Arctic Thunder

by Robert Feagan

  He slid down in the seat and closed his eyes. What would the kids be like in Inuvik? He was good-natured and made friends easily. His mother was of South African descent, and the mixture of features she had passed on to him often made it difficult for people to place him. With his large, expressive, dark brown eyes, caramel skin, and loosely curled black hair, he usually fitted in no matter where he went. People guessed he was everything from Dene and East Asian to East Indian and African Canadian.

  Although short for his age at fourteen, he was built like a muscular bowling ball: wide shoulders, thick chest, and massive legs and butt. Whether it was for hockey, lacrosse, or any other contact sport, he always surprised his opposition. If they hadn’t played against him before and saw him in equipment for the first time, they had no idea that he likely outweighed them by a good ten kilograms and was one of the fastest, most competitive players they would face.

  But what if none of that mattered to anyone in Inuvik? What would he do?

  CHAPTER 5

  Fitz was wrong. Inuvik didn’t look that much different the next day. After an early breakfast at the hotel, Fitz had picked them up and taken them to the house. Mike recognized Mackenzie Road from the previous night: hospital, stop at the light, post office, turn left, police station, house. The A-frame appeared even smaller in the mid-morning sunlight.

  Mike had to admit that though the town appeared the same, the weather was a whole lot better. The sun shone brightly and reflected off the snow, making him squint as he stepped down from the Explorer. Tiny crystals in the snow glistened like millions of diamonds. They were in the air, too, and made him feel disoriented as he blinked, momentarily snow-blinded. Fitz said they were ice crystals. Even though it was sunny, the air temperature had dropped to minus thirty-five, which was unseasonably cold, Fitz told them. Unseasonably cold! Did they even have other seasons up here?

  The big winter boots his father had given him that morning crunched loudly on the snow. He stopped in the driveway and took in his new neighbourhood through the frozen mist of his breath. Most of the buildings seemed pretty old. The police station was next to their house, and other than the post office and the schools he could see across Mackenzie Road, he didn’t know what anything else was. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he did notice one thing. Because the snow was so white, the colours of the buildings were incredibly bright. Even the brown of their house was intense. Jeez, get a grip, Mike, he thought, shaking his head.

  “Mike, let’s go inside,” his mother said.

  He followed his parents and Fitz toward the house he was supposed to call home.

  “This door at the side is basically your front door,” Fitz said. “Let’s go around to the back door, though, because it’ll give you a view of the yard and I can show you through from there.”

  They followed a wooden walkway along the side of the house, then turned right at the back and came to the other entrance. Absent-mindedly, Mike glanced around the yard as Fitz fumbled with the key. It wasn’t a bad-sized space — bigger than his yard back in St. Albert at least. Lots of snow and a few scraggly trees. Mike’s attention was drawn to a long, rectangular tube covered with corrugated metal. Running along the back of their lot, it continued in both directions out of sight and stood off the ground on thick wooden logs spaced at intervals. The logs held the tube about a metre off the ground. The tube itself was about a metre high and perhaps a metre across. A section branched off and entered their yard, disappearing into the side of the house. As Mike scanned both directions, he saw where the tube branched off into other buildings in the area.

  “There we go,” Fitz said, pushing open the door. “Let’s head inside.”

  Mike followed the others inside. The smell of fresh paint, Mr. Clean, and stale air assailed his nostrils simultaneously.

  “It’s freshly painted, and we had a couple of ladies come in and clean things from top to bottom,” said Fitz, struggling to kick off his heavy boots. “To be quite honest, Jeannie, Sergeant MacLean’s wife, Gwen, was awfully fussy, so it was pretty clean to begin with. This is the storage room, and the crawl space is right under here.” Fitz lifted a piece of the floor by a metal ring fixed in the centre. “If you bring in a barge order, this is where you can store most of your supplies. Seems a bit odd, since we have a road up from the South and so on, but it can save you a heap of money.”

