by Luanne Rice
“That’s really cool,” Billy said. I glanced at him, the boy without a family.
“Our tribe used to be known as ‘Montagnais.’ But that is French, and years ago we went back to our aboriginal name.”
“Is this your reservation?” Billy asked.
“We call it a reserve in Canada, but yes. It is our community. We don’t usually bring outsiders to work here, but our catch is so plentiful we need extra hands and you need money. Let me introduce you.”
George took us around and we met everyone, about twenty people. His father, Claude, worked on the processing line along with his mother, Marie; his twin sisters, Nathalie and Jeanine; his younger brother, Marc; and several cousins who were or weren’t actually related by blood. It didn’t matter. In spite of the fact that George had said they didn’t usually invite non-Innu to work here, I felt completely welcomed.
Billy and I jumped right into our jobs. We stood side by side at the tail end of the line. By the time the crabs got to us they’d been steamed, their legs separated from the carapaces, and it was our job to crack the bright red shells and extract the meat. We had to do it as perfectly as possible, not leave any hard bits of shell or cartilage, and at first it was okay—even good—because I was so close to Billy, and he was helping me.
“It’s not exactly like lobster, but close enough,” he said, showing me exactly where to crack the shell, remove the glistening crabmeat in one perfect chunk instead of shreds, how to place it on the conveyor belt that would take it to the canning station.
“There, that’s perfect!” he said when I succeeded. Our hands were busy, but he bumped my upper arm with his—kind of like a shoulder high five. I glanced at his arm and couldn’t help noticing his muscles. He was lean and wiry, but when it came to arms, he was pretty amazing. Until that minute I never knew I had a thing for boys’ arms.
“Is it just me, or is this making you want to eat crab?” I asked.
“It’s not just you,” he said.
The day seemed incredibly long; we concentrated on our work, but every time I looked up, I caught Marc, George’s younger brother, watching us. His expression was neutral; he seemed about our age, and I wondered why he wasn’t in school. Music played from speakers in the ceiling. It started out being familiar rock bands, but then it switched, and that’s when my mood followed.
The singer was a woman, and the songs she sang were so haunting I felt almost hypnotized. They were sweet and sad, accompanied by a flute, and then, in the background, the unmistakable sound of whales singing.
I stopped, frozen. Then I felt literally pulled away from my workstation to drift across the wide floor and stand under the speaker. I tried to listen to what the woman and the whale were saying. They were each speaking a language different from my own and from each other’s, but I felt their words and notes in my bones, my blood. I nearly levitated at the sound of the voices.
A horn sounded—it must have meant the end of work for the day because the machines stopped and everyone began chatting, filing outside. But the music kept playing. Marie walked over to me. She was short and plump, with her black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face was very tan and wrinkled.
“Do you like our music?” she asked.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.
“That is Alesie,” she said. “An Innu singer from Sept-Îles. She’s singing in our native language, Innu-aimun. Can you hear the harmony and guess who is making music with her?”
“I hear it,” I said. “A whale?”
Marie gave me a surprised smile. “How would you know that?”
“My mother taught me to love whale songs,” I said.
“Is your mother Innu?”
“No,” I said. “She’s not.”
“Well, I think I would like her anyway,” Marie said. “My son Marc and my nephew Pierre mixed the two voices. Pierre wants to move to Toronto and work in a recording studio, but we need him here.”
“And Marc?” I asked. “Does he want to move, too?”
“No,” she said. “He is devoted to the community.”
She beckoned toward Billy, and we followed her outside the building and along the coast road. We passed a white church with a cross on the steeple and a tepee-like structure—five tree trunks stripped of bark, tied together at the top and emblazoned with a carved eagle. A homemade cross—two pieces of wood held together with a leather cord, stood at the bottom. I stopped to stare. The instant inner knowledge of what it meant sent shivers down my spine.
I knew it was a memorial. Someone had died.
