Bookshelves run the length of my classroom underneath windows that peer across the airstrip at distant stands of spruce—a line of green, which hides the sea of muskeg surrounding us. I squat on the floor, running my thumb along row after row of miscellaneous picture books and chapter books, fiction mainly, the odd well-worn donation from a French or German library. I search for something, anything that might appeal to a ten-year-old Cree child—something we could use to hone his reading. I rack my brain for clues, trying to remember the sound of Suzanne’s voice: scansion, sight word, close or cloze or clothes or something close to that, context clues, and phonics. I have no idea how any of those words could help me choose the books or tell me how to use them—unless they’re magic or simply saying them will make it sound like I’m a teacher. I add book after book to a stack big enough, I hope, that it will cover all the bases. What I’d like to find are books that mention hunting geese or break up on a river, felling trees, or snaring rabbits—just a whispered sentence on how to make a mukluk or how to bake a bannock. Instead, I pile up literature that could have come from Mars, as far Watikwan might know—an encyclopaedia of irrelevant information written in incoherent code.
“Hard at work, M. Taylor, I see.” Sr. Theresa pokes her head into my doorway. “It is your holiday.”
“Um...”
“You must come now to my office. Dere is the call for you. It is no coincidence dat you were here waiting for me, no?” Her voice is uncharacteristically flat, and I can assume she has already had a conversation with my wife, a conversation that won’t make things any easier for me with either of them. I’m grateful only that the pile of books has gone unquestioned; I have no idea how many rules I’m about to contravene by transporting books from the classroom to my teacherage, but I’m fairly certain how she’ll feel about me tutoring Watikwan and even more certain her position will be made very clear to me the minute she discovers what I’m up to.
The walk to the office is short. Sister is ominously mute, and I worry that Suzanne will have hard questions for me, questions for which I have no answers, questions I haven’t dared to even dream about. The office door stands open. It is too late to excuse myself to use the bathroom or tend an ailing relative or fake a sudden heart attack. The jig is up; I have to face the music. Sister points me to the chair beside the radio and to my surprise and chagrin she seats herself behind the office desk. There’ll be no offer of privacy; Sister and Suz are on the same team now. My position in the Orkney Post hierarchy is now so clear and so tenuous I’m frightened that any new conflict with my boss will seriously jeopardize my job, the sole source of our income. I take the mike and press the button and say, “Hello? Over.” Sister moves her pen across a binder, no doubt pretending to write a memo or take notes on our conversation.
“You aren’t coming, are you? Over.” As much as anyone can tell anything about inflection in the crackling sound waves of the CB radio, what I hear is a voice quietly simmering with fury. Her question is a statement and an accusation and exactly what I expected, exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
“Good morning, Suzanne. I hope you and the baby are feeling well today. Over.” With Sister hanging on every word, I contemplate bringing up our sex life.
“David? Sr. Theresa says everyone is gone. The school is closed indefinitely. The planes have stopped flying. Why are you still there? What exactly is going on there that requires your presence? Over.”
“Okay.” Yes. It didn’t take us long to get right to the point. This is exactly why Suzanne should be here now. It’s what I love about her. She always knows how to strike right to the heart of a matter while I am still nibbling at its edges. She’s hit it perfectly. Now all I need to do is answer it. I look at Sister. She meets my gaze with ice. Yes, now that we’ve skipped to the bottom of the ninth with two outs, I need to give an answer. “Well, like things are kind of up in the air here. It should take at least a day or two before anyone knows what’s going to happen here with the river, with the ice. I don’t know, Suzanne. The last few days... Well, I’ve been working lots and it’s been really crazy. I guess I don’t quite know yet. I’m not doing a good job of answering your question, am I? I know it’s a good thing that I’m here. I think you’ll just have to trust me. Can you do that? Over.”
“Trust you? Seriously? What are you talking about, David? This isn’t a painting. It’s not a pile of bicycle parts in the middle of our living room. We have a baby on the way. I need you. This isn’t about you, David. What’s wrong with you that you can’t see that? Over.”
“I... I’m not sure how to answer that. Over.”
“Start by telling me the truth. Why aren’t you here where you are supposed to be? What is going on—really? Over.”
“I’m very sorry, Suzanne. I don’t want to upset you. Anyway, right now I don’t have a choice. I’m here. We don’t know when the next plane will come. I wish we were together. I wish you were here, but you’re not here and I am. I’m really, really sorry. Over.”
“I’m sorry too, David. Over and out.”
“Suzanne? I wish I could explanation it better. I’m sorry. Over. I mean, over and out, I guess.” I feel drained. I release the button and hook the mike back onto the radio. I slump down in the chair, but Sister’s voice brings me upright immediately.
“Well, M. Taylor. Dat did not go so well, did it?” She leans forward, elbows on the desk, hands clasped as if she’s ready to karate-chop a brick. “I see we are on the knob of the problem. Regardless of your situation with your wife I now need your keys, monsieur.”
“I already turned in the master key, Sister.”
“I will take all of your school keys now. As I am sure dat you know, the hospital she is having some conflict about deir cook using our kitchen to feed the men who refuse to leave with the others on dis evacuation. It will be best if I have all the keys for now.”
“Sister...” This is unexpected. On the desk I can see another ring of keys, one bigger than mine; it’s a safe bet they belong to either Thomas or Cheepash. “What if I want to work in my classroom?”
“It is the holiday. Use dat time to relax and think. I have never see you in our church all year, M. Taylor. Now might be the good time for you to make the visit. I think you have some very serious thinking to do about your personal life between now and when the next plane she lands.”
I slip my ring of school keys from my jeans pocket, remove my house key and lay the rest on her desk next to the other one. I should say something, but I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t make things worse. Does this mean I am also without a job—and a paycheque? This is a fight I can’t win, a fight I didn’t want, a fight I didn’t start.
I force a smile in her direction before I leave the office. I collect the stack of books from my classroom before I pull the door closed and head downstairs. At the front door as I exit, the lock clicks with a finality that didn’t register when there was a key in my pocket. The sun warms my face, but I feel a chill. I remind myself that Suzanne is okay; the baby is okay, at least I hope they are; I realize she didn’t tell me that exactly. She’s with her family. Her mom and dad are taking better care of her than I could certainly. I’m here now and, for better or for worse, I can’t change that, not before the next sched comes. I force my mind back to the task at hand, teaching a young boy how to read, a child who already in his short life has thwarted the efforts of five highly paid, legally qualified instructors.
.
I am halfway back to my house, head down, ruminating on Suzanne’s question, when I’m startled by something lying on my front steps. It rises onto its haunches, a large but gaunt husky-type dog. That’s very strange. When I get within a dozen yards, it growls at me and tenses as if it might attack. Stranger yet, it stands, hind legs shaking, and bares it teeth, forcing me to stop. This isn’t normal, not at all. The few pets on this side of the creek are pets in the southern Canadian sense; they live indoors, eat well, and enjoy being pampered. They all flew south w
ith their owners last Friday. The village dogs, on the other hand, appear to us in some way cowed and timid. They slink away when faced with any human contact as if they expect a kick or rock thrown at them rather than a scratch behind an ear. When I questioned Mr. Singh about it, he said the people in the village see it as a choice between a child and a dog; aggressive pups are culled. There’s zero tolerance for any beast that might cause harm to others. “Barbaric, it is. Killing anything that moves, these cigar-store Indians are,” he’d ranted. So the strange canine staring directly at me is an aberration, but I’m loath to argue since he’s taken ownership of my porch. We eye each other cautiously.
