Pleasant, quiet and efficient, he had the kind of aura that brooked no entry. Until, of course, he began to transform not only May Wabishki's old automobile but the two of them as well.
Prior to Alain's arrival, May had graduated from Business College and taken up a position as the school secretary. In a spirit of independence, intending to do more visiting outside of the confines of her little birthplace, she had purchased a second-hand car from Johnny. Promptly after he retired, it started giving her trouble. Years later, she joked with old Mr. Wilder that he had "set her up" with Alain by rigging the engine to fall apart after the new mechanic arrived in town. He always reminded her that she had driven the poor vehicle "all over hell's half acre" and that she was lucky it had lasted as long as it did.
May had heard all about the arrival of the new mechanic known as the 'coureur de bois.' As she drove her sputtering automobile into the garage yard that day, she caught sight of the man himself, broad shoulders leaning over the front of a car, the hood preventing her from seeing his face.
Chapter 6: Doro
The little town was bleak and windswept. Although it was the beginning of spring, the snowy freshness of the typical Canadian winter had quickly dissipated, leaving behind a dusty dryness that could be felt in the throat and in the blinking of the eye. As yet, there had been no real spring weather, with its refreshing rains, uplifting sun and healing winds.
Today the breeze was strong but unsatisfactory, devoid of moisture. It merely moved the dirt from one place to another and seemed to constrict rather than warm the air. It allowed the new sun to peer more directly onto the unprotected eye of the earth, drying it prematurely.
As soon as she stepped from the car, she was breathless and perspiring. But now, at least, she felt more in control, more like her external persona.
The village consisted of one main paved road, with a few narrow streets webbing off to end in a scattered pattern of homes, most of which were derelict or deserted. A few establishments displayed wares in their windows. Many had For Rent or For Sale signs hanging crookedly among the dust motes. It was reminiscent of the ghost towns she saw on cowboy shows as a child. Little more than a passageway between two larger towns. A place to visit briefly and leave. She could only pray that someone had stayed here, someone who remembered when the house down the road was alive and menacing.
Only one of the stores showed any sign of life. From a short distance, she watched as several cars, one after the other, pulled up to the curb out front. Usually only one person got out, returned and then sped away again, snacks and drinks piled high to get the travelers through the next stage of their journey.
She entered the shop after another of the passers-through and felt the fresh, cool air go through her like a shot of adrenaline. To her surprise, there was an enormous air conditioning unit standing upright in the corner, the kind that heated and cooled, providing a fresh, oxygen-rich climate any time of the year. Even if she found out nothing, she might just hang around inside.
The store was a large rectangle with a long counter and cash register in the middle. It was much bigger and far more modernized than it looked from the outside. In fact, it appeared they'd overtaken the neighbouring store, which explained the difference in ceiling tiles and décor. The air purifier chugged rather noisily from the corner, happily spreading its cheer over the customers.
Rows of foodstuff, all teetering on aluminum shelves, radiated to the left, while on the right, there was a collection of chairs and tables against the wall opposite the counter. Farther to the right she could see the usual Canadian crafts displayed on shelves and inside glass enclosures—red-and-white Maple Leaf T-shirts, furry moccasins, Native dolls, sculptures, maple sugar and syrup, jewellery made from natural stones, and an assortment of other treasures.
A young girl stood at the cash register, cheerfully ringing up the sales from the customers who flew in and out. She looked like a typical teenager in every way but her demeanour. One earring in her nose and three on each ear, jet-black hair pulled into a knot on top of her head. Her pale complexion was dotted with red spots and pimple scars. But she was smiling, open and friendly, not the normal slouching attitude of a teen at work.
There were three older men seated at the small tables, sipping coffee and nibbling on muffins. It was then she noticed the Tim Horton's Self-Service Express Center, tucked in beside the assortment of seats. Paper cups and plastic tops, creamers and sweeteners were heaped next to the gleaming coffee pots.
