Indian Horse

by Richard Wagamese

  The social workers told me about the New Dawn Centre. They said it was the best place for Native people to get help. It was on a hundred acres or so of land north of the city, and it was calm and restful. I resisted at first. But the doctors told me what a mess I’d made of my body and how another bout of drinking like I did would likely kill me, and for some strange reason I listened. I don’t recall wanting to listen. I just did. When I got here, though, it was all about getting strong enough to leave. I was as addicted to leaving as I was to the booze. But the funny thing is that as my head got clearer, so did my recollections, and it spilled out pretty much on its own. Getting to the part about that long, dark downward spiral let me surface into the light for the first time in a very long time. I don’t know if I was glad for it. Not at first. I felt as though I stood there blinking before I could move.

  48

  There wasn’t much to write about after that, though. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t come up with anything else. I felt dissatisfied. I thought I’d discover something new, something powerful that would heal me. That’s what Moses said the whole thing was supposed to lead to. When it didn’t, I took to walking in the bush alone again. I felt as though nothing had changed. I felt as though the only thing I had done was quit drinking. Only the land offered me any kind of solace. So I walked every day for a while and explored the territory behind the New Dawn Centre.

  A family of beavers had a lodge in the middle of a small pond a few miles into the woods. I’d sit in the cedars and watch them. They were delightful. That day they stayed active all through the afternoon, and when they finally disappeared into their lodge, it was early evening and my chances of making it back to the centre were not good. I walked up to a small table of rock I knew of. There was a lot of deadfall there, and I gathered enough for a good fire. If anyone came looking for me, they’d see it.

  The night was alive with stars. I lay on my back on the moss and watched them. The longer I watched them, the more I could sense the earth turning in the heavens. It was late when I fell asleep.

  I don’t know if I was awake or dreaming when I heard a sound in the trees. There was a slip of a moon in the sky and a low fog hung just above the ground. The air was still. The fog amplified every rustle of movement in the trees, and far off I could hear the cautious steps of deer. But the sound that woke me did not belong to an animal. It was like a moan, a low humming. It died off, then came again a moment later. This time I scanned the line of trees, but there was nothing. Only the fog. Then a shape began to appear. At first it was just a blur, but as I stared the dim shape moved closer. It didn’t walk. It floated. My guts cramped with fear. But I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The moan came again. It sounded desolate. Human.

  I began to see the shape of a person and behind it something huge and lumbering. I was prepared to bolt, but the voice, now easing into an Ojibway song, held me in place. As the strange duo drew near, the human shape moved one arm, and I could see that the big shape behind it was a horse.

  The sheaths of fog parted, and I was looking at a man I knew was my great-grandfather. He was dressed in a traditional smock and pants with a porcupine quill headpiece. In one hand he held an eagle wing fan, and with the other he led the horse by a rope braided from cedar root. His song was low, and he walked in the measured step of it, coming to a halt mere yards from me. Shabogeesick was old. Terrifically old and thin. I could see the jut of his bones beneath the smock, and the spray of wrinkles running down his face. But his eyes were sharp and steady, and he regarded me curiously. He raised the eagle wing fan and shook it at me. As he passed it over his body, I saw my father, my mother. My brother. My uncle. My aunt. My grandmother. I wept at the sight of them. My grandmother held a finger to her lips and crinkled the corners of her eyes at me. Then they turned, and the old man lifted my grandmother up onto the horse’s back. My family walked slowly into the depths of the fog, and I could hear them singing as they retreated. I closed my eyes, feeling an incredible weight of grief and longing, and when I opened them again the slender silver arc of the moon hung high above me. The fire had died down. I threw another piece of wood on it and sat with my arms hugging my knees. I cried again as I stared into those orange flames. I sat there all night, and when the first grey light of morning eased upward I kicked dirt over the fire to kill it. I was leaving again. Only this time I knew exactly where I was going.

  49

  “I don’t know why I have to go. I just know I do.” That’s what I told Moses.

  He only studied me some and then nodded. He’d been around a long time and he knew drunks. “We’re here if you need us,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  Once I’d checked out, I caught the bus east and promptly fell asleep before we’d hit the highway outside of town. It was a dreamless sleep. I woke to a dull morning in the fog of northern Ontario, and while the bus refuelled I sat in a diner and drank coffee and had a small breakfast of dry toast and fruit. Everyone seemed as bleary as I felt. They took tables alone or meandered through the parking lot sipping coffee and smoking to kill the time. When we loaded up again I stared at the land flashing by. I remembered how I’d watched it as a kid in the back of that sedan with Lonnie Goose and the girl whose name I’d never learned.

  White River hadn’t changed all that much. It still looked like a northern mill town. There were newer chain stores now, and the main street had been widened. The old arena had been replaced with a newer, bigger version. The gravel road that had led out of town beyond the quarry was paved now. But the sweep of the land was still the same. Past the quarry it dipped down into lowlands, the marsh and the stream where we’d bagged suckers, then wound upward through thick bush. As the cab I’d caught rounded the last turn, I could see the school.

