Through Black Spruce (10 page)

I sat back down and stared at the mess that was left, stared at a bottle shard lying in the black water on my kitchen floor. Marius Netmaker, he knew about me and my history. Marius knew about me and house fires.

And so this is the way the world goes. Over the next couple weeks, Gregor and Joe helped me rip out my kitchen floor and make new cabinets. We’d get drunk working. Lisette sewed me some new curtains for the kitchen window and brought some plants for the sill. They dried up and died because I forgot to water them. This is the way the world goes.

When I was ready, I went to town. Summer bloomed in increments of dust off the road. I walked alongside it. Long grass sprouted from the ditches, blackflies covering my neck and arms. I walked looking ahead, first time out and coming into town in weeks. Fear had taken me now.

When I jogged in the morning, I ran like a soldier, a rifle strapped on my back. No one out that early to see me. The only ones out would be the ones who wanted to do harm. By the dump my bear greeted me sometimes, sat on the ridge that rises to the town’s refuse and watched me pass, lifted her head in greeting, nostrils flared.

I walked to town with eyes ahead of me, but it’s from the periphery of sight that I know the danger comes at you. Town is the same as the bush that way. But each has its different pleasures and pitfalls. Down Sesame Street, the children squatted in the dust with blackfly haloes around their heads, making piles in the gravel or running after one another, the odd car or pickup steering its way around them. The children own the streets here, and that’s a good thing, no? I stayed off the road, closer to the river.

I passed the friendship centre and nodded to an old couple on the porch.
Kookum
smiled back and nodded, a cotton kerchief on her head.
Moshum
’s eyes squinted, too, but never looked straight at me, just glanced my presence once, and that was enough. Old school. I knew that when they stood up to hobble home, he would lead a few feet ahead, and she would follow. They grew up in the bush and still walked the same way, as if the wide road was nothing more than a narrow path through the muskeg and spruce.

After Marius’s late-night visit, I made at least one decision. I would feed that bear every night, and I would make friends with it. I’d give it something it had never been offered before: the assurance of a daily meal. National Geographic Channel and Animal Planet say no, no, no. Fuck them. What do they know of elders scraping by each day and starving? Do they have so few teeth in their mouths that they can no longer snap bones with their own jaws? Are they forced to live near a dump and go through the dirty diapers and broken tables and refuse of humanity trying to find the scraps that are left to them? My bear, my sow, you would eat. You’d eat well.

Near the bridge, a group of three teens emerged from behind a pile of water-soaked sofas and dead fridges piled on the bank of the creek. I saw them walk out to the road just behind me with purpose soon as I passed them, not straggling or talking to each other, but on a mission. I was still a hunter, me.

I hit the stretch of bridge. Taska’s Store lay not far across it, a few of the usuals milling about in front. The three were maybe thirty feet behind me by the sound of their feet.

“Bock-bock-bock-bockeee!” one called out. The boys laughed. “What are you doing on our bridge?” I kept walking, forcing myself to slow down a little to show them something. But the dread that came without warning and made my head buzz so I couldn’t think straight washed over me.

A stone bounced off the rail of the bridge to my right, and I jumped a little, heard it splash into the water.

“I asked you what you’re doing on our bridge, old man.” Old man? I hadn’t been called that before. I stopped then and turned. I faced them. They wore black bandanas tied on their heads, low, baggy jeans that showed their white undershorts. They stopped, too. Two were tall and thin, the other short and stocky. All of them held a rock the size of a baseball in their hands. The stocky one moved his left hand behind him, to his lower back.

“I walk where I want,” I said.

“We don’t allow no rats on our bridge,” the stocky one said. I recognized him as a kid who was once friends with you, Suzanne.

“Snitches die like witches,” one of the tall ones said.

Something inside my head popped like a light bulb burning out. I saw you, Suzanne, when you were just a kid, and their words made me suddenly sick with the thought that you were dead.

“Don’t you know who I am?” I asked, almost in a whisper, the words out before I knew they were inside me. “I will shoot you three and gut you like moose before you even know what happened to you.” I said this softly so that they strained to hear me. “I can blow your head off from five hundred yards, fifty yards, a thousand yards if I want. Don’t you know who I am?” I talked a little louder now.

The boys’ grins turned just a bit.

“And this is how you repay my leniency!” I realized as soon as I said it that it was a line from the movie
Braveheart
. It made no sense, but it sounded good. They looked confused.

I took a few steps toward them. They held their ground, but they weren’t as sure of themselves anymore. I’d begun it and couldn’t stop now. I walked forward a few more steps. “You work for Marius, do you? Tell Marius that I am the one who is the hunter.” I kept my voice low. “Tell Marius that I am the best hunter on James Bay.” I was five feet away. “Tell your boss that he will not feel the bullet that explodes his skull.”

I stared at them, waiting for a response, waiting for them to fall on me like a pack of dogs. They fingered the rocks in their hands, not sure what to do. I turned and walked back across the bridge slowly as I could.

This town changed for me after that, a shift so slight I might not have recognized it if I wasn’t paying close attention. The same gravel roads, the same pocked faces, a river that retreats and rises with the tides by my house, but something had changed.

