Moon of the Crusted Snow

by Waubgeshig Rice

  “Okay, make him promise to keep a low profile until after the meeting. People are gonna shit themselves if they see this big fuckin’ white guy out and about.”

  Scott accepted their offer, saying he was humbled and honoured to join them. The late afternoon sun stretched their shadows as they got into the trucks to convoy to the community complex. Walter got behind the wheel of Isaiah’s truck with Terry in the cab and Justin Scott lying flat in the back. Isaiah drove Scott’s snowmobile. They rolled out of the parking lot, veiled by the encroaching twilight.

  Seventeen

  The sage smoke billowed high and dissipated. As it smouldered into ash, the scent weakened, giving way to the strong smell of woodsmoke now woven into the jackets and sweaters of the men and women in the crowd.

  Nearly every seat was taken. There were more than twice the people gathered than the last time, and there was a more subdued hum about the room. There were fewer children in the crowd. People had quiet, serious conversations with their neighbours. And those who were silent gazed straight ahead, lips pinched with worry.

  The chief had met with the council the evening before, just after Justin Scott’s appearance at the edge of town, to settle on a course of action. A stranger’s arrival didn’t sit well with any of them.

  “Gchi-manidoo miigwech.” Aileen finished the prayer, but Terry stayed sitting, tapping his fingers on the table in a nervous staccato. The first two fingers on his right hand were stained a foul yellow from nicotine. He’d been chain-smoking since the power went out. He shared the general worry that cigarettes would soon run out too, but he couldn’t seem to cut down. He stood up and pulled at his thick blue sweater. “Good morning. Thank you all for being here. We asked you to come so we could bring you up to speed on what’s happening. We still don’t know what caused the problem or when the power will be back on. So we’re gonna ask you to keep being careful with how you use it. Jeff here will tell you more later in the meeting.

  “We have some new information that gives us a better idea of what’s happening everywhere else. Some of you have probably heard by now about Kevin Birch and Nick Jones, who returned home from the city two days ago on snowmobiles.”

  The room buzzed with the news. Terry let the murmurs subside before continuing.

  “We’ve had a meeting with the boys, and they’ve told us that there’s a blackout down there too. It happened around the same time our power went out. So it sounds widespread. They decided to come home because the city people weren’t prepared and things were getting worse pretty quick. But they’re home and they’re safe. Right now, they’re just asking to be with their families, so please leave them be. You can come to us with your questions.”

  From his spot behind the table, Evan scanned the room. He saw his mom, dad, and sister, Sarah, sitting to the side about halfway back. They had all kept their dark snowmobile jackets on. Most people did now. A persistent chill pervaded every room on the rez. Once again, his brother didn’t seem to be there.

  “It looks like there’s enough fuel to keep the power on throughout the winter,” said Terry. “But only if everyone cooperates. As long as there’s power for the water treatment plant, it can keep pumping in water from the lake. Our goal is to keep running water in your homes for the whole winter. If we run out of diesel for the generators, we’ll have no water in our homes. It’s that simple.

  “Our biggest concern right away, though, is food.” As Terry steeled himself to explain the upcoming rationing, Evan scanned the crowd for Donny Jones, the Northern’s manager. He couldn’t see him anywhere. That asshole really should have handled things better, Evan thought. And he should have the balls to be here.

  “We don’t think we’ll be getting a truck anytime soon,” Terry began. “The service road is snowed in, and we don’t know if Hydro is going to be around to make it drivable for the winter. It might be too late, with all the snow that’s already come.” Fear squeezed itself into the gym.

  “We all know there wasn’t enough food at the trading post to last us for the rest of the winter. And all that food is gone now anyway. So we have to use our emergency supply. There is a cache that will last us for a while. But again, we have to be smart about it. We’re going to assess each home’s need, and set rations according to that. That means we’ll be visiting your homes over the next few days to see what you have. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the only way we can do this fairly.”

