Black Bird

  Odawa Territory (Modern-day Ontario)

  Ten days. Ten days was all it took for his father to die. It was not some slow, pronounced transformation, nothing momentous or tragic or powerful. It was a tepid degradation, one that reduced him to some state that was neither dead nor truly living. In his last days, he did nothing but lay on his side, arms lying helplessly across him, like they were vestigial. His eyes would open at times in the scant few hours he was actually awake, and every now and then he opened his mouth and uttered a word or two. They never came out right, and Black Bird strained to make any sense of them. They were more moans and grunts than actual utterances, and as he declined more and more, Black Bird began to wonder if they meant anything at all.

  The only thing he knew was that his father could still hear. At the very least, when Black Bird spoke, there was an acknowledgment, some understanding that lingered in his father’s glassy eyes. He had no idea the extent of it was, or whether he was just pretending to see it, but he believed it nonetheless. It was this belief that led Black Bird to spend the time talking to his father, even if he could muster no response. He told his father of all the things he had missed in his absence—Black Bird’s youth and adolescence, his mother’s own decline and passing. What started as a spiteful attempt to remind him of the decisions he’d made turned to something else the more Black Bird reminisced. In the end, it became his own way of making peace with his father and his abandonment, to reconcile all the years of resentment and anger he had built up towards him. And now, his father could muster no rebuttal or argument, nor could he leave again. All he could do was listen, and Black Bird had so much he needed to say.

  “I suppose you want me to forgive you,” he said. “So that you’ll be at peace, so that your last moments on this earth will be free from guilt or remorse. But I won’t. Some would say I should. Nimaamaa* would have wanted me to, I think. But she’s not here. All I can do, then, is listen to my own conscience, and it tells me you haven’t earned my forgiveness. So why should I absolve you of your transgressions? Because I’m your son? Because you’re about to die? If you can feel anything right now, in these final hours, then you should. Bear that weight on your own feeble shoulders, and carry it with you to the next life, so the world will be free of it.”

  As usual, he received no response. Black Bird looked over at his father. He lay there on his deathbed, his breaths haggard and raspy, his consciousness waxing and waning. Black Bird could do nothing but continue to speak, each word granting him some semblance of closure as the father he had never known slowly drifted to death in front of him.

  “Do you think that’s cruel?” Black Bird asked. “It probably is. I’m convinced, though, that it’s just pragmatic. Everyone wants me to do the impossible—I have to save our race, bring glory to the Three Fires, and now let you pass on with a peace of mind you don’t deserve. Despite what they think, though, I’m only human. I only have enough strength to shoulder my own burdens, and they grow heavier by the day. Though I doubt any man alive could bear yours. You didn’t even try to. And I get it now, I think. At least I’ve tried to. But I still can’t forgive it. Despite all you’ve been through, despite all the reasons for it, you still chose to run. So I think it’s not up to me, really. The only way for you to find peace, to me, now and wherever you go next, is to acknowledge that. Face your own cowardice, your own shame, and own it. Because that’s what you are. That’s what your legacy on the world will be, what you will be remembered for. And I could lie, and say I forgive you, but that won’t change a thing. Every man and woman in this village, every person you’ve ever known, will remember you for what you are: the coward who ran.”

  It was a strangely cathartic dialogue, despite being so one-sided. And though it was selfish, it brought Black Bird a sense of tranquility that he claimed his father didn’t deserve. He was aware of this contradiction, of course, but to him, it wasn’t hypocritical.

  After all his twenty years on the earth, after his vision quest with the wabanowin, he had finally started to reconcile his own messy identity. Only, this task was far more difficult than he realized, due in large part to the fact that half of that identity was still a mystery to him. His father’s people were gone, scattered to the wind by the ever-expanding empire of the Five Nations. And no matter how he sought after it, no matter what stories he’d hear from the survivors, that part of himself would always remain foreign to him.

  It was a history his father was ashamed of, and Black Bird had finally started to understand why. This world was a cruel one, harsh and uncaring. It was a wild land, governed by one rule, and one rule only: survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. And while it had always been this way, it was never as pronounced as it became once the white man stepped foot on these shores. Some would argue it was because of the white man himself, because of his hatred and iniquity. But Black Bird had met many white men in his journeys, enough to know that they were just like anyone else. All races of people carried varied multitudes within their midsts: young and old, rich and poor, selfish and kind, ignoble and benevolent. What caused the current calamity of Turtle Island was not the white men themselves, but what they brought with them. The pox took entire villages and reduced them to nothing, brought once-mighty nations to heel, killing all but a quarter of them. The firearm killed more quickly and efficiently than any weapon they had ever seen, and required no training to use. The oldest elders would speak of a time when wars were more ceremonial than anything, where a battle would take place without a single casualty, fought over minor disputes. Such a thing was impossible now. The stakes were never higher—hundreds of tribes forced to scrape and fight for survival, their numbers decimated by disease, their weapons made of old thunder and new fire.

