Five Little Indians

Kenny wakes up, massively hung over, in a flophouse with a strange woman. He digs a relatively clean shirt from the pile of clothes he keeps in a black trash bag, gets dressed, and stumbles to the Two Jays Café for some coffee. As he revives himself with caffeine, he peruses the newspaper. An article describing the lawsuit victims of the residential school system are bringing against the Canadian government catches his eye. He carefully tears it out, pockets it, pays for his coffee, and heads to a payphone to call Lucy. She tells him to come over, even though it means he’ll have to face his angry daughter Kendra.

Kendra berates Kenny for continually abandoning her and Lucy. Lucy protects Kenny by sending Kendra out for the day. She puts Kenny into a hot bath, brings him clean clothes, and cooks him food. As he eats, they marvel at how much time has passed. Kendra is now 23 and in college. Kenny shows Lucy the article about the lawsuit. She doesn’t think that it will change anything. It certainly can’t go back and undo the damage of the past. But Kenny is curious, and he plans to go to the Friendship Center to see if Clara knows anything about it.

That evening, Kenny and Kendra have a few minutes to talk privately when Lucy steps out of the house to buy cream. Kendra is still angry, but now she’s willing to talk to Kenny. She spent the day at the Friendship Center. While she was there, Clara told her some things about the residential school—and about Kenny’s escape attempts—that have given her more insight. She encourages her parents to attend a meeting about the survivors’ lawsuit.

At the meeting one of the lawyers representing the survivors expresses his confidence that they will win. He invites anyone who wants to participate to speak with him privately afterwards. Kenny puts his name on the list. While he waits to be called, he wonders how many of the attendees he knows but doesn’t recognize from his time at the school. He remembers running into Wilfred. And then Howie comes up to him, drawing him into an embrace and struggling to hold back sobs.

Clara, Lucy, Howie, and Kenny chitchat for a few minutes before the lawyer calls Kenny. He spends half an hour rehashing his most painful memories in detail with the lawyer. The experience is so upsetting that he vomits afterwards, and he can’t wait to get out of the Friendship Center. He declines Lucy’s offer to go home and puts her onto a bus before going out and drinking himself into a blackout.

In the morning, the sound of someone opening the door wakes Kenny. Surprisingly, he feels good. Better than good: he feels twenty years younger, and the incessant pain of his dying liver has vanished. But then he realizes his perspective is skewed. He seems to be looking down on himself as two paramedics put his body on a stretcher. Then Bella is at his side, explaining how he will pass into the afterlife. Kenny can see his village as it was when he was a child, before he and the others were taken. Then other scenes from the past begin to flash through his mind: memories of the Indian School, Kendra as a baby, the logging camps, and Lucy in her kitchen.

When Kenny’s mind settles, he’s watching Lucy identify his body in the morgue. The authorities won’t let her touch him, but she insists on being given space to say goodbye. Kenny calls out that he’s okay, and she seems to hear him. After she leaves, Kenny turns to the spirit of his mother, Bella. She apologizes for the despair-fueled alcoholism that caused her to neglect him after he came home. He tells her that he never blamed her; they were all victims of the residential school system. On the fourth day, Bella instructs Kenny to turn back toward the village. It seems more substantial now. A line of drummers sing a travelling song for him there as he watches his funeral take place in the living world. He catches Lucy’s tears in his incorporeal hands and holds them in his hand as he departs.