by Jay Forman
So much for that idea.
It was while I was carefully placing my feet on the slippery rocks at the shore and was about to step back into the canoe that I saw the second flash of light that day.
It had come from the water. I backed up, took a step left, then right, trying to replicate the angle of the sun that may have caused that flash. Then I spotted it again and knelt down to grab the shiny brass cylinder that was sticking out from between two rocks under the water.
I immediately recognised that it was a shell casing and turned it over in my hand to read what was stamped into the bottom of it.
“You said your dad’s Winchester uses .38’s, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
I turned the shell casing so that Joshua could see the bottom of it. “Whose gun uses .357 Magnums?”
CHAPTER NINE
Elba was waiting for us when we beached Bernice’s boat on the shore. She’d seen us coming, seen us towing her canoe behind Bernice’s. Again, she and Joshua spoke in only Oji-Cree.
I knew how important it was to get a search going for Bernice and to report the shell casing and what we’d seen on Eagle Rock, but there was something just as important that I had to do. “Elba?” I cut into their conversation.
“Yes?” They both looked surprised to hear me speak.
“Could I use your phone? I promised to call someone and he’ll be worried that he hasn’t heard from me.” Jack wouldn’t be worried. He’d be furious.
“It’s on the wall, just inside the back door,” she said before quickly switching back to talking to Joshua in Oji-Cree.
“Thank y— … meegwetch.”
Elba’s house wasn’t very different from Sara’s; it was bigger, but just as basic. Her phone was on the wall, above a water cooler with an extra bottle of water sitting on the floor beside it. I could see all the way through her living room and watched River riding his bicycle in front of the house, jumping it over a series of ramps made out of thin plywood. Little Mary was watching him, sitting on a muddy ATV that was parked on the front lawn.
River flew off a ramp. Jack’s phone rang.
“Hi, it’s Jack …”
I opened my mouth to speak, but stopped when I heard Jack’s voice still speaking.
“… I’ll be out of touch for a couple of days and only checking my messages sporadically. If your call’s urgent please contact my assistant, Adaya, at 647-93—”
I hung up. Where was he? How would Adaya get in touch with him? More importantly, why would she be able to get in touch with him if I couldn’t?
Was my call urgent? Yes. I urgently needed to apologize to him. But directly to him, not through Adaya. I dialled his number again. “Jack, it’s me. I’m back in Webequie now. We had boat trouble and had to camp out in the bush last night. That’s why I didn’t call you back yesterday. I’m sorry. Really, really sorry. I’ll try calling you again.”
I hung the phone up, but only for a second. “It’s me again. Just so you know, I plan to keep calling you for as many times as it takes for you to answer.”
The receiver sat on the base of the phone just a bit longer the next time. I’d opened Elba’s back door and then changed my mind and picked the receiver up again. “I’m sorry.”
I was tempted to call back a fourth time to tell him that I missed him, but decided that I’d probably done enough long-distance damage to Elba’s phone bill.
I offered to give her some money to cover the cost of my calls, but she wouldn’t take it.
Even though I’d only been in the woods for 24 hours, Webequie felt positively cosmopolitan compared to the silence of the bush. We drove past the Northern. There were more trucks and ATVs driving on the road than there’d been the day before, and more people walking around.
We pulled up to a building that would have looked at home in a subdivision of bungalows. It was on a slight rise, just before the teacherages, and had three flags flying from poles that stood in front of two of the biggest satellite dishes I’d ever seen. The flag on the tallest pole had an orange sun with a stylised merganser sitting on rippling water in front of some black pines on a white background. It had to be the flag of Webequie. I wondered if Blaze had drawn the design. The other two flags flew lower down, on poles on either side of the Webequie flag. On the left was the red and white maple leaf flag of Canada, on the right was the provincial flag with both the Ontario coat-of-arms and the Union Jack on a red background. Talk about government representation! Every day, the people of Webequie saw a visual reminder of all the governments that continued to exercise at least some level of control over their territorial lands.
“This is the band hall.” Joshua said as he shoved the gear shift into ‘park’.
“Shouldn’t we go tell your police about the shell casing we found? Or call the OPP?”
“That can wait. Finding Bernice comes first. Ross isn’t going to get any more dead.”
Joshua didn’t stop in the reception area, only saying an Oji-Cree greeting to the woman at front desk in passing. I followed him into the corner office off of the reception area.
Chief Troutlake was sitting behind a big desk, talking on the phone.
Joshua said one word; I don’t know what the word meant but when Chief Troutlake heard it he immediately ended his call. They talked. I looked at all the geological maps that were stuck up on the walls of the chief’s office.
Joshua’s description of the Ring of Fire looking like an open-mouthed roaring bear had been pretty spot on. There was one map that had a large three-quarter ring on it in bright red. And Joshua had been right about something else: a few hundred kilometres was nothing in the vast expanse of Northern Ontario. I saw where De Beers’ Victor Mine was marked on the map. And Jack’s Winisk Mine.
The chief’s desk was littered with papers and I caught a glimpse of Hughes Diamonds letterhead, De Beers’ letterhead, Dorian Mining and several other mining company letterheads. There were reports from all sorts of government agencies lying around and stuck to the walls.