This change, though, it wasn’t good. And the problem was, it had only just begun.

12
MY PROTECTOR

I’ve put it off long enough. Gordon and I drive into Moosonee to visit with my mum. She no longer speaks of Suzanne, and I no longer mention her name. It’s too painful for Mum. I still hold out faith, for some reason.

Mum busies herself making dinner, asking Gordon questions he can’t answer, and then she looks embarrassed for doing it. She begins asking me questions about Gordon, and I answer rotely.
He’s from Christian Island, Mum. He’s Ojibwe. He was born not able to speak. We met in Toronto
. I’ve told you that already. Suddenly, it feels like he isn’t in the room anymore.

“He’s got lovely handwriting, Mum,” I say. “Let him answer a few questions.”

And then something funny happens after we’re done eating. I’m dying to get out of here and take Gordon home to the camp. I’m even considering driving all the way back to Moose Factory to visit Uncle Will.

Mum takes me up on the suggestion to give Gordon some paper and a pen and have her own conversation with him. Now I’m left here sitting and watching her ask Gordon questions, Gordon busily jotting down answers, and Mum asking more. They’re smiling and getting along like they’ve known each other years.

“How about a game of cards?” she asks. “Or cribbage?”

Gordon’s eyes light up.

What’s going on here? I’m ready to tell her I’m not interested, but Mum pulls out her cribbage board and starts a game with Gordon. “I know how you hate to play cards, Annie,” she says.

“Maybe I’ll run out to the hospital and visit Uncle Will for a little bit,” I say.

“That’s my good daughter,” Mum says.

Still another hour left for official visiting when I arrive, and it feels good not to have to sneak around. Eva won’t be on shift for a few more hours. When I get up to Uncle Will’s room, I see the large back of a man sitting and facing his bed, leaning into him. I scuffle my boots so as not to surprise him.

When he turns, I see it’s Uncle’s old friend Joe. He looks like he’s been caught doing something wrong. That paranoid part of me rushes up, but then I see his eyes are puffy and red. He tries to act casual.

“Well, look who it is,” he says, rubbing his sleeve down his face, pretending to yawn. I’ve only seen him in passing since I’ve been back. He looks bigger than before. His stomach is a thing of wonder, like a basketball hides under his shirt, the buttons straining. Joe acts as if he wants to stand and shake hands or hug but then decides against it.

I do something that surprises me. I lean down and kiss his forehead. He smiles. “Been here a while?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I’m not sure, me. You just missed Gregor.”

Thank god. What a perv. “Too bad,” I say.

I pull a chair to the other side of the bed. We sit uncomfortably for a while.

Finally, Joe speaks. “I’m sorry, Annie. I wanted to protect him.” His body begins shaking, and tears stream down his round face.

I sit awkwardly on the edge of my chair, wanting to get up and hug him or pat his shoulder, do something. When his shaking subsides, Joe wipes his face with his sleeve again and apologizes.

“He’s not dead yet, buddy,” I say, trying to joke. Joe heaves again. “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s okay.” I do stand this time, walk to him and put my hand on his shoulder. I haven’t touched so many men since New York City.

When he’s finally calmed, I search for anything to say. “Have you heard any word on my uncle Antoine?” I ask.

Joe shakes his head. “Cops took him down to Timmins. He’s too much of a wanderer, him. Nishnabi-Aski cops in Peawanuck agreed they couldn’t keep an eye on him up there.”

“Is there going to be a trial?” My mum says no, but I want Joe’s read on things.

“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “Everyone knows. Look at Will’s history with Marius.”

“I wish I could see Uncle Antoine,” I say. I don’t mean to say it out loud.

“Maybe he’ll come up this way soon,” Joe says.

I tell Joe about my trouble at the dance last weekend. Despite his breaking down, he’s not one that people around here want to mess with. He tells me he’s keeping his ear to the ground, that the Netmakers seem like they’re broken since all of this happened. “I think even his own family knows Marius needed what came to him,” Joe says.

Sylvina comes into the room and checks Uncle Will’s machines. “Sorry to have to tell you,” she says, “but visiting hours are over.”

Joe gets up and pulls his coat on. “I hope to see you again soon,” he says.

I give him a hug this time. “Me too.”

I ask Sylvina if I might stay for just a short while longer.

“Yeah,” she says.“I’ll just pretend I didn’t see you if you get caught.”

When she leaves, I’m left wondering what to say. Again. I’m still feeling a little foolish speaking out loud, even if it is in whispers, to someone who I’m quite sure doesn’t hear me. I look around the room, at the same thumbed-through magazines, the window, the TV anchored on the wall. I haven’t watched TV in a while. I search for a remote control, but it’s nowhere. I guess that makes sense. People in comas don’t typically watch a lot of TV. I stretch up and just reach the power button.

The TV roars to life, full volume, on a dead station. Panicking, I strain to change the channel, to turn it off, anything. My finger finds the power button again. The room goes silent. I sit back down beside Uncle as quickly as I can and pretend I’m examining my fingernails. No one comes in.

