thought of it. What was Doug Warner’s obituary doing in the Minneapolis paper? My hand began to tremble and I smoked greedily.
Terry was dressed in new blue jeans, glossy cowboy boots, and a red button-up shirt with a string tie. His yet-unlined face looked puffy, as I suppose mine did. He wiped the tears from his eyes and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Let’s go in,” he said. “We can talk later over a drink.”
This was the moment that I had been dreading. I turned around and looked at the empty lot before following Terry Blackbird into Swenson’s Funeral Home.
I’d been to Swenson’s more times than I cared to remember, the last time being to attend the service for my mother. I walked inside and somehow the air felt colder as we signed our names to Doug’s guestbook. Seeing our names at the top of the first page was almost too much to bear. The funeral parlor hadn’t changed a bit since my last visit. The faded red carpet with the white swirls still covered the sagging floor, and long purple drapes adorned the walls where the windows should’ve been. The place had the unique smell of death and nostalgia, which is the only way I know how to describe it. Pre-recorded organ music played softly from hidden speakers. I followed big Terry Blackbird into the chapel and up to the casket. I was concentrating on the Ojibwe artwork, painstakingly stitched into the back of Terry’s shirt. I didn’t want to see Doug lying there in his casket, but I found myself suddenly staring at him.
I didn’t even know how he died, but I now certainly knew that he was dead. He didn’t look good. I closed my eyes and prayed for strength as I stood next to Terry Blackbird, who was undoubtedly doing the same. There was one bouquet of lilies, and I read Terry’s name on the card. It made me sad.
Doug was white and very little hair remained on his head. His face looked bloated and appeared to be smeared with clay. His hands, one of which I had shaken a thousand times, looked stiff and gray and were crossed on his chest, clutching the beads of a rosary. I felt Terry leave my side, allowing a little more light to fall on Doug’s defeated face.
I was saying good-bye to Doug in his casket when it happened.
Doug’s dead jaw suddenly opened and closed, not once, but twice. I distinctly heard him say, “Help me.”
I nearly leapt back from the casket, my heart hammering inside my chest. I put my hand up to my mouth to stifle a scream and moved to the pew where Terry was seated.
“He talked,” I said, pointing to the casket. “He’s not dead, man. He… talked!”
Terry was up and he reached the casket in a few short strides, without a second thought he reached inside the casket and put a large hand on Doug’s painted neck. He stood there for fifteen or twenty seconds before turning to me and shaking his head. “He’s dead,” was all Terry said to me.
I saw what I saw and heard what I heard; there was no doubt in that. I wanted to run out of there and lay rubber out of the parking lot. I wanted to go home and hide under the covers of my own bed. Terry must’ve read that on my face, because he took me by the shoulders and sat me down on the front pew.
I sat there and looked down at my work boots. I was desperately trying to regain my composure, but I couldn’t get my mind off of what I’d witnessed. That was when I realized that Terry and I were absolutely alone in the funeral home, save for Doug Warner.
And it was after ten.
Terry’s huge hand fell on my leg and it practically caused me to scream. I didn’t move, not for a long moment, but I finally managed to lift my head and quickly wished I hadn’t.
Doug Warner was sitting upright in his casket and pointing a dead finger at us, accusingly. I don’t know why, but I ducked down to avoid the aim of that finger. Doug’s mouth was open wide in a silent scream and his eyes were open too, revealing a pair of glass marbles that were hidden under the bronze-colored lids.
The next moment both Terry and I were running for the exit. We hit the door and I followed him to his Buick. There were no words exchanged as we hopped into Terry’s car and we bolted out of there as if the place were about to explode. We left town and headed for the reservation. Terry shook out a couple of smokes and we quickly lit them.
“Aw, shit,” muttered Terry as he coaxed the Buick up to a steady ninety MPH. “What the hell was that? Tell me, Billy, what in the hell was that?”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t even think about it, much less speak about what had just happened. My body shook as if I’d taken a December dip in Lake Superior. We roared down the empty highway and continued to smoke our cigarettes in silence. Terry’s dark skin was as pale as I’d ever seen it, as I supposed my own looked to him. I had no idea where we were headed and found that I didn’t care, just as long as Terry continued driving. I had the feeling that Doug was behind us, following the Buick in the swirling winds of that terrible morning.
