LUCKY LOOKED HAGGARD IN the TV light. Cameramen elbowed one another viciously for prime shots. Reporters yelled questions.
Burn two canoes in the Canadian bush and you’d think a rock band’s plane crashed here or something, Du Pré thought.
Lucky said the expedition would proceed as planned.
Some RCMPs were around, asking questions headed toward blaming the fire on a drunken Indian.
Bart had showed up.
And, while Lucky was being pestered by the reporters, so had Paul Chase.
Du Pré had seen two floatplanes come in and had assumed that they bore more reporters.
“ ’Lo bro,” said Bart, behind him.
They stood watching Lucky. The guy was good. He managed to look both oppressed and fearfully determined.
The other woman from the first trip Du Pré had been on, Françoise, had showed up with the newspeople. She spent her time speaking softly into a small tape recorder.
Bart looked up and stiffened, like a dog at the sight of another on its turf.
Paul Chase was walking toward them, wearing a gleaming white smile nicely set off by his UV parlor tan.
“Hi,” he said.
Du Pré wanted to strangle him.
“You’re wrong about me,” said Chase. He smiled again. It was a smile blank as a clouded moon. His eyes were open too wide.
Bart and Du Pré just stared at him till his smile shriveled and he walked dejectedly away, one more little man cruelly misunderstood by everyone.
Lucky quit talking. The reporters fanned out and began jabbering at anyone who’d stand still for it.
The young woman from the paper who had talked to Du Pré the last time came stalking.
“Who did this?” she said.
Du Pré shrugged.
“Someone who doesn’t want this trip to succeed,” said Bart.
“Hydro-Quebec?” she asked.
Bart and Du Pré looked at something very interesting very far off. “Thanks,” she said, leaving to grasp more garrulous prey.
“This trip, it will be wet and cold,” said Du Pré.
“Yes,” said Bart.
“Why are we doing this?” asked Du Pré.
“Yes,” said Bart.
“Why are you saying yes yes?” said Du Pré.
“Yes yes,” said Bart.
They walked over toward Lucky, who was talking earnestly to the woman from the newspaper. He had a long braided thong in his hands, one with a piece of antler at each end. The leather was smooth and a deep red. He kept running the thong through his hands.
Du Pré and Bart stopped and waited.
“What is that cord made of?” said the reporter.
“Eel skin,” said Lucky, “best kind of babiche. Very strong.”
“Shit,” said Bart, whispering, “that’s the stuff the killer used on the second victim.”
Du Pré nodded. His people hadn’t made eel-skin babiche. They were a long damn way from eels. He remembered stretching the rawhide and slicing the reins from the hide, lacing up the snowshoes Catfoot made. Varnishing the babiche so that it wouldn’t get wet and stretch.
I wonder that shit Chase is going to follow along, Du Pré thought.
Probably.
“Did Hydro-Quebec do this?” said the reporter.
“Ask the mountains,” said Lucky dryly.
“Why did you choose the Rivière de la Baleine?” said the reporter.
“It’s very important to my people,” said Lucky.
“Do your people worship whales?” she said.
Lucky stood silent.
“Do they?”
Lucky didn’t move.
She scribbled something.
“Du Pré, Bart,” said Lucky, suddenly smiling, “let’s go get something to eat.”
“I have a couple more questions,” said the reporter, as though Lucky owed answers to her.
Lucky walked round her. She did not exist.
The three of them headed away from the ruck of people, heads down, each with his own thoughts. The reporter asked a couple more questions, but she got no answers and she gave up.
“Very smart,” said Bart. “The River of the Whale. Isn’t there a way you could get baby harp seals and the rain forest in on this, too?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Lucky. “And I never saw a harp seal in a rain forest on a whale’s back. I’d like to.”
“Among the primitives,” said Bart.
“Chase isn’t competent enough to follow us,” said Lucky, “so he’d have to hire paddlers, have to have flunkies. What a strange man.”
“He may have killed several of your people,” said Bart.
Lucky shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He is too weak, too frightened.”
Du Pré pulled out his pouch. The slingshot came with it. He wadded the thongs and pocket back up and stuck them in his jacket. I must practice where no one can see me, he thought.
Eloise was sitting in the front of the shack. She looked very angry.
Lucky went to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and she covered it with hers.
They murmured in Cree.
Bart and Du Pré walked away.
“We can carry rifles, at least,” said Bart. He was always ready to go to war.
Du Pré nodded.
“Michelle sends her best and says if you drown me, she won’t have you to supper for at least a month,” said Bart, “and she means it.”
“What if I pick another way?” said Du Pré.
“I’d have to check,” said Bart.
“These Hydro-Quebec people are to spend twenty billion dollars on these dams,” said Du Pré, “so I think they plan to make more than that. So with so much money in it I don’t think they play fair.”
“Capitalism and its absolutes,” said Bart.
“Just a bunch of poor Indians,” said Du Pré, “who would care?”
“A lot of people would,” said Bart, “if they knew about it. That Lucky is one smart man.”
The murmuring from the crowd of reporters and cops and Indians changed a little—a different rhythm, different notes. A woman screamed.
Du Pré looked at Bart. They began to walk fast, then ran.
The crowd was standing in a circle, looking down at something on the ground. A Mountie was moving around something, his hat in his hand.
Bart and Du Pré bulled their way through the crowd.
There was a big black raven on the ground, wings flapping.
It had two bleeding notches in its upper beak and one wing was injured.
The Mountie put his hat over the bird and tried to grab it. The bird scratched hard with its feet and the Mountie cursed and dropped it.
The crowd stood and stared.
The bird quit struggling and stared back.
Little ropy crimson strands of blood hung down from the deep notches.
Du Pré picked up a stick, stepped forward, and crushed the bird’s skull.
The Mountie opened his mouth. He shut it.
Du Pré picked up the dead raven and looked at the beak.
He was angry, breathing hard, his eyes seeing red.
He heard wings. Night.
Owls.