The ceremony to become a warrior was the grand finale. Only the boys were allowed to participate. Girls could not become “braves,” which outraged Véronique, especially after she’d worked so hard for all those green feathers. She challenged the “elders,” who were only about sixteen, pointing out the unfairness of their sexist rule, the infuriating lopsidedness of it, but they just said that was the way it had always been done. Instead, the girls had to spend the night in a tepee, and for this, they earned another measly eagle feather. The boys, on the other hand, were dropped in the middle of the forest by themselves, and had to find their way back to camp in the pitch-black dark.
Pierre, facing the forest alone, looked uncertain. Véronique had never seen him scared before. She gave him a nod of encouragement and watched as one of the counselors wrapped a blindfold around his head and led him behind the convent into a different part of the woods. They had flashlights to guide them in, but the boys would be left deep, deep in the woods with no light at all.
Véronique lay awake most of the night in her tepee, worrying about him. As the sun began to rise, she peered outside. That’s when she heard a loud whoop from the woods and recognized Pierre’s voice. He came charging through the trees, his arms above his head, waving a stick. Everyone started clapping. Véronique’s body relaxed. He looked exhilarated. She was proud of him. Two of the counselors picked him up, one by the feet and the other under the armpits, and they passed his body over the flames of the fire, chanting their traditional chants. And then they gave him a beautiful eagle feather and declared him a brave.
She thought he would be different after that, thought he would be more mature, maybe straighten out and get into less trouble, but nothing changed. The eagle feather was lost, and his pride over surviving the night alone in the woods was first exploited, and then quickly forgotten.
Véronique curls up into a tight ball, thinking about the time they ran over a raccoon in Camil’s truck and Pierre insisted on burying it instead of leaving it on the road. Or the time they put scoops of flour on every blade of Lisette’s kitchen ceiling fan because Pierre wanted to understand the air-circulation pattern by creating a wind tunnel effect. Another time, Pierre had the idea to trap a skunk with a hot dog and a milk crate, but when the crate fell on the skunk’s back, it sprayed them both in the face.
She can’t believe he’s gone. It’s surreal. She pours more wine, rolls a joint. Impulsively, she reaches for the phone and calls James. Screw being tough and prideful and shutting him out. He answers on the second ring. “V,” he says, and she can hear the relief in his voice.
“Pierre’s dead,” she tells him, and starts to cry.
Within fifteen minutes he’s at her place, holding her. He feels so good. They stay like that for a long time, hours. He says nothing, no mention of what happened between them last time. She loves him for that.
Around midnight, he gently tugs her off the couch and walks her to her bedroom. She’s drunk, grief-stricken, hollow. He lies down beside her and holds her until she falls asleep. The next morning, she wakes up in his arms. Her head is pounding, there’s a moment of confusion—a split second of oblivion—and then she remembers.
“I’m so glad you quit smuggling,” James says, when she’s still half asleep. “Promise me you’ll never go back to it. Please, V. You see now how dangerous it is.”
He’s probably been waiting all night to say that to her.
“It was an accident,” she says, rolling over. “A collision in broad daylight. He wasn’t smuggling.”
“We both know that’s not true. If it happened during the day, then he was bringing the cash to the reservation or he was on his way back—”
“It was a random accident,” she says, raising her voice. And if she had been there to rein him in, to drive the boat responsibly, Pierre would be alive. He didn’t die because he was trying to outrun bandits on the lake. He died because he was reckless and cocky, probably high, and because Véronique had abandoned him. “He’d be alive if I had been there,” she says.
“V, that’s not true.” He grips her by the shoulders and gives her a firm shake. “Do you hear me? It’s not true.”
She looks away, thinking about Callahan. If it hadn’t been for him, she would have been on the boat with Pierre. Callahan is the reason Pierre is dead.
“V, if Pierre hadn’t been killed on that boat, he would have wound up in jail. I don’t want to sound harsh, but there is no happy ending to this story. I don’t want you to be next.”
They’ve been locked in this battle since the beginning. She lives by her principles, he by his morals. When does one outweigh the other? she wonders. When you get caught? When a life is lost?
“I know you, V. I know you feel guilty right now and you probably think you should go back to smuggling to help out your uncle—”
“He’s going to need me.”
“I need you,” James says. “I see you grappling with this—”
“I’m not the one grappling with it, you are.”
Léo always says you have to be willing to cross the line, that there shouldn’t even be a line. Pierre is dead. How far is too far?
18
When she called him after two weeks of radio silence, he was relieved. Whatever grudge he’d been holding onto after she slapped him was quickly forgotten in the face of her cousin’s death. It was just good to hear her voice. He found her on the couch in fetal position, wine and weed spread all over the coffee table, blaming herself because she wasn’t the one driving the boat. He scooped her into his arms and held her while she cried, and he hasn’t left her side since.
“I’ve lost everything,” she murmurs, her eyes an explosion of pink blood vessels. “My cousin, my livelihood.”
“You haven’t lost everything.”
She’s shaking her head, inconsolable. “I almost lost you.”
“I’m right here,” he says.
“You don’t understand.”