My bedroom window opens and Watikwan appears. “This dog is crazy. Be careful. He won’t let me come outside.”
“Just stay in there. Don’t open the door. I’ll deal with this.” I think a guardian would say that even though I’ve no idea how to end the stalemate. At least the boy is safe; I’m grateful for that.”
“Be careful, Dave. Where do you keep your rifle? I looked everywhere.”
Jesus! “I don’t own a gun.” Never was I more relieved that I don’t.
“You need one, Dave. How else can you hunt?”
“Just relax, Watikwan. I’ll figure this out.” It hasn’t been twenty-four hours and already my foster child (one) is looking for a lethal weapon and (two) is threatened by a possibly rabid dog. I need reinforcements badly. Maybe if I pound on the school door loud enough I can rouse Sr. Theresa, although it’s impossible she will have the power to summon the Humane Society or the RCMP quickly. It’s not impossible, but still unlikely she’ll have a shotgun in her desk drawer and the will to use it on one of God’s creatures. “Stay where you are, Watikwan. I’ll be right back.” I turn toward the school and immediately see Thomas’ pickup round the corner at the hospital and roar up the road toward me. It stops in a cloud of dust only a few yards from where I stand, open-mouthed, in the middle of an elaborate wish for a miracle.
Thomas leans out the window. “You okay?”
I point to the dog. “I think I have a little problem.”
“The dog’s got the problem now.” He climbs down from the truck. “Three of them came over early this morning. They must be pretty badly off over there or else they smelled something very good over here. Either way, they found some path across the ice.”
“The other two?”
“The same as him—crazy with hunger. Not to be trusted.” He nods at the rifle standing upright on passenger side of the seat. “One is in the back of the truck. The other one is still loose somewhere over here.”
I assume the one in the truck is no longer a threat. “And this one?”
“We’re about to find out just how crazy he is.”
“Be careful if you have to use the gun. Watikwan, Albert Metatawabin, is inside the house. If you have to shoot, don’t miss.” My first thought is to protect Watikwan. My second is to remember Apishish and the very remote possibility that Thomas Cheechoo might ever endanger a child, anyone’s child. My third thought is that he might know more about firearm safety than I do. I wince when Thomas looks at me with some disdain. His eyes say: only a white man would be fool enough to risk shooting a bullet into a house accidentally. Or maybe he is only thinking that William Metatawabin might have been drunk or insane to put me in charge of his son. It’s too late to retract the comment. “Is there any way I can help?” I ask, shifting my armfull of book from right to left, expecting him to laugh or say: try to stay out of the line of fire, try not to screw this up.
“There is a bowl in the back of the truck and a sack of dog food. Get it.”
Through the passenger window, he pulls out the rifle along with a coil of woven cotton rope with a ring at one end through which he loops a noose. I get the food and dump my books, which thankfully does not necessitate moving the bloody carcass of his first crazy dog of the day. He pours a handful of kibble into the bowl and hands it back to me. “Take it over there, put it down and come back—real slowly. I’ll be here if he goes for you. Trust me.”
Exactly. I do trust him. I also realize how ridiculous it was to say those words to Suzanne. How could she ever trust me even in something as simple as changing a diaper let alone anything like this? I walk at an angle, watching the snarling dog. If he comes after me I want to give Thomas a line of fire that doesn’t end in one of these houses—just in case. But the snarling dog just snarls. I put the bowl down and back up all the way to the truck, our eyes locked, each of us fearing disaster if we so much as blink.
“So far so good.” Thomas keeps talking, but now he speaks Cree to the dog. He holds the noose in one hand letting the rope drag behind him. The rifle still leans against the grill of the truck. He said nothing about me using it to protect him—of course. Again I silently congratulate him on being a mile smarter than me. He knows it would be wiser to take on a crazy ex-sled dog barehanded than risk being shot by some white artist.
The Cree words must be having a good effect on the dog, because it comes down off the porch and cautiously approaches the bowl. He even wags his tail. He lets Thomas approach him and slip the noose around his neck.
“We’ll give him a few minutes, then feed him a little more. This is going to be one hungry atim. He’ll need some water too. I’ll tie him to the other teacher’s porch for now so you and the boy can get in and out of your place safely just in case he goes nuts again.”
“Thank you, Thomas.”
“I better get after the other one. Or maybe it’s gone back over.”
“Can I give you a hand?”
“You look after the boy. The work crew is going across when we get the boat loaded. If we don’t get there soon, you’re going to have lots of unfriendly visitors like this one.”
“You didn’t get permission to use a chopper?”
He looks me in the eye as if I’ve insulted him again. “We’ll use our legs. If the dogs can do it, we can. She can keep her fucking dragonfly.”
“Good luck.” There is nothing else I can say. I take my stack of books inside as the truck speeds away. I need to find a second bowl for water now that I have another ward and a new level of responsibility.
.
It took a lunch of comfort food, tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches, to calm my nerves enough to start the reading lesson. Later, Watikwan and I sit on my couch and pick through the pile of books, sampling random passages in hopes of something he’d find interesting. I try to help his stumbling efforts by sliding my finger under words and giving verbal clues in a picture book about a small sub-Saharan village. We both jump when Rosemary surprises us by creeping quietly into the living room.
“Don’t let me disturb you.”
“Hey. Hi. I didn’t even hear you knock. Come in and join the book club. It’s time we had a break.”
“I didn’t knock.”
“Oh?”
“White people, wemistikoshowak, knock. Ininiwak don’t. Think about it.”
“I think it’s weird.”
“Are you saying I might need permission to visit you? Don’t hammer on the door when you come to my house; everyone is welcome. If we want some privacy we lock the door. But if you guys don’t want company, I can come back later or wait on the porch.” Watikwan has already left the chesterfield to hug his sister. “Whoa. Has the mean teacher been mistreating you? I hope he’s not wearing down your eyeballs with all those books.” She presses her cheek to the top of his head.
“Look at this! Did you ever see this? Some people are black in their skin. How does that happen?” Watikwan shows the picture book to his sister. “Did you ever see them?”
“Of course. It just is, Watikwan. There were lots in North Bay and Sudbury. It is not a big deal. Your skin is darker than David’s.”
“Why don’t they come here? Are they afraid of us? Maybe they don’t like the snow.”
“Mr. Singh is dark, isn’t he? He came here.”
“Not black. He’s just brown like us. Besi
des, he is crazy.”
“It’s a big world. There’s room for all sorts of different people. David, if you guys are taking a break, the men are getting ready to walk across the river now. If you have time, maybe we could all go down and watch. You might even pick up a few pointers for the next time you want to go wandering out on the ice. You might even decide to do the walk with them.”
“Very funny.”
“I’ll go with them!” pipes Watikwan.
“No, you won’t, little brother. It isn’t safe yet. Maybe I should send you to your uncle to peel potatoes if you have that much energy.” She’s laughing, but Watikwan has developed a scowl. “It’s my day off today. I was bored over at the Residence.”
“So are you ready for a break, or would you rather read some more?” I wouldn’t mind some fresh air but it looks like Watikwan isn’t that impressed with “watching.”
Rosemary tries to coax him. “What do you say, Watikwan?”
“Can I stay and play with Diego? I’m tired of looking at the ice.”
“If it’s okay with your sister.”
