Fearless Warriors

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  Two days later, Jimmy came across Zoe, Marnie’s daughter, sitting at the end of Marnie’s long driveway, crying. When she saw the big man getting out of his truck, the four-year-old dove into the ditch and crawled into a culvert. She almost made it in too, before Jimmy grabbed her leg.

  She kicked and screamed and did everything she could to get away from Jimmy, and as big as he was, it’s a proven fact that it’s almost impossible to hold a four-year-old who doesn’t want to be held.

  But like I said before, Jimmy is a big man. To calm her down, he gently took her head in his hands and stared directly into her eyes. “Zoe, it’s me, Jimmy. I’m a friend of your mother’s. It’s okay. It’s all right. Where is your mother? What’s wrong?”

  All she could do was scream some more and point to her house and a Dodge pickup sitting at the top of the driveway. Marnie didn’t own a truck, but Roger Ames did. Faintly, across the long driveway separating the road from Marnie’s home, Jimmy heard yelling, a man’s harsh bark … then breaking, something breaking.

  Immediately, he picked up Zoe and placed her in his truck. “Stay here.” He kissed her forehead and shut the door.

  Jimmy never told me or anyone else what happened next. But that day, people along the main drag of the village reported seeing the Dodge pickup, one window smashed, make its way rather quickly out of the reserve and out of Marnie’s life.

  That was five months ago. Two months ago Jimmy moved in with Marnie. Yesterday, Jimmy phoned and asked me to meet him here, by the shores of Chemong Lake, under the branches of the largest pine tree in the reserve.

  So there we were. “What’s up?”

  Jimmy stood with a small box in his hands. He looked at it for a moment. “I need your help. But first of all, I have to bury this.”

  I recognized the small tin box I had seen fifteen years before, and the legend came flooding back from my memory.

  “Wait a minute, aren’t you supposed to do that after you’ve done something, like, really great or fantastic? Have you been holding out on me? What did you do this weekend?”

  Smiling, he placed the box on a bed of pine needles and began to dig with his hands.

  “You know, Marnie and I are kinda serious these days. She needed a good man to love her, and Zoe deserves a proper father. More than anything else in this world, I want to be that person.”

  “It’s kind of obvious, Jimmy. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Smiling, he opened the box and took out what looked to be an old lace handkerchief. He treasured it in his hands for a moment. “Okay, I will. You know, I’ve never been really good with women. It’s kind of hard to maintain a relationship when you can’t go on trips, get a credit card, buy or rent a car or even order cable TV. So your entertainment possibilities on a date are severely limited. But it doesn’t really matter any more. Not with Marnie and Zoe.

  “You know that terrific smile Marnie has? The one where her whole face just lights up and you know her spirit is singing? Zoe has that smile too. The great thing, though, is that I can bring it to them, that smile. They’ve both had some rough years. I think I make them happy. That’s important to me.”

  Jimmy placed the handkerchief and its contents into the ground and slowly covered it with earth. He then smoothed the blanket of pine needles over it.

  “You know, to me, I think the best thing I could ever do with my life is take care of Marnie and Zoe. Nothing else in this world could measure up to that. It all seems so right. They’re happy, I’m happy. What could be more fantastic and great than that?”

  He stood up again, wiping the dirt and needles from his pant legs. “In fact, we want to get married.”

  Stunned, I could barely utter the obvious: “Jimmy, you can’t get married. There’s all kinds of paperwork involved and you don’t exist, remember?”

  He smiled, then winked at me.

  “I know, I know. But you have a birth certificate, don’t you?”

  The White in the Woods

  It was Charlie May who first noticed it. He would, because the man has a spectacular row of them in front of his house. And then, over the next three days, Billy Wild, Annette LaBelle and Creek Johnson all woke up one morning to see the evidence. It was happening all across the village and nobody knew why. It was our turn next. Right beside my mother’s house stands a low fence comprised of rocks thrown there over the decades by people occasionally trying to farm, or sometimes just to clear the land. Growing amidst that row of stones were two birch trees that decorated that section of our lawn with dappled sunlight.

