White Heat

by Melanie McGrath

  'You break up with Lisa, Sammy?' The past couple of years, Sammy had gone through women like water. Lisa was just the latest. For some reason whenever one or other finished with him, he came to Edie's house to lick his wounds. He gave a little shrug, looked away.

  'Sorry,' she said. She wasn't consciously mean to him but sometimes a little bubble of meanness popped out. She guessed that somewhere, somehow, she was still angry about the situation, which probably meant that somewhere, somehow, she still had feelings for Sammy and was doing her best to ignore them.

  'My TV bust,' Sammy said.

  Edie took a piece of seal out of her pack and put it on the surface in the kitchen then switched on the kettle for some tea.

  'Plus I broke up with Lisa.'

  They laughed. Sammy raised his eyes to heaven. Even he'd come to think of his love life as a bit of a joke. So long as he was the one to say it.

  'Get together with anyone else yet?'

  Sammy nodded, sheepish.

  'Who?' asked Edie, a little too quickly.

  'Nancy.'

  'Nancy Allakarialak? Pauloosie's mum?'

  'Uh huh.'

  For an instant all three made eye contact, then just as quickly looked away. It was odd how sometimes they felt like a family again. Odd and unsettling. Then Joe got up to go to his room.

  'Call me when we need to leave?' Not his deal, this old stuff between her and Sammy.

  After he'd disappeared into his room there was a pause.

  'I didn't get a chance to say thanks for helping out with Felix Wagner,' Edie said, wanting to change the subject.

  Sammy took a swig of the beer at his side and said nothing.

  Edie said: 'You spoke to Andy Taylor?'

  'Simeonie just left him. Seems pretty keen to forget the whole thing and get back down south.'

  'I guess there'll have to be a police inquiry, right?' Edie said. 'They'll want to call in Derek Palliser.'

  Sammy cleared his throat and made a study of his feet.

  'That's not what I'm hearing,' he said in a way that indicated he knew something and was keeping it back. Edie gave him a long, hard stare.

  'Listen,' he said defensively. 'I don't control the council of Elders.'

  Everyone knew who did control the council of Elders: Sammy's older brother, Simeonie. Sammy had always stood in his brother's shadow and he wasn't about to get out of it now. Anything involving confrontation, particularly to do with his brother, Sammy usually ran a mile. He rattled his beer can to make sure he'd polished off the contents and stood to go.

  'Edie, stay out of trouble. Try to toe the line, for once.'

  When he'd gone, Edie put on her best parka and oiled her pigtails, then called Joe from his room. They walked up to the mayor's office together. The elders had asked them to the meeting on the understanding that they were there to give their version of events, and would have no say in the outcome. For this reason alone, Edie had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. It was typically screwed up Autisaq politics. The elders paid lip service to inclusiveness but when it came down to it, they huddled together like a group of harried musk ox.

  They opened the door into the council chamber and went in. Sammy was already there, beside him on one side Pauloosie's grandfather Samuelie and on the other, Sammy's cousin, Otok. Three or four others Edie knew by name, but not well personally. The driftwood and sealskin chair at the head of the table that had once been taken by Edie's grandfather, Eliah, was now occupied by Simeonie Inukpuk, who pointed Edie and Joe to a couple of office chairs brought in specially and motioned for quiet. The only other woman in the room, Simeonie's assistant, Sheila Silliq, was taking notes.

  Simeonie began by thanking them for coming. The council simply wanted to hear from each of them their version of events, he said. Perhaps, since Edie was present when Felix Wagner had his accident, she might begin.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Edie saw Sammy glaring at her.

  'Sure,' she said, 'the event.' Thinking, toe the line.

  Till the moment the shot echoed out across the sea ice, the day had in fact been pretty uneventful. In the morning, the party had gone after hare, unsuccessfully as it turned out. They'd had lunch and in the early afternoon, a couple of hours before it happened, she had left the two hunters on the leeward side of the esker at Uimmatisatsaq on Craig Island, within sight of the char pool. The men said they wanted to try their hands at ice fishing and promised to start putting up camp. Since the party was low on drinking water and Edie knew of a nearby berg, she left them to go and fetch freshwater ice. Both men were carrying rifles, she hadn't seen any bear tracks en route and when she left them the weather was clear, so she wasn't worried for their safety. She took her bear dog, Bonehead, with her and, in any case, she reckoned she'd be gone no longer than an hour or so.

