Through Black Spruce

  The water recedes, revealing a highway. I’m riding the back of a growling motorcycle at night. The red taillights of other motorcycles in front of us. Black night. Suzanne on a motorcycle somewhere ahead. I can see her long hair flicking in the wind. Bare limbs of trees above blurring.

  A room full of beautiful women. They stare at me, at Suzanne. Especially at Suzanne. They approach us and reach out to touch her with their long fingernails. They begin to jostle each other, trying to get closer to her. Their fingernails dig into Suzanne. She struggles to get away. They pull her down onto the floor. I fight my way through them, but they are too many in their gowns and stilettos. I pull one after the other from my sister, throwing the witches into the air. I turn back and dig through this flesh for my sister, all the while the photographer snapping, calling out, Perfect. Perfect. Beautiful …

  Christ! My neck feels like I’ve fractured it. I sit up in the chair, the respirator purring beside me. I’d been sleeping with my head back, my mouth wide open. My own choking snores woke me. Not very model-like. I’m glad Eva didn’t walk in and see me.

  Why don’t people in a coma snore? Or do they? Uncle Will, I’ve never heard a peep out of him. The grogginess doesn’t go away, and so I stand up and head to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. I forgot my watch at the cabin. I have no idea what time it is. It’s got to be late. Or really early. I wander out into the brighter hallway. Not a soul in sight. Only two nurses on this floor at night, I’ve discovered, one of them Eva.

  I walk to the nursing station, but it’s empty. I’m about to return to Uncle’s room when I get the urge to walk a little further down the hall. I’ll be in deep shit if Eva or Sylvina, the other nurse on tonight, catches me. They face some loud bitching if I’m discovered snooping around well past visiting hours. Sylvina, like Eva, is a good woman. She used to be a tough one when we were younger, the first girl I ever knew to get a tattoo, a greenish-blue homemade one of the name of the boyfriend who pricked it onto her arm. There’s something the men love about her. I was always jealous of the way she was like a drug to them. Even with four children now, she’s still got it going on.

  I peek into a room that has its door ajar, a soft light pouring from it. Two old people, a man and a woman, lie in beds beside one another. Both of them have hair as white as their sheets, a thin blanket pulled over each. I look both ways down the hall, then slip into the room. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s that they look peaceful.

  Someone, Eva maybe, has moved the beds close together so that they almost touch. Both of these old ones lie leaning to the other. They must be man and wife. The man is thin, thinner than Gordon. The kookum is round, and she moans lightly in her sleep. I can imagine both of them shuffling slowly down the road to the Northern Store, the man a few paces in front of his wife. Her face is brown as a dried apple. His is thin and so etched with deep lines it looks like a carving.

  “Neikamo,” the woman cries out. I jump. Does she know I’m here? Her eyes remain closed. “Neikamo,” she cries out again. Sing. It’s as if she commands me to do it. Someone’s going to hear her. I peer out into the hall, then quickly leave the room.

  A dim light shines out from the room beside Uncle Will’s. Again I peek in. I can hear the struggle of breathing. At first I think it’s Eva doing something strenuous, but I only see the thin form of somebody on the bed. Still no one around. I walk in.

  A young boy, no older than twelve, lies on his back. I recognize him, the youngest brother of a friend in Moosonee. Eva told me about this one. He was found outside his home, nearly frozen to death, a plastic bag spilling gasoline beside him. He’d siphoned some from a snowmobile. A chronic huffer. Eva doesn’t think he’s going to regain consciousness anytime soon.

  He’s still got the innocent face of a child. His breathing has eased, and the machine beside him beeps more regularly. I lay my hand on his forehead. He stirs just a little. I’ve got to get back to Uncle’s room before I’m caught.

  I begin with one of Uncle’s arms, picking it up in my hands and gently rubbing it from shoulder to wrist, careful to avoid the IV drip. The needle has bruised his arm to a yellowy green. I take his hand in mine and massage the fingers. I’m getting used to touching him. I take my time. The night outside remains a deep black.