She decided that she was hungry. That giving in to her coffee craving, rather than ordering a bottle of good-for-you spring water, was excused by the cool air from the hard-working air purifier. Plus, maybe someone would talk to her if she sat down at the mini café.
She smiled at the cashier who grinned merrily back, and asked if she paid now or later for a Tim's.
"Oh, you pay me after," the girl said in a light, melodic voice. "Help yourself!" As though inviting someone into her own living room.
Doro poured a steaming coffee into one of the paper cups, wondering if heat was the secret behind Tim Horton's success. Just keep it hot and the coffee is great, she thought. Then she reached for a soft, fresh carrot muffin and sat down next to the three old men. As she ate, she listened and watched.
They appeared to be around the same age, probably in their seventies. Similar in build and coloring, they could've even been brothers. Their nails were short and clean, their hair sparse and gray. Two of them sported a plain gold wedding band. The other had no jewellery. None of them wore a watch. They were dressed in long pants, attired more for inside than outside. Each of them wore a light, short-sleeved shirt. She would have to call them Striped Shirt, Flowered Shirt and Blue Shirt, she decided.
The only difficulty she was having was that they were speaking French. Although she could understand the language fairly well, she had trouble with their country accent and the rapidity of their speech. After a few minutes, she began to tune into their cadence and could mostly understand.
"I don't believe we should be there at all," Striped Shirt said, his voice calm but powerful and adamant. "And that does not make me against them."
"But they went for the very reasons you are saying we shouldn't go," Flowered Shirt interjected. "That makes you against them."
"I agree with Paul," Blue Shirt stated, which meant that one of the shirts now had a name. "Just because a person doesn't believe we should be over there doesn't mean he's against the soldiers. I think they went there for other reasons. Maybe they were caught up in the patriotic spirit or maybe they joined up never really believing they'd be sent off to war…"
She realized with a start that they were discussing the Afghanistan War. Ashamedly, she recognized that she was expecting discussions about gardening or the possibility of another summer drought or the community gathering on Sunday. She had not imagined that they would be having a political discussion perched on rickety chairs in the back of a store.
She lifted her eyes and looked straight at Striped Shirt as though seeing him for the first time. "Are you Paul?" she asked in English.
He glanced her way, then turned in his chair and looked directly at her. She saw that his eyes were blue, the pupils tinged yellowish with cataracts in a face etched with laugh lines.
"Why, yes," he answered in perfect English, his words giving no indication of his French background. "And who are you?"
He asked his question pleasantly, displaying normal curiosity, but she felt exposed anyway, unaccustomed as she was to playing games.
"My name is Doro," she said, and realized with a shock that it felt right. "I used to live around here when I was a little girl."
"Doro," he repeated, as though testing it on his tongue.
He didn't ask how she knew him or his name. Instead, he turned to Flowered and Blue Shirts and asked in rapid French, "Do we recognize that name?" She thought it was a strange question, a challenge rather than a search for information.
They looked u
p now, stared pointedly at her. Flowered Shirt had deep, rich brown eyes and his face was less lined than Paul's, more leathery and puckered. Blue Shirt had blue eyes to match, but they were clear and direct, different from his Yellow Shirt companion, not just in the absence of cataracts but also in the coldness of his gaze.
"What's the last name?" Flowered Shirt asked, his English difficult to follow with his thick French accent and speech impediment, which she could see was caused by a thick, perhaps tied, tongue.
"I'm not sure," she said, selectively truthful. "When I was very young I was sent to my aunt's home. She raised me, never telling me I was adopted. When she died, I discovered the truth about my background but very little real information."
She stopped for a moment, trying to stem the tide of her admissions, wondering if she was saying too much. Rapidly, she decided that she had nothing to lose. "I know the house that I lived in as a child though. I found a picture of it among my aunt's possessions, along with some pretty specific directions. I looked at the location, but it's been burned to the ground."