  Edie paused momentarily to check the expressions on the faces of the men sitting round the table but Inuit were brought up to be good at hiding their feelings - you had to be, living in such small communities, where each was so dependent on the others - and no one was giving anything away. She took a steadying breath and carried on.

  Afterwards, Simeonie congratulated her on her recall. She sat back, expecting questions, and was bewildered when the mayor merely summarized her account, added in a couple of editing notes for Sheila Silliq then moved on to Joe. Already, then, she sensed the outcome. Nothing she or Joe could say would make any difference; the elders were just going through the motions.

  Joe began to run through his version of the day. He had been in the mayor's office picking up a consignment of Arctic condoms that had come in on the supply plane a few days before. The condoms were wrapped in cute packets made to look like seal or musk ox or walrus, some well- meaning but patronizing southern initiative to encourage Inuit in the eastern Arctic to have safe sex, as though everyone didn't already know that the only way to make sex safe In the region would be to decommission the air-force bases.

  Sometime in the early afternoon, Sammy had called him through to the comms office. He'd found his father standing by the radio and doing his best not to look anxious. Sammy outlined what had happened on Craig, or the bare hones of it. While he went to check the weather forecast, Joe skimmed down the planned flights log book to see if any planes were likely to be in the area and could pick up the party, but there were no flights listed. In any case, when he met Sammy again briefly in the corridor and exchanged information, it became clear that the weather was going to make flying out to Craig impossible. That was when Joe first suggested he head out to the scene by snowmobile.

  The journey out to Craig had been tough because the winds were gusting and every so often a blast caught the snowbie and threw it off balance, but the new snow was at least dry and Joe had ridden the route only last week so he knew where most of the drifts and open leads were likely to be. When he got near, his stepmother's dog met him and led him directly to the camp. Edie was calm and purposeful, clearly in control of the situation. By contrast, Andy Taylor seemed withdrawn and shaky. Joe described Wagner's condition in some detail. He was keen to emphasize that Edie had already taken appropriate action, stemming the flow of blood and covering the wound with plastic to prevent air filling the thoracic cavity and collapsing the lungs. The bullet had shattered part of Wagner's collarbone and shredded the flesh beneath and there was what looked like an exit wound through the scapula. His pulse was racy and weak and it was clear that he had lost a great deal of blood. More worrying still, he was showing all the signs of advanced hypovolemic shock. He reckoned at the time that Wagner's chances of survival were small but he hadn't said so for fear of discouraging Edie and Andy Taylor, as well as Felix Wagner himself. He knew it was important that everyone was agreed they were on a mission to save a man's life.

  Simeonie wanted to know if waiting for the plane had affected Wagner's chances. Joe was sure it hadn't helped, but to what degree the wait for the plane had affected the outcome he couldn't say. It was possible Felix Wagner wou
ld have died anyway.

  The elders listened to the remainder of Joe's testimony without comment. When he finished, Sammy Inukpuk asked Edie and Joe to step outside and wait in the administration office.

  To pass the time, Edie went into the office kitchen and made tea. While Joe sat at one of the workstations picking at his nails, Edie sat cradling a hot mug. Neither felt relaxed enough to talk. Why were they there? As witnesses? Suspects? Defendants? Edie thought about Derek Palliser. She'd been thinking about Derek a good deal over the past twenty-four hours, assuming there would have to be a police investigation into Wagner's death. Now she wasn't so sure. The mayor usually handled any small community disturbances - drunkenness, domestic squabbles, petty theft hut this was bigger than that. Any unexpected death, Derek was automatically called in, wasn't he? She tried to recall the number of times in the past few years. Only twice, she thought. The first time was after Johnnie Audlaluk beat his little stepson to death, which must have been eight or nine years ago. The elders had wanted to deal with the situation internally, but news of the boy's death reached a relative in Yellowknife and she had called the Yellowknife police who had in turn alerted Derek Palliser. Audlaluk was held for psychiatric assessment, later tried and found guilty of manslaughter. He was still lingering in some secure psychiatric unit somewhere.

