Through Black Spruce (4 page)

5
TALKING GUN

There’s a dirt road you know well, nieces, that runs past my house, goes past the dump and the healing lodge, the place the town sends Indians when they don’t need a hospital but more a place to dry out or get away from abusive husbands. The dirt road, it’s a two-mile stretch beside the Moose River to town. If I go left out of my house instead of right, the road becomes a snowmobile trail that, if you follow it long enough, will eventually get you to Cochrane nearly two hundred miles south of here. I’m an early riser, me. Even if I’m up drinking till midnight, I’ll still wake at five, wide awake and with cloudy eyes, staring out at the dawn.

And so I tried jogging early in the morning when I knew Marius would still be asleep, and I realized I wanted my two friends with me because I no longer wanted to be out of my house alone. I had finally learned fear. Marius had taught me the kind of fear that threatened to make me a shut-in.

I began running most every morning, shuffling in my old boots down the dusty road. I’d walk down my drive when the sun rose, trying to stop myself from looking for Marius but doing it anyways. I was getting crank calls a lot of nights since my return home. Nothing on the other end but steady, deep breathing.

Each morning I’d take my first few steps and force my legs to do more than a walk, the pain shooting up my spine and into the back of my head. But I kept the legs moving, moving at a pace they hadn’t in years, my breath short after a hundred yards, promising myself I’d cut down on the smoking. I’d try to imagine something chasing me, a polar bear or even an angry marten. Crows screamed at me from the telephone poles.

Most days, I hoped to make it past the dump to the lodge and back. A mile each way. The healing lodge is the halfway point to town. I kept myself going on the vision of one day being able to run into town, running around it for everyone to see me, then turning and making my way back home in a dust cloud, running so fast they’d think I could fly.

I once tried to get Joe out with me. “I thought about it,” Joe said. “But my truck’s running fine, so I don’t see the point.”

Your mother thought I was crazy, too. Too many days I lay on my couch with a seized-up back or pulled leg muscles. “What are you thinking, Will?” she’d ask between chapters of whatever inspirational book she’d be reading to me. “You’re too old for this kind of nonsense. Did you shake something loose when you hit your head?”

I’d tell her the world was a different place now, a far more dangerous place. I only spoke in generalities.

I avoided heading into town in the couple of months after my beating. I didn’t want to have to explain the discoloured bags under my eyes, my new fear. But eventually the desire to drink came back. And it came full on. I lasted as long as I could, lasted until my emergency stash of rye under the kitchen sink ran dry.

The first day I walked back into the world of other people, straight to the LCBO for a bottle, all was good. But on the walk home, I was followed by Marius’s car, driving slow. I didn’t come out of my house after that for a long time.

I noticed something, nieces, in those days after my beating when I drank alone. With no one to talk with much, I began talking to myself. That, by itself, isn’t so crazy. But then, with too much rye in me, things started talking back. My sofa called me a fat ass when I sat on it. When I’d lean in to drink from the tap, it told me to get a glass. The secret in my closet began to beckon me. Drinking alone isn’t a good practice for anybody. It leads to lonely melodrama. I remember calling Chief Joe one afternoon when it was bad, but he didn’t pick up. I tried Gregor, but he didn’t answer, either. Must have still been at school. He somehow talked them into letting him coach the girls’ volleyball.

I sat on my porch and stared at the river, glass of whisky in my hand. I remember humming to myself, and the tune took on a life of its own. I called it Mosquito Song. The bastards were bad that afternoon and early evening, finally awake from their long winter sleep, all of them starved for my blood. Do mosquitoes get drunk on the blood of a drunk man? I hope so.

Joe called back that night. “Come on over, Joe,” I said. “I’m drunk.”

“Not tonight. I got my granddaughter with me. We’re playing dolls.”

I hung up.

I don’t get angry much, me. You know that, nieces. I don’t know what set it off, then I thought of Marius and of me being scared and you, my missing niece, Suzanne, and this is what I think caused it. I called Joe back. “Bad connection,” I said. “I’m gonna go jog again tomorrow. You should come, you.”

“We’ll see how my truck’s running.”

I heard a child’s laughter in the background. It made me sad. “It’ll be good for you.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking alone,” Joe said.