“I’ve left Gordon at Mum’s,” I say to Uncle Will, “and I should go get him soon.” The last thing I remember talking to Uncle about is the attack in Toronto. Gordon killed that fucker. He killed him. Not something I should be talking about out loud, I figure.

“You understand, don’t you, Uncle?” I say. “It’s a big part of why Gordon is up here with me. I couldn’t leave him to get caught when he did what he did for me, could I?”

But it was months before we came here. Maybe I wasn’t thinking right, but when we fled it wasn’t to my home, it was to Montreal.

I remember Gordon half carrying, half dragging me back to the underpass, a couple of white people laughing at us and calling us drunk Indians. I remember Old Man saying to me in the blue tarp teepee under the Gardiner Expressway that I’m going to be okay, that I’m on a journey where home isn’t the same as it used to be. The attacker, he says, did not get what he wanted from me, but he did get what was coming to him. I listen to Old Man, my head thumping, my mouth begging for a hospital, Gordon shaking his bloodstained head as Old Man’s two cronies boil water and bathe me with T-shirts. Old Man hums and prays as I slip in and out of consciousness.

They don’t show me the newspaper article on the second page till I’m more myself a couple days later, when I demand to see it.
Homicide. Stabbing. Most likely drug related. No witnesses or suspects.
Old Man tells me when he feels I’m ready that I need to leave for my own safety. I live on the streets with them under that overpass in the blue tarp teepee for those couple of days until I make them take me back to my motel room. They have Gordon bring me to it and stay with me. He’s my protector now.

“Painted Tongue is just his street handle,” Old Man explains to me. “His real name is Gordon. You can ask him when you feel up for it about his names.” I pay for one more week, and Gordon brings me food and water because I refuse to leave the room.

Old Man comes to visit me. He clearly isn’t used to being between walls, the shabby comfort of my cheap motel. When he finally sits, it’s on the floor by the foot of my bed. “What happened should never happen to any woman,” Old Man says, “but even something as bad as this happens for a reason. You met us for a reason. So did your sister.” Old Man holds a goose feather neatly tied with red ribbon.

“Can’t even afford one from an eagle,” I say to him.

“I have had many of those, Granddaughter,” Old Man says. “But me, I always seem to drop them on the ground and then have to give them away. A goose feather has its power, too.” He hands it to me.

Gordon and I get on a bus to Montreal at Old Man’s urging. All I want is to go home, but something in me believes him when he tells me I don’t have a home anymore till I travel further. I’m guessing I’ve suffered a concussion. I’m clearly not thinking right. The skin around my eyes has finally begun to turn pus green, which is better than the black and red it was a couple of weeks ago. The worst of it, though, is that I’ve burst a blood vessel in my left eye. All the white of it is a deep red. I look like some Cree vampire. It freaks me out when I see myself in the mirror. Day and night, I am forced to wear big sunglasses that Gordon swiped from a Shoppers Drug Mart for me. I feel like a bad actress. A phony. The bridge of the sunglasses rubs the cut on my nose when I smile or talk. Although I’ve never worn them before, I now understand why so many women in magazines do. You feel both invisible and like everyone watches you at the same time.

Does any of this make sense to you? Maybe I should back up. I haven’t thought about those days much since they happened. Montreal ended up being a simple choice. Just before I left Toronto, when I finally felt healed enough to go out on the streets again with Gordon by my side, the sunglasses stuck on my face, he walked me to the Reference Library on Bloor and logged me onto a computer. He tapped the keys of it and brought me eventually to the name of the man who was Suzanne’s agent. I’d hoped I could go talk to the agent and find out what I already knew. At least I could say
I tried
before heading home. I stared at that screen when the agent’s web page came up. I wanted to pick up the monitor and smash it. The agent had just moved to Montreal.

Montreal looks a lot like Toronto, a mix of shiny new buildings with old stone buildings squeezed in. And both places look like New York City if only they were five times the size and lived in by that many more people.

We find a hotel near the bus station. I remember the name of the street it was on: St. Urbain. I choose it because it costs enough to stay in each night that I will be forced to head home within the week. I don’t tell Gordon this. Instead, I prepare to say goodbye to him soon, making sure he has enough money in his pocket to get back to Toronto. Let’s face it. Neither of us wants any of this.

Despite being a nervous wreck and afraid to go out in public, I force myself to find the agent’s office. I tell Gordon I want to go alone. I need to defeat the fear.

A young woman sits at the desk. She doesn’t look up from her fashion magazine when I enter the glass and shiny wood office. I clear my throat. She puts the magazine down and looks up to me, acne across her forehead.

When I ask to see the agent, she responds in French, too quick for me to understand. She huffs. “Appointment?”

“No,” I say. “I just arrived in town. I’m hoping to say hello.” She stares me up and down for so long that I begin to feel gross. “He will probably not see you without an appointment or portfolio, but if he does, he will tell you to lose another ten, fifteen pounds. He will tell you, maybe, to style your hair in a different way.”

It dawns on me. “No, no. I am not a model. My sister, she …” But the woman has picked up the phone and punched a number. She speaks rapidly in French.