Truth and Bright Water (24 page)

“Grab the brass turtle,” Monroe yells at me. More people are pulling up in their cars, and at the far edge of the fire, I see the Karmann Ghia come into the camp. The top is down. My mother is driving. Auntie Cassie is sitting next to her.

“The antique ashtray.” Monroe moves in front of the fire, his arms loaded with stuff. “Bring me the antique ashtray.”

I look around to see if Lum has seen the fire and come into the circle, but I’m not surprised that he’s not here.

“The kaleidoscope!” Monroe waves at me. “And the Navajo rug!”

I find a small bronze sculpture of an Indian running alongside an elk. It looks as if the Indian is going to try to bring the animal down with his bare hands. Or maybe he’s just racing it to see who’s faster.

“Can I keep this for a friend?”

“Absolutely!” yells Monroe as he rushes by me with a Northwest Coast mask in each hand. “Who wants the Japanese armour?”

Before long, everyone is standing around the fire, talking and joking and having a good time. Some of the older people sit on the couches and chairs. The kids run around the fire, darting in and out of the fog. I go over to see my mother and auntie Cassie. Auntie Cassie just has a light jacket on, and she looks cold. My mother has the quilt wrapped around herself.

“How’s the car run?” I ask.

“So, this is where you went,” says my mother.

“I didn’t stay out all night,” I say.

Auntie starts to smile and has to turn away. “Nice fire,” she says. “You can see it all the way from Bright Water.” And she reaches into the back of the Karmann Ghia and takes out the suitcase.

“Where’s Lum?” says my mother.

“He’s around.”

“Is he okay?”

“I guess.”

My mother turns and looks at the fire. “So, was this your idea?”

“What?”

“The giveaway,” says auntie Cassie.

In no time at all, most of the people I know in Truth and Bright Water are standing around the fire or sitting on the furniture or lying around in the grass. Soldier trots around, saying hello to everyone, getting petted, begging food, and generally making a nuisance of himself. Monroe begins passing out all the stuff, and I help him. Skee gets a really nice painting of a woman on a beach for his café. Lucy gets a poster of Marilyn Monroe, and Lucille and Teresa get one of the big rugs. Monroe gives my grandmother a Navajo rug, and he lets Sherman and Wilfred and Eddie pick out turquoise and silver rings from a carved wooden box. Wally gets one of the two suits of Japanese armour, and Gabriel Tucker gets the other.

“What do you think your auntie would like?” says Monroe.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What do you think?”

There’s still a lot of stuff left, and as we wander through everything, I can see Monroe making mental notes on who should get what. “Here,” he says, and he picks up an Inuit sculpture of a woman with a child on her back. “We’ll give her this.”

I figure that Monroe is going to ask me what I think my mother would like, but he doesn’t.

“Who did we forget?”

“Do you have anything that looks like a duck?”

It takes a long time for the fire to burn down, and as the pile begins to collapse into itself, the people begin loading their pickups or tying their gifts to the top of their cars. One by one, they back up into the fog and disappear. My mother stands by the fire with auntie Cassie.

“You want a ride back?” my mother says.

“No,” I say. “I have to stay here and help Monroe clean up.”

“Just be careful what you give away,” says auntie Cassie. “There are some things you want to keep.”

My father stands off to one side. My mother sees him, and at first I think she’s going to ignore him, but in the end, the two of them walk out to the edge of the circle.

I stay with auntie Cassie. “Hi,” I say.

“Hi, yourself,” she says. The suitcase is lying in the grass. The Inuit statue is next to it.

“Nice, huh?”

“Beautiful,” she says, but she doesn’t sound happy or surprised.

“Monroe’s pretty generous.”

Auntie Cassie watches the fire. It’s mostly a huge pile of embers now, red and yellow and black and glowing. I take the photograph out of my pocket. “Is this her?”

Monroe and Skee and Gabriel are trying to get the suit of Japanese armour onto the top of Skee’s car. Auntie Cassie looks at the picture and then she nods towards the men. “I think they need help.”

“You know…Mia?”

Skee has thrown a blanket on top of the car so that the armour won’t scratch the paint. Gabriel is arguing that the legs should go up first. Skee wants to lift it all at once. Monroe is trying to figure out how it can come apart.

Auntie Cassie smiles as she watches the men struggling with the armour. “The Three Stooges,” she says.

“Is she someone I know?”

“No.” Auntie Cassie puts the photograph in her coat. “You never knew her.”

I wait to see if auntie Cassie is going to finish the story, but I can see that she’s gone as far as she wants to go.

“Another life,” she says. “Another time.”

In the end, Skee and Monroe lift the suit, and because I’m the lightest, I get on top of the car and guide it into place. Skee gets some rope out of the trunk, and we loop it through the car and around the suit, until it’s tight and isn’t going to go anyplace.

