White Whale

by Rose Christo

  "I'm a Gypsy," Jona said. "Remember? We know how to get in and out of places we're not supposed to."

  For a brief, weird moment I imagined Jona in a headscarf and an eyepatch. And then I remembered that that was pirates.

  "It'll be fine, Orca," Jona told me. "We'll go to Manitoba, we'll get your kid, we'll come back here. That guy--did he mention the school's name?"

  "Norway House," I said.

  Jona nodded. "Masking tape. A box cutter. If you can get that I can take care of the rest."

  I put my head in my hands. My head was so bad, my eyes were watering.

  "Orca," Jona said. He finally sounded skittish, the way he usually did. "You haven't eaten since yesterday. Eat something."

  "I'm fine," I said.

  "You look sick."

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I looked at Jona through the haze. He was good to look at. He calmed me like nothing else could. I wasn't very calm right now but he made me think that I could be.

  "Orca, I'm not kidding. You look sick."

  It was the way he said it. He didn't say, "You look like you have a cold." He didn't say, "You look like you have the stomach flu." My spine crawled with apprehension.

  "I want to take you to the doctor," Jona said.

  "I'm not covered."

  The BIA was supposed to build us a clinic on Wapu Island. By law we weren't allowed to do it ourselves. They were supposed to build us a clinic, but they never got around to it. That's usually the way things went with them.

  "God Almighty," Jona said quietly. "That bomb..."

  "You don't know," I said.

  He didn't know. I didn't know. I knew that Milk was alive one month and dead the next. I knew that Two-Ply had a girlfriend whose uncle had lived in Nagasaki, had died of leukemia. In Cree we call cancer Ka Maci Wiyasek; which means The Ungodly Disease. We have a cure for it, too. We've had this cure for thousands and thousands of years, probably before the rest of the world even knew what cancer was. All you have to do is go to the Southern Plains, cut some leaves off a chaparral bush, clean them and eat them raw. It's powerful stuff, chaparral. You don't just take it on a whim. In the old days you had to be really sick before the medicine woman would even let you think about ingesting it.

  Chaparral grew on the Plains. We were kicked off the Plains. Our prairies were razed and desecrated and piled high with cities no one really needed. Something told me chaparral didn't grow there anymore.

  * * * * *

  We went back to Wapu Island and I borrowed a box cutter from the guy who trapped otters for a living. I found masking tape in the back of my closet, next to one of Rabbit's old schoolbags. I picked up the schoolbag and held it in my arms and my heart broke. I could feel the pain, the desperation pounding in my blood. I felt the way a pilot whale feels when she can't find her calf. Whales are not solitary creatures. We need each other, or we'll wither away.

  I spent the afternoon packing. Jona helped me. I got out a big whale leather bag and I filled it with pemmican, fish bone stock, chocolate lilies and saskatoon berries. Jona wanted to take sweetgrass candles. I pointed out the whale oil jar at the bottom of the bag but he insisted; so I packed them, too.

  "I'm guessing there's no boat to Vancouver Island," Jona said.

  "No," I said. "We'll take mine." There was no getting around it.

  "Do you have a second set of oars?" Jona asked.

  "Have you rowed a boat before?"

  "Well, no."

  "Then it's better if I do it. Don't worry."

  "I'm already worried," Jona said.

  Everything he felt, he wore in his eyes: the profound kindness, the deep concern. Only now they were accompanied with a stony kind of fear.

  "I'm not sick," I told him.

  "And I'm not a Gypsy, right?" Jona said grimly.

  I was sitting on the floor, the sweetgrass carpet. I grabbed Jona’s hands and yanked them and he stumbled to the carpet with me. I pulled him on my lap. He sputtered and I put my hands in his hair.

  "Stop worrying," I said.

  "I--it's just--alright," he said, in that defeatist, peace-keeping way of his.

  "Jona," I said. "Did you really come to America on your own?"

  I was thinking that if something happened to me--if I really got sick--then he had no one to look after him. I didn't want him on his own anymore. Nobody should have to be alone. I think it might be the worst feeling on earth. Worse than finding out you're an animal in human clothing. Worse than realizing your entire species behaves the same way ants do.

