A Green Place for Dying

by R. J. Harlick

  “Life goes on, my Miskowàbigonens,” he murmured. “We all do things we’re not proud of, things we wished we hadn’t done. And as the years pass, we live with the guilt boring ever deeper into our soul. But there comes a time when we must relinquish this guilt. Toss it out for the gods to judge. And whatever they decide we must live with.

  “You’ve been dealing with this guilt ever since you were a girl. It’s time for you to free yourself of it. Toss it up to the Great Spirit and let him carry it.

  “So please, my little red flower. Rest easy. I will not judge you. You’ve suffered enough. Besides, wait until you hear about some of the things I’ve done. I can outmatch you any old day.” He chuckled.

  Exasperated, I punched him on the chest, but with more play in the touch than force. However, when I pulled my hand away, he encircled it and placed it over the amulet hanging again around his neck, courtesy of a shoelace taken from my boot.

  “You found my odjik, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Yes, in the cabin where you’d left it.”

  “And you put it back where it belongs with the red flower.” His voice carried uncertainty. His brows were arched in query.

  I leaned on my elbow and stared into the soft grey depths of his eyes. I hesitated before girding up my nerve. “More than anything, I want us to belong together … but … but only if you want to.”

  “I do. Life wasn’t worth living without you. You are my one and only love, my Miskowàbigonens. I missed you.”

  I smiled into his beaming face. “I missed you too. I promise I’ll never turn away from you again.”

  I collapsed back into his arms. We were whole again.

  Chapter

  Fifty—Six

  Eric struggled to sit up in bed. “Whoa, I’m weaker than I thought.”

  “Do you feel dizzy?” I asked, suddenly worried as I placed another pillow behind his back.

  “No. Just weak. But nothing a few days in bed with you wouldn’t cure.” His dimples beckoned.

  “Just a few? I think it should be for at least a week.” I tucked the duvet firmly around him.

  “More like a month, I’d say. It’s going to take a lot of TLC for me to recover.”

  I laughed. A month would suit me very nicely, even longer.

  He winced as he gingerly touched the bandage on his head. “Boy, they sure walloped me, didn’t they? It feels like the size of an egg.”

  “Not quite, but you have a good bump. Maybe some sense was finally knocked into you.” I placed a hot mug of tea on the night table beside him. “I ran into Will on my way back from the kitchen. He wants to know if you’re up to a visit.”

  “I know I’ll have to talk to him soon, but for the moment I’d like it to be just us. What about my daughter? Is she around?”

  “Will said she’s gone back to the river to look for Fleur in the daylight. The rain last night made it too difficult to do a proper search. He’s staying behind to deal with the women. I gather some of them need reassurance.”

  “I don’t doubt they’ll need time to adjust. They’ve been through a lot, but now thanks to you guys they are free and their healing can begin.”

  “I gather from Will that only two of the women were part of that group of missing Ottawa women you were investigating.”

  “Yeah, so I discovered. The other six were nabbed in Montreal. To tell you the truth, I never did hold out much hope that many of them would be found. These trafficked women get shunted from brothel to brothel, so the trail gets lost pretty quickly, and besides, this kind of business isn’t exactly good for one’s health.”

  “Will has started grilling the manager. Hopefully he can extract enough information to trace them.”

  “I’d sure like to hope so. But I tell you, Meg, after what I’ve been through and what I’ve seen, I’ve lost a lot of faith in my fellow man. I think it will be a miracle if any of those women are ever found.”

  “But at least the traffickers have been stopped, so no more women will be entrapped.”

  “True, but I don’t doubt another group of traffickers will soon take their place. There’s too much money to be made in prostitution.”

  “My, we are feeling gloomy, aren’t we? You need a hug.” I wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly before letting go.

  I passed him the steaming tea. “Here, this will make you feel better.”

