by Peggy Blair
The emergency physician approached them. Apiro leaped to his feet. “How is Maria? Is she all right?”
“She’s awake.” He smiled. “Go ahead, Dr. Apiro. You can see her now.”
Apiro rushed down the corridor.
The physician turned to Ramirez. “She’ll have a sore throat for a few days. She’ll have to sip liquids through a straw. And suck on chips of ice, if she can find any. But she’ll be fine.” He lowered his voice. “Inspector Ramirez, are you aware that this victim is transgendered? Her hyoid bone is much larger than that of a woman. That may have helped her survive this attack. Was this the reason for the assault?”
“No. I don’t think her attacker had any idea about her gender. Most people wouldn’t,” said Ramirez. “There’s no need to say anything about this to Dr. Apiro. And if you can avoid putting any reference to it in your report, I’d appreciate it. As you can see”—he inclined his head down the hall—“they’re emotionally involved.”
“Dr. Apiro doesn’t know?”
“I’m sure he does, but he doesn’t need to know that I do. Besides, I’ll have to file a copy of your report with the Canadian authorities. Maria’s assailant won’t be going to trial in Cuba, but she faces serious charges in Canada. The Minister of the Interior has instructed that she be returned there immediately. He wants her own people to deal with her. I’d like to see Maria’s private medical information kept out of those reports.”
The minister had no more interest in a nearly dead jinetera than he had in a dead one—he wanted the problem gone, particularly when a Cuban trial for the murder of two jineteras and the attempted murder of another would publicly expose Manuel Flores’s treason. But Ramirez didn’t want to give him another ground for blackmail.
The physician shrugged. “I don’t have to mention it. It’s not relevant.”
Ramirez thanked him and walked down the dingy hallway. He poked his head into Maria’s room. She was propped up on the bed, looking pale and vulnerable. Her neck was badly bruised. Apiro was standing beside her, holding her slender hand in his large one.
“Will you be all right if I leave you here with Maria, Hector? I have to go to the train station to pick up my family this evening. Detective Espinoza will be over shortly, if you need anything. I really should get going. There are a few things I need to do before Francesca and the children get home.”
“Of course, asere,” said Apiro. “Ricardo, I’m so grateful. I can’t tell you how much I owe you. How much we both owe you.”
Maria tried to speak, but the only sound she made was a croak. She put a hand to her throat and shrugged helplessly.
Ramirez smiled. “I’m glad it all worked out. You’re a lucky man, Hector, to have found a woman like Maria. Most men I know would envy you.”
66
The elder held Pagidaendijigewin, the ritual of the dead. He placed a small pile of tobacco in a clamshell and lit it with a match. He smudged everyone present at Freda Wabigoon’s wake, cleansing the air, their spirits. He waved an eagle feather above the clamshell, sending smoke over each person’s face and chest. The smoke would carry their words and prayers skyward to Gitche Manitou, the great unknown.
Outside the gymnasium, the sky was a cold, bright, clear blue. There were no storm clouds to be seen. The sky gods had settled down.
“The souls of the dead, on their journey to the great meadow, must walk a narrow path across a river,” the elder said in English. “Those who are hurtful to others always fall.” His voice softened as he switched to Ojibway.
“Mam’oon o’w, giwii-wiidooka. We say goodbye today to a beloved wife, mother, and daughter. She followed the path of life. She honoured our brothers: the wolf, the snail, the bear, the whitefish, the eagle, and the trout. She understood that nature is our teacher.”
He put the pipe down and reached for his small drum. He sang travelling songs as he thumped it with his hand.
When the prayers and songs were over, the elder spoke directly to the spirit of Freda Wabigoon. He told her what to expect in her travels, and how to behave when she reached the lands of souls. “I know your spirit hears me, Freda. Be careful as you walk. Watch for the blue light, and listen for running water. Those are your guides. In four days, my sister, you will leave us. K’d’ninguzhimim, wauwkweeng k’d’izhau.” To the land of souls, you are bound.
