by David Treuer
So numerous and so varied were the scenes that orbited the Stacks that he thought he could almost see his own life, or better, moments snatched from it and hurled in the dark to stick there amidst the growing constellations the way they said a giant flung the stars to sit in the sky. His father, maybe it was, maybe it was only someone like him, walking ahead of him down a trail through deep woods filled with snow. And there, to the left, inside an Indian round dance hall, a girl across the way. Didn’t he know her, or was she only a type, the kind of girl that resembled a singular girl from the past? She cried behind a rain-smeared window, and waved, waved, waved. Good-bye.
Another image came winging by. He was in high school. Their basketball team had gone to the next reservation to play. He was surprised to remember that, for a while, he had played basketball. They had lost the game. Most of the team was back on the bus, but Apelles had been slow to change and had walked more slowly still so that he was one of the last players out of the gym.
The sensations are as sharp now as they were then. He can feel the early spring wind cold on his skin where the sweat was still drying. The sidewalk leading from the gym had the texture of sandpaper. Up ahead the yellow school bus idled under the sodium light of the parking lot. He heard a voice.
“Hey. Hey you.”
He turned to see one of the cheerleaders from the other team running to catch him before boarding the bus.
“Sorry,” she said breathlessly, with a look that was both intense and shy. “Sorry you lost.”
“Really? Yeah, well, it happens.” Apelles had no idea what to say.
“You were really good out there.”
“Me? Not good enough.”
“No, really.” She leaned forward.
Everyone on the bus was watching them.
“Thanks.”
“You were. You were beautiful out there.” And with that she spun, clutched her backpack to her chest, and ran back to the gym.
“I was?” he said in wonder.
And when he was finally seated on the bus and the bus itself loped around the corner of the parking lot and grunted its way up the hill out of town his teammates wouldn’t leave him alone. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, they chanted. They launched into rhapsodies about her breasts and chided Apelles for not “getting some.”
Through it all he sat aloof and pleased, battered in equal measure by the taunts and the frostheaves in the road. He had no regrets, the moment was perfect as it was. There was a pleasing roundness to it—the game, the exchange of words, the ride out of town, her plump legs kicking up her pleats as she ran away. In and of itself the event meant little in the years that followed. He had experienced many more meaningful things before and after that transparent and frankly, banal experience: many more things both good and bad. But now, surrounded as he is with the images and scenes in his dream, he thinks that, after all this time, she might be right after all. Beautiful.
Scene followed scene and image followed image. Was that the landscape of his childhood home? Or was it only a copy of the landscapes one finds in books? Dr Apelles couldn’t say . . . What he could see and sense, however, was that each episode had its own tone and style—and thus, a different reality. The dream and everything leading up to it felt dusty and starched, English, the scenes of his early affair with the girl at the round dance hall had something French, something simple-hearted about it, while his boyhood had the hard cast of Hemingway. Mixed in with these images were scenes he did not recognize in styles he did not recognize and in the middle of it all was Campaspe. He blinked and he saw and even felt that they were having sex. She was on top of him. They were in his apartment. And she was radiant, gorgeous and flush with pleasure. In the background he could hear the hiss of ice and sleet hitting the panes of his apartment windows. He did not want to lose this image, and he tried to hold onto it. He could not. He had no control over the text, texture, or images through which he was being pushed. It seemed to be very important that he find a way to control those styles. But the images moved too fast. Dr Apelles tried to keep track of the scenes but could not. He did notice, however, the absence in his dream of what had happened after he got home that evening and before he had gone to bed; when, after he ate his frugal meal, he pushed the white plate, freckled with crumbs away from him and put the beer bottle in the recycling container below the sink. He was full, and yet, unsatisfied. He sat back down. Usually he would read an article or two from his stack of journals—noting key points or new approaches, or faulty or fanciful logic, but he could not bring himself to do so that evening. The distance between the simple pine dining table and his blue, velvet-covered easy chair next to which stood a neat stack of journals was both insurmountable and too close. His apartment felt smaller than usual. So fixed, so familiar as to have become, suddenly, sterile. He stood and resolutely made his way to the easy chair, and out of force of habit he sat down and opened the topmost journal—the Journal of Algonquian Linguistics. His fingers drummed on the de-plushed arms. He stood and walked back to the sink and washed his dishes, dried them, and placed them facedown on a dishtowel spread over the narrow countertop. He then walked back into the living room, and since it was unchanged from before, he moved closer and closer to the window. He stood in front of it and looked down at the streets below and the windows opposite—some dark and others lit from within. How was the man in Bovary described? As though standing outside looking in at a family sitting down to dinner. Yes, that was it. The strange thing was that when he thought about that line from Flaubert, he saw Campaspe, the girl from work. He could not shake the vision of her—her smile and her brown curls, and her white sweater. To think about a woman that way after not thinking about women except for his Mais was unexpected, and to find pleasure in the thought was even more surprising. This feeling, this terrible pleasure crept over him, covered him so completely that when he opened his eyes again he was shocked to not see Campaspe there, to realize that she was as distant as ever. There existed in this sensation the echo of his wet dreams of the past—the bizarre mixture of pleasure and absence. Shocked to realize that Campaspe was not there, he felt again that every window was remote—a potential galaxy spinning and leaping through the long winter night. Dr Apelles said something out loud, to whom it is hard to say, and what it was he said, very, very hard to hear, and it is even harder to tell if those words made their way past the glass or not.
