University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Fall 12-20-2013 The Runners of Shawnee Road Melissa Remark University of New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Remark, Melissa, "The Runners of Shawnee Road" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1761. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1761 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Runners of Shawnee Road A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Film, Theater and Communication Arts Creative Writing by Melissa Remark B.A. Trent University, 2010 Diploma, Humber College, 2000 December, 2013 The Sheeny Man rides through the streets pulling his wagon of junk. Sometimes he is black, sometimes he is white, and sometimes he is French. It depends on where he comes from. Either way, the Sheeny Man rarely says a word and always smells worse than his donkey. His cart comes buzzing with flies and rabid raccoons nesting in the piles. Always mumbling under his sour breath, he prays for odds and ends. He has hardly any teeth left in his mouth at all, but the ones that remain wiggle around when he pushes them with his purple tongue. The little ones hide inside their homes when they hear the Sheeny Man’s bell approach. Maman never sells anything to the Sheeny Man, but she saves up what she no longer wants or needs in the back of the car shed, and gives it away when he comes down Shawnee Road. When Tecumseh children are bad, their mamans say, “You be good, or we’ll sell you to the Sheeny Man.” No girl was threatened as many times as Lulu Marceau. She used to wonder where the Sheeny Man would take her if Maman ever made good on her word. When the children grow up, they realize the truth. The Sheeny Man is just an old gypsy who needs other folk’s rubbish to live. He fixes their broken things, makes them new again, and sells them away somewhere. This is what he does. And the people need him, too. Otherwise, they would live in piles of garbage. Life is hard enough. 1 ONE Sunday, August 5, 1928 Heat lightning flashed violet in an early evening sky above the thick Detroit River. It bounced off the windows and bronze patina towers, off the limestone and brick walls of Detroit’s new skyscrapers. Great ascending steel puzzles of construction lit up above. Momentary spotlights illuminated the Gothic steeples of the city’s cathedrals, onto storefronts down to the avenues where clusters of cars and trucks and streetcars lined up to inch forward at traffic posts. The faces of Detroiters turned up to catch the jagged lightning tails overhead; businessmen and ladies, drivers and police officers, vendors and children; everyone heading somewhere. High and distant thunder wrinkled the air. Across the river in Canada, the light ricocheted off the chalky yellow and brown brick surfaces of Windsor and Riverside, and lit the grasses and low lying fields beyond the neighbourhoods into the county. And in the boggy ponds of the Shawnee Rod and Gun Club, Lulu Marceau crouched amid the cattails, smacking mosquitoes and listening. Hundreds of bullfrogs sang out to each other on the water. Their predictable sounds made them easier to catch but you had to know what to listen for. And she knew. She'd been eyeing two fat croakers facing one another upon a single flat lily pad and chanting their ru-hmm ru-hmm beat. With the net in her left hand, Lulu moved knee-deep into the water. Not too close. She paused within striking distance and readied herself. The pond bottom was soft and wormy 2 between her toes. Before the frogs could respond, Lulu lunged out with a curved swoop. Barely a splash, she noted with pride, and both beasts lumped together in the base of her net. Lulu had a faint feeling then like a scent or a sound that this evening might be her last frog-hunting quest to the pond. She could feel the change ahead. On Tuesday, she would turn thirteen. The shadows blinked purple again in the lightning flashes, and gave Lulu a good shiver. She waded back on solid ground with her catch and dropped them into the waiting stew pot. She was a petite girl, but one whose internal thoughts filled immense and detailed worlds, and as the bats swooped low to drink and then circle back into the plum sky, Lulu’s mindset soured. She was the only child left to mother after her six older brothers had grown up and moved on, and the quiet house on Shawnee made her skin itch. Lulu thanked God often for her middle brother, Lauwy, that he'd married young, moved right next door, and had given her real life baby dolls to play with. So, Lulu kept her hands busy with fishing and hunting and shooting at the Club. Tonight, she should have been content to sit in the muck, listen to the noise of the day closing down, and bag dinner for tomorrow. The day felt off, though. And the feeling had hung on into these dusky hours. A Riverside girl had gone missing. She’d not been seen in two days now, and American criminals were slinking around the county with their fancy cars and revolvers looking for Lulu’s rumrunning brothers. Her mind had churned all Sunday long way more than usual. She yawned. Her eyes felt dry. This is my land, she said to herself. This is Tecumseh. She meant to set her worry free, but it didn’t work. Too much had happened in too short a time to feel secure even on her family’s land. The idea of a person just disappearing from her everyday life could not settle inside Lulu. She moved through the events of her own day plagued by that feeling of absence, just as she now 3 picked up the stew pot of frogs to relocate on the pond. The missing girl’s name was Bernadette Durocher. She lived in Riverside right across the street from Lulu’s eldest brother, Yves. She had met Bernadette only once, Bernie they called her, last summer at the brewery swimming dock in the river there. These were the only facts she knew, and there was no optimistic reasoning why a fifteen-year old girl would not return home for two days straight. Lulu crouched back in the rushes forcing herself to think of all the delicious, hot, butter- fried frogs legs they would have tomorrow if she could just keep her nerve to be alone. Be Spotted Rabbit, she told herself. Be the Indian warrior princess. But she kept picturing Bernie in the navy blue swimsuit and white bathing cap that she sported the day they had met. Lulu's memory had preserved Bernie as the most vivacious girl she had ever seen in person like a silver screen actress. And now she was missing. A new kind of fear settled into Lulu's chest like a beehive. Everything about life appeared the same, but it wasn't. Lulu let that strangeness breeze around her body anticipating some kind of tangible change when something snapped in the copse to the north. A rustle of summer bracken followed. Lulu stood, expecting something large, a deer or a man, and found the familiar shape of Bear clearing the woods. He carried an unlit flashlight in his left hand and a baseball bat in his right. "I knew you'd be here. How many you caught?" he asked, sauntering over to the pot and lifting the rock from the lid. "Only twelve." Lulu usually left it to Bear to kill the frogs. "Want some help then?" he asked, eyeing the pond's inky black surface. "Only if I'm invited for lunch." 4 "You know you are." Lulu turned her back to Bear and the frogs as he began his massacre bashing each one dead on the head. "We still on for the search tomorrow?" Bear asked, hushing his voice. The police were mounting a search party for Bernadette first thing in the morning. An English lady had announced it at Mass. Since Lulu and Bear had met the girl in person, they figured they would have a better chance at spotting her wherever she might be. "Bien sur,” Lulu whispered. Good, she thought. I need to do something more than just think about the girl. To do nothing but think was infuriating. Night was full now; the darkest of blue skies, and Bear didn’t waste time. The moment it seemed he had settled in the water, he stunned a bullfrog with his flashlight, and whacked its pea brain fast.