by Linda Hogan
After that, Tulik’s little house was never quiet, not that it had been before, what with Grandson dashing around, and with Luce saying, “We’ll not tolerate that a moment longer,” and, “Let’s put an end to this now!” as she read papers and magazines. Now the house was always filled with people and talk and music. Even those who kept to the old ways and refused electricity weren’t too proud to come and listen to Tulik’s radio, the tinny-sounding words broken at times by static. And now, more than ever, the house was full of talk and smoke and the smell of bacon and potatoes frying, and I wanted to go back to Adam’s Rib worse than ever.
Then, one morning, Dora-Rouge asked, “Where’s Bush? Have you seen her?”
Because of the visitors, I’d hardly noticed Bush’s absence. In the presence of neighbors and relatives, Bush had vanished. For how many days or nights, I couldn’t say.
I went up to the church where meetings were taking place. By now there were attorneys offering advice and information. I asked around if anyone had seen Bush. It was busy as a beehive there. Bush had last been seen at the post, one woman told me. But when I went there, Mr. Orensen said he thought she was at the church.
Finally, searching the area all around, moving in a circle the way she’d found me after my birth, I found her sitting alone in the trees. She’d set up a little lean-to and had a fire going and a few pots and pans, her shirt and a pair of panties hanging on a tree limb to dry. She was reading a report on what the dams would do to the land.
“Oh, hi,” I said casually, as if I’d just wandered by. “So this is where you are.”
She looked up with a faint do-not-disturb smile.
I looked around. “So where’d you get the washing machine?”
“It’s just temporary,” she told me.
But I knew why she’d moved there. It was next to impossible just to get a little quiet at Tulik’s. There were even conversations going on in the outhouse. As much as I had liked to go to town, I now welcomed the rare day when the others were gone and I could stay home alone, or almost alone.
One day it was just me and Grandson at the house. Everyone had gone to the store in the closest town.
When I told her I wanted to stay home, Auntie asked me, “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“No.” I didn’t tell her that I couldn’t stand to listen to one more conversation. “I just feel like staying.”
I asked Tulik and the others to bring two magazines back for me.
Luce, with her magnifying glass, said, “Okay. I’ll pick some out for you.”
I knew she’d pick out the ones she wanted to read, but I said, “Okay. That’s fine.” I was just anxious to get them all out of the house.
As soon as they left, I felt relieved. I watched Auntie in her red dress and Tulik and the others walking away from the house.
However, I wasn’t exactly alone. Grandson, who by now had grown attached to me, remained with me that day, but I pretended he was absent and when they were all gone, I tuned in some music and danced. At times I longed so much for the world of teenagers. The young people at Two-Town, like those at Adam’s Rib, had either left home to work, been sent away to school, or were in pain from the anguish disease that rapid change still carried into our lives. I wanted a friend. Even an enemy would do. I wished Jo lived closer. I wanted my old life back. And I wanted a Big Mac. And, while I was in the mode of self-pity, I wanted my own room.
With Tulik and the others gone, I could listen to music as loud as I wanted. The Iron Butterfly. Mick Jagger. I turned up the radio that day and felt it rattle the floor. Mika went outside and hid in the shadow of an old upended canoe. And I danced, thinking of how Luce had read me an article about how adolescent ostriches dance and shake for no reason at all, just because they have life and zest. I, too, danced about the little rooms just for the sake of being young, just because I had bodily energy.
That day as I stood at the sink and washed dishes, I sang and shook my hips, the music turned up loud so I could hear it over the clatter of plates and forks. I danced around the room, putting a green glass plate in the cupboard. Grandson bopped around the house behind me, in what I hoped was a poor imitation, his pants low on his little frame, his hair uncombed, as always, his smooth brown stomach showing. Little spots of news and an occasional song by Tammy Wynette came between the rock music. There were commercials for saws and Jeeps. Once there was even a proposal of marriage from Tony to Loretta. I wondered if they were the same Tony and Loretta who’d written their names on the rocks we’d passed on our journey. Their courtship, in the absence of one my own, interested me. It must be a sign, I thought, to hear about them more than once.