  His case illustrated precisely why the elders preferred not to involve police unless they had to. Almost everyone in Autisaq, including Johnnie's own parents, thought it would have been more humane to deal with him the Inuit way; lake him up to the mountains and, when he was least expecting it, push him off a cliff. No one said this to the then Constable Palliser, of course, but he'd picked it up anyway. His insistence on bringing the case to trial had made him enemies.

  Though Edie had disagreed with Derek's actions, she had a lingering respect for the man, which was probably why she had helped him out in the Brown case five years ago. Everyone else had been in favour of burying that one too. At the end of a particularly harsh winter a passing hunter had found Samwillie Brown's dead body out on the land. The foxes had made a meal of him. The council of Elders had put the death down to an accident or natural causes and the whole thing would have been buried along with the remains of Samwillie Brown had it not been for the fact that the arrival of Brown's body back in Autisaq happened to coincide with one of Derek's routine patrols. The policeman had made himself extremely unpopular by insisting on another investigation. Samwillie Brown had been a cheat and a bully and most people were glad to see the back of him. The only person who seemed genuinely upset by his death was his wife, Ida, who was also the one person most frequently at the business end of Samwillie's fist. But that was how it was sometimes. No doubt some southern shrink would label it co-dependency. Up here in Autisaq it was known as loyalty. Ida had asked Edie to accompany her to the formal identification of the body. They were friends of a sort. Ida had stayed over at Edie's house a few times when Samwillie was drunk enough to be dangerous.

  The moment Edie saw what remained of the dead man, she was struck by the parchment-coloured sheen on the skin. After Ida left, she stayed on at the morgue on the pretence of using the bathroom, returned to the body and lifted the one remaining eyelid. The eye looked like a lunar eclipse of the sun, the greyish jelly rimmed by tiny yellow flames, the classic symptoms of vitaminosis. She went directly from the morgue to Derek's room in the police office to tell him that, in her opinion, Samwillie Brown had died of an overdose of vitamin A, which in the Arctic could only mean one thing: the man had eaten polar-bear liver.

  Derek listened, then shrugged the information off, pointing out that Samwillie Brown was a drunk and looked jaundiced most of the time. Edie had been startled by his casual indifference. Until that moment, she'd had Derek Palliser down as the old-fashioned type — dedicated, something of an outsider, perhaps, but a by-the-book kind of man. But now he seemed to be quite determined to abnegate responsibility. She wondered if something had rattled him, if he'd become temporarily unhinged. Inuit often said that was what happened when you spent more time in an office than out on the land; one by one you lost your senses. After that, you lost your mind.

  Eventually they went back to the morgue together, Edie lifted Samwillie's one good eye and Derek Palliser agreed: the flames did seem to indicate vitamin A poisoning.

  A couple of days later Derek flew in a pathologist who ran tests which confirmed that Samwillie Brown had died of hypervitaminosis, the deadly overdose of vitamin A that comes from eating bear liver. Knowing no Inuit, even a drunk one, would ever be so stupid as to eat bear liver voluntarily, Derek went back to the house Samwillie and Ida shared, taking Edie's bear dog with him. She tried to recall which Bonehead it had been. She thought back to the date. Bonehead the Second most like.

  In any case, when Derek Palliser insisted on defrosting some hamburger he found at the back of the meat store, Bonehead Two went crazy at the smell of fresh bear meat. Not long after that, Ida confessed. What else could she do? The circumstantial and forensic evidence meshed up. Unable to tolerate Samwillie's violent and brutish behaviour any more, she'd started feeding her husband raw hamburger tainted with bear liver. No one seemed to notice him getting sicker because no one liked him enough to care. Derek Palliser had been promoted to sergeant for 'an outstanding investigation', but he and Edie realized they'd both been naive. Autisaq didn't exactly thank Derek Palliser for what he had done but, with the exception of a few hardliners who hadn't forgiven him for progressing the Johnnie Audlaluk case, the inhabitants grudgingly accepted he was just doing his job. They weren't so understanding of Edie.