“I do, though,” he says. “My dad had a heart attack while he was out working in the cornfield. I was supposed to have been home visiting that weekend, but I canceled at the last minute to go up north with friends.”
He’s never talked about this with anyone before. He’s always been too ashamed. “If I’d been home,” he says, “if I’d been out in the field with him like I was supposed to be, maybe I could have gotten him help faster. He might have lived.”
He sees something happen in Véronique’s face—a shift, an opening.
“It’s taken me a long time to accept that it wasn’t my fault,” he tells her. “A hell of a long time. But it wasn’t my fault he had a heart attack, V. And it’s not your fault Pierre crashed.”
She reaches for a half-smoked joint in the ashtray, lights it, takes a long steadying inhalation. “It’s Callahan’s fault,” she says, a little wild-eyed.
“The Marlboro Man? What’s he got to do with Pierre?”
“He’s a rapist.”
James sits up and faces her. Puzzle pieces sliding into place. “V?” he says shakily. “Did he rape you? Is that why you slapped me when I touched you?”
“He tried,” she confesses, breaking down. “I was doing a delivery. He had a weird edge that day. We were in his room—”
“Why the hell would you go up to his room?”
“That’s where he kept his cash. I had no reason not to trust him,” she says. “We’d hung out before. I thought he was harmless!”
“What happened?”
“He attacked me. Pushed me against the wall, put his hand up my shirt, pulled my pants down—”
“That fucking bastard.”
“He got his pants down, too, but I managed to knee him in the balls before he could . . .” She shudders, remembering. “He was so high—he wasn’t able to recover. I hit him with a lamp and ran out.”
James wraps his arms around her and touches her hair, trying to keep his anger in check for the moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks her.
“Is that why you quit smuggling?” he asks her, putting it all together now, beginning to understand. She didn’t quit for him, as he’d thought. She quit because she was almost raped.
She nods wordlessly.
“And you haven’t told anyone?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Not even your uncle?”
“Callahan threatened to go to the police about my uncle’s operation. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You could have told me, V. How can you not have known that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to do this, obviously. I figured you’d say you told me so.”
“What happened with Callahan has nothing to do with Pierre’s death.”
She shakes her head violently, pushing his hands away. “It does, though. If I hadn’t quit—”
“Véronique, if you hadn’t quit, you would also be dead.”
“Not if I had been driving.”
“How do you know it wasn’t the other driver’s fault? Do you hear me? Pierre’s death is not on you.”
“He drove high, he drove too fast. He was so reckless, James. He almost killed us both one time. I knew better. I should have warned my uncle!”
“Stop. Please.” He takes the joint from her fingers and stubs it out. “You need some sleep.”
“I can’t sleep.”
He reaches into the drawer of her nightstand and pulls out a bottle of sleeping pills. “You will. Take one.”
He goes to the bathroom and pours her a glass of water, places the pill on her tongue, and lies back down beside her. She nestles under his arm, resting her hand on his stomach. He breathes in the smell of her hair and waits for her to fall asleep, still thinking about Callahan.
It’s a straightforward two-hour drive to Ottawa. He left Véronique sleeping soundly this morning at six, and he’s just now pulling into Ottawa, right before the morning rush hour. It’s taken him the entire two hours to calm himself down and rein in his still-smoldering anger. He’s here to meet a former colleague for a story on Somalia, so he’s got to put the situation with Véronique on ice for the moment and act like a professional.
When he shows up at the Elgin Street Diner, Ed is already in a booth reading the paper. James sits down across from him.
“What brings you to the capital, Phénix?”
“You, my friend.”
Ed chuckles. “Right.”
Ed Moody used to be a political columnist for the Citizen when James was working on the Hill. He became a mentor to James, which James desperately needed in his twenties. He’s the dean of journalism at Carleton now, but they’ve stayed in touch.
“I want to pick your brain about Somalia.”
“Can I order breakfast first?”
“My treat.”
They order a round of fried eggs and poutine, a side of sausage, coffee, and juice. James has been up all night with Véronique; he’s wired and starving. They talk about Ed’s job at Carleton, his grown kids, the senators, the usual shit. But James is too tired for small talk and quickly gets to the point.
“What are you hearing about Somalia?” he asks, pulling out his notebook. “You think there’s going to be an inquiry?”
“That’s the word on the Hill,” Ed says. “When a Somali teenager is murdered by a couple of Canadian soldiers, there’s got to be an inquiry.”
“But one of the them was already convicted and the other one hung himself.”
“Those soldiers beat a kid to death. People want to know what happened. That shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
“Is it true their captain offered a case of beer to any of his men who killed a Somali?”
“He’s denying it,” Ed says, dragging his toast through a puddle of oozing yolk. “Claims he was just telling his men to work hard.”
“Will there be more convictions, you think?”
“Nah. The military already has its two lower-rank scapegoats. One’s in jail and the other is in a coma. It’s perfect. More convictions would only expose the rampant racism in our military.”
“There have always been rumors of a white supremacist problem at the base in Petawawa,” James says, flagging down the waitress for more coffee.
