I can see that I could learn something from him. He is all for “girls in gun class” because the “ladies” and kids are the future of the sport. The election is in full swing, but he is not going to talk politics, except he is by nature a Conservative election ad and this class, in the finished, poorly lit basement of his house, which he refers to as “the ranch,” is like every set the Conservatives use for their ads. It’s impossible for him to not talk politics, so he keeps saying, “But this class isn’t about politics . . .” after he says, “There’s only one party that is interested in protecting your firearms rights.” Just so we’re clear. The only time he breaks from the Conservative platform is on climate change — it’s real, he sees it, and we have to fix it. “It’s reality. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s no one’s fault.” He raises his voice when he says “no,” drops it when he says “one’s,” and then raises it again when he says “fault.” Then he stares at us. The tension in his face whispers to me what he’s afraid of: being misunderstood and having his right to hunt taken away by city people. And what he is not afraid of: hurting me.
Big Chief leads with a story about him and his best friend, Rooster, hunting in a farmer’s field years ago. Rooster doesn’t check that he is shooting the correct target before he fires and kills one of the farmer’s hens. They do the right thing and knock on the farmer’s door and ’fess up. They do the right thing and go and buy another chicken from another farmer to replace the one they killed. But they buy a laying hen instead of a meat chicken, and that’s way more expensive, so they get burned. Big Chief wanted to give Rooster a “tune-up” for not knowing the difference between a laying hen and a meat chicken, but he didn’t. The moral of the story is that you have to respect the people whose land you are hunting on.
My territory is zero minutes from the sliding glass patio door hellhole I’m trapped in.
Sabe came with me even though I didn’t ask him to. He was waiting for me in the parking lot when I parked my firefly of a rental car in between the Dodge Rams and the F150s with pink-like-only-white-men-are truck nuts hanging from their trailer hitches. I know Sabe doesn’t want me to go in. He’s going to try and tell me to wait until the course is offered on the rez or do it in the north or do it anywhere but here. He is trying to tell me this is unsafe. I tell him he is being classist. That these people are no more racist than the soccer parents or the profs at the university or the running club that limps by my house every evening in matching outfits and then ends up eating cupcakes at the local coffee roaster’s. I tell him I know my way around this scene, that while on the surface this looks like Deliverance, rural people are actually more kind and considerate than white people from the city. They don’t pretend they like or get Natives, and if I stay within the confines of firearms safety, the thing we have in common, it will go fine.
The younger instructor, Eric, is clean-cut like he is the front man of a Christian rock band, and I’m fascinated by him because he is a little bit scared of me but he is not letting that stop him. If there was an apocalypse and I was trapped with these people forever and I had to pick someone to fuck, I’d probably pick him but I’d have to be drunk. He is making eye contact, taking inventory of which jokes I laugh at, and trying to signal to me that he is an ally by bringing up his recent hunting trip to Cree territory when he met “the Crees” and they didn’t conform to his stereotypes, meaning they weren’t drunk and dumb and shooting everything in sight. That’s not why I’m fascinated by him. That’s why he irritates me. He is fascinating to me because he is a bro-whisperer. He is skilled at the complexities of the bro-code and how to bro-talk around them, primarily because he is one, but he is also trying to manipulate them into a kinder, gentler patriarchy:
“If you know what you’re doing and you practise, you don’t have to brag.”
“You’re not a man if you can beat someone up that’s smaller than you, like a girl or a kid.”
“City slickers think you’re a big, dumb, drunk, violent hick, don’t play into their stereotype.”
“I like a beer as much as the next guy, but don’t drink and shoot. It’s not cool, it’s stupid.”
He says it’s ok if the Crees shoot sitting ducks on the water because bread costs ten dollars up there, and they are hunting for food and not for sport. Well thank god, no one wants to be a bad sport.
The younger one senses my suspicion. He wants me to recognize him as the good cop. I wonder why he thinks he can insult my intelligence like that.
I wonder if my classmates are buying this. I know I’m not.
Eric is explaining tags to us and I’m not really listening because I don’t need tags. Big Chief butts in that you can’t just get your girlfriend a gun licence and a moose tag and then take her along for blow jobs and cooking and use her moose tag. That’s unethical. That’s cheating the system. If she has a tag, she has to have a gun and be out on the hunt or it’s illegal. He doesn’t actually say “blow jobs”; he says “hanky-panky,” but everyone in the room knows he means blow jobs and fucking like hockey players. I smile as I imagine her blonde ponytail swing from side to side.
I write down “Johnson and the boys” in the margin of page twenty-seven of the RCMP’s guide to firearms safety because I just learned it means “cock and balls.”
I try not to feel humiliated, but humiliation is the only thing dripping from the heads of the eight bucks that are mounted on the wall of this fake-wood-panelled basement classroom.
