Fearless Warriors

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  The wood bracing still stood, charred and burned, totally useless, but the bark itself had burned away. The air hung heavy with the aroma of burned wood and bear fat/pine gum/wood ash tar. The ground was littered with little fires, errant pieces of birch bark that had flown off the main conflagration, trying to eat up the damp pine needles that carpeted the camp. All the trees, both in the camp and surrounding it, especially down-wind, showed evidence of being scorched. Luckily it had been a wet summer or the fire would have been more biblical in proportions.

  The camp seemed deserted. “Duanne! Duanne!” There was no answer. Not even from the dogs. I ran through the camp, checking his cabin, and forced myself to quickly check the ashes of the ark. Nothing, thank God. There was no sign of Duanne.

  He had said earlier that no burning bush had talked to him. I wondered what a burning ark, a crushed dream would say to a man in the throws of fulfilling a destiny set out for him by God. And what that man might do when the dream was destroyed. Conceivably by God. Luckily, the options that went through my mind were considered a sin, therefore out of the question for Duanne.

  No matter how well watered the forest was, I still felt it prudent to stamp out the multitude of little blazes that peppered the area. It gave me time to figure out what had happened here, and to Duanne, the ark builder. Maybe he had gone into town to get help. It was a long way to go but it seemed the only logical possibility. I had trampled about eight small fires before I heard the gasping and huffing of a near exhausted man coming up the drumlin.

  Emerging from the bush Duanne arrived, carrying two buckets of water from the lake. He stopped when he entered the camp, his heaving breath the only sound. It was too late. A matter of too much fire, too little water—too much time had elapsed. His buckets fell from his hands and overturned, draining into the soft pine carpet.

  “It’s gone. All gone.” He fell back on his behind sending up a small shower of burnt birch bark, still staring at the scorched remnants.

  “Duanne, what happened?”

  “It burned up.”

  “I know that. How?”

  He picked up a half burned piece of birch bark, held it in his hands, eventually crushing it in frustration. It trickled down his hands, the ashes flowing away gently, caught in the fall breeze.

  “Duanne?”

  “The dogs. They did this.”

  I looked around but there were still no dogs in the area. “The dogs?! Duanne, how could they do this? Talk to me, Duanne.”

  Duanne got to his knees, then to his feet. Walking almost blindly, he approached his life’s dream. He seemed to talk without choice or effort. The words came out like on automatic pilot. “The tar. They wanted the bear fat in the tar. They upset the pot. The fat caught fire. And my ark … ” His voice trailed of and he stood directly under the huge remaining timbers that made up the frame of the ark. “My ark … ”

  Then suddenly, he grabbed an unused plank from the ground and started pounding the side of the support beam. He hammered and pummelled it, sending off nuggets of burnt wood and sparks flying across the camp. One caught in his hair but he didn’t notice as it sizzled, then went out, all the time yelling out, “Why? Why? Why?” The whole thing was shaking from the force of his pounding. It rocked back and forth, wobbling. I could see chunks of half burnt wood fall to the ground but Duanne was too busy venting his wrath to notice.

  But I could also see the all too obvious signs of structural weakness, burnt-through beams and support planks charred to cinders. You’d have to be blind, or crazed with rage, not to. “Duanne, don’t do that! That thing will … ” Several loud cracks drowned out my words as the framework for a four-hundred-and-fifty-foot by seventy-five-foot boat came tumbling down into a mess of partially incinerated wood, on top of Duanne. He disappeared underneath it without uttering a sound.

  Some of the wood was still hot and sparks flew everywhere under the collapse. Thinking surprisingly quickly, I used my jean jacket to protect my hands as I threw charred timbers and planks aside in a desperate search for Duanne. It was barely a dozen seconds before I found him, his clothes smoldering on top of some live embers. I did what I could to put them out and pull Duanne from the wreckage. He was still saying, though more softly, “Why? Why? … ”

  He was bleeding from his shoulder and a leg, one hand and the side of his face looked burned, and he had a horrible wheezing sound coming from his lungs. His cries for answers were soon replaced by coughing. In between spasms, he grabbed my shirt, asking again, “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You can always build another one. I’ll help this time.” He smiled a sad smile, one that again said too little, too late. He laid back in my arms, still smiling.