“Maybe he needs to keep working on that book. It’s going to take you a long time to read through that whole stack,” she teases.
“He’s been working hard, Rosemary. Just be careful Diego doesn’t scratch you. He doesn’t like to play rough. And leave the dog alone. He could get crazy again. I’ll give him some more food before we go.” Then I turn to her. “Did you talk to Thomas? Did he find the third dog?”
She shakes her head. “He thinks it probably went back across. He said we should be on the lookout though. You hear that, Watikwan? Be careful.”
“We won’t be long,” I tell him, “but don’t forget you have to check in with your uncle later. I’m sure he’ll have something to take your mind off reading.” I feel like what I imagine a parent might feel handing out cautions and assigning tasks. In my heart I want him just to smile, just to be happy, but perhaps working on his reading and helping Cheepash will somehow be good for him. Maybe this is something like feeling “responsible.” So maybe “tutor” doesn’t quite cover all that I am feeling for this child. Maybe “Watikwan” and “Orkney Post” are simmering together in my brain.
“Not today, Dave. I don’t like peeling his potatoes very much. That’s work for women. My job should be hunting snowbirds or setting snares.”
“Awas!” Rosemary hisses. She must know it will be a longer, more difficult task teaching her brother about women being equal to men than teaching him how to read. “Listen to your teacher. You promised kikawi. You can’t go back on that already. David peeled lots of potatoes when everyone was living in the school.”
“She’s right, Watikwan. Anyway, there aren’t that many to peel now that everyone has left.” He’ll be fine. I put a marker in our book and head for the door. “I’ll feed the dog and be right with you. Maybe your brother would like to read you a page from that book before he starts torturing my cat.” Then I grab the sack of food from the porch and take it next door. The dog pretends to sleep until it hears the rain of pellets in the bowl. He wags his tail again. I’m tempted to remove his rope now. Maybe he’d follow the men back. Or maybe I should check with Thomas first. Still, I’m out of my depth in almost everything I do here. No knocking on doors? I never dreamt that could be an insult. It’s hard to imagine how it would feel to just walk into someone else’s house, how it would feel to be friendly if not actually friends with everyone in my community. All that time Suzanne and I lived here, and we learned nothing... It’s frustrating. This might be the Orkney Post she was looking for and now she refuses to even look at it.
“So what are you calling your new dog?” Rosemary stands on the porch at the top of the steps. “Watikwan is reading better already. Thank you, David, for doing this.”
I toss the bag of dog food up over the porch railing and we start off along the road. “It’s not my dog. You said the men are walking? I guess Hélène didn’t change her mind about the helicopter.” I grin, feeling as if I’ve walked across the infield and changed dugouts, as if Hélène and Sister are wearing the grey uniforms of the visiting team.
“As if. They’ll go back the same way Thomas came over last Friday. You might remember that trip? They’ll have a heavier load this time with all the supplies.”
“Will the ice hold the weight? I hope this isn’t a crazy idea.”
“Thomas thinks it’s safe; he knows what he’s doing. The water is down a lot now, but you never know for sure. Things can change quickly in the spring.”
I’ll keep that in mind. As we walk over to the bank, we talk about her day off, about her favourite things to do in Orkney Post: taking long walks in the bush, helping her mother with the wash or cooking. It’s hauling water from the tap on this side she doesn’t like. I’d never thought much about them having to do that. I’ve seen people carrying five-gallon pails suspended from a yoke across their shoulders; I’ve never heard them complain. I just didn’t think. Now I imagine doing laundry for a big family like hers, how many pails of water it would take, how many trips along that half-mile road. I keep getting lessons about things that are difficult to hear—things that make me feel awkward. It’s out of shame I change the subject. “It’s strange,” I say.
“What’s strange to you now?”
“It’s strange about your Cree name being secret. I don’t think I understand that.”
“You can be annoyingly persistent, you know. It’s not a secret.”
I shrug. “Well, it must be pretty awful then. I mean I know a river and a stick and a skunk and there a ‘little bit’ and an island and ... well, I feel bad you’re stuck with something so terrible.”
“Stop teasing, please.”
“Well maybe. Okay, I won’t ever mention it again. I promise.”
“That’s better.”
“I’m sure Watikwan will accidentally let it slip again some day soon anyway.”
“David!” She punches me in the arm. “Wapikoshish. Okay. Now you know. Big deal. Now you have the burden of never calling me that. I don’t want to hear you say it. Ever.”
“That makes no sense. Why?”
“You don’t need a reason for everything. Just don’t.”
I snort. “That doesn’t sound fair at all. At least tell me what it means.” I am stuck trying to repeat it in an effort to remember each strange sound. I hope I have it right. I hope I can remember it—at least long enough to ask Watikwan or someone else the translation. If I’m banned from saying it, it’s not likely she’ll tell me it’s meaning.
“Life isn’t fair, is it? Help me up,” she commands.
The ice bank looms in front of us and we climb to our perch at the top of the pile of blocks. Right away I feel the chill. Rosemary is wearing a heavy jacket like she somehow knew the sun would disappear behind a wall of clouds and the north wind off the ice would become brisk.
I can see the men, already a third of the way across—three on either side of the canoe, two more behind it, another two out in front. Ten. They all have long staffs to test the ice. They take their time poking with their poles before each step, one hand always on a gunwale or grabbing a thwart. When they encounter a big heave in the ice blocks, they invent a detour around it. Their progress is slow, but they keep moving in the general direction of the other side.
“I don’t know much about this, but it really doesn’t look very safe. I can almost picture Evel Knievel down there on his motorcycle. I know this serious; they’re working, but it looks like a stunt.”
“Evil Who?”
“I forgot this is kind of a news-free zone. He was famous for jumping his motorcycle over cars and trucks. A few years ago he jumped over a river and broke about 400 bones.”
Rosemary laughs out loud. “That’s hard to do when there are only 270 bones in your body. This isn’t a stunt. We cross all the time,” she says. “Once the water goes down even kids cross in order to get to school. People need to get things from the store. Pe
ople need to take the plane. There are people who work at the school and the hospital—like me. If we still had houses, in a few days maybe, there would almost always be a few people out there crossing for one reason or another. Once a trail is set and marked, no one would need to push a canoe.”
“Well, that’s even harder to believe. Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe it’s just crazy for white people—like some white people aren’t allowed to say Cree names, some Cree names anyway.”
“Awas!”
“Seriously, I can’t see myself doing that, not willingly. It looks impossible.”
“That’s okay, David. The subway in Toronto looked impossible to me. The 401 looked insane. Even sidewalks looked crazy at first.”
I’m freezing. “You stay here and watch. I need to go get a warmer coat if we’re going to stand up here much longer.” Their progress is slow and I’m sure I can be back before they reach the village side. My teeth chatter as I start climbing down to head back along our more conventional road.
“Wait, David. I’ll come with.”
On the way back I express my amazement that school children are allowed, even encouraged, to walk across what looks to me like a very unstable bridge of ice chunks. “Wouldn’t someone be liable if there was an accident—like the school could get sued? Kids out there? I’m sorry, but it’s just hard to believe. Has anyone been injured in the past?”
