Keeper'n Me

by Richard Wagamese

  “Figure radio’d really help this place that much?”

  “Man, a radio station would bring this place to life. People’d hear about things they never heard of before and maybe start making bigger plans, dream bigger dreams, maybe get some nightlife going on around here. Things’d change, all right. For the better. Get some of the world into White Dog.”

  “Bring the world to White Dog. I like that.”

  “Get everyone right up to speed with things.”

  “Up to speed. I like that too. Got a nice ring to it.”

  “I’d die for a slice of modern pie right now, Wally.”

  “Slice of modern pie. Wow.”

  Wally slapped me up alongside the shoulders and headed off towards his dad’s house, and kept on walking around the lake. It was early evening and the sun was just going down. Usually that time of day makes me feel real good, but right around then I was awful anxious and wanting some distraction. I never knew what was coming until it happened.

  Them Red Skys have been big movers and shakers around here for as long as most can remember. There was Red Skys around when they signed the treaty back in the 1870s and ever since there’s been a Red Sky or two right up front in local politics. Kinda the big dreamers, I guess, and Wally, well, he was a bigger dreamer than most.

  Folks around here still like to talk about Wally when he was around ten years old. See, his family’s one of the hydro Indians. They moved away from the old skills like tanning hides, netting fish or any of the bush things my family still knows and does regularly, and they got used to being comfortable and thinking different. As a kid Wally was used to playing with a whole different set of toys than even his cousins who lived beyond the power line. Electric stuff, you know?

  One year for Christmas Wally’s grandfather was coming from Winnipeg. Mrs. Red Sky’s one of those White Dog people whose family took off a long time back and moved into town. She only came back after Wally Senior fell in love with her and they got married. Her daddy was coming back to White Dog for the first time in a long, long time. Wally was all excited and I guess really wanted to impress the old guy with how much of a bush Indian he was.

  So what happened was, he found a picture of some snowshoes in a catalogue and figured he’d make his grampa a pair lust like the old traditional people used to make. Ojibway snowshoes are real famous for being the best of the bunch, and Wally figured if he made up a pair, his grampa would really know that his grandson was a big bush kind of Indian.

  Trouble was, Wally never asked anybody for help. He just cut out the picture and went to work. He walked out into the bush one day and came back with two long skinny branches of jack pine. He stripped all the rough stuff off them and bent them around in a circle and tied them off with a couple of tough moose-hide thongs. Then he got some more thongs and made big sloppy criss-crosses across both of those bent-around pieces of jack pine. Had a couple straps to tie around the feet and I guess in a way they looked like snowshoes but not really.

  When the old man arrived Wally was excited as hell. Told his friends at school all about how his grampa was gonna really be proud of him on accounta he was a real bush Indian making them snowshoes.

  Well, Christmas morning came along and Wally waited until everything else had been handed around. Then he brought his snowshoes out for the old man. That was one surprised old Ojibway the way Wally’s ma tells it. The old man turned them snowshoes over and over before he finally figured out what they were supposed to be. Then he strapped them onto his feet and started tramping around the house kinda getting the feel of them while Wally followed behind all proud.

  Those moose-hide thongs just snapped all of a sudden. Snapped and sprang back straight again breaking all the thonging Wally’d criss-crossed across the frame. His grampa was left standing in the middle of the kitchen with two sticks strapped to his feet. Being a grampa he was real good about it and congratulated Wally on being the first Ojibway to figure out how to make collapsible snowshoes. Wally was real sad about it and it took most of the day for his grampa to convince him that he was still gonna be an Ojibway even though his first snowshoes didn’t work out. They still talk about them snowshoes to this day and laugh about it in a good way.

  So Wally’s always been the big dreamer around here and everyone’s kinda got their favorite Wally Red Sky story. Despite his wild singing and big dreams everyone likes him. Little backwards maybe, but a nicer guy can’t be found.

