courtesy Lakehead Region Conservation Authority
Cyril Dabydeen
L
arry champions his own name being an Ojibwa—now like my real introduction to Northern Ontario. Tall, rough-hewn in his style and manner, he is. Yes, Canada–a special place with Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, I know… and EXPO-67 in Montreal. On campus I watched Jane Fonda lambaste the US of A over the B-52 bombers raging over Vietnam. The Berrigan brothers, and Noam Chomsky, you see. Everything counterpointed. The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” also with me. And my being here: in a wilderness of sorts among long-haired students strumming guitars, each a Neil Young, or mimicking Joni Mitchell. But Larry insists that I contemplate the Great Spirit only.
Nanabijou, the Sleeping Giant, at the Lakehead. “Ahh,” he calls out, “you think you’re the only real Indian?”
We will plant more trees, work I seem fated to do. Yeah, back-breaking work. Now I will be a true Canadian. How…true? Echoes: a grandmother in the tropics, and my mother also. Spruce, pine and other seedlings in the bag on my shoulder–indeed here in Northern Ontario.
The trees must be put into the ground; as Larry glances over to me.
I scuff the topsoil hard once more. Larry keeps watching me. Mother-Earth, he calls it. Moss, grass, logs with charcoal before us after the forest fire. He shows me how to really plant the trees, see. Mother-fucker! he cries. We move uphill, then downhill, over more burnt-out areas.
He smirks that the crew bosses, the Lakehead University forestry farts, are lording it over us. A woodpecker rat-tats away. Three other Cree planters join us; and sweaty and tired I am. Blackflies and mosquitoes take off chunks of soggy sandwich from my hand.
“This forest’s ours,” Larry rasps. “We can do with it as we please.”
“Really?”
“We work when we want to. Christ, yes.” A grin spreads across his broad, tanned face. The other planters grunt to themselves. Larry leans against his shovel looking up at the woodpecker and talks in a long drawn-out way about the reservations at Longlac and Sioux Lookout; and about fights they’ve had with the RCMP.
Hate passes around from generation to generation, I must know. Do the Native officers among the police mean well? “Nothing ever really changes,” Larry grates. But now the crew-bosses are on our backs–they want us to plant trees with no roots sticking out. The woodpecker’s rat-tat-tat again. Vietnam, ah. My own play-acting with the shovel in my hand, a rifle—my being a vicarious soldier; I fire!
Larry grins.
The draft-dodgers, Americans–now tree-planters—throw hand-grenades in the air, a whole bundle of trees at a time. One guffaws. Freedom in the Northern Ontario air! Some are, well, religious…seeking nirvana in their communal living-style in an ashram not far away. A Mother-Goddess figure with long black hair is their guru, a Kali figure-cum-Durga. My own mother and grandmother back there in the tropics I think about. Nirvana…somewhere.
Larry watches me scuff the topsoil next to him. Real Mother-Earth, he calls it. Uphill, then downhill over more burnt-out areas. He smirks. Another woodpecker rat-tats away. “We work when we want to, Christ, yes.” He sniffs the air bracing against a tall birch, and pees. Leaves glisten. The draft-dodgers whoop it up once more, calling out that they would rather be in Southeast Asia. Really?
“They can be cannon fodder all they want,” Larry snorts. “Now it’s time to plant the goddam trees!” He points at a bear in the sky. Does he? The Crees move in single file. “Shit, do we have to plant these trees?” someone yells.
“The trees must be in the ground,” Larry rails. “Yeah, let’s get on with it. If we don’t plant the trees, who will?”
Maybe he thinks I am different from everyone else as he again glances at me. “Those bastards,” he points to the Americans again, “they’re hiding the trees.” A planter will dig a hole in the ground and bury an entire bundle, then plant a single seedling on top of it, I know.
“What d’you think, eh?” Larry snaps.
“Think?” I shrug.
He tears into the ground, scuffing the earth with large boots. “Come on, keep planting, it’s no time to waste,” he yells.
Grenades going off; the Americans, see. Smoke spirals in air, in all of ‘Nam. Whose turn is it now to start another forest-fire? Christ, no!
That evening back at camp Larry looks warily at me from across his bunk; he will once more talk about the reservations. “See, the Third World’s here with us,” he claims. Third World? I tell him of the back-breaking work people do back there–cutting sugar-cane–a far cry from fishing in pristine-pure Canadian rivers as I’d looked at in glossy tourist magazines. And skiers going down BC mountains at breakneck speed—like in my wish-fulfilling moment. British Columbia…New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Quebec—here I come!
Larry goes on about the reservations in Longlac and Sioux Lookout—like the only real places. The Great Spirit hums in my sleep that night. The bear in the sky. Believe me.
“Believe you?” Larry snaps, awake.
In the off-season he won’t plant trees, but drift off to Toronto, panhandling in the hottest part of summer while living on Yonge Street. And one time when a Swedish chick (he calls her), a blonde—came and wanted to find out everything there’s to know about Native people; she wasn’t a tourist. Oh, Larry keeps making up stories. She listened to everything he said, like gospel truth.
“Sure, I told her all she wanted to know about natives, dammit. We became a twosome.” In…love! Larry, you macho-Native shithead!
“I told her I wanted to live in Scandinavia. But she said there’s no such place.” Then, “What about the Vikings I asked her? Heck, she figured I didn’t need to know that history.”