“All right.” Skee turns to Monroe. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says. “Stop by the café, and your first special is on me.” Skee and Monroe
and Gabriel say their goodbyes. I stand on the roof of the car and watch the sky. It’s still the middle of the night, but as I look east, I imagine I can see the first movements of dawn and feel the early coolness of morning air.

The fire has settled into a low mound. It’s dying, but you can still feel the heat all the way to the car. My father is by himself now, and as I look around, I see my mother heading back towards the fire. My father stands up straight. My mother walks through the grass slowly, and by the look of everything, they’ve had one of their talks.

Auntie Cassie is still waiting by the fire. I wave to her, but she doesn’t see me. She has her arms wrapped around herself, but I can’t imagine that she’s still cold, standing where she is so close to the flames.

“Tell your old man,” Skee says to me, “he still owes me that chair.”

Auntie Cassie opens the suitcase, takes out a small shirt, and holds it up to the light. Against the heat of the fire, the shirt looks soft and golden, and even though I’m watching, I almost miss it, the motion is so quick and casual. In the end, all I really do see is the shirt spread out and floating, bright against the night. It settles onto the embers, lies there in the fire for the longest time, and then slowly curls up at the edges, glows briefly, and is gone.

My mother circles the fire, the quilt dragging in the grass behind her. When she gets to auntie Cassie’s side, she doesn’t say a word, and she doesn’t try to stop her. She opens the quilt and wraps it around her sister’s shoulders, while auntie Cassie takes each piece of clothing out of the suitcase, deliberately, one at a time, and casts them all into the flames.

E
verything is gone. The couches, the chairs, the suits of Japanese armour, the wheelchair, the paintings, the rugs. Everything. Except the piano. It’s still on the back of the truck, and I have no idea what Monroe plans to do with it. I only hope he doesn’t want me to help.

“That felt good,” says Monroe. “How did that feel to you?”

“Whatever happened to that painting? The one you restored. The one with the Indians?”

“Which one?”

“There was more than one?”

“Oh, sure,” says Monroe. “Lots.”

“And you…restored them all?”

Monroe smiles and shoves his hands in his pockets, and when he does this, he looks sad. “I tried,” he says. “But there were too many.”

“How many?”

“And the museums kept firing me.”

“What?”

“I don’t think they wanted their Indians restored.” Monroe picks up a stick and tosses it on the bonfire. “I think they liked their Indians where they couldn’t see them.”

Soldier wanders around the fire. I figure it’s time I head back to Bright Water and my grandmother’s lodge. “Skee really liked that painting,” I say.

Soldier comes over and rubs up against my leg. He’s happy, but he’s tired, too. He yawns and I can see that all he wants to do is stretch out beside the fire and go to sleep.

“When you write the song about my exploits,” says Monroe, “don’t forget the giveaway.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t have to say who got what,” he says. “That’s not
important. But it should be a ballad.” Monroe is having a good time, and I hate to leave him because it’s no fun having a good time by yourself. But it’s late, and there’s nothing left to do but stand around and wait for the sun to come up.

“You going to stay around here?”

“Don’t know,” says Monroe. “There’s an old residential school for sale over near Medicine River.”

“You going to paint it?”

“That’s about all anyone can do.”

And then I remember the bentwood box. It’s still in the church, and if we don’t get it out now, it might be hard to find the church again. Soldier was lucky this time. Next time, he might not be so lucky.

“What about the box?”

“What box?”

“The bentwood box,” I say. “Remember?”

Monroe thinks about this for a moment. “The bentwood box.”

“That’s right.”

He looks at me in amazement. “Of course,” he says. “No wonder I couldn’t find it.” He has left the door propped open, so we have no trouble finding the church. Soldier leads the way, but I could have found it without him. “Can you see it?”

The inside of the church is dark, and all that comes in through the windows are shadows. “It should be right over there.”

We stumble around, taking little sliding steps and keeping our hands out in front of us. I hear Soldier grumbling off to one side, and I slide in his direction just in case he’s gotten lucky again.

But it’s Monroe who finds the box.

“Sonofabitch!”

I’ve cracked my shin before, so I know how much it hurts. “You okay?”

We lift the box. It isn’t really heavy, but it’s clumsy and awkward, and we stagger about a bit. Soldier is waiting for us at the door, and now he is wide awake and wants to play.

“Go find a rabbit.”

Soldier bolts out the door and down the stairs.

“You think your father would like this box?”

“He’d love it.”

Monroe and I carry the box towards the truck. I don’t hear Soldier and I don’t see him, so when he careens into the back of my legs, it’s a big surprise.

“Hey!”

I can’t keep my feet under me. The box twists and gets away, and we hit the ground at the same time. By the time I get to my feet, Soldier has disappeared. The box is lying on its side and the lid has popped off. I figure we’ve broken it for sure.