Rosemary laughs at “liable” and “sued,” but does her best to explain that during residential school kids only crossed on weekends. After it closed, the last few years older children supervise the younger ones. If parents are concerned they keep their kids at home until they feel it’s safe. She explains how parents, at an early age, allow their children greater freedom and, when they seek it, more responsibility. “They grow up faster here than kids in cities further south.” Still, I wonder. I’m explaining the rules and laws and penalties regarding how we transport students to and from the public schools in cities like Toronto when we hear the barking dog. We know that something is amiss. It hits us just before we turn the corner at the hospital. We might have heard it earlier—muted by the distance and the wind—but we were wrapped in our conversation. Subconsciously we might have thought it was a bird or vole or skunk that teased the dog and started the commotion—nothing all that special here. But as we pass St. Marie’s we hear and see the frantic animal straining at its tether. It lunges and chokes itself, desperate to get loose. A little closer, and I see my front door standing open, the screen door swinging slightly in the gathering storm. Then we both start running—a flat out sprint. I know this can’t be right and neither does Rosemary.
I take my porch steps two at a time, beating her by three or four strides. “Watikwan? Watikwan!” There is nothing out of place in the living room, nothing different anywhere in the house that I can see. “Would your brother just leave and forget to close the door?” I don’t realize it until the final word, but I’ve been shouting to make her hear above the yapping dog next door.
“It’s not like him,” she says. “I’ll check at the hospital. Maybe he was dreaming about black people when he went over to check on his work. More likely he went there to get something to eat.” Her lips are pursed. “Maybe you could try to calm that dog? Diego must be terrified.”
I hadn’t thought about the cat. “Diego. Here kitty.” I don’t see him anywhere. If he went outside, of course that would activate my owl alarm system even though neither Suz nor I have ever seen one. I hadn’t even heard one until the other night. “Kitty, kitty.”
“You think he accidentally let the cat out?”
I quickly check under beds and in his favourite napping spots. “Not here.” But it isn’t the cat; it’s the boy that has me scared. “Watikwan isn’t here. Go check the hospital, please. I’m worried.”
“He must be over there, David. I’m sorry he forgot to close your door.” The tremor in her voice scares me even more.
“You go. I’ll start looking for them. Something isn’t right. Hurry, okay? I wish that damn dog would stop.”
She turns and starts running back the way we’d just come. I begin a frantic random circuit of the compound—dashing around teacher homes, calling out to Watikwan and Diego, trying in vain to quiet the crazy dog with threats and food and prayers. The more I search, the more I see that is odd, things that don’t quite fit. And by the time Rosemary, grim-faced and anxious, returns without her brother I’ve pieced some of it together.
“Cheepash was busy. I didn’t worry him. I was hoping you’d have spotted them by now. My uncle says he’s got some work for him once he’s finished with his lesson.”
I’m not sure whether an extra searcher would outweigh her uncle’s blame and anger about my losing track of his nephew, but Rosemary made the call to protect me and I’m not sorry—at least not yet. I explain to her what might have happened here. On the porch there’s kibble scattered from the bag and beside it, the length of string and feather that we used to exercise the cat. The string out here would mean the boy and cat were running laps on the porch. Playing here was not specifically prohibited; so yes, it’s something Watikwan would do, could handle easily without permission or my help. The dog next door has spilled his water bowl while straining at the rope, and there’s a patch of mud, which he’s splashed onto himself and tracked around the gravel circle where he’s tied. Now finally, he’s settled down and he wags his tail when I come near, but there are muddy paw prints on my steps and porch, prints he couldn’t have made. It is not a difficult puzzle to untangle.
“So Watikwan was playing with the cat on the porch when the third dog shows up. It tries to get some water from the husky’s bowl. Maybe it smells the bag of food. Maybe it just sees the cat. Diego freaks. The chase is on.” We are both wide-eyed, fighting back panic.
“Think, Rosemary. What would your brother do? I called and called. No answer.”
“I don’t know. He might be scared. We don’t know much about the dog. If it’s chasing your cat, I’d bet Watikwan is chasing after both of them.”
“This isn’t good. The dog I saw this morning was really crazy. I’ve no idea where Diego would try to hide. He’s never been outside in Orkney Post.”
“Dogs here hunt mice at lot. They get very aggressive about food. This one’s starving.”
“Watikwan!” We both shout his name.
The compound is flat and open, mostly gravel. Once we’ve checked around the teachers’ houses, there’s nowhere else a child could hide. We’ve just walked the road from the bank past the airstrip so we know he didn’t go that way. There’s a barren playground on the other side of the school—no place to hide, but of course Diego wouldn’t know that. It’s a couple hundred yards from my house to where the winter road disappears into the bush. Would a cat pick a road for its escape? Behind my house there is an uneven field, a dozen or more acres of weeds and brush stretching back to the line of black spruce and poplar that guard the riverbank. Once vegetable and hay fields for the residential school, it’s pocked with clumps of red willow and discarded farm tools, scarred with drainage ditches. The far end nearest the winter road includes the village graveyard. It’s a long way to the nearest tree, but it’s where I’d go if a dog were chasing me.
“Maybe this way. Unless he tried to get to the winter road.” I start behind the houses searching the grass and brush, calling his name, trying to focus on what we have to do instead of how I’ve failed in my responsibility. “Watikwan!”
“He’d feel terrible about letting your cat get out. He knows how much you value it. If he could find some kind of weapon maybe... I don’t know, David.”
My mind races in a dozen directions as I search: all of them are about Watikwan. There must be some sign, some clue that would give us a direction, a sound that would tell us we’re on the right track. If it wasn’t for the wind, maybe he could hear us. “I never should have left him alone, Rosemary. I’m so sorry.” I can’t panic. Where would Diego try to run or hide? Whe
re are they?
“Split up, David. The field is the best bet.” We walk parallel lines, twenty yards apart, toward the river. We haven’t gone two-dozen steps before Rosemary spots a place where a small patch of last autumn’s dead weeds have been crushed flat—perhaps a skirmish. Maybe it’s where Diego turned to confront his attacker or Watikwan distracted the dog momentarily. We look for fur or blood but find nothing. We call out. The wind swallows our words. We separate and keep heading for the trees. I prepare myself for a dead cat and a sobbing boy... O please let there be a sobbing boy, an uninjured, healthy, live boy. Then I spy another flattened area, a dozen yards from a large poplar near the bank.
Half the search is over only minutes before it started. The abruptness is shocking. Frustratingly close to the probable safety of a tree there is a bloody wad of fur, a piece of the late Señor Diego Rivera’s ear and part of his crushed head. Blood. I can’t bring myself to examine the remains too closely. There is no time to mourn or wish for some different outcome or explanation. “Here. Over here.”
“Watikwan?” she asks softly.
“Dieg..." My voice chokes on his name. “No sign of him here. I... Rosemary. Oh, crap. That dog wouldn’t... We have to find him right now.” My legs are shaking. There is no time to think about a cat; there is no time to grieve. There is no time to let worst cases slip into my mind. I have to sort out my jumbled thoughts. “He must have been here. But where is he now, Rosemary? Where would he go? I just... Tell me the dog wouldn’t hurt him. Please.” Why isn’t he here? Why doesn’t he hear us?
Our eyes drift over the grass looking for any clue that would fill in the blanks. “There’s nothing here, David. Watikwan would put up a better fight than the cat. I don’t see anything that looks like a fight between a boy and a dog. An attack just wouldn’t make sense unless the dog was rabid. Even then we’d see something. My guess is he’s devastated he couldn’t save your cat. I think he doesn’t want us to find him—not after he saw this.”
