Out with the Sunset

by P. D. Workman

  There was dried blood on the torso. It looked like a clean edge, not a bite mark. Not any of the accidents that she had thought might befall an unwary squirrel. But there could be other things. Something sharp… on the ground… or a barbed -wire fence… maybe a tin can that the squirrel had crawled into, looking for nuts or something that had smelled good. What looked like a knife edge could have been a dozen other things. She wasn’t a medical examiner. She wasn’t performing a necropsy and trying to analyze who or what had killed the squirrel. She just wanted to make sure that it hadn’t been Stella, and it hadn’t been.

  Margie walked briskly to the back gate and out into the alley to toss the body into the green bin. She made sure it was well-wrapped and then threw more paper towels down on top of it, so that she would never have to see it again.

  Rest in peace, little squirrel.

  Margie went back into the house to help Christina prepare supper.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning as they prepared for the day ahead, Christina asked, “Mom, could we go see Moushoom again? Maybe after school today?”

  Margie considered her workload and schedule for the day and nodded. “I’ll try to get home around the same time as you do, and we’ll go over. The staff said he could eat what he wanted, so we could take him food this time.”

  “Burgers?” Christina suggested.

  “If that’s what you want, sure. I’m sure he would like that.”

  “Do you think he would like something else better? Could we make him something traditional? Something he hasn’t had for a long time and that you can’t buy in the restaurants?”

  Margie blinked. “What a great idea. I’m sure he would just love that. I don’t have a lot of time and energy after work, though, I don’t think we can make anything too ambitious.”

  “Maybe we could just make bannock this time, but we could plan something else next time. When we have more time to shop and prepare.”

  “Perfect. Great idea. You don’t need many ingredients for bannock, so I think I can manage that without a shopping trip. Somebody said it’s harder to bake in Calgary because of the altitude, so it might not turn out quite the way we expect. We might have to try a few different times before we get it just right. It’s just a matter of learning how to cook in a new environment.”

  “How does the altitude affect baking?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to look it up. I know that water doesn’t boil at the same temperature.”

  Christina looked at her like she was crazy. “Water always boils at the same temperature. One hundred degrees.”

  “One hundred degrees at sea level.”

  Christina shook her head, still not believing it. She wedged more books into her bag and looked across the room out to the street.

  “There’s the bus! I gotta run!”

  Margie wasn’t even sure if Christina heard her ‘goodbye’ as she belted out of the house. There was certainly not going to be any hug and kiss and sage motherly advice that morning. It would have to wait until their visit with Moushoom.

  She was glad after work that they were going to visit Moushoom. She needed something to help take her head out of her work, and her de-stress playlist had not done it. She and Christina put their heads together in the kitchen to make a batch of bannock, which had turned out fine despite Margie’s misgivings. Maybe bannock was just one of those recipes that was impossible to screw up. They wrapped it up so it would still be warm from the stove when they got to Moushoom’s apartment.

  When they reached Moushoom’s room, they again found him parked in front of the TV. Moushoom beamed at them and waved his hand at the TV. “You can shut that off. The nurses are always turning on the TV’s to keep people quiet. And after trying to ignore it for a while… you kind of get dragged into it. But I don’t want it on while my granddaughters are here to see me!”

  Margie moved a TV table over Moushoom’s knees and put down her bundle. “Wait until you see what we brought for you. This was Christina’s idea.”

  Christina ducked her head and looked shy, but also excited and proud. “We made it together.”

  “Bannock!” Moushoom exclaimed in delight. “I don’t remember when the last time I had bannock was!” He immediately broke off a piece and popped it into his mouth. “This is the best thing you could have brought me. It takes me right back to my childhood; sitting in my mother’s kitchen, eating the bannock hot from the stove. Even in hard times, there was still bannock to fill hungry tummies.”

  He closed his eyes, savoring it. He opened them again.

  “Come on, come on. Bring chairs over. You come have some too. We’ll have a proper little feast here. Like we were away at school, sneaking food after lights out.”

  Margie and Christina did as he instructed. Margie laid out the butter and jam that she had brought along. She thought about what it had been like for Moushoom, back in the days of residential school, when the white man was so intent on beating the Indian out of the children. Anything that reminded them of their own culture had been banned. The Indigenous languages, spiritual beliefs, clothing, food, and ceremonies. They cut off their hair like the Philistines in the Christian Bible, trying to take away Samson’s strength.

  “Eat, eat,” Moushoom encouraged, bringing Margie back to the present. She smiled at him and broke a piece off, eating while smiling at him. The white man had failed. They had not been able to steal Moushoom’s culture away from him. They had not been able to stamp out all of the Indigenous cultures, though they had tried their best.

  They sat down, lowering their masks to eat. Margie hoped that they were far enough apart to prevent an infection. She didn’t want Moushoom getting sick. Sharing food and the knife for the butter was not a good idea, but they had both sanitized their hands before taking the elevator up.