“I got tripped,” I say.

“It’s okay,” says Monroe. “These boxes are tough.”

Just inside the box is Monroe’s wig.

“All right.” He seems happy to have found it. He picks it up and puts it on. I think it looks a little silly, but then it’s not my wig. “Thought I lost this,” he says, and he begins straightening the hair with his fingers.

Soldier comes out of nowhere, ambles over, and sticks his head inside the box. “Get out of there!” I yell at him. He shoves his head and shoulders all the way into the box and comes out with something in his mouth. “I’d drop that if I were you,” I tell him. “You’re in enough trouble already.”

Soldier looks at Monroe, and then he looks at me. And then he opens his mouth, and I see something fall into the grass. Monroe walks over and picks it up. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he says. “I forgot all about you.”

All along the eastern margin of the prairies, the sky has begun to lighten. It’s still night, but I have no problem seeing what Monroe is holding.

A skull.

Monroe turns the skull around so they’re facing each other. “Trying to hide, eh?” he says. The skull looks just like the one Lum and I found, and if I didn’t know any better, I might think that Monroe has snuck into Lum’s camp and stolen it. “Moving is a real pain,” says Monroe. “There’s always something left to do.” He turns and starts walking to the truck, his long hair crackling in the light of the fire, and in that moment, I see what I should have seen before.

“It was you!”

Monroe stops and turns. “Ah,” he says, “an epiphany,” but I can see he hasn’t got a clue.

“At the Horns.” I’m not sure if I’m angry or not, but I am annoyed. “It was you that night at the Horns.”

Monroe waits to see what comes next.

“You jumped into the river.”

Monroe thinks about this for a minute, and then he smiles and scratches his wig. “You saw that?”

“Lum and me,” I say. “And Soldier.”

“Boy, am I embarrassed.” Monroe sits down on the end of the tailgate. “I must have looked pretty funny. You know, when I was a kid, I could go off the top without making hardly any splash.”

I’m all set for Monroe to deny everything, so I’m not ready for him to agree with me and I have to go back a bit.

“I must have looked like a sack of garbage when I hit the water.”

“That’s where we found the skull,” I say. “On the Horns.”

Monroe nods and then pauses for a moment. “Which one?”

“There were more?”

“Sure,” he says. “The box was full. Took me years to collect them.”

“This box?”

“You know how easy it is to sneak stuff like that out of a museum?” says Monroe. “Once I had a thigh bone in my lunch pail.”

“You stole bones from a museum?”

Monroe nods his head and looks at Soldier. “I told them it was a soup bone from the cafeteria,” he says. “A surprise for my dog.”

Somehow the conversation has gotten away from me, and I’m more curious now than I am angry or irritated. “Why would anyone steal bones from a museum?”

“Oh,” says Monroe, “I stole them from lots of museums. Toronto. New York. Paris. London. Berlin. You name the museum, I’ve probably been there.” He stares into the distance and watches the sky clearing. He’s more sombre now, and he slumps against the side of the truck as if he’s just recalled a sad story or is dead on his feet.

“Children.” Monroe turns his face away from the light and looks
towards the river. “I found them in drawers and boxes and stuck away on dusty shelves. Indian children.”

I sit on the ground. Soldier comes over and puts his head on my lap.

“Happens all the time,” says Monroe. “Anthropologists and archaeologists dig the kids up, clean them off, and stick them in drawers. Every ten years or so, some bright graduate student opens the drawer, takes a look, writes a paper, and shuts the drawer.” He stands up and rubs his hands on his thighs. “So I rescued them.”

“How many?”

“All the museums wanted me. Famous Indian artist. The man who could restore anything!” Monroe pulls the hair out of his face. “It was wonderful. They’d invite me in and show me around.”

“That box will hold a lot of bones.”

“Where are you bastards keeping the children!” Monroe smiles and raises his hands. “Well, I didn’t exactly say it like that,” he says. “But I’d find them no matter where they had been hidden away. Sometimes those idiots had even forgotten where they had put them.”

“And you brought them back here.”

Monroe picks up the skull. “Look around you,” he says. “This is the centre of the universe. Where else would I bring them? Where else would they want to be?”

The ride across the prairie is bumpy, and Monroe has to fight the wheel and take it slowly because of the piano. I let Soldier sit in front on my lap because he’s still sad. He’s also heavy, and the ride’s not particularly comfortable, so it’s a good thing that the Horns are not that far away. Monroe slows down when we get to the rocks and begins inching his way forward. It’s not as dark as it was, and if it weren’t for the fog, we’d be able to see just fine. “Better stop here,” says Monroe. “Don’t want to go over the edge with this load.”

