Now, the thinking side of my brain told me two things. One, this information was not only useful but also necessary. Two, Burchill Public School was declining in enrolment and could certainly use the infusion. My emotional side, however, told me a whole bunch of things to counter those thoughts. The way he delivered the information was pompous and condescending, I can get those numbers through the school board planners, I am retiring in two years anyway so what do I care? Burchill Public is fine the way it is and the villagers will add enough new kids to keep it functioning very well, thank you very much.
What I did say was, "Thank you, Mr. Fobert. I appreciate your offer." At which, he proffered his business card. And yes, his nails were beautifully shaped and polished.
Conversation pretty much died after that intrusion, although Margaret made a valiant effort to divert our attention with some humorous tales about her past lives. Very soon, however, Duncan cajoled her into letting him walk her home, and May and I were left to finish our drinks alone.
"I know logically that Oona's being gone has nothing to do with that man," May said to me in a low voice, swirling her white wine and dabbing at the last vestiges of food. "But he makes my skin crawl and somehow I just have this feeling that the subdivision is the root of all evil in the village right now."
I grinned at her ruefully. "I know what you mean. Ever since those excavators came, it seems that Burchill has been on edge. And now with Oona and Frieda...."
Just then, Bobby Mills came tumbling into the pub and flung himself into his mother's arms.
Everyone looked up, stunned by the transformation from cocky, confident teenager to blubbering child. Out of force of habit, May and I instinctively moved toward him, hovering to see if there was anything we could do. Kathy gently led him to a chair in the kitchen, her arms around him the whole time, dabbing at his face with a tissue, talking softly and soothingly to him. Were it not for the largeness of her eyes, the slight shake of her hand, she would have been the picture of calm.
Bobby moaned and muttered, sobs erupting like spurts from a broken water main, as he clutched onto his mother.
"Are you hurt anywhere, son?" Barry asked, squatting down in front of him, tenderly turning his arms and hands, feeling his legs and feet, looking for cuts or bruises or any tracks of injury.
Bobby shook his head, drew in a shuddering breath, looking up wildly at us all. His eyes caught sight of May and he fairly shouted at her, "It's you Indians. You created it. You brought it on us." Then another round of sobs burst from him.
Kathy and Barry stopped suddenly in their ministrations and stared at the boy. May and I cast bewildered glances at one another. Bobby had never spoken to May this way. In fact, she often talked about how helpful he'd been in the office despite his reputation as a wild child. Kathy spoke up.
"Bobby, that's Mrs. Reneaux you're talking to," she said, as if he had become blind or stupid, as if his remark about you Indians wouldn't apply somehow to May and therefore excused it.
"What happened, son? Tell us what happened," Barry pleaded, his frustration and fear obvious in his tone.
"It's...it's...I know you won't believe me, but the other guys, they saw it too." Bobby's voice shook and his words were muddy with tears.
We waited silently while he took several breaths, his shoulders shaking as he attempted to regain control.
"It's Walking Bear. It's real. And it told me if I ever hunted again..." The boy's fragile control slipped again and he buried his face in his mother's shoulder.
The Great Spirit led the Chief to the land that was thick
with forest and animal life.
"This land," Manitou said, "is given to the People
to be protected and nurtured.
For every vegetable or tree you pull from the earth,
Nanna Bijou," the Great Spirit warned,
"you must plant a seed.
For every animal you hunt, you must nurture its young.
All spoils of the hunt must be used even to the very bone.
The forest is given to us for need, not for greed."
The good Chief agreed that this was the way of things.
He went back to his tribe and taught them these lessons.
For many years the brave People
abided by the Great Spirit's laws.
Chapter 10
Very slowly, Frieda became aware of the sound. Someone was chanting just on the other side of a stone abutment. The voice was muffled, as if spoken through cloth, or with hand clasped over mouth. Frieda could pick out a few words only, just enough to tell her that they were Ojibwa. She had always thought that her parents' language was difficult and stilted. She had rejected it as singsong, childish. Thus Frieda had never learned to speak Ojibwa fluently, though she remembered more vocabulary than she ever wanted to admit.
