Around sunset, Papa and I left our room in the shopkeeper’s house where we were staying and returned to the cemetery by foot. We were supposed to be getting some air—that’s what we told Mama. We walked along the main road, our moccasined feet sinking into the fresh snow. Papa jumped the picket fence and grabbed my arm to help me over. While I kept watch, he kneeled at Rita’s grave. He stuck his finger into the grave’s loose soil, reached into his pocket and pulled out tobacco. He slipped it into the earth. We were supposed to put food onto the casket as well so her spirit could find it, but Papa looked this way and that, and said, “Let’s go.”
We walked back the way we came. It was dark now, and the cloud covered the moon, making the road hard to follow beneath the snow. When we got back to our room, I saw that Mama was asleep, or at least pretending to be. I curled up next to her and felt her warm breath against my back.
We returned to Fort Albany after the funeral. Mama could not bring herself to return to our trapping camp where we lost Rita. Almost everyone else was still out in the bush, and the empty houses made Fort Albany feel like a ghost town. There were a few people left behind, like those who worked at the school and at the Hudson’s Bay store, but they were all a lot older than me, and I missed the Tomikaticks, especially Joseph.
We stayed in our one-room wooden house, and most mornings we had to dig ourselves out from snow. We heated our house with our wood stove. Papa promised that as soon as the ground had thawed he would find some timber and make the house bigger.
One day he came home with two kerosene lanterns. He told us kids to put out all the candles in the house and lie on our moosehide bed. He asked Mama to come and join us, and she said she was in the middle of fixing our moccasins and he should go ahead without her. He sat with us and turned a knob, and the release of gas sounded like a cat hissing and the room became warm with light.
He said, “Last night I had a dream. I was visited by a wolf, a manitou. He said that this year will be good. We will be rewarded as soon as we get back to our trapline.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon. Soon. Right, Netchi?” He glanced at Mama. She looked at him but didn’t say anything, and carried on with her sewing.
Over the next few weeks Mama mostly stayed home. When I asked her if she could play with me, she said she was tired and that I should go outside and play with Alex. It worried me, and I wondered if Papa had noticed it too, and whether he was going to say anything to her. I knew he wanted to go back to the land to trap, but Mama was too upset. They often discussed these sorts of things at night, after they thought the rest of us had fallen asleep. One night I decided to stay up, to eavesdrop. Once the candle was out, they started whispering to each other in the dark.
“Remember when we first met at the dance?”
“Of course, Keshayno.”
“How good you felt in my arms.”
Papa loved telling the story about how he met Mama when she was sixteen. He said that as soon as he saw her, he knew that she was the one.
“We danced all night long.”
“Keshayno. I’m trying to sleep.”
“Then after we were married, we went skinny dipping up the Albany,” Papa said.
“Come on, Keshayno.”
“I remember your skin was so smooth in the water. It felt like a pebble baked in the sun.”
“Keshayno. There are kids around. They can hear you.”
“No they can’t. We should do that again,” Papa said.
“In the snow?”
“In the spring.”
“Oh, Keshayno. Things are different now,” Mama said.
“But they don’t need to be.”
“Yes they do.”
“What’s so different?”
“Everything.”
“What?”
“There’s Rita … and …”
“Rita would have wanted this.”
“Keshayno. She was a baby. She certainly didn’t want her parents swimming naked.”
“You know what I mean.”
Next morning, Papa made us some hot tea and bannock, and then he went to see the Hudson’s Bay Company store manager. He came back and cooked us some lunch—moose meat with onions. We ate on the floor. Papa finished first and cleared his throat.
“I spoke to the manager. It’s going to cost me a thousand dollars to get the roofing tile for the extension to the house.”
“I see,” Mama said.
“That’s not good,” Papa said.
“No,” Mama said.
“I mean, we already have debt at the Hudson’s Bay store.”
“I know.”
“We should probably head out to the bush soon.”
“Give me time, Keshayno. We will be fine.”
“How do you know?”
“Father Lavois told me.” Father Lavois was the head priest in the parish of Fort Albany.
“Him?” he said. “What does he know?”
“He knows.”
“You trust his word over a manitou?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”
TWO
“Can I come? Can I come trapping?” Alex asked. Papa and I were standing by the door of our house. Alex was still sitting on his bed of moosehide and blankets.
“No,” Papa said.
“It’s not fair! Ed got to go last time.”
“He’s bigger.”
“So?”
“Well, you’re not old enough yet.”
“Yes I am. I’m five.”
Papa shook his head. “This one,” he said, gesturing toward Alex. “What a handful. I don’t know where he gets it from.”
“Probably from you,” Mama said. “You used to be like that when you were younger.”
It was spring and Papa and I were going trapping. I was already seven, but Papa said I still wasn’t big enough, so I watched him as he opened the trap and fastened it to the log that went into the water.
