Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

  “He’s worse,” the kid said. “Just in the last day or so.”

  “What he done was brave. You know that, huh?”

  “Done what?”

  “Tellin’ you. That took some grit.”

  “I don’t think it’d take much grit to tell what ya already know.”

  “Maybe. But it sat in his gut a long time. Most’ll just give stuff like that over to time. Figure enough of it passes things’ll change. Try to forget it. Like forgettin’s a cure unto itself. It ain’t. You never forget stuff that cuts that deep.”

  “A story like that woulda been good to hear before now, knowin’ nothin’ about where I come from an’ all.”

  “You didn’t grow up with him.”

  “No.”

  “Them that raised you then, they never said nothin’ about your mother?”

  “I asked once. But I was told it was a father’s job to do, tellin’ me about her.”

  “He never come out with it?”

  “Whenever I seen him he was mostly always drunk or drinkin’ an’ he never did make much sense. I got raised good. Never wanted for nothin’ an’ I got no gripe with any of that.”

  “Except that they never said nothin’ about your mother.”

  The kid stared at his father’s sleeping form. Becka rose and poured water from the kettle into a teapot and the kid smelled mint. She poured each of them a cup and the kid set his between his feet. “I’d look at women in town sometimes or at gatherin’s we’d go to wonderin’ if she was one of them or if maybe she’d been walkin’ by me ev’ry day an’ I never knew.”

  He stopped and picked up the cup and stared at it wrapped in his hands. “I get that some things take some workin’ up to. But he could die tonight fer all I know.”

  “He won’t.”

  His father moaned and the kid regarded him. “He don’t seem much of a warrior to me.” He sipped at the tea.

  “Who’s to say how much of anythin’ we are?” Becka said. “Seems to me the truth of us is where it can’t be seen. Comes to dyin’, I guess we all got a right to what we believe.”

  “I can’t know what he believes. He talks a lot, but I still got no sense of him. So far it’s all been stories.”

  She only nodded. “It’s all we are in the end. Our stories.” She stood and put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a pat. Then she poured some more of the tea in his cup and padded off to the cot, where he heard her rustle about some and then everything was silent.

  In the morning she warmed up porridge with water from a tin she kept in the rain barrel and cut up berries to sweeten it. The kid ate but all his father could do was finger the rim of his bowl. He picked a berry or two out and sat there moving them around in his mouth. When he was finished the kid gathered their few supplies and carried them out to the shed where he watered the horse, brushed and saddled her. Becka walked his father out. He could tell by the look of him in the daylight that he was weaker. He had a deeper yellow cast and he shook with the effort of walking. It took both of them to help him up onto the horse, and the heat from his skin was powerful. The kid took rope from his pack and cut it into three lengths. Together he and Becka tied his father’s feet to the stirrups and his hands to the pommel. Then they walked off a few yards and Becka put a hand on the kid’s shoulder.

  “Give him some of this when he needs it,” Becka said. She handed him a rough hide tied up into a bundle.

  “What is it?” the kid asked.

  “Ain’t no medicine I know can help him perfect. But I made this up for my own father when he was near the end. It’ll soothe him when it counts.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. When he gets too weak to even take in booze he’s gonna be sicker. Booze sick. Hard and ugly. He’s a lifer. Been drinkin’ all his life and stoppin’ sudden ain’t no good idea. It ain’t gonna be no pretty picture. You won’t be up to thankin’ me much when that happens.”

  “What can I do when that comes about?”

  “Can’t know. The bad news is he’s gonna be a terrible handful. The good news is, on toppa what he’s got goin’ now, it ain’t gonna last long. But give him some of this when the worst of it is on him.”

  The kid kicked at the dirt. “I guess I better get to it then. But I do mean to thank ya.”

  “Ain’t done nothin’ no one else would do no different,” she said. “I was glad of the company.”

  “Me too.”

  “You could stop by when you’re on your way home.”

