Over the years, the memory hadn’t faded exactly. It had just blurred around the edges a little, like an old picture or a book that had been thumbed through too many times.
But the way it played out still made my blood run cold.
I once read that the best way to get the demons out of your head is to write them down. The worst thing in my head was that experience with my grandfather, so this is what I wrote . . .
The crash of my bedroom door hitting the wall beside my bed as Grandpa threw it open. That’s what woke me up that morning. I was being pulled forcibly from a dream about flying to the sound of something banging loudly by my head. I sat up and yelled out in surprise and, quite frankly, terror.
“Floyd! Wake up, boy.” Grandpa was smiling strangely and swaying a little as he closed the door and tossed a package onto my lap. I peered at him through sleep-blurred eyes, mouth open and chest heaving as I tried to catch my breath.
I had never liked being startled awake. And Grandpa’s
sudden, crashing entry was almost more than I could safely take without a mini heart attack.
“Don’t just look at me, silly! Open it!” He belched into
his fist.
I rubbed a hand across my eyes and looked at him. He had been drinking. And it must have been pretty heavily. I could tell from the way he was hanging on to the end of my bed to hold himself upright. I glanced at the long package in front of me. It wasn’t my birthday and it wasn’t Christmas.
I touched the plain brown paper cautiously.
I tore the paper off in long strips. SNIIIIICK. SNIIIIICK.
I read the words written on the box in my lap. Remington Model Seven Youth Rifle.
“Thanks, Grandpa. We’ll have to do some target practice sometime.” I yawned widely and lay back down, pulling the blanket around my shoulders.
I tried to close my eyes and go back to sleep but he reached past me to pull the gun out of its box. He held it up to point out its finer features.
“Look at this workmanship!” He was clearly proud of his purchase. He breathed his boozy breath in my direction. “This is the best rifle on the market for a beginning hunter! Centre-fire, bolt action, adjustable rifle sights, sling swivel studs, and a hinged floor-plate magazine . . . it’s a beauty, isn’t it?”
What did he say? Sling swivel studs? What did that even mean?
“I even had a sight put on it, just like mine.” He fumbled with a bunch of shells he had pulled out of his pocket. He tried to load them into the rifle.
“Grandpa, maybe you shouldn’t load it right now.” I was sitting up, suddenly wide awake.
“Ssfine,” he muttered at me. He pushed my hands away when I tried to reach for the gun. “I can do it!” he shouted. But the bullets tumbled from his shaking hands and rolled onto the floor. “Dammit!” He tried to crawl under the bed to gather them.
“Grandpa! Just leave them, please!” I looked around the room, desperately. How were my parents sleeping through all the noise he was making?
Grandpa finally got his hand on a bullet and loaded it into the rifle. “There!”
He swung the rifle around the room until the barrel
was pointing right at me. I threw my hands in the
air stupidly.
The gun was loaded. He was drunk. I saw his finger
trembling. I could see it tightening slightly, starting to
put pressure on the trigger.
They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. I was one hundred percent positive I was about to be accidentally shot in the head by my drunken grandfather. But I didn’t see anything except that endless rifle barrel pointed at my face.
“Grandpa. Please put the gun down.”
He looked blearily at me. Then understanding suddenly dawned on him. His mouth dropped open as a look of
horror crossed his face.
He lowered the gun and reached for me. I recoiled against my headboard, my heart still pounding.
“Floyd,” he whispered. “Oh, god. I’m sorry, son. I didn’t mean . . . I wouldn’t have . . .”
I don’t know all the reasons for what happened next. But even then I knew that Grandpa being drunk was part of it. I still had my hand out, waiting for him to hand me the gun. He leaned toward me let me take it from him. I unloaded it and held the shell in my shaking hand. I turned to say something, anything to defuse the situation. And Grandpa was pulling a handgun from under the tail of his shirt.
“Whoa!” I put my hands up again. Another gun? Why would he be carrying that? “Grandpa, what are
you doing?”
Grandpa wasn’t pointing the gun at me. He raised it in his trembling hand, tears running down his face. He held it under his own chin.
“Grandpa, stop!”
“All I do is mess things up. I’m sorry, Floyd.” His finger tightened. I saw the trigger move slightly.
“Stop! Grandpa, it’s okay.” Where was my dad? “Dad!”
“You’d all be better off without me.”
Grandpa was sobbing. But he still held the gun tightly against his throat.
“No . . . no.” I was shaking my head, sobbing along with him. I reached toward him. “Don’t!”
The door flew open and my father burst in. His large frame took up the doorway and blocked my mother who was a step behind him. He took in what was happening. His father crying and holding a gun under his chin. His terrified son kneeling behind the old man on the bed, begging him to give him the gun.
“Floyd, go with your mom,” Dad said calmly.
“D-Dad?” I hiccupped, unable to move.
