by Julia Gibson
FOR THE WATERS: BLOOD OF THE EARTH
I, raised by atheists, have invited myself on a pilgrimage.
I’m sitting in a rental car at dawn waiting for people I’ve never met who might not want me with them. They are Anishinaabe grandmothers who are walking around the Great Lakes to help to heal the tainted waters of the world. I was told I would be welcome, but I may be more white than they expect. My duffel bag in the trunk is swollen with sleeping bag and pad, two-person tent, clothes for warm days, clothes for cold, bandages for blisters, extra walking shoes, bags of tobacco. I didn’t know what kind of tobacco would be right. I got American Spirit because it has no additives and there’s a picture of a man with a feathered headdress on the package. Maybe it’s an offensive image, like Aunt Jemima, but I don’t know any native people to ask. How will I know what to do and not do, what to say and not say?
The night before I left, I spent hours wrestling with the tent, trying to get it set up in my living room. The Anishinaabe grandmothers will no doubt be adept at tents, and will certainly know just from looking at my barely-used one that I’m utterly unprepared not just for camping, but for a spiritual devotional requiring fifteen hours of walking a day.
I can do it, I tell myself. It’s just walking.
I recall when I crewed for one of the AIDS rides, a 500-mile bikeriding charity event. I had signed up to load the gear trucks, because I figured it was a good excuse to work on upper body strength. For weeks beforehand, I lifted weights, did pushups, went to boot camp classes at the Y. And I was a disaster. I couldn’t lift 50-pound suitcases over my head and hurl them onto a 10-foot-high pile, like all the buff men and the one Nordic Amazon woman on the crew. People were nice about it, but they no doubt felt sorry for me. I don’t need the grandmas feeling sorry for me.
But I’m here. The night before last I slept three hours, got on an early morning plane in Los Angeles, arrived in Toronto in the late afternoon, got lost, drove 200 miles, mostly in the dark, found the grandmothers’ hotel, got a room there, slept a wink or two, pried myself out of bed so I would find them before they started walking. I know this is their van I’m parked next to, because it says “Water Walk” on the back window in letters made of duct tape. The license plate’s from Ontario, Canada, where Josephine lives. Josephine’s the one who said I could be here. She’s the one in charge. So where is she?
And do I call her just Josephine? She’s Midewiwin, an Anishinaabe wisdom-keeper. Is there a proper term of respect that a stranger is expected to know? In Hawaii, female elders are called Auntie. When I called Josephine’s cell to get directions, she put a nice young man on the phone who called her Auntie Jo. Maybe she’s actually his aunt, though. There’s too much I don’t know.
I’ve been sitting in the rental car, staring at this van, since before 4 AM. That’s when they usually start, the website says. Unless this is a support vehicle and the walkers are elsewhere. Aren’t they supposed to be camping? Isn’t that why I brought a tent?
I’m jonesing for an espresso. I’ve had almost no sleep for two nights running, I haven’t walked more than a block in six months, I’m probably going to be the only white person on this Water Walk, and everyone will think I’m a wannabe Indian and a new ager, and they’ll hate me. If I ever find them.
Three women in ankle-length skirts come out of the motel and cluster around the van, thrusting duffel bags and plastic storage boxes into it. I get out of the car and go up to them. None of them look like grandmothers, but I don’t either, and I am. They look me over. None of them smile. “You’re the writer?” one says.
Already I’m stumped. “I’m not really here as a writer,” I say. “I’m just here because I care about the water.”
It’s more or less true. I’ve spent almost every summer of my life in a cabin on the shores of Lake Michigan. I dream of the lake all year round, can smell it, feel its stones under my feet, the sting of sand in a big wind. Though I live in the desert now, my heart’s home is forest and lakeshore dune. Some years you couldn’t swim in the lake for the dead rotting fish plastering the beach, the whole massive body of water sour and poisoned. So when I found out about the Water Walk from a website I ran across while researching a novel that takes place in that part of the world, I wanted to be part of it, both because of my love for the lake country and because the experience might inform what I’ve been writing about. But this I can’t talk about easily, even to friends, so I don’t try to explain to these three women in their long skirts. I’m wearing a long skirt, too, a black one, French.
