Moccasin Square Gardens

by Richard Van Camp

  People talk. You ever watch Crow tan moosehide? She can go all day. Chews snuff. Red Man. She’s old school. You think she doesn’t know your name?

  Oh, yeah: back to the casino.

  Benny had told me they’d be waiting for me in a van in the casino parking lot.

  As the cab pulled away, I folded my receipt in my right pocket with the change. You could not miss this van of Indians. An airbrushed white wolf charged along one side of the van. It was running under a full moon. It looked angry. There was a big cross of sweetgrass hanging from the rear-view mirror.

  The passenger and driver doors were open to welcome the breeze. Two Indians sat in the front. One was handsome. Marlon Brando handsome. The other looked rugged. Marlon Brando was reading something on his phone. The rugged one watched me. They were both in their thirties, maybe. They sat up as I got closer. They could see what the tumour had done to my spine, how it was like walking with tightening ropes. How I had to twist my neck for balance.

  The old woman had a walker. She was standing by the vehicle. Her hair was long. It looked like she was wearing two dresses, one over top of the other. I loved her bracelets. Her earrings. Her blue runners. The way she held her face up to the last heat of the sun. Tiny eyes. Looked like tree sap was holding her eyelids shut.

  I walked towards the van and raised my hand.

  “Here for Benny?” the rugged one asked.

  Marlon Brando returned to reading his phone.

  I had to tilt my head up to see them both. “Yes, sir,” I said. I should have polished my shoes. I must have looked like a dusty monster all humped up.

  I stretched my hand out to shake theirs. The rugged one’s hand was rough. Marlon Brando’s grip was light as he leaned over his brother.

  “Our mom.” The rugged one pointed with his lips. “Violet.”

  “Hello, Aunty,” I said.

  The old woman extended her hand, and I took it gently. “I’m here to help,” I said.

  “I know’d it,” she said. She spoke Cree to me next, a prayer. I felt it wash over me. I noticed one of her eyelids, how it opened slightly. She could see a little bit. She could see me. I couldn’t tell you how rough I looked. I stopped looking in mirrors a long time ago.

  That’s when the limo came up to us, like a wolverine. Slow. Quiet. Ready.

  The driver was the biggest Cree in the world. He gave us all a look before buttoning his suit jacket and opening the back door. Out stepped a grasshopper of a young man. Nice suit. Nice shoes. Big brown hook of a nose. Long braids. “Hello!” the young man said. “Tansi!” He walked around shaking everyone’s hands. He took Aunty’s hand in both of his to greet her.

  “Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming. Tansi, Aunty.” The man spoke Cree to her and she answered that way. He laughed and clapped his hands. They’d met before. “Which of you is Simon?” he called.

  I raised my hand.

  “I’m Randy. I just got off the phone with Benny, and we agree to his terms.”

  I nodded. Who knows where Benny’s reach ends?

  “Anyone who isn’t here to help from here on in,” the man named Randy announced, “please be our guest at the buffet. We’ll only be an hour. I’m happy to call one of you when we’re done. Phil, take their number.”

  The rugged one had started smiling when the free supper was offered. But Marlon Brando put his phone away with a look of fear as Phil approached him. When Phil reached for his phone in his inside pocket, that’s when I seen his gun. Shoulder holster. Holy shit. This was full throttle. Phil held up his phone, read out a number. Marlon Brando nodded. They were not strangers.

  “Okay,” Randy said. “Are we good?”

  Phil the driver nodded, and the woman’s sons stepped out of the van. They were dressed in a uniform of sorts: braids, wife beaters, long shorts, high white socks, black runners. They shut the van doors, hugged their mom gently.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Marlon Brando said softly. The old woman nodded and looked down. He kissed the top of her head before joining his brother.

  So there we were: a Cree Elder and me next to a stretch limo in a casino parking lot with a giant Cree and a shiny Cree.

