Through Black Spruce

  “Who’s him?”

  “The sergeant. What’s-his-name. He told me you were no longer a suspect, that a dozen people in town swore to him that you had already left when the shooting happened. It was the bikers. Ever stupid, those police.”

  “Ever stupid,” I repeated.

  Before we got off the phone and I promised to come by and visit tomorrow, your mother told me the police told her they wanted me to drop in the station and talk to them when I returned. I stayed up the rest of the night, worrying this was surely a trap they’d set for me.

  In the morning, the old war pony wouldn’t start, and so I walked the long walk to town, to the station, wondering if this was the last freedom I’d have. I played over the alibi in my head. I returned home only last night, was trapping and hunting way up the coast, did some goose hunting on Akimiski Island where I ran into a Cree family from Attawapiskat. I returned last night before the storm that was now here, was sick of being out in the bush alone and was ready to come back to family. I kept my head down in the wind, the blow really starting. I didn’t even know what day it was. It felt like a Sunday. The snow stuck in my long hair that I’d brushed back and put in a ponytail.

  I couldn’t believe my own reflection when I saw it earlier in the morning. Narrow face, the high cheekbones, hair matted long. I took my shirt off and stared into the mirror. Skinny as a rail. The wind-burnt skin of my face and hands was far darker than the rest of me. I didn’t even recognize myself.

  I held my breath in front of the station before walking in. A young white guy, new here, looked up to me briefly from his snowmobile magazine on the counter. I waited till he looked up again and spoke.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure. What would I say? “I’m, uh, my name’s Will Bird. I’ve been in the bush for the last few months.”

  The young guy shrugged. Pimples on his cheeks. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. “Hope you had a good time. So what do you need?”

  “My sister told me that you guys might want to talk to me.”

  “What about?” He went back to his magazine on the counter.

  “I, uh, I heard that Marius Netmaker was shot and that you guys wanted to talk to me.”

  His eyes left the magazine. “What you say your name was?”

  I told him. He said to wait and went down the hall and disappeared behind a door.

  The sergeant appeared, a guy who’d been here a long time. I recognized his face. “Will Bird!” he said. “You’ve been gone a long while! Why don’t you come back to my office and have a chat with me.”

  I followed him, my hands shaking so that I put them in my pockets. He pointed to a chair in front of his desk, then sat behind it, opening up a notepad.

  “So, you’re just back from the bush, I hear?”

  I nodded.

  “How long did you say you were gone?”

  I didn’t. “Me, I’ve been gone since the second week of July or so.”

  “Long time,” he says. “Good hunting?”

  I nodded.

  “And you heard about Marius Netmaker?”

  “My sister told me last night when I got back.”

  “Do you recall the exact date you left Moosonee?”

  I told him, lying that I’d left the week before Marius getting shot. He scribbled.

  “Had Marius threatened you before?”

  He knew already. I reported it. “You should have it on file.”

  “I’ll be straight with you, Will. Your history with Marius could easily make you a suspect, but there are a lot of people in this town who say you were gone a few days already before the shooting. Boy. A lot of people.”

  I kept my eyes on his. He smiled.

  “A thinking man,” he said, “might argue you could have slipped back into town without anyone knowing it, done what happened, and slipped back out. But that’s not what a court would ever bother with, without some kind of evidence. And we got no evidence on you, Will.” He stared at me.

  I tried to hold it right back.

  He sighed and raised his hands, as if to surrender. “We’ve come to the conclusion that this is biker related, especially considering Marius was heavily involved with bikers.” He dropped the tone of his voice now. “If you ask me, it’s a shame that bullet didn’t kill Marius. This town would be better off without him. But he’s alive, and he’s coming back, from what I’ve heard. And he’s probably going to be pretty angry at whoever did this to him.”

  The sergeant stood and ushered me out, following me to the door. The wind howled outside now. Good storm.

  “So, how did the hunting go?” he asked.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Not good. Tough life in the bush.”

  “The flying was good?”

