The Apple

1. Chapter one
   It was a dare. A dare i probably should've walked away from, but the curiosity got the better of me.

There's a cabin on the edge of our reserve, a short four hour hike out into the bush that our members use to get away from it all; to go hunting, a spiritual retreat, or to dry out. Since I don't hunt, drink or have spiritual needs that aren't already met by Katy Perry music videos I haven't actually been to the cabin so don't know what it looks like.

I made the mistake of admitting this to several cousins who were frequent users of the cabin, during a conversation where I was lecturing them about the need for them to get flu shots. Somehow this became a conversation about traditional medicine, which turned into a conversation about science verses belief, which led to me being lectured about turning my back on my culture.

I maintain, as I explained to them, that culture and belief are separate; you can be apart of one without delving into the other.

"You don't believe in spirits?" Leroy asked.

"No, or ghosts; or anything else you can't prove."

"Bigfoot?" Leroy again, backed up by his sister Sara "we call it a Sasquatch stupid"

"No."

"You're an apple"

"Yes, thank-you, I get that a lot." I did, was going to happen having been raised in the only house with cable on the reserve. It didn't help that I moved to the city at seventeen for university and didn't come back till I had my Doctorate. I was a nerd. I believed in science. And in the mind of a scientist mythology and faith has a hard time co-existing with the burden of proof.

"We can prove spirits exists." Uncle pointed out.

"No you can't."

"Yes we can, some of us have seen them."

"That doesn't prove they exist, that just proves you think you saw something you thought was one." That was as hard to say as it sounds.

"How do we prove it?"

"For starters, I'd have to see one."

"You're not going to see one." Sara says.

"Cause they don't exist?"

"Because you're not open to them."

"Ok, so for me to see one, I have to believe in them first. That's convenient?."

"I know where you can see one," uncle says, I look at him as he dabs his bingo card. "The cabin."

The others all nod, as if just realizing this place exists.

"Spend a week there, you'll see things that'll change your life; spend a night there, you'll see things that'll change the way you look at the world."

It was a challenge, plain and simple. As a scientific mind I was curious. "Ok, a night"

"He said a week." Leroy blurts quickly.

"No, He said a week would change my life, I'm happy with my life, it matches the way I dress. But a night will change the way I look at the world." Besides, I hate bugs, who wants to spend a week out in bug country.

"Three nights." Uncles says.

"Why three nights?"

"Cause the first night you're going to need to get used the place, second nights gonna be about relaxing...third night..." He smiles to himself, "well, we'll see what happens on the third night."

I nod. I might as well go even knowing there's no win to this experiment for me. If I go and don't see anything, it won't change who they are or what they believe; they have too much faith in the unknown to convince otherwise. If I don't though, they'll hound me about not being open to other ideas.

I'm a nerd. A geek. I love other ideas, its not that I don't want to have the unexplained happened to me; its that I want them to happen so I can explore them, investigate them and explain them.

The magic isn't seeing something unbelievable; its seeing it and showing why it should be believed.

"Ok. Three days." I say with a smile.

---

Three days might have been a mistake.

It might be how tired my legs are. I knew that it was a four hour hike, but didn't take into account my cousins are seasoned hunters that like to walk. I'm twenty pounds over my optimal weight and lugging an extra thirty pound backpack of supplies.

The four hour hike took an extra two hours, maybe it woulda been less if I had asked for a guide. The trail there was erratic, and disappeared in spots; I would've been lost for good if not for the GPS on my phone...which lost signal somewhere up the forty degree incline.

I found the cabin though. It sits in a break in the forest with trees on one side and a lake on the other. It defiantly wasn't knew, parts of it were fifty years old while the rest was tacked on and fixed up over the years with whatever people could carry up.

It dawns on me as well, its not going to have any indoor plumbing; I've been holding it in for the last two hours only to find out I'm gonna have to pee in the woods anyway. That's gonna have to be taken care of first.

It's after removing my backpack that I realize along with my legs dying my back is going to be an issue as well. I picked up a cranky back living in the city, ten year sitting in classrooms apparently isn't good for it. I brought some pain killers, but this definitely was going to be a long three days.

---

The first night was uneventful.

The hardest thing I found was making myself something to eat, but only because I had to find a spot closer to the lake than I wanted. Starting a fire in the old iron heater would've been a mistake, sixty years of fires coated it with a layer of soot; and I had images of sending the entire structure up in a giant fireball.

