Medicine River Read online

  —

  “HEY-UH, WILL. Your mother must have loved him. Keeping all those letters.”

  “The guy was a jerk, Harlen. I don’t know why she kept the letters.”

  “Hey-uh. Maybe you should go see him,” said Harlen. “Maybe take him out to dinner.”

  “He’s dead. He died in a car accident. He was drunk.”

  Harlen poured some more hot water in his cup. “Too bad that. He wrote a good letter. Bertha said they made her cry.”

  “Bertha read these?”

  “You know Bertha.”

  “Shit.”

  “She didn’t mean any harm, Will. She says your father loved your mother a lot.”

  “Had a damn funny way of showing it.”

  “Hey-uh. Maybe he was just young. Hey-uh. What do you think, Will?”

  “About what?”

  “Hey-uh. Saw Will Sampson on television. It was a movie about him being a sheriff. That’s what he said all the time. Hey-uh. He’s a real Indian, too. What do you think?”

  I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. “Harlen,” I said, “it sounds dumb as hell.”

  “Hey-uh,” said Harlen, loud enough for the cooks in the kitchen to hear, and he began to laugh, too. The two of us sat there laughing.

  As we walked out of Casey’s, Harlen handed me the letters. “You should read them, Will. Your mother must have kept them for you and James.”

  Harlen stood there with the packet of letters in his hand. The velvet had cracked at the edges, and the yellow yarn had lost most of its colour. And I remembered the picture of the two of them. My mother with her dark hair and dark eyes, the pleated skirt spread all around her. She was looking back, not turned quite far enough to see the man behind her. His hand lay on her shoulder lightly, the fingers in sunlight, his eyes in shadows.

  2

  Harlen Bigbear was my friend, and being Harlen’s friend was hard. I can tell you that.

  Just before Christmas, Harlen came by my studio wearing a basketball jersey pulled tight over his plaid jacket and carrying a brown grocery bag. “Morning, Will,” he said. “Wind’s coming up. Good thing, too. Cold as hell. You remember Wilton Joe?”

  “At the Friendship Centre?”

  “That’s right. He used to coach the team.”

  The jersey was bright blue and there was an orange number seven on the front. “So,” I said, “what’s in the bag?”

  “Wilton left. Martha Bruised Head called around to find another coach, but nobody wanted to do it. So I said I would.”

  “So, what’s in the bag?”

  “Your uniform, Will.” And Harlen opened the bag and took out a blue jersey just like the one he was wearing, orange shorts, and a pair of white socks with two yellow stripes around the top. “Medicine River Friendship Centre Warriors,” he said. “All-Native team, Will, and we need a centre. You know Clyde Whiteman?”

  I shook my head.

  “Great player, Will. He can jump. Slam-dunk the ball. Quick as a Cree. Boy, you ought to see him play. Probably the best centre in all of Alberta.”

  “Then you don’t need me.”

  “Clyde can’t play right now. We need a centre. Someone big, like you. Be a lot of fun. You got a talent for it. I can tell.”

  * * *

  —

  EVERY PERSON BORN has a talent. My mother used to tell me that. Some people have three or four, but everybody has at least one. Sometimes a talent is hidden, and other times you can just look at someone and see it as if it were stuck up there on their forehead. Granny Pete liked to say that my father had a talent for lying and drinking, but that wasn’t what my mother meant when she was talking talents. Talents were good, things you did well, things you could be proud of.

  My brother James had all the talent in our family. He could draw any animal you wanted: moose, bears, tigers, giraffes. Sometimes I’d watch him to see how he did it. He’d draw a line and then another. It never looked like much, and then there was the lion, just like magic. James kept the drawings in a shirt box under his bed, and whenever Granny Pete would come over, he would bring them out and show them to her one by one.

  “Them beavers look like they’re alive.”

  “Look at that antelope!”

  “Not even your Uncle Tony draws elk this good.”

  I tried drawing too, but it was useless. My lines were stiff and crude. James tried to help me, but I just couldn’t see what he saw.