When the elder was finished, he handed Bill Wabigoon a small piece of folded birch bark that contained a braid of Freda’s hair.
As people mingled, Charlie Pike solemnly shook Pauley Oshig’s thin hand. Someone had smeared charcoal on the boy’s forehead to keep Freda’s spirit from taking him with her if she got lonely.
Pike gave Molly Oshig a hug. He walked over to Chief Wabigoon to say goodbye. “I’m sorry for your loss, Bill.”
Wabigoon nodded and wiped away tears. “I’m going to miss her, Charlie. She was a good woman. Your auntie was a lot of help, getting things ready. She gave us some little birch baskets that we put inside the casket. Freda don’t need much food where she’s going, but you know how it is. She’s wearing her moccasins.”
Pike nodded. The Anishnabe believed that spirits needed to be fed on their journey to Gaagige Minawaanigoziwining, the land of everlasting happiness. The tiny baskets were filled with food. The dead wore moccasins so that their footprints melded with those of their ancestors on the path. Not shoe prints, thought Pike. Footprints.
“She was proud of you, Bill. She told me so.”
Wabigoon took a deep breath and nodded gratefully. “Will you stay for the feast? Moose stew. Macaroni and corn soup, and some whitefish they pulled from the bay today. Freda would have liked that. Pretty much everyone will be there to send her on her way. We’ll be burning tobacco all week to light up her journey.”
“No, I can’t, Bill, much as I’d like to,” Pike said. As soon as he said it, he realized he was genuinely sorry he couldn’t stay. “I have a plane to catch in a few hours. But it was good to see you again.” He was surprised to discover he meant that too.
Bill Wabigoon smiled as if he’d read Charlie’s mind. “You call me when you get back to Ottawa. I’m going to need your help with that police force we’re planning. We have lots to talk about, you and me. And Sheldon too.”
“I’ll do that,” said Pike. He walked over to where Sheldon Waubasking was standing. He clapped his friend on the back. “Came to say goodbye, Sheldon. I got to get going.”
“Hey, it’s not goodbye, Charlie. You’ll be back,” Sheldon said, grinning. “You can’t stay for the feast? You know what they call a wake in Ojibway, eh? Tim Hortons.”
Pike laughed. He saw the elder packing up his belongings and remembered the pouch of tobacco in his pocket. He pulled it out and walked over to the elder. He handed him the tobacco.
“Miigwetch,” the elder said, and Pike realized it was the elder from the sweat lodge.
“Can I ask you something? You mentioned a blue light in the service. What did you mean?”
“The traditional people believe that on the journey to the land of souls, the spirit has two guides. There’s a blue light that glows to show the way, and there’s the sound of the river. You’re supposed to keep the blue light in front of you and the river to your left, so you can stay on a straight path and not get tempted to go astray.”
Maybe it wasn’t Luminol that Pauley saw, thought Pike. Maybe whatever it was that made the boy different let him see things that others couldn’t, the same way it let him speak with birds.
“Do you really think she’ll go to a better place?” he asked.
“Not all of them do,” the elder said. “Some of them decide to stay in this world, so they can help their friends and family. You can see them sometimes in the northern lights when they’re dancing.”
Pike thanked the elder. He walked over to where his auntie Alma waited. She was bundled up in her warm hat and mit
tens. A blanket covered her ruined legs. Outside, he pushed her wheelchair through the snow. The wheels carved parallel tracks as they made their way up the hill to the graveyard to pay their respects to his father.
Hundreds of glossy black crows followed them as Alma directed him to the spot. The birds settled silently into the pine trees above them.
Pike ran his fingers around the beaded cuff bracelet on his wrist. “Go back to your people,” the old man had told him in Ottawa. “That’s where you belong. Mine are Anaandeg, on my mother’s side. We have big families.”
