Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past (16 page)

“Francis, I heard my owl,” she told me.

“When? I didn't hear anything.”

“Last night. Everybody was sleeping. No one heard but me. It was for me.”

I felt a fear, and then a panic. She's going. She's leaving us. I fell beside her and held her and held her. We cried together.

“I can't go on without you,” I said.

“You have to, for the boys. They will need you more than ever.”

“I can't think about that right now. How can I be any good to them without you? I'm no good without you.”

“Don't say that. You're good.”

“I was no good until I met you. Ask your papa.”

“He was just making sure you were good for me,” she said as she touched my face and ran her fingers through my hair.

“I will be gone but I will never leave you. I will be here always to help you raise our babies. Remember that and believe it. I know. I see them all waiting for me on the other side,” she said.

Once her owl had come she wasn't fighting any more.

I was crazy in my grief. I was living in a world that was here and not here. When we laid her in the ground I was broken. I was in so much pain. I couldn't bear it. I was broken and empty once again. I was no good. I was lost in my own insane world.

I was no good to my children like this. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I was in rage, agony, and sorrow, and in devastated hopelessness. I couldn't seem to come back. I didn't want to come back. I wanted to die along with her.

Adeline tried to comfort me even in her grief. “She's not in pain any more, Francis. Remember how she suffered. Take some comfort in knowing she is well now.”

I couldn't hear that. I blamed myself. I'm sure she picked up the sickness on one of our trading trips. I raged at the greedy, selfish, ugly white man who was taking our land and our jobs, and who would rather see us dead. Adolphus tried to stop me from going to that place in my heart. “If you hate, it will kill you. Think of your children. They miss their mother too and they need their dad.”

I was poison. I had to take myself away from those I loved. I heard the train whistle blow. “Theres my owl,” I said to myself. I threw myself into an open boxcar. “Take me. Take me, I don't care where.”

“So tell me. Where did you go when you went to wandering around?”

Adolphus looked up from over the top of his mug, leaned back onto the side of the shed. “Must be some stories come from when a man travels like that.”

“Well, I was travelling with Louis for a while there. He was sitting in the shadows in the boxcar I jumped into, with his big jug of moonshine!”

“That's right. We heard he was gone about the same time you were. Crazy right from when he was a boy.”

“He told me his woman threw him out after that white man who was boss of the survey crew fired him.”

“Yeah, I remember. The boss wanted to bring in his brother-in-law. Not a lot of folks from around here still working for that team,” Adolphus said. “They all came from somewhere else.”

“Louis told me that it was because he lost his gun at Sylvester's poker game.”

Adolphus laughed. “That's probably true.”

“We made plans to work for some ranchers around Edmonton and take it from there. For a while we were thinking of maybe finding a train going to Winnipeg and go back to the old country—Rupert's Land, Louis called it. He said he was named for Riel but he hasn't been able to find his army.”

“His uncle was in Riel's army in 1869, you know. They came up here the same time as Laurent Garneau.”

“I remember him telling that to me. I asked him, ‘Don't you know the war is over?' and he says, ‘Well, in the name of dog tail soup! I guess I should be recovering my casualties.' I told him he's crazy. He said, ‘I'm a man of vision. There are two of you in front of me right now.'”

“I think you were spending too much time with him.”

“We had some wild times. We fell off the train just outside Dunvegan and slept the night in the bushes. Back then it was around harvest, so there was plenty of work. Don't have much to show for it, though, but it was pretty easy living. We even had the opportunity for a few scrimmages from time to time.”

“So what happened to him then? Did he come back with you?”

“No. Well, we split up when I got a ranching job and Louis went off with a threshing crew. We would meet up at the bar but it wasn't long before he disappeared for a while. And that was hard. I don't need to tell you, I had a lot of pain, and it started coming back then.”

“I knew that. It was always hard for you.”

I couldn't tell him how things went from there. I was drinking, more and more. I always made it to work because I didn't want to lose my booze ticket. Waking up was its own hell. I had to have my “medicine” to start the day, just enough to get me out of the bunkhouse. Not enough to get in the
way. When the day was done I could do it right. Finally it got to the point where I needed more and more to get out the door. Then it was over. I had to go and find another job. It wasn't easy. The boats weren't working like they used to. I didn't have enough education to brag about, and my hard living was clear enough that most folks wouldn't give me a second glance, much less hire me.