“Yeah, me, I’m gonna run tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see you.” We hung up, and I stood to pour another drink, stumbling a little to the kitchen. Headlights swam along the road, and I turned off the kitchen light quick and stared out. A pickup truck. It slowed a little by my house, then pushed by.

Suzanne, I thought more of you then, tried to remember how long ago you’d left with Marius’s brother, Gus. Christmas. Not this last, but past. Twelve months, plus the handful of the new year. Seventeen months I counted out. There was a magazine around the house somewhere with pictures of you in it. Those were near a year old. You looked pretty, like a pretty anybody girl that anyone sees in those magazines. Except your eyes. Sad eyes. My father’s eyes. They made you look different than the others in those magazines.

Your mother has other magazines with you in them. Lots, so many that I was impressed, and amazed at how busy you must have been. You are famous, my niece. But you have disappeared with your boyfriend, Gus, and this makes you more famous, especially around here.

One magazine has pictures of you naked, covering yourself with your arms and hands in all the right places, and I was embarrassed to look at them, wondering what kind of clothes or jewellery or perfume my niece was supposed to be selling with not a stitch on. I tried to make sure those pictures didn’t fall into the hands of Gregor. But of course they did.

Lisette was scared and proud to show them to me. “Can you believe this is Suzanne?” she asked, looking into my eyes. “This magazine is the most famous of them all, and look, it’s your niece.” I watched my sister’s thin fingers trace your outline.

Suzanne, when you left for the south and became famous, you kept in touch with your mother, but not with Annie. My two nieces had some kind of fight. Many fights. But that’s nothing new. One jealous of the other for her looks, the other for her visions. And when your mother didn’t hear from you, Suzanne, that last Christmas, she got worried, told me her mother’s instincts were telling her something bad. Your mum called your agent in Toronto when your cell phone only switched to messages and then, after a time, went dead. Imagine that. I know someone with a cell phone. You really are famous.

The agent said he didn’t know a thing. Lisette even contacted the Netmakers to see if they’d heard from Gus. And then the Netmakers took this as a chance to begin calling your mother and saying you were trash—just look at those pictures in those magazines!—and look how you had led Gus away from them and probably to some sick fate. And that in turn left me to wonder why Marius wanted to kill me.

Marius. I remember him when he was just another kid playing on the dirt road. And now he was a biker with a wispy goatee who sold drugs to the new kids playing in the dirt. No. He’s above that now. He brings in the drugs and recruits kids to sell the drugs to other kids. Cocaine. Hash. Crack. Something called ecstasy. What’s that? I must admit the name is appealing. Your mother was the one who told me all this. Gregor and Joe filled in some juicier bits. Your mother knows everything despite never being the one to gossip. She just sits and watches and takes it all in like an Arctic owl. Me, I wouldn’t do drugs. I always stuck with the rye. You always know what you’re gonna get.

The night that I talked to Joe and my furniture and kitchen appliances, that night when I finally went to bed, on my back, head spinning, that is the night that what I keep wrapped up in a blanket in my closet came to life. It had wanted to before. But I’d always ignored it, was always drunk enough to pass out and forget it tried to talk to me. But this night was different. It had to be my new fear.

The floor lifted and fell like I was on a James Bay gale. I drifted and rolled and drifted and rolled. No smart Indian would be caught dead out on the bay in the weather of spring or autumn. Winds come up fast and churn the shallow waters into monster waves that have taken many lives. I lost some good friends, me, many years ago in autumn. Out goose hunting, a family in three freighter canoes. Wind came up with the snow squalls, and the shallow bay made some big waves fast. Nine of eleven in that family dead. Six of them kids.

Bad water on James Bay. What can you do? No use to a Cree unless it’s winter and he can snowmobile across it. That’s what I say. Me, I stick to the rivers. Everything you need there between the two banks. Fish. Geese. Water. Of course water. All you need is some fishing line and a gun. A gun. Never think of guns in bed in this state.

I kept it wrapped up in a blanket in that closet, the blanket muffling its annoying talk that I couldn’t ignore. This one, she’s old. A real collector’s item. My father’s rifle from the war. That rifle, it did a lot of bad things. My father didn’t tell me much of this. The gun did. It’s a real chatterbox once it gets going.

Son of Xavier,
the gun whispered.
Son of Xavier,
it said.
Come here and unwrap me. You’re strangling me in this blanket. Please.
I tried hard to ignore it, nieces.
Son of Xavier,
it said.
Unwrap me. I have a story for you. A story to tell you.

