The Beautiful Lost

by Luanne Rice

  Wolf’s electronics looked sophisticated—I knew from being on boats with my mom that one was radar and another was a digital fish finder. My mother used one like it to locate marine mammals and schools of fish beneath the water’s surface, but it could also determine depth, and if there were any rocks or shipwrecks on the ocean floor.

  “Why is the boat called ‘Wolf’?” I asked, wondering why the name wasn’t more related to the sea.

  “My grandfather dreamed it,” Atik said. “Atik means caribou; the night I was born, my grandmother dreamed of an entire herd. Matsheshu means fox, because the day my cousin was born, his father saw one on the shore.”

  “But ‘wolf’ is an English word,” Billy said.

  “You’re right. I’d like to paint it over with Maikan, the real name for wolf. But my uncle is just like my mother and thinks the modern ways are better than traditional.”

  “Why is it more modern to use French or English names instead of Innu-aimun?” I asked.

  Atik leaned across Billy to look at me, as if he was surprised and maybe a little pleased that I was interested.

  “Aboriginals—Innu, Montagnais—didn’t used to live on reserves. We just lived on the land in birch wigwams—our houses. Then the Europeans came. We traded furs and skins and fish with them, and they tricked us.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Their trading posts were unfair. They took our goods and paid us little in return. Without our goods, our way of living, we became poor, destitute. We weren’t immune to their diseases and many of us died from Spanish flu, smallpox, and measles. They took away Manitou and forced their beliefs on us.”

  “What is Manitou?” Billy asked.

  “Our true religion—nature.”

  I thought of what George had said when we’d first arrived at the reserve and seen the sign: that nature was woven all through their lives.

  “The supernatural power that comes from animal spirits, tree spirits, both good and evil,” Atik continued. “The Europeans jammed Christianity down our throats to control us and destroy our religion. They built the church. My mother goes to it. You saw the cross by the memorial? She and my aunt put it there.”

  “Maybe all prayers are good,” I said. “And it doesn’t matter who you’re saying them to.”

  Atik shrugged, and I didn’t know if that meant he wasn’t sure and maybe I was right, or if he thought I just didn’t get it.

  “I’m sorry all that happened to the Inuit,” Billy said.

  Atik shot him a sharp glance. “We’re not Inuit. We’re Innu. You think it’s the same? It isn’t. We’re both from the north, and the names sound similar, but our cultures are completely different. They live north of us, mostly in the Arctic. You’d know them as Eskimos, a name we hate. But yes, it happened to the Inuit, too. To all indigenous people.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Billy said.

  Atik nodded, but his lips were tight. We cruised for a long time without speaking. I thought of what the Europeans had done and felt sick about the Cartiers, even Laurent.

  “What happened to Matsheshu?” I asked.

  “He was like his name,” Atik said. “A fox—fast, smart, able to hide and wait until he figured something out. But school, and the kids who made fun of him, put him down—he couldn’t figure that out. He was so good—not like me, I’m tough and like to fight. If someone attacks my family I don’t wait for them to do it a second time. But not Matsheshu.”

  “How was he good?” I asked.

  “Kind. Patient. He believed everyone had a good heart. When kids teased him, he pretended to laugh it off, and when I fought to defend him he’d say, ‘Don’t do it, brother, it’s not worth your anger, they don’t mean it.’ But yeah, they meant it. There are a lot of whites at our school and they look down on us just like the rest of Canada does—we’re garbage people to them. Matsheshu couldn’t take it anymore. He filled his pockets with rocks and walked into the river.”

  I felt stunned into silence, picturing Matsheshu. As soon as I could move, I reached around Billy to give Atik a hug. Billy put his hand on his shoulder. I felt Matsheshu in the circle with us—Atik’s love for him was so strong, and even though I hadn’t known him, so was mine.

  Something I learned at Turner: When someone kills himself, he leaves all his anguish behind for his family, and they have to carry his sorrow. It’s a terrible legacy, and I don’t believe anyone suffering badly enough to take his or her own life intends to hurt anyone. They just want the pain to stop. As different as our experiences were, I understood that part of Matsheshu. Even though I couldn’t know what he’d gone through, I could imagine getting to the point where he did what he did. And that scared me.