“Cardinal, take him outside — quickly.” He was talking to my mom, but his eyes never left mine. He moved into the room and gave me a nod and traded places with me on the bed. As I walked out with my mother hugging me close against her, I heard Dad murmuring gently to his father. I looked back to see him sliding an arm around Grandpa’s heaving shoulders.
My mom took me to my aunt’s house for the rest of the night. Grandpa lived to see another day. But those days were short. He took his life fifteen months later with the rifle he had given me that night.
Chapter 9
Chief
I let Charlie drive back. Mouse had to get home and Charlie was a more aggressive driver than I was. I tended to stick to the speed limit, even on the rez. But Charlie drove like he had a horde of flesh-eating zombies chasing him. I didn’t want Mouse to be late and suffer the wrath of his mother, Raynetta. She was actually pretty great but her big pet peeve was her family being late to meals. So Charlie was driving.
We got there in record time. I hopped out of the car with Mouse. Jasper and Charlie wanted to cruise around the rez and offer rides to any of the girls out walking. I felt like walking myself, and maybe checking on my mom at the
community centre.
“Don’t drive it into the ground,” I told them, closing the
passenger door carefully behind me.
“Too late!” Jasper yelled over the roar of the engine as they peeled away from Mouse’s house, laughing.
“Want to come in for a bit?” Mouse asked. Hope was written all over his face.
I hated to disappoint him but remembering Grandpa had me thinking about Aaron again. I really wanted to try to talk to my dad about what could be done. But I needed my mom’s advice first. Dad didn’t want to hear what I had to say and
I knew Mom could help me figure out how to make him listen.
“Sorry, buddy. I need to go talk to my mom.”
He didn’t say a word, but his face kind of crumpled. I hated that I had done that, taken away his contagious smile.
“We’ll do something soon, okay? Promise.”
There was the smile again, like the sun rising. “Okay!” He grinned. He leaped up the stairs to his front door.
I wat
ched Mouse scurry into the house. I knew he was bullied at school. He was way smaller than the other kids his age. And he was more sensitive than most. When he got to high school, I would be able look out for him. But I couldn’t stop what was happening every time he left home for middle school. I wished I could.
I had endured the usual ribbing and the odd snide remark like anyone else when I was Mouse’s age. But there were a couple of townies who had had a problem with anyone from the rez. They took great pleasure in shoving me into lockers and knocking my books out of my hands. It had escalated to name calling — things like Squaw or Pocahontas, which I assumed was because of my long hair. I put up with a lot back then. At least until I hit puberty and shot up six inches. Once I started shoving back, they moved on to easier targets.
Like Mouse.
And I knew it wasn’t just the kids who could be idiots. When I was younger, I had had to sit through a class as a substitute teacher ranted about how people on the reserve should get off their asses and stop living off taxpayers. How he was sick of
paying for a bunch of “lazy Indians” to sit around the rez and drink away their government income. Charlie and Jasper had been in the same class. I had watched Charlie get redder and redder in the face as the teacher went on and on. Jasper’s hands made such tight fists he ended up with fingernail cuts on his palms.
I told my parents and we never had that teacher again. My mom saw to that.
I headed for the community centre, saying hello to friends and neighbours as I walked past. I knew everyone in the
community was thinking about the girls who had died and the one who was still alive. I knew they were remembering the other kids we’d lost to suicide over the last year. I hoped a few were still thinking about Aaron. I missed him so much in that moment, it actually hurt.
The community centre was an old building that sat in the middle of the rez like a watchtower. I’d heard my mom talk about the plans they had for it when it was built. But the money never came through, and it never became what it was supposed to be. We all knew it was there but no one except the elders used it. They’d gather to play cards or gossip. We didn’t have a church, so services were held there on Sundays. Sometimes there were potluck dinners there. But there weren’t any formal programs or professional help. Kids tended to steer clear. It had turned into a spot for their grandparents, not for themselves.
I had always thought that the centre could have been a haven for the kids on the rez. It should have been a safe place to go when things got loud or tough at home. A place to learn new skills or share traditional ones. A place to get counselling or learn more about colleges or universities. Maybe tutoring. Definitely sports. A place that would help us see that we had something to offer and a future ahead of us.
I swung the door open and stepped inside. It was quiet. With the suicides last night, I thought no one would be there. The women would be with Theresa, trying to comfort her and bringing her food. But it turns out my mother was getting things ready for them to meet there later. They would drink tea and talk or whatever the women did when they got together.
I heard my mom’s voice before I saw her. She was in one of the back rooms. And she was loud. I stopped dead. I had rarely heard her using anything but her usual soft and respectful voice. But she was shouting — either in anger or frustration.
“You’re the chief, Victor!” she yelled. “It’s up to you to do something!” She was talking to my dad! I had never heard her raise her voice to my dad in my entire life.
“These kids need something to live for!” she went on. “We need a real counsellor for them to talk to. We need resources and jobs. We need to show them what they have to contribute to our community and the world. We need to show them where they come from and where they could go. We need to show them that they have a future. We can’t continue like this, Victor! Our community is dying!”
