Summary
As Niska rows herself and Xavier downriver, she tells him a story from when he was a young child. Niska was called to a distant village to assume the role that her father had played when she was a child: the killer of a windigo, or cannibal. After arriving at the village, she spends the day praying for strength. At night, she enters the tipi where the windigo is bound. Two men from the village hold the cannibal’s arms above his head as she uses a rope to strangle him. Xavier sneaks into the tent and watches the struggle. Afterwards, as he and Niska return to their home in the bush, Xavier asks Niska why she killed the man. Niska replies that sometimes one must be sacrificed if the others are to survive.
Time passes as Niska raises Xavier in the bush. When Xavier is twelve, he tells Niska that he is lonely and wants a friend, a boy his own age. Niska agrees to move their camp closer to town so Xavier can meet a friend there. Soon, Xavier is bringing back a friend from the residential school, a boy whose mother is dead and has never seen his father, a trapper for the Hudson Bay Company. This boy lives under the harsh nuns in the residential school. He is skilled at hunting and quickly learns bush survival skills from Xavier. One day, the boy shows Xavier an impressive rifle that he stole from one of the nuns. They become excellent marksmen over the course of the summer. At the end of the section, the boy decides that Xavier’s Christian name will be “Xavier”—since Niska always called him just Nephew—and says that his own name is Elijah.
The narrative returns to Xavier. As Niska makes camp for another night, he takes enough morphine to relieve his pain, knowing that he no longer has enough to kill himself with and that he will run out of it tomorrow. His memories return to the war, when he watched Elijah descend into a war- and morphine-fueled madness, learning to love killing rather than only killing to survive. One night, he tells Xavier about the time he found himself in a German trench, unsure of why and how he had gone there. After seeing a spool of wire in his own hands, he remembered that he had split off from the patrol group to set up a rabbit snare-style trap in the ditch. After setting the trap up, he calls out; the Germans come running to see who yelled, and Elijah watches as one runs into the wire, hangs on it, and dies.
Elijah begins to develop trenchfoot and is treated by the medic, who gives him morphine pills. Later, the men are ordered to go over the top of the trench near a town called Lens. After charging to the trench under heavy German fire, the men reach a dugout on the other side. From there, Elijah walks slowly to another dugout, purposely attracting sniper fire so that Xavier can shoot at the German snipers. Elijah, Xavier, and Thompson move to the destroyed church were the snipers were hiding. Elijah scrambles into the church to get a good view of the battlefield the higher ground of the steeple. He tells Thompson to stay with him while Xavier goes back and brings the company to the church.
While waiting in the steeple for the company to arrive, Elijah takes some morphine and thinks of Xavier, who he knows is going deaf but refuses to admit it. Eventually the company reaches the church, and Elijah tells them what he has seen from the steeple: that he has seen the Germans and believes they are retreating. Graves and a new private are sent to bomb a hole leading to a basement that Elijah believes looks dangerous. As the company is busy laughing at the new private’s unsureness, a man emerges from the basement carrying a flamethrower. Elijah yells at Graves to lie down, but he accidentally speaks in Cree. While Graves looks at Elijah in confusion the armed man sends a long stream of fire over him, burning him to death. The new private turns to run, but he trips, sending the bomb he was holding into the trench where the company is waiting, killing one man and injuring another. The armed man then burns the private as well.
One of the Canadian men is able to shoot the tank on the armed man’s back, making him burst into flames. The men are stunned in the aftermath of the brutal attack. They return to their camp, maintaining control of the hill and small villages around them. Elijah and Xavier begin sniping again while the troops remain in their trenches, unable to make much forward movement. As they lie waiting with their guns, Elijah tells Xavier that he has learned to take pleasure in killing. Xavier, in contrast, begins to sink into a hardened depression. Eventually, they find a good sniping position, but they know they can only make one shot before their fire gives them away and they must retreat. One morning, Elijah shoots and kills an officer in the German trench, attracting German fire in return. He shoots again, this time killing a soldier, and completely giving away his and Xavier’s position. Xavier angrily tells Elijah that he can put himself in danger, but not Xavier too. Since Xavier rarely loses his temper, his anger and raised voice hurts Elijah.
