Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 by Michel Noël
Translation copyright © 2004 by Groundwood Books
Published in Canada and the USA in 2012 by Groundwood Books

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Excerpt from “The Lake” by Alphonse de Lamartine; excerpt from “Oceano Nox” by Victor Hugo, Cassell’s Anthology of French Poetry, translated by Alan Conder (London, 1950).

This edition published in 2012 by
Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press Inc.
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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Noël, Michel.

Good for nothing / by Michel Noël; translated by Shelley Tanaka.
Translation and compilation of:
Journal d’un bon à rien, Le coeur sur la braise, and Hiver indien.
eISBN 978-1-55498-267-7
1. Algonquin Indians--Quebec (Province)—Juvenile fiction. 2. Métis—Quebec (Province)—Juvenile fiction. I. Noël, Michel. Hiver indien. English. II. Noël, Michel. Journal d’un bon à rien. English. III. Noël, Michel. Coeur sur la braise. English. IV. Tanaka, Shelley. V. Title.
PS8577.O356G66 2004     jC843’.54     C2003-906918-4

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF).

En hommage à tous les jeunes amérindiens, inuits et québécois.

1

WHEREVER I GO on the reserve, people recognize me.

“Kwe! Nipishish, how are you doing?”

“Okay, fine!” I answer as firmly as I can. “Actually, really good!”

But the questions keep coming.

“So you’ve come back to us?”

“Yes, I’m living with Manie —”

“You’re not going back to the residential school?”

“No! That’s all over.” I cut them off. My voice is harsh, like the crack of a whip.

It’s the one thing I know for sure, in my head and in my heart. I will never go back to that hell.

I wish people wouldn’t keep asking me all these questions, because I feel like I have to lie.

It’s not true that everything is fine. I feel like a deer, fleeing after it has been wounded by a hunter. My heart won’t stop pounding. I want to run deep into the woods and roll in the damp spring earth and lick my wounds.

I don’t know who I am or what I want anymore. When I was little and we lived in the woods, I told my father I would grow up to be a great hunter just like him. After he died, it was Jos, Manie’s husband, who taught me the best place to set a snare, how to make the call of the Canada goose. He always said that to be a good hunter, you had to observe nature, be patient. I dreamed of being as good as Jos.

I was all set until the whites locked me up in that school. Even when I left, I was still full of hope. I was going to learn to hunt, trap and fish. I would paddle down the great rivers, run rapids, make portages with my tent on my back, spend long evenings listening to the elders talk about their brave deeds. I thought my life would quickly get back to normal.

Now I feel trapped all over again.

Ever since I came back to my own people, I’ve been disappointed. It’s not at all the way I imagined. Life is completely different here now. These aren’t the people I knew when I was little. Or maybe I’m only now seeing the way they really are.

When the principal kicked me out of the residential school, he practically spat in my face.

“That’s it, Larivière. Get out of my sight. I know what you’re in for. You’ll end up in jail, a drunk who beats his wife and children, a shame to us all. Go on, if that’s what you want. I know you Indians. You’re good for nothings!”

What if it’s true?

And if I left here? I could go and live somewhere else. But where? The city? I push the idea away, but it keeps coming back, like water that drips over a dam until it ends up carving out a whole river bed.

I know others who just up and left without a word. Napéo, Dominique, John. They never came back. There’s nothing here for them anymore. Some people said too bad for them. Let them fend for themselves. Others said we don’t need them coming back to tell us what to do. We’ve got enough whites around here doing that.

I wonder what Manie would say if I left. She’s tough. I bet she’d stick up for me. But I just don’t know anymore…

And then there’s Pinamen. Beautiful Pinamen. We met at the train that took us all to the residential schools. We only spent a few hours together, but I’ve never forgotten her. It’s like she cast a spell on me, and ever since our paths crossed, my love for her continues to grow. It’s taken root in me, it fills me up.

Often I feel as if she isn’t far away. When I see a beautiful starry night, a huge fir tree stretching its branches wide, the reflection of the sun on the water, I stop and share my feelings with her. I know she would feel the same way I do.

I’ve even started talking to her in my heart. I’m sure she can hear me. Sometimes I hear her calling out to me with her beautiful Attikamek accent. My heart stops, and I hear her calling my name. “Nipishish! Nipishish!”

2

TODAY I NOTICE strangers in the forest around the reserve. I’m curious, so I sneak between the birch clumps and jackpines on the edge of Lac Cabonga. I crouch down in the thick green brush like a partridge on the alert. From here I can see everything without being spotted.

The men suspect nothing. I keep a good distance behind them. They’re white, and they’re wearing hard hats and boots like loggers. There’s a young guy and an old one. It’s the old one who’s carrying the heaviest load.

He carefully sticks a big tripod in the ground. It’s got a big scope on it, just like the ones on American rifles.

But these men aren’t hunters.

The older guy is obviously the boss. When his tripod is firmly in place, he squats and bends forward, his hands on his thighs and his rear end high in the air. He looks through the sight at the other man standing off in the distance.

Suddenly he gets all excited. He spreads his legs and flaps his arms like he’s about to take off.

The young man faces him and holds a long pointed stick straight up. He carefully follows the signals of his boss.

He goes to the right, to the left. He backs up, moves forward. He’s like a duck that’s trying to hide and doesn’t know whether to dive or fly away.

Suddenly the old guy straightens up and crosses his arms.

“Hold it!” he shouts. He makes a fist and points his thumb down at the ground. The other man grabs a long wooden stake from a bag on his back and hammers it into the ground with his ax head. The stake sinks deep into the black earth.

Satisfied, the two men walk on a bit farther and go through the same routine.

That evening I tell Manie what I saw.

Manie’s the head of an important family, the Twenish. She took over after Jos died. She’s like a mother to me.

She’s a big woman with square shoulders. She’s plump and her skin is as brown as the earth. But what strikes you the most about her is her eyes. They’re deep black, like the water at the foot of a cliff at the moment the sun goes down. Her hair is done up in two buns over her ears. She wears a beret and a flowered dress that falls down to the tops of her moosehide moccasins.

Manie has a lot of influence in the community. She’s known for her courage and her good judgment, but people still don’t listen to her the way they would if she were a man.

And she’s worried about these strange men. She asks the hunters about it, but nobody knows what’s going on. Why are these men hanging around the reserve? What are they doing? Why haven’t they introduced themselves?

It’s all very suspicious. We know the white men are clever, and they never do anything without a reason.

“Planting a stake here and there doesn’t hurt anyone,” some people say. “The forest is big. It belongs to everyone.”

The orders are to wait and see, but Manie isn’t satisfied. She wants to know what’s going on. She tells me to keep a close eye on the strangers and report back to her.

There are six of them in all, and they arrive early every morning in yellow pickups. As soon as they get out of their trucks, they get together for a smoke. Then the boss shouts, “Okay, boys, let’s go! It’s seven o’clock!” and the men gather up their equipment and disappear into the woods.

In the afternoon, they come back to the same place for another cigarette. Again the boss cries, “Okay, boys, let’s go! It’s five o’clock.”

They are very punctual and well disciplined.

All day long they go through the same routine, lining up and planting their stakes. The wood is very white and looks freshly cut. The stakes seem harmless, except for the part that sticks out of the ground. It is painted red, like blood.

The men are working smack in the middle of the McConninis’ camp. Won’t the family be surprised when they come back from the winter hunt and go to put up their tent. They sure aren’t going to want to live with a red stake planted in the middle of their house. Mr. and Mrs. McConnini are going to be mad.

One day I decide to come out of hiding. I’m tall and easy to spot, but the man carries on as if I’m not even there. I figured he would stop working when he saw me pop out right beside him, but he doesn’t do a thing. He doesn’t even say anything. I could be a rock, or a tree.

I stand there and try to remember the few words of English I know. I smile to be polite.

“What are you doing here?”

The man straightens up slowly, pressing his hand into the small of his back and wincing. He’s covered in sweat, and he wipes his forehead with his handkerchief. It’s filthy with brown stains. His pale face is streaked with red blotches and swollen with mosquito bites. His lips are puffy.

He swipes at the clouds of mosquitoes that are drawn by the heat of his blood.

“What are we doing?” he replies. “We’re measuring, drawing lines. We’re surveyors, her majesty’s surveyors. Isn’t it obvious?”

He starts to gather up his tripod, but I want to get to the bottom of this.

“Who gave you permission to do this?”

The surveyor glances at me out of the corner of his eye.

“The government, of course! You don’t know that? The land you walk on, those trees, the lakes, rivers, the air that you breathe, the fish you eat — all that belongs to the government. And the government doesn’t need permission from anyone. If you don’t like it, why don’t you take it up with them!”

The man starts to laugh, but then he sees that I’m not reacting, that I don’t seem to have understood him.

He heaves his tripod onto his shoulder.

“Look, you Indians are lucky,” he says. “The government is going to build you free houses — nice wooden houses with windows, a kitchen, bedrooms. One day you’ll have a school, a clinic, just like in town. Say goodbye to your tents full of holes, your old log cabins. This is progress, even for Indians!”

He turns on his heels and disappears into the forest, followed by a thick cloud of thirsty mosquitoes.

I hurry back to tell Manie. Everyone is in an uproar. The worst thing is that we weren’t even consulted. The government wants to build us square wooden houses just like the ones the whites have. What for?

“We live the way we do so that we are always free to move our houses,” Manie says solemnly. “That way we are at home wherever we pitch our tents.”

And why now? Where’s it been hiding, this damn government? When you do need something, you never know where to go or who to talk to. The young people say the government’s like a wolverine. You can recognize its tracks, smell it, see the damage it leaves, but it’s still invisible. You can never catch it, and it will avoid any trap you set for it.

• • •

Pinamen…can you hear me? I’m out here alone on the beach, far from the village. I feel good here, and closer to you. I’ve got the big lake in front of me and the forest at my back. Tonight our grandmother the moon is round and full. The huge fir trees wrap me in their shadows.

Pinamen, I can still see your smile — and the look you gave me when we went our separate ways. Your eyes and lips were sad.

I’ll find you again, no matter what. But I don’t know what the future holds, and right now I’m like a hare leaping around in a panic — first left, then right, not knowing where it’s going.

The road I take may be a long one, but I know in my heart that it is leading me to you.

3

FATHER LAFRAMBOISE IS our new young missionary. He can speak our language a little. He says he learned it from books.

When he arrives for his parish visit today, it’s as if he knows what’s been going on. Some people think he has good intuition. Others say he’s just well informed. Faces cloud over when he comes and people are quiet. We talk about hunting, fishing, the weather, but no one says a word about the surveyors.

As usual, Father Laframboise goes from tent to tent, from cabin to cabin. He smiles, shakes hands, coos at the babies. He seems cheerful. Then he goes down to the beach beside the Hudson’s Bay Company wharf.

The men are all gathered there, repairing their canoes, smoking their pipes and chatting together. They’re worried because more and more loggers are moving into the hunting grounds. They cut down everything in sight, like they’re in some kind of rage. They leave nothing behind. The animals flee from the noise of the chainsaws and the lack of food. Logs are floated on the rivers and then stored in the big lakes. They rip our fish nets, smash into the canoes, block the waterways. Now our bears are feeding in the logging camp dumps. Their meat tastes bad; it’s not good to eat anymore.

The hunting grounds grow smaller by the day. The men wonder where and when it is all going to stop.

“What will be left for our children?” asks Basile.

The men’s silence says everything. Basile’s voice rises in anger. He holds the bowl of his pipe in his bony hand and points into the distance.

“They took our sons and daughters so they could ‘educate’ them in the residential schools. They took them against our will, by force and with lies. We were deceived and today, I ask you, what has happened? Our children don’t know how to live like Indians. They no longer speak our language, they don’t recognize us anymore and we don’t know who they are. But they are still our children, our flesh and blood! They are ashamed of their ancestors and they disown us without daring to say it. It saddens me when I see how we have become strangers in our own land. We must do something before it’s too late!”

Then we see the priest walking along the shore. Basile shuts up, pulls on his pipe and goes back to repairing his fish nets.

“Kwe! Kwe!” shouts the missionary, holding out his hand.

“Kwe!” the men reply. They take turns shaking his hand.

“Hard at work, I see,” says the priest, trying to be cheerful.

For a few minutes they all talk about one thing or another, in that flat voice you use when you’re trying to kill time. Finally the priest decides the moment is right. He announces that officials from the Ministry of Indian Affairs, representatives of the government, will be coming this evening to meet with everyone. The meeting will take place in the chapel after mass. It’s important, so he wants everyone to be there.

The men nod. They’ll be there. Maybe they’ll finally get some answers to their questions.

• • •

The chapel is packed. Even the aisles are full. The women and girls sit on the left; the men and boys on the right. The first to arrive take the benches and choir stalls. The others crowd around the big open windows outside. You can only see their heads.

All the women are wearing long flowered dresses, checked shawls, their usual black berets with the Hudson’s Bay Company insignia, and moccasins. The men are wearing moccasins and baggy trousers held up by wide white suspenders that cross at the back. Their flannel shirts are buttoned at the neck and wrists. Their bashed-up felt hats look like the kettles we use to boil tea. Mostly their faces are very tanned and lined like the bark of an old cedar.

Mass is spoken in Algonquin and it goes on forever. Finally Father Laframboise blesses the congregation and leaves through the little door behind the altar. When he comes back a few minutes later, he has taken off his white and gold cassock. He’s accompanied by officials from the ministry.

With the crowd watching his every move, the priest quickly turns the altar into a table. He brings two chairs so the men can sit down. The officials open their black briefcases and take out thick files which they place on the table in front of them. They look out over the crowd below and smile vaguely.

These men come from another world. Their faces are pink and clean-shaven. They wear gray suits, polished shoes, white shirts and wide polka-dot ties tightly knotted under their Adam’s apples. They’re handsome men, nice haircuts, strange but impressive looking.

The smells in the room are growing stronger. The men’s odd sweet aftershave mixes with the smell of incense, smoked moosehide and the sweat that’s coming off the congregation.

The missionary looks nervous. He stands in the spot where he usually gives his sermons. He’s chewing his lip and swaying back and forth, his hands clasped behind him. He’s a little man with curly hair, brown eyes and thick bristly eyebrows. His collar is open and his sleeves are rolled up. His body is covered with big hairy patches. He looks like a bear that’s just come out of hibernation. When he gives his sermons he always says, “My dear brothers…” The rest of the time he calls us his “good friends.” But we’re not his brothers or his friends.

He talks too much and listens too little.

“My good friends,” the priest begins solemnly. “Let us rise for a short prayer. We ask God to show us the light and to give us the wisdom to make the right decisions for our future and the future of our children.”

We recite the Pater Noster.

One of the officials, a man with blue eyes, clears his throat.

“Can everyone hear me?” he shouts.

We can hear him all right. We just can’t understand him. He continues, exaggerating every syllable.

“Thank you all for coming here this evening. Such a good turnout demonstrates the interest you take in your future and the plans the government has for you.”

The priest signals for him to stop while he clumsily translates his words into Algonquin. Then the man from the ministry continues.

“We would like to have met with you sooner. Unfortunately, your community is isolated, far from our offices, and we are overwhelmed with work. However, better late than never, as the old saying goes.”

The two officials exchange glances and burst out laughing. We wonder what’s so funny. The priest, who also looks amused, translates again. We wait to hear the joke so we can laugh, too, but there’s nothing funny in his words.

The heat and smells rise as the setting sun streams through the windows. Babies are nursing hungrily at their young mothers’ breasts. The officials’ strong aftershave is starting to attract midges, and the mosquitoes are having a feast.

The two men are getting irritated. They’re swatting at the mosquitoes buzzing around like brook trout leaping on the water at dusk. They smack their foreheads, cheeks and necks and scratch their scalps. Finally they take off their jackets and start squashing the bugs that by now are so heavy with blood that they can hardly fly. The men’s white shirts are soon dotted with dark red spots.

“All right!” says the man with the blue eyes. “Let’s get started.”

He’s serious now.

“The Government of Canada is thinking of you. It wants to do everything it can to help you out of your misery. As proof, it has sent in surveyors — the men you have no doubt seen measuring the land in this area. These men are subdividing the land into lots.” He traces a little square in the air with his index fingers.

“The government will set aside these lots for your exclusive use. I say exclusive, and I say this with your priest as my witness, so you can live in peace. This is what you have wanted for a long time — to live in peace. Now your wish is being granted! Monsieur le curé, I give you the floor.”

The priest hesitates. He sputters away because he can’t find the words in our language for measure, subdivide and lot. To us, the land belongs to everyone. It has no boundaries. The land is home to the animals, birds and fish. Most of all, the land is our mother, made by the great creator to nourish us, heal us…

Thinking that the priest has already translated his remarks, the official finishes his speech.

“The government in Ottawa has arranged to build twenty houses a year until everyone is suitably housed. The names of the first beneficiaries will be drawn by lottery. It’s the democratic way. Work will begin in a few weeks. That’s it!”

He rests his hands on the table, palms open, as if to show that he has nothing to hide.

The priest has no trouble translating this time. The speech is simple and straightforward.

A heavy silence settles over the chapel. Everyone’s trying to understand what has been said. It’s so hard to picture exactly what’s going to happen.

“Are there any questions?” asks the priest.

He waits, swaying back and forth as he scans the crowd expectantly.

Finally Basile stands up. He takes off his hat and holds it by the brim.

“Yes? Basile, my good man, we’re listening.” The priest is relieved that someone has broken the silence.

Basile takes his time. He runs his hand through his thick graying hair, narrows his eyes and turns to the crowd. He rests his hands on the back of his chair. They are trembling.

“There are too many logs floating on the Notawe River. The river is blocked and I can’t go back to our hunting grounds with my family. It used to be a beautiful river, easy to navigate and full of fish, ducks, geese, beaver. I could always manage to feed my family.”

He shrugs.

“Now I can’t get there anymore.”

Basile sits down slowly. He’s a pretty strong fellow but tonight he looks like an old man. He looks worn out. His back is curved and his eyes are cloudy.

The priest looks uncomfortable. He turns to the officials from Ottawa.

“Basile is complaining about the log drive on the river…”

This time it’s the quiet official who answers. “Tell him the log drive is not our department,” he says crisply.

The priest translates. “Are there any other questions?” he asks quickly.

He looks around the room to make it clear that it’s someone else’s turn.

Noé stands up. He’s a giant of a man. He towers over everyone and his voice is strong.

“This past winter I only killed one moose. It’s not enough. I remember the days when I would bring down three, even four. Now the animals are fleeing because of the tree-cutting, and there are more and more white hunters. They are taking away our food. It’s got to stop!”

And he sits down, too.

The priest looks unhappy as he translates.

“This man is complaining about the cutting the whites are doing and too many hunters…”

The two agents shake their heads helplessly.

“Tell them we’re here only about the housing program,” one of them says in an irritated voice. “The rest has nothing to do with us. Tell them the government is giving them compensation — family allowance, social security — and that soon they’ll have houses…”

As soon as he finishes translating, Father Lafram-boise holds up his hand and looks at the crowd.

“Time is passing quickly and these gentlemen have to return to the city this evening,” he says firmly. “Is there one last question concerning the houses?”

Poné, the elder of the community, is sitting quietly in the front row. He’s very old, though no one knows exactly when he was born. He’s a bony, weathered little man. His skin is thin and brown and stretches over his smooth cheekbones like birchbark. Poné knows the land better than anyone.