6
JUST A WEEK

There’s something I love about being on the river before dawn breaks, the world still asleep as I follow the frozen spine of the Moose on my snowmobile. Despite a restless night filled with dreams of the cabin burning down because Gordon stuffed the wood stove too full till it glowed red, the push of the wind—this morning the thermometer outside the window read minus 40 Celsius—makes me feel as awake as I’ve felt in years. Ever cold! The kind of cold that can kill you if you make one stupid mistake is invigorating, to say the least. I’d love to see one of those fashion models I ran with not so long ago be able to do this. I’d love to see Violet or Soleil crank up her own snow machine or chop a cord of wood or set a marten trap. Why did I summon the faces of those two women? This simple whispering of their names makes my teeth clench.

Again last night, as I squirmed and flopped around in my bunk, the idea of climbing into Gordon’s bed and asking him to hold me washed over me and pushed sleep even further away. He and I were on that romantic track not so long ago, especially when I’d just brought him up here. But the violence that exploded so soon after our arrival pushed all semblance of normalcy away, those events an earthquake that toppled our houses to the ground. I’m thinking now, though, that letting another human get close to me might not be the worst thing. We’ll see.

I would never have imagined anything sexual with him when I first met him. But he cleans up well. I’ve put a few pounds on his lanky frame and reintroduced into his world the importance of bathing. He’s a good-looking guy, him. Striking. And in the city he proved to be more than physically capable. He’s my protector.

I slow down to go over a pressure crack in the ice, and when I give my snowmobile gas it lurches before catching. The belt’s wearing out. I’m going to have to replace it.

I stomp the snow from my boots when I get inside the hospital vestibule, the hot, dry air making my throat tickle. I get a coffee in the cafeteria and head up to the top floor. Again today the desire to just head right back outside and drive away tugs at me, but I have to be a good niece and put my time in, maybe find it inside myself to pray to whoever’s up there that my uncle will miraculously find consciousness again.

When I walk into his room, the curtain is drawn around his bed, and I’m overwhelmed with the understanding he has died. A sound comes out of my throat and my legs weaken. I promise I will come every day. Please. But then I hear humming and recognize the voice. I drop my coat and my snow pants onto a chair and collapse onto the one next to it. Eva’s big head appears from behind the curtain. I think of a walrus emerging from an ice hole. I can be so horrible even when I don’t mean to be.

“Just cleaning him up,” she says. “Wanna help?”

“Think I’ll pass,” I say. “That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

“Another monster bingo at the arena this weekend,” she says. I can hear the splash of water, the squeezing of it from the sponge. “Wanna come with me?”

“Mona,”
I say. “No. You’re the one who’s lucky with that.”

“Well maybe Gordon will want to get out, get into town. You ever think of that?”

When Eva’s finished, she pulls back the curtain, the squeal of the tracks making me grit my teeth. “Clean as a whistle,” she says, squeezing herself into a chair across the room. I look at the long, thin form of my uncle under the sheet. “I switch to night shift in a few days, so you probably won’t be seeing much of me for a while.”

Something in that news makes me horribly sad, afraid even. I want Eva here when I’m here. She’s the only one I trust, who I can talk to. “Are visitors allowed at night?”

“Nope.”

When I’m alone with him I get up and begin my pacing. “So, what do you want me to talk about today?” I look over at him. “Don’t be shy. Tell me.” As usual, I have a couple of hours to burn before Mum arrives. “Maybe I’ll sneak you out of here this weekend, Uncle,” I say. “I’ll steal a wheelchair and push you over to the monster bingo. You might enjoy that.”

Monster bingo. Eva won big, what, ten months ago. It feels like a lifetime ago. It was her idea to bring me on a vacation down to Toronto with some of the winnings. I’d never left this place before, not really. Maybe I’ll talk to you about that, Uncle. After all, that’s where it all started, really, didn’t it? Eva having a hard time with her man and thinking a trip to a real city, a place far south where we’d never been, might be a good idea. Some idea.