~ Book II ~
1. It was early fall. Bimaadiz was sixteen and Eta was twelve. The weather was warm during the day, sunny and bright, but every night brought with it a crisp frost. All the land was active: a good crop of rice bent the stalks low over the water, wild plums and grapes and cranberries were heavy on the branches. The lakes were turning over and the thick-fleshed trout were coming close to the surface to spawn and were practically jumping in the people’s nets. The deer and moose were nearing the rut and so were easier to hunt. The beaver were busy building their lodges and with each passing day their coats were getting thicker. Most of the mosquitoes had been killed off by the frost and so it was a pleasure to be in the woods once again.
As there was no trapping or hunting to do during the summer Bimaadiz and Eta hadn’t seen much of each other, and they were anxious to get back out into the woods. They were full of stories to share about what had happened while they had been apart. They disappeared into the bush together, grateful to be away from the village, grateful for the other’s company. Perhaps the summer’s interruption had dulled Eta’s skills or perhaps her excitement got the best of her. For whatever reason she set a snare for brush wolves a little too high, made the loop a little too big, and neglected, perhaps, to put a thick enough jumpstick above the snare. Despite her best efforts, she managed to snare a large doe. Bimaadiz and Eta came up on the set and noticed right away the missing snare and the torn and trampled earth. The doe had been caught recently, and she had run off through the brush pulling the dragstick behind he
r. Bimaadiz was excited at the prospect of his first kill of the season. Instead of waiting for the animal to run itself out and lie down, Bimaadiz whooped and charged off after the deer.
The doe had been snared around the neck and the snare was attached to a stout log—heavy enough so a brush wolf could not run away with it. But a deer can go a long way dragging a balsam pole without getting tired. She was easy enough to track because her terrified leaps had driven her hooves deep into the soil, and the dragstick had smacked against saplings and trees, tearing away the bark. The thickets of hazelbrush were no impediment either; the brush was left broken and ragged. It was an easy trail to follow.
Bimaadiz followed after the deer, sometimes drawing near. But always the snared doe heard him coming and pulled farther ahead. In her exhaustion she stopped to rest occasionally, her ribs heaving, snot dripping from her nose. But as soon as she sensed Bimaadiz’s dogged pursuit she was off again. When Bimaadiz reached the places where she had stopped, he saw the spatter of mucus on the leaves and the drift of her thick neckhairs sawn off by the thin metal snare and he felt at each pause that he must be getting closer. But a snared deer does not act like a deer that has been shot; a snared deer loses its strength more gradually. So, a chase he first figured would last no more than a half hour stretched on through the morning. The deer was always ahead and as soon as she heard Bimaadiz’s footfall or saw the pointed peak of his red toque bobbing through the trees, she urged herself to run some more.
The day—which started out with a coat of frost—had grown warm. The sun was high in the sky, and its pale light washed the woods. The deer was bathed in sweat. Her fur was matted and her tongue was specked with froth and swollen with thirst and the snare had become embedded deep in her neck. Bimaadiz was hot, too. He was wet through his underclothes, and his wool jacket felt heavier and heavier with each passing moment. Neither the doe nor Bimaadiz stopped to drink.
It was no wonder, as the mad chase progressed, that the doe headed for low land, a great cedar swamp well beyond Bimaadiz’s usual hunting grounds. And there, in that remote place, the doe cleared the trees, made two large bounds and laydown in the middle of a thicket of red willow and Labrador tea. Bimaadiz followed the deer’s trail to the edge of the bog, and there he stopped. He knew the habits of deer well enough to know that she had hidden herself in the willows. He was faced with a choice; he could wait for her to move or he could go in after her. He was determined to come back with the doe. He had come too far and the animal had suffered too much for him to turn back. And even though he knew where she was and that she could see him from her hiding place, he did not have a shot.
But he could not wait until she moved. She would stay where she was until nightfall and then sneak away, or she might very well die there. Bimaadiz thought of Eta. She would be worried if she did not hear him shoot. And since no matter which direction the deer ran, she would have to run through the open, he had to get close enough to either shoot her where she lay or to flush her out and take a quick shot as she ran.
Bimaadiz held the Winchester at the ready—the hammer cocked—and began to walk out into the treacherous, floating bog. It was hard going—he had to be careful where he stepped lest he step off stable ground and into the slippery peaty soup. Little clumps of cattails and marsh grass rose out of the water and offered some places to step, and there were floating sections of bog that quaked and shook with each step. If he stood still for too long his feet gradually pushed their way through the growth and into the water below. But he couldn’t afford to look down all the time—the deer might leap up and disappear before he was able to fire.
