Cold concrete on my back. Gasping. I’m gasping. I think I feel a piece of glass in my back. I try to talk, try to answer him, try for some air, for some breath. He picks me up and holds me from behind, lifting me from the waist and bending me over the railing.
The sensation of falling washes over me, and I see the street swinging below me. I see tiny cars, tiny people. If he drops me, please move out of the way. I need a breath, something. My hair whips into my face and stings my eyes and this bastard Danny is going to drop me. Who are you to drop me? I need air. Please, God, just one gulp of air. The blood rushes into my head so it feels like a bubble.
He yanks me inside the apartment. Danny doesn’t give me long before he straddles me again and places his hands on my throat. I won’t look at him. Instead, I focus on the billowing white curtains, the darkening sky outside pierced by the twinkle of a million lights.
“Nothing left for me now,” he says. “Nothing left for you unless you tell me where she is.” He squeezes to remind me that breath isn’t an option. “Nothing left for me, do you understand?” He takes one hand from my neck and slaps me hard across the mouth.
I run my tongue over my tinfoil teeth.
“If I’m dead, you’re dead.” He raises his hand again and I flinch. “I know you know where your sister is.”
I shake my head. I don’t. I really don’t.
His palm flashes, slapping my face so hard the lights above me blacken.
“I don’t.” My mouth is numb. He’s so heavy on me. A block of concrete. The heat of his thighs burns me. I’m going to suffocate.
“Stupid wagon-burning bitch.” It’s a whisper. Then the crack of his hand, and I feel it in my neck past the burn of my face.
“South Carolina.” I spit blood, feeling the heat of it splash on my cheeks. I see his fist raised directly above my nose, ready to drive down. “Postcard said South Carolina.” Why are these men so cruel?
He swings down, and I cry out. He stops his fist, covering my nose and mouth instead. My eyes widen with the attempt to inhale. “Off!” I scream into his tightened palm. “Off!” My chest heaves, then spasms. Hand off me now or I will die. I am drowning in his white palm. I feel my eyeballs slip up into the back of my head, my body kicking then shivering. He is going to kill me. I am going to die now.
My eyes roll back and into light. I see the ceiling above me. White ceiling. Far away. Danny’s somewhere close. I can feel his boots pacing on the hardwood floor. I can hear him mumbling to himself. The floor’s hard. I cough and spit blood, draw in a great breath, sucking more blood and spit into my lungs. I roll over, coughing in heaves. Jesus, please. He is on top of me again. The weight of him crushes me.
“One more chance,” he says, staring down at me. “I have nothing to lose. And,” he leans down close enough to kiss, “I will kill you.” His eyes smile. “Annie. Be rational. Gus? I shot him in the temple. Close enough to be sprayed in his blood. I had to burn my best shirt. Your sister? She’s probably lucky she wasn’t with him. I’d have killed her, too.”
“Let me up,” I say. I don’t recognize my own voice. He drags me to the couch and throws me on it. Steroid motherfucker is strong.
He sits beside me. “Want a glass of wine?”
“Water. Please. Water.”
He gets up. “If you even try, I will fling you off the balcony. Another tragic model gone bad.” My face throbs. My ribs feel broken. I can’t get a full breath.
We sit silently beside one another for minutes like a couple with nothing to say anymore. I drink more water. “Danny,” I say. “Please. Listen to me.” I glance at him. I don’t want to hold his eyes. “I don’t know where my sister is. You have to believe me. Christ, Danny.” I’m whining now. “I’m trying to find her, too.” Please make that sound like the truth. A few days ago it was.
He watches me. I think I catch a flash of understanding in his eyes. “Annie. Darling.” He breathes calmly. “You don’t understand. I need to find your sister.” He smiles at me, then lifts his hand and swipes me across the face.
I clench my jaw so that my teeth grind. I spit blood onto Soleil’s white couch and dribble it onto the floor as I lean over. The thought of her makes me want to laugh. I sit back up. “Why?” I ask. “Gus messed up, and he’s dead.” I’m spitting blood as I talk. “Your two buddies messed up and they’re dead. What did Suzanne ever do to you?”