I sit by his bed and look at his face. I take his hand in mine. The action still feels weird. You can tell he’s busted his nose a couple of times. Ever crazy, my uncle. He’s one of the great northern bush pilots. Everyone in this town has a different wild story about flying with him. It’s hard to picture it now, but the story is he was something of a lady’s man in his youth. He’s had a hard life, though, lost everything more than once. I look behind me to make sure no one’s at the door, then turn back and lean closer to him and begin telling him the story of Eva and her monster bingo.

I’d just gotten back from my camp, had a wicked case of food poisoning from an old tin of ravioli, which was the only food I had left. I’d failed to kill any geese all that week of hunting. You would have been ashamed of me, Uncle, not even able to call in one flock to my blind. I crawled back home in my freighter canoe, barfing out of both orifices every half mile. So awful. Worst of all, it wasn’t till I’d gotten back to Mum’s house in Moosonee that I remembered in my sick daze I’d left the door to my camp wide open to the animals and the elements. No way to begin a long journey, is it? Even if I didn’t know at the time I was about to begin one.

I remember waking up to my mother’s brown face the morning after I got home, the corners of her eyes etched in thin creases, more worry lines than smile lines. Her face looked taut, I remember, tired, but still beautiful. She has the intense stare of your father, Uncle, my grandpa Xavier. I smile at her, and this must surprise her. She cocks her head, looking confused before smiling back. Flash of white teeth. “You must be feeling better,” she says. “I can’t even think of the last time you smiled at me. Just like a little girl.” She reaches out to touch my cheek. It is my turn to pull back.

“I don’t feel that good, Mum.” I feel bad for doing this as I watch her smile fade a bit. But this is a game we’ve always played. I’ll give her some empathy and next she’ll be asking me to come to Sunday mass with her.

“Eva’s here to visit.”

“Make her some tea, Mum. I need the washroom.” I climb out of bed when she leaves, my legs unsure as I make my way to the bathroom.

I consider a shower but don’t want to keep Eva waiting, am startled by Suzanne’s face staring back at me from the mirror, water dripping off the sharp cheekbones. But no, this face is heavier around the mouth, eyes that don’t sparkle like Suzanne’s. I’ve lost weight in these last days, am dehydrated. I peel off my T-shirt and can see the line of ribs below the weight of my breasts, my ribs something I’ve not seen on myself for a long time. I leave the dieting and the picky eating to my sister. Running down the dusty streets of Moosonee in sneakers, running to nowhere, running from something, I leave that to Suzanne.

In the kitchen, Eva sits heavy in a chair, my mother across from her and holding the baby, Hugh. Baby Hughie, I call him, fat and complacent as his mother, staring at my mum like an Indian Buddha, allowing her to coo into his face. The only time that boy makes a fuss is when he’s hungry, and he likes to let the world know it, screeching till he’s red faced, not shutting up until Eva plugs him onto her huge tit and his cries turn to sucking. I want to like this baby, but he makes it really hard.

“Ever tired looking!” Eva says when I sit down at the table with them. My mother stands and with practised comfort swings Hugh onto her hip, heads for the counter and pours me a tea. I watch her take two slices of white bread from the bag and slip them into the toaster. Today I will accept her care.

“I’ll never get used to you going out in the bush alone,” my mother says, handing me the hot mug.

“I keep telling Annie that the more time she spends out there, the weirder she gets,” Eva adds. They laugh.

My mother places a plate of toast in front of me. “You should be able to keep this down. You need to put something in your belly.” I hand Eva a piece and bite into mine. I am hungry. I finish the toast before I realize I have. I watch as my mother puts two more slices in the toaster.

Eva keeps smiling at me. She knows something I don’t. She jiggles her leg like she has to go to the bathroom.

“What’s got you so excited?” I ask her. “Junior offer you his hand in marriage or something?”

“Ever!” Eva says. “Just because he’s my baby’s daddy doesn’t mean I want to marry him.” Everyone on both sides of the river knows better.

“What’s up, then?” I ask.

“Do you really want to know?” Eva asks. I nod. My mother, intent for the news, comes to the table, Hugh still on her hip. She hands me a second plate of toast and sits. “You know how I had a good feeling about the bingo last weekend? Guess who won.”

“Get out!” I say. “You did? How much?”

“A lot,” Eva says. “A game of telephone pole.” Then in a whisper, looking at me, eyes lit up: “Fourteen thousand dollars!”

“Get out!” I say again. “No way. Fourteen grand?”The gnaw in my belly isn’t from the ravioli.

