Fearless Warriors

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  It wasn’t till I was twenty-two that I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life, or the next little part of it anyway. There was an opening on my reserve for a Special Constable, a police officer for the village. I kind of liked that idea, because I was always driving around running into deer and rabbits, but I never had a gun. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone, so I signed up.

  Next I was sent to Toronto for some training. Evidently it’s not kosher to just hand a gun over—you have to learn how to use it, not to mention all sorts of laws and things. After I got over the first couple of days of culture shock, I got to like Toronto. I’d go for all these long walks, trying to figure the place out. I’d match names of streets and places with names I’d heard on the radio or television.

  On one of my walks I came to a place called lower Jarvis. It’s not one of the healthier or wealthier places in Toronto, but I figured who’s going to bother a six-foot, two-inch, long-haired Indian. Probably another Indian, come to think of it. I walked by hookers, drunks, pushers and a variety of other strange people who made me wonder for the thousandth time how white people could possibly have beaten us.

  I was down around Queen when this wino called to me. He was sitting against a building, almost hidden in the shadows. “Hey Buddy, got any spare change?” I thought people only said that in the movies, but, being the kind-hearted guy I am, I took a loonie out of my pocket and bent over to hand it to him. That’s when I saw what he was leaning against. It was a large brown wall, with chunks missing from the edges. The nearby street lamp illuminated most of it, but you had to be in the right position to see it properly, it was so big.

  There in front of me was an old friend, an old friend that had grown up big. The whole side of that wall, about nine feet high, was the head and neck of a horse, but not just any horse. “The Stallion” had returned.

  The spray paint looked to be less than a year old, but the eyes said it was much older. Again it was the eyes that told me something. They were darker, sharper than I recalled. “The Stallion,” I remembered, had eyes that gleamed exhilaration and freedom. Instead, this one yelled defiance and anger. It glared back at me, almost like it was daring me to do something. In a way, it frightened me. The eyes wouldn’t let me go.

  Something in the way they watched me said dark and unspeakable things had happened in the last eleven years. Like me, both “The Stallion” and Danielle had grown up. But unlike me, I had a feeling that they had been forced to.

  The Boy in the Ditch

  I never liked Paul Stone’s office. It looked too … I guess too Department of Indian Affairs-ish, if you know what I mean. You could smell bureaucracy the minute you went in the door. The structure was built during the sixties by a sudden influx of money from the DIA and, as a result, it had that boring, anti-radical government feel to it. Standard government-issue walls for standard government-issue programs, most of them completely out of touch with reserve-issue people. I know because I was one of them.

  And then there was Paul’s wall of knowledge. The ancient drywall was layered with rows and rows of Ministry-distributed posters warning Natives not to smoke, not to drink, to treat women with respect, to honour our Elders, and to stay in school. No matter who you were, just walking into that office made you feel guilty.

  Paul was the drug and alcohol counsellor on our reserve, the Otter Lake First Nations, a tiny blip in Central Ontario we humorously refer to as our home and Native land.

  Paul’s office was an even tinier blip in the larger Otter Lake Band Administration Centre, located just off the main road. It was his responsibility to help the youth (and the adults if they requested it) keep a clean and sober lifestyle. He operated a youth group, ran the local AA meetings, and organized a number of events ranging from local regattas to dry dances.

  But somewhere in his dedication to his job, his conviction had failed. A young boy, one we both knew, was dead. He had been found lying face up in a water-filled ditch back near the new subdivision. Nearby, the police had found a gas can, some plastic and, even though the boy had been submerged in six inches of water overnight, there was still the distinct aroma of gasoline coming off the body. That had been just a few days ago.

  Incidents like this took the wind out of the usually outgoing Paul. “He was gas sniffing.” As he spoke, I watched his eyes flow across the far wall of posters. He never looked at me.

  “It happens.” It was a stupid answer, I know, but it was the best I could come up with. I find it quite unnerving watching a man blame himself for a death he considers his fault.

