Through Black Spruce

  Before she knew it, your mum was meeting with RCMP dressed in cheap suits who recorded everything she had to tell them and made promises they couldn’t keep, either. Her daughter would be found. She was probably in hiding. She’d be home soon.

  They filled my sister with concerns and hearsay. Gus was involved with bad people in Toronto, biker friends of Marius, and they were responsible for the flow of coke and crystal meth and other drugs I’d never heard of into our community and others further north. They told Lisette that we Indians are the perfect buyers of drugs with our easy government money and predilections for dependency. They used lots of big words to convince her that if she was giving, they would be, too. They would help her find her missing daughter, but a price is always attached. And so your mother spoke, spoke freely, spoke from her fear and pain and desire to have her daughter back. I was forced to wonder what she knew that anyone in the community didn’t already, but to ask on my porch in the late afternoon was not the time.

  When your mother was done talking, I waited a long while. I tried to absorb all of this and figure out what it meant, where it led to. I looked over to your mum. Her cheeks shone with tears.

  “They promised they would help me, Will.”The tears fell heavier. “I—” and she held her head now in her thin fingers. “Suzanne is dead, isn’t she?” Her words came out strangled. Her body heaved.

  I pushed myself up and did something I can only remember doing once. I wrapped my arms around my sister and let her cry. I ran my hand over her hair, hot in the late sun, her body burning from the inside. She felt hot as a fire coal. The pain was burning your mother from the inside out.

  When she calmed, I sat back down again. My god, I remember wanting a beer. But I had to say this first. “Suzanne is not dead. If she is dead, we all are. She’s scared, but she’s alive.” Your mother looked up to me, red faced and exhausted. But her eyes held light.

  “Do you think?”

  I nodded. But I didn’t know. I nodded and smiled anyway. I didn’t know.

  After we sat quiet awhile, I got up and got a beer from the fridge, washed my face in the kitchen sink, then returned. “Marius has clearly heard something,” I said. “He has ears at the station. Don’t speak to them again until I do. Will you do that for me?”

  “They only call me once in a while now. I haven’t spoken to them in any real way in weeks.”

  Your mother knew as sure as I did that the leg that caused me such pain, and my head that still ached from my beating, these wounds were the only evidence we needed. Marius knew a little, but not much. He thought it was me who was talking, and I wanted him to keep believing this. I would make that happen.

  But what did this do for your safety, Suzanne? This question struck me like a slap. Had Marius made you disappear? Marius or one of his biker friends? Your mother hadn’t realized her loose lips’ repercussions. And I wouldn’t bring this up with her now.

  “Please don’t speak to the police again,” I said once more. She didn’t need to follow my train of thought.

  16

  BUTTERFOOT

  Out at my cabin, Gordon and I sit in chairs by the stove. I’ve popped the little door open to see the flames. Indian TV. Outside is black and frozen, but inside the light of the fire casts good shadows, and we’ve brought in enough wood to last us the night. I cooked up the trout in the old cast-iron skillet that my grandfather once owned. I did it his way, on the top of the wood stove, the fish gutted, heads and tails intact.

  I bought a couple of bottles of red wine before we left for back here. I haven’t had a drink in a while. Two glasses and I’m buzzed. It used to be all wine coolers and beer for me before I left this place. I learned to be a snob down south, but the wine tastes really good.

  “You want to know something, Gordo?” I ask. “I’ve been talking to my uncle Will at the hospital. Do you think he can hear me?”

  Gordon shrugs.

  “Eva says he can, but I’m not convinced.” He seems interested in what I’m saying. “I’ve been telling him stories about what’s happened to me the last year. It’s kind of weird. I almost feel like I’m at confession. Do you think that’s weird?”

  Gordon nods in the most serious way he seems to know how, looking down at the floor, like he contemplates this deeply.

  “Really?”

  He looks to me and then shakes his head, smiling. Jerk. He goes over to his bunk, picks up his notepad and pen. He sits back down and scribbles quick. Confession is probably good for a girl like you.