  “I didn’t go down to Toronto with the plan of looking for Suzanne,” I say, “but you of all people would say it was more than coincidence that the first Nish I run into knew something about her.” I can hear what he’d say if he could. So be it.

  What I’m amazed by is that the Indian community in this monster city is as tight as our own up north. They all know of each other, and where to meet: a stone friendship centre on Spadina, or else on the corner of Queen and Bathurst. I’m sure there are other places as well, but I haven’t found them yet.

  Not yet a week into our visit, I wake up one morning after staying out late with Eva and feel the tingling in my head, the subtle change of light in the room. A seizure comes, not nearly as bad as others, but still painful, still leaving me feeling wiped out. I’m thankful Eva is there to watch over me, to place a twisted Burger King bag in my mouth, to bring me water and juice after. Eva blames it on my not eating much and my drinking more than usual. I think it was caused by the realization that I don’t want to be in this depressing city anymore, but don’t want to be home right now, either. It’s been close to a year since my last seizure. I’d almost convinced myself this pain is a thing of the past.

  Eva’s surprised when I tell her I’m going to stay a couple extra days. I tell her that the Indians we met might know something about Suzanne, and it would be wrong of me to head home just when I’m offered a lead on her whereabouts. “Ever nutty idea, Annie,” Eva says and reminds me, as if she has to, that the cops don’t know where Suzanne is, and that her agent hasn’t heard from her in months. Why have I suddenly become a detective?

  I’ve talked Eva into grudgingly lending me five hundred bucks, and that, combined with the few hundred I still have, will be enough to last me. “I’ll head home when my money runs out, Sis,” I tell her. “Don’t worry. I can put it to bed with a clean conscience then. At least I can say I tried.”

  I walk with Eva to Union Station and hug her before she begins the long train journey home. When we were about to leave the shitty motel in Cabbagetown, she went to the office and paid for another week for me. She’s a good woman, Eva. I won’t forget this. But I didn’t tell her that. I think she knows.

  All alone now, I make my way along the streets filled with people on their way to work, kids who should be in school, bums. Lots of bums. Where do all these homeless people come from? Homes, once, I guess. Only a week, and far less than a grand, keeps me from joining them.

  I suddenly think I made the wrong choice not going back home. Maybe it was the seizure that made me make such a crazy decision. I thought it was a good idea at the time. Now that I think of it, maybe my seizures are warnings that bad things are just over the horizon.

  The sun’s warm enough that I peel off my jacket and tie it around my waist. I don’t want to head back to the crappy motel. It’s the first truly nice day since I arrived and I notice the difference in the way those around me accept it. They walk slower, soaking in the warmth, daydreaming of not having to go where they’re going, I guess. And they’re friendlier. Complete strangers, some of them even smile at me before pushing ahead through the sea of people.

  Near the place called Queen’s Park, I see a group of Indians sitting on the grass, paper cups in hand, shaking them at passersby for change. I think one of them is Painted Tongue, but when I get close enough, I see that he is much older and missing teeth. I keep walking. Once when I was thirteen or fourteen, I got separated from you while we were moose hunting near Otter Rapids. I remember the fear of it. Lost. I thought I’d be wandering in the cold woods forever and never see you or my mother or sister again. I thought then that I would die. This is what I feel like now. I’m lost.

  By the bank,
the old man and his cronies sit on their stoop, their faces to the sun. I feel like I take the first real breath since Eva climbed onto her train. But I see Painted Tongue’s not with them. I stop in at a café half a block away and buy a small coffee, then head toward them and sit on the step a few feet away. They don’t look toward me, but I know they know I’m here. A slight turn of the head with averted eyes, the old man’s nose sniffing at me, picking up my scent.

  “Good morning, Granddaughter,” he says finally. I sip on my coffee, then light a smoke.

  “Are you not going to offer your elder a little tobacco?” I pull another smoke from my pack and lean toward him. He smells bad.

  “You know, Grandfather, I have a motel room with a shower if you need it.”

