Through Black Spruce (21 page)

This city, like Montreal times ten, like Moose Factory times a million, the island of Manhattan surrounded by rivers. I can’t escape the rivers. I’m not meant to escape islands, either, apparently. I’ve been personally invited to this island by the famous girl Soleil. A week here in New York with Violet and Gordon, and I am no longer lost or scared to go out. I’m kept here by Soleil, who loans the three of us one of her apartments in SoHo. I want to question how I have ended up here, why some young, beautiful woman who looks like a fairy princess in a Disney movie will allow me to stay in a place like this in a city that is so loud and busy and full of people.

I think I’ll be okay here, but my Painted Tongue, he seems at a loss. He stays in with me when Violet goes out for hours at a time, coming back vibrating. She’s working, she tells us. Two product lines using her for print ads. I look at the tall, skinny girl and want to see how she looks in the magazines. I’ve searched, but so many of these women, they look the same. And I’ve learned they rarely look in real life like they do in their photos. Magic. All of it is some kind of magic. I’ve been getting Gordon out, though, took him to Times Square and to Central Park and even tried to get him to the Empire State Building. He wouldn’t go up. Too many people, and even in this zoo, I began to feel the eyes on both of us.

Maybe I’ve just gotten used to him, but when I see my protector through New York eyes, he does look kind of crazy and scary. Long hair and dark skin. He’s a wild Indian and lets his clothes get dirty if I don’t keep on him. He’s too scared to disappear onto the streets overnight here, though, and so it’s the two of us together. Easy enough for me. He doesn’t speak back and is forced, when the mood strikes me, to sit and listen to me talk on and on. I talk about Suzanne today, how when she first stopped calling my mum I thought it was just a matter of Suzanne being her typically flighty self, her selfishness.

Gordon and I sit and drink tea at the kitchen table by a huge window looking out at other buildings. Last time my mother heard from Suzanne was in the winter, a few months even before I left. But Violet claims Soleil saw her just a few months ago, in the spring. I will have to figure a way to get this Soleil alone and ask her some direct questions. Soleil, though, is clearly the kind of woman one listens, not speaks, to.

Maybe Suzanne’s still here. I tell Gordon that maybe he and I will run into her. She’ll see the two of us together and be totally freaked out.

Gordon picks up his notebook and pen, scribbles something on it, and hands it to me.
I think we will find her.
He’s got nice handwriting.
Inini Misko says we will.

Inini Misko? Oh yeah. “Have you spoken to him lately?”

Gordon shakes his head.
I need to.

As nice as this apartment is, it’s more like a fancy hotel. Nothing personal in it, no family photos. The kitchen looks like we’re the first ones to ever drink tea at the table, no clothes in the dressers or closets. No computer. A telephone and a big TV in the living room. I’ve thought about calling Eva or my mother, to tell them of my luck. I don’t want to take advantage of Soleil’s kindness. I’ll get a phone card today.

“Well,” I say, “let’s get out of here and find an internet café. I’m actually in the mood to send Inini Misko a few lines myself.” I look at Gordon as he drinks his tea. “And maybe we’ll buy you a new pair of jeans, a few T-shirts.”

The afternoon is sunny and hazy. I made Gordon take his notebook and pen from the apartment. We wander a number of blocks south, turn onto one of the hundreds of busy streets here, and walk on further. Nothing that looks like an internet café, but there’s a real café, and I make us stop. I order a glass of white wine for myself. When I ask Gordon what he wants, he shrugs. I order him a beer. What the heck. One won’t hurt, will it?

I think maybe that wasn’t a good idea when he drains it in two gulps, looks at me like a guilty puppy.

“Thirsty?” I ask.

He looks away.

“Want another?”

He nods.

“Are you going to be one of those embarrassing Indians who gets hammered and sloppy?”

He shakes his head. I call over the waiter and order another round.

It turns out I’m the sloppy one. When I finally ask for the bill a number of wines later, I think they’ve made a mistake, handing over most of the money I brought out with me. When we stand to leave, I’m dizzy and need Gordon’s arm, his sense of direction, to lead me back to the building, where a doorman opens the door for us. “Good evening, Ms. Bird. Mr. Tongue,” he says, touching his hand to his cap.

“Mr. Tongue!” I’m laughing as we ride the elevator up. “Ever funny! ‘Good evening, Mr. Tongue.’” Gordon grins, and I lean against him, up to him, for a kiss. He stares into my eyes. “Kiss me, you fool,” I say. He begins to lean down when the chime of the elevator door rings and I jump out.

