Three Day Road Read online

  The next four shooters are not nearly as good as the first, two of them hitting four tins, two of them five. But when my name is called, I talk to myself, tell myself to go to that place. I stand at attention and go through my movements in my head. When the officer barks out to begin, I fall to the ground, my knee striking a stone sharply. Wincing, I open the action of my rifle and grab a round from the ground beside me, slipping it in and slamming the bolt shut, both eyes open and staring down the field, searching out the first bully beef tin. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, half out, and the sights line on the first tin, the sharp bang and kick of the rifle and the tin ripping apart. I work steady, sliding open the breech and letting the spent cartridge fly out before I replace it with the cool casing of a second shell. I do the same thing over and over, in my own quiet place now, ears ringing with the noise of the rifle. By the fifth tin I know my time is good, but I fumble and drop a round because I have let myself think instead of just doing. I force myself to slow down. Seven hits will guarantee my advance. I drop the last three tins and stand to the cheers of the battalions, muffled by the ringing in my ears.

  Elijah is the last to shoot, and he is very good. There’s no pressure for him, I see. I think Elijah is like a wind across a field he is so smooth and sure. When all seven of the shiny little tins are punched through, Elijah stands and waves to the cheering crowd. He has always been the one who is not afraid of others. But there was a time when he knew nothing of the bush or of hunting. I was the one to teach him.

  The officer huddles with some of the others. I hear talk of more balloons, of more bully beef tins, of paper targets. Carefully so that it won’t be noticed, I take a sidelong glance at the little Highlander. He is short and thin with bright eyes that don’t miss much. He leans with one hand on the barrel of his rifle, the butt of it firmly on the ground. With his free hand he plays with a piece of string, tying it into sure knots with his fingers. I see the power in his confidence and look away. I look toward my battalion and make out Sean Patrick and Gilberto and Fat in the crowd. Sean Patrick gives me a wave. I smile at them all.

  The sound of Elijah clearing his voice causes me to turn to him. Elijah has approached the officers and begins speaking. There’s trouble in that. Everyone knows.

  “Sirs,” he begins. “Place matches in the ground twenty paces from us and the man who can light the match with a bullet wins.”

  Breech turns to him angrily but is prevented from acting by the British officer’s voice. “What’s this?” he asks.

  “It’s simple,” Elijah says. “You place matches in the ground and each man takes a turn. Whoever can light the match by touching the tip with a bullet wins.”

  It is a game Elijah and I played when we were young. A game impossible to win. The officer rubs his chin and nods, smiling. I watch word ripple through the troops who are sitting or standing at ease. Immediately men begin to talk and reach in pockets for money. I look over to Elijah and he smiles at me. It is the same trickster grin he’s flashed since he was a boy. I am the only one who knows, though, that Elijah has not always gotten by in the world so easily. As the officers continue to debate and the soldiers near us continue to exchange money, I think back to the winter shortly after Elijah left the residential school and came to live with me in the bush.

  We snared rabbits and used their fur and ate their meat and their stomachs full of greens. I showed Elijah how to find their runs, taught him that rabbits, like people, are creatures of habit. One morning as we checked our snares we noticed that a fox followed our lines. The fox had eaten a rabbit that had been snared. Its tracks were fresh, and so we followed them. I could tell by the impression that it was a large one.

  I walked along its trail, Elijah following noisily, snapping twigs and breathing heavily. “That school taught you nothing useful,” I whispered back to him. Elijah didn’t like that, but I knew the fox was close. We climbed a rise, and through some thick tamarack I caught a flash of red. The fox sensed us too, and stopped. I removed my mitten and raised my rifle, levelled my sight on its centre. An easy shot.

  “What do you see?” Elijah asked, and as soon as his voice left his mouth, the fox darted away.

  I didn’t speak to Elijah the rest of that day. When we returned to our winter camp he went out in the bush, dragging back dried spruce branches. I thought he was trying to make up for his mistake by collecting enough wood to guarantee us a night of warmth. As he spread dry branches around our askihkan, I wanted to ask him why, but I was still too angry to talk to him. The fox’s fur would have looked nice, felt even better, as a collar for my parka.