She thought about her parents' disappointment as she'd grown older and had shown less and less interest in the old ways. Her mother and father had long since died before Frieda had broken ties with their community altogether. Though by then, she would not have cared about their reaction anyway. Her mother, confined to a bed most of Frieda's life, had never seemed to understand. Her father, cold and undemonstrative, had appeared to have little love for his only offspring. Frieda was filled with a strange, bitter flood of remorse, wishing suddenly she'd gone to her mother's bedside and taken those thin hands in hers. She wanted to reach up and touch her father's cheek.
Unable to move beyond the restraints that limited her, restricted to the use of smell and hearing only, she began to listen. Snatches of words washed over her, low and soothing, like the rippling of a stream, the soughing of the wind. The voice of the chanter was female, though too far away and too muffled to determine if it was someone Frieda knew. Her pitch was sad and angry at intervals. Her sound was guttural and throaty.
Frieda listened to every nuance, frustrated that she could not hear it all, translating automatically when she caught the odd full word that she recognized. Perhaps it was the throbbing of her foot, the pain radiating hotly up her leg. Perhaps it was the darkness. Perhaps the forced stillness of her limbs. But suddenly Frieda could hear with a clarity she had never known before.
The music of the words blended with the whisper of leaves, the rush of wind, the murmur of birds. They washed over and around Frieda, filling not only the cavity of her ears, but the gaps in her soul. She could tell when the speaker was angry, even if she caught only one word, for the poetry of the language lent cadence and rhythm to the emotions that full paragraphs of English could not.
Yah-no-tum, unbeliever, the voice admonished. Frieda was awash with guilt and with shame. Bah-bah-me-tum, obedience, the stranger told her. Frieda was filled with yearning, with sorrow, with fear, not of giving up her possessions—for this is what obedience would cost her, she knew—but that she would prove unworthy, unable to give back what she had taken. Che-baum, soul. Each letter had life, each syllable was drawn wholly and meaningfully. Frieda's body responded with trembles and the roar of her heart pounded with every sound. Let me show you, let me take you, do not fail me, e-nah-kay-yah, the way.
She recalled Walking Bear's low growl like a lover's whisper in her ear. You will recover. I will help you. You will recover in every way, though you have many lessons to learn or relearn. The greed has filled your spirit. The forest is given to us to use for need, not for greed and when you break the ancient law, you must be punished. You will be able to think about and see the stories of the old ones so you can learn to live the truth. You are not alone. Do not be afraid. You have begun your Quest.
Frieda was no longer sure where her voice began and the Other ended, whether these were her thoughts or those of Walking Bear or the Other, where she ended and the Other began. The sounds mingled and tumbled over one another, under and over, up and down, her or the Other, keening and crying, linking their voices as one.
And the forest responded from the force of their longing, their anger, their fear, their sorrow. T
he trees bent over and listened, whipped their leaves in sympathy. Rain began to hammer on the stone roof. Birds squawked in anger, animals ran away, tearing through the bushes, their feet as thunderous as Walking Bear's.
Chapter 11
"...and then, so the legend says, the White Man came..."
"Thank God I'm a white woman," I laughed to May, "we're never mentioned."
She locked arms with me, actually laughed heartily, and then continued with the story. "The white man—not woman—filled the Ojibwa braves with firewater, intent upon taking away the riches from the land. They tricked the natives into hunting for greed. Soon the carcasses of the unused animals were strewn around the countryside, their blood seeping into the earth, their offspring abandoned, their rotting souls weeping and calling to the Great Spirit. And Manitou, upon seeing the animal bodies, stripped of their fur, shining white in the moonlight, came to Nanna Bijou and berated him for allowing this to happen. The kind and well-meaning Chief was shocked and stricken, for he had not known of his peoples' digressions. Manitou was angry, saying that a good Chief would know what his people were doing. Nanna Bijou had become lazy and had taken things for granted. The Bear Clan was supposed to be strong and steady, the police and guardians. Good Chiefs were expected to spend a lot of time patrolling the land surrounding the village, but Nanna Bijou had spent his time in contemplation, assuming the people could and would sustain the rules without his direction. So the Great Spirit turned the Chief into a half-man, half-bear, and ordered him to wander the land, looking for those who did not respect the animals and their environment."
