C
oming off the hill is easy. I don’t have to worry about the gears or the clutch or the gas pedal, and I can concentrate on keeping the wheels on the gravel. The truck picks up speed as we come down the slope, but I’m not worried because I know it’ll slow down by itself when we hit the flat.
I can see Franklin’s truck by the side of the tent, and I want to make a good impression. But we get going a little faster than I expect, and halfway down the hill, the truck slips off the gravel and buries the right side tires in the soft ruts on the shoulder. My father is thrown against the door, and instead of hitting the gas and horsing the truck back onto the road, I hit the brake. Hard. Which is the wrong thing to do.
“Gas!” yells my father.
But it’s too late. The tires dig in, the springs bottom out, and the truck pitches forward on its nose. There is a terrible screeching sound as the boxes slide the length of the bed and slam into the back of the cab. This really ruins my concentration, and I stand on the brakes and ride them all the way down. I hold onto the wheel as hard as I can, but the rear end begins to come around, and by the time we hit the flat, the truck is starting to slide sideways.
“Shift,” yells my father. The truck lurches forward, crowhops into the grass, and dies. My father waits for the truck to stop moving. “Clutch,” he says softly.
I don’t let go of the wheel.
“Maybe you should get out and strangle it,” my father says. “Just in case it’s still alive.”
My hands are a little sweaty. So is my face. “It didn’t whip my ass."
My father opens the door of the cab and steps onto the running
board. “I’m going to clean out my pants,” he says. “How about you?”
Franklin Heavy Runner comes out of the tent and waves at my father, and my father waves back. Franklin looks as if he’s laughing, but I know this is just an illusion. “You figure you’re a real truck driver now?” my father says to me.
“You bet.”
My father drops to the ground. “Okay, then how about parking the truck up by the tent?”
“Sure.”
“Close as you can get.”
“Nothing to it.”
My father turns and walks towards Franklin and leaves me alone with the truck. I’ve made a mistake and I know it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I set the brake. I find the clutch and step on it. I turn the ignition key, and the engine kicks over. So far, so good. I push down on the gas and let up on the clutch. The truck leans forward but doesn’t move.
I try it again. This time, I release the brake, and the truck creaks and groans and rolls ahead. The engine starts to whine, but since the distance is short, I figure I’ll just stay in first gear all the way. I’m feeling pretty good as I roll by my father. He’s standing with Franklin and doesn’t seem concerned, though I see him glance at the truck as I pass.
The tent is just ahead, and I begin to circle in so I’ll wind up right beside it. I watch the tent stakes in the side mirror and am pleased at how close I’ve come to them without hitting any.
In the side mirror, I also see my father and Franklin stop what they’re doing and begin to run after me, waving their hands. I’m sure they’re shouting, but I can’t hear anything. I look around, but everything is okay. I stop the truck next to the tent, set the brake, and open the door to the cab.
My father gets to me first. He’s out of breath and has to wait before he can begin laughing. “Damn, son,” he says. “You are one hell of a driver all right.”
Franklin is hard on his heels and isn’t smiling. “Where the hell you think you’re going!”
My father motions for me to jump down. He puts his arm around my shoulders and walks me to the back of the truck. “I couldn’t have put it any closer myself,” he says. He unlocks the padlock and throws the door up. “I’m going to start moving the speakers,” he says, and he hands me his knife. “Why don’t you start cutting it loose.”
“What?”
“The tent,” says Franklin, and he grabs my arm and drags me around to the side of the truck.
It really isn’t my fault. The tent has an overhang and my father didn’t call that to my attention. The top of the trailer has hooked the overhang and torn away part of the tent, opening the canvas along one seam. A large flap of the tent is still stuck on the truck.
“You got any ideas about fixing it?”
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say, so I hold up the knife to see if that’s the answer.
“Good idea,” says Franklin, and he takes the knife and points it at me. “But it’s against the law.”
I watch my father back the truck up so that Franklin can cut the flap free.
“Come on,” my father shouts to me. “Let’s see what else we can break.” The speaker boxes are heavy. We get them off the truck and then have to drag them into the tent.
