Scattered Bones (13 page)

At first he was assigned to Frere Town, Zanzibar to establish a mission for the children and grandchildren of liberated slaves. Lucretia hadn’t liked the idea of travelling so far. “All those black savages. I can’t sleep at night thinking about their naked bodies.” So Ernst was relieved when, after negotiations between the Sultan and the British government broke down, he was told he was being sent to northern Saskatchewan to convert infidels “in our own domain.”

~•~

“I have something I must tell you.”
Ernst says to his daughter. He then relates what had occurred in Arthur Jan’s storehouse. Izzy is troubled by what she hears. “You know, Pop, I’ve had this sense that something weird is going on around here.” At that moment Bibiane Ratt himself comes striding towards them. He smiles his snarly, cynical smile, “Afternoon, Reverend, afternoon, Miss. Any word about Rose Nateweyes? If they decide to take her to the hospital, we’d be glad to transport her there.”

“For a large fee, I would presume,” says Ernst. If there is one man in Pelican Narrows whom the clergyman cannot abide, it’s Ratt.
Myotis lucifugus
. Bibiane has the same tiny eyes, pushed up faced and sharp little teeth as Little Brown Bat.

“I’m shocked that you would think such bad things of me. We half-breeds, baptised in the Christian faith, have been taught to live by the Golden Rule. Still, I admit that for those who are not kind toward us, maybe we would return the favour.”

From his belt Bibiane pulls an evil-looking object shaped like a tomahawk. “Reverend, I’m sure, as an educated man, you’ll be interested in this. You see, the handle is made from the rib of a moose. A slot has been carved out and the copper blade lodged just so. It might be very old but it’s still sharp as any knife of today. Let me show you.”

Bibiane grabs Ernst’s wrist, twisting his arm upwards, then grazes the blade along the clergyman’s skin. Next he makes a sweeping motion from Ernst’s forehead to the back of his neck, the knife only inches away from his skull. “It was the custom of our ancestors to scalp their enemies. Once they cut the flesh away, they scraped and scraped until it was clean as a whistle.” Bibiane begins to wring the imaginary scalp in his large hands. “They’d work at it until it was soft – a napkin to wipe their mouths.” With that the half-breed laughs loudly and walks off into the bush.

There have only been a few occasions that Ernst has been truly frightened, and each time he had been ashamed at how cowardly he acted. Now, once again he stands frozen, petrified, unable to utter a word.

“Are you alright, Pop?” Izzy asks.

He doesn’t tell her what an utter fool he feels. When he finally finds his voice, he merely says, “Things have gotten out of hand around here.”

Izzy sensibly suggests that they report the incident to the authorities which in this case would be the Indian agent. Ernst knows what an almighty fuss Bob Taylor will make. If he is to keep his parishioners’ trust, he must not enlist the help of a man whom everyone despises. There’s only one person in all of Pelican Narrows, he can confide in. He says goodbye to his daughter and heads towards the cabin of Chief Cornelius Whitebear.

Chapter Seventeen

When Ernst first arrived
in Pelican Narrows
in the spring of 1912, the Grand Old Man of the Canadian Anglican Church, Canon James Mackay, was on hand to greet him. He was a living legend, for fifty-five years suffering every hardship imaginable “to bring light to the dark hearts of Canada’s savages.” At age 82 he was grey and stooped, but judging from his handshake, he was stronger than most men two-thirds his age, including, of course, Ernst Wentworth.

“I was expecting a wife and child. Where are they?” the old cleric had demanded.

“We thought it best that they remain in Toronto until I could be sure that the living conditions were adequate,” said Ernst, bowing meekly before this luminary.

“What a lot of bother,” Canon Mackay snorted. “Why, a rajah would feel right at home here.”

Ernst wouldn’t have called the rectory luxurious but certainly it was comfortable. A solidly-built wooden structure, it was surprisingly large, with a dining room, parlour, two bedrooms, and a kitchen in a lean-to at the back. Ernst complimented Canon Mackay on both the rectory and the church, which was equally as grand. The old man replied, “I built both these places myself. With very little help from my parishioners, I must say. I wanted Our Lord to be well represented here. You can see the result.”

