The Moon of Letting Go

by Richard Van Camp

  • • •

  The next morning the family was gone: perhaps to church, perhaps to pray on the land, perhaps to keep away from her. It was her mother’s birthday next month so she knew she’d be back, but she had to leave. Her boss was expecting her and this was a new day, a new job starting tomorrow. It would take her ten hours to drive to Smith, and she would take it one second at a time. She saw the packages that had been set aside for her: ham and cheese sandwiches, a large water jug, dry meat, dry fish, pemmican, fat, and an eagle feather to hang off her rearview mirror. The stem had been beaded with Dogrib blues, reds, and a single bead of yellow. Who had made this, she wondered. Her mother?

  She got into the car, gassed up, asked the attendant to check her tires, her oil, her washer fluid. She asked Robby what he wanted for a drink and snacks and he said apple juice and barbeque chips.

  She let him. How could she say no on a day when it would come for them?

  She bought a pouch of Drum tobacco and pulled over on the bridge, across from the Blackduck camp, and dropped tobacco.

  “Robby,” she said.

  Robby got out, rubbed his eyes and took a pinch out.

  “Let’s pray for a safe journey.”

  “I pray for my dad and brothers,” he said and quickly dropped the tobacco and deftly grabbed some more, “and for my mommy and for every hippopotamus who is dreaming right now.”

  Her heart ached and he went back into the car.

  “For the old man,” she said. “For John and for my boys. For my family. For a safe journey. I need to get home. For the man who sent medicine my way and the woman who asked him to. I pray for you.”

  • • •

  Robby started blowing kisses at the full moon and she smiled. She’d taught him to do that when he was a baby and it was something they did together every full moon. She joined him and they started to laugh. “For our aunty the moon,” she said. He nodded. “For our aunty the moon.” They walked together. She brushed the top of Robby’s hair as he made his way to the back. She buckled him in and surrounded him with blankets and sleeping bags and laundry.

  He went right to sleep.

  She drove and took her time.

  • • •

  It came for her over the trees. Robby was asleep in the back seat.

  She was watching the full moon as it raced alongside her car far away in the trees. She felt the medicine hunt her before she saw it as the medicine bag around her neck heated. And that’s when everything slowed.

  She saw it as a comet with a tail of yellow fire. It came for the car to get her and Robby. It struck the rear end of the car, blowing out the tire, lifting the car half off the ground with a shock wave.

  She looked back and saw Robby sleeping. She lifted her feet off the brakes and gas as the car lifted entirely off the ground and she watched the rubber of the tire blow out across both lanes of the road.

  Her instinct would have been to slam on the brake but she knew: she knew that whatever medicine they sent was counting on this. She calmly kept her feet off the gas and steered towards the ditch where the grass had grown wild. Never, she thought. Never would she have done this and time slowed, it slowed, time slowed and when the car landed, it landed with a bounce. She braced for a solid crunch, but the car raced, the car raced and it slowed, it slowed, it slowed, the belly pan of the car swept with the slowing hands of the grass and earth beneath it.

  She looked back and saw Robby sleeping and the car was gently cradled in the ditch where it rested.

  As if in a dream, Celestine watched herself stand outside the car. She watched herself jack the car, use the tire jack to remove the bolts, roll the spare from the trunk and replace the tire without a word. The whole time Robby slept. The whole time. She replaced the nuts and tightened them, just as John had shown her.

  And the whole time she heard herself singing. Perhaps it was the old man’s chant. Perhaps it was the man who was a bear’s song. Perhaps it was his wife’s. It was somebody’s song once and now it was hers. Her body hummed with this song and it was a chant. She sang and was comforted. She watched her hands work the same way she watched her hand reach out to the old man’s and to the man who was born a bear. The same hands that had raised three boys who were becoming men. The same hands that were free now.

