Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

  He worked fast and when the last few shovels of dirt obscured his father from view he felt empty. He piled as much as he could on top of him and then began to arrange the stones into a mound. There was anguish in him now that he had never felt before, an aching down the middle of his throat, and he let himself weep. He cursed at the world, at his own sorry history, and at himself for caring. Then he took hold of the large rock he’d hauled over and he squatted around it and pushed upward with his legs, screaming as he lifted it. He held it momentarily in his arms, grimacing, letting himself feel the hard burden of the rock and the pull of the muscles in his face and the long tendons in his neck and arms. Then he set it down on top of the mound of stones.

  When he stood up he felt weightless. The sear of sorrow gone now and replaced with the clear wash of air in his lungs. He stepped to the lip of the ridge and stood there in front of that incredible space.

  “War’s over, Eldon,” he said finally. “I hope when you get to where you’re goin’ that she’s standing there waitin’ for you.”

  It was all the prayer he had in him. And though there were more words to say he couldn’t reach them now and so he stood in the stillness, looking out over the valley a last time. Then he marched to the campsite to clear it and gather what was left into the pack for the journey back.

  26

  IT TOOK HIM TWO FULL DAYS to get back to the farm. When he got there it was mid-morning and he eased the horse out of the line of trees at the edge of the field and sat there looking at the old buildings and the sweep of the acres, gone brown and mouldering in the late fall chill. The cows were in the outside pens. There was a thin curl of smoke from the chimney of the house and he dismounted and walked the mare across the field and into the pen at the back of the barn. He could hear hammering coming from inside. He removed the tack from the horse and hung it on the top rail of the fence and brushed her out. He patted the mare on the rump and she walked off toward the water trough and he slipped quietly through the open back door of the barn.

  The other horses were gone, likely sent out into the back pasture. The stalls were empty and he could see the old man working with a pile of new lumber, replacing boards on the partitions and stalls. He stood in the shadows and watched the old man work. His face was rough from not shaving and his clothes were rumpled as if he hadn’t changed them in days. He was intent on the work and did not notice the kid enter.

  The old man hammered a single nail loosely into both ends of the plank. Then he lightly pounded one end to a post and walked to the opposite end, lifted it into place, and hammered the nail in before going back and securing the first end. His movements were familiar, a smooth and effortless rhythm afforded to the task at hand. He was bow-legged and bent some with age but he knew how to work. His face was intent and the kid remembered that look from all the years of farm labour they’d done together. Work was serious business. That’s what he’d taught him. “Ya just get’er done,” was his favourite saying and the kid had accepted it as a motto by the time he was ten. He had the old man to thank for the feeling of bending his back to a chore or a task and the sense of rightness that came from it. Watching him now, the kid saw how much of the steadfast old man was a part of him and he slipped into the tack room and retrieved his tool belt and put it on. When the old man’s back was turned he walked over and hefted the next board in his hands and stood there, holding it at the ready. When the old man turned there was only a momentary hesitation, a surprised flick of the eyes and the hint of a grin at the corners of his mouth. Then he took one end of the board and they walked it into place together and nailed it.

  They worked in silence, going through the pile of boards quickly. They hauled the old boards out to stack in the back of the truck and the old man pointed to a five-gallon pail of paint and the kid trundled it into the barn while the old man retrieved brushes from the shed beside the house. The kid stirred the paint until the old man stood beside him again.

  “He’s gone,” the kid said without looking up.

  “I figured,” the old man said. “I hope it wasn’t too hard for ya.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  The kid hauled the pail to the far end of the corridor. They went to work again. They painted opposite sides of the boards and every now and then their eyes would meet and the old man would nod. They painted hard and fast and when they reached the end of the job the kid resealed the pail and carried it to the shed where the old man was washing out the rollers and brushes with a hose.

  “You must be near to starved,” the old man said.

  “Near enough,” the kid said. “Whattaya got?”

  “Got some deer left over that’d make a dang fine sandwich and I done up a soup the other day that needs to be ate.” He handed the hose and a basin to the kid and waited while he washed up and handed him a tattered towel to dry with before going through the ritual himself.

  “I got to get the mare squared away,” the kid said.

  “I’ll get the food set out then,” the old man said.

