Indian Horse

by Richard Wagamese

  14

  I saw kids die of tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia and broken hearts at St. Jerome’s. I saw young boys and girls die standing on their own two feet. I saw runaways carried back, frozen solid as boards. I saw bodies hung from rafters on thin ropes. I saw wrists slashed and the cascade of blood on the bathroom floor and, one time, a young boy impaled on the tines of a pitchfork that he’d shoved through himself. I watched a girl calmly fill the pockets of her apron with rocks and walk away across the field. She went to the creek and sat on the bottom and drowned. That would never stop, never change, so long as that school stood in its place at the top of that ridge, as long as they continued to pull Indian kids from the bush and from the arms of their people. So I retreated. That’s how I survived. Alone. When the tears threatened to erupt from me at night I vowed they would never hear me cry. I ached in solitude. What I let them see was a quiet, withdrawn boy, void of feeling.

  15

  Father Gaston Leboutilier came to St. Jerome’s the same year that I did. He was a young priest with a sense of humour that angered his fellow priests and the nuns, and a kindness and sense of adventure that drew the boys to him. He led hikes in the spring and summer. He took us camping for days at a time and when winter came he brought us hockey. He convinced Father Quinney to let him build a rink, outfit the older boys and start a team. Things changed at St. Jerome’s after that, for one season of the year at least.

  “Have you ever heard of hockey?” That was the first thing he said to me. I was sitting on the steps behind the kitchen as the other kids played in the fresh fallen snow.

  “No. What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a game,” he said. “Maybe the greatest game. It’s played on ice with skates and it’s very fast, very exciting.”

  “Are there books about it?”

  “A lot of books. I have some I could lend you. If you like what you read maybe you’ll want to come and watch. We’ve built a rink and it’s almost ready.”

  “I don’t like games much.”

  He reached out and rubbed my hair. “So serious,” he said. “We need to get you outside to watch. I guarantee you’ll love it.”

  He smiled at me and I smiled back.

  Father Leboutilier brought me hockey books and answered all my questions. His passion for the game was contagious. I read about heroes like Dit Clapper, Turk Broda, Black Cat Gagnon, “Sudden Death” Mel Hill and Ulcers McCool. Then there were more recent hockey gods, like Beliveau, Mahovlich and Rocket Richard. From the pages of those books I got the idea that hockey had an alchemy that could transform ordinary men into great ones. I will never forget the first time I watched the older boys play. The white glory of the rink. The sun was shining and the sky was pale blue. There wasn’t a hint of wind. The air hung cold and crystalline as the boys pushed themselves around that oval to warm up, the huffing of their breath wreathing their heads. It reminded me of a locomotive, a steam-driven train bracing itself for release from the station.

  The game started in a mad scramble. Reserve and bush boys made sudden crazy turns and spins as they chased the puck back and forth, and only the blast of Father Lebou-tilier’s whistle returned things to a momentary calm. The players leaned forward on their sticks, eyes charcoal glints in the sunshine. The excitement in the air was so thick you could smell it. When the priest turned them loose to scrimmage, they broke with the abandon of mustangs. I never once looked at the puck. I kept my eyes glued to the boys, their sheer energy as they hurtled like comets. Father Leboutilier skated loosely along the edges, pointing with his heavy hockey gloves or the blade of his stick. When he skated over to me, rubbing at his nose with the blunt thumb of a glove, his eyes were afire.

  “There’s an order to the game, Saul, though it might not be readily visible yet. There’s a genuine rhythm under all this mayhem. When they grasp the rules you’ll start to see it,” he said.

  “I see it already,” I said.

  “You do?”

  “The lines,” I said. “They create space. The space you have to move into to make it happen.”

  “You see that?”

  “Yes.”

  And I did. I can’t explain how it came to me, but I could see not just the physical properties of the game and the action but the intent. If a player could control a measure of space, he could control the game. The boys on the ice lurched and skimmed, oblivious to anything but the rubber sliding between their sticks. But I could see how a skater might move, where he might go to gain the advantage of space, how he might move the puck along to get it down ice and into the nest of twine that was the net.

  There are stories of teachers among our people who could determine where a particular moose was, a bear, the exact time the fish would make their spawning runs. My great-grandfather Shabogeesick, the original Indian Horse, had that gift. The world spoke to him. It told him where to look. Shabogeesick’s gift had been passed on to me. There’s no other explanation for how I was able to see this foreign game so completely right away.

