Through Black Spruce

by Joseph Boyden

  “I got this in Timmins,” she said. She held a thick book up for me to see in the light of the bedside lamp.

  I squinted my eyes at the cover. Something about two hundred years of poems. “You’re not thinking of reading that to me, are you?”

  “No. Maybe just a few.”

  “Am I allowed to fall asleep after a while, or will you get angry with me?”

  “You can sleep, darling,” she said. “I’ll just keep reading my favourites to you and let them haunt your dreams.”

  I lay back, prepared for the onslaught, folding my hands behind my head. Dorothy read a poem but seemed nervous about it, and I told her to just pretend she was reading to herself. She settled in, reading some poems complete, stopping when others confused or bored her.

  She found poems by a man named Blake, and after a while I was beginning to kind of like them. It struck me right then that my world felt like the perfect place. My world right then, lying beside Dorothy, for the first time, it felt complete. Dorothy read about slouching beasts, tigers with burning eyes, worms that became invisible and flew at night. I was lost in Dorothy’s voice. I even began to think I might understand what all this poetry business was about. Beasts and stars and ships rolled across my eyelids as I listened to Dorothy read, and when she paused, I reached a hand out and touched her so that she wouldn’t stop with them, to let her know I listened.

  At some point I sank so deeply into the words that I sank into another world, understood that this world was just on the other side of my pillow, and I let my head slip deeper down until I was gone into it. I was leaving this room and walking out of the house, and I was in the bush, by a creek in summer, but the foliage was thick as the foliage I saw on Discovery Channel, like a jungle along this creek. Up ahead sat the whale skeleton, two small children playing on it like it was monkey bars. But I knew the tigers were close by, tensed in the bush and ready to pounce. I looked up to the sky and saw the bright light of the sun and watched as the edge of it darkened and the shadow began to creep, swallowing the sun slowly until it was black night in the middle of the day.

  I could hear the fluttering of moth’s wings beating against the screen door of Dorothy’s house. I wanted to get up and open the door to let the moth out, this moth whose wings beat so loudly it must have been very big. I wanted to stand up and let this moth out of the house, release it from my head because its wings tickled the inside of my skull. I stood to go open the door and I found myself sitting up in bed in a dark room and the bed wasn’t mine. I wanted to scream because I saw that not only did the moth want me to let it out, but that it would drag me with it.

  My hands clutched the sheet as I sat ramrod straight in this bed and only began to loosen when I realized where I was and who it was that slept in gentle sighs beside me. That feeling of a few hours ago, that I had finally found my place, had found something like happiness, allowed me to lay my head back on the pillow, reach to Dorothy, and nudge her to waking with my kisses.

  36

  NO MORE POETRY, OKAY?

  When I come in to see you today, early, before I know everyone else will arrive, I hear a voice I don’t recognize. I stand out in the hallway and listen. It’s a woman’s voice. It sounds like she’s reading poetry. That, or she’s nuts and babbling. I peek my head in. It’s Dorothy Blueboy. Eva told me she comes around often. You got a girlfriend you never told me about, Uncle?

  I’m about to tiptoe away when she looks up and sees me. She smiles. She’s a pretty one. You old dog. I’m forced, now, to enter the room. “Hey,” I say.

  She sits in a chair beside the bed, holding your hand. She places the book she’s been reading from onto your stomach. Intimate. Protective. Her smile, though, it’s warm. “Hi, Annie,” she says.

  I drag a chair and sit across the bed from her. My back’s to the door, a place I’m not comfortable with. “What you reading?” I ask her.

  “Oh, William Blake poems,” Dorothy says.

  The name doesn’t register. I’m not a big fan of poetry.

  “It’s called Songs of Innocence and Experience,” Dorothy explains. “Your uncle Will kind of became a fan before the accident.”

  You? A fan of poetry? The world really did shift on its axis during my time down south. I appreciate, though, that Dorothy doesn’t speak of you in past tense. “Funny,” I say, “that we don’t run into each other more. Eva tells me you come by regularly.”

