Keeper'n Me Page 4

  But fate has a way of dealing out the cards with the deck stacked in its favor. Plans and dreams and stuff can really get washed away by one fickle deal, and that’s kinda what happened with me. I’d gotten to know a few big-time movers through Lonnie and they all kinda liked me on accounta I knew how to keep my mouth shut. They thought I was kind of a novelty on accounta I was acting more black than most of them and could party down with the best of them. So it wasn’t hard to get trusted after a while with important knowledge.

  About two years after I’d moved in with Delma, me’n a mover named Curtis were trying to dump an ounce of Curtis’s cocaine one Friday night. We were moving from club to club, talking to a lotta people and having a pretty good time running a little business. Around midnight we hit a club on the Yonge Street Strip and Curtis bopped around the tables while I leaned against the bar with a beer. After a while he came back and asked me to hold the coke while he walked outside to talk to a guy. Didn’t wanna take a chance on getting rolled for his dope, I guess.

  It wasn’t long before a flashy white guy came up and bought me a beer. He was all decked out in a silk three-piecer and acting real friendly with people, so I figured he was cool.

  “You holdin’?” he whispered.

  “Who’s askin’? Somebody knows you, slick?”

  “Hey, man,” he said with his hands up, “just askin’. I heard you might have some coke is all.”

  “Yeah, I’m playin’. You wanna score?”

  “Sure, man. Make my night. How much you got?”

  “How much you want, man?”

  “I’ll take everything you got, brother.”

  “Got a little less’n an O.Z. on me. You got long enough green to cover that, slick?”

  “Hey, I got better’n that, bro’,” he said, whipping out a badge and throwing me up against the bar. “When I said I’ll take everything you got I meant I’ll take everything you got. You’re busted, pal.”

  There’s a rule on the street that you never take anyone down with you when you go, so I never said a thing about Curtis or the fact that the dope wasn’t mine. They nailed me with possession with intent to traffic and gave me five years. I was twenty-two. Delma was shocked and cried when the sentence came down and Lonnie just sat there shaking his head and staring at me with tears in his eyes. The rest of the family never came to the trial but they all wrote me while I was away, told me all about their lives and how it was going and tried to keep my spirits up. Keeping the spirits up was a hard go, but I never had a rough time in there really. I managed to get classified as a minimum-security risk and was sent to a work farm outside Peterborough, where I did farm work and walked in the fields a lot. The only bumpy times came when the Native Brotherhood guys started asking about me and where I was from. After a while they just left me alone when I wouldn’t talk and I hung with a couple black guys that were in there with me. I read a lot and fell into a quiet loner kinda space and people just let me do my time.

  Now if fate’s got a way of dealing fickle hands every now and then, well, there’s a magic in the universe that has a way of working as well. There I was, doing a five-year stretch, busy being black and planning on getting out and going back to Delma’s, finding a job and forgetting all about drugs and penitentiaries and bein’ a high roller. Well, that magic was working overtime and one day it arrived all unannounced and funky.

  Mail call at the farm was Tuesdays and Thursdays and I was getting used to a letter from Toronto every week or so. I’d done about two years by this time and I was already counting the weeks to my discharge date. By the time I got out I would have served a little less than three years with good behavior. In the pen you count your time by calendars instead of days, so I had a little more’n a whole calendar to go, but that was considered short time by most people in there. Anyway, I was expecting a letter from Lonnie and was glad to hear my name called for mail pickup.

  I was handed a heavy brown envelope that had stuff sliding around inside and the postmark said someplace called Kenora, Ontario. When I got back to my bunk and dumped the contents, a thick letter fell out with a whole mess of pictures of people I didn’t know. They were all Indians and they were all smiling at the camera with these big goofy grins and looking happier’n hell. A couple of pictures were of a guy who looked an awful lot like me without the Afro and there was something about the country in the background that rang something inside me. Kinda like the effect the blues had on me.