Violet sits and laughs in the kitchen with three girls when we bang through the door. One is a black woman, taller than Violet, her head shaved. She’s beautiful, truly beautiful in a way I’ve never seen one of these model girls look in real life.

“Indian Princess!” Violet shouts to me. “My Indian Princess and her protector!” She grabs me and pulls me to her friends. “Wait!” She runs to the counter, grabs a digital camera. “Before I forget, Soleil asked for a picture of you and your protector.” She stands me against the wall, tells me to look angry, and snaps a few shots. Gordon is trying to slip away when she grabs him and has him do the same. “Sexy beasts!” she squeals, looking back through the pictures. “Soleil loves your portfolio!” Gordon shrinks to the far side of the room.

“Annie,” Violet says, “this is Cherry.” The blonde gives me a kiss on each cheek. “And this is Agnes.” The thin, mousy one smiles and turns away. “And this, last but not least, the famous and talented, the one and only Kenya!”When Kenya smiles at me it feels as if I am the only person in the world. She reaches out a long, thin arm with a long, thin hand attached and takes mine into it, her skin cool. I glance at the paleness of her palm against her black skin. Violet pulls me to a chair and pours me a wine.

“Ever tipsy, me,” I say, and Violet screams and laughs so that she spills some wine onto Soleil’s nice clean floor.

“Oh my god!” Violet says to the other girls. “That’s exactly how Suzanne talked when she had a few! Oh my god, you two are too funny!” I’m not quite sure what I said.

The beautiful black woman speaks. “First time in New York?”

I nod, realizing I’m staring at her.

“Don’t worry. It’s a frightening place at first, but you get used to it.”

“You’re really a model,” I say, realizing as it comes out how stupid that must sound.

Kenya smiles. “This business, love. So many girls come and go.” She pauses. “Who knows how long I’ll be around?”

“Do you know Suzanne?” I ask Kenya. She looks like someone who I can trust. Who is trustworthy.

She nods. The four girls stay silent for an uncomfortable time. None of them wants to say what they all seem to know. “And I knew Gus,” Kenya finally says.

“I used to date him, me.” I tell Kenya this because I am too drunk to care if the others hear.

She nods at my words. I think she likes my directness. “Lucky you,” Kenya says to me, and me only. “And did he treat you as well as he treated your sister?”

From the corner of my eye I see Violet shake her head at Kenya. “More wine, anyone?” she says loudly, walking to the fridge.

Kenya looks to her, then looks back to me. “We’ve just met. I hope you are here a while. We’ll talk.” She stands and picks up my glass and hers, carries them to Violet and has her refill them.

Two hours later, I’m still up, sitting on a soft white couch with Kenya, flipping through magazines. So many of them seem to have her face in them. “At least I know you’re you,” I say to her. She looks at me and smiles. “You look like you in a photo as much as you do in real life.”

“Aren’t you sweet.” Her accent is strange. From somewhere far south of even this place.

Kenya digs and digs through a number of other magazines, so long that I begin to fall asleep on the soft sofa’s arm. She touches my hand gently.

“Here,” she says. “I found it.” I open my eyes to two mermaids, floating in blue, blue water. One is black against the blue, but I recognize Kenya despite the long black hair of the other woman floating around her face. And then I look into the other woman’s eyes. She stares at me, as if frozen in ice, her hair long enough to wrap around not only her face but Kenya’s as well. “One of my favourite shoots ever,” Kenya says, looking to me. “Look at your sister’s eyes. The set of her mouth.”

I do. To me, it is the look she gave to our mother when she caught Suzanne in some small lie and she feigned innocence. She really is beautiful in this photo. “May I have it?” I ask. Kenya looks at me, a strange smirk on her face. “It’s not mine.” She hands the magazine to me. “It’s yours.”

The famous Soleil has invited us all to a soiree tomorrow night. Butterfoot is a guest DJ. Kenya personally delivered the invites to the apartment. I saw Violet’s brief reaction, her turning down of mouth when she looked at what Kenya handed her. Violet isn’t used to being anything but alpha party female, but she tucks her tail in and looks to the floor as Kenya tells us all to dress to the nines and expect to meet the crème of NYC society. Kenya smiles at me with her white teeth before she leaves. “Another grand evening courtesy of Party Girls International,” she says. “Hope you’re looking forward to it.”

When Kenya is gone, Violet springs to life again. “Shopping time!” she cries, grabbing Gordon. He jolts at her touch and slinks away.

“I don’t think he wants to come tomorrow, if I had to guess,” I say.

