Take Us to Your Chief

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  Once more there was a pause. “Literaphorically. How about that?” Then the man laughed at his own joke. I hate people like that.

  “I should not have Googled it. That’s how you found me, right?”

  “Yes. We have a rather sophisticated search program keeping an eye out for certain words and phrases that may pop up on the internet or in the media. This was a serious red flag. We knew there were a number of classified files that had been surreptitiously downloaded, but why, by whom and for whom… that was still under investigation.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” I couldn’t believe I was in a situation where I had to say those words.

  “Let’s worry about that tomorrow. Right now…”

  “You’re coming to get me.”

  “My dear, we’re almost there.”

  Dropping the phone, I grabbed my computer and the thumb drive. I flung open my front door, departing from the once secure and safe embrace of my home of three years.

  “Ms. Wanishin, I really don’t think—”

  The door closing behind me ended my part of the conversation. Six large running steps across my side patio and driveway and I was opening the door to my car, planning to drive as fast and as desperately as I could in whatever direction offered me the best chance of safety. I had the key in the ignition and my pumping heart in my throat when logic managed to fight its way through my panic.

  They—whoever they were—would more than likely be expecting a car chase. How else but by road would they be getting here? I didn’t like where this was taking me. I couldn’t drive my way to safety. I had to use Plan B, except I didn’t have a Plan B. Small-time reporters from obscure First Nations don’t often have need of a Plan B.

  I was dangerously close to hyperventilating when I realized I might actually be in possession of a Plan B. Getting out of the car, I ran down to the lake and along the shoreline. My cousin Walter had a motorboat stored at a dock five minutes away, or one minute at full gallop.

  Every step I took along the lakeshore, I was sure somebody would leap out of the bulrushes and tackle me. Instead, I startled about half a dozen creatures that had settled down in the bushes for a lazy summer afternoon. My shoes had half filled with sand and water before I finally found the boat. Luckily, Walter always left it with a full tank of gas. Another fifty metres farther along the water’s edge, I could see his house, with his three kids playing on the deck, unaware of the evil in the world. I envied them.

  I leaped into his boat. He’d upgraded his boating preferences since I’d last gone out with him a few years back. And it had been a few more years since I had personally operated a vessel designed to travel through water, but I still remembered the fundamentals. When I was a teenager, I’d worked with my uncle as a fishing guide. I was pretty sure the technology of nautical travel hadn’t changed substantially. I primed the engine, pushed the right button and roared out into the wide embrace of Otter Lake.

  As I travelled deeper into the islands that peppered this side of the lake, I looked over my shoulder. From halfway across the water, I could see cars, maybe four or five, converging on my house from both sides. I knew they could hear the boat—sound travels amazingly well across calm water—but a variety of boats could be seen scattered across the lake, all moving in different directions.

  Still dressed in my pyjamas, flats and raincoat, I made my way through the islands, navigating from memory. I was looking for Joshua Red’s cabin. He was a friend of the family about my age who loved to get away from the hustle and bustle of reserve life by retreating to a small island where his family had built a cabin. He’d been in a car accident several months ago and was still recovering. I knew the cabin was empty and where it was located. More importantly, it was off the grid. Electricity over here was only a theory. Off the grid was good. Off the grid was necessary. Off the grid gave me time to figure things out.

  There were cottages and cabins strewn throughout the dozen or so islands, so it would take them time to connect the dots and find me. Hopefully, I would have a Plan C by then.

  As I expected, the cabin looked empty but at the same time welcoming. I hid the boat behind a patch of bulrushes and went in. I hadn’t been there in a few years, but as far as I could tell, nothing had changed. The winds of fashion and renovation don’t often blow across the watery expanse of Otter Lake. Once I had closed the door behind me, I slid to the floor. My fast breathing was making me nauseous, and it quickly gave way to sobbing. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. Pamela Wanishin, fugitive. Movies about dogged reporters flashed across my consciousness, albeit with an Aboriginal flavour: All the Prime Minister’s Men, Ojibway Holiday, The Blue Heron Brief, The Girl with the Orca Tattoo. Maybe I was having a psychotic episode.

