Through Black Spruce

by Joseph Boyden

  I said nothing as I approached them, just dropped the sack by their smoke rack and sat down on the sand, stared out along with them, rubbing my bum leg, and sniffing the new wind. I reached into my pocket, pulled out some tobacco, and rolled three cigarettes. Standing, I offered one to each. The old woman turned her head, but her husband accepted his along with my light. They knew something of me. I think I knew something of them, too. I guessed they were Attawapiskat people. I’d seen them before, on one of my many flights to their reserve so many years ago. I wanted him to be the first to talk, but he held out. We smoked our cigarettes, and the old woman went back to their camp, returned with two of the fattest plucked geese I’d ever seen and slipped long sharpened sticks into them, disappeared into her smoke tent to cook them sagabun. She was good, letting me know that whatever I’d brought in my sack, what they had was far better.

  I was younger than them. I broke the silence first. “Bad weather.” I pursed my lips and pointed to the north and west, toward Peawanuck.

  I saw from the corner of my eye that moshum grinned. He was missing a couple of teeth. He answered in Cree. “Don’t want to be out between here and there in a boat today.” He, too, pointed with his lips toward the mainland, so far on the horizon it was just an idea. “Shallow there. But plenty deep to drown you in what’s coming.” Just like that, we were friends. The west wind picked up, cool and dangerous.

  “Chose a bad day to visit,” I said in English. I wanted to know how much of it he knew, what I was working with.

  “You stay for dinner, you stay for the night,” he answered back in English. He walked toward their tent. I had a choice to make. Hump it home with a storm on my back or get ready to hunker down with these ones for a while.

  Their granddaughters were shy. They didn’t make themselves known until the scent of the smoked goose called them into the tent. We sat on fresh spruce boughs and drank tea. The wind picked up strong enough to sweep the deer flies and mosquitoes away, but on a silent evening, this place must have been hell. This family, these old ones, knew their business, though. Enough of a shore breeze to take the worst of the bugs away, and a perfect nesting ground for the geese. The two children ate goose with grease-smeared faces. The younger girl burped, and they fell into giggles. I answered their burp with my own, and they grabbed one another, laughing, rolling on the spruce. One was about five, the other maybe seven. They reminded me of you, my nieces. Of my others. My lost ones.

  “My sister and me. We saw a sasquatch here,” the youngest one blurted. “Ever big! He was big and he ran into the woods by the creek.”

  “I told my kookum he was wearing boots,” the older one said, “but Kookum said ‘Ever! Sasquatches don’t wear boots!’”The girls giggled again.

  The wind came in gusts now, puffing the tent, pellets of rain coughing off the canvas. Old moshum grinned when it blew hard. He had the smile. A front tooth missing and one, too, to the side. Something in me ached for a pull of rye. None of that tonight. Put it away. The old ones pretended to ignore the young ones’ antics, and the children squealed and laughed.

  Kookum kept herself occupied cleaning up and then sewing a nice pair of winter mitts. When the wind slowed between gusts, the hiss of the Coleman lantern filled the tent. The two girls calmed and became sleepy, jolting up when distant thunder cracked.

  “Your granddaughters?” I asked in Cree.

  “Good girls,” the old man answered. “We agreed to look after them for the summer and autumn while their parents get better.” I wanted to ask but it would be rude. It would come out with time.

  “From Attawapiskat?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Winisk a long time ago, but we moved south. Too much flooding up there every spring.”

  I asked his name.

  “Francis Koosis. You are a Bird. You flew a plane a long time ago.”

  I smiled. “Yes. A long time ago.”

  I poured more tea. Thunder boomed again. The storm was reaching its peak. We stopped talking to let the worst of it pass.

  “I knew your father,” he said. “Most old ones on James Bay did. He was an old man already when I was young.” The old man stopped and smiled. “He had you old. Strong like a bull moose.”

  “Yes. ”We both smiled.

  “One more hour and this will pass,” he said.

  I nodded. The worst of the thunder and lightning had come and gone, and the rain set in hard. He was right. This storm wouldn’t be as long as I first worried.

