Consumption (15 page)

Penny’s dogs noticed the protuberance on the horizon before she did. She simply steered them in the direction they were determined to go in any event. She could see the snowmobile with its hood opened, engine exposed. There was an El Greco version of an iglu beside it, conical rather than spherical, ludicrously tall and narrow.

Penny poked her head inside the iglu. In the dim light she saw a figure curled up motionless against the wall of the iglu. She reached out to touch it—and Pauloosie stirred and rolled over. “Good afternoon,” she said. “Everything okay?”

“My machine won’t start.”

“I could give you a ride.”

“That would be great.”

She backed out of the odd little iglu and he followed her. They stood up together. He was taller than she, and was smiling more than she had ever seen him do at school.

“Your grandfather is worried.”

“I know.”

“He’s out looking for you.”

“I thought it would be him that found me.”

“I’ve never been on the land by myself before.”

“Me either, much.”

“At least you know how to build an iglu.”

“If you call that an iglu.”

“It kept you warm.”

“It didn’t keep me
that
warm.”

“It must have been a long night.”

“I didn’t sleep much until it got warmer this morning.”

“Probably a good idea.”

“It wasn’t really a decision. I wasn’t very comfortable.”

“I would have been scared out of my mind.”

“I was pretty sure my
attatatiak
was coming to get me.”

Pauloosie sat down on the sled and Penny called to the lead to get going.
“Hee, hee, hee,”
she called, turning them to the left and back to town.

“You know what?” Pauloosie called to her.

She kicked out the snow brake and stopped the dogs so she could hear him better.

“What?”

“Actually, we say more,
‘Hey, hey, hey.’”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“I just thought you’d like to know.”

“Your iglu back there, it looked pretty comfy.”

“I was making plans for it.”

She smiled back at him and grunted at the dogs, who took off with a lurch.

They met Emo at the lake three miles west of town. He had seen two forms running alongside the sled and so, by the time they met, his relief had already given way to an impassive, barely detectable anger.

“Hello, Emo,” Penny said.

“Hello,” the old man replied, not looking at her, but rather at his grandson, who looked only at his feet.

“His machine broke down. Could have happened to anyone.”

“Jump on, boy.” Emo indicated his snow machine with a nod of his head, not prepared to debate the boy’s actions with a Kablunauk woman, even—
especially
—this one.

“Thank you, Miss Bleskie,” Pauloosie said, and sat down on the snow machine.

Emo pulled the starting cord. It coughed but did not start. He looked up at Penny, the winter’s intimacy that had grown between them scattering like grounddrift. He pulled again. It caught. He nodded to her. The boy nodded to her. She nodded back. They roared away.

EIGHT

DR. BALTHAZAR STOMPED
his way up the stairs leading to Robertson and Victoria’s kitchen door. Even sitting in her living room, Victoria knew who was coming by the shaking of the floor. When she went to let him in, she found Justine there ahead of her, swinging the door open. Frozen air swept knee-high through the house.

“Victoria, good to see you,” Balthazar said. “I hope I’m not too early.”

“You’re fine, Keith.”

“Your house is looking nice,” he called to her as she ducked into the pantry to gather enough potatoes from their burlap sack.

“We’ve been cleaning it all day,” Justine interjected.

“It looks like it.” Balthazar gave Justine one of his big loopy grins, which endeared him to his youngest patients despite the doubts of their elders.

“Is Robertson home?” Balthazar asked.

“Dad’ll be here in a few minutes,” Justine said and slipped down the hall to her room. Victoria began peeling the potatoes. She opened the oven to check on the roast and closed it again. The scent of cooking meat filled the air.

“How is Pauloosie doing?”

“Still a little rattled, I think, not that he’d admit it. My father was in worse shape.”

“Having a child lost on the land must be the most terrifying experience.”

“Well, every son pretty much does that eventually, I think. I wonder if we didn’t overreact a little. Pauloosie says he wasn’t ever lost, just that the snow machine broke down and it was late in the day. He built an iglu and was fine all night.”

“Well, he has a point then.”

“Still. I was pretty worked up.”

“What about the girls?”

“Justine just kept saying, ‘I don’t know what you’re so excited about. He’s on the land. He knows what to do.’”

“It’s natural to be worried.”

“The children and me, we’re Inuit, is the thing. Being on the land shouldn’t be the most frightening thing in the world for us.”

“The boy is seventeen, Victoria.”

“My grandfather was fifteen when he was married.”

“That was a different time.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t be that different.”

“Pauloosie would agree with you.”

“Yes.”

“What do the girls see themselves doing, do you think?”

“Justine wishes she was Pat Benatar. Marie wishes she was Justine. Who knows?”

“That’s pretty cute.”

“It isn’t in the morning.” And she hummed a snatch of “Love is a Battlefield.”

“Hey, how is your family?”

“Everyone is okay. My mom is retired in Arizona now, and my brother and his family have moved to Newark. It’s nice having him nearby—I’m close to my niece, Amanda. I’ve mentioned her before—she’s just a little older than Justine.”

“And what about your book? How is that going?”

Balthazar winced. No one else in the hamlet except the priest would have asked him. He kept a journal in which he wrote about
his days there—mostly about the medicine. His habit was discussed in the community more than it would otherwise have been only because he refused to comment. Given his reputation, the prevailing question was: What could he have to say?