I look along the treeline further up river, near the winter road hoping to see some movement in the grass or willows. “That sounds reasonable, but I still have to find him.” I close my eyes against the swaying treetops in the distance and yell as loud as I can, “Watikwan! Can you hear me? It’s okay.”
She rests a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss, David.” I look at her in panic, thinking for just a second she is talking about Watikwan. Clearly she meant Diego. “Don’t call out anymore. If he’s hiding from us, he’ll just go further. Maybe I can see better from the top of the ice pile.” She starts the climb.
I’m dazed. I wander back into the field stopping at every shrub and gully looking for some sign he might have gone this way. I slowly run my gaze over the whole area. We haven’t checked the playground or the winter road. Maybe he doesn’t even know that Diego didn’t make it. I pause at every dark spot, every shadow or abandoned barrel stave or tree stump looking for an arm, a leg, the coat of a crying child slumped on the ground, maybe injured or maybe panicked and maybe hiding from me. If during the course of the evacuation I felt that Orkney Post had shrunk into a place of more manageable proportions, it has now re-inflated into a vast and hostile wasteland, one in which a child could disappear forever. I see nothing—weeds and scrub and distant trees.
“David!” I haven’t gone thirty yards when she calls me. “Come back. I see him.”
I run to the bank and climb up next to her. “Where?”
She points—not at the field but out over the ice. “He’s there,” she says quietly, calmly, more softly than I can imagine in her situation. I turn and follow the line of her finger out onto the ice to a tiny form appearing and disappearing behind huge blocks of grey and white. “Don’t yell now. If he can still hear you, you may make him want to go faster and that might cause him to make a mistake. He’d never go out there to escape a dog. He has to be running away from us.”
“Why? Doesn’t he know I’d never blame him?”
“‘Why’ doesn’t matter now. Right now I need a stick. A branch—something like that.”
I climb back down, panicked even more now that he’s been located—located in the most dangerous place I can imagine. The danger of the dog was bad. The danger of the ice is so much worse. I blame myself for no conscious reason, as if I caused the flood, caused the inequity of our separate worlds, caused my ignorance and foolishness. Now he’s out on the ice by himself. I kick through the weeds and finally hit a hard object: a broken hockey stick. “This?”
“Yes. Hurry.”
When I am back on the ice bank, Rosemary says, “You don’t need to do this. I know what I’m doing. I’ll be fine by myself out there. I’ll be faster. You’ll just slow me down.”
I hand her the stick. “Let’s go.” I use the memory of my cat, my promise to her parents, my affection for Watikwan to justify what is probably a bad decision. “If I can’t keep up I want you to just go on ahead. I’ll be fine.”
Her lips move but the argument dies before it leaves her mouth. There is no time to debate the sense of things, no time to deal with wemistikoshowak stupidity. I get it. It’s her brother out there. She turns her back to me and starts down the bank of ice slabs.
The steps and slides down are longer and steeper than they were closer to the buried road last Friday. The vast bowl of broken ice sinks deeper now but still the total thickness of the stacked bergs must measure more than twenty feet. How much of that twenty feet might be surrounded by flowing water, no one knows. Whether the water will suddenly rise and move the ice, no one knows that either. Once we are out on the river the temperature plunges, and I remember the jacket I was, only minutes ago, on my way to retrieve. Clouds have thickened and the sky is even more threatening. The ice field feels like it has its own climate, and I may freeze to death in my flimsy windbreaker even if I do make it back to solid land alive. Once we stop going down, once we level off, without the sun, without shadows in the growing murk, I become disoriented. In every direction there are irregular chunks and piles of ice. I am an ant in a strange field ploughed up by a madman. There is no shoreline, no horizon. There is just grey ice and grey sky. “Which way?”
Rosemary prods and probes with the stick making sure the ice is solid before taking each step. “Don’t talk. Listen.”
I hear nothing. If she were to disappear, I would be lost utterly. “What am I listening for?” I whisper. My brave words about her going on without me already have been telepathically rescinded, replaced with a prayer that she wouldn’t abandon a friend.
“Anything. A voice. A pop in the ice. A barking dog. Anything that would give us a clue.” Then she is silent, and I am comforted that neither magic nor Sr. Theresa’s imaginary Husband is guiding us right now.
We climb over a pile of slabs and when, at its summit, I stand upright I am tall enough to see the cross atop the village church steeple. I touch her shoulder and point. We change directions. I try to pick some landmark, some quirk of ice or darker grey we could use for a bearing, but the markers are all too similar. Travel in a straight line is impossible. As soon as I look away to watch my footing, I look back and my landmark has disappeared.
Coming down the other side of a pile, Rosemary loses her grip and slides. Her running shoe hits a patch of ice with force, and it is not ice at all. It’s a shell of frost, which offers no resistance. I grab the hood of her jacket. The cloth tears but only at the edges of the seam. I pull her back. We look down into the crevasse—dark and jagged. We don’t see water. We don’t see a bottom. Just black. The water is so low at least the ice is unlikely to start moving again. I tell myself that and hope it is true.
The first snowflake hits my nose and I feel the cold before I feel the wet. There is no time to think about the indignity of yet more snow in May. I’m sure we are both thinking the same thing: does Watikwan have a stick to test the ice? We didn’t see one. Will he find the other side or wander upstream or downstream or in circles? He is not tall enough
to see a church steeple the way I did. Why didn’t I simply tell him not to play with Diego? I must have been thinking about the men and yes, his sister. Why didn’t we bring him with us?
“I should go first, Rosemary.” I reach for her stick.
“No.”
“I don’t want you to go through again. What if I don’t catch you next time?”
“And what chance would I have of catching you or hauling you back up. This way is better.”
“I’m just thinking you might step somewhere that’s thick enough for you but I’d fall through. If I go first, at least we’ll know it’s safe for you. I can be careful.”
“Sorry, that’s very gallant, but we’re not trying to save me, we’re trying to catch up to Watikwan. I trust you to be careful, David. But we need to hurry, too. Now we are fighting both weather and time. No more talking.”
I look at her sceptically but she keeps the hockey stick. I think there is a self-deprecating joke here somewhere about stickhandling and immigrants or ex-Little League washouts, but this is not the time for a laugh. I tell myself I’ll try not to slow her down. I’ll just keep going. I’ll stay right behind her.
She turns and I reach out and touch her shoulder just to reassure her, just to track her movement in the thickening snowfall. She taps. She stabs harder with the stick and it sounds solid. She steps onto the next block, and I follow hoping the additional weight won’t send us both crashing into a hole—into a place where the flowing stream underneath us has eroded the fickle ice. The wind picks up, driving right into us. It could be a lucky break if it doesn’t start swirling or change directions. If we can keep the wind hitting us directly in our faces at least we should be heading in a straight line—if we are on course to find Watikwan anyway or even the opposite bank. I’m not sure Rosemary could have any better sense of that than I do. Neither of us says anything and in a way I am glad for the silence. I’m no longer frightened just for Watikwan or Rosemary but for myself. In truth I’d not be unhappy if we followed the wind in a circle that took us right back to where we started: to safety, to abandoning our hasty search for her brother, to enlisting the help of Cheepash and others. She stabs. She taps. She stabs again until she feels it’s safe enough for both of us. It’s stop and go; I hope I’m not slowing her down. I realize too late how much safer it would be for her without me here, without the extra weight and force contained in every step. The snow comes harder bringing almost whiteout conditions. I watch the back of her jacket. I can no longer see where she is tapping, but I sometimes hear the stick against the ice above the howling wind.