The Water Walk was conceived by Josephine in response to a prophecy. There will come a time, the prophecy foretells, when water will cost its weight in gold. In the tradition of the Anishinaabe, women are the keepers and protectors of water. Josephine decided that she would walk around each of the Great Lakes, one a year, to heal the water and raise awareness of pollution and overfishing. In the spring of 2003, she and a few others walked around Lake Superior; the next spring, Lake Michigan; then Lake Huron. In 2006, Josephine set out to walk around the perimeter of Lake Ontario.
When I emailed Josephine to ask if it would be possible for me to participate in the Lake Ontario Water Walk, I made sure to let her know that I’m non-native. She replied that she didn’t care what I was. But maybe the three women looking me over aren’t as open to white folks as Josephine might be. And Josephine doesn’t seem to be among them, though nobody’s introduced herself.
I think of a journal entry from a previous year’s Walk, posted on the website: “Somehow a white woman is travelling with them and they are using her as a gofer. Pretty sad when we as Midewiwin have to resort to this type of support.” I don’t mind. I’m a professional outsider. If I’m to be a gofer, fine with me. I’m here as a pair of feet, a pair of hands.
I say none of this. I don’t know what to say. The women continue to load the van. One is short and has short hair, one is taller and has long bangs she tosses out of her face. The other has a ponytail and dark glasses. “You want to see Josephine?” the woman with short hair asks me. I nod.
“I guess she can follow us,” the tall one with the bangs says.
“Great!” I say with too much enthusiasm. The ponytail woman hasn’t given me a glance. Hates white people, I say to myself. I can’t blame her. I offer to carry some luggage in my car, as they seem to be having trouble stuffing it all in the van. Nobody replies. The women look at one another. Then I’m given two small duffel bags. Eager to exhibit my willingness to be a gofer if that’s what I am to be, I scurry to load the bags in the back seat of the rental and strap myself in. I don’t want them to have to wait for me.
I’m surprised at how insecure and eager for acceptance I feel. Shy six-year-old white girl sent outside to play, new to the neighborhood of black auto workers’ kids, a curiosity, the girls wanting to braid her long straight hair. At ten, the skinny new girl at school, wearing ugly glasses and the wrong clothes. Thirteen: the only white kid at Freedom School, befriended by a boy, shunned by the girls.
The three women are in the van. It starts up, but doesn’t move. Are they laughing at my sleek black skirt, planning to ditch me?
The woman with the long bangs gets out, bearing an abalone shell filled with smoking sage. “You want to smudge?” she says.
“Sure!” I say, too loud. This must mean I’m being welcomed. She waves smoke over my face and hands. I thank her when she’s done. She says nothing.
The van speeds off into the grey early day. I follow it for miles, anxious not to lose sight of it. We stop on a country road, opposite another van. Josephine sits in the driver’s seat, engine idling. I recognize her wide, friendly face from pictures on the website. The short-haired woman wordlessly escorts me across the road. “You found us,” Josephine says. Her narrow eyes are kind.
I’m close to tonguetied. “How are your feet?” is all I can think of to say.
“My feet.” She smiles, but she’s puzzled.
There’s no way to untangle myself. “From walking. Are they – holding up?”
“Oh, my feet! Just a few blisters, not too bad. I can’t talk long. I have to walk in a minute. Are you walking, Lucy?”
“I can walk,” the short-haired woman says.
“Will you be walking, Julie?” Josephine says to me.
“I’d love to,” I say. “But I’ve got this rental car. I guess that’s a problem.”
“No,” Josephine says. “It’s good, actually. You can be a support vehicle. Lucy, you’re walking? Go with Julie.” A round grey-haired woman is walking toward us, bent under the weight of the copper bucket and eagle staff. Josephine takes these from her and sets out at a brisk clip.
I’m going to be a gofer then. Fine. Lucy gets into my car. I ask where we’re going. She points down the road. I drive. Lucy rolls down the window and waves at a long-skirted woman leaning against a car pulled over on the shoulder. The woman has dark thick hair with a bold white streak. She waves back exuberantly, grinning widely.
“They’re doing five telephone poles,” Lucy tells me. I don’t know what that means. I just drive. We pass another car. An arm reaches out of its window to wave.
“Now we can count,” Lucy says. She counts telephone poles as we pass them. At the fifth, she tells me to pull over.
