Arctic Smoke

by Randy Nikkel Schroeder

  Lor sighed, withered. “Is there nothing that gets you down?”

  “And furthermore, my three, er, two, amigos, we’ll detour to Inuvik and visit the aforementioned witch, who, as luck has it, not only has the spirit’s medicine for compatriot Lor, but an entire collection of lights and sound we can borrow for the festival. She used to be in the film business.”

  Lor shook his head. “I’m not going.”

  “Still that old refrain?”

  Fatty stopped the truck, cracked the door.

  “Fatmeister. Where you going?”

  “I got to drain my lizard.”

  “Me too. Lor?”

  Lor shook his head.

  Alistair and Fatty trotted to piss at the river’s edge, while Lor listened to the radio’s faint static crackle. He lit one of his last smokes, then, cold, reached forward to close the passenger door. The door was slightly frozen; he pulled hard and slammed it shut. Immediately the radio poured a dissonant wash, floating strings and eerie female choir.

  “The familiar sound of Holst.” The DJ’s voice mellifluous. “Neptune, the mystic. Puts one in mind of the world’s mysteries. Right, Kenny?”

  Lor choked on his cigarette. He held his breath. Okay, this was a joke, that pirate radio station, some technophile playing an elaborate joke, and Al was probably in on it, of course he was in on it, there he was, pissing and laughing, him and Fatty having a good laugh at Lor’s expense.

  “It’s no joke,” the voice said. “Unless a cosmic joke, in which case it’s all a joke, Kenny, see what I mean. How was Yellowknife? Get any calls?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “You’re taking away my invitation?”

  “What do you want?”

  “What do you want?”

  Lor leaned forward and snapped off the radio, so hard the dial broke in his hand. Then he collapsed into the seat, breathing heavily. He peeled another smoke, lit up, inhaled.

  “Feel better?” the voice said. Lor slapped his hand to his mouth, as if he had spoken ill, and burned his palm on the cigarette.

  “Truth is for young men.” The voice glittered blue. “You, Kenny, are no longer a young man. We are thawing backward, you and I.”

  Lor’s chest constricted, eyes blurring. The sky rushed at him. The truck so cold and empty. He opened the door and fell out, then jumped and ran for the river’s edge, to the only community that remained, the only warmth—the sizzle of hot pee in snow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Rush, Nickelback, and David Suzuki

  Fatty’s truck rolled north along the meandering Mackenzie River. For one experimental year, Alistair explained, the Northwest Territories were converting the entire Mackenzie to an ice bridge, all the way to Tuktoyaktuk and the Arctic Ocean. Lor didn’t believe it. Alistair didn’t seem to care. He just babbled on, endlessly inventive.

  “Look how wide she is, boys, a frozen Mississippi, and we the Huckleberry Finns of winter, lighting out for the next territory, remaking ourselves on the fly. . . .”

  They often passed snowmen built on the river’s edge, in various stages of thaw and decrepitude, or sometimes ice fishers, to whom Fatty invariably gave the finger while Alistair grinned and waved. At one sinuous bend, the headlights enveloped a fisherman in a long black coat, with a snowy owl perched on his shoulder. The owl turned its flat face to stare, flashing bulbed eyes. The man saw the Jolly Roger and grinned. He was missing a tooth. He gave two thumbs up. He was missing a thumb.

  By February the stars vanished for hours at a time, and the sky flowed out toward a stark horizon lit with jangled pinks and peaches. Lor could not remember seeing the sun, as if it hid beneath the skyline. But the ice-bright moon stayed up for days on end, half a month it seemed, never setting, going ’round and ’round the sky, waxing and waning. When fog poured in from the groves of black spruce, Lor lost all depth perception, and ice melted to sky, and they drove only to the rhythm of snow.

  “Feels like we’re flying.” Alistair pressed his nose to the window.

  They landed for small towns, to play scheduled and unscheduled gigs, or for the occasional busload of Japanese tourists in Canada to view the northern lights. Often the bus would stop in the ice road’s centre, barking exhaust, while the tourists wandered smoking in their bright red jumpsuits and Sorel boots, some with full suit and tie peeping from beneath. In Fort Manitou, Fatty landed the truck only to find the planned gig re-booked to a progressive blues band from Hiroshoma called Cygnus X-Freud, who between sets excitedly and in halting English listed as their primary influences Rush, Nickelback, and David Suzuki.