  Father Leboutilier invited a small group of boys to his quarters, where he had a television. Few of us had seen one and we were thunderstruck. It was a box filled with apparitions, but once the game started we were too intent to pay attention to anything else. Hockey Night in Canada was the personification of magic. Ten men hurtling around a fenced perimeter with glorious speed. Cuts, switches, abrupt stops and misdirections. Hits, bumps, a focused grit and then the sweeping ballet of the open ice, the action funnelling down to a point where it became just the stick, the puck, the pads, the net, the red light and the klaxon sound of the buzzer that sent thousands erupting into glee. It thrilled me.

  I begged to play after that. I begged to be taught to skate. But Father Quinney allowed only the older boys to play. I was eight and small. I asked again and again, and finally Father Leboutilier put his hand between my shoulder blades and leaned down to speak with me. His warm hand made me think of my grandmother’s touch.

  “There’s nothing I can do, Saul,” he said, quietly. “The rules are the rules. If I were to break them for you, it might prevent everyone from playing.”

  “But I want to learn it.”

  He smiled and pulled me forward into a hug. I closed my eyes and I almost cried for the memory of my father. He held me a long moment, then let me go.

  “Can I look after the ice then?”

  “You want to shovel snow?”

  “Yes. Anything.”

  He looked out at the scramble of boys on the ice. “As long as you can keep up with your studies and your chores, I think I could arrange that.”

  16

  Cleaning the rink became my assigned chore and I would rise to do it before anyone else in the school was up. Before the nuns, before the priests, before the cooks even got to the kitchen to start the oatmeal mush and dry toast that was our regular breakfast. I needed no alarm clock. I’d just wake and dress carefully in the dimness and creep downstairs in my stocking feet to the back door, where I kept my thin rubbers. I’d pull on a pair of extra wool socks Father Leboutilier had found for me and clamber into my winter coat and scarf and mitts and step out onto the back stairs. The edge of those mornings always caught at my lungs. The air was so cold and so pure it was hard to breathe. But I’d huff a breath or two and stamp my feet to get the blood moving and then walk slowly around the school and beyond the barn to where the rink stood. It was a purple world with only the varying degrees of light from the moon that allowed me to see. I’d get my shovel from where I’d stashed it in the snow, and I’d begin. I’d start at one side and push the snow to the foot of the boards that faced out to the field. Once the rink was scraped clear, I’d work my way along the length of the boards, pitching the snow piles over. I loved the feeling of my heaving breath and the clouds of fog that swirled around my head. I’d sweat. When I was done I would lean against the boards and examin
e my handiwork; the smooth grey plate of ice in the dim morning light. The idea of the game hanging in the frost. I was out on that rink every morning, even when the snow fell faster than I could shovel it.

  At first I was simply grateful for my proximity to the game. But then I began to stash a hockey stick in the snow beside the boards. Once I’d made sure no one was around, I’d dig it out and run to the barn for a handful of the frozen horse turds I’d buried beside the door. I’d carry them back to the rink and drop them at one end. Then I’d take the stick and nudge one turd out of the heap and practice moving it back and forth, stickhandling, like I’d seen the players on Hockey Night in Canada do.

  I moved it carefully so I wouldn’t break the turd. I wanted to develop a soft touch, a deft weaving like the player Jean Beliveau, streaming up ice with the puck dangling on the blade of his stick like it was tied there on invisible twine. I made sure my stick made no sound against the ice, lest somebody discover me there. When the first turd eventually broke apart, I’d take another and I’d march up ice again with my substitute puck. I moved my feet as though I were skating, working the turd from side to side, making wider and wider sweeps. I got so I could slip it between my feet when I reached the end boards, spin around, cradle it in the middle of the blade and start back down the ice again. When all the turds were broken I’d flick the pieces over the boards with the wrist-shot motion I’d seen Dave Balon of the New York Rangers use. Then I’d stash my stick in the snow, shovel clear the evidence of my practice and head back to the building for breakfast and school.

  At night in the dormitory, when all the other boys were asleep, I would get out of bed and stand in the aisle between the rows of cots, where the moonlight made the linoleum look like ice, and mimic the motion of stickhandling. I pictured myself barrelling across the blue line with the puck tucked neatly on the blade of my stick. I would throw a broad feint at the final defender and race in alone toward the goalie, who would begin to retreat slowly into the crease. I would shift my weight from foot to foot as I skated, dancing, wriggling, faking, the puck still nestled in the cradle of my blade. The space between the goalie and me would shrink and when I got about ten feet away I would draw the puck back behind my right leg. Then I would drive my weight forward onto my left leg and allow the momentum to bring the stick and puck forward. When the weight transfer was right, I’d snap my wrists and send the puck in a blur high into the right-hand corner, bulging the twine behind the helpless goaltender. Naturally, the force of my shot would take me to one knee. I would raise my arms in the hushed light of the dorm. My mouth would be open with glee and I would face the picture of Jesus hung there on the wall, my salvation coming instead through wood and rubber and ice and the dream of a game. I’d stand there, arms held high in triumph, and I would not feel lonely or afraid, deserted or abandoned, but connected to something far bigger than myself. Then I’d climb back into bed and sleep until the dawn woke me and I could walk back out to the rink again.