"Nanna Bijou, now known as Walking Bear, is said to appear to those who hunt too much or pollute the land. He metes out various punishments, depending on the severity of the transgression."
May and I were walking home in the twilight. Before we left, Bobby Mills had told his story in a halting, tear-filled voice.
He claimed that they were just sitting around a campfire, talking and laughing, though I imagined the innocent picture he was painting wasn't quite so blameless. None of the boys had heard it approach.
"It's huge," Bobby had cried, trembling as though he were a baby, his thin shoulders bent over in fear. "The face…I couldn't really see it close up, but it's a bear's head. And the eyes looked at me as though it would kill me. It grabbed me in its claws." He held out his hands. "Look, see, Mum? I have some scratches. It turned me around and shook me and made me look at the—there was a deer. It said it would make me its victim if I…if I ever hunted again. Then it made me sit in the blood where the deer died. When I turned my head, it was gone. So I ran." He sobbed for a moment. "It's so big and covered in this stiff hair…and all these feathers. I'm never, ever going out there again."
Bobby had grown calmer by the time May and I got ready to leave. His mother was able to lead him upstairs to their apartment. He'd even given May a grudging apology, although his father's prompting seemed to be more the impetus than genuine sorrow.
The pub had come alive with talk about the legend of Walking Bear, but May and I were tired and shaken. With unspoken speed we had said our good-byes and walked out the door. We weren't to know until later, that we would miss a most extraordinary event by mere minutes.
The evening was beautiful. Almost all traces of snow and ice had disappeared from the village streets, replaced by puddles of shiny water that smelled of spring. A beautiful moon floated among the darkening clouds, reminding me of an old poem. "And the moon was a ghostly galleon," I whispered to myself.
The village was peaceful and quiet, at least on our side of the streets. I lifted my head and drank in the wonderful scent of trees, unpolluted air, the promise of warm skies. I listened to the quiet rush of the breezes through the tree branches, the distant sound of humans, the whisper of animals poking around the melting earth.
"I love that story, May," I said. "It has a terrible truth about it. We have as a species done so much harm to the earth. I'm just reading a book by David Suzuki about the environmental damage, and it's frightening. Maybe Walking Bear should have come around a lot sooner." I looked up at the stars, smudged as they were by clouds, and remembered how difficult it was to see these magnificent lights in the city.
"Well, you're right, Em, it's a legend, it's not true, but it does have a good moral. My Aunt told me there are at least twenty all about the legends of Walking Bear, all with different morals or lessons to learn." May's voice sounded strangely excited. "But Bobby Mills' story started me thinking." She waited until we had crossed over the bridge on Lawrence Street, the sound of the rapids loud in our ears, before she began again. "Did you follow Bobby's description of Walking Bear? I think I was too busy controlling my anger over his Indian remark to pay close attention and he was definitely babbling at times."
"He was hysterical. Hard to believe that that kid could be so scared. Anyhow, yeah, I did listen carefully. He said the thing was half bear, half human. He couldn't tell the gender of the human, but it had a bear head and bear claws. He said it towered over him. It picked him up by the collar and shook him, growling at him to never hunt again or he'd be severely punished. He said he could smell the musty fur and saw teeth glinting at him, but from what I could gather, he was held up and forward, so he wasn't facing the beast. It could easily have been anyone dressed up, I suppose, and maybe some of the description was from Bobby's frightened imagination. Plus, if you think about it, Bobby really is rather small. Anything might look huge to him. Though it sounded like Henry and his friends believe it was the real thing."