Lucy’s here with her two sisters, Hilda and Barb. The glaring one with the ponytail is Barb, and Hilda’s the one with the bangs who smudged me. She has her ten-year-old son with her, Kane. Kane is back at the motel, asleep, along with Lucy’s son Alex and Josephine’s nephew BJ, who blistered his feet by wearing boots that didn’t fit right. Lucy answers my questions succinctly, doesn’t elaborate. I think I remember reading somewhere that native people consider questions rude. Already I’m being culturally insensitive.
Not wanting to seem dense, I don’t ask details about the Walk. I’m not clear on who’s walking and for how far, and what the cars are up to. A woman with a scarf over her hair is walking toward us. She hands the copper bucket and eagle staff to Lucy. Where’s Josephine?
“I’m Debbie,” says the woman in the scarf. She looks to be in her mid-thirties and speaks as if she might be from Minnesota. She tells me to drive past the Water Walk van and the other vehicles that are pulled over five telephone poles apart. The walk is a relay, she explains. Lucy will walk to the next vehicle in line, then will drive it to the front, just as we’re now doing. It’s good to keep track of how many vehicles are with us at any given time, so you can know how many to pass before pulling over. I get over on the shoulder, where we’ll wait for the walker in the van behind us to make the handoff.
Debbie has her window open. I lay off the questions and let there be silence. We’re in the country. The sun’s not up yet. Birds are singing mightily.
“When I’m walking,” Debbie says, “I get to think about how the water’s in all of us, how we’re all made of it. And it makes me more compassionate. Even talking bad about people or disrespecting them – it denies that we’re all the same. We’re all water. The water connects us.” She keeps talking, answering all the questions I want to ask. She’s working on a master’s in Native Studies, writing her dissertation on suicide among native youth. The suicide rate is three times higher for aboriginal teenagers than for the rest of the population. Academia is a frustrating environment. Even Native Studies programs are steeped in nonaboriginal ways of thinking.
Here comes the next walker, the woman with the white streak in her hair and the broad grin. She gives Debbie the eagle staff and bucket. Debbie’s gone. Violet is energetic, outgoing, and funny. She’s been on all the Water Walks: Superior in 2003, then Michigan and Huron. Like Debbie, she’s an academic. She’s a young grandmother, like me.
There’s not much time between shifts, as the walkers call a stint between vehicles, and you have to pay attention. Violet keeps an eye on the rear-view mirror. When the van behind us pulls off the shoulder, Violet gets out of the car to wait for the walker who’s coming from five telephone poles away.
It’s Josephine. We talk about Lake Michigan. I remember how polluted it was when I was a child. It seems better now, at least on the beaches I know. She too remembers the algae blooms and beaches strewn with dead alewives. Now the pollutants are invisible, PCBs and mercury. For a hundred and fifty years the Great Lakes have been flooded with waste from mills, factories, sewage systems, farms. The fish shouldn’t be eaten by pregnant women. The toxins in the water decrease intelligence. “Terrible,” Josephine says. But she has hope. That’s why she walks, to raise awareness. People need to be reminded how bad things are. People forget.
The morning takes on a wavelike rhythm. A walker leaves, a walker gets in, groans, exclaims. We drive, park, talk or don’t, wait. Melvina, Josephine’s sister and major domo, has the face of an apple doll and north country inflections. Grey hair hangs past her shoulders. She seems weary. I don’t burden her with talk. Lucy warms up a little, tells me how she and her sisters make fun of everyone, especially each other. Debbie’s worried about her teenage children, left alone at home. Violet tells a story about Nanabozho, the Anishinabe trickster god.
The day brightens, clear and windy. Some walkers perk up, others tire. My shyness and insecurity recede. I feel easy enough with Josephine to offer her the money I’ve put aside as a contribution to the Water Walk. I’ve agonized over this. Should I write a check or give cash? Canadian or U.S. dollars? How much? I don’t want to be a Lady Bountiful, but I don’t want to be mingy either. Before leaving home, I took money out of the envelope, put some back, took out more, finally decided.
But I can’t find the envelope. It’s not where I left it. I search the car, search my bag, search my purse, search everything again. Nowhere. Gone. I realize what must have happened. The wind’s taken it. It’s a windy day. If anybody had seen the envelope in the car, they wouldn’t have known there was cash inside, and even if they did, it isn’t possible that anyone on the Water Walk would steal. I hope the wind takes it where someone who needs it will find it.