But if I relished, reveled in, this music and dancing, there were other kinds of dancing as well. Sometimes my heart skipped a beat, with a kind of Indian hope. Sometimes when I dried dishes with one of Tulik’s threadbare rags, a feeling came over me, as if a shining old person inside my body was happy that once again the people were coming together, insisting on justice, happy that anybody could still sing and dance. That old person had seen our lives in tatters before, and saw it again now in the light of hope. And that old person, also, wanted to dance. But that day, with Grandson following me, I folded back the two little rugs and hoped and prayed the old ones liked rock-and-roll, because I wasn’t yet so good at the bent-knee dancing of the old women. I was shy when it came to Indian dancing. Sometimes, at gatherings, the women would be in a line and dip and I’d see their gray hair as they moved together, their worn bodies, and I’d stand with them feeling off-rhythm and timid. When it came to Sly and the Family Stone, though, I was good, I could move, and even my aching muscles loosened up.
IN TOWN, Auntie had bought a hot plate and, on a table beneath the light, she hooked it up with an extension cord. “What should I cook?” she said to Tulik that night.
“How about some chicken.”
And so she fried two chickens in an iron pan on the hot plate and we all sat around the table biting into the fried chicken. Tulik said, “I liked it better the other way. Besides, what if we forget about the life of fire?”
THE WEATHER had been unusually warm. Because of this, the newly cut road turned into deep ruts of mud that tires sank into, and the flimsy quarters built for the workmen began to settle in various ways. One day in two different places, two buildings dropped, sagged down, and vanished into sinkholes. Electric poles leaned so far down that in one place the power had to be turned off for fear the electricity would reach out along the wet surface of the ground.
We would have been delighted with the failure of the modern world if it hadn’t been for the disappearance of Ammah’s Island on the same day. Ammah’s, where birds nested and hope roosted, simply vanished into the water. No one could account for what happened to it. But from the distance of that day, we heard the sound of rumbling machines and the rocks and trees breaking at another new site of construction.
IN THE NIGHT, while badgers, porcupines, and skunks roamed outside my many wakings, I could hear the human breathing, soft and calm, of the people inside our walls. The middle of night had been a kind of twilight; now it was bright with electricity, and the shadows of the room lay unmoving on the floor like the blue squares of cloth in Auntie’s quilt. I looked through these soft shadows at Grandson, lying asleep, all wrapped up in the bear coat he’d stolen from me. At first I’d tried to take it back, even on warm nights, because at night I was afraid and felt the need to be protected from anything that might have been awake when I was asleep. But Grandson breathed sweetly and I lay awake, uncovered, listening to the floor settling, the turning over of Dora-Rouge, the occasional snore of Auntie. Only the dog knew I was awake and she would look at me and sigh, put her head near me to be caressed. Whenever a dog outside or a wolf would sing, she would lift her face to the ceiling, look at the black wire and single bulb, and call back, softer. Auntie and Tulik and Grandson slept through it, but her wild blood gave me a chill. I understood how it felt to be part one thing
and part another, to be alone and away from your pack, to have a soul that wandered. I thought of Bush, how it must have been for her all these years in the north without friends, without a soul mate, sister, brother, lover. I suppose I thought all this because I, too, felt alone.
In my sleeplessness on most mornings, I heard the summer geese. Their voices fell down through the sky. But one morning, from behind the racket of the geese, I heard people coming in from the camps singing hunting songs, thanking the animals. “We love the deer,” one song would say. And, “They love us, too.” The people talked loudly. They drummed as they arrived. I knew they carried food, fresh meat, duck, and fish. I felt joyful. But this time, from behind their songs, from behind the geese, we already could hear the distant rumbling of machines as the bulldozers worked up above us at Child River.
