Motorcycles & Sweetgrass

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  The man disappeared into the old woman’s room, closing the door behind him.

  Willie and Tim and a number of other relatives gathered outside Lillian’s bedroom, unsure how to proceed.

  “Should we go in?”

  “Who the fuck was that?”

  “We should go in.”

  “Should I call the police?”

  “Tim, why don’t you go in?”

  “Somebody do something!”

  In the end, nobody did anything.

  Maggie was mystified as to how this six-foot-two-inch, black-leather-wearing motorcyclist with social interaction issues knew her mother. Part of her wanted to tell her brothers to go in and throw out whoever the hell that was. There were certain social graces to visiting a stranger’s house. You didn’t just barge into places like you owned them and manhandle people. But another part of Maggie, she didn’t know from where or from what, told her not to worry.

  Maybe that was the Anishnawbe side of her.

  The stranger stood in front of the door, unmoving. Lillian lay in her bed, also unmoving. The only sound was the ancient clock ticking the seconds away as the two surveyed each other. Instinctively, she reached over to the bedside table and put in her false teeth.

  “You ain’t one of my kids. Or my grandkids. Or any niece or nephew. Or cousin. And I don’t know a lot of White people who dress like that, Black or Chinese either. So I’m guessing we’ve never met. So I’m guessing you must be lost,” she said in English, with an accent.

  For the first time, the man under the helmet and leather communicated. He shook his shiny black helmeted head once.

  “You gonna take that silly thing off and talk to me, or we gonna be in here all day staring at each other?”

  The helmet tilted back ever so slightly, giving the impression that the man might have been laughing. Then, slowly, he took off his leather gloves. The skin underneath appeared to belong to a White man, or possibly a pale Asian. From the neck down, they all look alike, Lillian believed. The man flexed his fingers for a second, then grasped his helmet with both hands. Lillian watched, curious but patient. It took a moment or two for the constricting helmet to give, then he slowly lifted it off his head.

  His hair was past his shoulders, a sandy-blond colour, like freshly baked bannock. His eyes were blue as the lake outside her window. And his face… Caucasian, young—maybe twenty-five or a young thirty—and handsome, with a strong chin and masculine nose. This man was definitely in the wrong house.

  “I can breathe again,” he said. He scratched just above his left ear, then tried to put his hair back in some semblance of order. “I hate helmet head, don’t you?”

  “Young man, are you selling something?” she asked in English.

  “Nope,” he replied. He put the helmet down on a large mirrored dresser, and approached Lillian, stopping beside her bed. “I’ve come to say goodbye.”

  “Are you going someplace?”

  “No, more like coming back. It’s been a while since I was last here.” The man gazed out the window, and saw a dock, the boats and, off in the distance, a float plane. “It’s changed a lot. And so have you.”

  Comprehension flooded the mind of the old woman. She knew who he was. It was him. He’d come.

  “Gigii bidgoshin!” she said.

  “Poochgo nigiibizhaa,” he answered, saying, yes, he had had to come.

  “I didn’t think… Where have you been?”

  For a moment, he hesitated. “I’ve… I was sick for a while.”

  Lillian reached up and touched the man’s face, his hair, as if trying to find somebody else in there. “We’ve all been sick. And this, all this? What’s up with this?”

  For the first time, the young man smiled. And it was a familiar smile. “Different times, different faces. I am nothing if not adaptable. Do you like?”

  She shook her head. “Never liked blonds.”

  A loud interrupting knock was heard at the door. “Mom, you okay?” It was Willie.

  Lillian answered quickly. “Yes. Go away.”

  “All that brood out there yours?” asked the man.

  She nodded. “Most of them.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “Had to do something. Baking pies gets kind of boring after a while.”

  “I suppose it does. I guess you can’t go swimming forever,” he added, sadly. “How was that school of yours?”