  Struggling to get up off the floor, I noticed a dream catcher hanging in the window. There was another one against the far wall. Knowing they were somehow tied into this whole mess, I tore them down and ripped them apart. I would apologize to Joshua later… I hoped.

  There were still a lot of documents left to go through. At the moment, I was safe and I had three, maybe three-and-a-half hours of power left on my computer. All good wars need weapons and a battle plan. I had a feeling they existed somewhere in those electronic files. The day stretched on as I read, my little corner of the cabin lit only by the flickering screen of my computer. The sun and my computer’s battery gave out about the same time. I sat in darkness for the longest time, putting all the pieces together, or trying to.

  My head rested sideways on the Formica table, deep in a troubled sleep, until the early morning sun decided it was safe to make an appearance. For the second morning in a row, I awoke with a jerk. Long hours of contemplation had helped me figure it all out before sheer exhaustion gave me a few hours of solace. One document led to another, which explained a third, which confirmed a fourth and made sense of a fifth. The whole thing was huge… we’re talking national media huge.

  But first it was morning, and with all the excitement and exertion I was now hungry. The ever wise and prepared Joshua had several cans of soup and stew on his shelves, probably several years old. Not my normal morning yogurt and berries, but these were not normal times. I mulled my options over as I forced down some lukewarm beef stew and dreadful instant coffee. It was all so bizarre. Obviously I had to get this thumb drive and all its information to somebody with more resources than a cabin on an island stocked with canned food older than my shoes. I should have gone into nursing like my mother had wanted.

  For the rest of that day I held the thumb drive close in my hand, pondering how such a tiny, innocuous device could have such vicious consequences. I watched boats pass by the island, convinced the occupants were scanning the treed canopy for a thirty-year-old Ojibway reporter who, through no effort of her own, had fucked up her life and had no idea how to repair it. Across the calm waters I could see the community of Otter Lake, the thin treeline in the hazy distance. What was going on there, I found myself wondering.

  Those were the longest and loneliest two days of my life. I lived off two cans of ravioli, one box of uncooked Kraft Dinner and what I think was a granola bar. Every moment, I expected government officials to jump out of the poison ivy or leap up from the water lilies. With only my own paranoia as company, I was pretty miserable. Add to that the fact that I was alone and confused, and I didn’t know what to do. Sleep came at the end of each day, offering refuge but providing only nightmares.

  On these islands, there are a lot of birds. Especially crows. They nest all up and down the islands, but during the day they fly over to the community of Otter Lake to look for food, the local garbage dump being the avian restaurant of choice. Early on my third morning at Joshua’s cabin, the crows should have been just waking up. Instead, they were already loud and complaining. Complaining about what? Crows don’t have many natural enemies, except humans. Seemed we had that in common.

  It was
around that time that I heard a faint humming, which was gradually growing stronger, and closer. Like a hummingbird on steroids. Looking out the window, at first I couldn’t see anything. Then, just above a bunch of sumac trees, I saw some movement. It seemed to flutter and dodge through the thick foliage. I knew what it was instantly. I’d seen them on television, and once, in town, some kid was playing with one in a park. It was one of those drones. It seemed to be sweeping through the woods, looking for something. Looking for me.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  For a brief moment the morning before, I had hoped I was overreacting, that this situation I found myself in wasn’t as dangerous as I had thought. But what was slowly moving toward the cabin was definitely not some rich kid’s toy. Even from this distance I could tell it was all decked out with instrumentation and things I couldn’t even begin to identify. How had it found me, alone on a small island kilometres away from where I was supposed to be? Nevertheless, it was time to go—again.