  “Oh, I get it,” I say. “You’re still jealous of Butterfoot.”

  He shakes his head, scribbles some more. I’m better than him.

  He’s right. He is. But it took me a while to realize it.

  I open the second bottle of wine. This camp has never seen something the likes of a corkscrew before. I push the cork in with an ice chisel, the bottle placed between my feet. The cork begins to give, and before I know it, wine sprays into my eyes. I hear the light huh-huh of Gordon’s laugh. I pour two more glasses. I want to ask him if he thinks my sister is still alive, but I’m worried that if I do and he gives me the answer I don’t want to hear, everything around me will be ruined.

  “Do you want to kiss me?” I ask instead.

  Gordon gives a look I’ve never seen before. After a long silence he picks up the notepad. Yes.

  “A kiss, then, and no more,” I say. I reach for his hand and lean closer. My foot knocks the bottle over, and Gordon rights it. I laugh. “How is it we’ve never really kissed?”

  He just smiles.

  I lean to him. His lips are soft. I hold his face in my hands, kiss him deeper.

  We push up to stand, locked against one another, fumbling to my bunk. He wraps me in his arms, and I hold his head wrapped in mine. We kick over the wine bottle again in our awkward grasp to my bed, but neither of us bends to pick it up. For a second I think of it on its side, spilling onto the floor. I want that same thing. I push Gordon back so that I’m on top of him. A log cracks in the stove, and I see an ember shoot out. A falling star. We need to douse it. We will. I kiss Gordon’s mouth, his face. I want his neck. I kiss it, and can feel him under me. We sit up so that we can remove each other’s sweaters and then our shirts beneath. The cold of outside has crept through the wall and makes me shiver. I rub myself against Gordon, my hard nipples against his warm body. I kiss his neck again, and then lower to his chest, and lower, to his stomach. He pulls at my arms so that we kiss mouths again. Again I begin kissing down his body, feel through his jeans that he is ready for this. Again, he pulls me up to kiss him.

  “What?” I breathe in his ear. “What do you want me to do?”

  We kiss more, but with less heat. I roll so that I lie beside him, and we slow our kissing so that we look each other in the eyes. “What?” I ask. “Tell me what.”

  Gordon looks away, up to the ceiling. He breathes in deep.

  “What?”

  He sits and pushes himself off my bed. I watch his brown back in the firelight as he walks to his chair. He picks up the notepad and pen, sits and writes quickly. I pull my sweater back on and sit up on the bed. The wine bottle on the floor still lies tipped on its side. I consider walking to it and picking it up and draining the rest. My buzz is replaced by a headache now. He comes back and sits beside me. He hands me his notepad.

  I want you. Not yet. When it’s more right. When it’s right.

  I read the words on the notepad. My hands grip the notepad. I read the words again, then throw them against the wall.

  “Suzanne, I think she left with the best intentions,” I say. I’ve decided I won’t hold anything back. The sex. The drugs. If he really can hear something of what I’m saying, maybe I can shock him back to consciousness. The idea makes me smile. He’s been propped on his side by Eva tonight. I’ve gone through the ritual of rubbing his arms and legs. He’s getting thinner. “She left with Gus to get him away from his family as much as she left to get away from us.”

&
nbsp; I look behind me to the open door leading to the hallway. “I don’t think Suzanne knew that what she actually did was lead Gus right to the people his brother wanted him to meet,” I say. “But I think she had good intentions, Uncle. She just wasn’t the smartest girl in the world.” It’s mean to say, but something in it is like cold water on my own burn. “And Suzanne was no angel.” Why am I going in this direction? Because it feels good, in the darkest way I know good feels.

  I heard the stories from others about Suzanne and Gus and their indiscretions. Violet, she liked nothing more than to tell me how Suzanne and Gus seemed in a bad place in their relationship, Gus often out and partying with some very sketchy characters, first in Montreal, then in New York City, leaving Suzanne angry, and then ready to do whatever she wanted.

