Through Black Spruce

by Joseph Boyden

  “Worst fucking time of my life,” I spat. “I haven’t thought about those days in a long while.” I hobbled inside, dragging my heavy bum leg fast as I could, much slower than I wanted. I went for the fridge, popped open a bottle of Canadian with a knife by the sink. Dorothy didn’t follow. I drank it down in two gulps.

  When Dorothy finally did come in, I was still standing by the sink. “Maybe I should go,” she said. “You don’t seem to want company tonight.”

  I looked up to her. I was making her sad. “I don’t mean to,” I said. She glanced at the empty beer bottle by the sink.

  “You don’t mean to have company tonight?” She looked confused.

  “Mona. I don’t mean to make you sad. I think drinking wine makes me sad.”

  “Drinking anything makes an Indian sad,” she said. “Listen, Will. Water taxis stop running in an hour. I’ve been thinking.” She paused. “Maybe this is all too fast, too soon. I mean I don’t even drink normally. The idea of sharing a bottle of wine, of talking to an adult, someone interesting, it’s all … it’s all a nice thought, but it isn’t working like I want it to.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t want to be a bad influence on you. You’re … You’re an alcoholic. And I’m only an enabler by doing what I’ve been doing.”

  Hearing her speak those three words made me suddenly feel very sober. Sober, of all things. “I’ve actually cut way down on my drinking these last few months,” I said.

  “And I’ve drunk more than I have in my whole life since we’ve been hanging out,” she answered.

  “Enabler, eh?” I said. “Those are words my sister would use.”

  “That’s the new language of the Anishnabe,” she said. “How long can you go without a drink?”

  “A few days. Maybe more.”

  “How about one day at a time?”

  “Now you really sound like my sister.”

  Dorothy’s face went red. “You’re an idiot, you,” she said with thin lips. “Everything is a joke. Everything someone says to you, no matter with how much care, you turn it back on them. Like your problems are their fault. You’re just a big kid.” She headed for the door.

  “I’m a kid?” I said. “Look at you. First cloud on the horizon and you’re screaming thunderstorm!” It sounded stupid. But it worked. Dorothy stopped and looked back at me. “You come on to me,” I said, “all hot and heavy so I’m the one feeling like a girl trying to slow things down, and all you do is keep coming over with good food and bottles of wine. What? Only to tell me I’m an alcoholic?” The words were out before I even thought them.

  She looked like she was going to cry. Then she did. Now I’d done it.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. Don’t go. Please. Stay awhile.” I went up to her and wrapped my arms around her. She kept her arms stiff by her sides. I leaned my mouth to hers. Her face was wet. I remember wanting to smoke a cigarette and drink a beer. I wanted to get out of this kitchen and be by myself for a while. Ahepik the spider crawled up my spine. I knew this spider, had not felt its legs on me in a long time. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. The spider was weaving.

  We held each other for a long while, standing still in my kitchen, so long that the desperate need for a beer, or even a cigarette, passed. We stood there and held one another so long that I began to feel comfortable holding Dorothy. When I closed my eyes, I heard the sounds of outside. Crickets sawing their fiddle legs, frogs belching, the crack of twigs under the paws of some bigger animal. Then I heard a loud snap in the distance. My bear? Had you come back to me for a gift?

  I opened my eyes and saw me holding Dorothy in the dark mirror of my kitchen window, the river below flashing, passing in the quarter moon. I could feel the energy of my bear, the vibration of it sniffing outside. I hadn’t left any food out for her tonight. I closed my eyes but then opened them again. I wanted to memorize this picture that Dorothy and I had created. I stared at our outline, the river in the moonlight passing through us, taking us somewhere. Her breath had evened out, was the breath that is close to sleep. I took some of her weight in my arms. I stared outside.

  The shadow of some passing form, big as a man, slipped by below the window. I tensed and Dorothy started, a slight moan from her, and I rubbed my hand over her hair to calm her. I now saw my mistake. I’d left the inside lights on and the curtains open and anyone who wished me harm watched my life unfold inside my house. It was just my bear. It must have been. No Marius for over a month now. Just my bear slipping through the moonlight, wanting a meal. I fought my paranoia, this new sickness, and forced myself to close my eyes again and try to find a place of comfort with another human, a woman here in my arms.