I knew that Papa wanted to put his traps farther afield since the traps he’d set around here hadn’t yielded much. I’d tried to talk to him about it and he’d said that it was out of his hands, and when I’d pushed, he had become quiet.
Outside the morning sun bounced on the last ice covering the puddles. Shadows of cloud slithered across worn grass. The first patches of green were sprouting up in the muskeg. We walked silently, until we got to the edge of town.
“Which way is the wind blowing, Ed?”
“West!” I said and pointed.
“Good boy.”
Then we came to a depression in the soil that looked like two giant teardrops.
“What do you think made that?” he said.
“That’s easy. It’s a moose.”
“How old is it?”
“I dunno.”
“Feel the soil. Is it fresh?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Look at the grass around the footprint. Is it still flattened? Or has it started to bounce back up?”
“It’s already fully up.”
“That means the animal was here two or three days ago. If the grass has just started to rise, it’s less than a day, and we should follow them. And if the grass is dry, or the soil hard, they are long gone.”
“So are we going to follow it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s already too far away.” We walked out to the Albany River, to where Papa had found martens last year. As we got closer, I heard what sounded like a baby crying. Papa started to run, panicked. The trap was supposed to break the marten’s neck, but instead the animal was desperate, hissing, squirming, clawing. It smelled of sweat, piss and fear. A bad omen, signalling that Gitchi Manitou was unhappy.
“Shh,” he said to the marten, and he made tender sounds like the ones he used to make with Rita. Then he reached into the trap with both hands, there was a snapping sound, and the marten fell slack. A female, from the size. He freed her from the trap and brought her close to his face.
“Life is a gif
t,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
“Papa, one day, can I be a hunter like you?”
He shook his head no. I waited for him to explain, but he stayed quiet as he put a piece of meat on the bait pan. Martens don’t recognize human scent as easily as animals like foxes and wolves do, but Papa was always extra careful, especially when he had something on his mind. This time he reset the trap with such focus, it was like he was handling a robin’s egg. For extra measure, he wiped everything down with a rag.
Alex greeted us at the door. “What you get? What you get?” he said. “A couple of martens,” Papa said.
“Anything else?” Mama asked, looking up from her sewing.
“No, I didn’t set any more traps.”
“Why not?” she said.
“Well for starters, there aren’t many animals around here. But I’ve also noticed the martens and beavers are pretty thin right now. Let’s let them recover.”
“What about your debt at the store?”
“I’ll have to speak to the manager.”
“What about the extension to our house you were going to build?”
“I can still do that.”
“Keshayno, we’re in debt.”
“We’ll be fine, Netchi. I heard that fur prices are up again.”
Over the next few days, Papa scraped the hides and stretched them on a circular frame. He showed me how to scrape the hide with a sharp knife so it could dry better. We hung the frame from a high branch, safe from the dogs.
The day the furs were ready, Papa and I got up before the rest were awake. He helped me button my coat and pants, cooked bannock and tea, and we walked over to the Hudson’s Bay store. We climbed the steps and opened the wooden door. A tall man about the same age as Papa was standing at the counter holding what looked like a bulky gun, which he was using to put sticky labels on some bread loaves. Papa had already told me that the manager was also called The Boss and that we all had to be nice to him. Ignoring Papa, the man straightened a price tag on a bag of flour. Above him were shelves stacked with supplies—sugar, Klik canned meat, tomato soup, lard, tea—and on the wall to his right, the more costly goods—ammunition and a number of rifles including a new one just arrived called The Savage 45. Furs were draped from the ceiling and counters, with the most valuable—otter, black fox and wolverine—sheathed in cotton to keep out the dust.
Papa shifted his weight and cleared his throat, and still the man continued pricing. After what seemed like a long while, he turned and slowly began to wipe his hands on his apron.
“Good morning, Abraham,” The Boss said in Cree. “What do you think of our weather? Jesus, it’s cold.”
“It’s not so bad. Just the wind.”
“It’s always so goddamned windy.” He looked at my dad. “I had it better in Timmins, you know. Little house in South End, right near the water.”
“You have good fortune here.”
“I do? S’pose you’re right. So what have you got for me?” he said.
Papa pulled out the marten furs. They were the size of lean cats.
“They’re beauties, these ones,” the man said.
“Yessir.”
“Anything else?”
“No sir,” Papa replied.
“Do you know the size of your debt?”
“Yessir.”
“What is it?”
“Four hundred and twenty dollars and fifteen cents. That’s without the roofing tile.”
“And how much you think you’ll get for a marten?”
“I dunno. I heard prices were up.”
“You heard wrong, Abraham.”
“Well, how much then?”
“I can give you thirty dollars each.”
“Thirty dollars! That’s eight dollars less than last week. Why the sudden drop?”
“Toronto isn’t buying right now.”
“All right, then,” Papa said. “Can you give me some sugar and lard?”
“No. There are new rules. The company is asking everyone to pay off their existing debts before getting new supplies.”
“I have children,” Papa said.
