The Last Trolley Heater

- 1 -

T

he wind carried both sweet and sour Saskatoons as Bethany walked to the bus stop on 95th. The Arctic air cut her raw, while something older than the cold stirred beneath her parka, a terrifying warmth she couldn’t name. A furnace coiled and festered under her ribs; it rose like it remembered her, coming here unannounced. But when she glanced at the homeless man rummaging inside the bus shelter, she sighed, knowing she’d rather freeze than step inside.

He looked like he stank of piss off a dryer vent, like he had drowned in a skunk's gland. Her boots caked with gravel and greasy slush. She hugged her denim purse under the bus sign, sighed and whispered, “don’t look,” but her eyes flicked anyway.

He sat there, his hands folded, the plexiglass clattering from the wind, and steam rose from his broad shoulders. A hairless Sasquatch, looking as rough as a raw buffalo patty. He didn’t look cold in his sleeveless flannel, frayed denim shorts, and rubber boots. He had claimed the space, defended it, that foul musk holding it like a fence.

The wind shifted. The sweetest Saskatoon berries rushed up her nose. Bannock in cast iron. The aroma tugged at her, pulled her back to the warmth in her chest. She glanced again. He was so handsome in the strangest way. A jawline stolen from Mike’s David. Cheekbones with an altitude.

Then the Number Five cracked down the line, Edmonton’s last trolley bus. Sparks popped on the wire. She hopped on, greedy for the heater seat, the one where warmth climbs your shins. She placed her hand on the fogged window. Cold bled into her palm. When she pulled it back, he was there, outside, waving.

Creator help her. She waved back.

- 2 -

“I’m going to fuck that homeless man.”

Joan told her cousin Bethany, as she twisted the pink phone cord around her fingers, tongue pressing her lip as she thought of the first time she saw him. “He was nestled between concrete slabs on the AGT Tower and surrounded in pigeon shit. He smiled at me, and that face stopped me in my tracks. He didn’t say a word and just handed me some sweetgrass.” She paused, as if the thought of him stirred some kind of ancestral aphrodisiac.

“Bethany, he smells like the sweetest Saskatoon berries.”

“God.” Bethany held the receiver, cupping it with her palm, “I’m gonna make him some deadly chili and bannock.”

“Good luck. You won’t find him. He moves every day.”

“Really?” Bethany said.

Bethany pictured him somewhere on the Avenue, frozen, which opened in her mind like a doorway. She wanted to hold him, warm him up, heck, even go to the thrift store and get him a jacket, before snapping back to Joan’s voice crackling through the line.

“I saw him years ago. He was outside the Cromdale. It reeked of piss and radiator, but the second I inhaled his scent, I floated like Pepé Le Pew.” Joan lowered her voice. “Sometimes I grab some Saskatoon jam and my magic wand and go three or four rounds.”

“Jesus, Joan.” Bethany blushed, worried her daughter Dakota might hear.

“He’s driving me insane. I haven’t slept the same since.” Joan cackled back, “But you won’t find him. I’ve looked all over the Avenue.”

“You sure? He’s a monster. A Sasquatch.” Bethany said with a giggle.

“With his red plaid vest,” Joan shouted, “and those arms!”

“Mmhmm, and those quads in his cutoff jeans.”

They laughed in unison. “And rubber boots!”

Bethany pictured him somewhere on the Avenue, frozen, which opened in her mind like a doorway. She wanted to hold him, warm him up, heck, even go to the thrift store and get him a jacket, before snapping back to Joan’s voice crackling through the line.

“Why the boots?” Joan said.

“Does it matter? It works. So good.”

“Mmm,” Joan purred. “I just want to bury my face in that chest, soak up his fresh pelt.”

“Fuukkin medicine.” Bethany rolled her eyes.

- 3 -

Long before trolley bus Five sparked alone across the avenue, the city once hummed with a fleet of them. Around the time Hitler and Stalin pulled Poland apart, crews worked through the night stringing the brand-new cables, and Edmonton buzzed with change.

William Bareback had dodged the war, slipped past the conscriptors, and kept his freedom. At night he sprawled on the stone wall above the valley, his bundle bunched up like a pillow, boots crossed at the ankles, and a sleepy grin knowing this was better than any foxhole.