  17

  Father Leboutilier was my ally. When the nuns and priests got too hard on me, he was there to mediate and defend me. By the second winter, when I was nine, I’d become braver. I took to stashing skates along with the stick. Father put me in charge of the equipment locker and it was my job now to keep things clean, to launder the sweaters, air out the gloves and pants and pads. I still rose before anyone else and made my way to the rink. There was always the ritual of shovelling the snow and clearing the ice, that solitary work of preparing to open the doors to a magical kingdom.

  All of the skates were too big for me. So I stuffed the toes of a pair with newspaper to make them fit. Once they were laced tightly onto my feet I would grasp the edge of the boards and wobble along the length of the rink, then turn and wobble back the other way. Once I could travel the entire perimeter of the ice that way, I switched to a chair I took from the barn. I’d set it in front of me and lean on the back of it and push myself along. I always paid particular attention to the skating during Hockey Night in Canada, and I wanted to copy those motions. It was hard work, but I eventually got so I could push my way around the ice with that chair.

  Then came the morning I let go of the chair.

  I became a bird. An ungainly bird at first, but a creature of the air nonetheless. I leaned too far forward and had to save myself from falling, but I managed to propel myself along. In my mind I could see the way that I wanted my body to behave on skates and I worked toward that. For a week I practiced. Step and glide. Step. Glide. Step. Glide. I positioned my arms and concentrated on maintaining a stable posture. I’d picture the players I’d seen on TV, lock my gaze on the end boards and push myself toward them, gradually picking up speed.

  I saw myself making the turn at the far end. Saw myself crossing my feet, one over the other, leaning to the inside, dropping the inside shoulder some, lifting my elbows higher and inscribing a perfect arc around the curve of the boards. Saw it as though I’d done it a hundred times. And then I did it. I cut around the net and followed the line of the boards and broke out of that long curve and lifted my hands straight up in the air as I glided into the open flare of the ice. Then I taught myself to go the other way.

  I worked harder at clearing the ice to give myself more time to skate each day. I tore at that chore. I ran the width of the ice, pushing the snow into a pile along the boards. The labour made me wiry and tough. It gave my lungs a workout and cleared my mind of everything but the ice. As I laced on the skates my fingers actually trembled. Not from the cold but from the knowledge that freedom was imminent, that flight was at hand. I floated out onto a snow-white stage in a soliloquy of grace and motion. I loved it. Every time I skated I felt as though I had created the act. It was pure and new and startling.

  The way I began was always the same. I would lean forward with my hands on my knees and stare at the ice, picking a spot on its surface. Then I would picture myself skating to that spot. I’d see myself making a wide circle that I’d bring in tighter and tighter before turning abruptly and skating out of the circle the other way. Then I would actually go and do it. My blades never made a sound. I couldn’t let anyone discover what I was doing, so I learned how to skate soundlessly without the chunk-chunk of steel on ice the other boys made when they played the game. I learned to envision myself making moves before I tried them. If I could see myself doing it, then I could do it. It worked for any move. There was no explanation for how I could do what I did. I knew it as a mystery and I honoured it that way.

  My grandmother had always referred to the universe as the Great Mystery.

  “What does it mean?” I asked her once.

  “It means all things.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She took my hand and sat me down on a rock at the water’s edge. “We need mystery,” she said. “Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility, grandson, is the foundation of all learning. So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.”

  When I released myself to the mystery of the ice I became a different creature. I could slow down time, choose the tempo I needed whenever I launched myself into learning a new skill. I could hurtle down the ice at full speed and then bend time in upon itself to slow the turn, every muscle, every tendon, every sinew in my body remembering the movement, learning it, making it a part of me.

  I learned to stop quickly on one skate. I learned to skate backwards, switching back and forth instantly, shifting my weight from foot to foot, making dazzling changes in direction. I set up horse turds in random patterns and learned to cut in around them from all sides. Every time, I would envision the move and then make it happen. I reached out with all the love in my heart and let it carry me deeper into the mystery.

  Then I picked up the stick, using all of the skills I’d developed the winter before to stickhandle the horse turds around
the ice. The turds were precious and I worked at not breaking them. I turned circles, first one way and then the other until I could make them faster and smaller. I practiced driving off one skate into high speed using as few strides as possible, balancing the turd on the blade of my stick. I shifted, I feinted, I faked. I raced across the ice with the silent swish of blades and cleared it of evidence as the turds broke with a short, sharp snap of my wrists.