Through Black Spruce (32 page)

It will be good, Protector. It will be good.

33
NOT FAR THROUGH THE TREES

The bitch wind pushed me hard from the east so that I had to aim into it, working the foot rudder, steering into the gusts. I flew out at the right time. At the last moment. Trouble again when I had to hand bomb the motor, and I thought I was done for, thought I’d have to stay on that river and become one of the ghosts.

My tank must have had a small leak. The gauge showed only enough gas to barely make it. I saw myself dead as I pushed my sputtering plane back south, toward Moosonee, my body below me on my Ghost River camp, skin dried onto the bones of my corpse, my teeth exposed, my mouth grimacing.

This new plan of mine was hatched from the destruction of my camp and the ring around the sun with its promise of truly bad weather. This new plan of mine, it wouldn’t work. But I no longer cared. I’d made my decision. I was helped to it by a number of shots of rye, and this was the decision I’d live with.

Christ, I hoped I hit Moose River before dusk. I wasn’t left much time. Or gas. I couldn’t find a lot of my camp under the new snow. I lost an axe and left my prospector’s tent when I finally admitted the extent of its damage crushed under the ice and the tree. I’d been smart enough to keep my rifles close, but all my traps, out in the bush, sat there, sprung and useless. Cooking pots I’d left by the fire, my gill net, my last net for the fish, bunched up on the bank of the river, frozen in ice now. Covered by snow. I found most of my food caches, the moose meat, a few smoked geese, a little fish.

The food lay tucked down by the tail of the plane where it would stay frozen. I’d need more food in Moosonee: canned goods, more salt, more flour. I’d get real smokes, beg my sister to go to the LCBO for a few more bottles. Me, maybe I’d even dump my plane for my snowmobile and my big Cree wooden sleigh, pile what I needed in that and live in the bush north of town. Maybe I’d even sneak back in once in a while and visit with family.

Pipe dreams, all of it. I’d live in the bush alone like a rabid animal or turn myself in and go to prison. Those were my two real options. I’d fly back to Moosonee, arrive in the next hours, and let the
manitous
decide. The cops, the few of them in town, I hoped they’d be too busy dealing with the bootlegging, the domestic disturbances, the teen suicide attempts, to worry about me. I reached to the seat next to me and took a swig from the bottle.

Well, at least the plane was lighter. My fuel gauge bobbed well below the magical one-quarter mark, dropping fast. Moosonee, Moose River, Will Bird here. Where the fuck are you?

The plane coughed as I finally spotted my river, above it the grey skies of late afternoon and an approaching snowstorm. I’d stayed over the water, following the bay south, staying out of the airspace of the usual traffic. Not much at this time of day as evening began to descend. I dropped down to a few hundred feet. The gas gauge read dry now. If I had to, I’d make an emergency landing on the water.

Only a few more miles. The wind pushed me from behind, trying to help. If I made it to my dock, I’d take it as a sign of good luck. I’d have to hide the plane tonight, though. I didn’t want anyone knowing I’d come home. The lights up ahead of Moosonee on the right, Moose Factory on the left. Come on, plane!

Sputtering, the engine cut out and then on again as I passed the town below. I dropped lower, tried to slow the plane to ease the consumption. Just fumes now but not far to go. I knew this stretch of river as well as anything in my life. I needed to make the decision to land on the water and hope to coast up to my home or push her just a little further. I worked the throttle as much as I could without stalling her, began the glide in, going slow. Flaps at sixty degrees at this speed, and as I hit the water, that first bump, the engine started quitting, forcing me to throttle her up till she caught, and now I was coming in slow to my dock, the last droplets of gas burned away.

My place looked undisturbed. I watched it from the bank of the river for a while as the darkness settled in. I waited to see if anyone recognized the sound of my motor, would come by to investigate. So good to be back, to set my eyes once more on my own home.

