The Stranger on the Ice

by Bernadette Calonego

  “You’re telling that to a former journalist?”

  “Why not? You should know it better than the uninitiated.”

  Kosta smiled, but he wasn’t teasing her. He was serious. In fact, he usually was. Like their father. Their stepmother, Bella, on the other hand, had a ready wit. She could be hilarious at times. But Alzheimer’s had stolen her sense of humor. Valerie felt a stabbing pain in her heart. She intended to visit their stepmom right after coming back from Inuvik and the Northwest Territories.

  “So you never heard anything about a boy who went with them?”

  “No,” was all he said.

  She knew why he was being tight-lipped. The two of them could never agree on whether they should or shouldn’t root around in the past and dig up more facts. If they did, whatever they learned wouldn’t remain in the family for very long. The media would be all over them. It was Peter Hurdy-Blaine’s express wish to leave the events be. For their mother’s sake, he’d told the children. And for his sake too. They never said it, but as the three of them grew older, one word hung in the air, invisible and omnipresent: suicide.

  Even after their father’s death, they couldn’t ignore his wish. It was his trauma. They still had to respect his feelings. Mary-Ann Strong’s death had always been taboo. Their father had never offered the merest details. The urn with her ashes was put in a marble columbarium in Vancouver’s largest cemetery. That was not a good way to get over a major disaster. While their father was still alive, it was clear to Valerie and her brothers that any questions about Mary-Ann—especially concerning her death—were not welcome. He wanted to forget—her pain, his pain, the terrible events that had rolled over them like an avalanche of ice. He had escaped, but not his young wife. He must have felt guilty about it. Valerie was able to understand that better later on.

  “I don’t think that boy existed,” Kosta declared. That sounds pretty illogical for a lawyer, she thought, biting her tongue.

  They crossed the Granville Bridge over False Creek inlet.

  Even in the rain, Valerie was enchanted by the view of glassy apartment buildings and the boats in the harbor. She had a sudden urge for an apple focaccia from the public market on Granville Island. But they were on their way to the chic Dunbar area where Kosta and his wife had bought a house twelve years earlier. Clever move. Even a very busy lawyer could hardly afford a nice house there today.

  “Who is Christine Preston anyway? Why would she appear out of the blue and confront you with a thing like that?”

  Kosta sounded almost angry, which baffled Valerie.

  “It wasn’t a confrontation. She was very friendly and . . . I think she’d come across my presentation and just wanted to meet her best childhood friend’s daughter.”

  “Her best childhood friend? Why haven’t we heard anything about her before?”

  Again, she noted his lack of logic.

  “Because this sort of thing was never discussed in our family, as you very well know. We really know precious little about our mother.”

  He didn’t answer right away. A heavy rain was now beating against the windshield; the wipers were working nonstop.

  “Why? Have you ever wanted to know more?”

  She wanted to say, Not for a long time, but I think I do now.

  Kosta continued.

  “You know, it’s interesting that time and again you take tour after tour to an area that isn’t all that far from where it happened.”

  She looked at him in surprise. She was going to Inuvik for the fifth time, and he’d never broached the subject until now.

  “Pure coincidence,” she responded, as calmly as she could. “I go up there because of the demand. People want to go there, and I’ve got to make money. I lead tours to Vancouver Island and southern Alberta for the same reason.”

  At that moment she could convince herself that this was true. But she was also very well aware of the fact that some people in Inuvik could probably still remember her parents and her mother’s death. So far nobody there knew she was Peter Hurdy-Blaine and Mary-Ann Strong’s daughter. Perhaps Kosta was afraid she’d reveal her identity, hoping for new information. She’d done a little research on her mother in the past months—without her brothers’ knowledge. Not much came of it, though. Mary-Ann Strong had apparently left no diaries or other personal documents behind, and their father had largely destroyed his own writings.