Anaandeg, Pike thought. Yes, it was a big family, crows, and getting bigger all the time. The trees were getting crowded. Maybe that was the reason the crows had started walking. Or maybe they were turning back into people.
Pike made sure his auntie was tucked comfortably under her blanket, then left her alone for a few minutes while he looked out at Manomin Bay. The steel-blue water glinted gold where patches of ice captured the light. The way the dark water gleamed, it almost looked like mercury.
His auntie was right. They had buried his father in a beautiful spot, overlooking that part of the bay where his grandfather had drowned. Pike stood for a long time, thinking about his mother and his father. He let his anger slowly release, easing the tightness in his chest he’d carried for so long. He finally returned to his auntie’s wheelchair. As he pushed her down the hill to the elders’ lodge, the crows flew off, one by one.
67
Mabel Nahwegahbow moved stiffly, arthritis twisting her knees.
“You know, Charlie, I think I have a photograph of those children, those little boys. They took it the day an official from the church visited the school. They all got dressed up, like the Pope himself was going to be there. That’s why I remember it so well. That one little boy you were talking about, yes, I remember him too. He drowned in the lake the very next day.”
She walked to a cabinet that held china and figurines in the upper part and opened a drawer. She removed a pile of photographs and brushed the top one gently.
“I loved those little children, you know. I tried to speak Ojibway to them, but we weren’t supposed to, and if we did, we got punished. Can’t tell you how many times those nuns got me with a ruler. And I wasn’t even a student by then; I was the kitchen help.”
She handed him the photo. “This one.” She pointed. “On the end of that row in the front. The little one in front of the priest. That’s the boy that drowned. I guess he thought he could make it across the harbour and get home, but the ice gave way. He wasn’t very old, maybe seven. Oh, my, I remember the principal was really mad. He said that we shouldn’t tell anyone, that he’d take care of it. But I saw the older boys outside with shovels that night, digging a hole in the ground.” She wiped away a tear. “I was only fifteen myself, you know. I’d finished my fourth grade, so they made me work in the kitchen. There was nothing I could do to protect any of those little children. I still feel guilty about that.”
“Do you know his name—the boy who drowned?”
“His English name was Joseph, but the other boys called him Manajiwin. That’s how I knew who you were looking for as soon as you mentioned it. Do you know what it means in our language?”
“Respect,” said Pike.
“That’s right.” The old woman sighed. “There was one nun who was always after him, poor little Joe. Oh, she was bad. She’d grab him by the ear and twist it hard till he cried. Show some respect, she’d say whenever she scolded him. I think the other boys thought if they called him that, the sister could see respect whenever she looked at him and maybe she’d stop hurting him.”
“What about his brothers? Can you remember anything about them?”
“Oh, my, let me think. There were four of them. Peter was the oldest. He must have been nine or ten. Then came Joseph, the little one who drowned. Then Thomas. And John was the littlest. He was maybe five.” She smiled. “The older boys called him Long John, after Long John Silver, the pirate, because he had really long hair when he first came to school. The teachers cut it all off, all that beautiful hair. That frightened us, because we only cut our hair when someone died.
“They loved puns, all the children. They made up names for all the nuns and the priests. ‘Big Foot’ for Father Lafete. That made me laugh to myself whenever they whispered it, because that priest certainly did have big feet, I must say. And I remember they called that visiting priest ‘Little Ray of Sunshine’ when he came too, but I can’t remember why. He was the one that came to the school the day that Joe drowned. He’s in that picture. That’s little Joe he’s standing behind. Funny what you remember after all these years, isn’t it?”
Pike looked at the photograph. There were three rows of Ojibway children lined up on benches, girls and boys. The boys’ hair was cut short and they wore awkward, ill-fitting suits. Some looked like they’d been squirming when the camera captured their images. The girls had long skirts, their hair plaited. They sat passively, resigned.
