Medicine River

“And I remembered the picture of the two of them. My mother with her dark hair and dark eyes, the pleated skirt spread all around her.”

When Will recalls the photograph of his parents together, it is his mother he focuses on, and although details are sparse, the image suggests a calm enveloping presence.

“Helping was Harlen’s specialty. He was like a spider on a web. Every so often, someone would come along and tear off a piece of the web or poke a hole in it, and Harlen would come scuttling along and throw out filament after filament until the damage was repaired.”

In this simile, Harlan’s role in his community is similar to the spider’s role in nature. The actions of both are reparative and constructive as they mend frayed connections and try to keep their worlds whole.

“I wasn’t able to avoid Harlen for long. He came into the studio with his mouth all bent around his nose.”

In this humorous description, Harlen’s facial expression suggests someone who is always talking, asking questions, and barging in whether he is invited or not. While Will occasionally complains about this, it is clear that he appreciates Harlen and his company.

“Whenever Harlen had something important he wanted to tell me, he’d sort of float around the subject for a while like those buzzards you see above Blindman’s Coulee all the time. He’d start off cold and slow and have to warm to whatever he had to say.”

Comparisons to animals are common in Blackfoot culture, both in dialogue and in names. For the Blackfoot people, there are no “bad” animals. Each has its role in nature. The comparison is thus void of judgment and of the negative connotations associated with vultures. It is purely illustrative in a very specific way.

“Almost anyone could come along to Harlen Bigbear’s once-every-so-often, pot-luck-eating, cash-and-other-valuables hand game.”

Will’s casual language matches Harlen’s casual get-togethers, and the way that he speaks to the reader, as if to an old friend, also conveys the inviting, inclusive attitude of Harlen.

“There’s no point in rushing Harlen. We sat there and drifted together.”

Dialogues with Harlen are often like drifting along a slow stream or through a dream. He talks and talks, and while Will occasionally attempts to stop him, he almost always finds it best to just embrace the moment and let Harlen say what he needs to say. Will and Harlen seem to have an understanding with one another that Will does not share with anyone else in the town or even in his family, and Will’s patience with for Harlen is an example of the Forbearance that Friendship often requires.

“I mean, I wasn’t a kid. I was at least twenty-five when I told that woman on the plane that my father was a senior engineer. And there was no reason to do that. I didn’t miss him. I didn’t even think about him. I had never known the man.”

When Will says that he did not miss his father, it is clear that he was in denial of his own feelings. He still misses him, but now at least he is coming to terms with the fact of his father’s absence and not knowing anything about him, whereas before he compensated with made-up stories of who his father was.

“When you decide to come home, Will, you just call. That’s what friends are for.”

When Will comes back to Medicine River for his mother’s funeral, he meets Harlen, who already seems to know that Medicine River is where Will belongs. Harlen also acts as a fast friend, promising his loyalty to Will immediately—and this is something he never breaks. Will does not feel like Medicine River is home at this point, but he does move back, and before long is settling in as though he had never left.

“Pretty hard to see the bigger picture, when you’re depressed.”

Harlen sees that Will is down and believes that he must be upset over the lack of progress in his relationship with Louise. But the statement is also a microcosm of Will’s life as a whole; Will is caught in a rut, and because of that, he cannot see past tomorrow nor bring himself out of the past.

“I lay there in the dark on my side and dreamed about driving up the hill to the monument, busting through those gates, the tires squealing, bullets flying all around me, the kid yelling for reinforcements, the phone ringing busy in my ear.”

When the basketball team reaches the Custer Monument cemetery, an Indigenous burial site for those who died fighting in various wars of the past, it is closed, and when the guard refuses to open the gate for the group, Harlen feels personally affronted. Will does not react at the time, but he fantasizes about busting into the cemetery anyway, fighting for what he believes is right.

“Hey, I’m going to be okay. Learned my lesson this time. Not going to disappoint anyone anymore. You watch, just like that jump shot of mine. Swooosh! No rim.”

Clyde Whiteman is a star basketball player but unable to get his life together. He often makes unnecessary mistakes and lands himself in jail, which frustrates both him and those around him. When Will goes to visit him in jail, he reflects on the contrast between Clyde’s basketball skills and his life skills. Here, Clyde is aware of that contrast, too, and promises, yet again, to try to live as well as he plays.

Clyde went back to the game, and I watched him for a while. He moved from side to side with the fluidity of a dancer. Everyone else seemed half a step behind, as he wove his way through their arms and legs.”

Watching Clyde play basketball in the jail, Will emphasizes his skill and grace, his ability to move swiftly without faltering. But he is, after all, in jail, because of his inability to get by without faltering in the world. Clyde is like other characters in the novel who struggle with drinking, or relationships, or work, or violence. These men want to do well, but something holds them back from ever truly succeeding, and often this is related to the trauma many Indigenous people carry with them due to government policies that have marginalized them for centuries.