  Celestine dropped tobacco and gave thanks for the old man. She gave thanks for his protection. She ran her tongue along her chipped tooth and dropped tobacco for her parents and for the little boy who never woke up and his family. She thought of her ex-husband, his easy smile, his hands. The way he loved his sons with everything he had, the way he used to love her. Her heart ached with the memory of him holding their boys when they were babies. She closed her eyes and whispered, “I give you back.” She got back into the car, watched Robby sleep and drove the car slowly back onto the road and kept driving.

  One day Robby will be a man, she thought. One day he will look back and I will tell him this story. One day….

  She kept driving, watching the patient moon, and never, not once, did she look back.

  teachings

  I Count Myself Among Them

  My supper had just been put on the table when two Indians rolled into Yang’s. I was in the community we call Outpost 1, British Columbia. It was Easter. I was the only customer there. The men looked rough: dark, dusty clothes, scuffed cowboy boots. They wore hoodies and had them up and over their heads with large sunglasses on. Short hair, though, from what I could see. A lot of the Indians I seen around town had long hair. I’d say they were in their early thirties. One was slim and the other was heavy, had maybe thirty pounds on me. Slim cradled his right arm in a fresh cast and had a bruise across both eyes, as if he’d been struck with a two-by-four. Both had tough faces and stared right through me, which was refreshing as my height usually brings out the Carnival Effect in everyone: astonishment, awe, suspicion. I’m quite fair and often invisible to other Indians when I’m out of the NWT. Sometimes, a lot of times, this can bum me out, but not tonight. I wanted to eat my meal and make the drop at nine o’clock. I had an objective. The brothers sat down behind me and started bossing Yang around: “Hey, how you’re doing? Remember us? How’s that iced coffee?”

  A bear—or something like one—started growling outside the window. I jumped. What the hell was that?

  Heavy started yelling at Yang: “You got fresh iced coffee?”

  Yang said nothing. He only looked down. When I went to the bathroom to wash up I couldn’t help but notice a baseball bat under the cash register sitting ready for business.

  “Chumps!” Slim called out. “It’s okay now. Go find some shade.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Heavy said. “He’s not a pup anymore.”

  “Never mind,” Slim fired back. “He’s my nephew.”

  Nephew? I don’t get it. There was some whimpering from outside the window and the men started speaking quietly behind me. Shit, why did I have to sit here? Reuben would be mad if he knew I’d let myself get into this position. Not that I had enemies, but I had orders from the Coalition. This was my first trip where they weren’t checking up on me every half hour, so I had to prove that I could be trusted. Pistol had a cluster migraine, a “suicide headache” as he called it, and Reuben was delivering his haul to Prince George. Ever since the Night Crawlers mailed Pistol a picture of his wife and kids he’d become a child and started getting suicide headaches. Reuben and I didn’t have families so we were left to continue our business. I started to eat my chicken hot pot quickly in case things got ugly. These boys were trouble and Yang knew it.

  “We want iced coffee!” they said again. “Iced coffee!”

  “Okay,” Yang said calmly, as if he’d heard this a hundred times before. “I get it for you. Iced coffee to go, okay?”

  I started sipping my Ginger Ale—Indian Champagne, I call it—but it was ice cold so I kept sneezing when I hurried. I was
worried the boys would start into me, call me white and want to start something. I had to get to my meeting at nine and I could not be late. I had three kilos of cocaine in my trunk that I was to deliver to my contact here in Outpost 1. I had an address, a time, but I was two hours early. I pride myself in my work and this was my first time here.

  Yes, ever since I became acquainted with the Syndicate life has been sweet. All my life I felt like I was living backwards, when all I ever wanted was to belong to something. Like for the first thirty years of my life I was in a daze. I never knew where I was going, as if I was on a hunt but I didn’t know what I was hunting. This led me to jail several times but I feel as though, at thirty-four, my life now has a plan before me. If it wasn’t for jail, I’d never have met Ghost Bear, our elder in residence. I used to be a mean dog that didn’t belong to anyone, but things are getting better for me. People don’t call me Flinch anymore. Not since I joined the Syndicate. It’s like Reuben, Ghost Bear and Pistol believe in me, and when I have that I am unstoppable.