I haven’t told Josephine what I’ve been rummaging to find. I tell her what I’ve lost isn’t important. “Are you ready to walk for a while?” she says.
“I’d love to,” I say.
She says I can be partners with Debbie. Debbie is approaching. Josephine goes to meet her. I don’t hear their conversation, but Debbie doesn’t seem to have a problem with the plan.
“You’re not going to see your car for like an hour,” she tells me, and when we park at the head of the line I load myself up with wallet, camera, notebook, jacket. I slather sunscreen and remember to pocket tobacco for blessing the streams and rivers as we pass them. “Try not to spill any water,” Debbie says. “Not even a drop.”
I’m walking with the aboriginal grandmothers! I’m not just a gofer! The wind twists the long black skirt around my legs. The copper bucket is heavy. I hold my arm away from myself so the bucket won’t be jostled by my body. In a few steps, my shoulder and neck stiffen. I change hands.
Should I be trying to pray, I wonder. Raised by atheists, I don’t know anything about praying. I read somewhere that praying is talking to God, Creator, Spirit. Would water be considered our creator, since we came from it? Water I can talk to. It has visibility, a palpable presence. I’m with you, water, I tell it.
A stream passes beneath the road. Debbie stops to put tobacco on its banks. I go over to where she is, thinking I’ll do the same. “No, no. The water can’t stop,” she tells me. “Keep going.” She waves me away.
I slow down so she can catch up. “I guess you didn’t know,” she says. “The water can’t stop. It’s not supposed to double back, either. And you can’t spill any. Not even a drop.”
I’ve spilled. Drops splash out sometimes, jolted by a careless step or sloshed by shifting the bucket from one hand to the other. How many other rules have I broken already? I’ve walked only five minutes or so, but my heart’s going. The wire handle has creased both palms. My fingers are stiff. Josephine, I know, walks alone, sometimes for hours, carrying the bucket and the staff by herself. She prefers this, she told me. She likes to be alone with the water, to sing to it.
The day goes from chilly to mild to warm to hot. I peel off layers. The walking is wonderful, stretching my legs, my senses, my soul. I’m suffused with love for everyone on the Walk, everyone in the world. We are all water in our cells and veins. We germinate in womb water. I don’t feel so terribly white. The walking alters me. I’m noticing the water more, smelling it sometimes before I get to where it is. There’s lots of it here in upstate New York: sludging in drainage ditches, trickling in rivulets, rushing over stone and sand, spreading out from swamps, making green leaves and moss. When I’ve got the bucket, I can’t stop to listen and watch, but I can see that this stream is dammed with beer cans and plastic bags, this pond is home to frogs, this bend in the river is slick with oil. May you be healed. Run clear. May the poisons in you diminish and be gone. Nourish us all again. Hear our gratefulness.
Debbie and I don’t do much talking. She carries the eagle staff. I carry the water. We walk, drive, wait, walk. Suddenly there’s a white man walking with us, long-haired and barefoot, telling us who he’s done sweats with, what ceremonies he’s been to, his red cred. Surely Josephine will blow him off, I think – he seems to epitomize wannabe-Indian new-agerism. But we get word that we’re all going to visit his llama and herb farm down the road. We are ushered into a spacious, airy building by the man’s partner, a serene woman in a Guatemalan huipil. Here they make and sell weavings from their own llama yarn and herbal remedies, in partnership with indigenous rainforest people. The woman says she’s part Cherokee. She and the hippie man work with various nations in North and South America. She knows of Josephine and the Water Walk and welcomes us graciously, passing around cold water and showing us the canvas Iroquois-style longhouse that’s being constructed for an upcoming ceremony.
I say hello to Lucy’s sisters, Hilda and Barb. I haven’t seen them since we met at dawn. Hilda smiles, but Barb, dour in dark shades, turns away. I sort out who the boys are. Little Kane sits in a patch of sun playing GameBoy. Alex, Lucy’s son, is a husky solemn teenager. The young limping man smoking a cigarette outside must be Josephine’s nephew BJ of the bad boot blisters. I count us. The three sisters of the dawn and their two sons make five. Josephine and her sister Melvina and BJ. Violet, Debbie, me. I’m surprised we’re so few, just eleven. I’d imagined there would be clusters of schoolchildren, emissaries from native communities, packs of feisty young grandmothers like Violet and me. I like it better this way, a small band I can keep some kind of track of. The day is clear and mild. My feet feel good. No blisters so far, no sunburn. Josephine’s letting me walk. I’m not just running errands. I’m on a pilgrimage, a prayer walk, a devotional. Barb’s snub doesn’t bother me.