  Valerie wondered whether she ought to tell Kosta about Sedna, about the inquiries she’d made. But then she’d have had to tell him about Sedna’s rendezvous with Matt. Matt was a good friend of Kosta’s. Even now. Her brother hadn’t been thrilled about the divorce. And what had Sedna really done anyway? Maybe she was simply a bit more curious than other people.

  “Where does this Christine Preston live anyway?” Kosta asked.

  “In Zurich, Ontario. She was visiting her daughter in Vancouver. She gave me a card with her address and phone number.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  Valerie nodded.

  “Did you call her after you read the article?”

  “No, I was too busy.”

  “OK, I’ll contact her.”

  They hit a traffic light. People with umbrellas hurried over the pedestrian walkways.

  Valerie looked at her brother.

  “Are you worried about Christine Preston?”

  “Not worried, just cautious.”

  He rubbed his left hand over his temple. He always did that when he was tense.

  “I got an anonymous letter a couple of weeks ago.”

  “An anonymous letter? What did it say?”

  “Just one sentence: ‘Peter Hurdy-Blaine, your family is not what it pretends to be.’”

  She repeated the sentence in her mind. What was that supposed to mean? Her father had died sixteen years ago.

  “The letter was addressed to you but meant for Dad?”

  “Yes. Odd, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t get it. Who’d write a thing like that? And . . . who writes letters nowadays? It’s so . . . old-fashioned.”

  “It was written on a computer. There are surely other ways to communicate that would leave fewer traces,” Kosta said, once again the consummate lawyer. “It’s as if the sender wanted us to find him. Or her.”

  “Are you going to do anything about it?”

  “I’m not going to the police, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  No, she didn’t think that. Sometimes Kosta still treated her like a kid sister.

  Their conversation ended abruptly as they turned into Twenty-Third Street West and stopped in front of a two-story building with some rosebushes. She got out and climbed the steps to the entrance carrying a heavy backpack. The door opened, and a little boy pushed ahead of his older sister.

  “Auntie Val, are you going to shoot a polar bear?” he shouted so loudly that half the neighborhood could hear.

  “No, my little bear,” the blond lady who appeared behind the children answered. “The best Auntie Val can do is to shoot pictures with her camera.”

  Valerie grinned and dropped her backpack on the floor. Sandy, her niece, hugged her at once. Her little brother fumbled around with a toy pistol that shot foam-rubber bullets.

  “You can take it with you,” he said, swelling with pride. “I’ll loan it to you.”

  “My darling, we’ve got a flare pistol that makes a lot of noise and a little flame and scares the bears off but doesn’t hurt them.”

  Valerie stroked Sandy’s soft hair and felt the girl’s warm head against her stomach. For a moment she felt weightless and happy.

  Then she heard a still, small voice in her head.

  “Don’t forget your shooting iron.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Stay! You’ve been outdoors long enough today.” Clem gave the command to Meteor, who was trying to leave the house with him.

  His cell phone rang at that moment.

  Ottawa returning his call.

  “They’re send
ing a long-range plane to investigate the explosion. An Aurora,” the voice on the other end of the line announced.

  “Who? Who’s sending the Aurora?”

  “The army.”

  “Sending it from where?”

  “From the Yellowknife unit.”

  “Wow! That means they’re taking this seriously.”

  There was a pause on the line.

  “It’s being treated as a routine operation, and there’ll be a brief press announcement tomorrow. A radio reporter in Inuvik got wind of this so they had to do something.”

  “When will the Aurora be up, exactly?”

  “Dunno. That’s all I can say. Can you keep this under your hat until the media are informed?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you coming to Ottawa soon?”

  “Possibly. A family visit is long overdue.”

  “We’d have a job for you. The new government is looking for good people like you.”

  “Whenever I hear the word government, I feel sick to my stomach.”

  “The climate here is very different now, much more open. The people who made life hard for you are gone. Drowned in their own insignificance.”

  “But everybody still knows what happened . . . back then.”

  “The key people know the real backstory. Hey, man, you don’t still feel guilty?”