  “Yes, Mother.” He grinned and grabbed the mug. “Everything still feels so surreal, from the kidnapping to the rescue. After I made that call to the bank, I really believed I was a goner, so when I saw you standing in front of me, I was convinced I was dreaming. Even now, I still can’t quite believe the ordeal is over.”

  “It’s not a dream, my love. I’m here and will never leave your side again.” I kissed him.

  “The kidnapping happened so quickly. There wasn’t much I could do. All I could think was of the need to leave a trail for someone to follow, like the kids do in one of your people’s fairy tales.”

  “You mean Hansel and Gretel.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I found your sacred rock too.”

  “In the parking lot?”

  I nodded.

  “Amazing, I was worried that it wouldn’t stand out amongst all the other stones.”

  “The sparkle of the gold caught my attention. By the way, the body of a friend of Fleur’s was found close to that parking lot.”

  “You’re talking about Becky Wapachee, aren’t you? I watched her die. She tried to run away while they were switching us from one vehicle to another. They couldn’t catch her, so he dropped her with a knife then took out his anger on her. It was terrible to watch. Since she’d been used to recruit some of the young women, she knew what was in store. I guess forced prostitution was okay for her victims, but not for her.” He paused to drink some tea. “And to set the record straight, Becky was no friend of Fleur’s. She was the one who got her into this terrible situation.”

  “What about the woman at the Welcome Centre, Doris?”

  “She and Becky worked as a team. Doris would identify potential candidates and Becky would befriend them. They used a modeling ad to reel in these poor unsuspecting women.”

  “Was there another woman involved? I ask because a woman who also worked at the Welcome Centre was killed. Claire was her name.”

  “I had my suspicions about her, but I was never able to prove them. I began to suspect that Doris was identifying potential candidates from information gathered at the Centre. Since she didn’t have ready access to the files, she would need someone who did, and Claire, because of her role as a counsellor, could’ve been that person. But I think Claire was starting to regret her role. She left several anxious messages on my cell phone, but before I had a chance to return her calls, I was kidnapped.”

  “Maybe she was the one that got you kidnapped?”

  “Maybe, but I have a feeling it was Doris. I could tell she was pretty upset when I turned up at Auntie’s Place. She pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about, but I was fairly certain she was lying. At one point she left the room. I think that’s when she placed the call to the gang running this trafficking operation. When I stepped out of the building, they were waiting for me.”

  “I know. The Ottawa police have a witness who saw your kidnapping.”

  “So why the hell didn’t they do anything about it?”

  “Although getting the police to move has been a major challenge, in this instance they’re not at fault. It took us a couple of months to realize you were missing, so they’ve only been working on trying to find you for the past week.”

  “But surely when Teht’aa didn’t hear from me after the canoe trip, she should’ve known something was wrong?”

  “She just assumed you were too busy to call her. It was only when Dan Blackbird called that she realized you never made it to Vancouver. She then called up one of your canoeing buddies and discovered you hadn’t been on the canoeing trip either.
That’s when we knew something was terribly wrong.”

  “I thought the guy was going to kill me after he killed Becky. Instead they shoved me into the trunk of a car. There were two of them, bikers wearing Black Devils patches. I don’t think they drove very far before stopping next to a lake and forcing me onto a floatplane. I left another of my crumbs on the beach, the miniature hockey stick given to me by a friend.” He grinned. “I don’t suppose you found that one?”

  “Nope, I didn’t know there was a lake. But perhaps the police will see it when they eventually learn of this lake and we can put it back where it belongs.” I squeezed his hand and kissed it. “Wait a minute, I think the latest murder victim was found by a lake, Lac aux Herons, maybe that’s the one. Do you know who the guy was that killed Becky?”

  “Yes, a coldblooded bastard by the name of Fran.”

  “You will be relieved to know that he’s the one Will killed last night.”

  His eyes brightened. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear of someone being dead. He was ruthless. Treated the girls as if they were his personal harem. He liked chaining his women up, particularly native women. I gather from Fleur he called them his squaw meat and treated them accordingly. He was the first to use Fleur so despicably. I’m glad he’s dead.