  And so great wars were fought, the winners living to fight again, the losers snuffed out and extinguished. For four generations the Five Nations had conquered with their new arms, spurned on by the loss of so many to the pox. The Island Folk, his father’s people, were simply one victim of many. They had fought the Five Nations, and they had lost. The worthy among them were taken, beaten, and assimilated. The weak were simply culled to make room for their conquerors’ expansion. That was the hell of his father’s childhood—to grow up in a land besieged, among a people on the verge of extinction. His mother and father, brothers and sisters, neighbors too, all killed or taken, his village razed to the ground. Village by village, he watched his nation fall to dust and ruin, and he, like all the other Island-dwellers, were powerless to do anything about it.

  Only, what his father considered a source of weakness, Black Bird took as a point of pride. Because survival of the fittest, ultimately, did not mean survival of the best. The Five Nations, to this day, were the only nation on Turtle Island that employed their barbaric tactic of the Mourning Trials. None of the other nations nearby would even think of doing the same, even the ones who shared the same tongues, the same stories, the same cultures. And it was those nations who felt the result of that decision, who were conquered by a more ruthless neighbor. Regardless of how one felt about it, the act of their assimilation successfully recouped their numbers, allowing them to rebuild and thrive where other nations faltered. It was the root of the Haudenosaunee’s survival, the key to their prosperity and expansion, and yet it was an act of undeniable cruelty.

  So in this world where kindness was weak, where one was rewarded only for selfishness, what greater achievement could there be than to lose? Sure, there was honor in victory, in conquering, but at what cost? Would Black Bird be content to burn the whole world, as long as he could stand tall atop the ashes? No. If anything, his father’s decline had strengthened this resolve in him. He would fight and win on his own terms—never make any concessions, never allow even an ounce of malice into his heart, even if it would help him. Even now that so many expectations were being piled on top of him, he would not falter. He would save his people, if he could, and bring the fight to the Five Nations and all who opposed them, but that was all. His morals would never bend or break—while they might change, as he knew they likely would, he would never compromise on what he believed in. And if he should fall as a result, if his kindness should be his downfall, then so be it. But he would die principled, and proud.

  It was this resolve that pained Black Bird more than anything during his father’s final moments. His father lived his whole life believing he was a coward, that he could do nothing but run from every problem in his life. Only it was this belief that made it true. He blamed himself for his own victimhood, allowed it to consume him. A rational man would know that any child his age would have done the same, and that not even a grown man can save a crumbling nation all by himself. But when you’re living through it, reason falls to the wayside. When you watch your neighbors scream and flee in terror, time and time again, when you witness the barbarity of war with your own eyes, you abandon logic. A new instinct takes its place: the one to survive, at any and all costs. It leads some men to wickedness, to harm others the way they’ve been harmed. But Black Bird’s father, to his credit, was never malicious. He would not have the heart or the spine to bring harm willingly upon others. True, abandoning his wife and son was a harm of its own kind, but it was a hollow one, borne from fear rather than malice. And while Black Bird would never forgive him for his actions, he could at least understand them, for he too knew the overwhelming power of fear.

  Day after day, hour after hour, all Black Bird could do was wait for his father to die. It was hard for him to even look at the man in his languid stupor. Seeing him that way produced some reaction from Black Bird that he had never once felt, or would again. It was so foreign—not anger, or pity, or grief. It was something primal, something that tightened in his gut and coagulated in his throat. What it felt closest to, Black Bird realized, was disgust. Not the disgust from filth or gore or illness, but something more macabre, something only felt when confronting death. It was the pit that formed in his stomach when he killed a Longhouse warrior, when he watched the light leave their eyes, their body slump to the ground. It was seeing the transition from body to corpse, from life to death. But on the battlefield, that feeling was fleeting, watered down by the adrenaline of battle and a hundred other things to focus on. Here, it was the only thing he felt. It did not ebb or flow, nor did it ever leave him, even as he slept. It just sat inside him, stagnant, wallowing in its own misery.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  At first, Black Bird tried to fight it. Regardless of how he felt about the man, this was his father. He shouldn’t feel anything akin to disgust at seeing him die. Sorrow, perhaps, and surely regret, but not this. But as the days went on, he found that this new and strange emotion overpowered everything else, despite his best wishes. Each morning, he would wake, and tend to his father’s needs: brushing the hair out of his face, pouring lukewarm soup carefully into his mouth, cleaning the bed of his waste, now that he could no longer move. It was a strangely intimate ritual to perform with a man he had hardly known, and Black Bird wasn’t sure to feel angry or sad about it. In another life, he would have done these things gladly, the least he could do to thank the man who had raised him all of his life. But that wasn’t the case. If he had his choice, he wouldn’t even be here—he would be back in Wawyaatenak with his best friend, making merry and preparing for their futures. He was here not by his choice, nor from any sense of obligation towards his father, because he felt none. He did it because no one else would, because despite all his animosity towards his father, he couldn’t bear to let him die alone.

