White Heat (53 page)

    The
realization hit Edie like a rogue wave, turning her mind in so many directions
she had to take hold of her breathing to collect herself. Then, when she was
calm, she very quietly reached for her weapon. She approached the cockpit.
Martie felt the gun barrel against the back of her neck and let out the screech
of a cub abandoned by its mother.

    'Edie,
no.'

    At
the cry, Edie pressed the barrel in harder. Her skin prickled with adrenaline.

    'The
only reason I'm not killing you right now is that someone has to fly. But you
pull
any
tricks, and I mean any tricks, I'll send us all down.'

    She
took a moment or two, gazing out of the window down to the grey, hypnotic water
of Jones Sound. When she felt calm once more, she said, 'How long till we
land?'

    'Twenty
minutes.' Martie's voice sounded as though it had jammed inside her head.

    'Then
that's how long you've got to explain yourself.'

    It
had started out as some extra cash on the side. The dope - methamphetamine -
came up on the Arctic Patrol ship labelled 'scientific instruments' and was
collected by DeSouza personally. The ship's captain, Jonson, was in on it.

    Martie
was the bag woman. Every so often she would land at the science station strip,
pick up a box and drop it in Iqaluit.

    Martie
paused in her explanation.

    'DeSouza
told me the dope-running was funding important research.'

    'You
know he shot Felix Wagner, right?'

    Martie
nodded reluctantly.

    She'd
found out long after the event. DeSouza had followed the hunting party, waiting
for the moment Wagner was alone and he could disable him and take the stone. He
fired off the shot, but then Andy Taylor appeared. DeSouza hadn't meant to kill
Wagner, but he wasn't too sorry that he had. He claimed Wagner knew how much he
needed that stone, he owed him. But instead Wagner had sold out.

    'Shit,
Edie, he said what he was doing would change the world. When everything got
used up here, he said, people would go and live up in the stars with the
spirits. I don't know zip about science. I know about flying planes. So I
thought, what harm can this do? It wasn't like the dope was coming into
Autisaq.'

    'But
then you started using.'

    'I don't
know how it happened.' Another agonized bark. 'I guess I just started tooting
every now and then to keep up my concentration, you know, for the flying. Then
the old man found me at it, so he joined in. No one even noticed the
consignments were short. But DeSouza came by the cabin one day when me and
Koperkuj were sampling the wares. That's when I realized he was using too.'

    'And
that's when he found out about the stone.'

    'Uh
huh.'

    'Koperkuj
wouldn't give it to him?'

    'You
know how the old man was . . .' She hesitated. '. . . is. He wouldn't sell his
own turd to a
qalunaat.
Next time DeSouza came round, he told him he'd
lost it. DeSouza didn't believe him, but the old man wouldn't budge. That was
why he let you have it, so that DeSouza wouldn't steal it;

    She
glanced back at the old man.

    'He
gonna be OK?'

    Edie
shrugged.

    'You
gotta understand, Edie, in the early days, DeSouza was all right. Things
changed once he'd got sight of that stone. And then the meth. I dunno, he just went
dark.'

    'A
dark spirit.'

    Martie
nodded.

    'And
then Koperkuj went missing . . .' Edie continued.

    'All
honesty? I didn't know what had happened. Far as I knew, DeSouza believed the
old man had lost the stone. Neither Koperkuj nor DeSouza realized I knew you
had it, so I figured I was safe. But then DeSouza let slip he'd seen the old
man just before he disappeared so I figured what he was up to with him. The
stuff I told you about Koperkuj dealing weed? I knew you'd tell Palliser and I
assumed he'd make the connection with the space station and go check out
DeSouza.'

    'And
you thought you'd take the stone from my house and give it to him, he'd release
Koperkuj and everything would be just fine.'

    'Something
like that. Shit, it sounds crazy, Little Bear, but everything got so fucked up.
When I couldn't find the stone and I saw the photo on your couch I was worried
and then later when I came round and you'd gone, I panicked. I figured you'd
worked it out.'

    'And
you called DeSouza.'

    Martie
was wordless for a moment, her voice drowned in the tide of her feelings.
Autisaq appeared ahead of them now, tiny and frail before the great, ferocious
sweep of

    Ellesmere.

    'I
hate what I did, but I tried to make it right in the end.' Edie put down the
rifle, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 'Just land us, Martie, then get
the hell out of my sight.'

    The
new nurse, Diandra Smitty, met Edie by the tea urn in the waiting room of the
Autisaq nursing station. Diandra was a large, blowsy woman, the 'polar
opposite' of Robert Patma, as she often liked to say, and the only black white
person most of the citizens of Autisaq had ever come across. In the three and a
half months she'd been in the role, Diandra had listened to the elders chewing
over old wisdom and old cures. Bit by bit she had begun to incorporate
traditional practices into the healing on offer at the nursing station, and
this had won her a place in Autisaq's affections. The tea urn, too, had been
Diandra's idea.

    'Hey,
Edie,' Diandra said. 'Visiting with the old man?'

    Edie
picked up her tea and began ladling in the sugar. Diandra always observed how
much sugar Edie put in, but she never said anything. Edie liked her all the
more for that.

    'How's
the new volunteer?' Edie said. For the past two months Willa Inukpuk had been
putting hours in at the station, helping Diandra with the administration.

    'He's
doing great,' Diandra said. 'Funny, but some people just
are
natural-born
healers. Willa, he's one of them. Just didn't know for a long time, is all.'

