“Too bad that knowledge was taken away from you when you were growing up,” Shane said.
When Theresa felt she had a clear understanding of a plant, she went out to locate it. Often after searching an entire afternoon, she would decide that they probably were a little too far north for the plant to survive.
She tried making many teas from common trees and smaller plants. And she discovered many of the plants she was looking for that she hadn’t previously found. Invariably, at supper, she’d create some new concoction for them to try.
Theresa felt that plant discovery was her area and that therefore it was her responsibility to try out what she found before serving it to Shane.
“You’re too beautiful to go on serving as a guinea pig,” Shane said. “Be careful.”
But often he caught her with a grimace of distaste on her face while she was puttering around sampling something. Twice he found her vomiting something up.
Shane showed her once a plant he knew — Labrador tea. Patrick Matchewan had shown it to him, had told him only its Indian name, and Shane had quickly forgotten it. It had a slender, shiny leaf with a furry underside. “This is a fine tea,” he said. “Patrick made it for us often at night. It puts you to sleep.”
“Let’s pick some then,” Theresa said.
“Yes, but Patrick said that you have to be careful. He said that there is a plant exactly like this but with a shiny underside to the leaf that is extremely dangerous. He took me to one and showed me what it looked like.”
They gathered enough Labrador tea that day to last them for a while. And often they brewed it by their outside fire before going to bed in the evening.
“This is good tea,” Theresa said. “Did the Indians drink it often?”
“I don’t know.”
“If they did, it’s no wonder they slept so well.”
One day not long after, Shane was working in back of the cabin. Theresa was going back and forth to the woods as she usually did, carrying plants in her hands on the return trip.
Something worried Shane after one of her trips. He saw smoke coming from the chimney, and he assumed she was brewing one of her teas. Invariably she brought out a cup for him, both as a refreshment and, he knew, to see his satisfaction at her having found a new herb.
This time his worry grew because he did not see her for some time after she had started her fire. He called to her, but there was no answer. He rose to go to the cabin, called again, and got no answer.
When he entered the door of the cabin, he saw her sprawled on the floor. “Theresa!” he exclaimed. He knelt down and shook her roughly. She came to — partially. “What is it! What is it!” he shouted.
“Labrador tea,” she could barely mutter.
He swore. And he knew very well it was not Labrador tea but the other plant. He rushed to their little shelf that held jars containing various dried plants they had collected. There was one Patrick had shown him, an emetic. He took the jar from the shelf, grabbed a mug, and put some of the dried leaves in, pulverising them as much as he could with his fingers. She had left the tea kettle on the stove and he poured the still-hot water into the mug, trying to hurry the brewing.
He knelt down again, cradling her head in his left arm.
“Try to sip the tea,” he said.
He held the mug to her lips until, after a long while, she had drunk most of it. Then he picked her up and laid her in bed. Nervously he attended her, waiting to see if the tea would have an effect. Patrick Matchewan hadn’t made it clear what the plant resembling Labrador tea would do, only that its effect was no good. Shane knew that it must come up. He watched her. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, until finally she moaned and started writhing. Concerned, he leaned forward — just as she turned to him and vomited. She vomited heavily. As uncomfortable as he was, Shane felt relieved.
He cleaned her up — and himself — and after she slept it off, her malaise had passed.
II
Catches of northern pike from the lake and trout from surrounding streams were a large supplement to their diet. When they needed supplies, Shane and Theresa hiked the four miles south to the Canadian National tracks, flagged down the late afternoon train going east and spent a night or two in Casey.
Theresa worked on her log-cabin quilt. “I want to finish it for the cold weather,” she explained to Shane.
Often, as they went to bed at night in the big bed with the fluffy pillows, Shane read to Theresa from a book as she fell asleep. They talked of the peace they never had in the city, of being truly alive, as people seldom were.
“I know the secret of the woods,” Theresa announced one day.
