Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

  The kid tied the horse to a small tree and his father was able to walk on his own for a dozen yards. Then the trail tilted up and the footing grew less stable. The kid moved behind him and put a hand in his belt and the other between his shoulder blades. His father grumbled but the kid pushed on. They stopped now and then so his father could catch his breath. The kid looked out over the valley below them and waited. When he was ready his father huffed and the kid propelled him steadily upward. Eventually they reached a ledge about ten feet long and four feet wide. The wall of the cliff was flat. The kid eased his father down close to the edge. It took a moment for his breathing to settle and when he finally raised his eyes to look at the cliff face his mouth draped open.

  “Damn, Frank,” he said.

  The kid sat down beside him and they both stared up at the wall of rock. There were symbols painted in a dull red, black, and a stark greyish white. There were birds, oddly shaped animals, what appeared to be horses and bison, horned beings, stars, and assorted lines and shapes. The drawings stretched a full twenty feet up and covered the entire wall. They studied them without speaking for a long time.

  “Take me up to it,” his father said quietly.

  The kid stood and helped him stand. Together they shuffled to the face of the cliff. His father reached out and put his hand on the rock. Then he slid it over and covered a small dog-like shape and raised his head to look up at the array.

  “What do they signify?” Eldon asked.

  “I don’t know. Near as I can figure they’re stories. I reckon some are about travelling. That’s how they feel to me. Others are about what someone seen in their life. The old man doesn’t think anyone ever figured them out.”

  “Ain’t a powerful lotta good if ya can’t figure ’em out.”

  The kid shrugged. “I sorta think you gotta let a mystery be a mystery for it to give you anything. You ever learn any Indian stuff?”

  His father lowered his gaze. He turned his back to the wall and slid down to sit. He brushed a hand over his forehead and closed his eyes to heave a deep breath. “Nah,” he said finally. “Most of the time I was just tryin’ to survive. Belly fulla beans beats a head fulla thinkin’. Stories never seemed likely to keep a guy goin’. Savvy?”

  “I guess,” the kid said. “Me, I always wanted to know more about where I come from.” The kid took out his makings and rolled them each a smoke. They lit up and smoked quietly for a minute or two. “I could come and sit here for hours. I spent three days here once when I was thirteen. Sorta thought if I spent enough time studying them drawings I could figure out what they were supposed to tell me.”

  “They ever?”

  An eagle drifted over the valley. There was a yap of coyotes from somewhere below and the snap of a limb as something big moved through the trees above them. “Not really, I guess. Nothin’ real, least ways,” the kid said after a while. “But it seemed to me no one came here no more. Like they forgot it was here. That made me sad. So I kept comin’ so there’d at least be someone even if I didn’t know how to read ’em or get what it was they were tryin’ to say. At least there was someone.”

  His father just looked at him.

  “I can’t reckon someone dying,” the kid said. “Scares me some to think of it. Don’t exactly know how to face it. Don’t know what I’m s’posedta do when it happens. So I don’t know how come I brung ya here. Mighta just been for me.”

  His father slipped the whisky out of his coat pocket and dribbled a little of it into his mouth and sat there looking out across the wide expanse of space that hung over the valley. “Mighta,” he said.

  10

  THEY MADE THE BOTTOM OF THE CLIFF by mid-afternoon. His father was weaker. By the stream the kid helped him off the horse and washed his face with handfuls of cold water, then held a cup out for him to drink. His father sipped at it and when he swallowed there was an audible clack in his throat. Then he coughed. The kid sat him back against a rock. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back and the kid listened to the sounds of the land around them. The breeze sent leaves fluttering and the rush of the water was like a low whistle underneath that. The horse whinnied. The kid put his hand to his father’s head and felt the heat of him. Then he stood and faced the west and put his face up and closed his eyes. There was rain coming.

  “Got to get you inside,” the kid said. “Rain and cold ain’t good for you.”

  “You got a cave in mind?” his father asked. He opened one eye and studied him.

  “There’s a deserted old trapper’s cabin a few miles off. It’s off our route some but not by much.”