  It was from a guy named Stanley Raven and he said he was my brother. He went on and on about how I was taken away when I was a little kid and how my whole family had searched for me through the years but how the Children’s Aid wouldn’t give them any information. He told me about how he’d gone through school and gotten a degree in social work and went back to our home reserve of White Dog to work and how he managed to talk a sympathetic manager into looking up my old file. He got the address of the last foster home I’d been in and somehow managed to track me down care of the Ontario Attorney General’s department.

  He told me that I had a whole herd of aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins that missed me and loved me and wanted me home. He wrote about my brother Jackie and sister Jane, about my mother and how she’d never given up believing all these years that her baby would come home one day and about my father who’d passed away really young but who loved me too even though he never ever saw me again. He told me about the country there, about my language, a little history of our tribe and the White Dog band. And he talked about how he felt lost for years until he’d gotten back home and started living with his people and family again. He said that if I was feeling the same way in my life that maybe going home was a good idea. Then he invited me to write to him and tell him about my life and asked me to come home once I got out.

  All the time I was reading about myself and who I was and where I came from the less and less I could feel the cold wind that always been whistling through me. Looking at those people in the photographs, I got a feeling I couldn’t label and I felt like crying for the first time in a long time. I must have reread that letter a thousand times over the next few weeks and when Lonnie and Delma came to visit me I told them about it and showed them the pictures of the people who were my family.

  “Oh my brown baby,” Delma said with her eyes filling up with tears. “Someone got a lotta love for you to track you down after twenty years. You got a home. You got fam’ly. You gotta go there. Much as we want you back with us you gotta go there.”

  “Yeah, my man,” Lonnie said, looking at the pictures and shaking his head. “These definitely you fam’ly. Got the same Sasquatch cheekbones you got. Can’t run from this one, brother.”

  “Yeah, but what do I do when I get there? I don’t know anything about no bush country. What do I look like, Nanook of the goddamn north or somethin’?”

  “You look like a man needsa home,” Delma said. “You always did look that way. Can’t be movin’ around forever. You gotta find yourself some roots and it’s sad to say … but they ain’t with us. Your roots are callin’ you right now and if you run from this you’ll be runnin’ from ev’rythin’ forever’n ever.”

  “S’right, man,” Lonnie said. “I mean, I love you like a brother, man, but you ain’t my brother, you dig? This Stanley dude, man, he’s your brother. I can’t be that for you and you can’t pretend that I can now that you got this. You gotta go there, man. You been lookin’ a long time tryin’ to find your place, man, all that Hawaiian bullshit and all. Now’s your time.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Write the brother, man!” Lonnie said, banging on the table. “Write the brother.”

  “And what do I say when I do?”

  “Tell him the same things you told us,” Delma said. “Tell him all about where you been and what you felt like roamin’ aroun’ lookin’ for yourself. He’s your brother, he looked for you, you owe him that much, no matter what you decide.”

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

&n
bsp; “Right on, man. Right on. And we always be your fam’ly too, man. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change that. You always got a place with us, man. Always.”

  Delma said quietly, “You fill up my door anytime, hear?”

  “I hear,” I said, and I remember thinking that a guy had to be pretty damn lucky to have a family like this and wondering if the Ojibway family I’d just found out about would even come close to this one. “I’ll write him and if things work out I’ll go there as soon as I get out.”

  “Way to go, Arapaho,” Lonnie said. “Way to go.”

  Well, it turns out that writing to Stanley was easier said than done. I must have tore up a ton of foolscap trying to introduce myself and not sound like some fool. About a month later I finally got a letter sent away and I gotta tell you I was nervous as hell until the day the reply came back.

  Stanley said there was a room being set aside for me at his house and that everyone at White Dog was excited about me coming home. He told me not to worry too much about it because everyone there knew about jail and all, that I didn’t speak Ojibway and that I probably needed a lot of time to get used to the place. Then he told me that of all of us kids I was the only one who’d disappeared, that my brothers and sisters had all grown up in the White Dog area and had known my family all their lives. They’d had to go through the foster care system too but had been fortunate enough to stay together and get to know our family. When they were old enough to leave they headed right back to White Dog. I was the only mystery and they were sure looking forward to seeing me again.