I think Danny’s taken aback by my words. I see from the corner of my eye that he stares at me.
“Annie, there’s nothing complicated about my world,” he says. “Annie,” he says. “Annie, look at me.” I do. Small round glasses glinting above his straining, thick neck. “My world is a simple one. Get in. Do what you gotta. Be loyal. Be loyal. Take your cut but not more. Do you hear me, Annie?” Danny grabs my face in his paw and turns my face to his.
I nod my head.
“Did I say be loyal?”
I nod.
“Sell your product. Keep your little cut. Give the rest to the boss. Simple.” He looks at me.
I nod again, not knowing what else to do.
“If you’re ever busted, be loyal. Don’t ever snitch. Rats are worse than death. Be a good boy and aim one day to be one of the filthy few.”
“Danny,” I say, trying to choose the words that won’t infuriate him. “What does this have to do with Suzanne?”
“Be loyal. Don’t be a snitch. Don’t be a pretty rat. And give back what your boyfriend owes.”
So this is what it’s all about. Finally, with the blood and snot running from my nose, it all clicks into place. My sister holds some secret, and some money, that will kill Danny. That has already killed his friends. Those up above him will kill him too, and soon. But Danny is going to kill me sooner. He leans to me as if to kiss my cheek. His hands are on my throat before I can twist away, and we are on the floor again, and he begins to squeeze my throat until the black dots in my eyes come.
“Tell me,” Danny says, his cracked face brushing my cheek. “Tell me.” I see a shadow behind him, rising up. Is this death? I can’t breathe anymore, and the shadow grows taller. If it is, come now, please. I can no longer breathe.
“Moosonee,” I croak.
The shadow drops onto us and, slowly, I am allowed to breathe again. My sister. I have forsaken you.
Shadows wrestle in this large white room, the wind still billowing the curtains. The floor shakes with the weight of men fighting.
Two bodies slamming into the walls, locked in a death grip, framed pictures popping onto the tile, the smashing of a glass table, the splintering of a door frame. The thin shadow wraps around Danny, and the two slap and gasp like huge fish. Danny struggles hard against it despite his being twice as big. But the other is longer, taller, twining his thin arms around Danny like a snake until he is the one now gasping for air.
They struggle on the floor a few feet away, grunting. Gordon is behind Danny, his arms around Danny’s throat. His eyes bulge, his glasses broken and lying beside me, his cheeks smeared red. I stare into his eyes, bulbous like a frog’s. He stares back at me. I try to sit, and when I can’t, I roll away from them, the smell of Danny about to die stinking from his mouth.
I push myself up onto my hands and watch crouched like a dog, spitting blood as Gordon, on top of Danny now, his hands wrapped about Danny’s throat, arches and strains his arms to break something.
Danny’s face is near my own. His eyes are half-closed. The whites show, lightning-shot with red. He’s unconscious. I crawl away from him, my knees, my whole body aching.
“Enough,” I say. He’s close to death. “Enough.” I look at Gordon, look into his eyes. They shatter something weak in me. He is no street person. Gordon is no rubby. He keeps squeezing. His eyes shimmer, his lips thin with effort.
“Mona!” I shout at him. “Enough!”
Gordon turns to me. His face is puffed, his mouth bloody. “Mona,” I say to him again. “It is enough. It’s over.”
I try to stand but
can’t. I crawl to the couch, to the glass of water. I gulp it down. When I am able to stand, I see Gordon dragging Danny out onto the balcony, Danny’s feet disappearing behind the white curtain.
My legs feel wonky as I stumble to him. To them. Gordon heaves the weight of Danny up onto the railing, Danny’s arms flopping as if he’s waving to the street hundreds of feet below. The simplicity of it. Gordon is right. This is the way it needs to end. My protector turns to me. You’re right. No one will know the difference. Hunted biker flings himself from Manhattan skyrise. Celebutante suspected.
Gordon looks at me. Waits. The world waits. My world waits.
My protector has his arms wrapped about Danny’s legs, ready.
“No,” I say. The word surprises me. It sounds hollow in the cold wind whipping the deck. “Just leave him there. Exactly like that.”
