Arctic Smoke

by Randy Nikkel Schroeder

  “Shit!” He leaped up, still fully clothed, raced to the window in bare feet.

  “Shit!” He burned his palm on the radiator, stepped back, peered out. The van was gone.

  He ran to the door, out into the snow. The van was nowhere to be seen. He stared at the fading bar stamp on his hand, until his toes and heels burned with cold, forcing him to hop from foot to foot. He felt his pocket for the bag of glitter, suddenly remembered his guitar in the back of the van.

  “Shit! Those damned. . . .” He raced back into the room, chased by frosty winds, headed for the phone. As he reached he saw his guitar, in its case, on the bed, next to the imprint of his own body. He looked down, shook his head. Of course. He didn’t have a cent of cash anyway. He had a bank card. The girls had paid for the rest, double-crossing sweethearts.

  He sighed, grabbed the case, heard something jingle inside. What was this? He unbuckled the lid, opened. Four stacked coins clinked under the strings, twos and quarters. Exactly four-fifty, Canadian.

  † † †

  He sat on his guitar case by the curb, wrapped in the Mackinaw, and slurped four-fifty worth of coffee from the motel machine. After he had bonged his weight in caffeine he stood up and almost tumbled into the ditch. He sat back down. Where was he going to go? His future was darkening with the afternoon sky. But at least he was out of Lethbridge, away from the Weird.

  A light winked on and off in the distance, some dwelling hidden by small trees. He suddenly remembered a summer morning in the late sixties, still early enough for dew and a chill in the air, twitter of birds, smell of pine, and himself, still a kid, astride the fence watching a spinning spider. A souvenir from his own life. But the colouring, the texture, the feel. . . .

  He shifted on the guitar case. What was the texture? Fold the memory, smooth it, stroke its fibres, and the kid was also someone else, as if Lor was at once feeling and spying on his own memories. All strange and new. Yet old.

  Then it seemed his life stretched back through such a tangle of experiences that hundreds of years were stuffed into his thirty, a fibre fraying hundreds of bright threads. But could those threads be woven back together? And did he want them to be? Yes, of course he did. Of course he did. The spider went on spinning.

  A car honked, blasting his reverie. He looked up. An ancient blue Camaro idled in front of him, tire two inches from his foot. He stood, as the window hummed down and a woman leaned over the passenger seat.

  “Need a ride?” Tall, middle-aged Japanese woman, buzz cut bleached white. Lor remembered her immediately. But her hair was all gone.

  He raised his hands. “What are you doing here?”

  She laughed. “Quvianaqtuq quagapsi. Get in, punky.”

  † † †

  They drove the winter road through Wood Buffalo Park to Peace Point Reserve, then the Pine Lake Highway toward Salt River. The blue Camaro rolled smoothly, sure-footed as a four-wheel drive. The woman said nothing, laughed gently from time to time. Lor could smell her raspberry lipstick.

  “Where are you going?” she said at last.

  “Yellowknife.”

  “Coming from?”

  “Nowhere.”

  She laughed. Sound like a low bell, melody that turned to smoke before you could hum it back. “Ah, the laconic type. Can you form a sentence, or you just good to look at?”

  He couldn’t think of a comeback.

  “Guess we’ll find out.” She extended a hand. Long, piano-playing fingers, silver rings at the first knuckle of pointer and index. “Darcilee Shimozowa. Call me Darci.”

  “Are you Canadian?” He sure hoped not.

  “I asked for your name.”

  “Sure.” His heart sped. “Call me Lor.”

  She grinned. “Lor of Yellowknife?”

  “Just Lor.”

  “Try again.”

  “Of the flies?”

  “Well. Got the charm turned to broil, I see.”

  “Turned off.” Best he could think of.

  “Aren’t you the saucy one?”

  “Nope.”

  “Depends what you’re served on.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Guess we’ll find out.”

  Lor inhaled deeply. He thought of Vandy-Anne, everything he had seen in Alberta’s north. “Meaning?”

  “Think about it.”

  She opened a window, reached for a grey toque, unrolled it over her peroxide buzz cut. Her hands so expressive, a dancer’s or puppeteer’s smoothing ice on a snowman’s head. Her ringed fingers pure music, like it was the last unrolling ever.