  Because of Ghost Bear, I now eat better. Also, I was too big to fit in the sweat so he asked me to be a doorman. How’s that for a positive? The Syndicate has also given me direction and purpose and I deliver, and all it took was stepping up when I saw what was coming. That was when Pistol and Reuben were in the sweat. The wardens had welded a bar across the points of the pitchfork I was using to bring the grandfather rocks with, so it could not be used as a weapon, and the spades had been shortened and blunted. I was the doorman for the sweat lodge and spotted two members of the Night Crawlers coming through the sage, squash, corn and beans other inmates had planted. As a doorman you protect those in the sweat lodge you are responsible for. When I saw the shanks I tackled both men before the guards came. I kept squeezing my hands up and down the arms and legs of the attackers, enjoying the pop and crunch of bone beneath me. It was like those long tubes of lights in cafeterias. The bone that shot through one of the men’s arms looked like a tooth.

  There was no blood. There was no blood. Ever since then, Reuben and Pistol have been using me as muscle and I let them. But, you see, we are stopping people worse than us from coming to BC. There have been executions, torture, a mother shot to death in front of her four-year-old child—all organized by the man I’m to meet tonight.

  Ghost Bear’s teachings have never left me. I am walking the Red Road. He told me once about contraries: those who live their lives backwards, “Like those who laugh at funerals and those who cry at weddings,” he said.

  “That’s me,” my breath caught with emotion. “That’s what it feels like to be me.” I wondered if I was one and he shook his head. “You are a child of something else, and everything is leading you to something,” he said. And that’s all he said to me about that.

  What was funny was when I was driving into Outpost 1 I saw what looked like an angel engraved into the sides of the mountaintop. It was huge and made out of the snow that hadn’t melted yet from winter. Its wings were spread for what must have been miles up there through the beetle-kill and you could even see a tail with its head looking east. How I wish Ghost Bear was there with me. We could have prayed and dropped tobacco and he could sing a song to blanket me and I him. The best part of my incarceration was learning new songs and holy ways.

  “I want Salisbury steak,” Heavy said.

  “Make that two—to go,” Slim added, slapping his good hand down hard onto the table. “I’m paying.”

  Yang nodded and went in the kitchen and stayed there.

  The two men started whispering and then they raised their voices. “I don’t do that,” Heavy said. “You know I don’t do that. How many times I told you....”

  “No, no,” Slim said. “Just keep it down.”

  “I’m in charge of taking care of you and I say No,” Heavy said.

  They started whispering again and Chumps started growling outside the window. He sounded huge.

  Shit sakes, my hot pot was really frickin’ hot and I could tell that both men were getting edgier. Yang came back with two Cokes.

  “Is this iced coffee?” they asked.

  “No more ice coffee. Have Cokes.”

  The men were silent.

  Yang went to the window and looked for a long time. You could tell he was keeping one eye on the room ’cause it was tense. I knew exactly what would happen if Reuben and Pistol were here. Reuben would stand and block the door while Pistol turned around and told them to settle the fuck down before demanding to be compensated for being disturbed. But I couldn’t do that. I’m what you would call a gentle giant.

  The men were quiet until I heard them crack their Coke cans open and they started to drink. I wondered what Yang was thinking about. Country was playing on the radio. I couldn’t make out the artist but it sounded pretty good. “God Bless the Broken Road” was the song. I think that’s what it was called. I tried making out the words. It was a stirring song, one that appealed to the patient hunter inside of me.

  The men started whispering again. “No, no, no,” Heavy said. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me. Aunty said you’re not the boss of me.”

  “Settle down,” Slim said. “Shhhhhh.”

  I could feel them both turn around and look at me. Chumps started to growl again. Shit that dog sounded huge. If I had to leave in a hurry, he’d be waiting for me outside and I’d have to get through him to the trunk. I wouldn’t like to hurt a dog. Their bones feel like they belong in horses. When I gave my report, I’d have to leave this part of my journey out of it, as I was cornered. Pistol would never let that happen to him. Never.