  “Got a bed?”

  “There’s a cot is all.”

  “I could stand a bed.”

  When he’d rested the kid pushed him up into the saddle again and they walked along the stream for a mile or so. Then the kid led the horse west. There was a meagre trail that was overgrown with bracken but he knew where he was headed. His father looked up every now and then but didn’t speak. They soon broke through the trees into a wide marsh. The grasses were high and bent in the breeze that was stiffer now and cold. The footing was boggy and the horse’s hooves made loud sucking sounds. The kid clomped through looking for tufts of grass to aid his steps. There was a wide pond with a beaver dam in the middle. At the far end the spruce and fir began again and the ground was firmer and dry. The horse seemed to know where she was headed and picked up her pace some. His father grasped the saddle horn and swayed before he caught the rhythm of her step and settled into a looser sway. They walked into a clearing where there was dilapidated cabin gone grey with age and an open shed canted to one side. There was a feeble curl of smoke from the chimney.

  The horse nickered at the smell of hay and the door to the cabin opened. A woman stepped out. She cradled a shotgun in the crook of her arms. She was short and burly and she wore men’s clothes. Even her boots were a man’s and when she walked her step was deliberate and heavy. She had the wide, squat face of a Native woman but her skin was fair and her eyes under the wide, battered brim of her hat were a pale blue. She stepped off the porch and stood mutely, her eyes flicking back and forth between them. The hands that held the shotgun were grimed with dirt, hard-looking, dry, and she flexed them while she fixed her flat stare on them.

  “He sick?” she asked, swinging her gaze to the kid. Her voice was gruff and rattled out like she hadn’t used it in while.

  “Yes,” the kid said. “My father.”

  “What’s he got. The fever?”

  “No, ma’am. He’s drink sick. He’s dying.”

  “Drink sick? Well, least it ain’t catchy. Rain’s comin’ and I don’t imagine you fancy a night out in it. Feels like a good soak on its way.”

  “Appreciate a place on your floor, that’s true,” the kid said.

  “Well, fetch him in then. There’s hay and the well’s back of the shed. I got stew and I do a pretty good biscuit. If he’s drink sick, some cedar tea will help his fever.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. My name’s Franklin Starlight. This here’s my dad. Eldon.”

  “Becka Charlie,” she said. “Proper name’s Rebecca but no one much latched on to the Ree part. Been Becka all my life.”

  “Ma’am.” The kid touched the brim of his hat.

  “Becka,” she said.

  “All right.”

  She set the shotgun down on the rail of the porch and helped him get his father down. Together they walked him into the small cabin. The kid looked around. It was different from the empty, mice-ridden place he’d seen the last time he’d been there. There was one window with three panes smashed out and covered with thin, scraped hide so the light was yellowish and eerie. The cot was set in the back corner. There was a pair of chairs cut out of blocks of cedar and a rough table made from a sawn log with four crossed saplings for legs. The fireplace was stone and mud with a wide hearth that held a hornet’s nest, a stuffed owl, a bible, and a rattle made of deer hide and antler. Dishes and pots were piled on
a board set across a large pail and her clothes were hung on nails in the wall: suspenders, dungarees, wool socks, flannel work shirts, and a rain slicker. She had a broom fashioned out of a length of cedar branch and the floor bore the signs of regular sweeping.

  “She’s rough but she holds the warmth of the fire,” Becka said. “I done the roof last summer so she’s dry. Chinked the walls fresh. You’re welcome to make yourself at home.”

  They sat his father down on one of the block chairs and Becka tended to the fire. When it was roaring good she set a cast iron tea kettle on a tripod next to the flames. The kid left them to see to the horse.

  The mare had already walked to the shed and was eating hay. The kid fetched a pail of water from the well and set it down for her and then stashed the saddle and the blanket on hooks nailed to the shed’s remaining wall. Then he brushed her out. When he was finished he walked around the cabin. There was a privy set fifty feet back in the trees. A rough garden that hadn’t been there on his last visit, with a tangle of plants turned hard brown by frost, sat in a small clearing threatened by a spill of blackberry bush and wild rose. Back of the garden in the shade of a clutch of cedars was a grave marked by a wooden cross. The cross was new.