  Late that night the cold woke me, and as I built back the fire I noticed that Elijah wasn’t in the askihkan. I was still not happy with him and so fell back asleep. Near dawn the sharp snap of a twig outside woke me. I crawled from my blanket and peered outside. As my eyes focused in the early light, I saw the tracks going round and round our sleeping place. They were unmistakable. Elijah’s prints. He rounded the askihkan carefully, stepping one foot at a time, watching intently where his foot would go, trying not to disturb the twigs he’d sprinkled. He noticed me and smiled, looking exhausted. “I have been walking around you all night and didn’t wake you until now,” he said. “I will try not to make any more mistakes, Xavier.”

  When matches are placed in the ground, Elijah and the Highlander and I line up beside one another. Twenty paces away the matches stick up from the ground. The tips are tiny, almost impossible to see clearly. Elijah shoots first, and his match disappears. Men whoop but then go quiet when they realize that he hasn’t done it. I shoot second, but can feel the eyes of so many on me. I can’t find that place, jerking the trigger so that my bullet thuds uselessly into the earth a half-foot in front of the match. The Highlander takes his time, and when he fires he too makes his match disappear completely.

  On Elijah’s second turn, his bullet goes just over the top of the match tip. I can see that it was very close by where the bullet pierces the ground behind it. I lift my rifle and take my turn. I am steadier this time and actually hit the match so that it too disappears. I’m beginning to think that, even as adults, we will find this impossible. The Highlander fires and he misses, grumbling.

  The officer announces that the third shot will be the final one. There will be no winner today if the match remains unlit. Elijah takes a long time sighting, makes a show of it for the spectators, gently squeezes the trigger, and misses. The Rifles groan loudly. I breathe in, breathe out, breathe in and lift my rifle to my shoulder. If I can do this I will no longer be so much the outsider. I will gain respect. I let half my breath out and place the very tip of the sight on what must be the tip of the match. The world has grown silent. My body feels as steady as it ever has. I squeeze the trigger and as if by some magic the match flares and then lights, the flame wavering in the wind. The men roar. I feel a little dizzy and lower the rifle.

  My head is light and today has turned into a good day for me. The Highlander raises his rifle and aims a long time. I hold my breath. The rifle fires and the match quivers, then falls over. Men shout once again and rush on the field. I am surrounded by arms reaching out to me and men talking into my face. The ones in my section, Gilberto and Graves and Grey Eyes and Sean Patrick and Elijah, grab me and lift me above their heads. I look down at the sea of men around me and notice the officers pointing to me and talking.

  McCaan approaches, beaming, and shouts up to me. “From now on you will no longer be called Xavier. You have a new name now. Your new name is simply X, and when men ask you why, you tell them, X marks the spot on any target you wish to hit!” The others laugh and cheer, shout out to me, “X marks his spot!”

  It strikes me then. None of these who are here today can call me a useless bush Indian ever again. They might not say it out loud, but they know now that I have something special.

  ONAHAASHIWEW

  Sniper

  THE SHORELINE THAT WE PASS is still new growth, green and wild, nothing gr
own taller than a man. I watch it for some time after I awake, listening to the gentle dip of Niska’s paddle. In places blackened tree stumps jut up like burnt fingers. They look like the dead trees of Ypres, make me wonder if the battlefields have begun to grow over yet with red flowers.

  “Maybe Elijah is still over there, Auntie. Maybe the army has kept him there longer,” I say out loud, not meaning to. I turn to her and she smiles down at me, passes me a cup of water that she’s dipped into the river to cool my scratched throat.

  “Maybe,” she answers. I watch her lips. “When is the last time you saw him, Xavier?” she asks. She is not used to asking questions. I can tell she is afraid to voice this one.

  I look at the shore. “Near here is the place where the fire caught up to us,” I tell her, pointing to the bank. “We had made camp and fallen asleep with the wind blowing the fire away from us. But sometime in the night the wind shifted and the fire snuck up.” I lay my head back on my pack, too tired to speak more. I want to be able to tell Niska this story but cannot find the energy inside me that I need to do it.