Larry makes up stuff as he goes along. I will too now. Yeah, being Canadian. But my mind flits back to the tropics. Sugar-planation time in the background…then, the foreground. The Hare Krishna types now in Northern Ontario—in more time to come. Real or unreal?
***
At the makeshift pool-table at camp once more, being who we are—like making up for lost time. That evening Larry snores again, maybe because of all the lies he told me. But he’s the fastest tree-planter around when he gets to it. Heavy boots tramping on the ground, in darkness. But the next morning’s wake-up call from the bull cook it is—yes, Jimmie. Again we will trudge along in the forest layered with muskeg on swampy ground. I sink knee-deep in muck and grime.
Larry yanks me out. “Come on, there’s trees to plant,” he yells.
I yell back at him. He leans against his shovel, the bag slung across his shoulder primed with spruce and pine seedlings. I know he’s planning to leave us; and the crew-bosses are anxious about him. He openly mocks their “scientific knowledge” of how long it will take for the trees to grow. “That’s bullshit!” Larry cries.
“What is?” He doesn’t say.
Guffaws, as the draft-dodgers laugh. Shangrila…where?
Larry plants by taking longer steps; and it’s no time to take a break, not even to light a cigarette–no-one’s allowed to smoke in the forest anyway. He growls. I try to keep up with him, planting faster.
The others do too, Ojibwas…Crees. Sweat pours down Larry’s grizzled face; he wipes it away with his frayed cotton sleeves. No sooner the trees in his bag will be gone.
The ground throbs as he pounds at it with his hard-boots. Clods of dirt fly in the air; it will take a veritable storm to blow away the trees he’s planted–a real northern tornado.
I feel dizzy, yet try to keep up. Blackflies by the thousands swirl; the heat becomes intense. “You okay?” he asks me. Then he drifts off to plant by himself. Odd, I think I’m at the mercy of bears, moose. Wild horses, also…there are tracks of them.
Where’s Larry now…maybe hiding among thorns, rhododendron…on this bloodstained ground. A moose’s antlers nailed to a great hall, somewhere. The hunters from Duluth, Minnesota who’d been here, don’t I know?
Drew, a crew-boss, sniffs around near me, looking for buried trees. He has threatened Larry before, see. He pulls up roots, then a tufted bundle from the ground. He spreads the roots out like a victory trophy and gloats. Ah, Larry had buried an entire bundle. Is it why he keeps finishing planting his trees so quickly! I saw Larry plant each tree, I swear. He’s our best planter. Tell the crew-boss this.
“The Native bastard, they’re all like that. They’re the ones setting the fires in the first place so they can get work here each spring and fall,” said Drew.
“Not true!”
“I’ve been looking at him with binoculars.”
“No!”
Rat-tat-tat—gunfire–and grenades thrown high in the rancorous air against a russet-hued sky. I’m also taking part in a bear-walk in the clouds. Larry, you bastard! “He might be gone now,” I say.
“Gone?”
“You were going to fire him anyway.”
“No, I was only kidding. The trees have to be planted; we have a quota to fill.”
Larry’s already in a faraway reservation, like LongLac. The forest’s silence becomes heavy. Leaves of individual trees rustle; it’s another vertiginous moment. Larry, are you gone?
***
Back at camp close to Lake Mackenzie, I wonder what’s in store for me. “See,” Larry said, “you’ve got to take your chances.” Lake water lapping, and bass or pike mirrored, almost like fish spirited out of the sky. My own shaman’s sense now.
Larry adds, “The trees, they will rise up from the ground before long, so keep planting. Soon too you will be living in a highrise place, don’t forget.” Forget?
“Plant the trees well, mark my words.” The Swedish woman’s voice… somewhere. Now who’s racing through the forest, hard-booted and all? I see trees miraculously coming after me; and the other planters are gone. In silence a bear literally walks across the sky. Before me I only see Larry’s footprints.
I will meet him again, in another town or city, if only to see him panhandling Yonge Street—as time expands before us. Not in Saskatoon or Winnipeg…or Ottawa. Not in Scandinavia! Sure, I will meet him somewhere in a commonly-named Bay Street, in a new town or city. You?
But he doesn’t recognize me.
The trees keep growing taller. Somewhere a Swedish woman’s voice…one who’s really writing a book, insisting on all there’s to know about Canada’s native peoples. She flicks blonde hair from her eyes.
Yeah, Larry waves to me because of the Great Spirit; as I keep looking back, and it’s for me to tell everyone who he really is. Rat-tatting…gunfire; woodpeckers close-up. The Great Spirit, see.
How much farther north do I go, with voices calling out to me?
Larry waves to me because of the Great Spirit. I keep looking back, as he wants me to do. What I will tell everyone now–who he really is. Gunfire, woodpeckers close-up. How much farther north do I go, with true voices calling out to me?
Larry’s voice alone I hear. Cane-fires also burning, because of where I’ve come from. Tourist magazine images still in my mind’s eye, appearing and disappearing. And, I will look back at my mother and grandmother—thinking hard. Shangrila…home!
*******
Note Cover image from: https://lakeheadca.com/about/news?ccm_paging_p_b815=18&ccm_order_by_b815=cv.cvDatePublic&ccm_order_by_direction_b815=desc
Cyril Dabydeen is a Canadian is a poet ficton writer ,novelist and anthologist with 20 published works. Cyril Dabydeen in The Beacon
Leave a Reply