  I nodded.

  He leaned once again toward me and lowered his voice. “I found out your flying licence expired twenty years ago. I’d be willing to bet there’s about a dozen charges I could lay on you.” He looked me in the eye, his face close enough to mine I smelled the coffee on his breath.

  He leaned even closer to me, and whispered, “Next time, shoot straighter.” He laughed, and slapped me on the back.

  I walked out the door and into the howl.

  Three days of snowstorm, just as that ring around the sun promised. I used the storm as my excuse to stay holed up in my home, and when I emerged, the world was a different place. The sun came out, and the temperature dropped hard, so cold I felt it in my lungs. Moosonee lay covered in a white shroud, hardened by the freeze, the snow crusted over so that walking on it was easy. I’d build marten traps and set them while the snow remained this way, save myself the work that would come with a slight thaw and the snowshoes. I wasn’t ready to give up the bush life just yet, me. I still waited for the police car to pull onto my dirt road. Or worse, Marius to appear like a windigo from the trees that surrounded me, from the same trees that held my bear in them.

  I took a long walk down the road into where other people lived, light so bright on the white crust that I wished I had sunglasses. This town, my world, was frozen so still it looked like a photograph, the photograph of what this town wished it could be. Smoke from chimneys hung low and heavy on the blue sky. Roofs of houses overhung with wind-carved drifts, the ratty yards, the litter of broken bicycles and dolls and children’s missing running shoes, all under dazzling white. The once dusty road, pothole-ridden and washboarded, was now a glittering diamond of ice stretching into the sun. Not many people out so early this day. It felt like a Sunday once more. Every day a Sunday.

  I’d hidden in my house for three days and thought all of this through over and over again until I became paranoid. I had finally decided to walk among humans once more. I couldn’t live scared any longer.

  Your mother almost didn’t recognize me. She thought I was close to starvation, but I told her it had just been the hard work and the living alone, only drinking once in a while, but drinking good. I told her my body felt better than it had in years as she cooked me a huge breakfast of eggs and bacon and home fries smothered in ketchup that I barely touched.

  “Look, Will,” your mother said after breakfast, spreading out postcards and two letters on the cleaned table. “From Suzanne. She’s still alive.”

  I looked to Lisette’s wet eyes and smiled.“Lots of good news,” I said.

  I drank more coffee, then asked Lisette what she knew about Marius.

  “You know this town,” she said. “The rumours. A teacher at the high school found him in his truck. The back of his head was blown off. Ladies at church said he was dead, but when the teacher put his hand on Marius’s shoulder, he shot straight up and acted like he was driving again.” She looked at me.

  “People know it was the bikers.” She paused. She didn’t look away. “Some were talking that it was you. Isn’t that crazy?”

  She wanted to believe the best. I smiled and shook my head. “Ever crazy.” I tried to keep smiling, like it really was.
>
  I decided I’d call Dorothy in Moose Factory and say hello in the afternoon after visiting my sister. She didn’t answer. She didn’t call back. That hurt.

  I called Joe and Gregor and asked them over for a beer. I needed to live my life again while I still breathed. I wanted to breathe again, but I felt frozen, waiting for what I did and didn’t accomplish to catch up with me.

  So this is how the world goes. Joe and Gregor came over and tried not to look at me for a while. Then Gregor commented on my thinness and asked if I caught a touch of the AIDS while I was away. Joe threatened to cut off my ponytail when he got me drunk enough.

  We drank a few beers, and I told them about my trip, how I ran into the old couple and their grandchildren on Akimiski, how a polar bear ruined my camp, how I shot a moose in a haunted place on Ghost River. How I ran from there, afraid. My two friends hung on my every word.

  They were dying for me to just come out and admit that I had shot Marius, but I was a patient man. I waited for one of them to speak of it first. This didn’t take long.

  “Lucky, you, that you weren’t around when Marius was shot,” Joe said, staring at me till I looked at him and he looked away.