  I paid the cab driver and stepped out at the head of the driveway. The old sign drooped sadly off one post. Someone had shot out most of the letters with a shotgun so that only the first S of St. Jerome’s was legible. The post it hung on was nicked and bitten off by bullets. Old wine bottles and rusted-out beer cans were strewn about the ditch. Lumps of human excrement sat by the post itself. I unhooked the chain across the entrance and laid it on the ground. The cab driver honked as he pulled away. The driveway was pocked with potholes. The fields where they’d grown potatoes and cabbage and turnips were overgrown with weeds.

  The school itself was crumbling. Hollow. All of the windows were smashed. The ones on the top floors had been shot out, bullet holes splayed on the sills and sashes. I could hear the flutter of birds from within and the coo of pigeons in the eaves. Graffiti covered the walls with epithets and damnations. The leak of them like blood. The scrunch of my steps echoed through the gaping windows. It was like being followed by ghosts.

  The classrooms had occupied the first floor, and beneath their windows people had laid flowers. They were withered now, in bouquets wrapped in plastic and tied with string or ribbon. Here and there I saw a doll or a teddy bear. I knelt and picked up a small yellow truck and spun its wheels with my thumb. Inside, the desks had been smashed and the chalkboards torn from the walls. There was a heap of black rubble in the centre where someone had lit a fire that didn’t take. The feel of the room on my face. Desolate.

  The outbuildings were in ruins. I walked past them toward the barns. They too had been ransacked and they smelled of decay. The wet rot of hay and straw. When I rounded the back end, I saw that the boards of the rink were still standing, mostly, though the chicken wire that had stretched across the ends had rusted through. Coils of it hung down like webbing. I stepped through a break and stood in the mud and weeds. A pad of earth. That’s all the rink was now. I knelt to touch it.

  “You can’t be here, mister.”

  An older, bent-legged man strolled toward me from around the corner of the barn. He was scowling, but the ruddy good health at his cheeks gave away the effort it took to create th
e look.

  “I used to live here,” I said.

  “Don’t matter. Lots of them used to live here, and you can see how heartwarming an experience the visits have been.”

  “I haven’t seen it since the sixties.”

  “They closed her in ’69. Fact is, she was pretty close to being done a few years before that. Most of the kids had run off, and no one could be bothered chasing them down anymore. The town’s looking to sell the land.”

  “Ransacked pretty good?”

  “There’s nothing left now but junk. People still come here though. Some nights I see their fires. I generally wait until morning to chase them off. They’re hung-over or just wore out by then. Sometimes it’s the same ones. Time after time.”

  He stretched out a gaunt hand and I took it. “I’m Jim Gibney.”

  “Saul. Indian Horse.”

  “Jesus. That’s a handle isn’t it? Our Indians around these parts are mostly Foxes, Martins, Wasacases or Wabooses. How long were you here?”

  “I left when I was thirteen. Came when I was a little guy.”

  Gibney swept an arm toward the rink. “You play when you were here?”

  “Some.”

  “Any good?”

  The rink was smaller than arena-sized ones. I saw that now. Its corners were sharper, and it was shorter by about fifteen feet. The boards weren’t as high as they should have been, and I remembered us hunting pucks down in the thigh-high snow, heaving them back over the boards to the players, who waited impatiently, their breath like storm clouds in the crisp winter air. “They couldn’t keep me on the team,” I said.

  “Well, not everyone’s Gretzky. Listen, Saul, you take your time, and when you’re ready to leave make sure you hook the chain back up at the head of the drive. Keeps the cows out, leastways.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  As Gibney sauntered off, I walked over to the boards and propped my elbows on the top. The wood wobbled. The only sound was birds calling in the trees at the edge of the field. I closed my eyes, and in the still air I could hear the wild calls of boys and the sound of sticks clacking on ice and hard rubber pounding into board. I remembered the prick of ice crystals and the numb feeling in the soles of my feet in their thin rubber boots and the shovel in my hand as I worked, thrilled at seeing open ice emerge, each laboured breath making child’s play of man’s work.

  I cried then. I stood there and looked at that sad ruin of a rink and wept. And suddenly, I remembered.

  I remembered standing at the boards with Father Lebou-tilier on a perfect winter’s day. The clouds of my breath rose around my face and the sound of the boys skating was magnified by the cold, still air. As we watched the scrimmage, he pointed things out with his stick. I paid close attention. He pounded the top of the boards with one hand at a very nice play, and I did too. He turned to look at me and smiled. Then he rubbed my head with his hockey glove.

  “This game brings out the best in you, Saul,” he said.

  I remembered the two of us alone in his quarters, watching a game on television. When the Canadiens scored a goal, we celebrated. I jumped up and down in boyish glee, and he clapped his hands. Then he stood up and pulled me toward him. He pressed my face into his body as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. I could feel the broad warmth of his hand on the back of my head, smell his soap, feel the scratch of fabric on my skin and the buckle of his belt against my chin.

  “My angel,” I heard him say.