  When he got back to the cabin his father was wrapped in a blanket. The fire blazed a fine yellow. There was a steaming cup set on the remaining chair and he flopped his coat over the back of it and took the cup in his hands. The heat of the tin felt good on his palms. He inhaled the scent of the tea. Pine gum with a touch of mint. The kind he’d make himself out on the land. It offered more heat and he drank it slowly.

  The woman hauled an empty pail over close to the fire. She overturned it and sat on its bottom. Her feet were broad and flat as paddles in the wool socks. She had them pulled up over the bottoms of her faded work pants, and the tails of the coarse shirt hung over her hips and made her look shorter and squatter in the flicker of firelight. The kid thought she looked like a gnome and he grinned at his sally.

  “Grin like a gopher, you,” Becka said. “How old are ya?”

  “Sixteen,” the kid said. “Be seventeen pretty soon.”

  “Big’un.”

  “I guess. Never really thought about it.”

  “He’s bad, huh?” Becka hooked a thumb at his father, who had nodded off. He was folded in the crude chair like a rag doll.

  “His liver’s shot. He ain’t got long.”

  “Funny thing about drink,” Becka said. “Comes a time ya gotta drink to stay alive at the same time it’s killin’ ya. Never took to it, me. My father did though.”

  “That who’s in the grave yonder?” the kid said.

  She turned her head to squint at him. He could feel the force of her studying him. He raised the cup and drank in order to break the look. “Cut right to it, don’t ya?” she said.

  “Got raised to speak my piece and to ask direct. Saves a lot of time and wonderin’.”

  She snickered. It sounded spooky in the glimmer. “That it does,” she said. “Come from him, that kind of reason?”

  “No. I wasn’t raised by him.”

  “Well, whoever give that give ya good sense.”

  They sat drinking tea. Beyond the crackle of the fire it was quiet. He could hear the wind through the trees. Behind it there was the patter of rain on leaves and limbs and it grew louder as it neared like a wave of surf across the land. When it hit the cabin it spattered and drummed on the roof and Becka laid another log on the fire. His father snored. The kid put a hand to his forehead. It was cooler but clammy still.

  “He took some cedar tea?” he asked.

  “Drank a whole mug.”

  “Works good.”

  “She’s an old cure but a good’un.”

  “You know cures?”

  “Some. My dad was Chilcotin. My mother was Scotch. They both had heads fulla the old ways. I got raised up in it. Held on to a great bunch of it all these years. Never know when it’ll come to serve ya.”

  The kid nodded. He drank the last of the tea and set the cup lightly on the floor at his feet. The rain was heavy, falling in sheets he could see when he looked out the single pane of the window. He turned to the fire and stretched his legs out in front of him. The warmth fell over him like a blanket and he was asleep before he knew it.

  He woke to the smell of fresh biscuits. The rain had slacked off to a steady patter on the shingles. He was alone in front of the fire that had been banked to an orange mound that threw a steady push of heat into the cabin. He yawned and stretched and when he stood and turned to the table by the window, his father sat looking at him, his eyes in the firelight glistening like marbles. He was still wrapped in the blanket with a pair of the woman’s wool socks on his feet. He nodded and turned to lean his forearms on the table and watch the woman stirring an iron pot at the opposite end of the table. There was a pan of biscuits beside it.

  “Coulda slept for hours,” the kid said. He carried the trunk chair over to the table and sat.

  “Shoulda,” Becka said. “I’da kept this warm for ya.”

  “Just as well I’m up anyway.”

  “She eats better hot, that’s for true.”

  “Fetch us that hooch, Frank.”

  The kid turned. His father was staring at him. His eyes were empty. His face was haggard and everything seemed to fall downward, held in place by the nub of his chin. “Why’nt you just have some more tea?” the kid asked.

  “Why’nt you quit shin-kickin’ me and fetch me that hooch?”