Then I found Louis again. This time it was from the shadows under the bridge. He had his army. They would pool their findings and their thievings and make another day. He still had his grin but his body wasn't interested in big plans, even though his mind still made them. When I saw him, torn up and wasted away, that was the first time I realized how I looked.

“I was lost, lost for a long while there.”

I looked up at Adolphus. It was hard finding the words I needed to say.

“Its good you're back. I've been thinking about you. Bertrand's been around, trying to get meetings going about getting Métis land again. There may be something for you if you stay here for a while.”

He was so kind. I had to tell him what had brought me back.

“I had this dream, one of those dreams that felt so real it felt like it really happened.” I could see Adolphus knew what I was talking about. “I was walking with Catherine along the edge of a lake. It was that old comfortable feeling, yet in the back of my mind I knew she was gone. She was beautiful and healthy and happy. She smiled at me and told me, ‘Our boys must know the world. There's so much for them to be aware of.' She touched my face and she was gone.”

Adolphus leaned forward. “That's a vision, for sure.”

“I didn't open my eyes right away when I woke up. I wanted to savour the feeling of her presence. I could even remember her smell. I thought about my boys but this time I let their memory enter me, to be with her. All of us, we were all together for a brief moment and for the first time in a long time I let the tears flow. I cried until I felt like I'd just finished a hard day's work.”

Adolphus took a sip of his tea. “They have to know the world. What does that mean?”

I looked up at him. “That's what I was thinking. How could they see the world? Right now I have nothing to give them. I got up that morning at first light, washed myself in the river, straightened up my clothes as best I could, and just walked. I walked toward the city buildings. I needed to clear my head. I didn't know where I was going but I had a sense. And when I turned the corner I saw two nuns walking in my direction. One of them said, ‘Francis!' It was Flora.”

“Flora?”

“Joseph Callioux's daughter, the sister that was here helping us when Catherine was sick. She saw what rough shape I was in and took me in. The convent gave me some fresh clothes and a good breakfast. She's a teacher there now. I showed her my picture of the boys. She told me, ‘You bring them to me. I will take care of them as though they were my own.'”

“A convent school? What are you asking?” I sensed something darkening in Adolphus.

Just then from up the hill I heard the sound of two boys. I felt a joy rising in my heart as I got up. It was Jean Francis and Daniel. I bent down to meet them and soon they were on top of me, grabbing, laughing, and I was in the middle of it all, crying.

IMAGE CREDIT: EMILY CARR, PORT RENFREW, 1929, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, VANCOUVER ART GALLERY, EMILY CARR TRUST, VAG 42.3.120 (PHOTO: TREVOR MILLS)

T
HE PERIOD OF THE
Second World War was one of extraordinary misfortune. The skies appeared impenetrable and normal life seemed to be turned upside-down. It was as though the business of living had become transfixed while Death galloped rapidly around the world.

“The Moon of the Dancing Suns” is a kind of memorial that I am dedicating to the First Nations and their children. The wealth of courage, bravery, and loyalty that they displayed during our wars has been obscured, but it is our duty to do justice to the First Nations.

I presume that someday, in the light of an eternal day, when humans no longer see through the eyes of thieves, this wealth will finally be revealed.

The Moon of the Dancing Suns

MI TAKUOYASIN.
*

We are all linked to one another
.

A voice swells in the light of the moon that shines in the darkness. It speaks to Tobie with all the sweetness of an old soul no longer possessed of an earthly voice. It speaks with so overwhelming a tenderness that he feels his heart, his entire being, open and expand. His first thought is that this might be the voice of his father, absent for so long a time, who is using this means to give him a sign from the invisible world where he sometimes likes to turn his steps, saying that it was there that he felt truly at home. His father is off fighting for freedom, just as Tobies grandfather and all of his uncles did during the First World War. Even if they are not always recognized as full citizens, thousands of Natives have once again voluntarily joined up. Reserves everywhere are emptied of almost all their warriors, who have become soldiers alongside the millions of soldiers who
are fighting from east to west on front lines so far-flung that they could be given the names of rivers.