He stands up, but even then he’s no taller than the seated crowd. He looks at us serenely. His voice is as soft as an evening breeze rustling through the tops of the gray spruce. The room is very quiet and solemn and full of respect.

“Once upon a time,” he whispers, “there was a man who thought he was the bravest hunter of them all. But this man respected nothing — not the forest, animals or other men. He killed too many animals and often wasted skins, bones, even meat. He kept the best of everything for himself and never thought to share with his brothers and sisters. He would set traps and fail to check them regularly. He enjoyed humiliating small animals. This man caused damage wherever he went.

“One fine autumn morning, the man went hunting. He bragged that he was going to kill the biggest black bear in the forest. He had dreamt about it during the night, and he was sure he would succeed. He put his canoe in the water and paddled off alone. He was a strong man and he moved quickly, but the sky was clouding over and the wind was coming up. The other hunters stayed in camp, fearing there might be a storm.

“Halfway across the big lake, a stiff breeze blew up. The waves grew higher and threatened to swamp the canoe. The hunter knew he was in trouble and paddled with all his might. There was a small island not far away. He saw it and it gave him hope.”

Poné bends his head and moves his arms and shoulders as if he’s paddling a canoe heaving on the stormy water. He continues the story.

“All of a sudden the hunter’s canoe was tossed into the air by a gust of wind. It ran aground and crashed against the rocks. The hunter jumped into the water. He pulled his canoe ashore and dragged it onto the island. He turned it over to make a shelter, leaning the bow against the trunk of an old tree. The ground was soaked, his clothes were wet and he had nothing to eat, but he told himself the situation wasn’t serious. It wouldn’t be the first time he had to sleep under the stars. He would simply wait for the bad weather to pass and then someone would go by on the lake and he would signal for help.

“But the storm settled in. Night fell quickly and the wind became a squall. The temperature dropped and the rain turned into sleet. The next day was so overcast that he could barely see the sun rise. He was forced to stay under his canoe and spent a second night in the cold with nothing to eat. At dawn, his whole body shook with cold. He could no longer feel his hands or feet. He knew that he could not survive another night. He was alone and afraid. He curled himself into a ball and leaned his forehead against the stump of the old tree.

“Suddenly he thought he heard a faint voice calling to him, ‘Come here, quickly!’ He couldn’t believe his ears. He told himself that death was at hand and that his mind was playing tricks on him, but the voice was still calling. It was coming from the tree.

“The man opened his eyes and saw the round head of an ant sticking out of a small hole. The ant was signaling for him to join her.

“‘I can’t, I’m too big,’ he murmured between his chattering teeth.

“‘If you really want to come,’ she answered, ‘I will make you my size and you can take shelter in my house.’ The man just lowered his eyes because he couldn’t talk anymore, he was so stiff with cold.

“Suddenly he found that he was no bigger than a grain of sand. The ant was carrying him on her back into her tree, where she looked after him and kept him warm and safe.

“Little by little the man recovered. The ant told him how she had seen him from her house and hurried down to help him. ‘In this life we are all equal,’ she said, ‘and we must help one another and share everything that the creator has given us so generously.’ Then she showed him around the old tree. He passed more ants than there were stars in the sky. They were all working together and sharing the chores. The long passages were dry and warm, and he felt comfortable and safe. It was a new feeling for him. He recognized the rich smell of cedar.

“The man didn’t know how long he had been living with the ants, but one day he saw hunters in the distance turning toward the island. He said goodbye to the ant and thanked her for her generosity. Then he regained his human shape and went to meet the hunters.

“They were surprised to find him alive and in good health. They made a fire and boiled water for tea, and the man told them his amazing story. The men listened closely. From time to time they looked up at the old cedar full of holes. They thought the man’s story was full of good sense and decided that once again the real truths in life could be found in stories.”

• • •

Poné finishes and turns toward the altar, but the two officials from the ministry are no longer there. They have gathered up their papers and slipped away. Only the missionary stands there, waiting for everything to be over.

The chapel slowly empties as the sun is about to disappear behind the mountain on the other side of the lake.

Manie says nothing. She knows it’s up to the men to speak. But right now the men are feeling useless and powerless because they are no longer able to look after their families.

Manie doesn’t say anything, but she’s thinking. And slowly an idea makes its way into her heart and begins to grow until it takes over her whole being.

She starts to think about all the things she has heard. The whites cutting down trees in the hunting grounds, floating logs on the rivers. The children, the promise of the nation, being taken away and shut up in residential schools where they are forbidden to speak their own language. And now the government wants to build permanent houses and keep us stuck on a small piece of land.

She scarcely dares to believe what she is thinking.

Could it be that Indians are in trouble? That they are getting in the white people’s way? Could there be someone somewhere — this all-powerful government, for example — who wants to exterminate the Indians?

The idea is so frightening that at first she can’t bear to think it. She suddenly feels cold in the overheated chapel. But she saw those two officials tiptoeing out, their heads down, sneaking guilty looks at the crowd. They looked just like dogs who have stolen a piece of meat while the hunters were cutting up a moose carcass.

This time the officials from the ministry have stirred up a hot wind of anger inside Manie. She’s ashamed that she has given in for so long.

And that’s when she decides to go on the warpath. She knows the road will be long and difficult because the greatest opposition comes from her own people. They must be convinced. But Manie is stubborn, and she is already preparing her arguments.

That night she takes me into her confidence.

“Nipishish, our people have always been independent and self-governing, proud of our history and our origins. We have never needed anyone to tell us what to do, what to think and how to live — especially the whites. We live freely, according to our own laws and traditions, on the land that was left to us by our ancestors and that we want to leave to our children. It hasn’t been easy, but we have always managed to prosper and flourish. There is no reason to stop now. What is happening? Has Kitchimanitou abandoned us? Have we been taken in by the whites? They set their snares and seize us by the neck like hares. And the more we pull, the tighter the noose becomes.”

Then she adds, “Nipishish, we must regain our freedom at all costs. I don’t know what I am going to do or how, but I will not sleep in peace until I have found a way to get us out of this.”

• • •

As for me, I liked Poné’s story. He’s a wise man. It’s true that we are all important, ants as much as humans, the small and the mighty, the rich and the poor, Indians and whites. The land is here for everyone…but the reality is completely different.

I don’t understand the whites, and they don’t try to understand us, either.

4

SAM BRASCOUPÉ IS Manie’s older brother. He’s different from the other men. He’s traveled to many places — not just because his hunting trips take him far away but because he went abroad during the war.

Sam learned a lot in the army. He loves engines, and he soon became an apprentice mechanic. He’s the only Algonquin we know who can repair a broken-down engine, so there’s a big demand for his services. Ever since he got back from the war, he’s worked as a guide and maintenance man at the Club du Rosaire. It’s a private hunting and fishing club for the priests, the big bosses of the forestry company and their American guests.

In the summers, Sam, his wife Charlotte and their three children live in the guide’s cabin at the club. Charlotte and the two girls do the housekeeping and cook the meals, and Sam and his son look after the boats, generator and water pump. Sam also works as a guide. They’ve even saved enough to buy a second-hand pickup truck.

The Club du Rosaire is huge. It includes at least twenty lakes and the rivers that connect them. Sam is responsible for six boats, the big main camp and the three little camps that they call guest houses. Algonquin aren’t allowed on the property, except for Sam, of course, but he can only be there to work. He’s not allowed to hunt or even kill a partridge for food. There are two game wardens who constantly patrol the logging roads, and they keep a special eye on him. Charlotte says that the wardens even check their ice box when they’re away. One of them once said it was because Indians have hunting in their blood.

It’s almost night when we hear Sam’s pickup approaching. He hardly ever comes at this time of year and now here he is with his whole family. Usually Charlotte or one of the kids stays at the club in case the tourists need something.

Did he have a fight with his bosses? Has he lost his job? Is someone hurt, or sick?

Manie goes to meet the pickup. Sam stops when he sees his sister. Through the open window, he just says, “I’ve got a moose in the back. Let’s have a makoucham for everyone.”

“I’ll see to it,” Manie says, but I can see that she knows something is wrong.

In the winter, our families are spread out over the land where they trap, hunt and fish. But in the summer all the Algonquin gather here at Lac Cabonga, so news of Sam’s arrival spreads quickly from one tent to another.

There’s a gathering place where we all get together when something important happens. There are pits for smoking meat and fish, a big campfire surrounded by stones and logs to sit on, and a stack of firewood at the foot of a big jackpine.

The families arrive quietly. There are murmurs in the air, little muffled laughs. The fire is stoked up. The flames dance, the dry wood crackles and the sparks fly up to the sky like thousands of bright butterflies. Quarters of meat are hung from the biggest pine branch. Manie and the women lift long thin fillets of dark red meat that they have been roasting on racks hanging over the bed of coals. Water for tea is already boiling in the big bashed-up kettle sitting on the fire. The women arrive with plump golden bannock folded in their aprons. They place the bread on the flat stones facing the fire to warm.

Everyone is relaxed and enjoying the evening. The men smoke their short pipes and their puffs of smoke look like purple clouds against the setting sun, while the children throw handfuls of green grass into the black smokepots to keep the mosquitoes away.

Everyone’s wondering about the moose. Where did it come from? Where is the head? Who killed it?

Sam knows, but he will speak when he decides the time is right. If he is here this evening, if he asks for a makoucham, it’s because he has something very important to say.

Poné gets up slowly from the log he’s sitting on. His little round eyes shine like fireflies. He approaches the racks, cuts off a piece of moose meat and eats it with his fingers.

He has given the signal; now it’s our turn.

The moose meat is juicy and sweet. It’s always best roasted over a fire like this. From the first mouthful we can guess that it’s from a female, and that she has recently given birth. The flesh still has the smell of her pregnancy, the presence of her calf.

Now we are more intrigued than ever. Sam would never kill a female at this time of year unless he absolutely had to.

Full of moose, bannock and tea, we sit down again. The time has come for Sam Brascoupé to speak. He’s sitting on a log with Charlotte and the children at his side. The children huddle close to each other. A biting wind has come up.

Sam starts to speak. His voice is serious.

“I have a story to tell you. This story troubles me, and that is why I have come to share it with you.

“Yesterday morning, at the club, I took three of the big company bosses fishing. When we set off, the sun was shining on the lake. We weren’t in a hurry so at first I followed the shore of Lac Rosaire by the old cedars, where the sandbank is. Then I headed to the pass between two rocky islands. There, as I’d thought, each of the men got a huge gray trout. They were very excited. They kept standing up in the boat and yelling, ‘They’re biting today! I got one, I got one! A damn big one, too!’

“Right away they wanted to celebrate. They took beers out of a cooler that they had brought with them. Then they wanted to keep fishing. There are lots of fish in the pass, because the water is deep and fast there. They caught many more trout and had to celebrate with each catch.

“By this time they were getting hungry so we put into shore. I lit a little fire in a pit that I made a long time ago. I always stop there to eat. There’s dry wood and fresh water nearby. I made tea, but they preferred to drink their beer while I cooked up a trout and some bacon in a big frying pan. They ate and told loud stories that I didn’t pay attention to. Finally I gathered up everything and doused the fire while the three men turned their backs to the wind and faced the forest. Then they spread their legs and peed side by side, laughing the whole time.

“We left. I could see the men weren’t interested in fishing anymore, so I speeded up a bit and we headed back to the club. We had at least an hour to go so I decided to surprise them and went into the Baie aux Huards. There’s often a moose or two there wading among the water lilies and tall grasses.

“We were lucky. It was warm and there were lots of mosquitoes. Right away I noticed a black spot moving on the surface of the water. I knew it was a moose, maybe even a female with her calf — so beautiful. I cut the motor so the boat would coast in through the black water.

“The men were stunned by the sudden silence. I put my finger to my lips to tell them to keep quiet. The moose doesn’t see very well, but it heard everything and I knew it could smell us. I pointed to the animal that was standing right in front of us, barely a hundred feet away. It was a large female. We were downwind so we had time to admire her.

“The men didn’t realize at first what they were looking at. Then they all noticed her at the same time. ‘Goddamn!’ said the one named Frank, who was sitting in the middle of the boat. He was a big man, must have weighed more than two hundred pounds. He stood up and I barely had time to lean forward to steady the boat. I thought he was overcome by the sight, but he didn’t stop there. He grabbed his pack from under the seat, took out a rifle butt and quickly screwed in a barrel. It was a light shotgun, a .410-caliber single shot that he had hidden in his bag. Barely powerful enough to bring down a partridge. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a box of cartridges.

“The female knew something was going on. She left the water and moved behind the rocks and shook herself dry. She sniffed the air and pricked her ears. I wanted her to run away into the bush. I was sorry I’d made the detour now but I told myself he wouldn’t shoot. It didn’t make sense, not with that shotgun. The female moved a few steps. Then she turned toward us as if she didn’t want to leave.

“The man was quick and seemed to know guns. He cracked open the barrel, loaded, cocked the hammer. Then he shouldered it, aimed and fired. Bang! The shot rang through the warm air and echoed far away on the water. My ears were buzzing.

“The animal looked us right in the eyes, her neck stretched out, her muzzle trembling. She had taken a volley of lead right in the face. Blood started to pour out of her eyes and run down her cheeks. She was blind, but she didn’t move a hair. It was as if she’d been turned into stone. Her legs were as stiff as posts.

“Frank didn’t lose a second. He ejected the spent case, reloaded, aimed and fired. Bang!

“It was madness! His face was red and sweat was pouring down his cheeks. He realized his mistake but it was too late to turn back. He had to finish it, and he fired away like a crazy man.

“Bang! Bang! Bang! Each shot went straight to my heart. I wanted to tell him to stop, but the words were stuck in my throat. The bitter smell of gunpowder and blood floated in the air, but Frank didn’t stop.

“The moose was unrecognizable. She had no more snout, her jaw had been ripped open and shattered to pieces. Her brow was open flesh and her ears had been ripped off. But still she stood on her four stiff legs, even though her head was in shreds. I prayed that she would give up, but she refused to die.

“Bang! Bang! ‘Fall why don’t you, you stupid cow!’ Frank screamed.

“Suddenly, the female shuddered. Every muscle in her body started to shake violently. She bellowed, her legs buckled, and then she fell like a dead weight onto the big rocks. She was dead.

“The two other men were gripping the gunwales, shaken by the gunshots and paler than ever. They were completely sober now.

“Nobody said a thing. The smell of powder and blood was still in the air and that huge brown mass was lying on its side. It’s not a pretty sight, a dead moose. The lapping of the waves brought me back to reality. The hunter sat back down heavily, wiping the sweat off his face with the back of his sleeve. I paddled in. The moose was right in front of us, her head shot to a pulp and her dead calf between her hind legs. The three men stood in front of her looking helpless.

“The youngest one said, ‘Jesus, Frank. If we take it with us we’ll be in shit up to our necks.’

“The other one answered, ‘Don’t get excited, Johnny. We’ll just take the steaks…’

“‘Okay, but as soon as we get back to the camp we’re out of there bloody fast.’

“‘Okay, okay!’ Frank said. Then he turned to me. ‘Sam, cut out some steaks, then let’s go.’

“I always carry a good sharp knife with me. I cut out two warm, bloody steaks, rolled them up and put them in the cooler. Frank hid them under the beer and ice. The men were in a hurry to finish up. They wanted to get away quickly, but I told them we had to hide the carcass. It was visible from the air and the wardens are using seaplane patrols more and more these days.

“I cut down two young pines and stripped off the branches while the others gathered up small boughs and branches to hide the animal.

“We returned to the club as fast as we could. The sun was beginning to set and a brisk wind was blowing over the lake. No one talked in the boat. When we got back to the dock, two of them took the cooler and disappeared. I stayed behind with Frank. I had to gut the trout, store the motor and clean the boat.

“Frank came up to me. He stuck his hand in his pocket and took out a wad of bills. He peeled off a fifty and waved it under my nose.

“‘Look, this is for you,’ he said. ‘But if you ever speak about what happened today, we’re going to say you were the one who killed it. Understand?’

“I understood. I kept working as usual, so as not to attract attention. I took my time going back to the cabin.

“When it got dark, Charlotte and the children and I drove the pickup without headlights. I followed the old overgrown road around the bay. We portaged along the stream until we reached the female and quickly cut up the carcass. Nobody saw us. Charlotte is an expert. She learned from her parents. We carried the quarters on our backs back to the pickup and hid them under canvas. As a sign of respect, my boy and I hung the dead calf and what was left of the head in the branches of a tree. We thanked the great creator and the spirit of the moose for their generosity. Then we quietly returned to the club. Today I worked all day as if nothing had happened, but last night my whole family slept poorly and I had nightmares.

“That’s why I came to tell you this story tonight. It may be a bad omen, but I can’t let all this meat go to waste. That would be a sacrilege.”

Sam stops speaking. We have all listened closely without interrupting. We are worried, too. Has the balance been upset? The old ones reflect, weigh his actions, look at the situation from every angle. Finally they come to a conclusion.

“The spirit of the moose does not blame the Algonquin. Sam Brascoupé did what he had to do under the circumstances.”

Poné hangs his big drum from a large branch. It is as round as the full moon. He wets the moose hide with a few drops of water and rubs it with his palm. The skin becomes taut and comes to life. He tunes it by tapping the four corners with his index finger. The skin shudders. Poné takes his stick. It is a huge rib from a male moose that he has shaped by hand. He beats very softly, and the translucent skin quivers in the moonlight. Then he sings a song to the moose. The voice coming from the small man is big and powerful. It fills the clearing, fills our hearts and minds.

All at once, Sam stands up. He stamps his feet and cries out. It is the call of the moose. The sounds are guttural, sharp. They come from deep in his chest. Sam begins to dance around the fire. He dances alone and his cries become more and more urgent. He shuffles his feet, turns and bends slightly forward, his legs bent, his arms dangling, his head moving.

Suddenly a long cry answers, as if it is coming from the other side of the mountain. A long mating call pierces the dusk. Then a woman comes out of the crowd and starts to dance and stamp in front of Sam. With short, rhythmical and measured steps she goes before him, her head to the wind. They sniff the air and call out to each other. The calls blend with the deep, bewitching sounds of the drum and the singing.

One by one, the men and women form a big circle and dance in single file, pulling the circle tighter and tighter. They stamp and paw the ground, beat it with their hands. Sam moves between the dancers, who try to stop him with their hips and shoulders.

The dance stops. The men stretch their arms above their heads, their hands open wide. They look as though they are wearing huge antlers that stand out against the starry night. Their shadows run together on the ground.

Now everyone is braying in unison. The drum lets loose like a sudden rain of hailstones on the lake. The ground trembles beneath the pounding of moccasins. And suddenly a male places his hands on the round hips of a female. The drum is quiet. The sweating dancers stop moving and make a tremendous clamor. They applaud the prowess of the man and the woman, gather them into the fold, clap them on the shoulders.

The Algonquin have restored order with their dance. Humans and animals can live in harmony again. The makoucham is over. Sam can go home in peace. He’ll have no nightmares tonight.

The quarters of meat are still hanging from the pine. The logs have collapsed into the ashes. The smoke will cure the meat all night long and early tomorrow, the women will cut it up. They’re happy. Each family will get a share. The elders will be served first, and they will draw strength from the sacred meat.