The ice-cold stone was a crib, it pressed against his back, and it was as if a fairy had sprinkled doze dust on his face. Nearby, construction workers buzzed, hammers cracked, and William Bareback groaned, as if Thor himself were forging the new trolley. Electric poles’ rattles slapped the air and made him twitch, rolling onto his side.

“Grab this! Hold that! Asshole! Drinks on me later!” the crew shouted back and forth. 

Generators coughed black smoke and Edmonton seemed to launch into the future; somewhere beneath, deep below the river, below the bedrock, below that racket shifted something old.

He cracked one eye. Ursa Major wagged its tail above the half-built skyline, and some loose gravel skittered down the slope, stones plunking into the dark North Saskatchewan.

He shut it again, trying to drift back. A snowy owl hooted. Then the hammer struck once more; the wall trembled beneath him, and the city roared.

He rolled, slow motion, arms dangling, rubber boots hooked on nothing, and slipped. A tumbleweed. Down the valley’s back he went, knees scraping on stones, body cartwheeling through aspen and spruce, leaves lifting in his wake, branches snapping like ribs. Just before he should have splashed into the river, he vanished, like the trees swallowed him whole. A pocket had opened between two willows. A secret pod on the North Saskatchewan, and a doorway flipped open like a flap of flesh.

William Bareback somehow slipped inside, as if the willows inhaled him, forgot to puke him out, and he was gone.

- 4 -

The Five rattled down 95th. Sparks spit overhead where the poles kiss the wires. Bethany planted her boots on the heater grate and the warmth crawled up her legs. Goosebumps rose sharp as a cherry on a KooL, a flush rolling through her chest, burning her neck, her face, sweat beading under her parka. Like her chest dared to break protocol and enter a sweat on moon time. Forbidden. She clawed at her parka’s zipper, yanked it down, and still the heat climbed. She twisted, and cracked the window. A blade of frozen air darted in, but it didn’t fucking help. Unrelenting. Consuming. No breath. No mercy. The heat was climbing, and climbing, it had a mind of its own. What the fuck was happening?!

“Close the fuckin’ window squaw! it’s January!” a Moniyaw shouted from the back.

The driver’s voice crackles over the speaker. “Ma’am, best close that up.”

Bethany froze. Ma’am. When the hell did she become a ma’am? She slammed the window, her face scorching, and she surrendered, helpless, and stared out at Edmonton’s grey smear sliding past. It had to be the heater. That damn bus roasted her alive.

She pressed her palms flat to the glass, chasing the cold, and watched her wrinkled hands as the heat throbbed and fought the ice, wondering when her knuckles had grown so old.

- 5 -

The old people say that around Beaver Hills House the river carried soft spots, little sags in the earth where time sinks and stays warm. They call them pockets, like little green houses. Crops and medicines can grow year-round in them, you know, the good stuff, Yarrows, Tobaccos, Sages, Saskatoons, and of course Sweetgrasses. Real deadly n’ shit.

Most pockets ain’t much bigger than a half bath on a main floor, maybe a walk-in closet. If you managed to step inside, it was like standing in a botanical garden on summer solstice, even on those -50 days.

Some say they were made by places where people, all sorts, women, men, two-spirits, and inbetweens lay to rest. Others say they were made by a salamander the size of a great dane with octopus tentacles for arms.

There was nothing super sacred or haunted about them, just natural folds in the land. A kind of organic phenomenon the river keeps making. Some say they were made by places where people, all sorts, women, men, two-spirits, and inbetweens lay to rest. Others say they were made by a salamander the size of a great dane with octopus tentacles for arms. Some old people say other rivers got them too, that they're all over, on the Thames, Danube, Nile, even the Sumida. Here, on Turtle Island, you can sometimes see a pocket, on a crimson fall sunset, or during a nasty lightning storm, almost like a glass dome that glistens from the refracted light.

Funny how the river remembers the agreements we’ve forgotten.

- 6 -

The warmth of the mud seeped into William Bareback’s wrists. He was stuck in the pocket, in the dark, on all fours. The mud simmered like marrow. Warm water burned the cracks in his calloused knuckles. The moonlight and constellations flickered through a translucent ceiling. It was fluid, like silk on a clothes line.

When he breathed, there was no November huff. He licked his lip. A faint mix of iron and bread crusts being blackened in a pan brought his taste buds back to nôhkom.