  I left the computer behind and grabbed the thumb drive. I opened the front door, ready to make a dash for the boat… then I realized there wasn’t much point. That thing could fly faster than I could run, and faster than a twenty-year-old boat and a twelve-horsepower motor could travel. I backed into the cabin, trying desperately to figure things out. The humming was louder now, practically overhead. Cautiously, I looked out the only window that had a bare approximation of curtains, actually moth-eaten dish towels. I couldn’t see the drone, but through the pathway to the dock I could see an island about a half-kilometre to the east. And I was pretty sure I could see another drone over there. Evidently, they were combing all the nearby islands. This was not good. This was way above this Native reporter’s pay grade.

  I could hear the drone circling the cabin. I also heard a floorboard creak beneath my foot. Joshua suddenly became my favourite family friend for the second time. For “emergencies,” as he called them, the man often kept a rifle hidden under the floorboards. Just a .22 but enough to scare off hungry but skittish bears and coyotes. He had shown it to me once, when we were celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday. Moving quickly, I pulled it and a box of shells out from their hiding spot under the floor. I loaded it clumsily—twice I dropped the shells—and charged through the door, turning around as I cleared the roof. Instantly I could see it, turning to face me. I lifted the gun, aimed, pulled the trigger and stepped backwards, reacting to the recoil. I had missed.

  Putting another shell in, I took my time. The drone began to rise, as if sensing the danger. Taking a deep breath, I squeezed the trigger, this time anticipating the recoil. As if God were answering a prayer for the first time in my life, I saw the back left horizontal blades fly apart. It dipped to the right, trying to compensate, but with little luck. In front of it was a rather large cedar tree that proved to be substantially more obstinate than the drone. No more drone.

  Strangely, I did not feel elated. I knew I had only bought myself a few minutes, maybe ten at best. It had seen me. But again, I had to ask myself, how had it found me? And how had it known someone was in the cabin? Then the answer came to me—thermal imaging. Environment Canada often used the same thing to check out deer populations in densely forested regions. I was the warmest thing on the island. And the largest. That thing, even in its dozen pieces, looked like it had every possible surveillance toy on it. It was enough to make my little nephew Evan, who loved all those realistic war video games, wet his pants. But how do you fight thermal imaging?

  Camouflage! If my body heat stood out so noticeably on this deserted island, then give it something else to look at… or hide behind something hotter. Dropping the rifle, I began to put my plan into effect as quickly as a handful of dry crackers and one cup of black instant coffee would allow me. I’d lost track of whether this was Plan C or D, but so far I was alive, so I decided not to break the chain of theoretical backup plans. I grabbed some of my cousin’s kerosene lamps and a quarter jug of gas he had stored under the awning beside the door, and doused the cabin and nearby trees. I hated what I was doing. Joshua would also hate what I was doing. This went against everything I believed in. I had spent many happy days swimming and playing here as a kid, but what else could I do? Taking most of the gas from the spare tank in the boat, I soaked some of the trees close to it. Already I could hear more drones approaching, their buzz slightly louder than bees.

  Taking a deep breath, I ignited a barbecue lighter I’d found in the cabin. Handy little things—darn clever, those white people. I saw a drone coming toward me over the sumac bushes as I lit the trail of gas. For the longest moment in the world, I was sure something was wrong, because there was no corresponding whoosh of several gallons of gasoline bursting into flames. Maybe the ground and trees were too wet from morning dew. Maybe I didn’t know as much about setting an island on fire as I’d thought.

  Then suddenly, the path and the bushes alongside it erupted in flames. Running like a dog after a cat, the fire raced up the path and then attacked the cabin and surrounding forest. Almost instantly, the island was on fire. And I was still standing on it. Quickly I got into my boat as the new drone moved closer, hovering almost directly over a group of dry bushes I’d drenched just a few moments earlier. Behind it I saw the fire racing down from the cabin along the other side of the path until it was directly under the drone. A sudden whoosh of flames and the drone, blind and damaged, crashed into the water not more than three feet from my boat. By the time I was a kilometre offshore, the whole island was ablaze.