  "They're all gone," Jona said, stark and bland and horribly blank.

  I sifted my fingers through his hair. People talk to me, total strangers, even. That guy Slovik, the deserter I fought with in Ardennes, when we were camped out in Cherbourg together he wouldn't shut up about all the loaves of bread and sticks of gum he'd stolen as a little kid. I didn't know whether he thought I was his confessor or whether he was being braggart. I don't know why people look at me and start blabbing their life stories. I don't always mind it. I like learning about people.

  Getting Jona to talk about his family was like pulling the teeth from his mouth with nothing but my fingernails. He was the kind of guy who needed to talk. He was the kind of guy who had too many emotions battling for breathing space behind his eyes.

  "Sometimes," Jona admitted, "I can still remember the songs my sister played on the lavuta. Sometimes I turn around and I don't understand why my father isn't dancing the cocek. It's weird how their voices don't fade over the years. You'd think they would. I guess when a person dies their memory gets frozen in time. It's preserved with the salt of your anger, your tears."

  I pressed my forehead against his. He had such pale eyes. They were pale and honest and they cut through the shadows of the little birchbark house.

  "Our ancestors," Jona said. "You really think they're in the Northern Lights?"

  "I do," I said.

  "That's good," Jona said. He closed his eyes. "Easier to apologize that way."

  "What do you have to apologize for?"

  "Surviving, I guess."

  "Don't."

  Jona tucked his head in the place where my neck met my shoulder. I couldn't believe how good that felt. It was better than a warm bath, better than honey between your fingers and down beneath your head. I couldn't understand how something that felt so good was supposed to be a bad thing.

  I figure maybe the people who say it's a bad thing have never felt it for themselves.

  * * * * *

  By the time we left for Vancouver Island it was early evening. Old men were already out on the wharf, lighting the lanterns for the fishermen still at sea. Jona helped me push our boat off the pier and we got in it. We set the leather sack between us and I picked up the oars and rowed.

  Vancouver Island was a lot closer than Qanuk. We docked next to a clam fishery with a gated, stinking pool. Jona hoisted the sack over his shoulder. We couldn't exactly bring the boat with us; and by the time we got back with Rabbit someone probably would have stolen it. I guessed I'd have to rent one from the nearest mooring. I said goodbye to my friend of eight years. We left the boat beside a tool shed and we walked out onto the paved road beside the thickly wooded wilderness.

  "Never been to Canada before," Jona muttered.

  "Guess we're illegals," I said.

  "I'm already an illegal," Jona said, with a sideways grin. "Did you know that? Not that the Selective Service System bothered to check me out. Anybody's good enough to die for them. It's touching."

  No, it wasn't.

  "In my tribe," I said, "we have a name for illegals."

  "Yeah?" Jona said, and glanced at me. "What's that?"

  "White man."

  Jona laughed and ran ahead of me to the bus stop. I smiled after him. Pain spread through my joints, through my head. It didn't matter. He was good medicine, Jona. As long as I drank him in I could keep going.

  8

  The American Dream

&n
bsp; The train windows gleamed with darkness, the dark of the night sky and the shadows of the shallow strait. The train chugged slowly across the Discovery Passage. Jona sat with ankle over knee, staring out the window of our compartment. He had Fox eyes, Jona, clear and clever and small, and they made me think he could see right through the murkiness, right through the distance and into Manitoba.

  "You go to sleep," Jona told me.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because you look tired."

  I didn't know how he could say something like that. He wasn't even looking at me.

  "I'll wake you," he said softly. "Don't worry."

  I laid my head back against the coarse blue seat. I closed my eyes. I tried to relax but I kept thinking of Rabbit, his little button nose, his little snaggletooth. Every time I hugged Rabbit he smelled like winter magic. He was equal parts Trickster spirit and beautiful little boy. I was afraid for him. I was afraid that a few days in a white man's school were enough to sap the magic right out of his bones. My father had grown up in a white man's school and it had sapped the magic from him, the Indian from him. It had sapped him of humanity. Sometimes I wonder if that's how colonists were able to come to this land, call it Terra Nullius and kill everyone living on it without batting an eye. If you grow up with monsters for teachers, chances are it'll never occur to you there's any other kind.

