Through Black Spruce

by Joseph Boyden

  “It’s bikers, Mum.” I start sobbing again. “They killed Gus.”

  “Come home,” she says. “We need you here. Marius didn’t die, but he won’t be right again. Joe Wabano said Marius will come back to Moosonee soon. You have to come home, Annie,” Mum says. This is one of the only times she’s ever told me what I have to do. “You’re in the wrong place. That world isn’t for my daughters. Will, I’m sure he’d agree. Come back before the snows. Suzanne promises she’ll be home for Christmas. We can all be together again.”

  Only when we finally make our promises, that yes, I’ll come home, that we’ll all be together again, that my mother not breathe a word of Suzanne’s talk about coming home to anyone until we figure this out, do I hang up.

  I find a mostly full bottle of wine in the fridge. I sit on the couch, walk onto the balcony, and wander through the stark rooms of this apartment, trying to make some sense. I am lost, and the panic of it is like being lost in the bush. I need to calm down, stop running pointlessly and prepare for the coming night. This is not over.

  The wind gusts as I stand outside and smoke a cigarette, gulping straight from the bottle of wine. Bad weather coming. I’ve got to prepare now. Work this out. The wind out on the balcony howls. I stand shivering in it. My scalp tingles. I need to lie down. Something bad is coming. My jaw begins to clench, and I find the couch and an old T-shirt before the pain.

  I am on a soft white sofa, flying over Manhattan, trying to shield my face from the bitter wind, trying desperately to figure out how to steer this thing. It rises sudden and violent, climbs at such a pitch I’m worried I’ll roll off it and fall to my death. Then it nosedives and I slide the other way. I’m forced to grip into the fabric, dig my toes under the cushions to stop my inevitable plunge. The sofa levels off above a dark New York alley. Meatpacking district. I hover above it. I peer over the edge and look down, careful to not be seen. Kenya is below me. Her dark skin glistens on the wet, black pavement. She stares up, looks around, and senses me above, but she can’t see me.

  I see movement down the alley. I watch as Soleil in a white, white gown emerges from behind a dumpster. She has something in her hand. A credit card. Danny comes out from behind the dumpster, too, catches up to Soleil, and the two skip hand in hand down the alley toward Kenya. They plan on slitting her throat with the card. I know it.

  They approach her from behind. I scream to Kenya to run, and I fumble on the sofa, trying to figure out how to work it, how to make it fly. Soleil and Danny are close to Kenya now. They stop and kiss with just their tongues. Then they’re walking toward her again. They’re stalking her now.

  Kenya looks up and sees me and focuses on my eyes. I’m trying to scream to her, but nothing comes out. She’s happy to see me. In her looking up to me, she’s exposed her neck. Her eyes, they become Suzanne’s eyes. They say it all.

  The clicking of a lock and deadbolt. I am on the couch on my back, sweating. My head hurts. My teeth ache from clenching. I worry I’ve broken them. I spit the T-shirt from my mouth.

  The light from the hallway outside the apartment cuts through the black room. A lighthouse glow that sweeps across my eyes. The pain of it squeezes my eyes shut. When I open them again, the room is black, darting minnows of light shooting out across it. I am awake, alive on my back on the sofa in the living room, and I can hear the breathing of a man, the fumbling of his hand on the wall.

  The world flashes white, and the pain of it makes me cry out. I slap my hands over my eyes. I peep through my fingers, crying now with the fear.

  I see the long black hair. I reach my hands to my protector, worried that he isn’t really there. He leans down, and I see concern in his dark eyes. I reach up to him, to his ropy arms and strong back. I pull him to me, and he really is here. I’ve pulled him to me on the couch. He’s really here. I cry more and slowly, I begin to calm. He holds me.

  I talk and pause and talk again, trying to stitch together all of these images, the bits of cloth I’ve been handed. I try to stitch it all together into something that we can both see, that we can both begin to understand.

  29

  GHOST RIVER

  I can sense wabusk, the polar bear, snuffling and drooling here where I walk and rest, nieces, here where I remember the parts of my living world that led me to this dream world. I have not felt fear on this journey until now. But it isn’t total fear I feel. More like the fear you might get walking up the stairs from your darkened basement that makes you want to rush up to the light. Does this mean that the dusk road I feel my way along is near its end? I’d like to ask wabusk, but I don’t think it will have the answers I want.