Violet makes a sad face. “Well you and me, we got some work to do.” She takes my hand and marches me out the door of the apartment toward the elevator. “Your first introduction to Soleil,” she says. “You better look good, girlfriend. ”The arrival of Butterfoot makes my stomach tingle.

“Wait a sec,” I say, breaking her grip, not sure why I’m about to do this. “Just need to grab something.” I run back to the apartment and find Gordon staring out the window at the car-choked street below.

I touch his shoulder. He knows I am there. He turns to me. “Want to come shopping with me and Violet?” I grin, knowing I sound stupid.

He shakes his head.

“I didn’t mean to speak for you about the party tomorrow night,” I say. “Do you want to come?”

He shrugs.

“Does that mean yes, Mr. Tongue?”

He smiles.

“I want you to come, if you want. You’re my protector.”

He looks at me funny, and I think he’s about to try and mouth words.

I wrap my hands around his thin waist, pretending I’m measuring him. “What are you, a thirty? Thirty-two?”

He widens his eyes in question. It seems like he wants to talk, but he turns back to the window.

“Annie!”Violet calls from the hallway. “Shoppy-shoppy!”

“Got to go,” I say. “I’ll find you something good. Something that suits you.” I rush out to catch Violet.

23
OLD AND SMART

When I was alone on that island, no one to talk to except for the whisky jacks and the crows, the voices of my life suddenly crowded in around me, often at times when I did not wish them to, and began chattering. You know what’s strange? When my wife and I were together, she was often so quiet. Now that she’d been gone for years, her voice found me on that island, and it wanted to talk to me more than ever. Did Dorothy disturb her? The thought of another woman wanting me? I remember when we were young, how jealous I was. Another man at a dance asking to two-step with my wife. The odd call from an old high-school boyfriend to see how she was doing. I tried to hold that jealousy in, but its heat made me want to expel it from my belly. Dreams of her with others, mostly unwanted dreams that left me gasping for breath early in the morning with a stiffened cock that sickened me. Sleepy images of her doing crazy acts with faceless men, flashes of her face in true abandon. I have an admission, my first true love. Sometimes when we did it on the couch in the afternoon with the boys napping in their room, or in those rare times one of us would wake the other in the night in desperate want, sometimes the pretending that I was one of these men fucking you made me come harder than I ever had before. Was that wrong? Some strange form of cheating? I wanted to ask you, but we ran out of time.

Sometimes I preferred discussions with birds when my wife’s face came to me in a long afternoon of fishing or on a morning of scouting out rabbit runs. I feared I might be going a bit crazy out there in the bush alone. Staring out at the lake that sparkled in the bright sunlight of early autumn, my body lazy with its warmth, eyelids heavy, my wife’s eyes appeared so close to me I could kiss her mouth. Her voice was as I remembered it, especially when she wanted to convince me. I stared into her eyes close to mine and listened carefully.
These strangers are all right. They are old and smart. They know you are here. Meet them.

The one thing I did not remember to bring to that island was a mirror. My hair was now almost as long as it was when I was a teenager. That morning in September, I washed it with soap and combed it out with a twig as best I could and braided it poorly, but got it off my face. I washed my jeans and my flannel shirt, both still damp and loose on me now so that when I tucked my shirt in I still needed a belt to keep the jeans on. I packed a sack of smoked trout, berries, fresh rabbit, and a nice goose.

Only a week before did I run away naked from those children, and now I snuck back sober, this time clothed. It wasn’t hard to find the camp. I saw from a distance that it was an old couple, the grandparents, I guess, a freighter canoe, a prospector’s tent and an old-school rack for drying fish and geese on the shore of the big island. I’d hoped they were just here temporarily, but upon further investigation found a clearing in the bush with an
askihkan
and the signs around it that they had been here for a long while. I was angry at first that I was not by myself on this island, but a sense of relief came when it sunk in that I was not absolutely alone in this world.

As I walked over in mid-afternoon, my leg cramped up and ached. This meant slower going along the same route around the lake and then down the creek past the whale skeleton to the shoreline. That’s when it struck me that if I was so easily able to spy on them, they very well might have done the same to me. My advantage was that I knew where they were. They had no idea where my camp might be. But a fire’s smell in daytime can travel far, and a fire’s light at night acts like a beacon. I’d find out what they knew.