  Lor held his thighs and stared sidelong. There was something unnatural about this woman—like her body was clustered with twice the nerves as usual. That berry lipstick, that grey toque. He looked down.

  “Cat got your tongue?” she said. “Better your tongue gets the cat.”

  “Ha,” he managed, but his mind was unspooling.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” she said.

  He blipped out, back to high school, pillows, and girls on cold winter evenings, his dad’s cranberry vodka cloudy from the freezer. When fear always spiced desire, and nights were mulled with magical cinnamonflavoured sex, and he always thought his heart would explode mid-kiss, and cyclones of blue lust whirled through the house and knocked over all his mother’s furniture.

  He had moved out at eighteen and never gone back.

  Suddenly he missed Alistair. “Can you get me to Yellowknife? I have to meet some friends there.” He drew the bag of glitter from his pocket and twisted the drawstrings around a finger, regretted mentioning his old companions.

  “I’m headed there myself,” Darci said. “Do you want to know why?”

  Lor tugged the string, squeezed the dust inside. The scent of raspberry tickled his nose, as he nudged to the very edge of the seat and pressed against the cold window. He wasn’t going to look Darci in the eye. He wanted to be back with the strippers, even after last night; they were mean, but at least they had their own kind of logic.

  She laughed. “I was a lot like you once. On the same expedition.”

  He stole a long glance at her fingers, noticed her watch, perpetually stuck at twelve o’clock.

  “Your hands don’t move,” he said.

  “Oh, they move. You’ll find out.”

  He looked at her face. “I mean the—”

  “Watch. Yes.” Her smile rapacious. “Music?”

  She turned on the stereo. Strange melody rained from overhead speakers, distant violin over drums and bass. Lor closed his eyes and tried to remember Vandy-Anne’s face, but could picture only her glasses. He squeezed the dust.

  “Are you chased by some daemon?” Darci said. “You have the look.”

  Lor opened the pouch and poured some dust into his hands, sifted it through fingers, pressed the grains into the lines on his palm.

  “My old lover used to grind a blue powder from the bones of magpies.” Her voice drifted. “After he formed the circus. The Circus of Quaphsiel. Usually travelled about the Arctic, but on occasion far, far south.”

  “Magpies.” Lor’s breath quickened. “Powder.”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  She clinked two rings. “Oh, many years ago. So long. I was once like you.”

  “When?”

  She stroked raspberry from her lip, dipped her tongue at the reddened fingertip. “For many years I have chased a particular tribe of pure white magpies, across rivers, prairies, mountains. Even in the leafy corners of city parks and green spaces. These ’pies have no iridescence, not in any light.”

  “Quite a story.”

  “But before Christmas, in an arborescent greenstrip, in a city far south, I finally realized—” She turned to him, eyes flooded. “These white ’pies live here, in the Arctic.”

  “Here?” His heart bopped.

  “There are many possibilities. Perhaps they came across the Bering Strait from Europe. Perhaps they have always lived here, in secret. Perhaps t
hey’re trying to get back to Europe. Or perhaps they’re some new breed,” she nodded at him, “altogether.”

  Lor felt a well of immense desire, somewhere outside his body. He leaned forward to flick at the glovebox handle.

  She wasn’t laughing now. “They live three times as long as a woman. If a nut is too hard, they’ll drop it from a great height to crack it.”

  Crack it. He clicked the handle, bobbled the glovebox back and forth.

  “They have a complex language,” she continued, “rattles, gargles, squawks, coos.”

  He tugged at the glovebox.

  “They’ll pull up the lines of ice fishermen,” she said. “Steal all the fish.”

  He tugged.

  “I’ve watched them slide down icy slopes in plastic cups, taking turns, for their own amusement.”

  The glovebox plunked open and a bale of black hair spilled out across Lor’s lap. He yelled, bounced up in the seat and hit his head on the roof.

  “These are regular magpies,” she said. “Not white. That’s my hair. I kept it.”

  Lor exhaled, one long breath. “Your hair. Jesus.”

  She laughed. “I was starting to look too much like one of you. You still have the dust, yes? Keep it away from him.”