  All through the cruise I kept watching the water’s surface for signs of whales. A horde of seagulls hovered and dove—birds working were sometimes a sign of marine mammals in the area. Whales stirred up small fish, and gulls and terns fed on them. But in spite of the seabirds, I didn’t see any spouts or fins.

  “Do you hear them singing?” I asked Billy.

  “Yeah, loudly,” he said.

  “Who’s singing?” Atik asked.

  “Lobsters,” I said. “Billy hears them.”

  “That’s kind of Manitou,” Atik said, with a touch of admiration in his voice. “George said you’re a lobster fisherman.”

  “I was,” Billy said. “And I hope I’ll be again.”

  We continued west, the sun getting hotter as it angled across the sky; it beat down through the windshield. The boat had a sound system, and Atik popped in a CD by Kashtin.

  “They’re Innu from Sept-Îles, a community east of ours,” he said. “The first song is ‘Tshinanu’; it means ‘what we all are.’ ”

  The music was live and sounded happy—upbeat singers, guitars, people cheering in the background. Atik tapped the wheel with the palm of one hand, and I half danced, the way you do when you’re standing still but feeling the beat. Billy moved, too, leaning into me.

  “I love this song,” I said.

  “These guys really made it,” Atik said. “They’re cool, too. Kashtin means ‘tornado’ in our language, but it’s also a dig in English—‘cashed-in.’ Making money on telling our stories. Good for them, man.”

  The CD was obviously a homemade compilation with more songs by Kashtin as well as solo songs by the individual members. It lifted me, filled my heart, made me feel connected to something much bigger than me.

  For so long I’d felt like a kite that couldn’t quite get up in the sky. Depression had made me falter, then crash. But now on the boat, heading to Tadoussac, I felt myself letting out string a little at a time, starting to rise without the help of antidepressants. With Billy beside me and Atik speeding us toward my mother, I knew I was ready to soar.

  Missing, waiting, child, song. I’d be with her soon.

  “See those buoys over there?” Atik asked, pointing at a row of three red-and-white buoys floating on the water’s surface, along the northern shore.

  “Yeah,” Billy said.

  “They’re my uncle’s lobster pots. Those are his colors. Let’s see you pull them.”

  Billy looked at Atik, maybe to see if he was serious. Atik didn’t say anything more, just handed him a long metal hook.

  “No problem,” Billy said, beaming.

  He hurried out on deck and I followed, while Atik slowed the engine and eased close to the first buoy. It was made of Styrofoam, haphazardly bobbing in the current. Billy reached the boat hook overboard and snagged a rope that ran from the buoy down to the lobster pot on the river bottom. He threw the line over a grooved metal wheel hanging off the side of the boat and pushed a button to start the winch’s motor. The mechanism hummed as it pulled the line.

  A minute later, a big green mesh lobster pot came flying up from the bottom of the river. Billy paused the winch motor and we peered inside.

  “You need gloves?” Atik called.

  “Nah,” Billy said. He opened the door
on the side of the trap and reached in, pulling out the largest lobster I’d ever seen.

  “It’s a four-pounder,” Billy said, testing the weight in his hand.

  “That’s small for here,” Atik said, laughing.

  The dark-green lobster clicked its claws, reaching back to where Billy held it behind its eyes. I cringed, positive Billy was going to get pinched, but he was an expert. He grabbed wide yellow elastic bands from a bin on deck, slipped them around the claws, and dropped the lobster into a blue plastic bucket. Another pail was full of fish heads, and Billy re-baited the trap before throwing it overboard.

  Atik puttered slowly up to the second buoy, then the third, and Billy repeated the process—he pulled two equally gigantic lobsters from each trap. At the third, he held up a lobster that looked tiny compared to the others. He turned toward the wheelhouse, and without a word Atik tossed him a U-shaped instrument that Billy used to measure the carapace: The lobster was undersize, illegal to keep, so he threw it back in so it could grow some more. The boys’ movements seemed graceful, as if they had been fishing together for a long time.