  “I do,” Dorothy says. “You and I have different schedules, I guess.”

  We sit for long, uncomfortable moments before we both begin to say something at the same time. We laugh. “You first, Dorothy.”

  “It’s good news,” she says, “about Will showing some signs.”

  I nod.

  We sit again, for a long time, without speaking. The space between us, you, feels like it vibrates with the tension.

  “I’ll leave you two alone for a while,” I finally say. “I didn’t mean to disturb.”

  “Oh, you’re not,” Dorothy says, but I’m already standing and picking up my coat from the floor beside me.

  “I’ve got some errands to run, anyways,” I say. “I’ll see you later.”

  I didn’t mean to be rude, Uncle. Really. It was just kind of uncomfortable. I got spoiled by my night visits when it was just the two of us. You’re a popular guy, and that’s a good thing. Maybe I’ll see if I can start coming back at night.

  I’m waiting for the elevator when I hear a scream from the room. As I run back, Dorothy is calling out for a nurse, for a doctor.

  I’m the first one in, but Sylvina’s right behind. My uncle’s convulsing on the bed. Dorothy stands over him, a look of horror on her face. His hands are clenched into fists, and he’s drooling and spitting white phlegm.

  Sylvina pushes past me and leans to hold his body, to keep his vibrating arms from pulling out the drips and wires. She places her fingers to his neck, and then she places her hands on his chest, pumping it every couple of seconds. The machines he’s attached to beep and whine, and I’ve been to this room enough to understand he’s going into cardiac arrest.

  Two other nurses scurry in. I stand back as they bend to their duties, Uncle’s body straining under their hands. Dorothy crosses the room and holds on to me. I hold her, too, the both of us crying. I’ve broken you, Uncle, with my jealousy and coldness.

  “Don’t say that,” Dorothy says, holding me. I didn’t realize I was speaking out loud.

  Dr. Lam now rushes into the room, calling for two of the nurses to prepare the paddles. He checks Uncle quickly and motions with his hands. One of the nurses passes them to him. The high-pitched whine in my ears, I realize, is the whining of the machine beside Uncle’s bed, warning all of us that his body, his heart, has stopped.

  Sylvina pulls Uncle’s gown down from his thin chest. Dr. Lam holds the paddles onto it. “White on the right,” Dr. Lam says. “Clear.”

  The paddles thump, and Uncle’s torso lifts off the bed. A few moments later, Dr. Lam repeats the torture. I want to scream.

  The whine begins a weak beeping again. I listen to it. We all do. It begins to grow to something less erratic.

  “I’m going to have to ask you two to leave,” Dr. Lam says, still huddling over my uncle. It takes me a second to realize that he’s speaking to Dorothy and me.

  I’m about to tell him I’m not going anywhere, but Dorothy’s gentle tug begins to lead me out of the room. “He’s stabilizing,” she says. “Let’s let them do their job.”

  Downstairs, in the cafeteria, Dorothy and I sip on hot tea in Styrofoam cups. I stare out the window at the snow that’s climbed up half the window. Although today doesn’t feel like it, this snow will begin its slow melt soon. After that, the river breakup will come. Me, I hope I’ll be standing on the bank this year to watch it.

  I look at Dorothy. She’s pale and drawn. She’s a thin woman. She reminds me of someone I can’t quite put my finger on.

  “I guess maybe he isn’t as big a fan of Will
iam Blake as I thought,” Dorothy says.

  I smile. “Please,” I say to her, “no more poetry, okay?” We laugh.

  We watch different people come and go. I see the moshum, the grandfather whose old wife wasn’t in her room anymore the other day. He sits at a table, an IV standing guard beside him. He sits quietly with a man who must be his son, a man about Uncle Will’s age. Two pretty girls, girls who remind me of Suzanne and me when we were kids, play a game with dolls on the long table. The moshum and his son say nothing to one another but sit comfortably in the other’s presence. I want to ask him if his wife still lives. I know I can’t.