That year, there would be no fishing camp because the fish were contaminated from the damming of water and mercury had been released from the stones and rotting vegetation. Then a surge of water flooded the once-fertile plains. Because of the early thaw and new roads that crossed the migration routes of animals, spring camp the next year would not be fruitful, and people were already worried about food. The waterfowl that lived in the water and ate from its bottom were also becoming sick. Many of them were listless and thirsty before they finally died. If development continued, there would be no drinking water left. The world there was large, had always been large, and the people were small and reverent, but with machines, earth could be reduced to the smallest of elements.
The house smelled of wet paint on the day the hunters returned. Tulik had sanded down Dora-Rouge’s wood-and-wicker chair the day before, then enameled it white. He painted over the name “Mother Jordan,” but it still showed through, in need of another coat. Auntie had made Dora-Rouge a new red cushion stuffed with old nylons her sister in Montreal had sent to the rural women for stuffing dolls and other toys.
By the time the hunters reached our place, they found Tulik, who was every bit as orderly as Dora-Rouge, polishing the floor. Rags under his feet, he scuffed about the linoleum.
Others had heard that the hunting party was just in from the bush, and all arrived to see them and to listen to “Indian Time” news. They teased Tulik about his cleanliness. “Don’t clean just for us,” joked one of the relatives who came by.
Tulik stepped off his rags, leaving half the floor undone.
Bush, having heard the commotion of the hunters, came in from the trees. Auntie had just finished wringing out the newly washed clothes. Now she and Bush, with no extra chairs, were both standing, leaning against the wall. One woman looked at them and said, “They are holding it up to keep it from falling in.”
The hunters were good-natured and liked to tease. They called me Red, and each time it was said, the women would laugh.
“Red Power,” said old Luce, raising her fist, bringing more laughter.
“Look!” said one woman, still rosy from the long walk they had made that morning. She had long hair. “There is that salmon skin.” She took down the salmon-skin coat and examined the tiny stitches no water could pass through. It was from the northwest coast. Their work was held in deep regard.
ONE DAY, while I was tearing cloth with my teeth, making diapers, Tulik held out his hand to silence me. “Listen,” he said. He turned up the radio. “There’s going to be a big meeting. Listen. The officials are going to be there.”
I folded a diaper. “I’m going,” I said, with a voice full of determination, so no one would dispute me. I hadn’t wanted to be involved in these things, but it was too hard for me to watch all that was being changed. I wanted to fight back, for the water, the people, the animals.
And Dora-Rouge, who owed something to water, said, “You can count me in, too. Angel can push me to the meeting. I’ll carry the baby.” Her eyes looked clear. I didn’t know if she was looking forward to the fight or if she was compelled by her bargain with water.
Tulik smiled at her, his eyes lingering on hers. He liked me and he liked Bush, too, but he and Dora-Rouge had a special kind of kinship; they came from the same place, the same people, the same grief, and the same stories. He was a kind man, tender and masculine with still-powerful arms in spite of his smallness. He went over and touched Dora-Rouge lightly on the shoulder. I think he was proud of her. He thought she was singularly strong, and she was, but he knew nothing about her debt to water, and how she had no choice but to repay it.
Auntie said, “Did you know that the men building these dams didn’t even know that water ran north?” Then she turned and left. With only two radios in town, we depended on word-of-mouth to pass information along. She went around to tell other people about the meeting. Also, she’d heard a road was being built across the spawning grounds of whitefish. She needed to check out the rumor before the evening’s meeting.
By that evening, nearly everyone, except those still in the bush, knew about both the meeting and the whitefish.
Luce, who couldn’t hear well and was becoming deafer by the day, looked up from reading one of the magazines she’d picked out for me. “It says here if two percent of all people in a town meditate, it will change the whole town.” She was quiet a moment. She looked at our faces. “Say, what’s going on here?”
“Let me see that,” said Tulik, loud and close to her ear.
As I went outside to hang the wet clothes over the whalebone fence, I saw her reluctantly hand Tulik the magazine. It was late afternoon. It was warm and the humidity was high that day. I knew the clothes wouldn’t dry before the meeting.
