The Marrow Thieves

by Cherie Dimaline

  “After that day, I walked back to the school. It took about eleven days, and in every hour of those eleven days I imagined what I would do when I got there. There were murder fantasies and romantic reunions. I imagined snapping necks and then picking up my bae and running into the woods. Of course, it was all bullshit.

  “When I got to where the trees thinned into forced meadow, devoid of grass, the air empty of birds, I could barely keep myself from pissing my pants. So, I sat down.”

  “What?”

  “I just sat. I sat there for two days, watching the windowless walls. For what, I’m not sure. I wasn’t sure of anything. I didn’t even cry. I just sat. I knew damn well there was no way in and not even a window to break in through. What was I going to do? It was a suicide mission that wouldn’t get me any closer to Isaac than I was sitting in the woods.

  “The morning of the third day, a pickup truck rumbled past me. I waited near the fence gate for it to leave again and jumped in the back, squeezing in between two piles of wooden crates under a blue tarp. I rode along for hours until it stopped on the side of the road and the driver got out to relieve himself. When he was finished zipping up, I snuck up behind him and put the gun to his spine.

  “He raised his hands in the air. ‘Oh shit. What do you want? Take the truck. Keys are in the ignition.’

  “‘I don’t want the damn truck. I want into the school, and I know you can get me there.’

  “He turned then, curiosity getting the better of fear. He took in my appearance, from my shaved head to the gun I held in a steady grip.

  “‘Dude, what do you want to get into the school for? You’re an Indian. Indians go there to die.’

  “‘What do you mean? Indians go there to get harvested.’

  “He shrugged his shoulders and chuckled without mirth. ‘What do you think harvesting is? They work them … I mean … you … until there’s enough demand built up then they hook you up, and game over, man. It’s done.’

  “I punched him in the gut, a cheap shot, so angry I couldn’t hold it in. The air rushed out of him, and he fell to a knee in his own piss.

  “‘Where are they? Where in that godforsaken building are the people?’ It took him a minute to catch his breath. I wound up to kick him in his side before he put a hand up to stop me.

  “‘Gone.’

  “‘What do you mean gone? Where the hell are they?’ Then I did kick him. He fell to his side and held both arms up in front to protect his head.

  “‘They’re gone! There’s no one there now. Last group was used up. They’re waiting on new recruits!’ He yelled it at me from behind his arms.

  “I paced in a small circle, hands on the back of my head, gun clattering against my skull, then reeled back to the driver, who was still in his defensive curl, eyes closed. ‘I don’t believe you!’

  “He pointed to the truck. ‘Check the back.’

  “I kicked at his legs, just grazing a shin. ‘Don’t get smart with me, asshole.’

  “‘Dude, just look in the back. That’s the last of them.’

  “I looked behind me at the truck, then back to the prone man. ‘Don’t move.’

  “He lifted both hands in the air in a gesture of surrender and stayed on the ground.

  “Keeping the gun pointed in his direction, I walked back to the truck and lifted the side of the tarp. Just crates. I yanked it off completely and still, only crates. I took two steps back towards the man before he called out, ‘Look in the boxes, man. The boxes.’

  “I pulled a crate off the top of a stack and dropped it by my feet. I yanked on the top and the nails gave way. Inside were rows of glass tubes, held in a metal rack and cushioned by plastic wrap. ‘What the …’

  “I took one out. It was a frosted test tube with the shadow of liquid inside, a thick, viscous liquid that was neither cool nor warm. I turned the tube and on one side there was a paper label.

  “‘67541B, 23-year-old male, Odawa-Miqmaq.’

  “I grabbed another. ‘46522Y, 64-year-old female, Metis.’

  “‘No.’

  “‘67781F, 15-year-old male, Inuit.’

  “‘No.’

  “‘66542G, 41-year-old male, Euro-Cree.’