  The house was built on wooden supports like the ones holding up the metal tube in the backyard. Mike noticed a miniature bathroom to his left as he walked ahead into the kitchen. There was a table and chairs, and he remembered for the first time that the house was owned by the RCMP and came with its own furniture. Their furniture was stored back in St. Albert. There were boxes with kitchen scrawled across them along one wall. That would be the stuff the movers had dropped off.

  The kitchen was small, too. As he moved ahead, he realized the whole house was tiny, and pretty plain, as well. The walls were off-white. The floor in the kitchen was white linoleum with a checkered black pattern. He passed through the kitchen into a living room with a dining area to the right. The floor had a nondescript dark brown carpet, and judging by the drag marks, it had been recently shampooed. To the left was a set of stairs. Beyond that was a small room that could be used as a study or bedroom. Mike heard voices above him and started up the stairs, which were steep and covered in dark brown carpet. That made him realize how pointed the roof of the house was, and he wondered what the bedrooms looked like.

  There was a bathroom at the top of the stairs, and a hallway extended to his left and right. The same nauseating brown carpet flowed out of sight in both directions like a muddy river without an end. He turned left, away from the voices, and wandered into what had to be a bedroom. Judging by the twin bed against one wall, this was his room.

  The walls to his left and right rose more than a metre. At that point the ceiling angled up to a peak in the middle. The walls were off-white and the carpet was the same dirty brown. There was a window on the far side of the room. Mike wandered over and stared into the backyard. He could now see over the metal tube. Trees and other houses sat silently on hidden streets. In the distance he thought he spied a lake, but with the snow and brightness outside, it was hard to tell. Mike moved away from the window and allowed himself to sink into a sitting position on the bed. It felt soft. Too soft.

  Glancing around, he spotted two identical dark brown wooden dressers. Each drawer had two silly-looking metal handles. A hard wooden chair sat just inside the room’s door. Several piles of boxes were stacked against the far wall. These were marked: boy’s room. Those were his things. They didn’t belong here. They belonged thousands of kilometres away in St. Albert.

  “I see you found it on your own,” Jeannie said.

  Mike looked up to see Fitz and his parents standing in the doorway. They all had a goofy “Well, what do you think?” expression on their faces. He managed a weak smile and gazed out the window again.

  “Well, I won’t impose on you folks any longer,” Fitz said, “because I bet you’re anxious to unpack. If you can’t find anything, just let me know, Ben. You know where to find me.” He motioned in the direction of the police station.

  The adults moved away and headed back downstairs. Waiting for a moment or two until the voices were nothing more than a murmur, Mike buried his face in his hands and began to cry.

  CHAPTER 6

  God, I don’t want to go to school, Mike thought. He stood on the back porch, gripped the wooden railing through his ski gloves, and rocked back and forth as he stared at the backyard. Stopping, he pursed his lips and blew a visible stream of breath into the air like a jet. What a stupid place! Minus twenty something in early March. Loads of snow. And what was that metal thing in the backyard, anyway? It looked dumb out there. Despite the cold, he felt the warmth of anger rise in his face and began to shake his head. He was mad at a big metal thing that couldn’t even return his anger. How sad was that?

  “It’s a utilidoor.”
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  The voice wasn’t loud, and it took Mike a few seconds to realize someone had spoken. He straightened and searched around. To his left he spotted a man leaning on an ice scraper in the police station parking lot. The brightening sky outlined the stranger’s silhouette against the buildings but made it impossible to see his features because the backlight threw shadows across his face.

  “It has pipes in it,” the man continued. “There’s too much permafrost here to bury them. They run all around behind the houses and take the water in and out. If they were in the ground, the permafrost would snap them like twigs and nothing would work.”

  Mike didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.

  “I’m Victor Allen.”

  Mike nodded again. The man wore a dark blue parka, but not like the one his father had given him. This one was made of a softer homemade material with dark fur around the hood. Real fur. The man wore a baseball cap, and by the slight glint Mike detected when the stranger moved his head, he had to be wearing glasses. Mike was pretty sure the fellow was aboriginal, but he could never get the names right. There were Dene people and Inuvalut, or something like that. The guys who used to be called Eskimos.