How long have we been out on the ice? I’m totally disoriented. All I can do is face the wind and follow the dark blur of her jacket. Then the sound of her voice. “Did you hear it?”
“Nothing but the wind.”
“Sh.” She waits, her hand gripping my arm. She must be frozen without gloves. Watikwan might be even colder. Would he have worn a jacket to play on my porch? “Again.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Over that way. We need to hurry.”
“But...”
“Listen.”
We change direction slightly and the wind hits more to the right side of my face and my right ear. It bites my eyes and nearly blinds me. If it is a north wind then we are heading for the village. Most of the wind in Orkney Post comes from the west, I’ve noticed, but the coldest wind comes from the north. She’s moving faster—taking chances now I guess. Tap once. Step. Stab. Step. We start climbing a pile before considering going around it. I try not to lose contact with the jacket. Maybe I hear something this time. Or maybe I just want to hear something. My hands and ears are numb.
We change direction again. Then I slip but catch myself before I slide off the edge of one block into a narrow crevasse. There is enough snow on the ice now that it’s very slippery and hard to see where one block ends and another begins. The cracks disappear. If this strange spring snow never stops the whole bowl would fill up, leaving us buried somewhere at the bottom—a crazy thought for sure. Suddenly I’m alone. The jacket in front of me has been swallowed by the storm. For a second I want to scream out her name, yell at her to come back and save me or shout for her to say something so I can find her or ask her to calm the wind and snow, but silence is imperative now if she is going to hear her brother.
Then I hear what she’s been hearing. Sound waves touch my ear. It’s not some tree falling in a forest but a long drawn-out “ee” sound between the growls of the wind.
“Hurry, David. The ice is okay.” Her voice! Only yards away. I know where to go—a direction at least if not a certain place to step.
I see the next slab. I need to trust it. I need to make a step into the white, a step toward the sound of her voice. Now the “ee” sound becomes a word; the sound becomes a voice, the familiar voice of Watikwan. The word is wichiin—not a word I know. It comes every few seconds and it is filled with fear and pain.
“David? It’s him. Hurry.”
“I’m coming. I’m right here. I can see you now. Just don’t make a mistake. If something happens to us, no one even knows we’re out here.”
“Watikwan! Can you hear me?” she calls.
“Wapikoshish! Nina o! Wichiin!”
I see her jacket clearly. There is a large crevasse. I can’t see him, but that is where the voice is coming from. I move to the next block and I’m suddenly next to her and able to breath again. “Watikwan are you down in the hole? Are you okay?"
“Dave? I am sorry. I thought it would be okay. I was very scared of the dog. I couldn’t catch up to him. I couldn’t save Diego. I tried.” He is crying.
“All that matters is we found you. It’s going to be okay. Right now we have to get you out of there.” I tell Rosemary to feel with the stick so we can tell how far down he is. The crevasse is dark and filling with snow.
“Just hold still. I’m going to touch you with a stick. Then we’ll pull you out. Are you stuck? Are you hurt?”
“Nina n’miskat. It hurts a lot.”
“It’s his leg. Can you feel the stick?”
“It is hitting my head. Ow. Ow. When I move, my leg hurts more.”
“We’ll have to be careful. There must be a bend in the hole. He’s only three feet down. Head up. How do we do this David?”
I kneel on the ice and stretch my arm into the hole. “Can you reach up and find my hand?”
“My arms are stuck. I can’t move them. Hurry. I’m really cold. Hurry.”
I feel nothing in the hole but snow and cold and ice. “Hang on. We'll get you out.” I look at Rosemary. We are both thinking the same thing. The water won’t come up, but now and then a block will shift, and blocks this size could crush him. “Would you trust me to hold you by the ankles? If I go too far in and slip, I could push him down further or cause a shift. Neither one of us could get out. You probably couldn’t pull me. You’d have to go back and get help.”
Rosemary is already taking off her shoes. “We’ll have to go slow in case it’s a fracture. Are you sure we can do this? Like you said: no one knows we’re out here.”
“We’ll do this. We have to.” We both know I have no idea what I’m promising.
She takes off her heavy coat so she can fit into the crack while I put my hands inside my jacket against my bare chest to warm them enough to insure a better grip. She slides her lithe body headfirst down into the black. I grip her bare ankles between her socks and jeans. She is not heavy but my fingers freeze almost immediately.
“I’m here Watikwan.” The rest is Cree until I hear her say, “I have a grip under his armpits.”
“You are tickling!”
“Hush. If you are laughing it won’t hurt so much. Start pulling us up, David. Easy. Very easy.”
Watikwan screams when I start to pull. Then there are only his whimpers and Rosemary’s soothing voice until they are both on the ice shelf. Rosemary covers him with her coat, shivers into her sneakers, and examines the bo
y’s leg all at the same time. “Lay still,” she tells him. “How bad does this hurt? This? And right here?”
He screams again. “E-e! Ekwani!”
“My guess is a broken tibia. He’ll need an x-ray. At least it is’nt compound, but we need to get him off the ice as soon as possible. This has to be done very carefully.”
“Just getting ourselves off the ice doesn’t look easy now,” I say. “Do you know which way to go?”
“First, the leg. We need to immobilize it. If we use the hockey stick for a splint, we don’t have anything for checking the ice. I could use his other leg, but then he couldn’t sit on your shoulders. If we both carry him, there’s no one to check the ice. Suggestions?”
“Maybe there’s a way you could strap the leg right to my chest? If I held him sideways, could you use my windbreaker like a wide bandage to stabal...”
Behind Rosemary there is movement. Coming out of the blinding snow is a dark shape headed straight for us. It moves easily over the ice. It is large and upright. About the size of a bear, I think. "Holy shit," I whisper. Rosemary and Watikwan both turn at the same time, open-mouthed at the massive intruder.
The bear says in English, “Looks like you could use some help.”
It’s Thomas. And behind him other bear forms shape-shift into men as they come closer through the storm.
“You are not too far from the bank. We could hear you yelling. Is he okay?” Then everything switches to Cree. I am off the hook. Thomas is in charge. The hockey stick becomes a splint. The men all carry long poles for testing the ice. There is a coil of rope with which to secure the splint. Thomas picks him up like he is lifting a suitcase off the plane, a suitcase filled with Ming vases and delicate crystal, a suitcase whose value is as great as the value of a child to its father. We are saved.
.
And this, Mouse, believe it or not, is how I come to find myself in the real Orkney Post for the very first time. Imagine the irony of that. Consider everything that Suz and I gave up in our risky venture coming to this place; imagine all those months we spent guessing what it might be like here in the village, their world, the world our students live in; think of all this vital information housed in a place we never saw up close, a place so near to where we lived and worked. Yet, now that I’m finally here, it’s all but gone—destroyed by ice and water. Mouse, if you’re incredulous we let this happen, I’m equally surprised. It would have been so easy all those months to skip along that half-mile dusty, snowy road, cross a sturdy wooden bridge, shake a hand, and say hello. No labyrinth of ice; no broken leg; no need to hold your breath on every single step. We could’ve hitched a ride before the breakup. But no, we thought we lived in Orkney Post already; we dreamed we knew the people. We cashed the pay cheques they provided. I used their sunsets for my paintings. And now that I’ve arrived, it’s largely gone. Does that amuse you? It’s not a happy thought that only now it hits me: we let those who rarely came here or never even visited draw our picture of this place. Those few wemistikoshoak who made the trip came just for Sunday mass in Latin. Suzanne was warned the pool hall got too rowdy, so of course we didn’t go. She was warned some people drank at village dances, so we stayed away. Parent visitations were scheduled at the school. The nurses pointed out how incorrect it was to sightsee on “their native land.” The large hand-painted sign atop their riverbank was written in syllabics and it just as easily might have said: “Warning; do not trespass” as “Welcome; enjoy your stay;” we never asked. Notwithstanding the trouble getting here today, it would have been amazing if my student’s leg was healthy and the village was still here.