  “Babylon,” Alistair said, when they took off again. “Soon everyt’ing crash.”

  “What?” Lor snapped. “Stop that shit now.” Good Lord. Sometimes annoying didn’t begin to describe Alistair.

  Beyond Fort Manitou, a ghost or phantom began to sabotage the gigs. Small acts—a broken string or drumstick, a missing amp fuse, a busted spring from Fatty’s bass pedal.

  “Is someone following us?” Fatty said.

  Lor kept quiet. The more he thought about the phantom voice, the more he lost his sense of self. He became fearful of losing his memory again. Paranoid. Every night he poked his finger on the guitar string, to fire his nerves with bright blood. A bit more blood each time, a bit more pain.

  “It’ll go dark,” said the manager of the tiny bar in Aklavik. She was an Inuit woman who smelled of peaches.

  “Amigette?”

  “We’re going to have a power failure tonight,” she said. “You fellows will have to play fast. There is nothing pure in this world.”

  “Indeed, no.” Alistair counted them in. They slurred across a medley of punk and new wave, slopping it out. Only Fatty remained dead on, as always. But the audience loved it—mainly Japanese tourists, still swaddled in those bulky red jumpsuits, sweating, smoking.

  The band sped faster, sensing collapse. Fatty rode the beat hard, while his mates struggled to keep up. Soon Lor was playing faster than he could think, running on pure instinct. His pricked finger began to bleed. The tourists clapped out of kilter, bonked their feet in syncopated stomps. Suddenly the music snapped in on itself, became propulsive and gentle, aggressive and delicate, as for about fifteen seconds the band hit every erogenous zone between the beats.

  Out went the lights. Lor wiped his brow, to applause, felt warm blood on his eyelid. A match flared at the back of the bar. For an instant Lor thought he saw the peroxide buzz cut of Darcilee Shimozowa.

  He almost threw up. He fumbled across the stage and grabbed Alistair’s shoulder.

  “Al?”

  “Dude. Will you please come see the witch?”

  Lor paused, flicking a guitar string. Then felt himself nod.

  † † †

  The thought gave him insomnia. See the witch? Ridiculous. For the next week he could only fall asleep for a few hours at early morning. He would lie awake half-dreaming of brothers he’d never had, then realize how alienated he was from everyone he’d ever known. He especially saw his tenacious distinction between love and lust come apart, all his sexual encounters not only failures at intimacy, but further estrangements from himself. Fuck, what a boring insight. So many memories here, more than he wanted to count, all with a sting.

  Then each erotic whisper from the past turned bitter, some even malicious, and he knew there was no magic that could ever rejuvenate his personal history, except maybe the simple act of telling the story to himself.

  † † †

  Meanwhile, the magpie guitar continued to learn Lor. Town by town, gig by gig, his conception of music was rearranged from the inside out. Sounds became snowflakes. When he improvised, he could see that somewhere at the heart of each flake was just the right note. But it was so elusive. The faster he played, the further he got from the heart, spinning away until he was outside the song altogether. So he had to slow down, dig in—to time his entry with the subtle cues that flew just below his perceptions. It was frustrating,
trying to catch that note. But in the attempt lay the most beautiful noise.

  While the guitar continued to build Lor’s insides, the sabotage continued to wreck the outsides. Patchcords crackled and buzzed. A tuning peg went missing from Alistair’s bass. A skin from the drums. Fatty drove, said not a thing. Two miles from the tiny town of Tsintu he picked up a few seconds of pirate radio, and brightened.

  “What you got, Fatster?”

  “You!”

  A few seconds of eerie female choir, then static. Fatty touched the busted knob, but the music was gone. Still, he grinned all the way into town, bouncing in his seat.

  In the Tsintu Pub, Alistair shut up long enough to glare at two men in Karaca turtlenecks, both with laptops and expensive haircuts. One sipped a martini while the other took thoughtful pulls from the business section of a newspaper. At intervals he paused without looking up to argue the relative merits of Lagavulin and Cragganmore single malts.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Alistair whispered. “This is what we’re s’pposed to be escaping.”

