Chapter 7
They found him by the river, and right away Billy knew they shouldn’t have come. Darius was sitting cross-legged on the ground, looking out over the water with his back to them. There was a low smudge fire going in front of him, a small pile of balsam boughs over a bed of coals. Darius was wearing jeans but no shirt, and other than his bare torso the only thing different about him, at least from outward appearances, was the absence of his cell phone. His knife was stuck in a stump next to him, and Billy could see the blood on the hilt even from where he and Garney paused, twenty yards away.
Garney stepped down hard on a dead branch, the noise like a small firecracker under his boot. Darius didn’t turn around. Garney looked at Billy, eyebrow raised. He was sweating heavily, the rivulets of sweat running down his broad face and soaking into the collar of his shirt.
Beyond Darius, the Little Glutton River swirled around the granite rocks, the river very high for the late summer. Garney circled wide around Darius and looked out over the swollen river, his shirt back with a V of sweat running all the way from his broad shoulders to his equally broad waist. Billy joined him, grateful for the fire’s smoke after the long, buggy walk to the river. The deerflies were thick, and he swatted several off his arms even standing directly downwind of the smudge fire. After a little while, because he couldn’t not look, he looked.
The largest cut ran from Darius’s left shoulder diagonally down his chest, ending just under his right nipple. Two scars were above it, running in parallel like a scratch from a bear. His belly was covered in blood, and it had soaked into the waistband of his jeans. Billy looked at Darius’s face, expecting his eyes to have the faraway, dreamy look he associated with holy men and their visions—the look also of crazy men and their visions. But Darius’s eyes were hard and focused, looking out over the river as though some enemy were wading toward them.
Billy followed his gaze. The water was stained brown from the heavy rains that had swollen the wetlands. In a normal year, most of the base flow was from groundwater, cool and untainted by the touch of the land. Now it was just tea-colored water, nothing out there to glare about that Billy could see. Then again, Darius saw a lot of things to be angry about. Sometimes it took the rest of them a little time to catch up.
“We got news,” Garney said.
Darius stood. He was built as solidly as any man Billy had ever seen, including his football teammates at the community college in Regina. Darius had never lifted weights that Billy knew of, but he was well-muscled, especially his shoulders and back. He wasn’t defined—he liked his beer, and he never ran or did anything aerobic—but there was nothing soft about him either. His eyes were still very hard, and Billy looked away. After a moment, Darius eased himself down the bank of the river and waded out to wash the blood off his chest.
Garney paced the riverbank. Billy stood next to the stump, watching Darius ladle water over his chest, wondering if this was the man he wanted to follow. Wondering if there was anywhere Darius could lead them that Billy couldn’t get to himself. The river water washed away the blood, and more welled to the surface, running down his stomach. Darius stared at the water, which was turning pink as he cleaned himself.
Go ahead, Billy thought. Get mad at the water; see if it helps your mood.
Garney moved next to Billy, breathing through his mouth. “We shoulda waited.”
Billy didn’t say anything. Garney was right, but he was also wrong. There was no right time; had they waited, Darius would have been equally furious. Billy walked over and carefully kicked the smudge fire apart. With the woods this green, the chances of wildfire were low, but it was something to do besides watch their great leader standing in the river in the middle of the woods, staring at his own blood spreading in the water.
After a few minutes, Darius climbed back onto the bank and pulled his shirt on. The cotton clung to his skin and turned red.
“We didn’t know if we should bother you,” Garney said.
“I’m guessing it’s important.”
Billy looked to Garney, who was still standing there mouth-breathing, wiping mosquitos off his forearms. “His brother was out hunting,” Billy said, “a few miles north of the Braids. He saw a plume of smoke, not far from where the chopper was going earlier this summer.”
Darius frowned, rubbing at the pink scar above his eyebrow. “Wildfire?”
“No,” Garney said. “Russel said it was black and thick, like a tire burning or something. Right up near Asiskiwiw.”