  Both trees were about a foot in diameter, though on the particular morning we woke up, they were a little thinner around the mid-section. Somebody, during the night, for whatever reason, had harvested the bark from the two trees. We were the latest victims in an on-going rash of bark thefts that had left the village trees with their white, mottled, papery strips carefully peeled away from the trunks.

  In the olden days, birch bark had a multitude of uses in Native villages, ranging from the obvious and famous canoes, to baskets, to moose callers, to an original art form called birch bark biting where an artist would fold the bark and bite into it at strategic places to reveal in the unfolded bark, something as intricate as a flower, or some other beautiful pattern carefully outlined in the light brown inner bark. But that was a long time ago. Today, very few people use much birch bark, let alone the incalculable amount missing.

  If somebody needed bark, it was customary to ask permission if the tree happened to be on someone’s private land. But there was enough of it in the woods, especially out towards the swamp, that this kind of theft seemed unnecessary. So much bark taken so secretly. Nobody knew what was going on. And it bothered them. The people of Otter Lake may love gossip but they hate mysteries.

  Typically our reserve police, who often go weeks between anything exciting happening, like being the security guards at a wedding dance, latched on to the sudden bark disappearances. Before long I found myself being interviewed by Officer Magneen.

  “When did you notice the bark was missing?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “Did you see anything unusual?”

  “The bark was missing?”

  “Other than that?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have anything else to tell us that might help us locate the person who did this?”

  “Not really.”

  “Thanks Andrew, see you on Saturday at the ball game.” I was shortstop, he was third base.

  During the next few days more birch trees showed up in the same stage of undress as the two beside my mother’s house, all over the village. About three or four feet above the ground, an incision would be made vertically for about a foot and a half, then the outer bark would be peeled off, leaving the underbark intact. If the harvesting is done during the late spring, as it was now, then the tree has enough time to heal itself before the onset of winter. Evidently whoever was doing this knew what he was doing. The few birch bark peelers still left in our community (who, by the way, had been thoroughly investigated and their property searched for the hoarded birch bark) said the trees had been properly harvested and had not been permanently damaged.

  All in all, about thirty-six harvested trees had been counted, not including whatever ones might exist deep in the woods or in the less travelled areas of the village.

  A week passed, then two, and the reports of missing birch bark began to trail off. Two possibilities came to my mind. The mysterious bark fetishist had accumulated enough bark for his purposes or, possibly, the Phantom of the Forest had exhausted the in-town supply and had moved on to harvesting trees in other parts of the sparsely populated reserve.

  Talk and conversation about the subject ebbed and flowed over the next few weeks, until it had exhausted itself like a grass fire. The summer wore on, and more int
eresting topics quickly took over, like the Otter Lake Fishing Derby—an annual event that tested the local fishermen’s manhood (which was rapidly becoming an irrelevant concern since about a quarter of the participants were now women). But the motto of the Derby remained: “It’s not how big your rod is, but how you cast it. And what kind of line you use.”

  Somewhere in the midst of the three dozen high-tech boats and equipment was my ten-horsepower outboard—suffering from terminal tuberculosis, judging by its cough— attached to a standard aluminum boat. I felt somewhat inadequate about my skill, but my mother loved fish and I wanted the prize money. Two thousand dollars and a new outboard—I was willing to kill fish for that.

  Most of my friends were also out on the lake that hot August day; William, Paul, Jimmy and a host of others. We had all been out fishing together numerous times, but today we were solitary warriors, sitting in our metal mounts, ready to wage war with fishing tackle.

  The Otter Lake Reserve is bordered on two sides by a large lake system, logically called Otter Lake. Sprinkled with innumerable islands and bays dotting the landscape, every family, every individual, has a favourite fishing spot where the biggest and tastiest bass or pickerel could be found. Or, if lucky, a monster of a muskie to test your resolve. So, like ripples leaving a dropped pebble, the three dozen boats scattered across the lake in search of game.