  He wrote me every month. Long rambling letters about all kindsa things regarding White Dog and the Ojibway life there. The more I read about it the more I got intrigued and I was actually looking forward to the visit by the time my discharge date started rolling up. He knew my date and said if I grabbed the first bus north everyone would be there to meet it when it rolled into Kenora, which was the nearest town with a bus station.

  Being free after three long years of even minimum security is sure one hell of a good buzz. There’s nothing like having some goon open the door for you and kick your ass out after dreaming about it night after night. It was early summer and the sun was shining and I felt like anything and everything was possible. I was twenty-five. Being in my prime and all and having missed the pleasures of female company for three whole calendars, it was only natural I guess for me to roll into the nearest town for a good night out. Turned out to be about three nights out and in that time I managed to pouff out the Afro a little, score a few clothes and some tunes for the trip and, of course, satisfy the young man’s urges.

  I also managed to miss my greeting party in Kenora by three whole days.

  As the bus piled deeper and deeper into the northern part of Ontario a lot of feelings churned around inside me. I was scared, feeling really outta my element looking out at all the rocks and trees and lakes. I was feeling embarrassed to be meeting a bunch of strangers who knew about me being in jail and I was nervous about fitting in. But more than anything, I remember looking out that window of that bus, watching the landscape flow by and feeling somehow like I knew this country. I’d been raised in southern Ontario around farmland and skyscrapers, but something inside me told me that I knew, really knew this country outside the window. It was spooky and the more I watched it roll by the more that feeling settled into my belly.

  Of course, the closer I got to Kenora, the more the older, more familiar attitude started to take control of me again. I was gonna show these backwoods Indians how you could survive in the city. I was a downtown brown, hip, slick and cool, and there was no way they were gonna make me look bad. I’d been out in the world and done some things and that gave me some kinda advantage over these hillbillies right off the hop. By the time that bus started rounding the long curve at the town’s east end I was decked out in my finest threads and ready.

  The huge greeting I was expecting never happened, me being three days late and all. So I climbed off the bus, walked into the empty terminal located in some alley downtown and stood there feeling like maybe this hadn’t been such a hot idea after all. I was glad I had my shades on because people were just gawking away like crazy. Guess they’d never seen a slick downtown guy like me getting off the bus in their town before. I had my Afro all picked out to about three feet around my head, mirrored shades, a balloon-sleeved yellow silk shirt with the long tapered collar, lime green baggy pants with the little cuffs and my hippest pair of platform shoes, all brown with silver spangles, and three gold chains around my neck. I was giving off the odor of fifty-dollar perfume and bopping up and down like there was a Chicago blues band in my head. I just figured they couldn’t help themselves, couldn’t keep their eyes off me.

  I strolled on out to what looked like a taxi stand and rapped on the window to wake up the fat white guy at the wheel.

  “Say, my man,” I said, all smiley and nice, “I’m lookin’ for White Dog. Can you get me there?”

  He stared at me all slack-jawed and eyes wide open for about a whole minute before he started stammering away at me, little flecks of spittle flying off his lips.

  “Sh-sh-sh-sure. I-I-I-I can get you there right away. L-l-l-l-long trip though. C-c-cost you s-s-sixty dollars.”

  “Sixty dollars! Look, man, I’ll just find me another hack that’ll get me there cheaper.”

  “N-n-n-n-no cheaper. S-s-sixty’s f-flat rate, m-m-mister.”

  “Damn. Ain’t gonna be economical bein’ no Indian, is it?” I said and hopped into the back.

  The cabbie said White Dog was about eighty kilometres outta town and part of the sixty was paying him for coming back empty since not a lotta people had enough cash to hire a ride into town. He kept staring at me in the mirror.

  “Look, man,” I said. “What? What you lookin’ at? Ain’t you never seen no Indian before or somethin’?”

  “S-s-s-sorry,” he said, “b-b-but I ain’t seen anybody round here l-l-l-like you.”

