Fall from Grace

by Wayne Arthurson

  “No, it’s not that simple,” Francis continued. “Not everyone is as fluent in language as you or me, and even if they are, they lack the emotional awareness of themselves. They lack the language to describe what they are feeling and the emotional capacity to change their lives. People like those natives who live on the street, like those drunk Indians everyone complains about, like those girls who end up dead in a field outside the city, people like … Oh, here we are.”

  It was a small acreage on the west end of the city, just near the outskirts, an area where the suburban sprawl was starting to eat away at the outlying wilderness of the city. There were a few other trucks and an old camping trailer set near a clump of trees and he parked next to them. He shut off the engine, and before he climbed out, he turned to me and smiled. “Come on. I think you’re going to like this.”

  I climbed out, curious to see what I had been invited to. I could hear voices quietly speaking somewhere in the trees, but instead of heading toward them, we went into the trailer. Francis handed me an old bathrobe and I stared at it for several seconds.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “I know it’s a bit unusual but for this ceremony it’s suitable to remove all our clothes and wear this,” he said. “However, since it’s your first time, no one will mind if you want to keep your underwear.”

  He then turned and started to remove his clothes. By then I had a fair idea of what was ahead and started to get undressed. And though I was keen and intrigued about attending my first sweat, I couldn’t help but replay the last part of our conversation. He never got to finish the sentence but I knew what he had been about to say: “People like you.”

  26

  There were five men, all around Francis’s age and dressed in similar robes, gathered around a fire pit.

  “Hey, fellas, sorry we’re late,” Francis said with a laugh. “Traffic was a bitch.”

  They turned at the sound of Francis’s voice and he introduced me to the first man, Noah. He was one of the older ones, tall, with salt-and-pepper hair tied into two long braids and an expansive stomach that Buddha would have been proud of. I really didn’t want to reach out, open my robe, and expose my almost naked body in order to shake the proffered hand, a mammoth callused paw that should have belonged to a bear, but I had no choice since he was also offering something in the other hand: something wrapped in a bit of yellow cloth. I hesitated, looking at Francis in confusion.

  “Tobacco and cloth. It’s the standard offering. Normally they would give them to me since I’m going to be leading the sweat, but since it’s your first, they wanted to give ’em to you. Go ahead, take them. This time, it’s bad form if you refuse.”

  Shocked that I might be insulting this elder, I quickly reached out, one hand to shake and the other for the gift, but he enveloped both of my hands in his, a warm and welcoming vise. I was shivering in the crisp fall air, but he looked as comfortable as if this were a warm summer afternoon. “Thank you, Leo, for joining us for this sweat.” Noah said, his voice deep and rich. “We promise to be gentle.” There was a soft chuckle from the group and a bit of a grin as Noah squeezed my hands a bit tighter.

  My face turned red with a slight embarrassment but I still managed to respond. “Thank you. It’s all I can ask for.”

  The group laughed and Noah smiled, showing all his teeth, many of them black. Then he released me, stepping aside and tapping me on the shoulder. One by one, the other elders were introduced, shaking my hand and offering a pouch of tobacco wrapped in cloth: Jeffrey, like Noah with braids and a large stomach but younger; Louis, short hair, about my height but skinny; Daniel, braids and skinny like Louis but a bit shorter and with a boxer’s nose; and finally Lucas, older and looking a bit like Francis, but white.

  Francis also offered me tobacco and cloth but then took all the offerings out of my hand and placed them in a pile near the door of the lodge, next to a small shovel. The lodge was about four feet high, a dome covered with stained blankets and carpet remnants. A long flap of carpet hung over the opening. “Okay, fellas, thanks for coming. We’ll be heading in, Leo will go first since it’s his first, and then I’ll sit next to him and you guys come in whenever you’re ready. Louis, if you don’t mind, will you tend to the grandfathers?”

