His house is small and drab. A kitchen, a bedroom, bathroom and damp, cold basement that smells of mould. He lives here, he says, because it’s smack dab in between the airport and his favourite strip of bars. The first night home he takes her to a few of them — the Black Steer, Charlie’s Roadhouse, the Bulldog. He introduces Sylvina to his best friend, Drew, at the Black Steer. “She’s beautiful,” Drew says, knowing she’s in earshot. “You got yourself a real little Pocahontas there.” Both men laugh and Sylvina blushes a little, feeling good, even though the compliment was a stupid one. Drew buys them all a round of rye, straight up, chased by gulps of Export.
It’s eleven p.m. at the Bulldog and other friends have joined their group of three. All of them are lit up now, everyone shouting around the little tables they’ve pulled together, swearing and laughing and pushing one another. The men all comment to the pilot how pretty Sylvina is.
“You got a good one, bro,” one says. “Just don’t let her have no babies. It’ll make her dumpy-looking.” All the men at the table find this very funny, but their pudgy wives and girlfriends push at the men’s arms in anger or look down at their glasses of beer. Sylvina knows she is prettier than the other women here. “Exotic-looking,” one woman says. Sylvina likes that.
“The Indian women around here are all fat. And bad complexions,” one woman beside Sylvina says to her friend. Sylvina was introduced to this woman but has forgotten her name. The woman turns to her and says, “Hey, Sylvia, you must be from a different band than the ones around here. They’re all dogs, but you’re not!”
“Must be,” Sylvina says, excusing herself to the bathroom downstairs in the smoky pub.
She gets a shiver sitting, peeing. The high of a couple of hours ago has turned to full-on drunkenness, and it’s easier now to feel the cold of sadness creep in under the stall’s half door. For a while there, Sylvina was able to forget the girls. Forgetting her man is no problem, but Sylvina suddenly knows as she pulls up her jeans that there isn’t enough beer in South Porcupine to drown her two little ones.
Drew comes out of the men’s bathroom just as Sylvina passes it on her way upstairs to the noise and smoke. “Hey!” he says fast, reaching out and pulling her towards him. “Where you off to so quick? Talk to me a minute.” From behind he puts his arms tight around her, hugging her so that she can feel it pushing against her. He grinds his hips a little.
“You’re drunk,” Sylvina says, trying to wiggle away from him. “You must be drunk out of your mind to be trying this with your best friend’s girl.”
“Aw, he won’t mind, Sylvina,” Drew says. “Me and him share lots of things. He already told me how good you are with your mouth.”
“Let go of me,” Sylvina says as he pushes harder against her, biting at her neck.
“You smell good,” Drew moans, grabbing her breasts and squeezing hard. Sylvina twists her body and slaps her hand sharply, palm down, on Drew’s crotch. He cries out like a kicked dog and sinks to his knees. Sylvina is shocked that the simple trick she saw once in a movie is so effective. She’s smiling as she sits back down. The fat woman who finds Sylvina pretty is in the middle of a joke about a man who’s the world’s lousiest lover. Sylvina laughs at that one, and the woman seems especially pleased at the response.
“She’s a good egg, that Sylvina,” the woman says to the pilot. “I used to think all Indian women were the same!”
“We are,” Sylvina says, feeling bold now. “We’re all a bunch of drunken wagon-burners!” The crowd is taken off guard. A few of the men laugh. The women smile with tight lips and look elsewhere. “You know it’s true!” Sylvina says. She doesn’t know where to take this thing she has created. Use it like a punch in their faces or make it look like she is Queen of the Cree and friend of the white. She just lets her mouth go. “You know what Jesus said to us Crees?” Sylvina looks around at the faces. “Don’t do anything till I get back.” Some more of them look at Sylvina now and laugh. “You know the one about the Cree girl who’s getting raped by the fat guy?” Everyone is looking at her. “Stop it, mister! Stop it! You’re crushing my smokes!” The whole table laughs now. Sylvina feels herself slip into their corner, into their pockets. She’s not dangerous. She’s a good joker.