He stood up and placed his palm on the edge of the pocket. It was soft, like cartilage, not exactly the inside of a moose's ribs but more familiar, maybe a warm nest. The ridges trembled under his palm; the walls reverberated; delicate chimes echoed through the pocket. He pressed harder and the note climbed, then drifted down the river valley.

William Bareback sat back. Muck filled his jean shorts and boots. His hands rubbed the lump on his head. He laughed. His father’s voice filled his head.

“Billy,” his Old Man would interrupt at random, “That river has pockets on its banks. Little places where stuff grows best.”

Now he was in one. And for a second, he wondered if the river had been waiting on him all along.

Little waves moved against the pocket walls, and the water splashed back against him, like he was a kid again in some cheap backyard pool filled with black silt on a hot summer day.

The ceiling breathed. He could see Edmonton’s skyline up at the edge of the river valley. The city lights glowed and bent across the top of the water. The electricity hummed and the stars crawled along the sky. And he lay back in the shallow warmth and stared up until the moon blurred into dawn.

- 7 -

Bethany sat on the gurney, the paper cover tearing in little creases under her thighs. The room smelled of disinfectant and dust. The clock ticked. The door opened and Dr. Sifton whisked in. He was a pale, tired-eyed man in a stained white coat that brushed past her. His nose was buried in her chart.

He didn’t look at her, just flipped a page, hummed, clicked his pen. “It says late 30s on your chart here. You’re a bit young for menopause symptoms.” His voice was too practiced. “You might be the youngest I’ve seen.”

The heat prickled up her chest, behind her ears. Maybe it wasn’t menopause. Maybe it was something else. Maybe he knows better. She nodded.

“I’ll prescribe you Gabapentin,” he said, scribbling on the pad. “It helps with the hot flashes. Some women complain about side effects. A fuzzy head or suicidal thoughts, mostly.” His eyes lifted from the clipboard, bifocals enlarging the green behind them as they swept over her. “But a good-looking girl like you shouldn’t worry.”

She smiled faintly, hands folded in her lap. Don’t say anything. Don’t look difficult.

“Are there ... other options?” she asked, softer than she meant to.

He chuckled, eyes back on her file. “You don’t want to go down that road. Drugs, diets, all that. People get hooked, especially with, well ... ” Bethany could tell his pen was hovering over the part of the chart that identified her Indian status.

Gurney paper crinkled under her weight. Bethany could feel as his elongated "hmm ... " scalped her dignity with his paternal colonial instincts, but she just nodded again.

“30 years at this darling,” he said, tearing the slip from his pad. He held it out for her to grab. “Nobody’s complained yet.”

She took it and rubbed the scribbles with her fingers. He walked out of the room. She shoved the prescription in her purse and pulled out a pack of KooLs. She lit a smoke right there in the room. “Fuck em.”

- 8 -

The heater was going full blast under her boots, but it wasn’t the heater that crawled up her shins, then her thighs, then her chest. Bethany clawed at her zipper, yanked it down, parka wide open, but the heat kept climbing. Her face flushed red, sweat pricking under her toque.

She placed her hand on the bus window.

She snapped back at that same fukken Moniyaw passenger from the other day. He just dead eyed her, telling her, don’t you dare fucking open that.

She begged for air, for just a thin blade of ice to be swallowed in fire. Her cheeks pressed against the frosted window. The window sweated, fog curdling, then freezing back to a rime of ice. The lamps outside glowed jaundiced, blurred, as if her heat melted them, bent them into swollen eyes that stared back at her.

She tried to sit still but her chest bubbled and boiled. She tried to breathe through it. The flush only swelled.

Bethany caught the eye of an older woman sitting at the front of the bus. Those beady eyes rose from behind her romance novel. Tatakna’s Thunder. The cover showed a shirtless "noble savage" clutching a swooning brunette. The old woman’s glaring judgment told Bethany, deal with it, hun. We all have to.

She wanted to scream, rip off her clothes, tug her own skin over her head like rawhide.

Bethany was burning alive. She leapt to her feet and gripped the string bell, yanking on it.

The bus zipped past the stop. “Just stop! And let me off!” She yanked on it again, and again.

“Sit the fuck down,” the Moniyaw passenger barked through his short trimmed moustache.

The bus stopped. Bethany shoved past the passengers, ignored the mutters following her, and stumbled down the steps.