  Gus, I know he got into smoking rock. Others beyond Violet almost gleefully shared this with me. And Suzanne, her addiction became men, if I’m to believe Violet.

  The pounding of their music is what keeps these ones, these new friends, going. I never liked their music before, and after a brief flirtation with it, realize so much of it sounds the same. The same drone just below the techno beat.

  In these first weeks in Montreal, I find out that the push of bodies lining up is the other driving force, whether it is at a nightclub or restaurant or café. Always it’s the lines, the pushing of people wanting something, the desire to be among others, always wanting to be surrounded by a group, always part of the crowd. This is what these people I’ve met here want.

  No, they don’t just want it. They need it. They crave it. To be alone in a group, if it’s at a restaurant or dance club or on the street, to be caught not having someone to listen to you or be talked at, seems the death sentence for them. None of them, Violet or her friends—Amber, Veronique, any of these girls with interchangeable names and faces—they can’t be alone and sit quietly for more than a few seconds before the attention span collapses and the eyes wander and they are off like awkward racehorses to the next group of better-looking or more interesting people.

  I am always invited to a club or to a party because I am the sister of the missing model Suzanne. I am becoming the celebrity in my sister’s absence because of her disappearing act. And I’m the first to admit that I begin to feel as thin and see-through as an old T-shirt the longer I stay down south in this place.

  But I stay because. Because I can now? Because I might find out something? Because to go back north at this point means to be chased by this same sadness that will not cease chasing me at home. If I leave, I will wish that I had stayed longer, that I might have found out something important. I have no excuses to leave. And very few to stay. I am stuck.

  Suzanne’s agent handed me more than four thousand dollars, so I will spend some and have a good time if there is no other time to be had. I promise, Sister, I’ll pay you back one day. Or should I just consider this a gift for putting me in this place?

  I hand Gordon a hundred bucks. We’re riding a freight elevator with five or six other people. A woman beside me stares at me. She smells of flowers. When I smile at her, she turns her head. The elevator bounces to a stop at the top floor. A large black man with an earpiece lifts the wooden door of the elevator and motions us out. The bitch beside me pushes past. Gordon and I walk into a huge low-lit room with thick wooden beams on the high ceiling. Windows half the height of the room give views of the tops of other warehouses and the twinkling lights of nighttime Montreal. The music pounds so loud that I feel it in my chest. The room is packed with young people. I watch Gordon make a beeline for the bar. Maybe I made a mistake.

  I can see Butterfoot at the turntable on his platform high up over the crowd. Violet and her group will most certainly be at a table below, all of them laughing and talking, and, I’m sure, nobody listening. I push to the bar that stretches along one wall and squeeze into an open spot. Holding out a twenty, I wait for service. The bitch from the elevator stands beside me, holding out her own bill. When the bartender comes, he takes my order, and I smile again at the woman but she pretends to ignore me.

  Drink in hand, I make my way toward Violet’s table. I stop when I’m almost there and watch her and her friends for a while, trying to decide if I want to join them or wander around awhile. The sunglasses that cover my eyes make it hard to see, and people give me a glance, then look again. I feel like leaving this place.

  She and her friends are clearly the life of the party. Pretty boys stand and wait close by like crows at the dump, pretending to talk to one another, slipping glances in their direction. Violet sees me and squeals over the thump of the music, waves for me to join her. She grabs me and hugs me like I am her long-lost sister. “You’ve got to drop that mistake with the sunglasses tonight, girlfriend,” she shouts. “So nineties!”

  The other girls, two of whom I recognize, scream giggles. They fawn over me and touch my new clothes. I want to be able to laugh at the attention, but it’s kind of nice in some way I never understood before. When I look around the warehouse as I sip on my cocktail, I see the eyes of the crows on me, the same boys who a few minutes ago didn’t know I existed.

  Violet rips off my sunglasses and tosses them behind her. “Better!” she shouts. The girls laugh. “I already told you, girl, you have the most fucking butch look ever!” I laugh with them, want to dive and grab the sunglasses and put them back on my face.