  There was an eerie silence among even the most outspoken of the rez people, the corn soup and bannock they’d eaten before the meeting still settling in their bellies.

  Someone in the back shouted, “So I spend all summer fishing and all fall hunting to feed my family in the winter, and the lazy-ass people in this rez get food for free?” Evan tried to spot the heckler. He was there with Isaiah to serve as security in case the assembly got out of hand.

  “Yeah, what the hell?” someone else called out.

  Walter rose to his feet and attempted to restore order. “Okay, okay, calm down,” he shouted into the racket. “Quiet!” His booming baritone hushed the entire gym.

  “Nobody’s getting any kind of special treatment. And we’re not gonna keep any food or supplies from anyone. This is a goddamn crisis! We have to act like a community. We’re going to support each other until this all gets sorted out.”

  Evan wondered whether this meeting had served any good purpose.

  Walter took a deep breath, lowered his wide chin to the white buttons of his denim shirt, and buried his face in his rough hands. He dragged them slowly down his cheeks, pulling his lower eyelids down and exposing his bloodshot eyes as he exhaled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This has been a tough time for everyone here. I’m sorry I yelled.”

  “It’s okay, Walter,” shouted someone from the back.

  “Yeah, Walter, it’s okay,” said a new voice through the open door at the back. Everyone turned to see the tall, bald, muscular white man walk into the room. His heavy workboots made loud thuds on the tiled floor. Justin Scott had arrived for the whole crowd to see.

  “What the fuck is he doing here?” Terry whispered to Walter, loud enough for Evan to hear.

  “We told him to stay put!” Walter growled. He shot a cutting gaze at Evan, as if expecting him to contain the situation. Evan could only shrug.

  The crowd’s uneasy buzz grew. Evan caught his father’s eye, who furrowed his brow and mouthed “Who’s that?” as Patricia bit her thumbnail beside him. Evan tried his best to keep his face blank. Scott stopped and finished his sentence. “We’ll get through this. Together.” He beamed and raised his fists high above his head and pumped them.

  Evan’s cousin Mark Whitesky shot to his feet and yelled, “Who the fuck are you?” as Evan and Isaiah moved to stave off any confrontation.

  Walter tried to placate the room. “Calm down, everyone. Please allow me to introduce Justin Scott. He’s arrived from the South and is with us for a little while.”

  “Aaniin, everybody,” Scott said, as if he thought he could pacify the crowd with a greeting in their language. He folded his big arms over his chest, smirked, and nodded, his bodybuilder’s neck even wider than his large head.

  “We were going to wait to introduce Mr. Scott,” Walter said, staring sharply in Scott’s direction. “I guess we just got our lines crossed.” He let the last part of his statement float in the air.

  “Oh, my apologies,” Scott said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to say hi and meet some of the fine people here. I’m here to help. I’m sure we’ll all get to know each other very well over the next little while.”

  “Miigwech, Mr. Scott,” said Walter before Scott could say anything else. He looked over his shoulder and said loudly, “Evan, maybe it’s time you showed our guest around.” The councillor cocked his head in Scott’s direction and diverted people’s attention back to the front of the gym, saying, “Okay, now Debbi
e McCloud is going to explain how the food distribution is going to work,” he said, welcoming the small woman outfitted in a pink tracksuit. She pushed her glasses up her nose and stood, explaining the plan in a booming, cheerful voice.

  “Hey bud!” chirped Scott as Evan approached. The breezy greeting made Evan’s skin crawl. He nodded for Scott to follow him.

  Once they’d rounded the corner into the hallway that connected the gym and the health station, Evan turned to face him.

  “What the fuck are you doing, man?” he whispered harshly. “We asked you to stay put.”

  “I must not have heard properly,” Scott replied. “I thought I was to meet you all in the gym after the meeting. I thought it would have been done by now.”

  “You could have waited when you saw it was still happening.”

  “But if I’m gonna be a part of this community, shouldn’t I know what’s happening?”

  “You’re not a part of this community.”

  “Oh no?”