5

EARLY THIS MORNING, the women gather to bone the meat, cut it into thin strips and pound it between rocks. Others will crack the bones to pull out the pink marrow. The skin will be stretched, scraped, cleaned, softened and tanned to make moccasins, mitts, coats. Nothing will be wasted. There will be a good supply of food for the next few days but one moose doesn’t go far when there are many mouths to feed. Besides, the head is missing, and that’s where you find the best parts — the muzzle, cheeks, brain and tongue.

Manie still has her idea in the back of her mind. She is going to take advantage of the communal activity to speak to the women and quietly spread the word.

She stops working and muses out loud.

“I remember the days when we didn’t have just one or two moose to share. Those were good days. Not so long ago, really…”

Manie pauses. She waits. After a few moments she adds in a discouraged tone, again as if she is just talking to herself, “I don’t even have enough hide to make a pair of moccasins to give my niece as a wedding gift. I’m so ashamed!”

She pounds away at the pieces of dried meat. The silence is heavy. The women are all deep in thought.

Manie beats a rhythm with her pestle. She gets ready to raise the most sensitive subject of all.

“I wish our sons and daughters were here to help us and to carry on after we are gone. But there’s no one I can teach the things I learned from my own mother.”

The pounding is heavy and sharp. Manie is kneeling on the ground, the mortar wedged between her knees. Her forehead is beaded with sweat. She doesn’t raise her voice, but her voice is tight with anger.

“I feel like a bear in a cage. We no longer have the right to hunt and fish as we please and our own land is forbidden to us. Now they want to shut us up in white men’s houses…”

All the women have stopped working. Then Josephine, the youngest of the group, speaks up. Her voice is trembling.

“You’re right, Manie. My husband is desperate. And now he has started drinking. He drinks too much! It makes him violent. He… he hits me.” She breaks down in tears, and the women gather around to console her.

Philomène nods. “My sixteen-year-old son died in the city. The ministry said he was sick with the measles, but I don’t believe it. I think he was killed by the damned drink. It makes men angry and they lose all reason. If he had been near me, with the family… But to die so far away…”

The women are crying together, bound by their shared anger.

“Perhaps we can help each other…” Manie suggests.

“Yes! Let’s join forces…”

Suddenly the women sit up, on the alert, their faces worried. They have heard an unusual noise. A pickup is driving at high speed on the dirt road. They recognize the creaking of the truck, and their hearts stop.

The pickup charges straight up to the smoke racks before screeching to a stop in a cloud of dust. Two men in rumpled khaki uniforms get out and slam the doors. It’s two game wardens that we know well. They’ve got smug, know-it-all smiles pasted on their faces. Big black revolvers swing from their belts and bang against their thighs.

The men go over to the smoke racks. They sniff, wrinkle their noses.

The women are grim. They stand up. Our men have recognized the truck, too, and they’ve rushed up from the shore. Now they gather in a semicircle across from the women.

The two wardens hook their thumbs in their belts under their big bellies as they take in the scene. They inspect the racks, the mortars, poke the ashes with the toes of their boots.

“Looks like we’ve caught you red-handed,” the bigger one says. “What’s going on here, my friends?”

He breathes in deeply.

“If I understand correctly, you are smoking a moose. Yup, that’s it, a moose, no less.”

There is the rumble of muffled anger, but the wardens take no notice.

“I shouldn’t have to remind you that hunting moose is strictly forbidden at this time of year. Everyone must abide by the law — rich and poor, whites and Indians.”

He starts walking again and stops, thinking.

“Was it a buck or a female?”

He waits.

“As usual you’ve got nothing to say. Dumb as stumps! I don’t see the head anywhere.” He looks around.

“It was a female! That’s why you got rid of the head, isn’t it? But I wasn’t born yesterday. I know you Algonquin like the back of my hand. The law is tough on anyone who poaches a female, but I’m going to prove that I have a heart. If you tell me who killed it, I will show some mercy. Right, Ti-Bob?”

“Yes, sir, Peter! You will show mercy.”

Peter inspects each of the hunters in turn. He looks them right in the eye. It’s a challenge, a put-down. The game wardens are powerful people. They have guns and they are white, and they know that Indians are patient and fearful.

The children are hiding behind their mothers’ skirts. Peter stops in front of Moïse.

“Moïse, the greatest moose hunter of them all! I’ll bet my bottom dollar you’re the guilty one. And if it isn’t you, Moïse, it’s all of them.” He jerks his head in our direction.

“Anyhow, it doesn’t make any difference.” He turns to the smoke rack and kicks it hard. The posts shake, the poles collapse, and the strips of meat fall into the ashes.

The wind has dropped, the birds have disappeared. Even the babies in their tikinagans are wide-eyed with terror.

Why so much hate? Why commit such a sacrilege?

Peter’s voice is threatening. “I’m going to ask you one more time. I can confiscate your canoes, all your rifles. Who was it? Nobody? Moïse? The Big Manitou himself, maybe? Okay, enough with the games. Ti-Bob, go and get the rest of the meat!”

“It was me!”

The voice is firm. It’s a woman’s voice. The two wardens act as if they haven’t heard anything.

“Me!”

This time the word rings out like a shot at point-blank range. It gives me the shivers.

“Me! It was me!”

The cries come from every direction.

Caught by surprise, the two men turn toward the circle of women. The cries keep coming, like claps of thunder.

“Me! Me! Me!”

The women have closed ranks. Their bodies are like the trunks of the huge black spruce, deeply rooted, pressing against each other. Their eyes flash. Under their left arms they carry tin pans filled with moose meat. In their right hands they hold long butcher’s knives, their blades gleaming.

The wardens have been caught off guard. Suddenly they are aware that they are outnumbered, and they are trapped. The situation has got out of control. They are actually afraid, because anything can happen now.

Without taking her eyes off them, Manie slowly raises her knife and lets the side of the blade fall on the edge of the pan. She strikes a hard blow followed by three light beats and repeats this rhythm, keeping time, like heartbeats. Gradually, the other women join in, each one beating the edge of her pan with a knife. They spread out.

The wardens understand that this is their last chance. They quickly make their way through this forest of women. Then they leap into their truck and disappear in a cloud of dust.

• • •

Charlotte, Sam Brascoupé’s wife, is Attikamek, from Haute-Mauricie. She is thin and very tall. When she speaks, I can hear Pinamen. One day I casually asked her if she knew a Pinamen Petitguay, a girl a bit older than me. She wasn’t sure, because she’s been living with Sam for a long time, but she thought they might be related. I didn’t say why I was asking, but I think she guessed. I can still remember the way she smiled when she saw the way my cheeks turned red and my eyes lit up.

6

ONE AFTERNOON IN the middle of July, the ground suddenly begins to shake and hum. Two ducks fly off in a panic, honking as they struggle to climb into the air. Their silhouettes gradually turn into a blur on the horizon.

What’s going on? The humming continues, and slowly but surely it gets louder, like rolling thunder.

The sound is coming from the road.

We hover around the doors of our tents and cabins. Some people watch from the shelter of the trees. All eyes are turned toward the road, that bloody road that never brings any good. The dogs are whining, their muzzles pressed flat between their paws.

There’s a dazzling streak of silver light, like the reflection of the sun on the water. It’s an enormous white truck with wheels as tall as a man. It takes up the whole road as it pulls a huge flatbed trailer. On the trailer is a gigantic yellow bulldozer, its shovel gleaming like an ax blade so wide that it extends beyond the sides of the trailer.

And then there’s more. Other trucks loom into view, coming one after another in single file like a brigade of canoes in the spring.

It is an amazing sight.

The elders tell the old stories about huge monsters and giant birds that carry thunderbolts between their sharp claws. They tell of powerful shamans who can throw entire wolf packs against enemy warriors. But none of those tales comes close to what we see this morning.

Finally the procession comes to a dead end and stops. Before it stand only the virgin forest and our little paths that lead from one tent to another.

The engines go silent. A strong smell of gasoline fills the air.

The drivers slam the doors and jump down from the cabs. They look tiny next to the big trucks. Then they climb into a little bus that has followed the trucks. The bus turns around and they leave without a word.

We are both terrified and fascinated by this swarm of shiny monsters. They look unreal, but every instinct tells us they can be extremely dangerous. In their iron guts sleeps a power that we do not control. They can destroy everything in their path, even move mountains. Nothing can resist them — not fierce winds or mighty rains or rising rivers or forest fires.

The shamans never predicted that such a force could invade our land.

It’s the dogs that make the first move. They circle the trucks and then they urinate on the tires. Now we move forward to examine them more closely. The timid look on from the edge of the woods.

The women gather around Manie. They talk among themselves. Their voices are getting louder.

“Nipishish! Come here!”

I hurry over, and the women part to let me pass. They stop talking.

Manie is standing in front of the first truck, her hands on her big hips.

“Nipishish, what does that say?”

She points at the metal license plate on the front of the truck and looks at me. I went to residential school, so I must know how to read.

All the women are standing around in a tight circle, waiting.

I lick my lips and clear my throat.

“This says Quebec, 1959.”

“That’s it?”

“No. Here, in big, these are numbers.”

“So?”

“It’s a number, like a band number. You know how every Indian has a number? You, Sam, Josephine, William…”

Manie nods. Every Indian gets a number from the government and knows it by heart.

“The whites own lots of things,” I continue. “So they give everything a number so they won’t lose them.”

“Ah!”

I point at the license plate. “That’s the number of the truck. It belongs to the whites.”

Manie understands. She points to something written on the front of the cab.

“Sex…Sexy Lady,” I read out. “It’s a nickname. Like Big Nose, Big Ears…”

But Manie hasn’t finished. She takes my arm and pulls me to the truck door, where there are more words.

I read them out.

“O’Connell Construction Company. General Contractor. Renovation… Roads… House Construc-tion.”

Everyone has an opinion about these tractors and trucks. One thing’s for sure, you have to treat these things with respect. We talk about it all evening and go to sleep. The giants stand over us like silent guards.

At seven the next morning, the bus returns. This is when whites start work, no matter what the weather is like. I remember this from the residential school. Up at six in the morning, lunch at noon, dinner at five o’clock. Everything was on a schedule, and it was bad news for anyone who was late. The principal would go all red in the face and yell, “Punctuality! Punctuality! You will always be lazy in life if you do not learn how to be punctual. There is a time for everything!” All year they taught us to tell time using the big clock in the classroom. We had to memorize the days of the week, the months of the year, but it never sank in. Why did everyone in the world have to get up at the same time, eat at the same time?

Two men in white hardhats start giving orders to a bunch of others wearing yellow hats, and suddenly it’s like a bear has swiped open an ant hill. The men with the yellow hats scatter in all directions while we watch in amazement.

The tractors start to move. They spit thick black smoke out of their tall stovepipes. The more the engines roar, the thicker the smoke becomes, spewing up into the air. The caterpillars bite into the fresh earth. The bulldozers charge head first into the forest, the enormous gleaming blades of their shovels digging deep. The earth is split open, boulders heave up and roll over each other. The trees tremble as they are uprooted and stampeded into the ground. They bend, are flattened, crushed, swallowed up. The big bulldozers charge, back up and charge in again. They skin the earth alive, scrape it, clear huge flat spaces. The smell of overturned topsoil and sap emerges from the forest.

When the day draws to a close and the silence returns at last, we cautiously follow the tractor tracks between the new surveyors’ stakes. Our feet sink into the dark red soil, leaving deep prints.

• • •

Every day brings new surprises. We don’t even recognize the shores of our great lake anymore. Our campsites have disappeared, the hill has been flattened, the brook has changed its course. The smoke racks, the campfire, the old jackpine where we hung moose and bear hides have all been razed to the ground.

The endless grating noise of the caterpillars, the constant coming and going, the mind-boggling speed with which our land is destroyed…We can’t even think anymore. In the evenings, crude men wander between the tents and cabins. They gather on the dock or on the porch of the Hudson’s Bay post to harass the girls and even the women.

We’ve been plunged into another world, and no one even asked us whether we wanted this. The government claims it’s doing all this for our own good, to improve our future, to turn us into real Canadians, but we feel as if we’ve been ripped out by the roots, just like our big jackpine.

Manie is sad, but she waits patiently. In the past such patience has betrayed our people, but this time we will use it to our advantage. Manie will wait for calm to return before she goes on the attack.

7

WE’RE ALL GATHERED in the chapel again, but this time there’s no priest. The tension is thick. You can really see it in people’s eyes. The contractor has done his job in record time. Twenty new houses have popped up like mushrooms. This afternoon is the draw. Who will get one?

The representative from the ministry has put the names of all the heads of the families in a hat. He explains that he will pull out twenty names without looking at them, to show that the choice has been made “democratically and without favoritism.” He says not everyone will get a house this year, and those who do might be a little cramped at first. But in a few years when the program is complete, all fifty families will be properly housed. He says that for people who have never had proper housing, owning a house, even a very small one, is a real blessing.

Of course there is a special guest. We’re used to them by now. There’s always someone — smiling, happy, well dressed, and they drive new cars. They never stay long because they’re always in a hurry. Manie calls them gusts of wind, because when they come, everything shifts around in a panic, like a sudden wind that ruffles the treetops for no apparent reason. Then, when they leave, calm returns.

The visitor today explains that the houses that have been built for us are expensive, very expensive. He says a number and then multiplies it by twenty. He adds that we should consider ourselves lucky because our good government has invested a fortune to provide the Indians with suitable housing. He finishes by adding that despite the exorbitant cost that the houses represent, everyone is happy and he is pleased to be with us here this afternoon.

We all applaud.

The draw can now begin. That’s why we’re all here. We hear the big flies beating their wings and banging against the windows.

The official from the ministry closes his eyes. He screws up his face as if he’s making a huge effort to mix up the slips in the hat. Then he takes out a piece of paper and holds it up. He hands it out to the invited guest who reads it and then calls out, “House number one goes to the Commanda family!”

The crowd stirs. All eyes are fixed on Edmond and his wife, who suddenly smile, uncertain and happy at the same time. The white man hurries over to Edmond, pumps his hand up and down, congratulates him, gives him a bunch of keys, steps back, looks at him admiringly and applauds. We clap, too.

The draw continues. Each time it’s the same routine. Now we know what’s expected of us. House number two goes to the Tenasco family. House number three goes to the McConninis…

The faces of the winners light up like new pennies.

“House number five goes to Madame… Widow…Manie…Manie Twenish!”

It’s us! But we are only here out of curiosity. Manie doesn’t want a house. She didn’t even know her name was in the hat.

She goes pale and shakes her head. But the man just leaps forward and shakes her hand. He kisses her on both cheeks before handing her a ring of keys.

There is warm applause, but Manie is flabbergasted. She has no intention of abandoning her tent and holing up inside the four walls of a white person’s house.

But they’ve moved on to the next name, and Manie has already been forgotten.

She marches back to her tent, the keys clutched in her hand. We follow a few paces behind — her two sisters and their husbands, the children and babies. There are about a dozen of us. We don’t dare speak.

Manie stops abruptly in front of her tent. The group freezes.

“All right,” she says. “Let’s go and see this house!”

We wheel around and practically run back out of the woods to the big clearing where the houses are lined up facing each other — ten on one side and ten on the other. They are identical, like twenty drops of water. They are all painted white and sitting on gray cement blocks. They all have the same front porches, same doors, same windows. There are no trees, no winding paths. Just the houses. Bits of wood and tarpaper are littered here and there. The wind stirs up clouds of sand. Sheets of plastic packing blow flat against the walls and fly around all over the place.

Our old life already seems far away, a time when we would move around on our narrow, well-worn paths that snaked through the trees, spanned the brooks, zigzagged around the boulders and up the hills. We would stop to greet each other on the paths and exchange a few words as we went from one tent to another.

Today we walk in single file down the main street, staying well to the side so that the officials can pass by in their pickups.

Manie turns to me. “Nipishish, which one is it? They all look the same!”

We’re standing in front of number one. I count down with my finger like a priest sprinkling holy water.

“One, two, three, four… that’s the one, in the middle.”

Like the head goose, Manie takes the lead. She marches up the four steps and grabs the doorknob. She pushes, pulls, turns, but nothing happens. The crowd is right behind her. She feels them watching. Her cheeks redden.

I take the keys and stick one in the lock. Click! The door swings open like magic and the clan sighs with relief.

A strong smell of glue prickles my throat as we follow Manie inside. Each one of us sneezes discreetly, then we all cough. Manie stands in the hall and takes in the scene — the living room on the right, a kitchen on the left, a hall at the back with doors leading to bedrooms.

There isn’t much furniture. A kitchen table with chrome feet. Four chairs covered in yellow fake leather printed with roses like the ones on the box of Carnation milk. There’s a huge maplewood easy chair with a pleated skirt.

Manie slowly walks down the hall and opens the doors one at a time. She sticks her head in but doesn’t go into the rooms. I can see in her eyes that something is cooking in her mind.

Then she gives the orders, and the men and women disappear. Manie pulls the big easy chair close to the window and sinks into the soft cushion. The chair rocks! She looks out the window and discovers that from this spot she has a clear view of the entire reserve. She can see the entrance to the new band office and the door of the new Hudson’s Bay post, now called the Northern General Store.

Manie smiles slyly. She rocks back and forth, her hands lying flat on the wide arms of the chair.

The men eventually come running back armed with axes and saws. The women and children carry the tent and the family’s pack.

Then men start to rip off the closet doors, knock down the inside walls. Everything is saved — the nails, because they are scarce and useful, the planks and timbers. The wood is sawed up, split and stacked in the corner.

But there’s a problem with Manie’s cast-iron wood stove. There’s no hole for the stove pipe. Then clever brother-in-law Zacharie knocks out a window pane with his ax and runs the pipe through. That does the trick! It’s as if the pane was made for the very purpose. They’re not so dumb, the whites.

After awhile, we have cleared a nice big, bright room. The women quickly toss in the mattresses, blankets, cushions, skins and sleeping bags. The kettles and birchbark baskets are stacked in full view.

“At least now we know where we are!” says Manie.

Outside, poles are put up and spread with canvas. The ground inside the tent is covered with a thick carpet of fir branches.

Manie rocks inside her new house, one eye on the wigwam outside.

The official and his guest are visiting each household to help the new inhabitants settle in. Manie quietly watches them from the window. She sees them coming but doesn’t say anything.

They climb the steps.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

They tap at the door like woodpeckers on a dead tree.

We don’t move or speak. Manie waits.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

The knocking is louder.

She nods at me. I turn the doorknob, open the door a crack and see two whites standing there with their fake smiles. I look at them and they look at me.

“Don’t be afraid…” they say.

I wonder what I’m supposed to be afraid of.

“We’ve just come to see how everything is going. Open the door!”

They push on the door gently but firmly. I let go and the door opens. They come in together, shouting heartily, “Hello, everyone, we —”

The two men stand there with their mouths open, as if they’re about to swallow a big fly. They crane their necks and look around. They stand there pale, wide-eyed, their shoulders slumped.

Then they turn slowly on their heels and walk out without even shutting the door.

Manie rocks back and forth and chuckles to herself.

• • •

What amuses us Indians the most is when we can take someone by surprise, catch them off guard. Especially the whites. They aren’t used to our sense of humor. Sometimes they’re so astonished that words fail them!

And then we just laugh away quietly to ourselves.

8

AT NIGHT, I stay up very late. I wait until I’m completely exhausted. Then I collapse onto my mattress fully dressed and cradle my head in my arms.

