A Short History of Indians in Canada (10 page)

“Christopher Columbus was not a Ferengi,” said Ms. Merry. “He was an Italian.”

“But you told us that he kidnapped Indians from the islands of the Caribbean and sold them in the slave markets in Seville.”

“Yes, he did, but that doesn’t make him a Ferengi.”

“Who else but a Ferengi would try to sell people?”

“Milton,” said Ms. Merry, “do you remember what I told you about racism?”

“Racism hurts everyone.”

“That’s right.”

“I told my mother, and she mostly agreed with you.”

“Mostly?”

“She said it hurts some people more than others.”

That weekend, Milton’s mother had to go to Edmonton for a conference. “You can come with me, or you can stay with your grandfather.”

“Are you going to be near the West Edmonton Mall?”

“No.”

Milton’s grandfather was in the backyard setting up his tipi when Milton arrived with his backpack and his sleeping bag.

“Nothing like sleeping out under the stars,” said his grandfather.

“Like the old days, right?”

“Right.”

“Before television, right?

“You bet,” said his grandfather. “Here, give me a hand with this.”

“What is it?”

“An antenna. If you hook it to one of the lodge poles, it really improves the reception.”

“We moving the big television outside?”

“No,” said his grandfather, “it’s too heavy.”

Watching
Star Trek
on the seventeen-inch portable wasn’t quite the same as seeing it on the big screen. But it was cozy inside the tipi, and during the commercials, if you looked up, you could see the stars.

“Look what I found,” said his grandfather, and he handed Milton a magazine. “I went to the doctor’s office the other day and there it was.”

“
Maclean’s.
”

The banner headline on the cover said, “Abuse of Trust,” and one of the stories was about the George Gordon Residential School in Saskatchewan.

“Residential schools,” said his grandfather. “That’s one of the places where Europeans tried to assimilate Indians.”

“Are we back to the Borg, again?”

Milton’s grandfather sighed and opened the magazine to page eighteen. “Look at this. It says here that in 1879 the John A. Macdonald government decided to set up boarding schools in order to remove Native children from their homes to begin assimilating them into white culture.”

“And in 1894,” said Milton, reading ahead, “Ottawa
passed an amendment to the…” Milton stopped for a moment to catch his breath.

“That’s right,” said his grandfather, “an amendment to the Indian Act making attendance for Native children mandatory at these schools.”

“Wow!” said Milton. “So it was Borg, after all.”

Milton’s grandfather turned off the television and pulled the flap to one side. “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

It was a moonless night, and the sky was aquiver with stars. Milton’s grandfather walked to the edge of the cliff overlooking the river and sat down on the prairie grass. “I think I know what happened,” he said. “I think the Europeans and Jean-Luc Picard and the Federation are…one and the same.”

“That’s silly,” said Milton, who did not really think of his grandfather as silly. “Europeans can’t be part of the Federation.”

“The Prime Directive, right?”

“That’s right,” said Milton. “The Federation’s Prime Directive was never to interfere in the affairs of another race.”

Milton’s grandfather picked up a stick and drew a circle in the dirt. “You ever watch Sherlock Holmes on A&E?”

“It’s a little slow,” said Milton. “Mum likes it.”

“Sherlock Holmes says that the way to solve a crime is to eliminate all the possibilities and then, whatever remains, however improbable, has to be the answer.” Milton’s grandfather paused and gestured toward the sky. “There’s one.”

Milton looked up in time to see a shooting star streak through the night.

“That’s probably how it happened,” said his grandfather. “That’s probably exactly how it happened.”

Milton was getting a little cold, and he was a little sleepy, and he had lost track of what his grandfather was trying to tell him. “We have anything to eat?”

“I got some apples.”

“Any popcorn?”

Milton’s grandfather shook his head. “Have you ever wondered why Europeans and the crew of the
Enterprise
look a lot alike?”

“Yeah, that is a little weird,” said Milton.