“So you’re covering international politics now?” Ed says, letting out a soft burp.
“I’m doing a piece on the captain of the Airborne Regiment. He’s a Quebecker. I’m going to head over to Petawawa later.”
“The Airborne Regiment was trained for combat, not peacekeeping,” Ed says. “They never should have been in Somalia in the first place.”
With the seeds of a good feature planted, James pays for breakfast and gives his old friend a slap on the back. He’s got one more stop before he visits the military base at Petawawa.
He knows where Callahan lives because he accompanied Véronique on one of her tobacco deliveries. Her car had broken down, and he offered to drive her. The stupid shit you do for love. They’d loaded his trunk with cases of cigarettes, and off they’d gone, on a romantic little contraband-smuggling holiday. He remembers Callahan as a smug, orange-haired douchebag. He’d thought so then, even before this happened.
He parks around the corner from the dilapidated semidetached house, pulls his hoodie over his head, and jogs up the three front steps to Callahan’s door. He can see the blue light of the TV in the window. He’s not sure how he’s going to handle the roommates if they’re home, but he takes his chances. Pounds on the door. A few minutes later, Callahan is standing in the doorway, staring at him with glassy eyes and a questioning look. He obviously has no clue who the hell James is. “What’s up, man?” he says.
“You got any weed?”
“Sure, dude. Come on in.”
James follows him inside. The place reeks. Jerry Springer is on TV. “Your roommates home?” he asks.
Callahan turns around, gives him a quizzical look. “No, man. School’s over. They’ve all gone back to Toronto.”
“You’re staying for the summer?”
“Yeah, I’m sticking around another year. I make so much money during the school year, I’m not ready to give it up yet.”
“Even without the contraband smokes?”
“Hell, yeah. Shrooms and hash are always steady, and now I’ve got the CDs.”
“The CDs?”
“My new side business,” he says, opening the closet and pulling out a duffel bag. “How much you need?”
“An ounce.”
“I’ve got some smokes left from my last shipment,” he says. “You want? I’ll give you a good price.”
“Sure. Du Mauriers.”
Callahan hands him a carton. “One seventy-five for all of it,” he says. “You a TA? You look a little old, dude. No offense.”
“None taken, man.”
“Have you bought from me before?” Callahan asks, trying to place him. He’s not very sharp.
“No,” James says. “I haven’t. Actually, I sold you some, though.”
Callahan looks confused. He’s too stoned to remember. James can see him sifting through all the dead brain cells.
“Actually, it was my girlfriend who sold them to you,” James says calmly.
Now he sees the light go on in Callahan’s head. His eyes stretch open, and he takes a step back. “I don’t know what she told you—”
In one swift movement, James drops the carton of cigarettes and grabs Callahan’s flabby neck, pushing him back against the closet door. “She told me you tried to rape her, you son of a bitch.”
“She wanted it, man. I swear. It was mutual. She—”
James’s fist smashes into Callahan’s mouth before he can finish his next sentence. “No, she didn’t want it,” James says, keeping his voice low. “Is this how you had her pinned against the wall?”
“Dude, I swear—”
James punches him again, this time knocking out his tooth. Callahan moans. He’s got no fight in him
. It’s almost too easy. He’s stoned and out of shape, no match for James.
“Get the fuck out of my house!” Callahan manages, and James thumps him again, connecting with the bridge of his nose. Blood spurts everywhere, running down Callahan’s face and sweatshirt, seeping between the cracks of James’s fingers. James is going on pure adrenaline now, his mind blank. He’s lost control, can’t stop throwing punches. Even as he feels himself going over the edge, his fists keep flying into Callahan’s bloody face.
“You tried to rape my girlfriend,” James grunts, with a hard punch to Callahan’s gut. His hand sinks into Callahan’s belly, the impact dulled by a padding of fat. He does it again and again until Callahan doubles over, collapsing on the floor, at which point James grabs him by the neck of his Champion sweatshirt. Callahan is on his knees, gasping for breath. “Please stop,” he begs.
James lets go of his collar, and Callahan’s head falls back. James stands over him for a few seconds, trying to catch his breath. He’d like to finish him off with a boot to the nuts, but he’s starting to regain some self-control.
Callahan lets out a couple of pitiful moans, his head lolling to the side. James kneels down and puts his mouth right up against Callahan’s ear. “If you say a word to anyone about their operation, her uncle will kill you. You understand me? You’re lucky I’m the one who came to talk to you. If it had been Camil—if he knew that you tried to rape his niece—he’d murder you. He’s a Hells Angel, dude, and he would fucking murder you.”
He crawls back into bed with Véronique around five in the evening, not even bothering to remove his clothes. She stirs beside him and turns to face him. Without a word, she pulls him on top of her and hurriedly removes his shirt, his pants. She’s already naked beneath him. He’s hard and eager and penetrates right away. She cries out his name when he enters her, arching her back. She feels so good after all this time. He pushes himself deeper inside her, and she lowers her spine, slowly like a strand of pearls, her nails digging into the back of his neck. “Don’t leave me again,” she moans.
The Forgotten Daughter Page 16
