Charlie told me a story one night. It was late. We’d gone dancing. He got into his whiskey. Just a touch. That’s what he’d say: just a touch. And he told me a story. Well, it was a secret. I had been after him for weeks to tell me a secret he’d never told anyone before, and I remember when he started to tell it to me it was because he knew we would be together forever, and that this was the biggest secret of his life.
It went like this. Charlie said a long time ago he was up in the eastern Arctic. “The Artic,” he used to call it, and you know how his mother is Eskimo, right? Inuit? He could speak Inuktitut. He could also speak Dogrib. He loved languages. I always meant to ask him what language he dreamt in, but maybe you can for me. You know, Charlie was never the same person after he told me this story.
This happened before he knew me. Charlie said that he was skidooing, going to a hunter’s camp. It was a beautiful day on Baffin Island. He was making his way and he noticed a camp to his left. The tents were canvas with hides. He passed by and was so excited to go hunting. He had been home for a while with his mom and he was aching for muktuk with soya sauce. Oh he loved to smack his lips when he talked about muktuk and soya sauce. I tried it once with him, and I swear my hair was shiny for a month. It’s ever greasy. Oh our kisses were gross after. He loved it. But me, I’ll pass….
Anyhow, as he was a mile or so past the camp, the belt broke on his skidoo and he came to a stop. Most hunters have extra fan belts, and the man he borrowed the machine from was known for many things, but an extra of anything was not one of them.
Charlie was stuck. As nice of a day as it was, he knew he was the last hunter to make his way to the camp, and he was losing the light. As hard as he tried, he could not think of anything that would work. Then he remembered the camp.
So he decided to walk. It took a long time to get there and he used his skidoo trail as a path. He knew not to run, not to overheat. He took his time. Oh, I miss his walk. He was so handsome and he looked so relaxed all the time.
He made his way to the camp and knocked once before opening the tent flap to go in. Inside were several Inuit hunters. There was tea, he said. Pilot biscuits. No muktuk, but they had broth from seals.
He said hello and the hunters said hello back. Charlie explained his situation and the hunters listened to his Inuktitut.
The leader invited him in. “Eat,” he said. And they served him. The hunters all had their guns and their harpoons. They had a little lamp of stone that they burned seal oil on. Charlie ate. It was so good to be home. Strangely, all of the men used ulus, the curved knife of the Inuit that looks like a quarter moon. Mom said the ulu was only for women and boys with girls’ names.
“How do you know our language?” the leader asked him. “You have an accent.”
“Oh,” Charlie explained. He told them who his mother was and how he spent time in the west with his father. He apologized for speaking Inuktitut like a kalunat. A white man. And they all laughed.
“We do not know your mother,” one of the hunters said.
“No?” Charlie asked. “She’s a leader. She’s helping get Nunavut off the ground. You must have heard of her.”
The hunters all looked at each other. “No,” they said. “Where are you going?”
Charlie gave them the name of a great hunter who was expecting him. He was surprised when the hunters all said they did not know of him or who he was. The man he was to join was famous for leading many community hunts and for fighting for the rights of hunters.
“Where have you come from?” they asked. “Have you seen any caribou?” He had come from Lypa’s, his mom’s boyfriend. He’d come right from the airport to Lypa’s to get his gear, gun and skidoo and directions to the camp.
“We don’t know him either,” the leader said.
“Lypa?” Charlie said. “Everyone knows Lypa. He’s a great carver. He’s one of the trainers for the Canadian military with the Rangers.”
Again, the hunters all looked at one another. “We do not know him either.”
Charlie told me he had had a bad feeling, that he was a stranger to these people and that he had better leave. He explained to the hunters that the day was losing its light and that perhaps he’d better get back to his machine. He asked them if any of them had an extra belt, but they all said no.
“Then I’d better get going,” he said. And he stood up to leave. He told me how he wished he’d had his gun then. It was the strangest feeling to think this amongst hunters, but he had it loud in his head to leave right away. That was when the leader touched his own rifle by his side and told him to sit down and keep talking.
“Why?” Charlie asked. “I am sorry, but it seems I have offended you somehow and I apologize. I am sorry you don’t know my mother or the hunter who I am seeking or my mother’s boyfriend.”
“Keep talking,” another hunter said who touched his rifle. Charlie stood again and the hunters all told him to sit.
“What is it?” Charlie said. “What have I done? I do not understand why you’re treating me this way.”
The leader held his hand up and motioned for Charlie to sit. “Keep talking,” he ordered. “Prove to us you are not a white caribou.”
Oh no! Charlie thought. He had heard for years about the white caribou. They are beings who pretend to be human and steal into camps pretending to be visitors, only to learn where the men are going to hunt the caribou. When they leave, they leave nothing but bad luck and afterwards the caribou are never where they’re supposed to be.
“Prove to us you are human,” the eldest hunter said. “Keep talking.”
