Indian Horse

by Richard Wagamese

  “Just what the hell do you want?”

  “Well, the thing is, you gotta earn the right to eat here.”

  “We pay just like everybody else.”

  “We don’t eat with Indians.”

  “I don’t recall asking you to join us,” Virgil said.

  The man smiled. Then he reached out and clamped a hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “It’s not your place to ask us anything. You wanna eat here you gotta fight for it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, whenever we get Indians uppity enough to wanna eat here we take them outside to a little place in the alley out back we call Moccasin Square Garden. You walk back in here from the Garden and you can eat all you want. So we’re gonna march you out there one at a time. See who’s man enough to make it back.”

  “Sounds fun.” Virgil reached down and took a drink of water, then placed the glass back on the table.

  “You first,” the man said to him.

  “Save my spot, Saul. I’ll be right back.”

  The line of men walked Virgil out and three more stepped from the door of the bar to block our passage. They had axe handles in their hands. We sat there in shock, not knowing what to do. The waitress and the cook stood together in the kitchen, murmuring to each other. There was the sound of slushy traffic from the street. A police car slid by and we flicked looks at each other. The team sat ramrod straight in our chairs.

  They walked Virgil back in. He was bloody around the mouth and there was a cut on his temple. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he sat down and stared at his hands, which he’d folded on the table. Then they walked another of us out. For the next twenty minutes they came in and took one member of the Moose after another. Each time they brought someone back the smell of urine got stronger. When only I was left, the tall man leaned on our table.

  “You play a hell of game, little star,” he said. “That and the fact that you’re a kid gives you a pass. But remember your place. Next time, somewheres else, you might not get so lucky.”

  He blew a kiss to everyone at our table and then turned and walked away. The other men strode out behind him. As they entered the bar the jukebox jumped back to life we heard a lot of laughter and the clinking of glasses. I sat there looking around at my teammates’ faces. None of them moved. They were all staring at the table in front of them. They’d been beaten. Not severely. They weren’t injured enough to require a hospital but they were cut and hurt, and I could feel their brokenness. Virgil cleared his throat and stood up.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  We filed out silently and climbed into the van. Virgil motioned for me to join him in the front seat. We pulled out into the street and found the highway again. No one said a word. The smell of urine and spit was high in the air. Someone lit a cigarette and the acrid bite of the smoke was a relief. Virgil drove steadily, west along the road that would take us home. Darkness fell. We drove in silence. There was no sound for miles except the hum of the wheels beneath us. We’d driven for hours before Virgil spoke. When he did it was only five words. Five words that scared me and angered me at the same time.

  “They pissed on us, Saul.”

  The miles flew by and now and then we could hear a cough from the back of the van and the rustle of bodies trying to sleep. As we passed White River around midnight, he told me what had happened.

  “When I got out back they circled me. The first one came at me and we got into it. But all he did was push me back and someone else grabbed me and spun me around and I got punched in the face. Then someone else grabbed me and gave me another shot. They pushed me all around that circle, punching and kicking and when I fell to the ground, dizzy, one of them stood over me and pissed on me. It was the same for all of us.”

  I sat there without a clue about what to say. After a few more miles he spoke again.

  “But you know what the scariest thing was, Saul? There was no yelling, no cussing, no nothing. They did it silently. Like it was an everyday thing. I never knew people could be that cold.”

  “They hate us because we won?” I asked finally.

  “They hate us because we’re skins.”

  “We didn’t do anything.”

  “We crossed a line. Their line. They figure they got the right to make us pay for that.”

  “Do they?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes I think so.”

  “Virgil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I won’t say nothing.”

  “Good,” he said. “None of us will.”

  And we never did. But there were moments when you’d catch another boy’s eye and know that you were both thinking about it. Everything was contained in that glance. All the hurt. All the shame. All the rage. The white people thought it was their game. They thought it was their world.

  32

  I started to notice things after that. I started to see a line in every arena we played in. It showed itself as a stretch of empty seats that separated the Indian fans from the white ones. Police were stationed at the separate entrance they shunted our people through. I saw that a lot of players on the opposing teams would not remove their hockey gloves to shake our hands after a game. Some of them didn’t even leave the bench. When I mentioned it to Virgil, he scowled. “White ice, white players,” he said. “Honky Night in Canada.”

  The Moose were invited to play in a town called Espanola. It was a long drive, but their team, the Lumber Kings, were repeat champions. Several former members had graduated to Major Junior A and a handful had even gone on to play in the National Hockey League. They were a team with a pedigree, and only the best teams got invited to Espanola’s annual tournament. The tournament had never had a Native team before, and despite some misgivings Virgil convinced us to make the trip.

  “We win this thing and we’ve got enough for a down payment on a team bus,” he said. “Let’s show them that we can do it.”

  The Moose were a known team by then, and when we piled out of our vans at the arena in Espanola, I could feel the eyes on us.

  “Which one’s the whiz kid?” I heard someone ask.

  “Gotta be the big guy.”

  “Nah. I bet he’s the tall one, with the big hands.”