“Yes, I know.”
“We are hungry.”
“You and everyone else in this town. What am I supposed to do?”
“You are supposed to help us.”
“I am just doing my job, Mr. Metatawabin. Company’s orders.”
“How’d it go?” Mama asked as soon as we opened the door.
“Not bad,” Papa replied.
“Did you get the lard?”
“Uh … no.”
“Why not.”
“I forgot.”
“You forgot?”
“Yes.”
“What about the sugar?”
“No. Not that either.”
“So what did you get?”
“Actually I didn’t get anything.”
“What? Why not?”
“I have too much debt.”
“What are you talking about? You said it was under control.”
“No, I didn’t. I said we have to follow the teachings of the manitou. If we do as he says, the Great Creator will provide.”
“Provide?! How will the Great Creator take care of us? He’s not helping any of us. The animals are getting less and less. We get less money for the furs too.”
“We have to be patient. Don’t rush things. Let Gitchi Manitou take care of things.”
“You and your Gitchi Manitou! What’s he going to do? He didn’t take care of Rita!”
Mama’s mouth looked very big and her voice was getting louder, but there was a breathy, pleading note underneath her anger. Papa was the same as ever, gruff and direct, but he too looked worried that everything would fall down. And so they went back and forth, to and fro, getting even louder. I remembered the story of the fight between the jackfish and the bull moose, the Lord of the Water vs. the God of the Land, who pulled and pushed, the water swelling around them, the currents rising and falling, until the conflict took on a momentum of its own and became part of the landscape, creating the tides and laying down the pattern of things to come.
During the season of nipin, when the sun beats down and the black-flies are at their thickest, Mama started going to see Father Lavois more often. He was an influential man, and told her things she held close to her heart. I didn’t know the full extent of his powers, but everyone acted as if his words could stop a bullet. Like he had special magic, more potent than the shamans that Papa told me about, and who existed before I was born.
I’d never met a shaman. But I’d heard stories about them through the moccasin telegraph. It was said that they knew how to cure sickness. They had special powers, like being able to fix a broken leg or cool a man who was sweating and hot all over. Some said they could read people’s minds. And see into the future. They got some of their knowledge by crossing over the apeteyo, the veil that divides the physical and spiritual worlds, to talk to an animal manitou or ancestor, who got their powers from the Great Creator, Gitchi Manitou. He showed them how to see the interconnectedness of all things. To dip below the surface to see the secret forces that ran our lives, the undercurrents, as a wise fisherman would study a river and know how the current would one day shape the river’s banks. But the shamans didn’t do their ceremonies anymore. They had been banned with the wemistikoshiw laws.
Did Papa miss the shamans? He never said. For Mama, it was like they had never existed. I wondered if it was because she was so busy. Since we had gotten back to the reserve, she went to see Father Lavois every few days. I didn’t realize where she was going the first few times. I just awoke one morning and Papa was making bannock instead of Mama.
“Where’s Mama?” Alex said.
“Church.”
“Can I go?”
“No.”
“When’s she coming home?” I asked.
“At lunch.”
“When’s that?”
“Eat your bannock,” Papa said.
Mama came home in time to make lunch. We were having moose steak and I helped her cut the meat. Papa was cleaning his gun.
“You need to ask the Hudson’s Bay manager if you can work at his store,” Mama said.
“Did Father Lavois tell you that?” Papa asked.
“He might have mentioned it,” she said.
“I have a job,” he said, and he blew a little too hard into the muzzle of his gun.
“Abraham. Yesterday we ate food that the Father gave us.”
“Yes.”
“I had to ask the priest to feed my family.”
“Don’t accept it then.”
“And have the kids go hungry?”
“They’re fine. Aren’t you, kids?” I looked between Mama and Papa, feeling caught. Papa looked like he needed me more.
“What about the sickness?” Mama said.
“What sickness?”
“The one that killed the Spences’ boys.”
“They’re at home with Gitchi Manitou. In the land of the ancestors.”
“Father Lavois said they wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t been hungry. Maybe Rita would be here too.”
“That’s nonsense!”
“The Big Father in Heaven is a powerful protector. He will help you if you agree to be helped,” Mama said.
“By coming to church?”
“It’s a start.”
That night Papa went outside with a cup of his special bear oil. Papa had already told me a little about the amber liquid. He said it was very powerful and the shamans used it a long time ago. Now a few people used it, but only when they were out in the bush and no one was around. It was dangerous if you were caught.
I stood in our doorway and watched him. First he built a fire, then when it was about as big as me, he took the oil and threw it onto the flames so they reached up and hissed yellow and white. He wafted the smoke toward himself and breathed it in. He stared at the fire. The light reddened the palms of his hands, and his body was completely still as if his life force had seeped into the fire.
Why was he doing it now? The thought worried me. It was like he didn’t care if anyone saw or if he got into trouble. I wanted to approach him to ask about it but he looked lost, staring deep into the fire.
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