Dawn Dumont | Issue 9
Excerpt from The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour
It was John Greyeyes’s first time flying. And he wasn’t exactly nervous. More curious than anything, at this airport with so many people coming and going, shooting him curious looks as they passed. All monias. Not even a single brown, black, red, or yellow shade to draw the eye, which meant that he stood out like a donkey at a horse track with his long braids snaking out from under his cowboy hat down the sides of his chambray shirt. John hadn’t put too much thought into his attire. Someone could choke on the dust from his boots and, from the draft he was feeling, he was pretty sure his faded jeans had more than one hole and maybe one more wash left in them.
His clothes were clean, though; his mom had made sure of that. She’d come over last night, convinced that a bachelor like him had forgotten the important things in his packing. She was right. “Never even packed any gitch,” she scolded him.
“Europe’s been around a long time, pretty sure they have underwear figured out,” he said.
“People over there are different,” she told him. “Crazy. Smaller. Loud.”
“Yes, Mom, they’re all leprechauns.”
She didn’t find that too funny. ’Course Lenore Greyeyes was the type who couldn’t laugh when she was nervous, and she was nervous about sending her “baby” all the way to “that Europe” even though he was a grown man of thirty.
“Hey, ratface!”
John turned and saw his brother stroll through the front doors. When they were younger they’d almost looked like twins. But Amos had taken another path since then. While John had become a rancher, Amos had elbowed his way into becoming the Chief of the Fineday Reserve. His hair was cut into a neat brush cut, his pants were slacks, and he wore a suit jacket. No tie, which meant he wasn’t on his way to a white-guy meeting.
“As if, bear-gut.” John looked pointedly at Amos’s midsection. Amos was getting quite the pot-belly, evidence that he spent too much time sitting around in boardrooms making decisions about problems on the reserve and then having no money to turn the decisions into actions. That kind of life would slowly drive John insane. But Amos thrived on it — a bit too much, it appeared.
Amos stopped a foot in front of him and looked his younger brother in the right eye. He examined people’s eyes at length; John had told him a million times that it was annoying as hell. But Amos said he needed to “see a man,” before he could talk to him. After a moment of communing with John’s reluctant spirit, Amos said, “Thank you for doing this.”
John would have blushed if he weren’t so dark. “Yeah, well, it’s Europe. I should be thanking you.”
Amos laughed. “No need to lie, bro!”
John smiled. They both knew John was full of shit. Amos had called him three days before with the ask. “I’m in trouble, little bro. You have to help me.”
John had been breathless after running in to answer the phone — he’d been cleaning saddles on the front porch when he heard the phone; it almost never rang unless someone was having a baby, getting hitched, or dead.
John’s first instinct when he heard his brother’s taut voice was to hang up. But then his brother twisted the knife and his voice dropped to the volume of a summer breeze: “You owe me.”
Seemed like the whole world had gone silent in that moment as John’s thoughts raced backwards, back to when they were kids standing in a moonlit bathroom making promises. John took a deep breath; rent always comes due. ’Course it would have to be something that involved all of his least favourite things: travel, dealing with people, and money.
“The dance troupe got some food poisoning,” said Amos. “Damn near shitting themselves to death. Doctors say they can’t even leave their beds, never mind the country — can you believe it?”
John had no idea what dance troupe Amos was talking about and his silence probably communicated that because Amos went on. “The Prairie Chicken troupe organized by that Redcloud woman — remember her?”
John had a vague memory of a small woman with long, curly black hair. “Kind of.”
“She lives across the road from you! Jesus, do you ever pull your head out of your ass?” This was a constant bone of contention between the brothers. Amos thought his brother acted too stuck up and John thought he should mind his own business.
“I’m gonna hang up —”
“Sorry, you lead a very fully and exciting life. All by yourself.” Amos’s voice was picking up speed. “Anyways, her troupe was supposed to go to a bunch of festivals in Europe, starting off with that Swedish festival for all these Indian people from all over the world — a goodwill tour kind of thing — then they were supposed to head to Germany. Apparently, the Nazis love Indians.”
“They’re not Nazis anymore, Amos, that was more than twenty-five years ago.”
Amos grunted. “Always be Nazis to me.”
Their dad had gone to Germany to fight and was buried over there in a field. “Glad you’re not in charge of foreign relations.”
“Listen to me. I don’t have anyone else or I would’ve went to anyone else. You can drum, you can dance, play any damned instrument — and I trust you.”
“I haven’t danced in over ten years.” John had stopped after his late Kokum Yellow Belly had been laid in the ground. She’d been the reason he started dancing and when she passed, he didn’t feel like doing it without her. And by that time, he was needed at the ranch.