  When I opened my eyes again a few hours had passed. A smudge of yellow dawn crept across the watery channel. The stars were fading, the Passage flushed pale pink. Cool air gushed in through the open window. Weak smoke slipped outside. Jona had a sweetgrass candle lit on his lap.

  "What are you doing?" I asked him.

  "Praying," he muttered. His head was bent; I couldn't see his eyes. "Ja Develehi," he murmured. "Az Develehi."

  I wanted to ask where his rosary beads were. I guessed this was a different kind of prayer. I looked at the sweetgrass smoke and I thought it was like purging. He thought I was sick and he was trying to purge it away.

  We got off the train at a decrepit little station jammed next to a lakeside town. A watchman down the road rang a hand bell--I didn't know what for. Jona got rid of the sweetgrass candle and shouldered the leather bag. We walked the bridge across a manmade reservoir, a giant dam clamped shut at the other end.

  "Have you slept at all?" I asked Jona.

  "I'm alright," he said.

  "You sleep when we get to the next town."

  "Orca, I'm alright."

  "If you're allowed to worry about me," I said, "I'm allowed to worry about you."

  * * * * *

  We took the bus to Kelowna. The nearby valley was snow-capped and I looked at it for a while, wondering who used to live there. I wasn't hungry but I made Jona eat pemmican. He told me I was trying to kill him. I pointed out it was salted and he shouldn't complain.

  We found the next train station and it was bigger than the last, vented with cool air. Someone had forgotten it was January outside. Maybe it was a Canadian thing. I pulled Jona over to the arching platform, his teeth chattering. I sat him down against the brick wall and told him to go to sleep.

  "Are you sure?" he said anxiously.

  "No one's going to rob you," I said.

  He closed his eyes. I sat at his side, the whale leather bag on my knees. I would have liked to pull him back against my chest, to hold him while he slept, put my hand on his stomach and feel his breath rippling through my palm, the warmth of him solid and angular in my arms.

  A man walked past us and scowled. "Filthy bums," I heard him say.

  In about an hour I woke Jona and we got on board the train to Alberta. It was one of those stuffy kinds, the seats all crammed together, total strangers sitting halfway across your lap. Something about it must have reminded Jona of an airplane because he searched his pockets like crazy until he found his rosary. Beneath our seats I pressed my leg against his. I tried to calm him down.

  "If this thing crashes," he said in a high voice, laughing like a maniac.

  The train took off like a bullet. Jona relaxed once he realized we were still on the ground. My arms were aching and my throat was dry. I told myself it would pass.

  "Von Bolschwing, though..." Jona muttered.

  I looked around quickly. I didn't want anyone overhearing.

  "What's going to happen?" Jona said. "If all we did was--" He lowered his voice. "If all we did was uprooted the SS and brought them to America, what happens next? What happens to America?"

  Maybe, I thought, the war was still going on, and we didn't even know it. Maybe Jona and I were sitting on this train, halfway to Alberta, and the guys back in Washington were planning which country we should nuke next. Croatia sounded like a good choice. We could even pretend we were liberating the Gypsies--if any of them were still alive.

  "Valleyview, next stop," shouted the conductor at the head of the train.

  I wrapped my fingers around Jona's. I didn't need a reason. It just felt good to touch him.

  * * * * *

  We were in Edmonton by afternoon. It was the closest to a big city I'd ever been. The big slate buildings looked cruel to me, scattered though they were. I could smell the North Saskatchewan River on the air, sweet and crisp.

  Jona put the back of his hand against my forehead. I gave him a quizzical look.

  "You have a fever," he said, his voice tight. "Orca, eat something."

  "How is that supposed to get rid of a fever?"

  "You haven't eaten in two days."

  That couldn't be true.

