After each meditation was over, Dream-Catcher led a talking circle, where everybody shared their journeys.
The problem was that, although your own little subconscious adventure might have been fun, the visions of strangers were about as interesting as a three-hour shopping-channel marathon. Some people went on and on, and we were all supposed to intone “good medicine, good medicine” after they’d finished. Francy and I didn’t behave very well, although we stuck it out for the whole weekend. (There were no refunds.)
The animal who was supposed to have met us at the end of the tunnel was officially our “power animal”, according to Dream-Catcher. He told us this before we started, his white beard trembling with emotion. This was significant. We were supposed to take the power animal with us in our hearts when we left the weekend.
The people in the circle got all sorts of neat spirit guides. Francy got a hawk, Aunt Susan was met by a wild boar, a woman with a voice like Shirley Temple on amphetamines got a king-snake and talked about it for so long I wanted to strangle her, and the young guy who works at the Petro-Can got a cougar. I got a hamster. Really. A hamster popped out of my subconscious on that first Vision Quest and bowed ever so politely, like the white rabbit in Alice. It had spots and stupid little pink eyes.
I was horrified, and although I tried to think up something impressive to tell everyone when my turn came around, I ended up admitting that my power animal was a hamster. They all laughed, in a good-medicine kind of way, and Dream-Catcher spent some time alone with me trying to put a positive spin on it. I could see that he was at a loss for what to say, though.
I didn’t want to be reminded that my power animal was a domesticated rodent, particularly when I was tromping through a forest full of ferocious bears.
“Yes, I remember the seminar, Francy,” I said. “How could I forget it? I’ve never felt so stupid in all my life. You tell just one hamster joke and I’ll never forgive you.”
“Oh, relax,” Francy said. “I was just thinking that maybe the hamster-thing was your mind playing tricks on you.”
“Huh?”
“Look. You dream about bears a lot, right?”
I nodded.
“They scare you, right?”
I nodded again.
“But you’ve never even seen a bear, so maybe the bear is really your power animal and your mind was just trying not to scare you, so it made it smaller. I mean, a hamster’s pretty harmless, but it does sort of look bear-ish.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
“I think that if you’d been met by a bear at the end of your tunnel, you would have given up right there and left with your aunt. Instead, you learned all about Vision Questing—yeah, I know a lot of it was stupid, but it was cool too, right? So your hamster was sort of a substitute for the real thing, so you could learn.”
“This is a good theory, Francy,” I said. My mind was split between the notion that I was not of the hamster clan after all, which made me feel good about myself, and the realization that Francy was acting like Francy again. If talking about bears and hamsters could take her mind off the mess she was in, I was prepared to cope with it, uncomfortable as it made me feel.
“But if the bear is my power animal, my spirit guide, why the dickens am I so scared of them?”
“Maybe you’re afraid of dealing with something which the bear-spirit can help you with,” Francy said.
“Ooooh. Deep,” I said. It was, actually. I knew that I was suppressing something—I had been for years. My parents’ deaths, my grubby string of failed relationships with inappropriate men, my lack of ambition and my complicated vices were all probably bear-related.
Then, as if summoned, from out of the bush came a great big, black, smelly, grunting not-a-chance-it-was-a-hamster.
Eight
Truth’s drowned in whiskey and water
bargain smokes and trying to keep clear,
truth cant speak after all these years
—Shepherd’s Pie
The bear looked at us, we looked at the bear. Time, as they say, stood still.
I didn’t do any of those things I’d been told to do. No climbing of trees. No singing. No playing dead. At that moment I couldn’t have told you what my name was. I couldn’t think, and I am certain that my heart stopped beating. I do know that I took a deep inward breath because the next thing I registered after my mind had stopped screaming BEARBEARBEARBEAR was an outrageous smell, as if a huge wet dog had burped in my face.
The bear shook its head, registered extreme annoyance and surprise (which, on a bear, is very funny to watch), then showed us his lardy butt and crashed off into the bush.
My legs gave out completely, quivering underneath me like a ruined soufflé. My heart started beating again, pumping hundred-proof adrenaline through my veins—I could hear it goosh, goosh, in my ears. The kind of hyper-awareness I usually only got from dope spread through my body like warm honey.
My vision became so clear I could see the veins of every leaf on every tree. I could have counted the pine needles beneath me, one by one.
“It was only a bear!” I said and started laughing. “He stank. He ran. He ran away!” It was the funniest joke in the world and it was a moment before I realized that I was crying as well.
Francy came over and kneeled down beside me, touching my shoulder.
“You okay?” she said.
I smiled up at her, and she helped me to my feet.
“That was fun,” I said. “Sort of cleansing. I think I might have wet myself.”
Francy giggled, the amusement in her eyes making me feel warm and human. “So, now the hamster is banished, right?” she said. “The bear rules. Got any beer at your house?”
“Yup.” We hurried the rest of the way, not for fear, but for thirst and clean undies.
It was chilly in the cabin. I had banked up the fire in the morning, getting it nice and hot and then pouring a bucket of ashes over top, which usually kept the coals burning agreeably for hours. Not this time. The damn thing was out.
When you rely on a wood stove for heat, you develop a relationship with it, learning to feed and nurture it like a lover. Like most of my lovers, this one was demanding, temperamental and, unless it got enough attention, cold. There were times when I felt like whanging it across the damper with a two-by-four.
Francy stood in the middle of the room, shivering, as I started to shovel ash and lay a new fire.
“Beer’s in the icebox,” I said.
There’s no hydro at my place, and so a fridge would be silly. I got the icebox from Rico Amato not long after I moved in. He thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to use it for its original purpose. He had stripped it down to bare wood and varnished it (it was pine under the enamel paint) and the price tag matched its intended new life as a chic bar unit for some wealthy cottager.
I fell in love with it when I saw it in Rico’s shop, nestled between an old steamer trunk covered in stencilled roses (five hundred bucks) and a vintage sled full of dried cattails (one fifty plus GST).
Rico knew his customers, kept on top of all the latest trends as laid down in Architectural Digest and Country Home, and the icebox was priced