“The secret of the woods? I didn’t know there was one.”
“The secret of the woods is that the more you come in contact with the wild, the more you’re drawn into it. It’s sort of like seduction. For every motor and device of civilization you leave behind, you become more a part of this and you’re drawn in even further. It’s good when you see how easy it is to live in the bush, and how much you grow to need this kind of life.”
III
One mid-July afternoon they left their work to go canoeing around Lac des Îles, as they often did when they wanted to be in the canoe but did not want to take an overland trip to another lake.
“You won’t let me paddle,” Shane complained.
Theresa smiled and went on paddling from the stern. She enjoyed paddling her canoe and her man around the lake.
At the end of the afternoon it started to rain, and as Shane was without a paddle, Theresa paddled briskly to get them back to the cabin — but not before they got soaked. Although it wasn’t cold and there was only a slight rain at the time, they were chilled in their sodden clothes. They beached the canoe and hurried into the cabin.
“Let’s get into some dry clothes and I’ll make a fire to get the chill out,” Theresa said.
“I’ve got another idea,” Shane responded.
“There is no other idea. I’m shivering.”
“Not what you think. I’m thinking of something Patrick said.”
“What was that?”
“I think Patrick believed in rain.”
“So do I. That’s the best thing for the garden.”
“No. I mean for people,” Shane said. “He thought it was good for people. He said that only the white man didn’t like rain; he had to hurry out of it. He had to avoid getting wet. He told me that in the old days Indians no more minded being rained upon than they minded that the sun should shine on their faces or that the wind should blow through their hair. They appreciated all the elements, and they liked being touched by them.”
He reached over to Theresa’s hand to stop her from pulling a dry pair of pants from the chest of drawers.
“I’m freezing,” she said, and her body shook.
He gently had her put the pants back and lead her by the hand out of the cabin.
“Let’s see what it’s like,” he said.
They wore no clothes or shoes. Theresa was still shivering so Shane put his arm around her. The steady rain continued. Shane admitted to himself that he was quite cold — but he dare not for the moment admit it to her.
Then a strange thing happened. The rain had by then completely drenched them. Their hair was soaked. It was raining so hard that the rain washed the mud from their feet as they walked. Shane was relaxed and, to his own surprise, he no longer felt cold.
“The rain is warm. It feels good,” he said.
But under his arm, Theresa was still shivering, her face turned down toward the ground as if not to think about the cold rain. He expected her to bolt for the cabin at any minute.
He took his arm away from her. “Relax,” he said, “The rain isn’t cold.” She shivered. “Feel it. You’ll be surprised.”
They walked on a little through the woods. Theresa looked very dubious but she tried to relax. She took a deep breath.
She seemed to be more at ease. She stopped shivering. She
walked on easily. She liked to go barefoot whenever she could, but she never before had gone barefoot and nude in the rain. Shane could see that she was beginning to enjoy it.
In a moment, a faint smile came to her face. “I’m sorry, Shane,” she said.
They walked in the woods around the cabin. Theresa absolutely revelled in the rain.
“Were we ever cold!” she laughed.
“It must have had something to do with being soaked in clothes.”
“Maybe it was the way we were thinking too.”
Whatever it was, Theresa felt an unbridled joy. Seeing her like this always brought joy to Shane in turn. And inevitably — more often now — he thought about what was going to happen to her. It increased his determination to seize every moment of togetherness out of the time they had left.
They held hands and walked slowly through the trees, stepping over some of the deadfalls in the understory. Shane stopped and leaned over to kiss Theresa on the shoulder. Their bodies were warm and glistening in the rain. Shane ran his hand over Theresa’s back. He loved the feel of her in the warm rain.
He stopped and drew her to him. Her body was wet and warm against his. He had never felt closer to her physically than he did now. He held her tightly because he wanted to remember forever how her body felt at this moment. He kissed her on the front and side of her neck and finally on the mouth. He kissed her long and intensely in a way that somehow transcended passion. They kissed not only for that moment but also for years to come.