Early that evening—it was a Thursday—I heated water on the stove, tested it on my skin, then filled a basin with warm water and placed naked, slippery Aurora inside it. She laughed and splashed the water with her hands. By then the hunters and their families had gone over to Holy String Town and then to the post to buy provisions for their next journey out. Some planned to be at the meeting. This wasn’t just us, gathering to talk about injustice. The BEEVCO bosses were going to be present to tell us their plans.
Luce, reading another magazine, looked at me above the magnifying glass and said, “Babies can swim. Did you know that?”
“Really?” I washed Aurora’s hair and poured a cup of water over it.
“Look.” Luce held the magazine up. It showed pictures of babies swimming. They were smiling.
“Aurora would like that. Wouldn’t you?”
Aurora laughed.
When I finished washing and dressing the sweet-smelling Aurora I put her down firmly on Dora-Rouge’s lap and Dora-Rouge wrapped her bony arms about her and said something I didn’t understand. Then we set out for the white church that was snug above the sprawling village, the church so clean and neat that the rest of the town looked dark gray in contrast. But of course, the Anglicans had believed this was the domicile of God, who wouldn’t stoop to the level of humans; it needed to look better than where mere humans lived.
We went past the clothing hanging over the fence. Auntie’s red dress, the one that looked like a flag, was draped over the whale rib bones beside Tulik’s Eddie Bauer sweater, Grandson’s little jeans, and a pair of Levi’s with the sun-faded square of light in the thigh.
With difficulty, I pushed the chair up the hill. It hadn’t taken long for me to lose my arm strength. But the chair no longer squeaked. It looked gleaming and beautiful and it smelled of fresh paint.
The dark road had just been paved and oiled, even though no one had wanted the asphalt. Everyone knew the heat of sun on the dark pavement would melt the permafrost, and before long the road, another “improvement,” would cave in. But for now it smelled of tar and oil, and the wheels of cars and Dora-Rouge’s chair threw up little pieces of blackened gravel along the way. Dora-Rouge leaned over and looked at her tires. “It’s a mess,” she said. “And after all your work, Tulik.”
“Don’t worry.” Tulik smiled. “I can fix anything.”
His words offered such wonderful security and they were true
, as self-building as they sounded, stripping life of fear and worry. I believed him, this man whose eye was more precise than the scale at the trading post, this man who could measure the weight of green rice in a glance, and even knew what its weight would be when processed. Even Agnes would not have fretted or worried if she’d heard those words. But I could see that Bush and Auntie, in matching dark moods, thought there were things Tulik could not fix. They looked at each other but said nothing.
In Auntie’s large brown hand was the piece of paper she’d readied for a petition, which already had about twenty signatures on it. She carried it carefully, as reverently as if it were the Magna Carta, the words of a life, a people’s freedom, and all of us would agree that it was. Auntie had spent the day going about the two towns and the outlying villages to tell people about the meeting and to get the signatures of those unable to attend. Now she just hoped many others were coming. To give her courage to speak, a bag of medicines in white doeskin rested in the front pocket of Auntie’s jeans. She fished her hand inside the dark pocket now and then, to feel the small beaded bag against her warmth, as if it would vanish if she didn’t touch it, or she would lose her strength and convictions. Her fingers believed in the bag, that something inside it would show a way to keep the dam from being constructed, to turn water back to where water wanted and needed to be. But she was nervous. Already they’d changed the direction of one river. She knew that they would not give up easily and without a fight.
THERE WERE AT LEAST forty people, a large crowd, in the church when we arrived. The room was alive with gossip and chatter, complaints and the smell of coffee. Bush was already there, listening intently to a young white man from New York. She nodded her head at him, uncomfortable with the attention his voice and words required of her, uncomfortable that she couldn’t turn away, look at anyone else, greet them. He was fervent, his face flushed with an inner fire, the kind I recognize now as an intensity that didn’t always have our needs at heart, but it was a good fire to have; it was contagious and it motivated people. “Sign in,” he told us. He pushed a paper toward Auntie. She looked at it, then at him. She didn’t sign it. She lighted a cigarette. “Here, hold this for a minute,” Auntie said. She put her bag on Dora-Rouge’s lap, next to Aurora, and walked over to Bush.