  He passed in the early hours of the morning, before Black Bird woke. He went to his father’s bedside and tried to shake him awake. His head rolled lifelessly on the bed, and no breath escaped his lips. His face, his forehead—they were cold. And he stank—the whole room did. At first, Black Bird panicked. Should he call someone to help? To try and revive him? But reality quickly set in, and the brief worry just turned to an emptiness that would be there forever, black and cold in his heart. It was done. The wabanowin were right—this was his time. He would never get to make things up with his father, not the way he wanted. He would never truly know him, apart from those fleeting moments when he was three and four. And he would never know why his mother fell in love with him, or why his heart ached now, even though he had told himself time and time again that he felt nothing towards the man at all.

  Black Bird stepped outside the hut, trying to get some fresh air. Snow fell from the sky in tiny, meandering blankets of white. Black Bird looked up at the sky, breathing in the cold air as a flake settled on his nose. Today was Christmas, he realized—the holiday the Christians celebrated towards the end of the Little Spirit Moon. Was it just a coincidence? He couldn’t be sure. His father’s faith, like everything else about him, was shaky and unpredictable. The Wendat had accepted the missionaries into their fold more than any of the other tribes, intrigued by the similarities they shared with their own faith. Many of the survivors argued that it was Christianity, in fact, that led to their downfall. For the Wendat believed, among other things, that there was more than one Truth in the universe. Truth, like so much else, was subjective, and different from person to person. That meant then, that there was more than one valid faith, more than one god or pantheon, and more than one afterlife. Whatever you believed in, the Wendat thought, was your Truth, and that made it true for you. And while many would consider this an optimistic and coexistent outlook (Black Bird included), many others believed it was this thought that started a rift that would divide the Wendat in two.

  Every time an Island-Dweller converted to the Christian faith, a problem presented itself to each and every member of their family. Because the Truth was subjective, the new Christian’s ideals would guide them after death to the Christian afterlife. So if their parents and grandparents, their siblings, or their children believed something else, all of them would go elsewhere once they passed. When an Island-Dweller of the Old Faith died, they did not go to the Christian heaven. They believed that each person had two spirits, unlike the singular Christian soul. The first spirit lingered on earth, keeping watch over their family and community. Eventually, when it was time for the second spirit to leave, they would undergo their second burial. The body would be briefly disinterred, cleaned, and revered, a rite performed to pass them on. Only then would the second spirit leave, journeying upwards and beyond to the village of Ataentsic, the Sky Mother.

  A Christian among them who died, then, would not experience the same. They would have one soul, one that would leave the body and be sent to heaven or hell. Heaven would provide an eternal paradise, and hell an eternal torment, but neither of them would be the Sky Mother’s village where all their ancestors waited for them. Nor would they have a spirit that would linger in the Earth World, watching over their loved ones, together with all the other spirits of their family. It was an increasingly frightening prospect, one that shook Wendat society to its core. If one among them converted to Christianity, should the rest of their family, even the rest of their village, just so that they could share the same afterlife? What about all the ancestors that came before them, before they knew of the Christian faith? Should they all be forsaken for the Christian God?

  Many argued no, and more—that Christianity was a blight on their culture, that the white man’s influence was an evil thing that tore them apart. But many were compelled by the story of Jesus Christ, by his death and miraculous resurrection, his sacrifice to save the whole world of their sins. More and more of them converted, finding a sense of purpose among the missionaries who guided and taught them. And this fracturing would be the death-knell of the Wendat, who had already been in decline from disease and raids from the Snakes. In those bitter final years, many of those who worshipped the Old Faith walked into Five Nations territory of their own volition, submitting themselves to countless beatings and tortures just to return to the culture they knew.

