Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,77
part of our surroundings.
“Thanks,” said Thomson, looking up at the still-giant Mac. “Without you and Missahba the giant, shaman, I don’t know if we could have stopped the Wendigo.”
“You did much of this, fire builder,” said Big Goose. As he spoke, Mac shrank back to regular size, the excess paint spilling off and mixing with the background. “Medicine man,” he said, now speaking to Mac from Mac’s own body, “you may return me to the lands of my fathers.”
Mac blinked in surprise. “Medicine man? Me?” He smiled, and then closed his eyes. I could sense the change as Big Goose returned to his own afterlife, and once more it was Tom Thomson’s painting alone, with Mac and me as guests.
Thomson took his palette knife and put out the fire, painted it and the remains of the Wendigo away, mixed them in with the shore and the woods. Then he took the palette knife to Mac’s body and repaired the scratches and cuts that the beast had made. After he had done that he shook Mac’s hand again and then reached over and scratched me behind the ears. “You both have my thanks,” he said. “I don’t know how you managed to make your way into here, but you saved me. Uncommon bravery, Pat, attacking the Wendigo like that.” He patted me on the head again, and I winced.
“And without you, Mac, Big Goose would never have known to come.”
Mac lifted me into his arms, prepared to leave. “What about you, Tom? Where do you go from here?”
Thomson reached down to a patch of gravel on the shore and picked up his corncob pipe. It had been stepped on, but instead of breaking it had spread into the paint of the shore, but with a few deft moves of his fingers he once again had a working pipe. He lit it, and after sending up some slow, twisting puffs of smoke, he smiled. “Why would I want to go anywhere? Canoe Lake was always my idea of heaven, and everything around you,” here he waved at the surrounding landscape, “was my idea.” He next picked up the paddle, pushed off the canoe and floated out onto the lake. Before he was too far away, he turned and shouted, “Be sure you tell Jim to take good care of this painting! I’d hate to have to leave!” And after one last wave he paddled off towards a horizon that had suddenly leapt forward.
We both took one last look at Thomson’s rendition of creation, watched as it transferred itself from part of our world to a flat painting in front of our eyes. Mac set me down on the floor, and with a smile and a wink he pointed down to one corner, on the sand by the lake.
I stared closely for a second before I saw them: dog tracks, leading off into the bush.
Ancients of the Earth
Through the frozen streets of Dawson, Samuel runs from two cavemen.
They’re well-dressed, these cavemen, one of them even in tie and tails. But their hair is long and scraggly, and Samuel would almost swear that their brows slightly protrude; aside from the already out-of-place fancy dress, a neanderthalian version of your typical northerner, not at all worried about the niceties of polite society, here at the ass end of the nineteenth century.
Except that most northerners, even trappers and prospectors who spend almost all of their time alone in the bush, can speak in more than grunts and gibberish, and Samuel doubts even the most ruthless of them would be so keen to smash in his skull.
It is late in the evening, and the temperature is most certainly below minus twenty. Samuel rounds a corner, skidding on packed snow and patches of ice, but he retains his balance. Down an alley to his right he catches a glimpse of two more, one a cavewoman, resplendent in a glittering evening gown, which is up around her waist as the male apparently has his way with her from behind. They both yell inarticulately as Samuel passes them by but do not break off their primeval assignation.
Another yell tells him the first two cavemen are back on his trail.
He rounds another corner, and the door to a dilapidated cabin swings open. From the blackness within a voice quietly calls to him. “Quickly! Inside!”
Samuel does as he is bid, and the door closes behind him. It is darker inside than out; he can see nothing, but outside, over the pounding of