Through Black Spruce (36 page)

Glasses man knows I know. He turns to Marius. “He’s trying to get us to argue.” He turns to me. “You want to play a game?”

This strong, ugly man turns to Marius. “We’ll kill these three and bury them in the snow.” He looks at me. I know he’s a liar, but not about what he’s just said. I’m going to fall down. My legs are too weak. “Your sister will be easier to get information out of.” He smiles. “Hey. I’ve got nothing to lose.” He opens his mittened hands, one holding the club, as if to show that there really is nothing in them. I can’t stand any longer and fall down into the snow.

“Let me kill him,” Marius says. “I need to do it.”

The glasses man speaks to Marius. “This one’s mine.”

Marius looks like he’s going to explode. “No way,” he says. “I get to do it.”

They begin fighting again. I watch them argue like children over who gets to kill me. Finally, the man in glasses gives in. “I say we share this one, then,” he says. “You shoot. I club. Count of three.”

I look over to Marius. He’s smiling. I stare into his yellowed eyes. He must see something he doesn’t like.

“Wait,” Marius says. “I want to shoot him in the same place in the head that he shot me.”

My body shivers. I truly feel the cold now. He walks around and behind me, raising the rifle again. “Okay,” he says, “you said on the number three or after the three?”

“Careful, you fucking idiot,” the man in glasses says. “You’re going to shoot me.” He walks beside me and out of Marius’s line of fire. I watch him grip the golf club.

I’m shaking. “Don’t,” I say. “Don’t.”

The man in glasses is going to swing it like my head is the ball. “This’ll work,” he says. “On the number three, you retard.”

Gregor cries in heaves.

“Don’t do this,” I hear Joe say.

The two men count together. They are children playing a game. “One. Two.”

I will keep my eyes open. I will not close them. I will die like a warrior. I hear the crack. The faraway crack of a rifle. Marius lands on the snow hard beside me. It’s the last thing I hear before the club strikes me and the sky lightens to white and my head breaks apart.

My eyes are open. I’ve forced myself to open them, and it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. Marius’s eyes are open as well. We lie beside each other, staring at each other. I want to turn my head to see something else, but I can’t. Black swallows the snow all around Marius. I understand that it’s blood. My eyes no longer see colour. I stare into his eyes. Something inside me tugs at me to close my own. I try to fight it, but it is like trying to fight deep sleep.

Marius opens his mouth to say something to me. Blood rushes from it instead, covering the snow between us. We stare into each other’s eyes. I understand that he is dying. He understands that I am close, too. I stare into his eyes, and he stares into mine. I try to open my mouth, but it doesn’t work. I want to tell him that my father and Marius’s great-
moshum,
Elijah, were once close friends, and it is sad that our lives have come to this.

I watch the light in Marius’s eyes drain. I’m left staring at him as darkness comes quicker.

Before all the light is gone, I see that the man in glasses has fallen across Joe. His glasses lie in the snow beside them. I can’t hear anything. I’m watching a silent movie in slow motion. The man has fallen dead onto Joe. I watch Joe struggle slowly to get the bleeding man off of him. Blood stains the snow around them. It is black on the white surface.

I can’t fight it any longer. I can rest now. My friends, my nieces, my sister, they will be okay. I close my eyes.

Now that I am beside this river, I finally understand how I’ve gotten here. I can put it to words. Just under the current I hear the babbling of voices. They are the voices of my family and of my friends. They are excited. They are happy. I’m warm again here, even if the right side of my face still feels frozen. The river’s sound is pleasant, and the sun through the spruce makes me sleepy.

I want to go to the voices of my family. First, though, I’ll rest. Gain some strength. I’ll try not to sleep, just doze for a while. I need some strength for the long walk. Don’t fall too deeply asleep, though. Just a short nap.

38
CURING THE HEAD

We give ourselves to each other. This part consumes me. It’s what I think about when I’m away from him, and when I’m with him, we act like we’re starving.

Some small part of me tells me that I should feel guilty. I should be spending more time with my uncle. But then my rational brain kicks in and tells me that visiting every day is enough. Uncle has been showing more signs of waking. His hands move more often, and Mum was there when his eyelids fluttered. Dr. Lam tells us that Uncle might be fighting to wake up, and all of us have come together—Joe and Gregor, Mum, Dorothy—to try and urge him to consciousness with our chattering. When I visit him and there are others already there, though, it feels more like a wake than anything else. Although they won’t say it, I think they come to say goodbye to you, just in case. Uncle, you teeter on an edge.

