was something in the way. All around the truck and in the truck. Something big and inky-black and bad. So bad he could hardly bear to be near it. The wolf was whining, its ears pinned back flat on its skull. And as they looked on, the bad thing, the big, black, dirty thing, felt they were there. He was sure of it. It was like a mad dog tearing away at a rabbit, suddenly swinging around and smelling you creep up behind it. Billy felt a nameless fear rise in his guts as the blackness around the truck started to gather itself. That was the only way he could interpret the thing it was doing. It was gathering.

  And there was something worse. He recognized the core of the badness: a pulsating, dark energy that was swallowing and gulping and consuming, ripping and tearing at the night.

  He could feel it flashing through his body like electricity, in every blood vessel and nerve ending, in every vein and muscle.

  It was his father.

  Blackened by this throbbing hate, his father was there right at the heart of the horror. An empty shell of a thing, yet full of bitter and acrid malice.

  Billy thought his heart would burst. He struggled to make sense of the thing. So many sensations and dense, ugly, swirling veils of blackness to see through. But through the confusion there was still the truth of what he could feel. That it was the blackness, and his father, and they were intertwined like the hair in a braid.

  Then a hissing half-thought, half-spoken voice sizzled in mockery through the blackness.

  “And who is this?”

  Billy and the wolf were as still as stones. They felt tendrils like the touch of limp, dead flesh brush their fur, and the probing of that fur to see if there was a way inside.

  The wolf was baring its teeth in a snarl of ferocity that Billy had never witnessed.

  The black, the badness, the thing that was around and in his father, was trying to get into them, trying to take them over, to have them and be them.

  It was all over them now. Everywhere. The wolf writhed and snarled and growled, thrashing on the snow as though pinned by a skewer. And it was so close, so nearly in them… and…

  Katie sat bolt upright, her eyes wide open with the scream of her son. It was a scream that could make a mother’s heart stop: not the cry of a child dreaming of the boogieman, but one of excruciating torment. Her hand shot instinctively out to Sam and met an empty pillow.

  Billy.

  Sam.

  She leaped from the bed and ran to his room. Jess was already crying, but she ran past her door, burst in on her son and slammed on the light.

  His tiny figure was huddled in a fetal position against the wall under the window, eyes staring open, mouth ready to scream again. She ran to him, scooping him up in her arms, and held him close. The boy was soaking in sweat.

  “My darling. My sweet, sweet lamb. Shhh now. It’s OK. Everything’s OK.”

  He was gulping for air, his eyes rolling madly in his head as he gasped out the words.

  “Don’t let him in me, Mom. Don’t let Dad in me. He mustn’t touch me.”

  She froze.

  “Shhh. It’s OK. Mom’s here, lamb. Shhh.” And she held him pressed to her like that until she realized with a heart as heavy as an anchor that Sam wasn’t going to come to Jess’s cry. That Sam wasn’t in the house at all.

  It must be given and not taken. And, of course, it was given. The boy in Wild’n’Free, Alberta Ltd., had handed over the display tent, the ax, the shovel and the big serrated hunting knife to Calvin with a dreamy and kindly smile. He would pay for them out of his wages. He knew he could. The tent was less than half-price and they wouldn’t have shifted it until spring anyhow. The old guy really needed those things. And that delicate, gentle lemon smell of the sweetgrass he brought into the store with him made him think of camping with Angela.

  He’d watched the old Indian go, longing for him to stay so he could carry on filling his nostrils and his heart with that sweet, lemon-scented memory. But even when the glass door swung shut, and the bell stopped tinkling above it, he could still smell it. He smiled and sat down on the boot-changing bench to dream.

  Calvin lit the fungus, purified his hands and prayed. Then he purified the ax and laid down the tobacco he’d carried for nearly eighty miles, offering it to the spirit of the willow. He crouched for a moment to gather his strength and then set to cutting the willow saplings. He cut twenty, leaving the shiny red branches on near the tips, and laid them in a stack. His breathing was labored at the effort, panting out of him in great whirling clouds of steam, and he pulled his mutilated hand over his face to wipe away the sweat.