The men are sent back from the lines for rest, and they head to a village pub. Xavier and Elijah meet another Ashinaabe Indian there, a corporal, and spend the night getting drunk with him. The corporal says that Elijah and Xavier have a growing reputation as skilled snipers, and asks how many kills Elijah has. Elijah answers that he has 194, and Xavier confirms this number, but the corporal annoys Elijah by saying he knows of another Métis soldier with much more. Eventually, the three leave the pub. As they walk down the street together, a plane flies low overhead and bombs the pub, turning it into a scene of burning confusion. In the chaos, the corporal whispers to Elijah that he has twice his kills in the field. Elijah says that it would have been easy to kill the corporal then. He says that he is happy that he didn’t take advantage of this opportunity, but isn’t sure why.
The narrative returns to present-day. As night falls on the riverside, Xavier tells Niska that he will soon run out of the morphine, and die from the pain in his leg, arm, and heart. Eventually, he falls asleep, while Niska stays awake worrying. She feeds her sleeping nephew soup out of her own mouth because he hasn’t eaten in days. To keep her mind off her worry, Niska continues to tell Xavier stories from his youth. She recounts how Elijah came to live with her and Xavier in the bush after he had grown old enough to leave the residential school. Niska also began to teach Xavier her divining skills, such as using the shoulder of a burning moose blade to determine where game would be. Years passed, and the boys grew old enough to occasionally go into town, to meet the young women there. On one of these trips, they learned that a war had started in Europe, and Canada had joined it. After staying up late and talking for many nights, Xavier approaches Niska and tells her that he and Elijah have decided to travel to a town where they can join the army. Niska sadly accepts their decision. As the boys prepare to leave, she can tell that this was more Elijah’s idea than Xavier’s.
After the two leave, Niska prays every day for their safety. She soon grows anxious for news about their fate, and travels into Moose Factory with the hope of learning more. Once in the city, she attracts whispers and glares from both white people and Indians. She enters a store, where old men sit together talking about the war. At first they are angry and frightened by her presence; they believe she is a witch. However, they allow her to visit the store each day for a week once Niska promises she will bring them furs next winter. Listening to their rambling talks, Niska learns about the different places where the war is being fought and the kind of warfare being waged. Another Indian who frequents the store, Joseph Netmaker, helps translate what the men say for her. She learns that they would have been notified of Elijah’s death if it had happened, so he is probably still alive. She also discovers that Xavier and Elijah are probably together, since the army generally places men from the same area in the same company.
Eventually, Niska returns to the bush to trap furs and pass the winter in her solitary ways. Joseph Netmaker occasionally visits her, bringing news; he tells her that Elijah’s bravery and accomplishments have been featured in the military papers. Niska asks Joseph to write a letter from her to Xavier, and he complies, translating what she says into English and copying it down onto a sheet of paper. As he leaves, Niska feels a wave of anxiety wash over her.
The narrative switches back to Xavier. He is thinking of the war, when his company was moved to a place called Passchendaele. The battlefield conditions were the worst they’d seen, with knee-deep Canadian trenches separated from the sturdier German pillbox structures by a field so destroyed that wounded men drowned in its mud. Elijah and Xavier are sent as advance scouts to a nearby ruined city. As they walk through the rubble, they attract fire from a lone shooter at the top of a building. Xavier quickly shoots and kills their attacker. He and Elijah move into the building to determine if there are any other soldiers inside. Elijah instructs Xavier to check the building’s rooms while he scalps the dead shooter. As Elijah enters a dark room, he sees movement in the corner of his eye and automatically shoots at what he assumes is a German soldier. He quickly realizes that the figure was actually a woman, inexplicably present in this ruined town. He checks to see who else is around and sees a small child. He tries to calm her, but she begins swinging her fists at Xavier. Suddenly a gunshot goes off and the child collapses. Xavier yells at Elijah, asking how he didn’t notice it was only a child. Elijah says that he only saw a shape struggling with Xavier, and indicates the woman’s dead body as an example of how they have been trained to react under dangerous situations. The two return to their camp and don’t tell the officers what happened.
Christmas comes, and the men are given double rations of rum. While Elijah sneaks off to a nearby town, determined to meet the Frenchmen who told him to keep track of his kills by scalping bodies. Xavier stays in the trench, noting how his hearing is worsening. He gets drunk and walks into no man’s land, feeling free. A Canadian soldier frantically yells at him to move from his dangerous position. After Xavier returns to the trench, he tells the soldier, who he has never seen before, that there is a woman and child dead in Passchendaele.