  The polar bear destroying my camp like an angry, hungry child, it was not a good visitor to come home to once old Koosis and his family left me alone on that island. I screamed at it so loud I scared myself. I shook my rifle in the air, my voice swallowed by the snorts and growls of that huge white bear not far from me.

  A warning shot did nothing, but now my voice, the sound of a human, did. The bear stopped its violent rooting and turned its head. It left the wreck of my askihkan and began toward me, slow at first, sniffing, then with deliberation. I slipped the rifle onto my shoulder, hands shaking, and tried to aim at the white bulk of its chest. It seemed three of them, at least, in my fogged scope.

  I’d aimed a gun at and killed an animal hundreds of times. Only a few times I faltered. An old dog of mine wrecked by cancer, its milky eyes staring up. A cow moose in my sights, her wobbly-legged calf bounding out sudden behind her. My sow bear. If I had killed her that night at the dump I would have saved her a far worse death by hands I couldn’t imagine at the time. I remembered my black bear when I tensed my finger on the trigger of my father’s gun. This one loomed far bigger than her, had come into my territory, no remorse or care for what would happen to me this winter once it destroyed my stores.

  I pulled the trigger. The rifle barked. I saw nothing with the buck against my shoulder. I lowered the ancient gun quick as I ejected the old cartridge and replaced it.

  The bear stopped and looked through beady eyes toward me. I searched for blood on the bear’s chest but only saw the yellow-tinged fur. I spotted the red then, on the top and to the right of its eye. The bear lifted a paw awkwardly, began rubbing like it felt an itch. Blood stained its paw and forearm. The bear brought its paw to its mouth and sniffed, began licking, then raised it back to its head. The animal looked at me, and I think I saw accusation in the black eyes.

  Then I spotted what I’d done. One ear stuck up, but the other was missing. I’d blown the fucker’s ear off. My aim was off by more than three feet. Stupid rifle! I aimed into the air and fired again, and once more the concussion made the day feel shattered. The bear reared and turned, ran fast as the thick legs could take it, crashing through the thin spruce.

  My askihkan lay crushed, the embers of the fire smoking. I dragged out my belongings, my ripped duffels, torn boxes of canned food, my good rifle and shotgun, my sleeping bag and winter clothing. All the geese I’d shot, plucked, and begun preparing, ruined. Dozens of them once, now eaten or partly eaten or trampled so badly I kicked them in anger. I wished I had killed you, polar bear.

  My salt and flour supplies, though, they still looked okay. A setback, I told myself. This was all. I looked around. The sod pile had been left alone and at least I’d still have the rest of my smoked trout and goose. A couple weeks at best. Fuck.

  I realized then the laziness of my autumn. As if to taunt me, snowflakes drifted down and hissed in the embers of my old home. I dug through the sod pile and pulled out a bottle of whisky, shaking still from the adrenaline. The image of that polar bear on top of me flashed, its jaws crushing my skull with its teeth, my head spurting like a foamy can of Coke. I picked up my rifle case and removed the Whelen. I placed a mag in and leaned it beside me. Come back, bear. I shivered with the anger, the loss of something I barely had. Come back, bear.

  Build it all up, and it all falls down. It all bur
ns down. Everything you need can be taken. Remember that, nieces. Everything you hold dear, it can be taken.

  There was nothing left but to dig through my camp for what remained useful. I organized all of it into piles of food, warmth, and tools.

  When all of it was neatly packed in my plane, the plane didn’t look nearly as full as when I came here. But it was enough, I hoped, to get me through to spring if I was lucky with hunting and trapping.

  The battery of my plane, she was long dead, and so I drained the oil from my engine and heated it slow near a fire all night. I poured the oil back in, checked the engine, the wings, rudders, and ailerons. I floated the plane in the shallow water, nose on shore, and began the hand bombing, the winding up and pulling down of the prop, just like in the old days. My shoulders felt ready to tear I tried so hard, but eventually the engine coughed some. Again and again I tugged, and then she started, the prop turning on its own, warm oil in the engine gurgling happily.