“Way,” Eva says.

My mother claps her hands, jiggling Baby Hughie. “So much money, Eva! What are you going to do with it all?”

“Me and Junior are going to leave Hugh with Junior’s
kookum
and go down to Toronto for a vacation.”

The gnaw in my stomach grows stronger.“You can go on ten vacations with that kind of cash,” I say. Not that I’d go, but why wouldn’t she invite me somewhere? As if she knows what I’m thinking, Eva says she’ll take me shopping at the Northern Store. I’m happy she won something, but really, she already pulls in great money as a nurse. I barely get by trapping and guiding. I’m still forced to live with Mum when I’m not at my camp.

To try and make some kind of connection with Hughie, I offer to carry him down the long dirt road that takes us to Sesame Street and then to downtown. Downtown! Ever funny. A dusty street that runs from the train station to the boat docks, the Northern Store and KFC attached, a chip stand that’s open only in summer, the bank, Taska’s Store and Arctic Arts. About it.

The boy is heavy, just lies in my arms watching the world from lidded eyes in fat little cheeks. He falls asleep to the rhythm of my walk. Wish I had a
tikanagan
to carry him on my back.

“What else you going to do with that money?” I ask as we turn onto Sesame Street, quiet now with the kids mostly in school.

“I don’t know, me. Haven’t thought too much about it.” Eva huffs from the walking. “Save most of it, I guess.”

“Ever boring. Spend it. You’ll win more.” The day is warming up, the remaining snow trickling in small rivers from the washboard road and down to the river.

We stop at the bridge over the creek and stare down at the black water pouring into the Moose. Stolen bicycles dumped here last year stick up from the surface. I look down at Hugh still sleeping in my arms, get the urge to pull a Michael Jackson and dangle him over the current so that Eva flips out. I can be mean. He’s so fat I’d probably drop him. My arms and lower back ache.

“What you smiling at?” Eva asks.

“Nothing.”

We walk down to the main road, make a left toward the train station at Taska’s. We head to the big water tower by the station, the top of it painted with an osprey and Cree syllabics by one of the Etherington boys a long time ago. Paint job holding up still. Impressive. Kids playing hooky congregate in front of what used to be a pool hall but is now a Pentecostal church, along with the usual suspects, the old rubbies. Remi Martin, Porkchop, Stinky Andy. They wave hello and try to call us over to get spare change. “Not too shabby for a
Nishnabe,
” Porkchop shouts at me. I smile and keep walking. I pass Hugh back to Eva when he wakes up, whining.

“I’m going to have to nurse him,” Eva says, making a squishy face at her boy.

“Let’s go sit at the KFC.”

The Northern Store, our shrine to civilization way up here in Indian Country, provides us with overpriced groceries, wilting fruits and vegetables that cost a whole cheque, clothes and bicycles and boots and televisions and stereos all lit up by bright fake lighting. In back you can still bring in your pelts and sell them for prices that have plummeted over the last years. We’ll go in later.

Now we walk into the restaurant attached to it. Kentucky Fried Duck. The Bucket of Sickness.
Anishnabe
soul food. My god, the people around here love it. Today the stink of grease makes my stomach turn. “Ever smell good!” Eva says, sitting with me and coyly lifting her shirt and plugging Hugh on. The kid at the counter, Steve, watches, his pocked face entranced.

“They going to make us buy anything?” I ask.

“Grab me a lunch pack and a Diet Pepsi just in case,” Eva says. “And get yourself something, skinny. My treat.” I do as ordered, deciding that the only thing I’ll be able to keep down is a Pepsi and a coleslaw.

With Eva and Hugh fuelled up, we go to the Northern Store, walk up and down the bright aisles, neither of us really wanting to buy anything. But what else is there to do on a weekday morning? Mostly
kookums
and
moshums
hobbling along, pushing carts in front of them. In their lives, they’ve gone from living on the land in teepees and
askihkans
, hunting, trapping, trading in order to survive, to living in clapboard houses and pushing squeaky grocery carts up and down aisles filled with overpriced and unhealthy food. The changes they’ve seen over the course of decades must make their heads spin. Diabetes and obesity and cancer plague our community, in communities all across the north, if you believe APTN, the Indian TV channel. Experts seem puzzled.
Gaaah!
That’s what you’d say, Uncle.