  “Very lucky that so many people in town all agreed you were gone already,” Gregor added. These two. They’d been talking this thing out till it was dead.

  “Ever lucky,” I said, trying to smile mysteriously. “What’s the word on that bastard?”

  Neither of them had anything new to share. He’d be home soon. He was a walking nightmare. Bikers were to blame for his missing the back part of his head. I watched the two of them drink, harassing me for not keeping up.

  With the hard freeze, we all waited for the first hotshot to ride his snowmobile across the river’s thin ice skin to Moose Factory. It was usually one of the crazy Etherington brothers. Until then, we waited for the river to freeze over completely, and we all hoped that too thick a snow didn’t fall on it and make the ice slushy underneath. We waited now to cross the ice road on our snowmobiles, and eventually in our cars and trucks. Those who could afford the thirty bucks a pop each way took the helicopter taxi.

  I left two more messages on Dorothy’s answering machine, but she didn’t call back. She knew what I’d done. I knew it. She knew it like everybody else knew but pretended not to. I guessed Dorothy didn’t want to be around someone like me.

  I walked to town once or twice a week and felt the people gawking. Did they admire what I did? Maybe they looked at me like I was a sick dog. A couple of parents actually grabbed their kids and took them inside when I walked down Sesame Street to the Northern Store. I was an obedient but sick old dog that had shown its instability around children. Was that it? I didn’t know. All I knew was people looked at me now in a different way but didn’t want to stop and chat anymore. I had the mark on me.

  Why, then, did so many in this town stand up and protect me, even speak up and claim I was truly gone when Marius was shot? This was the question that had taken its turn keeping me up at night. That and the slow realization I’d lost Dorothy by my actions.

  Each day that passed, the troubles that had haunted me the last months faded just a touch. This should have made me happy. And in some small way it did. But with the cold, sunny days, I could feel in my bones the end of them.

  Something bad was still on its way, and it was not far, just through the trees.

  34

  NO MORE THAN WE NEED

  Something in me has weakened since I’ve come home. Something has changed. I admit this to Gordon. We sit by a beaver lodge today, heating snow water over a small fire for tamarack tea. When I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t understand, I try to explain. “I feel bad for the beavers that we’re harvesting,” I say. It sounds stupid. The kits came first, just as Uncle Will always explained they would, but with our carefully placed traps, we’re now snaring the young adults, larger and with thicker fur, as they, too, are forced to venture out from the lodge. Next will be the parents, and finally, the grandparents.

  Gordon listens intently. When we’ve finished our tea, he motions for me to take him for a ride on my snowmobile.

  We cut along the creek, and he points for me to turn on another. Not far down, he pats my shoulder for me to stop. I wonder what he’s up to. He steps off behind me, and stands, looking at the bank. I look to where he does. And then I see it. Another lodge, the vent on top melting with the heat of another family. After a while, Gordon points down the creek further. He slopes his hands down in the air. I’m not getting it. Then he wiggles his hands above. Smoke? Fire?

  I get it now. The steam from another lodge. He’s telling me that the animals are plentiful.

  “We’ll just take the ones we need to sell for the hides,” I say. “We won’t take more than we need. I get it. You’re right. ”We, too, need to live.

  I’ll cook a beaver tail over coals tonight for dinner. It’s an acquired taste. Let’s see, my protector, you be so philosophical then, when I tell you we will not waste any part of the animal. You are learning, though. We are.

  Gordon and I rent a couple of movies tonight. I’m surprised that you have a VCR, but there it is, sitting in its box under the TV. Gordon figured out how to hook it up. He’s pretty useful around the house with city things, and I drove into town, to Taska’s, and grabbed what looked good. I haven’t seen a movie in a long time. I can’t even remember what the last movie I saw was.

  The lights in the house are turned off, and the TV’s flicker makes me sleepy. Gordon and I lie on the sofa, our heads on opposite sides, our feet entwined under a blanket. I made us pasta and moose meat sauce. I found a whack of nice meat in your fridge. You must have shot a moose not so long ago.