  “You don’t have a name?” Victor Allen asked.

  The man smiled, and Mike couldn’t help but smile back. “I’m Mike Watson.”

  “Qanaqitpit, Mike Watson. That means ‘how are you’ in our Inuvialuit language.”

  Inuvialuit! That was it. The people who lived in the Northwest Territories who used to be called Eskimos were Inuvialuit. The people in Nunavut who used to be called Eskimos were called Inuit. It was like a social studies lesson right outside his house. It felt funny to even think that. His house.

  “Now this is where you would say ‘Nakuurunga, Victor.’”

  “Nagarunka, Mr. Allen,” Mike said.

  Victor winced. “That’s close enough, Mike. You must be the new RCMP sergeant’s son. Welcome to Inuvik.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Allen.” It wasn’t a very imaginative thing to say back, but that was all Mike could muster.

  “Now if I was a young guy like you, I’d hustle off to school, because I’m guessing within the next five minutes or so you’re going to be late.”

  School! Mike rushed down the porch steps and up the wooden walkway to the street. “See you, Mr.

  Allen!” he called over his shoulder.

  “See you, Mike.”

  Mike dashed past the post office and slowed down as he approached Mackenzie Road at the light. It was red! And the orange hand was flashing. One light in town half a block away from their house, and every time he’d been there it was red. He looked both ways and without stopping ran across the street. If he had tried that in St. Albert this time of the morning, he would have died a quick and painful death. As it was, a truck approached the intersection after he crossed. The driver beeped his horn and waved as he passed by.

  His feet were heavy in his winter boots, and despite the cold he started to sweat under his toque and parka. He slowed to a walk as he neared the school, noticing other students casually strolling up to the doors. Everything still seemed so much like a dream. No waking up extra early. No walking to the bus stop. No twenty-minute bus ride across town to school. Hat on, parka on, boots on, out the door, hike a block, cross a road at the light, take a few more steps, enter school. Welcome to the Outer Limits!

  The school didn’t look like much. As with every other building he’d seen in Inuvik, it was elevated on piles. There were two distinct parts or buildings joined by a short walkway with doors in the middle. The exterior was clad in aluminum siding that was a combination of faded yellow and tan. Looking quite out of place with the otherwise drab exterior was a bright red trim that ran around the top of the structure. The thought that maybe the builders had run out of tan-and-yellow material as they finished the school occurred to Mike. The part to the right of the walkway had two storeys, and the part to the left had samuel hearne secondary school displayed in big letters across the front.

  As Mike approached the front doors, he paid closer attention to the other students, which caused his stomach to lurch. Nobody else was dressed in heavy winter clothing. Ski jackets, snowboarding coats, ball caps or no hats, and running shoes or moccasin-like footwear were apparent everywhere. Mike halted just outside the doors and studied his heavy white winter boots.

  “Nice moon boots,” a girl commented as she pushed by and in through the doors.

  Any thought Mike had of fleeing home was shattered when a loud buzzer sounded just above the doors in front of him. Other students shoved by, and he realized he was getting more than his share of dirty looks for blocking easy access to both doors. Pulling himself together, he kick-started his legs and waded inside.

  Tentatively, Mike edged a few paces into the school, then stopped to get his bearings. The air was overpoweringly warm against his face as he pulled the toque off his head. There was a mixture of smells: warm bodies, sweat, floor wax, musty paper, and a smoky, somewhat pleasant aroma that Mike guessed was caused by the moccasin-like footwear and fur mittens some of the students wore.

  “You look a little lost and a little South.”

  Mike sensed a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he glimpsed the smiling face of a lady who he figured was one of the teachers. She was tall with closely cropped grey hair — business-looking but not too severe.

  “This is my first day,” Mike said.