  “If only I were a few years younger, I’d think you were making me an offer.” The old women beside him cackle. His voice is like I remember my own grandfather’s, the English words bending and drawn out.

  “I’d be surprised that someone your age still thinks that way, Grandfather.”

  “Oh, we do. That is why the white man invented Viagra, you know.” He raises his arm and clenches his fist. “Who doesn’t want to be a young warrior once more?” The old women cackle again behind their hands, looking at me in challenge. I laugh. What else can I do?

  I drink some more of my coffee, and when my smoke is finished, I ask the question I’ve come here to ask. “Where is the one called Painted Tongue?”

  “That pretty one was your sister?” Old Man’s directness catches me off guard. That he says was makes my stomach feel sick.

  “What do you know of her?”

  He waits a long while before answering. The three of them have turned serious now. “Painted Tongue is a wanderer,” he finally says. “He is a good man, but he is scared of the world. He doesn’t talk at all, but me, I think he can. He just needs the right person to help him.”

  “I want to find my sister,” I say. “This isn’t about Painted Tongue.”

  “Your sister had a boyfriend. He’s not a bad man, either, I don’t think. But he was involved with bad people. Find him. Maybe he’ll have some answers.” The old man speaks of Gus. He must. “Your sister is famous, eh? She showed us pictures of herself in shiny magazines once in a while. Whenever she passed, she always gave us something.”

  “Where is she?” I ask again.

  “Me, I don’t know. I think about her sometimes.”

  This is useless. I stand. “Where can I find the dumb one?” I ask, angry now.

  “I don’t know where he is, Granddaughter. He’s a wanderer.” I walk away. The old man calls out to me. I turn. “Do you know the underpass beyond Front Street?”

  I shake my head.

  “Do you know the big building where the Maple Leafs play?”

  I think about this for a moment and then nod.

  “Go there tomorrow. We have a feast every Sunday night. Head toward the water. You will find us under the Gardiner. I will build a fire.”

  Ahead, a fire’s light flicks on the concrete of the overpass. Wandering down along here, the drone and echo of cars on the highway above, I begin to wonder just what the hell I think I’m doing. No place for a young woman to be wandering alone. This place smells of piss and something worse below. I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t really want to.

  A bottle shatters behind, not far away, and then somebody or something shrieks. I walk faster, searching for a place to run, somewhere with lights, with people. Normal people. I head for the fire, close enough I can see it and forms sitting around it. Two are sitting on what looks like an old chesterfield. But what if it isn’t Old Man and his witches? I’ll just crouch down casual beside whoever it might be and ask them to pass the bottle. Christ.

  “Granddaughter,” Old Man calls as I get close. “I’m happy you came by our pad.”

  “Ever nice place you got,” I say, looking at the trash and the nasty sofa that the two cronies sit on. They look up to me, then turn their faces away, go back to staring at the fire they’ve built. Scrap plywood and boards lay about. A small blue tarp teepee sits in the darkness near a pillar. Old Man sits on a cushion on the ground. He’s barefoot, and his gnarled feet are nasty. I can see the overgrown toenails from here.

  None of us says anything for a long while. Old Man begins humming a tune, something I recognize. At first, by the rhythm, I think this is an old powwow song, but then I hear it. “I Will Always Love You,” by Whitney Houston. I can see he’s got a bottle by him, wrapped tight in a brown paper bag. The sight of it, of him, of somebody who was once young and maybe had a wife and kids and knew the bush, it’s depressing.

  “Take a seat, Granddaughter,” he says, pointing to a ratty, piss-stained pillow beside him.

  “Me, I’m fine standing,” I say. The witches cackle. Old man raises the bottle to me. My hand goes out without my wanting it to. I jerk it back. “Mona, none for me. I gotta drive later.” He shrugs and takes a long gulp, and I decide I shouldn’t be here. He passes the bottle to the old women, and they each drink as well. I’m not going to find out anything worthwhile from these rubbies. “I gotta go,” I say. “Time to split.”

