Moon of the Crusted Snow

by Waubgeshig Rice

  “I gotta get going,” Sarah said. “Come by later, brother. Bring the kids. Love you!” She hustled down the stairs to her idling car.

  “I should go too,” Isaiah said. “Don’t worry because everyone else is worrying. We’ll all have a good laugh about this later.”

  “Yeah, we better.”

  They nodded farewell and Evan stepped up the stairs. He pulled the white steel door open to a blast of heat. Loud chatter buzzed as people with loaded arms crowded the two checkout counters. Those who managed to secure shopping carts were only able to fill the bottom of the carts before store staff stepped in and pleaded with people to be mindful of the needs of others.

  But it didn’t really work. Evan stepped around people holding their finds close to their bodies. He’d joked with some of these people prior to the meeting the day before — now they avoided eye contact.

  He made his way through the checkout lineups to see what was left in the aisles. The lights reflected off every surface, illuminating the empty shelves. Random green leaves, stems, and stalks lay scattered about the small produce section that hugged the close wall. Across the aisle, every bag of heavily preserved white and whole wheat bread was gone. A few boxes of soda crackers remained.

  In the next aisle, a few tins of sardines were strewn across the top shelf. All the canned peas, carrots, corn — usually the least popular of the food items — were gone. On the lower shelf, a few jugs of cooking oil and some condiments like mustard were still there. Evan moved through the rest of the store, making an inventory of what else was left: dry dog food, vinegar, hot sauce, baked beans (which he grabbed), salt, baking soda. The refrigerator was barren of milk and eggs. He decided it was time to leave before he descended into panic too.

  By the time he finished his walkthrough of the trading post, most of the customers had paid and left. Evan approached the counter with a can of beans in each hand. The manager, Donny Jones, eyed him up as he neared.

  “Slim pickins today, eh Ev?” he joked. “What were you able to rummage up?”

  “Uh . . . some beans. Came looking for milk and eggs. You’re out though.”

  “Yep, we’re out of lots of stuff.”

  “What the hell happened here today?”

  “I dunno. People must be spooked about the power being out.”

  “Are you?”

  “I’m just here to sell them what they need. Even if it’s just a little blip, it’s good for business!” Donny adjusted his glasses. “Supposed to be another truck coming in next week. No wait, it’s the week after. Losing track of my days here! Either way, we’ll have more stock in.” He noticed Evan’s blank stare. “What’s wrong, bud?”

  Evan shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied. “Just thinking about what we got left at home. We’ll be fine until the next truck comes in.”

  “Yeah, we’ll all be fine. Guess people just get a little worried sometimes.” Donny rang up the two cans. Evan paid him and left.

  He stared at the road the whole drive home. He didn’t notice the kids still playing on the snowbank, nor Isaiah and Tyler flooding the rink to make ice as he turned down the road that led to his house. The windows stayed shut and the stereo off while the cigarette he had lit as he left the store slowly burned out in the ashtray.

  He tucked the cans under his left arm and opened the front door. The kids’ movie was coming to its tender climax. They sat on the couch with their mother, eyes glued to the screen. Nicole turned to look at him when he shut the door.

  Evan held up the two cans and shrugged. Nicole gave him a confused look. He said nothing and bent over to untie his boots. He hung up his coat and walked through the living room to the kitchen. He gently placed his tiny haul on the kitchen counter without saying a word.

  Ten

  Three more cold nights passed. The generator power would only last so long. The chief called another emergency meeting at the band office, this time just with the councillors and select staff. There was still no communication with anyone in the outside world. Terry leaned over the front desk in the main foyer, staring at his hands. The wind howled outside, blowing snow across the walkway to the front door.

  “At this point,” Terry started, his voice cracking. “I think we should just send out a second notice. Another meeting will just make them really panic.”

  Amanda Jones stepped away from the wall behind him and spoke up. “What do we tell them? We don’t know anything.” The bangles on her wrists clanked as she gestured out and upward, as if to raise the confusion to the ceiling.

