Fearless Warriors

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  She got a new boyfriend and, every time that anniversary rolled around, she’d drag that poor sucker out onto the ice with her. Same with the one after him. But eventually, a couple of years ago, she married a guy from the reserve and moved to Peterborough, about a half hour from home.

  Ryan did well at school, even became a decent baseball player, but he never left the reserve for any length of time. He never had the inclination to go anywhere or do anything. He still lived in his parents’ house.

  I’d see them occasionally when I came home. I even went out drinking with Ryan a few times. And whenever I wasn’t around, William would keep me informed as to what was happening around the village. William was quite happy. He was running the local marina and living with a beautiful woman named Marie. He had everything he wanted, except a charge account at the beer store.

  Me, I kicked around the city a bit, doing a little of this, a little of that. I came home every couple of months, though, to recharge my batteries. I finally came home two years ago at the ripe old age of twenty-four. Now I have a steady girlfriend, and an occasional job at the band office, whenever they throw me a contract like somebody throws a dog a bone.

  But in my two years back home, I’ve realized more than ever how true that old saying is: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The village has a few more houses, a little less forest. In some of the local bars, I run into cousins I used to babysit. These little things don’t add up to much when you consider that the tone of the village is the same. To this day, most people don’t know what’s going on up at the band office, and really don’t care. Old people still sit by their windows looking out at the cars driving by, dogs running everywhere fertilizing the world. Home is home, what can you say?

  It was winter again and I was back staying at my mother’s when Aricka called. It was the first time I’d spoken with her in almost a year. Teenage romances are hardly binding thirteen years later. Especially when you’re living in two different towns.

  “Andrew, I hate calling you like this out of the blue, but I need your help.” She still had that breathless quality about the way she talked. When we were young, I think it came from girlish enthusiasm, her brain working faster than her mouth, but now I fear it’s from too many cigarettes.

  “You sound serious, what’s up?”

  “It’s anniversary time.” I knew it was this week. You don’t forget a thing like that, but I had long ago stopped being a part of her ritual.

  “Yeah, I remember. I hear you still go out on the ice with those flowers of yours.”

  “Not this year. I’m pregnant, Andrew, and the doctor says I could deliver any time. He and Richard won’t allow me to go out on the ice this year.”

  I almost dropped the phone in surprise. “Don’t tell me you want me to go out there!”

  She was quick to respond. “No, calm down, Andrew. Richard offered but Ryan told him no. He wants to do it.”

  “But he never goes out on the lake, summer or winter.”

  “Well, he is this year. I don’t feel right about it. It scares me. You know he’s never been right about water since the accident. Something could happen out there.”

  I knew where this was leading. “Yeah, so?”

  There was a deep breath on the other end. “Go with him, Andrew. Make sure everything’s all right.”

  “Why me? You’ve got more cousins and relatives than you know what to do with. I don’t want to sound rude, but why me?”

  “I was thinking about that too,” her voice got softer. “You brought Ryan out of whatever he was in, remember, in the hospital? And you went out with me that first time. I knew you didn’t want to go, but you did. It has to be you, Andrew. Promise me you will?”

  I was silent for a moment. Those feelings from thirteen years ago came back to the pit of my stomach. I was cornered.

  “You win, I’ll go.” Aricka was ecstatic. She thanked me over and over again, but I barely heard her. I was thinking about how to handle this. I’ve found that, as you get older, your sense of courage tends to evaporate, disappears like the wind that blows across frozen lakes. I had promised I would go, but I wouldn’t go alone. I immediately phoned up my buddy, my pal, William.

  He was not pleased, even less than I was. “I don’t even like the guy. It’s your promise, you deal with it.”

  Luckily, the gods had allowed me to go to a hockey tournament a few months back with William. There we met these two girls from another reserve and, well … Also, as the gods would allow it, I had the phone number of Marie, his long-suffering girlfriend. I casually mentioned this to William. You have to do these things with William, just to keep him in line. That’s what friends are for.