Gordon stares at me. He tenses.
“His own people will finish him. It’s not for you to do.” Gordon breathes heavily and holds his side.
“Leave him like that. Let him decide his own fate,” I say. “If he falls, he falls.” My protector is no murderer. And neither am I.
Gordon does as I say.
“We’ve got to get out of this goddamn place. Now.”
And so my goodbye to New York comes more abruptly than I had planned. Two beaten and bloodied Indians on a midnight train to Upstate New York. I call Butterfoot from Grand Central Station. I try my bank card once more, and the slip of paper the ATM spits out tells me that my account’s dead. Instead of screaming at Soleil’s brutality, I laugh. She’ll need all that money for a really good cleaning service. I still have almost two grand stuffed away. More than enough to get us home to Moosonee. I’ll be back to NYC, Soleil. And I’ll come on my own terms.
Butterfoot asks to come meet us at the station, but I lie and tell him our train’s about to board. I warn him about Danny at Soleil’s, tell him to call 911 anonymously and report a disturbance. Butterfoot gets off the phone promising he’ll make the call as well as the call to his cousin who’ll meet us at the river.
It’s better this way, not seeing him. I am with the one I should be with, the two of us slipping into the night like red thieves.
I hold my protector’s hand as the train finally carries us from the lights of the city. The train rumbles all night into the snowy fields and small towns closer to home. I whisper to Gordon that we’ll make a stop for a few days in Toronto and see Inini Misko. It will be good.
Gordon smiles.
In the middle of the night, I lean to him and whisper, “I’ll take you to my home to meet my family. I’ll introduce you to the sister that is the cause of all this trouble.” I smile at the thought. “I’ll introduce you to my mum, but we better clean you up first. And I know you’re going to like my uncle.”
It will be good, Protector. It will be good.
33
NOT FAR THROUGH THE TREES
The bitch wind pushed me hard from the east so that I had to aim into it, working the foot rudder, steering into the gusts. I flew out at the right time. At the last moment. Trouble again when I had to hand bomb the motor, and I thought I was done for, thought I’d have to stay on that river and become one of the ghosts.
My tank must have had a small leak. The gauge showed only enough gas to barely make it. I saw myself dead as I pushed my sputtering plane back south, toward Moosonee, my body below me on my Ghost River camp, skin dried onto the bones of my corpse, my teeth exposed, my mouth grimacing.
This new plan of mine was hatched from the destruction of my camp and the ring around the sun with its promise of truly bad weather. This new plan of mine, it wouldn’t work. But I no longer cared. I’d made my decision. I was helped to it by a number of shots of rye, and this was the decision I’d live with.
Christ, I hoped I hit Moose River before dusk. I wasn’t left much time. Or gas. I couldn’t find a lot of my camp under the new snow. I lost an axe and left my prospector’s tent when I finally admitted the extent of its damage crushed under the ice and the tree. I’d been smart enough to keep my rifles close, but all my traps, out in the bush, sat there, sprung and useless. Cooking pots I’d left by the fire, my gill net, my last net for the fish, bunched up on the bank of the river, frozen in ice now. Covered by snow. I found most of my food caches, the moose meat, a few smoked geese, a little fish.
The food lay tucked down by the tail of the plane where it would stay frozen. I’d need more food in Moosonee: canned goods, more salt, more flour. I’d get real smokes, beg my sister to go to the LCBO for a few more bottles. Me, maybe I’d even dump my plane for my snowmobile and my big Cree wooden sleigh, pile what I needed in that and live in the bush north of town. Maybe I’d even sneak back in once in a while and visit with family.
Pipe dreams, all of it. I’d live in the bush alone like a rabid animal or turn myself in and go to prison. Those were my two real options. I’d fly back to Moosonee, arrive in the next hours, and let the manitous decide. The cops, the few of them in town, I hoped they’d be too busy dealing with the bootlegging, the domestic disturbances, the teen suicide attempts, to worry about me. I reached to the seat next to me and took a swig from the bottle.
Well, at least the plane was lighter. My fuel gauge bobbed well below the magical one-quarter mark, dropping fast. Moosonee, Moose River, Will Bird here. Where the fuck are you?