    Just
then Willa appeared from one of the consulting rooms, saw Edie and threw her a
fragile little smile. As the winter progressed, relations between the young man
and his ex-stepmother had thawed somewhat. The time Willa had spent working
with Diandra had transformed him. Edie had never seen her stepson so
purposeful, so comfortable in his skin.

    Diandra
disappeared back into her office and Edie headed for Saomik Koperkuj's room. In
the early days, when it was still touch and go, they'd wanted to air-ambulance
him out to a proper hospital in Iqaluit, but he'd point-blank refused to go,
said if he couldn't stay on Umingmak Nuna he might as well be dead. His experience
hadn't mellowed the old man; he was as ill-tempered and snippy as ever but,
luckily for them both, Edie never expected him to be any other way.

    Her
twice-weekly visits had become woven into the fabric of both their lives. They
each knew the score. Her role was to act out that visiting him was a burden,
while he pretended to find her an interfering pain in the ass. They both had a
whale of a time. Koperkuj knew much more about the old ways than Edie had
realized and he'd been keen to pass his knowledge on. Over the weeks, she'd
learned how to blow footballs from walrus bladders and cure snowblindness in
dogs by running a flea over a hair in their eyes. He'd taught her how to
approach a ptarmigan so that it thought you were a seal, and shown her a fail-safe
way to jig for sculpin. She couldn't recall a time when she had grown more,
both as a hunter and as an Inuk. But, of course, she never said that to the old
man.

    Just
as she reached it, the door to Koperkuj's room swung open and Martie stepped out.
Edie knew from Willa that her aunt came regularly into the clinic to visit
Koperkuj and get help with her addiction, but the remainder of the time Martie
took pains to stay out at her cabin and Edie had managed to avoid running into
her. The two women hadn't spoken since the flight back from Craig.

    'Hey,
Edie.' Martie's voice was soft with regret.

    Edie
couldn't bring herself to ask after Martie's health so she said the next-best
thing.

    'How's
the old man today?'

    'He's
cool.' Martie gave a fruity little chuckle. For a moment her eyes shone with
their old energy. 'He says he wants to make an honest woman of me. Imagine,
after all these years.'

    'You
gonna say yes?'

    'Are
you crazy?'

    Edie
smiled. They passed one another. It was an awkward moment, brimming with unsaid
things. Edie took the door and watched her aunt make her way down the corridor
towards the waiting area. Just before she reached it, Martie hesitated and
looked back.

    'Hey,
Little Bear, Willa tell you I'm clean?'

    Edie
nodded. Martie just stood there for a while. She was smiling but her voice
sounded choked.

    'Can't
keep a thing secret in this place.'

    'Sure
hope not,' Edie said. Then she took a breath and walked through the door into
the old man's room.

    Saomik
Koperkuj was sitting up in bed watching a DVD. During the weeks and months of
his convalescence, Edie had gradually introduced him to the greats of silent
comedy and now they had a kind of routine going where Koperkuj would tell a
story or two about the old days then they'd watch a silent short together.
Koperkuj was particularly fond of Buster Keaton, said the comedian reminded him
of himself as a youngster. He'd nicknamed the man Kituq, thought it made him
sound Inuk. Liked it better that way.

    'You
run into Martie?' he asked.

    'Yeah.'
She took the old man's nailless hand and squeezed it gently. Koperkuj stared at
the screen in front of him and grunted. Then he squeezed Edie back.

    'I
can't stay long this time, I have to get to the airstrip.' She wanted to catch
Derek Palliser before he got wrapped up in official police business. 'I don't
know if there'll be time for a story.'

    He
sat up in bed, his face still a mess of scars he called his war wounds. He
didn't seem to care too much about them.

    'Saomik,
mind if I ask you something?'

    He'd
never spoken about what he'd done with Andy Taylor's body, only that he'd been
out hunting when he heard a shot and finding Taylor lying dead, removed the
stone from around his neck.

    'You
gonna ask the question whether I mind or not.'

    'Why
did you cut up Andy Taylor's body?'

    Koperkuj's
lips tightened into a scowl. He'd said all he wanted to say about that time.

    'Man
was dead,' he mumbled. 'And the dogs was hungry.' He glanced at Edie and when
he saw she wasn't shocked, a look of relief came over his face. 'There, I said
it once, don't intend to say it again.' He folded his arms, as though to
emphasize the point. 'Now tell me, how's that Pauloosie boy?'

    Not
long after DeSouza's death, Edie and Derek had confronted Simeonie Inukpuk over
the monies going into the Autisaq Children's Foundation. The newly elected
mayor didn't even try to deny he'd been accepting bribes from the oil companies
to be pro-resource development. He'd embezzled government funds too. A deal was
struck and shortly afterwards the Autisaq Children's Foundation appointed Mike
Nungaq as its executive officer. The Autisaq Children's Rockhounding and
Camping Club had its first expedition not long after. It was followed by a
computer club and there was talk of raising money for an indoor swimming pool.
Edie was reinstated to her teaching job at the school. A few times, she'd taken
the whole class down into Saomik Koperkuj's hospital room for some lessons in
traditional

    Inuit
knowledge. The kids loved the old man, and in his gruff way Koperkuj returned
their enthusiasm. His particular favourite was Pauloosie Allakarialak. Reminded
him of himself at the same age, he said. Under the old man's tutelage, the bewildered,
wounded boy of a year ago had completely disappeared. This new Pauloosie had
started writing Inuktitut song lyrics. Now he was talking about becoming
Autisaq's first Inuit rapper.