  I hung near the shore, heading east towards a bay my father used to take me fishing in, when he was healthy. It was about twenty minutes by boat—thirty the way the dinosaur I was riding in cut through the water. I had neither the natural aptitude, nor the inherent knowledge of how fish think, to guide me. Instead, I had only my father’s assurance that this particular bay would get the family a new outboard.

  I could see Paul heading across the lake to Snowstorm Island, his usual fishing haunt. Jimmy hung out near the weed patch across from his grandfather’s place. William had long disappeared to his “secret” destination. Most of us figured it was a fish market.

  Up ahead lay Mukwa Bay, the much promoted location of massive and prize-winning fish. Along the shores, trees reached out over the lake, shading the shallow water. This place had always been a favourite spot of mine, one I was kicking myself for not spending more time at. It was remote, the trees were beautiful and lush, the water calm and not chopped up by tourists in speed boats or waterjets. I sat there for a few moments, drinking in the serenity and calmness this place seemed to share. I would enjoy the next couple of hours here. This was a good idea.

  I cast my first lure of this perfect day into the water, several dozen feet off shore. It bobbed on the surface, then sank as I reeled it in, hoping it would provide an irresistible attraction for a monster fish. It didn’t take me long to get into a Zen state of mind. Cast. Reel. Enjoy sun. Enjoy breeze. Enjoy day. Cast again. Repeat as necessary. All those hours and money white people spend in therapy had nothing on this. I felt there were no problems in the world.

  Somewhere not too distant, I could here a woodpecker doing its thing. It sounded close, and as an idle game, I tried to find it between casts, scanning the woods along the shoreline. I tried to remember what kind of wood they preferred to look for their tasty insects in. I remembered once discovering a nest of woodpeckers in a hollowed-out cedar tree but that didn’t count. That was a nest, and cedar is a soft wood. It’s easier to build a nest in soft wood than in maple or oak. Woodpeckers are not stupid animals.

  Due to the soft summer breeze, my boat eventually drifted closer to shore and to the busy woodpecker. It was hard to see the actual trees because the sun was shining so brightly that they were hiding in their own shade. But something in the dimly lit line of trees caught my attention. Evidently our bark-napping friend had been here. Knowing what I was looking for, I tried to see deeper into the woods, even scanning the hill-shaped drumlin that created the shore of the bay. There were more birch trees—almost all of them had been harvested.

  I thought about the mystery a bit, but the breeze and the sun pulled it away from me. If it puzzled me enough, I could think about it tomorrow. I had a fishing derby to win, and obsessing over birch bark wouldn’t help me do that. I forced my mind back to more productive thoughts. Deciding to move further into the bay, I used one of the paddles to move the boat, figuring the engine would only have ruined the placidness of the place.

  I found a place near dead centre of Mukwa Bay and remembered spending hours in this exact spot with my father years ago, fishing and talking. Sometimes not talking. Just being. I would sit at the front of the boat, and he would sit at the back. We would face each other, cast to opposite sides, and share our lives. Feeling nostalgic, I crawled to the front of the boat, assumed my childhood position, cast my lure and watched it arc far overhead, the sun reflecting off it, silhouetted against the lush green background of the woods surrounding me.

  Except is wasn’t all green. My eye had caught something buried in the wall of foliage. Barely hearing the plop of the lure hitting the water, I tried to refocus my eyes on whatever had grabbed my attention. It took a second or two to locate it again but there it was, halfway up the drumlin, almost totally hidden by the trees. It was a patch of white. A large patch, but I couldn’t tell how large. I didn’t remember it being there as a child, and something about it looked unnatural. It was too big to be a birch tree, and this was the wrong geography for any type of white rock of that size, especially halfway up a drumlin, a leftover from the glacial age.