  “But you know, Meg, I owe Fleur my life. Once they stopped trying to beat out of me all I knew about their operations and who I’d told, I figured my days were numbered. But it didn’t happen. Hoping to stall drastic action, Fleur told them about September’s money transfer into the reserve’s accounts, which she knew about from her father. She told them I was the only one with authority to access the account, so they needed to keep me alive. And they bought it. They pretty much left me alone after that. I thought for sure we’d be rescued before I had to make the phone call to the bank manager. That was two days ago.”

  “I know. Once Will heard about your call, he knew your life was in immediate danger. ”

  “I’d made my peace with the Creator before I made the call, knowing the minute those guys learned they weren’t getting the money, that would be the end of me. The money belongs to our people. There was no way I was going to let them have it.”

  “You are very lucky they decided not to kill you right away.”

  “Once again I have Fleur to thank for that. God, it makes me sick to think that she is the one that didn’t survive.”

  “She was a very brave young woman.” I squeezed his hands and kissed him gently on the forehead. “And I will be eternally grateful to her.”

  “She concocted a story about me being a powerful medicine man and that if they killed me, the wrath of the spirits would descend and they would die a very painful and mysterious death. So I —”

  His words were drowned out by the reverberating echo of a helicopter. I raced to the window in time to see a white helicopter with the words AirMédic stamped on its side land on the front lawn. Two floatplanes circled over the lake for a landing. Both bore the insignia of the Sûreté du Québéc along with the word “Police.”

  The police had finally paid attention.

  At the same moment, Will burst into the room. “Teht’aa’s found Fleur. She’s alive!”

  Chapter

  Fifty—Seven

  Echo Lake was aglow with reflected oranges, yellows, and reds of the surrounding hills. With the colours at their peak, it was the kind of quintessential fall day that only seems to happen in Canadian Shield country; a sparkling sun that brings everything into sharp relief, an electric blue sky, cool, crisp air, and flat, still water, so still that you could cut a knife through it and barely ripple the mirror. I was basking in its glory, relaxing in a Muskoka chair on the dock with Sergei asleep at my feet. I was waiting for Eric to return from the Fishing Camp. He’d paddled down Forgotten Bay shortly after lunch on some secret mission he refused to divulge, despite my amorous entreaties. He’d promised a surprise for dinner and I was getting hungry.

  Since our return over three weeks ago from the northern Quebec forests, this was the first time we had been parted, except for the three days Eric had spent in the hospital in Montreal. But even then, I had been at his bedside from the moment visiting hours started in the morning until they ended at night. If the nurses had chosen to turn a blind eye, I would’ve slept in my sleeping bag on the floor beside him. But rules were rules and they whisked me out of his room the moment the clock struck nine.

  It had been a tense few days, while the doctors poked, prodded, and scanned his head searching for signs of brain damage. Fortunately, he hadn’t sustained a skull fracture, and although there had been some intracranial bleeding, it had been minor and hadn’t led to any brain swelling. So after laughingly declaring that Eric had one very hard head, the doctor had said he was well enough to return home, but he was to take it easy and avoid any activity that could cause another knock to the head. This latest concussion, together with the four he’d received playing hockey, had increased his risk for possible long-term effects. Another could tip him over the edge.

  So we’d taken advantage of the solitude and isolation of Three Deer Point, keeping anyone other than close family and friends at bay, while Eric healed. His ribs were beginning to fill out and the redness around his wrists and ankles had almost disappeared, as had the soreness in his shoulder and hip joints. As for what he had unknowingly endured while lying stretched out, unconscious on the rack, there had been no detrimental effect … thank goodness.

