Take Us to Your Chief Page 2

  Behind her back, Emily crossed her fingers. It was a silly habit but a hard one to break, she knew. Tracey gave Emily a good luck kiss on the cheek, and Aaron celebrated the launch of the station by eating his apple core. “Hailing frequencies open, Captain,” he added.

  Emily managed to say, “Break a leg, Karl.”

  “Actually,” interjected Tracey, “in the Native community, it’s more correct to say ‘wound a knee.’”

  “So wound a knee!” Emily and Tracey said it together, and with a determined look on his face, Karl stepped into the sound booth for his first noon-to-four shift. C-RES was on the air!

  October 10, 1998

  Emily was growing increasingly weary of these conversations. In a million years, she had never thought her station would devolve into the classic battle of ratings versus content. But it had. Emily was responsible for getting the bills paid. Tracey was in charge of feeding the souls of their listeners. But for some reason, Tracey’s grasp of what could be done with a radio station never really developed beyond using it as a teaching tool. Yes, that was one of its functions, and it could be a pretty strong teacher. But people don’t like to be taught all the time. People like fun and, quite frequently, to hear what the other 30 million people in the country are listening to.

  “I don’t know, Tracey,” Emily said.

  “You have to do it. We have to do it. It’s part of our mandate.”

  “Look, Tracey…”

  “I hate it when you say ‘look,’” Tracey said. “I am looking. I’m not blind, but you might be. I know what this community needs.” Today, she was dressed in a cerulean blue motif.

  Sitting behind her desk, Emily sighed what must have been her seventh or eighth sigh of the morning, if anybody was counting. Already it felt like it was going to be a long day. “Maybe, but I know what this station needs.”

  “What do you have against the Kanien’kéha language?” Tracey placed her knuckles on Emily’s desk and leaned forward in an attempt to get closer. Walking around the desk to face Emily directly might have seemed a little aggressive.

  “That’s a stupid question and you know it. I have constantly supported you and your cultural programming, but occasionally you, Ms. Greene, have to tune in to reality. We have your language show. We have your Mohawk—”

  “Kanien’kéha.”

  “Kanien’kéha, then, your Kanien’kéha cooking show. Your Kanien’kéha fashion report. You’ve only done four shows and already you’re running out of topics for the fashion show. I even let you have your specials. The one about the existential view of Kanien’kéha was actually interesting. ‘I think Kanien’kéha, therefore I am Kanien’kéha.’” Emily paused in the hope that her compliment would take the edge off Tracey’s stance. No such luck.

  “Let’s be honest, Tracey,” Emily continued in a softer voice. “Your audience is dwindling. Even Aaron’s Kanien’kéha interpretation of Starship Troopers, the radio play, had better ratings than your latest Kanien’kéha programming. People just aren’t interested in our language. And I’m talking about our people.”

  Tracey was getting tired of the truth. “So what? You want us to just play country music?!”

  “Not just country music. You know we program a wide selection of genres to please the diverse audience across our community. My guess is that listening to archival drum music on the morning drive to work is probably not going to be—” Emily knew exactly what Tracey was going to say next.

  “That show is not archival, it’s historical! Either let me do it, or I will quit.”

  Emily waited for a moment. Should she call Tracey’s bluff? “Fine! You don’t have to pack up your office. You can have Sunday mornings, 8:30. Only half an hour, though.”

  “I’d rather have Mondays at 7:00 in the evening.”

  Emily shook her head. “No, I promised that to Karl for his radio bingo show. In lieu of a raise.”

  “But Karl’s…”

  “I know. But we can’t cancel a show that’s already been promoted. We’ll just have to find a new host. So it’s Sunday 8:30 or nothing.” Now it was Emily’s turn to wait for a response to her ultimatum.

  Satisfied with her partial victory, Tracey took her knuckles off Emily’s desk. She had her show. Now she had to get to work putting it together. “Thanks, Emily. You won’t be sorry.”