  Gordon, thin as he is, can eat. Once the pasta was all gone, he looked at me forlornly, and so I fried him up a big steak with onions. I would have preferred to marinate it overnight in some red wine, but clearly, Gordon liked it. There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?

  The movie I picked is a thriller. I’m already lost as to what’s happening in the first few minutes. I lay my head back on the sofa and watch handsome, well-built men run around, chasing each other through a construction site, accomplishing impossible feats up on scaffolding and along swinging cranes. I’m hungry. Not for food, but for something.

  Under the blanket, I run my hands down my tired body. Gordon is fascinated by the movie’s action. I’m sore from the last number of days’ work trapping. Under my shirt, my nipples tighten to my touch, and I can feel the jut of my ribs. I run my hands down lower, across my belly. I’m in far better shape now than I ever was down south.

  I slip my hands under the loose jeans. I’m not wearing anything underneath. Did I plan this night without knowing it? My fingers brush the thin hair. My face flushes. I close my eyes and listen to men on the screen grunting and breathing.

  I wake to the room washed in blue light. The TV glows, the movie finished, the screen emitting this colour across the room. Outside, it’s black. I can hear the even breathing of Gordon, his head resting on the other side of the couch, his legs wrapped with mine. I am hungry. I’m starving. I can’t wait any longer.

  I slip my head under the blanket and turn myself so that our bodies face the same way. I crawl slow under the blanket and, hunched over him, kiss his knees through his jeans. He stirs. I slip higher and push his shirt up his belly, continuing to kiss. His skin is warm. So warm. I’m afraid he’ll push me away. I take a thin fold of his skin between my teeth and gently pull. My hands hold his narrow waist. They hold his jutting hipbones. Don’t push me away.

  I can tell he’s awake now. Don’t push me away. I can feel him, so hard, beneath his jeans. I kiss his thin stomach, run my tongue over its contours. He’s a beautiful man, this Gordon. He’s beautiful now that he’s been given a chance. I lick and kiss him, and I don’t want to wait any longer. He’s fully awake.

  I unbutton his jeans. If he tries to push me away, I will pi
n his arms with my own. But he doesn’t as I pull his jeans down, as I wrestle quick to pull them off his feet. He helps as best he can.

  I slide up him once more, run my cheek along his hardness, then my tongue. He touches my hair and gently takes my head in his hands. I’m dying for him as I take him in my mouth.

  He tugs at me. I don’t want to stop this. He pulls me up to him.

  Don’t you dare push me away.

  He holds my upper body above him, still on his back. I’m amazed how strong this thin man is. I see him stare at me in the blue light. He smiles, then lowers me down and flips me over so that now I’m the one looking up. He pulls at my shirt, tugs it off me so that I’m left dizzy, my hair across my face. He runs his mouth down my body, holding my breasts in his hands as he sucks. He moves his kisses further down, pulling my own loose jeans off without even bothering to unbutton them.

  It’s my turn to hold his head now as he kisses my inner thighs. I push myself to him, my legs across his back. I bite my lips and pull his hair. The shuddering is close. Come up to me, now.

  He does. We do, and I hold on to him tight as he moves into me. I wrap myself around him and kiss his neck, mash my mouth against his, tug his hair hard till he begins to quiver inside me. The feel of this, it pushes me over my own cliff. I’m crying out before I even realize I am.

  I keep myself wrapped around him. I won’t let go. He lies on me, keeping me warm.

  He stirs again as we awake a short time later when I begin to kiss his mouth. I won’t let go. He moves his hips again then, slowly, into me.

  I only realize I’m smiling when the cold wind makes my exposed teeth ache. I’m zipping across the ice road to Moose Factory on my ski-doo, faster than I should, even waving to a couple of others passing by me on their way to Moosonee. I can’t wait till I get back home to Gordon. I’m going to jump his bones in the kitchen. Why’d we wait so long? My god, it’s amazing. He’s amazing. First though, I’ll visit the hospital and get an update.