  This was as nothing compared with what he would endure when he started. How was this abused old body going to take the strain? He thought little of this preparation when he was young. To prepare, and prepare correctly, was vital, but back then, with the Hunting Wolf boy busying around, assisting him in that earnest and eager way, it had seemed a joy building the sweat lodges in the clearing between the delicate dancing aspens.

  He prayed again, and bent to start collecting rocks. He would need twenty-five. One for each of the willow saplings, and five for the five most important Grandfathers: Earth, Water, Lightning, Thunder and Wind. Scraping at the snow with naked fingers, he felt around and selected his stones.

  Of course, there was no buffalo skull and that would make his altar weak. But there had been a gift in the night as he slept in his snow hole. An eagle feather. He had awoken to find it on his breast, a brown-and-white miracle trembling with the slightest movement of air as though it wished to fly again. A gift indeed. But one that mutely spelled the impossibility of escaping his duty.

  So the roots were chopped and ground, the mound of earth that would be his altar was built, and the feather would be his centerpiece on that altar. Not as powerful on its own, but he had little choice.

  His stones chosen, he laid aside and blessed five of them, four for each of the cardinal directions, and one for the sky.

  All the rocks were then placed on piles of logs, east of the altar, then surrounded by more timber and kindling. Calvin took a knot of lichen to the small fire a distance away from the lodge site, lit it and returned to the pyre around the stones. He placed the burning lichen beneath the twigs with a prayer, and watched until the wood had fully ignited.

  Calvin returned to the site of the lodge and lifted the shovel. The hole would have to be two and a half feet across, and a foot and a half deep to hold the rocks when they came red and glowing from the fire, but it was tough, real tough, stabbing at the iron-hard ground, even with the shiny new blade of this tool. He narrowed his eyes and shut out the pain of the effort as he dug, letting his mind drift from the task.

  Red-hot from the fire.

  An ugly memory was there before he could push it away, bobbing to the surface of his consciousness like a bubbling carcass surfacing in a pool. Too late to force it back down. He hacked at the earth with a hatred that was not directed at the innocent, if ungiving, soil.

  They had been drinking heavily that afternoon, Moses and Marlene. Wayne Longpaw was there too, squatting cross-legged on the floor, smoking a roll-up and raising his drink in a cheerful toast to more or less anything his host said.

  Moses sat in his greasy coffee-brown chair by the oil-drum stove, his jar of cloudy moonshine resting on one thigh. He was an ugly sight. Stick-thin legs beneath his jeans gave him the appearance of a fairground stilt-walker, and his whole haggard and pinched body was ravaged by lack of any nutrition other than the booze he swallowed down like a suckling
pig, and the odd piece of dismal food that Marlene made him eat when she was sober enough to remember they had to. Looked like he’d already been sick once, down the front of his pointy-pocketed rodeo shirt, and there was something matting strands of his long, black unbraided hair that fell forward on his shoulders. This was round two of the day, Calvin figured.

  Marlene was nearly out cold. Her jar lay on its side on the cracked linoleum floor, the caustic contents around her feet in a puddle as she lay slumped back on the pile of old clothes she’d been sitting on.

  Calvin could hardly bear it. He had only come up there to that vile cabin to look for the boy and ask for his assistance, but Moses had welcomed him in like a member of the family.

  And so he sat with them, holding a broken cup of moonshine that was given by the grinning Wayne, looking on in horror and pity as Moses gesticulated and slurred insults at his semi-conscious wife, laughing at his own witless remarks with a mouth full of black and broken teeth.