The rectory
was
nicely appointed, much of the furniture having been crafted by Canon Mackay himself. There was a wood-burning stove in the parlour and even though the weather was mild, a fire had been lit. The elderly clergyman settled himself beside it in an overstuffed easy chair, put his moccasined feet up on an ottoman, and motioned for Ernst to park himself beside him. Then he began to talk, and talk, and talk. For three straight days Canon Mackay wound fantastic tales of heroic exploits, all involving himself, until Ernst felt benumbed, bewildered and totally inadequate.

The clergyman did not see his job as merely “preparing souls for admission to the Lord’s Table.” Indeed, that was the easy part. His mission had thrived because of his expertise – as farmer, carpenter, painter, printer, book binder, wheelwright, wood chopper, fisherman, and hunter par excellence. “We would have been short of food but providentially I went out and shot three deer in one hour.”

Over the years he had built up a farm at Sandy Narrows, a three-hour canoe ride from Pelican Narrows, where the only fertile soil for
hundreds of miles around was found. His advanced years had not clouded
his brain: he could remember the exact harvest yields – on average 200 bushels of potatoes, 60 of turnips, 50 of cabbages, 30 of carrots, 15 of onions. But the main crop was wheat. “And, boy, do we get plenty of that.” Not only did he plough the fields himself, but he harrowed and sowed, carted the manure (from the cattle and horses he kept), and
harvested the crop. He constructed a grist mill, and, when horse power proved unsatisfactory, he manufactured a huge water wheel, installing it in a nearby stream. He made the stove pipes to heat his house, fashioned harnesses and collars for horses from left-over materials, single-handedly built additions to the barn as his livestock “multiplied mightily.” He thought nothing of walking twenty-four hours on snow shoes, “stopping only now and then for a few refreshments.”

“I made a push to reach the fishing nets at Lake Athapapuskow that fall but it began to snow heavily, and grew as cold as a devil’s tit. So I had to carry the canoe and, boy, was it a walk through hell. Over rough, jagged ice that had been broken up and frozen again – it cut through your moccasins like a hatchet through bear fat. Trudged for miles through fallen timber, the trees and branches creating a thicket right out of Hansel and Gretel. Once, the ice gave way, the canoe tipped over, almost all the supplies landed in the water. I made sure I fetched them, even though I got soaked. Thank the Lord, I found a trapper’s cabin, and there built a fire. It was comfortable enough, except my left foot was frozen. Never mind. Carried on the next day, another thirty miles.” He talked on and on and on.

At first Ernst listened eagerly, desperate for advice on the most effective means of bringing the Indian soul to Christ. But although Reverend Mackay was fluent in Cree and had translated a Book of Family Prayer into that language, the only thing he talked about was the machine he had devised to print the little almanacs. He revealed how parishioners, even if they were far away in their winter camp, liked to bring the bodies of their dead in for funeral services at St. Bartholomew’s, but instead of some guidance on how to deal with the grieving customs of the Woodland Cree, he described in excruciating detail how he had constructed the coffins. About the only time religion did come up was when he bragged about how he had outfoxed the various “Romanish” he encountered, by which he meant Catholic priests. “I knew the Romanish was at Deschambault, so I went to John Bird’s place, with a few beads for his wife, some flour for the family,
and helped him build a storage hut. In gratitude he promised to show up at St. Bartholomew’s next Sunday. And you know what? He never had anything to do with the devil priest again.” At that the old clergyman threw his head back and let loose with a raucous laugh.

Ernst began to feel that he was being smothered with words, that a huge balloon had somehow gotten into the rectory and was slowly suffocating him to death. When he had finally found the nerve to butt into one of the heroic episodes and ask how many Indians had attended the Eucharist service the previous Sunday, the old clergyman jumped up, grabbed his knapsack, clambered into his canoe and paddled away – to where, nobody knew. He did not wish Ernst well in his future pursuits.

