“Never mind. What’s Paulussie’s feeling?”
“He says what they all say. Aatsuuk, I don’t know. Maybe. When you’re hard-pressed for answers around here, you’ll find that nobody ever knows anything.”
In spite of Elliot’s cynicism, Yasmeen trusted Paulussie’s instincts for self-preservation. His gentle, fatherly ways appealed to her, how soft yet firm he was with his children, how he knew intuitively when to loosen his grip on them and when to pull back—though mainly he left them to figure things out for themselves. She thought of her own father, how he gave her wings and taught her how to enjoy the finer moments of life, whenever he had the chance. He loved blowing a bundle at Christmas to buy his kids the latest big-ticket electronic gadget, something that came in a box the size of a refrigerator. Something that would be the envy of every other family on the block. She remembered tearing off the paper and ribbons while he sat back, dew-eyed, holding the camera in his hand.
“Just look at them,” said Elliot, flabbergasted. “If we don’t hide some of this food and a couple of rolls of toilet paper, they’ll go through it in no time.”
“This is your honest assessment of them? And you keep coming back? Why? I mean, if there’s nothing to …”
“My dear, I have only one motto here. It’s simple. It’s practical. Better safe than sorry. It’s worked for me this long.”
•
The day stretched into two and then three. Supplies had dwindled but the men fought off the rain and the gaping maw of the river to put food in everyone’s mouths. The thrashing waters teemed with speckled trout. Meanwhile, the women sprinted out in shifts, using their shirts as slings to carry back fresh, cold blueberries. Yasmeen could see how the old imperative, survival, drove them. People were wet and tired of each other, but no one went hungry.
Sometimes when it was really coming down and they were trapped in the tents, Yasmeen would lower the flap that covered their plastic transparent window just to watch the grey, blinding, suffocating veils of water. It made her think of a sandstorm. She loved the idea that although the weather was conspiring against them, they were fighting back and winning, in spite of the wind. Its brute force. Their canvas tents were holding up.
Their little canvas tents.
On the fourth day the sun returned with a vengeance—as though nothing at all had happened. For the first time in days Yasmeen could see the sky, delphinium-blue against the razor-sharp horizon. A droning plane crossed it in a long, straight line until it disappeared behind a fleecy cloud.
They joked and sang as they packed up the campsite. Paulussie and Tommy, assisted by the boys but mainly by Elliot, prepared the boats. The women folded the tents and loaded up the supplies. The water was still rough but not treacherous, and the tide had turned in their favour.
Elliot whistled the theme from Gilligan’s Island as everyone hopped into the boats. The crews waved to each other light-heartedly. Tommy leapt off his canoe and gave it a big push away from the land. Paulussie shoved theirs too, wading through the water to catch up to them. He climbed back on with a dolphin-tail splash, his solid mass rocking the boat. Elliot started up the motor and stepped away to let Paulussie navigate.
Paulussie kept a close eye on the changing surface of the water. Yasmeen knew from her reading that he wasn’t just winging it, he was carefully calculating the force of the waves as they hit the hull and splashed over the side, collecting in a pool at the bottom of the boat. Elliot took instruction from Paulussie like a trooper, advising them when to shift their weight from one side to the other. They travelled this way until twilight set in with its dramatic show of sky, a feathery pink-and-black expanse.
As the village floated into view Yasmeen could see that the moon had cut a bright swath along the water, like a road leading them home. She surveyed the scalloped shoreline with its boxy structures, its cluster of dwellings including hers with the flaking green door, a handful of twinkling porch lights.
Paulussie cut the motor. Yasmeen searched for Tommy’s canoe but couldn’t see it anywhere. She eyed Elliot but he shrugged uncertainly. Paulussie pointed to a constellation of rocks poking out of the water, hemming them in. He ordered everyone off and onto one of them, large and flat enough to stand on. The water flashed its foamy underside.
Elliot climbed off first, steadying himself against the thrust of the bay before reaching his hand out to Yasmeen. “Concentrate on your feet, not the water.”