“You’re a funny one,” one of the men says. “Not a peep out of you all night, and it turns out you’re a regular Jerry Lewis!”
Drew appears suddenly, red-faced and sad. “Where have you been?” the pilot shouts out. “Looks like you got caught in your zipper or something!” Everyone laughs. Sylvina laughs especially hard, aiming the force of her breath at Drew. He can’t look at her.
Even though Sylvina’s had so much to drink, her dreams that first night are vivid and startling, ones she remembers long after she wakes up in the early morning. She dreams of her husband sitting in a snowbank, his eyes bloodshot with rage. Dark figures behind him, arms raised. The snowbank is cocaine now, and her husband lies in it, face down. Sylvina lifts off the ground and away from him, and she is flying in the pilot’s plane, over the reserve, all by herself. At first it’s exhilarating to hold the steering, to work the throttle, but slowly the skies turn darker and the plane makes funny, menacing noises. Soon the plane is doing the opposite of what she wants it to do. She tries to steer it down towards the earth but it climbs higher. She tries to speed up but it slows down until it floats high in the air. Sylvina’s stomach rises into her throat as the plane begins to fall slowly, then quickly towards the reserve. She wants to scream but, just as the plane’s nose hits the ground, she’s startled awake by the thump of the drunk pilot’s arm on her chest as he turns over in sleep.
Sylvina can’t fall back asleep now, and she thinks back to her friends on Moose Factory. She has left friends who can see each other in the dark. Friends who can sniff one another out in a blizzard. They have good ears and noses, her friends. Her husband has the best senses of all, and uses them for all the wrong reasons. Finding the drugs. He has lots of connections, suppliers stretching all the way south to Winnipeg and Toronto and even America. He has the senses to look for and find Sylvina, if he wants. She wonders if he will. When she thinks of her husband, she can’t help but think of the drugs too. She misses all that shit about as much as she’s missing him. The idea of them appeals to her once in a while. But the reality is uglier.
Two weeks later and the town is feeling as small as Moose Factory. This is not what I left everything behind for, she tells herself. The pilot is beginning to complain that their drinking is cutting into his savings. He’s working at the shop, coming home later each night. He doesn’t even bother trying to hide the smell of rye on his breath.
Sylvina would begin going out herself, but has no money. The pilot promised her the world when they first met, but she didn’t realize then that it was going to be this particular one. On the long days he’s at work, Sylvina wakes late, then moves from room to room through the house. She sits in each one and pictures her daughters there, each with her own room. She laughs when she realizes that the pilot doesn’t come into her little day-time fantasy.
“Mom?” Sylvina says into the phone.
“Where are you?” her mother asks. “The girls want to know.”
“I’m ... I want to come home. Send me some money. I’ll pay you back.”
“Not only doesn’t Peneshish talk, but Theresa’s quit too since she realized you’re gone.”
Sylvina pauses for a while. “I want to come home.”
Sylvina’s mother takes a week wiring her the money. It’s punishment for acting so foolishly, Sylvina knows. She’s taken to sneaking small bills from the pilot’s wallet or jacket pocket late at night. He has turned mean and quiet, as if the winter cold has slipped inside his bones and hurts him but he is too tough to speak of it.
“I think you should get a job,” he says one night as they lie in bed. Neither has touched the other for days now, since the time the pilot casually mentioned that it would be fun to have Drew join them in bed. Sylvina lau
ghed out loud when he said that, imagining chubby, weird Drew in bed with the two of them. Her laugh hurt the pilot’s feelings more than she could have guessed. He’s barely said anything to her in days. Until now.
“I’d get a job, but things between us don’t seem to be working out too good.” Sylvina pauses and takes a breath. “I decided to head back to Moose Factory.” She looks over to him.
“Oh,” he says. After a few minutes of silence he says, “When are you leaving?”
“In two days. On the train.”
The pilot doesn’t say anything else. Sylvina wonders what it was that she ever saw in him. Tomorrow night she will go out and celebrate her leaving.