  “You done good today is all’s I’m sayin’.”

  “Day’s still on.”

  The kid shrugged and walked to where he’d set the pack and rustled around for a bottle. He could feel his father’s eyes on him. When he turned with it in his hand his father’s mouth had draped open and his eyes were lit with orange from the fire. He looked like a spectre. He handed him the bottle. His father’s hands shook when he grabbed it and the kid had to twist the cap off for him and pour a slug of it into his cup.

  “Can’t let a drunk push you around,” Becka said. “They run with power like that.”

  “He ain’t drunk right now,” the kid said.

  “He wants to be. It works out to be the same in the end.”

  “How do you get to come to call me out?” his father said. There was fight in his voice.

  “You’re in my home, that’s how I come to it.”

  “This ain’t your home. You’re squattin’ is all.”

  “This was my grandfather’s way back when,” Becka said. “It come to my daddy and when I brung him here to die it come to me, you wanna know the truth of it.”

  His father could only look at her. He lifted the cup and swallowed what was left of the whisky. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  Becka busied herself with plates and utensils and while she rattled around the kid sat staring out the window at the rain. “Sure could eat,” he said after a while. “I want to thank for you for your kindness.”

  “Reason people got a door is welcome,” Becka said. “Besides, I been without company a while now. It’s good to talk to something other than the ravens and the trees.”

  She ladled the stew into bowls and slid them down the table toward the kid. He put a bowl in front of his father but all he did was stare at it. The stew was rich and strong with the smell of wild meat and the kid felt the enormity of his hunger. When she’d trundled over a length of wood to sit on and served herself he dug in with his spoon. His father took a biscuit, dipped it into his bowl, and then chewed it slowly. His head was down and he stared at a spot on the table. Becka ate lustily. She bent over her bowl and spooned stew into her mouth with a bite of biscuit. She smacked and gobbled and the kid smiled at her enthusiasm. He threw off decorum too and ate with the energy of his hunger. His father just poked at his food. He slopped whisky into his cup and drank slowly.

  He and the woman ate three bowls of the stew apiece and finished off the biscuits. Then Becka served them a cup of tepid tea and w
hile the kid sipped at his she ladled the last of the stew onto a plate with the remnants of a biscuit. She spooned his father’s bowl onto it and headed for the door.

  “Dog?” Eldon asked.

  “Usedta have one named Curly but he died. This is for the spirits,” she said.

  “Spirits? What kinda witchcraft you practise anyhow?”

  She turned at the open door and crooked her head and looked at him. “Ancestors,” she said. “Grandmothers, grandfathers, our people who gone before. The trees, the animals, the birds. Them spirits. If that’s witchcraft to you, I feel sorry for ya.”

  “Seems like kinda a waste of good food.”

  “Not eatin’ it is a waste of food.”

  “I’m sick,” he said.

  “Might not be so sick if ya ate.”

  “I got no belly for it.”

  “Seems to me ya got no belly for a lot of things.”

  He managed a dull sneer. Then he tilted the cup and drained it and set it back on the table, eying her hard all the while. She only shook her head and walked out the door.

  “She’s tough,” the kid said.

  “She’s a bitter old washed-out bitch.”

  “Took us in outta the rain.”

  “Yeah. So she’d have someone to sermon to.”

  “I never heard no sermon. Just someone talkin’ straight.”

  “Straight outta the loony bin’s my thinkin’.”

  His father fumbled about for a smoke and the kid rolled two from his makings. When he was done he helped his father out the door and onto the porch. There was a bench and a willow sapling chair. He set him in the chair and lit his smoke and took a seat on the bench just as Becka strode around the corner of the cabin. She sat beside the kid and he felt the bench sag with her weight. She took an old pipe from her pocket and crossed one leg over the other and lit up. The three of them smoked in silence. The rain slapped down and then seemed to break suddenly to become a light shower and down into a fine mist with fog rolling in from the trees.

  “She’ll clear off by morning,” Becka said. “Be muddy but you’ll travel all right.”