  “Won’t your uncle mind that we’re pulling his pots?” Billy called as Atik eased over to the next set.

  “No, that’s part of why I’m giving you a ride,” Atik said. “My uncle can’t work today and he didn’t want his pots sitting on the bottom. You know lobsters are cannibals.”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “If two sit in the same closed space long enough, one will eat the other.”

  “I thought your family only went crabbing,” I said.

  “Yes, mostly,” Atik said. “But we catch whatever we can to sell and feed our community.”

  Billy hauled the rest of the pots, and when he finished he was covered with sweat and salt water. He also had the biggest smile on his face, the happiest expression ever. I had a sudden, strong wish that his grandfather could see him like this: He had taught Billy this wonderful skill, and instilled in him a love of fishing. How could he have abandoned him?

  “Are you afraid to swim with the lobsters and whatever else is in there?” Atik asked, looking at me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Definitely not,” Billy said.

  “It’s hot in this sun,” Atik said. He steered the boat toward the north shore, cut the engine, and threw an anchor overboard.

  Leaving home so quickly, I’d forgotten to pack a bathing suit. Billy and I dug through our duffel bags for something to wear, and we took turns changing in the cabin. I pulled on denim shorts and a black camisole.

  Billy had on cargo shorts and no shirt. I stared at his chest, his lean muscles, and those arms. Atik came up from below laughing—he’d found his uncle’s bathing trunks, dark blue printed with pink palm trees, about three sizes too big.

  He hung a swim ladder over the stern. But instead of climbing down, easing ourselves into the water, all three of us stood on the rail. And then we jumped straight in. The rush of cold turned me into an ice cube and I shrieked when I came up for air.

  “Hey, I forgot to tell you, swimming’s a little different here than down south,” Atik called, smiling.

  “Feels great,” Billy said. It did. I was freezing, but I felt so happy.

  “Next time we’ll find a glacier and some meltwater and we’ll see how tough you are,” Atik said, laughing and treading water. “Seriously, that’s enough for me. I’m going up, got to call my girlfriend in Sept-Îles. Take your time. If you feel like it, there’s an abandoned trading post right over there. You can see where the Europeans set up to take everything they wanted from the land. About twenty yards into the trees.” He climbed up the swim ladder.

  Tall pines grew straight down to the rocky banks, and Billy and I swam toward shore. The longer we stayed in the water, the more I got used to the temperature; but it felt good to clamber up on the sun-warmed granite ledge. My skin tingled.

  We sat there for a few minutes, getting warm. Out on the boat, I could see Atik in the wheelhouse, phone to his ear. Seagulls circled the boat, crying and swooping, hoping to snag a scrap of bait.

  “Want to find that trading post?” Billy asked.

  “Sure,” I said and we got to our feet.

  The trail was narrow, so I fell into step behind him.

  His shoulders were wide, his back lean and muscular. I’d never thought of Billy as an athlete, but it was obvious he did something to look that way. He had freckles everywhere. I tried not to stare, but there was something about those freckles. I reached out and touched one on his back.

  “What?” he asked, smiling as he turned around.

  “You have a few freckles,” I said.

  “Yeah, you noticed?”

  I lowered my head, aware that I had turned bright red from the fact that I noticed everything about him, and from having touched his back. He was still shirtless and wet from the swim, and I was in my soaked clothes. I shivered from the air on my skin and from the way he was looking at me.

  We had walked through a wooded path along the shore and now stood in a clearing that was tightly ringed with pine trees. A crooked stone tower crumbled and half tumbled onto a rock ledge sloping into a small river inlet. Some charred logs and timbers lay on the ground, and we carefully stepped over them to climb what was left of the tower.

  “It feels like such a secret place,” I said. “As if it wants to stay hidden. Filled with ancient stories.”

  “Maia, I …” Billy began.