  The kid could only nod solemnly.

  He tied the sack of medicine and their supplies behind the saddle and led the mare out of the shed. It was cool and damp and he could feel the chill of winter on the breeze. He hauled a deep breath into him and stood looking at the trees along the ridge to the west, undulating and serpentine, and found himself wishing suddenly for home. When he looked down Becka had disappeared back into the shack. The bulk of his father slumped in the saddle and the cloud of the horse’s breath was all that framed the day in front of him and he walked the horse across the rough yard and into the trees.

  13

  THE WALKING WAS DELIBERATE. The horse seemed to sense the dire situation and he let go of the reins and she was content to plod along behind him. After the rain the land was a gumbo of smells. Pitch and bog, the tang of spruce, and the dank, rancid smell of wet bear tracing the weave of the creek to his left. He drew it all into him, closed his eyes a few paces and held it, let it fill him. The night and his father’s story had drained him and he needed the feel of the land at his feet and the sounds of it to quell the clamour in his head. His father. He thought about what Becka had said and worked at finding some pattern to the shards and pieces of history he’d been allowed to carry now. They jangled and knocked around inside him. It felt like jamming the wrong piece into a picture puzzle. Like frustration alone could make it fit the pattern. He cast a look back over his shoulder at his father, who seemed to be asleep, but he’d mumble when the horse’s step over a rock or a root made him lurch in the saddle. When the kid looked back at the thin trail they followed he felt worn and makeshift as the trail itself. He had no idea what was about to happen. He didn’t know if he could carry out what they’d set about to get done. He looked back over his shoulder at his father again. The sky was clearing and the sun splattered light against the green-black boughs of the trees and the birds came alive with it and he lost himself in the feel of the land shrugging itself into wakefulness.

  He never saw the bear until the horse snorted and reared. They’d come around a long bend in the trail that followed the creek and he hadn’t paid attention to the change in the direction of the wind. He cursed himself for his carelessness. The bear appeared suddenly. It was a boar grizzly and it stood on its hind legs on the rocks by the creek that ran about twenty yards away. The bear itself hadn’t heard them over the rush of the creek.

  The horse clattered on the rocks of the trail and the kid scrambled back and flailed about for the reins that had come loose in his hurry. The mare was sunk back on her hind quarters as the bear roared and his father swayed dangerously, unable to centre his weight. The kid found the reins and braced against the yank and pull of the mare. He walked toward her and she shied and shimmied. He could hear the bear huffing behind them.

  “What the fuck?” his father said and pulled at the ropes that bound his hands to the pommel.

  “Be quiet,” the kid said. “We got a bear here.”

  “Jesus.”

  Eldon settled in the saddle as much as he could and the stable weight made the mare easier to manage and the kid was able to grab hold of the halter and she calmed some but twitched nervously. When he could handle her he walked her off to a copse of birch and tied her and loosed the ropes that bound his father and helped him off the horse. He laid him in moss beneath the birches. He could hear the bear prowling slowly along the creek, cuffing at stones and growling low in the throat.

  “Whattaya think yer doin’?” his fa
ther croaked.

  “Can’t run,” the kid said. He slung the pack from his back and dropped it on the ground beside the tree. “Gotta face him.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Gonna have to be.”

  “He’ll kill ya.”

  “If I’m scared shit he could.”

  “You ain’t?”

  “Yeah. But he don’t gotta know that.”