  Only one thing left to pack. I jumped out, dug up the few remaining bottles of rye, and tucked them safely in the plane. I looked around this camp once more, truly sad to leave it. Always, though, to head to a new place, the adventure felt good.

  I flew to the coast of the mainland, then south to the place I remembered, the old abandoned Hudson’s Bay Company settlement. When I spotted my goal, I realized it was on a stretch of river far narrower than I remembered. As a young one, I would have tried to land that water, but the foolishness thins with age. I found a wide enough length of river once I’d flown over a couple of times, came back around and landed on the wider part, then motored in on my pontoons, surprised at how much gas I’d used up, so surprised I worried the tank leaked.

  The river there was a quiet and narrow stretch, with low banks and some good hardwood on the shores, creeks running into it that promised pike and pickerel. Lots of creeks, lots of tamarack, which meant a good cover for moose. Once landed, I set to work immediately with my chainsaw, cutting logs for a ramp to place my plane on and prevent it from freezing in the river, then for firewood and for making another askihkan. I was alone for hundreds of miles. When I killed my chainsaw the silence was almost as loud, crouching in all around me. No fooling myself. This was going to be hard.

  The clear afternoon promised a cold night. The prospector’s tent went up, tied between two spruce, with more spruce for tying off. A good spot here, up from the water and hidden but still close enough for my water and fishing. The little wood stove dragged in, what hardwood I could find deadfall enough for the first night. That first night wasn’t so bad, but the next days, the next weeks proved that I’d made a late start in preparing for winter. Building the winter askihkan would be the most time-consuming labour, digging into the ground, constructing the framework around, cutting sod and birchbark to keep the heat in and the rain, and then feet of snow, out.

  The abandoned settlement lay just up the hill and in a grown-over clearing. Fort Albany Cree called it chipayak e ishi ihtacik, whispered it was full of ghosts, and they are the ones, I guess, who gave this river its name. Bad things supposedly happened around here. I’d always promised myself I’d come see it in order to get a better feel for the place. And so finally, I was here.

  After days of hard work, finally, a day of blessedness. A mild late October sun shone on a spot for my camp that was more than I dreamed. I wished I had come here before Akimiski Island. The day peaked so warm that mosquitoes came out, fooled into a spring hunger. I travelled the river in my canoe, scouted out good drinking creeks, noting the ones that led to beaver ponds. When the freeze began, I’d start trapping them for food. I paddled in my canoe with my bum leg straight ahead, my rifle resting on it. Signs of moose from a few weeks ago, but also fresher prints further up the river. All of this was good.

  Feeling I had time on my side, I went up to investigate the old settlement. Something beyond the hard work of making a good camp had kept me from it. I didn’t try to put words to it and struggled not to open another bottle of rye on the long silent nights or to smoke too many cigarettes in waste. I was as long and lean as I was in my twenties. I was doing good, me, but still, the desire to explore got the best of me. I headed up to the place with my rifle.

  Two grouse, fat but fast, scared up from a spruce on the perimeter of the old place, the pop of their wings making me jump. If only I’d brought my shotgun. I told myself I’d brought my rifle instead in case I saw any moose, but knew the chances of that weren’t much. No trees had grown back in around the settlement. Maybe a half-acre of open ground. Why would trees not take this place back over? Long grasses, though, scattered around the fallen husks of old wood buildings.

  The first was nothing more than the ground the building once stood on, a few blackened and heavy lengths of ancient split hardwood scattered so that I could see what must have been the outline, the biggest here. Company store, I guessed. Maybe the church. One or the other. Always the two, hand in hand. One claiming to take what the Cree didn’t need or want, the other claiming to give us what we were missing. Never clear for me which was which.

  I walked around the foundation rather than through it. I found other foundations when I poked through the tall grass, smaller outbuildings on the perimeter, sleeping quarters maybe. Another, bigger structure that was centre to this tiny village. River stones flecked with mortar lay scattered. This one was built to be the most intimidating. Church or company store?