Being with Gordon is a release for me that I’ve been starving for. And so I won’t feel guilty for this pleasure that comes rushing through my door and leaves me exhausted and smiling. The two of us deserve this for all that we’ve been through.

Mum notices the change in me, in Gordon. She can tell it as sure as she knows a warm front has moved in. And it has. The skies are overcast each morning that I wake up, and the snow is turning soft. The grey skies are a welcome relief, strangely, from the blue skies that promised bitter cold for the last months.

The Indian part of Mum is happy for us. She makes us dinners of moose meat or caribou, spends hours concocting hearty soups and homemade bannock, urging us to eat, to keep up our energy. She would never be able to say the words. But she knows we need sustenance for our adventures.

It’s the Catholic side of Mum that talks to me when Gordon is out of the room. She talks about how a young woman and a young man living together outside of marriage shows poorly on us. “People talk in this town, Annie,” she says. “You know how people talk. It just isn’t right. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about marriage.”

My god, what a way to dampen the flames. It’s amazing how one word can kill things if you allow it. “Let them talk, Mum,” I tell her. Let them caw like ravens, let them bellow like moose if that is what they want to do. Let them babble in their kitchens and in the aisles of the Northern Store if it makes them happy. I won’t let a handful of holy rollers in this town crush what I’ve found. Winter gives way, slowly up here, to spring, and you can’t stop nature from taking its course.

As soon as the phone rings, I know it’s her. I brace myself. I’ve been waiting for this call for two months.

“Hiya, Annie,” Eva says.

I don’t say anything. I hold my breath instead, waiting.

“You there, Annie?” Eva asks. Her voice is too casual. This isn’t the call I’ve been waiting on for dozens and dozens of days, that I’ve begged for and dreaded at the same time.

“Yeah, I’m here. What’s up?”

“Not much,” Eva says. “I just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi, then.”What the hell’s going on?

“Yeah, I just wanted to say hi and to tell you to get your ass over here as fast as you can.”

“What? What’s going on?”

“I was sponge-bathing your uncle and the horny bastard woke up. He was smiling, Annie!” She’s almost breathless. “I know I should be more professional.”

“What? Shut up! What are you saying?”

“I was washing him and I see he’s got this huge erection, and his eyes are open and he’s smiling and he calls me Dorothy!” The words are pouring out of her mouth now. “He calls me Dorothy, and the horny old bastard says I’ve gained weight but he doesn’t mind. He was smiling, Annie! And he was talking like he’s barely been in a coma at all.”

Holy shit. “I’ll be right over,” I say.

“Listen. Wait,” Eva says. “So you know. His words were pretty slurry. He went back to sleep. Just get over here, but be careful. The winter road is real slushy today. Best thing we can do is his knowing family’s around.”

“Call my mum, would you?” I ask. “I’ll be over quick as I can.”

I’ve got Gordon on the back of my snow machine. We’re flying across the river, and I gun it over the watery parts. Gordon squeezes me with his arms, holding on for dear life. If he could talk, I know he’d be screaming. Across the way, over by Moose Factory, I see the tide’s coming up, pushing up from under the ice, pushing the water past the frozen bank’s lip. A tannin-coloured pool of it lies across the ice road, running up onto shore. A pickup’s stuck, spinning its wheels, kicking up icy slush behind it.

“Hold on,” I shout over my shoulder. I hit the water and skim over it, Gordon’s weight keeping the front end up, but then the track begins to bog. I can feel the slush spewing out underneath us. I stand and put my weight over the front end of the machine and push the throttle full in with my thumb. We fishtail through the rest of the water, my skis splashing it up onto my windshield and into my face. Eyes half-closed, I feel the more solid ground under me, the ski-doo getting traction again as we shoot up the bank and over to the hospital.

I’m expecting half the town to be in Uncle’s room, or at least Mum or his friends. But the room’s empty, and Uncle Will lies in his bed, just as stone-still as he has been for months.

What was I expecting? I know exactly what. I wanted him sitting up and cracking jokes and asking me to go sneak him in a couple of beers but to make sure Mum didn’t notice. I wanted him sitting up in bed when I walked in, flashing his missing-tooth grin, asking me to go find his partial before Dorothy arrived.

With our coats stripped off, Gordon and I sit by the bed. I realize I’m feeling strange, in part, because Gordon’s never been to the room before. He stares at you like you’re someone he vaguely knows and is trying to place a name to. I take your hand in mine. Gordon watches intently.

“What?” I ask. “You think I’m just going to start talking magic to him?”

Gordon wants to smirk, but he knows my tone well enough.

I’ve run out of stories to tell you, Uncle. You want me to make some up? How about you just quit being coy now, wake up for good, and climb out of this stupid bed.