  He hobbled the horse with the rope from his father’s foot and secured the halter tie to the birch. Then he walked out toward the bear. It stood swinging its head back and forth ten yards up the trail. He hadn’t wanted to turn them away from it. He knew that retreat with their backs toward the bear was to show fear. Now the only way was forward. He held his hands out wide and tried to make himself appear as large as he could. He stood up on his toes and opened his eyes and mouth wide and growled. The bear lowered its head and stared at him through the top of its eyes. It swayed its head and shoulders. There was a rumble from its throat. He could see that it was a juvenile, maybe in its first year away from its mother. The boar hadn’t grown the grizzly hump at the shoulders and it had yet to fill out its massive size. Still, it was dangerous. It seemed to want to hold the trail and the bend in the creek. The kid took a slow step forward and spread his arms out wide again and growled with the stride. The bear lurched to its hind feet. It stood there all seven feet of it and bellowed. He could hear the horse shy and buck some in the trees. He took another slow, measured pace forward. The bear roared again. It echoed back to him through the trees and he heard the horse’s ragged whinny.

  He moved again. The bear shook its head and there was a spray of spittle. There were only eight paces between them now. The bear dropped to the ground and cuffed at the trail with both fore paws. There was a sudden trench in the dirt. The kid slid forward another step and held the outstretched posture. He could smell the high, bitter scent of the bear. He growled and drew in as big a breath as he could until he thought his ribs would crack. The bear shifted left and right. He took another step. He could see right into the boar’s eyes and the bear held the look and raised its snout to sniff. The kid’s heart seemed to clang in his chest but he moved forward in another sliding step and the bear kept up the lateral shifting, and when the kid let the breath out and began striding forward and raising his arms outward again the bear broke. It turned and trotted off a few yards, then it raised its snout and sniffed again. The kid held his pose. The bear growled its discontent. Then it turned and walked off slowly, looking back over its shoulder every few paces and the kid didn’t move an inch. When it reached another bend in the trail the boar broke into a trot and then a full gallop when it reached the trees, and the kid could hear the snap and break of branches as it took off up a ridge until the clatter of stones was all that remained of its presence.

  Silence. It draped over everything. When the kid finally allowed a breath the world kicked into gear all around him and he heard the croak of a raven in the trees and the splash of a fish in the ripple of rapids at the creek. He slumped. He closed his eyes and drew deep draughts of air until he could taste it again. Then he turned and walked back to the copse of birch.

  The horse was still spooked and shied at his approach. The smell of the bear remained sharp and sour on the wind. He stood and spoke to the mare and rubbed her and when she calmed he stepped around her and walked to where his father lay on his belly. He groaned when the kid eased him onto his back.

  “You don’t look too good” he said.

  “Feel booze sick,” Eldon said. “And a godawful lotta pain.”

  The kid rose and got the medicine sack Becka had given him. There were four glass jars of liquid. He lifted one out. The medicine looked mossy and slick against the glass and when he opened it the smell was fungal, peaty with rot. He held his father’s head in his palm and held the jar to his lips.

  “What’s this?” Eldon asked.

  “Becka stuff. She said it’d help you when it counted.”

  “Counts now.”

  “Okay then.”

  He drank a few gulps. His face twisted but he held it down. “Tastes like shit,” he said, wiping at his mouth.

  “Figure you choked back worse in your time.”

  “Some. Not like this. It’s like drinking swamp.”

  “We’ll rest here. If ya can’t ride no more I’ll make camp.”

  His father put his head back against the trunk of the birch and closed his eyes. The kid could hear him moan.

  “Tell me if I can do anything,” he said.

  “What’s in this stuff?” Eldon asked.

  “Can’t know. Becka called it medicine.”

  “Heats up the belly. Get kinda light in the head too. Kinda woozy.”

  “That’s good then.”

  “Yeah. Don’t feel no booze sick no more. Just kinda like a head fulla cotton. Ask you somethin’?”

  “Go on.”

  “How’d ya know what to do?”

  The kid shrugged. “Out here you do what ya need to do when ya need to do it is all.”

  “Still, that was a fuckin’ grizzly.”

  “Juvenile. Not full grown. Likely confused the hell outta him.”

  “Took some balls is all I’m sayin’.”

  “Seems to me that everything takes nuts.”

  “The old man teach ya to move through fear?”