Today I’m witness to an epitaph to what once was, a suggestion of what’s been lost. Today there’s devastation from the flood. Some houses have been invaded by frozen chunks of river the size of the house itself, smashing down an outside wall or half a roof and crushing the interior frames and furniture to make itself more comfortable. Other houses have been relocated by ice and water. Without foundations, some now straddle roads, themselves so badly undermined with massive sinkholes nothing but a tank could travel them. Other houses have been skidded up against their distant neighbours and then squeezed flat. One in ten might be intact, but the stench of rot and sewage indicates those have suffered different fates. Sewage is a misnomer since the village had no indoor plumbing, no sewage system, no running water even prior to the devastation. The village had no magic way of keeping outhouse overflow from flooding into homes. Structures that were cut in half reveal plywood walls lacking insulation and windows with plastic film instead of glass. I see the battered remnants of wood stoves created from oil drums cut lengthwise and fitted with a metal top. A broken kerosene lamp lies at my feet and I step over it—not an antique but the source of light by which I’ve expected students to do their homework.
At one end of town there are four large canvas cabin tents, each with a smoking stovepipe, one with its flap pulled back, and a man beckoning us in. The man introduces himself to me with the same limp handshake I got from Rosemary’s father. “I’m Toby Williams, chief of Orkney Post First Nation.” He’s also Thomas’ cousin. He apologizes for the shabbiness of the accommodations, the men having arrived only a few minutes before they heard Watikwan’s first call for help. We are offered tea. We are offered food. We will be offered the use of a CB radio once they set up their small generator. We are offered shelter for the night if we need it. We are offered first aid and sympathy for Watikwan’s broken leg.
Rosemary tells me, “It shouldn’t take too long to get the helicopter. I’d like to get my brother over to the hospital as soon as possible. He’ll probably have to go out to Moose Factory or Timmins to get it set.”
“You really think Hélène will send a helicopter after all the threats to Thomas?”
“She will—as soon as the storm lets up and the radio is working. She has to do that even if it embarrasses her. It is her job; sometimes we have to act like nurses instead of people—all of us.”
The smell of cooking reminds me it’s been a long time since our lunch. “What’s the weather forecast?”
“Thomas says it’s just a squall. It shouldn’t last much longer. It’s the weather south of here that worries me. We won’t know till later if they can do a medevac tonight.” She stands beside a cot, running her fingers through Watikwan’s hair. “How does the leg feel?”
“It hurts. Not as bad as when we were coming across the ice.”
“Try not to move around. You’ll be fine. Everyone will want to sign your new cast tomorrow,” she tells him.
“Dave?”
He looks at me, searching my face perhaps for clues of how things will go between us once he’s back on his feet. It must be hard; he must feel terrible about Diego. “You know, Watikwan, Diego was a good cat. I really liked him. But maybe I protected him too much. If I hadn’t been so scared an owl might get him, if I’d let him explore a little more outside, maybe he would have found places he could hide closer to the house. That was my fault. Or maybe if Hélène had let these men come over yesterday when they wanted to, maybe the crazy dog wouldn’t have been so crazy in the first place. Maybe a lot of things, Watikwan.”
“I shouldn’t have taken him outside, Dave. I’m sorry.”
“Today there’s only one important thing that happened. We found you on the ice. The broken leg is not so great, but it can be fixed as good as new. This could have been a whole lot worse. I will never blame you for what happened to Diego. You always treated him with respect. He liked you. I’ll remember those things. You gave us a scare, running off like that. I’m just glad you’re safe and we’re all warm and dry. Let’s just keep our thoughts on that, okay?” I might have rambled on further due to my exhaustion but Thomas’ son sneaks back into my brain. Perhaps the most awful thing on earth is losing a child. We were very lucky today. I’m certain Rosemary would agree with that.
“I’m glad you are not as crazy as the other teachers, Dave. I thought I would come over
here and work with the men until it was safe to go back. Thank you for finding me.”
“Me too,” says Rosemary.
Emotions clog my throat and I’m unable to tell him what he probably knows already: my role was once again little more than being the equipment manager or team mascot. I’m honoured to be here; I’m happy he’s going to be okay. I never would have found him by myself.
Later, as we try to carry on our conversation in two languages with our mouths full of moose stew, we hear the CB crackle to life. After that, things happen with a sense of urgency again. Within an hour the snow stops and Chad shows up and we watch the sunset twice: once standing in the doorway of the tent while thanking Thomas and the others and then again, a few minutes later, from the low-flying helicopter zipping across the peaceful ice field to drop us at the terminal where Cheepash waits with a stretcher—and unkind words for me.
“What kind of fool mishaw mokoman takes a ten-year-old kid out on the ice three days after breakup? You ought to be charged. What was Winyam thinking letting you take care of my nephew?”
“It wasn’t totally my idea that he should go across...”
Rosemary interrupts and rescues me with a barrage of Cree I don’t understand. It looks like he asks questions and she responds, and I watch the anger slowly drain from his face. He lets me take one end of the stretcher for the short walk across the road to the hospital. Watikwan laughs at his uncle’s jokes in Cree as we hoist him up the front stairs and into the examination room. Rosemary and Cheepash stay with him behind the curtain Hélène pulls around his bed, but Cheepash sticks his head out and makes his backhanded apology to me. “There’s a pot of hot coffee in the kitchen, David.” I consider thanking him in English. His offer means a great deal to me, and I wish I knew what sort of response could express it without spoiling the moment. All I do is nod, before heading to the kitchen. It is a complicated business trying to act civil here, trying to understand anything at all here.
I sit with my coffee in the small dining room off the kitchen listening to the muffled conversation in the exam room and the occasional moan or shout from the rooms upstairs.
It isn’t long until Linda drops by and tells me it’s her break. “Fancy meeting David Taylor here. You didn’t get enough excitement on the ice last week? You had to go back for seconds, didn’t you? Do you ever learn anything the first time around?” She pours herself a coffee and slides onto a chair opposite me at the table.
“Go ahead; rake me over the coals. I’m in too good a mood for you to spoil it.”
“I thought you’d be crying crocodile tears about your poor pussycat. Sorry.”
“Thanks. He was a good cat.”
“I suppose you’re hanging around here waiting for Nurse Metat? Again. Cute.”
“I thought I’d wait and see what’s going on with Watikwan since I’m technically responsible for of him. At least that’s what his parents think.”
“Who?”
“The boy. Albert. His last name is Metatawabin.”
“Right. Her brother. Sorry, I can’t help you there. Hélène’s doing the exam and paperwork for that one.”
“I’m not in any rush.”
“So it would seem. And now that everybody’s gone south, what will charming David do all day? Rosemary has a job, you know.”
“I haven’t had much time to think. I was tutoring Albert. I guess that’s on hold now. Actually I think I need a little break just to catch up with everything.”
