Butch.
William stuck his hand out and gave us a thumbs-up. We all thumbed him back.
No need for a rescue now.
As soon as we rounded the last point upstream of Tulita, we heard a blast of sirens.
For a few seconds, that sound took me back to the mining riots in Xela, and my whole body shrank. It was still there, some of that inner junk that I guess I still had to work on. Then I saw several big pickups at the boat launch, flashing red, blue, and orange lights at us.
“What, are they going to arrest us?” Morris asked.
“Not unless you try pushing drugs on them,” I said.
“It’s the cops,” Alyssa said. “And the wildlife guys. Basically, anyone who’s got a siren to blow. It’s how we welcome bigshots.”
“That would be us?” Morris said.
“Oh, yeah. This is big.”
I got an idea of just how big our arrival was to the community of Tulita when I saw hundreds of people and their dogs lining the beach. Others couldn’t wait for us to land, and were already headed our way in a parade of motorboats and canoes. In a village this small, it looked like pretty much everybody wanted to welcome us. And to marvel at the bizarre boat we had built together.
The sound of moose skin grinding into gravel had made my flesh crawl ever since we’d pushed off from our fast-shrinking island. Today it was the sound of victory.
I admit I was doubtful from the start.
A moose-skin boat? Ridiculous!
But it held up. It got us there safely, as had others like it for generations of Alyssa’s people, bobbing down the Keele River with a winter’s worth of fresh meat. Most moose-skin boats were much bigger than ours, built from the hides of at least half a dozen moose, not two.
We’d called it Plan C. Building that crazy boat. With the island disappearing beneath our feet and the canoe long gone, we knew it was basically build the thing or drown.
But look who I had to work with: a heavyweight drug dealer who’d almost bullied me to death. An obsessive cutter with a history of multiple suicide attempts.
After depending on over ten thousand online friends to keep me happy, I was down to two fellow addicts to keep me alive.
Leading our team, guiding construction every step of the way, was Alyssa.
For sure, Morris was the muscle behind the work. Without his strength, we’d never have been able to shift those moose around and peel off their skins.
But Alyssa was the brains. She showed us how to skin the moose and scrape their hides. She showed us how to shape and split the driftwood to make gunwales, ribs, and a keel. When we’d used up our clothesline to tie the boat frame together from all the pieces, she showed us how to pound sinew out of stringy connective tissue to make extra thread. “Moose thread,” she called it.
We worked hard and fast. There was no time for any bullshit or meltdowns. The water kept rising and our teeny island was disappearing before our eyes. We worked carefully. From start to finish, we knew that one slip of the hatchet or buck knife and we were sunk, literally.
Sink or swim, eh, Woody?
At one point, we stopped to cook some moose meat over the fire, and a big male grizzly showed up on the bank right across from us. The bear stood up on two legs, looking just like a big hairy human, shaking his head around, sniffing the air like crazy.
I was freaking inside.
Alyssa motioned for us to sit down and keep still.
My heart pounded at the sight of this magnificent, terrible animal.
Morris kept waving the hatchet at it like he was lining up a headshot. He probably could’ve done it, too, even at that distance.
The bear dropped to all fours and made a few bold charges at us. Luckily, the current was too strong for it to swim across. It took off in a huff, as if to say, “Well, piss on ya!”
Our work continued into the night by the light of a roaring bonfire. By sundown the next day, we’d stitched the hides together, stretched them over the frame, and lashed them on, all thanks to Alyssa.
And still no sign of a rescue.
Had the wind stopped the rescue boats? The clouds stopped the search planes? Had the rest of our team all drowned and nobody even knew we were in trouble?
We had no time to debate such questions. Our island was going fast.
That night around the fire, we carved three decent paddles in record time.
Funny how a life or death situation improved our carving skills!
The next morning’s weather: no change. High winds, low clouds.
We greased every seam with moose fat, tested our boat for leaks, and declared it seaworthy.