“Leave ‘em,” says Franklin. “Sherman has to wire them up and pour the concrete for the pads.”
We walk back to the truck. Franklin and my father climb into the back and push on the boxes. The two smaller ones move okay, but the two larger boxes don’t budge.
“Could have brought a forklift,” says Franklin.
“No big deal,” says my father. “We open the boxes here and roll them down the ramp.”
Inside the first box is a motorcycle. A bright red motorcycle with black flames on the tank. It’s not a car, but it’s close enough. “I can help,” I say.
“He wants to try for the daily double,” says my father.
“No way he’s getting near them,” says Franklin.
“The tent wasn’t my fault.”
There’s another motorcycle in the second box. This one is yellow with red flames.
“What do you think?” says Franklin.
“I think it’s a dumb idea,” says my father.
“That’s why you’re not chief.”
“Damn straight.”
The two smaller boxes are sidecars. They’re painted the same as the motorcycles.
“This look like fun?” Franklin shouts at me.
“Neat!”
“It’s going to be a real money-maker,” says Franklin, and when he says it, he reminds me of my father.
“Yeah,” says my father. “Just like the landfill.”
My father and Franklin sit down on the grass and settle in with the instructions and the tools. My father gets a large wrench from the toolbox and begins working on the yellow sidecar. I stand around and try to be helpful.
“Indian Days start this weekend,” Franklin says, and I guess he’s talking to my father because he’s not looking at me. “You see my kid around?”
“Nope,” says my father.
“That’s right,” says Franklin. “You know why?”
“‘Cause he’s smarter than you.”
“‘Cause he’s a lazy shit.”
“He’s practising for the big race,” I tell Franklin. “He’s really fast.”
“Yeah, well, if you see him again, tell him that the only people in this world who eat are the ones who work for it.” Franklin reaches out and whacks my father on the shoulder, hard. “Ain’t that right?” My father snaps the wrench at Franklin’s head. It comes pretty close, but Franklin doesn’t flinch. “Ain’t that right?” Franklin says again.
“Unless they can steal it,” says my father. “Or get elected chief.”
“Fuck you,” says Franklin.
“Fuck you,” says my father.
Franklin runs his hand over the chrome exhaust pipes. “You think that kid of mine can outrun one of these?” he says to me.
“No.”
“Then he’s wasting his time, right?” Franklin nods in the general direction of Happy Trails. “Bunch in from Georgia. Maybe they need a smart boy to show them around.”
I can see that Franklin’s not going to let me forget about the tent right away, so I wander up to the RV park, just in case there’s something to do. The park is deserted except for the small group of trailers huddled in one corner. Most of them are a lot older than the one in my grandmother’s yard, and a couple of them are pretty beat-up, as if they’ve been on the road forever. From a distance, they look a little like the covered wagons you see in old westerns.
The band built Happy Trails with the idea that tourists who came west would line up for the opportunity to camp on a Native reserve. It was Franklin’s idea, and even my father said it should have worked and that it was a hell of a lot better idea than buying the buffalo or getting into the landfill business. But the year the band opened the RV park, the septic tank stopped working, and the mushy stuff that was supposed to flow in one end of the system and out the other began bubbling up in the washrooms and the showers and gurgling around the Winnebagos and the kingcab pickups and the Volkswagen campers, until most of the parking pads were covered with a soft mustard-coloured slick.
The band tried to get it fixed, but nothing worked. Some of the elders said that there were animals and other creatures in the earth who were tired of having shit dumped on them and that they had finally done something about it. Marvin Simon, who had taken a couple of Native culture courses at the University of Lethbridge, stood up in council and reminded everyone that, in the past, Indians were known to dump their refuse in holes in the ground, and that putting shit into the earth was more or less traditional. Carleton Coombs agreed with Marvin, but pointed out that there was a difference between shit and sewage.
“There’s good shit,” said Carleton. “And there’s bad shit.”
Mary Hicks waved Marvin and Carleton off and told the council that all this talk about “you know what” was making her angry, and that if they knew what was good for them, they would close the park, dig up the tank, and apologize. Franklin and the council
thanked Marvin and Carleton and Mary for their concerns. Then they voted to add twenty new parking pads to Happy Trails, leave the old tank where it was, buy a new and larger tank, and bury it on the north side of the park.