  “We will camp here another few weeks, maybe a month. Leave well before freeze-up. Pick a good day with no wind. Make it back in half a day if the motor holds up.”

  “We will have so many geese it will sink our boat,” the old woman spoke. She’d been listening intently by the light of the Coleman. “How long do you stay here?” she asked. She didn’t mind being direct.

  “I don’t know. I think I might like to trap on the island this winter.” I began to wonder what they could have heard from the mainland. Maybe they knew far more than I thought.

  “You’d rather trap here?” the old man asked. “Be careful of the polar bears. We’ve been seeing tracks. Lots around. More to come when they wait for the freeze-up to get out on the ice.”

  “I’ve got a good rifle,” I said.

  “You’re the one who doesn’t have a family anymore,” the old woman said. “It makes sense to me that you don’t mind staying here through winter. It will be awfully lonely, though.”

  Her husband gave her a sharp look. “She sometimes speaks her mind out loud when she shouldn’t. Me, I think her head is getting soft.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, smiling at her.

  She smiled back in such a way that I thought maybe moshum was right.

  “I will make you a warm pair of mitts, then,” she said, going back to her sewing.

  The rain continued to pop on the tent in a steady rhythm. I’d be able to leave in an hour if I wanted to. I liked this couple, though. I liked the company. The thought of being alone in my damp askihkantonight wasn’t very appealing. I’d open a bottle of rye, I thought. I wouldn’t be able to fight it. After being in the presence of others and then having to go back to being alone was tough business. A few drinks could help that.

  “Any news from the mainland?” I asked after a while. I didn’t want to sound too eager and figured I’d waited long enough.

  Moshum gave me a quick look but looked away just as quick. “We’ve been on the island awhile. But before that, no. Not really. I’d like to say hello to some relations, but we don’t travel with a radio. You?”

  “Mine never worked well,” I said. “It’s broken for good. Me, I’d like to say hello to some family, too.” I was hoping they might have had something. As the rain slowed to a patter, the weight of not knowing sat heavy on me. I gave my thanks for the meal and made my way out of the tent. The old man followed.

  “You can stay the night if you wish,” he said. “How far is your camp? It can’t be close, or I’d know.”

  “It’s inland. On some water.” I wasn’t ready to give too much yet. I had to figure them out, their intentions, first. “ Meegwetch for the offer, but I will be able to find it fine.” We looked up at clouds speeding over a half moon.

  “More rain coming,” he said.

  “I will be fine. I’ll come back to visit in the next while, if that is okay.”

  He nodded.

  I climbed onto the higher dry ground and made my way to the creek. No flashlight. But I had my lighter and a few rolled cigarettes. A long walk in the dark, but I’d make it. What else did I have to do?

  The walk home wasn’t a good one. My leg felt broke again. The weather. I banked on it clearing, but another band of rain came in, just like the old man predicted, obscuring any moonlight, the kind of rain that promised to last till morning. I found the creek okay but missed the place to turn toward my lake. And for the first time since I was a child, it came over me.

  When I realized I no longer had a
ny idea which way to go, I felt the panic blossom in the pit of my stomach. My clothes were soaked, and the rain dropped the temperature so that my jacket was useless. Walking a long way, stumbling over uprooted trees and slipping in mud, I became disoriented. And so I forced myself to stop and did what I knew I needed to do. I wasn’t going to get a fire started tonight, so I dragged dead wood into a simple frame and pulled moss over it, got a single smoke going before the rest of my tobacco was ruined, smoked it halfway till it, too, soaked, then huddled in the useless little shelter like a squirrel and shivered the rest of the night away.

  An hour before dawn, the skies still weeping, me shaking so hard I feared hypothermia, I forced myself up to move and get blood flowing again. I walked in bigger and bigger circles, knowing I wasn’t going to find my camp this way, but walking for the warmth.

