He finally saw two Indian women walking along de Maisonneuve. He walked up to them quickly but neither was Theresa. He spoke to them but neither knew Theresa, nor had they seen an Indian woman fitting her description.
On he walked. He felt as though he was going to be driven crazy with his thoughts. If Theresa were in trouble he knew that she would be thinking of him and hoping that he would come to rescue her. It occurred to him that, in the midst of any trouble, she would also be worrying about her kitten, Annie.
Foot-weary, Shane entered his apartment near midnight. Jim was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper and drinking tea.
“Anything?” Shane said.
“No. How about you?”
“No,” said Shane, as he took a deep breath.
Jim looked at his friend. Poor Shane, the handsome young man who people always said did not smile enough — he and Theresa were striking opposites in that respect — now looked as though depression was chiselled into his face. He had never seen him so and could not have imagined any human looking so lost and helpless.
“Some tea?” Jim asked.
“Yes, thanks,” Shane said. “I’m going to make some more telephone calls. It’s midnight but I have to.”
He again called the police, the hospital emergency rooms, Victoria, Mrs. MacNeil and anyone else he could think of. No one had any news of Theresa.
“Get some sleep,” suggested Jim. “There’s nothing you can do tonight.”
Shane tossed in bed for hours without sleeping. Jim slept, but from time to time he would wake up and realize that his friend was not yet sleeping. The crazy thoughts which had tortured Shane earlier, about what possibly might have happened to Theresa, now came back to him in the loneliness of the night. They seemed all the more horrible and tormented him viciously.
Theresa had changed his life. Neither his fine snowshoe craftsmanship, nor success in hunting, nor work with his people would give him the fulfillment he found in her.
He rose and left the apartment and walked the streets for a couple of hours, hoping that it would help him sleep upon his return. But he spent the remainder of the night staring into the darkness.
IV
At seven o’clock, Jim rose and made a big breakfast of eggs, home fries, toast, and coffee.
“Have something to eat,” he said to Shane. “I made everything you like.”
Shane poured some coffee, remained essentially speechless and was unable to eat anything. He got up and called Victoria, Mrs. MacNeil, the hospitals and the police; no one had any news of Theresa. He came back, stood at the back of his chair and announced to Jim, “I’m going out.”
“Where?”
“I’m going back to that Chinese restaurant where they last saw her. I’m going to wander around that area for a while. It’s the only thing I can think of to do right now.”
He wandered around the area of the Chinese restaurant for a couple of hours then went into a phone booth to ring Theresa’s apartment to ask Victoria if she had heard anything from Theresa.
When the telephone was picked up on the other end, all Shane could hear was crying.
“Theresa! I’ll be right there!”
He dropped the receiver, ran out of the telephone booth and, for the first time in his life, took a taxi.
He leapt up the stairs to Theresa’s apartment. He opened the door. She was standing before him, crying uncontrollably. Her face, neck and arms had been bruised. She ran to him, crying, and as soon as she was safe in his arms, he too began to weep.
He held her for a long time, until her crying subsided. Then he asked her, “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
She nodded that she did.
Chapter Fifteen
I
In the next days they went to the bush as often as they could. Shane was gratified and amazed at Theresa’s recuperative powers. She always had liked to be in the woods best. When she was there with Shane and her little kitten, she was content, what had gone on before mattered little.
“Are you getting excited about law school?” Shane asked.
“I definitely am,” Theresa said.
They were in a canoe on a small northern pike lake near Saint-Donat. Theresa sat in the bow seat, Shane in the stern, and it was he who paddled to position them for casting. He looked at her often and was gratified to see that she looked happy. She enjoyed fishing, as she never ceased to point out to him when they had a free weekend.
“I’m very happy for you that you were accepted to law school, but a little sad for us,” Shane said.
“Are you worried again about being trapped in the city?” she said.
“Yes, more than ever now. It’s evil.”
“You’re right. But if I don’t do what I can for Indians, there aren’t many people who will.”
Shane admired her determination in the face of a challenge that was not going to be easy for her — in more ways than one.
They caught several pike and went home with more than twenty pounds of the succulent fish.
Driving back south along the Autoroute, Shane asked about Victoria.
“Are you going to try to get her another job?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard for her here. She’s lived all her life in Barrière Lake.”
“Do you think she should go back?”
“She can’t really go back, but it’s hard for her to stay too. Montreal isn’t a good place for her either.”
One Sunday night when they get back to Theresa’s apartment in Montreal after a weekend of fishing during which they had slept in a tent, Theresa mentioned off-handedly that she was going to see the doctor the following day.
“Is all the fresh air getting to you?” Shane teased.
She gave him a sidelong glance.
“Pregnant?” he teased. He knew that she wanted very much to have a baby by him but doubted that she wanted it just now, in view of the fact that she was facing three years of law school.