Unfortunately by the lake the air was colder and I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to weather; I hoped that the fire would fix that. Also unfortunately starting a fire is easier to say than to actually do. It literally took six matches before I switched to the butane lighter.

Fed though, just as the sun was going down in the distance; I had time to stop and reflect.

Words can't describe what I was seeing, oranges and pinks bending over the mountains, the calmness of the water, the trees slowly drifting in a distant breeze. I also notice the smell in the air. It's not that tingle that comes from the city that burns the throat. It was pleasant.

Uncle was right, it does make you look at the world differently.

But fuck, my legs hurt.

---

The second night was different. A little more exciting.

I spent the day exploring, inwardly and outwardly. After cooking some eggs for breakfast I decided to walk around the lake to see what nature had to offer.

As a child and a teen, I remember my grandmother and her sister taking me out into the bush. I was reluctant and bored, so spent a lot of the time ignoring what they told me about the plants; which was too bad, as ten years later I would excel in class learning the names of plants and what they did in the wilderness.

I could do that now, I realized. I spotted several plants and fungi out here that lived symbiotic with their tree hosts. Drawing in nutrients, breaking them down so the tree can absorb them, growing bigger. What I lacked was knowledge of what my grandmother would use them for.

Knowledge. That's an important word for me. I live for knowledge. I just wish I saw what she was telling me back than as knowledge and not as her taking me away from GI joe.

Then there was a spider. A Latrodectus hesperus to be exact. Black and the size of my thumb. Enough of a reason for me to head back to the cabin. Probably not dangerous, and wouldn't kill me but would still sting...and if infected would require a week of intravenous antibiotics...not something I wanted to go through right now. Along with spiders, I hate needles.

I spent the next three hours till lunch reading Les Miserable. I've always had a fascination about the plight of the poor in France several hundred years ago. There's something about the down trodden, the suffering, that indians can related to. Life is unfair. I relate.

I spent my afternoon preparing for my cousins.

I'm not stupid, I know them. I know what they're capable of and their sense of humour. And I knew whatever they would try would be tonight, last night they would've wanted to see how I did on my own; but they wouldn't be able to wait three nights. They're not that patient.

Lucky for me, they weren't aware of what I'm capable of.

Ten years of university means I've been surrounded for years by young men with a working knowledge of science; and no girlfriends. Knowledge and no sex is a bad combination that tended to lead to pranks and tomfoolery.

Unfortunately I didn't have much time to prepare, and only had the nearest gas bar to find supplies. But what they had would be enough.

I spent an hour cutting apart glow sticks with a knife, this took time as they were small and I didn't want the phenyl oxalate to mix with the hydrogen peroxide prematurely. Separated I put them in condoms, condoms as thin as they could possibly make them. These I places around the cabin.

Growing up around bear bangers, I was aware how loud they could be; like shotgun shells they fired a pellet of magnesium and potassium perchlorate. I didn't want to shoot my cousins, just scare the shit out of them so I took the time to remove the chemicals from the shell and also put them into more pliable containers.

I just needed a self contained trigger.

Not having the courage to get into the legal ramifications of writing out how to make a bomb with household chemicals; I will say this, any curious person with a doctorate in chemical engineering will tell you that certain store bought toys will ignite when exposed to h2O.

I put this chemical into an extended condom, all someone has to do is step on it and...loud. Very loud.

I spent the rest of the day till dinner writing down what I had been up to this day; horrified as my iPad battery slowly died. I should've brought a windmill generator or solar panel. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

I went to bed around nine, listening to the sounds of...frogs? Frogs, honest to god frogs croaking in the distance. A lithobates clamitans actually, green frog...yes, I am that smart.

My cousins didn't show up till midnight, they must've wanted to ensure it was as dark as possible before trying to scare me. The first clue that they were around was the frogs had quit.

Then the cracks...hunters sure, but they hunt during the day. At night they only had the moon light and just as clumsy as I was during the day. There would be a crack, the stepping on a broken branch or stick followed by an unnatural silence as they waited to see if I heard.

I wasn't giving in. I wasn't going to race out looking for people, I wouldn't be able to see them anyway; which would make me look scared of the dark to them and I wasn't giving them that satisfaction.

I was was waiting for...

Someone, I hope Leroy, stepped on a condom. A fast chemical reaction as particles mixed with each other creating a burst of energy, igniting other chemicals.

Boom.