I’m terrified of not being able to fall asleep, of not being able to stop the nightmares and the memories from flooding into my head. I don’t want to remember. I just want to sink into sleep like an anchor dropping down into the deep water.

At night the reserve turns into a living hell. Even when I cover my ears I can hear the cries of frightened women and children. I hear drunken men screaming in rage and despair. I hear gunshots splitting the darkness and I am frozen with fear.

Why doesn’t someone do something?

What can anyone do?

Things are moving too quickly here. The elders say that the reserve is possessed by the devil. As for the people from the ministry, they pretend that everything will be back in order soon. The Mounted Police only come during the day when things are nice and quiet.

Today I get up at dawn. It’s the calmest time of the day. The light chases away the evil spirits, and the partyers are still asleep. I pour myself a cup of warm, sugary tea and grab a piece of bannock from the kitchen counter. Then I sit on the top step of the porch and look out.

In front of me there’s the gravel road. Between the two houses across the street, I can see the silvery water of the lake.

The reserve is filthy. Beer bottles and crushed cartons are scattered everywhere. Smack in the middle of the road sits an old pickup on four flat tires, its hood open and the windshield shattered. The other cars have to drive around it. No one pays any attention to the rusty carcass, even though it will never rot away, not like a broken birchbark canoe.

The truck has been there since the day Vincent moved into his new house. He didn’t think he would need his canoe anymore, so he traded it for an old pickup that belonged to a carpet layer who had finished his contract on the reserve. Vincent figured with autumn coming it would be good not to have to store the canoe over the winter. He thought a pickup would be more useful.

Vincent would drive down the only road in the reserve until he got to the dump two miles out. Then he would drive back again. He couldn’t go anywhere else because he didn’t have a license and the pickup wasn’t certified.

One week after he bought the truck, he got a flat tire. So he just stopped the truck in the middle of the road. He got out of the truck and stared at the tire, trying to understand what had just happened. Then he looked around to see whether anyone could help. But people just looked on from a distance, curious to see what he was going to do. Finally, Vincent kicked the flat tire, slammed the truck door and walked back to his house on foot. Ever since then, the pickup has just been rusting away in that same spot.

When they built the reserve, the ministry also gave us a dump. It’s a huge hole where the contractor threw all his trash — leftover wood, sacks of cement, empty gasoline barrels, even an old tractor. Every day the kitchen help also threw in a truckload full of garbage bags.

There’s no word in our language for dump. What could such a thing possibly be good for? Still, it has become an attraction. We have nothing else to do in the evenings, so we wander down to the dump. Sometimes we surprise black bears rummaging in the garbage, looking for food. At first they would run away when they saw us, but now they just eat right under our noses.

9

MANIE SITS SILENTLY in her armchair, her hands resting on her thighs. She’s not rocking. I stand behind her and we both look out the window in dismay.

Alex is sitting in the back seat of an RCMP car, his head on his knees, his face hidden. He’s wearing handcuffs. We can’t hear him but we know he’s crying. His shoulders are shaking.

Last night he got in a fight with his cousin and stabbed him to death. He was in such a rage that no one could stop him.

Last month, people from the forestry company came to the reserve looking for loggers to work in one of their camps. The pay was good — six dollars a cord — and the ministry gave free hardhats and boots to anyone who wanted to go, as well as two brand-new chainsaws for each team of three men. They guaranteed transportation to the camp but not back. At the camp, the loggers would get free room and board.

Alex and his two cousins decided they would go, no matter what their families said. They wanted to make money, lots of money. They bragged that they could cut six cords a day, and they were sure they could make two hundred dollars a week. They said they would come back from the lumber camp as rich as whites.

But when they got there, they were soon singing a different tune. They had to slog away from morning until night, and it took them three days to cut six cords.

They said the white loggers attacked the forest as if the trees were their enemies. They seemed happy to see them fall and die. They rushed around with their axes and saws as if they couldn’t get enough.

Alex and his cousins were used to cutting up dead wood for firewood, but chopping down fresh spruce was another thing altogether. They couldn’t understand why they had to cut down live trees, strip off the branches, cut them into four-foot lengths and then stack them in cords. So many trees! And the foreman was always in a bad mood. He said they were lazy and slow, said Indians didn’t even work hard enough to earn their meals.

At the end of the month, Alex and his cousins were fired. That was fine with them because they’d had enough of lumberjacking and had been talking about quitting anyway. Their pay for one month barely covered the tobacco, makinaws, Coke and chocolate that they’d bought on credit at the company store.

The camp cook offered to drive them back to the reserve in exchange for one of their chainsaws. They figured they had two, so they could afford to part with one. They told the cook he could have the saw in exchange for a ride and two cases of beer.

The cook thought about it for a moment. He knew there were big fines for selling alcohol to Indians, but he wasn’t really risking much because the RCMP tended to close their eyes when it was the whites who were making a profit.

So he accepted, on the condition that they didn’t drink in his car. He would leave them at the edge of the reserve and after that they could do whatever they wanted.

So yesterday, at four o’clock, we watched our three loggers march proudly down the street, their yellow helmets perched on their heads, their logger’s boots laced up to the knee. Eddie was at the front balancing the big chainsaw in his arms. The other two followed, each with a case of Molson on his shoulder. The boys partied noisily all night long to celebrate being back with their friends.

In the morning, no one could remember why two of them had quarreled.

The ambulance is parked in front of Alex’s house. The attendants are carrying out Eddie’s body. Two feet are sticking out from under the red blanket. They are still wearing the big logger’s boots.

Outside, no one is around except for the police, but dark eyes watch from behind the windows.

10

I ROLL MY cigarette nice and tight to save on tobacco. It’s my third one this morning. I close my eyes and lean back to soak up the sun like a lizard on a rock.

Suddenly I hear the grinding gears of William’s old pickup. His family hasn’t been issued a house yet, so he’s moved in with his wife’s family. Lots of people have done the same thing. In some houses there are as many as twenty people sleeping on the floor.

I peer out and see him slowly make his way around Vincent’s dead pickup. The street is busy even though it’s still early. Kids are up and playing with their plastic trucks and tractors in the wet sand.

Now I can make out William’s head and shoulders. He holds himself stiffly, his head upright. He’s wearing his cowboy hat. I get the impression he’s having a hard time driving.

William is a little older than me. We went to residential school together. We’re friends, but we don’t get together often because we remind each other too much of those dark years.

William is on his way home from driving his wife Nancy to the band office, where she works as a secretary. But instead of driving right by, he parks in front of my porch.

His window is open and there’s a strong smell of alcohol coming from the cab. He turns off the engine, and for awhile we don’t say anything.

Then he hands me a small flask wedged between his thighs.

“Here, have a swig,” he says.

I shake my head.

He looks at me, and I notice his eyes are glassy.

“Too good to drink out of the same bottle?”

“No, no! It’s just that hard stuff makes me sick.”

“You don’t drink with me, it means you’re not a true Indian.”

“Sure, okay.”

I take a drink and pass the bottle back to him. He takes a swallow and grins. He seems happy now.

“Know what we should do, Nipishish? Go into the woods this fall. I still have land that belonged to my father. We can hunt…moose, bear, trap some beaver, maybe some otter… My father always told me there’s so many fish in these lakes that they’ll break your nets…”

He stops to take another drink. A long silence goes by.

“It costs money to hunt,” I say. “The canoe, the rifles, ammunition, food. It’s not like the old days…”

“I know! Sometimes I wonder if we weren’t better off in the residential school!”

I don’t know what to say.

He takes another gulp.

“You know, they’re talking about you over at the band office,” he says. “They say you’re the one who’s getting Manie and the others all worked up and whining about things all the time. Look, the band manager gave me a letter for you… Nancy typed it. You’ve got an appointment there this afternoon.”

He holds out the bottle to me.

“Hey, why don’t you finish it?” he says.

I finish it off in one gulp and hand it back to him. He throws it under the porch and laughs.

“Another dead soldier!”

He starts his engine.

“When I’m ready to go into the bush I’ll let you know, okay?”

I nod and watch as his old truck heads toward the dump.

I open the envelope. The letter is in English.

Your presence is required at a meeting at the band office this afternoon, September 15 at 1:30 sharp.

Bill MacPherson, Band Manager

I reread the message several times before rolling another cigarette. Why does this man want to see me? Ever since I got back from the residential school, I’ve stayed far away from members of the band council. I don’t want anything to do with those people.

I could talk to Manie about it, but I don’t want to worry her. She’s been busy quietly starting to gather the women together. Whenever she gets hold of some fish, a goose or two or a beaver, she’ll invite them to come and share a meal with her in the tent beside her house. More and more of the elders are starting to come.

Manie has a good excuse for holding these gatherings — the craft business. The ministry agrees that crafts are an economic activity. The women, especially the young ones, learn to make moccasins, mittens and birchbark baskets which are then sold to tourists. The ministry will even pay for the materials. Manie is the teacher. She gives classes in her tent or at her kitchen table.

I decide it would be better to go to the meeting. The letter seems like an order, and I’m curious.

The band office opens at one-thirty. I get there at two. It’s an impressive new building that sits proudly in the middle of the reserve. The night of the official opening, someone smashed the glass front door and threw in a bottle of gin. The green shards of the bottle and bits of broken door are still littered over the wide cement steps. There’s a piece of plywood nailed over the door.

I go in timidly and walk over to the counter that separates the waiting room from the offices. Nancy’s working at the reception desk. She knows I’m standing there, but she keeps typing. I wait.

“Is the manager going to see me?” I ask finally.

She stops, peers up at me and points down the hall with her chin.

“It’s the big office at the back.” She gives me a faint smile.

Nancy is pretty. She has black eyes, round cheeks and long hair that falls over her shoulders. She dresses well. She’s eighteen and has three children. She already had two when she married William. During the day, her mother looks after the kids.

I walk down the hall and stand in the doorway. A man looks up and waves at me.

“Come on in!”

He holds out his hand. He’s white with red hair, used to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Behind his back we say he looks like an old stovepipe because his face and neck are covered with brown spots like rust.

I hold out my letter about the appointment. He takes it and looks at me, his head tilted to one side, his lips pressed together. His glasses have thick frames the same color as his freckles.

“Right, okay! Larivière?”

He turns to a big gray metal file cabinet. With one finger he pushes on a drawer and it silently slides open. I see a long tidy row of tightly packed brown files, one behind the other. They all have red labels that stick up like little flags. They remind me of the surveyors’ stakes.

His fingers march over the tops of the files as he squints at each one and mutters under his breath.

“Bearskin… okay… Brascoupé, okay…okay… okay.”

I watch him closely.

“H…Laloo, okay… Larivière! Here we go, Pierre Larivière!” He looks pleased with himself as he pulls a thick folder out of the drawer. He comes back and sits across from me, puts the file on his desk and opens it.

I can’t believe my eyes. If I understand all this correctly, that cabinet contains a file on each one of us. I look at mine. I see a bundle of pink pages covered with writing. It looks like government stationery.

The man bends over the file and reads the first page out loud. I lean forward on the edge of my seat and crane my neck to try to see what he’s reading, but I can’t make it out.

“Pierre Larivière,” he reads. “Also known as Nipishish, son of Shipu, Algonquin, and Flore St. Amour, White…” He glances up at me. “…born in Maniwaki in 1944.”

He continues reading in a low voice. He mumbles away and I can’t understand what he’s saying.

“Okay!” He stares at me attentively. “Okay! You attended St. Mark Residential School?”

I’m caught off guard. I nod. He seems to know everything, yet I never imagined there was a file containing all this information about me. And it seems as though there’s one for each of us! Why? What could this file say about me?

“Here we go,” he says. “I have your personal form here. Okay. Now I just need your letter of confirmation…”

He flips a few pages.

“Okay! Here it is!”

He produces a typed page that he reads to himself in silence. I don’t like these silences.

Finally he says, “The ministry has found you a foster family in the city. You have been enrolled in a high school. Your papers are ready. My assistant will drive you to the bus tomorrow morning. Pack your bags and be ready. The bus will not wait for you.”

I’m glued to my chair, stunned. The words dance in my head. City. Foster family. Bus.

I try to stay calm.

“It says all that in there?” I ask, pointing to the file.

“Yes, it’s all here. In black and white!”

He waves the letter in front of me as positive proof. Then he quickly puts it back in the file and closes the folder with a slap of his speckled hand.

“My boy, you have no secrets from the government. It knows every step you make, okay? Everything is written down here.”

He stands up and puts my file away and pushes the drawer closed with the tip of his finger. He locks it and leans his arm on the file cabinet.

The interview is over.

I stand up. I’m shaking. I have so many questions, but I know there’s no point staying in this office any longer. I need to get outside so I can think.

“Tomorrow morning,” he says again. “In front of the band office at 10:30 A.M., okay?”

I feel as if I’ve been stripped naked. I’m more stunned by that file than I am by the news about going to the city. I never suspected anything like that even existed.

Could they know things about me that I don’t even know myself?

• • •

Nothing gets past Manie. She has the nose and eyes of an old lynx. I know she’s been watching from her observation post. She’s seen me enter and leave the band office.

I slowly head home, deep in thought.

It’s true that I was thinking of leaving here one day, but tomorrow morning?

Halfway home, I get out my pack of tobacco. I stop and roll a big cigarette. I pack in the ends carefully. For a few seconds I think about nothing but rolling this cigarette.

I take a long drag, like a deep sigh. I start walking again, cigarette between my lips, my hands deep in my pockets.

Manie is sitting at the kitchen table. She has pushed aside all the scraps of leather, spools of thread, pots filled with glass beads, the patterns. A flowered chair is waiting for me on the other side of the table.

I sit down. I take one last drag and throw the butt on the grate of the stove.

We are alone, Manie and I. This is rare in our house because more than a dozen of us live here and there are always people coming and going.

I suspect she’s arranged this so we can talk.

She’s bent over her work, stitching an upper sole of a moccasin. It’s delicate work that requires a lot of attention.

I place my hands flat on the table and begin to speak. Even I’m surprised at how serious my voice sounds.

“Manie, the ministry wants to send me to school in the city, to stay with a white family.”

She carries on sewing. Only her black eyes cloud over. I know she’s thinking, weighing the pros and cons.

We let the minutes go by. It’s her turn now.

“What are you going to do?” she asks simply.

I roll another cigarette, slowly, as if I’ve got all the time in the world. But my fingers are shaking, and my heart is pounding. A few flakes of tobacco fall on the oilcloth, and I brush them into my hand.

I know that deep down, I want to leave. I tell myself that I can be free in the city, and the nightmares will stop. I want to forget the residential school, put the reserve behind me once and for all. I want a fresh start. I want to stop thinking about the past.

But I also don’t want to hurt Manie. She’s the only one who could keep me here. She’s got an important fight ahead of her. She wants to make the others realize how the whites are treating us, how they’re keeping us down. She wants to bring back our pride in our past, our history and culture. She wants us to claim the rights we have over this land.

But that isn’t my fight. I don’t have her fire, and it makes me feel guilty, as if I’m disowning my ancestors…

Then a tiny voice reminds me that I’m Métis. I’m half white. My mother, Flore St. Amour, was not an Indian…

I remember a joke William once made.

“Do you know what an apple and a Métis have in common? They both have red skins, but they’re white on the inside!”

Manie can guess what is bothering me. She stops working and holds out her hands. I open my hands and wrap them around hers. Her fists are strong and hard, but her voice is soft and sure.

“Nipishish, if you really want to go, if that’s what your heart tells you, then go. If you don’t you will regret it for the rest of your life and you will be unhappy. Listen to your heart and follow it.”

I feel her warmth, her tenderness and her strength pass through my arms to my shoulders. Her eyes are deep and shining. I’m trembling from head to toe, as if I have a fever.

“I’m going to go.”

Manie nods.

“That’s good.”

She smiles at me, but two big tears roll down her cheeks.

We sit like that for a long time. Then she says, “Tonight we will all get together to eat the rest of Sam’s moose. I was keeping it for a special occasion. But before that I want to give you something.”

She brings out a big birchbark basket that she inherited from her mother. It’s where she keeps her most precious things. I watch as she reaches in and takes out a small object that she places in my hand.

My heart leaps. It’s my father’s penknife, the one my mother gave him. I close my fist around it and feel its warmth.

My mother gave him this knife as a present.

One winter, my father lost the knife on his trap line. He went crazy looking for it, but he couldn’t find it. When spring came we went hunting porcupine. We followed the trap lines and searched every inch of the path. I must have been five or six.

At noon, my father made a fire and we stopped for bannock and tea. Then we carried on, searching both sides of the path. Suddenly he stopped and walked toward a fir grove. I thought he had spotted a porcupine. He bent over and I thought he was reaching for a piece of wood to hit the animal on the nose. Instead he stood up and raised his fist high in the air.

“Nipishish!” he cried. “I found it!”

He came over to me and opened his big hand. It was his knife with the red handle. It gleamed in the sun.

“As we were passing this place, I remembered that I had set a snare under that fir tree there, so I went to check. Look, hold it. It’s a good knife, not even rusted. One day, Nipishish, this will be yours.”

11

MANIE WRAPS ME in her strong arms. I bury my head in her neck and take in the smells of the forest, the firs and the smoke for the last time. I breathe in deeply so I won’t forget any of it. I can hear Manie’s heart beating.

She hands me a canvas bag.

“Nipishish, there’s a pair of moosehide moccasins in here for you, and a little birchbark basket for your foster family. I also packed you some tea, because they don’t drink it in the city and I know you’ll miss it.”

I don’t need anything else. I’m wearing the only clothes I own. I climb into the band administrator’s red pickup and sit on the edge of the ripped fake leather seat.

The road is rough. We skirt around potholes, drying laundry and puddles of water. No matter how slowly we go the truck still jerks up and down. The administrator’s assistant cranes his neck forward to see through the dirty windshield. It’s cracked, as if a spider has spun a huge web in the glass.

Finally we come to the highway that goes from Val d’Or to Maniwaki. The driver looks at his watch and speaks for the first time.

“Eleven o’clock. We’re a good fifteen minutes early for the bus, but better safe than sorry!”

He picks up a brown envelope sitting on the seat beside him and hands it to me.

“You’re to give this to Madame Paradis.” He raises his voice. “Do you understand? Madame Paradis. You’re going to be living with her.”

He shakes his finger at me. “Make sure you don’t lose it or Madame Paradis will be very angry. Her address is written right there.” He points at the words. “Madame Mona Paradis, 531 rue de la Madone, Mont-Laurier.”

I place the big envelope on my lap and repeat the address to myself. I learn it by heart. Madame Mona Paradis, 531 rue de la Madone, Mont-Laurier.

“There’s the bus!” shouts the assistant. He gives me a push. “Hurry, get out, get out. You don’t want to miss it!”

He jumps down from the truck, stands on the side of the road and waves his arms. The driver sees us and slows down. We stand back and the bus pulls over, spraying us with dust and gravel.

The bus is enormous. Through the windshield I can see the bald, fat little driver wearing a white shirt with short sleeves. He sits in the front corner on a tiny seat. He smiles. The engine is at the back and it heaves and shudders. The noise is deafening.

The door opens. The driver leans toward us, smiling.

“Salut, my friend!” he shouts happily to the administrator’s assistant. “How are you? Just come out of the woods?”

“I’m fine! And you? Fumes from those big engines getting to you?”

“No, no. I’m surviving.”

