Three Day Road: Takoshininaaniwan: Arrival Summary & Analysis

Rain falls as Xavier sits by the fire. Like Niska, he does not sleep. “Dead friends” Xavier doesn’t “want to see come to visit” in his sleep. When sleep does come, the dead accuse Xavier of “acts [he] did not perform” and “some that [he] did.” Everyone “over there” behaved “in ways it is best not to speak of. Especially Elijah.” Elijah is “truly skilled,” Xavier thinks. “But at one time I was the better marksman. No one remembers that.” 

“Where is [Elijah]?” Xavier wonders. They were together the entire war until the last days. Xavier had taken some shell fire and was thrown into the air like a “bird.” When he “came down,” his left leg was gone. “I’ve always known men aren’t meant to fly,” Xavier says. But he was given medicine for the pain and learned “to fly in a new way.” Now, the medicine is nearly gone, and Xavier “will not be able to live without it.”

Nothing “makes any sense” to Xavier. Niska is alive, and Elijah is “missing.” Xavier “shivers in the cold rain” and stares at the fire. “Oh, this medicine is good,” he thinks. Xavier closes his eyes and can see “broken buildings” lining the edge of a town. He can hear the “big guns” in the distance and knows that he will be in the trenches by the next day. Rifle fire erupts nearby. “Are those our fucking signal flares?” Sergeant McCaan yells. “Can somebody tell me? Are they?”

The company has been in Flanders, Belgium for weeks. Xavier keeps mostly to himself around the other soldiers, but he listens carefully for “jokes and insults.” The others think Xavier is “something less,” but he will “show them what [he is] made of when it is time to kill.”

The next morning, Xavier stands at attention next to Elijah. Elijah fidgets and shuffles his feet and McCaan yells at him to stand still. Xavier can tell that McCaan doesn’t want to yell, but Lieutenant Breech, whom the men call “Bastard Breech,” stands watching. Breech gives the order, and the men begin to march. The men sing as they march but Xavier doesn’t join in. “Me, I won’t sing their songs,” Xavier says. “I have my own songs.”

Without warning, Xavier is thrown into the air by “thunder and a wave of heat.” He lands hard on the ground and is hit with “raining rock” and “globs of red dirt” that he realizes is “the flesh and guts of men.” He tries to move but can’t. Elijah appears and drags him to an upturned wagon. Elijah quickly crawls back through the “flying metal” and returns with Grey Eyes and Sean Patrick, two men from their unit. 

Once the shelling stops and the dead and wounded are carted off by stretcher, McCaan again orders the platoon to march. Breech will be waiting outside of town with another unit. “Tiny fucker wants us to march into dangerous land after dark knowing full well we have no goddamn idea where we are,” McCaan yells. “Like fucking virgins into the mouth of a lion!” The night is extremely dark, and the men grow increasingly uncomfortable as they march. A soldier named Fat stumbles and falls. 

“You are acting like rabbits,” McCaan yells. “It is time to act like wolves.” Xavier thinks McCaan’s words are “perfect.” This will keep them alive, Xavier thinks, “to be the hunter” not “the hunted.” This is the same “law” in the woods— “turn fear and panic into the sharp blade of survival.” McCaan calls Elijah and Xavier to the front of the line and orders them to advance and scout the ridge ahead.

Xavier and Elijah crawl into the darkness and quickly lose sight of each other, but just like when they track a moose, each knows where the other is. They come across a group of men speaking the “Belgian tongue.” Elijah asks them in English where the Canadians are, and they learn they are just a half mile over the ridge.

Their unit manages to make it to the next town, and Xavier wakes early the next morning. He is invited to sit with a small group of soldiers. One of the men asks Xavier where he is from. “Near Moose Factory,” he answers. “So you’re an Indian, then?” the soldier asks. “You’re pretty short for an Indian, ain’t ya?” The men all laugh. Xavier looks to one soldier’s rifle; there are small notches cut in the stock. “Smithy here’s a sniper,” one man says. He has thirty-three kills—more than any other Canadian or Brit.

“That ain’t true at all,” Smithy says. “There’s another Indian feller goes by the name Peggy. Ojibwe, I think.” Peggy has nearly one hundred hits, Smithy says, but the officers won’t “give him credit” because he works alone. Xavier sits and doesn’t speak. “Man of few words, eh?” a soldier asks him. “I don’t know much English,” Xavier says. “You don’t need to know much,” replies Smithy, “for the job you been sent here to do.”