The Dogs of Winter

by Ann Lambert

  One woman in three has been the victim of at least one sexual assault from the age of sixteen. Slightly more than eight in ten victims know their assailant—close to seven in ten victims were sexually assaulted in a private residence. And only one out of twenty sexual assaults is ever reported to the police, who often dismiss and minimize the case or dissuade the victim from pressing charges. If their case does makes it to court, they often endure a brutal cross-examination that often re-victimizes them.

  No wonder that most victims never even bothered reporting the crime. Michaela read on. Forty percent of women with a physical or mental disability will be sexually assaulted at least once before they turn eighteen. Over seventy-five percent of Indigenous girls under eighteen have been sexually assaulted.

  The statistics were shocking. And until just nine days earlier, they were only that—numbers. But Michaela also thought about the systemic misogyny of the justice system, where sexual violence is the only crime where the idea of consent is examined to prove that a crime has been committed. If someone is physically attacked and injured they don’t begin the court case by asking the victim if they wanted to be attacked. In rape cases, the prosecution has to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no consent, and as a result, the victim is positioned as a potential liar from the beginning of the legal process.

  Through her closed door, Michaela could hear the sounds of life from downstairs. Her mother expertly chopping something. Her father’s low drone, punctuated by short bursts of her mother’s laughter. He probably had a beer in his hand and was going over his day for her. If she…if she told them—that would mean it really had happened. There would be no going back. Would they ever look at her the same way again?

  She slowly got up from her bed, tucked her unbrushed mess of hair behind her ears, put on a cleaner top, and opened her bedroom door. Now she could hear her parents doing what they did every weeknight at six o’clock. They were playing Jeopardy—loudly declaring their mostly wrong answers at the TV. Michaela put her foot on the first step, hesitated, and then began heading down the stairs to her innocent parents.

  Forty-Seven

  Wednesday

  February 13, 2019

  “TABERNOOSH, IL FAIT FRETTE! It’s too fucking cold!” It was twenty-four below zero outside, and Ti-Coune Cousineau was scraping away the frost on the inside of the windshield with one hand and steering the car with the other. He had borrowed this crappy old Honda Civic from his old “friend” from the Cock and Bull pub after Nia had called him and asked for his help. The heater and defroster didn’t really work, and Ti-Coune could barely feel his feet anymore. It also stank of beer, weed, and some other disgusting thing he preferred not to identify. He was feeling grumpy and fervently wishing he himself could have a beer right about now. “I told you we should’ve gone another day.”

  “I couldn’t wait another day,” Nia snapped. She glanced at this strange old man from the bar who was putting himself out for her and softened. “I really, really appreciate your doing this for me. Give me the scraper. I can do that while you’re driving.”

  They hadn’t talked much once they’d found themselves in the car and realized the journey was going to be epic given the car’s many challenges. Despite a provincial law that said all vehicles had to have snow tires on by December 15, the car’s tires were almost bald all-seasons, and Ti-Coune felt like they could go skidding into a ditch at any moment. It wasn’t a good feeling. What did feel good, though, was getting farther and farther from Montreal and further into the Laurentian boreal forest. They had passed the little town of l’Assomption, named for the assumption of the Virgin Mary directly into heaven Ti-Coune remembered from his grade one catechism class. Now they were driving past the sign for the golf course in l’Épiphanie.

  “Do you know what l’épiphanie is?” Ti-Coune asked as he peered through the hole in the windshield frost that Nia had temporarily cleared.

  “That’s when the wise men came to visit Jesus, isn’t it? On the twelfth day after Christmas?”

  Ti-Coune glanced at Nia and smiled. “Not bad. I thought your generation had no religion at all.”

  “I didn’t. I mean, I was raised to be very anti- any religion. But I read a lot. I read the entire Old and New Testaments when I dropped out of high school. For some crazy reason, I thought there might be some answers there. Boy, was I wrong.”

  “When I was a kid, and they said the three wise men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh, I always called it Frankenstein. Used to make my teacher laugh.”

  “An epiphany means something else too, you know.”

  “Oh yeah? What does it mean?”