  Finally, with the first light of dawn the rain slowed, then stopped. By mid-morning, I found the lake and pulled myself around its shore to my askihkan, got a fire going with dry wood, stripped off the wet clothes, and pulled on all the dry clothes I could. I slept till late in the afternoon and when I woke, I did exactly what I knew I shouldn’t do. I dug another bottle up and began drinking. By evening I felt nothing much. I was alone. I was no longer alone. Other people around me again brought all of it back. A familiar whisky jack, one no longer in the least bit afraid, perched near my outstretched hand. As I fed it bits of old bannock, I began talking.

  What if they do know of Marius’s murder? If I am wanted by the police, these people probably have gotten wind. There are no secrets in Mushkegowuk. These old ones are good actors or they truly don’t know anything.

  The whisky jack took another bit of bannock from the ground.

  And what about when they return to Attawapiskat? Even if they know nothing now, surely they will speak of me on this island. Whether or not their intentions are good, word will be out, and people will know where to find me. Does this mean I have to find another hiding place?

  The whisky jack turned its head and blinked. I stood and began pacing. The bird flew away. I would have to as well.

  Sitting in the darkness of my askihkan, I drank more, used the excuse of my hurting leg, but the more I drank, the more my father’s gun in its blanket moaned, enough to make me think I was going crazy. The fire burned low. The night began coming into my askihkan now, but I didn’t stand up for more wood.

  “Shut up, you!” I found myself shouting. “You don’t shut up, I will throw you away.” I imagined the rifle whimpering at my words like a punished dog. I looked at the shadows around me, the last light before complete nightfall a deep blue halo in the smoke hole above me. I saw my packs of winter clothing in one corner, my father’s rifle buried below them. Perishable food sat at the far end by the door. My bed lay across the fire from me. The log that I sat on hurt my bony ass. So this is what my life had become. An idea presented itself to me. “You know what?” I said to the rifle. “I’m going to give you away. As a gift.” The gun, this time, it definitely whimpered.

  24

  SQUEEZED

  Five of us sit around Uncle Will’s kitchen table. Eva says she’s going to try and come by. She’s an hour late. Gordon and I lit candles earlier for some ambience, but my mother’s and Joe’s and Gregor’s faces in the eerie light make it seem like more of a séance than a casual dinner. Why, again, did I ask them over? What was I thinking, trying to introduce a little city suave into Moosonee?

  “So, ven do ve eat?” Gregor asks. The vampire accent, though not a put-on, still makes me want to laugh once in a while. He picks up his beer bottle and drinks. His eyes catch mine in the flicker of candle flame. He winks. Such a perv. But there’s something funny about him. He’s the neutered old dog that begs for attention.

  “How are we going to see what we’re eating,” Joe says. “You weren’t able to get Will’s electricity turned back on?”

  My mother, of all people, laughs. She pats Joe’s arm. “You’re such the funny one, Joe Wabano,” she says. She stands. “I’ll help Gordon in the kitchen.”

  I didn’t buy any booze, thinking it was a good idea to have a night where no one drank. But both Joe and Gregor showed up at the door with a case of beer each. I’m seriously wanting to head to the fridge and grab one.

  “Annie,” Joe says, his own bottle in his big hand, “your mum tells me that Will squeezes your hand when you talk to him.” He smiles. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.”

  My god, are there no secrets in this town? I’ve created a lie that has repercussions. But don’t they all? “Yeah,” I answer. “Sometimes his eyes flutter, too.”

  We’re finishing up our meal when I hear a snowmobile pulling into the drive. When I open the front door, the icy air washes over me. Junior sits on the ski-doo while Eva struggles to climb off it. He won’t even get his fat ass up to help her. They exchange some words that I can’t hear, and Junior cuts across Will’s front lawn without so much as a nod.

  “You made it,” I say as Eva stomps inside, kicking snow off her boots. She smells of the cold.

  “Ever freezing out!” She gasps as she sits. I help her pull her boots off. “Junior’s such a dick. Our truck wouldn’t start and he wasn’t going to drive me across on his sled. He won’t pick me up later, so I’m going to stay over if you don’t want to drive me home.”