  The kid stood in the tack room after he’d stabled the horse. Their riding dusters hung side by side. The old man had always preferred a rope hackamore to a bridle and it rested on the same hook and draped atop his duster. The kid went over and took it in his hands. It was coarse and dry. The kid had used a hackamore for years. The old man had taught him to ride bareback first. Said it let him learn the rhythm of a horse better. It had. A hackamore made a rider work more closely with a horse, know it, understand its moods and temperament, and learn to cooperate with it and vice versa. So that when he went to a bit and bridle at twelve the old man had just cocked an eyebrow at him. “Ya want a horse on a bit in the backcountry,” the kid had said. “Something happens out there like comin’ upon a bear or a cougar a guy wants to know he’s got control. ’Sides, it’s better for the horse to know there’s a boss out there.”

  “Makes me wonder who’d be the boss of the bear or the cougar,” the old man had said. The kid wondered at the nature of things that stuck in the mind.

  When he got to the house he slipped out of his boots. The old man was rattling pots around in the kitchen and the kid set the cutlery on the table, the heft in his hand reassuring and solid. The old routine felt easy and natural. The old man ladled soup into bowls and carried them to the table while the kid fetched the sandwiches. The plates and bowls were heavy clay pottered by a neighbour long dead, the old man had once told him. While he sipped spoonfuls of the soup, the kid watched the old man eat. He moaned lightly while he chewed. When he bent his head to the bowl he scooped soup quickly, the clink of the spoon against the bowl in counterpoint to his satisfied grunts. The kid set his spoon down. “He told me, ya know.”

  The old man gazed at him and pushed his bowl aside. “I always hoped he’d be the one to,” he said.

  “You ever see her in me?”

  “Near every day.”

  “Did it hurt like it hurt him?”

  “I could see you move, see ya change, and it was like watchin’ part of her claim its place in the world.”

  The kid nodded. “I heard how you got your name,” was all he could think to say.

  The old man rubbed at the bald top of his head down to the rim of hair above his ear. “Kinda lost its use same time as the hair left,” he said.

  “Did he ever tell ya the whole story? His life. What happened to him. What he done.”

  “That’s what he always kept locked away. He had a weight to him like he was luggin’ sacks of grain uphill but he never spoke of it. Not to me leastways.”

  “I don’t think he ever told no one.”

  They finished their meal in silence and then stood and walked out onto the porch. They sat in the rockers and the kid looked around at the farm. He lit a smoke and he began to tell the old man the story of his journey with his father. The old man listened and did not interrupt and when he was finished the old man asked if he wanted to walk a while.

  They walked the perimeter of the yard, pa
st the chicken roost, the tool shed, the tractor shed, and along the line of rail fence to the barn. The kid regarded everything solemnly. “I don’t know as he ever got what he wanted in the end,” the kid said.

  “Whattaya think that was?” the old man asked.

  They stopped and they both put a foot on the bottom rail of the fence and gazed out across the acres. The kid shook his head. “Don’t know. It’s all jumbled up in there. Maybe I was s’posed to forgive him.”

  “Do ya?” the old man asked.

  “Don’t know that either. Kinda like a thousand-pound word to me right now.”

  “It’s okay if ya figger I oughta been the one to tell ya. It’s okay if ya think that. I wrestled with it for a lotta years, waitin’ on him to break and let ya know the lot of it.”

  “You don’t need forgivin’,” the kid said. “You were my father all these years.”

  The old man’s eyes shone. “It’s what I hoped to be,” he said.

  “There’s a stone in the pack,” the kid said. “It’s from the grave. I brung it for ya.”

  “For me? Why’d ya wanna do something like that?”

  “I figured you mighta lost something too.”

  The old man clamped his jaws together. He nodded. The cattle were moving from the back pasture and they could hear them bawling through the trees. “We’ll keep it on the hearth,” he said. “That way we can share it, talk of it if we need to. Thank you, Frank.”

  The kid looked down at his feet. Then he raised his head and looked at the old man and they held the gaze silently.

  “I ain’t sure how to feel,” the kid said.

  “Sometimes when things get taken away from you it feels like there’s a hole at your centre where you can feel the wind blow through, that’s sure,” the old man said.

  “Whattaya do about that?”

  “Me, I always went to where the wind blows.” The old man put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and turned him to face him square on. “Don’t know as I ever got an answer but it always felt better bein’ out there.”

  The kid nodded. They looked at each other. The horse neighed softly in the barn and the old man pulled the kid to him and clasped his arms around him and rocked side to side. The kid could smell the oil and grease and tobacco on him and it was every smell he recalled growing up with and he closed his eyes and pulled it all into him.