Bimaadiz was halfway between the trees and the center of the bog when the deer stood and tried to run. Bimaadiz stopped, raised the Winchester, fired once, and the doe fell down. Exultant, Bimaadiz hopped from hummock to hummock until he found the deer, his first of the season. She was thick with fat. He told himself that as a present he would give Eta the heart, tongue, and the loins—they would have a feast, just the two of them, to celebrate the first kill.
First he would have to get the doe out of the swamp. He could gut her there in the mud, but the bad water would leak into the meat and ruin it. And an ungutted deer, without the breath of life, is a heavy thing. There was nothing to do except loosen the snare around the doe’s neck, stuff the front legs together through the expanded loop, and tighten it again. Once secured this way—so the animal’s legs would not catch on the ground—he was ready to set off. He braced his feet against a hummock and pulled. The doe lurched forward. He found new footing on another low rise in the swamp and pulled again. Bit by bit, Bimaadiz brought the deer closer to the trees where he could gut it on dry ground. But he was tired—he hadn’t anything to drink all morning and his legs shook. He stumbled, and then one foot went in the mud. He tried to push up with the other leg, but he broke through the solid earth, and that leg, too, became mired. With each subsequent effort he sank deeper.
He was calm at first. This was not his first experience with a floating bog. But his frustration was immense—how would he get out and bring the deer back to Eta? His legs were deep in the mud, and the swamp’s grip was strong. The more he struggled the deeper he sank until the water reached his waist and crept over his rib cage.
He began to despair—for himself and for the deer, and he cursed himself. Why had he run after the deer like a child? Why hadn’t he let the doe exhaust herself so that he could track her the next day when she was either too tired to run or even dead? Bimaadiz thought he might die in the swamp.
Suddenly he heard a voice.
“Bimaadiz! Bimaadiz, are you okay?” There was a shadow standing over him. It was Gitim—a youth two years older than he was. He normally trapped that area and, while scouting out beaver ponds, he happened upon the trampled trail. And then he heard the shot. He followed the sound and found Bimaadiz in the swamp.
“I have nothing to pull you out with,” said Gitim. “No rope or cord, or wiigoob.”
Although he didn’t say so, he was afraid that he, too, might get stuck in the swamp. Gitim was so lazy and habitually averse to risk that he always managed to spend more energy trying to find the easy way to accomplish a thing rather than setting to work.
“Don’t you have anything? Can’t you use a stick?”
Bimaadiz and Gitim, while pondering Bimaadiz’s situation, heard Eta shout from the edge of the swamp. She had also followed the trail, at a more leisurely pace, until she heard the shot, at which point she hurried along. Eta quickly wound her way out to the center of the swamp.
She wanted to laugh when she saw Bimaadiz buried up to his waist. But, filled with pity for her friend—stuck up to his chest in mud, his hair plastered with twigs and dirt—she did not laugh.
“Hold on,” she said. “Hold still.”
Thinking quickly, she untied the red wool sash that was wrapped around her thin waist. She braced her feet against a small willow bush and handed one end of the sash to Bimaadiz while she held the other.
“Push, Bimaadiz. Push!” she said. And she lifted just enough of his weight so he could kick his legs to the surface of the bog and clamber out.
Bimaadiz rested a moment and tried to wring the mud out of his clothes the best he could. Eta, meanwhile, began to work on getting the deer to dry land. She spied an abandoned beaver lodge not too far off and quickly made her way there and pried out a few long poles. These she carried back, and with Gitim’s help, she used them to skid the body of the deer over to the beaver lodge. Bimaadiz was now rested and in a trice he had the deer gutted and quartered. They were happy that the doe and Bimaadiz had been successfully rescued, and so they made a gift of the deer to Gitim, who was only too pleased to have all the work done for him. So, weary but full of good humor, already laughing at the day’s events, Bimaadiz and Eta walked back to one of her lean-tos so Bimaadiz could clean himself off.
This particular lean-to was one o
f Eta’s favorites. A small stream tumbled over a short cliff just behind her shelter and watered a small flat area of firm ground. Habitual use had cleared the glen of brush and deadfall. Eta honored the beauty of the spot and kept it clean by taking all the carcasses, wood chips, bones, and trash far away. The waterfall never froze over—even in the coldest times. In the summer the glen was carpeted in moss, sweetfern, and maidenhair. Caribou lichen and cottonball sedge clung to the rock face of the cliff.
Bimaadiz was afraid of what his parents might think if they saw him come home with his clothes ruined and covered in mud, so he and Eta decided he should bathe in the waterfall next to Eta’s lean-to while she rinsed and beat his clothes. Bimaadiz took off his fawnskin bandolier bag and emptied it out. Rifle, cartridges, knife, and pemmican he set on a bed of basswood leaves to dry out in the sun. With a handful of sweetfern he scoured the fawnskin until the spots turned white once more, and then he stuffed it with dead grass so it would dry more quickly. Then he undressed, piled his clothes to the side where Eta could reach them, and began to wash himself. The water was cold, but the clumps of mud and specks of peat were washed away. He held his head under the waterfall and rinsed out the peat that had dried in his hair. His hair was dark and thick and his skin looked all the darker as the water rolled off his shoulders, which were tinged with red from the cold water and from the vigorous rubbing he gave himself with sweetfern.