I could smell the fear on myself; the pungent odor that lingers in a hospital waiting room, and that scent blended with the fear rising from Terry. Cracking the window didn’t help because it isn’t as much an odor, as it is an entity that only diminishes with time.
What the hell are we going to do?” I asked, stubbing my cigarette out in the brimming ashtray.
“We’re going to visit Odd Whitefeather, that’s what we’re gonna do,” replied Terry, a touch of a challenge in his voice. “He’ll know what to do.”
Somehow, I knew exactly that was where we were heading. “Odd Whitefeather has to be ninety by now,” I replied.
“Closer to a hundred.”
Odd Whitefeather was an outcast, just as my mother had been, although for very different reasons. He had been an outcast for as long as I could remember, but he hadn’t always been so. At least, that’s what I knew from the talk of his younger years. He had been somewhat of a mystic; a medicine man, without ever achieving official status from the Ojibwe who lived on the reservation. I’d never met him.
Terry turned the Buick down Cemetery Road and negotiated the winding curves with the confidence of a racecar driver. I never doubted that he’d get us there in one piece. What bothered me was the fact that I had yet to see another living person since my arrival at Swenson’s, that is, if you don’t include Doug Warner. I don’t know what he was.
Just because I hadn’t ever met Odd Whitefeather, didn’t mean that I hadn’t heard of him. Everyone knew where the old man lived and everyone avoided the place. Odd Whitefeather had gained a reputation during his strange existence and that was one of being a bad omen. One didn’t look for a bad omen, not until today, that is.
The road meandered around the tall white pines and was relatively free of ice and snow. Odd Whitefeather lived at the very outside edge at the back of the reservation, five miles from his nearest neighbor. I spotted the familiar mailbox in the same place I’d left it, planted in the frozen earth t the beginning of the long gravel driveway. The woods here were thick with undergrowth and dark with gloom. Whatever fear I’d left in Carlton was creeping back and I felt a cold shiver as we made the turn. I suddenly realized that by coming here, we had committed ourselves to understanding what was happening.
At that moment, I had no desire to understand anything. I just wanted to get as far away from my old friend, Doug Warner, as I possibly could. Thinking that brought on a deep sense of guilt and shame and those emotions began to battle the fear. I gritted my teeth as the Buick tread in the snow-covered lane, where it looked as if no one had traveled by car. A single path lined the middle of the driveway, and I knew that path had been created by Odd Whitefeather’s moccasins. Snowmobile tracks were in the ditch. The driveway wound its way around a tall stand of pines to where a large clearing revealed a ramshackle house and a dilapidated barn, both of which had long ago faded to gray. Smoke billowed from a brick chimney before being swept away with the wind.
The yard was neat and an axe lay stuck in a stout stump, next to a large pile of split hardwood. The rusting hulk of an old tractor sat next to the barn. There were no cars. Terry parked the Buick and gave me a hard stare. T
hat look would have been enough to send most men running for their lives, but Terry and I were friends and I recognized it. I opened my door and stepped outside into uncertainty.
I walked alongside Terry towards the skinny, two-story home that was at least as old as Odd Whitefeather, himself. The place looked as if might collapse at any minute. “Have you ever met him?” I asked.
“Nope.You?”
“Never,” I replied as Terry took hold of the handle on the old screen door and pulled it open, the spring creaked with rust. He then rapped on the inside door.
He needn’t have done so, because a scant second later it was opened wide by the old Ojibwe known as Odd Whitefeather. “Come on in boys,” he said with a mouth that lacked even a single tooth. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Somehow, seeing the old man standing there was nearly as frightening as the incident at the funeral home. To call him ancient was somehow not sufficient, for he looked much closer to Doug’s condition than he did to our own. He had lines etched into the lines of his proud face. A pair of bright, brown eyes held our own gaze for a