Scattered Bones (21 page)

He undertook her religious education, drumming catechism into her head whenever he had a spare moment. “Who made you?” he would ask.

“God made me,” she’d reply in heavily accented English.

“What else did God make?”

“He made all things.”

Why did God make you and all things?

“For his own glory.”

If he had been truthful with himself, he would have admitted she wasn’t really keen about these lessons – she seemed to be in another space – but eventually he decided that it was time she was received into the Catholic faith. He baptized her himself while the congregation prayed for her salvation. Her parents had called her
Otipeyimisow
, Cree for “Independent,” but if she was to become a Christian, her name must be changed. Étienne suggested Sally – he thought it as pretty as she was – and she had agreed.

In mid-January, six months after Sally’s arrival, Étienne came down with a cold that grew more troublesome by the hour. A raging fever gripped him, a cough rattled his lungs. None of the medicine that he had brought from Quebec helped. On the third night, an excruciating pain pressing against his chest, he felt his heart beating out of control. There would be no Last Rites for him here in this isolated place. He prayed that, nonetheless, he would be welcomed by the Heavenly Host.

That night Sally’s uncle and two other male relatives – he never did find out who they were – barged into the rectory, wrapped him in a blanket, and bundled him out the door. Étienne tried to resist – he wanted nothing to do with heathens at the moment of being accepted into the arms of Jesus Christ – but he was too weak to put up any kind of fight. They laid him on a sled pulled by dogs, and after a fifteen-minute journey, they arrived at a small conical-shaped wig-wam. Several men were waiting for them outside. In his delirium, he thought the face of one was smeared with bright red paint.

They rolled him off the sled on to his belly, shoved him through the small slit that was the doorway and onto a bed of sweet-smelling balsam boughs. The blackness was so complete, he thought, surely I’ve arrived in hell, yet at the same time, he was curiously elated. A strange voice, high pitched like an injured hare or weasel, intoned what sounded like a prayer, although Étienne could not make out the exact words. Other voices, soft and low, began echoing from the walls. In a way he never understood, this bizarre chorus soothed him; he felt his panic begin to loosen its grip.

The singing suddenly ceased. A shape barely discernible in the dark waddled towards a heap of rocks in the middle of the tent, raised the bucket sitting nearby, and carefully poured water on top of the pile. A sharp sizzle sliced the silence. Soon Étienne was enveloped in hot
steam.

He gasped for breath. The vapour seared his throat. He was sure the sweat pouring off his body would begin to boil. “Oh God, how long before I perish?” he pleaded, but the torture continued. More red-hot rocks were brought in, the water poured time and again. Then came a loud, otherworldly intonation which filled the wigwam, “
Onde, Onde.
” Voices echoing from hell.

Just as Étienne felt he could not endure one more second, the door was flipped up. The searing cold rushed in, hitting him in the face, pummelling his body. Gasping, he crawled outside and fell face first into the snow.

He had no idea of how he got back to the rectory or how long he lay unconscious. He was shaken awake by Sally, who was holding a spoon of greenish-yellow syrup. She told him, “This is made from roots of squashberry, water smartweed, calamus, and many other plants which I can’t reveal. Our medicine man mixed this for you because he thinks you’re a good person.” Too exhausted to resist, he allowed her to pour the concoction into his mouth. He was expecting bitterness and so was surprised at how sweet the syrup tasted. Soon he fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

Étienne never figured out whether it was the sweat lodge or the medicine, but three days later he was fully recovered. It was an epiphany for the priest, the point at which he began to understand that the Christian God of his schooling lived in a narrow, constricted world. In this foreboding place, the supernatural existed in every crevice, in every tree, a guiding light, certainly not a vindictive punisher of sins.