“I can do it myself,” she said pulling her hand away. The boys blew past her, barking like seals.
Clutching her coat collar with both hands, Iris lost her balance on the gummy surface. Elliot shot his arm out just in time to save her from falling. She blushed and said thank you.
When everyone was safe Elliot went to help Paulussie pivot the boat and free it from the obstructing rocks. The kids fooled around, tagging and pushing each other, unaware of the gravity of the situation, or else fully aware but unfazed, having dealt with it numerous times before and gone home to a good night’s sleep, the way Yasmeen did after a healthy day in the country. Paulussie was remarkable. He wrestled the boat out and got them all back on board without a single casualty.
The village drifted toward them like a sleepy whale. Tommy’s canoe was already docked by the time Paulussie arrived with Yasmeen’s crew. Elliot made himself useful, hauling the supplies off, helping the men flip the boats over. A crowd had gathered onshore to wave them in, leathery faces with eyes like beacons. Everybody was shaking hands with everybody. Yasmeen was beginning to understand it was customary to do this when people returned from somewhere. She noticed the radio guy, Joanasi, meandering toward her with his hand extended. “So, you made it home,” he said, not as a question but as a simple matter of fact.
FIVE
Yasmeen discovered the pleasures of having the radio on all day, its reassuring presence. It happened by accident, the day after they returned from camp. She was dusting and tossing around ideas for the first day of school, and though all the talk was in Inuktitut and she couldn’t make out a word, she recognized its soothing effect on her. It was the timbre of the voice, a particular vibration that struck a chord in her and gave her the sensation of being in the close company of a friend. It was like sharing an intimate space. There were no motormouth traffic girls, no manic sports reporters racing though hockey scores. This radio was so low-key that sometimes there was no talking at all, the dead air just hanging there for however long it went on, until a stammer or a spluttering cough broke the silence.
Something curious caught her ear, the way the announcer took a long time to exhale after he inhaled, like he was holding onto a thought that he didn’t ever want to let go. It sounded like the voice of someone who enjoyed letting the velvet cigarette smoke linger in his lungs before releasing it. She was almost certain it was Joanasi’s.
Just as she was deciding that yes, it was probably him announcing Friday’s upcoming Bingo Night, one of those lemmings Elliot had mentioned on the plane darted past her, right in her own house. She chased it into the kitchen, following the patter of feet. It had a tapered snout and a short tail like the one Frank had shown in his slides, and was barely the size of a human hand. Her mind went into the dizzying logistics of how to corner it. She wasn’t sure what she would do after she did. One thing at a time, she thought. She grabbed the broom and swung it haphazardly. The pesky thing scurried past her into the living room.
Yasmeen held the broom the way her father’s favourite movie star, Errol Flynn, held his dueling sword. She advanced on the rodent, part of her recognizing how ridiculous she looked, but she didn’t know how else to rout it out and she couldn’t let it run around indefinitely.
Her ears perked up when she heard that Mick Jagger was up next. She didn’t catch what song, but it wasn’t so important. What was important was this, now. Figuring out a strategy. She tried to imagine what Joanasi, a radio personality but probably
also a hunter, would do in her place, facing the same shifty creature. Would he skewer it between the eyes? Behead it with the full length of the broomstick? For sure, afterwards, he’d have the wherewithal to do what was necessary—sweep it along the floor to the front door and then outside, but not like it was nothing. He’d have respect for it. He’d leave it like a gift in a special place where a bigger animal would go looking for food. He wouldn’t feel the least bit guilty about it, knowing he was doing what was necessary to keep the cycle of life going.
This could all be a load of crap, though. A romantic notion fed by The Nature of Things. She shook her head.
“Come out, you little shit.” Her body stiffened, waiting for the lemming to resurface. She waited and waited. There was no sign of him anywhere. She thought of how bats could squeeze through holes the size of a quarter, settling permanently in a building’s insulation. Did lemmings have the same expertise? She wasn’t keen on the idea of her intruder becoming a permanent resident in her pipes or walls, skittering up and down and around. Keeping her awake nights.