I felt Marie watching me out of the corner of her eye. She took my hand and pulled me past the structure. Inside I was shaking. I could barely swallow. She led us past a row of brightly colored houses. She pointed at a bright blue one, and we filed up to the front door.
George met us at the door. Marc sat at the kitchen table, watching. “Merci, maman,” George said.
“De rien, George,” she said. “Vos amis sont trés gentils. La jeune fille aime beauçoup les chants des baleines.”
I understood: Your friends are very nice. The young girl very much likes whale songs.
“Merci,” I said. “C’est vrai—j’aime beauçoup la musique.”
“It’s good you speak French,” Marie said. “We Innu have had to meet others in their languages—the French when they first came to this land, the English and Americans to whom we have always sold our fish, whatever the catch. And whales—we speak to the whales.”
“But you don’t speak Innu-aimun—Montagnais,” Marc said sharply. “Our real language.”
“French is enough,” his mother said. “It is a good effort. Be polite, Marc.”
Marc didn’t respond; he just frowned and turned away. Marie and George ignored him, but I stared, wondering why Marc seemed angry. Marie took my hands.
“You’re very sensitive,” she said.
I didn’t reply. I wanted to tell her everything: how this was my first time in Canada, how my mother had lived here for three years and I hadn’t seen her in all that time, how the sound of Alesie had uplifted me, and how the sight of the tepee made me feel sorrow.
“Ta coeur,” she said, touching her chest. “Your heart is very big.”
I wanted to hug her, but wasn’t sure if it was the custom. She made it easy for me, took me into her arms. My throat ached with everything, especially being hugged by a mom.
Marie dropped her arms, smiled at me, and turned to her son. “Marc, come with me. It’s time for dinner.”
He got up and without a word left the house.
“He’s still young and lives at home,” Marie said. “Even though he thinks he’s all grown-up and on his own.”
She said good-bye to George and Billy, then with a last smile at me, walked away, along the coast road, fifty yards behind Marc.
“That was good work,” George said, shaking Billy’s and my hands. He reached into his pocket and counted out a hundred dollars.
“Thanks,” Billy said. “That’s a lot of money for half a day.”
“We pay what is owed,” George said. “If you’ll work for us again tomorrow morning, I’ll make sure you get back to Tadoussac in the afternoon. And I’ll call my uncle there. He’ll take you up the fjord in his boat.”
“Thank you,” Billy said.
I just nodded. I was afraid to speak; Marie’s hug, Alesie’s singing, and the way Billy was looking at me overwhelmed me. I was filled with tears of love. I knew that was weird, but I felt that if I cried, the love I was feeling would spill over everything.
We ate dinner with George, and I was really excited because we were having crab. We sat around the table in his kitchen. It was covered with a yellow oilcloth marked with crayon streaks. I also noticed a Big Wheel, some Legos, and two Barbies in the corner behind the stove. It looked as if they hadn’t been played with in a long time.
“This is just for you,” he said, serving us big plates of un-cracked crab leg
s. “I’m so sick of it I can barely look at it, but when we have special workers they’re always hungry for the catch.”
“My grandfather and I got to the point we couldn’t eat lobster,” Billy said. “After pulling pots every morning all summer long, then before school in the cold weather, selling it at the local market every day after school.”
“You worked hard back home,” George said, sounding admiring.
“It didn’t feel like work,” Billy said. “I was with my grandfather. It was the best time of my life, and I want more of it. I want to work on the water, with a better boat, a faster winch.”
George grinned. “It’s good you appreciate the benefits of technology, the ways it makes our life easier. I wish Marc would—he’s fifteen years younger than me, and he’s an old man. He wants to bring back the traditional ways. He thinks the new ones are ruining our culture. Diluting it too much. He’d rather get rid of modern conveniences entirely. But put him in a boat, and he opens up the engine to go as fast as he can. And as much as he talks about how the elders pulled pots with their muscles and complains about the winch, he uses it. And he loves mixing music with our cousin Pierre. Life is full of conflicts for him.”