“Resurrection Valley,” Darius said. “He didn’t go look, eh?”
“No,” Garney said. “He was a good three or four miles out when he saw it, up on top of that big hill this side of the Braids. He didn’t want to cross the river by himself.”
“He’s sure it wasn’t from a brush fire?”
“Not sure,” Garney said. “But you told all of us to watch out for anything different, and Russel said the smoke looked man-made. If it was a brush fire, somebody threw a tire in there, too.”
“Asiskiwiw,” Darius said.
He laced his fingers together and closed his eyes. His nostrils flared, and after a moment a line of sweat appeared on his brow. The low rumble of a passing logging truck came from the provincial road, three miles away. Billy watched as a mosquito landed on Darius’s eyelid, its abdomen swelling with blood. After thirty seconds it lumbered back into the air, her belly filled with enough fuel to make another thousand just like her. More mosquitoes landed and drank their fill, stepping delicately around the drops of sweat rolling down Darius’s face, landing on his shirt where the blood was seeping through the cotton. Another logging truck went by, the metal stakes rattling in the bed sockets.
Finally Darius opened his eyes, and Billy saw a bit of something in those dark brown orbs he hadn’t seen before. Not fear, exactly, but a close cousin.
“Okay,” Darius said. “We have to go see her.”
* * *
They dropped Garney off at his girlfriend’s house and headed west out of Highbanks. The gravel road was muddy and rough, beaten into uneven lanes by the logging trucks. They passed the meadow that housed the annual powwow and First Dance ceremonies, a huge pile of tamarack and balsam logs drying out over the summer for the big fire. Billy smiled, thinking about all the babies, ranging from a few weeks old to a year, crawling and spitting and crying and giggling in their little ceremonial dresses. There was supposed to be a bumper crop of First Dancers this year, a couple dozen babies from all the surrounding area.
They passed an active timber cut a few miles down the road, a hundred-acre clearing filled with mud-splattered brush. A clam-bunk skidder was perched on the near edge of the clear-cut, arranging the long aspen trunks for the forwarder. Billy craned his head to watch as he and Darius drove past, trying to make out the operator behind the mesh-covered glass.
“I think that was Weasel’s cousin.”
“Marvin?” Darius said. He shook his head. “He’s up in Potowatik. Sixty days. Couldn’t come up with the fine money after he punched that constable.”
The drive got smoother as they passed the logging operation, and the road closed back in on them. After another couple of miles, the gravel turned to something closer to dirt, and mud splattered against the bottom of Darius’s truck as they headed north. The aspen forest turned to black spruce, the deep ditches full of brown water.
“You going to log with Garney and them this winter?” Darius asked.
Billy took awhile to answer him, a good half mile of corduroy road passing under them, graded into a series of bumps. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Maybe.”
“You don’t think it bothers me, do you?”
“Why would it bother you?”
Darius cranked his window down and spat into the slipstream of air. He turned to look at Billy. “There’s folks around here think I’m against everything.”
Billy opened his own window and cocked his elbow outside, studying the black spruce forest. There was a market for these scraggly trees, too, mostly for their pulp. Logging was one of the few professions around Highbanks that allowed a man to make a decent wage, and it was the only way Billy had been able to overwinter himself the past couple years. He didn’t mind the work, and the money was good. Christ knew they had enough trees to go around.
He glanced over at Darius. “You think calling the Blacksky crew a bunch of earth-rapers could have possibly had anything to do with that?”
“That was different,” Darius said, “and you know it.”
“Okay.”
“They were using wheeled rigs in early May,” Darius said. “The frost was barely out. You walk out there you can still see the ruts. If old man Blacksky had used his tracked rigs instead—”
“I get it.” Billy put his hand outside the window, palm flat, and moved it up and down on the air currents, banking left and right. He thought it must be how a hawk felt when it soared on the thermals. Darius turned down a rutted track, and the trees closed in again. They rattled up a steep hill, the shelves of bedrock like giant, tilted stairs. The truck’s frame scraped against the rocks as Darius eased it up the hillside. “How come Garney couldn’t come with?”