  “No. You have to step up, just like everyone else. And then we decide if you can stay.”

  “You don’t think I can?”

  “I don’t know you.”

  Scott towered over Evan under the pale glow of the fluorescent lights above them. Evan knew that he was no match for this man in a fight. He wasn’t intimidated; though he wasn’t quite sure why. He eased back from their confrontation and the stranger relaxed.

  “Well, let’s get to know each other then. So what of this tour?”

  Evan decided to show him the shop and then take him to the band’s main offices. For the first time, Evan considered the man’s own vulnerability. He’s stranded, thought Evan. He needs us more than we need him.

  Eighteen

  Maiingan stood on the counter on his tiptoes and peered into the dark cupboard. He gripped the bottom shelf with his left hand, a little nervous about the height from the floor.

  “Okay, sweetie, tell me how many big cans there are,” asked Nicole.

  The boy reached in with his right hand extended and touched each one as he counted the cans of tomatoes. “One . . . two . . . three . . .” He carefully tallied the wide tins wrapped in the familiar no-name label. “Four . . . five . . . six . . . seven!” His voice piped with pride when he got to seven.

  “Good! Way to go, bud,” said his mother. “Now do it one more time just to make sure.” A tedious task for any older child, this was a fun counting exercise for Maiingan. He was thrilled to be able to help his mother with an important chore. And to be able to stand on the counter.

  “Alright, my boy, now do the little yellow ones,” said Nicole. He opened the right cupboard and inspected the rows of cans of corn. “Found them!” he proclaimed. He proceeded to count and declared that there were nine in there.

  Nicole jotted down 9 next to whole corn in an elementary-school scribbler. When they finished in the kitchen and in the hall pantry, she planned to tally the contents of the bigger pantry in the basement. But she would wait until Evan arrived home to watch the kids so she could do it on her own. She wanted to keep the lights off in the basement for now and knew she’d be faster without her son later.

  She planned on counting the upstairs stores once again anyway. Not that she didn’t trust her son’s skills. She just needed something else to do to pass the time.

  Nicole had grown up in a house much like the one she shared with Evan and her children. She had two older sisters. Geraldine, the eldest, lived on the other side of the rez with her husband and three boys, and Danielle had moved to Toronto for school when she was nineteen and had been there ever since. Her husband, Sean, was not Native and was often teased by everyone in their wider family, but he was loved deeply nonetheless.

  Nicole thought now of her seven-year-old nephew, Will, and what might have become of him since the rez had been cut off from the world. She pictured his toothless grin and bright blue eyes. She wondered if Toronto was blacked out too. She thought of the chaos she’d heard about in Gibson and pictured her young nephew frightened as hungry mobs rolled through the bigger city streets where he lived. Fear crept up her back and she shuddered. She shook the thought from her head and focused again on Maiingan.

  “Okay, bud, how many little green ones? Those are the peas,” she said.

  “Ewww, peas? I don’t want to count them!” Maiingan scrunched up his little face. “Peas are gross!”

  Nicole snickered. “You don’t have to eat them. Just count them!”

  “Okay,” the boy reluctantly agreed. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  “One! Two! Three!” Nangohns echoed from the table. She raised her head from her colouring book, apparently in need of attention. Nicole’s heart warmed every time she heard her daughter’s voice. “Can you count too, baby girl?” she asked. The three-year-old nodded enthusiastically and looked back down to the erratic lines of blue and orange crayon that breached the outlines of the picture she was colouring in.

  Nicole heard feet stomping up the stairs to the front door and turned to see Evan’s head loom into the window frame, his breath visible as he exhaled. He opened the door, and Maiingan shouted, “Daddy! I’ve been helping Mommy count the cans!”

  “Daddy!” Nangohns echoed. Nicole helped the boy down from the counter as the girl leaped off her chair.

  “Aaniin, binoojiinyag!” he boomed. They ran up and wrapped their arms around him, cold coat and all. He leaned down to kiss the tops of their heads while he tried to wiggle out of his coat with the children stuck to his legs.

