Wake The Stone Man (3 page)

Bernie Olfson, the cop who lived a few houses down from us, drove into his driveway and I could see antlers sticking out from the back of his truck. There's something about a guy driving up the street with a moose in the back of his truck that sets off a silent alarm. One minute there was no one on the street except Nakina and me, the next all the dads were at their doors. They didn't go over right away. First they stood on their steps, arms crossed, like they'd just stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air. Then they looked over at Mr. Olfson casually and gave him the Fort McKay how-ya-doing-eh nod. Then after a bit they strolled over to his place and said “Hey, so you got yer moose.”

Before long my dad and six other guys were helping Mr. Olfson lift the moose out of the truck. They set it down on the middle of his lawn and then stood around, waiting.

After a while Nakina and I walked over and joined some other kids on the sidewalk. I'd seen my dad skin rabbits when we lived up north, but I was curious about how they'd skin something as big as a moose. It was lying on its side, head tilted back and its big grey tongue hanging out. It looked gross.

“So what do you say Bernie, he's about, what … a thousand pounds?” my dad asked.

“Bit more I'd say. Maybe fifteen hundred.”

Mr. Olfson had two knives. One was about twelve inches long and the other not much bigger than a pocket knife. Looked pretty small to skin such a big thing.

The men stepped back and watched Mr. Olfson make the first cut. First he took the long knife and sliced off the head. Blood gushed out all over his boots. A few guys lifted the severed head and tossed it towards where we were standing. Steam was rising from the head as the hot blood hit the cold air. Some boys turned to look at me and Nakina. I think they thought we were going to scream or puke or something, but we just kept watching.

Mr. Olfson took the smaller knife and cut just above the tail and slid the knife under the hide and started peeling back the skin. At that point a few of the men knelt down around the moose and helped fold the skin back as he cut. When they had exposed one side they rolled the moose over and skinned the other side. Then one of the guys picked up the skin in a heap and dropped it beside the head.

My dad went into Mr. Olfson's garage and came back with some rope and they rolled the moose onto its back. My dad wrapped the rope around one of the front feet just above the hoof and tied a knot. He tied the other end to the tree. One of the other guys tied up the other front leg to the back of the truck. The moose was lying headless on its back, front feet splayed between the tree and the back of the truck. With the skin pulled off you could see every red sinewy muscle.

Mr. Olfson cut down its throat and pulled up the trachea. Then he cut into the belly, careful not to go too deep, and a few of the guys rolled up their sleeves, stuck their arms into the belly and pulled out a long twisted tube of intestines. They laid the intestines beside the carcass and white steam rose from the hot belly.

Mr. Olfson went into his garage, and with bloody hands he carried out a small chainsaw. He pulled the starter chord and when the engine kicked in he made a cut through the ribs.

I guess Donny must have heard the chainsaw start up because he came out of his house and walked towards Mr. Olfson's. My dad was helping them pull the ribs apart. Mr. Olfson grabbed the throat and pulled down slowly, bringing all the internal organs out — lungs, heart and stomach.

Donny came up beside me, and when he saw all the blood he started rocking back and forth and moaning. I turned him around and put his head on my shoulder so he wouldn't see. Nakina said we should take him home, so we walked him back to his house and hung out with him for a while.

It was getting dark when we went home but Mr. Olfson's garage door was open and the light was on. You could see the headless moose carcass, back legs tied together, hanging from the ceiling of the garage.

chapter three

The Beatles were coming.
A Hard Day's Night
finally hit the boonies and Nakina and I went to Woolworths to buy make-up. Had to look good.

Nakina picked out pink lipstick. I wasn't into lipstick so I stood there wondering why Woolworths smelled like old men's socks. I saw the salesclerk watching us. It happened every time I went shopping with Nakina.