  “Educational, in more ways than one.” Over his shoulder, Lillian could see the helmet resting on the small table. She pointed at it. “Your helmet, that thing you painted on it. It’s hard to tell, the way it’s drawn, but that’s a raven, isn’t it?”

  The man was surprised. “Yeah. How would you know?”

  Smiling, she leaned back in her bed, her head almost disappearing into the pillow. “I used to get around. Read a lot. That’s West Coast art, ain’t it? Believe it or not, I’ve even seen a sea otter!” She sighed. The clock seemed to tick louder. “So what happens now?”

  “What always happens.”

  “I suppose. Why should I be any different, huh?” She saw him pick up a photograph from her dresser, one of her at a much younger age. “You came all this way to say goodbye?”

  He nodded. “You called. I came.” Looking at the disease-ravaged woman in front of him, the man could still see the pretty young girl he’d once known.

  She hesitated, then asked, “Tell me the truth, do you hate me? For going away?”

  The man put the picture down and once again looked out the window. “No. That was a very long time ago. And you called me back… from where I was. I guess that’s fair.”

  “And here I am, leaving you again.” The man did not respond. “Neither time did I have a choice. Tell me, what will you do when… when I go?”

  The man turned from the window and faced her again. “I will do what my nature will tell me to do. That’s all any of us can do. I know that’s not what your boyfriend believes, but…”

  Lillian put up her hand, cutting him off. “Oh, don’t start that again. Please. I am so sick of that argument. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just a good person with a lot of good things to say. You really need to get a better grasp of this whole situation. There was room for the both of you. Quit being a child and give him a chance.”

  “I don’t think we hang out in the same bars.”

  Both fell into a silence.

  Finally, the man said, “I am what I am. You of all people should know that.”

  Her face softened. “I know. You’re right. That’s part of your charm.” He smiled, and she smiled back. “It’s so good to see you again. Blond hair, blue eyes or not. I missed you. I think we all missed you. You shouldn’t go away like that.”

  “A person’s gotta feel wanted.”

  Lillian shook his head. “A person’s gotta make himself be wanted. And you were always wanted. By me and everyone.”

  “It didn’t feel like it.”

  “Did you come back all this way to bitch?”

  “I came back because you called me.”

  “You didn’t have to come back. I didn’t think you would.”

  “Of course I had to come back. You’re the last person who really believes in me. As a person. After you…” He shrugged. “Besides, sounds like you’re the one doing all the bitching.”

  “Yeah, well, what are you gonna do about it, Mr. Blond Hair?” Gritting her false teeth, she grabbed a small throw pillow lying on the bed and tried to toss it at him. But the ravages of time and sickness, combined with the law of gravity, resulted in the pillow merely rolling off the bed onto the floor.

  The man picked it up and held it. “Nice try. I remember when you could skip a stone clear across the river.”

  “That was a long time and a lot of stones ago.”

  “I suppose. Still, it’s nice to see that determination in your eyes. The furnace may have some wear and tear but the fire still burns hot.”

  Her breath was now growing wheezy. “I
bet you say that to all the old dying women.”

  Kneeling, the man took Lillian’s hand. “No, just the pretty ones.”

  “What’s going to happen? To me? Now?”

  With what strength she had left, she squeezed the man’s fingers. He caressed the top of her withered hand in response.

  “Like I said, what always happens.”

  Her voice was now barely a whisper. “No more riddles, please.”

  “In all my time on this land, I have learned there are three constants in this universe: getting fat, mosquitoes and saying goodbye,” he replied, his voice low. “I think even your buddy Jesus would agree with that one.”

  “My daughter…”

  “Yes?”

  Lillian closed her eyes, summoning effort to speak. “She’s not doing very well. Too busy. This community. Too busy. Everybody wants something from her. She thinks life is in that Band Office building. It isn’t. Killed her husband practically. And my son. My grandson. They need to believe…”

  “I have no idea where you’re going with this.”

  “You…”

  “Yes, me?”

  “After I’m… after… I want… I want you to…” She was rapidly losing her ability to talk.