  “Will’s the athlete in the family,” my mother said. “James is the artist.”

  I played basketball. Mr. Bobniak, who taught math and coached basketball, told me he could see that I had a talent for the game, that I owed it to the school to come out for the team. I told my mother what Bobniak had said, and she went out the next Sunday and came back with a pair of black canvas high-tops she had found at a yard sale. They were almost brand new. And they fit. Damn, they were good shoes. I put them on, tied them down tight and jumped up and down on my bed. Shoes like that helped you jump higher, run faster. And you never got tired.

  I wasn’t very good, but Bobniak promised me that I’d get better. A little more time, a little more practice. Fact is, I got worse. By my fourth year, the guards and the forwards stopped trying to feed me the ball inside and took their shots from the perimeter. I was left to grab rebounds and block shots. The last four games of the season, we played a three-guard, two-forward offence, and I spent most of that final year watching the games from the bench. I was big and I was tall, and that was it.

  * * *

  —

  “HARLEN,” I SAID, “I can’t play basketball worth shit.”

  Harlen laid the jersey on the table and smoothed the shorts out next to it. “Number four, Will. That’s a sacred number. Lucky, too. Person always looks better in a basketball uniform. Team needs you. You don’t have to be real good, Will. You can get those rebounds, you know. Use your weight. Intimidate those little guards. Block some shots. You must have played ball in Calgary.”

  I said no. No time. No interest. No energy. No shoes. I said my knees were gone. I said I was too old.

  “Hey, Will, forty’s not too old. A few work-outs, and you’ll be fine. I can get you a discount on shoes at Bill’s Sports. Women love basketball players, Will. You know Louise Heavyman comes to most of our games. So does Thelma Simpson and her cousin Rosemary. You know Rosemary?”

  It wasn’t the flattery as much as it was the memories and the guilt.

  “Make a comeback, Will. Be a star,” said Harlen, holding the jersey against his chest. “You know what they say about basketball players.”

  So I said yes and somehow I managed to compound the original injury, adding the embarrassments of middle age to those of adolescence. But Harlen was good to me. I missed easy shots, fumbled rebounds, dribbled the ball out of bounds, and Harlen sat on the bench, twisted his towel and yelled encouragement.

  “Next time, Will.

  “Way to move the ball.

  “Nice try.

  “No sweat, we’ll get it back.”

  We had a good team. Elwood and Floyd had played a little college ball, and Frankie and Leroy had been starters up in Edmonton. Most weekends during the fall, we’d travel around to the money tournaments. We’d drive out to Gladstone Hall on the reserve or up to Siksika or Gleichen or Hobbema. Sometimes we’d drop across the line and play some of the reserve teams around Great Falls or Browning or Missoula. Friday nights, we generally won. Floyd would put in those jump shots of his, and Elwood would muscle in on the boards. But after the game, the boys would go out to a bar and drink until closing. We generally lost our early game on Saturday, and the afternoon game wasn’t much better. The championship game was played on the Sunday, and by then, most of the time, we were driving home.

  One Sunday, as we were coming back from a tournament in Browning, Harlen pulled the van to the side of the road.

  “Come on, boys, hop out. I want you to see something.”

  There wasn’t much to see, j
ust the river and the prairies stretched out gold and rolling. Harlen stood with his back to the wind. It blew his hair out into a spiked fan. He looked like a thistle.

  “You boys don’t try hard enough,” Harlen began, which was the way he always began when he was going to give us one of his coach’s talks.

  “Christ, Harlen,” said Floyd, “it’s cold and blowing like hell.”

  “You boys look around you,” Harlen shouted, ignoring Floyd and the wind. “What do you see? Go on, look around. Where are you? What are you standing on?”

  Elwood and Floyd looked down. “Looks like a road to me,” said Floyd. “What about you, Elwood?”

  “That’s why you miss them jump shots. That’s why you get drunk on Friday night and can hardly get your shoes tied on Saturday. That’s why we lose those games when we should be winning…cause you don’t know where you are.”

