Runaway Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

Manitoba
    heat. There’s easier ways to make a buck but you take what
    you can get when the Rambler Typhoon breaks down in the
    middle of nowhere and the Mounties shake you awake by the
    foot sleeping behind the Esso and give you the choice of “jail
    or job.” Still, the food was good and when the guy beside you
    asks you for a smoke you give him one because he told a real
    good one about Cape Breton one night around the fire that
    made you laugh like hell. The gang of you headed west.
    Their names are gone but you recall the places: Come By
    Chance, Sissiboo Falls, Moosehorn, Snag and Wandering
    River. They were Russian, French, German, English, Inuit,
    Swede and Blackfoot and everyone came with stories that
    crackled with the light of the fire outside the bunk house
    and there were songs sung all guttural and low while goatskins
    got passed along with the last of someone’s hash and you
    could look up and see the moon hung like a blind man’s eye
    throwing everything in that prairie night into a mazy, snowy
    blue that made each of those tales a portal you stepped
    through as easily as breathing until the voices stilled and
    the fire died and the lot of you stumbled to your bunks to
    dream of better days somewhere beyond the dry rasp of wheat
    and the press of heat like an iron to your back and clouds
     of
    chaff in your nose. You smoke and watch the land sail by and
    wonder where you’ll land next and someone bumps your foot
    with the toe of a broken shoe and grins and you hand off the
    butt and watch him lean his head back against the wooden
    slat and exhale long and slow, the cloud of it vanishing back
    behind the truck like dreams born somewhere you never
    heard of before.
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    V
    She kept an old and battered Bible
    on the table made of packing crates
    and drank Indian tea from metal cups
    poured from a pot dangled
    over a birch log fire
    in the stone hearth that held
    black and white photos of her children
    and her husband all long gone
    the edges scalloped, curled and yellowed
    and medals from the Indian school
    for penmanship and spelling
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    she lived in Eden Valley
    in the shadows of the foothills for so long
    she said, the hills became her bones
    and she watched the reservation change
    as the Old Ones like her died away
    and the young ones drifted off
    chasing city dreams and left their talk behind
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    but she taught me how to build a sweat
    and sing an honour song to the breaking
    day and to lay tobacco down when
    we walked across the land to gather
    the sweet grass and the sage
    she taught me how to pray with
    â€œalways ask for nothing” she told me
    â€œjust give thanks for what’s already here,
    that’s how an Indyun prays”
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    she told me stories
    legends and amazing tales
    of creatures and spirits and times before
    things changed forever for the Stoney
    and how the nuns at the residential schools
    taught them how to scour everything
    even the Indian off themselves
    â€œthen why the Bible?” I asked
    and she smiled and took my hand
    in both of hers like elders do
    â€œbecause Jesus wept” she said
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    it took me years to finally get it
    and when I did I looked up to the sky
    and said thanks for everything that was
    and is and ever would be
    because Jesus wept
    in gratitude for pain
    and the salvation that comes
    with the acceptance of it
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    when you learn to hold it
    you can learn to let it go
    it’s how an Indian prays
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    VI
    Looking out across the lake and seeing
    how the mist seems to hold it all together
    so that even the loon calls seem connected
    to the side of the mountain standing
    tall and proud as a chief
    or a medicine woman
    the forest dropping to the shore
    like the fringes of buckskin the stone
    of the cliff at the turn of the lake
    a shining bead in the flare of the rising sun
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    it all comes together of its own accord
    and all you can do is stand here
    and take it in and hold it like a