Medicine Walk. Richard Wagamese
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let the horse pick her pace. He’d ridden her there a dozen times and she knew the smell of cougar and bear so he was content to let her walk while he sat and smoked and watched the land.
When she’d taken her fill he backed her out of the creek and turned her north to the trailhead. She followed the trail easily, the memory of warm livery, oats and fresh straw, and the sour apples the kid brought her before bedding down beside her for the night urging her forward, and the kid sat in the pitch and sway and roll of her, smoking and singing in a rough, low voice, wondering about his father and the reason he’d been called.
THE TOWN SAT IN THE VEE OF A RIVER VALLEY. There was a steep flank of mountain on either side where the water rushed through and the mill sat a mile or so beyond, gathering the force of the flume. He could see the grey-white spume from the stacks before he crested the final ridge and when he topped it the town lay spread out along the edges of the river like a bruise. The horse snorted and shook her head at the sulphur smell. The kid blinked his eyes at it and kneed the horse forward to the downward trail. The trees were stunted and there were no varmints or scavengers except for crows and ravens that squawked at them as they passed. It was sad country and the kid had never liked coming here. The mill town kids were crude and laughed at him on the old horse and called him names when he passed. Sometimes they pitched stones at him. But he would just pull his hat brim down low over his eyes and hunch his shoulders against the plink of stones and the guttural scrabble of their voices. The last half-mile he had to follow the highway and the horse grew agitated at the rush of vehicles with drivers who hadn’t the sense to slow or give a wider space when they passed. Some even honked. Horses on the road were seldom seen here and they were a curiosity. People stood on the steps of their houses and stared and he was aware of how he looked: the worn dungarees and boots, the faded mackinaw, the wide-brimmed hat and the old saddle, weather-beaten, the flank skirt cracked and scraped and scarred a hard brown like the body of an insect. He kept his face neutral. He rocked with the rhythm of the horse and let his shoulders roll some, both hands resting on the horn, the press of his knees calming the horse when she skittered at the cars or the screeching metallic sounds of town life.
The highway bellied out into a wide avenue that was the main street, and the kid turned down a side street a few blocks before he reached it. The houses were small, tar-papered or sided with crumbling wood, and most times there was sheeted plastic in the windows and dead automobiles in the twitch grass of the yards. There was woodsmoke and the greasy smell of cooking. Large dogs on chains raced out to bark and growl, and he had to ease the horse forward up the street. At the far end was the farm where he liveried the horse. It wasn’t much. Five acres tucked against the sprawl of the town on one side and the jutted wall of mountain on the other. They had a pair of ponies, a jackass, a goat, and a few chickens that all bedded down in the same slumped, dilapidated barn. But the oats were good and they kept the straw fresh and they were half-breeds who’d known the old man for decades and they fed him and seemed to understand his quiet ways and let the kid be whenever he arrived. There was no one around so he unsaddled the horse and brushed her out and left her with oats and hay and made his way back down the street toward the heart of the town.
It was evening. Purple. The autumn chill was in the air and he could smell the frost coming and the rain that would follow sometime the next day. He could hear the clink and rattle of families settling in to their evening meals and there were kid sounds at the back of most of the houses and the dogs hunkered down near the front doors and raised their hackles and growled at him as he passed. His boots scrunched on the loose gravel of the asphalt. He rolled a smoke while he walked and traded solemn nods with men standing in their yards, smoking and drinking beer out of bottles. They were hard-looking men, grease-stained, callused with the lean, prowling hungry look of feral dogs, but his size and his tattered look let them take him for one of them and they let him pass without speaking. He smoked and squinted at the jutted angles of the town. When he got to the highway again he picked up his pace and strode purposefully to the main street, where the lights glimmered in the evening haze. He made his way lower, past the shops and mercantiles into the greyer, seedier area near the river where the grim bars and honkytonks were alive with the clatter of glasses, shouts, curses, laughter, and the smoke and sawdust smell that hovered just above the blood and piss and semen of the alleys and muddied parking lots. He wrinkled his nose at it and walked on harder, looking at no one and giving no sign of indecisiveness. There was a row of rooming houses farther down that backed onto the riverbank where mill workers and itinerant drunks and fugitives stayed and it was where he knew he’d find his father. The houses sat in the gathering dark, dim and unwelcoming, and when he came to a slatternly woman weaving drunkenly along the sidewalk he stepped to one side to let her by.
“Eldon Starlight? You know him?” he asked her.
“Got a smoke?” she said in return.
“Only rollies.”
“Smoke’s a smoke.”
He took his makings from his pocket and twisted a smoke while she watched and licked at the corners of her lips. When he handed it to her she reached out a hand and leaned on his shoulder and the fumes off her were sharp and acidic. She motioned for a light and he sparked a match and held it up for her and she put a hand demurely on his and winked at him while she took the first draw. She kept her hand on his until he had to pull it away. She eyed him lazily while she smoked and he felt awkward.
“You’re a big one, aren’t you?” she said.
“Eldon Starlight?” he said again.
She laughed. “Twinkles? What do you want with that old lech?”
“I need to find him.”
“Finding him ain’t never hard, darlin’. Standing him more’n an hour’s the trick.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“If he ain’t passed out drunk out back of Charlie’s, he’s second room on the right, third floor, third house down. But I’m way better company than old Twinkles and I like ’em young and big like you. Come on. Let old Shirl show you a good time.”
“Thank you,” he said and stepped back onto the sidewalk and turned to walk away.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Indian.”
THE HOUSE LEANED BACK TOWARD THE SHORE so that in the encroaching dark it seemed to hover there as though deciding whether to continue hugging land or to simply shrug and surrender itself to the steel-grey muscle of the river. It was a three-storey clapboard and there were pieces of shingle strewn about the yard amid shattered windowpanes and boots and odd bits of clothing and yellowed newspapers that the wind pressed to the chicken-wire fence at its perimeter. There were men on the front verandah and as the kid climbed the steps that led to it they stopped their chatter and watched him. He tried the door but it was locked and when he turned, three of them stood up and faced him.
“Eldon Starlight,” he said evenly.
“Who the hell are you?” the tallest one asked and spit tobacco juice at the kid’s feet.
“Franklin,” he said. “Starlight.”
“You his kid?” the one beside the tall one asked. He had a lazy eye and it made the kid check over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” the kid said.
“Never knew Twinkles had a kid,” the tall one said.
“Neither’d Twinkles,” a fat one said from behind them and they all laughed.
“Hell, kid, have a drink,” the tall one said and motioned for him to lean against the verandah rail.
“No,” the kid said. “Thanks, but no.”
“Damn. Polite and he don’t drink. Can’t be Twinkles’ kid,” the fat one said, and they laughed again.
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