  As we skated onto the ice for our game against the North Bay Nuggets, the crowd booed us. When our lineup was introduced, they knew suddenly where to direct their energy.

  “Hey, Indian Horse! Thirteen’s gonna be real unlucky for you!”

  “You guys are gonna need an Indian hearse to get outta here!”

  “We’re taking your scalps, Chief!”

  Once we settled on our bench, Virgil looked at me and grinned, trying to keep his spirits up. “They warmed up to you real fast,” he said. “The Indian hearse thing was pretty good.”

  The North Bay team was exciting to watch. You could tell that they were well coached by the disciplined way they moved the puck. Fred Kelly seldom made a road trip because of his work schedule, and I found myself wishing for his presence right then. No one on the North Bay team took unnecessary chances. They played the game efficiently, and nobody held on to the puck for long. I was impressed as I studied their game. They weren’t afraid to halt the flow and turn their rush back when it wasn’t shaping up. Their defense was solid, if unspectacular. They were the stay-at-home variety who kept their heads and passed cleanly. The Nuggets could really skate too. Our guys looked awkward compared to them. Not long into the game they scored a pair of goals on us.

  Virgil slumped down beside me on the bench and elbowed me in the ribs.

  “You scared of these guys or what?” he asked.

  “They’re good.”

  “Yeah, well, anytime you feel like helping out.”

  I nodded. I watched a few minutes longer, and w
hen one of their rushes broke down at our blue line and they turned the puck back to their trailing defenseman, I had the knowledge I needed. I raised my stick as Virgil skated by. He turned to the bench immediately and I leaped over the boards.

  I burst in across our blue line to a tangle along the boards and tapped the puck loose. It skimmed out to one of their players, and I was on him in a flash. There was no sound from my skates so I surprised him. He flipped a hurried pass into the middle. Our defense ate it up and we started up ice. When they assembled to stave off our attack, I turned and skated as fast as I could along the right wing, ignoring the puck. I saw their defense tighten nervously as I flew across centre ice. They moved toward me but I cut hard back toward the play, passing our rushing left-winger in a blur. He left the puck for me, and I scooped it and flew across our blue line in a long sweeping turn. I could feel the air whip by my face, and my jersey flapped. The crowd was on their feet. I’d never skated so fast. When I met their forwards coming back toward me, I did a crazy loop-the-loop around their centre and another one in the opposite direction by their left-winger. I pulled the defense to me again as I crossed the blue line and made a nifty drop pass between my legs. Joe Eagle Chief, our right-winger, picked it up all alone and scored on a wrist shot. I’d never heard such noise—cheers mixed with boos and a crazed stomping of feet. A flurry of empty cups landed on the ice as I skated to the bench.

  “They play clean, but high speed disrupts them,” I huffed to Virgil.

  He thumped me on the back, then whispered to our guys along the bench. From then on, we picked up the intensity on every shift. I played forty minutes of that game. I was drenched in sweat. My gear felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. I scored four times and we won it going away, seven to four. Half of their team refused to come out for the handshake.

  When we returned the next morning to play the Owen Sound Clippers, the arena was packed. Like before, the crowd was noisy. The Clippers were a hard-skating, workmanlike team, known for their toughness. They were the biggest team we’d ever faced too, and when I lined up for the faceoff against their number one centre he loomed over me.

  “Watch your head, squirt,” he said.

  Maybe I should have registered those words as ominous. Maybe I should have been able to read what was coming, discerned intent from the vicious way he slapped my stick before the puck was dropped. But I didn’t. What tipped me off first was the hard cross-check I took across the back when I went into the corner after the puck. It was so hard I lost my footing and tumbled into the boards. I heard laughter from the seats. My helmet had slipped down over my eyes, and when I stood up and raised my glove to lift it, someone slashed my skates out from under me and I fell again. I heard more laughter and people were slapping the glass above me. The play had moved down ice by the time I got up, and I had to chase it.

  The hits came regular after that. Every player on the Clippers slammed into me whenever they could. I was slashed repeatedly from behind. I was cross-checked, tripped, held and elbowed. When someone pushed my face into the glass with his forearm, I spun on my skates. My helmet fell off, and I was standing toe to toe with the tall centre. He flipped his gloves off, spread his skates wide, raised his fists and scowled at me.

  “Whatta ya gonna do, squaw hopper?” he asked.

  I looked over at our bench. Virgil was standing there looking at me. As I bent to retrieve my helmet, the boos rained down from the stands. There was clutter strewn all over the ice. The crowd was rabid. Back on the bench I slumped down and took a long swig from the water bottle. I could feel my teammates all looking at me. I stared at my feet.

  “You don’t gotta take the cheap stuff, Saul,” Eagle Chief said. “Hit the fuckers back.”

  “That’s not my game,” I said.

  “Starting to look like it better be.”

  When I went out for my next shift, the crowd was on me right away.

  “Hey, it’s Chief Chicken!”

  “Injuns are s’posed to wear war paint, not make-up!”

  “Hit ’em with your purse, Indian Horse!”