The Arctic air hit her full on, icy teeth biting her throat, but it didn’t douse the blaze. She unzipped fully, parka flung wide. She scooped up snow from the sidewalk, slapped it against her neck, her face, the flakes liquefied against her neck. Her legs carried her toward the river valley. Anything to escape the molten eyes on the bus, the fervour of voices. Boots slipped and grinded against ice. She skated down the slope of the river valley. The snow fumed beneath her weight. It hissed into a vapour.

Her body was a furnace, her skin roasted, like a sweat in the fourth round, with at least 80 glowing stones. Her skin begged for release. She wanted to scream, rip off her clothes, tug her own skin over her head like rawhide. Jumping into the river seemed like the only viable solution. 

And then it came. The fragrance reached her nose; weakened her knees. That Saskatoon sweetness slid under the burn. A scent so gentle, enticing, full bodied, it curled into her lungs. Cast-iron Bannock. It must be him.

Bethany bent over, pressed her hands to her knees, gulped frigid air. She closed her eyes and let the smell fill her. The fire inside her body shifted, have mercy, it eased. When she opened her eyes, William Bareback was there, at the bottom of the slope between the spruces. A giant, half-naked in the March dark, those arms in that sleeveless plaid shirt, those quads pressing against his cutoff jeans, and those rubber boots. His broad back turned, steam rising from him like horse sweat evaporating.

He shifted, head turning just enough. His blue eyes caught her browns. He smiled and waved. Strolled like a cloud carried him. And then he tripped on a rock, a misstep. His body tilted, toppled forward, down into the black river.

Bethany gasped.

She bolted after him, boots skiing, arms pinwheeling. Snow whipped against her calves. Her heart hammered so loud she couldn’t hear her own breath. She leaned against two willow trees at the spot where he’d gone over, leaned hard over the edge. Nothing. No splash. No ripple. Not a mark in the snow.

She spun in circles. Scanning the bank. The trees. The shadows. How could he vanish? She pawed at the drifts, kicked at the edge of the river bank, clawed branches back out of her way. Nothing. Her chest heaved, the sound muted by the sweet smell lingering in her nostrils. It cuddled into her and nuzzled on her neck like a kitten.

Bethany stood at the river’s edge. “He fell. I saw him fall.”

- 9 -

The hum of the fluorescents pressed on Bethany’s skull. She folded and unfolded the prescription slip, running a finger along its edge until it went soft. There was a girl in front of her, short, blonde hair, maybe a high schooler? She spoke in hushed tones to the pharmacist—an older woman, maybe in her 60s, she had smooth olive skin and a long silver braid. There was a calm about the pharmacist, the kind that quieted a room. Her accent curved her English at the corners, like a Mediterranean wind, Bethany guessed Greek or maybe she was Turkish.

The teen kept her voice low at the counter, her shoulders hunched inside an oversized denim jacket covered in heavy metal patches, the sleeves chewed and frayed at the cuffs.

The pharmacist leaned in, listening close, nodding without judgment. “One is enough,” she said. “Take it with food, and a glass of water after. It’ll be okay hun, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

The sound of her voice gave Bethany a warm feeling, as if she just placed her cold feet into a nice bath, maybe with a few candles, a Rosé, and vanilla bubbles.

The teen reached for her wallet, but the pharmacist waved her off. The teen glanced back at Bethany with a quick smile, then stuffed everything into her purse and slipped out the door. Bethany eased her grip on the slip and stepped forward.

“How can I help you?” The pharmacist said. The sound of her voice gave Bethany a warm feeling, as if she just placed her cold feet into a nice bath, maybe with a few candles, a Rosé, and vanilla bubbles.

Bethany slid the crumpled slip across the counter. The pharmacist took it, smoothed it out, and studied her face instead of the paper. “I love your hair.”

Bethany combed her hands through her raven hair and smiled. Her ring caught a grey one. She inspected it before letting it fall to the floor.

“Don’t worry about losing that one, you can have some of mine.” The pharmacist held out her braid.

Bethany let a chuckle slip.

“You’re warm all the time, yes?”

She nodded.

The pharmacist’s face softened. “It’s funny,” she said. “You spend half getting used to the rhythm. Then you spend the other half wondering where that rhythm went.”