  A branch cracked, and my eyes were open again. I looked out the window and imagined the dark slant of land running down to the river. I should have left some offering for her. Movement outside tonight. More than I usually felt. Maybe Dorothy really had awakened something inside me.

  I stared out the window, tired now and nearly sober, her slight weight in my arms. A cloud passed over the quarter moon and darkened the world, and I stared out my window and wanted to see my bear but saw only my face. When she fell asleep, I carried Dorothy to my bed.

  A few days later, the smell of an old kill stunk outside my house. Gamey, a dog, maybe, hit by a car and lying splayed open in a ditch by the road. It wasn’t too overwhelming yet, but it was getting close. The bad stink comes when the animal is large and the other animals can’t or don’t eat it soon.

  The smell of decay. You can get used to anything. Joe and Gregor came over on a pity visit. They couldn’t go a minute without complaining about it. “Did you kill Marius and gut him somewhere nearby?” Joe asked.

  I wish.

  “We should investigate,” Gregor said.

  “You get used to it after a while,” I said. “Let’s just drink a few and shut up for once.” But the words didn’t make a difference. Before I was finished a second beer, we were up and following our noses into the trees beside my home. My leg screaming, the three of us stumbled in the lessening light, an evening that wanted to go on forever like it was the last day in the world fighting not to have to get offstage. Me, I fought the pounding of drinks long as I could, but I gave up, swallowing the last of a bottle of rye I’d left under the sink for an emergency. I knew what was coming and could not face it sober. I was afraid of what we would find.

  The three of us searched the underbrush for a few minutes, then came back out onto my lawn for a breath. When the wind blew in, slight from the west, the smell picked up again. Joe got his bearings at the same moment I did, waving for us to follow him as he stepped back into the woods once more, Gregor tripping over a fallen bough just ahead of me. Did we have to do this? The smell would be gone by week’s end, and I could go back to my dreaming, my memories of when those I love were still alive. Joe stopped up ahead. I heard the buzzing, the feeding of flies. Their wings, their bodies, vibrated in the purple of dusk. I’d learned the smell of death, but Gregor held his nose, and I heard the muffled sound of his saying he was going to be sick. I pushed past him and edged in beside Joe, his large back heaving for breath, hands limp at his sides.

  There you were, my bear, standing up straight, your back to the skeleton of a dead spruce. Words were posted above your head. But words were pointless now. You, as tall as me when you stood like this, staring back, long purple tongue hanging from your mouth and blackened by flies. They’d already taken your eyes so that at first their crawling forms made it seem you blinked at me, this twinkling in the soft light. When I could pull my eyes from yours, I trailed down your body, stopping at your neck, the bloodied rope that held your weight, that held you standing like a human, around it like a dark smile across your slit throat. Your chest was exposed, the bald patches of your pale skin giving way to the rip of the knife that gutted you. So thin. You were so thin. Barrel chested but thin. Maggots pulsed and squirmed on top of your innards by your feet so that it was li
ke these exposed insides of your body were still alive. You were drained. And I was, too.

  “That’s not right,” Joe muttered. He wouldn’t look at me. I wouldn’t look at him either. “What the fuck does that say?” He pointed with his lips to a ripped-open beer case above your head smeared in bloody letters. I stared at the words bleeding down in your blood. Snitches. Bitches. Witches. No mind. I wouldn’t read the English anymore.

  “Let’s go,” I said. My friends followed me as I humped my way out of the trees and underbrush, dragging my heavy leg behind. I didn’t speak again the rest of that night.

  I left my house with a knife, a length of rope, and an old Hudson’s Bay blanket my father gave me. He’d used it out on the traplines. Its reds and blues and blacks and greens were faded with age now, the beaver marks, the stitching that shows its worth, faded to grey.