  Emily already was. She hated these head-to-heads with Tracey. Somewhere back a few generations they were cousins. And Emily actually liked her cousin. Last year, Tracey had joined Weight Watchers after being diagnosed as prediabetic, and she had applied to weight loss the same force of will she brought to the station and cultural preservation. As a result, she had dropped twenty-three pounds. Unfortunately, she was short, and the added weight had helped make her a formidable physical force to be reckoned with. Now she was just short and lean. During the wet spring that year, her front door had swollen shut, imprisoning her in her own house until she phoned for help. The old Tracey would never have let an eight-by-three-foot piece of wood and glass get the best of her. Being a skinny Native woman has its drawbacks.

  Emily, however, had recently been morphing into her grandmother, an imposing figure with a rather matronly physique. Running a radio station and babysitting half a dozen employees left her little time to burn calories or eat a balanced diet. She was on a first-name basis with the employees of several drive-thrus circling the reserve. Physically, Emily was now the sole alpha woman in the room and at the radio station.

  As soon as Tracey left Emily’s office, she found Aaron, huddled over his precious editing suite, working on something that may or may not have been for the station. He had so many pet projects that it was difficult to know what he was working on at any given time. After years of keeping the station operating, nobody questioned what he was doing because all roads, be they sound or systems, led to him. Focusing on the minutiae of a circuit board, Aaron didn’t notice Tracey enter the room.

  “Aaron! Aaron! Earth calling. Hello.”

  Turning off his headphones and shaking out his new shag cut, Aaron finally looked at Tracey.

  She certainly was looking good these days, thought Aaron. “You look like somebody blew up your Death Star. What did the Emperor have to say?” After years of working together, Aaron could no longer find endearing nicknames for Emily. Theirs was not the first relationship to be altered because of hierarchical office structure.

  Tracey pulled up a chair next to Aaron. “It’s a go.”

  Aaron looked mildly surprised. “She went for it? Wow, I wasn’t expecting that. This is so not her kind of show.”

  “You just need to know how to play her,” Tracey said smugly. “First thing we have to do is find a way to digitize all the old records I found.”

  “Did you threaten to quit again?”

  “The communications between the station manager and the program manager are privileged information,” Tracey said with a full stop. “Do you think you can filter out all the scratching noises? Make them broadcast ready?”

  Aaron was silent for a moment before answering as solemnly as he could, “If you bring them, I will do it.”

  At a garage sale put on by Tracey’s cousin Joseph five months earlier, Tracey had found something very interesting.

  “They belonged to Granny,” Joseph wheezed due to his deviated septum. “Just found them a month ago when I was cleaning out the basement after the flood. She left them to me when she died. I didn’t know what to do with them. Interested?”

  Tracey didn’t want to show how interested she was. Stacked in two beat-up boxes were countless thick polyvinyl slabs of Haudenosaunee culture. Sometime in the 1920s, an anthropologist had come to their village seeking to record traditional songs of their people. He graciously made copies and sent the records back to their grandmother as thanks for her help. Authentic, vintage and original Haudenosaunee social songs and, with any
luck, specifically Kanienké’hà:ka ones. C-RES listeners and the world had to know about these.

  Tracey could dimly remember her grandmother playing the records while she babysat Tracey and her cousins. Occasionally, snatches of the songs would creep out of her subconscious like the faint aroma of some delicious pastry made by a loved one long ago. As soon as she found the records, she knew this new way of generating more interest in her people’s heritage was practically heaven sent. Now that Emily was no longer the main stumbling block, she could put a program together that truly showcased the traditional songs of her people. It might even foster more unity within the Iroquois Confederacy, not to mention placing another brick in the dam that held back the flood of the dominant culture’s influence. C-RES—all social music, all the time was her motto.