~•~

Étienne spots one
of the larger birch bark boxes that Sally had crafted long ago. It has been placed near her on a bedside stool. Good news! Perhaps she is at last recovering. The box is very special – a bright red cross has been beaded on the lid, the first indication that she had fully embraced Christianity. She had never learned to read, but Étienne hopes that the drawings he had painstakingly sketched for her depicting the life of Christ will still be stored there. Maybe they’ve become an inspiration for her. He lifts the lid, looks insides and sees a mound of scrap paper. The drawings have been shredded into tiny pieces. Sally’s true feelings revealed. He is bereft.

Chapter Twenty-Five

As time passed
Étienne grew fonder of Sally.
She was so sweet, so compliant. Then one day, three years after her arrival, she announced that she was going home. She missed her family, she said. He was so disappointed – she was such a comfort to him. Even his fits of terrible depression had eased. Nonetheless he had no choice but to agree.

“Your job will be here if only you’ll come back to me,” he told her.

Not long after, he was reassigned to St. Gertrude’s Mission at Pelican Narrows, over 300 miles north. She’d never find him now, he was sure. Then one night, a year later, he was surprised to find her standing at the rectory door. In her arms she held a baby boy.

He likes to tell himself that it was entirely her fault. Mid-January, a frigid minus forty degrees. She had said, “What if neither of us wakes up in time to feed the fire? Lying close to each other, we won’t freeze to death.” But he knows that that is mere delusion. The truth is more sordid. He had just returned from visiting his parishioners’ camp near Frog Portage. As he nattered about his journey through the bitter night, she had rubbed his near frostbitten feet. She asked if he’d like more tea. He said no thank you, then stood up, gathered that lovely, young body in his arms, and carried her to his bed. He could no more have stopped himself than she could have resisted. And she didn’t resist, he’s sure of that.

When she disappeared, he had had no idea that she was expecting a child. She told him later she wasn’t sure what would be best for the boy, to have him grow up among strangers or to remain with her family. Her father had argued fiercely that his grandson was to be brought up a strong, independent warrior of the forest. But her eldest brother had convinced her otherwise. The Cree way of life was changing, he said, and not for the good. Better the boy should know something of the white man’s modern world. Despite her father’s opposition – she wasn’t called Otipeyimisow for nothing – she had found out where the priest lived and returned to him.

Étienne made her understand that, no matter what, their secret must be kept – both their lives would be ruined if the true nature of their relationship was revealed. She bowed her head and accepted his edict.

The timing was fortunate. Sally had left Cumberland House before her pregnancy showed, and, as far as Étienne knew, nobody at Pelican Narrows was aware of their previous connection. As for the child’s appearance, although his complexion is a little lighter than most Cree, his hair is straight and jet black, the cheek bones denoting a Mongolian ancestor. The only thing that concerns the priest is those strange eyes. He often wonders if anybody has noticed that his brother Ovide’s are the same brown/yellow colour.

An Indian father had to be concocted; Sally had insisted on it for the child’s sake. Whenever Étienne overheard her weaving elaborate stories about the imaginary George Sewap, a hunter and trapper extraordinaire, an important medicine man who had been killed when lightning had zapped his canoe, he became irritable. The priest knows how ridiculous his jealousy is, how irrational, but nonetheless he’s determined that, sometime before his death, he will tell his son
the truth. Joe is the son of a Roman Catholic priest; his roots lie as deeply in Quebec farm country as they do in the Saskatchewan forest.

After Sally’s return, their lives took on a semblance of normalcy. The mother and son settled into the little cabin Étienne built for them beside the rectory, Sally continued with her housekeeping duties, the priest carried on his mission work. The nights however were dark and troubled. He tried hard to fight it, but often the outrageous craving grabbed hold of him. He would scurry like a besotted rat to the log cabin and slip into her little bed, hoping that the boy wouldn’t wake. First ecstasy transported the priest, but then sour, degrading guilt assaulted him. And, to this day, it has not ceased.

Living in mortal sin as he does, he accepts that he is no longer God’s representative on earth. And he no longer asks for His compassion. How could he? Each time he says mass, he partakes of the Body of Christ, and, since he will not make a confession, this is the most deadly transgression of all.