  I did my best to eat my meal but was wondering what they were talking about. Maybe they knew about the angel on the mountaintop and what it meant to the people of Outpost 1, so I listened. Pistol told me that Rule Number One as a Road Man is to “shut up and listen ’cause that’s how you learn.” You learn to sense the undercovers, the snitches and the players who play the killing role in things.

  But you also find people on the Red Road from all races. How I love to talk with them and learn. I learned from someone in Mission that a bear always knows what you are thinking. I learned from a lady on Salt Spring Island that dragonflies are the revivers of snakes and can sew the lips shut of any child who’s just told their first lie. I even learned from a carver in Gibsons, that place where they filmed The Beachcombers, that butterflies are guardians for lost souls.

  I always try to learn something about the land I’ve traveled through and the people I’ve met here in BC, and it seems to me that BC needs a good fire to take care of these pine beetles because they have eaten, from what I’ve seen, half the province’s trees. You can see the rust of where they’ve been carpeting the mountains and valleys. But I am always trying to learn. This way when I find my next wife and settle down, I can be the man who points out things to my family as we drive on by. I’m not going to be with Reuben and Pistol forever.

  I have plans: start a family, settle down, spend the second part of my life over with the innocence that jail or past hunts

  can’t touch.

  Chumps started up again, growling at something. This time it sounded like he was really angry, getting ready to charge.

  “No tail,” Yang said to him outside the window. “You big but no tail.” I caught him glance at where the register and bat were.

  “He’s half wolf,” Slim said. “Likes to fight.”

  Half wolf? I wondered. Everybody I know who had a big dog said they were half wolf, but this time maybe Slim was right. I’d love to see Chumps.

  “How come he bit you?” Heavy asked. “I told you to shoot him.”

  “Never mind!” Slim said. “I’ll shoot you!”

  Oh great, I thought. Chumps was an attack dog. I could not miss my meeting. What the hell was I going to do? Good thing the cell was in the car. If Pistol called and asked for a report he would not be happy with how this dr
op was going. And then he’d put Reuben on the phone and I’d really get it.

  “Hey,” Heavy called. I turned. They were looking at me. “You’re Indian or what?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I am.”

  “Holy shit,” they looked at each other. “Aunty said we’d meet a brother today.”

  I smiled. “I’m from the north. Dogrib.”

  “Dogrib no less,” Slim smiled. “You’re wolf clan?”

  I nodded that I was. “Are you on the Red Road?” I asked.

  They looked at each other and grinned. “Aunty spoke and she was right,” Slim said.

  “We answer to her,” the other nodded and they both smiled.

  “Are you on the Red Road?” I asked again.

  “Brother,” Slim said. “We are the Red Road.”

  I liked this. This felt good to my spirit. Now was my chance. “Do you know about that angel,” I asked. “On the mountain?”

  They looked at each other and nodded. “She said you’d ask about that too and that would be the sign.”

  “Sign,” I said curiously. “For what?”

  “To tell you the story,” Slim said.

  “Indian way, uh?” Heavy said and nodded.

  “Tell you what,” Slim offered as his hard eyes softened. They rose together and Slim pulled out a crumpled up twenty, tossing it on the table. “Want to see a miracle?”

  I nodded and rose. Both boys stopped and their mouths dropped when they saw the full size of me. People think I’m a big dumb Indian but I’m not at all. I used to measure how tall I was but now I measure it in the shock of those around me. Yang came out with their orders. He’d put their food in Styrofoam containers so they’d have to leave or in hopes that they’d leave. Slim held up his hand. “Uncle, got any plastic bags?”

  Yang nodded and gave a look of relief that Heavy and Slim were leaving. He turned around and walked back into the kitchen. He glanced at me and gave me a look that said this happens all the time.