  A few minutes later, lugging the treasured boxes into Aaron’s sound lab, a place he liked to call his “magic suite,” Tracey was ready to start immediately. At that point he was huddled over a non-responsive and ancient Ampex reel-to-reel recording machine. His curiosity piqued by her story, Aaron stopped his labours long enough to rifle through Tracey’s precious box of records. A look of concern popped up on his face.

  Tracey noticed it instantly. “I know that look. What’s wrong?”

  “My bad. I… these records…” He took a deep breath. “These are 78s—I didn’t realize when you said records they would be these old, massive hunks of wax.”

  “Why is this a problem?”

  Leaning back, Aaron stared at the box, but his mind was elsewhere, already working on rectifying the problem. “They may just take a little more time. I think I have one of those old-time record-player arms that can handle these artifacts. Give me a second.” He started to rummage around in a large box full of what appeared to Tracey to be vintage tech equipment.

  Tracey was amazed. “You have one of those? In here?” She had heard rumours that Aaron had UFO odds and ends that had been rescued from Roswell hidden somewhere in the labyrinth of his office.

  Finally, she heard an “Aha!” as Aaron’s head and right arm emerged from the crate, victoriously holding a large metallic device. It reminded Tracey of the arm that had been on the record player she had owned as a teenager, except this was much larger and more ornate.

  “Never throw anything out. That’s my rule.”

  Aaron, the problem solver, had come through for her once again. Already he was busy attaching it to a worn stereo.

  “It’ll just take a second,” he said, grabbing his soldering iron.

  Tracey leaned against a counter and looked around the room, wondering what other marvels were lurking in bins and shelves. All around the half mixing/editing, half repair room was a hodgepodge of wires, circuit boards, equipment and tools. An altar to man’s insatiable need to tinker and invent. It looked like a Terminator had exploded in here, which suited Aaron’s aesthetic just fine.

  A few minutes passed before he spoke again. “There.”

  The confidence and finality in how Aaron said that single word gave Tracey hope that she and her community might actually be able to hear what was on the records she cradled so protectively.

  “Let’s take another look at those babies,” Aaron said. Once more, he began leafing through the contents of the box. “I haven’t heard of half of these songs. You sure they’re authentic?” Aaron’s great-aunt was a clan mother, so he was no stranger to the songs of his people.

  “Of course they are. I’ve researched and double-checked as many as I could. I can’t tell you how cool this is! Look, one of the earliest recordings of ‘The Alligator Dance’ known. Same with ‘The Smoke Dance’ and ‘The Pigeon Dance.’ This is priceless.”

  The Haudenosaunee people were well known for a variety of social dances and songs, usually sung with a unique water drum. Who knows? She might get one of those Aboriginal Achievement Awards for her show.

  Aaron was holding up one record, studying the worn and faded wording on the label at the centre. “I’ve never heard of this one… ‘The Calling Song’?”

  “Me neither. I looked everywhere. It seems to have disappeared sometime between when it was recorded and now.” Unfortunately, that applied to a lot of Haudenosaunee and other First Nations cultural offerings in the New World. Segments of precious history lost in the progression of Manifest Destiny. But moments like this made her feel there was hope. “Can you play it?”

  “Can and will do. Actually, this is kind of exciting. A lost archive of mysterious records containing unknown songs. A very Indiana Jones kind of thing.”

  “Just play the song.” Tracey’s pulse quickened.

  Try as he might, Aaron couldn’t get rid of all the scratching sounds loved by vinyl fans. Then, faintly, a water drum could be heard, reminding Tracey of the sound of a heartbeat, specifically a baby’s heartbeat but at an even higher rate. The rapid succession of thump-thumps echoing back from the water in the drum was the sound every Haudenosaunee knew and was proud of. The sound gradually built. The rising volume of the water drum was followed by growing voices that sounded like a dozen Haudenosaunee elders singing in unison. The song seemed to have all the characteristics of a traditional social melody, but then it grew increasingly discordant. Each voice seemed to find dominance over the next, as if the elders were proclaiming their place in the universe. The discord lasted a couple more minutes before returning to the more familiar keen of the traditional social song. Slowly the voices ebbed away, leaving the water drum. Then there was a scratchy nothing before the sound of the needle being lifted. Aaron turned the machine off.

