Since Joan had called her about the boy, she’d been listening real good. She’d even recounted her alarm system. Some asshole had taken the empty back to the beer store for the deposit. She replaced it with a Johnny Cash CD in a cracked plastic case. Oh, that Johnny Cash, he was a man she could snag in half. At least until his fat days, when he got too churchy and found out he wasn’t a real Indian.
Shuffling. Scratch against wood. A heavy thud, which she knew was her marigolds in their planter boot tipping over.
“Alright then.” She pushed the blankets off and stood up, smoothing down her nightie. She shushed Rickard and fixed the blankets, lifting them back to the pillow. She told him to stay put. Before she got to the bedroom door, she turned back. “Next time you bring an extra pill or don’t bother to stay.”
She tiptoed into the kitchen and reached on top of the fridge, sticking out her tongue for balance. She felt around until she found the tin and pulled it down. She really should have prepared the salt before. Now she couldn’t turn on the kitchen light and she couldn’t open the drawer where she kept the grater and her knives without a lot of rattle and bang. She turned, looking for something that would work to shred some bone, a diminutive ghost in a thin, white nightie, wavy hair down to her waist.
“Merde.”
She remembered the careful way they had to handle Angelique’s body while dressing her to meet the Jesus so that the holes they’d stitched up wouldn’t crack back open. She remembered old Elsie Giroux tucking both lips inside the pressure of her clenched teeth to stop from talking about things that hunt the road. Ajean would have popped her in the nose if she’d upset Flo and Joan with those stories. She’d told her so straight out. Angelique didn’t die with a pleasant look on her face; Ajean remembered having to coax the muscles to ease the tension from her jaw. Angelique didn’t die nice. Ajean wanted to pass in peace—at bingo with the winning card, or lying out all stately-like in buckskin on the dock, or under Rickard like a proper lady who’d lived a good life right to the end.
On the counter was a thick crystal glass reflecting the small bulb above the stovetop like a faceted lighthouse beacon. Inside, in lukewarm water with a full Polident tab, was Rickard’s top plate. She didn’t give herself time to reconsider, just fished out the teeth, pried open the tin and scraped herself a small pile of salt. Then she dropped the denture back into the glass where it smiled at her like an overbite, some grains sinking to the bottom to join the cleaner residue. She’d take care of it later.
She held the pinch of bone salt in her small, brown fist. With her other hand she grabbed a wooden spoon she kept on a hook by the telephone for just this kind of thing. On second thought, she went back to the counter and retrieved the yellow bag of oatmeal cookies, tucking it under her arm. Now she was ready, and she wasn’t fucking around.
“Oh my girl,” she whispered as she stood before the front door with the street light through the window casting the shadow of wild fur over her face. “I hope you’re almost home. He is. And I don’t know how long I can hold him.”
She opened the door, just a crack, and made clucking noises like she was calling in a stray. Silence. And then the shadow strained and flexed, blocking the street light, the moon and any god pulled away from the contemplation of silent stars to watch the choreography of a damn good fight.
acknowledgements
I AM THANKFUL to my husband, Shaun, and our children, Jaycob, Wenzdae and Lydea, for putting up with me disappearing into this world for days at a time, locked away in my office.
To my longest-running fans and supporters—Hugh, Joanie and Jason Dimaline—I love you. You are the reason I am fearless, and so damn full of words. Thank you for making me believe each of them had value.
To my agents, Rachel Letofsky and Dean Cooke, and all the amazing souls at CookeMcDermid who I love to burst in on and hug, you are truly the best. You make it possible to continue publishing and allow me the time and space to dream up new ways to speak my truth. You guard the road so that I can spin around and sing and pluck memory to braid with wonder. I cannot thank you enough.
Sometimes you meet a person and know that they will make you the best version of yourself. It doesn’t happen often and when it does, you need to hold on to it. Anne Collins, you make me a better writer; it is a gift I will never be able to properly repay. A special thank-you to little Olive for allowing me time with her grandma to put this fever of a book to bed.
My thanks, also, to Kristin Cochrane for our first lunch and the ones yet to come, and most of all for changing the world so that we writers have a steadier place in it. Your belief in me makes me work harder. I guess that’s why you’re the boss.
This story, and every story, is from and for my mere, Edna Dusome. I am grateful to Mere and to my great-aunt Flora for telling me scary tales of giant black dogs on the road, for keeping me safe and for filling me with community and story and the kind of love that sticks. I carry you every day and know that you carry me right back.
CHERIE DIMALINE’s young adult novel The Marrow Thieves shot to the top of the bestseller lists when it was published in 2017, and stayed there for more than a year. It won the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Kirkus Prize in the young adult literature category, and the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and, among other honours, was a fan favourite in the 2018 edition of CBC’s Canada Reads. It was also a Book of the Year on numerous lists, including that of the National Public Radio, the School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire and the CBC. Cherie was named Emerging Artist of the Year at the Ontario Premier’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts in 2014, and became the first Indigenous writer in residence at the Toronto Public Library. From the Georgian Bay Métis Community in Ontario, she now lives in Vancouver.
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