And "aaaaahhhhhhhhh...." Followed by "why am I green!!!" There was some yelling after that I didn't catch.

There was another bang a few seconds later as they quickly tried to take another route out of the clearing. I got to the window in time to see three forms, two glowing green, racing into the trees.

I'm glad no one had a heart condition.

---

Breakfast, cold beans and eggs.

It was before breakfast I discovered I had a case of delayed onset muscle soreness, Doms. The six hour hike up the mountain caught up with me again, thousands upon thousands of micro-tares in the muscle fabric were causing a very painful experience. Body builders love this feeling, after a cold night though in the bush they probably wouldn't. I need blood flow.

It was after breakfast I decided to go for a walk, I needed the movement but wasn't sure in which direction. I didn't want to head around to the spider again, and I don't want to head into the trees as I'm sure I'd get lost and never find my way back.

That only left me with the other way around the lake.

I was starting to see why people came up here to get away from it all, the world was calm out here, no distractions. That might also be a little bit of the problem, once you take away all the distractions that the modern world had to offer, all you were left with was your thoughts.

That could be an issue if you're a person that has a million different thoughts going at once.

About a kilometre and a half away U found the fishing spot, there was a little enclave where the water went down a two foot water fall into a pond that flowed off into the forest. I could see the fish, but more importantly I could see the the fishing equipment; not nets or rods but actual staffs with hooks on the end. They were spear fishing out here.

I wonder how good they were.

My grandfather tried to teach me how to spear fish once back when I was fourteen; I had read about it in a book and decided that it was something I should into. I asked my grandmother about it and she passed me onto him...it didn't go that well, all I caught that day was blue feet.

My grandfather didn't say anything, he didn't say much at all ever actually; one of the reasons I loved him. We've spend hours upon hours together and in those times he could go up to six straight without uttering a word. When he did,, it was usually profound.

What I missed most about him was that I never felt like I was at odds with him; because unlike him I discovered early on that I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I started learning at the age of ten, and to me it felt like I was sharing my knowledge with the people around me; but aparantly to the people around me it came across as lecturing. As judging.

I made a mistake at fourteen once though. My Grandfather and I used to watch Star Trek every day together, but for different reasons; I saw it as a world of invention, the future, a place where science won out...he saw it as adventure and magic, it was because it was magical to him that he liked it. My mistake came when he took me to have lunch at the airport, he was watching the planes and said "It's amazing, how they're able to stay up there, when they should't be able to."

I spent the next five minutes explaining the science of lift, of thrust, how the wings created pressure under themselves to push the plain up. I slowed down though when I saw in his eyes, a slow understanding as I started to take the magic away from him. The unknown, what made him love plains....we both had wonder, but saw them differently.

I promised myself I would never do that again to him.

Damnit, I miss him.

Everybody else. I was different from them, sometimes I feel like I can live with that; other times, they liked to point it out.

I decided to spend the rest of the day back at the cabin, reading or something; I want to think about something else.

I spent the rest of the day reading, finishing off les miserable and starting huckleberry fin. I've never read it before but I've heard good things; that and I'm tired of not getting the references to it on Futurama.

I went to bed early, around seven as the sun was setting behind the mountains. Third night here, I wanted to be back on the trail heading home first thing after breakfast.

---

It could've been midnight, or two, I don't know without my phone so I was guessing. I could hear footsteps moving around the cabin. It couldn't have been my cousins, they wouldn't have come back after last nights fiasco.

Besides, this person wasn't being sneaky; they were taking every full step casually. They were moving around the cabin toward the front door, I couldn't see any light in the cracks of the wall so they were moving blindly.

Casually in the dark. They must've known their way around or had really good night vision.

I sat up and went about looking for the lantern in my backpack, I paused when I realized I could see everything. It was dark and slightly off blue but the details where there, was I developing good night vision.

The door to the cabin open to reveal a form, someone I've never met but recognized from old pictures my grandmother had on the wall. I was looking at my great grandfather.

"Uh...hi". What else was I going to say, he's been dead for sixty years.

"Hmm" he nods in my direction, moving around the cabin; checking to see that everything is still in place. "First time here."

"Well..." I stand up, brushing off my clothes, sorta wishing I slept in my clothes; who puts on pyjamas when camping? "Yeah..."

"Cause you don't believe in what the others do."

"Well. No."

"Bet you're having a hard time explaining me though, eh?"