Elijah returns to the trench and tells Xavier that the French were intimidated and frightened when he showed them his now large collection of scalps. He also says that they gave him meat as a gift, and cooks some on the fire to share with Xavier. While eating, Xavier asks what kind of meat the French gave him, and Elijah responds that it is from the body of a German soldier. Infuriated and disgusted, Xavier quickly begins retching up the meat. Elijah quickly tells him that he was joking, that it was only horsemeat. Shocked by Xavier’s visceral action, he chews some of the meat himself to prove that it is not human. Xavier notes a mischievous gleam in Elijah’s eyes.
Analysis
Xavier’s experience with the windigo killing exemplifies the circularity of Three Day Road’s narrative, as the past loops into the present, and themes and rituals overlap across generations. As a child, Niska’s father allowed her to watch him killing a cannibalistic woman and her child, because she might one day need to do the same as a hookimaw responsible for the well-being of others. This event marked Niska’s departure from childhood, symbolized by the blood of her first period running down her legs after the woman and child are killed. Xavier, too, gains maturity by watching Niska kill the windigo. His acceptance of Niska’s explanation that sometimes one must be sacrificed if others are to live translates to the battlefield, as he recognizes that killing German snipers saves Canadian lives.
Elijah deteriorates further in this section. In addition to his worsening physical condition—he literally starts to rot—Elijah’s morality plunges. He has gaps in his memory, designs creative and sadistic ways to kill others, and openly confesses to Xavier that he has begun to take pleasure in the act of killing. This deterioration leads to recklessness, as Elijah fires dangerous extra shots at the German snipers, giving away their position. The tension between Xavier and Elijah, which has been steadily worsening since the war began, is made even more explicit in these sections, culminating at the point where Xavier yells at Elijah for endangering his life. This moment shows Xavier taking agency for his own fate and standing up to his friend, a rare act compared to his normal reserved and deferential conduct.
The issues of race and success reappear in "Tapakwewin: Snaring" when Xavier and Elijah meet a fellow Ashinabe Indian at a pub. The jealousy that is apparent in the white officers appears to transcend racial boundaries, as the corporal makes a point of telling Elijah that he is not nearly as successful as he thinks he is. Elijah’s claim that he is happy he didn’t kill the corporal further complicates his relationship to killing, as he has grown to relish the act of murder itself. His lack of regret indicates that his bloodlust may be limited to non-First Nations soldiers, or it may demonstrate that an indiscriminate desire has not entirely seized him. The burning pub is a fitting image for the end of these sections, which are filled with the horrors of war, deathly battlefield torture traps, and shocking cannibalism.
Niska’s account of Xavier and Elijah’s adolescence shows us the ways in which she deeply cares for her nephew and his friend. Her willingness to reenter the wemistikoshiw town that once brought her so much pain is a testament to her maternal concern for the two boys. In an interesting twist that demonstrates the payoffs of a split-narrator format, the next section reveals that the letter that she requests Joseph Netmaker to write misinforms Xavier. This has tragic consequences, as Xavier’s belief that Niska is dead increases his disillusionment with war and his desire to return home. It demonstrates the importance of language in the book, building off of the devastating mistake that Elijah made when he tried to warn Graves of the flamethrower in Cree rather than English. Language serves as a tangible marker of the cultural divides separating Xavier and Elijah from the white soldiers; Elijah’s knowledge of English increases his ability to bridge that divide.
Xavier and Elijah’s shooting of the woman and child provide a poignant example of the unintended violence that war brings to civilians. The event is a defining one in Xavier’s wartime experience, combining with Niska’s letter to hasten his cynicism about war. It also exemplifies his increasing doubt of his own friend. Elijah is becoming largely unreliable, in part because of his drug-altered state. Xavier suspects that Elijah’s bloodlust may be even stronger than he lets on; he no longer believes his friend to be incapable of any act, no matter how depraved. Xavier questions how Elijah could have mistaken the child for a soldier, and he takes Elijah’s joke about the German meat as reality. These instances point to the increasing unpredictability and tendency towards violence that Elijah displays.