  “It’s like the moment when a person is suddenly struck with a life-changing realization, which changes the rest of the story. It often starts with a small, everyday experience that shows something much bigger.”

  “I never heard of that.”

  Nia grabbed the scraper again and went at the windshield on her side of the car.

  “You ever had one?”

  Ti-Coune nodded. “Oui, ma belle. I had a few. One big one, two years ago. But I’m not sure the rest of my story is changed yet.”

  He suddenly made a sharp right turn. “That’s the road to St. Esprit—according to Google, it’s down this way.”

  The car fishtailed a bit on the icy dusting of snow caused by the frigid temperature. Ti-Coune slowed down and pointed to a road sign indicating the next town.

  “The Saint Esprit.” He said with English pronunciation.

  “Who got the Virgin Mary pregnant through her ear.”

  Ti-Coune started to laugh. “Anh? What did you say?”

  “The Holy Spirit got Mary pregnant through her ear so her…um…sexual organs could remain intact. So she could still be a virgin. That’s very important to Catholics, by the way.”

  “Mets-en.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mets-en? It means…oh…it means in English—put more. Say it more.”

  “Maybe it means…you can say that again!”

  Nia and Ti-Coune both chuckled at yet another unique Quebecois expression. Then they both got quiet and watched the road ahead, unfolding before them in a straight line of blue-whiteness punctuated with the odd forlorn farmhouse.

  “I hope they have your dog.”

  “Thanks.” Nia added nothing further. She didn’t want to even entertain the possibility that they might not.

  “I hope you find your sister. Hélène? What is she like?”

  Ti-Coune was so slow to respond that Nia thought he might not. Then, he took a deep breath and said, “She’s the toughest person I’ve ever known—she is like those toy clowns, you know the kind they buy for kids to punch? But no matter how hard you punch it, it always comes back up to face you again? That’s Hélène.” He tried not to look at Nia, as he felt he might cry. “And she saved my life. Many times.”

  He composed himself and glanced at Nia briefly, but then returned his eyes to the road ahead. “She is also very beautiful. She looks a bit like you—or you look like her.”

  Ti-Coune instantly felt her entire body tighten. He shouldn’t have said that. Did she think that was a come-on? “I’m not into young girls, okay? I like you. I like dogs. That’s it, that’s all. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They drove in silence for several more minutes along the St. Esprit road. Suddenly Ti-Coune braked the car to a stop, threw it into reverse, and backed about 500 feet up the road, the car whining all the way.

  “I saw a sign. I think we passed it.”

  Nia glanced back over her shoulder until Ti-Coune stopped and put the car into drive. Nailed on a tree, half-hidden by branches and handwritten in uneven letters in what looked like black marker was a sign that read La Crèche>>.

  “That’s IT!” Nia whipped around excitedly in her seat. “Turn here.�
�

  “Crissti. They really don’t want you to find it, anh?”

  Ti-Coune turned the car down the road that cut a thin line through a dense swath of balsam trees and continued along for another ten minutes or so. There was absolutely nothing around them. There were no other cars, no houses, no gas stations, no dépanneurs. Only the trees and the snowy road. Ti-Coune drove carefully along it, looking for signs of human life. Suddenly the road just ended. They peered through what was now the already diminishing light of early afternoon, trying to make its way through the dense foliage. Then Nia saw it.

  “Look! There’s a house! Right through there, see? Wait, there are two houses!”

  Ti-Coune turned the car into the trees and along a very narrow, snow-packed driveway. He aimed his tires into the two deep ruts that led them towards their destination.

  Before them was a basic prefab bungalow, and behind it they could just make out a few outbuildings. As they got out of the car, Nia reminded Ti-Coune of what they’d agreed to say, just in case “Buddy” had been stolen.

  “Remember, we’re here to adopt a dog. We saw the one named Buddy on the website and thought he could use a home.”

  Ti-Coune quickly took out his phone and thumbed a quick text. There wasn’t much power left on his phone. “Okay. You do the talking.”