  No, not guilty, not anymore. But still bitter.

  “Let me know when you’re coming. We could get together.”

  “A class reunion?”

  “Right on.”

  “I’ll bring the caribou steaks.”

  They laughed and signed off.

  Clem drove to the Great Polar Hotel. His cell phone alerted him again. A text message this time.

  “Am in Whitehorse. Nobody pulled out. Valerie Blaine.”

  Only six more days until she was in Inuvik. She’d reserved rooms at the Great Polar, unlike previous years when she put her customers up in log chalets with woodstoves. The chalets had been booked out for the winter by a Dutch travel agency. Clem could imagine that the hotel, with its modern look and amenities, didn’t square with the image adventurous tourists had of Arctic lodgings. But Valerie wasn’t down about it because they could get to the Muskrat Jamboree on foot from the hotel.

  It occurred to Clem that she hadn’t heard about the weird explosion on the ice.

  Inside the hotel bar, Clem and his buddies didn’t spend time talking about the explosion—or the mysterious death on the Ice Road. Instead they planned their strategy for the upcoming snowmobile race. Given the dramatic events of late, Valerie would have found their chosen topic of conversation odd, to be sure. Vancouver women didn’t understand such things.

  Clem’s team had lost to Paulie Umik’s men the year before. Umik owned a company that was angling to dominate the construction sector in Inuvik. Clem, the favorite, came in third on account of a bad flu. He should have been in bed, but racing fever held the upper hand. Clem’s friend and teammate, Phil Niditichie, a Gwich’in and a teacher at the local community college, was a little ahead of a man on the Umik team, who pulled up even by using a tricky maneuver on a curve. What happened next still triggered controversy and arguments in the delta a whole year afterward. Umik’s team claimed that Phil had deliberately caused the other man’s machine to tip over. Phil was the first to cross the finish line but never saw the six thousand dollars in prize money: he was disqualified despite a barrage of protests. To this day, anger burned like a glowing ember in Clem and his teammates’ hearts.

  They were going to win this year’s race come hell or high water. Clem and Phil had each bought new snowmobiles, and Clem was free of the flu.

  In the middle of their barroom strategizing, Clem’s cell phone rang again. Damn! Marjorie Tama’s name lit up the display. It had totally slipped his mind.

  “Gotta go, people—drum dance at the arena,” he explained, grinning in embarrassment. A wave of wisecracks promptly broke over him.

  “Hey, Clem, you don’t have to go—you can perform for us right here!”

  “We’ll buy you a round if you’re good at it!”

  “Remember not to use a turkey drumstick!”

  “He’s got lead feet; can’t even jump through a doorway!”

  Clem drained his beer and banged the glass down on the bar.

  “OK, guys, it’s about the young people in our town. Somebody’s got to do something for them. Who’s going to volunteer? You just have to serve dried fish and tea. How’s about it?”

  He looked around with an intimidating stare.

  “Where there’s food, there’s gotta be Clem,” Phil Niditichie crowed from the far end of the bar.

  “Where there’s Phil, there’s gotta be one real sharp mind,” Clem retorted. “Real sharp.”

  Everybody howled, including Phil.

  Clem picked up his muskrat-fur hat.

  “Well, looks like I’m the only one who gives a damn about indigenous culture. And don’t forget, boys: no boozing during the Muskrat Jamboree.”

  “That’s why we’re filling our gullets today!” Poppy Dixon shouted. Laughter and hollering followed Clem out the door.

  Outside, a white veil of snow flitted like a ghost through the gathering darkness. A strong wind whirled up snowflakes like dry leaves. Was it punishment for the string of sunny days? He dove into the icy elements like a bull into a matador’s red cape.

  Pickups and SUVs were lined up in front of the arena when he arrived.