  I’d waited for the first light of dawn to do this, didn’t sleep last night. Instead, I built a fire in my pit by the river and watched the light of it, breathed in its smoke. I found myself crying, chanting a death song, a song I’d not chanted since my last loss. I hadn’t touched a drink after Joe and Gregor left. Another want filled me now.

  In the early light, it was easy to find you. I could find you with my eyes closed by the hum, the buzz, the vibration of your soul going to where it needed to. I’d brought my pouch stuffed with dried sweetgrass, cedar, tobacco, and sage. I’d brought my lighter and an old cereal bowl. I squatted in front of your carcass and smoked a Player’s Light, looked up at your stripped and empty body.

  I stood and carefully placed the blanket below you on the flat ground. I scooped your entrails up with my hands, waving the flies away, shaking their maggots from my hands. When I’d neatly piled your insides onto the blanket, I took my knife and cut the rope from around your neck, guiding the fall of your body carefully onto the centre of it. The flies scattered, you on your stomach now, resting. Bits of your fur stuck to the dead spruce, but I left them.

  Careful, I wrapped the blanket around you and tied you tight into it with my rope, tight as a baby in her cradleboard, her tikanagan. This is the proper way to enter the world, and this is the proper way to leave it, secure in the knowledge you’ve been cared for. Loved, even. An embrace. This is how you deserved to leave this world.

  Another, longer length of rope I used to make a simple cradle around your form, the end of it tied to a heavy rock. You looked like a human, my bear, covered in the stripes of Hudson Bay. I picked up the rock, looked up to a high limb of the dead spruce above you. It took two tries.

  I began trying to haul you up into the tree. Sweat burned my eyes in the early sun that penetrated this bit of woods, leaving shadows that danced across us. I was patient. And I was strong. But not strong enough. I hauled with all my weight. You were twice, three times it. I wrapped the rope around my arms, around my body, and tried with everything I had to walk you into that tree, to guide you into that tree, into a few remaining limbs that would support your lessening weight. I could get you a couple feet off the ground before I ran out of strength.

  I sat and sweat and lit another cigarette. How the fuck did the elders ever do this? I guess it takes a village to bury their child.

  I’d kept a block and tackle from my days of working on my old plane. It wasn’t too hard to find in the fallen-in shed behind my house. The rope was prickly, twiny with age, but still looked strong enough, the wooden wheels of the block still in good shape. I dragged the gear back, set it up on the tree, and in this way hauled you to blue sky peeking between the high limbs of the dead spruce, to your own part of heaven. I had to swing the rope and your weight attached to it with everything I had left to get you snuggled into the spruce’s branches that looked more and more like the fingers of a palm that asked to cradle you. When I was done, I sat and sweat and lit another cigarette.

  I took out my cereal bowl, placed the dried contents of the pouch into it, and lit them on fire with a match.

  Still morning. Smoke rose up straight to you. I sat below you and followed its trail. Straight smoke. A thin, simple line. It told me exactly what I had to do.

  18

  IS THERE NOTHING

  I CAN HAVE?

  The inside of the building spiders out in a maze of dim hallways. The numbers on the doors are confusing. I finally find the right one and knock. A thin man in a cowboy hat answers. He has the long black hair of an Indian, wears turquoise and silver bracelets, and has a gold tooth. He says hello and asks a few lispy questions. He doesn’t sound like any Indian I’ve heard speak before.

  The room’s full of lights, cameras, and umbrellas. It isn’t nearly as fancy as I imagined it would be. Another young man offers a bottled water while the photographer fiddles with his gear. The water man shows me to a dressing room, picks out different tops and skirts and a pair of white leather pants that I worry are too small. He sits me in a chair in front of a bright mirror. I stare at myself, wondering what I’m doing here. He begins to dab at my face with soft brushes and sharp pencils.

  “Your skin’s gorgeous,” he says.“But I will make you look like a brown goddess.”The black eyes, the broken blood vessels, have finally healed.

  When the makeup artist’s done, I stare at myself in the mirror. I look like myself still, but maybe an improved replica. I try on different clothes and settle on the leather pants and a silk top. The leather fits me like a second skin. I stay barefoot.