This was not exactly Victoria’s point of view, but she knew she enjoyed a certain licence with him that others didn’t, and she couldn’t resist teasing him. He almost liked it but still sidestepped the question.

“Have you painted in here since I last visited?”

She grinned. “No.”

The door opened and Robertson came in, unzipping his nylon jacket. He was known in the town for his habit of wearing a light nylon coat even in fierce winds. He had confided to Victoria that heavy coats made him feel claustrophobic, but she had long suspected that he liked being known both as a man who could stand the cold and as a man who didn’t have to. It was like the architect walking through a job site wearing a tie. It was also just about the most predictable of conversation topics and so was seized upon by Balthazar.

“Heavens, Robertson, I don’t know how you don’t just freeze solid in that jacket in this weather.”

Robertson looked at him as he unlaced his boots. “Good to see you, Keith. Long time.”

“Yes. Almost a year, I think.”

He stood and held his hand out. Balthazar shook it.

“Kids! Dinner!” Victoria hollered.

“Hi, Marie,” Balthazar said as the girls came in.

“Hi,” she answered dutifully.

Pauloosie followed, a measurable beat later.

“Hi,” Balthazar ventured.

“’Lo,” the boy answered and slunk to a chair at the kitchen table. The children knew Balthazar well enough to not be interested in charming him.

Justine said grace. Victoria passed the roast to Robertson, who carved it as the girls dished themselves potatoes and mixed vegetables.
Robertson pushed the serving platter into the centre of the table. Each of the children drew it in turns closer to them and picked out a few slices. Robertson tsked at their manners but held his tongue.

“How are things at the clinic, Keith?”

“Oh they’re fine. Every year seems busier, of course. But the nurses are great.”

“I think the funding for a hospital might finally be coming through.”

“I don’t even know whether to hope it’s true. Twenty million to build, they say, and staffing would be another issue.”

“Well, some things are happening.”

Balthazar detected a note of insistence he had not heard in Robertson on this topic before. He looked up from his plate. “What have you heard?”

“I heard they might be prepared to let a contract in the next six months.”

“How long would it take to build?”

“That’s more a question of capital financing than anything else. The government has agreed to provide operating funds, but they say they aren’t able to put the thing up, which is convenient. Still, it could be built in a summer if the money was all in place.”

“Is there any reason to think that the money might be in place?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I can’t say.” Not-quite-silent chewing filled the pause. Robertson regretted having said as much as he had. Balthazar was alarmed by Robertson’s certainty.

Robertson tried to move the conversation to medical matters, not money. “So how many beds would you say the hospital should have?”

Balthazar chewed slowly and swallowed. He looked at Victoria. “The thing is, truthfully, I don’t think a hospital will make much difference here. I know everyone thinks it will, but we’d still have to fly people out for surgery and CT scans and things like that.

There are a small number of things we would be able to treat: some of the bronchiolitis and croup maybe, and pneumonia. But staffing the hospital will be a huge problem: we can’t get enough nurses to work here now. How will we get twice as many?”

Robertson sawed at his meat as he listened to this. “Why do people in small towns in the south have their own hospitals and we don’t? They aren’t looking at a five-hundred-mile trip to the next nearest hospital either.”

“I know.”

“It’s so hard to do anything new up here.”

“If you say so.”

“Who is threatened by a hospital, for crying out loud? I can sort of understand why people reflexively oppose every mine and resource development, but a hospital?”

“Hospitals paralyze health care. They suck up all the money in a flash and seem to be a solution to everything, but mostly they aren’t.”

“Keith, listen to me.” As Robertson grew impassioned, his Northumbrian accent grew steadily more prominent. “You might be a little more influential on this subject than you realize. What you say might be listened to. So, you can’t really allow yourself the luxury of your usual timidity.”

Balthazar coloured. “Well, that’s one way of looking at it.”

“So,” Victoria interjected, “who would like more potatoes?”

“I would,” Pauloosie said. He looked at the doctor. “Would you say that the hospital will require more Kablunauks to live up here?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“The hospital in Churchill employs a hundred people, from janitors to doctors.”

“A hundred
jobs,”
Robertson said, “rather than assistance cheques.”

“So those people would come here and need houses.”

“Yes.”

“Where are those houses going to come from?”

“The hospital would have to make some arrangements as part of its recruiting strategy,” Robertson said.

“Why don’t they just build the hundred houses now? There’s people that need them.”

“It’s complicated,” Balthazar answered, eyes on his plate.

“It isn’t that complicated,” Robertson said, looking at his son. “The houses are needed. The hospital is needed. The money to pay for them is needed.”

“I think it’s time for dessert,” Victoria announced.

NINE

A COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER
, Balthazar stumbled out of his cab in front of his apartment building in Yonkers. He had dressed that morning in Rankin Inlet and had disrobed incrementally in airplane and airport washrooms as his latitude had dropped. Now he carried a sweater under his arm, a pair of rolled-up wool socks in his trouser pockets, and a light jacket over his shoulder. The long underwear had been deposited in a paper-towel receptacle in Winnipeg. Getting out of the cab, his shirt was pulled away from his neck and displayed great perspiration stains under his arms.