Way, and a breeze blew in off the lake. Waves slapped quietly on the shore; from further down the beach came the noises of a party in progress, but the mood among the four young men had been contemplative, even solemn.
They had traded life stories. Leon poked thoughtfully at the treads of his hiking boots with a stick, cleaning the mud off them, while he told them about his past. He was the only child of two drunkards, one of whom had killed the other when Leon was sixteen and would probably never get out of prison. He got the scar on his forehead when his mother had thrown a toaster at him. Toof stared into the flames, firelight flickering in his eyes, as he told them he was the youngest of seven, raised by a widowed mom who worked three jobs and never knew which of her sons would end up in the nick next. Kevin didn’t tell them too much. Parents died when he was ten years old. Fell in love with poetry. Dropped out of college after second year. Got wired to smack. Kicked it. He didn’t mention that he was skin-popping again; no need to burden the others with too much information.
The three of them looked at Red Bear. So far, they knew nothing about him, other than that he came from a reserve somewhere up north.
He smiled, those perfect teeth gleaming in the firelight. ‘You want to know about me? I will tell you. This, of course, is the first thing you have to know.’ He pulled out his wallet and snapped a card on the table.
Kevin picked it up. It was a status card issued by the Department of Indian Affairs, confirming that Raymond Red Bear was a member of the Chippewa First Nation at Red Lake, which was located beyond the northern shores of Lake Superior and boasted a climate that made Algonquin Bay look like Florida.
Firelight flickered on Red Bear’s face like a stage effect. His voice was soft, all but inaudible above the lapping waves.
‘Life on the reserve,’ he told them, ‘was cold. Hard. Our house never had enough heat. There was never enough food in the refrigerator. Every morning the frost formed patterns on the bedroom window.’
Red Bear fell silent, staring into the fire. No one said anything for a while.
Finally, Leon said. ‘Are you going to tell us more?’
Red Bear shook his head. ‘I would like to. I trust you. I trust all of you.’ He looked at them: Leon, Kevin, and Toof, one after another. ‘But there are things of which I cannot speak. And other things which you are just not ready to know. There is certain knowledge only a few must have.’
Kevin wanted to get out of there and get to bed and just sleep. The mood was getting too weird.
Red Bear smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘In a week or two, I will make a sacrifice and then we will know exactly how to turn our fortunes around.’
‘Sacrifice?’ Kevin said.
‘Don’t say anything more just now, Kevin. You will see soon enough what I mean.’
Leon flicked his cigarette butt into the fire. ‘Does this sacrifice mean I get to walk down Main Street again without worrying I’m going to get seriously fucked up by bikers?’
‘Oh, yes. I guarantee it. If things go the way I expect them to, six months from now the Viking Riders will tremble when you approach.’
‘Righteous, man,’ Leon said. ‘Way it should be.’
A week after that solemn night on the beach, the four of them meet up at the Rosebud Diner, a greasy spoon just south of town by Reed’s Falls. Red Bear, Kevin, Leon, and Toof. Toof’s looking shame-faced because he got lost on his way to the Rosebud – a place he had been to at least three times, by Kevin’s count – and the others had to wait. Red Bear doesn’t say anything, just stares at Toof with those husky’s eyes of his. Then he leads them out into the woods.
First they follow the hydro lines over the hill, then they veer off into a snowmobile trail, deserted at this time of year. After a few hundred yards, they venture onto a trail that is a trail in theory but is scarcely easier to walk than the thickest of the brush surrounding it. Eventually they come to the crest of a hill, a rocky clearing.
Red Bear had them build an altar fire the way he had showed them. He pointed to the moon, almost but not quite full. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Just perfect.’ He was dressed in buckskin pants and vest, both with a fringe, the vest decorated with intricate beadwork. Hollywood Indian, Kevin thought, preposterous on anyone else, but not on Red Bear. A canteen clanked against his belt, next to a long knife sheathed in buckskin.
Red Bear waited until the fire was blazing.
‘Our sacrifice is waiting on the other side of the hill. You three stay here, and do not move – no matter what you hear – do not move. You may hear nothing. When I return I will do a ceremonial dance. If this is too strange for you, if you cannot open yourself to other cultures, other customs, then I ask you to back out now. Back out now, and never return.’
Nobody moved.
‘If you choose to stay, you must never speak of this to anyone, do you understand?’
Red Bear stepped up to Kevin, his face inches away, pale eyes otherworldly. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yeah, sure. I understand. I’ll stay.’
Red Bear did the same to Leon. Leon also said he would stay.
Then Toof. Runty little Toof with his turned-up nose almost like a pig’s. In the firelight he looked like some nocturnal creature.
‘Do you understand?’ Red Bear said to Toof. ‘You must never speak of this to anyone.’
‘I won’t. I promise.’
‘On pain of death,’ Red Bear said.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Toof said. ‘I won’t tell a soul, eh? You guys are like my brothers.’
‘Exactly. We are your family now.’
Red Bear unsheathed his knife.
‘Wait in silence. I will return in ten minutes. Do not speak during this time. Stare into the flames and empty your minds. I will ask the spirits for direction.’
Red Bear pointed the knife high over his head, stretching on tiptoe as if hoping for lightning to strike. He began to speak in what Kevin figured was Ojibwa or Chippewa or some damn thing. Sounded like nothing he’d ever heard, full of clicks and gutturals, not sentences so much as a meandering flow of syllables. There were many repetitions. Then Red Bear lowered the knife and strode over the hill, beads rattling.
Kevin stared into the flames.
No sounds came from the far side of the hill, and none of the three figures around the crackling fire said a word.
Kevin’s face felt scorched, but his back was uncomfortably cold. He wished they were downtown, sinking a few pints at the World Tavern.
There was a cry, and then a dark shape came over the hill. Red Bear broke into a run, cried out again, and leaped into the circle between them and the fire. He was chanting now, and doing a loose-limbed dance around the flames. It wasn’t a dance, at first, so much as a kind of shuffle, accompanied by his low sing-song. His shadow, thrown by the firelight, reared and stretched across the surrounding rocks and trees.
Gradually the dance became more energetic. Red Bear leaped and spun, his arms and shoulders gleaming in the firelight. His arms were soaked in blood up to the elbow. There was a large leather bag in his hand that he passed around his body and he revolved around the fire, making a wheels-within-wheels pattern. Then he stopped and opened the bag and held it upside down over the flames. The contents crashed into the burning wood, and sparks swirled into the sky.
The other three jerked back from the fire, coughing and brushing at their clothes. When Kevin turned back there was a pig’s head sizzling in the flames, its little eyes shut tight and crinkled