Everyone’s about to tour the garden and llama pasture when I’m dispatched to take Violet to the bus station to pick up her son, who’s just arrived from Toronto. Why aren’t Hilda and Barb walking, I ask her.
“Hilda’s on her moon time,” Violet says. Women on their moon are concentrated with sacred energy, so they don’t touch holy objects or participate in ceremony. It’s not to exclude, but to honor. “I don’t know why Barb’s not walking,” Violet says. “Yesterday she did. Maybe today her feet hurt.”
Maybe Barb’s not holding any kind of grudge. Maybe she’s just in pain. Maybe I should tap into some sacred energy myself, and quit worrying about getting everyone to like me. We drive to the town, past the old mill and through the town square with its clock tower. Adam is a lanky cheerful lad the age of my own son. He and his mother are affectionate and compatible and have the same warm humor. By the time we rejoin the others, I’m sent off again, with Adam this time, to look for a place to stop for lunch.
“It should be an extra nice place,” he says, “because of the pipe ceremony.” I’m not sure what a pipe ceremony is, but according to the website, there will be one every fourth day of the Walk. I’ve planned my itinerary accordingly.
A good place, Adam tells me, should be somewhat secluded, on public land so that no conflicts arise with property owners, and on some water – clean water, preferably. He has a knack, he says, for finding such places, and is often asked to be the one to scout them out. He directs me up this country lane, down this dirt road. As if by nose, he finds a shady creekbank a short walk from the road. “I don’t see any No Trespassing signs,” he says. “Must be public.” Adam tells BJ the location over the walkie-talkie. Somehow he’s remembered every turn we made, the name or number of every road.
The vehicles arrive. Plastic crates and coolers are unloaded. Blankets are spread on the ground. Josephine carries a drum. Someone helps her set it down. They arrange things around it. Everyone seems to know what their tasks are, as if they’ve all done this together many times. I don’t know what to do to help. Enough people are emptying grocery bags, tossing paper plates on a blanket, putting out bread.
Uncertainty overtakes me. Should I eat their food? I’ve given nothing. My money was taken by the wind. And this pipe ceremony – maybe it’s something white people aren’t welcome to witness. I take myself for a walk. Little Kane, pants legs rolled up, is in the creek looking for frogs. Debbie comes out from behind a tree. “Watch for poison ivy,” she warns. I crouch on a rock slab by the edge of the water, close my eyes, listen to current moving swiftly over stone. The water in me wells up. Why am I sad? Is sad what I am? Why am I not glad and grateful to be here? But I am, I tell the water. Thank you, water, for bringing me to this place. My eyes stop stinging. The squeeze in my throat lets go its hold.
When I return, people are eating, talking and laughing together. Adam hands me a paper plate. On it are a white-bread bologna sandwich, a pile of Chex snack mix, three strawberries, and an apple. I’m stunned with gratitude. Yet the sandwich frightens me. I have a confounding but intense phobia – mustard. I could gag with the smell of it as Kane squirts the lurid yellow on a piece of bread. I can’t take the chance that there’s any on the sandwich someone so nicely made for me. Ashamed of my weakness, I wrap it in a napkin, pretending to save it for later.
Josephine seems to be setting up for the pipe ceremony, removing the cloth that covers the drum, taking a pipe stem and bowl from a beaded bag. “Adam went and got the water,” she announces. “A man got the water for this ceremony today. Getting water is the responsibility of women. But a man had to, because there were no women to do it. Everybody was off doing something else.”
It’s a reproach, but her tone is neutral, no raised voice or snideness. She’s just saying what happened, stating the facts. Nobody replies.
Someone starts the sage burning. Josephine motions for me to join the circle. We smudge ourselves, waving smoke onto faces and arms. Josephine fastens pipe bowl to stem, fills the bowl with tobacco. The pipe is passed around. I draw smoke into my mouth and let it out. It lets me see the shape of the wind as it’s carried away. One by one, we all drink water from a copper cup. Josephine’s sister Melvina drums. Violet shakes gourd rattles. The songs are maybe prayers. I’d pray if I could. No teachings have been passed on to me, not the Protestant ones of my forebears or the Buddhist ones my father studied in his midlife or the Anishinaabe ones of the people in this circle. Most likely I wouldn’t understand the meaning of the songs even if I knew the words. I feel ignorant and clueless. I’d like to know what’s being said and the significance of the direction the pipe is being passed and the intention of the prayer that’s being offered. I’d like to know what a prayer is, and how and where to address one.