With their camp at the meeting point above the mudflats of the creek and the bay, I made my way through stunted black spruce, approaching on the shore opposite from where I should be coming, making my way around driftwood and quicksand, whistling to announce myself. I’d chosen high tide so that I wasn’t walking through the worst of it. The
kookum
stood by her fish rack, looking out to the big water. The changed wind direction spoke bad weather despite the calm afternoon. She knew I was coming and showed me this in her relaxed pose, neck tensed just a little to the sound of my whistling. Old
moshum
emerged from behind her, thin and ropy with a big shock of white hair. He looked so much like my own father I almost stopped dead in my tracks. He, too, made no obvious acknowledgment, but his appearing at this moment was acknowledgment enough. They were wise, this couple. The grandchildren were nowhere to be seen. I had no doubt
moshum
had a moose rifle in easy reach. But he was too polite to make its presence known.

I said nothing as I approached them, just dropped the sack by their smoke rack and sat down on the sand, stared out along with them, rubbing my bum leg, and sniffing the new wind. I reached into my pocket, pulled out some tobacco, and rolled three cigarettes. Standing, I offered one to each. The old woman turned her head, but her husband accepted his along with my light. They knew something of me. I think I knew something of them, too. I guessed they were Attawapiskat people. I’d seen them before, on one of my many flights to their reserve so many years ago. I wanted him to be the first to talk, but he held out. We smoked our cigarettes, and the old woman went back to their camp, returned with two of the fattest plucked geese I’d ever seen and slipped long sharpened sticks into them, disappeared into her smoke tent to cook them
sagabun
. She was good, letting me know that whatever I’d brought in my sack, what they had was far better.

I was younger than them. I broke the silence first. “Bad weather.” I pursed my lips and pointed to the north and west, toward Peawanuck.

I saw from the corner of my eye that
moshum
grinned. He was missing a couple of teeth. He answered in Cree. “Don’t want to be out between here and there in a boat today.” He, too, pointed with his lips toward the mainland, so far on the horizon it was just an idea. “Shallow there. But plenty deep to drown you in what’s coming.” Just like that, we were friends. The west wind picked up, cool and dangerous.

“Chose a bad day to visit,” I said in English. I wanted to know how much of it he knew, what I was working with.

“You stay for dinner, you stay for the night,” he answered back in English. He walked toward their tent. I had a choice to make. Hump it home with a storm on my back or get ready to hunker down with these ones for a while.

Their granddaughters were shy. They didn’t make themselves known until the scent of the smoked goose called them into the tent. We sat on fresh spruce boughs and drank tea. The wind picked up strong enough to sweep the deer flies and mosquitoes away, but on a silent evening, this place must have been hell. This family, these old ones, knew their business, though. Enough of a shore breeze to take the worst of the bugs away, and a perfect nesting ground for the geese. The two children ate goose with grease-smeared faces. The younger girl burped, and they fell into giggles. I answered their burp with my own, and they grabbed one another, laughing, rolling on the spruce. One was about five, the other maybe seven. They reminded me of you, my nieces. Of my others. My lost ones.

“My sister and me. We saw a sasquatch here,” the youngest one blurted. “Ever big! He was big and he ran into the woods by the creek.”

“I told my
kookum
he was wearing boots,” the older one said, “but
Kookum
said ‘Ever! Sasquatches don’t wear boots!’”The girls giggled again.

The wind came in gusts now, puffing the tent, pellets of rain coughing off the canvas. Old
moshum
grinned when it blew hard. He had the smile. A front tooth missing and one, too, to the side. Something in me ached for a pull of rye. None of that tonight. Put it away. The old ones pretended to ignore the young ones’ antics, and the children squealed and laughed.

Kookum
kept herself occupied cleaning up and then sewing a nice pair of winter mitts. When the wind slowed between gusts, the hiss of the Coleman lantern filled the tent. The two girls calmed and became sleepy, jolting up when distant thunder cracked.

“Your granddaughters?” I asked in Cree.

“Good girls,” the old man answered. “We agreed to look after them for the summer and autumn while their parents get better.” I wanted to ask but it would be rude. It would come out with time.

“From Attawapiskat?” I asked.

He nodded. “Winisk a long time ago, but we moved south. Too much flooding up there every spring.”

I asked his name.

“Francis Koosis. You are a Bird. You flew a plane a long time ago.”

I smiled. “Yes. A long time ago.”

I poured more tea. Thunder boomed again. The storm was reaching its peak. We stopped talking to let the worst of it pass.

“I knew your father,” he said. “Most old ones on James Bay did. He was an old man already when I was young.” The old man stopped and smiled. “He had you old. Strong like a bull moose.”

“Yes. ”We both smiled.

“One more hour and this will pass,” he said.