I figured we were ready for takeoff.
I was wrong.
“Wait,” Alyssa said firmly, as Morris and I started nudging our homemade boat into the river.
“Wait?” Morris said. “For what?”
Alyssa just stared at the water, humming a private tune.
The Keele River swirled around my bare feet, still waiting, watching.
The clouds seemed to move closer, holding their breath.
Our island had been reduced to a few scrawny willows, clinging to a sliver of sand. Soon everything would be ripped away, including us.
It was still super-windy but at least we’d have a tailwind. Hopefully manageable.
Whatever. We had to take our chances. To wait any longer would be guaranteed suicide.
“It’s now or never, Alyssa!” I said.
“No,” Morris said, grabbing my arm while looking at Alyssa. “I get it. We gotta pay the water, right?”
“Yes,” Alyssa said. She reached into the boat and pulled out a hunk of smoked moose meat, our only food source until we reached safety—again, it was Alyssa who’d taught us how to make it. She tore off a strip for each of us. “This’ll do,” she said, pausing for a moment before she gave hers to the river.
Morris and I did the same. As I watched my offering drift downstream, I suddenly jerked my head up.
What was that new sound coming from the river?
I swear it was applause.
Once we got the thing launched, we discovered that, for such a weird-looking boat, it handled surprisingly well. With the wind at our backs, we mostly just drifted downstream, occasionally tweaking our course and eating smoked moose meat.
By the time we hit the Mackenzie, the wind had died enough for us to cross it, a river so wide I thought at first we’d taken a wrong turn and spilled into some giant lake.
A few hours later, the clouds lifted and blew away.
On that home stretch to Tulita, we had nothing much to do but bask in the sun.
Three lizards in a moose-skin teacup.
An old man with a walnut face like my Uncle Faustus stepped out of the crowd and gave Alyssa a big bear hug. Jonas, her grandfather. I could hear in his voice, though the words were strange to me, that he was overjoyed to see her and the work of her hands. He was the elder who had taught Alyssa and her classmates how to build a moose-skin boat, that time, years ago, when he led them up the Keele River to the foot of Red Dog Mountain.
I made a point to shake his hand and thank him, using words that Alyssa had taught me on the river. “Mahsi cho, Jonas. Mahsi cho.” A big thanks. His hand was rough but warm in mine. I got this strange feeling that I was shaking a chain of human hands that reached way back into the mountains.
After all we’d been through, the biggest threat to our moose-skin boat came blasting out of the crowd, gave my ankle a few quick humps, then started chewing on the bow like it was a giant rawhide bone.
“Butch! Come here, you little brat!” William scooped him up with one arm and wrapped the other around all three of us. “Don’t scare me like that, you guys,” he said with a tremor in his voice. “You wouldn’t believe all the chocolate I ate, worrying about you!”
“So what the hell happened?” I asked William, wiping my eyes.
“Well, when you guys decided to go for a little joy ride, Woody tried to
pull a quick U-ee and dumped.”
“Woody dumped?”
William shrugged. “Hey, the guy’s human.”
“So why didn’t you phone for help?”
“No sat phone.”
“But I thought—”
“Uh-uh. See, Carrie happened to have the phone out when they dumped, wishing her dad a happy birthday or something, and the river ate it.”
“Whoah,” Morris said.
“Then, when we got to the Mackenzie, the wind pinned us to the wrong shore, and we had to sit there chewin’ our nails till it swung around and we booted it over here.”
“When?” I asked.
“Like, this morning.” William pumped a fist. “But we beat ya anyways!”
Butch let out a yelp as Carrie dove in for a group hug. “Look at me,” she said. “I’m bawling!”
“You should see a shrink,” Morris said, and we were all laughing till it hurt.
“Fixed yet?” came a voice with a faint Scottish accent.
“Hey, Woody,” I said. “We’re gettin’ there.”
Carrie ran her hand along our boat’s driftwood gunwale. “I’d say they all passed the final exam, wouldn’t you agree, Woody?”