I walked up to the back door and stood on my own porch again. The key was still in its hiding place under the bench. I turned on a light and drew the curtains. The house smelled musty, unused. Everything as I left it. If someone drove by tonight, there was a good chance they’d notice me home. Home, only to be hiding and scared shitless, listening for the sound of approaching tires on gravel that would send me fleeing. Home again, only to hide here for a couple of days while my sister resupplied me. Then gone. I didn’t want to face having to leave once more. How would I? I couldn’t right now.

First things first. I picked up the phone, worried the company had cut the line, but heard the familiar tone in my ear. I was feeling lucky, me. Signs that this might actually work.

“Lisette, it’s me,” I said when she answered.

“Will? Will? That’s really you? Where are you?” She sounded happier than I could remember.

It struck me now. If I told her and then went further and asked her to help me, she became an accomplice. “I’m around,” I said. “It’s good to hear your voice, Lisette.”

“Oh my god, Will. So much to tell you.”

“So tell me, Sis.” I grimaced, ready for it.

“Suzanne! She sent me some postcards. A letter, even!”

Chi meegwetch
, whoever it is watching out for us. I could feel tears burning in my eyes. Suzanne, you were still alive. “Where is she?”

I found out from Lisette that Suzanne wouldn’t let her mother know where she was, and more surprising, that Annie was still gone, was in New York City working. I couldn’t believe it.

“Will,” Lisette said, her voice quieter. So here it came. “There’s other news. Bad news, I guess. About Marius Netmaker. It happened just after you left.” Did Lisette really believe this, or was she pretending? “Somebody shot him.”

I was about to tell her I knew about it all but then decided I’d practise my act. “Where?”

“In his truck.”

“No, Lisette. Where on his body did they shoot him?”

“Oh. In his head.”

I was about to ask her to come by here tonight, worried my phone might be tapped.

“He made it. But they think it’s brain damage.”

“He what?” I asked, sitting hard on the floor.

“He got shot in the head. Police say it’s bikers that were seen up here with him. You remember those ones? The ones who beat you up?”

“Lisette. Are you lying to me?”

“What?” Lisette said. “Why would I do that? The police said it’s bikers.” Lisette paused for a couple of seconds. “I have to tell you something else, for your own good. After Marius was shot, you were a suspect, I think. They came by my house looking for you. I told them you’d gone out to the bush to trap. That you weren’t even here when Marius was shot.”

I breathed shallow, trying to absorb all of this. “Go on. Are they still looking for me?”

“No. I went to the station a week later to find out what I could. I was bold, Will. You would have been proud of me.” I thought of Lisette, and I couldn’t see bold. “I got mad at him. I almost swore.”

“Who’s him?”

“The sergeant. What’s-his-name. He told me you were no longer a suspect, that a dozen people in town swore to him that you had already left when the shooting happened. It was the bikers. Ever stupid, those police.”

“Ever stupid,” I repeated.

Before we got off the phone and I promised to come by and visit tomorrow, your mother told me the police told her they wanted me to drop in the station and talk to them when I returned. I stayed up the rest of the night, worrying this was surely a trap they’d set for me.

In the morning, the old war pony wouldn’t start, and so I walked the long walk to town, to the station, wondering if this was the last freedom I’d have. I played over the alibi in my head. I returned home only last night, was trapping and hunting way up the coast, did some goose hunting on Akimiski Island where I ran into a Cree family from Attawapiskat. I returned last night before the storm that was now here, was sick of being out in the bush alone and was ready to come back to family. I kept my head down in the wind, the blow really starting. I didn’t even know what day it was. It felt like a Sunday. The snow stuck in my long hair that I’d brushed back and put in a ponytail.

I couldn’t believe my own reflection when I saw it earlier in the morning. Narrow face, the high cheekbones, hair matted long. I took my shirt off and stared into the mirror. Skinny as a rail. The wind-burnt skin of my face and hands was far darker than the rest of me. I didn’t even recognize myself.

I held my breath in front of the station before walking in. A young white guy, new here, looked up to me briefly from his snowmobile magazine on the counter. I waited till he looked up again and spoke.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure. What would I say? “I’m, uh, my name’s Will Bird. I’ve been in the bush for the last few months.”

