Free Wabanaki Blues by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel Page A

Stream before I left, I read that it’s frontier territory. People in this place have been fighting over their rights to land for centuries. The colonists who came here were so ornery they formed their own republic and stayed independent from both Canada and the United States for years. The Indians tried to keep their independence, too, but that didn’t work out as well as they’d hoped.
    One side of a cloudy glass refrigerator contains microbrew beers with depressing names like Grim Reaper and Last Chance Lager. The other side holds milk, eggs, butter, and locally produced sodas, which come in red, pink, or blue. Their names are sweet enough to make my teeth hurt. Black Cherry Charmer. Wild Blueberry Fizz. Razzamatazzberry. I crave a Diet Coke.
    Grumps stands next to a DVD rack and shakes a copy of the movie Smoke Signals at me. I watched this movie like a thousand times. It’s about a couple of Indians who come from the boondocks out West, a place not all that different from this one. The movie is hysterical. I presume Grumps picked it off the rack because there’s a pretty Indian woman on the cover.
    â€œWe ain’t got no way to play movies,” he says. “But help yourself to the books.” He continues staring at his DVD. “They loan them out, here, like a library.”
    I rifle through the yellowed books that smell like my dad and review their titles. Not a bestseller in the bunch. They’re about local subject matter with titles like Logging the Modern Way , How to Dress a Moose in Thirty Minutes , and Foraging for Beginners . I choose one called Wabanaki Tales . The introduction says “Wabanaki means ‘people of the dawn land.’ It refers to the ancient confederacy of the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki and Penobscot tribes of the northeastern United States.”
    At least he didn’t make up the word. I’m hoping the text might tell me something about Grumps’ big “secret.”
    I start to read an Indian story about how a bear saved all the people of the northeast woodlands.
    Grumps clears his throat, makes a fake pompous face, and imitates my father’s professor voice. “I’m glad to see you researching your heritage.” He points to my book. “But don’t believe anything in there. A book can’t teach you our real Indian traditions—excuse me, what your Ph.D. mother calls Native American or Indigenous lifeways. You don’t want to read about our people in books by folks who get their information secondhand. They’re all gobbledygook. All you need are these woods for a true Indian education.” He leans backward. “Books are misleading when it comes to our ancient stories. Too many people believe what they say, literally–like some of your lunatic relations.”
    I assume he’s talking about my dad, who’s chasing down Russian bear legends from old books. I tuck the book under my arm, debating whether or not to borrow it. I don’t want to put it back, mainly because Grumps made fun of it. But he is right about Dad. I follow him to the meat section, which turns out to be nothing but a dented chest freezer full of Ziploc bags, with labels like “rabbit parts,” and “ground moose.” Venison suddenly sounds as ordinary as hamburger.
    Grumps pulls aside a guy in a blood-splattered white coat who is carrying a cleaver. He mumbles something to my grandfather about the “stash out back.” Thanks to my slaughterhouse apartment, I’m not big on blood and so feeling green, not to mention this guy makes me think I’m in the middle of a crack deal. Three minutes later, the same blood-splattered man—who I hope to God is a butcher—slaps a fresh turkey on a piece of brown butcher paper at the checkout counter along with a half dozen bunches of bananas and two sealed boxes, marked “Elmwood.” A list, scotch-taped to one box, says,