  Behind his desk, the corner of a poster had become unstuck. It flapped in the air-conditioned breeze. Paul reached over and pressed it strongly against the wall. A little too strongly, I thought. Again he spoke without looking at me. “Did you know him?”

  “A little. He handled the balls and bats for our baseball team.” He had lived right beside the baseball diamond so it was convenient for the team to store our equipment there. Other than that, he was the son of a second cousin. That was about all I knew about him. “His name was Wilson, right?”

  He nodded. “Wilson Blackfish.” He finally looked at me. “He was a good kid. I’m not just saying that because he’s … dead. He really was a good kid, going places, smart in the head. He was only thirteen but he had good grades, solid family, no bad attitudes. He wasn’t the type to waste it all on gas sniffing. This doesn’t make sense. I just wish I knew what happened to him.”

  “Was it the gas that killed him?”

  “Everybody’s pretty sure but the cops want to be certain. The autopsy is being done today but the results won’t be released for a couple of days. But let’s face it, I don’t think the results will be a surprise. While sniffing he was overcome by the fumes, passed out and rolled down into the ditch where he drowned.”

  “Maybe he had a seizure or something.”

  For the first time I saw emotion; I got the impression Paul wanted to throw his desk through the window. “Don’t play games. I hate it when people play games about these things. It is what it is and that’s the problem with this kind of abuse. People refuse to recognize it for what it is. It’s called denial. I just can’t understand why Wilson would do this to himself.”

  Paul continued to look at the wall covered in useless posters. “You going to the wake tonight?”

  “Of course. Is that why you wanted to talk to me?”

  He took out a cigarette and lit it. The smoke curled around his head.

  “No, I just want to put an end to this stupid, senseless behaviour. I’m trying to comprehend what would make a thirteen-year-old boy stick his head in a plastic bag and breathe gas fumes till he loses consciousness. I thought, maybe, if I talked to enough people who know him, I could piece it together and maybe figure things out.”

  Paul was a dedicated man, the product of his own misspent youth. He’d been there and come back a better man, and he wanted to make the trip as short and painless as possible for all the other travellers after him.

  He played with the cigarette in his hand, evidence of his only remaining addiction. “I understand why people drink. Been there, felt it. Even some drugs I can grasp, but there just seems something so stupid, so useless about gas sniffing. There has to be a reason Wilson would do this.”

  “Wish I could help, Paul, but I barely knew him. Bought him a pop last month, that was about it. Sorry.”

  Paul put out his cigarette and stood to shake my hand. He forced a smile. “Thanks anyways. Hope I didn’t drag you into my crazy mood.”

  “No problem. But Paul, sometimes things just happen. Just because. No rhyme, no reason, it just happenes. It doesn’t make things any better, but unfortunately it’s true.”

  I could tell Paul refused to believe me. Or maybe he was just too frightened to really listen. He couldn’t grasp the concept of chaos, or the potential randomness of tragedy. “Truth or whatever you want to call this always has a reason. You throw a stone in the water, it
makes ripples. You whack your knee, you get a bruise. A boy is found lying in a ditch, that’s the effect, not the cause. That’s my truth. I’ll see you at the wake.”

  Wilson’s body had been found Tuesday morning, meaning the mourning process would start that night and run for three days. Tonight the wake would be at the Blackfish residence. Tomorrow the viewing of the body would be at the church. And finally, the funeral the day after.

  That night, the lawn in front of the house of Wilson’s parents, Harriet and Ward Blackfish, was lined with cars and trucks of all makes and descriptions. With the ground still wet from spring, the grass would bare the scars of Wilson’s death for several years.

  Inside, food was everywhere, and a million people forcing conversation, looking for a place to sit or at least put their plates down. The temperature soared with the sheer numbers of bodies. Wilson was a well-liked though innocuous kid, and so were his parents. Everybody felt obligated to show up.