My Charlie sat, and he told me he spoke for what seemed like days. Days and days. They fed him and watched him. They questioned him over and over, the stories he told. He told them everything he could think of about his life and they listened carefully. When he was tired, they would let him sleep. When he had to use the bathroom, they went out with him. Sometimes it was day; sometimes it was night. It was then that he realized they had no dog teams, nor did they have skidoos. When he tried asking them questions, he was bullied to keep answering, to keep talking. Finally, after he burst into tears from exhaustion and after they’d all run out of food, the hunters let him go. He said he ran all the way back in the direction of town where the Rangers were looking for him.
My Charlie told that secret to me only because I nagged him and only because he loved me. I want you to know this.
And you know, I think it was that story that broke us. After that, everything fell apart. Bad luck found our home. Worse luck found our love. Charlie hurt his back; he couldn’t work. He got mean. He was jealous when I came home happy. He told me he could not taste his food. We tried all we could to make things last, but I lost him. You know I lost him.
They say we live many lives in this one and we have to give thanks for our exes. I think about him more and more. Yes, I’m with Hank. Yes, our kids have grown. Yes, I have a home filled with memories of feasts and laughter. But then I heard that Charlie had gone missing. I heard he was training with the Rangers and that they were jogging and he vanished like he did – his footprints vanished – I knew because it was a raven who came to him the day his mother died. She had returned as a raven to say goodbye. That raven outside my window was Charlie telling me something I figured out some time ago.
The more I think about that story…. I figured it out. I figured you out. You see, that camp he described – there were no dogs. No skidoos. “Men” using ulus. And those hunters. How they treated him. How you treated him.
I think they were the white caribou. I think you are the white caribou. I think you were getting ready to split up and go after the camps and learn the plans of the hunters. I think he surprised you and that you made him earn his freedom as a human.
You know, he used to hold me in his sleep like a vice. Sometimes he’d shiver and yell out, “They’re coming for me! They are
, Susan. They’re coming!”
I believe you came back for him. All of you. I believe you let him and his glorious heart go so he could live a few years and that you’d come for him so you could steal him back. I believe you missed him just as much as I do… all these years later. I think you know I know now. I think you know he told one person on this earth the story of all of you.
They say my family has medicine. It’s true my grandmother saved her cousin from having his leg cut off due to diabetes using beaver castors. Ehtsi cured my styes using skunk juice. It’s true she knows how to cure asthma. And she trained me how.
I was the one who told Charlie how to gather medicine under the full moon: to always work in fours; to always offer tobacco first; to talk to the earth and sky and spirit of the leaf, root or tree about why you were taking what you were from them. I tried passing this on to my kids and my husband but it never took. So I’m willing to pass it on to you. All I know. For your people.
I think you should come back and take me. When I think of how hard Charlie’s life has been. When I think of his good heart, even when he was drinking. It wasn’t his fault he told me the story about you. I was the one who figured this story out.
I’ve lived a good life. My kids are grown. My husband is a good man but he’ll move on….
I have only been in love once in my life. I will tell you that. When I light this letter on fire and give it back to the spirit world… give my words back to the Creator and to you, I know you will see this letter and wish from the other side.
I will never tell anyone about you, and I have learned where the hunters are coming this month to find you. I’ve made my rounds in my own quiet way, and I will tell you everything. This is a good trade. I want you to consider my offer. I want you to consider this –
Lizard People
And so I have these friends, God, where do I even begin? I have to set this up properly because I want to… I want to astound you. This is the craziest story you’re going to hear today. All right? So I’ve got these friends and their names are Marvin and Stacy and they live in Vancouver, and Marvin is a man of many strong opinions. And we met them walking on the beach one night and we asked Marvin to take our picture and with a flick of his wrist, he created a timeless portrait, and we’ve been good friends ever since. So I was in Vancouver a while ago for business, and they are obsessed with David Icke, the writer and theorist and conspiracy buff.
And, I don’t know if you know this, but David Icke is convinced that there are Lizard People who live on the planet who have infiltrated our species and they’re gearing up for a big strike. And so they’re the reason that they put so many hormones in our milk because they’re creating a new species of us – like a third sex (men with boobs, women with mustaches) – because they want to keep us weak and docile so that when the invasion comes, none of us will have weapons; all of us will have boobs and beards and there’s nothing we can do. We’re either going to make good pets or great food and it’s up to them, right? It really is.
So that’s the conspiracy. There’s also the theory that with the chemical trails, every time a plane flies over a community, the chemical trails that we see from their engines are dropping a thin mist that the Lizard People have created and when doctors inoculate us, there is a sleeping agent in our blood streams that’s activated and increases passivity in us all, so things have been set in motion and if you look at the US one-dollar bill, and you check out the pyramid, and you see that little eye in the pyramid, if you look carefully, it’s actually a reptilian eye. And it’s because the people who were engraving it were trying to warn us that the Lizard People are upon us. They’re already here. But those people that had anything to do with that… they’re all dead. Like, they died mysteriously as soon as that dollar was out. You need to look into this. Yes, you. All of you.
So, anyways, I’m in Vancouver, and I’m feeling really good about myself, and we go out for supper the night before, and they’re telling us about how David Icke was in Vancouver and he has more evidence that Lizard People are here and they can prove it. And I’m like, “Well, okay, what’s the story?”