“Europeans don’t look like the Borg. They don’t look like the Ferengis or the Klingons or the Vulcans or even the Romulans.”

“Too bad Europeans aren’t as nice and considerate as the crew of the
Enterprise.
I’ll bet if Jean-Luc Picard had come to North America instead of Christopher Columbus, he would never have kidnapped Indians and sold them to other Europeans as slaves.”

“Christopher Columbus did that?”

“Sure,” said Milton. “You could make pretty good money selling slaves.”

“Well, I guess that settles it,” said Milton’s grandfather.

“It does.”

“You’re a smart boy,” said his grandfather. “How would you explain a race of people who look exactly like Federation officers, but who want to assimilate everyone and make a profit at the same time.”

If Milton had had any hair on the back of his neck he was sure it would be standing on end.

“Remember that episode when the Borg were racing toward Earth?”

“And everyone was chasing them?”

“Klingons, Ferengis, Vulcans, Romulans. And Jean-Luc Picard. Everyone travelling through space at incredible speeds.”

“Warp ten at least.”

“They go faster and faster. The Borg out in front. The Federation right on their heels.” Milton’s grandfather paused, so Milton could catch up.

“Like a shooting star.”

“Exactly.” Milton’s grandfather nodded. “And then…something happened.”

“Something?”

“An accident. And explosion. Maybe a wormhole collapsed.”

“A wormhole! You think a wormhole collapsed and caught everyone in a high-energy gravity field?”

“Maybe it was a faulty temporal time warp,” said Milton’s grandfather. “Who knows.”

“But everybody would have been…crushed.”

Milton’s grandfather shook his head. “Or they were phased into particle streams, and their atoms were mixed and merged. Borg, Klingon, Vulcan, Ferengi, Romulan, even Jean-Luc Picard and his crew.”

“You mean they were…reconfigured?”

“And when the dust cleared, what do you get?”

Milton sat back and took a deep breath. “Europeans.”

“Only thing that makes any sense,” said his grandfather.

“This is worse than I thought,” said Milton.

“I never did buy that story about Columbus sailing the ocean blue,” said his grandfather.

“So what are we going to do?”

Milton’s grandfather got up and brushed off his jeans. “Not sure there’s anything we can do. I’ll bet Europeans don’t even remember it happening.”

“You know what this means, don’t you,” said Milton glumly. “I’m probably going to have to write my paper over again.”

For a Borg/Klingon/Vulcan/Romulan/Federation molecular composite, Ms. Merry was remarkably understanding. “No,” she told Milton. “You don’t need to do your paper over again.”

“I know you can’t help it,” Milton told Ms. Merry. “It’s just that I don’t want to be assimilated.”

“Then you should probably stop watching so much television,” said Ms. Merry.

At the next community meeting, Milton’s grandfather got up during the open microphone period and read Milton’s paper out loud. It was a big hit, and, afterwards, several people came up and said it was nice to
have a scholar on the reserve. Milton was flattered at first, but after he’d had a few cookies and some time to think, he felt a little depressed.

“What’s wrong, grandson?” asked Milton’s grandfather, as the two of them walked home under a spacious, starlit sky.

“I don’t know,” said Milton. “Doing that paper on the Indian Act and discovering what happened to the Borg was fun, but what good does it do to know that Europeans were created by a freak accident in deep space?”

“Probably not much,” said his grandfather. “But look on the bright side. Now that we know the truth, having Europeans around won’t seem nearly as bad as it once was.”

“You think so?”

“Sure,” said Milton’s grandfather. “They invented television.”

“That’s true.”

“And those ice cream bars covered with dark chocolate are pretty good, too.”

“They certainly are.”

Milton’s grandfather stopped and looked into the sky just as another shooting star flashed through the night. “And don’t forget the Borg.”

“The Borg?”