  He quickly gathered the hair, stuffed it back in the glovebox. She watched, half a berry lip turned upward. He sat back and rubbed his forehead, as the music sizzled to a hiss.

  She watched him, one hand on the wheel. He couldn’t stand her silence. “How long have you been chasing magpies?”

  “How long.” She flicked her eyes to the rearview mirror, then the road. “Longer than you can imagine.”

  † † †

  Yellowknife was less forbidding than Lor expected—well-treed, civilized, nestled along the North Arm of Great Slave Lake. Darci slowed the Camaro and rumbled up Ptarmigan Road to tiny Rat Lake, where the Potiphar Hotel stubbed the hills with a matrix of columns and porticoes, sweating warm light and clinks of suppertime.

  “Wait here, punky.”

  She pulled over to the roadside and stepped out. Lor watched her build a snowman. The open door chimed the whole time; she rose and stared south.

  “A warding charm,” she said, climbing back in, dusting snow from her pinkened palms.

  “For what?”

  “Where do you need to go?”

  Lor looked at his fingers. He heard children’s voices across the frozen water. “Uh. Not sure,” he said. “My friends took off on me.”

  “Ah.” She laughed. “Well then, you can stay with me at the Potiphar.”

  He watched a helium balloon escape a window to trail its string into the clouds. “Not a good idea.”

  “Got a better one?” she said, parking.

  Lor tapped his foot in the lobby while waiting for Darci to book in. Kids from a birthday party darted under tables and between his legs, swirling the carpets, yanking balloons. All of them were basted with icing at lips and fingers, clutching cupcakes. High above, lonely balloons watched from the ceiling. A girl with chipped teeth stumbled in front of Lor, squashed her cupcake as she hit the floor and released her balloon. Darci’s long fingers snatched it.

  “Come on.” Darci took Lor’s arm with her free hand. “I have a room in the tower.”

  “Hey!” said the girl. “Thath my balloon.”

  The room was small but opulent. Peppermint carpets like a dream-lawn carefully cut, four-poster bed, gingham curtains that swayed to phantom breezes, though the hotel air was as still as an August afternoon. Darci bent to tug the bedsheets, releasing the balloon. Lor watched it scuttle northward across the ceiling, as he stood in the centre of the room, fists at his sides.

  “So, when did you first hear about these magpies?” he said. “The ones without the green and blue.”

  “Or black.” Darci stopped in mid-tug, turned her head slowly. “That was only a story.”

  She dimmed the lights and began to pull off her coat and sweater. She dropped her arms suddenly; for a moment the sleeves fell from her shoulders, and her shadow on the wall had many arms. Lor sat on the couch and looked for the balloon. Must have been behind his head.

  “That’s a nice coat,” Darci said.

  “A gift.” Lor heard a pop. Not the balloon, more like a cork. Darci bent to decant a bottle of Zinfandel. Lor stared at her eldritch features, white cotton T-shirt bright as moonlit snow. She spoke. Lor tried to follow the ripple of her voice, but it had too much surface area, too many folds. He heard another pop, some kind of plastic lid.

  Darci sat beside him. “Moisturize me.”

  He smelled the aloe in the cream.

  “I don’t think—”

  He noticed the rough texture of her elbows.

  She dabbed cream on a fingertip. “What’s the matter?”

  He pressed his fists together. He pulled off one sleeve of his Mackinaw coat.

  “It’s not like we’ll meet again,” she said.

  “No.” He wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  She stared at him without breathing a word. He turned to meet her eyes, but immediately looked down at the carpet. She tittered.

  “What?” he said.

  “Just waiting for you to ask.” Each syllable stretched to a delicate tension. She stroked a finger between his shoulder blades.

  “Ask what?” he said.

  She smiled, a slowly brightening glow. “Anything you like. The answer is yes.”

  He sat wordless.

  “Yes.” She took his fingers in her own and drew them to her eyelids, now closed. He could feel her eyes moving beneath, smell the raspberry from her lips. She seized his index finger and popped it in her mouth. He felt her teeth first, then her tongue, licking lengthwise knuckle to knuckle. His back arched. His fingerprint became a whirlpool, all of his nerves pure light, every cell drawn by dark undertow.

  “Darci.” He pulled back his hands and stood. His Mackinaw flapped across one shoulder. She opened her eyes, looked up at him.