All three shirts looked at one another. A telepathic message being sent. She could almost see the charge race through the air. At a practically imperceptible nod from the others, Paul pulled another chair up to their table and invited her to sit with them. She complied, her heart ramping up as she wondered where this was going to lead her but determined to follow through with her mission.
Paul gestured to Flowered Shirt. "Doro, meet Nic."
Flowered Shirt smiled at her.
"And Sam."
Blue Shirt merely gave her a tight-lipped gaze.
Paul paused for a moment and then continued. "I don't know if we can help you much, but we were in this area when the manse burned down. It's just that we were young men and not very interested, I'm afraid, except in the more sensational details."
She noticed that Nic looked down at the table, not at her, his lips pursed as though to keep himself from speaking. Sam made no movement at all. He sat with his hands folded, his stare unwavering as he looked at her through half-closed lids. She defiantly looked back at him and his eyes shifted away.
Her mind was racing, caught on his seemingly casual words—manse and sensational. Her emotions lurch and the acrid smell of the burned ruins was on her tongue.
"What's a manse?" she asked, the only question she could manage, the only answer she might handle.
"I think it's an old English word, really," Paul said, his voice conversational, informative. No inflections or emotion. "I think it means the preacher's house. At any rate, that's what we called the old Janot place." He pronounces it with a soft g sound, ending in the French long o.
"Janot?" Once again her question elicited the exchange of looks between the three men.
Before she could fill the awkward silence with another question, a disturbance occurred at the counter. The pleasant teenage girl was obviously trying to be polite as a man, tall and slender with a shock of long white hair, hastily bent over a spill of cans on the floor. As he replaced the last item on the shelf, the three men, she herself and the girl continued to be mesmerized by his odd movements.
Straightening up, he looked right at the group by the coffee station, casting them all a cold, angry gaze. She was amazed by his fury, wondering why their staring, though perhaps rude, had incited such a livid response.
Suddenly, she sensed a change beside her. The three Shirts pushed aside their chairs without comment and headed to the door. She tried to call out, frozen in her astonishment, when Blue Shirt looked back. The glare in his eyes stopped her from saying anything at all.
Chapter 7: Emily
Unlike Sydney D'Aubigne's clan, whose roots in Burchill and the surrounding area went back a couple of hundred years, Meghan Sanderson's family moved to our little town just before Meghan was born in August six years ago. There were ten of them when they arrived. The little girl with reddish curls soon made eleven.
Eight Sanderson children entered Burchill Public School that September: two sets of twins and four other siblings. All very tall for their ages, they were exceptionally thin and every one of them with reddish-blond hair and blue eyes. Extremely quiet, compliant and well mannered, the children were always hanging out in the yard or in the hallways with one or two others. But we never saw them actually talking to their friends, merely listening and following. They created no problems in the classroom or in the yard. Every single one of them achieved good marks and their projects were always neat and well thought out. In fact, the Sanderson children were unnaturally robotic and perfect.
The boys, including the eldest child, Aaron, Benjaman, and twins, Trevor and Tyler, often looked like deer caught in headlights. Whenever I appeared, their eyes immediately darted about, looking anywhere but at me. Even when I began to know them well enough to say hello to them by name, I received nothing but a short nod in return. Now that they knew me better, it was sometimes followed by a tremulous smile.
The oldest daughter, Cate, now in grade seven, was hunched over at the shoulders and barely spoke to anyone. The other three girls were much like their older sister, but perhaps because they were younger, Jennifer and the twins, Carly and Devon, were not hunched over—yet. They were like little ciphers, never saying much, never volunteering answers in class.
Meghan was very close to what we called a 'selective mute.' She rarely spoke to any adults. She resisted speaking in front of a group of other children. The only time she spoke in the classroom was to whisper to Sydney to relay her request or answer to the others. The teachers in both junior and senior kindergarten had worked intensively with her and there had been progress.