  I found Harriet, the shock of the event barely twenty-four hours old etched on her face, trying to make small talk, but with little success. She would muster small spurts of meaningless conversation, momentarily pretending to forget why everybody was there, then it would all come crashing back to her. Her voice faltered and her eyes moistened. Ward Blackfish, on the other hand, was standing in the corner, eating a piece of peach pie, looking very stern. He was not the type of man to show or take weakness lightly.

  Harriet’s sister Beatrice shoved a half-full plate into my stomach as she sat quickly beside the distressed woman, trying to comfort her. Harriet barely noticed.

  “Why did he do this to us? Didn’t he love us? Why didn’t he say something?” Beatrice did what she could, but what could she do? Harriet continued to ask the same questions over and over again, more often to herself than the people around her.

  “This isn’t like him. No, not at all.” She turned, speaking directly to me for the first time. “You should see the painting he gave me. Boys who give presents like that don’t … do things like this. I mean that’s not a normal present for a thirteen-year-old boy to give his mother for her birthday. But it showed he cared, doesn’t it?”

  I guess I had paid more attention to Paul’s little lecture earlier in the day than I had intended to. I found myself asking, “What painting?”

  Her eyes moist, she pointed vaguely to the back of the house where I knew, from snatches of conversation, that Wilson’s room was located. “It’s in … his room. He got his art teacher in school to draw it. Wilson gave it to me last month for my birthday. What am I gonna do with it? It doesn’t even look like him. I told him I wanted a watch, that’s all, just a simple watch, but … ” At this point, her wall of strength fell with a flood of tears.

  Concerned relatives whipped by me, surrounding Harriet with rows of comfort and murmuring platitudes, forcing me away towards the far side of the house.

  Without really being conscious of it, I found myself standing in front of Wilson’s door. And again, not really wanting to, my hand turned the door knob.

  The indelicacy or just plain rudeness of entering the bedroom of a recently deceased boy weighed heavily on my mind as the door opened, revealing the private world of Wilson Blackfish to me. I don’t know what I expected, but the normalcy of the room, the averageness of the decor startled me. It was a teenage boy’s bedroom. Music posters on the wall, some car and sports magazines scattered haphazardly on the floor, the bed wasn’t even made.

  It was very similar to the room I had as a boy. Eerily similar.

  Peeking out from under the bed, rolled up into a small thin tube held together by an elastic band, was what looked like a painting. Everything my mother had taught me about invasion of privacy screamed how disrespectful this was but curiosity knows no mother. I picked up the work and slowly unrolled it.

  It was like Harriet said. It was a painting. That’s all, nothing special. Competent but hardly memorable. It was easy to recognize Wilson’s smiling face in the odd swirl of impressionistic water colours. Personally I thought it was a great idea for a present, though not particularily well executed, but I guess Harriet had been brought up in a more austere time. Her pragmatism clashed with Wilson’s inventiveness.

  “What a waste of money.” Ward stood in the doorway, looking at Wilson’s smiling face in my hands.

  “He paid his teacher to do this?”

  “To do that? Nah, but he bought the paper and paints and God knows what else they use. He should have known his mother wouldn’t want something like that. The boy wasn’t thinking.”

  “I think it’s kind of nice. Something different.”

  Ward took the painting from my hands, and held it for a moment as his thumb absent-mindedly rubbed up against the rough texture of the paper. You could tell there was a universe of thoughts milling behind Ward’s stoic face. Then he quickly rolled it up into a tube again.

  Tossing the painting back under the bed, he turned away intending to leave. But something made him stop, hand on the doorknob, back still to me.

  “I don’t want you to think wrongly about the boy’s mother. It wasn’t that Harriet didn’t appreciate it, it just didn’t fit. You know what I mean? It’s like giving a fisherman a hunting rifle, or an alcoholic a salad. It just doesn’t belong. We just like things to belong.”

  The door opened, flooding the small room with the sound of several dozen conversations as Ward rejoined the world outside that bedroom.