This bar is too loud. The shouting miners looking for drunk and easy ass, the band up front sloppily playing heavy metal, screaming waitresses. Everything in this town is loud. The pilot still wasn’t home tonight when Sylvina left. She wouldn’t be surprised if she saw him here. She lets a cowboy buy her drinks and touch her hair. “You got pretty Indian hair,” he says over and over as they toast each other with sweet concoctions poured into shot glasses. The lousy band plays a sped-up version of “American Woman.” Sylvina looks away from the band, straight at Drew sitting at a table alone. He looks like he’s lost here with no one around him. His eyes widen in surprise when he meets Sylvina’s glance. He raises his hand slowly, not sure, it seems, if he should greet her. Sylvina turns away quick, but it’s too late. She knows he’s seen her but she can’t make herself look back at him.
“You be my little squaw tonight,” the cowboy says, leaning to Sylvina’s ear, “and I’ll be your Genital Custer.” She doesn’t laugh. The joke makes the sweet booze in her stomach burn. “Sorry,” he says when he sees the reaction. He buys her another shot. “Where you from, anyways?” he asks after a while.
“I’m American,” she says suddenly. She’s never even been to the States. He smiles, happy. These are the first words she’s spoken directly to him tonight. He thinks he’s that much closer to getting her home now, she knows.
“You from New York State? Michigan?”
She thinks of pretty turquoise and silver bracelets. “Arizona,” she answers smoothly.
“Shit! You’re far from home!” She is.
He buys her another beer. The cowboy smiles and talks of nothing. She can tell from the cocky way he talks, from his eyes, that he fully expects her to come home with him now that he’s lavished her with booze. But Sylvina is in control. She gets off her barstool and slips.
“Easy there, little darlin’,” he says. “Where you goin’?” Sylvina knows it’s time to sneak out of the bar. She’ll go find another, avoid the end-of-the-night scene when he says, “Let’s go to my place,” and she is forced to talk her way out gently or feign shock and anger.
“To the little girls’ room,” she answers. She’ll find a quiet bar, have one last drink, then go to the pilot’s and pack her few things. The cowboy’s had her here for hours. She’s drunk.
“Godspeed,” the cowboy answers.
When she thinks he’s not looking, she slips her jacket from the barstool. She walks slowly in the direction of the ladies’ room, trying to keep her balance. The place has become crowded in the time she’s been here. Men shout over the music and slam drinks on tables, eyes wild with the night, on fire and ugly when they look at her. She makes it to the place where she must go towards the door to her left rather than the washroom along the right wall. Casually, carefully, she peers over her shoulder to the bar. The cowboy faces away from her, talking and gesturing with the bartender. The bartender’s eyes catch Sylvina’s. He winks. She slips out the door.
The snow has finally come. Huge flakes fall thick and quick all around her. Seeing snow for the first time this season makes Sylvina smile. It has already covered the ground. She knows the night’s cold, but she only feels it tingle in the small of her back and harden her nipples. Her tongue is warm with the sweet booze and she can’t feel her toes at all. Her head floats above her shoulders and she ploughs along the snowy sidewalk a block, then two, away from the bar. Tomorrow she will see her girls.
“Hey little darlin’.” The cowboy’s voice is behind her, startling her. “Are you heading back to Arizona already?”
She turns to face him. “No” is all she can think to say.
“No thank-you’s for all the drinks, bitch?” he asks, his voice still low and pleasant.
“I had to leave. I’m not feeling good,” she answers. He raises his hand to cut her off from saying more. With his other hand he pulls a long thin blade from his pocket and walks towards her, making her back-step into the driveway of a small, dark house.
“Take your jeans off, squaw,” he says, smiling. Sylvina isn’t sure if he’s joking. She wants to believe it’s his bad sense of humour, but he reaches out and pushes her hard so her ass hits the ground and her breath hitches. “What I tell you to do?” he asks her.
Sylvina is frozen. The cowboy steps closer. A pickup truck crunches by on the snowy road behind him. Sylvina wants to cry out. The cowboy is kneeling and in her face now, and she can’t tell where the hand with the knife is. She holds her breath for the pierce and pain. “Take your jeans off, squaw bitch,” he hisses into her face. All the casualness has left his voice.