Sabe is standing beside me with his fingers on my back vacuuming the shame out of me. “Settle down, Kwe,” he whispers. I tell Sabe to stop touching me and then I immediately feel bad. I’m too stressed and armoured for touching. I know Sabe is trying to be nice to me but I’m angry and hurt and wounded.
I’m a bobcat that’s been non-fatally shot with a .22 and I’m still being pursued. The last think I want is a fucking massage.
Sabe should just wait at the edge of me. He should wait until I collapse and can’t do this anymore. He should wait until they beat me. He needs to stay close to me even though I’m pushing him away. I hope he gets that. How could he not know this about me by now?
The instructor asks me to pick up the pump-action shotgun. Shotguns are the firearms of humiliation for the Mississaugas. They are the symbol of our defeat. Bison, Elk, Caribou, Moose . . . all gone or nearly gone from our territory. Our land is such a cesspool that we are only allowed to use slugs in shotguns to shoot deer, mostly in cornfields. The land is so destroyed by these white motherfuckers, there is simply not enough space left for the elegance of rifles. I hate shotguns. I hate squeezing the trigger. I hate the sound. I hate the spray. I hate the kick in the teeth.
I pick up the twelve-gauge. I make sure the safety is on and point the firearm in the safest direction, which for me is a different direction than it is for everyone else. I pump the action three times to unload. I observe the chamber. I verify the feeding path. I examine the bore. Big Chief tells me to load two shells into it. I check to make sure the writing on the shells matches the writing on the side of the barrel. I load.
I am holding a loaded shotgun, face to face with the epitome of a white man. In the past twenty-five hours he has erased all of my people from our land. He has said “Indians” are only good for shooting cormorants. He has said “Indians” twenty-seven times in two days. And here I am, one of “their” women. The only thing he thinks I’m good for is what I’ve been marketed to him for: deviant fucking.
I look him in the eye in a way that makes him feel unsafe, and wrong. Threatened. Like he has met his match. I do not look away.
And then I fugitive-smile at him, hold my fake gun-school shotgun in the cradle position, and demonstrate how to safely get through the pretend piece of fence sitting in the middle of his basement.
In another forty-five minutes, Sabe and I will be on the road, putting some distance between us and the ranch. I’ll have the flimsy whit
e sheet that says I passed and that I’m supposed to send to the RCMP in Miramichi City, the T-shirt I won for getting the highest mark in the class, and what is left of my dignity. Sabe has me, the bolt cutters, and the five pairs of testicles he’s removed from the trailer hitches in the parking lot, ready to be mounted on his basement wall.
caribou ghosts & untold stories
we are always almost drowning
we are the best trained troops
that refuse to fight
we are hyped up on aesthetics
and tripped up
by real life
we don’t have time to feel these feelings
so we file that for
another day
we don’t have to plan for the win
because we always lose
anyway
caribou ghosts & untold stories
bad timing
& smashed hearts
train tracks six pack riff raff
deadening regret
a collection of old parts
we get these little gifts
of tremendous, unclouded
by past dues
we get these tiny moments
but there’s never
enough glue
we’ll tie ourselves together
with bungee cords
and luck
bring the fish,
the fire,
& the new knife
catharsis is still elusive
so we’ll save that
for another day
meet me at the underpass
rebellion is
on her way.
Dedicated out of respect to the intelligence and commitment of Black Lives Matter Toronto for halting the Pride parade in 2016.
BROWN AGAINST BLUE
We decide to get up early and paddle over to the bay that has a tiny piece of land separating it from the rest of the lake. The first snow came last night, reflecting skylight back at us from the ground up and bringing respite. We’re losing fast and we all know it. The eagles left last week. There is a denseness to the colour of the lake that matches the deadblue sky and the deficiency of certain neurotransmitters in my head. It never looks like this in the south because the angles are different; there’s never scarcity. It’s not bruised because there isn’t enough purple. It’s not grey because there is too much blue. It’s just light leaving, and I’m not sure if I can survive.
I’m up too early and I feel like I’m going to die — no, I’m feeling like I want to die. I’m lunging into coffee and holding quiet too tightly until the caffeine kicks in. I’m colder than I should be and sadder than I should be, but this is something I want to do and he is someone I want to do it with and I don’t want to waste it. And here I am wasting it, on the verge of wrecking it actually. Why can’t it ever just be good, he asks.
One answer is because I’m straddling the eroding edge of pathos, feeling the hole inside me screaming, and my left foot is slipping. I’m excellent at mostly hiding this presence. I’m tightening the muscles on my inner thighs until they both scream, trying to drown out other kinds of pain. Some of that’s a lie. I never teeter on the edge of things. I live there. I cheat on myself with Sad and she never abandons me. In a way that will sound awful to you, but not to me, she is the only one that loves me in the way I need to be loved. My constant lover Sad, as muted, dysmorphic entrapment.