The fog is on the move, turning in currents and streams. Every so often it opens up, and you can see the Horns and the river. “Close enough,” says Monroe, and he gets out of the truck. “What do you think about some music?”

“For what?”

“The ceremony,” says Monroe. “For putting the bones in the river.”

I’ve never heard of a ceremony for putting bones into a river. So far as I know, people who die get buried in graveyards. Monroe climbs into the back of the truck and sits down at the piano. “Classical or traditional?” And he plays a piece that sounds particularly gloomy. Soldier and I wait around to see if it gets any better, but it doesn’t.

“Okay,” says Monroe, and he closes the lid on the keyboard. “Let’s do it and go home.”

We walk to the edge of the Horns, the three of us. Monroe carries the skull. Soldier walks beside him, his head hanging down. “Why do you throw them in the river?”

“No good reason.”

“So, it’s not traditional?”

“Don’t think so.” Monroe searches through his pockets. “You have anything we can use for the ceremony?”

“Like what?”

“I’ve been using ribbons,” says Monroe. “But I ran out.”

Soldier sits back and barks once. I’ve forgotten about the ribbon Rebecca gave me. I fish it out of my pocket. “What about this?”

Monroe loops the ribbon through the eye sockets and ties it in a bow. “What do you think?” He holds the skull up. The ribbon flutters out like wings. “If it was me,” he says, “I think I’d want something pretty like this.”

“Mum?” The voice comes out of the darkness, and Soldier and I turn at the same time. Monroe stays facing the river, talking to the skull, unaware of anything but his voice and the sound of the water below him.

“Is that you, mum?”

Lum stands in front of the truck in the fog. The Cousins stand at his side. I can’t see Lum’s face clearly, but I can see the gun. “Hi, Lum,” I say.

Monroe turns around just in time to see Lum rock forward, level the gun, and pull the hammer back.

“No,” I say quickly, and I reach out and take the wig off Monroe’s head. “It’s just Monroe, Lum. Monroe Swimmer.”

Lum takes one step forward.

“It was Monroe we saw that night,” I tell Lum. “It’s a great story. You’ll really enjoy it.” I hold Monroe’s wig up and shake it around so Lum can see that he’s made a mistake. “See?” I say. “We thought it was a woman, but it wasn’t.”

“Hi,” says Monroe.

“It could have fooled anybody,” I say.

I make the mistake of lowering my arm, and as soon as I do, Soldier turns and snatches the wig out of my hand. I try to grab him, but I miss. He’s got me really pissed off now, and if Lum doesn’t shoot him, I might. I expect he’s going to take off down the coulee, waving the wig around, pretending he’s finally caught a rabbit. Instead, he carries the wig over to Lum and drops it at his feet.

Lum looks at the wig. The Cousins lean over and sniff at it. They’re trying to look harmless, but they don’t fool me.

“You missed a great giveaway,” I tell Lum. “Everybody was here.”

Soldier reaches up and begins licking the gun and Lum’s hand.

“You probably saw the fire,” I say.

Soldier whines and squeezes the gun with his mouth. He waits for a moment and then pulls on the gun gently. The Cousins fidget nervously now that Soldier is armed. They back up slowly and disappear. As soon as they are gone, Soldier lets the gun drop to the ground next to the wig and waits.

I don’t know about Monroe, but I think waiting is a good thing to do.

Lum stares straight ahead. Soldier whimpers, leans in, and rubs his head on Lum’s leg to try to get his attention. You’d think he’d fall over from all the love that my mother and I give him, but he’s always looking for more.

“Hey, mutt,” Lum says softly, and he bends over and gives Soldier a pat. “That your piano?” And Lum stands up and steps back into the fog.

I’m not sure that I want to stand on the Horns in the dark and wait
for the sun to come up, but at the moment, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

“That was exciting,” says Monroe, and he walks over, picks up his wig, and puts it on. I wish that he would stay put until I’m sure that the coast is clear. “Here,” he says, and he hands me the gun. “Dangerous thing to be lying around.”

“Those dogs are a little unpredictable,” I say.

“Don’t worry,” says Monroe. “I looked. It’s not loaded.”

“Sometimes they’re friendly, and sometimes they’re not.”

“Friend of yours?” says Monroe.

“That’s Lum.”

“Franklin’s boy?” says Monroe.

All across the high ground, the night has retreated. The sun hasn’t appeared yet, but the sky is clear, and to the east, you can see the tops of the bluffs and the coulees rising out of the fog like islands. To the west, the river bottom is still buried, but you can see the mountains now, bright blue and white and purple in the morning light.

“Looks like a nice day,” says Monroe. “Your friend going to be okay?”

“Franklin tossed him out of the house.”

“Ah,” says Monroe.

The air softens and swells and begins to move. Soldier leaves the piano and turns into the wind. He stands at the edge of the truck with his ears up, listening.