  The man leaned closer. “What? What do you want?”

  The old woman reached up and grabbed the back of his blond head, gripping as tightly as her frail muscles would allow. “A favour… no, two favours… okay… promise me… please…”

  He put his ear by her mouth and heard her dying requests.

  From outside, Virgil and Dakota had seen the man enter through the side door, and watched him barge into their grandmother’s room. They had watched the family fight in whispers about what to do, and shuffle around her door like bees around a rotten apple. Being thirteen, they were intensely curious about what was happening in there. Virgil’s grandmother’s bedroom window was situated at the edge of the deck, and could be peeked into with a little effort.

  “I wonder what’s going on in there,” said Dakota.

  “Let’s find out,” said Virgil.

  Dakota nervously looked at the window. “Should we?”

  Virgil nodded. “Yes, we should. Come on.”

  Conspiratorially, they made their way to the edge of the deck, directly under the window. It was Virgil who took the first peek. What he saw inside would shock and puzzle him till the end of his days.

  His dying grandmother, patriarch of the Benojee clan and widow of Leonard Benojee, was locked in a passionate embrace with the motorcyclist. The man’s long blond hair was obscuring what was happening, but Virgil was sure, positive in fact, that the man was kissing his grandmother, and quite passionately too. It was the kind of kiss you see only in movies and on television, the eyes-closed, toe-curling kind.

  This was not the grandmother Virgil was used to.

  “What’s happening in there? What do you see?” Dakota was trying to push Virgil aside, eager to peek.

  Unwilling to move, Virgil continued to peer through the window, unsure of what he was witnessing.

  Lillian’s window was open, and as she often did when annoyed, Dakota raised her voice to an almost whining pitch. Her voice floated through the mosquito screen, across Lillian’s room and into the man’s ear. Still deep in the kiss, he opened his eyes, and his expression registered that he saw Virgil’s face at the window. The man raised an eyebrow, and Virgil quickly retreated, his heart beating loudly.

  “What? What did you see?”

  Virgil flattened himself against the side of the house in case the man looked out the window for him. He urged Dakota to be quiet, and dragged her against the wall too.

  “What? What? Tell me!”

  “Shhhh.”

  They both stood there, quiet, until they heard Lillian’s door open and close, and the sound of the man’s boots fading down the hallway.

  “Come on, Virgil. Tell me what you saw!”

  Not knowing how to tell his cousin what he’d seen without sounding crazy, he just said, “Nothing.”

  FIVE

  Three days later they buried Lillian Benojee beside her long-departed husband, Leonard. The whole village turned out for the ceremony. The church was filled to capacity. You don’t live for almost eight decades without making a lot of friends, or conversely, a lot of enemies. Lillian had definitely been the “friends” type. After the service, it seemed the whole community moved in a surge toward the graveyard, following the hearse. Maggie walked with Virgil and the rest of the family. Several hundred others followed respectfully behind.

  Sammy Aandeg was there too, dressed in what could have been a thirty-year-old black suit. One that hadn’t been worn in thirty years. Ten years of living at the residential school, plus over half a century of living with the effects of that school and finding new ways to damage his body hadn’t left much of the young, defiant boy that Lillian had once known. Instead, there shuffled an old, broken-down man who reeked of alcohol, of urine and of just about every unpleasant smell a human body could emit or absorb. And yet, somehow he’d managed to throw himself together and make it to this funeral.

  Some people might point to Sammy as an example of what happened to the children that had been sent away to such schools, and had never really come home because they suffered from a form of shell-shock. Other less-sympathetic folks merely pointed to him as a crazy old drunk. Luckily, he didn’t care. He just mumbled to himself, rubbing the fingers of his right hand together non-stop.

  The mourners hung their heads as the priest said his comforting, priestly things. Some remembered Lillian as the source of their life. Others thought they should have stopped by to visit more often. Still others regarded the funeral as symbolizing the passing of a generation, of a library of culture and of an Aboriginal lifestyle rapidly becoming extinct. All were saddened by the death of a good person. There were so few of those special people still left in the world.

