He thought about pleading with her. Offering to leave his wife. But there was no point. Sondra's eyes were sparkling. She was happier than he'd ever seen her. Even in bed, writhing in mid-climax.
So he congratulated the love of his life on her good fortune. Wished her luck. And didn't beg her to stay. In his heart, he knew she was already gone.
* * * *
In Lansing, Sondra hit the ground running, reorganizing her new office, kicking its plodding staff into shape, making plans to nudge her fossil of a boss into retirement.
But a few weeks after her transfer, the fossil called Sondra into his office. He said her drive and ambition were wasted in the DNR. She'd probably be happier in some other line of work. And to start looking.
Stung and humiliated, she told the old fossil exactly where to stick his job. He heard her out politely, then had security escort her out of the building. Afterward, he placed a long-distance call to an old college pal. A small town judge. In McTeague.
* * * *
Prepping his cottage for the coming winter, Ex-Conservation Officer Leon Cobb scared the hell out of himself. As he was sweeping out his garden shed, a dried snakeskin tangled on the end of his broom, came up writhing and twisting as though it still had life.
And it did.
On a whim, Cobb saved the skin. Driving through McTeague that afternoon, he dropped it through the open window of a prowl car parked in front of the Sailor's Rest.
Sheriff Lutes's car.
In the weeks after Sondra's transfer, Bobby Lutes had been drinking. A lot. Long lunch hours in the Sailor's Rest. Sometimes the whole day.
After knocking back half a pint of Kessler's before noon, Bobby wobbled out to his prowl car, opened the door, and found the snakeskin. And knew what it meant.
He was back. That damned Metis. Playing games again. Bobby's rage and frustration zeroed into a tight focus, like the crosshairs on a rifle scope.
Baptiste.
Maybe Bobby was stuck in hick city with a fat wife, ditched by the woman he loved, but he by God didn't have to take crap from a half-breed hobo. No more games. Time to finish this.
Drove back to Heck's old cabin. What was left of it. One charred wall and the remains of the woodpile. Didn't expect to find the Metis there, heard he was camping deep in the bush. But Heck's trap line would still be nearby. And he'd have to check it every single day.
After concealing the prowl car in the brush, Bobby took his department-issue Remington 870 Express 12 gauge out of the trunk and checked its load. Double-ought buckshot. Racking a round into the chamber, he headed into the woods.
All he had to do was find one of Heck's traps, wait a bit, whack out the breed when he showed. Nobody'd notice a stray gunshot. Not this time of year.
Hunting season.
Locating the trap line wouldn't be difficult. It would be near a stream. Problem was, Bobby was pretty well hammered, hadn't brought a compass. And after a few hours in the forest, one tree looks much like another.
By mid afternoon, he was completely turned around. Couldn't find the damned stream. Couldn't even find his way back. Getting cold, running low on gas. Sobering up fast.
Needing a breather, he found a low-hanging cedar tree, nestled himself in among its boughs. Took a few minutes to rest, clear his head. Just a few.
Bobby woke in a world of white.
Wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but dusk was falling. And so was the snow. Thick, heavy flakes, already an inch deep on the ground and piling up.
Still buzzed but sober enough now to be worried, Bobby tried his cell phone. Useless. Signal grounded by the dregs of copper ore. He was already chilled to the bone and in a few hours the temperature would drop like a rock. With no matches and only his uniform jacket, he'd never survive a night out here.
Desperate now, he plunged into the forest, trying to maintain a straight line of march. Slipping and stumbling in the snow, his eyes scanning the sky for a final glimpse of the sun, he never saw the sinkhole. Only felt the earth slip suddenly from beneath him. And then he was falling, forty feet, screaming all the way, crashing down on the rocky floor of the old mine pit.
Stunned, his weapon lost, both legs broken, Bobby could barely breathe without igniting a blaze of agony. So he stayed still, feeling the icy chill inching up his limbs. Tried to dream of Sondra, couldn't seem to recall her face. So he stared up at the impossibly distant rim of the sinkhole as the snow gently covered him like an ermine cloak. And the dusk faded to a deep, northern blue.