  “It must have been awful for you, going away to school,” Margie said.

  Moushoom’s smile dimmed. He closed his eyes for a moment against the unwelcome memories, then shook it off and looked at her with a confident smile. “We learned far more than the brothers ever intended to teach us. They thought that they could crush us. Could squash the Métis out of us. We were like prisoners of war. But we were warriors. They could not overcome us.”

  He nibbled at some more bannock.

  “Not all of us,” he admitted. “Many of my brothers and sisters never came home.” He looked at Christina and shook his head. “You seem so young to me now, but you are as old as I was when I left that place, a full-grown man, expected to fend for myself. A fully-educated man, looking and acting like a white man. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw pictures of me then. But I went back to my people, grew my hair out, put on my sash, and I never let my culture go. Even when I came west and settled here, I didn’t pretend to be white. I am Métis. I will always be Métis.”

  Christina nodded. She lifted her chin a little. “I am too. I’m still going to school. I want to get my education, but not so that I can be like them.”

  “There is nothing wrong with being educated. As long as you don’t let them write their stories on your heart.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good girl.”

  Margie let her eyes drift around the room as she buttered and ate small pieces of the bannock, making it last as long as she could. Like Abdul’s house, it was starkly furnished. Moushoom had not been able to bring many of his possessions there. But there were still decorations intended to remind him of his heritage. And he wore as much traditional clothing as he could.

  There were certain parallels between Moushoom and the immigrants. Even though they represented opposite ends of the spectrum, one preserving his old traditions and the immigrants trying to adapt to an entirely new culture, they were similar to each other, out-of-step with the mainstream. Outsiders.

  At least Abdul did not have to experience what Moushoom had. He went to public school with other children of all different races and traditions, and there was no one telling him that
he could not keep his own name, no one shaving his head or beating him if he spoke his own language or didn’t answer a question the way that they wanted him to. There were still rules, but they were not brutal and were not designed to erase who he was.

  “What are you thinking of?” Moushoom asked.

  “A boy I interviewed recently. He is from the Sudan, in Africa. Very far away and very different from the children here. I was talking to Christina the other day about how hard it must be for him to adjust to a new language and culture. Like you did.”

  Moushoom nodded his understanding. His dark eyes shone with interest and intelligence. There had been stories before Margie had moved to Calgary, suggesting that he was growing senile, that he didn’t understand what was going on around him and easily forgot things. But so far, she had not seen it.

  There was a crash out in the hallway or one of the nearby apartments, followed by shouting and swearing.

  Despite his advanced years, Moushoom was immediately on his feet, his eyes wild, looking toward the disturbance. In his hand was the knife that only moments before had been on the TV table for them to spread butter and jam on the bannock.

  “Moushoom!” Christina looked frightened by his reaction and rose as well, crashing into the TV table and nearly knocking it over.

  Moushoom turned toward her, the knife held up in a defensive stance. Margie steadied the table.

  “Sit down, Christina,” she said quietly.

  “But—” Christina looked at her Moushoom and then toward the noise in the hall. She looked terrified.

  “Just sit down. You’re safe. But you’re frightening him more.”

  Christina looked at her mother for a minute, black brows drawn down in confusion. Then she obeyed, lowering herself slowly to her seat.

  Moushoom wavered. He looked at Christina, then at Margie. His eyes, though still quick, were different from the way they had been. He was separated from them by time. How far in the past he was, she didn’t know, but she would give him however long he needed to calm down and make his way back to them.

  “You are safe,” she told Moushoom. “I don’t know what is going on out there, but I don’t think it is any danger to you.”

  Moushoom’s stance gradually relaxed. He put the knife back down with the bannock with a self-deprecating laugh. “Who wants some jam?” He sat down again in his chair with a deep sigh, as if at the end of a long, physically arduous day.

  “Did it scare you?” Christina said tentatively.

  Margie wouldn’t have tried to question Moushoom about his reaction, but she didn’t stop Christina. If Moushoom didn’t want to talk about it, he could say so; Margie didn’t want to stop Christina and imply that it was a forbidden topic or that Moushoom was not free to share whatever he pleased.

  “I am an old man. Old men scare easily.”

  “Why did it scare you?” Christina’s eyes were on the knife. Old men might scare easily but, in Christina’s experience, they didn’t take up weapons to defend themselves.

  “You do not know all the things that happened when I was a boy,” Moushoom said slowly. “We don’t talk about it.” He looked at Margie. “Not all of it. We don’t want to relive those years.” He was silent for a few moments. “But make no mistake… we were at war with our captors. It was a silent war. But we were still warriors.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Margie’s sleep was restless, interrupted by dreams that were fleeting, sliding away from her as soon as she tried to remember and analyze them. She tossed and turned, got up and had a drink of milk in the hopes that it would help her to settle down, and lay down to sleep again.