  "Orca, please."

  "Alright," I said.

  We made our way to a sad-looking drugstore. We went inside and they didn't have a soda fountain.

  "What kind of drugstore doesn't have a soda fountain?" Jona said, bewildered.

  "A Canadian drugstore," I said.

  We went back outside, out to the dingy parking lot. We sat on the curb beside a Caddy with giant hubcaps, opened up our whale leather bag. He ate the salted pemmican and I ate the chocolate lilies. Normally I can't get enough of candy. Today it tasted like dirt.

  "You notice there's no colored entrance?" Jona said.

  I peeled back the petals on the chocolate bulbs. "What about it?"

  "I don't know. It's nice," Jona said. "Never knew why they needed colored entrances back in the States. We slept with Two-Ply for months and we didn't change color overnight."

  I lifted my head. "We need a bus schedule."

  "What?" Jona said.

  "Saskatchewan," I said. "My cousin lives nearby."

  "Not the cousin who walks into walls?"

  "His sister."

  "Maybe the soda jerk has a schedule," Jona said.

  "Can you call him a soda jerk if he doesn't have a soda fountain?"

  "Right, I guess not."

  We threw our trash in the rubbish bin. I grabbed the leather sack and Jona stuffed his hands in his pockets and shouldered open the door to the drugstore.

  The jerk without a fountain told us the next bus pulled in at 3:35. I grabbed Jona's wrist and checked my wristwatch. We had a seventeen minute wait.

  "You gonna buy anything?" asked the jerk. He was awfully young, had the blemishes to prove it.

  "Uh," Jona said. "Do you have any squid?"

  "What?" said the jerk.

  "He'll take a Slim Jim," I said.

  "Right, that," Jona said.

  "You queer or something?" the jerk asked, ringing us up.

  "No," I said. "Just soldiers."

  "Oh," the jerk said. "Alright."

  The cash register banged and chimed. Jona looked like he was going to pass out.

  * * * * *

  We got on the bus and sat at the back. It was mostly empty, except for an old man who sat cleaning his dentures with a toothpick.

  The road was rocky underneath the tires. A tired little radio played the Best of Elvis Presley for an hour straight. Jona tried to get me to share his Slim Jims. I wasn't interested.

  "Your cousin won't mind
us dropping in like this?" Jona asked skeptically.

  "She's done the same in the past," I said.

  A gated farm rolled past the bus window. The paddock was gray with winter. I wondered what they farmed in Canada. Sheep, probably. Something about Canada made me think of sheep.

  "Elvis isn't so great," Jona said critically. "My baba could hold a note, but no one gave her a record deal."

  I dropped my head on his shoulder, as a matter of convenience. He snaked his arm around my waist. His chin came down on top of my head.

  "Hey," he said, in an unsteady voice. "Do you know I'm always thinking about you?"

  I pressed my face against his neck. He squirmed and laughed at the hot air on his skin.

  "Even when you're right here," he said. "Even when I'm talking to you. I'm always thinking about you. Like when you smile out of nowhere and I spend the next forty-five minutes trying to figure out how to get you to do it again. Or when you sit polishing the sealskins that don't really need to be polished. It should be scary, thinking about someone this much. It should be. Sometimes I feel like my head's going to explode because it's too full of thoughts of you."

  "You're not scared?" I asked.

  The bus driver turned up the radio. The old man coughed.

  "I've had you inside of me," Jona said, his voice low, uneven. "Do you get that that's something I don't just do? Do you know what you are? You're that person who makes it okay. Everything. You make everything okay. I don't know how to be afraid when you're with me. I could face the Porajmos again. I could fight in the army for another ten years. That's what you are. I don't know how to return that. I want to, so badly. If I give myself to you a thousand times it'll never be enough. And in a way I'm glad. If a thousand times aren't enough I have an excuse to keep on giving myself to you. And I can tell myself you have no choice but to keep on having me."

  The bus rattled over a bump in the road. I took my head off Jona's shoulder and looked at him.

  "That's," he said. He was a lot less wordy when it meant eye contact.