  I moved the boat around trying for a better view but I only succeeded in losing the mysterious image entirely. I returned to the center of the bay and there it was again, high up the hill, almost a beacon. Nobody could see it except me, in this specific spot. This time I could discern another odd disturbance in the seeming stillness of the bay. Dogs barking. A lot of them. And it was coming from the direction of the white patch.

  When you spend your entire life growing up in a rural area, you tend to know where everybody lives and the places where everybody doesn’t live. This was one of those latter places. Behind the drumlin was an old dirt road, once used by loggers, that connected to the larger road near Japland, another sparsely settled part of the community. Other than that, the place was deserted, used only occasionally for camping or fishing. Dogs and large white patches should not be littering the drumlin.

  There was a silent thirty-second debate raging in my head between greed and curiosity. Two thousand potential dollars versus an explanation of a large white spot and the dogs. It seemed an odd toss-up until I realized the two were not mutually exclusive. Mukwa Bay and the fish would still be there after I took care of my curiosity. I estimated a good thirty-minute hike up the side of the drumlin to the location of the white patch, and probably about twenty minutes to get back to the shore. Or possibly three minutes, providing I didn’t watch my step on the way down. That would leave a good half day to reel in Moby Dick.

  I tied the boat to a large weeping willow overhanging the water. Making my way through the trees, I found what looked like an easy route up the side of the tear-shaped drumlin. I was still a fair distance from my destination when I noticed a third disturbance in how things should be in Mukwa Bay. The first had been visual, the second auditory, the third was odorous. There was a vicious, horrible stench coming off the side of this hill—the closer I got, the worse it got.

  It wasn’t from the dogs I had heard—I knew that smell well enough. It reeked of what I had always thought biblical brimstone would smell like. I was beginning to have second doubts about the need to satisfy my curiosity. Perhaps whatever is up at the top of this hill had a reason for being out here in the middle of nowhere, smelling the way it did, surrounded by the sound of a dozen dogs or so.

  Unfortunately I had waited too long in my indecision. Judging from the growl behind me, one of the dogs I had been hearing for the last half hour had, in fact, found me before I could find it. It was a small mongrel of no definable heritage, the breed common on many reserves. But what it lacked in size, it
seemed to make up for in temperament. And teeth. It growled, barked gnashed its fangs at me. Making a strategic withdrawal, I backed up the drumlin, keeping my front to the dog as much as possible, because basic military strategy dictates it’s better to have the higher ground, and make the enemy advance up the hill towards you.

  This, however, meant I found myself backing onto a small plateau or shelf in the drumlin, and directly into the heart of the mystery. And more dogs. Lots more.

  I lost track after at least fifteen mutts of all shapes and sizes swarmed me, running, jumping and barking all around. I felt like a covered wagon surrounded by Indians in one of those old-time Westerns. One black and white dog lunged in and nipped at my pant leg. This was rapidly turning out to have been a bad idea. What was more frustrating was that I had passed up a perfectly quiet day on the water for this scene from Hell, brimstone included.

  “G’jih!”

  Either God had spoken, in Ojibway, or there was somebody else on this drumlin with me. Over my left shoulder a chunk of wood came flying into the pack of dogs. It hit a grey one making him dart off into the bush with a yelp that made the other dogs scatter. Apparently God had a great overhand throw.

  I turned to see the source of this divine intervention. Instead, blotting everything else out, I confronted a wall of white birch bark—more than a wall, almost a mountain face. It was huge, about thirty feet long, and twenty feet high, tied to a framework that looked surprisingly familiar in structure, almost like the keel of a boat. It was all neatly patchworked together, the squares from various sized trees, with different shades and varying textures, all sewn together to be … whatever it was. And off to the side was a mound of unused birch bark, again almost twenty feet high. So this was the home of the Phantom of the Forest.

  Standing not fifteen feet away from me, wearing dirty overalls, no t-shirt, work boots and a rash of mosquito bites was the Phantom himself. Not quite as daunting as you would expect. He smiled, showing an equally splendid patchwork of teeth.