  About a week later the first signs appeared. Big orange banners, hung up at the community hall, the school, the band office and even stretched across the front of Big Ed’s store. Big black lettering that announced the impending arrival of “The White Dog One Radio Network.” This was followed by finer print that said we had only a mere two weeks before the “radio beacon of the north” came into all our homes to “obliterate the vast silence of the tundra” with the “back-porch ambiance of traditional country music for the masses.”

  There was an accompanying handout that laid out the ground rules. For a mere five dollars a month we “subscribers” could sign up for four hours a night of crystal-clear, no-drift reception while we enjoyed the “cheerful stay-at-home charm of our aboriginal rusticity” aided and improved upon by the White Dog One Radio Network. Further information would follow, it said.

  Naturally this announcement got a lotta people talkin’. The idea of someone bringin’ radio right into the reserve was big news but strange news. Good news too for a lotta folks who were really missing old Bert’s radio down at the hall.

  “Maybe we’ll have our own blackout bingo games here now,” said Velma Crow, whose monthly bingo migrations to Winnipeg were well known and envied.

  “Yeah, an’ we can have one of them request lines like they got on the radio in town. Here’s ‘Forever an’ Ever Amen’ goin’ out to Delilah Runnin’ Rabbit from Cameron Keewatin,” said Cameron Keewatin all dreamy-eyed, Cameron being on the path for Delilah’s affections since they were kids.

  “Ah, that’s jus’ some hare-brained idea somebody woke up with’ll never happen!” my ma figured and strolled off to finish up a pair of moccasins she was making for Chief Isaac’s nephew.

  “Hockey!” said Wilbert Fish. “Hockey!” And wandered off to give the boys the news of radio coming to White Dog.

  “Hmmpfh,” Keeper said, while we were loading up with supplies for his place that day. Wonder how any-one’d come up with that kinda thinkin’ round here.” He gave me the once over and smirked.

  “Who knows? Good idea though,” I said, turning real quick to fetch some lard.

  “Sounds kinda like another snowshoe episode to me,” Keeper said with a wink. “Gonna be some learnin’ in this for lotsa us, I think.”

  He didn’t say anything more about it and didn’t act the least surprised a week later when the notice went up at the community hall urging all of us to show up the next night for the unveiling of the White Dog One Network.

  “Hmmpfh,” was all he said. “Hmmpfh.”

  People were real anxious and neither Keeper or me were real surprised to find the hall jam-packed the next night. One of them big orange banners was stretched across the front of the room and there was a microphone on a stand in front of it. Someone had borrowed Wally’s old tube amp and there was a big tablecloth covering something on the table behind the microphone. People were craning their necks to get a look at the set-up and we were all right owly about the delay when Wally Red Sky walked up to the microphone carrying a big bunch of papers. He gave me a huge wink when he passed Keeper’n me.

  “Hmmpfh,” Keeper said, giving me that once over again.

  The groan went up immediately. Wally just put his pile of papers down and waved with his hands to get people to quiet down. Clearing his throat into the microphone and smoothing back his Brylcreem-shiny hair, he went into his special radio announcer’s voice.

  “Ladies an’ gentlemen, boys an’ girls, this is the moment you’ve been all waitin’ for.”

  “Bri
ng on them radio guys!” interrupted Wilbert Fish, eager to hear if hockey was gonna be parta the programming.

  “Yeah, Wally, get offa there! We wanna hear about the radio!” yelled Velma Crow.

  “This ain’t no talent night, for god’s sake, Wally!” screamed Wally’s dad. “Get off an’ let the radio guys on!”

  Wally grinned and shocked everyone but Keeper’n me when he announced that it was he, Wally Red Sky, who was part, parcel and head honcho of the White Dog One Radio Network. When the groans died down and people started piling on their coats to leave, Wally’s voice got suddenly louder.

  “For a mere five dollars a month you can have this kinda sound in your own home!” he yelled as Hank Williams singing “Lovesick Blues” filled the room. People stopped and turned around to figure out how Wally managed to get such good sound happening. Most looked pretty impressed with it. Turned out that the tablecloth was covering a pair of record players hooked up to Wally’s amp, which was turned up good and loud.