  The room was oppressively hot from the stove, but no warmth could make this dingy space feel homely. There were some curling black-and-white photos of Marlene in a barrel race tacked to the plasterboard wall opposite the curtainless window. Calvin thought she sure did look something in those days. Braids out at right angles to her head, her face clear and unlined as she gripped that nag with her knees. Hard to believe it was the same girl when you looked at the face of Marlene Hunting Wolf now. Her lifeless left eye socket was closed and sunken, the skin scarred and fused together over it in a hideous reminder of what Moses could do when his tank was full.

  And she was as thin as her husband, a tiny, wizened bird. The womanly flesh that had modeled her pretty oval face and sweetly rounded body in those black-and-white photos was long gone.

  Moses lorded it in his chair. The remains of some kind of meal were on the floor at the back of the stove, bits of stale soda bread that seemed to have been dipped in gravy. It made Calvin sick looking at it.

  The boy had come in. Sam had opened the door the way Calvin guessed he opened it every day of his life. With caution. A hunted thing, watching warily to see if the predator would strike. Moses’ eyes had glittered. Calvin saw that thin, barely perceptible line of evil intent flit across those deep-set black eyes and had been afraid for the boy. But they had guests. Sam was to come and join them. The boy had looked at Wayne, then at Calvin with a mixture of relief and shame. He clearly didn’t want his shaman teacher there in the house, but he was glad to see him nevertheless.

  Sam was like a creature from another planet in this household. At fifteen he was already six feet tall, gangly, waiting to fill out as a man. But he smelled of the open air, and his clear, nut-brown, almost femininely beautiful face was all the more attractive for the smears of mud on its cheeks.

  Marlene was stirred by the cold air that came into the cabin with her son and she propped herself up on one elbow, squinting at him, trying to focus. “Is ‘at ma darlin’? Ma darlin’ come home to his mama? Come here, ma baby.”

  Sam walked quickly into the back room to escape. Calvin heard him moving about, shifting objects on a table, presumably looking for something edible. His mother sank back down onto her arm again, making a cooing sound as though chucking a baby under its chin.

  Moses took a long swig of his drink, gritting his teeth and saying gaaaar through them as it slipped down his throat, then leaned across to Calvin with a cunning, conspiratorial glint, his voice thick from the burning liquor. “You want to see somethin’ good? You watch this.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, nearly toppling out of it, put down his jar as though it were the finest wafer-thin porcelain and felt in his jeans pocket for something. The operation took a long time, but eventually he fished out a coin. A dollar. He winked at Calvin, kicked at Wayne to pay attention to what he was doing, then winked at him too. With the concentration of a chef putting a cherry on top of his cake, he placed the coin on top of the raging-hot stove and sat back in his chair with a contented and triumphant expression. He put a finger to his nose and tapped it at Calvin, then sank another drink. Calvin watched the yellow of the dollar start to discolor and tarnish with the extreme heat.

  “He don’t do nothin’ for his ol’ man.”

  Moses shook his head solemnly. For a moment the sly face softened into a mockery of self-pity, like he was going to cry. The maudlin tears of a drunk.

  “Nothin’. Flattens those dollars he earns in town on the railroad tracks so’s I can’t use ‘em. I know it. I know it.”

  Calvin had poured the remains of his cup down his throat. He’d wanted another. Just to blot out the misery of the room.

  Moses sat shaking his head to himself for a few moments, then drank deeply from his jar and put it back down again, the action seeming to signal time for his mood to return from self-pity to sly prankster. He made a small sniggering sound and booted Wayne to watch him again as he picked up a small black shovel by the stove, slid the hot dollar onto it and into an empty tobacco tin on the floor by his chair. He grinned, his eyes on Calvin as he called out, “Sam. Get in here.”

  The boy appeared in the doorway behind his father, sullen and expectant.

  “Got somethin’ for you, boy. Get in here.”

  Sam came around to his chair.

  In the half-light of that room, the evening approaching fast, Sam looked so handsome and vulnerable that Calvin, man as he was, had wanted to kiss those tight pink lips. It was the light on his face, the way it glanced off smooth high cheekbones and shone in his straight black hair. And the set of those broad shoulders with a boy’s lean body hanging below them was sculptural.