“No. A check-up,” she said, to stop his taunting.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just that my folks” — she meant the MacNeils — “always had us get a medical check-up once a year. I got used to it because I think it is a good idea.”
“Sure, why not,” Shane said.
“You should go too, you know. There’s nothing wrong with it. You might catch something before it catches you.”
“Why worry about it unless something’s bothering you?”
“I just want to do it, that’s all,” said Theresa. “Do you want me to make an appointment with the same doctor for you?”
“No, I’ll pass,” said Shane.
“I’d like you to go.”
“Come on. I don’t even get winded when we snowshoe. Gee, you really get spooky sometimes. What do you expect to happen? We’re both in our twenties.”
“I just think it’s a good idea.”
Theresa went to the doctor’s the next day. Shane stayed home and read.
Theresa came home before six. They sat down to the spaghetti Shane had prepared, just about the only dish he felt confident making. The noodles were floating in liquid, as was the sauce, but Theresa gamely went along with it. Victoria accepted the putative spaghetti as well and said almost nothing during the meal.
“What did the doctor say’?” Shane asked.
“He gave me a check-up and told me to come back to see the results of the tests,” Theresa said.
“Pregnant, eh?”
“No, it can’t be that.”
Thinking that Victoria must get out of Montreal, at least temporarily, they took a long weekend and travelled up to Barrière Lake. Delores had said that it was better for Victoria not to go into the village because of the mysterious thing that had happened, but she could come out to a place out in the woods called Kokomisville — Grandmother City. Here Delores, her sister and their mother had a camp that consisted of several log cabins. They spent the weekend working. Shane cut and split some fire
wood for the women. All the women, including Victoria, worked at various stages of moose-hide tanning, on the preparation and weaving of a rabbitskin blanket, and netted some fish and then came back to camp to prepare the catch. Mary made bannock and mixed in whole kernel corn. They dunked it in honey and ate it. Most of the meals consisted of generous helpings of moose meat and potatoes.
Victoria spent much of her time beating moose hides with a stick to further the tanning process. It was a job she had done often before and Shane and Theresa were pleased to see Victoria enjoying something at last.
Mary told Shane to fetch a large frying pan from another cabin in the camp.
“My sister-in-law is in the cabin,” Mary told Shane. “Just ask her where it’s hanging, and tell her I need it.”
Shane walked to the other cabin. It was a twelve by sixteen-foot cabin of logs, with a meagre board door. He looked in to see Mary’s sister-in-law sitting on the bed nursing a tiny baby. He averted his eyes.
“Could Mary have the frying pan?” he asked.
The sad-faced woman only looked to the frying pan hanging on the wall. Shane took that as permission to borrow it.
He lowered the frying pan from its hook, then started to leave the cabin. He glanced at the infant suckling noisily at the woman’s breast. It struck him as strange that the woman did not look especially contented; she looked dejected.
The infant was clothed in a dainty white dress. On its head was a small white cotton bonnet. It had a flap that hung down on the neck to protect the neck from mosquitoes. It was the kind of bonnet found nearly always on the heads of Indian infants in the isolated settlements — and rarely elsewhere.
Shane recoiled as he suddenly realized that it was not an infant at the woman’s breast but rather a tiny beaver kit.
When he returned to Mary’s cabin with the frying pan, he sat at the kitchen table with Theresa. She offered him a cup of tea that she had just prepared.
Somewhat shaken by what he’d just seen in the other cabin, Shane began, “Your sister-in-law…”
“She lost her baby last week,” Mary began in explanation. “I got her a baby beaver to take the place for a while.”
Later that afternoon, Mary prepared a large bowl of rice pudding with raisins for all of them for supper.
“Ki ta madjipiton agwatcing,” Mary said to Victoria, who then set the bowl to cool on the doorstep of the cabin.
They sat there, drinking tea, when all of a sudden, a few minutes later, Shane sprang towards the door quickly, shouting, “Birds!”
And a small, but stealthy, flight of birds had quickly swooped down and picked the rice pudding clean of raisins.
The women had been startled when he had shouted. But when he came back in with the large bowl of rice, now without a raisin in it, and the women saw that the birds had so cleverly robbed them, they howled with laughter and delight — Shane joining them. Perhaps never on the planet had sixteen or seventeen raisins given rise to such amusement.
They left Kokomisville for the long trip back to Montreal gifted with many pounds of maple sugar, moose meat, and fish.
II
Theresa went back to the doctor the next week. Shane was in school. After the appointment, Theresa went to the university where she found Shane in his class. The teacher was in the middle of a lecture, but Theresa managed to get Shane’s attention and motion to him to come out of the class.
“Should we take a walk?” she said.
She looked so serious that Shane returned to the class to get his things without even asking what was on her mind.