  “Are you … well?” Randy asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Sorry to hear it,” he said. He wiped his hand on his pant leg. “Benny never told me.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “What do we have to do?”

  “Aunty?” Randy said.

  The old woman was sitting down by now. She had a doohickey on her walker you could lock so it wouldn’t roll away on you, which meant you could use it as a chair too. My grandma would like that. Maybe the Northern could bring one of those walkers in for her, or the Health Centre.

  “Mah,” she said. It was like her soul was sniffing out a beast in the building.

  Randy looked around to make sure no one could hear him. “We have a family using Indian medicine to steal money from our high-paying VLTs.” He ran his hand over his chin. “Aunty, I need you to tell us which of the machines they’ve doctored. If you can take this bad medicine away, your family’s debt to Benny is paid.”

  Debt? I wondered at that.

  “Simon?” He looked at me. “You help Aunty in whatever way she wants, and you get to keep your family’s house.”

  A little spot in the bottom of my heart, the only part the sickness hadn’t spun its web into, lit with hope. I could smell sweetgrass on the old woman. She’d smudged before she came here.

  Randy let out his breath, and I could see beads of sweat on his forehead. “Aunty, what can we do to make this happen?

  The old woman thought about it for a minute. “The people,” she said. “They can’t be there.”

  “Already arranged,” Randy said. “We told our casino customers there was a water leak, so it’s all cordoned off with yellow tape.”

  The woman thought some more. “I can’t go deep into the casino, me. Medicines can’t mix. This one here”—she used her chin to point at me, and I seen a sparkle where her open eye was—“can lift me just one step inside.”

  “No problem,” I said. I may be hunched over, but I’m still strong.

  Phil folded up Aunty’s walker and put it in the trunk as we got her settled into the limo. I sat across from her. I could see leather woven into her braids. The car engine was so quiet. It was almost peaceful.

  I was disposable. That’s why I was there. If anything medicine touches you, you’re done, but I was done anyway. This was Benny’s strategy. Even I could see it.

  “They are going to kill my son,” the old woman whispered to me, “if I don’t do this.”

  I tapped her hand gently. “Okay, Aunty. I’m here to help you. Anything you need. You can trust me.”

  We pulled up parallel to the side of the casino. Crazy close. The doors opened from the inside. I saw cameras recording us.

  We got out, and I steadied the walker for her. You could hear the ding ding ding of the machines inside, and right away we were covered in cigarette smoke.

  “Cold,” she said to me as soon as she stood. “Can you feel it?”

  I couldn’t. The sun was still out. I could feel the heat from the parking lot.

  “Lift me,” she said.

  She held her arms out. I stepped behind her and lifted her one step into the casino, propping her up from behind.

  And that’s when I seen a slice of Hell.

  So many people pacing back and forth, shuffling to and fro. All them suffering because they couldn’t get to those VLT machines. I’ve seen the way my dad’s spirit is pulled from the house when the phone rings and he hears there’s a game in town and someone’s calling him to come down and lose. I felt that feeling pass through me one time. I was walking down the hall beside our kitchen, and it roared through me. Just cold, boy. And I could feel it now.

>   The sign in the casino parking lot showed some white guy throwing dice with a blonde, a brunette, a redhead hanging off his shoulder. Everyone had white teeth. Everyone was happy. What I saw in that casino was fat, dying people drowning in their bodies, some still wearing their pyjamas. Indians. Asians. Not a lot of whites. It was like a plane had exploded and these were the bodies thirty thousand feet in the air.

  They were huddled behind the yellow tape. Some had settled for smaller VLTs. Others were restless, shifting from foot to foot. No one looked at us. Not a soul. It was like we weren’t even there. That’s when I felt something charge through Aunty. I was holding onto light somehow.

  She raised her head from praying and pointed at one machine. “That one.”

  I was amazed. How could she sense anything through the noise? Through the darkness? Randy stepped around us, careful not to touch her or me. He snapped his fingers, and a Cree man wearing overalls ducked behind the VLT and started strapping it up to a dolly.