  “Couldn’t we do this next week?” Floyd and Elwood and Leroy jammed their hands in their pockets and began to walk around to stay warm.

  “You’re standing on Mother Earth.” Harlen looked at Floyd hard. “That’s right, go ahead and smile.” Harlen gestured with his chin. “You see what’s over there?”

  “Give us a hint,” Floyd said, under his breath.

  “Ninastiko.”

  You could see Chief Mountain clearly, its top chiselled back at a slant, its sides rising straight off the prairie floor. There were no clouds, just the Rockies, and above them, the sky. The wind was gusting, strong. Harlen rocked back and forth as he talked. We stood there, our heads pulled down, our eyes closed to slits, and we slowly turned away from the wind and Harlen and the mountain.

  * * *

  —

  JAMES’S BEST DRAWING was an eagle, its wings spread, riding the wind. It was my favourite. Henry Goodrider who lived on the floor below us figured he could draw as well as James. “Anybody can do that stuff. Nothing to it,” he said.

  “You ought to see the rhino James did.”

  “Nothing to it.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve never seen an eagle like the one James drew.”

  “Bet you can’t draw at all.”

  “I’m not an artist. I’m an athlete.”

  “Hear all you play is the end of the bench.”

  “Hear all you can draw is flies.”

  Henry and me were always talking like that. Just fun. And to tell the truth, Henry was a pretty good artist. He didn’t draw pictures like James. His were more cartoon characters with big noses, bushy eyebrows and huge bellies. Most of them had cigars sticking out of their mouths and stuff dripping out of their noses. Henry drew them in chalk on the basement floor and the walls by the washers and dryer.

  “Who cares about drawing eagles?” Henry would say.

  Henry was up in our apartment one day, and he saw one of James’s drawings on the refrigerator. “Hey,” said Henry, “what’s this one supposed to be?”

  “It’s an elephant. Anyone can see that.”

  “Looks like a big, grey turd.”

  “You must be blind.”

  “Know a turd when I see one.”

  I knew where James kept his drawings. I got the box and put it on the kitchen table.

  “You want to see some real art?” I said.

  Henry looked at all the drawings, and when he was done, he said, “Your brother draws okay, draws better than you play basketball. But you know, there’s still something missing.” And then he grinned at me and pulled out his pen.

  * * *

  —

  I WAS IN THE DARKROOM on Monday when Harlen came by. I could hear him prowling about just outside the door. “Will, I got to talk to you.”

  We had had these talks before. I put the prints in the wash, turned on the lights and opened the door. Harlen was leaning against the frame. “What am I going to do with those boys, Will?”

  “They’re just young.”

  “We could have a good team, you know. We’ve got talent. You know what we need?”

  At the first of the season, we needed new uniforms, something to give us pride. After the first three losses, we needed to be in better shape. The last time Harlen had dropped by to talk to me, we needed discipline.

  “What we need, Will, is a leader. Someone the boys respect. Someone with maturity.”

  “You got someone in mind?” I don’t know why I thought Harlen was talking about me.

  “Me,” said Harlen. “I’m going to have to play. Used to be a good athlete. Need the exercise anyway. Set a good example for the boys. Team drinks too much.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Course you don’t, Will. You’re too old for that. You know better. It’s those young boys I’m worried about.”

  “I’m not old.”

  When Harlen came to practice that night, he had on a red T-shirt that said Indian Power. He looked taller in shorts.

  “Where’d you get the shoes?” asked Elwood.

  “Antique store,” said Floyd. “Must of had a sale.”

  “Ten laps around the gym,” said Harlen. “Come on, we got to get in shape.”

  Harlen took off, and the rest of us hung on his tail. Most of the boys could have passed him at any time, but the pace was comfortable, and all of us were content to let him lead. By the eighth lap, he was struggling. The back of his shirt was dark with sweat, and the old black canvas high-tops were smacking the floor, all the spring gone out of his legs.

  Floyd ran alongside me and motioned towards Harlen. “A beer says he doesn’t last the night.”