“Sure,” said Milton’s grandfather. “Europeans are no great shakes, but think how bad things would have been for Native people if the Borg had gotten here in one piece.” The old man paused for a moment and a frown
began working its way across his face. “Unless, of course, we’re wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

Milton’s grandfather wrinkled his forehead. “Of course. That’s what they want you to think.”

“Who?”

“The Federation.”

“Jean-Luc?”

Milton’s grandfather sighed and sucked at his lips. “When has the Federation ever lost a fight? When have they ever lost anything?”

Milton thought about this for a moment. “Never.”

“So, what if the deep-space accident never happened. ” Milton’s grandfather was chuckling now. “What if the Federation attacked the Borg and defeated them long before the Borg got to Earth.”

“You think the Federation attacked the Borg?”

“Why not. The Federation likes to fight as much as the Klingons.”

“Yeah, but they never start the fights. The bad guys always start the fights.”

“And they like logic, same as the Vulcans,” said Milton’s grandfather, “and they acquire things at almost the same rate as the Ferengis.”

“Yeah,” said Milton. “That’s true. But what about the Prime Directive? The Klingons and the Vulcans and the Ferengis and the Romulans don’t have a Prime Directive.”

“Lot of good it does,” said Milton’s grandfather. “The Prime Directive says you’re not supposed to interfere
with another culture, but Jean-Luc Picard and Data and William Riker and Councillor Troy are always sticking their noses into other people’s business.”

“They can get a little pushy,” Milton agreed. “Especially Riker.”

“‘To boldly go where no one has gone before,’” said Milton’s grandfather. “Sounds like nosiness to me.”

“That’s just exploration talk.”

“You know,” said Milton’s grandfather, “now that I think about it, the Prime Directive sounds an awful lot like the federal government.”

“Our government?”

Milton’s grandfather slapped his hands together. “You know what I think? I think that the Federation destroyed the Borg and then, when no one was looking, they ambushed the Klingons and the Ferengis, the Vulcans and the Romulans one by one, until there was no one left in the universe to oppose them.”

“But why would they do that?”

“So they could have the universe all to themselves.”

“But, Grandpa,” said Milton, “the Federation are the good guys. Good guys wouldn’t do something like that.”

The smile on Milton’s grandfather’s face slowly faded, and the old man’s shoulders sagged a little. “Holy,” he said softly. “You’re right. Boy, what was I thinking? I guess I got a little carried away.”

“It’s okay, Grandpa,” Milton took his grandfather’s hand. “It’s an easy mistake to make if you don’t know what you’re looking for. All you have to remember is
that, in most cases, the bad guys look like lizards or devils or scary people with dark skin and snaky hair.”

“And the good guys look like Europeans?” said Milton’s grandfather.

“Sure,” said Milton. “Who else would they look like?”

The following Monday, Milton stopped by Ms. Merry’s room to give her the good news and to ask her, in light of all the extra work he had done, if she would consider changing his grade.

“Collapsing wormholes and molecular realignment?”

“My grandfather thought it might be a tear in the space–time continuum, but he doesn’t watch as much
Star Trek
as me.”

When Milton’s mother saw the new grade, she was pleased. “There’s probably no one else on the reserve who knows as much about the Indian Act as you do. I never would have realized that it was such an important document.”

Milton settled on the couch. Yes, he thought to himself as he ran through the channels until he got to Space, the Indian Act was an important document. Certainly important enough to have its own holiday. And who would have guessed, Milton mused as he watched Jean-Luc Picard save another primitive civilization from destruction, that it would turn out to be the key to understanding the universe.

Avoid Utah.

Laura and I were living in Yuba City, and I told her I was willing to stay, that Yuba City was dull but in a nice, ordinary way, and staying wouldn’t be a disaster like Vacaville or Modesto. But Laura said, “No, let’s do what you want to do. You can’t be afraid of change,” she told me. “You’ve got to follow your dream.” And, I could see her point, you know, I could see that things would be better this time.