“He ate today.” Darius downshifted into low gear. “You haven’t.”
“Serious?”
“She thinks it matters. And don’t even think about coming out here with liquor on your breath.”
“How’d you know Garney had eaten and I hadn’t?”
“Because you never eat breakfast,” Darius said, “and Garney smells like he took a bath in maple syrup.”
Billy laughed. “He always smells that way.”
“Listen,” Darius said, pulling to a stop in front of a tarpaper shack. “I wanted you with me, not Garney and not Weasel. Never Weasel. You got your doubts about me. It don’t take any touch, any sight, to know that. But I don’t have any doubts about you.”
They got out of the truck and started toward the house. There was no lawn, and tall grass and brush grew right up to the walls. Close to the house, the grass had turned yellow and the brush was dead, denuded of leaves. Billy supposed it had been sprayed with some sort of herbicide, or maybe salted. The house was small, twenty feet by sixteen feet, not much more than a shack covered with peeling tar paper, the asphalt shingles cracked and curled. The south and west walls were faded gray by sunshine. The tar paper on the east and north walls was still black under a crust of grayish-green lichen. There were two small windows, curtains drawn on the inside. The grass was matted down along the western side of the shack, and small bones were strewn in a pile in the middle of the clearing. There was still flesh on some of the bones.
Just rabbit bones, Billy thought. Or maybe grouse.
And on the heels of that thought, another: Why in the hell haven’t the bones been scattered by predators?
He turned to Darius. “You come out here alone?”
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Darius said, absentmindedly. He stepped on the pallet in front of the door, his normally rough voice meek. “Elsie?”
There was a low yowl from inside the shack, and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Billy saw the curtain flutter slightly and scrambled back, his heart rising up in his throat. He caught himself before he turned and ran for the truck. The pale yellow eyes he’d seen belonged to a cat, poking its enormous black head through the curtains to inspect the visitors. It withdrew slowly, its eyes never leaving Billy’s face until the curtain fell back across the window.
“You okay?” Darius asked.
“That’s one big fucking cat,” Billy said. “Ready to go?”
“We aren’t leaving,” Darius said. “She knows we’re here.”
“What do you mean?” Billy asked. He looked at the shack again, and then let his eyes roam over the forest that surrounded them. It was mostly balsam fir and spruce, grown so closely together there was no way to walk through them except for several twisting trails lined with brown needles. The cat yowled from inside the house, deeper this time, almost a growl. “She could be anywhere, Darius.”
“Yes,” Darius said. “Exactly.”
“Quit being a goddamn creep.”
Darius turned to him, unsmiling. “We’ll wait in the truck.”
* * *
They were almost out of cigarettes, the windows rolled up to ward off the mosquitoes, when they saw the shape standing at the edge of the overgrown lawn. It was twilight, and all they could see was a silhouette, a wizened figure clutching a bucket in one hand, the other hanging loosely at her side. She was looking not at them but rather at the grass at the edge of the lawn, a few feet away. She crossed over to it and knelt, plucked a strand of long grass with her free hand, and held it next to her mouth. When she stood again, they could see her licking her lips.
“That’s right where I pissed,” Billy said.
“Quiet,” Darius said.
“Does she even know we’re here?”
“Yes.” It was the woman’s voice, Elsie’s voice, high and strident, loud enough to be heard through closed windows. “Yes and yes. Come on, boys. Help an old lady clean some cranberries.”
Billy stepped out into the tall grass. Elsie was moving toward the shack, her back to him, and he saw just how small she was. For some reason, he had always imagined her to be tall, stringy but strong, the kind of woman who would grab you by the shoulders and curse at you face-to-face. This woman was not much bigger than a sixth-grader, and, carrying her bucket into the shack, she reminded Billy of just that, a farm kid coming in from the evening milking.
They followed her, the wind sighing in the firs and spruce. Billy fell into line behind Darius as they stepped onto the pallet and into the house.