  Edie and Joe finished their tea in silence. Pauloosie Allakarialak came skating by the building, followed by Mike and Etok Nungaq, fresh from closing up the store. Joe began chewing his nails again. Edie tried not to pull on her pigtails. The clock swung round to 9 p.m. The sun continued to burn. They could hear muffled voices coming from the council chamber but couldn't make out any words. After what seemed like an age, the door to the chamber swung open and Sammy Inukpuk's weathered face appeared, looking grim. There was something sly or perhaps evasive, Edie thought, in the speed with which he withdrew back into the room, as though he were signalling that his loyalties were to the men inside.

  Edie and Joe followed him in. The elders watched them in silence as they sat. No one smiled. After a moment Simeonie Inukpuk began to speak in oddly formal tones, the kind Edie associated with the feds and do-gooders from down south.

  'The council of Elders has considered the circumstances surrounding the death of the hunter, Felix Wagner,' Simeonie began, 'and has determined his death was caused by a bullet fired by him from his own rifle ricocheting off a boulder and hitting him in the collarbone. There were two witnesses to the accident, Edie Kiglatuk and the white man, Andrew Taylor, who will confirm this.'

  For a moment, Edie and Joe sat in astonished silence, then Edie heard Joe gasp, stiffen, and open his mouth to speak. She elbowed him under the table and shook her head minutely. Whatever he had to say now would make no difference.

  'The dead man's family will be informed immediately of the accident. As a matter of form, Sergeant Palliser will be sent a written report from the council. Given that the two witnesses to the event are happy to sign an affidavit to the effect that Felix Wagner's death was caused by a self- inflicted wound, we do not consider it necessary to ask the police to investigate the matter further.'

  Simeonie held Edie's gaze. Now was the time for her to speak up. She drew breath then, for an instant, caught Sammy's eye, and thought she saw him give her a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

  'Since the hunter's death was a rare and unfortunate accident,' Simeonie continued, 'the council of Elders hats concluded that there will be no need to revoke Edie Kiglatuk's guiding licence.'

  So there it was. The deal she had just wordlessly struck to give credence to the lie and keep her job. She bit her lip and reminded herself that she was doing this for Joe.

  Sammy accompanie
d Edie and Joe back to Edie's house. Nobody spoke on the way. Edie sensed her ex-husband had insisted on stringing along because he was gofering for Simeonie. Maybe the mayor had asked him to make sure they didn't call Derek Palliser until a formal announcement had been made. She couldn't blame Sammy. She knew when she married him that he would always live in his brother's shadow. Now she understood why Simeonie had gone to speak to Taylor at the hotel. He'd struck some kind of deal with him too. You had to take your hat off to the fellow. He was slick.

  At the house, Joe made directly for his room, saying he was tired and would skip supper, but the real reason, Edie was sure, was that he was disgusted: with the process, with the council of Elders, and even, or maybe especially, with her and Sammy. She heated seal soup while Sammy flicked through the TV channels until he found an old episode of NYPD Blue. They ate their food on the sofa in awkward silence. She wasn't going to open old wounds by tackling him about what had just happened. He still thought her leaving him was an act of betrayal, not, as she saw it, a means of survival. He would see what had just happened as a bit of truth-tinkering for greater ends. And maybe that's exactly what it was.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Derek Palliser bent down in the gravel to get a better look at Jono Toolik's graffitied sealskins.

  'What did I tell you?' said Jono Toolik, in triumphant tone. 'Vandalism.'

  There was no arguing with the evidence. Someone had branded the word iquq, shit, in middle of the skin where there would be no disguising it. And there was more - two iquqs, three itiqs, asshole and, towards the bottom of the pile, a qitiqthlimaqtisi arit, fuck you, or more accurately, fock you, since whoever had created it couldn't spell.

  'Listen,' Derek sighed, 'why don't you just store your skins under lock and key for a while?' Jesus Jones. Smalltown politics. He felt in need of a cigarette and reached into his pocket for his Lucky Strikes.