Medicine River

Will describes his friendship with Harlen as difficult, as Harlen can be pushy and at times overbearing. Harlen comes into Will’s studio one day with a basketball jersey over his jacket and tells Will he has to join the “Medicine River Friendship Centre Warriors … [an] All-Native team” (11). Harlen just recently became coach. Harlen insists that he can tell just by looking that Will has a natural talent for the game. Will remembers hearing the same thing from his basketball coach in school, who assumed that Will would be good at basketball due to his height. Will feels he plays below average at best, and when he plays the first game, this is proven to be true. He thinks about how he was always expected to have athletic talent, even by his mother, but this never came to fruition. His brother, James, was skilled at drawing, and at one point drew an eagle that Will still remembers. When their neighbor found the drawing, he encouraged Will to help him ruin it; James’s reaction was to make an even bigger one and hang it outside their window. It stayed there until “there was nothing left but the tape and shreds of brown paper” (19).

Harlen attempts to inspire the younger team members, Floyd and Elwood, and a few others, to play better basketball. He encourages them not to drink before games and takes the team out in the cold and reminds them to remember where they are. He considers it a lesson in teaching the importance of positions in a game. In the next basketball game, Harlen takes Will’s place and lets him play for only a minute or two, once again reminding Will of his childhood experiences with sports. Will feels affronted, given that he didn’t even want to join the team, and he tries to get back at Harlan by poking fun at him for having been a hoop dancer at one point. Harlen denies that he was and claims that it was his cousin Billy who was the hoop dancer. Will soon finds out from Floyd that there is nobody named Billy, and that Harlen lied.

Harlen tries to set Will up with a local woman named Louise Heavyman, who also happens to do their taxes. Will thinks Louise is a nice person but finds Harlen’s questions about marriage and prospects with Louise out of place. Still, he accepts that Harlen means well. When he tells Harlen that half of marriages end in divorce, Harlen optimistically replies, “If you could get odds like that in Vegas, you’d be rich” (24). A few days later, Harlen tells Will that Louise is getting married to a Cree man from Edmonton, and a few weeks after that, he informs Will that Louise and her boyfriend broke up. Louise is pregnant, and Harlen worries she will be socially ostracized. He hints that Will should date her since he happens to be single anyway, and at first Will declines, but soon finds himself going to visit Louise at work. She mentions that Harlen has already sent three other men to ask her out, but Will calls her later and tells her he’s serious.

Over the next few months, Will and Louise become close, but it seems to be more of a friendship than anything else. When Louise goes into labor, she calls Will, who spends the night waiting at the hospital. All night, the nurses think he is Louise’s husband and the baby’s father, and when the girl is born, Will jokingly names her South Wing after the area of the hospital where she is born, but the nurses take him seriously and write it down on the card. When Will later visits Louise, she tells him that her father likes the name South Wing, but that she has chosen the name Wilma, likely after Will himself. She tells Will she hopes they can go out when the baby is settled. Will goes to see the baby in the nursery and stares at her, still thinking of her as South Wing and as his own.

The husband of January, a relative of Will’s, recently ended his own life, and Will is taking January to the funeral. Her husband was known to be violent toward her, but January never filed charges, always defending him instead. On the way home from the funeral, January admits to having written the suicide note, but explains that she found her husband already dead, with a pen and blank piece of paper in his hand. She thinks his death might have been accidental and wrote the note to save his reputation. After her husband’s death, January made an effort to evoke positive memories of him, and Will marvels at how the man’s image slowly transforms due to his wife’s efforts.

Will recalls a woman named Mrs. Oswald who lived in his childhood apartment complex with her daughter, Lena. She often wore expensive clothing despite having little money and was eccentric. Will remembers one day when she came out onto the roof of the building and marveled at the view and the “fine, manly wind” (38). Mrs. Oswald said that her husband died, but Lena revealed to Will that he, too, was violent and that they were trying to escape him. When Will told his mother of this, she warned him not to get involved with white people’s problems, but a few days later, Lena rushed to their apartment for help, and Will and his mother found Mrs. Oswald sitting covered in blood and with a broken arm.