  He was flustered for a moment. “I’ll tell Barb, then you’ll be in trouble.” I could hear the smile growing in his voice.

  “I wasn’t going out with Barb at the time. See you tomorrow at five. Bye.” Before he could protest any more, I hung up.

  I picked him up in my car the following day. He was glum, cranky and generally not impressed with me. “I hope you’re happy.” I was, sort of—as happy as I could be, under the circumstances. “Let’s just get this over with.” Good old William, overflowing with the milk of humanity.

  We arrived at Ryan’s house. It had changed little since that winter thirteen years before. Maybe a little more run-down, but not much. Bachelors are like that. Ryan was already sitting on the porch, his hair blowing in the stiff wind, a bouquet of half-frozen flowers on the porch beside him. You could tell he didn’t want to do this, even from this distance, but he had to. Something inside was going to make him do it. It was necessary. Like going to the dentist.

  “I really don’t want to do this, Andrew,” said William.

  “Neither do I, but we gotta.”

  “My, aren’t we plural these days?”

  Once our car stopped in his driveway, Ryan got up and walked over, breath pouring out of his mouth like a little steam engine. I opened my window to talk to him.

  “Hey Ryan, ready to go?”

  Instead, he opened my door and motioned for me and William to get out. “Let’s cut through the woods. It will be quicker than driving around to the lake, then walking. It’s about half the distance.”

  William looked at me with worry. We would be following the same path Ryan took coming back from the accident. And we were going to the lake to remember the accident. This was becoming too much for William, almost too much for me. Ryan motioned for us to get out of the vehicle again and we did. I could hear William muttering under his breath, “You owe me big, Andrew.”

  “Well, let’s go.” Ryan closed the door behind me and started walking across his yard toward the woods a hundred feet distant. He quickly grabbed the flowers and nestled them in his arms. William and I followed along like ducklings behind their mother, every once in a while William giving me a shove to remind me that he was there at my insistence (or my threat). Nobody said anything until we reached the lake.

  I’ve never been one for ice fishing. I always found it too cold, and the fish were never tasty enough to warrant the numb extremities. Even still, I’d always find myself out on the lake for one reason or another at least once a year, same with William. But this was the first time for Ryan in all these years, winter or summer. He had stopped walking just short of the ice. He looked out across the frozen expanse. I couldn’t tell if he was working up nerve or lost in thought.

  “It’s been so long, I’m not sure where it was.” His voice was almost lost in the rushing wind. “Aricka sort of gave me directions—a little off to the right of the spit she said.” We all mentally found the spit and the direction. “That way, I guess.”

  Nobody moved. Again William was muttering: “Oh Marie, where are you? Your arms are so warm.” February on our reserve can make you very romantic.

  Then suddenly Ryan was out on the ice, walking at a brisk pace. We were a good ten feet behind him before we started moving to catch up. Other than the win
d, the only thing we could hear was the dry crunching of lake snow under our three sets of boots. We walked in a row, barely able to keep up with Ryan. There were old skidoo tracks all around us; it would have made walking a lot easier to follow them, but Ryan had his own course set.

  Approximately half way to our destination, William finally said something aloud. “For God’s sake, Ryan, slow down. My sweat is freezing.”

  Ryan stopped and looked around. “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Actually I was thinking too much.”

  “What’s the hurry?” William looked miserable, his hands shoved way down deep in his pockets.

  Ryan started to walk again. “No hurry, just lost in thought. It’s all so familiar. Except it’s not snowing.”

  Again William muttered to himself. “Give it time.”

  We were walking again, but not so fast. The shoreline was slowly drifting off behind us, and we were squinting now from the glare. William tightened his hood to keep the wind out. “Been a while, huh Ryan?”

  Ryan looked like he wasn’t listening, but he was.