  As I leaned in for the faceoff, their centre blew me a kiss. “Pussy,” he sneered. He slashed the stick out of my hands when the puck was dropped. When I skated away he raised his hands to the crowd and they roared.

  They kept at me all through the game, and when it was over I was covered in welts and bruises. And we lost. That hurt far more. I sat in the dressing room holding ice to the most painful areas.

  “Tough guys,” Virgil said.

  “We could have won,” I said.

  “Hard when they won’t let you skate.”

  “Where the hell were the refs?”

  “You sound like a whiner.”

  “Hey, you saw how they played me.”

  “Yeah. I saw. I saw how you reacted, too.”

  “You think I’m chicken?”

  “I think you’re scared, yeah. I would be if I was your size. There’s some big boys in this tournament. It ain’t gonna get any easier now that they know how to slow you down.”

  Virgil was right. It didn’t get any easier. It got worse. Every team we faced after that sent their biggest and toughest out against me. They sent their finesse players out against our other lines, so that when my teammates tried to hand out a measure of punishment they were penalized and played short-handed a lot of the time. The Moose struggled. My body was sore. My thighs had been slashed so many times I could feel the beginnings of a charley horse. When we came out for our last game, a game we had to win to stay in the tournament, I didn’t know if I had it in me. For the very first time that I could remember, I couldn’t find the vision. I couldn’t seem to read the play and I felt hopeless. I felt like a loser. On my first shift in that game I was skated hard into the boards by both opposing defensemen and had my head rubbed into the glass for extra measure. When I turned, the biggest of them pushed me in the chest and I fell back into the boards. He waited, as I gathered myself, settled my helmet square on my head and skated away. He spat at my feet as the crowd booed lustily.

  When I finished that shift I came back to our bench and tilted my head up to squirt water from the bottle onto my face. That’s when I felt it. Spittle. It rained down from the seats behind us, and I heard them calling me names and beating against the glass. When I turned around I came face to face with a boy who must have been about nine. He spit against the glass. “Fuckin’ chicken,” he mouthed. The man standing beside him squeezed his shoulder.

  By now, the whole crowd was on its feet and gesturing toward our bench. When the ref had whistled the game down, he skated to the PA announcer. It took a full five minutes for the crowd to settle down. While they cleaned the garbage off the ice we went to our dressing room. I sat with my head down, and no one said a word. When I looked around, nobody would meet my eye.

  There are times in this world when you have to look hard at yourself. The challenge you feel is the one that burns in your gut. I knew my team wanted me to buckle. They wanted me to bare my fists and fight. But I would not do that. I would not surrender my vision of the game. I would not let go of my dream of it, the freedom, the release it gave me, the joy the game gave me. It wasn’t anybody else’s game to take away from me. Father Leboutilier had said that it was God’s game. I had no head for that idea. But I knew for a fact that the game was my life. I sat there in that horrible silence and I smouldered. I raged, and when the referee knocked on the door I stood up with the others to head back to the ice. I clomped with them down the hallway, and when I got to the bench I turned and looked at the crowd. I raised my stick to them and stepped out onto the ice and reclaimed the game.

  There wasn’t one of those players who could skate with me.

  33

  Two things came out of that tournament. The first thing was that it made me tougher. I would not fight, but I was better able to handle the
rough stuff after that; to churn my legs and use my weight to flail through and make the pass that cleared the logjams they set up for me. I ignored the slashes, spears and elbows. I never saw the sense in fights. They always sent their goons to goad me. But I never fought.

  The second thing was the press clippings. It had been a colossal struggle, but we’d fought back to win that big tournament. When we hit the road back to Manitouwadge, every one of us was spent. Wasted. But we’d won it. There was something in the negativity from the crowds and the other teams that drove us. My teammates had wanted me to drop my gloves and start throwing punches, but they’d all felt the splatter of the spit that rained down, and every player on the Moose took that personally. We pushed ourselves to excel, to show them that the game belonged to us too. So we were champions, and they wrote about us in all the newspapers. Virgil saved the clippings in a plastic folder.

  Soon after those stories appeared, we started to see a stranger in the stands. He was a tall, thin white guy in a battered hat and a long grey trench coat. Wearing those pullover rubbers with the zippers you never see in the North. He showed up at a tourney in Osnaburgh, and then at one in Pickle Lake. He was in the stands during the big tournament in Batchewana, and as we clomped back into our dressing room after winning the semifinal, the word “scout” was whispered along the line. I sat down on the bench with a towel draped around my neck and everybody looking at me. Big brown faces. Deep dark eyes. Indian faces, all stoic and quiet, studying me with a focus that rattled me some.

  “What?” I asked.

  “He’s here for you, Saul,” Ernie Jack said quietly.

  “Who is?”

  “The scout.”

  “Nobody knows if he’s a scout or not.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Virgil walked over and opened it. The white guy stood there with his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his coat. He and Virgil talked in low voices for a moment or two. There wasn’t a sound in that room. No one moved to undress. I could see the man scanning the room, and when his eyes fell on me he squinted. Then he patted Virgil on the shoulder and Virgil closed the door. He crossed the room and sat down beside me. You could have heard a pin drop in that room.