“Young boys don’t know anything today.”

When Granny Oldcrow makes this comment to Harlen and Will, her calling these men “boys” indicates that she sees something lacking in them. Although she doesn’t specify what knowledge it is that they don’t have, it would seem to be fundamental to developing a strong and mature sense of self.

“There is no later, Will.”

Harlen is a man of action. When he gets an idea, he wants to see it through immediately, and when he wants Will to act, he pushes him relentlessly. Harlen’s brother, Joe Bigbear, seems to be just the same; when Will declines a cigar, something he absolutely hates, Joe pushes him to try it anyway. Despite his brash approach, Joe’s short and simple statement is one that suggests that Will is always waiting—waiting to be ready, waiting to commit, waiting for life.

“It was the wind that did it. That damn wind was blowing hard when we came out of the American, and it blew us into Harlen’s car. I wouldn’t have gone, but there was the wind, and the reserve was as good a hiding place as any.”

Will blames his and Harlen and Joe’s decision to climb the bridge on the wind, humorously commenting on the ridiculousness of the situation and unable to think of any logical reason that would have led them to do it.

“I didn’t know Lionel James very well, but I had heard stories. Harlen said he was almost one hundred years old. Bertha said he was about sixty-nine. Harlen said Lionel had been a great athlete when he was young, could run for miles. Bertha said he had had a bad drinking problem, spent some time in jail. Harlen said Lionel had been to some of the old-time Sun Dances and had the scars on his chest to prove it. Bertha said he got those in a car crash. But whatever he had been in his youth, he was one of the most respect men on the reserve.”

In this humorously long and contradictory description of Lionel James, Will reveals the flaws of gossip. Nobody knows the truth of the matter. Fortunately, in this case, it doesn’t seem to matter. Lionel is a respected elder, a sign that Life in an Alberta Blackfoot Community holds true to its roots as a culture that looks to its elders for wisdom and guidance.

“On the way home the next day I bought a paper and another bottle of wine. I was going to make a big pot of spaghetti and some garlic bread. But Susan wasn’t there. She had come by sometimes in the afternoon, collected her things, and left.”

Will’s relationships seem to be constantly disappointing. Susan abandons him the way his father did, and although she was part of his life the way that his father was not, she was never really there. Will himself also has difficulty with being present and making a commitment, such as to Louise, as a result of such disappointments.

“The truth of the matter, she told me, was that marriage was always more of a burden on women than on men, that women always had to take on extra weight, while men just fell into marriage as if they were falling into bed. I tried to stay away from talk like that.”

While Medicine River is not strictly a feminist novel, it does acknowledge the difficulties that women in modern times face regarding relationships and marriage. Will discusses his experiences with knowing women who were abused by their husbands or left with children. Women like Louise have become skeptical about relationships as a result of many bad experiences.

“A person should do something important with their life. You should think about that.”

David Plume was present at Wounded Knee and continues to attend protests across the country. He looks down on those, like Will, who are not politically active on behalf of Indigenous causes. For him that is the only “important” thing to do. Will does not hold this view, but the remark does apply to him in the sense that Will is stagnant in various areas of his life.

“I was smiling in that picture, and you couldn’t see the sweat. Floyd’s granny was sitting in her lawn chair next to me looking right at the camera with the same flat expression that my mother had, as though she could see something farther on and out of sight.”

Photographs can be revealing—but only so much. In this photo of the townspeople, a smile may or may not mean that Will is happy; the fact that he’s hot is unseen. That Floyd’s granny seems to be able to “see something farther on and out of sight” also calls attention to the limits of photography and accurately depicting the past.

“The darkroom was gone. There were holes where the water pipes and the filter had been, and you could still see the line against the wall where the table had stood.”

When Louise buys a new house that has a darkroom, it all seems too perfect to be a coincidence. Even Will starts to believe that he wants her to move in, but when he goes to visit Louise, he finds that she has torn up the darkroom and begun converting it into a bathroom. It is clear that his hopes, however shy they were, were a fantasy after all.

“My mother had short legs, but they could move relentlessly. She could walk for hours, and she never wasted a moment.”

Rose is a strong woman who raised two children on her own and made an effort to give them whatever quality of life she could manage. She was also a proud woman who usually refrained from discussing the past or the flaws of others.

“I floundered into smoother water, and my feet found the bottom. Louise was waving to me from the far bank. She was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. South Wing ran back and forth on the bluff, alive with excitement.”

Will and Harlen can both be boyish in their penchant for risky adventures. In this instance, they’ve taken an old canoe down some rapids despite neither of them having any experience and—predictably—capsized. The scene is comic, but it is clear that South Wing feels the same kind of irrepressible excitement that the men did. The entire operation is botched, and the moment is one of sheer comedy as Will floats helplessly down the river, the excitement of the moment so strong that it reaches the shore.