  I can hear Butterfoot playing the same trick, looping in old powwow voices below some trippy beat. Is this his calling card for me? I’m sure he does it for all the girls. When I look up, he smiles a very sexy smile and jerks his head. Violet misses nothing. “Come on,” she says. “He beckons. Always heed his nod.” She winks at me and takes my hand and leads me to the stairs.

  As the bouncer looks up to Butterfoot for the okay, Violet slips into my palm what feels like a pebble. It looks like an aspirin.

  She leans and whispers so loud over the music that my ear buzzes. “Don’t let anyone see it! Take it!” She winks, then places another one on her tongue. I want to ask her what it is, but she motions for me to do the same. It tastes like an aspirin as it begins to dissolve. Ick. I take a swig of my drink and we march up the stairs.

  Butterfoot returns Violet’s hug as he makes a face then winks at me. I say hi and shake his hand, then play hard-to-get, leaning on the railing, looking over the crowd. Hundreds of people. Hundreds must be on the floor dancing, arms above heads, clothing and hair and teeth flashing, glowsticks here and there tracing the air in strange patterns. That’s when I see Gordon, near the far bar, in a corner with a beer in his hand. He might be a bouncer in the crowd he stays so still, watching. But then I see the wobble in his walk as he heads to the bar. Shit. If he gets wasted here tonight, he might get in trouble. What will these new people think of him if I have to introduce him?

  Sweat beads up on my arms. I think I might barf. I turn from the railing to ask Violet about the pill, but she’s talking to her friends, gesturing dramatically with her hands. I’ve never liked heights much, and although this stage isn’t ridiculously high, it is high enough to spit on the people below me. I like that idea. My drink is empty, and I wish I had another. A cold shock touches my neck, and I turn back to a smiling Butterfoot, who holds a bottled water in his hand. I take it and smile. I turn back to the crowd. Gordon has disappeared.

  I put the bottle down and grip the railing with both hands. I can’t get a good breath in. The people dancing below me make me dizzy. I focus on one dancer, a thin, tall guy with Jesus hair and beard. He is loose limbed and wild, swinging his arms and moving his body as if he’s a puppet. He’s beautiful to watch. I want to know him. I want to talk to him. I’m not crazy about dancing, but I want to dance with this guy. I watch him move, my eyes sharp. I imagine I am a bird of prey. I’m on my perch here.

  My stomach flutters and I hold the railing tighter because my legs are weak. My heart beats fast. I want to keep watching this Jesus dancer, but I’m distracted by all of the others below me. Whatev
er Violet gave me has made my eyesight that of a bird. I can see details of people’s faces even from this distance. That guy there, he has dimples when he smiles. The woman over there, a space between her teeth. I stare at the sequined shimmer of dresses and the muscular bodies in tight T-shirts. I can see. It’s gorgeous here.

  But then the thought of not having Gordon somewhere close to keep an eye on me makes me scared.

  “Let’s dance!” Violet shouts in my ear. “You feeling me, girl?” She smiles, looks like she’s straight out of a comic book with her cut cheekbones, little nose, teeth glowing white. I want to laugh. I want to explain this to her. She flings her hair and is down the stairs, her posse following. I watch as she marches with them close behind, cutting through the crowd without having to touch a soul. She will take over this perch. She is about to make it her own.

  I leave my place at the railing and reach out to touch Butterfoot’s arm, wave bye to him, holding his eyes over my shoulder for just a second as I walk down the stairs. On the dance floor, I search for Violet, for Veronique or Gordon, somebody, some friendly face. I’m worried that I will be jostled, that I will step on someone’s toes, but I weave through the dancers with a precision and clarity that makes me want to laugh and talk and cry all at once. Not sad tears, though. Tears from somewhere good and strange, bubbling up from deep. People flow around me, the sweat of their arms the salt water of the ocean. Oh my god! That makes perfect sense. We once came from the ocean, and we are mostly water. I am in an ocean of people. I want to find Violet and explain this to her. It’s too important to forget.