- 10 -

Bethany lay flat on her bed, a bag of frozen peas pressed to her chest. The plastic crackled when she shifted, stiff with frost and freezer burn. She’d used the same bag for weeks, thawed, refrozen, and repeat. A bunch of half-dead lemmings inside fused together into an icy green clump.

She sensed the ceiling fan trace lazy circles through her closed eyes. The cracked window let in a thin ribbon of cold that barely touched her cheek. She wanted to open it wide, but the cold air could crack the cheap copper pipes. She tried to focus on her breathing, hoping the meditation techniques would help alleviate the heat, as if stillness could trick her body into cooling down.

The bag slipped. Peas rolled free, bouncing off the comforter, pinging the stack of library books on the floor. Tink. Tink. Tink. One lodged under her thigh. It was as if they woke up the pipes. The clink-clink started, the radiator hissed, a pissed off cat.

She exhaled, long and low. “Nooo ... ”

Sweat beads pooled at the base of her neck. “Why are you doing this to me Dakota?” The warmth crawled up from the pipes. She closed her eyes, tried to ride it out, but the next hiss broke her.

She swung her legs over the bed, bare feet sinking into the cool carpet. “Oh, for fuck’s sake Dakota.”

Bethany stood in the hall, staring at the old square bronze Honeywell thermostat. She leaned close, squinting at the mercury bubble behind the dusty plastic. The needle sat at 25.

“Jesus, Dakota,” she muttered.

Down the hall, her daughter’s door pulsed with Brittany. Posters from her favourites covered the cheap brown door: TLC, Cobain, and Biggy. The scent of cheap coconut hairspray lingered from under the door. Bethany can hear her daughter’s gabbing echo, talking circles around whoever was on the other end of the phone.

Bethany hooked her thumb under the thermostat nub and slid it down to 18. The pipes groaned at the base of the floor, as if they were saying make up your mind already.

She went to the junk drawer, dug past old gift cards and wine corks until she found a pad of yellow sticky notes. In block letters, she wrote:

PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. I AM DYING.

She stuck it crooked beneath the dial, pressing the corners. Then she looked back toward Dakota’s door. “When did you grow up so fast?”

- 12 -

Outside the Drake Hotel, William Bareback sat on a flattened cardboard box, legs apart, two orange Home Depot buckets at his side. One filled with long, dried-out strands of sweetgrass. The other with only a few finished braids coiled at the bottom like green cobras. He pulled a handful from the bucket and placed the sweetgrass between his knees, smoothed it over on the cardboard, and began to weave.

He hummed "Here Comes the Sun" and thought of nikâwiy as he worked the sweetgrass with decades of practiced rhythm. Thumb over finger, tuck, twist, repeat. Each strand curled in the light. When the braid could go no further, he tied the ends with an extra piece of sweetgrass and trimmed the loose wisps clean.

A small boy tugged at his mother’s hand as they passed. She paused, rummaging through her purse for her chequebook. The boy looked down at William Bareback and smiled. “What’re you making?”

“Medicine,” William Bareback said. “This here’s sweetgrass. She’s one of the three sisters—tobacco, sage, and her.” He handed the braid he’d just finished to the boy. “When you burn it, it doesn’t take smoke to heaven or heal wounds. It just reminds you to make the room to remember kindness.”

The boy held it to his nose.

“Do you like it?” William Bareback asked.

“Yeah.” The boy smiled and tried to show his mother. She was still preoccupied with her purse, mumbling that she knew she grabbed it on the way out.

William Bareback grinned and started on a new braid. The mother looked at what her son was holding, “Where did you get that?” And then she noticed, hesitating, then smiled thinly. “That’s kind, but we don’t have cash.”

“Don’t need cash,” William Bareback said. “It’s a gift.”

She nodded, grabbing the braid from her son, said thanks, and hurried the boy away. 

William Bareback watched them go, then he split the sweetgrass into three neat strands and began again. The air shimmered with exhaust, the avenue alive with traffic and noise.

A man in coveralls and a Carhartt jacket passed by. He spat on the sidewalk in front of William Bareback. "Get a job, you dirty Indian.” Then he went into the Drake for a drink.