Another answer is that he lives in his own muted, dysmorphic entrapment that is slightly different than mine.
I decide to close my eyes and focus on each stroke, while doing what therapy lady says to do in these situations: imagine yourself as a tiny baby crying. Pick the baby up. Cuddle it. Soothe it. Rub its back. Love it because no one did that for you when you were a baby. Remember, sometimes you can trick yourself into being temporarily good enough.
That’s so goddamn stupid and I can’t believe it sometimes works.
I want to stop the canoe and I want to get out on the rocks and I want him to hold me and hold me and hold me until the hole stops screaming, but I can’t ever find that in someone. He’ll pull away first and the abandon will make it worse so I don’t ask. I bite the inside of my cheek instead and cry without evidence.
I’m thinking of you too, though. Don’t think I’m just sad. Don’t think it’s you. I’m thinking of you and I know we’re going to see each other soon, although it’s unclear when. I remember what you said to me in that dream. It’s worth it. Don’t ever think it’s not worth it. I know you love me; I just can’t feel it, remember?
He’s in the front of the canoe because there’s always a hierarchy, but he’s being careful of that and that makes me love him more, even though I can’t feel it. I’m in the back, crocked steering and hiding. I’m matching my rhythm to his and this is the unearthly part of paddling — the synchronicity, the glide, the moment when together movement exceeds individual effort and it seems like you’re floating on air and not water.
We’re moving faster than I think; we’ve already been around the island, past the beaver house, and we’re approaching the spot. He asked me where I wanted to go and I told him exactly what you told me and I didn’t tell him why. He just listened like he was supposed to. I didn’t know how to make sure that I would be the one who would meet you, so he thinks we’re here to shoot ducks. He doesn’t know I’m here for you. You’re sure, right? You won’t come if you’re not sure. That’s how it works, right?
He gets out on shore and takes the shotgun through the reeds to see if there are any zhiishiibag in the bay on the other side of the clearing. I wonder what he’s thinking. We’re in this moment that feels like a miracle, and I want to like it but all I can think about is the leaving and if I can survive. We’re still awkward around each other in a way that friends are not, and I don’t know how we’re going to sit and wait for hours if it comes to that. We like each other too much and the like always sits between us, surrounded by the ten thousand reasons it’s wrong.
I watch his back as he disappears and I wonder about the kind of love that exists before you really know someone. The kind that seems so pure but never lasts. The kind that is light, unencumbered by damage and issues and talking. Just I love you as you are right now in this breaking moment. If Sad could let go of my hand, my chest could open up a bit and I could let this fleeting love in and carry it and steal it away from reality and play it and replay it in my head until it was the most perfect, infallible love in the world. It never matters if it actually exists outside of my head. It’s always better in my head.
That’s when you walk out of the bush and down to the lake. You are so beautiful. You look up and see me in the canoe floating on manufactured struggle, fucking around with Sad, as if self-defeat is nobler than regular defeat. Your body stands sure in a way I’ve never been sure about anything. Brown against blue. I don’t understand why you picked me.
I think:
Fuck, please don’t do this. Don’t make me pick.
You walk through the reeds and lower your head to drink from the lake, less than fifty feet away from me.
I think:
It’s clear you are making me choose. Perfect you, unfixable me.
and
I hate you.
I step onto the shore. Pick up the rifle, load, aim, and fire anyway.
Someone falls.
He hears the shot.
He comes fast and he brings three things: fragility, wild eyes, fear.
The sun is making the water and his brown eyes sparkle. Blood-red light comes out of his chest and into mine, like I knew it would. He presses his body into mine, and there are tears in his eyes and I’m so fucking naïve, of course he saw it all along. He kisses me and he doesn’t stop.
When you are shot with an arrow you die from hemorrhaging. When you die of a bullet wou
nd, you die of shock.
I kneel down and kiss your fallen moose forehead. I close your eyes and say the same words as my Ancestors, Chi’miigwech gii miizhiyan bimaadiziwin. There are tears in my eyes and that’s ok where I come from because it was love, not hate. And then he comes to me again and he brings three things: tobacco, a knife, and some proud, just for me.
II.
a witness on unkept-promise land
constellation
luck + intent = a star-person moving in
light = the unanswered thoughts of great mysteries
mama = your first ocean
you’re used to quiet words
& so am i
so i’ll just whisper:
you’re a treaty, a dish & a spoon
you’re a prairie, a big river & the mouths of many rivers
you’re a longhouse, a tiipi & a wiigwamin
you’re corn, beans, squash & minomiin
you’re a buffalo & a bear amongst turtles
without conditions = that time we all prayed for your heartbeat
home = the place where the healer lives
nine months = the shift from spirit into solid form
you’re used to quiet words
& so am i
so i’ll just whisper:
This Accident of Being Lost Page 3