It was Cornelius Whitebear who opened Ernst’s eyes to the truth. He had been a church warden for years and knew everything about the workings of St. Bartholomew’s. Attendance at church service had
reached rock bottom because the Reverend Mackay had taken to tongue-lashing his congregation. Cornelius described how, as the old man raged from the pulpit, you could see his spittle spraying the air –“like steam from Nistowiak Falls, and just as loud, too.” Jabbing his bony finger at the few parishioners who had shown up, he would
storm, “Civilization has brought nothing to you but temptation. You have succumbed to every soul-destroying vice loathed by God – booze, fornication, games of chance. If you do not mend your ways, each and every one of you will suffer eternal flames of hell.” For a full hour each and every Sunday.

Ernst also discovered that none of the usual infrastructure had been put in place – no women’s auxiliary, no choir, no greeters, no chalice bearers, no altar guild, no Good Food Box program. The Reverend had declared that Sunday school for Indians was a foolish waste of time. And it soon became apparent that Mackay’s parishioners loathed his much-admired farm. Ernst was surprised at this because he had read a half dozen stories in
The Living Message
promoting the enterprise as a model for civilizing Canada’s Natives. But it turned out that the Reverend dragooned his parishioners into working for him, and the crop was often so poor – almost every September frost pounced leaving the potatoes black and mushy, the wheat wasted – that they received little of the bounty they had been promised for their labours. Yet it wasn’t the old clergyman’s dereliction of his duties that upset Ernst. It was something else that Cornelius Whitebear made very clear. Sowing the seeds of Divine Truth in the Indian heart had begun years before when the missionaries had arrived in the footsteps of the fur traders, and now, except for a few ancients who remained died-in-
the-wool pagans, every resident of Pelican Narrows, and in the country beyond, were Christian, either Anglican or Roman Catholic. Why on earth would a missionary be sent here?

~•~

Until this moment Ernst hasn’t noticed
the black clouds scurrying across the lake. There’s another thing about this place that frays his nerves. With hardly a warning, violent storms lash up full of crashing thunder and savage lightening. God booming out his message of wrath, he supposes. He reaches Cornelius’ cabin just as the downpour begins.

Ever since he became ill, the old chief has taken to sitting for hours in a wicker chair perched on a rocky ledge overlooking Pelican Lake, protected from insects and weather by a canvas tent raised for him by his sons. So, despite the downpour, Ernst finds him there. A broad-chested man with a head of bristly white hair – he’s affectionately called
kakwa
, porcupine, by his grandchildren – and a face that seemed to be made out of putty, every emotion expressed in his enormous liquid black eyes and extravagant mouth. Lately he has lost so much
weight that his flesh hangs off of him, especially around the thick bull neck. Although he smiles, his usual joyful face is pale and sad.

“How are you feeling, my friend?” the clergyman asks.

“My time has come – I feel it in my bones. Soon, I’ll pass to the other side. Probably by the time the snow falls.”

Ernst is genuinely panicked. “Don’t even think that! What on earth would I do without you?”

“You’ll get by.”

His usual straight-talking self, thinks Ernst. His honesty is the main reason that time and again he’s been elected chief of the Ballendine Band, despite being an Anglican in a Catholic stronghold. But recently he had to hand the reigns over to Councillor Custer.

Two years ago, out on his spring trap line, he was chopping wood for the evening’s fire when he glanced up at a gaggle of swans
kloo, klooing
overhead. In that instant his axe hacked into
his leg. He was dying from loss of blood when his two brothers found him an hour later. After staunching the wound, they transported him as fast they could by motor canoe to medical help in The Pas. His life was saved, but his limb had to be amputated just above the knee.

The hospital furnished him with a peg leg, but the device doesn’t fit properly, and all he can do is hobble about. A petition was got up, signed by every Pelican Narrow resident, whites and Cree alike, requesting that he be equipped with an artificial limb. The government responded in its usual fashion – too expensive; a precedent would be
set. After that Cornelius faded. His wife claims that the thought of never being able to go out on his trap line again broke his heart.

Ernst is eager to tell Cornelius about his run-in with Arthur Jan and Bibiane Ratt, but just as he begins Mrs. Whitebear sticks her head into the tent and tells her husband he must come to the cabin for his dinner. “Nothing like my moose stew to get his strength back.” she says. “Come, Reverend, have some tea.”