  Sean Patrick’s at his sniping post, Grey Eyes working the steel plate, swinging it up when Sean Patrick calls for it, shutting it as soon as the shot is fired. I noticed them earlier in the day and am surprised to see them still shooting in the afternoon. I want to warn them not to use the same position too long or they’ll give it away, but figure they know as much. I don’t want to offend them. I also see that Grey Eyes has the glassy look of the medicine in his veins and he is not paying close enough attention, but McCaan has given me a shovel and told me to fill sandbags.

  “Don’t want you snipers thinking you’re above all this,” he says.

  I notice Elijah isn’t given a shovel.

  An aeroplane drones overhead and I look up from my work to see if it is one of ours, or Fritz come to strafe us. I bend back down to fill sandbags when I hear Gilberto shouting for help. When I look over, I see ten yards from me Sean Patrick on the ground writhing like a snake and grabbing his neck, blood spurting out in impossible amounts, his eyes wide with terror of what is coming. I run to him. We all run to him, McCaan and Elijah, Graves and Fat who’ve become closer and closer over the last months like a skinny father and his heavy son. We stand over Sean Patrick dumbly, none of us really knowing what to do, in shock at the sight of bright red blood pumping from between his fingers clenched so hard that he appears to be choking himself, McCaan kneeling and fumbling to help.

  “Shot through the neck,” Graves mumbles as if to no one.

  Immediately I think of the snipers rumoured to be around here, of one especially, the one they say stalks our lines and has impossible numbers. Elijah claims that the man doesn’t really exist.

  McCaan pulls gauze from a pack near him and tries to move Sean Patrick’s hands. “Help me,” he shouts, and the tone in his voice sets us all into action.

  Elijah and I pry Sean Patrick’s hands away and hold them above his head while Graves and a stunned-looking Grey Eyes clamp onto his long skinny legs. McCaan applies the gauze to his neck, but we all know it is futile. I stare into Sean Patrick’s eyes near to my own. He stares back at me in pure fear. I smile to try and reassure him that soon he will be on the long road and he won’t be scared or in pain or cold or wet any more. I can see the fear die a little at the same time that the bright light drains from his eyes. They turn glassy as those of Grey Eyes. McCaan quits working. I let go of Sean Patrick’s arms and watch the muscles relax into the slow release of the dead.

  Grey Eyes stands back from us. “I told him to take a break,” he mumbles to no one. “I told him that he’s too tall to be sniping here.”

  Sean Patrick’s height has nothing to do with what has happened.

  That evening McCaan gives me and Elijah and a couple of others permission to carry Sean Patrick back behind the lines near one of our nests for burial. We dig silent and steady, the body beside us wrapped tightly in his blanket. When the hole is deep enough, we put him into it. I prefer the old way of placing the body high in a tree so that the soul can leave it without hindrance, but no trees stand for miles around here. I say my own prayers to Gitchi Manitou, and Graves and Fat touch their fingers to forehead and chest and shoulders. It surprises me that Elijah whispers his own prayers in Cree as well. We burn a little sprig of sweetgrass that I’ve carried with the leftover moosehide in my pack from Canada and whisper more prayers to drift up with it. We cover Sean Patrick’s body with shovelfuls of dirt and then sit, watching the flash of the big guns and feeling the rumble beneath as the real darkness begins to settle in.

  “Hun sniper,” Elijah says. I nod to him. “He’s a good shot,” Elijah continues. “To be able to hit a man through the neck with such a short window of opportunity.”

  I want to tell Elijah that Grey Eyes is at least partially to blame for operating the slot so slowly, but then I realize that I am to blame too for not saying anything to them when I noticed the mistakes they were making.

  Sean Patrick is not the only one to be killed by their snipers. All up and down the line the Germans are taking a toll. Although the shells kill far more, the snipers eat away at morale like a fast disease. Thompson says that Fritz are using this area as a training ground. McCaan orders Thompson, Elijah and me to do whatever we can to impede them, to get a little revenge for Sean Patrick.

