Take Us to Your Chief Read online

  Finally, on a shelf beside the window, he targeted the centre of his last victim. A toy robot, given to him by his father before he went away. It was an old-fashioned kind of thing, about a foot high, with moving arms and flashing lights. At least, it once had these things. It used to move eagerly across the floor with lights flashing, filling up the world with excited beeps and sirens. Mr. Gizmo—that was what he had once called it. Now it just sat there, gathering dust.

  The boy imagined pulling the trigger. The gunpowder igniting, gases instantly expanding. The bullet pushing down the barrel, spiralling slightly, flying across the floor and into the cheap plastic figure. Bits of department store robot parts and made-in-China electronic guts exploding across the room.

  “Hey, don’t point that thing at me. What did I do?”

  Everything in the room stopped. There had been a voice. Definitely a voice. His hand with the gun fell to his lap as he quickly scanned the room. He was alone, as always. He almost dropped the handgun, but when odd and unexpected things happen, perhaps that’s an even better time to have a weapon. Door was closed. Cellphone turned off. The only thing the boy could hear now was his own heartbeat.

  He did the only logical thing he could think of and asked, “Where…? Who said that?”

  No answer. Silence, except for the creaking of the bed as he stood up, turning a full 360 in a second attempt to locate who, or what, had spoken.

  Eyeing his old friend warily, the boy approached the toy robot slowly. He leaned in toward the familiar object, studying its worn plastic face and body. The boy hadn’t paid this much attention to Mr. Gizmo in a long time. He reached up to his old childhood acquaintance, taking it firmly in his free hand. It wasn’t talking. It wasn’t doing anything. Just staring back at him, if inanimate objects can indeed stare back.

  Not knowing what else to do, he knocked the side of the robot’s head with the barrel of the gun—twice. You know, just to be sure.

  “You know I can’t feel anything. However, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t do that again.”

  This time, the robot moved. Thanks to a hand opening in surprise and the power of gravity, it plummeted about four feet straight down and then bounced twice on the thick rug. Backing into his dresser, the boy raised his gun, aiming directly at the thing on the floor.

  “Who… what the fuck are you?”

  There was a very pregnant pause before the boy received an answer.

  “If I remember correctly, you used to call me Mr. Gizmo. Never liked that name but also never liked the cheap plastic they made me with. Will you please put that gun down? I know I’m obsolete, but I also know I was not put on Turtle Island to become target practice. I would like my end as a robot to be a little less violent.”

  Lying face down on the rug, the robot was still. Even if it was indeed talking, it was not moving. None of this made sense. As if to prove his point, the boy continued to point his gun at the toy. At the moment, he was out of other options.

  “You! Why… why are you talking? You never talked before.”

  Sluggishly, as if mired in a dream, the white-and-silver toy managed to roll over onto its back. Its eyes—plastic nodules, actually—were now facing upwards, looking toward the boy and glowing faintly.

  “I will tell you if you put the damn gun down.”

  Although it seemed to the boy that the whole world was spinning around him, he elected not to do as requested.

  “Do I look like I’m dangerous? Is this what dangerous looks like to you?”

  The boy had to give the robot that. Unless it was one of those Transformer-type things, this toy would have a serious problem overpowering or even hurting him. Almost reluctantly, the boy lowered the gun to his side. But like a jack-in-the-box, it could and would spring forth if needed.

  “Now, if you don’t mind, can you pick me up and put me back on the shelf? Lying here on the ground gives me a far better view of your crotch than I would like. I would prefer to look you in the eye. Man to man… or robot to teenager, as the case may be.”

  For a few seconds, neither moved. It seemed Mr. Gizmo was waiting patiently, and the boy was assessing the situation. To the best of the boy’s knowledge, things like this didn’t happen after the funeral of most grandparents.

  Suddenly, the robot moved again. Left to right, then right to left, as it struggled against both gravity and a discarded T-shirt that was restricting movement on its right side. “You realize you are making this difficult. Even if I can manage to get upright, there’s not a lot I can do from down here.” Mr. Gizmo stopped moving. “Well?”

  Taking the gun from his grandfather’s closet had been the boldest and pluckiest of the boy’s limited repertoire of actions. Until now. He could see Mr. Gizmo staring at him, expectantly it seemed. Not knowing what else to do, he grasped his childhood toy in his trembling fingers, ready to drop it, throw it or shoot it if the need arose. But all that was required was to return Mr. Gizmo to his time-honoured location on the shelf. The boy couldn’t help noticing how normal the robot’s body felt. Not unusually hot or even cold. It wasn’t vibrating or tingling. All the boy could conclude was that it felt like any twelve-year-old plastic toy should.

  “Thank you. Now, let’s talk.”

  It wanted to talk. It wanted to talk more. It wanted to talk more to him. This couldn’t be good. “About… about… what? Talk… about what?”

  “Nuclear physics. What do you think? You are standing here, alone in your room, I guess very depressed, with a loaded gun. There aren’t a lot of dots to connect.”