First there were the raised eyebrows that said she knew there was an Indian kid in the store. Then the eyebrows would lower and she'd look like she just sucked on a lemon. Then she'd cross her arms across her chest, and I would start counting to myself … one, two, three … and over she comes. This clerk came up to us and said, “Can I help you?” and I said, “No, just looking,” and she said, “Well, you have to leave the store if you're not going to buy anything.” Nakina held up a lipstick and said, “I'm buying this.”

The woman followed us to the cashier and waited until Nakina paid for the lipstick. They wanted her out but not before they got their money. You gotta love this town.

On the big day we walked into town. Nakina wore the new pink lipstick. It looked good on her.

There was one good thing about South Fort, they had not one, but two — count 'em — two movie theatres — the Odeon and the Capital. North Fort only had one — ha.

We sang all the way into town with arms linked, shouting at the top of our lungs: “When I saw her staan-ding there.” We swung our heads as we sang so our hair would flip around. Nakina's hair was straight so it really flew but mine was like a frizzy pot scrubber so it just wiggled. We were still singing when we got to the theatre.

It was dark when we went in but I remember thinking something was weird. I expected to see a lot of kids from school but the theatre was almost empty. The maroon velvet curtain opened. And the first thing I saw were the credits:
Histoire … nuit et Brouillard
. What the hell. French? That was the first clue.

After the credits rolled there was this big green field. Nice. And nothing happened. I waited for four guys in black suits to pop up on the horizon and run across the field. Then the camera moved back, and farther back, and I was looking at the field from behind a barbed wire fence. Then music, flutes and violins, and a man's deep voice speaking in French and there were subtitles across the bottom: “The blood has dried, the tongues have fallen silent.”

The camera panned back farther behind the fence and I saw rows of buildings with tall brick chimneys. The man was speaking again — names like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. I didn't know what it meant, but I was pretty sure that Paul, John, George and Ringo weren't going to come running across that green field.

The next shot was a crowd of people and some little guy in a uniform was shouting at them, and as his arm shot up into the air Nakina punched me in the shoulder. “What the hell, Molly!”

I looked at her with raised eyebrows because I really didn't know what to say, and she hissed, “The Capital you idiot, the Capital Theatre.”

She punched me again “Get up.
Now!
”

Nakina stood and pushed past me, grabbing my sweater as she went, but I didn't move. At the end of the aisle she pushed past an old man and woman and they grumbled at her. I saw her shadow move up the aisle towards the door. I didn't move. Couldn't. It was too late.

I looked back up at the screen and saw long low buildings behind barbed wire. At the end was a big brick building. I tried to read the subtitles but they went by too fast. They were like weird poems.

I saw crowds of people standing at a train station. A row of children, alone. I wondered where their parents were. Maybe it was a school trip? But they looked scared and I knew it wasn't a school trip. Maybe they were being sent away because of the war? I had heard about kids from England being sent to Canada during the war. Maybe these kids were being sent away to keep them safe.

I watched them getting on the train, not into the passenger cars — they went into the big open baggage cars. More and more and more kids. Some guy in a uniform pulled the sliding door across. I saw a face in the crack just before it closed. The face of a girl about my age with a scarf on her head. Her eyes were big white circles. The guy in the uniform pulled the door again and the girl's face disappeared. He bolted the door closed. More trains, more people, more guys in uniforms with dogs. The camera pulled back to a shot from above showing the train moving across a field. Then night, and searchlights pointed at the train. The doors opened and bodies fell out. I thought they must have fainted because there were so many people crammed together on the train. Lines of people were loaded into big open-backed trucks. Trucks moved through the night and fog towards a building. A building that looked like the residential school.

Then men. I saw naked men. Stark naked. I'd never seen a naked man before. I'd seen girls at swimming class in the change room but never a naked man. I saw a long line of old naked men facing me and I thought oh god, oh god what kind of a movie did I walk into? I looked down the aisle to see if I could squeeze past the couple at the end. Their knees were sticking out so far I wouldn't be able to get past them. I looked to my left. A few men were sitting at the end of the aisle. In front another man and woman — they looked old — and beside them some men were sitting alone.