It’s over a half-hour before Eva even comes in, or anyone, for that matter. My hand that holds Uncle’s, it sweats with anger.

Eva’s puffing, and I know she must be having a busy day. I’ll try to go easy on her. She heads over to Gordon and punches his arm. “Ever fancy seeing you here. Annie let you out of your cage for the day, eh? Any activity?” she asks, looking to me.

“Not a bat of the fucking eye,” I say. I squeeze your hand before I realize I might be hurting it.

Eva picks up my vibe. “Listen, Annie,” she says. “Today is a good day. Today, your uncle made the tiny percentage of patients who wake up after so long.”

It’s her total professional voice. Yeah, yeah.

She sees I’m upset. She sees the burn of tears in my eyes. “I should have been more professional.” She pauses. “This is huge news, Annie. I needed to tell you. He’s not conscious now, but he was.”

Oh god, she’s going to start crying now. “You’re my tough bitch,” I tell her. “My bugger of an uncle is teasing us. He’s going to wake up.” It’s all right, Eva. You did right.

Over the hours, Mum joins us, then Joe, Dorothy, and Gregor spill in, too. We all talk for a long time, keeping our vigil, spouting out what words come to us. Dr. Lam drops in, explains to us what’s happening in medical terms that wash right over my head. All I need to hear, though, is when he says, “Will’s making his decision.” I can understand that.

When, after dusk, Eva’s shift change comes and Sylvina takes over, we’re all exhausted. I ask Sylvina in front of everyone that I be able to stay. Sylvina says it’s fine, and I tell the others to go home and sleep, that I’ll call if there’s any news.

Gordon watches me as they all put on their coats and hats.

“You go too, okay?” I say to him, holding him, feeling his body beneath his shirt. “Take my snow machine. Just remember to be careful by the water.” I know the tide’s dropped and the going should be fine. “If you see slushy places, keep on the tracks that go over them. They’ll have frozen over by now.”

Joe promises that he’ll keep an eye out for Gordon.

I sit and watch for what feels like hours.“It’s okay, Uncle, they’re all gone now,” I say once in a while. “You can wake up. We can chat.” I’ve not spoken so much for so many days my whole life. I feel drained of words.

Spring goose hunt is not too far away. Despite all the snow and the frozen river, the world’s beginning to thaw. Here. Here’s one more story for you, then. It’s a short one, and I don’t think I have anything left for you after this.

You’re the one who took me to the bay every year since I was a baby, drove me the miles by river in your freighter canoe to where the river ends. I guess we all have our favourite childhood memories. Mine burn inside me like red coals. A cold autumn evening there on the shores of the big water, our canvas prospector’s tent glowing by lantern light against the night, the air cold on my cheeks as my
moshum,
your father, sits with me on a boulder overlooking the water. I know you’re somewhere close, fishing with Uncle Antoine. My mother and Suzanne are in the tent, having finished plucking a goose for supper, one just taken an hour before at dusk.

Moshum
sits with me and points out how the bay has absorbed the light. He gives names to the stars that appear. North Star. Hunter’s Star. Going Home Star. He speaks slow in Cree, the words magic and long, a part of me.

“They are the same stars you see anywhere you go in the world, little Niska,” he says. This name, Niska, Little Goose, has always been his pet name for me. “My own auntie told me that,”
Moshum
says, “but I didn’t learn it until I travelled far away. And now I teach it to you.” I remembered those words. Remember them to this day.

My mother was always surprised, a little envious, even, at how much my grandfather spoke to me. He wasn’t a talker. Do you remember how he could go for days, sitting in an old armchair by the wood stove, leaning on his cane and gazing into the open door, startling a little when a log popped? He was already ancient when I was still a small child.

When it gets too cold to sit on the boulder any longer,
Moshum
and I go into the big canvas tent and join Suzanne and my mother. Suzanne is just big enough to be walking on her own now, is stubborn and becomes angry when she doesn’t get her way. But tonight she’s happy, plays with a large black-and-white wing feather, drawing pictures in the air with it that only she can see. I sit with her and tickle her face with another feather. I try to stick the point up her nose. At first she feigns anger, but then breaks into peals of laughter.

You and Uncle Antoine come into the tent soon after, smelling of cold air and tobacco and goose.

I remember how you’d plucked the first goose of the season earlier that day, how you sharpened a long stick and speared it through the bird, how you tied each end of the stick with a thin rope and dangled it over a fire in our canvas tent, the goose hanging from a crosspiece in the roof, turning all day in the heat and smoke, slowly cooking, its juices dripping into the fire in tiny hisses.
Sagabun
style.