  On the second day came the viewing of the body. The parking lot around the church was full. I was standing outside with several of my cousins as they smoked, delaying the solemn event, when Harriet and Ward arrived. Our attempt at normal conversation trailed to an end as their car pulled up. Like an old-fashioned gentleman, Ward jumped out first, looking dapper in his dark suit, a startling change from his usual green work clothes. He opened Harriet’s door, helping her out.

  It didn’t look like Harriet had gotten much sleep. She managed a weak smile at us as she and her husband walked by. Ward gave us all his customary single, quick nod before entering the church.

  “Who’d a thunk it, huh?” Kelly, my cousin on my mother’s side, was the first to recover. “Little Willie, dead. You just never know, I guess.”

  “Little Willie?”

  “Wilson. I used call him Little Willie to tease him. He hated it too, really bugged him. He was kinda serious. I’ll miss the little guy.”

  Pete, Kelly’s brother, lit up another cigarette. “Yeah, I remember you calling him that. He started crying once, he got so upset.”

  “Yeah, ‘geez,’ I told him, ‘it’s only a nickname.’”

  Paul approached us, dressed in his standard DIA suit. “Hey guys, sorry I’m late. Everybody in there?”

  I nodded. “Any news about the autopsy?”

  He shook his head. “They won’t be releasing any information for a few days. It’ll only confirm what we already know.” He took a deep breath. “Well, I’m going in.”

  Pete and Kelly echoed each other’s “Me too,” and followed Paul into the church. Much like last night in Wilson’s room, I was left pondering the many images of Wilson, always coming back to the last one: a thirteen-year-old boy, found dead in a ditch, staring up into the sky. It was the image that was growing more difficult to lose.

  Inside the church the organ was playing, and people were lined up, side by side with family seated at the front. There was the odd whispering of muted conversations and not so subtle observations, and the usual sporadic coughs and sneezes. I took a seat on the left side, close to the aisle, while people filed by the body. Waiting my turn.

  It came quickly, and with it a feeling of reluctance. I’ve never understood the viewing of the body but it is tradition and everybody knows how Native people like to hold on to tradition. Like something from Fiddler on the Roof.

  Except for being unusually well-dressed, Wilson looked the same as the last time I saw him. I did notice, though, that the corners of his mouth seemed to be frowning
. In the picture he’d given his mother, Little Willie had been smiling. Not anymore.

  As usual, my imagination was working overtime. I thought I could barely, almost, smell just a hint of gasoline hovering over the casket. I know that Wilson had probably been washed, cleaned, and obviously groomed. There was no possible way I could smell that faint aroma. It must have been just my imagination.

  The viewing lasted deep into the night. The next day came the funeral, scheduled for two o’clock. The casket was loaded into the hearse and was trailed by a procession of anybody who wanted to follow the long black vehicle, as it made its way a half mile down the road to the graveyard.

  The sky was clear, a good day for a funeral. At first the walk behind the hearse, dressed in my dark respectable suit, wasn’t too unpleasant. There were about a hundred of us walking behind Wilson. The rest of the mourners, those too old or just unwilling to walk, were following in a chain of cars and trucks.

  I walked beside Warren Dieter, a teacher at the local high school in town where we all used to go. He’d been there as long as I could remember. All the Native students used to joke that he had lost a hair follicle for every student from Otter Lake he taught. He was now completely bald.

  I hadn’t talked to him in years, but he remembered me.

  “You’re Angela’s younger brother, aren’t you?”

  “That’s me.” I shook his hand as we walked on.

  He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his shiny forehead. Dark suits and a hot day were not a good match.

  “I taught Wilson, you know. Good boy, a great help in the class. I thought he’d be smarter than this. Poor boy.”

  “He was a cousin,” I replied.

  “Everybody out here is a cousin.” Mr. Dieter was right.

  It was still another ten minutes or so to the graveyard at the pace we were travelling. I tried to make conversation, but what do you say to a teacher you never really cared for in the first place? “Boy, this sun is hot.”