  For the next days we stay out of the trenches as much as possible, finding places to hide and scout for snipers. I am glad not to be in the trenches. McCaan is angry that Sean Patrick died so needlessly, and keeps a closer eye on Grey Eyes. He is not as good as he thinks he is at hiding what he puts into himself. I must remember what he has done to Sean Patrick next time Grey Eyes asks for something.

  ELIJAH GOES INTO ANOTHER PLACE when he is hunting. He forgets his British accent and his bragging, is patient. And he becomes more watchful. He moves with no wasted movement, like a wolf on some smaller animal’s trail.

  Sometimes late at night when we are in a listening post or in one of our nests, Elijah will comment on what Fritz is doing in his own line, on what his actions will be in the next few days. It is as if Elijah is lifted from his body and carried to the other side where he can float around at will. His eyes stare as if he can see very far. Some elders talk of this experience, but more often a man takes the form of an animal when he leaves his body—a bird or a fox or even a bear. Sometimes I wonder if Elijah is taking Grey Eyes’ medicine, but I know that he isn’t. He wouldn’t be able to hide it from me. This wemistikoshiw medicine, sometimes I am tempted to try it, late at night, lying out here and listening. Plenty of it around. Many of the soldiers carry it in tablet form in their packs. They put it under their tongue if they are wounded. Some even carry a needle full with them at all times, the same type of needle that the medics carry. Most are deathly afraid of pain, of prolonged suffering, even more than they are scared of death.

  I begin to adopt Elijah’s ways. I try to think like the Hun, particularly the very good one who killed Sean Patrick. The sniper has been operating in this area for a while now. Many shots through the neck. His numbers continue to grow. Proof that it is the same man is that he uses a rare type of round in his rifle, one that does not flatten and expand on impact like most of the cheap rounds but is hard and copper and cuts through nearly anything like a tiny, deadly knife.

  We spend more and more days out in our different positions, watching for hints of the others who are no doubt in turn looking for us. Elijah and Thompson and I go into our own line only once in a while for small supplies of food and water. Lieutenant Breech lets us come and go as we need to, on the promise that we deliver results. The summer remains quiet on this part of the line, hot like I have rarely known heat. I am always thirsty. We hear the constant rumble of the big battle going on down the line. It is not going well for Tommy. Graves keeps us informed when we come in. There’s a new urgency to find the snipers operating across from us. Word is out that very soon the Second Division, my company included, wi
ll be sent down to take part in that fight.

  “We bombed ’em straight for days on end,” Graves says. “Literally tons of shells we dropped on ’em thinking we were going to soften ’em to mush before the assault.” Graves talks more now that he has a listener in Fat. “We figured it would be a Sunday stroll across no man’s land after the bruising we gave ’em. But little did we know they’ve got some very deep trenches to hide in. Soon as we stopped the bombing and the whistle blows for us to go over the top, here comes Fritz crawling from their deep holes and setting up their machine guns. From what I heard, a man couldn’t advance for all the dead Tommies lying like cordwood on the field in front of him.”

  McCaan tells Graves to pipe down and stop stirring trouble.

  “If we’d had those same machine guns in the Boer War,” Graves continues, muttering now, “I tell you it’d have been a different outcome.”

  Here where the Ypres Road bisects the front line, where the piles of brick and wood and debris add to the chaos, nothing stands out and everything stands out, it seems. I peer through my riflescope for hours at a time. I’ve taken to spotting through my rifle now in the chance that I, too, might get a shot. I want to see if I can do what Elijah does. But all I am able to spot are rare glimpses of a helmet or shovel. Easier for me to picture soldiers with antlers on their heads, I tell Elijah. It will make it all the easier when the time comes to shoot one. Elijah laughs at this. Even though I make light, I spend my hours wondering what I will do when it is my turn to pull a trigger on a man.

  “Antlers,” Elijah says. “Do you remember the time you had antlers?”

  I wonder for a moment what he is talking about, force myself back to Mushkegowuk, a place I try not to think about for fear it will make me homesick. “When we were caribou hunting?” I ask. He nods. I smile. “We were young then, weren’t we,” I say.