  He walked out into the pasture and got the old man’s grey mare, brushed her out and saddled her, and led her out to the paddock. He pulled a hat down low over his eyes and mounted, urging the mare to the gate, and he leaned down and opened it and rode through into the field. The light across the horizon was a wide flush of pink and magenta beneath the banked tier of cloud and the lowering sun threw shards of light upward so that the sky seemed curtained. He rode across the field to the line of trees. When he got there he turned the horse and regarded the farm. He let his eyes trail across the fields to the back ten acres his father had fenced and thought of that time when he had been almost happy. Then he wheeled the horse and kicked her up the trail.

  He sat the mare easy. The roll of her gait was comforting and they climbed steadily. When they breached the rim of trees at the top of the ridge, the last of the clouds parted and sun reclaimed the western sky. The clouds were dappled now in a burnished gold and he thought that this was all the cathedral he’d ever need.

  The ridge formed one side of a deep narrow valley. It was a half-mile across at its widest point and there was a stream that ran its length through thickets of alder and red willow with a swath of meadow, level and true as a table, leading to the scree and talus that marked the bottom of the far ridge. It was the old man’s favourite ride when he’d gotten too old for riding into the depths of the backcountry. He nudged the horse forward and kept his eye on the vista.

  The light weakened. He could feel the thrust of evening working its way through the cut of the valley and he watched the shapes of things alter. The sun sat blood red near the lip of the world and in that rose and canted light he sat there filled with wonder and a welling sorrow. He wiped his face with the palm of his hand and he stared down across the valley. Soon the light had nudged down deeper into shadow and it was like he existed in a dream world, hung there above that peaceful space where the wind ruled, and he could feel it push against him. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he looked down into the valley again he thought he could see the ghostly shapes of people riding horses through the trees. They angled east into the valley with dogs strewn out in ragged lines ahead and behind them and children running after them waving sticks, the shouts of them riding the wind to the rim of the ridge. Close on that the clack of the horses’ unshod hoofs on the loose and scrabbled stone and the drag and bump of travois poles and the shouts of young men on rearing ponies. There were women walking stately beside the horses, stooping to gather herbs and berries in hide pouches slung against their hips, the dip and sway of their travelling song finding the push of thermals and rising to him. He watched them ride into the swale and ease the horses to the water while the dogs and children ran in the rough grass. The men and women on horseback dismounted and their shouts came to him laden with hope and good humour. He raised a hand to the idea of his father and mother and a line of people he had never known, then mounted the horse and rode back through the glimmer to the farm where the old man waited, a deck of cards on the scarred and battered table.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In the Ojibway world you go inward in order to express outward. That journey can be harrowing sometimes but it can also be the source of much joy, freedom, and light. There are many who have been there to share on my inward journey and without their light I may not have found the wherewithal and courage to brave the darkness and shadows. Suffice to say, the re-emergence has been amazing and this story was born out of long nights of soul searching and reflection. I am grateful as always to my steadfast, indefatigable agent and friend, John Pearce, who’s been there every inch of that inward journey and always when I re-emerged to take up the writer’s craft again. You made me strong enough to write this book. As well, to those great friends who have also been part of that journey and always been there for me though sometimes I didn’t know it: Nick Pitt, Rodger W. Ross, Dawn Maracle, Shelagh Rogers, Charlie Cheffens, Joseph Boyden, Thomas King, and Fiona Kirkpatrick Parsons. I owe my current state of openness and light to the presence of Rick Turner, Arjun Singh, Waubgeshig Rice, Kim Wheeler, Daniela Ginta, Blanca Schorcht and Vaughan Begg, Mackenzie Green, Michelle Merry, Deb Green, Jane Davidson, Herman Michell, Peter Mutrie, and, especially, Yvette Lehmann.

  Thanks to all the folks at Westwood Creative Artists, the Thompson-Nicola Public Library in Kamloops, and all my students and workshop participants for the ongoing motivation to be more.

  Heartfelt gratitude and deep indebtedness to my uber editor, Ellen Seligman, for finding me and this book. I owe you many dinners. To all the folks at McClelland and Stewart and Random House of Canada, the Canada Council, the B.C. Arts Council, thanks for the support.

  Lastly, this book would not have been possible if it weren’t for the presence of Debra Powell in my life during its writing. Long may you shine.