Elsie was already sitting at the kitchen table. The smell was intense, the sour stench of unwashed bodies and cat piss, of leftovers scraped onto the floor and not eaten. The only thing he had ever experienced that rivaled the reek inside these cloistered walls was the fur trader’s building, the flensed skins and the barrels full of carcasses in various states of decomposition. He saw Darius stiffen a bit in front of him when the smell hit him, then square his shoulders and keep going.
There were several sections of newspaper spread out in front of Elsie, and she had dumped the contents of her bucket atop the yellowed paper. A small single-mantle lantern hung on a hook above them, illuminating the sprawl of highbush cranberries that covered most of the table. There were some leaves and twigs still attached to the berries, and Elsie’s fingers, disproportionately long compared to the rest of her, picked and plucked even as she surveyed her visitors. Her fingertips were stained red by the juice, the nails long and yellow. She motioned to the chairs.
They sat down and started picking, pulling the clusters apart and setting the cleaned fruit back into the bucket. It was tedious work, and Billy was glad for it—the kind of busy work he had always enjoyed when his mind was in turmoil. There were long oval pits in the cranberries, and the flesh was incredibly sour, not the kind of fruit his family had ever bothered with. Wild strawberries and raspberries were a treat growing up, but blueberries were always the main show. He glanced up and saw that Elsie was staring at him, her hands working below, never pausing even as she surveyed him. She was old, but he had no idea what decade of life might be hers; this far north, fifty years could look like eighty. Her eyes were sharp but rimmed with gunk, her skin mottled and touched by past frostbite. Her teeth were mostly hidden behind the cracked lips, but those he could see were yellow and worn. He looked back down.
“You brought me a Thomas,” she said at last. Her voice, which Billy had only heard when she called out to them, was not unpleasant. “Why?”
“It’s not just you he doubts,” Darius said.
Elsie slid her chair next to Darius and laid a hand on his leg. Billy watched as her red-stained hand roamed over him, up and down his legs, twisting momentarily in his lap, her face intent, studious. Darius sat unmoving, a clump of cranberries in his hand. The cat, which Elsie called Piss-Whiskers, padded into the kitchen to watch. Its head was almost the size of a basketball.
“You’re cloudy, Darius,” she said. “But not completely dark.” She reached down and squeezed the cranberries he held, then traced a line through the bright red juice. “This is not the first time your hands have been red this month, is it?”
“No.” Darius’s voice was little more than a whisper.
She leaned in close, as though she were going to kiss him. “And what did that do for you?”
“It was needed.”
“It was?”
“They came to take. Like you said they would do, Elsie. Take and take, and never give back.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now we must do what is needed again.”
“Ahh,” she said, then pulled back and withdrew her hand. “I see you leaving soon, Darius, perhaps as early as the coming dawn. Five of you.” She gestured toward Billy. “Even if this one could learn our ways, his own doubt is like a blanket over his head. It would take months, years, to open his eyes.”
“No, I didn’t bring him here for that,” Darius said. “I brought him only to meet you, in case there is a need for . . . guidance . . . in the future.” He took a deep breath. “I cannot see myself returning, Elsie.”
She leaned in close and sniffed, her nostrils flaring. “Have you smelled its breath?”
“No,” Darius said, drawing back. Billy could see him suppressing a shudder, not sure if it was from Elsie’s presence, inches from his face, or her question. “I smell nothing, I see nothing. Not my death, not my return. And the place where we must go is—”
“Speak not of it,” Elsie said. “Bad enough that I have seen it in your mind.”
“We have to go,” Darius said. “We both saw this, Elsie. That which is ours being ripped from the earth.”
She traced a finger through the berries that remained on the table, staring at the path she created.
“Others have gone there and returned,” Darius said.
Elsie leaned back, her arms falling to her sides. After a moment, Piss-Whiskers padded over and nudged his enormous black head into her palm. Elsie stroked him absently. “Yes, but this is not a hunting trip. You go with the red haze in you. To a place we are better off to not visit.”