  This left Black Bird with a new quandary, one that filled his mind with worry as his footsteps crunched on the new snow. How was he supposed to bury his father? He did not know whether his father worshipped the Old Island Faith or the New Christian one, and no one in the village knew the proper rites for either, including him. Would he be content with an Odawa burial? Would his spirit be able to find peace with burial rites that were not his own? If the Wendat were right about the Truth, it wouldn’t. At the same time, there was no way to know what his father believed, what he thought the afterlife was. Black Bird thought hard, back to the fragments of his childhood, but there were clues pointing to both. He would perform the Old prayers at times, but whenever he truly feared something, he would sign the cross over his chest. As a child, they would celebrate the Old holidays, but he was also the one who taught Black Bird that Jesus Christ was born today. It was like both Faiths were in constant competition for his commitment, and he, being the man that he was, could never decide on either. Though he never really knew him well, Black Bird imagined that he must have looked at these faiths in his classical way—pragmatic to a fault. He would go with whatever he was feeling in that moment, whatever was most convenient and helpful for him. So where would his spirit go now? Were there one or two inside him? Black Bird couldn’t figure out an answer, and he knew he never would.

  Black Bird rapped the outside of his aunt and uncle’s wigwam. Ettawageszhig answered, stepping out into the snow. One look in Black Bird’s eyes was all it took to know. His uncle just embraced him, holding him tenderly in the cold of Manidoo-giizisoons.

  “Ninaniinawendam,” His uncle said, hugging his nephew tight. “You should have never had to bear this. It’s a cruelty of life to lose your parents so young.”

  “Aawan,” Black Bird replied. “But life is cruel, is it not?”

  “At times. At times not. It is through those highs and lows that we all must tread, no? And despite what you may think, we have some control over all of it, though never as much as we’d like. Come—let’s get you something to eat. You should never face such tragedies on an empty stomach, at least.”

  And so he did. His aunt cooked them all an extravagant feast of smoked venison, roasted winter squash, and soup with wild rice. Black Bird ate ravenously, his appetite somehow managing to find itself. Perhaps he ate more fervently because of his father’s passing, for he had always heard the Island Folk reserved the biggest feasts for their funerals. A death in their community was an event that would shake the whole village, and all would feast tremendously to honor their transition into the next life. This was not the whole village—most here hardly knew him at all, and none well enough to mourn him. The best Black Bird could do, then, is eat enough for an entire village. Besides, he quickly found that he was starving, and his aunt’s cooking almost made up for her nastiness.

  Then, they split up. Ettawagheszhig went off to the hollow nearby, to seek out a wabanow for the funeral rites. Black Bird and his aunt went back to the wigwam to fetch the body. She brought a bucket of water to clean him, and both of them did so silently, not even sharing a glance between them. Not that there was anything that needed to be said—both of them understood each other, and neither would change. The only thing they had in common was an obligation to a dead man’s body, and they performed their duties with diligence and respect. They combed his hair, painted his face, and wrapped his body in a burial blanket. Then they lifted him together, and left the wigwam.

  Outside, the wabanow and Ettawagheszhig had already started preparing a spot for his burial. He would be buried alongside everyone else in his wife’s family, along with his pipe, the only personal item he had. Black Bird and Ettawagheszhig placed his body on a wooden slab and lowered him carefully into the grave. A wooden totem was placed at the foot of the grave, and a fire was lit at its head. The Wabanow spoke an Odawa eulogy—not to commemorate the dead, but to give it careful instructions, guiding it along on the Path of Souls to the afterlife. Black Bird stood between his cousins, his eyes glazed over through the rising smoke. They patted his back to comfort him, but he could hardly tell. All he could think about was the ritual itself. It wasn’t his father’s—not completely. But it was not completely foreign, either. He had chosen this place, after all, as the one to settle down in, even if only for a scant few years. He chose to marry an Odawa woman, to become part of an Odawa family, so perhaps being given an Odawa burial was not some great betrayal after all. There was a chance, strange as it was, that this was his Truth. And this thought brought Black Bird some much-needed peace, quelling his guilt-ridden heart.

  After the ceremony, Black Bird stripped some bark off the birch tree by his family’s wigwam. He curled it around his finger tightly, until it stuck that way, then hammered it above the wigwam’s entrance. The elders said this cord was meant to look like a snake, which the malevolent spirits that haunted dead places feared, and would stay away from. As he did, he couldn’t help but smile. His father had been afraid of Snakes, too, of a larger and western kind. Perhaps then, he would be repelled by it too, and not think to linger here. He could flee, like he always had, and for good this time. He could finally be free of the world and its cruelties, free from his own guilt and suffering, free to wander, as wanderers did.

  Then, those unwelcome things called tears came to Black Bird’s eyes. How strange that they would show themselves now, after everything else. They came freely and unabated, and he could not even muster the strength to wish them away. He sank to his knees on the snowy ground, looked above to the dark winter sky, and wept.

  End Notes:

  * ‘Mother’ in Nishnaabemowin.