"Actually no." He tilts his head, surprised by my answer. "REM sleep works in cycles, each cycle becomes shallower until you awaken; but I'm assuming that due to the cold or stress my body released insufficient amounts of adrenocorticotropin to fully wake me up and I'm experiencing lucid dreaming."

I could hear the frogs croaking in the distance. They might as well have been crickets.

"You really can't help it, can you."

"Nope, story of my life." It was, it really was.

"Then what am I?"

"I don't know yet, a manifestation of my inner insecurities, maybe." An LSD flashback, I experimented in my late twenties. Granted, it was government sanctioned and I was in a lab testing LSD's effects on the brains ability to process higher mathematical equations. Turns out, messes it up. It's more likely insecurity, which sucks.

"How can you be sure?"

"My legs don't hurt."

"Hmmm." He moves to the only chair in the room and sits down as he considers it. "Could be that you're still asleep, could be that's how I choose to come to you, in your sleep"

"Yeah, but what's the point in that? I'm here to prove spirits either exist or don't; and you come to me in a dream!?" That's just like hokem, always looking for the loop hole.

"Could be I'm testing your faith."

"I don't have faith, I have logic; the two can't coexist."

"Am I a manifestation of you're mind."

"Yes."

"Then you must be open to faith if I'm saying its possible." Oh my god...he got me on my own technicality, "And who's to say it can't be proven, maybe science hasn't evolved enough, maybe science hasn't the technology yet to measure what this is."

"My two choices, either admit its fact yet can't be proven or its a conversation with myself; which borders on having philosophical ramifications. Neither are good choices"

"But aren't you curious?"

"No...no...no...yes;" who wouldn't be? I'm always talking to myself, I might as well answer once in awhile. "But its not going to help."

"Help what."

"I go home tomorrow, with what? I had a dream? That doesn't prove you exist or that you don't."

"Your cousins will believe I did, you don't have to convince them."

"I know that, but I'm not convinced. Why would I tell them about this...the only outcome is they spend the next year telling me they told me so". That'll be fun, I hate being wrong and giving them fodder to make me look wrong would make it worse.

"Or they accept you."

"What?"

"Or you tell them you've seen me, they think you've changed and they accept you."

I have to consider that, they might actually take the high road...wait, no, I'd be lying if I accept their version of the world. I'd be lying to myself.

"I wouldn't really be an outsider anymore, would I?"

"And isn't that what you want? Isn't that why you came out here in the first place?"

"Why?"

"To say you did something they'd do, to feel like you're with them and not always..."

"I am with them..."

"But do you feel like you are?" He leans back and lets it sink in. He's right.

"Yeah...but I can't help it..."

"You can't just see the world like they do? It's a beautiful world."

"I know that! That's just it...the sunset, the sunset the other night. I can see it, I saw it; and I can see how they find if beautiful." I step back, somehow I need more room to explain. "But why can't they see it the way I do?"

"How do you see it?"

"Particles. Wavelengths. In here." I motion to my head. "Light hits the atmosphere at a different angle later in the day; the light has to travel further through the atmosphere causing the particles to scatter, blue dissipates, oranges become stronger...why can't they see that? Why can't they understand, that's what's beautiful to me". I take a breath. "Or am I really that different?"

"Who knows?"

"What?"

"Who knows.?"

"Indian ancestor, generations of wisdom and the best you can do is 'who knows'"

"Could be I'm your insecurities, and if you don't know the answer I wouldn't."

"Right." I say, disappointed in myself; if he is myself.

"Could be they consider you as one of their own, seeing as you're family." He shrugs.

"What do you mean?"

"If you were anybody else, anybody at all...and you came to me with your lectures, with your endless amounts of information I didn't care about, if you were my family; I'd send you on your way. But they didn't, did they?"

No, they didn't. They took me to bingo, and they sent me to a cabin in the woods. Their cabin in the woods.

"We share DNA."

He chuckles and starts getting to his feet, making his way to the door.

"Wait."

He stops at the door and turns around.

"Be honest, what are you?" I ask. If he's really my subconscious he'll say he is, he'll be honest with me and not lie; that's what a scientific mind is.

"If I say I'm a spirit, when you wake up, will you still believe it?"

I contemplate it...he's gone before I can answer.

A moment later, its morning.

You can read the rest of the kindle book at this link.

https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Indian-Country-Andrew-Genaille-ebook/dp/B00HYT7VMU

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