  It was a strange feeling, all the more aberrant for the absence of shame he had experiencing it. Calvin had never felt it for a man or boy before. But it was there. Sexual, perhaps, but at the time it was not his crotch on fire, but his heart.

  “You want dollars to spoil? Have mine. Jesus knows I owe ya.”

  Moses chuckled like an indulgent father and picked up the tin, offering it out to Sam to show him the contents.

  Sam looked at his father and then at the dollar, suspicious but seeing no trick. He went to pluck it from the tin, when Moses pulled it back.

  “Ah ah! Hold yer hand out and say ‘Thank you, Pappy!’”

  Humiliated and yet scared to detonate this drunken time bomb, Sam did as he was ordered. “Thank you.” A pause and a small tight mouth. “Pappy.”

  Moses kept his grinning eyes on Sam and tipped the searing-hot metal disc into his son’s palm. There was a fraction of a second before Sam’s skin got the message to his brain and he dropped it and grabbed the wrist of his burned hand, his teeth bared like a fighting dog. No sound, no cry, no yell. Just teeth clenching in agony, eyes screwed up, fighting for control.

  Calvin was digging hard at the ground now, gulping to fight off the face of that boy in the room and the sound of those two drunken men laughing at his pain.

  The shovel split a last clod of hard earth apart with a thud like a blade splitting a skull. His hand was a fist around the shaft of the shovel.

  The hole was big enough. It would take the stones.

  Calvin straightened up and massaged the small of his back with his knuckles to relieve the aching.

  The saplings would have to be woven together into a dome, then the canvas he’d cut from the tent draped over it to make a loose roof. There was still a great deal to do, and between the delicate branches of the trees, the gray sky announced the day was waning.

  He stood up, faced east and offered up a prayer for the Hunting Wolf boy. It was not the first time he’d done it, and with his eyes turned to the darkening sky, he knew in his heart it would not be the last.

  30

  The soft gray leather bound around the steering wheel in a spiral had absorbed enough saliva to make a dark, wet stain. But Sam had been slumped forward drooling, with the wheel between his teeth like a horse’s bit, for an hour.

  He was clearheaded this time when he’d woken. Alth
ough woken was not quite the right word for that mercurial return to consciousness that left him gasping as though winded by a punch. Sam groaned, almost whimpered, as he lifted his head from the wheel and rubbed at his aching jaw.

  An hour. The lights were still on, illuminating the spartan instrument panel, though the engine had stalled and the clock told him the unpalatable story of the time he’d lost. His mouth was dry and sore, his neck muscles throbbed, but those minor physical irritations were of little consequence compared to the nugget of alarm in his heart, that it had happened again.

  For a moment he sat blinking in the darkness, allowing an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and resignation to wall him in. His hands fell to his lap and he stared at the snow wall through the windshield like a child at a dull adult TV show; mouth hanging open, eyes glazed and distant, yet too drained to look away.

  Awake again. Alone, in the dark. Paralyzed with terror by the potential an hour could hold.

  The madness of uncertainty, the horror of not knowing and the deeper fear of knowing. This time there had been a silver shard of light in that great blackness. A dream, perhaps, in the void. Someone he loved close by. He looked forlornly at the snow avalanching down the glass in front of him and watched as it slid gracefully down to join the wedge that already reached halfway up the wipers.

  Loved ones.

  Soon, he thought, they will doubt me.

  An alien thought, a phrase from nowhere. It snapped his torpor. Sam opened the cab door and stepped out, thigh-deep into the snow and the air thick with flakes like fortune cookies. He didn’t want to see Daniel any more. He wanted to get away.

  The truck was not badly stuck. It appeared to have left the road slowly, as though Sam had taken his foot off the gas, kept his hands on the wheel but ceased to steer. The drift had halted it safely, if inconveniently, in its breast, and it needed digging out.