  “I think we just tell them to be patient,” said Walter, who was leaning against the desk. “We gotta tell them that this is the new status quo for the time being: to keep conserving power and water.”

  Evan watched each of the council members closely. They looked tired. He could see the worry and fatigue in Amanda’s eyes. She was only a few years older than he was. Terry sighed. “Alright, Joanne, do up another one.”

  Joanne wheeled back to the keyboard. Her son Tyler moved to stand behind her. Although he was there as a rez staffer, he was also there to support his mother. She’d been having a particularly tough time over the past week. Kevin, Tyler’s younger brother, was attending college down in Gibson for welding. Bright and ambitious, he planned to get his education and spend a few years working in southern Ontario before returning home. No one had been able to contact him since they had been cut off. That was over a week ago. He was one of nine from the community living elsewhere for their post-secondary education. Amanda’s little brother Nick was at the same college as Kevin.

  Joanne tapped out the message, printed off a copy and brought it back to the chief.

  NOTICE

  ONGOING COMMUNITY-WIDE POWER AND COMMUNICATIONS OUTAGE EMERGENCY POWER GENERATION REMAINS IN EFFECT

  PLEASE CONSERVE ENERGY AND WATER WHERE POSSIBLE

  USE WOOD STOVES AND FURNACES AS PRIMARY HEAT SOURCES

  MONITOR YOUR WATER PIPES

  FOOD DELIVERY SCHEDULED FOR NEXT WEEK

  PLEASE RATION IN THE MEANTIME

  NEXT UPDATE MONDAY

  HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND

  MIIGWECH,

  CHIEF AND COUNCIL

  Terry turned to the others. “Should we really say there’s a delivery coming?”

  Walter smoothed back his greying ponytail. “Well, we originally worked it out with Donny for next week. That’s still the schedule.”

  “Yeah, but we haven’t heard from anyone in more than a week. We don’t know what the fuck is going on out there!”

  “Terry, relax. We’ll be okay,” said Walter.

  “That’s easy for you to say. I’m supposed to be the goddamn leader here! What am I gonna do, deliver these bullshit pieces of paper to every single fuckin’ home on this rez and tell everyone it’s gonna be okay? We have no goddamn answers.”

  “Terry, take it easy . . .” It was Amanda’s turn to try to calm the chief.

  “There’s something seriously fucked up going on out there. Why haven’t we heard from anyone? Why is the power still off? If we run out of that diesel, all the water lines are gonna freeze. Then it’s gonna be fuckin’ chaos here.” Terry slammed his fist against the desk. “Fuck!”

  Joanne jumped and the others winced or stared at their feet. Walter gazed at Terry from under his furrowed brows. Evan felt the tension rising between the two. As this crisis unfolded, he found himself gravitating towards Walter, who always kept his cool and had a calming and confident demeanour.

  “Print them up, Joanne. Tyler and Evan, take them out,” commanded Walter. “They’re gonna want to hear something from us, and this is all we can do.”

  Terry inhaled deeply and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry for getting mad. You guys can all go home now. Someone will come for you when we need to meet again.”

  Joanne turned back to the computer screen and slid the
mouse about in short bursts to print more copies. Tyler squeezed her shoulders and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. She let out a cough to stifle a sob.

  Eleven

  “Hey, wake up.” Nicole nudged Evan again. He opened his eyes in the pitch-black bedroom. He couldn’t tell if he was awake or still sleeping.

  “Evan, wake up.”

  Her elbow in his side stirred him out of his deep sleep. But it was the tremble in her voice and her rigid body that really woke him.

  “I’m awake. What’s up?”

  “I had a really weird dream.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I’m scared.”

  He turned to face Nicole and inched closer. “Come here,” he said. She buried her face into his T-shirt. “What was your dream?”

  “I dreamt that me and the kids were outside,” she said. “And we were trying to run through the snow. But it was that kind of snow that’s hard on top and real powdery underneath. Nangohns was on one side and Maiingan was on the other. I was holding their hands real tight. I was trying to run on top of the snow. But I kept falling through every couple steps. The kids would pull me back up, and we’d start running again until I fell back through. I don’t know what we were running from or running to, but we had to get somewhere. You weren’t around anywhere.

