The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer Read online

  Said nothing to me

  He forgave me; I was

  Part of this world and knew nothing about

  Some dead fellow

  Who told Jean’s people

  They could all be born again

  I wondered where they’d find the women

  Who’d volunteer for the job.

  Far Lands, Strange Customs

  (Heron Feathers solves a few mysteries)

  “I’m going with him,” I told my father.

  “No problem,” he said, stretching a beaver pelt

  “Just learn their accursed language,

  Let us know if there really is

  Anything in that book

  And find out what they do

  With all those pelts.”

  Twenty years later, I’d figured out

  How to curse like a buffalo hunter in

  French, English, and Cheyenne

  That the book had only one manitou

  And millions of white guys, somewhere

  Lived in mortal fear

  Of frozen brains.

  The Parting

  (Heron Feather’s mother says good-bye)

  “I will not see you again,” she said

  Giving me a stone with the Turtle on it.

  “There will be a hollowness in the sunshine

  There will be a silence in the night

  I was warmed by your first cry

  I burn with your last farewell

  I am cold with your last farewell

  Somewhere outside my uncle laughed

  An owl hooted, twice

  “Go with him,” she said. “You are young and

  There is a big life ahead of you.

  I am old, and this

  Is only a little death.”

  Part of Some River

  (Lollie indulges in rhyme and romance in the same poem! Heron Feathers to Jean, when they are old, looking back on their life.)

  Oh, Love, we were bubbles

  In the flotsam of time

  Part of this river

  Part of some rhyme

  All promises fulfilled

  All projects on hold

  We had so many rivers

  Before we grew old

  The March wind was singing

  Some wild hero’s song

  The canoe was ready

  The evenings grew long

  And now we’re a couplet

  In the epic of time

  We followed our rivers

  To the end of our rhyme

  All dreams and all rivers

  To the end of our rhyme

  Come and Share the World

  (Heron Feathers on her first night away from home)

  Come and share the world with me

  My night is full of fears

  And on tomorrow’s portages, we’ll place

  Our footprints on the years

  Come and share the night with me

  Warmth on warmth in dark

  When the wind shakes the tent

  You’ll be fire, I’ll be spark

  You be fire, I’ll be spark

  Against the tears of night

  In reach and touch and sudden flame

  Enfold, then hold on tight

  Only the Wind Knows a Woman’s True Name

  (Heron Feathers settles into a Métis village)

  If you think you know me

  Tying my dark hair in the thin morning light

  Maybe you missed the part where

  Wolves howl in the darkness

  Of the frozen moon

  If you think you understand me

  Singing by the fire in the evening

  Repairing your shoes

  Or preparing our meal

  Then you must include the part

  Where I camped alone, silent

  Waiting for my manitou to speak

  If you think you’ve found me

  In softness and warmth in our night

  Be sure to include the unbending rock

  At the base of my forestshadow soul

  Man; if you don’t know the chill of flame

  The warmth of snow

  Stay out of the forest.

  Lesson

  (Heron Feathers and Jean celebrate their first anniversary)

  I am from the woods. You

  Are just passing through.

  You've bedded me and sang to me

  And laughed with me.

  We've taught each other words

  Me, French, you, Cree

  And we've gone a thousand miles

  Canoe and horseback.

  You think you know me, my man

  You will learn to

  Be rough with my fears

  Tender with my memories

  Stay away

  From my dreams

  Unless I ask.

  The Show

  (Jean and Heron Feathers reach the open prairie)

  The sky above was a circus tent

  And we all came to the big valley

  For the show

  The big canoes, the skeering carts

  Buffooning westward on a sea of pemmican

  With the strange burlesque of beaver pelts

  Flowing east like a pulsing brown river.

  Oh, I thought, we have fabricated God

  As easily as a buckskin coat

  And now that we’ve finally made our way to this stage

  We are determined to amuse ourselves before our best of all

  Our creations.

  Watch the people fight; see the buffalo run and vanish

  The grassfires will roll from Batoche to bottomland

  The halfbreeds fiddle, while the locals leave tobacco on

  The hills and the black robes sing of Galilee.

  Welcome to the pemmican palace; may the

  Flesh Made Word protect us from the reality

  Of that vaudeville sky.

  Part 4: North-Central Manitoba

  Lollie leaves the woods of northern Ontario for the woods of north-central Manitoba. She wants some time alone with the forest.

  In the first days there, she finds herself, as predicted by her son, in a thirty-dollar motel room, depressed, sharing the company of a bottle, and angry at time, life, aging, and assorted other things she can’t change.

  But she takes a canoe trip by herself, has a spiritual contact with another set of petroglyphs, and ends up much happier.

  Highway

  (Lollie’s mood darkens as she heads into Manitoba)

  The highway takes me

  West and north

  All skipping stones

  Eventually sink

  God built the world round

  So middle-aged women

  Could never go far enough

  Superhero

  (A hero, to me, anyway.)