  As they approached the modest house, the front door opened, and framed inside it was an extraordinarily tall person. Nia gave a little wave and announced why they were there. As they got closer, they realized the person was in fact, female, although it wasn’t easy to tell. She had on what they used to call a red lumberjack jacket that was faded with age and gray with wear. She had on a pair of baggy overalls tucked into decrepit winter boots with the tongues hanging out over the laces. Her long, gray hair was matted and looked like a toddler had glued it in patches to her head. She stared at them balefully. “You need an appointment to visit the dogs. You didn’t make an appointment.” And with that, she slammed the door. Nia marched right up to it and knocked hard until the door reopened. In her heavily accented but serviceable French she said, “We don’t have an appointment, but we drove all the way from Montreal to find a dog. To choose a dog.”

  The woman looked Nia up and down with disdain. “You don’t just choose a dog. A dog chooses you.” But she nodded at them to come in the house and directed them toward her kitchen table. A little dog who looked like a scruffy white rat scrabbled after her as she disappeared into an adjoining room where a TV was on very loud. She returned moments later with a few crumpled papers. “Fill these out. Name, address, phone, and why you want a dog.” Then she disappeared into a different room through a curtained doorway, with the little white dog on her heels.

  Nia and Ti-Coune looked at each other, eyebrows raised, and shrugged.

  “Is that a man or a woman?” Ti-Coune whispered.

  “I’m not sure—but a woman, I think. The voice.”

  “Elle lui manque des bardeaux.”

  Nia looked at him quizzically. “Ehm. She’s missing a few…. I don’t know the word in English.”

  Nia smiled and started to fill out the forms in earnest, while Ti-Coune took in his surroundings. The kitchen was small and despite the appearance of the woman of the house, remarkably tidy and clean. Immaculate, even. The little table they were seated at had a worn but spotless floral tablecloth, and on it were a white Scotty dog saltshaker and a black Scotty dog for the pepper. There was almost nothing on the walls at all. Not a photograph, not a cheesy still life painting, not a little sign with a stupid saying like “It’s beer o’clock somewhere.” The only thing hanging on the wall was a calendar. It advertised an auto parts store, and had a sexy woman bent over a car wearing very short shorts and a bikini top, winking at the viewer. Except someone had drawn a thick dog collar on her in pen, and two X’s over her eyes. It was very disconcerting. Nia finished filling out the form and watched Ti-Coune checking out the kitchen. He very much wanted to see what was in the fridge but restrained himself. The giant woman had not returned.

  “Allo? Madame? Allo? Madame, vous êtes là?” Nia called out to the back room, but there was no response. Only the loud ticking of a wall clock beside the fridge. “Allo?” Nia wandered through the rest of the house. “I’ve finished filling the paper out. Can we go see the dogs?”

  There was no answer. Ti-Coune put his coat on and gestured to Nia to do the same.

  “I don’t have a good feeling here. I think we should go.”

  Nia and Ti-Coune went back out the front door towards their car, but Nia broke away to circle around the house to see what was in the backyard. There was still no sign of the woman who had greeted them. Suddenly, there was an explosion of barking, whining, and yapping dogs. Nia started to run towards the sound, while Ti-Coune trudged along the path through the snow behind her, on alert for any sign of human life. Ahead of them was a small building hidden in a copse of trees, and there Nia saw the first dogs—maybe a dozen of them in a huge enclosure, with individual dog houses lined up like on a suburban street, and a few tree stumps and old tractor tires embedded in the snow for them to play on. Several started to bark at her and Ti-Coune, but their tails were wagging and their ears perked forward. One ran up and down from corner to corner trying to get their attention, while another stood on his hind legs against the fence and whined at them. They all seemed happy and in good health. But Nia did not see Hamlet. Ti-Coune let a one-eyed pitbull lick his fingers through the fence, then heard Nia call to him.

  “Jean-Michel! I think there’s another kennel here. I can hear more dogs!” Ti-Coune jogged toward Nia’s voice. When he’d caught up with her they walked together through a large shed towards the sound of more barking.

  “Oh my God, that sounds like Hamlet!” Nia started to run, and before she knew it, she was in a similar dog run to the last one, but this one had a tin roof and was completely enclosed. But there were no dogs to be found there at all. Ti-Coune followed her inside. “Nia? Please stay with me here. Nia!”