  “All you need to do is sign your name on these sheets of paper here agreein’ that when I come around the first of ev’ry month you’ll pay me five bucks for more radio. I’ll be around in the next week to install your own radio unit in your home.

  “Then one week from tonight, an’ from six to ten ev’ry single night after that, the Red Sky One Radio Network comes into your home! An’ the thing of it is … an’ here’s the best part … you don’ even need electricity an’ you’ll never haveta buy another battery!”

  This was met with murmurs of delight, shock and polite disbelief. Keeper was grinning like I never seen him grin before and I think he was kinda proud of Wally for standing there and pressing his case.

  Well, needless to say there was a big rush for the signup sheets and no one even stopped to ask about what they could expect from the radio. Five dollars seemed like a hell of a deal for four hours a night of crystal-clear radio, and Wally’s enthusiasm pretty much caught on with everybody. There was even people dancing around together while old Hank kept singing away in the background. One week started to feel like an awful long time to wait for lotsa folks.

  “Hmmpfh,” Keeper said. “Hmmpfh.”

  “You watch what happens now that this radio’s comin’ to White Dog,” Keeper told me a few days later when we were heading out to gather cedar. “People gonna change. Prob’ly real fast too. Them outside things move fast make people move fast too. You watch.”

  “You don’t like it? Think it’s a bad idea?”

  “Not a bad idea. More like bad timin’. Things like this gotta come slow, give people time to find balance with it. It’s an important thing havin’ balance.”

  “What’s balance gotta do with it?”

  “Balance is a big thing in the Indyun way. Somethin’ you gotta have. Kinda like carryin’ a load too big’n awkward for you. Make you walk all funny underneath it, maybe fall, hurt yourself. But you take time to find a balance, that load’s easier to travel with. See?”

  “Well, yeah, maybe but not really.”

  “It’s like this. You see them eagle feathers hangin’ up at my place there?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Eagle feather’s good tool for teachin’ ’bout balance. Help us remember one o’ the biggest teachin’s comes from the eagle. See, bird gotta have balance to soar around like he does. Us we like seein’ him up there. Looks real free to us. Make us wanna be like that. Trick is, though, we gotta have that same kinda balance. That’s why we admire the eagle so much. Somethin’ inside us wants to be able to soar around our world like that too.

  “But that eagle took a long time to learn about balance. Soarin’s just the result of a lotta effort. Lotta work an’ learnin’ to see an’ feel.”

  “See and feel?”

  “That bird’s soarin’ on air. Air’s movin’ all the time. When he’s floatin’ around up there so graceful he’s floatin’ on moving air. That bird knows when that movin’s right for soarin’ an’ when it’s not. Eagles don’t soar all the time. Sometimes gotta work hard to stay up there.

  “When he’s learnin’ to fly he’s learnin’ to see the way the clouds are movin’ or if it’s clear he’s learnin’ to see how the treetops are movin’ in the air. Gets to know what’s what up there. And he’s learnin’ to feel the air against his body. Learns when it’s gentle enough to soar or wild enough to make soaring dangerous. Takes a lotta time for him to learn but he learns. Learns to see and feel so he can know when he can balance against the air an’ float around like we always see him do.

  “You watch sometimes. See a real young eagle tryin’ to soar when that wind’s really blowin’. Flies right up into the face of it. Spread his wings like he wants to soar but that wind just pushes him around. Tries again and again. Same thing. Keeps on gettin’ pushed around till he learns that that kinda wind’s no good for soaring. Gets real tired from the effort. So he learns to sit through it and wait.

  “Us we only see the freedom, we don’t see the work that went into it. We see the balance in the sky but not the time it took to get it. It’s slow coming, that balance. Same for us.”

  “But what are we balancing?”

  “Living mostly. Living. Us we gotta learn to see and feel in order to live good. See what’s good around us and feel what’s not. Kinda weed out the things that make us uncomfortable. Pick out the bad air from the good air so we can soar. Takes time. That’s why we give feathers sometimes. Recognize someone for takin’ time to learn balance an’ put it into the way they live their life.”