  “The kids kept saying stuff like ‘Don’t worry, Mommy’ and ‘We’re gonna make it,’ but it wasn’t their same voices. It was like they were elders speaking to me. They were calm. They were smiling at me every time they pulled me up from the snow. I was getting tired and they made sure I made it out of there. I was falling deeper and deeper into the snow every time the crust broke.

  “Then I finally fell in over my head. I was struggling, trying to get up. The snow was getting in my eyes and in my mouth. I thought I was gonna suffocate, but they reached all the way down to pull me back up. But this time, their hands felt bigger.”

  Evan lay perfectly still, listening. He stroked the top of Nicole’s head, soothing her while he grew increasingly frightened.

  She sniffled, and he knew she was on the verge of crying. “They pulled me all the way to the surface, up to my feet. But we weren’t running anymore. We were in the middle of the bush, and there was a whole bunch of other people there. There was a fire going. It looked like a winter camping site.

  “I turned back to face Maiingan and Nangohns, but I saw a young man and a young woman wearing old patched snowmobile suits. They both had long hair that flowed so beautifully. They smiled at me, and then I knew it was them. It was our kids. But they were adults. All grown up. They started talking to me in the old language, but I didn’t understand them. It was a place I didn’t recognize. I didn’t recognize anyone else there either. I was panicking.

  “Then Nangohns reached out to grab my hand. She squeezed it tight and looked into my eyes. Her eyes were so big and brown. Her cheeks were so high and proud. Her hair fell so beautifully down the sides of her face. She was the strongest and prettiest young woman. Then she reached up and touched my cheek. She said, ‘Welcome home, Mommy.

  “And then I woke up.”

  He squeezed her gently. “It’s okay. It was just a dream.”

  He held her close to him as she fell back to sleep. He remembered his father’s dream, and his eyes stayed open in the darkness as the competing omens forced the calm from his mind and body.

  Twelve

  The snow came again overnight, pounding the small community at an unforgiving pace. Another thick layer of heavy snow lay on the roads, driveways, and rooftops, keeping Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler too busy to worry. They formed their usual snow-clearing formation — Evan driving the plough in the middle with the other two staggered behind him in pickup trucks outfitted with large yellow blades to clear the excess.

  A full pass through the reserve took all morning and most of the afternoon. The two main roads that ran north-south and east-west and intersected right in the middle of the community were always first. Then the secondary roads that branched off from them in straight lines. The boreal region they lived in was mostly flat and allowed a practical, grid layout of the rez roads, driveways, and homes at regular intervals.

  From his high seat in the plough’s cab, Evan didn’t notice much activity around the houses they passed, the unremitting snowfall keeping people inside. A few children played happily as full-blown winter held steady.

  The convoy came to the end of the road by the Northern Trading Post, where they’d decided to stop in the parking lot for a break before driving the equipment back to the yard. The store had been closed for nearly a week, since the townspeople had ravaged its stock. Was that really a week ago? Evan wondered. Without any steady routine, the days were beginning to blur together and time was becoming more fluid. Despite the chaos, Evan felt more relaxed in some ways, falling into the natural rhythm of the days and the tasks that needed to be done.

  They parked the trucks randomly. There was no worry of impeding any other vehicles. The air was a little milder as it usually was following a major snowfall, so they left their heavy jackets in the trucks and stood around in insulated construction overalls and sweaters adorned with the logos of sports teams and sportswear companies.

  They sparked their tobacco and inhaled without saying anything. Isaiah reached into his pocket for a brown plastic bottle. He held his cigarette in his mouth while he unscrewed the black metal cap. He transferred the cigarette back to one hand and tipped the bottle back. He passed it to Evan.

  Evan took the mickey of rye from Isaiah and dumped the liquor into his mouth just as quickly and effectively as his friend did. He barely tasted the burn of the cheap booze, but it warmed his throat and his innards all the way down. It was both comforting and shameful, as it always was. Tyler took it from his hand, continuing the circle.

