Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

The food was ready. The boys hopped down off the bunk and put their feet under the table. Granny said grace and everybody but the Eagle and the Englishman’s boy crossed themselves, even the baby. They all set to with a will and an appetite, piling their tin plates with elk steaks and a stew of buffalo and wild parsnip. Everybody had a side bowl of boiled and sweetened saskatoons for bannock dipping and as much scalding-hot tea as they could drink.

In a bit, the Eagle had coaxed the little girl up on his lap and was spooning food into her from his plate. Soon she was clambering all over him like a squirrel, patting the bandanna on his head with her chubby hands.

“ Aimez-vous , the pirate? Aimez-vous , the pirate?” he squawked at her. When she tried to speak French to him, he made a droll, rubbery face and said, “No comprenez-vous.” Every time he reiterated this, she laughed louder and harder than the last time.

It wasn’t long until he had a game of “creep mousie” going with the child, cautiously stealing his fingers up her arms, breathing, “Creep mousie, creep mousie, creep mousie,” into her ear, and then with a sudden cry of “Right in there!” burying a finger in her armpit, tickling her until she squealed loud enough to raise the roof.

Then, suddenly, he stopped the game dead, finger poised. An apparition darkened the doorway. The Englishman’s boy made an involuntary movement to the pistol at his side, but the Eagle caught his hand. “No,” he said, pulling the child protectively to his chest.

The figure in the doorway was sniffing the air, swaying, grunting to himself softly. He shambled a few steps into the cabin and halted.

The Englishman’s boy had never dreamed himself such a bogey man as this. The bogey man had shaved the top of his head bald and rolled the hair on his temples into balls so they resembled bear ears. His face was painted blood-red and down each cheek the paint had been scratched away to the skin, leaving claw-marks. The eyes and mouth were circled in black and a bear-claw necklace swung from his neck. His skin shirt was daubed thickly with ochre and hung in bedraggled yellow shreds; long cuts slashed the front, and holes were punched the length of the sleeves.

Now his face was lifted to the ceiling and he was casting back and forth with his nose, the way the bear does when it rises on its hind legs to take the wind for danger. He lowered his head and shuffled toward them, grunting.

“He got a knife in his hand,” warned the Englishman’s boy. The knife was broad-bladed, double-edged, and fixed into the jawbone of a bear.

Grace signalled him by dropping his eyes to something beneath the table. The Englishman’s boy caught his meaning. Grace’s pistol hung between his knees.

The bear stalked around the old woman’s chair. His nightmare face descended to the part in her grey hair, snuffled the hollow of her wrinkled neck. She sat like a stone. He stalked over to the boys, scented each of them in turn, panted huh, huh, huh.

When he swung clumsily towards the Englishman’s boy, the boy said loudly, “You ain’t sniffing me, you bastard.”

The bear stood swaying, then jerked and rolled his shoulders so the distinctive hump of the grizzly rose up menacingly on his back under the torn shirt. The Englishman’s boy did his best to stare him off like a dog, but these weren’t the eyes of a dog. They were the black fierce lights of the bear the Indians called the real-bear, the grizzly, beside which all other bears were nothing. This was the bear that broke the body of the hunter in the bushes, killed the women and children when he found them stealing in his berry patch; this was the bear who crushed your bones as easily as he did the bones of a salmon, who tore your guts with his claws. This was the bear with the great hunger, the bear who, in his rage, could eat the world, all its fruits, all its fish, all its flesh.

And he was in the room with them.

“Yes, you will,” said Grace quietly. “You will let him sniff you.”

The bear came forward, the vermilion on his face shining with grease, the charcoal eyes and mouth shafts leading into some terrible inner darkness, a darkness out of which he groaned hollowly, out of which he laboured to walk on his hind legs, like a man.

Then he was in the Englishman’s boy’s face, inches from it. The boy could smell meat on the panting breath, smell the bear grease twisted up in the balls of hair on either side of his head – smell something else, musky, slightly skunky, which snagged in his throat, coating it with old, rancid fat. The bear peered into his face, nose to nose. Sniffed him.

Death was smelling him to see if he was ripe; Death was looking him in the eyes to see how they would answer. When the grizzly caught you, you best play possum.

Don’t you try to eat me, old bear. I ain’t big, but I’m more’n you can swallow. I might stick in your throat and choke you. I might slide down your gullet like a straight razor, slice you stem to stern.

The bear was leaving him, swinging his head toward Grace. The two black eyes bored across the table to where the child clutched Grace’s shirt pocket, mouth hanging open with terror. The Englishman’s boy thought he could see a little picture of Grace holding that babe tight sitting in each eye of the bear. Slowly, the bear wrinkled his lips and bared his teeth. Slowly, he backed across the room to the door, his moccasins whispering in the dirt as he smiled his yellow, carnivorous grin for Grace and only Grace. Then he was gone.

The Englishman’s boy glanced at the Eagle. He was staring at the yawning door, clasping the child even closer.

“Eagle.”

Grace didn’t answer.

“Eagle.”

He turned to the boy, kissed the child on the head, set her on the floor between his feet.

“What the hell was that, Eagle?”

Grace stood up. “Assiniboine Bear Cult man. One of the chosen few the bear visits in a dream to pass bear medicine to.”

“So what the hell was he doing here?”

Grace was watching the door, as if he expected the bear to shuffle back in any minute. “I don’t know. But it can’t be good. A bear man always means bad luck. They never prosper. Their wives die and their children go hungry. The spirit of the bear brings trouble and death. They have a reputation as touchy killers like the grizzly. Maybe these people know what it means, but I don’t.” The family sat solemn as owls, watching Grace as he spoke. He put money beside his plate, more money than he should have. “I’ve got a bad feeling. I think we better get on back to the post and warn the boys. Maybe it’s nothing but it stinks like something.” He turned to the old woman. “We’re obliged for the hospitality. I’m obliged to have sat in a house on a Sunday. When we’re gone, bar the door.”

Leaving wasn’t so easy though; when she realized he intended to go, Rose Marie wrapped herself around his leg and hung on with all her might. The Eagle pried her off, screaming, and passed her to her granny.

Stepping out the door the Eagle drew his pistol and signed for the Englishman’s boy to do the same. The door closed behind them and they heard the bar fall with a solid chunk behind them. It was hot and still. The sun glared on the surrounding cabins. There was no smoke rising from the chimneys. A great silence reigned. Grace cocked his head, listening. Nothing but insects playing jew’s-harps in the grass. Even the dogs were mute. Not a soul moved outside the cabins. He could feel eyes pressed to the chinks between the logs, watching him.

He narrowed his eyes against the painful light, attentively swept the field from right to left. It was empty. No sign of the Bear Cult man. He had disappeared, maybe into the willows down by the creek. Maybe across the creek and up the bench rising to the north of Moses Solomon’s fort. He prayed God he wasn’t lying up there with a gun, sighting them now.