  After a while, Dorothy speaks. “I know you had some big adventures, some troubles, down south.” She looks embarrassed for saying it. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean for that to sound rude.”

  I shake my head to tell her it wasn’t. “If you only knew,” I say. The impossibility of trying to tell her, of truly expressing to her what I’ve been through in this last year. “Maybe one day when this is over, I’ll try and tell you about it.”

  She smiles.

  “He’s really dying, isn’t he?” I ask. The words come out without my requesting them. Like they’ve done for a while now.

  Dorothy doesn’t answer.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  She won’t answer.

  37

  I THINK I’LL KILL YOU NOW, OKAY?

  I huddle near the river, and I am confused. I want to go to it. I don’t want to go there. It calls me to come. Its voice is like singing. I don’t think I should go. It babbles through the spruce. I am warm. I can hear the familiar voices chattering just below the current. I know those voices. That voice. I should go to the river. I should go to them.

  When the wind shifts, though, the boughs of the spruce creak. The voices are not coming from the river at all. They come from the other direction.

  I lie in the snow, on my belly, the right side of my face freezing in it. I shiver. I know that beside me, Joe and Gregor lie in the snow, too, the sides of their faces freezing as well. We are scared. We are so scared. We are going to die today. We are going to die violently very soon.

  I am on my back, lying by the river. I’m still warm, but a weather change comes. I focus on the tangle of spruce boughs fanned above me, and I think I can smell their resin. I won’t go to the river right now. I want to wait here a while.

  I hear the river begin flooding its banks so that it can come to me. I’m no longer warm. I don’t want to go in the water right now. I’m too cold. I spit at the rising water. I shake my body violently to try and keep it from approaching.

  The voices that help keep the river away, they stop. I begin to shiver. I’m so cold now. I’m cold in the way a Moose River night in February is cold.

  The river should be frozen, but it’s spilled over its bank, and the ice water touches me. The tide below, the tide that comes twice every day, must be pushing the water past the frozen bank’s lip. It’s nature, and that makes sense.

  Something that no one will ever see happens. I can hear the crack of lightning. Lightning in deep winter on James Bay does not exist. But now it does. The lightning scorches the ground so close that it sends its current through my body.

  The cold water inches around me. It’s rising. I will be electrocuted if the lightning strikes again.

  The water rises so that it lifts me up. I know by the sound of rumbling that another lightning strike is close.

  The crack of it sends my body into the air. I wait for my body to slap into the water and begin its slip down the current.

  But the lightning, the pain of it through me, does something that I don’t expect. Something that makes good sense. It heats the water so fast that the cold on my skin, the cold in my bones, begins to go away. Like sitting by a fire when I have been out in the snow too long.

  I lie in the snow on my stomach. The right side of my face is freezing. I’m scared of the coming violence. Joe and Gregor lie in the snow on their stomachs beside me. The sides of their faces must be freezing, too.

  I can hear Gregor whimpering. He cries, gasping for breath. I can’t see him because my face is turned away from him, and from Joe, but I know by the choking sound that Gregor has inhaled snow. He begins to cough in spasms. Marius, above us, tells him to shut the fuck up.

  The right side of my face is freezing in the snow. I see the ski of Antoine’s ancient snowmobile. He’s out somewhere, tracking moose by snowshoe. Beyond the ski, I see the white slash of the creek through the dark trees.

  Snowmobile boots crunch up to my face and stop by my head. The boots must be far too big for the man who wears them. They mustn’t belong to him. He drags his boots as much as he lifts them. This man, he scares the shit out of me. I stare at the tracks he’s left in the snow. I stare at the crescent divot, the nearest heel drag. This one, I can tell he has no qualms with killing.

  He’s a man I’ve never seen before. I got a long look at him when he and Marius appeared from behind my cabin with a rifle and a handgun pointed at us, before they forced us to lie on our bellies with our faces in the snow. This man I don’t know. He is not very tall, but he is very thick in a hard way. He’s lifted many cheap weights in prison. He wears little round spectacles that make him, at first, look like he might be kind and smart.