He doesn’t look at me, but he says, “I see you’ve got another one for me this morning. Soon there won’t be any left up there! What are you trying to do, empty the whole reserve?”

They burst out laughing.

“You’ve got that right. This one’s going to Mont-Laurier.”

I’m standing right behind him, my bag on my shoulder. I just want to get on the bus.

“Mont-Laurier? That’s new. Usually I just dump them in Maniwaki…”

“I know, but there’s no more room there. All the foster families already have more than their quota. The ministry’s decided to spread them out a little…”

“Sure, if you say so,” the driver says with a shrug. “But he’ll be the only one in Mont-Laurier. I’ve never even seen an Indian there, never. He’s going to miss his mother.”

“It’s better this way,” the assistant says seriously. “Not so many bad influences in Mont-Laurier. Maniwaki’s turned into a real hole!”

“Hey, I’m just the driver. You’re the boss.”

They laugh again, and the driver grabs a lever with his right hand. He’s ready to get back on the road. The conversation is over.

As I climb into the bus, I notice that the driver is wearing a big gold ring that gleams in the sun. He pulls the handle toward him and the narrow doors fold shut. The engine rumbles. The two men wave to each other and then we’re on our way.

I put my bag down beside me on the seat. I feel small, staring out with my nose pressed against the window. I can feel the wheels turning below my feet. The road is like a river running under the bus. On either side, thick walls of black spruce, lakes, rivers and rocks rush by. The sight makes me dizzy.

All of a sudden I panic. I reach inside my jacket pocket. I feel the knife…

I’ve done it! I’m making a break with my past, leaving the reserve. I’m relieved and worried at the same time. The sun is already high. It glistens on the thick windshield of the bus, and I can almost see the ghostly figures of Manie, Pinamen, Sam, Charlotte, Poné…

I lean my forehead against the cold window and watch the landscape roll by. More trees, more lakes. Sometimes we follow a river. Now and then there are roads that cut into the forest like wounds. There are logs piled up on both sides of the road, stripped of their branches and dripping with sap. Then more leafy trees. The maples are flaming red, the birches yellow. Autumn has started already.

We’ve left the mountain and now we’re driving through a valley. I see a clearing, and in a glance I take in a house, barns, fences. And animals, standing still like patches of snow on the mountainside in spring.

They’re cows, a herd of cows. It’s good to see animals.

I’m getting used to the passing countryside, and things are starting to register. I see a truck, a tractor, but no people. There’s a strong smell coming in through the small window beside the driver. It’s the smell of cow manure.

When many animals live together, the manure accumulates quickly. The whites shovel it into big piles. How can they live with that in their yards? If you can get used to that, you can get used to anything! It would be the same if we kept moose in pens. We’d have to do something with all the droppings.

I think about beavers. When their pond is too full of droppings, when the water is dirty and stinks, they just move somewhere else. There’s lots of land, lots of room. They find another stream, build another dam, another lodge, and life goes on.

We Indians live like beavers. We move around a lot. I don’t know what the whites do, but it’s not really my problem. The whites can figure it out for themselves. They have an answer for everything. They invented the train and the airplane. I’ve heard that the planes now are as big as two or three buses glued together. I’d like to see one some day, a plane as big as that!

Really, the whites are pretty impressive. The more I think about it, the more I realize how many things they’ve invented. We Indians couldn’t live without rifles and all the food that we buy from the Hudson’s Bay Company — flour, oil, sugar, lard, salt.

But the most ingenious thing is money. The whites didn’t just invent money, they’re the ones who make it! If a white man needs money, he just works a little, holds out his hand, and someone pays him. That’s why all whites are rich.

We Indians don’t know how to make money.

I wonder whether we have anything the whites don’t. Not much. When they need something, they simply buy it or take it. Money gives them power. It’s the reason they have so much confidence. They act as if they own everything.

We should do that, too. Instead we’ve lost what little we had — our land. Soon there won’t be any animals, any forests. We’ll all eat cows, we’ll all drink milk.

Maybe that’s the reason they have white skin and blue eyes. It’s the milk! One day we’ll be exactly the same. We’ll eat the same food and we’ll become white.

Look at that, more cows! And flowers…and trees in rows.

Now I get it. They’ve cut down so many trees and flowers that now they have to plant new ones!

12

SUDDENLY THE OTHER passengers start moving around in their seats. They stand up and try to balance in the aisle. They try to gather bags from the racks above their heads and put on their coats at the same time.

“Mont-Laurier!” shouts the driver.

I can feel my heart beating. I hug my bag against me and repeat to myself, “Mona Paradis…Mona Paradis…”

What will I do if she isn’t here? How will she recognize me? She’s never seen me before. Maybe by the big brown envelope? I’ll hold it up just in case.

The bus stops behind a hotel. The travelers crowd toward the door, jostling to be the first out, loaded down like they’re about to make a portage. I let them all go by. I’m the last one out.

I don’t know what to do or where to go. I move forward slowly. The driver is sweating and pulling boxes out of the compartment underneath the bus. He tosses them onto the pavement behind him without even looking at them. His face is red and he’s short of breath.

As soon as the passengers recognize their suitcases, they grab them and take off as if there’s a fire. Some are swallowed up in cars that drive away quickly. Some rush into the hotel. Others take off down the sidewalk.

The driver slips away into the hotel, too. He has completely forgotten me. I just stand there alone. I scan the pavement.

She isn’t here, or else she’s late.

I wait. My hands are clammy. My legs feel weak.

Then I notice a big car right at the back of the parking lot. I look at it closely. There seem to be two people inside, but I’m not sure, because they’re not moving. I hold my bag against my stomach. I hold the envelope in front of me.

The car door opens and the driver gets out. He waves. I don’t react. I’m afraid of making a mistake. He waves again.

Does he mean me?

“Hey! You…come here…”

And at the same time, he opens the back door. Now I see that she’s there, too.

He waves again.

“Let’s go! Come on! We’re waiting! Hurry up!”

I run over and slide into the back seat. There’s a strange, strong smell in the car that I don’t recognize.

The door clicks shut, the engine roars. We drive straight off, as if we’re in a hurry, too. The seat is soft. I sit back.

The woman is enormous. She takes up all the room beside the driver, who is tall and skinny as a sapling. With a huge effort, she turns around to look at me. Behind her thick horn-rimmed glasses, her eyes look close and enormous, like a lynx.

She smiles. She has a gold tooth at the front, like a beaver’s tooth, and thick strawberry red lips.

This must be Madame Paradis, 531 rue de la Madone, Mont-Laurier.

After she examines me for a long time, she says, “Hand me the envelope, kid!” She has a big raspy voice.

She tries to hold out her right hand, but her arm is too short to reach past her huge chest.

I forgot all about the envelope. I quickly lean forward to give it to her. The strong smell is coming from her.

The car glides like a canoe carried on the current.

The restless eyes of the driver keep moving from the road to the rearview mirror. He’s watching me closely. The woman has opened the envelope. She reads, smiles, opens her purse, puts something in it, clicks it closed and puts it down between her feet. She continues to read and leaf through the papers.

The driver looks me in the eye.

“Did you have a good trip?” he asks.

I nod at his reflection in the mirror. I can only see his eyes.

“First time you’ve taken a bus?”

I nod again. It’s not true, but I say yes so he won’t ask me anything else, like where I went, or when or why.

“Hey, speak some Indian. Tell me how to say hello. Yeah, how do you say hello in your language? You must know that!”

“Leave him alone, Méo. He didn’t come out of the woods to talk Indian.”

“It’s true, it’s a known fact. Indians don’t talk much. Me, I know one word in Indian. Wawanesa. Know what it means? No? It means insurance company! I work for Wawanesa! What do you say to that?”

I smile at the mirror. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I guess I’ll get used to it. It’s normal that I don’t understand everything.

“I’m talking to you but I don’t even know your name yet. What’s your name?”

“His name is Pierre Larivière,” Madame Paradis says before I have a chance to answer.

They gave me that name at the residential school because it was easy to remember and write. My father named me Nipishish, which means little river. But now that I live in the city, I guess I call myself Pierre Larivière.

I try not to look at the driver, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.

“You don’t look too Indian.”

She saves me again.

“Méo, you should pay more attention when I talk to you. I already told you that I ordered a Métis. It says so right here in black and white.” She reads from my form. “Pierre Larivière, Métis, born in 1944.”

She stops and calculates in her head. “He’s fifteen,” she says. “Father’s Indian, drowned in an accident, and his white mother abandoned the kid and died of a long incurable but non-contagious illness. He was adopted by the Twen…Twenish family. Says here, ‘Pierre Larivière attended St. Mark Residential School where he received an excellent education.’”

Then she adds, “There’s a note here in pencil. ‘Child is quiet and studious.’ Couldn’t ask for more, eh, Méo?”

“Hey, Pierre, how do you like my wheels?”

I smile and tell him I like them a lot.

“It’s an Oldsmobile two-tone super ’88 Holiday. Yes, sir, my friend. And that’s not all! Four door, hardtop. V-8 automatic, big engine, fully equipped, power brakes, power steering!”

“Power this, power that,” snaps his wife. “If it weren’t for the loan, Méo dear, you’d be walking right now!”

And they both burst out laughing. To be polite, I laugh, too, even though I don’t understand any of it. As far as I can tell, whites often laugh for no reason. I have a lot to learn if I’m going to live with them, but that’s okay. I’ll do whatever it takes.

“Méo?” Mona frowns. Her nostrils flare. “Méo!” Her voice is alarmed. “Do you smell smoke?”

She sniffs. Méo does, too.

“Did you put out your cigarette?”

She pulls out the ashtray…then she stops. The two of them look at each other with little smiles of understanding.

I blush right up to my ears as it dawns on me. I’m the guilty one. I have the smoked moosehide moccasins in my bag. I’m the one who smells.

I feel like a little kid. Mona turns her head and looks at me.

“When we get home, I’m going to run you a nice hot bath, little Pierre, and you can clean up. You’ll feel like a new man!”

Méo points out the sights. There are gleaming bikes in the window of Légaré’s store. On the left is the post office, the big building with the flag on it. Then comes the courthouse, the theater and the bowling alley.

“It isn’t complicated,” Méo says. “There’s just one main street, rue de la Madone. It goes from one end of town to the other, and we live at number 531.”

When we get to the apartment, Mona stands in the middle of the living room and points out each room — the kitchen, the bathroom. The door to their bedroom is closed.

“You’ll sleep here on the sofa. It’s very comfortable. Better than sleeping on the ground, that’s for sure.”

There’s a big window with blinds and beside it a door to a little patio. Then there’s the sidewalk and the street. I can hear the traffic going by outside.

I don’t say anything. I take everything in. Méo is waiting his turn. He pulls me over.

“Hey, look at this! This is my brand new TV. Twenty-six-inch screen…”

“Don’t worry,” Mona interrupts. “We go to bed early.”

“Wait a second, Mona,” Méo says. “Except for hockey nights. Don’t forget hockey.”

“Oh, you and your hockey! But enough talking. You must be starving. You can have your bath later.”

It’s true. I could eat a pack of wolves, but all I really want is to roll a big fat cigarette and smoke it. I pretend I’m interested in the TV. All I can see is shadows and black bars. It’s starting to make me dizzy.

“At this time of day the reception is bad and the screen is full of snow,” Méo says. But the two of us just keep staring at it, as if we’re waiting for something.

“There’s not too much on TV,” Méo says. “But that doesn’t matter. I watch it anyway. It’s a good way to kill time!”

It never occurred to me before that time could actually be killed.

“Time to eat!” Mona calls from the kitchen.

Dinner is ready. I’m not too worried. I know my table manners. I learned them at the residential school.

I go to the bathroom to wash my hands. There are mirrors everywhere, shelves filled with bottles, towels of many colors. The floor is covered with a thick pink carpet. Even the top of the toilet has a carpet. I walk on tiptoe, like a cat.

While I eat, my nose in my soup, Mona gives me some advice.

“Pierre, you start school tomorrow morning. If anyone asks your name, say Pierre Larivière. If they ask where you live, say 531 rue de la Madone, Apartment 1. If they ask your phone number, say you don’t know. If they ask who you live with, you say I live with my uncle Méo and my aunt Mona Paradis. If someone asks where you come from, you say Maniwaki. If they ask if you’re an Indian…well, best not to talk about it. Or just tell them that like all Canadians, one of your ancestors might have been Indian. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Aunt Mona.”

“Good. I have some clothes for you, so you’ll look nice and smart tomorrow.”

We eat in silence. There’s soup with rice and chicken and a plate of potatoes and sausage, which I wolf down.

Uncle Méo stops chewing, wrinkles his eyebrows and thinks for a moment with his fork in the air.

“So how much do we get for this?” he says with his mouth full.

Aunt Mona just drinks her soup as if he hasn’t said anything. I stare at my plate. There’s a bad feeling in the air.

“Mona, I’m talking to you,” he says stubbornly. “How much does this pay us?”

She rolls her big eyes. She’s not in a good mood. She takes her time, places her big plump hands on the table on either side of her plate. Her face is bright red.

“Listen, Méo,” she says, her voice low and threatening. “This has nothing to do with you. It’s my business. I’m the one who got the idea, I’m the one who’s organized the whole thing. Is that clear?”

Uncle Méo shifts nervously in his chair. I think they’ve both forgotten I’m here. I wish I could leave, but I can’t get up now. I make myself as small as possible.

“Mona, I’m your husband!” Méo looks like a dog that’s just had its bone taken away. “I have a right to know. How much are we getting for this?” He stresses the word we.

Mona gets up, pushes back her chair noisily, taps her index finger on the table. Her words are short and sharp. I’m sure she can be heard right out on the street.

“The housework, the cooking, the TV payments! Your damned case of beer every Saturday, your stupid wheels! All that costs a fortune! Money doesn’t grow on trees, Méo!”

Méo gets up now, too. His lips are trembling, his little brown eyes are bulging. I’m afraid they’re going to go at each other. Uncle Méo isn’t very big. I’ll bet my new aunt could crush him like a bug.

“Okay, fine,” he says with a sneer. “I get it. But Auntie Mona seems perfectly happy to plant her big fat ass in my car and wave bye-bye to her friends on the sidewalk, acting like the queen of England sitting in her velvet carriage…”

Mona is fuming. She’s ready to explode. Méo picks up his big coffee mug. It’s got his name printed on it. The O is in the shape of a tire.

He goes into the living room and sits down noisily in his chair in front of the TV.

“Méo, I don’t want to talk about this in front of him, do you understand?”

He doesn’t reply.

Later I stretch right out in the big white bathtub full of soapy water. I sink in up to my neck. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply.

I am in paradise. The water is hot, soft, perfumed.

What a day! I can hardly believe everything that’s happened to me. Just this morning I was lying on my mattress on the floor with my cousins stretched out all around me. Now here I am at the end of the same day, in another world. I can’t even begin to take it all in, but for now I’m happy just to lie here and let the water slide over my skin.

Fortunately, Méo and I are pretty much the same size, so I’ve inherited some of his old clothes, except for his shoes.

“My goodness,” Mona said when she saw my feet. “Looks like the good Lord gave you snowshoes instead of feet!” And she burst out laughing.

The door is closed, but I can still hear her shrill goose voice calling out advice.

“Be polite to the principal. Don’t fight with the other students. Look after your new clothes. Come straight home after school. And especially don’t tell anyone where you’re from or who you are…”

Underneath Mona’s sofa there’s a drawer on wheels. I pull it open. On one side there’s a white sheet, a gray flannel blanket and a pillow. On the other side there’s room for my things.

I hide my penknife right down in the toe of one of my moccasins. I roll the pair into a ball and put them in the bottom of my canvas bag. Then I shove the bag in the corner of the drawer.

I don’t like the idea of parting with the knife, but for the time being it’s probably safer under my bed. I know Mona will go through my things the first chance she gets, but she might not want to touch the moccasins.

She’ll see Manie’s birchbark basket, but I don’t want to give it to her. Not yet.

Aunt Mona and Uncle Méo have gone to their room in silence, their faces tight. I can tell they don’t like each other much.

I make up my bed. First I cover the whole sofa with the sheet. I put the pillow on the armrest. I lie down with my head facing the big window. I fold the sheet down over me like a sandwich. I reach down and try to spread out the flannel blanket without moving too much. My feet are poking out but I’m afraid of spoiling the arrangement.

I hear the squeal of tires speeding down the street outside. Strange voices sound from far away, get louder, then fade away in the night. I hear voices shout, cry, someone’s name, a greeting. A door bangs shut, a tomcat yowls. Through the blinds I can see the flashing neon sign of the grocery store across the street — Chez Armand… Restaurant… Grocery… Cold Beer… Chez Armand… Restaurant…

All night I doze off and on. I’m often startled awake. A car horn beeps, the neon sign flashes.

I’m hot. The sheet sticks to my skin. I’ve been dreaming but I can’t remember what about.

Each time the refrigerator goes on, the floor trembles.

13

THE NEXT MORNING I’m huddled under the juniper bush in the corner of the patio, like a snake under a rock.

I don’t want to go to school. I feel like an idiot with my plastic yellow bag on my back, wearing Méo’s baggy old clothes that smell of bleach.

Suddenly the door bangs open.

“What are you doing out here?” Uncle Méo shouts. “Why aren’t you on your way to school? Are you hiding? Good grief, that’s it. He’s hiding!”

He lights a cigarette. “You’re scared, aren’t you? You’re shaking in your boots.”

He swaggers out in his black-and-white shoes, his hands deep in the pockets of his gray suit. His cigarette is wedged between his teeth as he talks, noisily blowing long clouds of smoke out each side of his mouth. He’s got a ham and mustard sandwich wrapped in a napkin tucked under his arm.

I feel like I have a huge rock in my stomach. I’d even rather be back on the reserve, no matter how bad life is there. But it’s too late.

I can’t go back now. I don’t want to go back.

Uncle Méo stares at the passing traffic. It’s Monday morning, garbage day. The enormous garbage truck creeps forward, followed by men running back and forth across the street like crazed dogs. They grab the trash cans, empty them into the huge jaws of the crusher, then throw them onto the sidewalk where they bounce and roll like thunder. Black liquid leaks out of the truck, leaving a long stinking trail on the pavement. The garbage men keep running and sweating. They must be in a hurry to finish.

They make their living collecting other people’s garbage.

Uncle Méo finishes sucking on his cigarette. He pinches the butt between his fingers and flicks it onto the sidewalk. He blows the last puff of smoke through his nose.

“You’re used to living deep in the woods,” he says as he watches the garbage men. “But things are different here. You’re going to find it hard.”

He looks at his shoes and turns thoughtful. “I feel the same way every Monday morning when I have to go to the office. I drag my ass over there. I’d give anything to be a hundred miles away. So before I set foot on the sidewalk I just say this to myself…”

He looks defiant, his eyes narrowed, his teeth clenched.

“You can all just kiss my ass!”

I look at him in surprise.

“Look, Indian, you say it, too,” he commands. “Say it! It’ll do you good. It’s not complicated. You just look straight ahead, square your shoulders and tell them all to go to hell.”

I say it.

Suddenly I’m overcome with laughter. Soon my eyes are full of hot tears, and I’m crying buckets in the middle of a sunny morning.

“Good for you,” Uncle Méo says. “I’m happy for you. Do you smoke?”

I nod, and he pulls three rolled cigarettes out of a plastic case.