  Louis nodded, and as a group they removed their robes and tossed them over a lawn chair by the fire pit. Francis put his arm around me and shepherded me to the door of the lodge. He flipped the carpet to reveal the opening and made a sweeping motion, left to right, with his hand.

  “When you move in the lodge, whether you’re coming in or going out, you have to move in a clockwise direction. Since I’m leading the sweat, I’ll be sitting right across the pit from the door and I want you to sit to the north, which, if you’re facing the door, I’ll be on your right, got that? I want to keep an eye on you during the sweat, make sure you don’t pass out or anything.” He gave my shoulders a squeeze, removed his robe, draped it over his arm, and held the same hand out for mine. “Ready, Leo?”

  I didn’t know how to reply. I was a mix of emotions. I was looking forward to this sweat, looking forward to experiencing something totally new, elated at being invited to participate in this spiritual event, but also apprehensive.

  I didn’t know what was expected of me, I didn’t know if my presence would temper the celebration, didn’t know how I would react to the heat. I had been in saunas before but I had no idea how hot it would get in a sweat lodge. I hoped my body could handle the heat and that it or I didn’t do anything stupid to spoil the experience, not just for me, but mostly for everybody else. And even though I had made a joke about it, I hoped that I would hold up.

  I nodded in response to his question and he smiled. “Everyone who enters the lodge gets a smudge. Takes away the negative energy and brings in the good,” he said, taking a piece of braided sweetgrass from a pouch and lighting the edge with the fire that heated the stones. Then he took the bit of smoldering sweetgrass, flapped it gently so the end glowed brighter and more smoke rose from the tip.

  Based on one or two other experiences with Aboriginal ceremonies that I’d seen, I knew I was supposed to pull this smoke toward me, rub it into my hands, over my head, to my heart, and to any other part of me that I felt needed healing.

  Francis went first, and when he held the sweetgrass near me, I did what he did. He smiled and then handed the braid of sweetgrass to one of the other elders so they could smudge themselves.

  Francis flipped the carpet from the opening, and before he went in, he told me to wait a few seconds before following. As I did, I wondered if someone from the Catholic Church had visited the New World centuries before Columbus. And then, after I figured enough time had passed, I pulled off the robe, tossed it aside, and bent down to crawl through the door.

  The ground was hard like concrete, but already the air was pretty hot, my skin tightening and any coldness in my body melting away. There was a moment of blindness as I passed from the outside to the inside but then the light became a soft glow of twilight in the lodge. In the middle of the lodge there was a hole with a single rock glowing red and emanating heat.

  Francis sat opposite the door, beside a small bucket partly filled with water. He gestured to his right, which I figured was my spot, a place marked with a medium-sized white towel and a water bottle. I crawled around the lodge, in a clockwise direction as Francis had said, stepped over him and sat down, turning to face the door. I settled in, crossing my legs. Francis nodded at me and pointed at the towel.

  “Since this is your first time in a sweat, we’re only going to do a few rounds, but even so it’s going to be extremely hot. Some people can handle it, some can’t, and if you feel yourself getting too hot during a round, just wet the towel from the water bottle, drape it over your head, and bend down toward the cooler air.”

  The rest of the group entered, circling around the lodge, but Francis kept talking, leaning back to let them pass. I did the same and they sat down ju
st to my right. “We’ll be opening the door after each round and it’s okay, Leo, if you want to step outside and cool off. It’s perfectly normal, a lot of us do that. And drink plenty of water to keep hydrated. You got that?”

  I nodded, feeling my body tense up with the unusualness of the experience and the closeness of the space. I resisted the urge to touch the walls in order to test their strength. I occupied my hands by pouring some of the water over the towel. I wanted to be prepared, not fumbling around in the dark for the bottle, interrupting the ceremony with my clumsiness. I closed the bottle and set it underneath my knee for quick access and then placed the towel on my lap, the excess water dripping down my thighs and into my crotch.

