Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

Maggie drives through the new 300-acre Anishnawbe property, thinking about the concerns that white residents have about Indigenous people buying back the land that white people stole from them. She must get back to work in town, but suddenly gets a flat tire. Just as she sees that she’s out of cell phone range, she hears a motorcycle in the distance.

John/Nanabush pulls up to help. She wants to do it herself, but the nuts on the tire are very rusty, so she agrees to let him change the tire. As they lower the car off the jack, she realizes her spare is also almost flat, so John/Nanabush offers to give her a ride to the mechanic shop of her brother, Tim. She hesitates, concerned about how it will look, joking about the motorcycle’s name: “A chief on a Chief. There was bound to be talk” (88). Finally, John/Nanabush convinces her, and she thoroughly enjoys the ride into town. Virgil and Dakota see them together. Virgil has decided not to skip class that afternoon. Dakota wants to know if she can get a ride on the motorcycle as well.

Later, standing in the woods, Nanabush reveals to readers that he cut Maggie’s tire, so she’d have to rely upon him to rescue her. He reminisces about the last ice age and acknowledges that he prefers swimming in warmer water. A group of raccoons, inheritors of a long-simmering feud, watch him from the woods.

Maggie and Virgil eat the first meal that she’s cooked for him in a long time. He is quiet and uncommunicative, though she is very chipper. She tells him about her motorcycle ride, calling the man who helped her John Richardson. As a thank you for saving her on the road, she invited him for supper the following evening. Virgil thinks the man is a con artist.

At night, Nanabush breaks into the local Catholic Church. He sits and stares at the life-size icon of the crucified Jesus, bitterly asking himself what allure Jesus has that draws people to him: “The more the stranger gazed at the figure on the cross, the less he understood what power Jesus had had over Lillian, and some many others” (97). Nanabush compares his life to that of Christ; they have some things in common, though there are important differences.

Maggie wakes suddenly at 4 am, thinking she heard something. Unable to go back to sleep, she looks through her cookbooks to find the perfect recipe for supper that evening. Thinking about Nanabush makes her feel like an adolescent again. She has not been on a date in the three years since her husband’s death.

Nanabush watches Maggie’s house, thinking that he would like to know Maggie a lot better. He remembers his last trip to Otter Lake and notices a gathering of raccoons.

Virgil skips his first two classes, lying on the big flat rock by the train track. He notices new carvings in the rock, representing a man on a motorcycle and a woman heading west toward the setting sun. Virgil decides to question Nanabush at supper that night.

Riding his motorcycle down a dirt road in the woods, Nanabush sees a raccoon in the road and realizes that will not be able to get away. As he tries to hit it, the raccoon dodges one way, then the other. He only runs over the very tip of its tail.

Nanabush sees Dakota walking in the village and asks her where he can get something to eat. She tells him to go to Betty Lou’s, the town’s only diner. When he realizes that everything on the menu is deep-fried, he loses his appetite and leaves, telling Dakota he will see her later.

Virgil pouts as Maggie fixes chicken cacciatore. When Nanabush shows up, Virgil asks him his name again. Nanabush answers with the names he gave Maggie and Virgil, claiming that he was adopted as a child. At supper, he says he is diabetic and that he doesn’t drink alcohol. When Maggie goes to get sweetener for his coffee, Virgil grills Nanabush in hushed tones about his intentions. Virgil kicks him in the knee, making Nanabush spill his coffee.

When the meal is over, Maggie and Virgil learn that Nanabush is staying with Sammy, the man who showed up at Lillian’s funeral. People think that Sammy is crazy, but this is why Nanabush likes him: “he’s better than television” (120). When Maggie and Virgil ask how Nanabush (who still looks like a young white man) communicates with Sammy, who only speaks Anishnawbe, Nanabush insists that Sammy speaks English, and then quickly rushes out of the house and rides away, thinking that Maggie and Virgil are almost smart enough to trip him up in his lies.

At work, Maggie reviews the different proposals for the new 300 acres, as well as all of the procedures they must deal with as a consequence of people who don’t want them to build on the land. She sneaks out the side door of her office and goes to meet Virgil’s teacher. Virgil is not applying himself in his classes. The teacher asks if anything untoward is happening at home and Maggie says no.

Maggie goes home and stretches out across the bed. Her older sister Marie wants to go out that evening; Maggie decides to go, even though she knows that her sister has an ulterior motive: “Her sister didn’t really want her to have some fun. She wanted gossip, the dirt on John” (127). Virgil is glad Maggie is going, hoping she can get the band and Nanabush out of her mind. After she leaves, Virgil hears strange music coming from across Beer Bay. He sees Nanabush on a dock with his motorcycle; he is playing the music on a large boombox and dancing to it, which Virgil finds alarming. Virgil decides he will find his Uncle Wayne, the reclusive karate expert, and ask his advice for getting rid of Nanabush.

Dakota, whose family has a dock on the lake, is also watching Nanabush. After dancing, he takes off his clothes and swims. Dakota knows her parents would not want her to look at the naked swimming man. Out on his island across the lake, Wayne also hears the music and wonders about its origin.

Sitting in Charlie’s Saloon with Marie and her friends Elvira and Teresa, Maggie laughs and makes sex jokes as the women tease her about Nanabush. Maggie says this will be her last term as chief. The women are sorry to hear it—having a woman in that office has been so much more productive.

Nanabush comes into the saloon. The women call him over. Maggie is surprised to see him—he said he didn’t drink. He points out that this doesn’t mean he cannot come into the saloon. After a few funny, sexually charged comments, Nanabush apologizes for leaving so quickly the day before. He confesses that their questions about how he and Sammy communicate threw him off-balance: He does speak Anishnawbe, but it reminds him of a woman from that nation who loved another man instead, something Lillian consoled him about. The women are all touched and believe every word. He asks to cook a picnic for Maggie the next night. She agrees because the other women will riot if she doesn’t. After he leaves, the women enviously talk about how alluring he is: “I don’t normally like White guys, for both aesthetic and political reasons, but damn” (145).

Virgil paddles a canoe he borrowed from his Uncle Tim across the lake. He reviews everything he has heard about Wayne and wonders if Wayne will help him. He beaches the west side of the island and slowly makes his way inland, calling out for his uncle very softly. Wayne answers him from a cedar tree, drops down silently to the ground, and asks why Virgil is there. Wayne knows everybody in the family is afraid of him. Virgil, a little in shock, finally answers that he needs Wayne’s help. He is worried about the new man’s influence on his mother’s life. Wayne is very reluctant to interfere—Maggie is a grown woman who can take care of herself.

Virgil tells Wayne about the petroglyph on the rock by the railroad track, which looks like a man taking a woman to the setting sun. This gets Wayne’s attention, as does the fact that the same man kissed Lillian the day before she died. The longer Virgil talks, the more Wayne remembers the way his mother talked about Nanabush: “It was almost like she knew Nanabush. She had so many Nanabush stories” (155). Wayne knows that the family is angry that he wasn’t there for Lillian’s funeral. This seems like the right opportunity to finally visit her grave.