So I said, “All right, let’s go.”

We packed our apartment, sold the stereo and the hide-a-bed, and said goodbye to our friends and the big valley oak in the backyard.

“You know what I’ll miss most?” Laura asked me.

“The tree?”

“No.”

“The apartment?”

“No.”

It was Laura’s plan to move. Well, not move out of Yuba City. That was both of us. But
how
to move to
Utah, that was Laura. She got a piece of cardboard and drew a diagram of the trip with coloured pens. I would drive the moving truck, and, since it was slower, I would have to leave earlier. Laura would follow in the car. The truck was a purple line. The car was a yellow line. The mileage from town to town was in green, and the rest stops—gas, lunch, coffee—were indicated in red. The motel where we were to stay in Elko the first night was a big blue dot.

“David and Sheila?”

“No.”

“Helen and Tom?”

“No.”

The night before we left, Helen and Tom and David and Sheila and Brad Glick, who worked with me at the office, came by to help us pack. Brad was in a jolly good mood.

“Damn, I envy you guys,” he said. “What an adventure. Just pulling up stakes and starting over again. Wish I could do that.”

Helen and Tom and David and Sheila weren’t as happy and said that they would miss us, and they hoped things would work out.

“You guys will look back on this,” Brad said, as we walked a table out to the truck, “and wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.”

The next morning, I left at six o’clock, and I have to say this for Laura’s schedule: it was accurate. I was ten minutes early getting into Auburn, twenty minutes late getting out of Reno, and only five minutes late getting into Elko.

The Desert Flamingo was not as luxurious as the advertisement in the travel guide, but it had easy access to the highway and a wonderful pool that was teal blue and shaped like a pork chop with vinyl fish—sharks, catfish, swordfish, dolphins and whales—stuck to the side. One of the sharks was beginning to peel. That first evening of our move to Utah, while I waited for Laura, I floated in the pool until the fog began to drift in off the desert.

By eight o’clock, I was hungry. The man at the desk told me about a good restaurant, and I told him about the vinyl shark. He thanked me and said he’d tell Laura where I was when she arrived.

“The stereo?”

“No.”

“The hide-a-bed?”

“No.”

I had the meatloaf. The waitress recommended it. Her name was Fay, and she was Paiute from the Reno area, and you could see she wasn’t lying. All the white guys like the meatloaf, she told me. It was the chef’s special,
made with chopped red peppers, garbanzo beans, pine nuts, and raisins, not the kind of thing you find in a cookbook.

“The raisins keep it from going dry.”

Fay had been married four times and was currently going through a divorce. She said most men were pigs, and she was always surprised to see a couple who had stayed married.

“Sometimes I think it’s unnatural for two people to live together for more than five years,” she said.

“Laura and I have been married eleven years.”

“You got kids?”

“No.”

“I got six. That’s why I work here.”

“For the kids?”

“For the money.”

Fay was an interesting person. I enjoyed talking to her, and she was right about the raisins. When I got back to the motel, Laura still hadn’t arrived.

I watched television for a while, and, at ten o’clock, I called the highway patrol. Then I called the hospitals in Reno. Then I called Brad to see if Laura had gotten off on schedule.

When Laura answered, I was greatly relieved, I can tell you that.

“Boy, am I glad to hear your voice,” I told her.

“How did you find me here?”

“I called the highway patrol and the hospitals. What happened? The Dodge break down?”

“No.”

“The battery, right? Damn I knew it wouldn’t last much longer. Was it the battery?”

“I didn’t leave.”

“Okay, just so long as you’re safe. I’m in Elko. I’ll wait until you get here. What’s wrong with the car?”

“Nothing is wrong with the car.”

My room faced the highway. I could hear the big trucks rumble by in the fog. The ones going east were headed to Utah, just like me.

“So,” I said, “when do you figure you’ll get here?”

“I’m not coming.”

