Motorcycles & Sweetgrass Read Online Free

away—and extremely pretty. In her hand she carried a cloth bag that from the man’s window appeared to be filled with clothes. The woman entered the dry cleaner next to the roti shop. Through the large storefront window, the man watched her pull from the bag two sweaters, a skirt and a large blanket sportinga Native design. She seemed to be on familiar terms with the Asian man behind the counter.
    Something continued to stir deep in the man. Something familiar, yet it had not reared its head in a very long time. The woman was pretty, that was obvious. He watched her as she took her receipt and exited the building. Taking a chance for the first time in a long time, the old man waved to the woman, his arm swinging wildly out the window.
    “Hey, you—up here! Hi! Hello!” He had no idea why he was doing this, but something inside made him.
    It took a moment before the woman located where the voice was coming from and concluded that it was directed at her. She glanced at the ground floor of the old man’s building, and followed his voice up to the third floor.
    Excited that she was looking at him, he continued gesticulating and calling. “Hello! Hello! Up here! Yeah, me!” A sliver of light spilled out from underneath that locked door, and the man spoke a lone word.
    “Ahneen!”
    Where that had come from, he wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t hold it back. He yelled it a second time, then a third, but then the expression on the woman’s face silenced him, and the light from the locked door disappeared. He’d seen the expression before, a thousand times. It was a combination of disgust, pity and embarrassment. It stung the old man, the remnants of his pride struggling to come out of its coma. Hurt, the old man mustered his strength and responded in the only manner he could.
    “Fuck you!”
    As it turned out, he had summoned up a little too much strength. The virulence of the “f” and “ck”’ sound was more thanhis worn teeth and gums could stand, and as those two words went sailing out of his mouth, so did his right bicuspid. Out over the sidewalk and landing four feet from the woman. Looking shocked and more than a little repelled, the woman got back into her car and drove off, leaving her dirty laundry and the crazy letch in the window behind.
    The old man, equally shocked but for different reasons, watched her leave. So this is what he’d become. Once a mighty battler of monsters, creator of creatures, teacher of tales and both chief troublemaker and champion of Canada’s Native people, he was now… pathetic. He sat back down on his ass, not really knowing what to do or feel. And though he’d gotten up just ten minutes before, he fell back onto the floor.
    He lay there for hours, fading in and out of consciousness, bits and pieces of past lives trying to claw their way to the surface. Wendigos, his long-dead mother. Women and men he’d known, fought and loved. Hunting deer. Buffalo. Whales. Creation. More memories than a hundred people could possibly have, yet they were all his. He just lay there, as his past ran over him, like pages from his life randomly flipping by.
    Then, from the recesses of his damaged mind, she appeared. The face that had once stopped him from wandering the country, the body that had made him forget all the others (at that time anyway) and the smile that had made him hold his breath. He had known from the moment he met her, so long ago, that he could never be the man she wanted, needed or deserved, but so long as he could fake it, he had figured they would both be happy. She must be old now, he thought. Like him. Well, hopefully not like him. His eyes popped open. He hadn’t allowed himself to see her face for decades. Why now? he thought. He propped himself onhis elbows, perplexed. He shook his head, trying to remove the cobwebs from his mind. This was more than a flashback. It was more than an idle memory. This—she—was real. For some reason, he looked out the window again,