Muriel Gray - The Trickster

He’d figured this would be preferable to a couple of days in the slammer but now, with the snow making his task Herculean, he wasn’t so sure. The RCs didn’t dare touch you these days. No way. The band had hired that fancy lady lawyer from Edmonton who’d throw the book at them if any Kinchuinick Indian came out of their custody with so much as a scratch. Sure, they would call you every name in the book and some that didn’t make it into the book, but they couldn’t break your face. She was the best thing the band ever bought. Even looked after off-reserve Indians like Wilber. All you had to do was use your one phone call to her and, bingo, she’d get you off the hook. Of course from Silver, calling the band office was long distance, but that didn’t matter none. So far Wilber had called the lady lawyer four times. He was really getting value for money. Okay, value for the band’s money. Except this time, he wished he’d taken the days in pokey. You got food and sleep, and it was warm. Of course there was no liquor or tobacco, and that was hard to go without for three days. He felt the bottle again on his leg and decided that he’d made the right choice. He ran his tongue over dry lips, catching a flake as it tried to fly into his mouth. Now was as good a time as any to step quietly behind the bus and have a small refreshment. He shovelled noisily towards the bus and slipped behind its great frozen flanks, out of sight of the open shed door. With his back to the chicken wire, he propped the shovel against the bus and fished in his light blue parka for the bottle. Even the warmth of his body hadn’t made any impression on the whisky, and it was as cold as a beer straight from the ice-box when he put it to his lips and threw his head back.

‘Tasty?’

Wilber choked on the liquid burning down his throat and coughed like a consumptive. His eyes were streaming as he pirouetted round to see who had addressed him from the other side of the wire.

A man, a man just like him, stood smiling from the sidewalk outside the compound, his eyes piercing Wilber like skewers.

‘What the fuck …’

The man put one hand up to the wire, coiled his fingers through the diamond-shaped hole and with the other hand put a finger to his lips to make a hushing mime, as if to a baby crying in its cot.

Wilber was confused and not a little pissed off. He wrestled his coughing under control, and blinked at the guy like he was crazy. Still hanging on the fence the man put his hand back into his pocket and spoke deliberately, in the manner of someone making an announcement.

‘I am …’ he paused as if for dramatic effect, and smiled, ‘… Sitconski.’

Wilber blinked at him at again. He screwed the top back on his whisky and stepped back slightly from the wire. ‘Yeah?’

The man stood perfectly still, waiting.

Wilber flicked through a mental filing cabinet of what this guy wanted. He took a guess. ‘You from Welfare?’

There was an almost imperceptible change in the man’s demeanour, but Wilber Stonerider picked it up. Was it anger? Why would a total stranger be angry at him? He’d done nothing. Well, nothing he wasn’t already paying for. But there it was in this guy’s eyes. Anger. Definitely.

This time the man spoke softly, and if Wilber were honest with himself, menacingly.

‘My name is Sitconski.’ He scanned the forty-two-year-old Indian’s face as if searching for a concealed message, a smile forming on his lips again. This time, an unmistakably cruel smile. ‘Moses Sitconski.’ The smile gave way to a dry laugh, like ice cracking under a boot.

Wilber was out of his depth here. The guy was obviously a nut. And he was a nut interfering with the only serious drinking time he might grab this morning. Any moment now the foreman would walk out of the shed looking for him and it would be too late to take another swig. If he wasn’t here to pin something on him, this guy could get lost.

‘Nice meeting you, Mr Sitconski.’ He turned his back on the guy and picked up his shovel. There was, after all, eight feet of wire netting between them. The voice that came back at him this time made Wilber freeze like an animal in headlights.

‘Do you know my name?’

What was wrong with that voice? It was a human voice. Was it though? There was something horrible running beneath the syllables, like a sewer running under a sidewalk. Frightened, Wilber turned round slowly to face the man again. The snow was falling thick and silent between them and Wilber’s breath sent white clouds billowing between the flakes. If the man was breathing at all it was like an athlete. There was no vapour from his mouth or nose at all. Wilber realized the hand holding the shovel was shaking and that he still held his bottle in the other. He leaned the shovel on the fence, unscrewed the bottle and took a long draught. Of course he could always run away, but something told him no one would ever run fast enough from this man.

The whisky hit the spot and gave him back his voice. He laughed nervously. ‘Sure. Sure I know your name, mister. You just told me it. Moses Sitconski.’

Wilber thought he saw ripples in the man. That was the only way he could describe it. Like the guy had something under his clothing. No, under his skin. And it was stirring, getting restless.

‘Do you know my name?’

He wanted to cry now. What was this? Something was happening to the air between them, and all the alarm bells had just gone off in Wilber Stonerider’s brain. What did he mean? The crazy son of a bitch had told him his name about three times. He found himself looking to the side to see if anyone in the shed could see them from here, but he’d made sure they were well out of sight when he’d sneaked behind the bus. Through the wire, he could see the white blanketed scrubland on the other side of the road. In short, no one could see Wilber Stonerider and his insane visitor Moses Whatever.

‘Look, mister. I don’t want no trouble. I know your …’

‘DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?’

The force of the words, spoken quietly, almost gently, was so unexpected that Wilber fell back against the side of the bus. The voice had come from somewhere distant and dark and although its volume was that of an explosion, he knew somewhere deep inside him, that only he, Wilber Stonerider, had heard it. It contained so much malice, so much rage, it stunned him. He started to weep. There was something happening to the man, something Wilber couldn’t even begin to address. It wasn’t so much that he was changing, more that he was becoming what he was. The tears rolled down his cheeks as he pressed himself against the bus.

‘Are you pullin’ your pecker back there, chief?’

It was the foreman. Wilber opened his mouth to yell, but found he couldn’t. The thing through the wire looked back at him with a wrath that promised to erupt into frenzy. It whirled its head round to where the shout came from and as it broke contact with his eyes, Wilber ran. He ran, skidding in the snow, round the bus and into the chest of foreman Taylor. They fell together in the snow, Wilber’s bottle smashing with a thud instead of a tinkle in the snow a few feet away. The alcohol melted a tiny patch of snow round the shards before it disappeared into the ground.

‘Ah! You fuckin’ moron.’

Taylor, clad only in his work jeans and an ex-army sweater, tried to peel the jabbering Indian off him as he rolled on his back like a turtle. Wilber clutched at him like a two-year-old, making gasping noises and dribbling from the mouth and nose. Taylor pushed him off and struggled to his feet, leaving Wilber on the ground, his arms covering his head.

‘Get up! I said get up, you drunken shit.’

Taylor was really angry. An Indian with DTs was not what he called help. He was cold and wet now, sweater soaked through, jeans covered in snow, and it was this snivelling idiot’s fault. How did the numbskull manage to get so sauced in such a short time? He’d handed him the snow shovel only twenty minutes ago and the Indian had been sober. Look at him now.