  Aunty shivered. “I’m freezing,” she said. “Tell him to not touch what he finds with his bare hands. He should not touch it. It will be in the middle of the machine.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Randy said.

  She looked at me. “Take me out,” she said. “We are done.”

  I made sure Aunty was secure in the limo. Phil, the driver, waited outside for Randy.

  “Where are you from?” Aunty asked me.

  “Fort Simmer.”

  “I was there once,” she said. “My dad used to travel up there to help the people. You have pelicans.”

  I smiled. “Yes, we have—”

  She reached out and wrapped her hands gently around my neck. I froze. Her hands were burning.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She was talking about my life. “Me too. I’ve never even smoked. My dad does. Maybe it’s from that. My mom died of cancer too.”

  She kept her hands there for a bit before letting me go. She folded her arms over her tummy, like she was hugging herself. “Your grandma will be proud of what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  She cocked her head to the left, to listen to something. Then she nodded. “It’s what’s coming, they told me.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  But she looked down.

  Randy leaned into the limo then, wiping his hands with a wet rag. “Aunty, thank you so much. Our worker is going to take the machine apart. Wearing gloves, as per your instructions. While he’s doing that, I’d like for you two to go eat. On us, of course. When he’s done, I’ll come back and get you.”

  “I can’t eat in there,” Aunty said. “Can you take us somewhere else?”

  “Sure,” he said. “There’s a Denny’s nearby.”

  So that’s where we went. We ordered breakfast at night, the two of us. An omelette for me. Lots of cheese and ham and onions and peppers. Raisin toast. Suddenly, I was starving. So was Aunty. We went to town. I don’t even remember if we talked at first. The coffee was fresh and hot. Oh my goodness, it was heaven. Phil, Randy’s driver, stayed out in the parking lot. Did he have kids, I wondered? How many hours at a stretch did he work?

  “You are a good boy,” Aunty said to me as she sipped her coffee.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Mahsi.”

  “You’ll be with your mom again soon. Is there something you’d like to do before you pass?”

  I thought about it. I couldn’t save my dad. I had tried for years. I was really gonna miss my ehtsi. Her laugh. Cooking for her. But maybe there was something useful I could do before I was gone.

  Aunty and I talked for a bit about things. She told me about Heaven. What it’s like. She had visited once in her sleep and seen the other side. She gave me light in my bones with what she told me, but I’m not going to talk about it here on tape.

  After we ate, Phil drove us down under the casino. There was a bakery, a dentist, a doctor, even a jail, kind of. They had everything under that casino so you never had to leave. We drove to the service garage where the VLT had been taken apart. The guy doing it had laid out tarps for each section. Randy was waiting for us there too. He sent the worker outside for a smoke.

  “These VLTs are assembled in different parts of the world,” Randy explained, “so that the Mafia can’t get control of them through our workers. Each of our VLTs is shockproof, tamper-proof. You name it.”

  He was sweating. I wasn’t sure why.

  “My question is,” he said as he pointed with his chin, “how did they get that into one of our machines? It was in the centre.”

  We looked over towards the workbench, and there it was: the spider you’re holding now, made out of black glass beads.

  “They could put that in your beating heart while you’re talking to me,” Aunty said. “Distance is nothing to them.”

  Randy dry-swallowed. We all heard it. “But how?”

  “This power,” Aunty said, “is also the power that could cure just about everything. It’s the same. And that’s what’s so sad. They could be saving lives.”

  “Will it stop now if we bury it?” Randy asked her.

  “Yes. And then we need to smudge.”

  So we did exactly that. We smudged. After that Aunty asked me to bury the spider. The earth would take it, Aunty said. The spider was in a brown paper bag, and I put on gloves before handling it. As Aunty and I went to bury it, I held the bag all the way there.