I had never thought of fog in the desert. Yuba City had lots of fog, really dense stuff, but I guess I expected the desert would be clear. Just one of those little surprises in life. I could barely see across the parking lot.

“Utah isn’t that bad, honey.”

“It’s not Utah.”

“There’s good skiing in the mountains, and Salt Lake City is supposed to be very progressive.”

“It’s not Utah.”

“Hey, you’ll never guess what the weather is like here in Elko. Fog. You believe that?”

We talked for a while, and I remember her sounding tired as though she had driven for hours. But, of course, she hadn’t. Finally she sighed as if the air was slowly being pulled out of her.

“Here,” she said. “Why don’t you talk to Brad.”

I talked to Brad, who said he was glad I had made it to Elko safely, and that driving in fog was a dangerous thing at best. I told him about the meatloaf and the raisins, and
he said he’d have to try it. He told me a funny joke about truck drivers and rabbits, and said I should call back tomorrow when Laura wasn’t so exhausted.

“Okay, I give up. What are you going to miss most?”

“Think about it for a minute. Just think about it.”

When I returned to the restaurant, Fay was still behind the counter. I sat on a stool.

“Hi,” I said.

“Coffee?”

“Sure.”

“You want to see a menu?”

“I just ate. I had the meatloaf. Remember, we talked about marriage.”

Fay smiled. “I must have been drunk. Leroy’s party, right?”

“What?”

“Did Leroy put you up to this?”

“Who’s Leroy?

“Well,” she said, pulling at the pen in her apron, “I’m not going to marry you. The meatloaf is good tonight.”

“I had the meatloaf. Remember me. I’m the guy from Yuba City. My wife and I are moving to Utah.”

She said, sure, she remembered, and I ordered some coffee and a piece of pie and a large order of french fries. We talked in between customers, and, after a while, we got to be friends.

“I get off at two. Why don’t you come by my place. I got some pizza I can throw in the microwave. I want to hear more aboout this Brad guy.”

Fay lived in a single-wide trailer. I had always thought of trailers as those little silver things that looked like metal sow bugs, but Fay’s place was almost spacious. I mean, it was skinny, but it was also long. I told her I liked it, and she told me she was renting it from the guy who owned the restaurant.

“So this guy named Brad has been fooling around with your wife.”

“No, that’s not it. She’s just trying to find herself.”

“Seems to me, she has.”

“I’m going to call her tomorrow. She’s upset that we had to move. What do you think I should say?”

“Probably just as well you don’t have any kids.”

The pizza was chewy but good. Fay had some beer in the refrigerator, and it helped wash the pizza down.

“Not to be crude or anything, but he’s probably banging her right now, you know.”

“It’s not like that at all.”

“You white guys are as dumb as hell.”

I liked Fay, you know. She spoke her mind. I always had to guess what Laura was thinking, and she kept things in her. Fay just said whatever came to mind. She told me about her latest husband, and how she had caught him in bed with one of the other waitresses.

“In this trailer?”

“Where else did you think he’d go?”

“What about the kids?”

“I just say that for the tips.”

Around four in the morning, I had my heart attack. It started out as a burp, and then the pain came. Fay helped me out to her car.

“Hang on, honey,” she said, which made me feel loved in a nice way. “You want me to give your wife a call? Women are suckers for heart attacks. I flew all the way to San Diego when my second husband had his first heart attack.”

Fay drove me to the hospital, and they strapped me up to a couple of machines. Fay ran around yelling at people as though she owned the place.

“The man’s dying, for christ’s sake. How about some service?”

I would have guessed that, if you knew you were dying, you would spend your time thinking about the people you loved and how much you would miss them and how much they would miss you. But lying on that table with all those people running around me, all I could think about was the truck and whether I should go on to Utah or go back to Yuba City.