They were so engrossed in their conversation that Joshua forgot to switch to using English when he turned to ask me a question. “Show him the casing,” he corrected his language.
I pulled it out of my pocket and put it on the desk.
Bernice’s name had stopped coming up in their conversation. They were talking about Arthur now; the word Winchester came up a few times. Then I heard Aileen’s name, followed by a very familiar name – mine.
The chief shouted something and soon the office started to fill up with other people. They joined the conversation. I kept having to back up closer to the door to make room for them. Someone spread out a large map over the paperwork on the chief’s desk and everyone focused on it, pointing at various places as they talked.
I was invisible. Which meant I wasn’t needed. Which meant I could walk over to the school and use the phone there to try to call Jack again.
A strong gust of wind blew my hair over my face as I walked down the road toward the school. My hair smelled like wood smoke. I probably smelled, too. If Jack didn’t answer I’d see about having a shower at Sara’s place before trying to call him again.
Sara was in her classroom, working at the computer on her desk.
Internet access! I’d send Jack an email, too. To the private email account that was just for me, not the business one that Adaya could access.
“Why are you limping?” Sara asked me when she looked up from her computer.
“It’s nothing. I slipped on some rocks and twisted my ankle a bit, that’s all.”
“You’re sure nothing’s broken?”
“Positive.” Even so, it felt great to sit down in one of the little chairs in her classroom. My ankle was very appreciative.
“I heard about you finding Bernice’s canoe.”
“That was fast!”
“Elba called. She wants to drop Mary and River off with me so she can help organize the search. I hope Bernice is okay. River won’t have anyo
ne if he loses her, too, and he’s such a sweet kid.”
“He’ll have his uncle, Joshua.”
“I don’t know if he’s ready to be a parent yet.” She clicked her mouse a few times and closed her computer. “Were you able to get anywhere with looking into Ross’ death?”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that, ask you a bunch of questions. Before I do that, though, could I use the phone here? I was supposed to call someone last night and I think he’ll be worried” – or not speaking to me – “because he didn’t hear from me.”
“Are you talking about Jack Hughes?”
I nodded.
“He called the chief last night.”
“I know.” Boy, did I know!
“I think the chief reassured him that you were fine; that you and Joshua decided to spend the night on the mainland.”
“Wait a minute.” Oh, dear God. “The chief told him I was spending the night with Joshua?”
“I think so. Apparently, Jack was quite concerned.”
Jack wasn’t out of touch for a few days. He was deliberately out of touch with me. He thought I’d chosen to spend the night with Joshua. Oh boy. There was no point in trying to call him now. He wouldn’t be answering any calls. He’d let Adaya screen the world from him; specifically, screen me from him. And therein lay my issue with committed relationships! The people in them went nuts, wanting to know what you were doing and who you were doing it with every single minute of the day. There wasn’t any freedom to just go. Okay, so given my track record with some of the men I’d met while travelling, I could see why Jack might wonder … but I’d told him I wouldn’t. Promised him I’d be monogamous. I wanted to be monogamous! But I most definitely didn’t want to have someone tracking my every move. He was turning this into something bigger than it had to be. “I’d still like to send him a quick message. Could I use one of the school’s computers to login to my email?”
“Sure.” She stood up. “Nobody’s in the office right now, so you can use one of the computers in there.”
I started to mentally draft my email to Jack as we walked down the hallway, and it wasn’t shaping up to be as conciliatory as I’d originally planned.
“Can I ask you something? Berkshire grad to Berkshire grad?”
Using Berkshire to bond with me wasn’t going to get her very far, but I was curious to see where she was going. “Go for it.”
“Are you and Jack, you know, more than just good friends?”
“Why?”
“Just a feeling I get and Blaze hinted at it, too. The chief thinks you are. He thinks you lied to him about that. Did you?”
“I didn’t lie to him.” Yes, you did. And you lied to Jack, too. At this rate, my conscience and I would both soon be in a committed relationship in a comfy room with rubber walls. “Besides, what has my relationship with Jack got to do with anything?”
“Everything. The chief wouldn’t have agreed to let you come if he thought you were closely associated with anyone from a mining company, not even Jack Hughes.”
“I thought I was here because Blaze—”
“Blaze got permission from the chief before calling you.”
“I swear; I don’t have anything to do with mining. I don’t know anything about it.” And I didn’t want to know anything about it, unless … “My turn. Can I ask you a question, Berkshire grad to Berkshire grad?”
She pushed open the door to the office and turned on the ceiling lights. “Absolutely.”
“Do you think Ross’ death could have something to do with mining? We found some prospecting stakes in the woods on Webequie land and Joshua got angry. Really angry. It made me wonder if maybe Ross was killed for another reason, something that had nothing do with him being caught in bed with Bernice.”
“No,” she shook her head. “The people here do have a love-hate relationship with the mining companies, but it’s aimed at the companies, not the prospectors. It’s hard to explain how important the land is to First Nations people. There’s a line in Joshua’s favourite song by Midnight Shine, Northern Man, that comes close to explaining it – ‘I don’t own the earth but it’s who I am.’ When someone, anyone, tries to encroach on their land they get very protective.”
