Sorceress (5 page)

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7

The road (2)

They were coming up to a point where decisions had to be made about the best route to take. Scenic would take them up through the Adirondacks. The faster option took the interstate.

They stopped again to eat and look at the map.

‘This route from Albany to Buffalo takes the old Mohawk trail.’ Agnes traced it with her finger. ‘Did you know that?’

Alison shook her head.

‘It’s kind of a weird thing to think about. Like you were saying about the trail the Rivers family took.’ Agnes went on as she studied the map. ‘These highways follow routes already worn deep into the land before Europeans even got here.’

‘I was thinking of taking that road anyway.’ Alison smiled. ‘That’s decided me. Come on. There’s still a long way to go.’

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‘Have you always lived on the reservation?’ Alison asked.

‘No,’ Agnes answered, and then, thinking that was maybe too abrupt, added, ‘I used to just vacation there, but one year, around about when I was eight or nine, the vacation became permanent.’

‘What happened?’

Agnes was silent for a while, as if deciding whether to speak or not. The highway still stretched on for mile after mile.

‘You don’t have to say ... ’ Alison did not want to crowd the girl.

‘It’s OK. Mom and Dad split up. He was in the army and we moved around a lot. When he left, he couldn’t get a job. He and my mom used to fight about it all the time. One day he went out saying he was going to look for work and didn’t come back. My mom sent me to stay with Gram and Aunt M while she figured out what to do and –’ Agnes shrugged – ‘I didn’t go back. Seemed I didn’t fit in with the plans Mom had. She took off for Vegas, got a job in a casino, and I stayed on the reservation with Gram, Aunt M and Sim.’

‘Do you see her? Your mom, I mean?’

‘Oh, sure,’ Agnes lied. ‘My dad, too.’

‘But you don’t live with either of them?’

‘I prefer not to. Dad’s got a new wife. She’s OK, but ... ’ Agnes shrugged again. ‘My mom? Well, I’m too old for her, I guess.’

‘How’s that? Too old for what?’

‘I make
her
look old, to be more accurate. She had me when she was very young but an eighteen-year-old daughter gives you away some when you’re trying to pass for thirty.’

Agnes scrunched down in her seat, folding her arms around herself, conversation over. There were no more files to read so she stared out of the passenger window at the passing scene. Alison probably thought she was asleep. Agnes let her think it. She did not intend to sleep if she could possibly help it, but she was done talking for the moment.

All those files. All those people. What if she herself was reduced to a file, what would it consist of? What did she have to show for a life so far lived? A birth certificate, school reports, a high-school diploma, a bunch of grades and SAT scores, that would be about it.

What of the stuff that couldn’t be measured like that? Her mother’s scent when she went out: perfume mixed with cigarettes. Her father’s morning smell of aftershave and fresh-laundered poplin. Her happiness when they were together. Her misery when he left. The way she’d waited and waited, all the while knowing he wasn’t coming back. He’d smiled that day and called her ‘Short Stuff’, just like always, but she’d seen the tears in his eyes and he couldn’t look at her as she waved goodbye.

What about the places they’d lived? Her file would contain quite a bunch of addresses. Army bases where the houses were all set out as neatly as in a parade ground. Row houses that smelt of damp. Ratty apartments with narrow halls and thin walls and steps out front to go sit when the quarrelling got too much to bear.

All the schools she’d attended had merged in her mind into one long corridor. She’d rarely stayed long enough to make a friend. Now all the faces jostled together, as anonymous as the rush hour. The mean kids and the nice ones. The ones who thought she was Hispanic; the ones who knew she wasn’t; the ones who didn’t care either way. The kids who treated her like a breathing museum exhibit, expecting her to do dances and bring war bonnets to Show and Tell, when all she wanted to be was a regular kid, just like everybody else. In one place even the teachers were racist. Her mother had taken her out straight away. Agnes had been proud of her that day.

After Dad had left, Agnes thought they’d be OK together, her and Mom. That was why it had hurt so bad to be left on the reservation. She’d taken it real hard. She remembered the exact time she found out that Mom was not coming back for her. It was on the day appointed and she was out on the porch, listening for the car. It was late, almost night. She’d been watching all day. The cars went up and past and none slowed down to turn into the yard. All the stars were out by the time Aunt M called her into the house. She could still taste the anger, bitter on her tongue like a mouthful of copper. She’d known before Aunt M spoke. Maybe she did have power after all.

Her anger grew, making her blind to everything. She hated the reservation. She wouldn’t speak to Aunt M and Gram, but they were both women of wisdom and patience, they knew she’d come around, so they set to wait her out. Meanwhile Agnes fought every kid in her class who even looked at her funny. Sim made her stop that. She’d got herself surrounded by big kids: the brothers and sisters of her classmates had finally caught up with her. Sim had come up behind her and she thought he’d fight beside her. Instead he wrapped his arms around her, binding her fists with his.

‘You can’t beat the whole world, Agnes,’ he’d said to her. ‘You got to know when to fight and when not to, and this time I advise you to quit. Any of these kids done stuff to you?’