They walked out of the university building and along the paved paths, beyond the university grounds to the mountain.
They held hands and walked across the green mountain top. Shane still hadn’t spoken. He waited for Theresa to say something.
“I’m going to die,” she said.
“You’re crazy!” Shane shot back. He even started to laugh. But he could see by her seriousness that she was not kidding.
“The doctor told me today when I went back. He got the results from the first tests.”
Shane was still unbelieving and hoped that she was kidding. “What is it?”
“Leukemia.”
Shane’s face was flushed. The announcement caused a reaction that sent shock waves throughout his body. “Is he sure?”
“There’s no way he could have made a mistake,” she said. Her voice was steady, virtually free from emotion. “It’s kind of far along,” she said. She was almost apologetic in her tone, as if her illness were her fault.
A score of thoughts crowded Shane’s mind instantly, including Theresa’s physical condition in recent months. “In the past couple of months you haven’t had the strength you usually have.”
They continued walking in silence. Neither one had had the time to assess what this would mean to them. Shane looked at Theresa’s hopes for the months to come. They were apparently slim. The only thing he could do in the circumstances was to act natural. But how to act natural when one’s lover is dying?
That evening after supper Shane went out for a walk by himself to try to think things out. His thoughts were jumbled. Either it would happen or it wouldn’t. The only thing he could contemplate clearly was her survival. If she were truly as sick as it appeared, he didn’t know what he could do. He couldn’t begin to fathom how much he’d miss her.
The next day Shane went in to see the doctor. Dr. James Saarinen was a man in his fifties, very soft-spoken and intelligent. Although still incredulous and shocked at the news, Shane pumped the physician for hard information. He spoke to Shane openly, explaining all the symptoms and realities of Theresa’s condition. Most of the information made no sense to Shane, but its effect was only too clear.
The doctor told Shane that Theresa probably had one year to live. She might survive a few months longer at most, but that would require a good deal of luck and care. He would begin treating her immediately. Her first symptoms would be weakness and lethargy, but drugs he would use would mask those problems. They would also stimulate her appetite and give her strength. In fact, with luck and the proper treatment she would be almost symptom-free for many months. Only during the final months would she need hospitalization and then pain could be fought off with drugs. But during the final months, the inevitable onslaught of the leukemia would lay waste to her body. She would be drastically thin and pale.
Shane could hardly visualize Theresa as anything less than smiling and healthy. “It will kill me to see her like that, Doctor,” he said.
Chapter Sixteen
I
Jim and Shane were sitting in the kitchen of their apartment having coffee.
“I can’t imagine you without her,” Jim said.
“I can’t either,” Shane responded.
Shane looked at his friend and saw in his face a look that might have been there had his friend’s entire family been killed in an automobile accident.
“You don’t look good,” Shane said.
“I put myself in your place.”
“Thank you for being so good,” Shane said.
“What did the doctor tell you?”
“Basically, he said she could live months or a year and a few months. It’s hard for him to say.”
“Is there any chance of a remission?” Jim asked.
“There might have been had they found it earlier. Now, it seems to be fairly advanced.”
“She’s never had a lot of luck, has she?” Jim observed.
“Do you know any Indian who has? Why couldn’t this happen to some white man who’s been a shyster all his life?”
“What will you do now?”
“I don’t really know. It depends on what she wants to do. There’s no chance of law school now anyway.”
They sat in silence for a time, both fidgeting nervously with their coffee cups.
Shane began again. “There’s one thing I can think of to do in the near future — leave Montreal.”
Shan
e and Theresa were sitting in the living room of her apartment, playing chess. It was the week after they had been told the news of her illness.
“You look so beautiful it’s hard to imagine you sick,” Shane said.
Her face was tanned so that her Indian visage was even darker. She had just washed her hair and it hung down straight and shiny over the chessboard. They each had a cup of hot tea.
Shane found it difficult to believe that Theresa was going to die. There was no logic to it. But he tried to keep himself from displaying his sorrow in front of her.
Their daily lives had not changed; she still went to classes at the university every morning. The only variation in their daily routine was Theresa’s frequent visits to the doctor. She would need something to occupy her time and her mind until the end. They would go hiking and canoeing soon, while she still had the strength.
II
Shane was helping Jim make the cross pieces for a pair of Cree snowshoes. “You’re going to have to fill some of the orders for snowshoes,” he said to his friend as Jim worked away with the crooked knife in the living room.
“You’re preoccupied,” Jim pointed out.
“You can say that again,” Shane said.
“Wouldn’t it be good if you worked hard making snowshoes? It might take your mind off Theresa’s illness.”
“I can’t think of anything else. If anything could divert my mind, snowshoes would be it. But there is no way I can focus my thoughts on anything but her.”
Speak to Me in Indian Page 10