“Here, take three. When things get tough, light up one of these coffin nails and have a good drag. That’ll make you forget everything. If someone bothers you at school or gets on your nerves, don’t insult him. It just makes things worse. Offer him a cigarette. Okay now, I’ve got to get going.”

He lights up another cigarette and pulls on his rumpled jacket. He looks hard at the horizon and leaps onto the sidewalk, shouting, “You can all just kiss my ass!”

I head off slowly, as if I’ve got all the time in the world. I’ve never liked school. It seems to me there must be a better way to learn things.

I’m not worried about finding the way. Aunt Mona explained everything.

“You go along rue de la Madone until you reach the post office. Don’t turn at the traffic light, keep going straight. Do you understand? Go straight. At the end of the street, turn left. You’ll see the big school St.-Eugène. You can’t miss it. You’re to go straight to the principal’s office. Monsieur Boulanger will be expecting you.”

I take my time. The big doors of the Beaulieu Garage are open, and I see a car hanging up in the air. I cross a bridge. The water below is brown and dirty. It smells of gasoline. There are no fish in this river, that’s for sure.

The shoe repair shop isn’t open yet. The blinds are still shut.

I stop in front of the Cinéma Laurier. I look at a huge colored poster of bucking horses. Their black hooves rear in the air. They snort fire and their bulging eyes are red as flames. The men riding the horses have big hats like William’s, and they’re waving their revolvers. They look angry. In the background stand men with solemn painted faces, their heads decorated with long feathers. They look like half men, half birds.

I read the big red letters:

ALL WEEK, ONLY AT THE LAURIER,
CONQUEST OF THE WEST
WITH JOHN WAYNE

As I leave, I notice a door set back in the building. The sign on it says “Bowling.”

I carry on walking. I see the post office in front of me. The traffic light is green. I know I’m going the right way.

Suddenly I realize that I’m going to be late. Aunt Mona said the principal would be waiting for me. My heart starts to pound.

I turn the corner with big strides. In front of me sits St.-Eugène School, with its bare gray walls.

This is the place, all right. It’s set back on a hill. The big enclosed yard is covered with new asphalt, shiny as crow feathers. A strong smell of tar still floats in the air. No trees, no bushes, no plants. Not a drop of water. Just a huge, solid black lake.

I climb the cement steps and try to remember the principal’s name. I hear someone running up the steps behind me. He jostles me aside and opens the door. We both go in at the same time.

“Where are you going?” he asks breathlessly.

“Principal’s office?”

“Follow me.”

We climb the steps four at a time. The walls are beer-bottle green.

“That’s it!” he says, pointing.

And he carries on down the hall, opens a classroom door and rushes in. I hear a man’s voice say, “Millette, late again!”

“Oh, piss off!”

The long corridor is strangely silent. There’s a constant distant hum, like the sound of the wind in the treetops. And there’s a smell. I can tell there are a lot of people in the school. I feel as if I’m on an overloaded boat.

I go in. A secretary stops typing and stares at me from behind her glasses. She’s thinking hard.

“Larivière!” she cries suddenly. “That’s it. You’re Pierre Larivière.”

I nod. She doesn’t tell me her name.

“Have a seat. I’ll tell Monsieur Boulanger that you’re here.”

She gets up and opens the door to the office at the back.

“Sir, the new student Larivière is here.”

“Larivière?”

“You know, the Algonquin. The Indian sent by Indian Affairs. You remember. The agent from the ministry came and…”

“Right, right. I remember. Tell him to come in.”

I tell myself to keep quiet. The last time I stood in front of a principal was at the residential school. He struck me on the side of the head so hard that I lost consciousness.

Monsieur Boulanger is sitting behind his desk.

“Sit down!” he says crisply.

I want to remain standing, but I sit down quickly.

“You’re late. Classes begin at eight-thirty.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Yes, sir!”

“I’ll let it go today, but in future you must be on time. Just because you’re an Indian doesn’t mean you can arrive whenever you feel like it. We have rules here, and the rules are for everyone. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

The secretary brings in a file and puts it down in front of him. She smiles at me and disappears. He opens the file and leans over it. His lips and eyebrows move when he reads.

I thought all school principals were old, but this one is quite young. He’s very, very clean. He has shiny, wavy black hair, his shirt is spotless, his tie is blue. He is completely absorbed in his reading.

The secretary said the agent from the Ministry of Indian Affairs was here. I came to the city to forget and be forgotten, but the ministry is there no matter where I go. It follows me like a shadow, makes decisions for me, rules my life.

I feel naked, as if the most secret parts of my life are exposed. My whole life is in that damned file he’s reading. One day I’m going to get my hands on it and see what it says. And after I’ve read everything, I’m going to burn it.

“Good!”

He interrupts the anger that was starting to grow in my stomach.

“You’ll be placed in a special class. Follow me.”

I follow him down the corridor and straight into Room 205.

We’re greeted by total silence. I feel dozens of pairs of eyes examining me from head to toe. I look down at my shoes.

The teacher seems caught off guard.

“Sit down, Millette,” he says. “We’ll talk later.”

I realize that Millette is the tall guy I ran into earlier on the stairs. He was in the middle of being chewed out by the teacher, a flabby bald man with thick lips. He speaks with a funny accent.

“Monsieur Croteau?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have a new student who has joined us this morning. His name is Pierre Larivière.”

“Very good, sir. Take a seat, Larivière!”

I spot a free seat beside Millette and head straight for it. I cross the entire classroom and sit down. I feel better now that I’m just one of the crowd, even if my neighbor and I are the two biggest.

Nobody is looking at me anymore. Everyone is looking at the principal. I can tell something’s wrong, but I don’t know what it is. I thought the principal would leave, but instead he’s walking back and forth in front of the class. His steps are heavy, and his eyes shift from side to side. His hands are tightly locked behind his back, like a trap about to spring.

I know this look all too well.

“This morning,” the principal says at last, biting off each word, “I saw graffiti in the washroom.”

He gives the class a long, black look.

“Do you know what graffiti is?”

He waits, knowing perfectly well that no one is going to risk giving him an answer. Every mouth is clamped shut. Eyes are blank, and sweaty hands are folded on the desks.

“You there, Miron,” he says, raising his voice. “Do you know what graffiti is?”

“No, sir,” Miron says at once.

“How about you, Létourneau?”

The boy shakes his head. “No, sir.”

“Robitaille?”

“No, sir.”

“So, you aren’t even smart enough to know the name for what you’re doing. Fine! I shall tell you. Graffiti are the indecencies that idiots write on the walls of public places. This morning, in the bathroom, I read…”

He stops, keeping us in suspense. The tension is at a high pitch.

Then he says, “Don’t care if you shit or not but if you do, hit the pot!”

The tension goes up a notch.

“And it’s signed, The Principal. Someone has forged my signature!”

There’s dead silence.

Suddenly, a little muffled laugh breaks the silence.

The principal leaps down, grabs the kid by the ear and pulls him out of the classroom like a dog.

As soon as the principal slams the door behind them, Miron, a short, strapping guy with a square head and curly blond hair, grabs his neighbor by the collar and yells in his face, “Vézina, you thick-headed dunce, do you know what graffiti is?”

And Vézina answers in a squeaky voice, his chin pressed practically against his ears, “Yes, sir! It means Don’t care if you shit or not but if you do, hit the pot!”

At that everyone collapses into laughter and starts banging their fists on their desks.

Monsieur Croteau is sweating.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, that’s enough!” he shouts hoarsely. “Be serious!”

Millette and I watch the goings-on calmly. I’m relieved. The worst is over. I’ve arrived, and now I hope they’ll just leave me alone.

But Monsieur Croteau is madder than the devil in a pool of holy water. His round eyes sweep the room and land on me. I try to avoid his gaze, but it’s no use. He leaps on me faster than a bullfrog.

“Monsieur Pierre Larivière?”

I’ve never heard my name uttered so clearly. It rips into me like a clap of thunder, like the sound of Uncle Méo’s TV.

I feel myself sinking right into the floor. I want to disappear. The classroom is so quiet you can hear a leaf fall.

Croteau is pleased with himself. He’s found a subject that has everyone’s attention, and I’m it.

Everyone is looking me over. They’re taking in my thick hair, my dark skin, my almond-shaped eyes, my high cheekbones. I have never felt so different in my whole life. Why was I born like this and not like everyone else?

The teacher takes his time.

“Monsieur Larivière,” he asks. “And what brings you to us?”

I don’t move. Every head is turned toward me, their eyes sneering, mouths slightly open, ears pricked, but I don’t say anything.

He’s getting impatient, but that doesn’t scare me. I have time on my side. The other students are starting to shift in their seats. Some of them are looking at Croteau to see what he’s going to do.

“So tell us where you’re from, Monsieur Pierre Larivière?” he asks, louder.

They’re all around me, like a pack of wolves on the scent of a moose.

I’d like to tell them that my father’s name was Shipu, that he was a great moose hunter and great fisherman, a friend to the animals, the wind, the sun, the trees and the water. I want to tell them that my name is Nipishish, and that I’m his son. That I decided to come here to become educated, to be free, and that I’m ready to do whatever it takes to rebuild my life, leave the miserable reserve, forget the damned residential school.

There are so many things I’d like to tell them, but the words won’t come out.

I don’t know who I am anymore. Larivière? Nipishish? Métis?

Half Indian, half white.

I take a deep breath.

“Maniwaki!” I say, just the way Aunt Mona told me. “I’m from Maniwaki, sir!”

I’m surprised by the sound of my own voice. It echoes in the classroom. I sound just like Monsieur Croteau.

“Ah, good…” he replies.

“Hoo, hoo, hoo!”

It’s Miron, murmuring very softly, tapping his mouth with the palm of his hand. The others get the message. Vézina picks it up first.

“Hoo, hoo, hoo!”

He sticks his finger up behind the head of the guy beside him to imitate a feather.

Then Létourneau starts, and Robitaille and all the others whose names I don’t know. All tapping their mouths and beating out a war cry.

The teacher stands at the front looking pale. The cries spread. My ears are buzzing.

Suddenly there’s a dry, sharp click. The entire class goes still, and all eyes turn to the door. The doorknob slowly turns. I figure the principal is hiding in the hall, that he has heard everything and is about to burst in.

The door creaks open and in walks the little guy with the stupid laugh. He walks stiffly to his seat. His eyes are puffy, his ears white, his cheeks swollen.

Miron and his followers smile with relief.

“Sit down, Monsieur Grondin,” Croteau says gently.

Grondin sits down silently. His hands are resting on his thighs. I get the feeling they are red and hot. He doesn’t know he has just done me a big favor.

“All right,” says the teacher. “Let’s turn to a little grammar.”

“Oh, no! Not more bloody grammar! Bloody hell!”

“Yes, gentlemen. Grammar. You could use it.” He turns to me. “Monsieur Larivière, for today you can look on with Millette.”

I slide over while Millette takes the grammar book out of his desk.

Millette smells. At first I can’t pin it down but then it comes to me. He smells like mildew, like an old cabin that hasn’t been aired out. I look at his hands holding the book. They are wide and almost transparent. He has webbed fingers like a duck, and they are trembling uncontrollably, like water just before it comes to a boil. At first I think he’s just nervous, but then I realize his whole body is shaking. He’s as thin as a knife, his skin is gray, and his teeth are kind of yellow. He’s missing two on my side. It’s like he’s got a black hole in his mouth.

His clothes are too small. If I’m swimming in mine, he looks as if he’s been stuffed into his. He’s wearing a black leather vest decorated with studs, chains and bits of metal. The sleeves only come halfway down his forearms. He’s got on faded black jeans, a red shirt done up to the neck, and cowboy boots with worn-down heels.

The bell rings loudly, practically cracking my eardrums. The class rises with one breath and stampedes to freedom. Millette and I run down the stairs together. We’re a team now.

The fresh September air feels good. Hundreds of students come pouring out of the school, spreading out over the asphalt yard like a herd of caribou on the tundra. I follow my new friend to the edge of the yard and offer him one of Uncle Méo’s cigarettes. I light one for myself and take a long, deep drag.

Millette holds his cigarette between his long fingers. They look like the blades of a pair of scissors. His hand is so big that when he puts the cigarette to his lips, his hand covers his mouth, his nose and his chin. He breathes in deeply. We both smoke with our left hands.

“Thanks for the smoke. I’ll pay you back.”

I realize his voice trembles, too.

“That’s okay. It’s always better to smoke with a friend…”

“Yeah, you’re right. Smoking alone is pretty boring.”

He laughs, and I can see the big hole in his mouth. He spits out bits of tobacco.

“You got to school late today?” I ask.

“Yeah, that’s right.” He smiles. “But I don’t recommend it. Room 205 is a special class — the principal’s brainchild. He sticks all the kids who have failed a year or two in the same class along with the dummies like me…and you! But we’re the lucky ones. We’re big. We can defend ourselves.”

I nod. He takes another drag, exhales, spits.

“Miron’s a sneak and a hypocrite,” he says. “You have to keep a close eye on him and stay well away at the same time. He sells cigarettes and beer that he steals from his father’s grocery store. He can do everything — lend you money, find you a girl. He has his gang. Even the teachers are afraid of him. The others are just pieces of cow shit, sitting around on their fat asses.”

He tosses his butt on the asphalt and crushes it with the pointy toe of his boot.

“What about you?” I ask.

“Me? They call me Gillette,” he says proudly.

“How come?”

“They say I look like a razor blade!”

We both burst out laughing. The bell goes.

“You and I don’t have to bust our asses too much,” Millette says as we follow the crowd back in. “We’ll be moved on to the next grade because of our size. It’s not marks that count. All you have to do is go with the flow — and keep growing.”

It’s not exactly what I thought school was all about.

14

AFTER THE DINNER dishes have been washed and put away and everything is spic and span, Aunt Mona goes out to the patio. She sits back in a folding lawn chair and sips her coffee. I often sit out there with her, right on the cement, my feet on the sidewalk, leaning against one of the iron posts that holds up the balcony above us. We watch the cars go by. They stink up the air and shower us with dust. Mona keeps an eye on the grocery store across the street. Armand, the grocer, has hung a cow bell above the door, and every time it opens, the bell rings.

Aunt Mona likes her observation post. She knows the comings and goings of everyone in the neighborhood.

When there’s nothing on TV except for the news, Uncle Méo comes out. He says watching the news is a waste of time.

“How about a little drive in town?” he asks, dangling his hockey-stick key chain, and we jump at the opportunity.

I love driving around in the car. I love the smell of the leatherette, the quiet hum of the motor, the soft seat. I feel like I’m being rocked in a cradle. When Méo takes the wheel it’s like he suddenly turns into someone important. Aunt Mona takes her little makeup case out of the glove compartment and examines herself in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. She smooths down her hair, puts on lipstick and presses her lips together like a carp. Then she puts everything away again.

I sit right behind the driver. He arranges his rearview mirror so he can see me when he talks to me. He likes to have me in full view.

We always take the same route. We go up the main street, turning our heads left and right like cocks on a weather vane. Sometimes Méo nods to an acquaintance. We go past the cathedral, a huge, dark building with big doors. At the end of the main street, just before the bridge, we turn right on Riverside Drive. It already smells like the country here.

Now we slow down. This is the rich part of town. On the right is the river. On the left are the houses. They are big and impressive, and they sit right at the back of their properties on the edge of the woods.

“Look, Dr. Roy’s at home,” says Mona. “There’s his Jeep. Would you look at that house with the fountain and double garage. How much do you think that one goes for, Méo?”

Méo, who works in insurance, knows exactly what each house costs, but he takes his time and scratches his head as if he’s calculating.

“That one?” he says finally “Number 325? That belongs to Lambert who owns the hardware business. It’s worth at least $175,000.”

“Wow! No shit, eh, Méo — $175,000? That’s a lot of dough. Oh, look, they’ve paved the entrance to that new one on the corner. You know, I like it better like that.”

I just look around without saying a word, my elbow on the armrest, my chin on my fist, my nose against the glass. I see bicycles lying around by the front doors, lawns as smooth as the carpet in Mona’s bathroom, big furry dogs, tidy clumps of trees, trimmed hedges, big picture windows full of light. I get the feeling that life is good inside those houses.

Méo and Mona carry on with their commentary, appraising everything. The doctor’s house, the mayor’s, the manager of the Légaré.

Then Méo shouts at me, “Look, look, Pierre!”

I jump, startled.

“There, there.” He points at a big black car. “That’s the new Cadillac. Now that’s an automobile, the best car in the world!”

I look at him in the rearview mirror. His eyes are sparkling.

“Méo! Look at the one they’re building over there. That’s new. My God, it looks like a villa in Spain!”

On the way back we stop at a brand-new Dairy Queen. It’s Mona’s treat. I go in for it. I don’t like standing in line with the other people, but it’s worth it.

I know the order by heart. “Two large soft cherry ice creams and a small vanilla.” The small one’s for me.

We get back on the road straight away. Méo holds the wheel with one hand and licks his big soft cherry ice cream while he’s driving.

But I’m perfectly happy. I like my vanilla.

15

EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT, Uncle Méo calls over to the store across the street.

“Hello, Armand? It’s Méo. I’m sending Pierre over. Give me a two-four of cold Molson. Mona will pay you at the end of the month.”

He has to phone ahead because I’m too young to buy beer myself. Armand says that if Méo phones, it’s like he’s going over himself.

Aunt Mona has a fit about it because she says beer costs an arm and a leg, but Uncle Méo just pretends he doesn’t hear her. His beer is sacred, like his car and his TV.

The case of twenty-four is heavy. When I get home I steal two — one for me and one for Millette. Then I take two to Uncle Méo. He has a huge capacity for a man so thin. I don’t know where he puts all the beer he drinks. He knows I help myself, but he doesn’t say anything.

At seven o’clock he undresses and sits in his La-z-boy in his underwear, his skinny feet on the leatherette footrest. He plants his icy bottle of beer between his legs and watches TV. He looks like a man in seventh heaven.

That night, Millette and I sit on the edge of his bed with our beers. We’re drinking it straight from the bottle.

“Nothing more sissy than drinking beer from a glass,” says Millette.

He looks like a duck swallowing a fish when he drinks. He lifts his chin, rolls up his eyes and pours the beer straight down his throat. Then he looks up, his eyes damp. He rests the bottle on his pointy knee, belches several times, pats his stomach and says in a hollow voice, “Your beer, Larivière, is damn good!”

At first I didn’t like the taste of beer. It got up my nose and made me sneeze, but I got used to it pretty fast. Besides, it’s a treat for Millette and me.

When we’re drinking in Millette’s room we never talk about school. One day I show him my penknife and tell him it was left to me by my father. I let him hold it, feel its heat. He holds it for a long time and then hands it back as if it’s something very valuable. Sometimes I even feel like telling him about Pinamen.

Millette lives with his mother. I only met her once. Her face is as pale as chalk, she has thin red lips, very blonde mussy hair, little narrow feet and very high heels. She’s a waitress at Bar 69 on the main street. It’s a very busy bar. Whenever I pass it, I slow down and try to peer through the big window, but it’s always dirty and covered with a heavy red curtain. If I’m lucky enough to be standing there when the door opens, I can smell the alcohol and mustiness inside. For an instant I hear voices, deep-throated laughs mixed with country-and-western music. Then the door closes. I’ve noticed that the men who go into the bar are always in a hurry. They have their hands in their pockets and their heads hunched down between their shoulders.