A young priest stood at the end of the first row, his hands resting lightly on the shoulder of the small boy Mabel had identified as Joseph, the boy that drowned. The priest was Ray Callendes. He was the only person smiling.
“Did Peter have a nickname too?”
Mabel looked at the ceiling for a minute, thinking. “They called him Peter Rabbit, now that I think of it, because he’d steal vegetables from the garden, but he always got caught.”
“Was that his last name, Rabbit?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. There are some Rabbits around Manitoulin Island, but that’s pretty far south. And I’ve met some Rabbit Skin people too, but they were all Cree. These boys spoke the same language as us. Not from Sandy Lake or Manomin Bay, but somewhere not too far; we had the same accent. I remember whenever they called him Rabbit, he’d smile. A sweet little boy, you know. Whenever he smiled, he lit right up.”
Pike thought of the old man who called him son, and the damage caused to him by the priest who stood at the end of the row, his hands resting casually on the shoulders of the child he’d already chosen as his next victim. Angry tears stung Pike’s eyes.
“He had really long hair too, when he started school,” Mabel added. “That’s the other reason they called him Peter Rabbit, come to think of it. It was another pun. I think his last name was Hare.”
“Do you know what happened to the others, to Thomas and John?” Pike asked. “Are they still alive?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t, Charlie. I stopped working at the school when I turned sixteen. I haven’t thought about those little boys for years.”
As Pike got up to leave, the old woman spoke again, haltingly, as if trying to decide how much she could trust him. “I heard they found human remains back there, Charlie. Last spring. Behind the school.”
“Who found them?”
“Some parents from Pelican Lake whose children went missing a long, long time ago. Back in the seventies. They’ve been looking for them for years. They started digging out back and they found some buttons, same as the ones that were on everyone’s school uniforms. They kept on going until they found bones. The elders said they were human, so they buried them in the graveyard at their reserve. The traditional way, four days later.”
“They’re supposed to call the coroner when they find human remains so they can be examined by an expert,” Pike said, exhaling. “Did they do any forensic testing? Do they know whose bones they were?”
She looked at him sadly. “The elders don’t need some white scientist to tell them what human bones look like, Charlie. They know what comes from an animal and what doesn’t. Besides, it doesn’t matter. We always bury our dead.”
Pike nodded slowly, his mind whirling. “How many did they find?”
“Sixteen, is what I heard.”
“Sixteen bones?”
“No, Charlie. Sixteen children.”
&nbs
p; 68
Inspector Ramirez pushed open the door to the Chinese restaurant. Before he went to pick up his family at the train station, he wanted to try to contact Antifona Conejo, and there was only one way he could think of to do that. He no longer trusted anything that Manuel Flores had told him about his visions. Besides, whatever they were, they were hardly subconscious. Ramirez approached the same waitress who served him when he was there with Dr. Yeung.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for the ‘ask rice’ woman. The old woman that was working here the other day?”
The woman looked puzzled and shook her head. “We have no old women employed in this restaurant. All our servers are young.”
Ramirez looked around the room. The waitresses were Cuban, wearing tight satin dresses with high collars. “She’s Chinese. Maybe in her seventies or even older. She has a necklace made of gold coins around her neck.”
“Oh, I know who you mean now. There is an old woman with a necklace like that. She runs the kiosko that sells paper dragons and Chinese kites. Out the front door, down the street, on your right. She comes in for green tea in the afternoon.”
Ramirez walked outside and saw the small kiosk. Red lanterns swung from its four corners. As he approached, he recognized her immediately. The cluster of coins still hung around her neck. Her face was creased with spiderweb lines.
“Dr. Yeung said you’d be back,” she said, and bowed to him. “She flew back to China this morning, but she left this for you.” She reached below the counter and handed him a package.
“You speak Spanish,” he said, surprised.
“I was born here, Señor.” She smiled. “My grandmother was Chinese.”
“I need to talk to the hungry ghost again. Can you help me?”