  In the time it took me to dig a huge hole in a field behind the casino, with Aunty’s head bowed and her praying on her walker, a new treaty was made. I dug and dug and dug. Maybe it was during the car ride that I thought of it. Maybe it was when I knelt to bury the bag. Maybe when I reached into the heart of the Earth a cold hand was waiting and held mine and a voice whispered to me. Maybe I slipped this little black spider into my jacket when Randy and Phil were on their phones with their backs to us reporting to their bosses.

  All that’s in that hole in the earth is a little brown paper bag with tobacco gently sprinkled on top of it.

  See: I made a deal.

  The spider spoke to me in cold little whispers: Giveittohimgiveustohimgiveusgiveusgiveusgiveustohim.

  I could feel something gathering like a roaring wind, something cold pulling its tendrils out from under my skin. I felt it unbraid itself from around my bones and sinew. I felt it untickle my brain stem like a black octopus uncoiling, realizing I was the wrong meat. I felt the unleeching of it all that night, once I was home in my own bed. After a while, I felt that roar of the wind pass through my fingers into this spider of glass, and now I’ve given it to you.

  It wanted me to bring it to you so it could take you.

  With it comes my tumour.

  I’m cured, see?

  I worked at the Friendship Centre before I got sick, as a janitor. Maybe you saw me there. They were still paying me, even though I mostly didn’t show up anymore. The smell from the cleaners made my dizzy. I had to lie down on the couch in the foyer the last time I was there. They called a cab for me. Garth didn’t even ask for money. He saw the mass on my neck. “Jesus, Simon,” he said. “Holy shit.”

  It was through my listening as I pushed the mop around that I learned something horrible about this town. A lot of kids had started to come in to talk to our counsellor, and I heard them talking in the halls. Little Crees, Chipewyans and Dogribs. All Native kids who came in scared. No parents. None of them had parents. That was the clue. That was the key.

  All those little kids you been touching at boxing class when they’re working out. All the times you helped them change.

  What you’re holding now is for them and the terror you brought their way.

  You’re going to die cold and alone with a tube down your throat.

  Me? My family, we will continue.

  You don’t remember this, but when I was little
, my family lived in Rae. Behchoko. You were just starting out there. Already feeding your hunger.

  You don’t remember what you did to me, but I do. It all came back to me when I heard those kids talking at the Friendship Centre.

  I’m one of probably a hundred kids you murdered inside.

  This spider you hold now is our kiss back to you.

  As the tumour takes hold and your face twists, think of every young boy you ever stole. We’ve all been shuffling towards the fire because of you.

  Like my dad, you can’t stop yourself. They should have taken off all of your fingers when you were in Rae so you could never grab a boy again.

  We have a long memory in the North.

  So I confess: I did throw that rock through the window of the Northern. I’ll pay Reggie at the store for it when I’m out. Lock me up if you want. It is an honour and a privilege to be in the same place where Snowbird once turned himself to smoke and slipped out through the keyholes.

  You think you know us?

  You don’t.

  You never did.

  All you saw up here were victims and dirty little Indians.

  But we bide our time.

  Like our ancestors.

  Start praying. You probably should. See if it helps.

  Oh. One more thing. In that Denny’s, after Aunty told me what Heaven is like, she said to me, “That man who sent you here.”

  “Benny?”

  “Look where he sits. Under the pillow. There’s an ace of spades taped upside down where he can reach it.”

  That’s how he won our house. That’s how he won that cabin. He’s still cheating.

  Before I threw that rock, I told Dad about this, and I told Dave. They’re over at Benny’s right now. Torchy, Sfen, Crow, Flinch: they’re tough, but they’re outnumbered. Dave’s related to half the town.

  Don’t be surprised when the ambulances start rolling out.

  Don’t be surprised when Benny phones for help.

  This is gonna be fun, seeing how it all turns out.

  One more day. When you come as close to dying as I did, one thing you learn is that in the end we all wish—we all beg—for one more day.