“Cardinal,” my father tried to break into my mom’s rant. But even from out in the hallway, I could tell she wasn’t finished yet.
“Our son is hereditary chief, Victor. He has the knowledge, but it’s time for him to share it. He needs to start learning from you how to preserve our culture and pass on our traditions.
And you can learn from him. Listen to him! Let him help!
He knows what the kids need more than we do.”
I had come to ask my mom’s advice, and found her doing what I hadn’t had the nerve to do myself. I should have said exactly what she was saying. I knew I could help somehow. But it became clear that I needed a plan. If I was hereditary chief, I should be standing up for our people. I should be supporting and helping them. Now was my chance. I could go in and, very calmly, ask my dad to listen to what I had to say. Maybe with my mom’s support, he’d finally let me help.
I took a step toward the room.
Then I heard my father’s voice. “He’s a child, Cardinal.
He has no idea what this community needs. Neither do you. I’m the Chief! I will not have my wife yelling at me like a harpy!
Let me do my job!”
“Which job, Victor? You’ve taken on too much. You should have stuck to being hereditary chief and found ways to pass on what you know. Why wasn’t that enough? Now you’re chief councilor too? It’s too much for you. It would be too much for anyone. We’re falling apart.”
“I know that! But Floyd is too young to take any of this on! Let it go!”
I stepped back. It was clear Dad wasn’t going to listen to me. Not now. Not if he wouldn’t even listen to my mother.
I couldn’t imagine the stress he must be under. But I also couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t let anyone try to help.
I left as quietly as I could.
Dear Diary
Someday I’ll figure out how to start these things without sounding like a thirteen-year-old girl.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of my mom confronting my dad like that. I can’t believe he said those things about me. I really can’t believe he yelled at my mom. My parents never fight and I’ve never heard him talk to her like that. Just for a second, he sounded like he hated both of us.
That’s stupid. I know it is. My dad loves us. But I think what’s going on here — all the people we’ve lost — is weighing pretty heavily on him. He’s lashing out. I want to cut him some slack. But I want to help and he’s shutting me out.
If I ever have a son, I’ll listen to him.
Even if I’m falling apart at the seams.
Chapter 10
The Guys
I wandered down the road, listening for the sound of the beater.
I needed to hear what my friends thought before I made any more plans to waylay my father.
I knew how to find one of my friends, at least. I swung back around toward Mouse’s place. I’d seen the kid eat and figured he had probably had more than enough time to finish lunch. Sure enough, he was sitting on the old swing hanging from
the maple tree in his front yard. He was frowning down at a notebook in his lap. He erased something and gently blew away the eraser dust before leaning down and sketching something onto the paper.
“What are you working on?” I asked.
Mouse jumped and almost fell off the swing. He quickly closed the sketchpad. “Nothing,” he said, pushing his hair out of his eyes and leaving a smudge of lead on his forehead.
“You’ve got a little something there.” I pointed toward the spot on his face. He rubbed at it. Now he had a bigger smudge.
“I’ll get it,” I laughed. I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and cleaned him up.
“Thanks, Floyd.” He smiled up at me. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to the guys about something. I thought I’d see if you wanted to come.”
“Me?” He looked completely shocked. “Why?”
“You’re one of the guys too, right?” I asked
him.
His face lit up. “Well . . . yeah. I guess so.” His chest puffed with pride as he leaped off the swing. “Let me just put this stuff inside and tell my mom.” He was running toward the house before I could answer.
I wondered how well Mouse knew the girls with the
suicide pact. I wondered if they had been bullied like he was. He didn’t like to talk about it, but I had heard his mom
talking to mine. Mouse had come home crying a few times and with bruises a couple of others. Maybe I could teach him how to throw a punch or something so the kids at his school would stop bothering him. I had tried talking to him but he clammed up as soon as I mentioned it. If I ever caught those kids, they’d better run a lot faster than me or they’ll be the ones going home with bruises.
We found the beater before we found the guys. They had left it parked at the side of the road. Mouse spun around in a slow circle.
“Where are they?” he asked. There really weren’t very many places they could have gone. They had left the car at the edge of a field.
“I have no idea,” I told him. We settled down on the ground beside the car to wait. They had to come back at some point,
I figured.
I settled back against the tire well of the beater and stuck a piece of grass in my mouth. With no idea when the guys would be back, I figured we at least had time for a story. “So, Mouse, did I ever tell you about the time some kids at school teased me about my braids?”
“No. They teased you?” Mouse frowned and touched his own braid.
“Yeah, man! There were a whole bunch of them. Started pushing me around and pulling my hair. They said I looked like a girl.”
“You don’t look like a girl!”
“I know! I look like a freakin’ warrior with this hair!”
“I’ve got long hair.” Mouse smiled.
“’Cause you’re a warrior too, man!”
“You think so?”
“For sure. For us, long hair is about spirituality and power, Mouse. Anyone who makes fun of your hair is an idiot who doesn’t know anything about us or our culture.”
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