  The Indian-looking photographer directs me to a short stage and tells me to sit at an angle and turn my face to the camera. He holds a small black box too close to my nose and clicks it. “Light is perfect,” he says.

  I smile when he begins to click away with the camera.

  “Stop that,” he scolds. “These aren’t your prom photos.” All three of us laugh, and he clicks and clicks away.

  “Look more serious now,” he commands. “A little angry, even. Make your lips pout a little more.” I think of Suzanne then, of our last conversation so long ago before she climbed on Gus’s snowmobile on Christmas Day. When I see the photos a week later, there’s a tinge of sadness at the corners of my mouth. The photographer and the agent love the look.

  The photographer makes me stand, makes me kneel, makes me lie down with arms stretched out. I change clothes constantly, even take a few photos with no shirt on at all, arms crossed over my breasts. I’m embarrassed and wish I were in better shape, but the photographer acts like he loves me. The positions I’m asked to take seem too dramatic, even fake. But when I see those photos a week later, spread out across the agent’s desk, the pictures look very real. The photographer’s good, the best, the agent says. I remember how uncomfortable I felt, the discomfort turning into resignation. The photographer had captured that look on my face, the way I seemed almost too angry to look into the camera.

  “You might pass for Asian,” the agent says. “Or Spanish. Or even a beautiful Eskimo.” I laugh at that. The few raw-flesh eaters I know are short and have bad skin. “The exotic look is in.” This is the same small man who represents my sister. Represented my sister? I’ll have to ask him. This is the same man who handed me an envelope stuffed with Suzanne’s money not so long ago. To buy me off. Now, I think he is ready to sell me.

  This afternoon when I drive into town for supplies, the general manager of the Northern Store asks me if I’d be interested in being in their new catalogue. “It’ll go out to our stores all across Northern Ontario, maybe Manitoba, too,” he says.

  I want to ask him if he wants me to pose in the wilted fruits and vegetables aisles or with the lumber jackets and snowmobile boots. Instead I say, “Let me contact my agent,” before walking out.

  I drive to Eva’s house in Moose Factory and have an awkward dinner with her and Junior and their kid. Fat baby Hughie fusses and cries, and Junior ignores him and turns on Hockey Night in Canada so he doesn’t have to talk to me. It’s a classic rivalry: Canadiens vs. the Leafs. I know Junior’s a Montreal fan, and though I don’t care about Toronto,
whenever they score, I hoot and holler.

  Junior and I have never liked one another. He knows I think he’s a loser, and I know he thinks I’m a bitch. Eva puts up with him, though, and so I must, too. When Junior’s mother comes over to look after Hugh, I want to ask why Junior isn’t capable. It’s a Saturday night. There’s a dance over in Moosonee. Enough said.

  I drive Eva to work on the back of my snow machine because Junior’s taking theirs. I’m worried, as we make our way over the drifts and bumps, that the belt is finally going to break.

  The hospital has become a second home. I don’t even notice the sterile smell covering up the worse ones anymore. The bright lights late at night are dimmed to something almost comfortable. I’ve continued my little wanderings up and down the halls.

  When I peek in the huffer kid’s room, I see the empty bed and panic. Eva didn’t say anything about him getting moved. There’s someone else in the bed next to his that was empty a couple days ago. I can feel tears begin to burn my eyes. Stop it. Ask Eva about him before you become a sad sack.

  Down the hall, I look in the old couple’s room. They look the same as when I saw them last except for the white sheets that inch further up their chests each visit. I’m worried I’ll pop my head in one day to the both of them completely covered.

  Eva’s breathing startles me. She’s only a few feet behind me, dressed in her scrubs. “Sneaking around, are ya?” she asks.

  “I just wanted to look in on Moshum and Kookum,”I say.

  “Him,” she says, pointing her lips at the old man, “we can’t figure out what’s ailing him. Strong as a horse. Sylvina thinks he can’t stand to be too far away from her.”

  We walk back to Uncle Will’s room. “What happened to the gashuffing kid?” I ask, bracing myself to break down into a puddle of tears.