  Most of the elders had settled in already, one carrying a drum and a wooden stick. The stick had a piece of what might have been suede sewn on one end and the drum was the size of a small tambourine and smelled faintly of rotten meat.

  “Just relax and let yourself go,” Francis continued. “I’m not going to say much, but if I do, it’ll be in Cree so don’t worry about it. Don’t think too much or force yourself to try to get something out of this, just experience the moment as it comes. Okay, there’s no goal you have to reach, no vision that has to come, but if something comes then something will come. But most importantly, try to stay in the moment and accept the experience, be it just a physical one or something else.” He gave me a bright smile, his teeth glowing in the light from the door, and winked. “You ready, Leo?” he asked, placing a warm hand on my shoulder.

  I took a deep breath and nodded. Francis lifted his hand and shouted toward the door. “Okay, Louis, you can bring in the grandfathers.” A second passed and then Louis came in, carrying one of the rocks with the shovel. He dropped it into the hole and then repeated the act until there were four rocks in the hole.

  Francis took the birch branch and shook it twice over the rocks, a spray of water pelting down. It burst into a cloud of steam with a sharp hiss and in an instant the temperature and humidity jumped considerably. Louis sat down with his back to the door, facing Francis. He gave a short nod that Francis returned and then Louis reached behind and pulled the flap over the door, blocking the outside light.

  The suddenness and depth of the darkness was so intense that it knocked the wind out of me for several seconds. My eyes blinked rapidly, searching for any sort of reference point. It took a few seconds but I soon found the silhouettes of the elders, the distinctive shape of Francis next to me. But when I heard his voice, the quick dance of Cree, the direction from where his words came and the image of his shadow didn’t correlate. My brain, so keen on finding something in the darkness, had generated false images based on where I thought everybody was supposed to be. When I heard Francis speak again, another blasting hiss, and then the sudden red glow of the rocks from the water, I knew I had been completely wrong about where I had been and was now lost.

  The heat from the rocks felt like someone had opened an oven, and it knocked me back enough that I bumped my head on the lodge wall. Beads of sweat gathered across my forehead and started to stream down the side of my face, over my eyebrows, and into my eyes. I blinked my eyes in rapid succession, but was unable to differentiate when my eyes were open or closed.

  The heat kept rising, a heavy humidity that crept over me, weighing me down. I breathed through my mouth, almost gasping, the hot air reaching into my mouth to scorch the back of my throat and sear my lungs. The pain spread across my chest, my heart striking against my breastbone. I instinctively moved back to escape the heat, but the farther I leaned back the hotter it became. I stopped breathing and a lightness rose up inside of my head. There was a second when I drifted away, but then Francis spoke again, bringing me back.

  In that second, I remembered his advice and felt the damp towel on my lap. I snatched it up and pressed it against my face, the cool wetness dispelling the heat. I put the towel over my head, my body cooling slightly, and then held it in place so that part of it hung over my face. I bent over, ignoring the pain in my back as I stretched to get as low as possible. It was still hot down there, but the intensity of the heat was reduced. I peered up and could see the rocks glowing a soft red, but that was all. I cocked my head and found the locations of the others in the lodge by listening to their breathing. The sounds were even and steady, as if they were sleeping.

  I felt a wave of embarrassment rise over me because compared to them I must have been as noisy as a colicky baby. But I tried to push the embarrassment away, telling myself that these men were elders with countless years of sweats behind them and I was just a virgin. And whether they were judging me was not something I could control; I could only control how I felt, and I was now pleased to have things under some control and felt ready to face the rest of the sweat.

  I took a deep breath, slow and soft so as not to overtax my body, and then sat up, wiping the sweat from my face with the towel. It was no longer cool so, as quietly as I could, I poured some fresh water from the bottle over the towel. When I had the bottle closed and back underneath my knee, I held the damp cloth against my mouth and nose and took in several wet, cool breaths. I held that posture and then they started singing.