  “You think I’m a fallen angel?” She bared her teeth. “Think I can’t love?”

  He hardly heard. The balloon was floating somewhere “No. I—”

  She grabbed his Mackinaw, a bit roughly he thought.

  “Sit,” she said.

  The balloon’s shadow trailed across the ceiling. She tightened her grip on the Mackinaw.

  “Sit,” she repeated. “Lor.”

  “No.” It hovered near him.

  She pulled him down. He slackened his shoulder, and the coat peeled from his arm. He looked her in the eyes, but they were wrong, all wrong—twin galaxies, one blue, one green.

  He snapped up, grabbed his guitar, hastened for the door. “I have to go.” He broke into a trot. At the door he stopped. Darci stood in the small hallway, holding his multi-coloured coat.

  “Run.” Her voice husky. She held up his jacket.

  Suddenly he felt hotter than ever in his life. He spun the doorknob. Fled.

  “Next time I will not be gentle,” Darci called after him.

  He hit the stairwell, leaped two stairs at a time. Then raced across the lobby weaving through kids and cupcakes, out the door and down the street, all the way down, to the bottom of the hill, to the end of the road, where he dove headfirst into a snowman. It collapsed around him, sizzled his skin. Flies buzzed in his ears, and for a moment he thought he heard a pop, somewhere in the liquid light at the top of the hill, at the tip of the tower, as the black balloon burst at last.

  † † †

  Children dug him out.

  “Mister, you ruined our snowman. You broke the charm.”

  Lor felt like he had been asleep for a hundred years. “My guitar.”

  “It’s right here.” A cherubic boy, black hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak. He brushed snow from Lor’s face with a soft glove. “See? You’re in the ruins. But everything will be okay. We have other magicks.”

  Lor sat up. He was nested in a pile of old maps and Playboys from the fift
ies. He reached for his guitar. A gang of kids circled him, faces flushed, eyes bright.

  “Who are you?” said the cherub.

  “Who are you?” Lor gripped the guitar case.

  “Peace.” The cherub lifted a hand. “I’m Sid. Sid Hoar.” He circled his hand. “This is my gang.”

  A girl in a striped The Cat in the Hat snowboard cap leaned forward and offered Lor a chocolate bar, silver wrap half unzipped.

  Lor shook his head. “My name is Kenneth Kowalski.”

  Sid Hoar nodded. He pulled a thin joint from his vest pocket, to Lor’s surprise. These kids were too young, seven or eight at best. Sid Hoar lit up, offered to Lor. “Do you have a nickname, Kenneth Kowalski?”

  “Thanks.” Lor inhaled all the way to his toes. “No. People call me Ken.”

  “As will I.” Sid Hoar rocked on his heels, exhaled smoke.

  “Ken.” The girl with the chocolate bar accepted the joint.

  “Ken. Ken.” Rippled softly through the gang.

  Sid Hoar smiled. “Tell us, Ken. Why are you in Yellowknife?”

  “I. . . .” Lor looked at their curious faces. He searched his brain, sifting memories. No connections. The emptiness troubled him. He didn’t seem to be properly dressed. Was he missing a coat or sweater?

  “Why are you here?” The girl said.

  Lor stared at her.

  “Why?” Echoed softy from young mouths.

  “I.” Lor hugged his guitar. “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Behind the Tree

  Sid Hoar took Lor by the hand and led him down a long and winding road. The kids trailed, whispering.

  “Where are we going?” Lor clutched his guitar till his knuckles ached.

  “To the Old Stope.”

  Lor shivered. This place was in many ways a normal city, yet somehow like the moon. Beneath the amenities and architecture hunched bones of rock, whistled by haunting winds. What could he possibly be doing here?

  They wandered to the Rock, a massive chunk of Precambrian Shield at the centre of Old Town. The kids ushered Lor all the way up to Pilot’s Monument, where they sat in darkness and swilled a panoramic view of the bay, crushed glass glimmering to the horizon. Lor’s eyeballs quivered at the immensity. He focused on the planes and frozen barges studding the shoreline, finally looked down altogether. Then the strike of a match, the smell of lit weed. A Twin Otter roared below, and Sid Hoar took him by the wrist.