Sylvina sees the pickup truck suddenly behind the cowboy again. It honks its horn. The cowboy jumps, then turns and stands. “You OK, there?” a familiar voice shouts from the rolled-down window.
“Yeah. Girlfriend’s just feeling a little sick, is all,” the cowboy answers.
“No!” Sylvina screams, not even aware it’s her own voice. Her shout sets the cowboy in motion, like a grouse scared out of the bush by a shotgun blast. He rushes awkwardly down the drive, his boots slipping and skidding as he cuts left onto the sidewalk, just as Drew opens his truck door. The look on his face is confused, unsure, as he watches the cowboy run away. He walks to Sylvina and helps her up.
“You’re frozen,” he says. “Get in the truck.”
His heater is running full blast. Sylvina reaches her hand to the vent and begins crying. Drew reaches across her to the glovebox and hands her some Kleenex. “Here,” he says. “What was all that about?”
“He followed me from the bar,” she says. “He had a knife.”
“It’s all OK,” Drew says. “I won’t tell him.”
Sylvina is confused for a moment. For a second she thinks Drew is talking about the cowboy, but soon realizes he’s referring to the pilot. “No, Drew, that’s not a worry. We’re basically broke up now,” she says, her fingers thawing, aching and burning. She shivers, watching the snow cover the truck windows.
“You two didn’t seem a good match anyway,” Drew says after a while. A Shania Twain song plays quietly on his radio.
“I love this song,” Sylvina says to break the uncomfortable silence.
“I love you,” Drew answers. Sylvina bursts out laughing. This is all just too much. She’s laughing and crying and just wants to be back home. She looks over at Drew and can see he’s hurt and she wants to explain to him that her laughter is release, not aimed at him. She’s just happy she isn’t getting raped right now by that pig.
“Sylvina,” Drew moans and reaches over to her, hugging her hard.
“No, Drew,” she says, her laughter drying up. “It isn’t what either of us wants.”
“I love you, Sylvina,” Drew says again, beginning to cry. “And all you do is hurt me. You can’t even wave to me in the bar.” Sylvina is twisted towards him in her seat, her arms pinned at her sides. It’s hard to breathe.
“No, Drew,” she says again, worried.
“I want you, Sylvina,” he says. “I didn’t want to share you with him. That was his idea.”
“No, Drew,” she repeats. She struggles against him now. He reaches up with his left hand and punches her hard in the temple. A sharp pain shoots in her head, ricocheting and popping. She sees black spots.
“Now don’t you try to hurt me again, Sylvina,??
? Drew says. “Don’t you go embarrassing me in front of my friends.” Drew punches her again in the same spot, one knuckle digging into the soft circle of flesh. Her head feels like it’s been split. She blacks out.
What follows comes in flashes. She is on her back in his seat. Her eyes open to his face just above hers, grimacing and crying, kissing her mouth. Her body is numb from his weight. She sees snowflakes hitting the passenger window, sees his vinyl dash. She goes back into darkness. She comes awake again, tugged back by yanks at her legs. She looks down to Drew struggling to pull her jeans off her. She kicks at him and he shoves her hard so that her head hits the metal of the passenger door handle. Lights and dots explode all around her and she fades out again. There’s a stabbing pain and a burn in her groin and she knows in the darkness what it is. She swings out at the weight on top of her and again feels the knuckles on her temple, sending her this time deep into the warm black liquid of the truck’s seat.
After a time, the warmth begins to turn icy. Something is tickling her face. It’s Grandpa, her mother’s dad, Prophet, tickling her face with a goose feather, telling her a story so she isn’t too lonely. “One time I was out hunting with my brother,” Grandpa says. “My brother liked to make fun of me because I liked sleeping naked in my blanket at night. He didn’t believe it was warmer than clothes. Well, one morning I woke up and my brother was gone and so were my clothes. I went outside to look for them. Nothing. Only my boots and my blanket. It was much colder than this, you know. Crazy brother. I had to walk five kilometres home through the snow with only my blanket.