  I walked to the middle of this one, ignoring the body’s pull against it, same as the tug to not walk on a grave. I took out my hunting knife and kneeled. Pulling out the long grasses, I began to dig with it, clinking stones, digging up some brown, then black earth. I dug a small mound out, then kept digging deeper, the hope of finding an old piece of musket, an iron pot. Then, past a foot down, I heard the clink of my knife striking an object softer than stone. I pulled out shards of dirt-covered glass. Digging more careful now, I hoped to find a piece at least part complete, but the chances of that were slim with the years of weight and pressure and freeze and melt.

  Maybe it was boredom, or maybe it was that I had an afternoon with nothing to do but go crazy if I didn’t keep my hands busy, but I was still gently probing and digging an hour later, a three-foot by three-foot trench excavated, my knife and fingers sifting and scraping, pulling out the bits of old wood and pieces of porcelain and glass.

  I pushed harder into the ground with my knife than I meant to when the sharp crack of a bigger piece of glass stopped me. I sifted through the dirt and I cut my pointer finger on the sharp edge of something. Not a bad cut, but it bled red through the black of mud-caked hands. Scratching, I saw what looked to be clear glass, warped and fogged with age. As my fingers continued to gently scrape away the layers of heavy, wet dirt, I saw that I’d come across what must have been an old windowpane, broken now by my own hand. But my eyes were the first to peer through it for far over a hundred years.

  More careful scratching and digging, and I saw I’d found what appeared to be at least four panes of glass, once held together by a frame, the wood long rotted, but the glass somehow still intact. The first pane was cracked from the knife. The second I thought I’d cleared enough earth from, but when I pulled it up, it too cracked into a dozen pieces. The third sat already smashed. An hour of sunlight before I had to head back. I decided to take my time with the fourth. I dug a wide swath around it, careful with the gentle scrape and removal of dirt from the top of it until I had a four-inch by six-inch piece of dirty glass sitting before me. I picked it up and looked through it, the world on the other side muddied and warped. I carried it back to my camp as careful as if it were a treasure. I knew it was worth something only to me.

  October faded with the last of the geese. I turned my attention to moose before they headed further inland now that the rut was mostly done. More than three months that I’d left Moosonee. Three months since I’d killed Marius. I spoke the words. I murdered Marius. I have killed a man. Why did the memory of that decide to haunt me no
w?

  My father had killed many men. I watched him kill a goose one time. Many times I watched him kill. Geese, moose, a polar bear. Fox. Marten. But this particular goose. My dad cried. He cried! A simple goose. I think he never got over the guilt or the shell shock of killing so many. Who knew it can last decades? I hadn’t even begun coming to terms with what I had done.

  With my leg still not strong enough for daylong hikes into the thick bush, I took to paddling up the Ghost River far as I could in search of any moose that might be on the shoreline. As hard as the paddling up the river was, the coming back made it all worthwhile.

  One day I’d made it maybe three miles up, sometimes paddling, sometimes standing carefully and poling along the faster parts, other times walking the bank, my canoe on a line over my shoulder. I had what I needed in the canoe, a tarp and my sleeping bag, an axe, some food, my rifle. A small load, but big enough to camp overnight. Plenty of old signs of moose along there kept me going, imprints of their hooves in the dried mud along the bank, stretches of tamarack stripped of their buds.

  For a night’s camp, I found a good place on the bank near a small creek. Good wood around for a warm fire. By the time I’d set up my camp, night had fallen. I knew it was going to be a long one. Nothing much for me to do but keep the fire going and stare into it. I picked up my rifle and inspected its working parts. Me, I’d kept this thing cleaner than I ever had. Idle hands, nieces. Idle hands.

  The thought of a bottle, of a drink, pulled my guts. But I’d brought none. A decision made earlier in the morning as I loaded the canoe to go it dry. Fucking idiot. Shouldn’t this have passed, this physical ache for a drink? If I was going to live and die up here in the bush alone, why didn’t I bring ten cases? A hundred? Shouldn’t a man be allowed to die how he wants? As that night crept by, I thought I’d rather die drunk and alone, screaming and hollering at imaginary enemies, than sober and alone at real ones. I tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t come.