Agnes shook her head.

‘You do stuff to them?’

Agnes shook her head more vehemently.

‘To their brothers and sisters?’

It took a while, but Agnes nodded.

‘That case, I’ll talk to them. You go on home now.’

Sim had saved her that time, and plenty of times after. He’d even squired her to the prom when her date failed to show up.

That was a life, not dates and records, certificates and papers. In Agnes’s mind, the reasons for taking the trip had begun to change. The objects that Alison wanted so badly were ceasing to be the major concern. In Agnes’s mind they had become just that: trinkets, inanimate bric-à-brac. Even if they had belonged to Mary, so what? She had to know more than they would be able to tell. What mattered, really mattered, was the story, and how was she going to access that? There was only one way she knew and for that she had to prepare herself mentally, conserve her energy.

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8

The reservation

Alison drove on past the sign that said they were on reservation land. They were in a separate nation now and this took them outside certain state law and tax systems; sales tax, for example. Alison took advantage of that by filling up at the first in a line of gas stations which lay along the road. She dropped Agnes here and turned the car around. She still had a long drive to Montreal and was anxious to press on, but she’d scribbled down a list of contact numbers for Agnes to call after she’d talked to her aunt.

Agnes took the paper and stuffed it in her pocket as she watched the red tail lights fade away. It was kind of strange to be on her own again, and it was cold outside the warmth of the car. She began to walk towards a group of buildings centred round a truck stop: a smoke shop selling discount cigarettes and a couple of small gift shops stocked with Native American souvenirs. Tax-free goods were a big draw. Folks who stopped by for those could be tempted to buy gift items also. One of these other stores belonged to Aunt M:
Nature’s Way: Natural Medicine and Herbal Healing – Miriam Lazare
, but it was in darkness.

Agnes turned away from Aunt M’s store and thought to go into one of the tourist places, she knew people there, but at the door she turned aside. Her aunt’s house was not far, and she didn’t feel like talking to anyone else right now. There was a distance between her and everything around her. Her head was filled with a low-grade background buzz that would not go away. Even her vision seemed distorted, as if she was looking through Vaseline-smeared lenses.

When Agnes got to her aunt’s place, the lights were out. Sighing, she leaned her head against the side of the porch. She had not been expecting that. She let herself in with her key and looked around. There was no one home, but a note taped to the refrigerator told her to go to the casino.

What was her aunt doing there? Agnes had long given up trying to figure Aunt M out, best not even to speculate. She just shouldered her pack and headed off down the road to where the casino sign spilled candy-pink light into the darkness.

Nation status put the reservation outside of state gambling laws and the casino did big business now. Agnes walked past the vehicles lining up for valet parking and on to the doors.

She recognised the guy on the door as Rickey. She’d dated him briefly in her last year in high school. Enquiries about her aunt got a puzzled expression, but he told her Sim was in. He’d know where Aunt M was.

Ricky held the heavy glass doors for Agnes and she went in. Rows of slot machines stretched in front of her, each bank topped with dollar signs: American one side, Canadian the other. No one took the slightest notice as she passed. Eyes stared straight at the lit-up, flashing squares, checked the spinning reels. Fingers worked on buttons, hands moved from cups of coins to slots and back again. It was a quiet night, so far anyway, and the atmosphere was as subdued as the lighting. The only sound was from the machines bleeping and the occasional chunk, chunk, chunk of a payout. The blackjack stations were even quieter, each in its own pool of light, some empty, some occupied.

No one turned to look at her; the gamblers did not even speak to each other. The task in hand took up all their interest and concentration. There was a tension in the air, she could feel it. Making and losing money was a serious business.

Agnes trod the pistachio-green carpet, following the lighted pathways past the crap tables and the roulette wheels, making for the area at the back where the poker was played.

Sim would be here. Poker was his game. He was much admired. People would stop by just to see him deal, see him handle the cards in his easy left-handed style. Agnes remembered the tricks he used to show her out on the porch when they were kids. The way he could make the cards ripple and flow like one continuous unit. ‘Watch real careful,’ he’d say, but she could never watch closely enough to see how he did it, how he could make a card appear inside your pocket, how he could pluck it from behind your ear.

Now he made a living from it. Poker was a game that required skill; it was not like playing slots. No tricks were allowed, no cheating either, but he’d kept his conjuror’s sleight of hand and ability to distract. He could always read the other guy, anticipate his thinking.

He won, too. Not here, that would be against the rules, but when he went visiting other places – Vegas, Jersey City, or other nations with gambling operations, Foxwoods or Turning Stone. Sim went with his uncle Jeb, who ran the casino here, and he generally sat in on a game or two. He knew how to balance gain against loss. ‘You gotta quit while you’re ahead and that can be hard, but that’s what you have to do.’ He generally got up from the table with more than he took to it, and he was generous with the money he gained in this way. He’d given some to Agnes for her college fund.