  “Hmmpfh. So how does that fit what’s happening with Wally’s radio?”

  “It’s not just Wally. Got more to do with you really.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re feelin’ lost here again. I can tell you’re wantin’ some of that fast livin’ again. Way you walk, way you talk sometimes, way you look at things. I figure you were talkin’ it up to Wally and tellin’ him all about how fast’n shiny that world can be. Kinda got him thinkin’ about this radio. Right?”

  “Well, yeah, we talked, but I never figured he’d start up a radio station.”

  “Lotsa people around here like you on accounta you seen the world. Know more about it than them. Makes you kinda special. They listen when you talk about it. Wally just kinda took off on his own after that.”

  “So what’s this balance thing got to do with me?”

  “You’ll learn about that from what’s comin’. See and feel. Find a way to balance this world you live in now with the other one you came from. Big lesson for you. Big lesson. Gonna need it all your life.”

  “Do you know what’s gonna happen?’

  “Not really. But people are gonna bump up against the outside world through this an’ have to find their own balance with it. Wally. You. Me. Everybody. Can’t stop it now. Keep our eyes open. You’ll see something for yourself through this.”

  “Hmmpfh,” I said. “Hmmpfh.”

  Three days later Wally’s plan swung into action. Him and his brother Frankie were out bright and early in Roy Cameron’s old orange pickup dropping off big bundles of wire around the townsite and even carrying some off into the bush a ways. Looked to be about five miles of wire lying out there by the time they were done.

  Turned out that Wally’s uncle Charlie, who’s been on the band council for about a hundred years, had okayed a loan of seven hundred dollars for Wally’s use. That news really had Bert Otter steamed since Bert had applied for some money to replace the old shortwave outfit Wilbert had trashed. Anyway, Charlie told me down at the store one day that Wally’d gone to town and spent it all at the Radio Shack. He’d borrowed Roy Cameron’s truck and come back with a big load of wire, connectors and speakers. It sure didn’t sound like any radio set-up I’d ever heard of and I was wondering how old Wally was gonna get all set up with a transmitter, antenna and studio in the three days left before the big kickoff.

  “Gonna haveta wait like ev’rybody else, Garnet,” Wally said when I pushed him on
the issue. “Can’t be givin’ my secret radio formula out to just anyone, you know. This radio’s one highly competitive business an’ you never know who’s listenin’.” He said all this while squinting around real fast and cupping a hand to one ear for emphasis.

  He was busy in his bedroom scribbling song titles in a brand-new three-ring binder and having a bit of a tough time on accounta the Brylcreem was dripping off his sweaty brow and making slimy little puddles on the paper. He looked like a real executive at work.

  “Final phase shifts into gear tomorrow,” he said, not looking up and scribbling away like Chief Isaac on a fiscal funding deadline. “People gonna know by then what it’s like when the world comes to White Dog, by golly!”

  Well, what happened the next day is this. Wally and Frankie, who by now was referring to himself as the Senior Vice President of Subscriptions and Membership, dropped by everyone’s house delivering small black speakers, which they wired up, dropping the end of the cable through the bottom of the nearest window. Next, with Wally directing, the senior vice-president began unrolling all those big bundles of wire between pretty near every house on White Dog. They connected the cables hanging out the windows to the one main cable hanging out of Wally’s bedroom window. Took them right up into the night to get it all done and folks were pretty puzzled by it all.

  When the big day for the official kickoff of the White Dog One Radio Network arrived, excitement was at an all-time high. No one could talk about anything else and big plans were being made for how to spend the money folks were thinking of winning in those big radio contests they’d all heard about. Or some were planning on where they’d take the big cruise vacations they just knew were gonna be given away too. They were talking about the big blackout bingo games to come and of course the latest in country music, since Wally’s singing was getting a bit much for most everyone.

  By the time six o’clock came on opening day there wasn’t a soul out and about on the whole reserve. Even Uncle Buddy and his pals were huddled up around somebody’s radio speaker. The whole reserve was quiet as a ceremony.