The young guy shrugged. Pimples on his cheeks. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. “Hope you had a good time. So what do you need?”

“My sister told me that you guys might want to talk to me.”

“What about?” He went back to his magazine on the counter.

“I, uh, I heard that Marius Netmaker was shot and that you guys wanted to talk to me.”

His eyes left the magazine. “What you say your name was?”

I told him. He said to wait and went down the hall and disappeared behind a door.

The sergeant appeared, a guy who’d been here a long time. I recognized his face. “Will Bird!” he said. “You’ve been gone a long while! Why don’t you come back to my office and have a chat with me.”

I followed him, my hands shaking so that I put them in my pockets. He pointed to a chair in front of his desk, then sat behind it, opening up a notepad.

“So, you’re just back from the bush, I hear?”

I nodded.

“How long did you say you were gone?”

I didn’t. “Me, I’ve been gone since the second week of July or so.”

“Long time,” he says. “Good hunting?”

I nodded.

“And you heard about Marius Netmaker?”

“My sister told me last night when I got back.”

“Do you recall the exact date you left Moosonee?”

I told him, lying that I’d left the week before Marius getting shot. He scribbled.

“Had Marius threatened you before?”

He knew already. I reported it. “You should have it on file.”

“I’ll be straight with you, Will. Your history with Marius could easily make you a suspect, but there are a lot of people in this town who say you were gone a few days already before the shooting. Boy. A lot of people.”

I kept my eyes on his. He smiled.

“A thinking man,” he said, “might argue you could have slipped back into town without anyone knowing it, done what happened, and slipped back out. But that’s not what a court would ever bother with, without some kind of evidence. And we got no evidence on you, Will.” He stared at me.

I tried to hold it right back.

He sighed and raised his hands, as if to surrender. “We’ve come to the conclusion that this is biker related, especially considering Marius was heavily involved with bikers.” He dropped the tone of his voice now. “If you ask me, it’s a shame that bullet didn’t kill Marius. This town would be better off without him. But he’s alive, and he’s coming back, from what I’ve heard. And he’s probably going to be pretty angry at whoever did this to him.”

The sergeant stood and ushered me out, following me to the door. The wind howled outside now. Good storm.

“So, how did the hunting go?” he asked.

“Not bad,” I said. “Not good. Tough life in the bush.”

“The flying was good?”

I nodded.

He leaned once again toward me and lowered his voice. “I found out your flying licence expired twenty years ago. I’d be willing to bet there’s about a dozen charges I could lay on you.” He looked me in the eye, his face close enough to mine I smelled the coffee on his breath.

He leaned even closer to me, and whispered, “Next time, shoot straighter.” He laughed, and slapped me on the back.

I walked out the door and into the howl.

Three days of snowstorm, just as that ring around the sun promised. I used the storm as my excuse to stay holed up in my home, and when I emerged, the world was a different place. The sun came out, and the temperature dropped hard, so cold I felt it in my lungs. Moosonee lay covered in a white shroud, hardened by the freeze, the snow crusted over so that walking on it was easy. I’d build marten traps and set them while the snow remained this way, save myself the work that would come with a slight thaw and the snowshoes. I wasn’t ready to give up the bush life just yet, me. I still waited for the police car to pull onto my dirt road. Or worse, Marius to appear like a
windigo
from the trees that surrounded me, from the same trees that held my bear in them.

I took a long walk down the road into where other people lived, light so bright on the white crust that I wished I had sunglasses. This town, my world, was frozen so still it looked like a photograph, the photograph of what this town wished it could be. Smoke from chimneys hung low and heavy on the blue sky. Roofs of houses overhung with wind-carved drifts, the ratty yards, the litter of broken bicycles and dolls and children’s missing running shoes, all under dazzling white. The once dusty road, pothole-ridden and washboarded, was now a glittering diamond of ice stretching into the sun. Not many people out so early this day. It felt like a Sunday once more. Every day a Sunday.