In grade one, the speech pathologist had become involved, but the little girl continued to be mostly silent. She had begun answering her teacher, Meredith Cole, when questioned one-on-one, but Meredith told me that Meghan would strictly speak in whispers. Only in the yard and sometimes in the gym could Meghan's voice be heard, shouting or singing along with her friends.
Thus, my guess that Sydney's secret with Meghan might involve "something that hurts her" wasn't entirely out of the blue. In fact, the teachers and I had long wondered about the entire Sanderson family. The children were far too quiet, far too submissive, frightened of everyone and everything. Despite our vigilance, we had never seen any signs of physical abuse and though emotional abuse appeared to be present, we simply had no proof. Their teachers and I held many talks with social services, but we seemed to hit a brick wall each time.
The children were always clean, though sometimes not so well dressed. There were no signs of beatings. They had never confessed unhappiness to their teachers or their friends. In fact, they had never confessed anything.
Little towns like ours didn't warrant Children's Aid Society offices. Fortunately, we had an outstanding itinerant child protection worker as our contact person for Burchill and Sahsejewon Reserve. Renae Ogemah was articulate, insightful, knowledgeable and compassionate. Although she had a no-nonsense exterior, enough to intimidate any big bully into backing down, she was also tender and kind to the children who came into her sphere. She'd been out to the Sanderson home a couple of times and had found it clean and well appointed. The only negative she reported was that the household appeared to be overly strict and regimented.
Privately, she told me that her "intuition was going wild." She felt that there was more to the story, but she had no objective, tangible proof of anything amiss. Even in cases far more black and white and disturbing than this one, she revealed, only about ten percent of children were removed from their homes. Her only course of action was to offer financial assistance and parenting lessons to Mrs. Sanderson, which were both politely refused.
After Sydney had left my office, I called Renae, but got only her voice mail. Just listening to her message conjured up her dynamic presence—a tall, wiry frame, short cropped hair sticking up all over her head with fashionable abandon, almond eyes, sparkling earrings protruding from three holes in each ear. R
enae's eyes were lively and huge, insightful and sharp. Only her flat nose, nostrils spreading across the middle of her face, prevented her from being a traditional beauty.
Renae was full-blooded Native, proud of her roots. She often stated very clearly that she wanted to be called Indian and she always told the same little yarn.
"The name really comes from 'in Dios,' meaning 'with God.' The story about Columbus is nonsense. I am happy to be known as an Indian. Most people should aspire to being Indian."
Forthright, honest and loads of fun, Renae spoke in a softly modulated voice that soothed the savage beast instantly. Whenever I worked with her, I felt supported and even comforted.
We had dealt with an amazing number of delicate cases over the eight years I'd been the principal. People wrongly assumed that a small town had nothing to hide. I learned, sometimes the hard way, that many individuals had scars and secrets no matter where they lived, no matter the outer clothing they wore. The other misconception, expressed directly to me on many occasions, was the prejudiced assumption that most of the problems emerged from the reserve. I didn't know what the national statistics were, but in our town, Sahsejewon was no more likely to have cases of child abuse or neglect than in the center of Burchill.
I left my office through the connecting door and walked into the secretary's, which was also the reception area. Burchill Public School was well laid out generally, except for the office. Over the past few years, I'd persuaded Superintendent Peter McGraw to invest a few dollars into updating the old building. May, the secretary, was very happy with the changes. The long, sleek counter which spread in front of her desk afforded privacy and yet openness. The removal of a smaller room to enlarge the main office granted more space for filing cabinets and storage, as well as meeting and greeting.
May Reneaux was not simply my office partner. She was my best friend. Never having had a close female friend in the past, I was only just beginning to give back to her what she had given me. Also Native Canadian, a truly 'in Dios' person, May was somewhat shorter than I and quite stocky. Her broad face, straight hair and large oval brown eyes gave her a striking, approachable look. Not beautiful perhaps, but definitely eye catching. She was the kind of woman that everyone sought out, for confidences, for comfort, for fun. Only once had I ever seen May lose her temper and that time she had plenty of reason for doing so.
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