Dreams of his childhood haunt him, his mother weeping for her debauched son, his father railing at his weakness, his siblings, including Ovide, upbraiding him. He relives the rigid routine of his early years – the Way of the Cross, the rosary recited three times a day, hymns sung morning and evening, prayers before and after meals, signs of the cross over every loaf of bread ever eaten, devout readings by his mother, fasting, the blessing of the children, attendance at mass at least five times a week. Creation, original sin, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Ten Commandments – he has been so steeped in the religion of his ancestors, he wonders how he can so easily shun their God. But he has.

During his annual retreats at St Christopher Mission, he will not allow himself the comfort of confession. That would mean the termination of his bodily bliss, yes, but also the end of his terrible mental suffering. Yet he has never seriously considered it. As the years go by, his love for Sally and the boy has grown – even to save his soul from eternal damnation, he will not abandon them.

Étienne lets go of Sally’s hand, stands up, stretches. He walks across the room to where
the laundry is hung and fondly strokes one of Joe’s socks. Beside his bed is a bookcase and the priest glances at the titles on the top shelf. The Bible, of course, but also Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel
Emile
, Zola’s
l'Assommoir,
and in English, Hardy’s
Far from the Madding Crowd
. Étienne smiles. His son, unacknowledged by the world as he is, has turned out as well as he had hoped. Étienne’s love for this boy is sometimes unbearable.

~•~

He’s had to walk
a fine line with Joe. He can’t lavish as much attention on him as he would like lest the truth be revealed. Teaching the son of his housekeeper to read and write was reasonable, but instructions in Latin, French and English literature, mathematics, natural science, history would be suspect. It had to be done surreptitiously. Étienne said, “First we finish our daily work and then we study.” Long into the dark night, they laboured. Joe was clever, malleable and eager to please, reward enough for Étienne, although the teacher was a little disappointed when the student obviously enjoyed the novels of the English Dickens more than those of the French Flaubert.

Joe’s religious education has not been neglected. Étienne himself might be damned, but he wanted the child to love the Son of God. By the time he was ten, he had memorized the four principle parts of the Catechism. Sally assented to this religious training, indeed to everything Étienne wanted, so he was surprised that she rebelled, forcefully, even obnoxiously.

He had made the necessary arrangements through an old friend, the principal of his alma mater, the Collège de l’Assomption near Montreal. It helped that no sponsor was necessary as Étienne had money enough to support the student. But Sally had shrieked with pain when he announced his plan. “Enough of this mean, spoiled white world. He must learn Indian ways,” she had cried.

Étienne would have brushed aside her concerns, but, much to his amazement and sorrow, she had looked him in the eye and spat out, “I will tell the world your ugly secret if you dare send my child away.” There was nothing he could do but acquiesce.

For three years Joe lived with his mother’s family, mastering the art of survival deep in the bush. Then tragedy struck, the sadness descended, and Joe had come home to weep at his mother’s knee.

Étienne brushes Sally’s hair from her face and kisses her on the cheek. “It’s time to go, my darling.” Time to attend to a most unpleasant business.

Chapter Twenty-Six

As he walks along
the dirt path,
he watches the brown, glistening bodies of the Cree children frolicking along the beach like energetic sandpipers. He remembers he and Ovide, also naked, also joyful, diving off a cliff into a deep, cold quarry. Their sister had spotted them there in that prohibited place and had told their father. They were made to kneel and say their rosaries while he beat them with a willow switch until their bare backsides glowed red. Mary, Mother of God, why does it hurt so? Étienne can still feel the bite of the lash, feel the humiliation at the tears. Yes, he thinks, it was their eagerness to escape their harsh father as much as their devotion to God that had spurred them on to become missionaries. He hates despots, which is why he has lodged the complaint against Arthur Jan. Outside of God, he is the biggest
bully of them all. The hearing is to take place this afternoon.