  “Hey,” Nicole said as he walked over to kiss her. They hugged, holding on tightly. “Ah, this feels solid. This feels safe,” she said into his shoulder.

  “Huh?” he said.

  “Oh, nothing. Just glad you’re home.”

  It was unclear to them both if this was the shape of their lives now. Evan still held out hope that it was temporary, but Nicole was less certain.

  Evan’s workload had increased substantially with the electricity rationing. He kicked off his boots and collapsed on the couch. It was well past noon and he had been up since before dawn, ploughing the roads and then driving Candace North around to continue inventorying people’s household food stores. It was their third day — an intense, tiring routine that involved taking a lot of questions and requests from the worried townspeople. “When’s this blackout gonna be over?” most asked. “We don’t have no more meat!” declared others. “You sure this food is gonna last?”

  He was thankful that he didn’t have to answer the questions. He just had to go through refrigerators, cupboards, pantries, and deep freezers to register what people had so the council could determine what would be needed in the rollout of rations. He was disappointed to discover how few hunted anymore. Many had grown complacent in the rut of welfare.

  As he lay on the couch, Evan thought about the remaining homes they had to get to. Images of pickup trucks, blowing snow, and counting cans and weighing moose meat whirled through his mind.

  ~

  He was driving the plough through a thick layer of heavy snow on the road by the rink. The truck struggled as the road became tougher to navigate the closer he came to the heart of the community. The overcast daylight cast everything in a sickly grey glow.

  He drove up to the main intersection. He looked to his right to see if anyone was at the rink, but he could see that the metal roof had caved in. Ahead of him, the snow was nearly as high as the truck’s headlights. The wheels spun but gradually caught some traction and he kept ploughing his way to the community complex with the band office, school, and health station.

  No one was around. It looked like no other vehicles had passed these roads in a very long time. The ghostly silence unnerved him. He reached the driveway to the community complex and frantically pulled on the steering wheel to make the turn, but the truck got stuck at the bottom of the hill.

 
; Desperate, he tried to open the door, but the deep snow blocked his exit. He bodychecked the door with his shoulder, but it barely budged. He shifted in his seat to face the door and raised his feet to try to kick it open with both legs. That didn’t work either. So he kicked at the window to smash it open. His feet passed through, and glass flew into the cab and out onto the snow, now as high as the window itself. Still, no snow fell from the sky above.

  Evan climbed out headfirst, shards of glass tearing at his jacket and pants. He tried to stand on the snow, but fell up to his thigh with each step. He lay on his belly to crawl the rest of the way to the band office. With each pull, the thick snow crushed into his face. It went into his nose and mouth, and he struggled to breathe. He had to pause to come up for air. He looked behind him, and saw a trail of blood all the way to the truck, where only the blue roof was now visible. The air remained dry and still but the snow grew denser and seemed to rise from beneath him.

  Suddenly, the top began to freeze, taking hold of his arms, legs, and torso. It thickened with each lunge forward. He kicked to free his legs and feet as ice scabbed over the snow. He was sinking into the lighter stuff below and he struggled to hold himself up on the crust, kicking and heaving himself forward with as much force as he could rally. He rolled over onto the ice, exhausted, and lay on his back for a moment to catch his breath before struggling to his feet. The crust was now thick enough to support his weight, so he ran towards the building in the distance. He looked behind to find the gaping hole he’d escaped from, but it had already disappeared. A trail of blood still followed him. He didn’t know where he was cut.

  He fixed his eyes on the front door of the complex. It appeared to sink as the snow got higher. He was running out of time. He needed to get in at all costs. He gasped for air as he pumped his legs as hard as he could. The creeping snow was now nearly as high as the door handle. Just steps away, he jumped forth with his shoulder down and his head tucked into his chest. His body hurtled through the glass. He got up and pulled open the second set of doors and went through, locking them behind him. The snow piled through the broken glass and filled the space between the doors.