* * * *
Winter came early that year, and stayed on. Heavy snow and sleet storms all through the Christmas holidays and deep into January.
Living in the bush, Heck Baptiste didn't know Bobby Lutes was missing a week before they found his body. The coroner ruled it death by misadventure. A hunting accident.
Walking his trap line on a fading February afternoon, Heck stumbled over a coyote carcass. Or parts of one, anyway. Bits of bloody fur and shattered bone. In the new snow, the signs were easy to read.
Wolf.
Big one. Poor bastard coyote had no chance. The lobo's paw prints were wide as Heck's boots. No other tracks. Probably a rogue male.
Almost certainly Canadian. Heck had cut wolf trails many times in these woods. Never one this size. He rose slowly, looking around, sliding his old Winchester out of its sheath. In the winter forest, man isn't always the top of the food chain.
Heck tracked the wolf a ways, making sure he'd moved on. Thinking all the while. If this fella came down from Canada, then the big lake must be frozen over, shore to shore. No passport required.
His Cree cousins would be warm in their Ontario lodges. And would welcome a wandering hivernant, a Metis winter man, in from the cold. Unless the floes had separated again, leaving a snow-dusted deathtrap.
What the hell.
It was dusk when he set out. Only a sliver of moon, but he had no trouble backtracking the big male to the Lake Superior shore.
Paused a moment, awed by the vastness of the open ice, a glittering, luminous moonscape, blue white to the horizon. Upturned floes like mountain ridges, snow devils dancing in the icy gusts.
And for just a moment, he thought of the timber snake, snug in her den. And wondered if she'd done him a great favor. Or would finally kill him after all.
Fifty miles and more to the Canadian side. No food, no fire, no rest.
No problem. Resetting his pack, he stepped off at a smooth snowshoe shuffle, nose in the wind, blood singing. Heading north. Heading home.
* * * *
By April, the charred wreckage of Baptiste's cabin was already sheathed in green lichens, returning to the earth. But a few traces remained.
In the tumbled woodpile, the last timber rattler slithered out of her winter nest, inching ever so slowly onto a maple log.
Coiling there, she warmed herself in the pale spring sunlight. Dozing.
And dreaming. Of ancient days. When the Cree and Metis lived lightly on this land.
And around their camps, the field mice were many. And littered often.
And the baby mice were sleek. And curious.
And careless.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Copyright © 2005 by Doug Allyn.
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The Chant of the Powwow by Janice Law
Dimly over a murmur of voices, Nadie heard the powwow chanting. She thought she was dying at last, but the song continued on, a repetitive murmur unlike the hoarse and expressive voice of the powwow, who knew all the spirits of the earth. And where was the hissing beat of his turtle shell rattle? It would be like him to cheat her, to leave out some essential of the ritual and leave her suspended in agony, physical and spiritual. Yes, she'd been right to plan as she had, to do as she'd done. She was not called Wise for nothing, not even if some called her Pauwau behind her back and hinted they'd turn her in to the English as a witch. Let them try.
For a moment, Nadie's feverish mind ran to t
houghts of vengeance, to spells and potions, before she realized that the great pain was gone. The fox gnawing ceaselessly at her bowel had been appeased, killed, driven away. Ahanu, the powwow, her great enemy, had managed what all her medicines, the spells Grandmother Alawa had taught her, and English whiskey, straight from the bottle and burning like fire in the gullet, had not touched. The powwow had done it; she was without pain. Sitting, yes, it appeared she was sitting outside her own wigwam, it must be her own, though there was a strange woman grinding grain beside her. Nadie could see, dimly, stalks of corn and sunflowers, although she did not recognize her garden. She was without pain and that was wonderful, but where had he taken her?
Summer, she was sure, for the woman beside her wore only a light deerskin skirt, and the sunflowers were in full bloom. Just the same, the light was very dim for high summer, neither the pale pink and gold of dawn, nor the deep yellow and red of evening, but a strange illumination like the pallid glow reflected off the thick bellies of clouds at the onset of a storm. Nadie felt frightened, though she missed the sudden skip of her heart and the sound of blood in her ears, the sound that had always terrified her, that had convinced her she was about to die at any moment, her great fear.