  “I can hear him. I’m sure that’s his bark.” And then, there he was. Hamlet. He hurled himself at the fence separating them, jumping up and down, crazy with joy at the sight of Nia. She fell to her knees and tried to touch him through the fence. They were both crying. Ti-Coune left them there and went back to the metal gate they had come through. It had somehow locked behind them. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach. Had someone locked them in? This outdoor cage with no heat, no shelter? He called several times for the woman, but his voice just echoed in the windless, frigid air. Nia got to her feet. “What is it?”

  “It’s locked. The gate is locked.”

  “What? That’s not likely. Let me try.”

  Nia pried at it, rattled it, and finally bashed at the lock. It was impossible to open. Ti-Coune began shouting for help to the woman again, and Nia added her cries to his. No one came. Hamlet paced frantically back and forth along the fence that separated him from Nia, never taking his eyes off her. Ti-Coune did the only thing possible. He pulled out his phone to text Roméo. But his phone was dead. The cold had just killed the battery.

  Forty-Eight

  SHE WONDERED WHAT HAD HAPPENED to him. For close to seven years now, Le Bon Samaritain had come every Monday and Thursday to pick up day-old bread and charcuterie that was otherwise destined for the garbage bin and taken it to distribute to the homeless. In all those years, she could count on one hand how many times he had not shown up. It was now Thursday afternoon, and Madame Yvonne was just tidying up after the feeding frenzy of the lunchtime rush. She was trying to restore some order to what was left of the neat rows of bread she had so lovingly and carefully stacked at six o’clock that morning. Thursdays were usually very busy, and she always looked forward to Monsieur Blum and his gentle, polite small talk before the madness of her day began. She read somewhere that it was these small human interactions, courteous, polite exchanges of no great importance, th
at made a society healthier and saner. Isaac Blum was one of the people who made it better. Madame Yvonne had customers who’d jostle and elbow each other out of line for the last pain rustique or one of Chez Babette’s famous croissants aux amandes. Isaac was always a gentleman, and he tipped very well. She had prepared a bag of day-old bread and pastries for him anyway and hoped that he hadn’t caught the second round of flu that was laying waste to every employee at the bakery and half the city. Madame Yvonne sat heavily in the chair where she always took her break, and slipped her shoes off her aching, swollen feet. She was getting too old for this.

  Isaac Blum sat in his ancient armchair watching the thick paper curl into the blue flames of the fire. He had removed every photograph from his wall, and every bit of information he had collected over the years would soon be now gone, consumed in minutes. He had seen so many come, some go back, and so many die or disappear. He watched the photos he’d taken of Shannon disappear. And then her friend, Vickee. There would be no evidence of any of these girls. Not the kind he collected. He had spent so many years trying to make a connection with them, especially after his own children were taken from him.

  The day after Isaac was falsely charged with sexual interference, his ex-wife took their young son and daughter and flew home to Brazil. She informed Isaac she was never coming back to Canada, and he’d never see his kids again. He had followed them down to Sao Paolo, but his wife came from a powerful and connected military family, and they closed ranks. Isaac was forced to leave without his children and without even seeing them or saying goodbye. They were grown up now, maybe even with families of their own. Were they Brazilian now? Or back in Canada? Did they ever, ever think of him?

  He tossed the photo of Nia he’d taken months ago into the flames. She never let him in. Maybe because she had always had that boy with her—they were hermetically sealed in their affection and loyalty to each other. Isaac thought of Shannon again, and the crack burns he’d seen on her arms that day, the brand her pimp had given her. He had spent so many years listening to their stories, their heartbreak, their memories of better times. Some of them. Some didn’t have any memories of better times. They devoted themselves to obliterating all memories—to living in the ever present. Listening to them made him feel part of something bigger, and he desperately needed to feel bigger than himself. He had only wanted some record that they had existed—and mostly for the girls he felt were in real danger. Didn’t everyone have the right to exist? To be treated equally? He knew that society’s answer to that was, in fact, a resounding no.