IT WAS shortly after his wife died that Norman started talking to the crow. She was an old bird who nested at the edge of his trapline, and she told him where to find the rabbit runs and marten. In exchange, Norman brought her jerky and shared slabs of bannock.
“Sorry I burned it,” he would say. “Myrtle used to do the baking.” But the crow didn’t mind. Both were glad for companionship.
The crow had her nest beside a small lake where the beaver had built a single lodge. They met there for lunch every couple of days that winter, even through the long darkness of January.
At first, Norman found it a bit strange talking to a bird. He hadn’t spoken with one since he was sent to residential school, eighty years before. The crow was surprised at this.
“Were there no birds there?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “But they stopped talking to me. I think it was when I noticed the girls”—and they laughed at this, though both knew it wasn’t the girls that had changed things.
When spring came, Norman continued to visit. The days were lazy and long, with lots of time to talk and tell stories. He couldn’t afford one of those new four-wheelers and he couldn’t ride his old mare as far as he used to, so they met halfway down the trapline, on a hill where a breeze kept the mosquitoes away. From the top, they could see the mountains in the east.
“I remember that one,” he said, pointing to a snowy peak off in the distance. “They were going to put the road through there.”
“What road?” asked the crow.
“The Canol. A big American pipeline back in the war days, when they needed oil to fight the Japs. The army bought four head of horse from me and shot them for dog mush. Then they told me and some boys to scout a trail to the Wells. It took forty days, and we had to hunt two moose when the horse meat ran out. They never even used our route.”
“Why not?”
“I guess they found a better one. It was a rough trail. But I always wanted to go back, you know. That’s God’s country out there. No white men or Indians or government agents.”
“Are there any crows?”
“Maybe. All I saw was a big black wolf and the two moose. Sometimes I think about how lucky he was, that wolf. The road would have changed everything.”
In the fall, Norman shot a moose. The crow told him where a bull was feeding, and it was the biggest Norman had seen in many years. Years ago he would have hung the antlers above his cabin door, but he was too old for that now. It took him two and a half days to pack the meat out, and another three to make jerky.
One morning soon afterward, when snow covered the hillsides and Norman knew that it would stay for good even on the south slopes, a government man came to visit his cabin.
“Hello Mr. Martindale,” the man said. He had thick glasses and a clean blue parka.
“What do you want?” asked Norman, who had bannock waiting in the oven.
“Just to talk, sir. Please understand, I’m not here to take anything from you. I’m with social services. Your daughter, Mrs. McLeod, asked us to speak with you.”
“What does she want?”
“Mrs. McLeod said she was worried about you living alone out here. She asked us to talk to you about the new seniors’ centre in Whitehorse. You see, this is a very new facility, and I think you’ll appreciate some of its benefits . . .”
“You tell Clare I’m just fine,” he said, and turned back for the cabin door.
“Sir, please hear me out. This is a special facility for aboriginals.”
Norman turned to face the man with his back straight like a gun barrel.
“I’m not an Indian, and I don’t want your house or your talk,” he said. Then he went back inside to pull his blackened bannock out of the oven.
When he was sure that the blue man had left, Norman saddled his horse and rode all the way to the little lake. His trail was not very long—it had shrunk every year for the last thirty—but he had not ridden that far in a long time now and it hurt him very much.
He waited below the crow’s nest until the sun was gone and the snow was blue with twilight, when she came flying home on those big black wings.
“They want to take me away again,” Norman said. The crow listened.
When he was finished, they were both silent for a while.
“I won’t go.”
When he had said this, he felt strong again. He noticed that it was getting cold and that he should build a fire, so he hobbled the mare and pulled his axe from his saddle roll and then set to work.
The crow watched him and helped as much as she could by bringing small twigs for kindling. Norman made a tall stack of logs and started a waist-high blaze, then settled into a bed of spruce boughs between the two, reclining on his saddle. His back hurt and he was tired, but the stars were out and he was happy to be beneath them. The crow sat on top of the wood stack, black as the night sky, and talked.
Norman did not want to think about the home in Whitehorse, but now it was on his mind and he could not think of anything else, even though it was the end of fall and the crow had many things to tell him about the rut.
“I told them I’m not an Indian,” he said.
“Are you?” asked the crow.
“I think I was, once.”
“Then what are you now?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “What are you?”
“I’m a crow,” she said.
“Then I’m a man.”
Soon they were both too tired to say anything more, and Norman began to doze. He would wake with the cold each time the fire died, add more wood, and then fall asleep again. Every time he woke, the crow was sitting there, watching him.
As the flames began to die for the third or fourth time, Norman had a dream. In it, he woke up by the red coals and was not a man anymore but a wolf, a big, black one. The crow was still sitting on the wood stack, and she greeted him.
“Hello, wolf,” she said.
“Hello, crow,” he said.
“It’s getting light.”
“We should be off now.”
“Where to?” asked the crow.
“Follow me,” he said, and started off east toward the snowy mountain, where a faint blue glow had appeared. The crow flew above his head as he loped along on four tireless legs.
When the searchers found him two days later, he was covered in a white blanket of fluffy snow. A crow was perched on the spruce beside him.
One of the men took a piece of firewood from the stack and flung it at the bird.
“Filthy animals,” he said. “Can’t leave the dead alone.”
But the crow could not hear this. It was already above the snowy treetops, black wings whistling as it flew eastward, out of the forest and into the mountains where no roads are built and wolves are strong and black.