“We’ll have our debrief later,” he said. “The jury’s still out until you get back home.”
I caught an awkward flash in Woody’s eyes, like he might even be proud of us, would maybe even miss us. I figured that was some of the junk he needed to work on. How to say what you feel.
Woody gave us all a token pat on the back, then disappeared into the crowd.
I spotted a short round guy standing on the dock, wildly flapping a homemade banner with the words, GO, TEAM!
“Hey, Obie!” I yelled.
“Thanks for leaving me with the wolves!” he yelled back.
After all the handshaking and backslapping and drumming on the beach, after the final tobacco offering to the river, we were walking up the hill for the community feast. I looked up at a row of small houses lining Tulita’s riverside road.
My legs froze.
A satellite dish hung from every one.
“You okay?” Alyssa asked.
I turned and looked back at the shining river, wondering how much junk I’d actually shaken into it.
I kept walking up the hill. “Yeah, I’m good, Alyssa. Thanks.”
HOMECOMING
My fist froze a micron from the solid oak door. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then gave it all I had. I heard footsteps behind the door.
Cowboy boots.
Dad opened the door, looked me up and down, then quietly closed it.
After locking me in all those years, now you’re locking me out?
I pounded the door. “Hey! Aren’t you just a little glad to see me? Don’t you like surprises? Where’s Mom? Where’s Sofi?”
Dad opened the door again. He looked pale, worn out, even scared. Mom told me on the phone that he’d lost his lawsuit. The villagers had turned around and were suing him. Diadora’s family was leading the charge.
“Hi Indio. Uh … the girls are out shopping.”
“Again, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“Shoes or something, eh?”
Dad shrugged. “Yeah, probably.”
Dad was staring at my arm. At the new tattoo I got in Yellowknife after we flew down from Tulita. He mouthed the words in barely a whisper. “Le prometo tío.”
The color surged back into his cheeks, from deathly pale to cherry red. I instinctively backed away from him, like how William taught me if you suddenly meet a grizzly on the trail. With the scraggly beard he’d grown over the summer, he kind of looked like a bear.
“What’s all this about?” Dad demanded. “Did you go out and get your body pierced, too? I mean, where does all this end?”
“No, Dad,” I said as calmly as I could. “No piercing. Not yet, anyway.”
Dad raised his eyebrows. His breathing was choppy.
I covered the tattoo with my hand, like my father’s gaze might defile it. “It’s for Uncle,” I said. “I promised him.”
“Faustus?”
“Yeah.”
“You heard he—”
“Yeah, I did. We were in the mountains. Kind of off grid.”
“What did you promise him?”
“After the crash. Don’t you remember?”
“No … I … I don’t.”
“I promised I’d never give up the music. Nunca renunciar a la música.”
A little light went on in Dad’s tired eyes, the one I’d see when he used to listen to me play. When he’d just sit and listen, as one guitar player to another.
Before all the bullshit and pain.
“Now that is good news,” he said, extending his hand, as much to shake mine as to draw me back home.
SKY DEVICE
I heard the sliding glass doors open but didn’t look down. There was a raven I wanted to keep my eye on. Almost in the clouds.
“You out here, Ian? Ian? Your mom said—”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Like … where?”
I rolled over and saw the top of Monica’s head right below me, her blonde hair swirling as she twisted from side to side. I slowly plucked a ripe, red crabapple, took aim, and let it fall. It bounced off her guitar case.
Monica looked up, laughing—that bubbly laugh I’d heard in the river. “Hey! What are you doing up there?”
“Just hangin’ out.”
“Hey, sorry I’m late for my lesson. Did you get my text?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“I’ve been crazy busy planning the Halloween dance and—”
“Don’t worry. But if it happens again, I’ll have to email you a bunch more scales to practice.”
“Please, have mercy, Maestro.”
“How else do you expect to get any better?”
Her smile got bigger. “Room for one more up there?”