I looked up again. Shaved heads. Striped pajamas. Inside the long low buildings, rows and rows of bunk beds stacked with people like chickens in a chicken coup. A woman's big white scared eyes, like the eyes of the girl on the train. The music was creepy and sad.

The barbed wire fence again, and there was a man hanging on it, the tops of his fingers curled over the fence. Curled over like Nakina's fingers the day I saw her climbing the chain-link fence. His head was tilted back, a hole through his forehead, and because the movie was in black and white the blood that dripped down his cheek was black. The camera pulled back and I saw that he was hanging dead on the fence, hooked there by the collar of his coat.

Rows and rows of men and boys — naked again but this time their legs were thin and I could see their ribs, and I didn't think it was dirty that they were naked because their faces were so sad and their bodies so thin, and their penises were small and shrivelled. I wanted to wrap them in warm blankets.

I saw a country cottage. A man in a uniform with a swastika on his shoulder and a woman in a flower print dress were having tea in front of the fireplace. There was a dog beside them. The woman looked bored.

I saw the date 1942 on the screen, then more men in uniforms looking at a model of a building with a brick chimney. More trains, more trucks and women and children herded naked into the buildings with the chimneys — then bodies on the floor. I couldn't look at the subtitles anymore, I couldn't take my eyes off the children. Now women and children were standing in a field in front of a firing squad. There was a crack of fire as the guns went off and the women and children fell. A muffled cry, then weeping. Was it me? No, the older woman two rows down in front of me was crying. She had her head on the shoulder of the man beside her.

A body in a bed. He was dead but his eyes were wide open. That terror look again — the eyes all white. I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn't. Piles of eyeglasses and combs, and the camera panned back to show a large pile of human hair then farther back to show a wide field of human hair. Furnace doors opened and human bones were shovelled out. I remembered what Nakina had said — genocide — the slaughter of a race.

Piles of body parts, unattached legs still wearing socks, hands over legs over heads. A tin pail of men's heads, all with their eyes open. A head upside down with a big black hole where an eye should have been. Then a tractor. It moved slowly, slowly forward, scooping up bodies in its shovel. Forward slowly, arms, legs, ribs, heads rolled and writhed in a strange dance. A muffled scream and this time it was me.

There was colour now. Green. The wide green field. And below the words: “Who amongst us will keep watch for the
new
executioner? Who amongst us will keep watch?”

The lights came on in the theatre and I lowered my head and closed my eyes. I could hear the people shuffling out. I waited until it was silent, then I waited a few moments longer before moving out into the bright sun of the afternoon.

Standing at the corner of Main Street I could see both theatres. The marquee of the Odeon Theatre read
Night and Fog
and the marquee of the Capital Theatre read
A Hard Day's Night
.

I dreamt about the Stone Man that night. He was standing in the harbour holding the hand of a little girl. The girl I'd seen on the train before the door slid shut. The girl with the scarf over her head and big white scared eyes. I could see her lips open just a bit, like she was trying to say something to me, but before I could hear what she was saying the Stone Man let go of her hand, and she sank slowly into Lake Superior. I woke up screaming and when I finally got back to sleep I dreamt I saw the Stone Man again, holding a bucket towards me. I looked in the bucket and saw a bunch of heads, some of them with black holes where their eyes should have been. The faces smiled and started singing, “It's been a hard day's night.”

I never told mom and dad about the movie. Don't know why. Just didn't, or couldn't. Just went on with the same old, same old. We ate dinner on TV tables watching new stuff burn on the five o'clock news: burning bras, burning draft cards and Quakers, who started burning themselves on the streets like the Buddhist monks. Toasted Quaker Oats.

I watched
A Charlie Brown Christmas
on TV. I liked his big sad head. After a while the nightmares went away.