Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

  She was a weather-beaten old Merc that was a few thousand miles beyond her better days. She was slung low on her springs and the windshield was starred with cracks. The front bumper was wired on. There was a rag stuffed in where the gas cap should have been. When the kid rode by he saw a clutter of tools flung into the bed: a rusted chainsaw, pry bars, falling wedges, a bow saw, several axes and mauls, and a scattered heap of shovels. A pair of fuzzy dice dangled from the rear-view mirror.

  After he’d stabled the horse he walked through the house. There wasn’t anyone there. There was a whisky bottle and a single glass on the kitchen table. Tobacco stench hung in the air. He went to the barn and walked the fence line around it. He found the tracks near the gate that opened out onto the tractor path leading to the woodlot where the old man chopped and stored their winter fuel. It was less than a quarter-mile and he heard no sounds of sawing or cutting. As he walked he listened and halfway there he could hear shouting.

  “Stubborn old son of a bitch!” It was Eldon’s voice.

  “Shut up! Just shut the hell up!” The old man’s voice, harder and louder than he’d ever heard.

  When he cleared the last bend he saw them. They were sat apart from each other, leaning on stacked cords of wood. Both of them were heaving for breath. The kid could tell by the spill of the earth at their feet that there had been a scuffle, maybe even a full-on fight. There was a spot of blood at the corner of Eldon’s mouth, and the old man looked winded and half spent. When they saw him they both put their heads down and stared at the ground. The kid walked silently to a round of fir they used for a chopping block and sat down on it, not saying a word. He looked back and forth at them and it took a minute before they raised their heads to look back at him.

  “Tell him,” Eldon said.

  “Not my place to tell him. It’s yours,” the old man said.

  “I don’t know that I got it in me.”

  “You come here all full of beans for it.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Yeah, well, nothin’. He’s here now.”

  The kid was puzzled and there was a spear of anxiety in him at their words. Eldon put his hands on his knees and let out a breath. He hadn’t shaved. He looked as broke down as the truck. He took something metal from his pocket, screwed the top off, and drank. He swiped the back of his hand across his lips and stood up, tucking the thing back into the pocket of his faded dungarees. He wavered but caught his balance, and put one hand on a hip and looked over at the kid.

  “Got something needs tellin’,” he said.

  The kid looked at the old man, who leaned back on the stacked lengths of wood and waved him over. The kid crossed to him and sat beside him. The old man put an arm around his shoulders and the kid peered up at him, wary at the sudden weight of the moment.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Hear the man,” the old man said.

  The kid turned to Eldon.

  “I’m your pap,” he said.

  The kid looked again at the old man.

  “I said I’m your father.”

  “What’s he saying?” he asked.

  “Sayin’ what he needs to say. Or thinks as much anyhow.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Ask him.”

  Eldon had caught his full breath now and he had a cigarette he twiddled between his fingers.

  “Is it true?” the kid asked him.

  “Truest thing I ever said,” Eldon answered.

  “That can’t be true,” the kid said. He stared at the old man wide-eyed. “I thought you were my dad.”

  “I’m raisin’ you. Teachin’ you. There’s a diff’rence,” the old man said. “But I love you. That’s a straight fact.”

  “How come then? How come he’s my father?”

  “Gonna have to ask him, Frank. It ain’t mine for the tellin’. Certain things when they’re true gotta come right from them that knows them as true.”

  “How come?” he asked.

  Eldon peered at him, then struck a wooden match and lit the cigarette. “Don’t know as I can say right now,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

  “What’s complicated mean?” the kid asked.

  “It means he ain’t got it all organized in his head,” the old man said.

  “Then why say?” the kid asked.

  The old man tousled his hair. “That’s what the scrap was about,” he said.

  “I don’t even know you,” the kid said.

  Eldon scratched his head. He took another long drag on the smoke. They could hear the nattering of ravens in the trees. When he looked over at the kid again his face was taut-looking. “That’s why I said it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Me neither rightly.”

  “Then why say?” He stood and moved a few steps away from the old man. He put his hands on his hips and stared at Eldon.

  “Jesus,” Eldon said. “You got him talkin’ like a man.”

  The old man smirked. “Someone got to,” he said.

  Eldon ground the smoke out on the logs. He flicked it across the open space with one finger. The old man eyed him sternly and Eldon strode over and retrieved the butt and put it in his pocket. He looked at the two of them sheepishly. “Thing is,” he said slowly. “I don’t know why I come. Except somethin’ told me I needed to. Hell, the truth is, I don’t know why I hadta say it neither. Just kinda felt like I did. Savvy?”

  “No,” the kid said.

  “Damn,” Eldon said. “This is tough business.”

  “You called it,” the old man said.

  “Shit,” Eldon said. “Sorry. About the cussin’, I mean. I’m way too sober for this.”

  “You know how to fix that. Always did.”

  “Yeah,” Eldon said and stared at the ground. He traced a half-circle back and forth with the toe of his boot. Back and forth. Back and forth. His lips were pinched together and his shoulders slumped. The kid felt sorry for him. He’d never seen anyone trapped by their own words before. It looked like tough business like he’d said.