When Millette’s mother comes home at night, she’s usually with one of his uncles. Millette has lots of uncles, and they don’t even bother telling him their names. In the morning, his uncle of the day gives Millette a cigarette or a couple of dollars.

From time to time his mother brings him a sandwich from the bar. She keeps it fresh by putting it between the double-pane windows because they don’t have a fridge. In the winter, the apartment is cold enough that she just leaves the sandwich on the table. Millette gulps it down for breakfast before school.

Millette says he’s lucky. He has his own room with a bed, a blanket and a pillow. There’s no other furniture. When his mother isn’t there, he leaves his door open to let in the heat from the light in the kitchen. Otherwise when he goes to bed, he rolls himself up in the blanket with all his clothes on and hides his head under the pillow. That way he doesn’t hear his mother arguing with the drunken uncle.

He says he really loves his mother.

16

OUR FRENCH TEACHER, Monsieur Thibeault, is a little man with round black eyes and a thin voice. He walks bent over on the tips of his toes, like he’s got the wind at his back. We respect him, because he respects us. Nobody in the class says anything bad about Thibeault. He doesn’t just read from a pile of books. Sometimes he just has a little sheet of paper in front of him. He’s a good storyteller. He’s even been to Paris and London. He reads the papers, watches TV, he likes hunting, fishing, the forest. He asks us questions, but he answers a lot of them himself.

He makes us laugh. He’ll be talking away and suddenly look at the clock and say in a surprised voice, “Would you look at that, boys. I only have fifteen minutes left. We’d better take a quick look at the material, otherwise the principal will have my head.”

One day, near the end of class, he says, “Today I am going to tell you about two great men who have left their mark on the history of humanity — Lamartine and Victor Hugo. They both lived in the last century.”

The names mean nothing to us, but then we already know, thanks to Monsieur Thibeault, that we don’t know much about anything.

“These two men,” he goes on, “were famous writers. They are said to be romantic writers because they wrote about their personal feeings, about life, death and love…”

The class is silent. Life, death — I think I know about them. But love?

Several students start shifting in their seats.

“They wrote poetry!” the teacher says.

Everyone bursts out laughing. Monsieur Thibeault smiles, too.

“Poetry?” says Miron. “That’s for sissies!”

When things have quieted down, the teacher says, “I am going to read you a short poem by Lamartine. Then we’ll finish with a little bit of Victor Hugo.”

Monsieur Thibeault is a good reader. He takes a page that’s sitting on his desk and almost turns pale with concentration. He reads with a serious voice, one hand over his heart:

O, Time, suspend thy flight; and you, blessed hours,

Your course a moment stay!

Let us taste the swift delights of this day of ours,

Of this our fairest day!

I don’t have time to take it all in, but it sounds nice.

He returns to his normal voice and says, “Now I am going to ask someone to read part of a poem by Victor Hugo.”

We all shut down our faces. Reading in front of the group is the worst.

The teacher’s gaze sweeps over the room for an instant and lands on me like a club.

“Larivière, it’s your turn!”

“Me? No, I don’t want to.” I’m as pale as a sheet.

Millette gives me a poke on the back.

“You can do it, Tonto! Go on!”

I get to my feet painfully. I go up to the front of the class. The teacher hands me the sheet of paper. The room is filled with a cruel silence, and I know that under the silence there’s a bomb waiting to go off as soon as I make the slightest mistake. I can just hear them all making fun of me under their breath.

“Just read the title first,” Monsieur Thibeault says.

I would give the shirt on my back, even my pack of tobacco, to make the bloody bell ring, but there are still six minutes left.

I cough and start to read.

“Oceano…Oceano nox…”

“Good!” he insists. “Carry on.”

I read the first words to myself.

My vision gets blurry as the words dance like a cloud of black flies in front of my eyes.

It isn’t possible.

Suddenly I’m in another classroom, at the residential school. I’m looking over the heads of the children with their empty, lifeless eyes.

Monsieur Thibeault sees my confusion. The whole class is ill at ease, the silence is heavy.

“Go on, Larivière, for God’s sake!” Miron cries. “We’re listening!”

I place the sheet of paper back on the desk. I don’t need it. I lean forward. My voice changes, I can hear it. I sound just like the teacher at the residential school The words roll off my tongue in big waves, my voice swells like sails filled with wind. I recite the poem in a clear voice.

How many gallant captains and brave hands

Who joyfully set out for distant lands

Have over somber skylines gone like ghosts!

How many has fortune overtaken

In soundless seas on nights by moons forsaken

Submerged beneath blind waters in their hosts!

Monsieur Thibeault is rooted to the spot in the corner, his mouth open, his arms dangling at his sides. Everyone looks at me as if I’ve just landed from another planet.

Whenever he felt sad, whenever he missed his home in the Gaspésie, our teacher at the residential school would go to the back of the classroom and recite these lines to himself in a loud voice — lines I repeated to myself until I knew them by heart. But I never heard myself say them out loud before. I thought I’d forgotten them, but now they have come back to me.

I always thought it was something he learned from his mother or his grandmother. Now I find out it’s a poem by someone called Victor Hugo.

I walk out of the classroom and hurry outside. The bell rings behind me. I don’t want anyone to see the tears rolling down my cheeks. They’ve come up to the surface like water that suddenly gushes up when you break through the thick ice in winter.

17

ON FRIDAYS, MONSIEUR Thibeault always has a surprise for us. This week he’s standing at the front of the room with his hands behind his back. He’s hiding something. As usual, Miron is acting up, swearing, banging down the top of his desk, swinging around noisily in his seat.

Gradually things quiet down, like the calm after a gust of wind. Without saying a word, Monsieur Thibeault shows us an envelope that he’s been holding behind his back. It’s long and light, with red, white and blue stripes around the edge. He waves it in the air like a flag. He walks back and forth in front of the class and waves it under the noses of the kids in the front, the ones who are nearsighted. He makes some of them touch it, sniff it.

“It’s a funny kind of paper,” says a kid in the second row. “Like toilet paper.”

Everyone laughs.

“And to whom is it addressed?” the teacher asks quickly, before the laughter gets any worse.

The kid squints at the writing. “To…uh, Monsieur…uh…G. Thibeault.”

“Right!”

“At 320, rue La…la…violette…Mont-Laurier…”

“Right!”

“Canada.”

“Good. Do you see anything else?”

“It says By Airmail.”

“And the stamp?”

The kid’s forehead wrinkles up.

“Republique f-f-française!”

The teacher snatches back the envelope and leaps back onto the platform as lightly as a deer.

“This letter has come to me from Paris, the capital of France. The most beautiful, marvelous city in the world. Just imagine. It has traveled more than five thousand miles to Mont-Laurier.”

He reads aloud and comments at the same time.

Dear brother!

I am presently in Paris (the capital of France) sitting on the terrace of a café (that’s an outdoor restaurant) on St. Michel in the Latin Quarter (that’s where all the artists live). The Seine runs alongside (that’s the famous river that runs through the middle of Paris) and just a bit farther I can see the tower of Notre Dame (that’s the big stone cathedral). I am writing you while I sip my espresso (that’s a small cup of very strong coffee).

I have good news. I have sent the manuscript for my novel to a publishing house and it has been accepted. I am in the City of Light now to sign the contract and enjoy life. I will call you when I return.

Your big brother,
Paul

Monsieur Thibeault’s voice is thick with emotion.

“This is a letter from my dear older brother. When you think about it, it’s almost like magic. This little sheet of paper, light as a feather, has crossed the ocean full of words just for me — words that connect me with the person who sent them.”

Then he says something that goes straight to my heart.

“Often, in life, when we are upset or troubled, when we don’t know what to think or who to talk to, the simple act of taking a piece of paper and a pencil and writing can do us enormous good. Writing things down lets us talk to ourselves, helps us understand who we are, where we come from and what we are heading for…”

On the way home from school, I think about what Monsieur Thibeault said. What if I write a letter to Pinamen? It would be as if I was talking to her.

The more I think about it, the more this idea takes hold. I spend a long time leaning on the railing of the bridge, watching the water below.

What if I can’t do it? And I don’t have her address…

But the ministry has an address. It’s on the envelope that Mona receives every month. The ministry surely knows where Pinamen Petitquay is. It could find her in its files.

I tell no one about my plan. In my head I find the perfect words and build them into sentences. I rewrite them a hundred times. I want my words to say exactly what I feel.

Finally, one night after dinner, I get out my schoolbooks, my notebooks, my pencils, my eraser. I spread everything out in front of me on the kitchen table.

I’m scared. I want to get up, stuff everything back in my bag and collapse in front of the television with Méo. After all, no one will blame me for not writing.

Then a voice inside me says if I don’t write it, I will spend the rest of my life thinking about this letter that I never finished, never mailed.

I don’t want to write pages and pages. Just two or three lines. Maybe just a paragraph to tell her that I have never forgotten her.

But what if there is someone else in her life? What if she’s already married? I brush away this thought.

I take the plunge. I write every night. I erase, start over. I go through pages and pages of my notebook. Aunt Mona and Uncle Méo are surprised. They’ve never seen me work so hard. I tell them I have an important composition to write for Monsieur Thibeault. Every night before I go to bed, I gather up all my rough pages and carefully put them in my school bag.

It’s as if I’ve opened the lid of a chest that has been buried for a long time. And now that the chest is open, I can’t close it.

Dear Pinamen,

I don’t know where you are. I imagine that you’re back with your family. I’m not even sure that you’ll get this letter, but my heart told me to write you and I decided to do what it said.

Do you remember those few hours we spent together at the train station? I’ll never forget them. That day I saw in your eyes and in your voice that you felt good being with me. Then you got into the girls’ car and I went with the boys. I always hoped that you weren’t living through the same agony I was. This is the first time I’ve had the courage to talk about it. I want to be completely truthful with you. At the residential school, I was humiliated, beaten, pawed by filthy hands until I was sorry I had ever been born, until I was ashamed to be an Indian, ashamed of my ancestors, my language.

But always, in those terrible moments, I thought about you. I remembered your smile, and it made me feel strong. I resisted for the two of us. I dreamed of the day when I would see you again.

Sometimes I still feel so bad that I cry when I’m alone. It’s like I’m being taken over by a huge, sudden pain. I can’t explain it, but it makes me feel as if I’m alone and naked in a terrible snowstorm.

I was full of hope when I came to live in town. I thought I could bury the horrible memories that were haunting me on the reserve. I thought I would be able to sleep without nightmares, but I was wrong. The memories stick to my skin. Here I’m alone and useless. I’m a misfit, a good for nothing, and I feel as if there’s no place on this mother earth where an Indian like me can fit in.

What am I going to do with my life?

As I reread this letter, I don’t see the fine words I’ve been dreaming of writing you for so long. But I’m going to mail this anyway, because the words come straight from my heart.

Nipishish

18

AUNT MONA IS always telling me how much it costs to keep me. She never stops talking about money. But I know that every month she gets a check from the Ministry of Indian Affairs. She just stuffs it in the bottom of her bag.

One day she says, “Pierre, you are big and strong, you have to find a job. You could deliver groceries or pack bags at the cash, a strong boy like you.”

I just nod, but I don’t take her seriously.

It turns out I should have. The following week, in the middle of supper, she says, “I’ve found a job for you, Pierre!”

“A job?”

“Yes! They need a pin setter at the bowling alley. I know the manager, he’s my second cousin. I told him about you, told him you are strong and quick and smart. You have everything it takes to be a good pin boy.”

Uncle Méo is sitting at the end of the table, picking his teeth with a toothpick. He doesn’t say a thing.

“But I go to school…”

“This won’t get in the way of your classes. The bowling alley is only open nights and weekends. Besides,” she adds, smiling, “I spoke to the agent at the ministry. He said it’s good for you to learn how to work, that this will help mold your character, teach you the work ethic. You have an interview tonight at seven. You know where the bowling alley is. Right below the theater.”

I have no choice. Besides, if I make some money, maybe by spring I’ll have enough to buy a nice red bike like the one in the window of Légaré’s store.

At seven o’clock it’s already dark, and the neon sign for the alley is lit up, the arrow pointing to the lower level. People are already arriving. They open the big heavy door and are swallowed up into the stairwell that leads to the basement.

I wait. I don’t like basements. But it’s the end of November and my feet are freezing.

I at least have to go and see it. Then I can politely refuse the job and go back and tell Aunt Mona that things didn’t work out.

Another couple goes through the door and I slip in behind them. A strong smell of sweaty feet and old leather fills my throat. I hear what sounds like the beats of a drum, long and regular, mixed with the blows of an ax, as if someone is splitting wood. When I get halfway down the stairs I see the manager, Mona’s cousin, standing behind his shiny counter. I know right away that it’s him. He’s short, thick-set, with a wide mouth and forehead and a brushcut. He’s noticed me, too. He can see everyone who comes in before they see him, because of the way the door opens at the bottom of the stairs.

I can’t turn back now. He stops wiping the counter and gives me a questioning look. He stares and waits. I can see myself in the huge mirror behind him.

“Are you the manager?” I ask timidly.

“As far as I know I am!” he thunders.

“Madame Mona Paradis sent me. She told me that you might be needing a…a pin setter.”

“Maybe!”

He doesn’t budge, his arms spread, his hands leaning on the brown counter. In one hand he’s crushing a wet rag. I can see his big stomach rub against the edge of the counter.

“Do you know how to set pins?” he asks.

“No, but I learn quickly.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Show me your hands,” he says. “Stretch out your arms! Spread your legs! Lean over! Touch the floor without bending your legs!”

I obey like a puppet. He softens his tone.

“So you live with Romeo and Ramona!” It takes me awhile to figure out that he’s talking about Uncle Méo and Aunt Mona.

The cousin fixes me with his eyes and says, “The more I look at you, the more I think you’re an Indian!”

I feel myself going pale. Surely Mona has told him all about me.

“My name is Pierre Larivière,” I say firmly. “I live at 531, rue de la Madone!”

He looks defensive.

“Okay, already. Don’t get mad, kid! Just one last question. Can you hold three pins in each hand?”

I’m standing beside a cooler full of beer. I push aside the glass door, stick both arms in the refrigerator and grab six beers, three in each hand, the necks of the bottles wedged between my fingers. I wave them under his red nose.

“Okay, put them back! Tonight you’ll sit on the bench over there and see how things work. Doesn’t take a genius. You start tomorrow at seven o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.”

And he goes back to wiping the counter.

I watch how the game works. A player stops right at the line and throws a big ball that rolls down the lane like a train out of hell. It hurtles down and crashes into the pins. Bam! The pins fly up and tumble down.

Behind a grill at the end is a person, barely visible, who sits astride a bench, legs dangling. That’s the pin setter.

While the player goes to take a second ball, the setter hurries down into the pit, collects the fallen pins and quickly sits down again. With the end of his foot, he activates a mechanism that makes nails come out of the floor. There’s a hole in the bottom of each pin. He quickly places the pins on the nails and then the nails go back into the floor.

Nothing to it.

One of the setters comes and sits beside me while he waits for another group of bowlers to come to his lane. I recognize him from school.

“Hi,” he says. “You’re the new guy?”

“Yes, I start tomorrow.”

“Have you ever done this before?”

“No.”

“It’s not hard. You just have to have eyes on the back of your head, and never let yourself get distracted. Set up the pins as quickly as you can. The customers like fast games.”

I ask him the question I forgot to ask the manager.

“How much does it pay?”

“Depends on the day. Ten cents a game, plus tips. But Rosaire, that’s the manager, controls the tips. Once he takes his cut, there’s not much left. That’s the price we pay to work. On a good week, it’s about twenty bucks.”

Twenty dollars a week! In four weeks I’ll have enough to buy a brand new CCM bike.

I learn quickly. I’m motivated. I set every evening except Friday. Before long I am so fast that I can do two lanes at the same time, jumping from one to another like a deer.

19

ON FRIDAY I arrive at Millette’s apartment with my two beers hidden under the old winter coat that I’ve inherited from Uncle Méo. It has a useful inner pocket.

I’m feeling good, because it’s December, and I love winter.

Millette’s waiting for me. He’s excited.

“What’s happening?”

“Come and see!”

He pulls me into the room by the arm. He bends over and pulls a small case of beer out from under his bed.

“Wow! Did you steal it?”

“One of my uncles left this morning in a real hurry. He left this on the kitchen table, and I hid it under my bed. I’ve been waiting for you ever since.”

Millette can swallow three or four beers without flinching. I’m reeling after just two, but I feel like celebrating. Tonight, on the way back to Aunt Mona’s, I’m going to pick up my first pay. Two weeks — that’s thirty or forty dollars!

I feel like a millionaire.

• • •

I hang on to the railing as I go down the stairs to the bowling alley. I feel dizzy. The smell of sweaty feet sticks in my throat. I can hear the rumble of the bowling balls. I feel as if I’m going to throw up. I stop and take a deep breath.

My first pay.

Rosaire has been watching me ever since I set foot in the place. He has a mean look in his eye. The balls are rolling, the pins are crashing.

I turn toward the counter. I see myself in the mirror, scruffy-looking, my skin gleaming. I’m hot. Rosaire is standing in his usual spot.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Guess.”

“Don’t play games with me…”

“I’ve come for my pay.”

“Come another night. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“But tonight’s pay day. I want my money just like the others.”

“I’m not the one who pays you.” He’s turning red with anger. His fists are closed on the counter.

“If it isn’t you, then who is it?”

The customers have realized that something is going on at the counter. Fewer balls are being thrown. Rosaire is getting edgy.

“Listen, you little punk, you settle that with your aunt Ramona. She’s the one who’s collecting your pay.”

Ramona? He’s lying!

“And don’t you ever forget that I’m the boss here. You’re just an Indian.”

I grab him by his lapel and I pull him toward me.

“Give me my money!” I shout in his face.

I feel very strong, but Rosaire shoves me away and slams my back against the cooler. The bottles knock against one another and topple over.

I open the door of the cooler, take out a beer. It feels cold in my hand. I throw it against the mirror with all my strength. The bottle breaks, the mirror shatters into a thousand pieces. There’s glass everywhere, and beer runs down the wall.

People shout. Rosaire disappears under the counter. I throw bottles everywhere. They roll down the bowling alleys into the pins.

The door opens with a crash. Footsteps pound down the stairs. Two police officers with sticks grab my shoulders with an iron grip and cuff my hands behind my back.

I am a prisoner. I can’t hold myself up. They throw me onto the stairs and drag me up.

I hear Rosaire screaming below.

“You’re nothing but a damned savage, a miserable piece of shit! A stinking Indian! Never set foot in my bowling alley again. Understand?”

Outside there’s a crowd. The movie is just letting out. I wish I could just take a minute to take a deep breath of cold air, but they throw me onto the floor in the back of the police car.

I feel like a dog in a cage. I try to pull myself up so I can sit down, but I can’t do it without my hands. I feel like I’ve fallen over a steep precipice.

I gather all my strength and twist my neck around.

“Hey, taxi!” I scream. “Take me to 531 rue de la Madone!”

“Shut your fat mouth, Indian!”

• • •

I open my eyes a little at a time, blinking rapidly. The light is white and blinding. I have an unbelievable headache, as if my skull has been split in half. There’s the taste of blood in the back of my throat.

Where am I? What has happened to me? My arms hurt. I’m cold. I see the cement ceiling, big bars.

I surface bit by bit. I stretch my legs.

I’m in jail.