May gave a mirthless laugh. "Uncle Henry would love that. It would give credibility to all the stories, the Oral Traditions, which he's been passionate about since boyhood. I'll bet he'll spread this incident all over town before morning." We trudged along in silence for a moment, listening to the wind gather strength in the trees, the brittle, leafless branches ticking together like rhythm sticks. "Do you think this Walking Bear could be Oona out there, scaring the boys?"
Her question made me literally stop in my tracks. I looked above her head where the Bridgeman's house loomed in the distance and I remembered that anything was possible. Though it had immediately occurred to me that someone must have been pulling a dangerous trick on the boys, I had never connected it with Oona. Perhaps I really did, along with many other villagers, expect to find her body at the bottom of Bahswaway Pond.
"Would she disappear like that, though, May, without at least telling her family? Wouldn't she be sensitive to how you must be feeling? And she couldn't help but know the whole town has been out looking for her."
I could see the light go out of May's eyes. "I guess you're right, Emily. I'm just grasping at straws, trying to make sense of her disappearance." She struggled to keep the tears at bay. "But who just scared those boys half to death, then? It can't be some half-human, half-bear. I don't care what Henry says. The form is a symbol used in the story to frighten people into caring about the environment."
"What about Agnes Lake? Doesn't that seem like something she would do?"
May thought about that for a moment as we resumed our walk. "That would make more sense, I suppose. She has told everyone she's going to be gone for a while on her vision quest. I just don't want to let go of Oona."
"You don't have to, May. I could be wrong about this Walking Bear business. It would be like Oona to want to teach Bobby Mills a lesson. She's always been a champion of the environment."
We kept walking and then May spoke up again. "I'm not sure about that lately, though." This time her voice was hesitant, as if she wasn't certain how to put her feelings into words. "She seemed to be...I don't know, talking a lot about how others had reaped the riches of the land, why shouldn't she, maybe she ought to be more like Frieda. She didn't say any of this to me, but I heard about it from Henry and a couple of others. She'd been mouthing off in the pub. Which is also unlike Oona. She knows that when she drinks, she becomes the stereotypical drunken Indian and she hates that about herself, so she har
dly ever touches the stuff. But over the last few months, she'd been showing up fairly often at the Main Street Station."
We both slipped through the slush on the sidewalk, heads down, contemplating. The wind tugging away from the lake had become cool and damp, causing us to button our coats and plant hats back on our heads.
"We'll probably have a bunch of scared kids tomorrow," I said, suddenly remembering that we had to work the next morning, and deciding a change of topic was a good idea. "That'll make the last day even more pleasant!"
We had reached Rideau St., which led to Julia. I had a short distance to go on St. Lawrence before I turned onto Lakeview. Although May and I had both just now been adamant that the story of Walking Bear couldn't possibly be true, we were suddenly nervous, looking at each other sheepishly as we caught the scent of one another's fear. May threw her arms around me and we stood for a moment wrapped in the warmth of our friendship.
"Walking Bear cannot be true," she half-whispered in my ear, trying to convince herself and me. "It has to be someone dressed up. Maybe even my Aunt Oona."
"I agree. Run home, though, just in case." We both laughed and separated.
"See you tomorrow," May said. "Thanks for tonight. I needed it." And, after squeezing my hand, she was gone.
Chapter 12
Edgar had just reached home after patrolling the Highway when the telephone rang. Thinking it might be Frances telling him that she'd changed her mind and wasn't too tired to come over after all, he rushed at the phone and said a delighted hello into the receiver. He wasn't prepared for Barry Mills' frantic tones and the noise in the background. In a matter of minutes, Edgar had climbed back into his patrol car and had arrived at the Main Street Station Pub. He was surprised at what he saw.
Edgar Brennan had spent his whole life in Burchill. Thus, he was not used to angry confrontations or drunken brawls in the street. Contrary to the cities and many towns, Burchill was a quiet, peaceful place, a template for co-operation and citizenship. Or, at least, it used to be.
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