Five Little Indians

At his seventh parole board hearing, Howie makes a statement before the board can ask him any questions. He doesn’t want to waste their time. He knows that he’s supposed to say he regrets beating Brother and that he’s changed in prison. But he isn’t sorry, and he hasn’t changed; beating Brother was the aberration in a life of not causing trouble for anyone. One of the parole board members reminds Howie that it’s their job to “protect the public safety.” Howie demands to know who was protecting his safety, and the safety of the other mission school children. The sympathetic guard who escorts Howie back to his cell encourages him to play the parole board’s game and say the things they want to hear. But Howie has too much dignity to lie.

Much to his surprise, when the parole board’s decision comes down a few weeks later, they grant Howie’s conditional release. On the day he leaves, he tries to refuse the prison’s offer of a ride into town. He savors the wide sky and the breeze on his face as he walks through farmland which reminds him of the happy part of his life, after he and his mother escaped to Oklahoma. But a police officer eventually catches up to him on the road and insists that he ride. Climbing into the back of the cruiser like a prisoner or a suspect yet again nauseates Howie, but he makes it into town, where he catches a bus to Vancouver. 

Some of the guys in prison have told Howie where to go in Vancouver to get his prison check cashed, since of course he doesn’t have a bank account anywhere. He gets more and more anxious as the teller must repeatedly confer with the manager—first to cash the government check and then to accept Howie’s only form of ID, an expired Oklahoma driver’s license—but eventually she counts his cash out onto the counter. Afterwards, Howie wanders around the neighborhood until he finds a diner called the Two Jays, where he stops in and orders an enormous meal from a kind waitress (later identified as Connie). She also tells him where he can rent a room inexpensively.

The next morning, Howie luxuriates in the shower of the shared bathroom, annoying the other guests. But he doesn’t care. He returns to the Two Jays for breakfast, where he also peruses the wanted ads in the paper. Afterwards, he boards a bus toward Stanley Park. He watches through the window as the scenery shifts from skid row to downtown department stores, to upscale neighborhoods and finally to the rich greenery of the park. He spends the rest of the day slowly relaxing as he walks on verdant trails and visits the zoo’s female wolf. Eventually, he returns to the skid row neighborhood where he’s staying and heads to the Two Jays for dinner.

Mindful of his dwindling cash supply, Howie orders much less food than he did the previous night. Connie notices, and it confirms her suspicion that he’s an ex-con. She graciously adds a free slice of pie to his dinner and tells him that she can help him get a job unloading beer at the Balmoral because she knows the proprietor. She also, finally, tells Howie her name—she refuses to wear her nametag so that customers can’t harass her as easily.

When Connie’s shift ends, she walks Howie to the Balmoral, where she introduces him to the owner, Mike. The atmosphere is thick with the stench of beer, urine, puke, and cigarette smoke, and the noise and chaos of the patrons—a fight seems to break out every few minutes—unnerves Howie. Mike offers to pay him $10 a day to come in at 7:00 a.m., unload the daily alcohol delivery, sweep the barroom, and clean the bathrooms. Howie gratefully accepts. Afterward, Connie refuses his offer to walk her home—she must take the bus to her place—but she does accept his invitation for a date on her next day off.

Howie shows up at the Balmoral the following morning determined to do the kind of good job his family taught him to take pride in. The bar and bathrooms are a disgusting sight when he starts. But by the time Mike arrives, they’re sparkling clean. Impressed with Howie’s work ethic, he offers to hire him as a bouncer, too. But Howie declines, saying he’s not good with crowds. Back at his hotel room, Howie reads the wanted ads without finding any promising leads. He falls into a sleep disturbed by dark, traumatic dreams.

For their date, Howie takes Connie to Stanley Park. She wants to ride the train, and while they do, Howie tells her about the train trip he took with his mother to visit his aunt the summer before he went to the mission school. Then he finds himself telling her about the mission school and his escape to the United States. Connie has an inkling of what he suffered; father survived the residential school system and gave up his Indian status to keep her from suffering the same fate. Her mixed-race mother was exempt. Howie brings Connie to visit the wolf, whom he sees as a kindred spirit. Before he was locked up, he loved the freedom and isolation of the American high desert.

Days and weeks pass, and Howie becomes increasingly desperate to find a real job. Nightmares and mission school flashbacks plague him at night. When he’s unable to sleep, he takes long midnight walks. One route takes him through the grounds of a Catholic cathedral. One night, when he’s feeling particularly overwhelmed, he breaks into the cathedral and steals a valuable gold crucifix. As he takes it, he thinks of al the brutality and indignities he and other Indigenous children suffered at the hands of the church. When he tries to pawn it, however, he’s quickly caught and arrested. But the arguments of his court-assigned paralegal earn him a conditional release. If he stays out of trouble for a year and seeks job training at the Indian Friendship Center, the theft charges will be dropped.