  Evan broke the silence. “Hopefully that’s all the snow for a bit.”

  “Yeah, really. This shit ain’t lettin’ up,” agreed Isaiah. “It’s like we’re getting kicked while we’re down.”

  Tyler laughed. “As if, Izzy! What a drama queen. You guys are acting like the world is ending.”

  “How do you know it ain’t, asshole?” Isaiah retorted.

  “The end of the world is gonna be big bombs or earthquakes or some shit like that. The dinosaurs were around for like a billion years, and the only thing that could do them in was a massive fuckin’ asteroid! This shit won’t be slow, believe me.”

  “Okay, professor.”

  Evan shook his head and laughed. “Listen to you two geniuses.” The bottle came back around and he took another swig. The faint hum of snowmobiles bounced off the woods around them.

  The buzz swelled to a roar from the southeast. Tyler fixed his eyes on the service road beyond the store. It was heavily snowed in and no vehicles had driven it in weeks. But now someone was coming. Evan turned to look, and so did Isaiah, dragging off his cigarette again.

  Evergreen trees concealed the bend in the road about a half-kilometre from where they stood. Trucks leaving the community always disappeared into the forest, no matter what time of year they left. And those approaching could always be heard before they were seen. Evan could hear now that there were at least two of them.

  “Wonder who’s coming from that way,” Tyler thought aloud. “I didn’t see no one head out.”

  Two machines pulling long sleds emerged from the trees. A bright yellow one led the way, with a black one slightly behind it and to the right. Both drivers wore dark suits and black helmets. It was impossible to tell who they were, and Evan felt his back tense. He glanced at Tyler, and then at Isaiah. Both looked uneasy.

  The snowmobiles glided along the snowy surface that would become the community’s winter access to the South once the surface was established. The drivers cut a path straight to Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler. They came in at full speed and slowed only as they reached the high snowba
nks that dropped to the road that the team had just cleared.

  The drivers eased their snowmobiles over the frozen ridge at the end of the road. The one in front raised a hand in greeting, as if he recognized familiar faces. The other did the same, and they brought their machines to a stop in front of the three Anishinaabe men and pulled off their helmets. Tyler recognized his little brother. “Holy fuck, it’s Kevin!”

  Kevin’s short brown hair was messy, and he looked tired, but he smiled to see his brother and the road crew. The black snowmobile stopped beside him, and the second rider stood up and took off his helmet. It was Nick Jones, Kevin’s best friend, looking just as dishevelled.

  Tyler charged to his brother and wrapped his arms around him. “What the fuck are you guys doing here?” he shouted in excitement. Kevin buried his head in his brother’s shoulder and began to sob. Evan and Isaiah rushed in and took turns hugging Nick, who was heaving with emotion and struggling to smile through a tear-streaked face. He caught his breath and said, “You guys have no fuckin’ idea how good it is to see you.”

  “You too, bud,” said Isaiah. “What’s going on?”

  Fear hummed in Evan’s ears. This is not good, he thought. Not good at all.

  “Everything’s fucked up,” said Kevin, as he stifled another sob. “Everything’s fucked up. We had to come home.”

  “What do you mean, bro?” asked Isaiah.

  “It’s chaos down there, Izzy,” replied Nick. He was referring to Gibson, about three hundred kilometres to the southwest. “The food’s all gone. The power’s out. There’s no gas. There’s been no word from Toronto or anywhere else. People are looting and getting violent. We had to get the fuck out of there.”

  So it’s everywhere, Evan thought.

  Kevin picked up where Nick left off. “We stole these sleds from school and left early this morning, when it was still dark. Shit was going bad right after the power went out. So we decided to make plans to get outta there. We stocked up on some stuff for a few days before leaving.” The sleds behind the snowmobiles each held two large black hockey bags and two orange jerry cans of gas. All of the supplies were tied down tightly. “We thought we might get lost,” he continued. “But getting lost and freezing to death woulda been better than just one more day in that shithole.”