  The gun… The boy had forgotten about the gun still in his hand. Under the circumstances, though, that could be expected. Realizing the situation had changed substantially, he could revisit the need for the gun later perhaps. At the moment, there were other things to consider. He gingerly released the gun, and it landed with a slight thud on a shelf about a foot to the left and just below Mr. Gizmo. Pivoting its head slightly, the robot watched the boy release the weapon.

  “Excellent. I think that’s progress. Remember that ray gun I used to have? I think you lost that within the first month. Too bad. I always liked that ray gun. But kids, right? They wouldn’t be kids if they didn’t lose things.”

  “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?”

  “I’m Mr. Gizmo, remember? From the planet—”

  “Mr. Gizmo never talked. At least, not like this. And not for a long time.”

  “I’ve never needed to. Communication is very overrated.”

  Breathing heavily, his knees dangerously close to buckling, the boy didn’t respond. Reality for him was usually constant. Boringly constant, like waves on a beach. Mosquitos in summer. Trips to the bathroom. The only thing in his community that happened on a regular basis was people leaving his life. Not insane incidents like this.

  The boy blurted out the words, almost too quickly to be understood. “Then why now? Why… why… why…?” But his confusion seemed to be of no interest to Mr. Gizmo.

  “I didn’t like where things were going.”

  Again, the boy tried to coalesce his exploding thoughts. “But how long…? When did…?”

  Normally, the boy wasn’t verbose. He would get away with as little conversation as he could. But that wasn’t the reason he was currently struggling to speak. He fought for the right word to explain what he was trying to express. Then it came to him, though without the necessary grammar or sentence structure.

  “Consciousness.”

  The word had popped into his head, from where he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the kind of word used frequently in teenage conversations.

  Mr. Gizmo had an answer. “I have always been… conscious, as you put it. Just like you are. Just like your grandfather. Just like your bed. Your bike.”

  There was so much wrong with that sentence, the boy didn’t know where to begin.

  “You can’t be ta
lking. Am I… am I… crazy?”

  Mr. Gizmo, somehow, shrugged his little plastic shoulders. “Well, that’s for a toy much more knowledgeable than I am to decide. But enough about me. Let’s talk about you.”

  It seemed his childhood toy wanted to have a detailed and comprehensive discussion with him—about him. Once again, this couldn’t be good. His response consisted of a hearty and fearful swallow. Then he managed, “I don’t want to talk about me.”

  “Yeah, but we’re going to. Look, I broke protocols to talk to you. At the very least you could be a little more receptive. And grateful. Geez, I bet the Impatient One didn’t give the trees this much grief when they showed him the way through the mountains. Or when that carving introduced itself to the Impatient One, who then turned around and adopted it as a brother. At least that carving wasn’t so snotty.”

  Like a drowning man grabbing at a life preserver, the boy suddenly had a frame of reference, albeit one less concrete than he might have preferred. He’d heard that unusual name before, and the references to helpful trees and a carving coming to life tickled the back of his memory. These were stories—fabulous, incredible ones—his grandfather had told him that came from the Kwakwaka’wakw people. His people. What this had to do with a cheap plastic toy named Mr. Gizmo eluded him, though.

  “But those are just… just… legends.”

  “So were the Trojan War and Vikings hanging out on the East Coast. Doesn’t mean they’re not true. The Impatient One’s carving? Distant cousin of mine. Those trees? I knew a gazebo who knew a stump who used to date one of those trees.”

  More of the traditional tales were slowly coming back, surfacing above the sea of confusion swirling around in the boy’s head. He’d listened to them when he was very young, and then again when he was older, relishing their detail and his grandfather’s ability to make them feel real. These were stories of the West Coast that had sprung from the mountains and the sea and were first told way back in the epoch known as Time Immemorial. Starring Raven and a plethora of other amazing characters, who until now the boy had relegated to the same status as Santa Claus and Superman.

  “Now look, dude, I’m sorry for interrupting your little depression fest here, but I did not like where your interest in that gun was going, and I figured I had to say something. There’s been a lot of talk among us about this lately, about where you young people have been going these days. Years, actually. Yeah, ever since the People of Pallor—that’s what we call them—arrived, things have been kind of tough for your people. Actually, all First Nations people. Sort of a hangover of the colonized. We call it PCSD—post-contact stress disorder. But, buddy, enough is enough.”

  “What… what do you… what do you mean, ‘There’s been a lot of talk’? By who?”

  “Us. The things in your life. The things in all Native people’s lives. Am I right, or am I right?”

  The light on the boy’s desk clicked on and off. So did the radio. One of his graphic novels opened a page, and the pillow on his bed seemed to be breathing.

  The room around him had been his sanctuary. A fortress where he could contemplate his place in the world and feel reasonably secure. All those years of confident refuge now went flying out the window, which had conveniently just opened itself.

  Mr. Gizmo still commanded the floor, or in this particular case, the shelf. “This has got to stop. You were going to kill yourself, weren’t you? Or at least you were thinking about it. Come on, admit it. We all saw you.”

  The amazement he had been feeling, freshly tinged with a healthy dollop of fear, was now replaced by embarrassed surprise intermingled with a substantial dose of shame.