  “Well, follow me.” The teacher motioned, stepping ahead in quick, purposeful fashion without glancing back. “The office is this way. They’ll get you all set up and headed to the right homeroom.”

  Mike followed, his boots squeaking on the shiny tile floor, which was quite wet in places from the morning traffic of students coming in from the snow. Everything looked pretty much the same as in any school. The halls were narrow and lined with lockers set into the wall. Most of the lockers were tan, but there was the odd red or black one that seemed to have been added as an afterthought. The ceiling was white tile stuff, and the walls were off-white or brown panel in some places. The floor in every direction was brown tile.

  After a quick stop in the office where they seemed to be expecting him, one of the staff led him to an orange locker where he thankfully deposited his toque, mitts, heavy parka, and moon boots, replacing the last with the running shoes he’d stored in his backpack.

  When he entered his homeroom class, he was relieved to see he was now pretty much dressed the same as everyone else — jeans, T-shirt, and running shoes. A few kids sported the high-top moccasin things he’d seen earlier. He would have to find out what they were because they looked pretty comfortable.

  His homeroom teacher, Ms. Delorme, didn’t make him stand up but welcomed him and told everyone his name and where he was from. She was a kindly lady with a smile that never seemed to leave her face. Not much taller than Mike, she was plump but not rotund. With greying brown hair and expressive, almost black eyes, she appeared matronly, but there was no doubt she was in charge. Ms. Delorme was one of those teachers who viewed each student as part of her brood and woe to whoever interfered with any of her charges.

  She went on to mention who Mike’s father was, which made him feel uncomfortable. He couldn’t tell whether the heat in his cheeks was from the warmth of the school after being cold outside or from blood surging to the surface from embarrassment. Planting herself at the front of the class, Ms. Delorme breezed through a review of the previous day’s English lesson. Not having been part of the prior discussions, Mike slumped in his seat and tried not to be conspicuous as he surveyed the students around him.

  It was pretty much a sea of brown faces. There were two or three students who were obviously white, but everyone else was either Inuvialuit or Dene. Some looked a little more his colour, and he guessed they were a mix like him, Métis perhaps or a combination of Inuvialuit and white. His new situation seemed weird, and the irony wasn’t lost on him.

  St. Albert was pretty “white bread.” There we
ren’t many visible minorities. In fact, all of the guys he knew in school there were white as white could be. Every guy he played lacrosse with was, too. Mike had been the only boy of mixed parentage. But he had never felt out of place. Now he sat in a class brimming with brown kids his own age and some youths exactly the same colour as he was, yet he felt like an alien who didn’t belong. Pretty weird.

  Mike was sitting by the door and guessed there were about thirty students in total. The class itself was big but much the same as any he’d been in: shiny brown tile floor, off-white walls, a blackboard, the teacher’s desk at the front, whiteboards at the sides, geography posters from around the world, and orange, yellow, and blue handmade posters with pictures depicting various Shakespearean and other literary themes.

  The desks were rectangular metal ones — smooth shiny top, compartment inside, and four legs. The compartment in this kind of desk always scared the heck out of Mike. You couldn’t see all the way to the back and never knew what was or had been in there.

  The kid before you might have been a nose-picker, and who knew where he’d wiped or flicked his sticky treasure. There was always gooey, stuck-on gum underneath such desks, too.

  “Let’s get started, Mike.”

  Mike glanced up to see Ms Delorme smiling pleasantly at him.

  “While everyone else is reading, move your chair up to my desk and we’ll see where you’re at. Your marks from St. Albert are quite good, so I don’t anticipate you’ll have any problem jumping right in with the class.”

  Feeling the flush of embarrassment fill his cheeks once more, Mike sheepishly dragged his chair away from his desk and placed it beside Ms. Delorme. He looked back at the rest of the class and saw a few students staring at him before they returned their attention to the books in front of them. How much worse could this get? New kid in town. Dad a cop. New kid in class. New kid sitting with the teacher alone at the front of the class. Wonderful!