Theresa was caught up in their passion. When they had kissed for a long while, and were still holding each other in the rain, Shane reached with his right leg to her inner left leg and gently moved it to the side. Then he got down on his knees before her, held her to him and kissed her long and dearly.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I
After mid-summer, Theresa’s health began to deteriorate. The deep tan she had acquired at the beginning of summer began to fade. She became shorter of breath. Her weight loss, while not great, was noticeable. Her appetite was good, but Shane attributed that solely to stimulants and dared not stop them. Also, she was capable of doing less work. It was as if her internal clock was telling her to slow down.
There was a surplus of berries that summer. In rapid succession they ate strawberries, Juneberries, wild cherries and raspberries, then blueberries.
In the second week of August, the blueberries ripened and covered the ground like a carpet of blue and green. Some of the berries were as big in diameter as a thumbnail, and so heavy they pulled down the branches until they touched the ground. They picked and dried blueberries to last for many months. They ate the berries off the bush, dried them, canned jams, cooked puddings, and baked pies.
Although Lac des Îles was home to many birds, none was as gregarious as the whiskey-jack. Aware of when the smallest crumb of food left the cabin, they came crying down for it, one or two at a time. At first, Theresa threw them bits of food. Then she noticed how near to her they seemed willing to come to get a treat. She dropped the food closer and closer to her body. In a few days, one ventured to take food from her hand.
“Somehow, the animals always seem to warm up to you much sooner than they do to me,” Shane said.
A short while after that, noticing their boldness, she put a square of bread in her mouth and tipped her head back. She heard the bird make an inquisitive pass. Then he flew, pulled up and perched on her chin, neatly picking the bread from her mouth. Eventually, they learned to pick the bread from between her fingers on the fly.
One night they again made their fire outside the cabin. Theresa brewed some Labrador tea. She was full of news of her day, taming the whiskey-jacks.
“I bet I could tame this whole bush with enough time,” she said, not aware of all the implications in her statement.
“I bet you could,” said Shane.
Theresa had made friends with one little whiskey-jack. “He’s a profiteer but he is a charmer all the same. He’ll make friends with anyone if there’s a piece of bread in it for him.”
“Patrick said that a man should pick an animal he likes and study its Indian ways. He said that you could learn to understand where it lives, how it moves and the sounds it makes. He said that animals really want to talk with man.”
“I wonder,” Theresa said. “I was thinking that about the whiskey-jack. Maybe he’d make special sounds when he wanted certain things. I tried to distinguish his different sounds but I didn’t have any luck. I couldn’t learn another language at university. How am I going to learn whiskey-jack?”
“I think you could. I saw Patrick say some things to wild animals, and they responded. I swear they did. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.”
“Are you sure he could talk to them?” Theresa said.
“Patrick could communicate with them. He could get a beaver to swim close to his canoe. All the whiskey-jacks were his friends, of course. And if he met a fox in the woods, he’d mumble something, and the fox would not bolt. When I asked him how he did it, he agreed that he could communicate with animals more than his children could communicate with them, but he also said that he was unable to talk with the animals as well as his father and people of earlier generations. He thought that if you looked at it that way, going back through the generations, there must have been a time when the Indians could talk directly to the animals.”
Encouraged by her success with the whiskey-jack, Theresa started to work on a nearby beaver family. She first found the underwater entrance to the lodge and placed food — poplar branches — on the ground a few feet from it. Then she went home. She repeated this several times, always at the same hour of the day. The beaver always took the food. After having made them used to receiving the food at the same time every day, she stayed within sight when she delivered it to the spot. Then she moved closer. And every time she moved closer, she allowed a few days at each distance. In two months, the beaver were eating from her hand.
II
In early August, Shane and Theresa had begun building a birch-bark canoe. They found a large stand of birch trees on the north shore of Lac des Îles.