  When he knelt down and cradled me in his arms, I felt no shame or fear. I only felt love. I wanted so much to be held and stroked. As he gathered my face in his hands and kissed me, I closed my eyes. I thought of my grandmother. The warmth of her arms holding me. I missed that so much.

  “You are a glory, Saul.” That’s what he always told me. It’s what he whispered to me in the dim light of his quarters, what he said to me those nights he snuck into the dormitory and put his head beneath the covers. The words he used in the back of the barn when he slipped my trousers down. That was the phrase that began the groping, the tugging, the pulling and the sucking, and those were always the last words he said to me as he left, arranging his priestly clothes. “You are a glory, Saul.” Those were the words he used instead of love, and he’d given me the job of cleaning the ice to buy my silence, to guard his secret. He’d told me I could play when I was big enough. I loved the idea so much that I kept quiet. I loved the idea of being loved so much that I did what he asked. When I found myself liking it, I felt dirty, repulsive, sick. The secret morning practices that moved me closer to the game also moved me further away from the horror. I used the game to shelter me from seeing the truth, from having to face it every day. Later, after I was gone, the game kept me from remembering. As long as I could escape into it, I could fly away. Fly away and never have to land on the scorched earth of my boyhood.

  I felt revulsion rise in me. My throat was parched. Rage was a wild heat that rose out of the base of my spine and through my belly, and I punched those rotting boards until my knuckles were raw, the tears erupting out of me. I fell to the ground and buried my head in my arms. I had run to the game. Run to it and embraced it, done anything that would allow me to get to that avenue of escape. That’s why I played with abandon. To abandon myself. When the racism of the crowds and players made me change, I became enraged because they were taking away the only protection I had. When that happened, I knew that the game could not offer me protection any longer. The truth of the abuse and the rape of my innocence were closer to the surface, and I used anger and rage and physical violence to block myself off from it.

  When I sat up again, the sun was sinking low. A gathering chill rode in on the breeze that kicked up dust at my feet. It was a very long walk back to town, and I knew where I had to go from there.

  50

  I slept on the bus ride north to Kenora. I stopped just long enough to eat in a small café, and then flagged a passing taxi that took me as far as Minaki. It was early afternoon when I got there. The town was still an underused railroad stop and work camp for railroad labourers. There were a lot of Ojibway people around, and from what I could see most of them were living in the rat-trap government houses in a hollow behind the upscale Minaki Lodge, which catered to moneyed tourists. I found someone in need of some fast cash with a boat and outboard motor, and I arranged to rent them. I loaded the boat with supplies, extra gas and a small tent. No one asked any questions. The boat owner was content with the handful of bills I gave him, and I saw him in the lineup for liquor while I was shopping. The sun was just starting to slip behind the trees as I aimed the boat downriver, in the direction of Gods Lake.

  The river was like I remembered it, black as tea, swirling with secrets. The water level was high and the current powerful, turning the river into a huge, serpentine creature, undulating and curving. I mostly let the motor idle and allowed the river to haul me forward, giving it gas intermittently to stay in the deepest part of the current and avoid the huge rocks that sprang up irregularly in the hidden shoals.

  The river opened wide into channels and gaps between spare rock islands and larger wooded clumps of land. The light eased down, giving the river’s edge a mystical feel, and I remembered the stories my grandmother had told about how this waterway fed the souls of our people. The silence was profound. There was no wind. I eased the throttle back and kept one hand on the arm of the motor. I was like a piece of flotsam, borne wherever the current might take me.

  As I felt the air chill, I headed for a larger island to make camp for the night. Before long I had a fire blazing. I sat close to it, warming myself as I stared into the flames. The land felt good around me, but there was a hollow ache in my belly now. Thought of the school filled my head and I could feel a moan building in my gut. As it escaped me, it frightened me with its ancient sound. I wrapped a blanket around myself, and curled into a ba
ll and pressed my eyes tight.

  You’re free. That’s what Father Leboutilier had told me that last time I saw him. Free to go where the game could take me. I shook with anger as I recalled it. I was never free. He was my captor, the warder of my innocence. He had used me. I felt hate, acrid and hot. “You are a glory, Saul.” I repeated those words over and over, until the pressure inside forced me to my feet. I kicked at roots and stones and the jut of logs as I howled, ragged, rough and sore. When I couldn’t scream any longer, I picked up the small hatchet I’d bought and began to whack at a stump. I hit it with everything I had, until my arms and shoulders burned and it seemed that every ounce of fluid in me had drained out through my sweat and tears. I hobbled to the river, waded in up to my knees and splashed water over me. I cupped my hands and drank. When I’d calmed some I walked back to the fireside, spent. I woke at dawn to smoke spiralling lazily from the dying fire and fog settled over the river. I broke camp and aimed the boat downriver.

  51

  I made Gods Lake by early afternoon. My insides still felt like sandpaper. There was an eerie silence as I made the portage, feeling the bush close off behind me. The shadows were deep and ominous. When I stepped out onto the western edge of the lake and looked across it, it was as though I had never left.