“Don’t give me that,” Amos said. “Dancing is like riding a horse.”
“When was the last time you rode a horse?”
“Who cares? I hate the damned things.”
John clucked his tongue. “Why not chuck it all?”
A pause. John knew his brother was choosing his words carefully, which meant a big sell was coming. He was taking all his ten-dollar words and making them simple for his little brother to understand.
“You know the National Indian Brotherhood?”
“Sounds like a bunch of guys who go camping together and sing kumbaya around a campfire.”
“They’re damned powerful here and in Ottawa. Even down in the States they got pull.”
John laughed at the annoyance in his brother’s voice.
“Anyway — I promised them I would make this happen. I was put in charge and you know I have . . . aspirations, beyond the reserve.”
“Aspirations coming out of your ass.” John also knew that his brother had a pretty wife and five children and this made his decisions more loaded than John’s ever could be.
“Diarrhoea or no diarrhoea, this shit needs to happen. And you are the only person I trust —”
“You said that —”
“I meant it. I know I’m asking a lot — fifteen days with three people you’ve never met. Travelling through all these foreign countries with a bunch of strangers.” Amos paused. “But you know, this could be good for you. You never leave your farm anymore.” Trust Amos to turn John doing a favour into Amos doing a favour for him.
“It’s a ranch.”
“You live out there, all alone. Never even hear about you running around with anyone. You don’t go to any parties, don’t go on any drunks. It’s not normal. You’re thirty, not eighty.”
John laughed because they were on the phone and his brother couldn’t see his face or the way John’s eyes scraped the horizon outside. Always searching for something and he didn’t even know what it was. So then how would I know it — even if I found it?
But in person all exposed in the middle of this pristine airport, John kept a handle on his face. He could even fake enthusiasm and make his brother feel a little better about throwing him into this tornado.
Amos took some tickets out of his pocket. “Here’s all of them. You got your passport?”
John patted his front jean-jacket pocket.
“Good.”
“What about money? Unless you want a bunch of starving Indians calling you from Europe.”
“Oh, right.” Amos pulled a well-worn cheque from his front pocket and handed it over with no small bit of reluctance. “Careful with that now. Don’t spend it all in one place!”
John looked down at the cheque. “What the hell?”
“You’re gonna have to be frugal —”
“$500 for fifteen days? We’re gonna be chewing off our damned arms like coyotes when we get hungry.”
Amos clucked his tongue. “It’s a lot of money to some people. ’Sides the festivals are supposed to be providing most of your food.”
John saw that the cheque was made out to cash. “Where am I supposed to cash this?”
“The bigger airports will have banks and stuff. They have concierges that look after travellers.”
John looked at him, one eyebrow raised. John folded up the paper and put it in his chest pocket. “You better stay near a phone, just in case.”
From The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour by Dawn Dumont.
Copyright ©2021 by Dawn Dumont.
Reprinted by permission of Freehand Books.
Dawn Dumont is from the Okanese Cree Nation, located in southern Saskatchewan. She is the award-winning writer of Nobody Cries at Bingo, Rose’s Run and Glass Beads. Dawn is a keynote speaker, comedian and humorist for Eaglefeather News and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour
Dawn Dumont
Freehand Books, 2021
Purchase a copy here.
The hilarious story of an unlikely group of Indigenous dancers who find themselves thrown together on a performance tour of Europe
The Tour is all prepared. The Prairie Chicken dance troupe is all set for a fifteen-day trek through Europe, performing at festivals and cultural events. But then the performers all come down with the flu. And John Greyeyes, a retired cowboy who hasn’t danced in fifteen years, finds himself abruptly thrust into the position of leading a hastily-assembled group of replacement dancers.
A group of expert dancers they are not. There’s a middle-aged woman with advanced arthritis, her nineteen-year-old niece who is far more interested in flirtations than pow-wow, and an enigmatic man from the U.S. — all being chased by Nadine, the organizer of the original tour who is determined to be a part of the action, and the handsome man she picked up in a gas-station bathroom. They’re all looking to John, who has never left the continent, to guide them through a world that he knows nothing about. As the gang makes its way from one stop to another, absolutely nothing goes as planned and the tour becomes a string of madcap adventures.
The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour is loosely based — like, hospital-gown loose — on the true story of a group of Indigenous dancers who left Saskatchewan and toured through Europe in the 1970s. Dawn Dumont brings her signature razor-sharp wit and impeccable comedic timing to this hilarious, warm, and wildly entertaining novel.
Issue #9 of Send My Love to Anyone
Micro Interview with Lee Henderson
Excerpt from The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour by Dawn Dumont
Excerpt from If I Die, Will You Die? by Kathryn Mockler
September 2021 Recommendations
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