  “Well, get used to it, slick. My name’s Raven, man, and I’m just coming home to White Dog for a visit, so you be seein’ my brown ass a bit, dig?”

  “R-r-raven? Y-you don’t look like no R-r-raven.”

  “What? I ain’t black enough for no Raven or somethin’? Shit, man, I said my name’s Raven, my name’s Raven, all right?”

  “H-h-hey, no offense, you just don’t look like the r-r-r-resta them, that’s all.”

  “Fine,” I said, looking out the window. “Fine, I can live with that. What’s with your mouth anyway, man? You’re stutterin’ aroun’ like Porky Pig or somethin’.”

  “S-s-sorry,” he said, giving me one last wide-eyed look before grabbing the wheel with both hands and staring straight ahead at the road. “It’s j-just that, well, you’re not quite what we’re used to seein’ from our our Indians, y-you know?”

  “Our Indians? What’s that supposed to mean? Our Indians?”

  “No offense. I-I just meant the ones from around here. That’s all.”

  “What are they? Like the Clampetts or somethin’?”

  “Well, not like you, that’s for sure. Not like you.”

  “Make you kinda nervous, does it? Seein’ an Indian like me?”

  “Nothin’ I’m used to, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, relax, my man. Maybe if I hang out here long enough you gonna be seein’ lotsa brothers lookin’ like this. Maybe what this place needs is a good shot of downtown.”

  He just looked at me one last time in the mirror and then concentrated on the road, which was just beginning to do its twist and turn to White Dog.

  I’m used to it now having been back five years but that first day I wondered where the hell I was landing once we approached the reserve. First there was a big sign on the side of the road with about a hundred bullet holes in it that said: YOU ARE ENTERING THE WHITE DOG INDIAN RESERVE. NO ADMITTANCE. VISITORS REPORT TO THE BANK OFFICE. NO ACCESS WITHOUT PERMISSION.

  Then about a quarter mile after that was a sign that
read: KEEWATIN’S GENERAL STORE! WHERE NO STOCK ISN’T A PROBLEM! GOOD FOOD! GET GAS! NO LINEUPS! BIG ED KEEWATIN PROP.

  We rounded the final curve into the townsite and I swear it looked like something outta a foreign documentary. Houses were perched on toppa rocky outcroppings and they all looked about ready to tumble down. There wasn’t any siding on a lotta them and it looked like most were just sitting there on the land with no basements, plumbing or furnaces. They were all about a quarter mile apart and there was a lotta dead-looking automobiles parked everywhere. Reminded me of what Lonnie described the Detroit ghettos to be like. There was scruffy kids running around everywhere, shirtless and wearing rolled-down black gumboots, and the occasional old person walking around lookin’ tired and glum. Out back of all the houses was a big lake and there were lotsa shaky-lookin’ docks around with boats tied up to them. There was a big red brick schoolhouse and a few modern houses all hunched together close by and further away was a buncha aluminum trailers too. First thing I noticed was the missing power and telephone poles, and I saw someone behind one of the houses walking up from the dock with a five-gallon pail with water slopping over the sides. There were outdoor johnnies behind the houses too and I worried about how I was gonna get the slivers outta my ass. It was the only time in my life I ever thought constipation might be a blessing. Everyone looked up as the cab pulled in and by the time we pulled up in front of the store there were about fifty Indians all heading towards us. Kinda reminded me of those movies I used to watch as a kid. One minute they weren’t there and the next minute they were everywhere. It was true after all. Indians did just pop outta nowhere.

  They were all craning their necks real good trying to get a glimpse of who it was behind the tinted glass, and it gave me a chance to check out the locals and try to see any faces I recognized from the pictures Stanley’d sent. Seeing all those brown faces craning and squinty-eyed reminded me of something you see in National Geographic and I laughed while I handed the cabbie his dough. I could hear them chattering in Ojibway, laughing and rustling around. When I opened the door they all stepped back in one motion like a gumbooted chorus line.