She, herself, sat motionless, immobile—could she have been paralyzed? Could that ghostly fox have severed her spinal cord? Perhaps, for there was motion all around, a swirl of colors, strange costumes, high, unintelligible voices. Not her own people, then; they spoke no Algonquin dialect, nothing she knew. They were moving right before her, always moving, and Nadie realized this was the real nature of the transitory world, ephemeral as the summer, a place where men and women passed insubstantial as ghosts.
In the distance, the powwow was still singing. During her great illness, Nadie had not appreciated his stamina. Whatever she thought of him, she had to admit that he was earning his fee, holding her above the pain with his chant and carrying her to the spirit world in his trance. This is what she had paid him to do, paid him with her heart's blood, paid with all she loved, with all she had. Well, she would surprise him when he was finished, and, surely, he would finish soon. She would cease to hear him and find her spirit safe.
Yet it seemed that she was still in the village, a village subtly changed and full of ghosts, so perhaps he'd deceived her. Perhaps this was the land of the dead, crammed full of Algonquin and English and Dutch and the Five Nations. Perhaps Ahanu, the Laughing One, had cheated her, watching indifferently as her soul departed forever. Still, he chanted. If he stopped, Nadie wondered if she would cease on the instant. If even this frozen, suspended life, this view of sunflowers and corn and the procession of ghosts, would end. Once again, she felt the great fear, the fear that had pursued her all her days, that had led her to the powwow and his vicious bargain.
That was in the fall, so nearly a year had passed, because the sunflowers said it was high summer and the corn was growing tall. She'd made her bargain with the powwow the autumn after the second great sickness in the village. Protected by her herbs and spells, Nadie had escaped everything: the flowing sickness, the coughing sickness, the sickness of blood, the throat closing sickness.
Her youngest girl was not so lucky. Oneida, Nadie's favorite, whom she was training in all the arts of herbs and roots, died painfully, bleeding from her lungs. An older daughter was living in another village, and Nadie's grown-up son had gone north with some of the young men, figuring to escape the foreigners and not aiming to come back. That left Abukcheech, her baby, a boy of nine, strong and straight and clever. He already spoke English as well as Algonquin, and he knew a few words of Dutch and French. He would be a trader; already Nadie could send him with herbs and furs to the English village without fear he'd be cheated.
She figured that she and Abukcheech would survive a few years more, but one day after the strange illnesses were driven back to the world of evil things, a great pain came upon her. She was bent over, picking late pumpkins, when the ghost fox leapt into her gut and fastened its teeth on her and took her breath away. Nadie fell onto her hands and knees in the warm earth; around her, the strong smell of the faded cornstalks; in her ears, the sound of her breath and the buzzing flies. She knew then. She rested for a moment, unable to move, then raised herself to her knees and, clutching her digging stick, struggled back to the wigwam. Within days, Nadie was so weak she could not leave her bed of skins and furs, and she knew that as soon as the cold came, her lungs would fill up and she would die. If not before!
Her brother's wife, Ogin, tried to comfort her with the inevitability of it. “You will see Oneida,” she said. “You will see your father and mother."
Nadie turned her face to the wall. She hadn't eaten anything in days and was rapidly losing strength. The next morning, in desperation, she sent Abukcheech for the powwow, her rival, her enemy. He came into the wigwam and sat down opposite her. Nadie explained what she wanted. Despite the soot and bear grease that darkened his cheeks and shadowed his eyes, she could follow his emotions quite easily. Oh, he was glad to see her brought low. To see her suffer. To have her ask for his help. Even the English powwow, the minister in his black coat, would not have had more satisfaction if she had crawled in pain to his door and asked for his prayers. The thought gave her strength; even their precious English whiskey had not brought her peace.
But the powwow was startled at the boldness of her desire. Yes, she could see that, though he kept his face still; only his small eyes moved, the whites bright against his dark mask of paint.