  The idea of Eva staying over makes me feel crazy happy. I guess I’m starved for hanging out with someone who will actually talk back to me.

  “Got any wine coolers?” Eva asks. “Me, I got the next three days off, and my mum’s watching Hugh till tomorrow.”

  “We just got beer,” I say. I go to the kitchen and grab one for each of us. So much for a sober evening.

  Mum sits beside Gordon, holding a mug of tea. The table’s already cleared off.

  “You hungry, Eva?” I ask. I can see Joe and Gregor out on the back porch, smoking cigarettes, their mouths emitting great puffs of steam.

  “Mona,” she says. “Me and Junior ate at home.” Despite her size, I’ve never seen Eva eat any more than a normal-sized person. The other kids used to taunt her mercilessly when we were young. Her size is not her fault.

  Joe and Gregor bump back into the house, letting in a blast of cold air. I head to the wood stove and throw in a few logs. In the next couple of days, I’ve got to get Gordon out to cut up some extra wood. I’m worried he’s going to hurt himself with the chainsaw, but he hasn’t yet.

  “Wachay, wachay, Eva,” Joe says, sitting at the table. Gregor joins him. “So you got the night off work, eh?”

  “The next three days,” Eva says, taking a swig of beer. “Ever tasty, this.” Joe and Eva are cousins, though I don’t think they talk unless I bring them together. It’s nothing personal between them. Just different generations. Half this town, and Moose Factory too, are cousins, it seems.

  “Didja hear that Will’s been responding to Annie’s talking?” Joe asks.

  Oh shit. I’m dead. Eva looks over to me quick, but doesn’t say anything. I can feel Gordon’s eyes on me, too.

  “I’m sure you must have heard,” Joe says. “What does that Dr. Goat have to say about it?”

  “Dr. Lam,” Eva corrects. She glances at me again. “He says activity in the prefrontal cortex is working overtime to click back into gear.”

  “Well,” Gregor jumps in, “this night, it is a night of celebrating.” He raises his bottle. “Nostrovya!” he shouts, and we raise our beers and clink. “Tomorrow, I will begin talking to my friend Will,” Gregor claims. “I will talk to him for three days until, like Jesus, he climbs out of his bed.”

  Everyone else finds this funny. I get up from the table to grab another beer.

  Eva and I sit on Uncle’s couch, taking old photos out of a shoebox and looking at them. Gordon sits in a chair across from us, picking up some of the photos lying on the coffee table. The others left an hour ago, and Gregor was kind enough to leave the rest of his case of beer in the fridge.


  “Look at you!” Eva says, showing me a picture of a skinny girl with twig legs, casting a fishing rod.

  “That’s Suzanne,” I say, looking closer.

  “Ever look alike when you were kids,” Eva says. She picks up another photo. “This was Will’s wife, eh?”

  I nod.

  “Such a shame.”

  “I don’t remember her,” I say.

  I look at some photos of Uncle Will when he was my age. Handsome devil. Tall and thin, his long hair tied back. He’s smiling in this photo and looks like he owns the world, his first bush plane resting behind him. “Look at this one, Eva.”

  She takes it and stares. “Wow! What a hunk. What happened?”

  I slap her arm playfully. “He’s still good looking. Even lying in that hospital bed, you can tell.”

  Eva puts down the photo. She picks up her beer and drinks. “So, Annie, it’s good to hear he’s responding to you. Too bad no one at the hospital knows about it.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I ask. “You guys were going to send him down south. You know as sure as I do that he’d last about a week there away from his family. Away from home.”

  “What,” Eva says. “You a doctor now? You don’t know that.”

  “You’re the one who told me to talk to him,” I say.

  “I didn’t say you should lie,” she says.

  I get up and walk to Gordon. I stand behind him and place my hands on his shoulders. “Be honest with me, Eva. Is he ever going to wake up, or is he basically dead already?”

  She looks down at the photos on the table. “Do we have to talk about this now?”

  I don’t answer. It’s answer enough.