Clifford Page 4

  * * *

  There’s a canoe on the back of my truck, a shotgun behind the seat, but that’s for ducks and geese and to scare away any bear that might come wandering too close to my camp.

  Where am I going to camp tonight?

  I haven’t decided. I have all my gear with me, just threw it in before I left, without a plan, just coming north, coming home.

  The only real plan I have is that I am going to sleep on the ground. I am going to lie on the bosom of Mother Earth and feel her powers come up and heal my hurts. I might put up my tent. I might not. Depends upon the weather.

  I look up, through the pine canopy. There are clouds, but they’re white and puffy, no threat of rain. Rain clouds are black.

  I know this stuff. I know about camping, about how to predict the weather, how to make a fire, how to look after myself, where to find food, where to find shelter, because my mother taught it to me. She insisted that I know, made sure that I had the opportunities to learn, and most of it I learned directly from her. So, later when I was a young adult and out camping with other men, they sometimes would look at what I was doing and remark, “You do that like a woman.”

  Women and men do things differently. I learned to trap muskrats and squirrels instead of foxes and coyotes and lynx, because that was what a woman typically trapped. They were the easy animals. Men trapped those that were harder to get, were more labour intensive.

  A woman will pick up small sticks to make a fire. A man will chop down a big tree, cut it into blocks, and split the blocks into small pieces, and by the time he’s done all that, she’ll have the tea boiled.

  A man will sleep on the hard ground, regardless of rocks or roots that gouge rib cages and numb thighs in the night. A woman will make herself a mattress out of spruce boughs, or pick a soft spot to make her bed.

  A woman will wait for the fire to die down to coals before she starts cooking. A man will sear his food on the high dancing flames of a fresh fire, and eat his food charred and crisp on the outside and bloody and greasy on the inside, but he will be relaxing under a tree, licking his blackened teeth before she finishes cooking her meal.

  Survival

  I don’t have to be back to work until Thursday, back south to that land of prairie. There’s a loneliness down there, in that empty land, that I can’t resolve, a loneliness that I tolerate until it becomes too great for me and I come rushing home; home to the trees. I’ve been years down there, away, and every time I come home, there’s a spot where the prairie ends and the first of the big white spruce stand along the highway where I suddenly feel tired. It took many trips before I figured out what caused that tiredness. And when I did, I realized that it wasn’t tiredness at all; it was relief. I hadn’t noticed the tension, but it must have been in my muscle and my bone, and when I saw the trees again, I relaxed. That’s what I felt as my body slumped into the seat: not tiredness, just relaxation. I was safe, among friends again.

  I can survive here. If there are trees: I have a bed, I have shelter, I can make a fire, I can find food. Out on the prairie I am vulnerable, out of my element. I’ve often imagined what I might do if I were caught out there in the winter, a truck stuck in a snowdrift, a blown engine — if I were in the forest, it would be no big deal, simply make camp, but down there where the wind never stops, I’d have to pour gas over my spare tire and light it up.

  But not today, not here. Today is warm. There’s no need for a fire, unless I want to cook something. Maybe — maybe I could make myself a pot of coffee. Right here; right here in the sand in the front yard.

  No — better down there where Mom used to work on her moosehides. We always had a fire going, a pot of tea nestled near the edge of the coals.

  Coffee first over the blaze of fresh wood on a new fire; it boils quickly, and I have a cup while I wait for the flames to die down to coals. Then a simple meal of fried sausage and potatoes. I think of eating it straight from the frying pan, and I might have if I were in a different place, but not here, not where Mom spent so much of her time. Out of respect for the woman who taught me to do all of this, I use a plate.

  The sun throws long shadows through the pine. There’s a quietness to the evening, a hush. The birds and even the squirrels have fallen silent in the soft light. I sit with my back against a tree, a comfortable place where roots and ground meet in a hollow that fits my shape. The coffee in my cup has become cold, and I swirl it to stir up the grounds before I toss it away, then place the cup upside down on the ground so that nothing crawls into it in the night.

  Why did we leave here?

  This place, this bit of the earth where everything was provided for us, where a garden produced enough for our needs and a fishnet could feed a large family, where the animals gave themselves to us and we ate them and sold their pelts to buy salt and sugar and coffee and tea, where moosehide became moccasins and mitts and jackets.

  In the late sixties Canada was moving Indians around, creating new villages and relocating Inuit people farther north. It seems that Saskatchewan wanted to be part of the new experiment and picked Molanosa. We’d been a village of about two hundred people, mostly people who had been evicted when Prince Albert National Park was created. Now the government wanted us to move across the lake to a new townsite beside the new highway; a straight, modern highway with pavement.

  A new power line followed the new highway. At some level we must have known that the new highway wasn’t built for us. It wasn’t for the people. It went around the people and through an ancient forest, over Thunder Hills. We heard rumours that the southbound lane would have pavement twelve inches thick, so that the trucks hauling the logs out would not break through the asphalt. The highway wasn’t built for the people; it was ultimately for resource extraction. It was an accommodation for the corporations.