I nodded. The worst of the thunder and lightning had come and gone, and the rain set in hard. He was right. This storm wouldn’t be as long as I first worried.

“We will camp here another few weeks, maybe a month. Leave well before freeze-up. Pick a good day with no wind. Make it back in half a day if the motor holds up.”

“We will have so many geese it will sink our boat,” the old woman spoke. She’d been listening intently by the light of the Coleman. “How long do you stay here?” she asked. She didn’t mind being direct.

“I don’t know. I think I might like to trap on the island this winter.” I began to wonder what they could have heard from the mainland. Maybe they knew far more than I thought.

“You’d rather trap here?” the old man asked. “Be careful of the polar bears. We’ve been seeing tracks. Lots around. More to come when they wait for the freeze-up to get out on the ice.”

“I’ve got a good rifle,” I said.

“You’re the one who doesn’t have a family anymore,” the old woman said. “It makes sense to me that you don’t mind staying here through winter. It will be awfully lonely, though.”

Her husband gave her a sharp look. “She sometimes speaks her mind out loud when she shouldn’t. Me, I think her head is getting soft.”

“It’s all right,” I said, smiling at her.

She smiled back in such a way that I thought maybe
moshum
was right.

“I will make you a warm pair of mitts, then,” she said, going back to her sewing.

The rain continued to pop on the tent in a steady rhythm. I’d be able to leave in an hour if I wanted to. I liked this couple, though. I liked the company. The thought of being alone in my damp
askihkan
tonight wasn’t very appealing. I’d open a bottle of rye, I thought. I wouldn’t be able to fight it. After being in the presence of others and then having to go back to being alone was tough business. A few drinks could help that.

“Any news from the mainland?” I asked after a while. I didn’t want to sound too eager and figured I’d waited long enough.

Moshum
gave me a quick look but looked away just as quick. “We’ve been on the island awhile. But before that, no. Not really. I’d like to say hello to some relations, but we don’t travel with a radio. You?”

“Mine never worked well,” I said. “It’s broken for good. Me, I’d like to say hello to some family, too.” I was hoping they might have had something. As the rain slowed to a patter, the weight of not knowing sat heavy on me. I gave my thanks for the meal and made my way out of the tent. The old man followed.

“You can stay the night if you wish,” he said. “How far is your camp? It can’t be close, or I’d know.”

“It’s inland. On some water.” I wasn’t ready to give too much yet. I had to figure them out, their intentions, first. “
Meegwetch
for the offer, but I will be able to find it fine.” We looked up at clouds speeding over a half moon.

“More rain coming,” he said.

“I will be fine. I’ll come back to visit in the next while, if that is okay.”

He nodded.

I climbed onto the higher dry ground and made my way to the creek. No flashlight. But I had my lighter and a few rolled cigarettes. A long walk in the dark, but I’d make it. What else did I have to do?

The walk home wasn’t a good one. My leg felt broke again. The weather. I banked on it clearing, but another band of rain came in, just like the old man predicted, obscuring any moonlight, the kind of rain that promised to last till morning. I found the creek okay but missed the place to turn toward my lake. And for the first time since I was a child, it came over me.

When I realized I no longer had any idea which way to go, I felt the panic blossom in the pit of my stomach. My clothes were soaked, and the rain dropped the temperature so that my jacket was useless. Walking a long way, stumbling over uprooted trees and slipping in mud, I became disoriented. And so I forced myself to stop and did what I knew I needed to do. I wasn’t going to get a fire started tonight, so I dragged dead wood into a simple frame and pulled moss over it, got a single smoke going before the rest of my tobacco was ruined, smoked it halfway till it, too, soaked, then huddled in the useless little shelter like a squirrel and shivered the rest of the night away.

An hour before dawn, the skies still weeping, me shaking so hard I feared hypothermia, I forced myself up to move and get blood flowing again. I walked in bigger and bigger circles, knowing I wasn’t going to find my camp this way, but walking for the warmth.

Finally, with the first light of dawn the rain slowed, then stopped. By mid-morning, I found the lake and pulled myself around its shore to my
askihkan
, got a fire going with dry wood, stripped off the wet clothes, and pulled on all the dry clothes I could. I slept till late in the afternoon and when I woke, I did exactly what I knew I shouldn’t do. I dug another bottle up and began drinking. By evening I felt nothing much. I was alone. I was no longer alone. Other people around me again brought all of it back. A familiar whisky jack, one no longer in the least bit afraid, perched near my outstretched hand. As I fed it bits of old bannock, I began talking.