  The entire Otter Lake Debating Society was there. Lillian was Marty’s aunt and Gene’s second cousin, as the complex family trees of Reserve members intertwined. “She once told me I was her favourite nephew,” said Marty, though everybody knew Lillian had said that to all her nieces and nephews at one point or another.

  “When my son died, she stayed with me. For two days. I never forgot that,” Marissa Crazytrain told Maggie. Marissa had no close relatives, so when the tragedy occurred she had few shoulders to cry on. Except for Lillian. The very thought of losing one of her sons had sent a chill down Lillian’s spine, so she showed up on Marissa’s doorstep and cared for her until she was strong enough to be by herself. She even organized most of the child’s funeral. Maggie remembered that now, wishing she’d been around to help in Lillian’s time of need, instead of on her honeymoon.

  The testimonies dragged on, but Virgil was too distracted to listen. He’d never worked up the nerve to go in and see his grandmother, especially after what he’d observed through the window. The stranger had left immediately after that, in the same abrupt manner in which he had arrived. Virgil and Dakota, peeking around the corner from the safety of the deck, had watched him with eager intensity.

  As the stranger straddled his bike, helmet in hand, he glanced toward the corner of the house, where they were hiding. A small smile crept onto his handsome face, and he cocked the same eyebrow as before.

  “See you around,” he said. Then he put his helmet over his head and kick-started his bike. It roared to life and took the blond man down the driveway and out of what had started out as a boring afternoon.

  Who was he? the boy wondered. He and Dakota discussed that very question for the rest of the day, but Dakota’s primary contribution to solving the mystery of the motorcyclist consisted of repeating, “He’s cute,” which Virgil found of little use.

  Inside the house, everybody was buzzing over the appearance of this man, and his actions. They asked Lillian, but she just smiled enigmatically.

  “That would be spoiling the surprise,” she managed
to say. And then she added one final word: “Magic.”

  Later that night, as she slept, her spirit and her body became two separate things. And the world moved on.

  And now everyboday was saying goodbye. Maggie had known her mother was dying, but she still wasn’t prepared. They had had one more brief conversation before her end came, and what saddened Maggie was that it was entirely inconsequential. Virgil was growing up quickly and needed bigger clothes. Lillian had urged her daughter to buy him clothes that were a size or two bigger—that way they would fit longer, as all mothers knew. But Virgil hated baggy clothes, how he always felt lost in them. Maggie would tease him that he’d never make it as a hip hop star, and Virgil would fake a laugh.

  “He’s my son and I know what he likes.”

  “What he likes and what he needs can be two different things.”

  Maggie now regretted having such a confrontational discussion with Lillian, so soon before… She should have just said yes and then gone ahead and bought Virgil an extra-large everything. That was the kind of relationship the two of them had, and Maggie accepted that on an intellectual level, as she was sure Lillian had. But funerals and dead mothers are not intellectual exercises. So Maggie was awash in regret, sadness and more than a little bit of guilt.

  She could tell Virgil was deep in his own thoughts and she squeezed his hand reassuringly. The boy looked up at his mother and returned a sad smile. Both were aware that behind them and to the right stood a tombstone bearing the words clifford second—beloved husband and father, with some dates carved below. During the ceremony Virgil had been glancing at it surreptitiously. And so had Maggie. Both dutifully made pilgrimages to it every year on the anniversary of Clifford’s death, and on Graveyard Day, when local custom dictated that close relatives place fresh flowers on the graves of loved ones.

  Virgil had loved his father, as all sons should. Maggie had loved her husband… for the first few years anyway. Half a decade into their marriage the Clifford Second she had married had become the Clifford Second she was married to. The Band Office had become more of a home to him than the home the three of them shared. He had dreams for the community and the Anishnawbe nation, but not so many for his family.