  He was standing really close to me. Sunlight slanting through the pine needles made his green eyes shine.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I love coming here with you,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said. “With you.”

  He held my hand. We were both facing forward, toward the little curve of river, but then he turned toward me. I moved so slowly, both afraid of what was happening and dying for it to happen. Our movements weren’t hesitant, and we weren’t upset like in the lighthouse; this was what I’d dreamed of, wanted all along. Billy leaned over to kiss me.

  My lips touched his, salty and warm, and my arms went around his neck. I stood on tiptoes. He held me so close. My whole body felt hot, as if I had the strangest fever, one that made me feel wonderful. Stars were running through my blood. He tangled his fingers in my hair, and everything in the world went blank except for the kiss.

  I didn’t want to stop, ever. I don’t think he did either because we kept kissing. Kisses on my lips, then little kisses on the side of my mouth and neck that made me go higher on my tiptoes and lean closer, full of feelings I’d never known existed. No matter how often I’d dreamed of Billy, of really kissing him, not an almost kiss but a real one, it was never as amazing as this.

  After a while we sat down on the crooked steps of the old tower, and put our arms around each other, and then he kissed me again. We stayed there for a long time with his arm around my shoulders. Tiny yellow birds darted around the tops of the trees, and a gray fox ran through the brush, and usually I’d be thrilled with so much inspiring nature, but sitting there with Billy I was only thrilled with him.

  “I don’t want to leave here,” Billy said.

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  “But your mother …”

  “I know.”

  “Everything’s about to change,” he said.

  “No it won’t,” I said. “It doesn’t have to.”

  “It will,” he said. “There’ve been other people along the way …”

  I thought of them: Darrah and Cleo, Richard and Morgane, Atik and everyone at the reserve.

  “But they haven’t mattered,” Billy went on. “It’s been us, Maia, the whole time. We’ve been on our own. I know we’ve always been heading to your mother, but in my mind it’s been you and me. I even thought …”

  “Thought what?”

  “That maybe when we got close, we’d just keep going.”

  He kissed me again, and I still had the fever feeling, but this time I also felt a scary shiver run
down my spine. I hadn’t thought we’d keep going. I’d imagined us living with my mother, in her cabin, finding a school, or having her teach us.

  “She’s different,” I said when the kiss stopped. We didn’t break apart, just leaned into each other, foreheads touching, and his arms around me. “She’s not like regular parents.”

  “She’ll send me back,” he said. “I expect her to. I’m not her kid.”

  “She’ll want you there, I know she will. Besides, remember the sand dollar? Our pact? We’re not going back, no matter what.”

  “Promises are real when you make them,” Billy said. “But they change along the way. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just how it is.”

  “You’ll see. I’ll never break my promise to you,” I said.

  We gazed into each other’s eyes for a long time. I felt as if he were trying to memorize me, as if I were going to disappear. I tried, with my eyes, to tell him, from the deepest part of my heart, that he could believe me, that our promise was as true and real and eternal as the river, that it would outlast anything or anyone who might want us to break it.

  Then we heard three sharp blasts of an air horn: Atik calling to let us know it was time to leave. Billy stood, started to pull me up. But I shook my head and made him crouch down again. The ruined trading post was scattered with broken stones. Many were round, but plenty were flat. We gathered them together, and before we left, we built two tall cairns.

  We didn’t have to tell each other that the cairns represented us: Billy and Maia, so close together. And we left them standing in the place where we’d had our first kiss. Then we walked down the path and dove back into the cold river and swam out to meet the boat.

  The river was wide and straight. Atik kept the throttle open, but by the time we got to Tadoussac it was nearly dark. We swept along the river, then angled a right turn into the half circle of a bay, and the sun disappeared behind the fjord’s soaring rock walls. The sky was indigo, the calm water turned silvery purple, and that’s when I saw the first whale.

  I heard the spout before I saw the whale. The sound is unmistakable after the first time, a combination of whoosh and pfffft. I glanced left just in time to see a V of ghostly mist hanging in the air, and then the sleek white back of a beluga.