“Does he like to fish?” Billy asked.
“Of course. We all do. But the thing about lobster fishing, crab fishing: We sometimes forget to appreciate what we have a lot of.”
“I think I could eat crab every day,” I said. I knew I should love this meal, but the weird thing was, it was hard to take more than a few bites. I was on major overload.
“Yeah, people do forget to appreciate,” Billy said. “What they have. And who they have.”
“My wife left,” George said. “Took our kids with her, too. It gets hard out here. The winters are long and cold. The river often ices over and we have to travel farther east, into the true salt water. That eats up fuel, and the catch might not be there anyway. Money is tight. It’s roughest for kids. We have a drug problem here. Huffing, drinking, too. Did you see the memorial out there?”
“Memorial?” Billy asked.
“The tree trunks with the eagle,” I said.
George nodded. “That’s for my nephew Jacques. He was sixteen years old. Kids at the regional school, they’re not all aboriginal there. It’s a mix. They bullied him, called him Indian, Eskimo. Threw rocks at him. His mom left the village with someone she met, abandoned him with her sister. Marc tried to protect him, but it wasn’t enough.”
“What happened to him?” Billy asked.
“He killed himself,” I said.
Both Billy and George stared at me, but they didn’t ask me how I knew. I had the feeling Billy could see through my skin, know that I had been there, too. I could hear Jacques’s voice, as if he were speaking to me.
After dinner, we cleaned up the kitchen. Every move I made felt as if I were swimming underwater. The air felt like the ocean, cold and clear. It was late May, heading toward the longest day of the year, and at this northern latitude the sun stayed high in the sky past nine o’clock.
I couldn’t keep my eyes open. George showed us where we would sleep: in twin beds in a small room with one wall painted pink and the other blue. I realized his daughter and son had shared this bedroom.
We were still in our jeans and T-shirts, and Billy climbed into one bed and I into the one on the opposite side. We stared at each other across the narrow space. I thought of all the nights I’d gazed up at the Stansfield Home, waiting to see him through the second-floor window. I’d felt such longing for him. I’d wished I could tell him my secrets and that he could tell me his. I had spent so much time wondering if he was looking back at me.
Now he was.
“Remember how I couldn’t trust anyone?” Billy said. “Well, it’s been a long time since I felt close to anyone. Or felt as if I belonged.”
“They make you feel as if you belong here, don’t they?” I asked.
“I meant you,” he said. “You make me feel as if I belong … everywhere. You do.”
“You make me feel that way, too,” I said.
Outside the sun had not quite set, and cool blue light came through the window. I could see his straight mouth, the slant of his cheekbones, the way his brown hair fell into his green eyes.
I could see the shape of his body under the blanket, the way his arm looked when he reached across the space between us. And then he held out his hand. And I reached over, and our fingertips touched, and then in the declining light we held each other’s hands for a long, long time.
We woke to a bright morning. Even at six a.m., there on the river in eastern Canada, the sun’s rays felt surprisingly warm for being so far north.
Small wind-gnarled pine trees grew along the road through the reserve. Walking back to the plant, I couldn’t stop thinking of what Billy had said last night, and of holding hands until we fell asleep. We worked half the day, as we’d promised George. I had to really concentrate on doing the job.
I hated to admit it, but going off my medication cold turkey was taking a toll. I’d been cruising through, doing fine, until I’d seen Jacques’s memorial. I felt so bad for him. But that morning I realized, for the first time since I had stopped taking my pills, that I was going through withdrawal—exactly what I’d gone through before, what Dr. Bouley had warned me not to do. I felt dizzy, a little sick to my stomach, and in spite of the reasons I should be so happy, sensing the edge of despair. It shimmered just out of sight.