A lemming year, Elliot had said.
She waited it out while the afternoon light softened, casting a pinky glow on the walls. She breathed the way a yoga instructor once taught her to do, deeply, from her diaphragm. It put her solidly in the moment, allowing her to focus on the battleground, which wasn’t a battleground at all but a benign arrangement of furniture and belongings. In her tranquil state she spotted him on the other side of the room, beady eyes gleaming beneath a sock that had strayed from her laundry basket. They were looking straight at her.
She wondered what he was communicating in the language of his gaze. Perhaps that he was only a lemming, with no ulterior motives except the primary one, survival. It seemed like that’s what he was telling her. That he wasn’t a dangerous polar bear that would maul her with a swipe of his paw. That he wasn’t planning to rear up on hindquarters, or bare his teeth at her. No, he was defenseless. He had nothing on her. Nothing compared to her warm house, her drawer full of sharpened knives. She could wolf him down in two bites if she really wanted to.
The more she thought about it, the more she relaxed. She felt waves of guilt, first for wielding the broom like a weapon; second for all the times she and Morgan had strapped firecrackers to the backs of toads for no reason at all except to revel in the confetti of their exploded body parts.
The lemming’s eyes were still trained on her. Give me the heave ho, they were saying, but please spare my life. For a fraction of a second she thought of wrapping him in shiny paper like a fancy Christmas gift, sticking on a bow and presenting him to Elliot, the lemming expert. One of the bumper crop, she could write in curlicue calligraphy inside the card. Funny as it was, it was stupid and cruel. She would never do it. This lemming had the right, like everything and everyone, to live his ephemeral life and die of natural causes, out on the land among his own.
Yasmeen tiptoed over, careful not to scare him. Cautiously she lifted the sock off. He looked up at her almost apologetically when she told him to go on now, take a powder, disappear. He blinked. He blinked again. “Go have a life or something,” she repeated. Lightly tapping him with the back of the broom she shooed him along the rug. When she got to the door she opened it wide and watched him scurry toward the incoming light.
SIX
The portable that had been assigned as her interim classroom wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen on her teaching practicums down south. In addition to desks and chalkboard, this one had a small kitchen at the back with a fridge and stove and a counter stocked with bowls and oversized canisters of instant soup mix.
She began by giving the place a good airing out. She jogged the corners of the windows and lifted those that weren’t stuck or painted shut. With a set of Magic Markers she drew a welcome sign for the door. She hadn’t planned what she would write, she just let instinct guide her. She knew that whatever appeared on the page would be right. And it was. Yasmeen’s Arctic All-Stars. It had a nice ring to it. It made everyone sound like a winner. She made yellow name cards for the half-dozen students on her mimeographed list and then practised pronouncing their exotic-sounding names. Names she had never heard before. She hoped that on the first day she’d be able to say them all without mangling them. Ulayu. Audlaluk. Qalingo. She jotted them down on index cards for future reference in case she ever had kids of her own, which was highly unlikely but still in the realm of possibility.
She counted herself lucky not to have a class of thirty-five like her colleagues who had landed jobs at the big comprehensive schools in Montreal. The things she could do with only six! The creativity she could tap into! She wanted to roll up her sleeves and get started as soon as possible.
She wrote the date on the chalkboard in her best handwriting and moved the desks into a semi-circle. On each chair she left three sharpened pencils, a pen, an eraser, a binder with lined paper, and a soup bowl—everything a student needed for a first day of high school.
•
It was because of Morgan’s father, an off-the-cuff remark he had made, that Yasmeen decided to become a teacher. It was the way he said it, the forlorn look on his face. Mr. McEwen had a shitty desk job, as Morgan kept reminding her, and he always came home hyper-depressed even though it paid a bundle. “Who knows, maybe he’s boinking his secretary,” Morgan suggested. As though she needed some excitement in her life. Yasmeen once overheard her parents say that the reason Morgan’s father had gone out and bought himself a red, fully loaded Pontiac Trans Am was because he was having a midlife crisis. She always thought if Morgan really wanted family drama, why not take some of hers; there was certainly enough of it to go around.