"You can do this thing?” she asked, but it was only half a question. As she dealt in the consoling roots and medicines of this world, so the powwow claimed the worlds above. With his drum and his turtle rattle, with his chanting and dancing, Ahanu could travel to the spirit realm.
"We all must die,” he said.
"We must leave the body,” Nadie said. “We must leave the body behind. But where our spirit goes—"
The powwow shrugged. Nadie was said to be a witch—the whole village called her Pauwau behind her back. Even the English were afraid of her, afraid she was a witch, and also afraid to arrest her, a state of affairs that suited the village. But now she was afraid. She had listened to the English minister—her father was half English—and she was afraid of the English afterlife with fire and torture.
"You can find a safe place for my spirit,” Nadie said. “You have boasted often enough."
"It would be very dangerous,” the powwow said, but she saw in his face that he would attempt it.
"My herbs, my medicines,” Nadie said, waving a weak hand at the bundles hanging crammed from the poles of the wigwam. “For you."
Ahanu's lips twitched and he shook his head.
"Furs,” she said, though she had hoped to save those for Abukcheech. “My older son is a good trapper. There are furs."
Ahanu shook his head again.
"Two metal cook pots. In perfect shape. Two knives, best steel."
"This could cost me my life,” said Ahanu.
There was a long silence. “What do you want?” Nadie asked, but she guessed and her heart contracted.
"I am without a child,” Ahanu said. “I need someone to help in my old age. I want Abukcheech as my son."
Nadie closed her eyes and shook her head. She did not want Abukcheech with the powwow, who was a strange, cruel man. She was not sure fun-loving Abukcheech could make a powwow, either. She shook her head, but the great fear was on her, the great fear of oblivion, and the idea came to her in the moment. “Come back tomorrow,” she said. “I will live that long. Come back tomorrow, take my spirit to some safe place, and you can have Abukcheech as your son.” Then, exhausted, Nadie fell into a deep sleep.
She woke in the night and roused her child. She told him to take down the bundles of dried roots and herbs, berries, and mushrooms, and had him bring her the dark stone mortar that she used to grind dangerous herbs. Abukcheech saw this but said nothing. He was a clever child—and he was afraid of the powwow.
&nb
sp; Nadie asked Abukcheech to help her sit up. She took her bundles, selected what she needed, and ground a mysterious assortment of roots and dried fungus into a paste. When she was finished, she told the boy to bring six smoked fish from the rack. Then she sent him outside the wigwam. When she was finished, she put the fish in a container of birch bark and called Abukcheech back inside. “When I am dead, give these fish to the powwow as a present. Give them to him and no one else."
Abukcheech nodded his head and stored the bundles and the mortar and hid the birch bark box away. Nadie never had to tell Abukcheech anything twice.
All that night, Abukcheech gave Nadie sips of a brownish infusion which helped keep her mind clear. Her whole purpose was to survive until the powwow arrived, which he did late in the day, when the shadows had lengthened and the coals of the banked cook fire cast a red glow over his black face paint and glistened on his oiled limbs and on the writhing serpent tattooed on his naked torso.
"I am grateful you have come,” she said, though she hated him, though she had no good wish for his future.
In the faint light, the powwow's moving figure flickered and became insubstantial. Supported by Abukcheech, Nadie lay pillowed on the pile of soiled furs and watched with half-closed eyes, as Ahanu set up a rhythm with his turtle shell rattle and began to summon the spirits with his chanting. His voice was low, but oddly piercing, a supple, insinuating instrument fit to unwind her soul from her flesh.
Nadie smelled the bear grease that glistened on his bare arms and chest, and something else, some whiff of medicine that she saw reflected in his dilated eyes—the powwow had many arts. She could have given him more, but, no, he preferred Abukcheech. Even the sachem had been troubled by that. He had heard of the bargain, though not the details, and had come to be sure the arrangement was her will.
"There is your daughter and her husband,” the sachem said. “And there is a hope that your older son will return."
Nadie shook her head: this arrangement was her wish.
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