And maybe I do know. Does it have to be a big old mystery? Here we all are – the humans with their blistered feet sitting on damp earth, the drum uniting our pulses, the scent of smoke in our hair and on our hands and inside our mouths, the river’s declarations, the smoke becoming wind. All this together makes a capacity, a potential, a hope we all have, we two-legged embodiments of creation’s creativity, and the water in us and beneath us and surrounding.
The song ends. The drum goes silent. People twist-tie bread into plastic bags, fold blankets, haul everything back to the vehicles lined up on the road. I’m partnered up with Adam. He’s good company, smart, forthcoming, and witty. He’s planning to go to culinary school instead of becoming an engineer like his dad. He’d be a good at it, he says, but he doesn’t think he’d enjoy it as a career. I think he’s probably good at most things he tries. When one of the vans breaks down, he’s summoned to take a look at it. I’m assigned to a new walking partner, Adam’s mother Violet.
We gab the afternoon away. She talks about a trip to Finland and meeting some of the indigenous Sami people there. I tell her how my daughter fell in love with a methamphetamine junkie; she tells about raising her partying sister’s child. She speaks about substance abuse and suicide, legacies of the government residential schools that many native children endured, including some who grew up to be on this very Water Walk. I’m shocked at my ignorance. I hadn’t realized that these infamous institutions of cultural extirpation and child abuse were fully operational well into the 1990s.
The day begins to fade. I’m hungry and thirsty and sticky with humidity and sweat. The seared soles of my feet could use a balm of cool grass. My shoulders and neck cramp with the weight of the bucket. Lack of sleep is hitting me hard. But walking only stops when Josephine says it’s time. It’s coming on dusk when she designates an end point. We all gather there. She touches the eagle staff to the ground by the roots of a tree, spills a thin stream from the copper bucket on the place, sprinkles tobacco. The Walk will begin at this spot the next day.
People get in the vehicles. Violet rides with someone else. I drive alone, fighting sleep, almost losing sight of the van in front of me on the curving country road. We caravan to a trailer park miles from the nearest town. Cabins surround a murky pond. People haul their luggage inside. Adam methodically constructs a fire in the barbeque. Josephine sits on a picnic bench with her shoes off, drinking a soda. Lucy and Hilda share a cigarette. One laughs, then the other, then both of them.
I feel invisible. It occurs to me that I might not be welcome. Maybe I should sleep in my car. But the evening already has a bite to it. My feet hurt. I’m sunburned and blurred with exhaustion. Any drop of comfort that’s available, I could sure use.
Maybe I should make it clear that I’m no sponger. When Melvina goes to the van to fetch something, I waylay her. “I haven’t given anything to the Walk so far,” I say. “Maybe I could pay for this place for tonight.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she says.
“I’d like to contribute. I don’t expect anybody to pay my way.”
She doesn’t look at me. “I’ll have to talk to my sister.”
“Okay,” I say. “Will you let me know?” She wrestles a cooler from the van. “I can take that,” I offer.
“I got it,” she says. Melting ice rattles as she carries the cooler away.
I go to visit the stagnant green pond and call home on my cell phone. The voice of my loved one makes the loneliness gape. “You sound so sad,” he says. “Are they being nice to you?”
“Pretty much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. It’s wonderful. I’m just tired.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.” I wonder what’ll be cooked on that barbeque. Maybe some chicken’s been marinating in the cooler I let Melvina carry all alone.
No chicken. People who want hot dogs are roasting them. The food on the picnic table is much the same as lunch – packages of presliced American cheese and processed meats, iceberg lettuce, spongy white bread. I hate myself for the sinking of my heart as I survey what’s being offered. I get why it’s what it is – cheap, no prep, keepable in an ice chest. What do I expect, a whole-grain artisan loaf, cheese from across the ocean?
The hefty teenager Alex, Lucy’s son, is grilling a kielbasa as big as a dachsund. “Are you planning to eat that whole thing?” Adam says.