Fay was there the whole time. She got one of those large styrofoam cups of coffee, pulled up a chair near the bed, and told me about each of her four husbands. And, after a while, my chest didn’t hurt so much.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a heart attack. All the tests were normal, and the doctor said it was probably a bad case of heartburn or the symptoms of a possible hiatal hernia, and that, if it happened again, I should get it checked out.

“What did you have for dinner?”

“Meatloaf and pie.”

“Anything fatty or greasy?”

“Some french fries.”

“You drink coffee?”

“Couple of cups.”

“Anything else?”

“Pepperoni pizza.”

“You can still digest that stuff?”

“My wife just left me, too.”

“You’re kidding. Pepperoni?”

“So, it’s not a heart attack?”

The doctor gave me a short lecture on the dangers of stress and how I should try to avoid it. She also gave me a list of foods I should avoid eating, especially late at night.

By the time we got out of the emergency room and Fay dropped me off at the motel, it was after eight.

“Don’t lose sleep over what’s-her-name,” said Fay. “She’s probably still in bed with a smile on her face.”

“We’ll get things worked out,” I told her.

“You and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.”

The truck was still in the parking lot. The fog was gone, and the air was cold. I was starting to shake. “Thanks for taking me to the hospital and staying with me,” I said. “I owe you one.”

Fay smiled and blew me a kiss and shook her head. “Humpty Dumpty.” And she rolled up the window and drove away.

All things considered, I think lying is a bad idea. People will argue with you about this, but my feeling is that if you lie and you are believed, then you have to continue the lie, which is difficult, and that if you are not believed, then you feel foolish. When I told Laura about my heart attack, she sounded concerned.

“It wasn’t major,” I told her. “Just a small one.”

“My God,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?”

“I was there most of last night. They said I could go home, but that I shouldn’t drive or go anywhere for a week or so.”

“You only have the truck for six days.”

“I know.”

She was concerned. You could hear it in her voice. In my defence, I have to say that I thought it was a heart attack. Now that’s the truth.

“What are you going to do?”

I told Laura that the heart attack had given me a new view of life, that there were important things and unimportant things. The truck was unimportant. Relation-ships were important.

“What’s important is us,” I said. “I can come home or we can go to Utah. As long as we love each other.”

Laura didn’t say anything, but I could hear her breathing into the phone.

“Don’t cry,” I said.

“I’m not crying.”

“Do you think we can still get the apartment back?”

“Here,” said Laura. “Maybe you should talk to Brad.”

I slept most of the day. By the time I got up, I was hungry. The guy at the motel was cleaning the pool. He waved at me and asked if my wife had arrived yet. The restaurant was almost empty.

“You again,” said Fay. “How’s what’s-her-name?”

“She’s fine.”

“What’d you do to make her so angry?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“That will do it every time. You tell her about your heart attack?”

“It wasn’t really a heart attack.”

“Okay, so shoot me.”

Fay recommended the french dip sandwich, and she said she’d substitute cottage cheese for the fries.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I thought I’d go home.”

“That’s real smart.”

“Well, I can’t stay here.”

“That’s for sure. I’ve got enough troubles already.”

That night, I went home with Fay, and we made love. “There are four things you should avoid in life,” Fay told me afterwards.

“I’ve never done this before, but it was nice.”

“I don’t have to tell you the first one.”

“Actually, it was great.”

“And number two is pretty obvious.”

“I really mean it.”

“You can guess what three and four are.”

“It sort of reminded me of when Laura and I were first married.”

“So, don’t get any funny ideas. Think of it as therapy.”

“Thank you.”

“Not for you. Christ. For me.”

When I woke up in the morning, Fay was gone, but she left me a note that said she had the next two days off and that she was going to visit her daughter in Reno. Lock the door, the note said, and good luck.

I went back to the motel and phoned Laura, but there was no answer.

“So what are you going to miss most?”

“If you knew, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

The vinyl shark had come loose and was floating in the pool. The guy at the desk said he’d tell the maintenance people. “Your wife ever show up?”