The second tank worked fine, but the odour from the first backup never quite went away. Families would pull in and start to set up before they noticed the smell. Some stayed the one night, but most left before it got dark. The smell wasn’t a particularly bad smell like the stench of rotting meat or an angry skunk. And it wasn’t over-powering. It sort of crept up on you, foul and musty like bad breath or a lingering fart. Most days you could hardly notice it, but it was always there.
On the other hand, the view from Happy Trails was spectacular, especially when the late light flattened against the mountains, coral and gold. On those evenings, if you walked out to the point just beyond the park and looked west, you could watch the land swell and stretch, as if there were something large and heavy buried deep in the earth, and if you turned your back to Truth and Bright Water, you could imagine that you were the only person in the entire world.
And the smell didn’t keep anyone away from Indian Days. By the weekend, the place would be packed solid with tourists, roaming through the camp and the booths with their cameras, taking pictures of the tipis and the buffalo and the dancers. People from Germany and France and Japan would wander around, smiling, asking the kinds of questions that made you feel embarrassed and important all at the same time.
“That your tent?”
I don’t see the girl right away. She’s standing in the shadows of one of the trailers.
“Nope,” I say. “It belongs to the band.”
The girl is younger than me and thin, with dark eyes and long thick hair tied back with a red ribbon. She reminds me of the Tailfeather twins over at Siksika. Or a bird.
“Where you from?”
“Georgia,” says the girl.
“Vacation?”
The girl is wearing a long dress that is torn and frayed at the hem and at the sleeves, as if the material has been ripped rather than cut. It looks a little old-fashioned, but is probably a new style that hasn’t gotten this far north yet. It’s okay, but I don’t think it’s going to be a hit in Truth or Bright Water.
“I’m looking for my duck,” says the girl. “Have you seen her?”
Down at the tent, my father and Franklin are still working on the motorcycles. “This is kind of a dangerous place for a duck,” I say.
“Some people think a duck is a silly thing,” says the girl. “But it was a duck who helped to create the world.”
“Ducks are cool,” I tell her. “I have a dog and he’s pretty silly.”
“When the world was new and the woman fell out of the sky, it was a duck who dove down to the bottom of the ocean and brought up the mud for the dry land.”
“Great.”
“Some people think it was a muskrat or an otter.” The girl steps out of the shadows. In the shade she looks fine, but in the light, she looks strange, pale and transparent. “But it wasn’t.”
“You met my cousin the other day.”
“The boy with the bad eye?”
“That’s him.”
“Rebecca Neugin,” says the girl. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
Below the RV park, in the deep grass, someone has built a large log corral with a long orange-plastic mesh chute that runs for half a mile or more across the prairies. There are about six buffalo wandering around in the corral and a couple of men sitting on the fence watching them.
“That your father?”
“No,” says the girl. “That’s Mr. John Ross. He’s got the big red trailer.”
“So, your father’s the other guy?”
“No, that’s Mr. George Guess. He reads books.” The girl steps back into the shadows as if there is a line drawn in the ground past which she is not willing to go.
“Indian Days are this weekend. Maybe you’d like me to show you around.”
“Watch out for my duck,” says the girl, and she turns and disappears among the trailers.
It’s almost evening before Franklin and my father match the instructions with the parts. Franklin fills both bikes with gas and oil, and my father gets them started. Franklin hops on the yellow motorcycle. My father gets on the red one.
The two of them ride around in circles for a while, and then Franklin runs his motorcycle up to the tent and shuts it down. He waves to my father, but you can see my father has other ideas. He guns his motorcycle and takes off across the prairies in a looping run that sends him out to the river and back again. When he gets back to where I’m standing, he has a big grin on his face. “Hop in.”
The sidecar is deep, and it feels as though I’m sitting in a bucket. We start off gently, cruising through the grass, my father leaning the bike to the left and then to the right. When we get to Happy Trails, he stops and lets the motorcycle idle. “Hell of an idea,” he says, looking over the fence at the asphalt pads and the electrical boxes set on short poles.