“Anybody can have some,” Alex shrugs.
It smells pretty good. But I’m starting to get shaky and can’t wait, and anyway, I’m not going to take a growing boy’s dinner. I try to melt cheese on a hot dog bun, but the bottom burns and the cheese stays the consistency of the plastic it was wrapped in. By the time I finish it, almost everyone has gone into one or another of the cabins. Debbie leans against a table, munching chips.
“Where do you think I should sleep?” I venture.
“Well,” she says. “There’s three cabins. This one’s the smokers, this one’s the non-smokers, and that one’s for the boys. You don’t want to sleep in their room, because they stink.”
I’m too worn out to care if I’m being pushy. I take my sleeping bag into the non-smoking cabin. Josephine’s on one of the beds, relating to her Blackberry. Violet and Debbie have the other bed. I drop my sleeping bag in a corner, then go back out to root around in my duffel bag for toothbrush, towel, clothes for the next day.
When I return, Josephine has her shoes off and is rubbing ointment on her calves. Her calves are wiry. “Did you find somewhere to sleep, Julie?” she says.
Does she mean I should find a hotel? Is she trying to get me to leave? I point to my corner. “Is this all right?” I say.
“Are you sure you’ll be comfortable?” she says. “That’s kind of a small space.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed. “What do you have to sleep on?”
I show her my sleeping bag and pad. She kneels on the floor, pokes at the pad with a finger. “I’ve got something better than that. I’ll go get it.” She rises stiffly.
“That’s okay. This is fine. It’s great. I’ve slept on it lots of times. It’s absolutely comfortable. Should I go with you?” She’s at the door.
“No, no, no. You stay here.” She’s out in the dark. I don’t like her fetching me anything. Shut up, I tell myself. You were feeling like an outcast. She’s helping you. Stop resisting.
Josephine returns with a thick king-sized blanket. “I always sleep on this when I go camping,” she says. “It’s really soft. And see – it’s got bears, because I’m Bear Clan.” She unfolds it for me. I barely manage not to choke up, thanking her. She goes back to her bed. Melvina sighs loudly, getting into it too. Violet imitates her sigh, then Debbie does. They laugh.
I put my sleeping bag on top of the folded blanket and zip myself in. The blanket’s a cloud. I’m out.
It’s dark when the women start getting up. I wait to use the bathroom last. On emerging, I find everybody gone but Melvina. I ask if I can make a contribution toward the room. “It’s already paid for,” she says. I follow her outside. She gets into her van and starts it up. I realize I won’t be able to find the end point of the night before, today’s starting place. My navigational skills are terrible, even in daytime. I tap the window of Melvina’s van, ask if I can follow.
We find the walkers. Melvina drives away. There are only two other vehicles, Debbie’s car and Josephine’s van. I think I should check in with Josephine before putting myself in line. I find her sitting in Debbie’s car. “Oh,” she says. “You’re up early.”
Did she think I’d sleep the day away? “Isn’t it time to start walking?” I say.
“Not everybody likes to get up when it’s still dark. It’s my favorite time to walk, though. I love it. I love how quiet it is. Let’s see. Who’s here?” She counts vehicles, counts bodies. “I don’t think there’s anyone for you to walk with right now,” she says. “Melvina’s going into town, so it’s just Debbie and Violet and me. Everybody likes to solo in the morning.”
“I could solo, if you want.” Could I really? My shoulders are still sore from carrying just the water. The bucket and the eagle staff together might be more than I can handle. To fail would be the ultimate humiliation.
“I can’t have you walk by yourself,” Josephine says. “Someone has to carry the eagle staff. It’s only supposed to be touched by aboriginal people. Those are the instructions we were given. I’m sorry. I hope you understand.”
“Absolutely,” I say, but that demon insecurity’s got his barbwire fingers around my throat again. I’m being dismissed. Whatever tests I’ve been given, I’ve failed them. She knew last night she’d be asking me to leave, and lent me her blanket as a goodbye.
“What would be useful, though,” she’s saying, “you could drive behind the walkers and light their way with your headlights. Sometimes there are holes in the road, or stones. I’ve tripped a few times in the dark, myself.”
The demon retreats. “Thank you so much for that blanket, by the way,” I tell her. She smiles. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she says.
“The best! I’ve got it right here in the back seat. Where would you like me to put it for you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Keep it for now.”