I thought of starting up the antidepressant again, right now. Instead I steeled myself and decided not to. Day three without it, I was at my mental limit, but I knew it would pass if I could just hold on. My brain was scrambling, searching for the neurotransmitters the drug had provided. Now that everything with Billy was changing, and I felt the possibility of real love, I knew I could feel happy forever once my brain chemistry caught up.
I told myself that after another twenty-four hours or so my system would acclimate to being med-free, start producing its own serotonin, and I’d be back to myself, my old self, pre-depression—only better. I was sure that was true. It had to be. The conditions for happiness were in place.
Billy and I had both gotten faster at sorting the catch. I forced myself to keep working hard, and the morning started to fly by. The bad feelings washed over me, retreated, and returned like waves in a big storm. In the moments between them I felt up, hopeful that if I stayed the course I’d get through this.
When work was over, I felt sorry to leave the reserve. We said good-bye to everyone in the processing plant, packed our things, and, bags slung over our shoulders, headed to the spot where George had parked his truck.
It was gone.
No, it couldn’t be. Had he lied to us? Had George left us here with no way back to Tadoussac? I couldn’t breathe, on the verge of a total hyperventilating panic attack.
Marc walked over, hands in his pockets. His brown skin looked ruddy from time spent in the sun and on the water, and his black eyes gleamed. He wore thick canvas work pants and scuffed black boots. His red T-shirt was printed with a caribou and symbols I didn’t understand.
“George had to leave before sunup,” he said. “The shipment was ready early.”
“But he said he’d drive us,” I said, my voice so strained it barely came out.
“We’ll hitchhike,” Billy said, giving me a reassuring look. “We’ll get you there.”
“I’m taking you,” Marc said.
I looked around the parking area. There were a couple of rusty cars, an old station wagon on blocks, the way we’d found Billy’s grandfather’s truck. That left a small blue sedan, so pocked with rust that you could see through the holes.
“What’s the matter?” Marc asked, gauging my expression. “You don’t want to be seen riding in a junk car?”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” I said.
“Man, you should have seen the truck we left across the river,” Billy said. “It makes your car look brand-new.”
Mar
c gave a half smile, and I was glad Billy had said that, defused the situation.
“We’re not taking the car anyway,” Marc said. “Come on.”
He led us down to the wharf. Most of the fishing boats had left that morning, but there was one medium-size boat tied to the dock. It was white with a small cabin in front and long deck space in back. The boat’s name, painted on the transom, was Wolf.
“George said you need a ride to Tadoussac and up the fjord,” Marc said. “And my uncle there is busy today, so George told me to take you.”
“Thank you, Marc,” I said, tides of relief flooding me.
“Call me Atik,” he said. “That’s my Innu name. Around here the older people accept what the Europeans did to us, the English and French names they gave us, but not me. And my cousin Matsheshu didn’t, either.”
“Matsheshu,” I said, pronouncing the beautiful name slowly.
“Everyone called him Jacques,” he said. “But he was Matsheshu.”
We got into the boat. As Atik started the engine, Billy undid the lines and cast us off the dock. He did it so easily, I could tell a love of boats was in his blood. The water boiled, then rippled into a wide white wake behind us. I stared back at the carved eagle on top of Jacques’s—Matsheshu’s—memorial. The bird was bold with a hooked beak and spread wings; it looked almost as if it could fly.
Marie, still wearing her blue paper hat and smock, had stepped out of the plant to wave good-bye to us. Atik gave her three quick blasts on the air horn and then, just as George had told us about him, proved his love of speed by opening up the throttle and zooming through the channel.
There was almost no wind, no waves. Wolf ran smoothly over the river’s glassy blue surface. Atik stood at the wheel, I sat in a high swivel seat with a great view forward through the windshield, and Billy stood between us. I looked at the GPS chart of the area glowing green on the console. We would travel west on the Saint Lawrence River, then take a hard right at Tadoussac and head north into the Saguenay Fjord. It was a very long ride.