  So what did you think you were?

  Lollie Singer, Superhero?

  Did you imagine you could fly

  Ignoring the queen’s highways

  And the forever identical Taco Bell

  That follows you around?

  Lollie Singer!

  She bestrides two cultures

  Her orange kerchief flapping

  In the western wind.

  Watch her repeatedly polish

  Those very bifocals

  That surely give her X-ray vision

  And that wonderful cloak of invisibility

  That makes waitresses

  Strangely ignore her.

  Rain

  (Lollie suffers a temporary emotional setback in a north Manitoba town)

  There were tears in rain

  Spruce mocking me.

  Oh yes! Great beginnings

  A whole world out there

  And none of it mine

  Not a speck

  Not a drop

  Of northern water

  Not lake not river not the crying sky

  This liquid promised me safety

  Out past the black
hole

  Beyond blue horizons

  I am an old white woman

  Drinking alone in a thirty-dollar cabin

  While brown-skinned children outside

  Kick at a ball, like they were

  Dancing in the rain.

  Youth

  (“Like sands through the hourglass are the days of our lives.”)

  Youth is the laughter of a brutal spring, elbowing

  along the land, among the trees, pushing rains

  and truth and warm weather ahead

  It is the sound of new waters running

  in old ditches. It is deceptive, however; the

  sky calls the truth, that summer

  comes stalking us all

  panning us for gold and leaving us

  with eyes turned back.

  Beware youth, that laughter

  in the hills is hostile

  and wants no friends.

  Certain as clouds is the way we are

  tumbled by days

  thrown to be pecked over by

  the dogs of years and strewn along

  these highways when the leaves

  come asking forgiveness and snow sits

  on every blade of grass.

  Last Butterfly from Eden

  (Lollie the exile.)

  I am the last butterfly

  From Eden

  Just out, as the great iron doors

  Slam closed

  In a shower of rust.

  Dream

  (Lollie would like to know what this one means.)

  In the dream

  I was on a bus

  Vaulting through the night

  I knew, in a panic

  I had to get off, and soon

  But I couldn’t leave

  Until I had filled out

  A long questionnaire

  It was in a language I couldn’t understand

  Several passengers

  Tried to help me, but they, too

  Spoke in strange languages

  I looked out the window, and saw

  That long dark train

  Along the horizon

  Racing for the same bloody crossing.

  Cages for Women

  (Some things are more important than loneliness)

  I was frightened of men’s eyes, but

  I am tired of cages

  This is a great planet, but it’s full

  Of women-cages.

  Some have bars

  Some have a doorbell

  Some are as silent as

  A bedroom alone

  I think

  Men and women

  Have not had a good history together

  Except for the men

  I have found more freedom

  Alone in a small motel room

  Than I ever knew as a

  Shape

  In men’s eyes

  On Saturday Afternoon

  (Just Lollie, doing up some Heron Feathers poems in the coffee shop)

  Outside the window of Tim Hortons

  It’s driving rain

  Again, again, again, again

  A parade of trucks and clouds, and

  One old woman under a brown umbrella

  Drift their long wet horizontals.

  The streets are slippery and

  My mind keeps trying to go home.

  If you want to understand

  Pour some brown coffee

  Watch the skies, the trucks

  The rain.

  Now close your eyes and

  Try to pretend you see, strangely,

  One lost woman, writing poems

  When you open your eyes

  There will be nothing but

  An empty cup, and

  Words on paper

  The rest of Lollie is rolling west

  Along a sometime highway sky

  Deep in rain.

  Condensed Service Data for Lollie Heronfeathers Singer

  (No-one should try to work without proper instructions.)

  When to run the diagnostic test

  Run this test whenever a middle-aged Lollie seems to be malfunctioning.

  You can also run this test after carrying out adjustments, to see whether the above Lollie now works properly.

  How to run the diagnostic test

  1. Ensure the Lollie unit has sufficient space.

  2. With the LHS Diagnostics menu displayed, type the number of her days, then press Doubt.

  The screen shows: WHY?

  and time slows down. The Lollie is now ready for you to connect to the test eschatologies.

  If you do not want to test her past or biological functioning, press the No Tears key to disable them. (They will be re-enabled automatically when you terminate this Lollie test.)

  The indicator above the Whatthehell key comes on.

  3. Answer the following questions before proceeding:

  Is life infinite?

  - Is good rewarded?

  - Are memories worth a pinch of coonshit?

  - Is today the first day of the rest of your life?

  - Have you had your morning coffee? You may need it.

  4. The Lollie is moved through a fixed space as shown in Figure 3-26 (Note: Figure not available at time of publication; use road map).