And Marvin says, “Well, Stacy says that they have proof. This was in the paper. There was a lady in Vancouver who met a very handsome man and they were at the bar and they’re drinkin’ and so they ended up at her place and they start fooling around. And he has a hard body, a little eight-pack, eh? So they’re fooling around; he’s on top of her, and he’s giving her the J strokes and he’s plums-deep and things are great, and he feels fantastic and she’s just running her hands along his side, you know, just feeling his lats, eh? And so what happened was, as he started to pick up the speed, she tried, like, grabbing his bum. Because you know when women are close, they like to hold on, eh? And what happened was, as she went to go grab his bum, something kept slapping her hand away. So she kept trying to get closer and closer to latch on cuz she was getting close now, and you know how when you’re close with your woman and you want to ride that storm out together, like two horses lost in a wind storm but suddenly you find a way together by riding each other out, she just wanted to grab on, eh? Just let go with him. You know when the J Strokes turn into the Vinegar Strokes, hey? But this little thing kept slapping her hands away from his bum, and what it was, was he had a tail. And the tail didn’t want her to hold his bum. Yes! And so she let out this huge scream and from there, he pounced off the bed and he started running sideways along the wall. She saw his little tail and a flash of his eyes, and he had red eyes. He had reptilian eyes that GLOWED AT HER BECAUSE SHE KNEW NOW WHAT HE REALLY WAS! And that’s how she knows that there’s Lizard People – in Vancouver, no less.”
And so they tell me that story and they’re just looking at me for a reaction, and I’d just came back from Bali so I was no stranger to geckos, eh? I said, “Couldn’t you imagine if when she screamed, she clenched, and his little peeny popped right off and was wiggling inside of her, like a little flipper? Can you imagine that?” And they were horrified that I suggested that because it just never crossed their minds.
So when you think of that story, you think of, like, the Lizard People, and I always think, “Well, why not?” Because we have Little People stories, we have White Caribou stories, we have the stories of the Deer Lady – the lady who’s hitchhiking and when you look at her feet, under her jacket, she has doe’s hooves – when you think about these shape-shifters, right, like, you’ve got the Wheetago and the Rougarou, the Loupgaroo, the Métis shape-shifting spirit – when you think of all these shifters, it makes me really happy to hear these stories, because I think that whether or not the Lizard People are here in actuality, it doesn’t matter, right? Perhaps they are; perhaps they’re not. It’s good that people are telling these stories. Many of us have lost community and it makes me happy that these stories are being told. Whether it’s around a supper table, in an elevator or around the water cooler. These are good stories and stories are how we grow as a people and family together.
A ho. A ho.
Godless but Loyal to Heaven
Oh these pills are kicking the shit out of me… and I could tell this was going to be about as much fun as a gut full of pinworms.
Jeezus, why me?
As I walked up the parking lot towards the hospital, there stood the Smith Squad chain-smoking outside the hospital doors. They stood straighter when I approached and they watched me cautiously. The Smith Squad was Lester’s co-workers, guys who were all from Fort Smith, who worked for Jeremiah the Bullfrog. And there was Jeremiah’s son and UFC hopeful: Country, the biggest boy in town. I don’t know if it was a glandular problem or genetics or what the fuck, but he was a giant at easily six foot eight and solid with muscle. Because of his father’s nickname, Townies called Country “Pollywog” as an act of irony, though never to his face. All of the men, including Jeremiah, stood in their overalls with their gloves off. I saw yellow trigger fingers on all of them
from their smoking and I could tell they wanted to emanate criminal intent. They sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups and smoked, waiting to see what Jeremiah would do as I passed by. He said something quickly and Country pushed his chest up and walked out towards me.
I walked straight up to him and swallowed hard. My fists were all out of fights for me. Think like a wolf….
Gunner walked forward and stood beside Country, barring me from the door. He had no teeth so he looked a lot older than he was. Sharp knuckles. He spoke with his lips. Gunner probably blubbered to his pals that I jumped him, but that wasn’t true at all. Of all my knockouts, he was my fave. I marvelled at how his spit flew and his ears wobbled every time I whooped him.
Gunner was the one who called me at Snowbird’s and I could hear in his voice how much he hated me. I made a quick move towards him and Country and they both stepped back. I then looked at Jeremiah. “Fuck around,” I said. “If Lester’s dying and he’s asked to see me, you’re all in the way of a dying man’s request.”
I didn’t really know the other members of the Smith Squad, except for Country, and I did not want anything to do with him – not with the body I had now. The other men were simple folk really, a wild assortment of the rough and ruthless and the tough and toothless – and then I sensed a great presence at three o’clock as the man in the back moved to oppose me while the others parted like weeds to let him approach.
I met his eyes, and he was a stranger. This was no Smither. He was Inuit from the east. The Inuk was short and stocky, powerfully built like Mike Tyson. He had long hair, a moustache and a little goatee. And nothing in his eyes for me but hate. He checked me out while the men snickered around me and I got the shiver, the same kind of shiver I felt when that daddy-long-legs spider ran across my ass the last time I used an outhouse. I knew, in a second, that this guy could really hurt me.
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