  The kid sat and crossed his legs. He peeled a twig off the birch and picked at his teeth with it. There was a stiffer breeze now and the trees swayed and creaked. When he raised his head to look at his father, his father had a grave, sombre look. He considered his words before he spoke. “Can’t no one bring ya to that. Some things you just gotta get to on yer own.”

  His father stared at him passively. There was a droop to his head and it slipped down in a hard nod but he lifted it back up and stared at the kid again. “Medicine, huh?” he slurred.

  “Yeah,” the kid said.

  “Works good,” his father said. His eyes closed and his head dropped sideways and the kid reached over and straightened it and laid it back against the birch. He kept a hand to his cheek. It was warm and flushed but less hot to the touch than it had been at first light. He kept it there. Then he rose and began to make camp.

  It was late afternoon when his father woke. The kid had the camp set, and there was a fire of birch logs that threw great heat and his father rolled onto his side to face it. His eyes were clearer. He seemed calm, and when he lifted a hand to his face to wipe the sleep away there was no shake to it and he held it out in front of him and stared at it. The kid handed him a cup of water and he drank thirstily. Then he lay on his back again and stared at the sky through the limbs of the birch.

  “The old man told me that everything we need is out here. Trick is learnin’ how to find it and use it.”

  “You savvy?”

  “Some. I can treat a cut. But I could never doctor nobody.”

  “You figure on maybe tryin’ to get to learn it.”

  “Don’t know what I figure,” the kid said. “All’s I know most times is how to shake out what’s in front of me.”

  “That’s lots sometimes.”

  The kid rose and strode into the trees and returned with an armload of wood. He set a few pieces on the blaze and they watched as it took and the heat surged out again. His father moaned. “How you doin’?” he asked.

  “Not worth a shit, really.”

  “Could you eat?”

  “Don’t reckon.”

  “You want some of that hooch?”

  Eldon cranked his neck and scrunched his eyes tight trying to settle on the spruce boughs the kid had laid under him while he slept. “No,” he said.

  His father shifted about and stared at the fire. He was quiet a long time. The kid could hear the creek over the snap of the fire and the rustle of the frail breeze in the trees. He waited. When his father spoke again it was in a whisper and he had to lean close to hear him. “Gotta shake out what’s in front of me,” he s
aid.

  “Amen,” the kid said.

  “Do me a favour?”

  “Sure.”

  “Pour it out. The hooch. Pour it out. Get rid of it.”

  “You sure?” the kid asked.

  “No. I ain’t. But if it ain’t around I can’t reach for it and I wanna go out clean. Or as least as close as I can. I can get through on that Becka juice.”

  “You need some now?”

  “Yeah,” his father said. He took the jar the kid held out and sipped at it. Then he handed it back and settled on the boughs and closed his eyes. The kid could tell when the medicine hit because his father’s breath got deeper and slower. “Tell me a story,” he said dreamily.

  “What kinda story?” the kid asked.

  “Any kind. Any kind at all.”

  He was asleep in minutes while the kid scratched about in the dirt with a stick trying to recall a tale. He sat a long time and watched his father sleep. Then he got up to feed and water the horse and to rinse his face in the creek. When he came back to the fire the sun had sunk below the line of the western ridge and the world was shushed into the purple-grey of early evening and there was only the fire, the trees, and the bent form of his father sleeping. He eased the booze bottles out of the pack. Then he stood with them clutched in his hands, watching his father sleep. He turned and walked slowly to the creek and stood on the smooth stones at the bank holding the bottles, the water silvered in the hushed light.

  14

  HE WAS NINE THE FIRST TIME he and the old man rode horses to the mill town. The old man roused him early and they’d saddled them in the pale yellow dust of the sun. The barn seemingly filled with it. It was late spring and the last of the winter chill hung in the air. The horses were excited and they snorted great clouds of breath and he watched them billow and fade and when the old man walked his horse to the back door he followed, glad to be out in the flare of morning. They rode across the field and into the trees before the old man spoke.