Further West

an Indigenous historical novel by Kim Anderson

EXCERPT

Emile had only been back in Red River for four days, but he was already consumed with minding his brother. He did this not because his grandmother had told him to—though it could be said that much of what Emile did was in service of Nancy’s directives. No, he tended to Nimki because of a fierce, nagging worry he had carried all their lives.

Maybe it had to do with being a twin, for even though Nimki had always been with Nokomis Che at the lake, and he with Nokomis Nancy at Red River, Emile had felt Nimki’s calamities deep in his bones. The miles between them provided no buffer for the stories that played over and again in Emile’s mind, stories of Nimki, the toddler running straight for the fire. Nimki, the child getting bucked off a horse. Nimki had made it to sixteen, yes, but just last week he had been violently tossed off a York Boat, had found himself surging and roiling in the waters of a sudden storm. Miraculously fished out, hanging onto the paddle of a hardy cousin. And each time Nimki had gone on the buffalo hunt, Emile had been paralyzed by the thought that it was the last time he would see him. He knew these thoughts were at odds with the blind courage expected of men in their world. At the very least, it wasn’t appropriate to have such little faith. He just couldn’t help it.

At least for now Nimki was in sight, albeit sprawled out on his back and spilling off either side of a hooked rug on Nancy’s parlour floor. At least he had carefully wrapped his fiddle, which he affectionately called Waape, and had tucked it away on the bottom shelf of Nancy’s china cabinet. He always took more care of Waape than he did of himself.

Nimki’s snoring, all the worse from his unbridled consumption of liquor over the last few days, was so loud it was a wonder it wasn’t rattling Nancy’s few prized pieces of china, prominently displayed on the shelf above Waape. Everything in its place. The fiddle sang to the people, but the china was “for entertaining Society,” Nancy liked to say—those that had risen above the station of voyageurs and labourers. Nancy was proud of her tidy home with its parlour, complete with wooden floors and upholstered chairs. Proud that she had a room that held no other purpose than receiving.

Sitting on one of Nancy’s hard chairs, Emile tried to write, to will away the worry, as he had done in the years at boarding school. But there was a sibling’s resentment that kept getting in the way, a sentiment he was loathe to admit.

He put down his journal. It wasn’t charitable to feel this way, especially toward one’s brother. After all, Nimki had travelled two days to be part of his homecoming, and at first sight, had leapt off Nancy’s porch and clung onto his back, slapping his bottom and whooping with such abandon that Emile had no choice but to laugh.

Nimki loved him.

Still, it bothered Emile that Nokomis Nancy, known to chase men in the drink out of her store with a broom, had such tolerance for his brother and yet, was so unflinching in her demands of him. In the few days Emile had been home, Nancy had taken every opportunity to tell visitors in her store, and in her parlour too, that Emile, having completed his secondary school studies in Montreal, would soon entering the seminary. “To take up his role in Society,” she would say. And yet, Nimki just lay there, unperturbed by calls to the future, his placid figure chafing against Emile’s inescapable anxieties.

Emile could feel Nancy’s pride; indeed, it warmed a larger part of him than he cared to admit. But when he tried to imagine himself ten, twenty years into the future at the pulpit, advising the flock, he felt a flattening of the soul. Then there was Nokomis Che, who had suggested Emile’s gifts could be put to better use. These feelings were a deterrent, yes, but it was the nightmares of a black robe, hovering, that hung about like a wolverine, ready to pounce. They just kept coming back.

He pushed these thoughts aside, placed his pen and notebook on the floor beside him and picked up the broom. Better to do something, and there was no such thing as too much sweeping in Nancy’s house. He began making steady, deliberate motions, and as he swept, the rhythm of Nimki’s fiddling from the previous night came to him. He picked up his step, held the broom to one side and began jigging as he thought about the family gathering to celebrate the completion of his secondary studies in the east. He circled the room, thought about the smiling faces and tapping feet in chairs that had been pushed back against the walls of Nancy’s parlour. And there was Nimki, playing with such a force that the hair on his bow splintered off. Even Nancy had tapped along from her upholstered seat – unable to contain the pinched look of a woman bound by rules of the parish.

 “Don’t worry, Nokomis. Get up, get up!” Nimki had cried across the flurry of his fingers. “Just keep your upper body stiff and that prying old priest will never suspect what you’re doing with your feet.” Nimki must have known that the priest, while not invited, had made a showing, had stood out on the street, had watched them through the window that Nancy had forgotten to shutter. Perhaps this is why he played even faster.

Emile’s favourite song had always been Haste to the Wedding. The waltz suited him more than the showy competitions of the Red River Jig. He could hear it now as he thought about the dance, chuckled at the memory of his uncles last night, pretending to dance with the broom—a necessity, they said, on the trails that left them bereft of the company of women. Emile flipped the broom on its head, gazed into the straw. He wondered what it might be like to dance with a real woman.

 “Emile! Aykooshi.”

It was Nancy, standing in the doorway. Emile felt the heat move into his face. At least she didn’t ask what he was doing with the broom.

“Aashtum – Come! I need you to haul fabric to the store. We’re late already.”