  Shaking his head, he muttered, “No, no. I was…”

  “Oh, be quiet. We know you better than you know yourself. You were playing with that gun more than you play with yourself.”

  That substantial dose of shame suddenly became a flood. They had indeed been watching him.

  Down the hall, face down on the bed, his grandfather snorted twice, enveloped in a deep intoxicated sleep. If only the old man could be in this room right now, thought the boy. Maybe then there would be answers to the multitude of unasked questions currently crowding the boy’s brain. His mother’s father had been a treasure trove of cultural facts. Unfortunately, the boy could only remember bits and pieces of what the old man had taught him over the years. Still, above everything else was the Kwakwaka’wakw belief that all things were alive… Actually, “alive” might not be the correct word. Everything had a spirit… Again, that didn’t sound right. It was something about everything in Creation being animate—having a will, an intelligence, a state of being. Kwakwaka’wakw stories were replete with tales of objects come to life. If there was a need or a reason, or more specifically, if they wanted to.

  “Quit denying it. You were going to kill yourself. What an absolute waste of time and energy. And life. You think life is that depressing? Trust me, that kind of death is even more depressing. Add to that the fact you think the best way to deal with all this is to repaint your grandfather’s wall with your brains… Excuse me, but I’m having trouble seeing the logic.”

  “You don’t know—”

  Before the boy could finish his sentence, the robot interrupted with a rude beep and a flashing light.

  “I don’t know? Really? You think I don’t know? You forget, my morose little friend, I was not born on the date of manufacture printed on my butt. I have been around since the days when Raven used to crash all the parties. I just live here now and go by the name Mr. Gizmo. So, thanks to the passing millenniums, I know a few things.”

  A sudden thought occurred to the boy. He could just leave. Walk out the door. Leave all this behind and return to a place where the rational laws of reality still operated. Many things in the universe were beyond his understanding—he was bright enough to acknowledge this—and this was definitely one of them. Everything happening now, here, was not normal, and he was rapidly discovering he was a big fan of normal. Normal had become a lot more important and appealing than it had been just five minutes ago. But the doorknob refused to turn, and as a result, the door would not open, despite his furious tugging.

  “Have you met my friend the door? We have… an arrangement.”

  The boy was getting frustrated. He was being thwarted by a cheap, mass-produced toy manufactured in some far-off land.

  “You can’t hold me prisoner. I have rights.”

  If a quasi-mechanical coughing sound could be called laughter, the robot had just chuckled loudly. Mr. Gizmo’s arm rose, pointing at the boy. “You don’t even know what that means. Besides, you were gonna kill yourself, and to the best of my knowledge, dead bodies don’t have a lot of rights. So given the choice between a locked door and lying on the floor, staining your grandmother’s lovely carpet—which, by the way, is not looking forward to that—I think this is the safest option.”

  Trapped. The boy knew it. Someday, far in the future, if he survived this exceedingly bizarre encounter, he would look back on the events of today and… well, he had no idea what he would feel or think. True, it takes a certain amount of time and reflection to figure out the complexities of any given situation. And in this particular case, a little therapy might also be required. Still, there were other avenues for the boy to take in search of deliverance.

  “I won’t do it. I promise. I’ll put the gun back.”

  He wasn’t lying. He would do that if the talking robot would let him. Anything, including staying alive, had to be better than being held hostage by a children’s toy.

  What’s even worse than being held hostage by a children’s toy? Being lectured to by that same toy.

  “Did you know suicide doesn’t really solve a heck of a lot? Only those who live forever can really understand that. You might think it’s an end to everything that is bothering you. The pain. The misery. All gone in a final act of desperation
. But it just transfers the pain, passes it off to other people.”

  This was all becoming too much for the boy. A talking toy robot that claimed to be a Kwakwaka’wakw spirit lecturing him on mental health.

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Your laptop is my best friend, so we talk. Suicide is really just a permanent solution to a temporary problem. One of the benefits and curses of being eternal is witnessing the history of a people pass by. I was here, in a different form, when the first of the Colour Challenged—that’s another thing we call them—landed on these shores. I was here during the epidemics. I was here when the reserves and residential schools were set up. I saw entire generations of your people… shit on. And they survived. And now, you’re shitting on yourselves. And you know, after a few hundred years it’s gotten kind of annoying. A noble, proud, strong people chopping away at their own legs. Until now, it’s been these Pigment Denied People—we also call them that—doing their best to weaken Native people by targeting the youth. Now it seems Native youth are targeting themselves. There comes a time when even toy robots have to stand up and say, ‘This has just got to stop.’”

  Everything that could make a sound in the room made a sound. It was a cacophony of agreement from a variety of inanimate objects, though as the boy had found out, “inanimate” was no longer the correct word for things in the Indigenous world.

  Once at the top of the food and technology chain, the boy now realized he was definitely at the bottom of the power paradigm that currently existed in his bedroom. In fact, he was finding it difficult to argue his position. How often does a teenager get asked to validate his choice to decrease, however minimally, the Aboriginal population of his community and of Canada? No defence, no rationalization, no justification miraculously sprang to the boy’s lips. So, he said nothing.