74 Before Agriculture
and ideas. He had been ill for a while, coughing a great deal and suffering periods
of sudden weakness.
A few weeks earlier, Thomas’s family, along with several others, had moved
from the Halfway River Reserve to a moose-hunting area a few miles to the north.
There they had been preparing dry meat. Moose were plentiful, and the hunters
had killed several. The meat had been brought back to the family tents for the
women to slice into long, paper-thin sheets. They hung these on wooden frames
beside fires, where the meat part dried and part smoked. After a few days, the slices
were almost weightless and perfectly preserved. They were a source of concentrated
protein that could be stored for many months and packed into bags that were easy
to carry. Thomas had not gone to the dry-meat camp that year. He had become
very weak; before the others left, he had been taken to the Fort St. John hospital.
I found him lying on his bed in a small public ward, dressed in jeans and a vest.
As soon as he saw me, he said, as he had so often before when I arrived back in
Dunne-za country: ‘I know you here. Time to hunt. We better go someplace, look
for moose.’ I thought he was making a joke, then realized he was serious. ‘But can
you leave the hospital?’ I asked. ‘You see doctor,’ said Thomas. ‘Then we go to dry-
meat camp.’
Thomas’s English was fluent, but it came from his fur-trading days. He used it
to make direct statements or to ask straightforward questions. His real language was
Dunne-za Athabaskan. So we did not have a discussion about just how he was going
to manage in the camp. He had made himself clear, and I went to find his doctor.
The doctor was a tall young man in a hurry. He said that Thomas was very
sick. His lungs were ‘gone’. I asked what the actual diagnosis was. ‘TB,’ he said.
‘Maybe cancer as well.’ He paused, then added: ‘Nothing we can do.’ So was it all
right to take him out of the hospital? ‘Fine,’ said the doctor. ‘I just hope that you
take him somewhere he can get some care.’ Were there medicines I should take
with us? Was there any treatment he should come back to the hospital for? The
doctor shrugged. ‘There’s nothing much anyone can do,’ he said. ‘He’s old and his
lungs are gone.’ I could take Thomas whenever he wanted to go.
I was upset. There was a certain callousness about the way the diagnosis had
been given, and something eerie about the lack of medical prescription. Was Tho-
mas about to die? I went back to Thomas’s bed and sat down beside him. He
looked at me. He must have known that I had seen the doctor. He didn’t say any-
thing. I looked at his eyes, which seemed to have sunk back into his skull. He had
lost weight. ‘The doctor says you can leave here when you want. But I guess you
could stay, too, if that seemed better.’ I paused. ‘You would be cared for here.’
Thomas did not hesitate. ‘Okay we leave now?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When you
want.’
‘Now,’ he said. He sat up on his bed, swung his legs over the side and stood up.
We found his shoes and jacket and walked out.
Thomas wanted to go straight to the dry-meat camp. He did not say much,
and I noticed that he was breathing with some difficulty. I was worried. Maybe we
should go to the reserve, where he would have a bed and be within a few hundred