  “It’s all right,” the kid said quietly.

  Eldon looked up at him and the kid could see that his eyes looked wet. His hands shook as he rubbed at his chin. He looked ready to bolt. He took a huge breath and looked up at the sky. He exhaled loudly and when he looked back at the kid and the old man he looked desolate. It scared the kid some and he edged closer to the old man. “How come this is such a rough go?” Eldon asked.

  The old man stood up. “Truth ain’t never easy. Especially one you had hung up in you a long time. I give ya points for gumption though.”

  Eldon closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Thing is,” he said, “I don’t know where to go from here. It’s out. It’s there. But I plumb don’t know what to do. Maybe this was for shit.”

  The kid looked up at the old man, who stepped over and put a hand on his shoulder. They both studied Eldon, who stood straighter and set his lips into a grim line.

  “I gotta think on this,” Eldon said. “I gotta go.”

  “To where?” the old man asked. “It’s out. You said yourself. Can’t go nowhere without the truth of it followin’ you around. You owe now.”

  “Owe what?”

  “Time. You lost seven years of it.”

  “I can’t change that.”

  “No. But you can make the years coming different.”

  “How?”

  “Gonna have to work that out for yourself. Me? I’d put the plug in the jug and sort it out quick.”

  Eldon looked at the kid. His face seemed to waver like the shimmy the wind makes on the face of a pond. The kid just looked back at him calmly. “He just needed to know, is all,” Eldon said and fumbled about for another smoke.

  The kid switched looks back and forth from the old man to Eldon. He needed one of them to tell him what to do. He could hear the cows bawling in the paddock and the hard, flat clap of a rifle shot echoing off the ridge. Eldon fidgeted. Then he pulled out the whisky and
tipped it up and drank. When he pulled it away from his mouth he studied it as though surprised at the emptiness. Then he stood and tucked it back into his pocket. “Sorry,” Eldon said. “I shoulda thought this through.” He looked at the old man, who just shook his head sadly. Then he stared at the ground and puffed out his cheeks. When he looked up the kid could see how spooked he was. “Sorry,” he said again and stomped off.

  All they could do was watch him go.

  “My father,” the kid said.

  “Yessir,” the old man said.

  “He never said nothin’ about my mother,” the kid said.

  He watched as the old man’s face clouded. “Comes a time for it I’ll tell ya but for now it’s up to him,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a father’s thing to do. It’s him who owes ya that. Not me.”

  “Maybe he’ll be too scared to talk about that.”

  The old man scowled. “Could be yer right there,” he said.

  9

  IN THE MORNING HE WAS FEVERISH. The kid could see the yellow cast of him and when he offered up the bottle his father waved it away and struggled to a sitting position and lit a smoke. He pushed the kid’s hand away from his brow and stared at the ground.

  “What do I do?” the kid asked.

  “Nothing. Liver’s shutting down.”

  “Can you eat?”

  “I can try.”

  He checked the nightline and there were three trout that he cleaned and flayed and placed over the fire on sticks. When they were finished he handed one of the sticks to his father and he picked at the flesh and tried a few mouthfuls and then handed the stick back and took a drink from the bottle. The kid ate the fish. He walked out to where the horse was tied and brushed her out and saddled her. Then he walked her close to the lean- to and left her there and began cleaning up the camp and reloading the pack. It was sunny but crisp and his father kept the mackinaw pulled around him. The kid kicked out the fire and then killed it with a canteen full of water and handfuls of sand from the creekbed. Then he disassembled the lean- to and laid the boughs and saplings in the trees and helped his father up onto the horse.

  “Why do that?” his father asked.

  “Respect. Gotta leave it the way you found it,” he said.

  “Can’t ever leave nothing the way you found it.”

  “You’d be the one to know that, I suppose.”

  “What’re you sayin’?”

  The kid stared up at him. He could feel words churning in his gut, like fish fighting their way upstream. None broke the surface. He brushed the horse’s neck and stared at her brown orb of an eye. “Nothin’, I guess,” was all he said.

  He shouldered the pack then grabbed the halter and walked the horse out of the camp and down the trail that led north and west along the creek. His father struggled to sit the horse and settled for clutching the saddle horn two-handed again.

  “Try and feel her step,” the kid said. “You have to move with her.”

  “Ojibways weren’t horse Injuns.”

  “Still. Better if you read her step. Don’t tire out that way.”

  “I’ll tire out anyhow.”

  The creek was boisterous from rain in the higher elevations and it drowned out the sound of the land. The kid kept an eye on the trees. Cougars were known in these parts and they bore no fear of man. There were tracks in the mud of the trailside: deer, raccoons, skunks, rabbits, and one sudden, bold, clear print of a bobcat. He looked up at his father to point it out to him but he was slumped in the saddle with his chin bumping his chest and he called to him. His father raised a hand limply from the saddle horn then let if fall. He was weaker. There was a different odour coming off him now, something like old leaves mouldering on the forest floor, and the kid wondered if the moment was close by. The thought raised a lump in his throat and he gritted his teeth and mouthed a silent curse at himself for it. He punched his thigh and scowled. He walked the horse more carefully up the pitch of the trail. His father’s head lolled and he moaned now and then and the kid wondered about binding his hands to the pommel and his feet to the stirrups.