  “It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

  “It was amazing.”

  Duanne looked puzzled for a moment, in thought. Then in a sad, regretful tone, he simply said, “Hmmm.”

  “What does that mean, Duanne?”

  He had another coughing spasm, this one stronger than the last. When it subsided, he looked calmer. “I was just thinking. What if I misunderstood? What if I was supposed to build a park, instead of an ark? Maybe that’s why he destroyed it. What do you think? Or am I still being punished?” He give me one last confused searching look. “This hill would have made a nice park, you know.” Then his eyes closed.

  I left him up there with his ark. Though it was probably illegal, and possibly unethical, I buried him on the side of that drumlin, hoping he’d found his redemption. I’m ashamed to admit it, but my Bible studies were a little lax, and I’m not sure if Noah was buried on the side of Mount Ararat, the place where the first Ark originally landed. Duanne’s ark never even saw a drop of water. It’s said that fragments of the original Ark can be found atop that mountain, in far away Turkey. But if you’re not too picky about your arks, you can still find some relics over in Mukwa Bay.

  Ice Screams

  It’s been three days and I’m still here, sitting in that back corner, away from everyone. Three days.

  People are looking at me funny. Most of them were here the first night I came in and are surprised to still see me sitting in the corner when they come back, but I don’t care. I just order another drink. But that’s why they look at me funny. I’m not known as a particularly hard drinker—in fact, only a handful of people in this bar could claim to have ever seen me drunk once, let alone for three straight days.

  I know they’re all dying to ask me what happened out there on the ice, but that would defeat the purpose of drinking. I’d have to remember.

  So instead I sit here, listening to the same country songs played on the jukebox over and over again. If it was a weekend, there would be a band, but not in the middle of the week. The waitress keeps eyeing me warily. I guess years of training have taught her to watch people who power-drink. But I won’t be a problem. I just want to be left alone, drink some more rye and try to burn some memory cells.

  Steve and David came in earlier and joined in, though I made it obvious I was not fit for company. I kinda got the feeling my mother probably sent them to talk sense into me, or at least to keep an eye on me. But Mom knows what happened, and she knows I have to work this out myself, though I doubt she agrees with my methods. But, as everyone knows, fear and alcohol often hold hands.

  “If The Drinking Don’t Kill Me, Her Memory Will” starts to play. What little feeling I have left tempts me to smile at the irony. Except in this case, it would be “his memory” and it sure as hell isn’t a love story.

  It’s been three days since what happened to Ryan but the memory still scares the hell out of me, a good four bottles of rye later. The sharp reports from the pool table make me think of my buddy William. Normally he’d be at that table exercising one of the few talents he has in life. I wonder what he’s doing now? Probably hiding at home, since he doesn’t drink anymore.

  Steve and David get up to leave. They’ve been there a good three hours, keeping an eye on me. They’ve done their good deed bu
t they have families and work tomorrow. They look at me, then open the door to leave. A cold blast pours in and, in the distance, I can see the multicoloured light of this small town stretching down the street. Steve and David see the numbed look on my face, shudder, then leave.

  They’ll probably take the 507 to the cut-off, then drive across the lake to the village. People have short memories when they’re in a hurry. The lake is usually frozen over by this time of year, taking a good fifteen minutes off the trip into town. People from the village always travelled across the lake, even before most people had cars. Years ago, people drove sleighs or even walked across the two mile lake. It was supposedly safe from mid-December to early March. But having grown up there, most of the local people can handle the frozen lake. That’s what makes what happened to Ryan’s parents so puzzling. What happened shouldn’t have happened.