  Old Man gets the bottle back, drains it, and then pulls it from the paper sack, empty. It’s Perrier. He reaches behind him, grabs another bottle, twists the top with a hiss, and places it in the greasy bag. “This stuff is good for someone like me, Granddaughter,” he says. “Makes a man ejaculate like a horse.” The old women cackle again. I take the bottle, take a long drink, and let the bubbles tickle my nose like I’m a kid.

  “So where’s the Dumb One?” I ask.

  “Oh, he’s around. He’s a wanderer, him.” I hand the bottle back. “Us, we’re going to eat soon,” he says. “I hope you stick around for some grub.” I can’t imagine what they’re going to eat, begin thinking of excuses to get out of here before that happens. “Get Painted Tongue off the streets, he’d be good marriage material.”

  “Ever!” I say.

  “Think about it, Granddaughter. He’ll never talk back to you. Him, he’s a good listener, too. And if you teach him, he can become a good provider.”

  “He’s a drunk,” I say. “If I want a drunk for a husband, I can find one easy up in Moosonee.”

  “Him, he likes the booze. But he’s not a drunk. He just needs another direction in his life. Needs a good woman.” Old Man points at me with his lips. So Indian.

  “Forget it.” I sit on the gross pillow, hoping its stink won’t stick to me. Old Man passes me the Perrier. It’s warm, but I don’t care. “How does someone like you get bottles of this to drink?”

  “Oh, lots of people downtown seem to like me. I am the wise elder who’s found hard times. The white people, they ask me what I need. I tell them Perrier, change, a blanket when winter’s coming.” He can see it in my eyes that I don’t like the idea of begging. “Think of it as cheap rent for good land, Granddaughter.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.”

  “Because it is a truism.”

  I can smell something over the stink of piss and desperation, something that actually smells good. It reminds me of home. I look around, and see smoke coming from the top of the blue tarp teepee. “You’re cooking a goose, aren’t you?” I ask.

  “Sagabun style.” The old man smiles. “We will have a feast. Why don’t you go in there,” he points with his thumb, “and tell me how much longer before your goose is cooked?”

  “Ever funny, you,” I say. “No, thanks.” I run my hand over my belly. I’ve lost weight while I’ve been in the Big Smoke.

  “Painted Tongue, let’s eat,” Old Man shouts. I hear rustling in the teepee, then Painted Tongue crawls out, carefully holding a goose on some newspaper.

  I sit back on my dirty pillow, surprised, and watch as he carefully cuts strips from the goose, handing portions first to the old women, then to the old man, and finally to me. He stares off at something I can’t see as we all eat.

  “Where the heck did you ge
t a goose in this city?” I ask Old Man.

  “More geese on the lakeshore than on James Bay,” he says, his mouth full. “Lazy buggers, too. They don’t even bother flying south for winter. They just hang out here all year round and get nice and fat.”The old women nod. “Living here, they lose their fear of people. Instead of flying away when you come close, they hiss at you. All you got to do is pretend to be scared, back away, and then when one rushes at you, grab it by the neck and give it a good snap.” The old man shrugs. “Cops will throw you in jail if they catch you doing it, but me, I’m a sneaky one.”

  “This tastes different than goose back home.” I wouldn’t mind some salt, but I don’t ask.

  “That’s because they eat different here. Candy floss, popcorn, hot dogs. Man, I fed them hot dogs once. Buggers went nuts, chasing joggers around the park, snipping at them.” Old Man scratches at his chin. “Beggars can’t be choosers, eh.” I don’t know if he’s talking about the geese or us.

  “Your sister came here once, too,” he says, staring at the fire, “to eat goose with us. She was a good one. A generous one. She worked at a bar when she first moved here. She’d always leave us money after her shift. But she was like you, didn’t want to talk too much.”

  I nod to him to keep him going.

  “She stopped working at the bar and began bringing us magazines with a twenty tucked in them after a few months.” He takes another bite of goose, then throws a bone into the fire. He stares at it burning. “Her boyfriend, I didn’t know him. Just saw him with her once in a while.”