  But the promise to the people of Molanosa was that if we moved, we would get all of the modern conveniences: electricity, phones, water, sewer, a new school. They would provide us with a sawmill that would be ours, and the men could work there and we would own the forest for ten miles around where we could cut the timber for the sawmill. The plan was explained as an opportunity.

  But my family never moved to Weyakwin, the new town; the town of curses.

  Swearing Bay at the north end of Montreal Lake was named after a group of white men who were paddling to La Ronge, got lost, and couldn’t find the beginning of the river. Some Indians came along and found them cursing loudly.

  Weyakwin: the Cree word for foul language sounded better as a name than Swearing. It would look better as a road sign to the tourists; but to the Cree, the meaning didn’t change.

  The community was still debating whether to move or stay; town meetings were being held when Clarence came home with a big truck. We loaded everything we owned into that truck that was designed to haul gravel and moved to La Ronge, to a new house.

  Clarence didn’t have to argue with Mom about the move. She was in the hospital.

  Mom had several broken ribs where she had been crushed.

  Uncle Johnny on the way back from La Ronge — Mom, Donny, Garry, and Clifford crammed into the cab of his old truck — and of course he was drunk. They said that Clifford saw it coming, grabbed Donny and Garry and shoved them down on the floor on the passenger side, and lay down on top of them. They weren’t hurt. The truck flipped — Johnny went through the windshield and hit his shoulder against a tree about ten feet above the ground. Mom was ejected, and the truck landed on her.

  La Ronge wasn’t a great place to live. I learned what it meant to be poor.

  In Molanosa we had been rich. Mom had trapped and made money. We had gardens. We could set a net in the river and catch all the fish we needed. We had family around; I had cousins who knew me and took care of me.

  In La Ronge we were isolated and dependent upon welfare.

  Despite the forced relocation Mom kept trapping
in the spring. There was one spring, I must have been about thirteen. I had been lethargic and sickly and prone to fainting. For no discernible reason I would pass out and fall down to awaken a moment later with a tingly face and tongue. We’d gone back to Molanosa and spent the night at Uncle George and Aunt Beatrice’s before heading down the river to the trapline. The morning before we left I was walking across the one-room cabin when I fainted and fell down; my long hair hit the corner of the wood stove in the middle of the room, and everyone who saw thought I had hit my head and bashed out my brains.

  Mom and I walked up the river that day on the ice. I remember the next two weeks with an unusual clarity; every detail stands out. We stayed in a small log cabin with a dirt floor and walked the river every day, checking muskrat traps. We weren’t trapping hard. It seemed she just wanted to be out there doing it, to be on the land, eating good food. There is nothing as delicious as a muskrat. The meat is tender and flavourful, and once you start eating them, you want more and more until it seems you can’t get full: boiled muskrat, baked muskrat, muskrat on a stick over an open fire.

  It was March. The meanest part of winter was done. The days were longer and bright. There were nights when we slept outside on a bed of spruce boughs and listened to the owls hoot. We laughed often and easily, even at the owls, though I cannot for the life of me tell why the sound of owls hooting in unison was so funny. It just was.

  The clearest memory is of us about a mile and a half south of the cabin. The sky was mostly blue with a few wispy clouds. The sun was to the southwest, so I estimate it was about two o’clock in the afternoon. The wind was warm and came out of the same southwest direction. The snow that time of year has melted and frozen and melted and frozen and has a different sound to it. I can remember the sound of my mother’s moccasins on that snow.

  She stops, turns to me, and says: “My boy, you have to learn this. You have to learn how to trap. You have to learn how to fish. You have to learn how to make your living off the land.” As she says this, she waves her right hand at the forest along the river, a muskeg area covered with black spruce that grew thick together. And then she says, “In case anything ever happens to that other world.”

  I know what she means by “that other world.” It’s the modern world. It’s different from this world where we are standing. This is the real world. That other world is where things like the Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties happen. Here, we have all we need.

  When the two weeks of trapping were done and it was time to go home, I ran ahead of her the last mile to my aunt and uncle’s house. I ran because it felt good to run; I felt alive and enthusiastic. When I got to their cabin, I didn’t knock; I didn’t have to. It was, after all, my aunt and uncle’s house, there was no need for that formality.

  On the ride back to La Ronge that evening, Mom told me, “Beatrice said that when you ran into their house today, she didn’t recognize you. She said a pale, sick kid went up the trapline and a tanned, healthy boy came back.”

  Maybe that’s where I get the conviction the land can heal. I never had a fainting spell again. The only medicine I needed was to be outside, to eat clean food, to laugh and reconnect with a world where concepts like wealth and poverty are meaningless; a place where you are as wealthy as the earth provides.

  That one-minute conversation on the river ice has stuck in my head. It has shaped who I have become. I can live in both worlds. I might not be the best woodsman out here; there are others who know more than I do, but I know enough. And that knowing has given me the confidence to live in the modern world. I am not afraid. Even if bad things happen, I know that I can always come home to the forest and survive.