“What? We just stay here, then—let them do what they want?”
She chuckled. “Your anger is admirable, Darius. This other, this Doubting Thomas, has some of it as well. A fine group of young men. Of warriors?” She sighed. “You want my counsel?”
“I do, old mother.”
“Take the middle path. Wait for them to leave that place, and then butcher them in the forest.” Her eyes gleamed. “String their guts from the branches for the crows to peck on and the marten to gorge himself on. Throw the rest into the swamp. This you know how to do.”
Darius said nothing. Above them, a moth almost the size of his hand circled the hissing lantern. Billy had never seen one like it before, black all the way through except for a band of iridescent blue along the edges of its wings. Its shadow danced along the walls, flittering across shelves filled with jars full of meat; canned venison, the meat gray, floating in its own liquids. The cat watched it with him, the irises in its yellow eyes narrowed to slits.
Darius leaned toward her. “If we wait, they may escape. If we take them in the valley—”
“Yes,” Elsie said slowly. “And yet my counsel is to stay in the forest. They may not even find anything worth returning for, Darius. Wait for them, and they will carry answers with them.” She paused, her tongue flicking at the corner of her mouth. “If they even make it out.”
“Can you see if they will?”
“Ah.” She smiled. “So that is what you ask of me, then. Your own blindness makes you hard to read, Darius.”
“Can you see?”
Elsie stood and lifted the bucket of cleaned berries from the table. She set them in the sink, then poured some water from a jug into a cloudy glass. She drank deeply, her scrawny throat convulsing. When she turned back to them, water had run down her face and soaked into the collar of her shirt. She glanced at the moth, still circling the lantern, and muttered something under her breath. The moth’s circles around the lantern widened, and a moment later it lit atop one of the jars of canned venison to rest. Billy turned back to Elsie’s face, now even harsher in the slanting lantern light.
“I won’t turn my eyes to look upon that place, Darius,” she said. “Lest something looks back.”
Darius looked to Billy, then back to Elsie. He nodded.
Elsie sat back down next to him. “Wait, and take them in the forest.”
“Old mother, I promise nothing.”
She mumbled something again, and stared at one of the narrow windows. Through the crack in the curtains Billy could see the night sky had gone completely dark. The wind was rising, and he could feel the breezes working through the numerous chinks in the shack’s walls. How she spent a winter out here without freezing was beyond him; the small wood-burning stove in the corner would struggle to keep temperatures above freezing most days. There was no woodpile, just some deadfall she had broken off from the lower branches of the spruces and firs. Maybe she hibernates, Billy thought. Squeezes down into the mud and muck for the winter.
“You said you saw us leaving,” Darius said after a while, “at dawn.”
“Yes.”
“There are four of us, four Okitchawa. Who is the fifth you mentioned?”
She was still looking out the window and spoke without turning. “I send you young fools with an old fool. But one who has been there before, one who has fasted in the forest. He will have counsel for you, Darius.”
“Henry? Henry Redsky?”
She scratched at a patch of scarred skin on her cheek with one long fingernail. “Tell him osikosa says it’s finally time for him to be the wise man he always thought he would be.”
“You said there would be five of us,” Darius said, “before you knew my decision.”
“It is you who are blind,” Elsie said slowly. “Not I.”
Darius stood, and Billy did the same, his knees popping loudly in the little room. Instead of moving toward the door, Darius stepped behind Elsie’s chair and began to knead the back of her shoulders. Billy watched as Elsie’s faraway look contracted, became focused. She turned to look at him, her mouth parting, a line of saliva suspended between her cracked lips. One of her hands creeped up and entwined with Darius’s, their fingers lacing together. The cat, which had been sitting on the floor watching them, gave a low, displeased yowl and scurried into the back room.
“Go wait in the truck, Billy-dog,” Darius said, then grinned when he saw Billy’s expression. “Unless you want to join in.”
Billy fled into the night.