Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
“We’ll come back to visit soon,” I say over my shoulder. “We know where to find you.”
“Maybe, Granddaughter. We’re hunters and gatherers, though. Never in the same place for long.”
We move on down the busy street. It’s stupid to think they would know Suzanne. Why would they? How could they? As we jostle through the lunchtime crowds, I get the feeling we’re being followed. I turn around and catch a glimpse of a thin body, long black hair disappearing into a doorway. I want to go to this one, this Painted Tongue, but Eva tugs at my arm, pulls me into the crowd.
9
SPRING BEAR
This place where I wander seems to be in perpetual dusk, not quite dark, not quite light, and sometimes I feel very cold, other times too warm. Not much sound except for my breathing. Once in a while the whisper of something. Wind in trees. Voices carried from far away on the wind, maybe. I know I have to keep moving forward, but when I hear the wind whispering, I want to stop and rest and listen for a while. I miss you, family.
After Marius beat me and after my overreaction to seeing that bear, Joe and Lisette worried about me. Maybe they thought it was shell shock I was suffering. Maybe they were right. Lisette brought over a moose stew and macaroni and cheese one night not long after those events. Joe brought a twelve-pack of Canadian. It wasn’t too long after you’d left Moosonee, Annie, with your friend Eva.
I’ve always been the bush man in this town. I’ve been the hunter, the trapper, the feeder of mouths. A thing passed on from father to son, and I was the one in possession of it. But it was slipping from me.
After dinner that night, just like other nights following, your mother liked to read to us from a new book she’d found. Joe and I would give each other the look and retire to the back porch for a cigarette and a beer to listen to your mother’s new book.
I always wanted to lie to Lisette, to tell her I was too tired for it, but the soul leaves the body just a little bit at a time with each lie.
“This is a good one,” Lisette told us, settling into a chair. “An Oprah pick.” She looked at us, expecting a ribbing. “But it’s important to hear. You might like it, Will. Joe. It’s about healing.” She opened it, a paperback that looked used, and began. “‘We are all born innocent children. And we can maintain the innocence of children if that is what we choose.’” I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeper than usual. “‘We gain experience as we grow into this world, and experience is a two-edged sword. Experience is the most difficult of teachers because it gives the exam first, and the lessons second.’” Lisette paused, looked up at me above her reading glasses. I looked out to the river.
“‘As children, we see the world as a mystery, but a mystery that will reveal itself to us day by day. As children, we see the world as a place where nothing is impossible. We aren’t afraid to believe in our dreams. In fact, we often believe in them more than we believe in the real world. We can fly; we can swim across the ocean; we can climb the highest mountain. It is only through adulthood, the growing up and accepting reality, that we become jaded, that we learn to accept that we can’t be anyone or do anything. I am here to tell you differently.’” Lisette took a breath as if she’d just completed a long journey.
When your mother finally left that night, I dug my hunting rifle out, and Joe and me climbed into his truck and went looking for that bear.
I remember seeing my old friend Mary when we passed the healing lodge. She sat in a rocking chair on the porch and waved to us when we passed.
“What’s she in for?” Joe asked.
“Too much of a good thing,” I said. “Forty-ounce flu.”
“Must be sick and hungry,” Joe said. It took me a minute to realize he was talking about the bear. “Dangerous in town.”
We sat at the dump and watched the night creep in. We smoked cigarette after cigarette without saying anything to one another. It’s a game me and Joe have played for years. First one to talk shows weakness.
Finally it was Joe who broke the silence. “Must be sick and hungry,” he repeated. “Those bears are dangerous in town.” I nodded, staring out at the black, some part of me enjoying the stink. “I figured out what you need,” Joe said when I wouldn’t give him anything, his voice rough from cigarette smoke.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“A woman.”
“No woman would have me.”
“Lots of women would have you.”
“Not the ones I would want to have.”
“You have to come to the understanding, Will Bird, that you are no longer the handsome young creature you once were.”
“Yes I am.”
“You’re not. You need a woman. Sex is important, but more importantly, you need someone to talk to once in a while. You don’t talk to anyone but me or Gregor. You’re getting strange. Weird. You need to move forward.” We sat there.
In the darkness at the edge of the dump I saw the form of a big animal walking slow along the edge. “Turn on your headlights when I say so.”
We waited. I watched it carefully, dipping in and out of shadow. “Now,” I said. Joe pulled the knob and the area directly in front of us filled with a cone of light. The bear stopped dead and lifted its head to us, nose sniffing. “That’s the one,” I said. I picked up the rifle resting between us and popped out the mag, placed three shells in, then pushed it back in. “I’ll be right back,” I said. The bear remained frozen, staring up with flared nostrils. I left the door open.
Once I cleared the truck, the headlights behind me, I raised the rifle, the bear not far, presenting me its profile. I studied the face quick, the scarred, greying muzzle, the eyes that didn’t seem able to focus. It panted like it was tired, missing one of its big fang teeth. Too old to make it through next winter. It needed killing. It had turned to the dump and dogs or cats older and slower than it was.