  I was sure I could see two other drones circling the island, dodging back and forth. At first I was afraid they’d spot me out on the still water of the lake, but by then, with all the early morning fishermen plying their trade, people fleeing nearby islands and billowing smoke creating an amazingly effective smokescreen, I was effectively lost in the confusion. It looked like I would live to fight another day.

  By the time I pulled up onshore at Otter Lake, I knew what I needed to do—sort of. First of all, I needed help. So far, God, the Creator, Lady Fortune or random chance had taken a shine to me, but I knew that without other forms of help, I would not continue to be so lucky. Leaving the boat, I made my way through the village, waving casually to people emerging from their houses to see the burning island across the bay. Passing two friends, Mike and Charlie who worked at the gas bar, I noticed them looking at me curiously. It was then I became acutely aware that I was still dressed in my soggy pyjamas, slip-on shoes and a raincoat, smelling like gasoline and three days on an isolated island. By this point, I didn’t give a shit.

  My nephew Todd from the snack shack drove by. He waved to me. I saw his car had a dream catcher hanging from its rear-view mirror, as did the three cars that followed his. I passed my Aunt Julia’s house. I saw a large dream catcher in the window. The elementary school had a big one painted on its side. The conspiracy, right under my nose, was enormous. More cars passed with more dream catchers clearly visible.

  The dampness of the morning, the trip across the lake and perhaps a certain level of shock were making me shiver on Sally’s doorstep. It took a moment for her to answer the door.

  “Pamela, where the hell have you been?! Do you know what’s been going on around here? We’ve all been… Ho-ly! What happened to you?” Dressed for work, she looked good, unlike me. “Is something wrong?”

  “Can I come in? I need help.”

  She stepped aside and held the door open for me. Once I was in her house, I felt a certain amount of relief. I flinched, hearing a buzzing, before realizing it was her old refrigerator.

  Sally pulled out a chair for me and I gratefully sat down.

  Her hospitality gene kicking in, she poured me a cup of coffee. “Did you see the fire across the bay? Isn’t that Joshua’s island? Is he okay?”

  The cup she gave me had the Iroquois two-row wampum sign on it.

  “Yeah, he’s fi—”

  Her cup had a dream
catcher design on its side. Dangling over the kitchen sink was yet another.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  It felt like I was surrounded. With one hand, I grabbed her coffee mug; with the other, I tore the dream catcher from its mounting and threw them both out the door.

  “What the hell? My mother gave me that!”

  “Listen to me, Sally. Remember that thumb drive I got on Thursday? My God, was that just a few days ago?”

  “That was my favourite mug, too.”

  “Pay attention. Dream catchers are evil. Part of a government plot to control Native people.”

  For a few seconds, the only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the clock above the doorway to the living room.

  “Huh?”

  “Okay, stay with me. I’ve just spent the last couple of days plowing through all the information on that thing. I know this is going to sound weird, but it all makes sense. Okay, now follow me. Dream catchers are almost always made with a metal hoop, right? With intricate interlaced threading or wiring extending inwards. And on those threads are usually beads or crystals—”

  “I know what a dream catcher looks like.”

  I could see I was losing her.

  “Do you? Do you really? Think about it. What does that sound like? A metal hoop. Wiring. Crystals?”

  A frustrated shrug told me I had lost her.

  “An antenna! Or even a satellite dish. A lot of the stuff I read in those files was way over my head, but some secret branch of Indigenous Affairs has spent the last twenty-five years developing the technology and dispersing it among Canada’s Native population.”

  More ticking from the clock, and I heard her refrigerator come on again.

  “Have you been out on some sort of binge? I mean, you show up here in your pyjamas and raincoat, smelling of gas, looking like you haven’t slept for a while, talking about a dream catcher conspiracy to control Canada’s Indigenous people. That’s a little unusual.”