  Harlen was horrible. His jump shot was a brick. His hook shot, which he liked to shoot from twenty-five feet out, reminded me of John Wayne throwing hand grenades. He had a set shot from half-court that occasionally went in. But he ran and he jumped and he sweated with the rest of us, and Floyd bought the beer.

  “He’s just trying to compensate.” Floyd signalled to the waitress for another beer. “He can’t dance any more, so he figures to make his name in basketball.”

  “Harlen doesn’t dance.”

  “Used to. Harlen was one hell of a dancer. Won all sorts of prizes at the powwows. Used to hoop dance, too…exhibition. Elwood’s auntie says that there was no one could work those hoops like Harlen.”

  “Hoop dancer, huh?”

  “Back when he was young. But he don’t do it any more. One night at Gladstone, he was giving an exhibition. He’d had a little to drink, and halfway through, he fell. Hard.”

  “Did he get hurt?”

  “Hurt his foot, but mostly it was his pride. That’s why he’s always trying to compensate.”

  “Harlen’s not trying to compensate.”

  “All you old guys are trying to recapture the past. You knew Pete Johnson, didn’t you?”

  “Rodeo?”

  “Yeah. Got busted up by a bull in Calgary. Couldn’t rodeo any more, so he took up stock-car driving.”

  “So?”

  “So, he killed himself. Couldn’t rodeo, wasn’t much of a stock-car driver. One night he just drove his truck off Snake Coulee.”

  “Floyd, I saw Pete last week.”

  “What?…Oh, yeah…I remember now, it wasn’t Pete, it was Jimmy Bruised Head.”

  “Jimmy’s in law school.”

  “Well, you get the picture. Harlen’s trying to compensate, make up for that mistake with the hoops. He made a fool of himself that night, and he’s going to make a fool of himself again. First game we play, you watch.”

  That Friday, we drove out to Siksika. We had the six-o’clock game.

  “Will, need to talk to you for a minute.” Harlen walked over to the bench. “I been thinking, and I figure I won’t start you tonight. Save your legs the first game. Keep you fresh for Saturday.”

  “I don’t mind. I feel good.”

  “It’s nothing like that, Will. You’ll get to play. Just want to try a few new things.”

  Harlen started in my place. I got to play the last two minutes of the first half, and that was it. We won.
Floyd put in thirty-two points. Harlen didn’t make a fool of himself. He played well and even scored six points—two half-court set shots and one John Wayne hook. I generally scored eight points. But there it was—my past. The same solicitous tone, the same concern. Mr. Bobniak had said much the same thing in much the same way when he put me on the bench.

  We showered, talked about the game as we dressed. Harlen reminded the boys not to get drunk, that we had a big game tomorrow. I was standing at a locker when Harlen came by and swatted me with a towel. “Good game, Will. Hell of a move on the base line.”

  I had brought my own car. I finished dressing, threw my uniform in the team bag and left. It was a two-hour drive back to Medicine River. I turned the radio on and rolled back the sun roof to let the night in. The moon was out, and you could see Ninastiko standing alone against the Rockies.

  * * *

  —

  JAMES FOUND THE DRAWINGS right away and showed Mom.

  “Henry did that,” I said. “I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t.”

  My mother shook her head. “You’re the oldest, Will. You should look after James.”

  “I can look after myself,” said James.

  The next day, James went down to Mr. Pugh’s butcher shop and got a long piece of brown paper. He drew another eagle on that paper and hung it out our bedroom window. I helped him tape it to the ledge.

  “I can make them as big as I want,” he said. “And I can draw eagles over and over again.”

  “This will show Henry, all right,” I said.

  The eagle hung on the side of the building until the rain and the wind tore it apart, and there was nothing left but the tape and shreds of brown paper.

  * * *

  —

  I FIGURED THAT HARLEN would come by on Monday. I had all my lines rehearsed. Harlen came by on Tuesday. He looked shorter draped over the crutches.

  “What happened?”

  “Twisted my ankle pretty bad, Will. Went after a rebound and landed on someone’s foot. Hurts like hell. Elwood had to drive the van home.”

  “How’d the team do?”