  “Well, that was interesting. No wonder it didn’t catch on. What do you make of that?” Aaron asked. As if Tracey had any idea.

  She was silent for a moment, letting the vestiges of the sound slowly evaporate from her mind. “It was very different. Most of our songs have a purpose or a meaning. What did the label of the record say it was again?”

  “‘The Calling Song,’” Aaron said. “Maybe if you’re looking for a moose!”

  Tracey gave Aaron a quick swat on the back of his head. “Be respectful.”

  “Always,” Aaron gave back. “Are you really going to broadcast it? It’s worse than a Klingon opera.” Grabbing his big mug of coffee with his left hand, he handed the record back to Tracey with his right. “I mean, I can clean it up all you want, but really… You think people will want to listen to that? I mean, I’m as proud of our culture as the next Mohawk—”

  “Kanienké’hà:ka!”

  “Kanienké’hà:ka, then, but that sure ain’t our best work.”

  Tracey had to agree. “It would be a bit intense first thing in the morning.”

  She knew this song had to have some significance. It came from her community, so maybe somebody in the listening audience might know.

  “Still, it’s our heritage.” Tracey’s imagination and enthusiasm ran on. “I mean, it’s a previously unknown social song. Do you know how important that is? Maybe what we should do…” Her mind was still whirling. “Maybe we should put it in heavy rotation and run a contest for the best information leading to the meaning of ‘The Calling Song’!”

  Realizing his mug was empty, Aaron stood to adjourn to the interview room. “That might work. Look, I’ll do what you want, but I’m predicting a disaster.”

  “Disaster? You’re being overdramatic,” Tracey scoffed. “What’s so disastrous about this song?”

  “Oh, any number of things. We don’t know if it’s authentic. We just have the word of a long-dead cultural anthropologist. And you know how considerate they were. It doesn’t sound like any other social song we know. You might just be setting yourself up to fail. And,” he paused for dramatic effect, “I don’t like the song. Makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tracey said. “It’ll be a great mystery for the community to solve!”

  Knowing it was futile to even
attempt to dissuade her, Aaron asked the bigger question as he walked out the door. “Hey Tracey, can I get a ride with you to Karl’s funeral tomorrow?”

  December 17, 2018

  Emily, Tracey and Aaron huddled around the television in the interview room, watching the special report coming from the CBC news network. They hadn’t moved in almost twenty minutes. Movement took premeditated thought and choice, and all free will had been stolen by the television. If a CD of Robbie Robertson hadn’t been playing, there would have been dead air emanating from the C-RES antenna.

  “Do you think…?” Emily ventured.

  “Shh!” Aaron wanted no interruptions while he soaked up what was the most amazing event in recorded history. Barely registering Aaron’s rebuke, Emily placed one hand over her mouth at what she was witnessing. Tracey’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the table, still dusted with sesame seeds from bagels and doughnut sugar. Aaron found the remote and turned up the volume.

  “It has been confirmed. It appears there is life beyond Earth, and it is on its way here. Earlier today, in a joint press conference, a panel of world leaders combined with representatives from NASA, SETI and various other space exploration organizations announced the approach of what appears to be a large spaceship originating beyond our solar system. At the moment, it is located somewhere between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, approaching at approximately fifty-two kilometres a second. Officials are either reluctant or unwilling to speculate on the origins of the large ship, estimated to be over four miles wide. Needless to say, the world and its political, religious and scientific leaders are furiously discussing the implications for the people of Planet Earth of such an event, which we are now referring to as ‘contact.’ In an attempt to communicate, greetings in all known languages have been broadcasted to the approaching ship.”

  “Betcha not in Kanien’kéha! They always leave us out, goddammit.”