“For sure. Just hoist yourself up those two big branches and I’ll grab you.”
“No sweat,” she said. Still clutching her guitar case, she wrapped one arm around the lowest branch as her legs flailed for the next.
I laughed into my hands. “Uh … maybe without the guitar.”
“Right.”
I pulled her up to me, enjoying her vanilla scent and the touch of her warm, sweaty hand. “Welcome, Madame President.”
“Nice tree fort,” she said, surveying my simple wooden platform, just long enough to stretch out on.
I rolled onto my back and checked for the raven. Swallowed by the clouds. “No. Not a tree fort.”
“Your practice studio, then?”
“Nope. My sky device.”
Monica lay down beside me, looking up at the sky. “Uh-huh.”
“No, really,” I said, shifting closer. I hadn’t designed this thing for anyone but me and space was tight. Deliciously so.
She waved an arm above us. “So, like, I’m now looking at the screen, right?”
“You got it.”
“And does your sky device have many apps?”
“Oh, yeah. Lots. It has sun, clouds, moon, stars.”
“You sleep out here?”
“Sometimes, yup.”
“Hmm.”
I spotted the raven dive-bombing out of a cloud. “And look, another app. Birds.”
“Cool. So … do you ever have to recharge your sky device?”
“Nope. Never. It recharges me.”
Monica let out a long, lazy sigh. “It’s nice, Ian. Plug me in.”
Long pause.
“You know what?” I said, watching the sun break out from behind a cloud. “I’d really like it if you called me Indio.”
“How come?”
“It’s my name.”
“I like it. Okay, Indio it is.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a work of pure fiction. I made the whole thing up and had a lot of fun doing it. The truth is though, there’s a lot of re
al world stuff in this book, from Xela, Guatemala to Carcross, Yukon, and beyond. A lot of real people inspired unreal characters but I’m not telling who you are. This is fiction, remember, so you can’t sue me. But I will say who helped me tell this story, in so many important ways.
For starters, I have to thank Jack Panayi (again) for giving me brutally honest feedback on the title—as only a fourteen-year old can—and ultimately picking it. And Jim Savage, for his insightful advice on the cover.
Thank you, Mari Urizar, for taking such good care of us in your Xela home, meal after meal, day after day. ¡Muchisimas gracias! Another big gracias to all the staff at Xela’s PLQE Spanish school for organizing such amazing field trips that took us into the Mayan heartland of Guatemala.
Thank you, Bob Hans and Bruce Ontko, for making us feel so at home in Quito, Ecuador and for sharing your reflections on living the expat life and raising a family away from your native Alberta.
Thank you, Indio Saravanja, Argentinian-born, Yellowknife-reborn, guitarist and songster who shed a dazzling light on what it means to be named “Indio,” and to be parachuted onto Canadian soil at a tender young age. And thanks to Andres Benitez, for sharing stories about the teen challenges you faced when uprooting from your native Colombia and moving north.
I thank Bill Hans for the tour of Indio’s stomping grounds in Calgary including one heck of a rainstorm up on Nose Hill.
I thank my nephew, Braden Greenlaw, who shared his journey into and out of a car crash that left him with a major concussion and an unplugged life.
I thank my daughters, Jaya and Nimisha, and my almost daughter, Bella Cole Huberman, for sharing your journals and stories about your own fifty-day canoe trips through the great wild North. And thank you Bill Stirling, Laurie Nowakowski, and John Stephenson for sharing your Keele River stories with me, and to Darren Keith and Marie-Claude Lebeau for joining us down that river to discover stories of our own.
Tobin Leckie, you were the first real live wilderness therapy guide I’d ever met. I thank you for your colorful anecdotes from the forested frontlines, and for the trail of contacts you opened up for me, including fellow guide, Jen Redvers, Meghan McIntosh of Ontario’s Pine River Institute, and Carolyn Godfrey of Alberta’s Enviros Wilderness School Association.
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