  When one of the yups went to the bathroom, Fatty sneaked over to steal his phone from the bar top. He crouched beneath a stool and tapped. The remaining suit dropped his paper and picked up his own tweedling phone.

  “Yeah.”

  Fatty coughed. “Hello, this is Sergeant McKracken of the Inuvik RCMP. Apparently you’ve been engaged in subtle acts of insider trading, but we’re on to you, and we’re on our way to pick you up to take you down.”

  “Who is this?”

  “You!”

  “And where’s your authority?”

  “Here!” Fatty jumped up, fly unzipped, authority already in hand.

  Later, on the ice road again, Alistair offered Fatty hearty congratulations. “Couldn’t have done better myself. Though, must say, the grand finale was a little limp, amigg . . . o . . . lee shit, is that a minivan behind us?”

  Fatty looked back, swerved.

  “Careful, Fatster, careful, or you’ll get us all holy mother of Mary, is that a minivan?” He pounded the seat. “And a Beamer? God save us from that fucking small ice on wheels! This is the Arctic, not the suburbs, the Arctic, goddamn it, last time I heard, Lor?”

  Lor was carefully slicing his finger with the sharp edge of the magpie guitar’s body, drawing bright pain. He looked up as the Beamer passed.

  Alistair yanked his seatbelt, let it zip back. “Look at the lukewarm Euro-wannabe suburboids, thinking their Beamers and minivans are God’s reward for sound moral standards, living a life of constant low-grade pleasure, pecking shiny objects and shitting caramels.” He smacked the dash. The Beamer fishtailed and spat snowy powder. “Dig me, we’ll put their tepid moral vision to the test—hammer it, Fatty.”

  “Huh?”

  Alistair splayed his hands against the windshield. “. . . lives that tinkle with vapid pleasantries—floor it, kid, floor it—Frappucinos, TV, weekly barbecues. . . . ”

  The minivan swooped out to pass, hot on the Beamer’s afterburn. Alistair shrieked and cast out a long leg, pressing the accelerator. Fatty’s neck snapped back, cracking vertebrae.

  “You’ll kill us.” Lor resumed his finger-cutting.

  “They’ve got kids in the back seat, kids in argyle sweaters.” Alistair stomped the gas again. “This is a bad dream, ’migos.”

  He stood, smushed his hat into the roof. “Run ’em off the road! Everyt’ing crash!”

  Lor studied his blood.

  “Everyt’ing crash!” Alistair jumped, banged his head on the rearview mirror. “Fatty! Smash ’em! Smash ’em! Here, asshole, give me the wheel!”

  Then, magically, as if jealous Yahweh himself was on the side of the upper middle classes, Fatty’s headlights blacked out, and the four-by-four stalled, and both sets of tail lights vanished ahead like homebound fireflies.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Pause for a Drink

  And then a great night descended upon the world, and stayed for many cycles of the moon. Soon the three stranded companions knew hunger and thirst, growing as the moon grew, for the earth itself threw up nothing to eat or drink but for a mist that disappeared at the touch. And the three grumbled, and said: why did we ever come to this wilderness, to seek the god’s own light, if it meant that we were to die so far away from home? The snow fell, but they did not know what to do with it, for though it would melt on their tongues, the more they drank the thirstier they became.

  Then the tall one spit out and swore, and said: we are lost, brothers, and have been led astray. And the thick one said: a plague take this unending night, for if we could see a little distance we would at least know what was in store for us. And they both cursed the gods mightily. But the small one kept back while the other two talked among themselves, until they disappeared in the darkness and he was left alone.

  Even then, he laughed. For Fox was not only the foxiest, but the shrewdest of the three, and knew that such profane conversation was likely to draw Bear in his killing humour. And he was right, for Bear did perk up his ears, and in his rage slew Fox’s companions, both Beaver and Caribou, and left them red on the snow, and did not eat either, for they were a desecration. Meanwhile Fox had enough meat to kill his hunger for many weeks.