  It started with the drum, soft distant thumps that seemed to spring from the forest outside and around the yard. At first I thought it was a two-step rhythm, one heavy, one soft, like a heartbeat. It was, in fact, simpler, one beat over and over again. It circled the lodge for several rounds and then moved toward us, the tentative footsteps of a shy creature.

  For a long time, it felt like the drumming would stay outside forever, the sounds curious of our presence but uncertain of our intentions. But suddenly, without warning, it charged forward, breaching the walls of the lodge, moving among us like another invited guest to the sweat. The drumming echoed all around, pounding off the walls, filling the space with sound and penetrating our skin, flowing back and forth through our bodies with every beat of our hearts.

  27

  There was a voice mail for me Monday morning, short and to the point.

  “I saw your stories about the serial killer and I thought you might be the guy to help. I’m a retired member of the EPS and I got some info you might be interested in.” He gave a number and that was that. Intriguing as hell, and if he had something new that would bring the story back to life for a few more days, then all the better.

  I immediately called him back.

  Retired detective Mike Gardiner lived in a quiet neighborhood that was probably on the northern outskirts when it was first built in the fifties, but would now be considered a central neighborhood.

  He greeted me at the door with a smile and a military handshake, a strong grip that lasted exactly one and half seconds. He wore a pair of plaid shorts and a light brown cardigan opened to reveal a white muscle shirt underneath. He may have once been a cop but those years were long behind him. There were a lot more lines of his face and gray hair when compared to the constable photo that I found in the morgue at the paper, along with about thirty to forty pounds of additional weight. He had been retired for almost twenty years so that was to be expected.

  After a brief introduction, Gardiner invited me into his home, a typical three-bedroom prairie range bungalow with the living room in the front, kitchen in the back, and three bedrooms down the hall. He pointed at a well-worn, floral-patterned chesterfield backed against the front window for me, and then took a seat in the matching armchair set next to a fake fireplace.

  There was no artwork in the room, just a few well-cared-for plants and a timeline of photos, either on end tables or hanging off walls, that started at the edge of the mantel and made a clockwise circuit of the room. The early ones were easy to spot, yellowed with time and showing a young Gardiner and wife, a leggy brunette, smiling in their wedding clothes, and then successive additions, three kids it seemed, first as infants then progressing through the years all the way to graduation.

  Then the cycles started to repeat, with another wedding shot, and
some new photos of a couple of infants growing into toddlerhood. And that’s where it ended because that’s probably where Gardiner’s life sat at the present. I also noticed that somewhere after the high school graduation section, the photos of one kid, a boy, stopped appearing.

  “Sorry about not dressing up for ya,” Gardiner said in a scratchy voice, bringing me back to the now. “It’s been a while since anybody paid me a visit because of police reasons. Besides, I was never one for pomp and circumstance and all that, even when I was on the force. Don’t get me wrong, I kept my uniform clean and pressed but I figured since we were all cops, part of the same team, I never really got why the ‘sir yes sir’ was such a big deal.

  “ ’Course that got me in trouble a few times, kept me from getting a couple of promotions because—what the hell did they call it once? Yeah, ‘At times Constable Gardiner shows a discourteous attitude toward superior officers’ which meant I told a couple of supervisors to fuck off. But anyway, you didn’t come here to hear an old cop reminisce about the old days, did you?”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the old cop, projecting myself in his life, but knowing that when I reached his age there would probably be no photos on my walls and end tables, just empty spaces and, maybe if I was lucky and strong, with my career to fill in the blanks. “You’re the one who called me, remember?” I said, and while he nodded to show me that he heard the question, he didn’t answer.

  “I can tell by the way you were checking out my living room, running through the photos, that you were adding more to the file, building the character that sits in front of you and wondering if that will help you make a connection in the interview.” He turned his chair on a swivel to point at a spot on the wall directly across from me, just above the console TV. “And I noticed that you stopped here for a second and you probably wondered why there are no more photos of the boy.”