The girls had dyed their hair black that summer. They wore it long and parted down the middle and wore liquid eyeliner and matching black chokers with a silver buckle in the centre, all that black accentuating their paleness, which was the point. It was a stinking hot day. They were in their string bikinis, pigging out on Morgan’s mother’s famous pickle-in-the-middle sandwiches. Even when it was sweltering they were never allowed to lounge around in their swimsuits at Yasmeen’s. There was no prancing about half-naked in her house.
Mr. McEwen had taken a sick day. He was sitting across the kitchen table from them in a velour bathrobe, pretending to read the obituaries while they babbled on about their dream careers, high-paying jobs with benefits that included travelling around with bands like The Cure and The Velvet Underground. Wouldn’t it be awesome, they kept repeating. Morgan’s dad cleared his throat and lowered his newspaper so that Yasmeen could see only his eyes and the bridge of his nose. She noticed a real sadness in the way he looked at her. It was like Morgan wasn’t even in the room with them. He stared for a long time. “Teaching is a much nobler pursuit,” he said, and returned to his obituaries.
His gaze remained. It left its print in the air the way a sparkler emblazons the darkness in its wake. The idea didn’t seem at all strange to Yasmeen, as though it had always been sitting quietly inside of her, biding its time, waiting for something to release it.
•
The fire-red button on the telephone, the emergency button, was flashing.
“Lock up the portable and meet me at your place,” whispered Iris.
“What’s going on?”
“Hurry, I’ll explain when I see you.” She hung up.
Yasmeen threw her plan book into her bag and collected the rest of her things. It was dusk and the wind had picked up. Rushing to beat Iris to her place she stumbled but managed to stay upright, her big rubber boots kicking up a spray of rocks in her path.
She leaned into the handrail to catch her breath. “What’s up?”
“Close the door,” said Iris, lining up her boots like dutiful warriors. She crossed into the living room and twisted the blinds shut. “Better yet, lock it.”
“Can’t.” Yasmeen hung her jacket and bag on one of the hooks of h
er coat rack, a painted two-by-four nailed to the wall of her entrance. “The lock’s been busted since I arrived.”
Iris clapped a hand over her mouth. She sank into the couch, little red splotches creeping up her neck. She unzipped her coat and sat it beside her.
“I’ve put an order in to Maintenance but they said it might be weeks. Anyway, who locks their doors here? Everyone just walks in. I kind of like that about the place.” Yasmeen was more preoccupied with the dirt and debris pelting the window. She wondered if winter was about to arrive early. “So, what’s all the fuss? Is there a lemming crisis or something? Been there, done that.”
“It’s not a joke.” Iris fiddled with the collar of her shirt. “I’ve seen this sort of thing in other villages.”
She was trying to sound diplomatic but Yasmeen saw through it. “Okay, so what?”
“Bootlegging. There’s contraband booze in town.” She said it didn’t matter how it got there or who brought it up north, the point was it didn’t bode well for them.
“Us?”
“The whites,” said Iris, rising to peek through the slats of the blind. She lowered her voice as though someone might be listening. “Apparently, our friend Tommy’s gone off the deep end.”
The deep end. What did that amount to, Yasmeen wondered? It sounded like hyperbole, like someone trying to stir up excitement in a one-horse town. “Where’s Jacqueline in all this? Can’t she calm him down?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“If it’s true, if he’s really plastered, I’m sure she can deal with it, they’ve been together four years, for Pete’s sake.”
“Elliot called me just before I called you—in case you think I’m exaggerating. Apparently, Tommy made an appearance over there. Going on and on, of course, about the usual.”
“The usual?”
“Never mind. We’ll need to barricade the door however we can,” she said, pushing up her shirtsleeves. “If Elliot’s hunch is right he’ll be making the rounds, so we’re better off sticking together. There’s safety in numbers. Now, come and help me.”
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