Keeper'n Me

Keeper'n Me by Richard Wagamese Page B

Book: Keeper'n Me by Richard Wagamese Read Free Book Online
Authors: Richard Wagamese
Tags: Fiction, Literary
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This was about three weeks after I got here and no one expected him to really go, so it was an even bigger surprise for folks when old Keeper asked to stay an extra coupla weeks because he figured he needed it.
    His best drinking buddies had been wandering around pretty confused about all of it. My uncle Buddy wasn’t buying any of it.
    â€œAh, that old fart’s just restin’ up,” he said. “Been drunk as long as me’n Keeper been drunk, you stay that way!”
    He was the one to know. Uncle Buddy used to say that when he’s “whistled over” as he calls it, they won’t have to waste any money on embalming fluid on accounta he’s drunk enough in one lifetime to keep him pickled forever. And there’s those around who agree.
    Anyway, there was a lotta differing opinion on whether old Keeper meant what he said about having enough. I thought about this all across the lake. Keeper was one of the people who were there in Stanley’s cabin to meet me that first day. I hadn’t seen too much of him after that, being so busy getting to know folks and visiting around like I was then. I remember carrying him outta the bush once when he’d passed out in there and was getting rained on real good and I remember catching his eye one night on the shoreline staring out across the lake while I was sitting there doing the same, but we weren’t exactly buddies or anything. Still, one of the things you learn around here first is that you gotta respect what the old folks either tell you or ask you to do. It’s part of the way we are. So I headed over to find out what the old guy wanted.
    I stopped by home to grab a warmer jacket and found my ma sitting at the table. Ma’s one a the best moccasin makers in the area and she was hard at it again that night. She was trying to teach me how to do things like beadwork and stuff but my fingers never went the way they were supposed to and I was always leaving little piles of half-done things lying around for her to fix up. Anyway, she was sitting there sewing away like her hands don’t need help from her eyes and she was smiling.
    â€œAh-ha. Got holda you, eh? Keeper’s lookin’ for you.”
    â€œWhat for? That old guy doesn’t even hardly know me.”
    â€œWell, that ol’ guy’s got somethin’ he wantsta tell you. Might help you find your way around.”
    â€œYou talk to him?”
    â€œHey-yuh,” she said. “We been friends long time, Keeper’n me. We were in the residential school together for a while and we even been drunk a few times too.”
    â€œOh, I get it. Maybe now that he’s all sobered up and got his memory back he wants to tell me some juicy stories about him and you!”
    â€œHmmpfh,” Ma said, but smiling all the while. “Ain’t no juicy stories! Even if there were, that old guy couldn’t do any real good stories proper justice anyhow!”
    â€œSo where is he?”
    â€œÂ â€™Member the old cabin we showed you round the bay?”
    â€œWhere my grampa lived?”
    â€œHey-yuh. He’s stayin’ there now.”
    â€œÂ â€™Kay then. I’ll be back soon.”
    â€œÂ â€˜â€™Kay then. Careful walkin’ through that bush.”
    â€œÂ â€™Kay then.”
    My grampa was the oldest person on this reserve when he died. He’d have been about ninety-eight and passed on about three years before I made it home. He’d never ever learned English and from what my ma and other people told me, he was the last of the real traditional Ojibway around here. He had a sweat lodge near the cabin where I was headed, made tobacco offerings, tried to help people and held pipe ceremonies at his place now and again. Real traditional man. I never knew anything about all that when I went out to meet Keeper that night and frankly all the talk I’d heard about it freaked me out.Sometimes it was hard to shake

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