  Since the band’s affairs had run so smoothly under the acting chief during Eric’s long absence, he’d seen no need to dive back into its operations. Instead he’d decided it was time to retire. He’d achieved what he’d set out to do when he’d been first elected band chief almost ten years ago. He was confident that there were enough like-minded councillors and other band members to continue the course he had set in striving for greater self-sufficiency. Besides, last night, Dan Blackbird had called wanting to know if Eric was ready to become involved on a more full-time basis with the Grand Council of First Nations. He’d promptly said yes. Tomorrow he was submitting his resignation as band chief of the Migiskan Anishinabeg.

  Yesterday we’d driven Fleur to Ottawa. Although much was being done to help her, I wasn’t sure whether she would fully overcome her horrifying ordeal at Sunset Lodge.

  After finding Fleur several kilometres downriver from the falls, Teht’aa had taken the half-drowned, shivering woman upriver to where we had set up the tents. There she had done her best to care for her. Fortunately, apart from hypothermia, the worst Fleur had suffered was a broken arm, from crashing into a rock.

  I later learned from Eric about her recounting of her suicide attempt. As she was plunging head first into the falls, her will to live took over, and she arched her body as far from the rocks below as she could. Luckily, she’d overreached her dive, so found herself far enough away from the cascading water to avoid serious injury. But she became caught up in the powerful rotating currents below the falls. She was certain she was going to drown, when the river suddenly released its hold and thrust her upwards to the surface. “It was not your time to die,” Eric told her. “The Creator has other plans for you.” But rather than accepting his comforting words, she chose to scorn them with a few choice swear words. Still, she did later agree to spend a couple of weeks with Summer Grass Woman.

  When we arrived in Montreal, her father was waiting by the ambulance. She refused to have anything to do with him. Instead she shouted at him to leave and denounced him as her father. Rather than protesting, he merely shrugged and replied derisively that she was damaged goods and wasn’t worthy of being his daughter. He walked off without a backward glance, much to the astonishment of us and the paramedics. I later revealed my suspicions of sexual abuse to Eric. He had already started to form his own.

  Fleur was no more forthcoming with her mother. I’d found Marie-Claude in tears in Eric’s hospital room, after being turned away by her daughter. Once again she was consumed with
guilt, insisting that she deserved this punishment for refusing to acknowledge, let alone try to stop her husband’s abuse of her two oldest daughters. Eric managed to placate her by pointing out that she was now doing the right thing in leaving her husband. He also said Fleur needed time on her own to heal, but he believed that when she was ready she would seek out her mother. In the meantime, it was their job, his and Marie-Claude’s, to do all they could to help Fleur, and a first step would be for Fleur to begin her healing under the care of Summer Grass Woman. So for the past two and a half weeks, the young woman had been staying with the elder at her healing lodge on Whispers Island.

  Yesterday, after seeing her for the first time since I’d driven her back with us from Montreal, I knew Eric had given the right advice. The young woman no longer hid behind a mask of hostility and distrust. Instead she greeted me with a tentative smile and thanked me for having saved her, something she hadn’t done until that moment. But she stiffened and backed away when I tried to hug her, so I knew it would take more time before she would allow anyone to come near her. With Sergei, on the other hand, she had no qualms about burying her face in his thick, curly coat and wrapping her arms around him.

  We’d driven her to a farm just outside Ottawa, where she’d be staying for the next couple of months. The owner, a friend of Mary Eshkakogan, had a way with wounded creatures and ran a wildlife rescue operation that always needed helpers. The woman’s grandmother, an Ojibway elder, lived with her. These two women had made great inroads in the healing of other abused women Mary had sent to the bucolic acreage.

  Since Fleur wasn’t yet able to forgive her mother, no consideration was given to her living with her family at her uncle’s apartment. But she was still close to her sisters, so they would be visiting her at the farm. In fact, the two of them had been waiting expectantly when we arrived at the farm. As we drove off, the view through the back window of three of them wrapped in one anothers’ arms made me feel considerably more optimistic about Fleur’s recovery.