  It was late February, a safe enough month. There were still some great winter sales on and his parents, always frugal shoppers, decided to go all the way to Toronto to spend four days on a buying binge. It was all planned. Being only nine at the time, Ryan got to go with them while his older sister stayed behind with relatives.

  I’ve been told Ryan was always particularly close to his parents, closer to them than his older sister was. My mother claims it’s because he was a difficult birth. Story has it his mother almost died giving birth to him and then he almost died of some respiratory problem a week later. His mother blamed the nursing staff, saying they didn’t watch over him enough and then his father accused one nurse of being racist and prejudiced against Indians. You had to know Ryan’s parents.

  Needless to say, they both survived. Maureen, his mother, liked to say that she refused to even consider dying until she knew if her little one would be okay. That sort of set the pattern for the rest of their lives.

  By pattern I mean that he was the baby of the family and was treated as such. It was obvious that he was favoured by his parents but that happens in some families. Of course, that’s not to say the parents neglected or didn’t love Aricka, his sister. He just always got the benefit of the doubt, or the bigger slice of the pie. Pretty soon Aricka learned to accept this, though it was through gritted teeth. It’s amazing that Ryan didn’t grow up more spoiled than he really was.

  I remember how excited Ryan was about going to Toronto. He’d never been there before. Aricka, fours years older, shrugged off his enthusiasm, a little hurt that she wasn’t going. All she had to look forward to was a week of exams and staying with her aunt.

  Standing at the schoolbus stop that morning, all she talked about was her brother and the trip. Minus ten degrees and she could still whine.

  “He always gets what he wants. Mom treats him better than me. She always does. ‘He’s the baby,’ she says. If you baby someone all the time then they’ll be a baby all the time.” I stamped my frozen thirteen-year-old feet in response. The school bus was late, probably due to the heavy-falling snow. The possibility of a day off from school was in all our minds, so we didn’t much care about Ryan or Aricka’s problems.

  All except for William. William Williams was my best friend then and now, and don’t ask me why. He could be an idiot sometimes, in fact most times, but I accepted that. It was one of those friendships which defy explanation. Now William had little affection for Ryan. Ryan had never done anything against William or vice versa so there were no real grounds for his dislike. But he hated the attention Ryan got from his parents because William was somewhere in the middle in a family of nine. You had to fight hard for any recognition at his house. I suspect the real reason came from a secret crush William had on Aricka. He would agree with anything she said just to get on her good side.

  “It must be terrible having a brother like that,” he said sympathetically. He could always be counted on to be sympathetic to a pretty girl when it was necessary, even at that age and temperature.

  Aricka watched the family truck approaching through the growing snowfall. “You get used to it. Someday though, he won’t always be the favourite. He won’t be so hot then. The little scum.”

  Then the family’s Ford came rolling down the street, on its way to Toronto, the family ready to buy out the town and fit as much of it as they could into their beat-up old vehicle. It was a yearly thing with that family and a few others on the reserve. The income tax refund came in early and already it was mentally spent.

  The last anybody saw of them was the back of their truck roaring down towards the lake, a trail of snow and exhaust billowing up through the air. I remember Ryan sticking his tongue out at Aricka as they disappeared onto the whiteness of the lake.

  Aricka blew into her hands. “I hope they get a flat.”

  William responded with a hearty “yeah” and smiled like someone who’s just scored some victory points.

  After that it gets kind of strange.

  Three days passed before Mags Magneen noticed a light on at Ryan’s house as she was driving by. According to what she knew, they were still supposed to be in Toronto. No car was in the driveway and nobody answered the phone. Always the curious (some would say nosey) type, she decided to investigate.

  The way she tells it, the house looked “as cold as a Christian’s heart.” A blanket of virgin snow surrounded the house. She had to break a trail as she walked up to the front door. The light was still on, but the house “felt” empty as she put it.