  The trail left the stream after three or four miles and began a long, meandering climb around the jut of ridge. The trees were farther apart here, the bed of soil a mere four inches thick, and he could see the roots of them pushed across the skin of the mountain like veins. They climbed steadily for the rest of the morning and when the sun had reached its zenith he looked for a level place to stop. They came to a clump of pines with one thick root poked out of the grass and gravel and he took the horse into it and helped his father down and set him with his back against the root until he was comfortable. Then he strode off and returned in a short time with mushrooms and greens and berries that he crushed up and fashioned into a paste. He gathered a clump of it on a stick of alder and held it out to his father.

  “You don’t want me to eat that?”

  “It eats better than it looks.”

  “It’d want to.” He took a mouthful and washed it down with water from the canteen and looked at the kid with surprise. “Don’t taste bad.”

  “Sometimes I’ll put some pine resin in with it if I got a pot and a fire. Makes a good soup. Lots of good stuff in there.”

  “Old man?”

  “Yeah. At first he brung me out all the time when I was small. Showed me plants and how to gather them. Everything a guy would need is here if you want it and know how to look for it, he said. You gotta spend time gatherin’ what you need. What you need to keep you strong. He called it a medicine walk.”

  “Hand us that crock.”

  The kid reached across to the pack and rooted around for the bottle. His father drank in small sips and peered out through the trees at the territory they were in. The kid rolled them each a smoke and they lit up and sat silently. Now and then his father would close his eyes and let his head fall forward and then push it up again with one hand. Then he leaned his head back against the root of the tree and closed his eyes and the kid could hear him breathing. It was ragged and forced at first and his hand clenched and unclenched at his side and he put the other to his belly and groaned. Gradually he eased and his breathing grew shallower and quieter. His mouth hung open and he huffed and clawed around at his pocket for the smokes. The kid leaned over and dug out the pack and shook one out and held it to his lips and lit it for him. His father smoked without using his hands and kept his eyes closed. The kid scuffed around at the gravel with the alder stick.

  “There’s a place just up this face worth seeing,” the kid said.

  His father only grunted.

  “I been goin’ there a long time. It changes. Maybe because I got older. Got more sense now. I don’t know. It’s just special,” the kid said. “There’s signs up there. Symbols. Painted right into the rock. When the old man took me there the first time he said it was sacred because no one can ever figure out how come the paintings never faded. They been there a powerful long time.”

  “I hearda places like that. Never been to them. Never seen them.”

  “Seems like maybe you should see it now.”

  “We gotta climb to it.”

  “The horse can get you most of the way. I’ll lug you the best I can up the rest.”

  “Sounds like a lotta work for a few paintings.”

  “Lotta times, I guess, you never know what you need until you lay eyes on it.”

  “You got to be a philosopher,” his father said.

  The kid looked at him and shook his head. “Not so much. I mean, out here things just come all on their own sometimes. Thoughts, ideas, stuff I never really had a head for.”

  “I never had much of a head for anything. My back got me through.”

  “That and the hooch,” the kid said and nodded toward the bottle.

  His father glared at him. He tipped the bottle up and swallowed. He coughed and gagged a bit. He held a hand up to his mouth and closed his eyes. When the urge to retch passed he leaned b
ack against the root and eyed the kid who lowered his gaze. “Don’t judge me,” he said.

  “Ain’t,” the kid said.

  “What is it you’re doin’ then?”

  “Just watchin’ is all.”

  “Watching what?”

  The kid stood up and pitched the stick into the fire. “Guess I’ll tell you when I got that figured. Right now, I’m just watching.”

  His father took a feeble sip of the whisky. The kid kicked dirt over the fire and stamped it out then walked to the horse, snugged up the tack, and led her back to where his father lay. His father struggled to his feet. The kid took his arm to help him up onto the horse. His hand encircled the whole bicep. He had to reach out and grab his father by the belt to hoist him up into the stirrup. He stood with his foot in it and caught his breath before kicking his other leg over to sit in the saddle.

  There was a narrow path that led around boulders and between trees that eased upward with the flank of the cliff at their right. The forest thinned out. There were large gaps between trees. The ground was a mass of pine needles, roots, and rocks. Here and there a small copse of aspens or birches lent a dappled look to the slant of the path and the horse nickered at it. The kid patted her neck. His father looked around and clutched the saddle horn for balance and they walked easily for a while until the trail canted upward sharply. It pressed tight to the cliff. They began a tenuous, snaking climb. His father had to lean forward in the saddle and the horse fought for purchase in the talus and gravel.

  The trail bellied out onto a small ledge. The trees were stunted. Only junipers seemed to flourish and they spread wide right up to the edge of the cliff. The trail became barely visible along the cliff face. “We’re gonna leave her here,” the kid said. “It’s about eighty feet more.”

  “Might as well be eighty miles,” his father said. “Way I feel anyways.”

  “I’ll get you there. Everyone should see something like this.”