  Marjorie Tama waved to him as he entered the warm building. She tried to shout at him from a distance, but nothing penetrated the roar of the drums, the singing, and the gusts of laughter. The benches were crowded: a colorful mishmash of Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, Métis, and white people. Before reaching the corner where the mayor was setting up dishes of food and several thermos jugs, he noticed what the crowd found so funny. John Palmer, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, was hopping around the arena with some kids and teenagers. In uniform, ammunition belt and all. Palmer waddled like a goose, flapped his hands as if playing an invisible piano, squatted to the right, then left, and rotated his arms like a windmill. Holy smoke!

  Clem had to admit the guy had no qualms about being the butt of all that laughter. The two teens beside him, who were warming up for the drum dance competition, looked positively statesmanlike compared to Palmer. Their parkas sparkled blue and red with traditional embroidery, and they were trimmed with wolverine fur and white piping. The RCMP officer brushed off the laughter, throwing himself into his dance with a look of sheer delight on his face. Palmer was a young man from Mississauga in Ontario and had only been stationed in town for nine months. It didn’t escape Clem that the new police officer was making an effort to mix with the native populations and establish a good rapport with their young people.

  “Break’s coming up. Are you ready?”

  Marjorie was standing beside him. She pulled at his jacket.

  “Still cold?” she said. “You should dance too.” She laughed, and her eyes nearly vanished completely beneath the folds of her skin. Clem followed her to the snack table.

  “Do you know what the story’s about?” Marjorie shouted in his ear.

  “What story?”

  “The song, the dance.”

  He said he didn’t know.

  She tried to explain it to him, but the noise level was too high. She laughed and shrugged. The Inuvialuit would habitually laugh at any hardship.

  It was critical for the police officer, John Palmer, to show his face at this event: somebody might whisper something in his ear. Gisèle’s death had scarcely been mentioned, at least to Clem. Maybe the silence was an expression of helplessness. Or maybe everyone thought it was better to keep your mouth shut—especially if you didn’t know if a crime had been committed or not. You might say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Clem had heard through the grapevine that many parents were forbidding their daughters to go out at night.

  Clem lost sight of Palmer
while serving the children and adults their dried fish and tea. Marjorie set another tray down on the table, maktak with barbecue sauce.

  “Beluga,” she explained. “Not for you—after all, the police are here,” she teased.

  Inuvialuit loved blubber but couldn’t legally sell it to tourists and whites. Any whale killed was destined for their own needs. Clem’s eyes roamed around the arena. He saw Palmer off in a corner, cell phone to his ear.

  “Have you ever hunted qilalugaq?” an old man asked him, giggling as Clem piled up the shining, pink-white cubes on a plastic plate. He laughed along with the old man, who knew very well that Clem hadn’t killed the whale himself. Only the local Inuvialuit in the Mackenzie Delta had permission to kill belugas. This annoyed some white hunters. Low-class types, as Clem thought of them, who regarded the world as a gigantic hunting ground. The beluga paradise was forbidden to them. Clem didn’t give a fig about it, though he owned a hunting rifle. He’d never have dreamed of admitting that he found it more fun to photograph animals than kill them. That did not conform with the image many men in Inuvik projected.

  “Why do you think my skin’s so white?” he asked the old man, who kept hanging around him. “Because I eat so much beluga maktak?”

  The old man’s face lit up like the sun.

  “No, because you eat a lot of snow!”

  The people in line behind him snickered, and Clem flashed his broadest grin as he filled up plate after plate.

  “One point to you, my friend,” he conceded. “Be careful not to eat too much maktak or you’ll be as white as the tanngit.”

  “Not as white as your toes, you softie!” a teenager shouted; he was wearing a hoodie and sneakers, in spite of the cold. The look was everything.

  “Clem, got a minute?”

  John Palmer materialized before him.

  “Sure, just let me . . .”

  He signaled to Marjorie to replace him at the snack table.

  Palmer took him over to the bulletin board, away from the crowd.

  He didn’t waste time on pleasantries.

  “Do you know where Helvin is?”

  Clem saw drops of sweat on John’s forehead. Dancing must have been strenuous.

  “No. Why?”