  A couple knocks on the door went unanswered, as did the harder pounding which followed. Feeling somewhat uneasy, Mags was about to give up and leave, but decided to give it one last try and rattled the doorknob. She discovered that the door was unlocked. Puzzled, she swung it open.

  “Martin? Maureen? Are you here? Hello?” No answer. She shivered, not sure if it was from the cold or the eerie silence.

  The house was cold, colder than outside it seemed. Some of the lights were on, but the place still looked dark. Mags called out a few times but, other than the unnerving echo of an empty house, there was no response. The kitchen was clean as always and Mags was confused. It wasn’t like Ryan’s family to leave the lights on when they went away, let alone leave the door unlocked. Yet they weren’t there and weren’t due back for a few days.

  She wandered into the living room and looked around. Again, nothing looked as if it had been touched in several days, except for the comforter on their big couch. Mags had given it to Ryan’s mother four years before. Now it was lying all in a bundle in one corner of the couch.

  Mags was beginning to feel the February cold by this time and was tempted to leave, maybe make a few phone calls later on to some relatives, inquiring about the location of the family. Still puzzled over the strange state of the house, she absentmindedly picked up the comforter from the couch and started to fold it.

  Ryan looked back at her from under the comforter. Mags screamed and jumped a good six feet back, knocking over a plant and the worn out La-Z-Boy and ending up against the window. Ryan, his expression never changing, followed her with his brown eyes.

  “My God, Ryan, you scared the hell out of me! What are you doing underneath that blanket?”

  Ryan simply looked at her, still not saying anything. “Ryan, are you okay? Where are your parents?” Ryan shivered, picked up the rapidly discarded comforter, and pulled it back over himself. He disappeared back into the couch as quickly as he had appeared.

  “Ryan?” Mags tried again. Again no answer. She approached the couch again, more timidly this time, still calling out Ryan’s name, with the same lack of response as before. Her gloved hand reached out slowly and tugged at the comforter until Ryan’s face and upper body were visible.

  “Ryan, what happened to you?” Ryan merely blinked his eyes at her and shivered again.

  According to Mags, poor Ryan looked like hell. He was still in the same clothes he had worn when he and the family had driven off the reserve three days ago. His face held no expression, just a steady blankness, and it was thinner. The doctor later estimated that nine-year-old Ryan h
ad lost six pounds in three days.

  A nervous Mags covered Ryan in the comforter and another blanket from the overturned La-Z-Boy. Ryan didn’t flinch. You could barely see the little trickle of vapour escaping from his mouth into the cold air. Mags then searched every room in the house, but couldn’t find anything that would explain Ryan’s mysterious appearance.

  In the kitchen, some of the plants were dead from exposure to the cold. A large window overlooking the backyard had been forced open and left that way. Footprints outside the window led from the bushes, away from the lake. They were the same size as Ryan’s feet. Mags was beginning to get really scared.

  “Ryan, listen to me. Where are your parents? Did they leave you here?” Ryan didn’t respond, Instead, he tried to duck under the comforter again. Mags quickly grabbed his arm and immediately let go again. “Your arms are so cold!” Ryan stopped moving for a moment and looked at Mags, his brown eyes both looking and not looking into hers.

  “Cold,” was all he said.

  That was enough for Mags. The police were there in fifteen minutes. Aricka was driven in from school. Uncles, aunts and cousins all converged on that little house, but still Ryan refused to talk. The more they asked questions, the more unresponsive he became. Aricka was getting panicky. At one point she screamed at Ryan to say where their parents were. She had to be dragged out of the room and looked after by the doctor. The doctor then quickly examined Ryan, but it was obvious what was wrong: he was hungry, dehydrated, suffering from hypothermia and shock.

  One of the cops followed the footprints as far as the lake, but by then the wind had obliterated any trace of a trail. They later theorized that Ryan had been in the house for the last three days, not eating anything or doing anything, just sitting there under the comforter and occasionally going to the bathroom. That became fruitless after the pipes froze and burst the first night.