  5. Press the Fictional History button and set the Fantasy Level to 8. Historical accuracy is not required in this test.

  Adjustments

  Adjustment are not required on the Lollie Unit: the unit is self-adjusting once diagnostics are complete.

  (Continued on the following page.)

  Tools And Supplies Required for Non-Adjustments

  To perform the non-adjustments described in this part of the manual, the following tools and supplies are required:

  - $1,477.28. Use credit card (Visa) where possible. Give Lollie credit.

  - Vague notions of First Nations history

  - Desperate need to start again.

  - Warm heart (45 mm hole in it)

  - Lollie reality adjusting tool and test documents (things Lollie should have asked her mother before she died)

  - One heron feather (any condition)

  - Twelve PaperMate Med. Pt. blue ball-point pens

  - Notebook with tear-out-crumple-and-throw-away pages (for poems)

  Error Messages

  There is only one valid error message; it may appear at any time during diagnostics or adjustment. The Lollie Unit may indicate improper functioning on paper or just by the stiffness of her movements.

  - ODYSSEY FAILURE 00h

  - Lollie hasn’t found what she was looking for. Check the connections, the cages, assorted petroglyphs, and the back row of the nearest Catholic church. If that fails, see the section, “Condensed Service Data for Lollie Heronfeathers Singer.”

  Notes:

  - The subject may try to create a few strange and unlikely histories at this point; ignore them - they do not affect the outcome of the test.

  - The highway number maintained in doubtware is printed on the map, and the event consecutive number counter increments by 1.

  - The message SIGN FROM GOD NOT FOUND does not indicate an error condition, merely an operating mode.

  A Day in the Lost and Found

  (Lollie takes a trip into the woods of Manitoba)

  Clouds drove across the sky like

  Trucks on the Don Valley Expressway.

  There was an emptiness to the rain, so

  I rented a canoe, went so far

  I could not hear the chain saw

  The cars roaring

  For somewhere to go

  My longing just too great

  For this quiet girl

  To postpone any more

  I was looking for my losses

  In the quiet lakes where pasts might

  Cling like moss, in a world where secrets

  Were locked in somebody else’s basement

  Then almost invisible o
n smooth rock

  In increasing rain

  Red ochre

  I reached out to touch it, it was

  A hand a snake a black sky spots on the water heartbeat of eternity the silence in the woods the blood through the inner ear

  “I’ll be damned,” I thought, knowing

  Just maybe, now

  I wouldn’t be

  Upon This Rock

  (Lollie ventures out alone on a northern Manitoba lake)

  Had Jesus canoed

  This northern lake

  What strange routes

  Would history take

  Had he owned

  A red canoe

  Every pope

  Would have one, too

  Paddling pilgrims

  Would come to gawk

  At Michaelangelo's God

  Painted on rock

  Cathedral walls

  Would be green, and sway

  With sunlight blessing

  All who pray

  These are No Ordinary Waters

  (Lollie believes she has inherited an affinity for the northern wilderness)

  These are no ordinary waters,

  They are wild, they all

  Shelter fish

  These are no ordinary rivers, underneath

  Are mysteries of bass, wisdoms of carp

  And lots of places to hide

  These are no ordinary lakes, inside

  Such boundaries are ebbs and flows

  Of smell and pulse and cold, cold deeps

  These are no ordinary creeks

  Every one dances with life and never

  Is the same ten feet downstream

  These are no ordinary waters, look

  Deep into any and when the movement slows

  I see

  Me

  The Return

  (Lollie’s view of the planet rotates a bit)

  When I returned, I found, the sky cleared, and

  The heart of the planet was beating like

  An infinite drum

  Tides of time lifted

  The horizon of old pines

  Towards a sun turning red

  It was suddenly

  Too late

  It was suddenly

  Too soon

  I, a daughter

  Of eight to four

  Suddenly scared

  Of the utter shamelessness

  Of the planet

  Jesus, why did you never mention

  The heartbeat of old earth and

  The way the horizon lifts

  To the blood-red sun?

  Pajamas

  (As promised, Lollie sends a postcard to her son)

  I carried the postcard

  Addressed to my son

  Two days

  Edgy, puzzled

  At the blank space on the back

  I remembered him

  At six, in pajamas

  Getting on the school bus

  The day I overslept.

  What could I write? I felt

  I was, myself

  Now getting on some bus

  Happy as hell

  In Spiderman pajamas

  Part 5: Heron Feathers Poems 2

  On her way south towards the Red River Valley, Lollie writes further poems about Heron Feathers.

  This set is about Heron Feathers and Jean in the Métis settlement of Red River Valley; in the early years of their marriage.

  From the Stone Walls of Old Québec

  (Origins of Métis)

  Jean Dumont never knew

  What happened to his parents

  In the stone walls

  Of old Québec

  He scuffed the deep stoneless