  I watch as one of his black snowmobile boots lifts up. I feel it smash onto the side of my face. I see black in my eyes as the boot drives my head deeper into the snow.

  Joe, beside me, mutters in Cree. I think I hear Joe spit out that this strange man is a moose’s cock. I can hear Joe scream when the soft thud of something hard hits something fleshy. Joe only grunts after that. I want to look to my friend, but I’m too scared. Not being able to makes me feel ashamed.

  Marius has a rifle. Although I can’t see it, I know when he points it at me. His voice, his questions, they go higher pitched near the end. “Where is she, Will? Tell me where the bitch is hiding.”

  Marius is not well. I shouldn’t have shot him. I should have shot him better. He talks quickly, like his spring is wound too tight. The way he makes each sentence rise up near the end scares me the most.

  “Where is she, Will? I’m going to kill you. I’m going to shoot you in the head. Where’s your niece? Where’s the bitch?” Marius talks like he knows he needs to stop but can’t. He talks in his high voice, like an excited kid. I think he knows he does this, and it angers him more. “Where is she, Will? Where is she? I can’t wait to shoot you in the head, too, Will. Where’s Suzanne? While I’m at it, where’s Annie?”

  I messed him up when I shot him in the head. He’s a broken machine. I remember how the whites of his eyes were yellow when he surprised me coming up behind us at the cabin.

  Even if I did know where Suzanne was, I won’t tell Marius and his friend. I’m sorry, Joe. I’m sorry, Gregor. I think we’ve pounded our last rye and gingers. I will not betray my family. This makes me feel not so scared anymore. I’ll die for you. I’m cold.

  I try to figure the odds out in my head. If they’re going to kill us, then I need to try and stand up and run away. I look to the trees closest to me. I won’t make it halfway before Marius shoots me in the back. But I should try, shouldn’t I? Won’t it be better to try to save my own life than to just let them kill me like this? Maybe they are just being threatening, though. Maybe they are bluffing and don’t want to kill us at all. I’m frozen with indecision.

  I can hear Marius and the man in small glasses talking like they’re arguing. “This is stupid,” I hear. “You’re a fuckin’ retard. We got to kill them. Now.”

  Their words make my decision for me. I push myself up off my belly with my hands. The side of my face is too cold not to. I prepare myself to push from this crouch and run as fast as I can. I hear Joe breathing heavy beside me, Gregor crying softly. Slow as I can, I turn my head to them. Joe faces the other way, and I can tell he’s in pain. Gregor’s eyes plead through his tears. I can’t leave my friends. I can’t run away and le
ave them to be killed. Something in my chest hardens.

  I flop over and sit on my ass in the snow. I look at Marius and his friend. They’re still fighting, Marius with a moose rifle in his hand. Maybe I could have made it to the black spruce before they noticed, slipped into the trees and run for help. The thick one with small glasses holds a golf club in his hands. I wonder, in a place like this, where he’s found such a thing.

  They stop their fighting when they see I’m sitting up. I look over to Joe again. He’s turned his head to me and mumbles into the snow, his words red on the white. His eyes stare up at me. He’s angry. He’s in pain. I look over to Gregor. His eyes are full of something unspeakable. They’re begging me.

  When I look back to the other two, they are walking up to me. The glasses man with the golf club swings it one-handed against my head so that it explodes with heat. The pain makes me lie down on my back.

  “Tie him up,” the man with glasses says.

  He and Marius argue again. I listen to them through the bright pain in my head. Marius says he doesn’t have any rope.

  When I’m able to open my eyes, I see Marius has rested his rifle on Antoine’s snow machine beside me and fumbles with an old bungee cord tied to the backrest. I want to reach for the rifle but my arms won’t work well enough. I’m shivering, and only the left side of my face feels hot now. Marius stands above me. He screams and stomps on my head so hard that the world goes black.

  The pain in my hands makes me open my eyes. Marius still stands over me. I am on my back, and my naked hands are pressed into the snow under me. They feel like they’re on fire. I can’t move them. I know this pain. They’re getting frostbitten.