  “I didn’t think. I didn’t consider. I walked back to the driver and started shooting. It wasn’t even his fault. He was just a cog in the system. Not that he didn’t know what was going on, but still.”

  We had slowed down. The sun was setting. Miig motioned for Chi-Boy to go ahead to scout the next campsite, then continued.

  “I didn’t kill him, not right there. I hurt him bad, though, shot him in his arm and a thigh. He was bleeding pretty badly. And crying. He cried hardest when I drove away with his truck, leaving him there all alone. That was the worst part. He pleaded with me to take him, but I was deaf to him then. Not that I wouldn’t hear him clearly later when I tried to sleep. I loaded the crate in the back and just drove away with them all, knowing leaving the driver meant he would die slowly and without dignity there on the side of the road.”

  “What did you do with it? With the dream stuff?” I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask.

  “I was too late to save Isaac. I took too long. I had to live with that, but I couldn’t live with the people being served up like a club sandwich to the dreamless. So I tried to take them home.

  “I drove to the lake, one of the last ones I knew still held fish. Got as close as I could from the road and then trekked in, back and forth, one box at a time. Then I camped there for four days. I sang each of them home when I poured them out. It rained, a real good one, too. So I know they made it back.”

  Chi-Boy looped back and guided us to a swatch of even ground under a ridge of thick pine where we’d spend the night. The group started unloading. I stepped forward to drop my pack and set up, but Miig grabbed my shoulder, holding me there for a moment.

  “Thing is, French, sometimes you do things you wouldn’t do in another time and place. Sometimes the path in front of you alters. Sometimes it goes through some pretty dark territory. Just make sure it doesn’t change the intent of the trip.” He put his right hand in the center of my chest. “As long as the intent is good, nothing else matters. Not in these days, son.”

  ROGAROU COMES HUNTING

  We were on day eight since RiRi, keeping a steady pace with early mornings and late nights, when we were jerked to a stop by Miig. He stood stock-still for a minute, head tilted towards his right shoulder so that his good ear was raised to the tree line.

  “Off the trail now. Now!” He chopped the air with his arm, directing us to scatter left into the trees.

  We jumped, clearing the taller grasses and crashing into the low-hanging branches with our loaded backs and stacked shoulders. Tree and Zheegwon each had an arm under Minerva’s so that she almost floated into the bush, still hanging her head as she had been for the past week. Miig stayed on the trail until we were all off and then slipped in beside us, quickly passing us in near complete silence.

  Then I heard them. Sharp, short blasts of fetid breath pushed through a metal cylinder through the scruff of a combed-down moustache. There were two of them, about a half a mile away.

  “Fucking Recruiters,” Zheegwon said in a loud whisper, and we gained speed and agility at the threat on our heels, jumping a narrow gorge and crossing a clover-filled clearing like gazelles with packsacks.

  Miig turned to the right and we followed, tumbling through a dense thicket, coming out the other side into another low clearing with nettles in our hair. We ran until we couldn’t hear the whistles anymore, until we’d zigged and zagged our way to what seemed like an untraceable spot. It was nearing dusk when we finally stopped. Minerva was half asleep in the twins’ grip, and Chi-Boy had sweat through his outer sweater by then.

  “There.” Miig pointed with his chin to a dark smudge, only visible through the tr
ees by the geometric slope against the slash of branch and leaf. “It’s an old barn. Chi-Boy, come with me to check it out first. We can crash there. They’ll be no fire tonight, so walls would be good.”

  “Frenchie?” Miig said. “Take lookout position there.” He pointed at an oak about fifteen feet from where the group was huddled.

  I shrugged off my pack and took a run at the trunk. By the time I stopped I was high enough to see over the squatter pines and over the roof of the barn where Miig and Chi-Boy were scouting.