- 13 -

Three empty mugs sat between Bethany, Joan, and Nôhkom in Bethany’s apartment, each one stamped with a character from old Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. Nôhkom always claimed the Hector mug. She loved that big bulldog. Steam coiled from the teapot decorated with the cartoon Granny. The smell of orange pekoe drifted through the room, thick and floral, riding the stale heat from the baseboard vents. Beside it sat an open jar of raspberry jam, and an old bunny-patterned plate, chipped at the rim, piled with toast.

Bethany scooped a couple spoonfuls of sugar and flooded her Tweety with cream. 

Nôhkom laughed. “Geez Louise, look at the queen of cream here, can’t even drink her tea black like a good NDN woman.”

“Not even,” Bethany grinned, swirling the spoon slow. Joan snorted, a fart squeezing out. The three of them broke open in laughter that wouldn’t stop. The kind that makes any problem vanish.

“Holy!” Nôhkom said, “Look at Joan here farting in front of her elders.”

Joan wiped her eyes, still laughing. “Don’t act like you two never cut one before.”

“Nah, you don’t get it,” Nôhkom grinned. “The only reason I look like a raisin is because I have to hold it around all this white rice. But you, you out here chasing spirits away with those deadly farts?”

“Kinda smells like a rancid pickle,” Bethany waved a hand across her face.

“As if.” Joan rolled her eyes. She reached for the teapot and filled Nôhkom’s Hector, then poured into her Sylvester, eyeing Bethany’s Tweety. “That is an awful lot of cream Bethany.”

Bethany shrugged. “Heard caffeine and hot tea can bring on hot flashes. Figured the cream might cool it a bit.”

Nôhkom gave a long sigh. “Early for you too, eh?”

This beautiful man, way too pretty to be wandering the Avenue, smelled like the sweetest Saskatoons. Well, he gave me a big braid of sweetgrass. When I burned it, those nasty hot flashes went away.

Bethany nodded, reaching for a piece of toast. “Was it early for Mom too?”

Nôhkom shook her head. “No. Camsell took her insides after your brother was born. Didn’t even bother asking. You know how they are. They decided that’s it, ya NDN, no more kids.” She looked down into her cup. “Guess they figured four was enough. No real menopause for her though.”

Bethany placed a hand on Nôhkom’s forearm.

Nôhkom closed her eyes and swayed back and forth with a bit of a hum. “Me though? I had it bad. Real bad. Nothing seemed to work.”

Bethany huffed. “Shit. How many years did it last?”

“Too many,” she laughed. “But I’ll tell you what helped. This beautiful man, way too pretty to be wandering the Avenue, smelled like the sweetest Saskatoons. Well, he gave me a big braid of sweetgrass. When I burned it, those nasty hot flashes went away.”

Bethany and Joan watched her blow across Hector. She took a slow sip, and smacked her lips. Somewhere in that tea William Bareback was weaving sweetgrass on the frozen Avenue. “He wore a sleeveless flannel and rubber boots. In the middle of winter, too. Can you believe that?”

Bethany and Joan froze, Sylvester and Tweety halfway to their mouths, eyes wide over the rims.

Nôhkom just hummed, tapping her fingers on Hector’s face.

- 14 -

Bethany stood swaying on the LRT. No way she was sitting on those old red felt seats, who knew what was stuck to them?

The train lumbered north from downtown, sodium lights stumbling past the industrial stretch of Edmonton’s north side. Even from Stadium station she could already see Coliseum station ahead. All she wanted was to get home and take off this bra.

She wondered if her bus would be waiting there surrounded by that awful Wall Street—grey concrete and blue trim hunched over the Avenue like a rib cage. Was there an Oilers game tonight? That always messed up the bus schedule.

As the train neared the station, she spotted the Number Five. Idling in its bay below, blinkers on. Her heart sank. One wrong delay and she’d be stuck for 30 cold minutes. Before the train doors hissed open, people bunched near the doors, calculating distance like seasoned commuters.

When the doors slid apart, they bolted. Bethany joined the stampede, but a mix of old people and teenagers clogged the stairwell. One commuter ran down the escalator going up in an effort to beat the stairs. Halfway down, she caught it. The scent. Not dried urine or weed. It was him. The sweetest Saskatoons.

She slowed. Commuters shouldered past her. The air shifted. Her chest loosened. She had finally found him.

At the bottom she moved past the ticket booths, the closed concession, the flickering A-Channel sign, and there he was. Sitting on cardboard with two Home Depot buckets, surrounded by grime and gum. Flannel, cutoffs, and rubber boots. A Styrofoam cup steamed beside him, floating a raft of tiny marshmallows. He worked the grass between his fingers, patient and steady, humming a song.