I clicked off the safety with my thumb and sighted in just behind the shoulder blade. One shot should do it. I followed it with my sights. It tripped over a garbage bag, got up, and tripped over another a few feet later. The dumb thing, I realized, was blind. The bear stopped, raised its head to me once more, sniffing the air. Maybe I thought of my wife, nieces. Of my two boys. I lifted the rifle higher and pulled the trigger. The bear jumped, then scurried quick as it could into the bush, stumbling.
“Did you get it?” Joe asked back in the truck.
“Yeah,” I lied. “Old stinker.” I stopped any possible move toward Joe wanting to go out and inspect it. “Even its hide isn’t worth it.”
There’s so much more I want to share with you, but I’m not even sure why. Maybe you will piece it together. Back thirty years ago, right before the residential school in Moose Factory closed for good, I had recurring dreams of going back to it, climbing up the side like Ahepik, our own Cree Spider-Man, and rescuing the children from their beds, the dreams so full of anxiety and even terror as if the building was on fire. I’d go back into that building over and over until all the children had been freed, lined up safely on the bank of the river in the tall grass where they couldn’t be seen. The ending of the dream was always the same. With the last child in my many arms, I walked down the bank to the cheers of the others, who all came running to me, grabbing and hugging my legs. A simple dream, but it was a good one. Now I remember those dreams again.
I was a bush pilot then, a good one. I was one of the first in this area to fly all the way up to Winisk and other southern parts of Hudson Bay. Good business for a crazy young man. I had more money than I often knew what to do with, and I had my wife and, eventually, my two little boys. Best years of my life. Productive years. The worst part of my job was that sometimes I’d be gone from home for a few days, a week once when I got grounded by a blizzard.
There were dangers to the job. Frozen gas lines, bad mechanical work, weather. Three crashes. After my third, that’s when I quit flying. When flying quit me. My life as I knew it ended then.
When everything was gone, my money, my home
The night of not shooting the bear, Joe mentioned women. That spring, the snow melted and the creeks rushed and the sap ran. I walked to Taska’s Store not long after that night and wandered around the tiny place. Northern Store down the road would have been more interesting for people watching, but I wasn’t ready to be around too many people yet.
I was doing my third lap around the aisles when in walked Dorothy Blueboy, my first crush during rez school days. “Hello,” she said, smiling. Boy. The rush of it with one word.
“Why, hello,” I answered, smiling back. “You still over in Moose Factory?”
“Oh yeah. I still call the rez home.”
“What you doing over this side of the river?”
“I just need to get away for a little while sometimes, even if it is only to Moosonee. Living on an island can drive you crazy.” I nodded, wanted to say something smart like, No woman’s an island.
She said she’d heard something about me getting hurt a while back. I told her I fell and hit my head. She looked confused, said, “I heard you were beat up by that Marius Netmaker and some of his biker friends.”
“That’s when I fell and hit my head,” I answered, backing up.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I think so, just ho—just headaches once in a while.” Dammit!
Dorothy smiled again. “For a second I thought you were going to say ‘just horny.’That would have been funny.”
“Really funny.”
Dorothy brought her basket to the cashier, and I glimpsed at her from over the magazine rack. Still a figure, her. Not much of a bum to speak of, but lovely hips. She glanced back my way, and I looked to the magazines quick as I could. Car and Driver. SnowGoer. Hunting and Fishing. Playboy above, wrapped in plastic. Hmm. When she left, I saw the store empty. Crow, a kid who burned his auntie’s house down years ago, stood behind the counter. Walkman on his ears, taller than I remembered he was, handsome despite the burn scars on his neck. Long black ponytail and ball cap. Old school. I grabbed the Playboy and made a beeline to him.
“That all, Will?” he asked. “Smokes? Vaseline?” He grinned.
“Just hurry up and get that in a bag.”
The door beside me jingled.
“I forgot to get smokes,” Dorothy said, smiling at me, then her eyes wandering to the magazine lying by my guilty hands. “I … I’ll get them at Northern Store. See yas.” And she was gone with the clinking of the bells on the door. I felt the burn of my face.
Crow handed me my change. “Got something to tell you, Will.” He looked all serious suddenly. “I’m going to tell you this because your nieces are my friends.”
“Get on with it.”
“I know it’s garbage, me. But Marius says you’re a snitch. You’re ratting him out to the OPP,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know that, Will. Your nieces are some of my best friends. They were always there for me when no one else was, even my own family.”
“I got nothing to do with that.” I’m no snitch. I thanked Crow, walked out of the store, and headed to the LCBO. This new bit of info called for a bottle.
I didn’t want to face another night of drinking alone again, so I called Gregor and Joe over. We sat on the porch for as long as we could stand the mosquitoes, then moved inside to my kitchen. I told them what Crow had said. I didn’t tell them about running into Dorothy.
“If you become a snitch,” Joe said, “you can probably get him taken away. Let’s do it.”
Gregor was in, too. Too many of his students, he said, were strung out because of Marius. We talked more. We drank more. The talk turned darker.
Joe, he started it. “Let’s kill him,” he said. “Cops are useless around here. We’ll shoot him and drag him into the bush and leave him for the bears and the crows. No one will miss him.”