  Foreshadows

  There is a sleeping bag in the truck. The night is cooler now. Where to sleep? All of the ground seems equally inviting, but I end up back in the hollow under the pine, not in the bag, just covered with it, I don’t want anything between the earth and my body. I want the healing that comes from that old grandmother. I expect that I will sleep like a wolf, waking up often, looking up at the stars, checking their location, falling back to sleep to awaken again to note their new position, to watch the Big Dipper circle Polaris. There’s something there, something between humans and the stars, some old connection that our spirits remember, something that’s good for the soul.

  I will sleep well here, with my body on the earth and my spirit in the stars.

  But I don’t sleep, not at first. My mind is not at rest. It wants to remember, to journey back; perhaps it’s searching for its own healing.

  * * *

  Cheeeeeeeeeze burger.

  I look around for the bird that made the sound.

  That was Clifford again. He’s the one who told me that was what the bird was saying.

  Cheeeeeeze burger. And now, whenever I hear that sound, I automatically think that’s what it’s saying. But I’ve never seen the actual bird.

  It’s close. So I get up and go looking for it.

  Stand still and listen.

  It calls again.

  There it is.

  No, it can’t be. That’s a chickadee.

  Chickadees call chicka dee dee dee.

  But the bird I’m watching, sitting high in a pin cherry tree in the soft light of evening, grey with a distinct black cap, gives the cheeeeeeeze burger call.

  Holy shit!

  All this time and it was the black-capped chickadee.

  I’ve solved the mystery of the cheeseburger bird.

  Reminds me of Mom.

  Mom knew all the birds and what they said. Only, to Mom, all of the birds spoke Cree. I should’ve paid attention, listened to what she said. I try to remember and all that comes is: “Wesakicahk, omaki mitso, Wesakicahk, omaki mitso,” the little birds that teased Wesakicahk, the trickster, in the story about when he burned his ass.

  She knew them all. Hear a birdsong and she’d imitate its call with a Cree phrase, and she was so good at it that I could almost believe all the birds spoke her language, that they laughed along with her.

  None of us ever learned Mom’s language.

  She wanted us to do well in school, and the governing thought at the time was that children who spoke Cree would be at a disadvantage to English speakers. That, and if you spoke Cree anywhere near the school, you could get the strap. Even if you were walking across the schoolyard on Saturday, if you were heard speaking the forbidden language, on Monday morning out came the length of belt.

  My cousin Virginia told me that if I fell down and hurt myself during recess, I had to say ouch because ouch was English, and I shouldn’t say iyaya because that was Cree and I would get the strap.

  But I haven’t started regular school yet when Clifford sends me space travelling. School would be later. First I have to get a haircut. I’ve never had a haircut in the six years of my little life, and my hair hangs almost to my elbows.

  I don’t remember my sisters’ dressing me up. Thankfully, I have only stories about when Jean and Dorothy put me in a dress, braided my hair, and took me around town to show me off. One of the places they stopped was at the school. The teachers were expecting a little Johnson girl to enrol that fall.

  But I do remember the haircut, vividly.

  Outside. In the front yard.

  Sitting in a chair, and Mom with a pair of scissors.

  And my long, blond hair falling in clumps after each loud snip.

  She should have known better. Indians cut their hair only when they’re mourning. If you cut your hair for no reason, you can cause something bad to happen.

  Crying.

  An overwhelming sadness taking over.

  Crying, and I can’t stop.

  Tears and snot and blubbering.

  And I can’t stop.

  I want to stop.

  I want to stop crying.

  But I can’t. Whatever it is,
it’s too big for me.

  It’s more than a haircut, way more. It’s something else, not just my hair on the ground and my head feels strange. I’m getting the first haircut of my life because I am going to go to school now, and long hair is just for little boys.

  She should have known better.

  There was that thing with Richard.

  When Richard was little, he had long hair too. His hair was so white he earned the nickname Wapoho, White Owl.

  There’s a story about Wapoho, the original Wapoho, the famous one.

  He had two long, white braids. Mom said he was about seven feet tall and had three wives. Then the priest told him he could have only one. He went into his tent and cried all night. In the morning he came out and decided that he was going to keep the youngest wife because she needed someone to look after her. He gave each of his other wives a wagon and a team of horses, and he filled both of those wagons with things they would need.

  Richard could predict things.

  “Uncle ’Dolphus is coming, and he has thirty-five beaver and twenty-two mink.”

  And Grandma’s brother would show up later that day with exactly that much fur.

  Then Richard made the big mistake. He told Mom, “Uncle Jim is drowning eh.” And Mom ran down to the river in time to see her favourite brother, the one she was the closest with because he was the closest in age to her, go under the broken spring ice for the last time.

  Richard got a severe beating for that, as though he’d caused it.

  He said he could still predict things. He just never, ever told anyone ever again.

  My beating would come later.

  Whipped

  There’s two parts to it: the beating and the explanation. The whipping came first. It happened shortly after Dad died. I don’t know where the extension cord came from. We didn’t have electricity in Molanosa. Why would she have an electrical cable? It doesn’t make sense, but it was there and she used it. She held me by the hair, her powerful hand with a fist full at the top of my head.