“Poor Patrick,” Shane said, “I feel guilty. He has to hire someone with a pick-up truck and go miles to get bark for a canoe, and we find it right at our front door.”
Much of the area hadn’t been logged so it was with minimum searching that they found an ideal large birch. They made a ladder of hardwood poles. Shane used it to climb the trunk. With an axe, he made a cut sixteen feet down the trunk, and then they carefully removed the large sheet of bark.
Back in front of the cabin, they prepared spruce root. The roots were taken from beneath spruce trees and split evenly along the length of the root before the thin bark of the root was peeled off. The roots were then rolled in a coil and kept in water until used.
“The flies seem to like the spruce root,” Theresa said, smiling and happy, in a way, in her predicament. She rose to make a smudge. She was happy when they were working together.
Shane looked at her. At times she looked somewhat pale; other times her colour was deep and vibrant. It did appear that she had lost a little weight. But he probably had as well; the activity was good for them both.
“I think we can probably count on the flies helping us at every stage of the canoe-building process,” Shane said.
Strips of cedar served as the gunwales. They felled a tall, straight cedar tree and began by splitting the log in half, lengthwise. Then the two halves were split and the quarters split again. From there, they split off cedar strips. The five thwarts, made of birch, braced the gunwales apart, were fitted into them in mortises and anchored there by wooden pegs driven down through the gunwale and thwart — and, later, by the spruce-root lashing. The outside of the bark was the inside of the canoe. With two cedar pieces for each gunwale, the bark was sandwiched between, trimmed and lashed with spruce root. “This is the best part!” said Theresa enthusiastically. “I like the sewing wit
h the spruce root.”
The two stems were formed by splitting two cedar battens, immersing them in water for a few days and then bending them to the bow profile. Shane put them in place in the bow of the canoe, trimmed the bark to fit, and then lashed them in with spruce root.
“Ooof!” said Theresa on one of their building days, when it was especially hot and the flies had come up. She wiped the sweat from her brow and took a swipe at the flies, all the time trying to lash the gunwale with spruce root.
“Boy, is this a long job,” she said.
“It takes a long time. Taking time is the Indian way.”
To provide the framework of the canoe, they made ribs from cedar battens. They soaked these in water for a few days and then poured boiling water over them and bent them, forming them to the hull shape of the canoe.
A day-long trip through the woods from spruce tree to spruce tree got them the gum they needed to seal the canoe’s seams. They looked for scars in the spruce and usually found gum deposits flowing from them. Back in front of the cabin, they boiled the gum and added animal grease to keep the gum from cracking. They applied the gum to the seams of the canoe with a small spatula. The gum dried in seconds. After having tested the canoe in the water, Shane carved out paddles from two lengths of ash. The birch-bark canoe looked fine; it was sturdy and — at forty pounds — weighed less than their commercially-made canoe.
“Well, what do you think of it?” Shane asked.
“Kitci kwenatciwan,” she said approvingly. It is beautiful.
They were out on their maiden voyage in the birch-bark canoe. It was gliding through the water quietly, with Theresa paddling in the bow and Shane in the stern.
“It floats easily. It’s really light.”
“If you take it by yourself, you’ll have to make sure your weight keeps it in the water or the wind will get you. You’ll have to put a big rock in the bow.”
Thereafter Theresa took the canoe out often alone. She usually asked Shane to come with her in the other canoe, but there was something about the bark canoe that made her want to experience it alone. Her favourite trip was to comb the shore of the lake looking for Labrador tea and other herbs she could use. She soon cut out portages with an axe to the other lakes close by, made trips by herself for the day, and once overnight. She had quickly learned how to lift the birch-bark canoe onto her shoulders and soon profited from the knowledge by carrying it often. Despite her gradually weakening condition, she often carried the canoe up to the cabin rather than leaving it down by the lake.
Speak to Me in Indian Page 14