“But wouldn’t those stakes mean Ross and his partner had encroached on Webequie land?”
“They mean that a mining company might, and I stress might, be threatening to encroach. Even if a prospector found something on Webequie land it would be years before it turned into anything more than a couple of stakes in the ground. Before any mining can start there have to be tons of environmental studies, especially now. The last two winters people have seen wolverines around here and that’s really scared them. They’re vicious animals and they’ve never been here before. Nobody knows why their migration pattern has changed – it could be because of global warming or it might be because of the mining to the east. And a mining company would have to do months of on-site geological research to make sure that whatever was under the ground was worth enough to bring it out. If they think there’s going to be no return on their investment they’ll go look somewhere else. And they’d have to do feasibility studies to sort out the infrastructure of developing the site, how to get their equipment in and get the minerals out. There aren’t any roads and flying everything in and out is too expensive. I heard something about a Chinese company that might be building a railroad, but as far as I know that’s still just talk. All of these things cost millions, maybe even billions, and no mining company would start spending that way without first getting a written agreement with the council. If they didn’t have that agreement they’d risk facing the entire Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, not just the Webequie council, in a long court battle and they know it. The thing is, people here may not trust the mining companies, but they do want to work with them if it will benefit their people. It’s taken me years to understand the situation and I’ve only scratched the surface, but I hope I’ve given you a good enough overview. If not, I’m sure your good friend Jack will explain it better.” She smiled and winked at me.
Seriously? Was I that bad at lying? And I wasn’t even really lying. I was just leaving out a few details.
I waited until she was heading back down the hallway to her classroom before typing my email to Jack:
‘Jack – I came here because Blaze asked me to. He also asked me not to tell you because of the whole mining thing. I didn’t tell the chief about us because I didn’t think he’d let me stay or tell me anything if he thought we were …’
If we were what? Lovers? Engaged? Nope, I wasn’t ready to type that word. Not anymore. A whole lot of talking would have to happen before that word came out of me, either through my fingers or my mouth.
‘… if he thought we were more than old friends from high school. I was going to text you to let you know where I was, but my phone can’t get a connection up here. I asked if someone could show me around and Joshua offered to. The engine on his boat crapped out when he tried to start it just after you called. He was trying to start it so that I could get back to Webequie to call you like I promised. We were stuck out there the whole night.’
I liked that – ‘stuck out there’. It made it sound like I’d had a lousy time.
‘I slept on a rock. I did not sleep with …’
No. I wasn’t going to lie or fudge the truth on this specific issue. I was going to be brutally honest.
‘I did not have sex with Joshua. I will not be having sex with Joshua. I might not be having sex with you in the foreseeable future, either, because I’m annoyed with you right now. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I will try to call you again, so answer your damn phone.’
I clicked on ‘Send’.
Had I been too bitchy? I started another email, subject ‘PS’.
‘I do love you, no matter how irritating you can be sometimes. Trust in that.’
I logged out of my email program, turned off the computer monitor and office lights, and stepped o
ut of the office just as Elba was coming into the school with Mary and River.
“Hi, River,” I said cheerfully.
He didn’t acknowledge me or even look up at me; he watched his shoes as he walked down the hallway. He looked like he’d been crying. The poor kid. He’d lost his parents, had one grandparent taken away by the police and now the other one was missing. I wanted to give him a hug, but something in the way he was slapping his shoes on the linoleum with each step told me he wouldn’t accept one. His movements were so familiar to me that I almost wanted to cry. He was doing the ‘I do myseff!’ walk that I’d done as a little girl. The little boy who was determined to grow up big and strong like his uncle was trying to be strong about something, in spite of his current size.
Mary was on the other side of Elba. She walked closer to the wall when I smiled at her.
Yeah, maybe kids weren’t in my future. I didn’t have a very good effect on them.
****
Sara put the kids to work making Thanksgiving decorations for the classroom. Mary seemed to be enjoying herself, cutting out orange and yellow and red leaves from sheets of construction paper. At least, I think they were intended to be leaves. Their shape was rather ambiguous. River sat at the little desk across from Mary, staring at his knees while he swung his feet back and forth and ignored the paper, safety scissors and glue that Sara had put out for him. Sara sat beside him and was doing her very best to get him to come out of his shell of independence.
There was a big map of Canada on one wall, an equally large detailed map of Webequie territory on another. I walked over to the Webequie map and stared at the spot where Ross’ body had been found, then looked at the distance between that spot and Eagle Rock. If he had been killed by Eagle Rock why had his killer moved him down to the south end of the peninsula that the gathering camp was on? To make sure he was found? That didn’t make sense. Everyone was at the gathering camp. There hadn’t been a rock circle for a fire where Ross had been found; Joshua had to build one. So how or why did the killer think someone would be there to find Ross? Hiding his body would have been a better idea. If he’d been left out in the woods he might never have been found. And why scalp him? There had to be a message in that act; a reason for it.