The plane coughed as I finally spotted my river, above it the grey skies of late afternoon and an approaching snowstorm. I’d stayed over the water, following the bay south, staying out of the airspace of the usual traffic. Not much at this time of day as evening began to descend. I dropped down to a few hundred feet. The gas gauge read dry now. If I had to, I’d make an emergency landing on the water.
Only a few more miles. The wind pushed me from behind, trying to help. If I made it to my dock, I’d take it as a sign of good luck. I’d have to hide the plane tonight, though. I didn’t want anyone knowing I’d come home. The lights up ahead of Moosonee on the right, Moose Factory on the left. Come on, plane!
Sputtering, the engine cut out and then on again as I passed the town below. I dropped lower, tried to slow the plane to ease the consumption. Just fumes now but not far to go. I knew this stretch of river as well as anything in my life. I needed to make the decision to land on the water and hope to coast up to my home or push her just a little further. I worked the throttle as much as I could without stalling her, began the glide in, going slow. Flaps at sixty degrees at this speed, and as I hit the water, that first bump, the engine started quitting, forcing me to throttle her up till she caught, and now I was coming in slow to my dock, the last droplets of gas burned away.
My place looked undisturbed. I watched it from the bank of the river for a while as the darkness settled in. I waited to see if anyone recognized the sound of my motor, would come by to investigate. So good to be back, to set my eyes once more on my own home.
I walked up to the back door and stood on my own porch again. The key was still in its hiding place under the bench. I turned on a light and drew the curtains. The house smelled musty, unused. Everything as I left it. If someone drove by tonight, there was a good chance they’d notice me home. Home, only to be hiding and scared shitless, listening for the sound of approaching tires on gravel that would send me fleeing. Home again, only to hide here for a couple of days while my sister resupplied me. Then gone. I didn’t want to face having to leave once more. How would I? I couldn’t right now.
First things first. I picked up the phone, worried the company had cut the line, but heard the familiar tone in my ear. I was feeling lucky, me. Signs that this might actually work.
“Lisette, it’s me,” I said when she answered.
“Will? Will? That’s really you? Where are you?” She sounded happier than I could remember.
It struck me now. If I told her and then went further and asked her to help me, she became an accomplice. “I’m around,” I said. “It’s good to hear your voice, Lisette.”
“Oh my god, Will. So much to tell you.”
“So tell me, Sis.” I grimaced, ready for it.
“Suzanne! She sent me some postcards. A letter, even!”
Chi meegwetch, whoever it is watching out for us. I could feel tears burning in my eyes. Suzanne, you were still alive. “Where is she?”
I found out from Lisette that Suzanne wouldn’t let her mother know where she was, and more surprising, that Annie was still gone, was in New York City working. I couldn’t believe it.
“Will,” Lisette said, her voice quieter. So here it came. “There’s other news. Bad news, I guess. About Marius Netmaker. It happened just after you left.” Did Lisette really believe this, or was she pretending? “Somebody shot him.”
I was about to tell her I knew about it all but then decided I’d practise my act. “Where?”
“In his truck.”
“No, Lisette. Where on his body did they shoot him?”
“Oh. In his head.”
I was about to ask her to come by here tonight, worried my phone might be tapped.
“He made it. But they think it’s brain damage.”
“He what?” I asked, sitting hard on the floor.
“He got shot in the head. Police say it’s bikers that were seen up here with him. You remember those ones? The ones who beat you up?”
“Lisette. Are you lying to me?”
“What?” Lisette said. “Why would I do that? The police said it’s bikers.” Lisette paused for a couple of seconds. “I have to tell you something else, for your own good. After Marius was shot, you were a suspect, I think. They came by my house looking for you. I told them you’d gone out to the bush to trap. That you weren’t even here when Marius was shot.”
I breathed shallow, trying to absorb all of this. “Go on. Are they still looking for me?”
“No. I went to the station a week later to find out what I could. I was bold, Will. You would have been proud of me.” I thought of Lisette, and I couldn’t see bold. “I got mad at him. I almost swore.”