  “Yeah, a while.” He kept walking. “You two didn’t have to come with me you know. I could have handled it myself.”

  “I know, but your sister asked me as a favour. You know I could never say no to Aricka.” That was true, even now, pregnant and all.

  “I almost wish you hadn’t come, Andrew. You make it more real. I remember the two of you at the hospital, then the crying. It’s like I’m nine years old again.”

  The wind started to pick up and we soon found ourselves shouting three feet from each other. Another few minutes and we’d be there.

  “You know, I always told people I really couldn’t remember what went on that day, when they died. Actually I do, but I never wanted to talk about it. At the time I thought it was nobody’s business, not even Aricka’s. She wasn’t there, she didn’t see anything. Now I don’t know.”

  We were approaching the channel, a couple hundred feet to the left was the other shore. The ice would still be quite safe, but it was like looking over the edge of a tall building: you knew you were safe, but …

  “I was sitting in the back, the window was open. You remember how I used to get car-sick. Dad was cursing about the snow, worried that he might be lost. Mom had just told me to roll the window up, it was too cold to have it open. That’s when it happened. The car just lurched, dropped and I was thrown to the floor. Mom was screaming and I heard Dad call my name. Then I felt wet, and very cold. I climbed on the back seat, and saw water coming in my open window. I don’t know if it was instinct or what, but I jumped through that window so fast it’s all a blur.”

  William and I felt like we were being told a ghost story, in a very ghostly place, by a very ghostly person. It was not a warm feeling. I was beginning to wish Marie was there, too.

  “I was only little then, so the ice could hold me up. I crawled across the broken ice to the solid stuff. It was cold, so damn cold, but it soon went away. I actually felt numb, then warm after awhile. All the time I could hear Mom and Dad behind me. They were trying to open their doors, but because of the water pressure, the doors wouldn’t open.”

  “You don’t have to tell us this.” William said what I was thinking. I don’t think Ryan heard, either because of the wind, or the memory.

  “I remember sitting on the ice, crying. The water was up to the windows, and there were bubbles everywhere. It looked like it was boiling. Mom rolled down her window and tried to crawl through but she was kinda big. She wouldn’t fit, I’ve never seen her try so hard at anything. She actually looked wedged in the window, then she reached for me, like she wanted me to pull her out, or maybe pull me in with her, I don’t know. But the look on her face … Then the car went under the water, with a large plopping sound. It wasn’t there anymore. There were more bubbles, then her purse floated to the surface.”

  Ryan stopped both talking and walking. Evidently we had reached the spot, or as close to it as we were going to find, both in his memory and in our reality. He was looking down at the ice about six feet ahead of him.

  “I just sat there for the longest time. I was nine years old, I didn’t really know what was going on. I was scared, cold, in shock. After that it gets kind of blurry. I guess I found my way home.”

  Way over on the other side of the lake, I could see a car driving across the ice, heading to the reserve. I wished I was in it.

  “Is this why you’ve never been out on the lake since?”

  “I guess. I just remember my Mom reaching for me. They’re still out here you know. Somewhere below us. They never found the bodies.”

  William stamped his feet from both impatience and cold. “Can we get on with this please?”

  “You’re right. Let’s get this over with.” Ryan walked ahead a bit, then kneeled down and placed the flowers quietly on the ice. Then he started to stroke the flowers like Aricka had, like he was afraid to leave them. “Since the accident, I’ve always been afraid of this place. But Jesus, I’m twenty-two years old, I’ve got to stop being afraid at some point. In all this time I’ve never been able to say goodbye to them. After all, it’s only water, right?”

  “Goodbye Dad. Goodbye Mom.” He stood up and turned to face us, a slight smile on his face. “I was always Mom’s favourite.”

  It was then he went through the ice. It all happened so quickly—a sharp cracking noise, Ryan looked down and then, like bread in a toaster, he slid straight down into the water, the ice buckling around the edge of the hole. A plume of water rushed up into the air, filling the space where Ryan had been a scant few seconds before, then falling onto the ice. Then there was silence. Even the sound of our breathing had stopped.