“Except for his family,” I said. His brothers were bad as him. Christ, even his old witch of a mother frightened me.
“How would they ever know it was us?” Gregor asked. “He must have lots of enemies in his business.”
I thought it was all just drunk talk. You can’t just kill a man, can you? But that night the idea took root. “You know what? We’ll kill Marius,” I said. “Wouldn’t be hard.”
“You dilapidate the monster,” Joe said, rubbing his belly, “and another head grows from the body.”
“Decapitate, to slice head from body,” Gregor corrected. “Dilapidated, the state of Will’s house.”
The two rattled on, but me, my head swam. How easy would it be to follow Marius, to follow his tracks, just like you would a moose? Follow him to his favourite watering holes and feeding places. He had to be alone sometimes. I hadn’t seen his two friends lately, and even if they were around, three quick shots and I’d finish them, then drag them into the bush. But I’d need help. Would Joe and Gregor really be up for it?
“Let’s do it, boys,” I remember telling them. Even drunk, my friends backed off. I think they saw something in my eyes that scared them.
They came up with less serious plans, all of them silly. “Plan A,” Gregor said, “we go undercover for the OPP and buy drugs from him. They’ll wire us up. Put cameras, tiny ones, in our meeting places. You know they make cameras the size of a quarter? I’d love to get a hold of a couple of those for school.”
“And then the Netmakers know it was us,” I countered, “and we’re dead in a month.”
“Police can put us in protective custody,” Joe said. “Give us a new identity. Move us out of Moosonee. Maybe to Kapuskasing or something. I wouldn’t mind a vacation from this place, me.”
I knew my friends didn’t have the heart for it. If I was going to do this, it had to be alone.
I expected it, lying in bed, the ceiling spinning above me. Tortured images of you, my nieces, swimming through my head. You were both in trouble somewhere down south, and I was up here fat, drunk, and useless. Marius Netmaker, he was directly involved in our troubles. He was the root of them, I knew it. Even if at this point I couldn’t follow the thorny branches straight down to him. But my gut knew that as sure as I knew I’d wake up in the morning with a hangover. I was beginning to accept what I had to do. There was a dark warmth in that. A black fire when I shivered with cold.
I was drunk enough that night by the time my friends left me that I sat with my father’s rifle, holding it in my lap, the scarred stock rough and warm as an old man’s hand. Son of Xavier, I swear it said to me. This is the story I will share with you tonight. I could hear you tonight, talking with your friends. Be careful, son of Xavier. This town is a place of talkers. No one can know. Not even your friends. They are not strong enough for this. But you are. You are the son of a warrior.
I knew I was entering a dangerous place, nieces. What man who is well speaks to his dead father’s rifle? And more, what man who is well hears his dead father’s rifle speaking to him?
But sometimes when you are all alone in the bush, deep in winter, and the northern lights come, you can actually hear them. A crackling. Like a radio on real low, moaning and sighing. This is what it seem
10
BLUE TARP TEEPEE
Eva’s weight leans over me. I’m on my back on a bed, and I smell the pissy warmth of this motel room. The tingling in my head doesn’t go away. I touch it, dizzy, and explore my scalp with my fingers. I can’t feel the tips of them against my head. The room begins to glow white.
I rub my thumbs over the chipped polish of my nails. My arms are covered in goose pimples. Sweat burns my eyes. Eva stuffs an old fast-food bag in my mouth, her weight on me now so that I can’t breathe.
“Eva …” I mumble, my mouth dry and numb. The first pain comes, like an ice bullet has been fired into my forehead. I try to cry out, but my throat constricts and my jaw tightens on the bag. Eva holds a camera in her hands and begins photographing. I see bright light through my eyelids but know that my eyes are still open.
Beautiful. Perfect, Eva says, leaning back and laughing. I shake as if I am freezing to death. My head will burst. I can’t open my mouth, so I stare into her gaping mouth, looking at her fillings. I hear the groan of the ocean surf.
Wind roars like when I stick my head out the window on the highway. I need to scream to release the pain in my skull. It will pop soon. Black. Hands on my shoulders. Weight pushing me into the mattress so that it swallows me whole.
Eva becomes the Indian-looking photographer, the one with the lisp who shot my portfolio. The photographer Violet and Soleil introduced me to. His lens pushes too close to my face. What is he doing? That will be an ugly, ugly shot. Bright light of his flash, so bright I close my eyes against it, but still, it penetrates my lids. Suzanne and me laughing and swinging sticks at each other on the shore of the bay. Adults close by. Protective.
My grandfather’s wooden leg washes up on shore. Suzanne runs and bends to pick it up. A wave swoops up and takes her, pulling her out. I throw my stick to her so she’ll be able to float. As it arcs through the air, it grows larger, thicker. Her hand reaches from the water and grabs it. She pulls herself up onto it, the size of a log now. Her wet hair is plastered on her forehead, white teeth of a smile as she straddles the log, rides it like a horse and waves to me as the tide pulls her out and away so that she gets smaller and smaller, her arm raised triumphant in the air, her tiny hand waving. The photographer catches it all.