  But when he had eaten his fill a gigantic thirst grew in his throat, and he fell down, and ate snow until his thirst multiplied. Then he cried out, and said: Why did I trick and eat my brothers, and despoil myself so, and how will I quench this terrible thirst? And he left the meat and wandered out across the snow, until he met King Raven at the fork of Great River.

  I am dying of thirst, Fox told King Raven, and have sinned, and where oh where is one to get a drink in this white desert, where there is no water, but only an ocean of mocking ice?

  And King Raven said: At the end of Great River the water melts, and rushes with a singing noise, and is sweet to drink. But how will you get there?

  Indeed, Fox said, how to get there?

  Then King Raven laughed: You cannot get there, any more than you can ever get home, for the River is time itself, and remains frozen according to its own secret devices, and moves in subtle loops that you can never know—

  The boy storyteller paused for a drink.

  Alistair tapped Lor on the shoulder and pointed.

  “There,” he said. “There’s the witch. I told you so.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Her Invisible Beard

  An hour earlier, when they had finally reached Inuvik on the Mackenzie’s east channel, Fatty had just about hit a car. A blue Camaro, by the looks of it, though it was too dark for anyone to be sure.

  “We need those headlights,” Lor had muttered. “Let’s just find that witch before we kill somebody. Where does she live?”

  Alistair paused, pushed his hat back to wipe his brow. “Well, ’migo, I don’t exactly know that.”

  They rumbled down flat streets, past a Roman Catholic church built to look like an igloo, past an inuksuk, a humanoid figure built from rocks. Then stopped at the town’s main junction and only traffic light, across from the yellowing elementary school, to check the payphone book. Alistair flipped: Dana something, Dana Angootealuk if his memory served, and who knew if it did. Either way, the name wasn’t listed. When Lor asked if she was Inuit, Alistair said: “Scottish. Her married name. Yeah.” He frowned. “She changed it. In the 1980s.” He paused to squint. “Wait a second.”

  Lor followed his squint across the street, where the school door posted a sign for a talent show.

  “This way.” Alistair herded them across the street, saying he knew the witch would be in the audience for that, it was just like her. Lor followed grudgingly. Fatty, sullen again, said not a word.

  The sign named participants in bright calligraphy—Lawrence Komolov, B. Aslanov, the Qingnatuq twins—and word was a boy-genius storyteller would make an appearance, one Zephaniah Tookalook of Nunavut. Alistair asked around, and it turned out that all the contestants were from the east, f
rom Nunavut, except for the Kuptana Family Singers, who were all sick anyway, and doubtful to show. But as far as anyone knew or told there was no Dana Angootealuk.

  The show was hosted by a Quebecois woman named Jose Titus—or was it actually Juicy Tight-Ass with an accent, as Fatty repeatedly insisted? The audience scattered around the floor on some sort of enormous white blanket, sneezing a lot, many of them in blue parkas trimmed with fur. Lor stood nervously while Alistair scanned the gymnasium.

  The Kuptana Family Singers did show, and sang “Amazing Grace” to the accompaniment of a strummed acoustic guitar and the discordant swells of its electric counterpart. Other singers came and went. The timing between vocals and accompaniment was generally nonexistent, but the crowd loved it, clapping in bursts at about every five or six bars. At one point two shy youngsters held hands and sang an old Nirvana song. The host interrupted them in order to give a brief talk on spirit guides.

  “An animal may speak to you,” she explained in that French-Canadian accent. “A beast perhaps. A bird. From afar at first. But if you are patient, the spirit will identify itself, and you will have a lot of good luck.”

  “The witch is here,” Alistair whispered. “I guarantee it. Just her kind of thing.”

  Then a special treat: the host led a blind boy to the stage, the rumoured Zephaniah Tookalook.

  “Mr. Tookalook,” said the host, “will now tell us a story all about Fox and King Raven.”

  The boy sat on a stool and smiled at the audience, tall cup of water in hand. The sneezing stopped. For a moment the only sound was the tinkling of ice cubes in the glass.

  “There,” Alistair whispered. “There’s the witch. I told you so.”

  The boy storyteller took a deep breath. In a surprisingly high voice he began: “And then a great night descended upon the world, and stayed for many cycles of the moon. . . .”