  We stood there for a moment, not believing what we’d just seen. I remember instinctively racing for the hole and William grabbing me and wrestling me to the ground. I tried to crawl to the hole but he held me.

  “Forget it, he’s gone. He’s under the ice somewhere, we’d never find him.” He was right. There was no sign of him in the three-foot hole, just the occasional bubble.

  “Come on man, let’s just get the hell out of here. Tell the police.” We stood up, I looked at the hole again, not knowing what to do. “Don’t Andrew, let’s go.” William grabbed my arm and turned me towards home. We slowly headed back to the shore. William took one last look backwards. “Like he said, he always was his mother’s favourite.”

  On the way back, it started to snow.

  That was three days ago. Three long days ago. We told the police, and they went out with divers, but never found anything. I never thought they would. The community went into mourning, and the funeral was today. Even drunk, I found it mildly amusing, them burying a body they never found.

  Poor William. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, he doesn’t drink. From what I’ve heard, he hasn’t come out of his house in the last few days—won’t take calls either. The police had to practically threaten to arrest him if he didn’t give them a statement.

  And here I sit, waiting for the waitress to walk by so I can order another drink. I keep seeing Ryan disappearing into the ice, over and over and over again. I now have a new respect for alcoholics and why they drink. While I don’t think this phase will last forever—I’m really a terrible alcoholic—it will hopefully last till I have new thoughts to think, and new memories.

  I have just enough time to make last call. I manage to flag down the waitress as she passes. She nods at me.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Double rye and Coke. No ice.”

  A Blurry Image on the Six O’Clock News

  The batteries on the remote control were dying and that pissed her off the most. It wasn’t the fleeting glimpses of her one-time husband amid the crowds of Native people, or the brutal tactics of the Sûreté du Québec, or the seeming ignorance of the media as to the real issues involved. It was the dying electricity of the batteries in the television remote that made her curse the world. This resulted in a three-se
cond delay between channels. She had spent hours sitting in front of the television, trying to spot her ex-husband, a displaced Ojibway in an increasingly bitter Mohawk war. Lisa had been tantalized a few times—the glimpse of a familiar jean jacket two hundred yards across the barriers. His hair, once fashionably short, now seemed to be getting a little on the shaggy side. Further evidence of his conversion to what he called “the cause.”

  It had been just over five months since the divorce. Another mixed marriage had bitten the dust. Though, she was positive, through no fault of her own. It wasn’t her fault things went the direction they did. He wasn’t the man she had married six years earlier. He had … changed. He was no longer the Richard Spencer she had met at university. He had, to all intents and purposes, become his brother, Donnelly. Granted, she had changed too. Six years of being married to a Native man—Richard always hated the term ‘First Nations,’ it sounded too political and he didn’t consider himself a political person—could do that to an urban woman. And she, Lisa Spencer, descended from Irish-Scottish immigrants, always found it ironic that her married name, given to her by her Aboriginal husband, sounded more English than the name she was born with: Baird.

  That was all a long time ago … many moons ago, as Richard would joke. They were younger and the world less angry, or so it seemed. A White girl marrying an Ojibway man … Even in the early ’80s it still caused members of her family to gossip and wonder. Sure he was a handsome man, potentially successful, once he got out of university, but really, an Indian … “Don’t they have a reputation for drinking?” She heard that more than once, more often than not from her Irish relations. She couldn’t help thinking there was a little “kettle calling” there. Oddly enough though, Richard, with his fashion sense and cool haircut, could easily have passed for someone of a more Mediterranean or Middle Eastern extraction. But the cowboy boots always gave him away. And he wasn’t much of a drinker. A couple of beers occasionally, during hockey or at a party. Her uncles drank way more. Physician heal thyself, she had said to herself.