  The alarm rang too early in the morning. Margie forced herself to swing her feet over the edge of the bed and to get up and get moving. Once she had been up for a little while, once she had showered and had a cup of coffee, it would be easier. Even if she were short on sleep, she would still be able to function and make it through the day.

  She listened to make sure that Christina got up when her alarm rang. She let Christina choose her own wake-up time and routine, as long as it got her to school on time. Christina was old enough to be responsible for those details herself. And she had shown herself to be responsible. Most of the time. They had both found it difficult to settle down after the long visit with Moushoom. Margie’s brain had been busy with all of the things they had talked about.

  “I’m up,” Christina croaked from her room. She knew that Margie would be close by, checking in.

  “Do you want me to put bread in the toaster for you?”

  “Um… yeah,” Christina agreed. They both knew that food was one of the things that was sure to get her out of bed.

  Their morning preparations were slow and involved their bumping into each other and into other things a lot that day. But despite their fatigue, neither was grumpy and irritable. It was just kind of a slow-motion morning. Margie saw Christina off to the bus and hopped in her car.

  A lot of the high schools only had a half day on Friday. Christina would be arriving home by one o’clock, and Margie wasn’t sure what she would be doing in the time until Margie returned home. Doing her homework early so that she wouldn’t have to worry about it all weekend? Margie suppressed a smile. Doubtful.

  She wondered if Abdul, too, would only have a half day. His father had been home when they had visited before. Margie wasn’t sure what kind of a job he had, whether it required him to work on shift, or whether he could work remotely from home. Would Sadiq be watching for Abdul to come home? He didn’t seem like the kind of father who supervised his son closely. He came from a culture where the children were probably allowed to run around the village barefoot all day, as long as they didn’t have to be at school, work, or doing chores. Of course, that was just what Margie thought after seeing commercials about giving aid to emergency relief in the African countries. Or the occasional telethon or news report on happenings around the world from them. She didn’t really know anything about the Sudan personally.

  She took a break from the mind-numbing work of eliminating or prioritizing each suspect to do a quick Google search of the Sudan to learn what she should probably already know about their culture and history.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Margie sat with her eyes closed for a long time.

  She didn’t want to believe it.

  She sat there, thinking things through, going through all of the variables in her mind, putting the pieces together. The picture they formed was complete, but it wasn’t what she wanted to see.

  She looked around the squad room to see who else was there. She’d been working with her head down for so long that she had missed the comings and goings of the other detectives. Cruz was leaning back in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. Clearly, he had been working too long at his computer as well.

  “Detective Cruz, do you want to go for a ride?”

  He nodded, rolling his shoulders and continuing to rub his neck. “Yeah. Anything to get away from this desk. What do you need?”

  “I think… I need to talk to Abdul James again.”

  He studied her face. “Abdul. I thought you had decided he wasn’t a suspect. Too young and shy. Wouldn’t have any motive.”

  “I know. I had decided that. He didn’t seem like a danger. And yet…” She thought about Moushoom the night before, grabbing the table knife. Nobody would expect a frail old man to be a danger either. But he had reacted in an instant, ready to defend himself.

  “You think he might be the doer, or you think he knows something?”

  She wasn’t ready to float her theory yet. It was too soon. She wanted some verification first. She needed more information. “Let’s go over there. See if we can find anything else.”

  He nodded his acceptance of this plan and didn’t insist that she tell him all of her thoughts. Margie agreed to go in Cruz’s car. He knew his way around the city better and she wouldn’t have to demonstrate her complete lack of a sense of direction. They put on their m
asks before sliding into the enclosed space. Cruz didn’t even use his GPS when she gave him the address, but pulled out into traffic and headed toward the community.

  Margie watched out the windshield, trying to memorize everything she could about the layout of the city. “Have you lived in Calgary long?”

  “Fifteen years now. Four with homicide.”

  She was not surprised he had been there so long. He seemed to be comfortable with the culture in Calgary. He didn’t sound or act like a new immigrant. And he obviously had to have the years behind him in a Canadian police force to have earned the position of detective. He couldn’t do that straight off the plane.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Calgary or homicide?”

  “I meant Calgary, but either.”

  “It suits me. Other than the weather. I still find it cold. The summers are nice, but they are short.”

  “Yes. Same with Winnipeg.”

  “How long did you live in Winnipeg?”

  “I’ve been in Manitoba my whole life. Winnipeg… since high school.”

  “And before that?”

  “A Métis community you’ve probably never heard of. But I wanted to get an education. There wasn’t much available if I stayed home. I always figured I would go back after I finished school, but then… there’s the problem of finding a suitable job. And I wouldn’t have been able to find something there. Not in law enforcement.”

  “Have you always wanted to be in law enforcement?”

  “No, not really. I kind of gravitated toward it during college. I thought I might have an aptitude for it.”