  The sky was navy blue in the east, azure overhead, purple bleeding out to a pink-stained orange in the west. The north was black; that was the direction we were headed. The medicine wheel–wearers were down south. The schools were an ever-spreading network from the south stretching northward, on our heels like a bushfire. Always north. To what end? Now we’d lost RiRi. Now I’d shot a man. Would I even be welcome in the North? I couldn’t even protect a little girl. Tears flooded my eyes. I wiped at them furiously with my sleeve. I had to keep a sharp eye. Couldn’t lose another one of us.

  Miig’s fluttery owl call brought me back down to earth. Rose was waiting for me with my roll. “Let’s get going. We can’t make light tonight, so we need to hurry if we want to get camp settled in the barn.”

  I took my baggage and unloaded RiRi’s off the top of hers to add to my own. We couldn’t ditch her stuff, not yet anyway. She rewarded me with a smile that showed a missing tooth on the left side and a dimple on the right cheek. I would have carried a thousand pounds for that.

  The barn was empty: not even the leftover scent of manure greeted us. At first it seemed all hollow and singular, but by the last fading light of the moonless sky we caught the outline of a ladder on the far wall. Tree held the base while Zheegwon carefully made his way up, testing each rung with his rubber boot before putting weight on it. Then he disappeared into the darkness.

  “There’s all soft hay up here! Can we sleep here?” Zheegwon tossed down a few handfuls like confetti.

  It was a loft. We each went up the ladder, one by one, plopping into the soft nest of hay.

  “Fine, fine, we can stay up here tonight.” Miig tried to be stern, but he was already fluffing up a nice soft bundle to lie back on. “But being cut off from the exit’s not good idea, so it’s early to rise tomorrow, before the sun even, so we can put some more ground between us and them.”

  “Hey, Miig.” It was Wab calling up from below. “Minerva won’t come up.”

  We leaned over the edge to check it out. Sure enough, Minerva stood far back from the ladder, arms across her chest, kerchief tight around her fat face.

  “Minerva?”

  She just shook her head, not even looking up at Miig.

  “Minerva, you okay?”

  She nodded, her mouth a thin line.

  “You want us to come down?”

  We all held our breath. Slopper immediately pretended to be asleep, letting out one fake wavering snore.

  “No!” She almost shouted it. “Stay.”

  We sighed. Slopper’s eyes opened.

  “Okay, okay.” Miig rubbed his chin. “Did you want us to make your bed down there?”

  She nodded again and walked to the center of the open barn, pointing at the floor directly in the middle.

  “That’s not going to be very comfortable, Min,” Wab cooed. Her concern was greeted with a grunt and arms re-folded over three layers of sweater. Minerva had been irrational since RiRi’s fall. It had been eight days of forced meals, stubbornness, and waves of tears. Even getting her into the bush to relieve herself was an operation in patience.

  “All right, then,” Miig conceded, swinging his feet over the edge onto the ladder. “Let’s get you settled.”

  Miig and Wab made Minerva a nice bed that night, using two donated sleeping bags from the contented kids in the loft. Miig even had his nighttime smoke down there with her, taking extra-long hauls so she could smudge herself, making shallow cups out of her crepe paper fingers and pulling the smoke over her covered head. I watched for a bit, and at one point she looked up, right at me, and held a single finger to her lips. I was already quiet, so I didn’t quite get it, but then again, what was there to get about Minerva?

  I kept an eye on the two Elders below, but when Rose accidentally kicked my foot and then left her warm toes against my sole, I lost all sense of anything other than that one patch of skin. Eventually Wab and Miig came up and settled in, and I dozed off to the sounds of genuine sleep from my patchwork family.

  I was dying. We were dying. That was the only reason for a noise like this.

  Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  Sharp metal; angular auditory jabs; cold, dry, biting alarm.

  I sat up; seven other heads popped up around me. From close by there was a chaos of singular lights, flashlights bouncing off the trees, shuffling polyester shorts, the squeak of gym sneakers on a wooden floor. And those whistles.

  Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  I hung my head over the edge and for a moment, in the bounce of a flashlight, I saw Minerva’s face, wide awake and without fear. Again she caught my eye and held her finger to her thin lips, just for a split second, before they curled back in a mischievous smile. Then her face was gone, swallowed by the dark. More lights, rushing figures, three of them now, and the shuffle and slide of runners. Miig yanked me face down in the hay. I heard muffled voices as the others were tackled and muzzled in the loft.

  “This is for the good of the nation. You’ll see, granny,” one Recruiter said.

  “You are doing a great service, ma’am,” said another.

  “The world needs you. And, of course, you want to do your part for such a great world,” said a third.

  Then they turned their beams to the walls, the ceiling, along the floors and into the corners.

  “Clear,” one Recruiter said.

  “Clear,” said another.

  “Clear,” said the third.

  Then they dragged out Minerva, who stayed silent, whose smile was the last thing we saw as they turned through the doorway, whom we were sure we would never see again.

  We listened to the branches break, the dirt get unsettled, the grasses sway. And from somewhere close by, an engine started up and roared off headed south.

  I felt for Rose and pulled her close to me as she sobbed, my own tears caught up in the thick web of her braid.

  When we finally convinced ourselves to move, to make the day real, the sky was a cerulean blue with a light gauze of striated clouds. Miig swung his foot over.

  “Jesus.” He yanked it back.

  We watched him with our swollen red eyes, anxious and numb at the same time.

  “Damn ladder’s gone.”

  He hung his head over. Chi-Boy joined him. “I don’t see it on the ground. Couldn’t have fallen or it’d be right there.” They turned and locked eyes, understanding the weight of what had happened, taking in that Minerva had moved the ladder sometime in the night, before the Recruiters woke us. Understanding that she’d sacrificed herself and allowed us to remain hidden. How long had she known that they were coming?

  “How are we going to get down?” Wab’s voice was husky with unshed tears. She rocked herself back and forth on her heels. Since she no longer had RiRi to comfort in these situations, Wab had to face herself, and it made her more fragile.

  Slopper threw himself back on a pile of hay, contentedly stretching his back into the softness. “Man, we’re stuck.”

  I had an idea. I grabbed a handful of hay from beside me and threw it over the edge. Then I grabbed another and another, throwing it off as fast as I could. Rose caught on and started kicking it over.

  “Hey,” Slopper complained. “Quit tossing all our bedding!”

  Miig clued in and mimicked Rose’s kicking, and others joined in. Slopper sat in the corner hoardin
g his own pile of hay until Tree explained to him that we could jump off the loft if we had something below to break our fall.

  We threw our packs to the ground below and then, one by one, we jumped after them.

  When the last body had fallen, we straightened ourselves out and re-shouldered our packs. We stopped at Minerva’s bed, rolled up the bags, and folded her faded star blanket. Wab took that one. She unfolded it halfway to tuck RiRi’s soft blankie inside and then folded it back over, her grief inside grief like the blankets themselves.

  It was Rose who found the jingles. In a small fold of hide were two dozen rolled tin lids. They weren’t smooth and uniform like the jingles we’d seen in old pictures, hung from women’s dresses, being danced into grand entries at the old powwows when we were safe to make noise. These were rough around the edges from our camp can opener and stamped with expiry dates and some with company names: Campbell’s, Heinz. We passed them around, careful not to slice our fingers on their jagged curves.

  “But why? Aren’t these supposed to make noise?” Slopper was confused. We’d been told over and over that silence was the only way to move out here, the only way to stay alive.

  It was Chi-Boy who answered, out of character. “Sometimes you risk everything for a life worth living, even if you’re not the one that’ll be alive to live it.”

  We wrapped them back up in the hide we’d found them in, and Rose pushed them into her pack, tears streaming down her dusty cheeks.

  Miig left a pinch of his precious tobacco on the spot and mumbled his own goodbye as we shuffled out into the bright new day.