“You might want to make yourself scarce around the hospital.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mr. Chookomolin will put you to work—now that his slave is crippled up. He hasn’t peeled a potato since you made that deal with the kid’s parents.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“And I think maybe you cured Hélène of her crush on you, Romeo. I’d steer clear of her too.”
“Roger.”
“As much as I’d like to stay and tease you about your new girlfriend, I have to get back to work. See you later, gator.” She tops up her coffee in the kitchen and heads back upstairs just minutes before Rosemary comes in.
“Hey.”
“How is he doing? Everything okay? Is there anything he needs?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Sure. As long you don’t want to go for a stroll on the ice.”
As we step outside she says, “Could we go to your place please?”
Right then my head begins to spin. It only lasts a minute though, before we’re deep in conversation about shins and casts and crutches. As we make our way across the compound with a soft post-sunset glow in the western sky promising better weather tomorrow, Rosemary answers questions. She tells me the medevac won’t happen until the morning. The plane won’t come tonight because this isn’t a code emergency and the weather is uncertain. Watikwan took an anti-inflammatory to ease the pain and he quickly fell into a peaceful sleep upstairs in the ward. The prognosis is good, Hélène assured her. The medevac escort nurse is Rosemary, in part because she’s off tomorrow, in part because she’s family—destination: Porcupine General Hospital, Timmins. They should be back in Orkney Post by suppertime tomorrow unless weather forces them to wait until Wednesday. All of this is good news—all of it. But they are all things she could have told me in the hospital dining room or during a walk to her residence. That’s not where we’re headed.
I open my front door for her and she takes off her jacket and drapes it on the chesterfield. “It’s chilly in here. You need to put some wood in your stove,” she says playfully.
I turn up the thermostat on our way to the kitchen. “What could I get you? Tea? I’m out of wine, but there might be a little CC. A Dr. Pepper maybe? Are you hungry?”
“Some water would be nice.”
In the kitchen I run the faucet while I get a glass down from the cupboard. I can’t help but think how easy it is on this side, how water that she must measure by weight and distance and shoulder pain is now simply flowing down my drain without an ounce of guilt attached. I’m a water millionaire: clean water for drinking, hot water for a shower, water to flush my indoor toilet, water to pour down the drain for as long as I want for no reason at all. It must be a strange dichotomy inside of Rosemary’s head living in both worlds at the same time, walking home each night to a slop pail and a washroom with a bucket, walking to work the next morning where a cup of coffee starts with a twist of a tap. Compared to that, the river of ice is a not such an insurmountable barrier between our two worlds.
“Thank you, David.” There is something in her voice I can’t untangle.
She takes a sip standing near the sink then puts the glass down on the counter and steps close to me. Without any hesitation she puts her hand against my cheek. Gently. She leans toward me and lifts her lips to mine—touches mine lightly. They stay there warming until I feel her other hand on the back of my neck, a soft caress. I pull her close to me. Her lips part. Her eyes close. Our mouths, suddenly hungry for each other, stop asking questions and begin their exploration. I am somewhere else; I am someone else, when suddenly it is over. She leans back and again there is a space between us.
“The other night.” Her voice is as soft as I remember Diego’s fur. “I wanted to kiss you back, but I couldn’t. Not then. Now? Nothing that’s happened makes anything about this easier, but I can’t ignore what I’m feeling any longer.”
Now the spinning in my head coasts to a standstill. I am stopped in a yellow wood where two roads diverge, Mouse, but not a clue where either road could take me. I open my eyes and all I see is Rosemary Metatawabin. I know what you’re thinking, Mouse: now would be the time to make a choice. Now would be the time to get out a sheet of paper and make a thorough and considered list of pros and cons. Now would be the time to phone Suzanne or call the reference desk of the non-existent local library. This is David Taylor to Air Traffic Control; am I cleared for take-off now? Please advise. Do I have permission to cross that line drawn
in the sand, sir? Yet, somehow, the choice is already too late to consider. I’m obviously not thinking clearly, not thinking at all even though I expect you are doing lots of that on your own right now, Mouse. Right now I’m sure you see it all quite clearly. Right now is when I pull her close. Now is the time we start to dance without moving our feet at all.
We dance with our mouths, our lips, our tongues. We touch lightly, then forward lean, backward lean, embrace, release, and touch again.
We dance with our hands, the elegant twist of the wrist, the feather grasp, a head snapped back, the seductive smile of a finger along a clavicle, the do-si-do and swing your partner, the waltz of a blouse unbuttoning.
We dance in silence. We focus on the music in our heads. We focus on the layer of skin alive with nerves, alive with sensation. We focus on the moment. If there is a time and place where we really are, I’m not sure we know when or where that is.
We dance into a tangle of sheets and pillows. Into thrusts and parries. Chasse and cross body leads. Into. And out of. And repeat. And sweat. And moan. We dance finally into sighs and panting. We dance until we are exhausted, until the pain of pleasure, until the reality, until the music fades so much we cannot hear it.
“Is this...”
“What?”
“Could this be the real reason why I didn’t get on that charter with the other teachers last Friday? Did I somehow know this was going to happen?”
“Think?”
“I don’t know what to think. I think I’m very surprised that we are where we are right now.”
“Right now might not be the best thinking time, you know.”
“Tell me why I’m not allowed to say—your nickname.”
“You’re kidding. That’s what’s on your mind now? Wow. Does it really matter?”
“I don’t know. Yes. It might. I think it might.”
She looks at me—directly in my eyes for just a few seconds—like I will have no idea how to comprehend the complexity of what she is about to say. “Okay, here goes. The truth is, I like the sound of how you say, ‘Rosemary.’ It sounds very sweet to me. I don’t even have to hear you try it to know you can’t say Wapikoshish in a way that won’t make me laugh. No offence.”
“I could practice.”
“I’d be a happy woman if you’d do your practicing on Watikwan or someone else.”
I sigh and change the subject. “Can you stay the night?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Hélène will come to my room in the morning—to tell me what time the medevac will be here. I should be there.”
“Would it be so bad if she didn’t find you right away?” Rosemary just looks at me through the dim starlight filtering through my bedroom window. After awhile I answer for her. “I guess it might make things kind of hard. I don’t want to make things worse, but... I’m not ashamed of this. It’s complicated, but it was special. It was real.”
“Yes it was,” is all she whispers.
“I wish everything could stop right here. I wish this could last forever. I wish we didn’t have to have tomorrow.” Rosemary sits up and pulls the sheet up to cover her breasts. I reach over and pull it back. She doesn’t resist. I kiss her lightly at the edge of a swollen nipple. “Ten Sunrises, you have a beautiful name.”
“There will be just one sunrise at a time from now on. The next tomorrow will come soon enough.”
“It’s not here yet.”
“Not yet.” She spoons close to me. “But I’ll go soon.”
“Why?”
She touches my nose with the edge of a fingernail. Then she covers my mouth with hers and lets her hunger show. Eager. And I struggle to catch up. This kiss devours me. Neither angry, nor tender, it springs from some deep appetite, some volcano of fire and heat. It is a kiss no one could ever forget.
And when she breaks it, she whispers in my ear. The words caress; they linger long after she has found her clothes and dressed and touched me on the forehead and left me alone in my bedroom, left me dazed and anxious once again. The words, the whisper, the reminder is, “Don’t let yourself forget about Suzanne.”
Chapter Eight
Mouse Page 8