Agnes could see him from across the room. He was wearing the uniform of green tux jacket, grey dress shirt, white frill front bordered with black, western-style bootlace tie. His long black hair was tied back in a ponytail, accentuating his knife-blade cheekbones and thin-faced handsomeness. He’d grown a moustache since Agnes saw him last, a line on his upper lip not much wider than his bootlace tie. It looked as if it had been drawn on with eyebrow pencil. It made him look older, she guessed that was why he’d done it, but was wrong for his face. His tilted black eyes did not as much as flicker in her direction as she approached the table. The copper skin of his brow creased in deeper concentration. The cards took all his attention.

In fact Sim saw her as soon as she came in, although he made no sign of it. He dealt. He checked the bids, no bids, he checked the cards being picked up and put down, and he checked her out. She was thin. Too thin, tired and troubled-looking. Kind of jittery, like she was on something, but he knew that would not be the case, not with Agnes.

She knew better than to interrupt when he was working. He was due off in fifteen minutes. He would be free to speak with her then. Her business was not with him but with his mother. He could sense her agitation from clear across the room.

‘Your cousin’s here,’ the waitress whispered in his ear as she passed drinks to the customers.

‘I know it. Tell her I’ll be over when I finish up here.’

When Brad took over as dealer, Sim eased himself up from his place at the table and headed over in Agnes’s direction.

‘You’re too young to be back here. Over twenty-one only. How did you get in?’

‘Used to date one of the doormen.’ Agnes drew on the condensation beading the sides of her glass.

‘Which one?’

‘Rickey.’

‘Lacrosse Rickey?’

‘That’s him.’

Sim nodded, as if taking in this information. Agnes scowled. He was nearly eight years older and protective of her, as if he was her brother. Sometimes she liked it, but it didn’t give him the right to give ratings to the guys she dated.

‘I’m looking for Aunt M.’ She turned her glass round and round on its coaster, setting the ice clinking like little silver bells.

‘Well, she ain’t here. You know what she thinks about the casino.’

‘I thought she was all for it.’

‘Says she prefers the old bingo days; that they were more fun.’

‘What about the money it generates? Gambling is helping to pay me through college.’

‘Yeah, I know, I know, and for medicine and housing, a place for the old folks to go. But there’s plans for more expansion and she worries where that will take us. She wants to know how long before we all fall to squabbling and fighting like a pack of dogs over a pile of meat, or before some real big hound comes along and drives us all off.’

‘Do you think that’ll happen?’

‘You can’t stay still.’ Sim shrugged. ‘If we don’t do it, somebody else will.’

‘She been active about it?’

‘Let’s say her views are known.’

‘That where she is? At a meeting or something?’

Sim shook his head. ‘She’s up at the lake.’

‘Looking Glass? What’s she doing there?’

‘Waiting for you. I gotta take you. You set? Finish your drink. We need to go. Gotta get something first, though.’

He stood up and led her past the gaming tables, down through an avenue of slots to the smoke shop.

‘Carton of Marlboros, please, Denise.’

The woman behind the counter reached one down for him. He passed it to Agnes.

‘I don’t smoke.’ Agnes gave him a puzzled look.

Sim laughed. ‘They ain’t for you. It’s for her. You gotta give tobacco, remember? When you go see the medicine woman, tobacco is the traditional gift. I take it you’re not just here on a family visit?’

Agnes shook her head.

‘So put them in your pack and let’s go.’

She shrugged and followed him to the parking lot.

‘How’d you get here, anyway?’ Sim asked as he unlocked the doors to his battered, mud-spattered pickup.

‘Woman called Alison Ellman gave me a ride.’

‘All the way from Boston? Some ride.’

‘She said she didn’t mind.’

‘Where’s she now?’

‘She went on to Montreal.’

‘This time? She must like to drive. What she do?’

‘She works in a museum.’ Agnes grinned at Sim’s expression. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at her. She’s different from the average.’

‘She cool?’

‘Yes. I guess she is.’

Sim nodded, taking that in. ‘Excuse the mess,’ he added as Agnes levered herself into the passenger seat. ‘Me and some of the boys took a trip up to Kahnawake.’

Agnes cleared the empty candy wrappers and chip bags and found a place for her feet among the crushed and crumpled drink cans which littered the floor. Sim took off at speed from the casino parking lot and it wasn’t long before the reservation sign loomed up and passed. The scattered houses were thinning, the pools of porch light placed more sparsely. Once or twice a dog barked at their passing, but they were heading into darkness, the only ones on the road. The night was cold and Sim had turned up the heating. Agnes struggled out of her jacket. He’d also turned up the music. Some local band, Native hip-hop; a voice soft, insistent, merging and emerging, backed by what could be a water drum. The effect was kind of hypnotic. Agnes made her jacket into a pillow and stared out of her window. The moon was rising. A sliver of moon, white as bone, shone through the bare-leafed birches. It flashed in and out of view, in and out, in out, now you see it, now you ...

‘Hey, Agnes, you like this? Agnes?’

When Sim got no reply the second time, he looked over to see how she was doing. She seemed to be sleeping. So he turned the volume down, his quick fingers fluttering to the rhythm of the background beats as he spoke softly along with the track.