Bethany stopped a few steps away.

He looked up, smiled, and lifted a hand in greeting. “You look like you seen a ghost,” he twisted the braid’s ends and tied it off with a strip of itself.

Bethany let out a breath that turned to fog. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“That right?” He took a sip from the styrofoam. “Hope it wasn’t for my rubber boots, these are my only pair.”

She laughed, too loud, like she was a nervous teenager meeting Mick Jagger. “No. I mean—I’ve been keeping an eye out. Asking around.”

He squinted, amused. “That so? What for? Are you my cousin?”

Bethany laughed through her nose. “No. I mean, the sweetgrass you give out. I was hoping you could let me have some.”

“The sweetgrass?” He stopped weaving for a moment. “Of course you can have some, but you can buy this stuff almost anywhere, or even grow it yourself.”

She shook her head. “No, no. Yours is different. It’s special. Everyone says so. Even my Nôhkom said you gave her some decades ago. But it looks like you haven’t aged.”

William Bareback snorted into his cup. “I’ve managed to stick around for a while.” He stirred the floating marshmallows with his pinky, licked the sugar off before setting the cup down. “So that’s what they’re sayin’ now, eh? They used to say I was a hairless Sasquatch that kidnapped kids. EPS used to drag me in every time some kid went on a milk carton.”

“They say you’re a medicine man,” she said with a smile like she was meeting the Pope.

He licked his thumb and pressed down on a strand of sweetgrass, stretching and flattening it out. “Oh, Creator, no. I’m just a guy with time on his hands that harvests and braids this sweetgrass.”

Bethany studied the half-finished braid between his legs, the rhythm of his thumbs. For a second, she thought of how absurd it was, this man in shorts, in winter, talking like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

William tied off the braid and gave it a little tug to test the tension. Then he held it out to her, palm open, grass coiled like a question.

Bethany took it, the ends still warm from his fingers. “Thank you,” she whispered. “People say this helps with hot flashes. That it calms everything down.”

His eyebrows lifted. “That right?” A grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Well, damn. If it helps, I’m glad. My mom used to get those something fierce. Used to jump into the snow in the middle of the night with her bare chest.”

Bethany laughed, her fingers brushing the braid. “My daughter says it’s messed up, though. That a medicine man has to save us. She said that isn’t the way the Creator wants it. I think she makes a fair point.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m no medicine man. I didn’t even know it helped. I just harvest and braid and pass them along. If you and your girl want, I can show you where it grows. Anyone can pick from the pockets.”

“Pockets?”

He nodded. “The little warm spots the river left behind. All along the banks. Grows anything, even in January. That’s where I get these.”

She thought about all the sleepless nights. All the burning sensations. She thought about all her friends, co-workers, and family. She thought about Joan, Nôhkom, her mother, and even what Dakota would have to face one day.

She looked at him sideways. “I thought I saw you fall into the river. You vanished. Is that where you went?”

He blinked, “You saw that? You startled me that day and I collapsed right into it.”

He reached into the bucket. “You want a few more? I mean if it helps with your symptoms, I’d love for you to take more.”

“I shouldn’t, not for free anyway,” she said. “Did you want some money for them?” She reached for her purse. “Maybe I can help you find a place to stay?”

“That’s okay, take ’em.” He extended his arm. “I don’t need help. I’m doing fine.”

“Thank you, I should get going.” She stuffed the four braids of sweetgrass into her bag.

“Before you go, any chance you know any other women needin’ help?”

“Plenty.”

He grinned, pushed the whole bucket toward her. “Then take it.”

Bethany looked at the bucket. It was filled with perfectly woven braids. She thought about all the sleepless nights. All the burning sensations. She thought about all her friends, co-workers, and family. She thought about Joan, Nôhkom, her mother, and even what Dakota would have to face one day.

“I can’t, it’s too much,” Bethany said. “I have nothing to offer.”

“You have plenty to offer, but how about you give me five bucks. A little treaty money so I can go buy a new bucket. Don’t worry about the braids,” William Bareback picked up his other bucket filled with dried strands. “I’ve got plenty of time to harvest and braid more.”

“Thank you.”

“Next time we can see where it grows.”