I’m in jail, lying on a hard, narrow bed without a mattress or blanket, and I hurt all over.

What did I do?

I screamed and howled like a pack of wolves. I kicked. They beat me, threw me onto the bed. I heard their words ringing in my head like blows. “Shut up, Indian! Shut up!” They took my shoelaces, my belt, my cigarettes, my coat. And my knife.

They had no right to take my knife.

“You’re thieves! Nothing but damned thieves! That’s all I have! Now I have nothing. Nothing!”

“Shut up!”

“It’s my father’s knife. It’s the only thing I have of his! Please, give me my knife. Let me go. I haven’t done anything bad. I just want what’s mine.”

“Shut up!”

And I scream until I think my heart will break. I scream so that everyone can hear.

“I am an Indian! I want to go home!”

“We know. Shut up. Go to sleep, it’ll do you some good!”

I’m clutching the bars of the cell with my hands. My whole body is covered with sweat. Saliva is running down the sides of my mouth and trickling down my neck. I stretch out my arm and grab a guard who approaches the cell.

He shakes his fist in my face.

“Listen, Larivière. We’re not going to listen to this all night. We’re fed up. Now shut your big mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”

• • •

“Larivière? Hey, Larivière? Get up!”

The very sound of my name is like a blow. It hurts my eardrums, hurts right down to the marrow of my bones.

“Larivière? I’m talking to you.”

I see the shadow of a man in uniform leaning over me.

“Get up, I’m taking you home!”

“Back to the reserve?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m taking you to the Paradis, at 531 rue de la Madone!”

It’s a new policeman that I haven’t seen before. He doesn’t shout. He helps me sit down on the edge of the narrow bed. I’m used to the harsh light now. I breathe deeply.

I’m still stunned by what has happened. I’m in jail.

I remember what the principal said when I left the residential school. That I was just like all the others, that I’d end up in jail, bringing shame to everyone.

I try to convince myself that it isn’t my fault, that Rosaire provoked me, but deep inside I am ashamed.

“Look, your personal effects are in here,” says the policeman, handing me a big brown envelope.

I light my last cigarette. It’s dry and crushed, but it tastes damned good. I take two or three big drags and then continue to look through the envelope. My old shoelaces, my belt. I look right in the bag, feel inside down to the bottom.

“What about my knife?” I ask the man.

“What knife?”

“I had a little red knife with a white cross. A knife with two blades, one big and one small, with an awl at the other end…”

“The night shift gave me the envelope and I brought it to you. I never saw anything like a knife. Maybe you lost it at the bowling alley or in the patrol car.”

“No, I’m telling you! I’m sure I gave it to them…”

The policeman is getting impatient. He hands me Méo’s coat.

“Listen, I don’t have time for this. I’ll ask the guys who worked last night what happened to your knife, but my orders now are to take you back to the Paradis. Let’s go!”

When we get outside I realize that it’s dusk. The sun is just going down behind the mountain. The last rays are reflected on the crusty snow. It is very cold. I’ve lost all sense of time.

At 531, rue de la Madone, the blinds have already been pulled. The big window is closed, the car isn’t in the lot.

Have they gone out so they won’t have to see me?

The apartment is cold and dark. The policeman waits until I’m inside before he leaves.

There’s a light on in the kitchen. Aunt Mona is waiting for me, standing at the end of the table, her face pale, her nostrils trembling, her gold teeth gleaming. She leans toward me and rolls her owl eyes behind her thick glasses.

“Pierre Larivière, you shame me! You were drunk as a pig and you got in a fight. Your clothes are a mess, you’re filthy, and you stink like a brewery. You have brought shame to me, Mona Paradis. What will the neighbors think? You’re lucky Méo has relatives down at the police station. If he didn’t, you’d still be there.”

I hear her, but I’m not listening. I look at her, but I don’t see her. She’s spitting words at me but they roll off me like drops of water on a duck’s back.

I take a big mug out of the cupboard. I put on the kettle and make myself some hot, strong tea, black as a night without stars. I don’t think about anything. I am like a wounded animal that creeps into the brush to lick its wounds.

I sit at the other end of the table. I take the mug between my hands, lift it to my nose, breathe in deeply. I take little sips. I think only about the tea.

But Aunt Mona hasn’t finished.

“The police!” she cries, practically in tears. “The police at my door! How can you do this to me — to me, the one who brought you out of the bush. I have a good mind to send you back to that sewer you came from!”

I get up with my cup of tea and lock myself in the bathroom.

“Go ahead and hide!” Aunt Mona cries. “Look at yourself in the mirror, take a good look!”

I turn the taps on full and let them run. I only hear the noise of the water, like I’m standing at the foot of a waterfall. I get undressed and rub my hot palms over my arms, my belly, my thighs. I like this soft feeling of skin on skin. I lean my hands on the back of the toilet and look at myself in the mirror for a long time, at my puffy lips, my matted hair…

I slide into the hot water, and it wraps me up like a soft sheet. I’m suddenly filled with a huge sadness, as if my whole body is filled to the brim with tears. I try to pull myself together, but I can’t. I tell myself that no one loves me, no one is thinking about me. I am a misfit, good for nothing, useless.

If I could, I’d let myself sink in the bath like a rock to the bottom of the river. Then everything would be over and I would find some peace, some quiet. The Paradis would have their money, and the ministry could close my file for good, like they did for Antan who died in the residential school, or Shipu, my father. If I were gone, they would have one less problem.

I stay in the bath until the water is cold and the house is quiet. I leave the bathroom quietly. All the lights are out. The neon lights from Armand’s store leave me in semidarkness.

I kneel on the floor and pull out the drawer under the sofa. I’m as calm as still water. My heart is beating slowly but steadily in my chest. I open my canvas bag and unroll my moccasins. I feel the soft skin, breathe in the bitter, smoky smell of cedar.

Then I hold them to my face and sob as if my heart would break.

En hommage à Louis Riel.

1

IT FEELS LIKE the day before a storm. At school, kids are fighting for no reason, swearing like troopers. It’s the end of June, and today’s the day the report cards come out.

We can hear the principal out in the hall, going from class to class. We’re the last room on the list. At ten o’clock he bursts in, slams the door and dumps a pile of reports on the teacher’s desk. He looks like he’s in a bad mood. His hair is glued to his forehead and his tie is crooked.

We sit up straight and stiff. At first he looks us over, without saying a word. Then he speaks.

“I am disappointed. Worse than that, I am ashamed of you. Your results are dreadful. You have brought dishonor to the entire school. I think of your poor parents who have sacrificed so much for you, who now have to sign worthless garbage like this.”

He claps his hand on the pile of reports and picks them up one at a time.

“Allard, 57 percent. Bertrand, 55 percent. Cadieux, 54 percent. Couture, a nice big 50 percent.”

The whole class is on edge. They are all afraid of their parents. Miron is putting on a good front, but he’s shaking in his boots. His father is counting on his son to take over the grocery store, and he expects him to be at the top of the class.

One by one the students go up to collect their marks.

“Millette, 46 percent…”

I don’t get a report. Maybe there isn’t one for me.

But it’s too much to hope for.

The principal picks up the last report between his thumb and forefinger, holding it away from him like it stinks.

“There is only one left, and it is not even worth mentioning who it belongs to.”

He turns toward the door and stops. I see his back. He stretches out his arm and drops my report into the wastebasket beside the door.

I am burning with shame.

Millette can tell how upset I am. He unfolds himself out of his seat. In two strides he goes over to the wastebasket, comes back and gently hands me the report with an awkward smile.

Without saying a word, I calmly head toward the door. Behind me the teacher cries, “Larivière? Where are you going? Class is not finished!”

I go out into the corridor feeling dizzy, as though I’ve fallen off a cliff. I know I will never set foot in this school again. My big adventure stops here. It’s all over.

Outside, the cold air burns my forehead. My cheeks are on fire, but I feel very light.

I quickly head for the bridge. I want to let my feet dangle over the swirling river. It would feel so good to be at the bottom of the water, far from the noise of the world…

To the left is the street. In front of me is the long gray sidewalk. To the right is the schoolyard, empty and lifeless. A bit farther on is a small truck. It looks out of place here. There’s something familiar about it. In the back are rolled sheets of white canvas, paddles, coils of rope, an ax…

And through the back window I can see…

No, it can’t be! My blood is rushing through my veins. My heart is beating like a frantic drum.

It’s Sam! Sam Brascoupé! What is he doing here?

And he’s not alone.

The door opens. A girl gets out. She smiles at me. She calls out and her clear voice cuts through the air.

My heart turns over.

“Nipishish!”

It’s Pinamen.

It’s her.

She got my letter…

I drop my school bag and run to her. Manie is there, too, sitting on the seat with Pone’s old walking stick at her side. She smiles, holds out her hand, and I grab it. I dive into the truck. I bury my head in Manie’s warm chest and weep. I drink in the smell of the spring wind, the summer sun, the water and the pines. She pats my back with her big strong hand.

“Nipishish, my boy,” she says. “We need you.”

2

THE TRUCK PULLS away, leaving behind a long gray cloud of dust that seems to go on forever. We make our way slowly to the heart of La Vérendrye Park. We’re all squished together in the cab, but I feel perfectly comfortable. If there were children with us, they would be in their mother’s arms or sitting on our laps. If there were more adults or dogs, they would be riding in the back of the pickup, sitting on their bags or on the rolled-up tent.

This is how we Algonquin travel.

I’m not sorry to be leaving Mont-Laurier. I went there to get an education, to live in a city with white people. But now I want to forget all that — Aunt Mona, Uncle Méo, the school, the teachers, the police, the bowling alley…

And Millette? I tell myself that he’ll understand why I left without saying goodbye.

Sam is jammed into the corner of the driver’s seat to leave more room for the rest of us. His eyes are fixed on the horizon, and there’s a slight smile on his face. He’s somewhere far away, maybe paddling a canoe on a big lake or hiding in the tall grass, patiently waiting for an animal.

Suddenly his face darkens as we pass a huge truck rolling toward town, dangerously overloaded with long logs dripping with sap, skinned alive. Sam slows down, and we’re swallowed up by a thick cloud of dust. We drive on blindly and then emerge into blue sky. We pick up speed again.

I don’t like to see these big trucks full of wood. Each truck leaves us a little poorer, keeps us in misery. One day, if we aren’t careful, there will be no more forest and we Indians will disappear from the earth altogether. We will have no more reason to be here.

Manie is sitting beside Sam, watching the road. She is wrapped in a deep silence like a groundhog that sleeps with its eyes half closed.

It’s been almost a year since I last saw her. Her hair is silver at the temples, and her shoulders are rounded like a mountain that has been worn down by the wind and the rain. Her golden cheeks and the corners of her lips are lined with tiny wrinkles, like a pebble that bursts in the frost. I know that deep down she’s been hoping I would come back from the city one day. Maybe she even predicted I would return. She knows me better than anyone.

If she hadn’t come to find me, I would have thrown myself off that bridge. Now, just a few hours later, I have never been so happy to be alive.

Sometimes the line between life and death is so thin, like a sheet of ice in autumn. It seems solid, so you lightly take a step, then two, to check it out. Everything’s okay. Then you step more heavily and all of a sudden the ice gives way with no warning, and you disappear into the dark water.

I shudder just to think about it.

The forest is very green from the spring melt, and it unfolds on either side of us. I notice the damp, glistening undergrowth, the streams full to bursting running into lakes that are still crowned with ice. Here and there the new growth of the birches rises up from their slim white trunks.

It’s all so familiar, the land of my childhood. I, too, have long roots that run deep into the earth and mingle with those of my ancestors. We all drink from the same sap of the earth. We are all one. That’s what Kitchimanitou, the creator of all things, intended when he made the mother earth, animals and humans. We were made to live together in harmony.

Like Sam, I am leaning back against the door, sitting on one hip, my left arm resting along the back of the seat. Pinamen is dozing beside me. I can feel her thigh against mine. Her black hair falls over my arm and her head is resting in the crook of my shoulder. I dare not move for fear of disturbing her. I know that she is not completely asleep, that she can feel the warmth of my body, the purr of the motor and the jolts in the road. When we pass a transport truck filled with logs, she presses against me.

I don’t want this trip to end. I could drive my entire life with Pinamen at my side.

Suddenly I want her to know I’m here. I touch her arm gently. Her skin is so soft. She opens her eyes. They are black and luminous. She smiles at me, then goes back to sleep. My heart turns over and beats hard in my chest. I’m not the least bit tired.

The truck slows down. Sam concentrates on the road and turns right onto an almost invisible turnoff into the forest.

I can feel the blood rushing in my veins. I know where we’re going, and it makes me happy. I didn’t want to go back to the reserve right away to face everyone’s nosy questions. I can already hear them, see their crooked smiles.

“So, Nipishish, things didn’t go too well in the city? You’ve come back to us? What are you planning to do now?”

“Well, here you are again! Tell us, how was life in the city?”

And I know what I’ll say. “You want to know what I learned in the city? I learned that the whites don’t like Indians. I learned that there are even whites who hate us, who think that the sooner we disappear the better. That’s what I learned. We Indians can expect nothing — absolutely nothing — from the whites.”

This old path leads to Sam’s hunting camp. I came here when I was just three or four years old, with my father or Manie’s husband, Jos. Here I can see them clearly in my memories. They were fine men, brave and strong. People said they were forces of nature.

We crawl along bumpily between the trees. Sam drives carefully. The engine groans. We go around large boulders, follow the brook, ford a river.

We are all wide awake now. Sam and I have lowered our windows. There’s no more dust here. Just the fresh smells of resin, of damp undergrowth, of tender leaves. Birdsong invades the cab. In places the road is so narrow that the leafy branches brush the old bodywork.

We’re still following an old logging road left over from the days when men cut down trees with saw and ax and hauled out logs with teams of horses. They knocked down the big pines, the most beautiful, oldest trees in the forest. Huge rotting black stumps are dotted here and there.

The road gets better. The vegetation changes. We’re driving on gravel. On both sides there are dense thickets of alders and aspens.

Without raising his voice, Sam speaks, and I get the feeling that I’m the one he’s talking to.

“All the vegetation is the same height. There was a huge forest fire here twenty years ago. We call this place the old burn. All the Algonquin know it. This is where we come every summer to gather blueberries.”

Suddenly he goes quiet. There’s a deep frown on his forehead. His lips are pinched together, the muscles in his neck stick out.

He stops the truck and turns off the engine, even though we have not arrived yet. The air is filled with silence.

We wait. Nobody moves. I follow Sam’s gaze. He’s smiling, expecting something, but I don’t know what.

A large female bear slowly lumbers out of the bush and stops in front of the truck. She looks at us, sniffs and rises up on her hind legs. She’s thin. Her long coat is shaggy, plastered down on her body. From her chest hang huge black and pink teats that gleam in the sun.

We hold our breath. We hear tiny cries coming from the thicket. The mother grunts and two little black balls tumble out of their hiding place and run between her paws. They are hungry. They nuzzle at her breast, looking for milk. The female pushes them away with her nose and they disappear into the woods. We watch until the huge black beast lumbers after them into the brush.

I am always happy when I see an animal in the forest. Pinamen and I exchange smiles.

Sam starts up again. The conversation becomes lively.

“She has just come out of her den,” Sam says. “That’s why she’s so thin and scruffy. At this time of year she’ll do anything to protect her babies. You need to stay far away. Any other time she would have turned on her heels and run away as fast as she could.”

“Seeing a bear is good luck,” Manie says. “That’s a good sign for you, Nipishish!”

“And we saw three of them,” says Pinamen. “That is very, very, very good luck!”

And we all laugh.

The forest road that we follow suddenly stops at the bank of a big lake.

“My children, it’s time to eat!” says Manie happily.

We all burst into action. We’re as hungry as wolves.

The place where we set up has been used often. The earth is beaten down, and Sam makes a fire in a pit of blackened rocks. I draw fresh water from a nearby spring for tea. Pinamen lays down a red-and-white checked cloth, and Manie pulls out plates, cups and utensils, all mismatched and of different colors. Then she gets out bannock, jam, sugar and a goose that she cooked the day before. In no time everything is ready and the tea is brewing in the old dented pot.

The fire crackles. The smells of burning wood, of simmering tea, of the pines and firs fill the river bank. It’s early spring. The mosquitoes haven’t come out yet. The water is too cold and the land is still frozen on the dark side of the mountains.

For dessert I cut a thick piece of bannock and spread it with a rich blueberry puree that Manie made last autumn. My mouth is still full when I suddenly turn to Pinamen.

“Kwe!” I say. “Not a lot of blueberries around this time of year…”

She pauses while she gently sips her tea. She is sitting on a boulder, her forearms leaning on her drawn-up knees. She’s holding her bowl in both hands, as if to keep it warm. She has a mischievous look in her eyes.

Sam and Manie look at each other, puzzled. They don’t know what’s going on between the two of us. My comment makes absolutely no sense to them.

Pinamen, her eyes laughing, finally answers me.

“Kwe! It’s true. There aren’t too many around this time of year, but the ones that are left are very sweet.”

And we both burst out laughing. Pinamen explains to Sam and Manie that we only met each other once before today. It was the end of summer, in the forest, just behind the railway station in Parent. The priests and mounted police had grouped us all under the trees so they could keep an eye on us. We didn’t know it then, but we were waiting for the train that would take us to our residential schools. I would go to St. Mark; she was heading for Pointe-Bleue.

“I saw this beautiful girl not too far from me,” I say. “And I wanted to meet her. So to get closer I started to gather a few late blueberries, going from bush to bush without anyone noticing…”

“And I started doing the same thing…”

“Until we met up with one another in the middle.”

“And Nipishish said that there weren’t many berries, and I said they were very sweet. That broke the ice. After that we spent the afternoon together…”

“Until the train came and we were separated.”

We both stop talking then. Neither of us want to talk about going to the residential schools.

“Let’s go,” Sam says suddenly, and he gets up. “Charlotte and the children are waiting. They’ll worry when night falls. Come and help me, Nipishish. I’ve hidden my canoe just down here, under some branches.”

The long canoe has a bright red hull, like a trout in spawning season. We find it quickly and pull it down to the rocky landing where the women are waiting with the packs.

It’s not the first time Indians have stopped here. This is an ideal place to load up for trips. The rocks jut out into the deep water, making a natural wharf. We are right at the head of a waterway that leads down to the Ottawa River, the Harricana, James Bay and the huge hunting territories of the Algonquin.

Our ancestors have walked over these same spots for thousands of years. They have left their marks, but they have blended back into nature and are scarcely visible. It’s things like this little firepit, the remains of tent posts, a narrow path that winds between the trees, following the shape of the terrain.

Our history isn’t written up in big books. It’s inscribed in the landscape, silent testimony to our long presence here.

Sam tells me to take the bow.

“Watch the water. We have to be careful. There are a lot of stumps and deadheads that have drifted away from the log jams just below the surface.”

Pinamen sits behind me in the bottom of the canoe. Manie, who is heavier, sits in the middle with the packs. Sam is standing at the stern. He starts the old motor, and it coughs to life. We follow the shore slowly at first. Then Sam speeds up. We head right to cross the big lake, Lac des Rapides. The nose of the canoe lifts as we pick up speed. The stern carves a deep silver wake in the black water.

From the front, I watch the surface of the lake carefully, my eyes trained far in front of me. The early evening wind turns my cheeks pink. I have to squint so I don’t get tears in my eyes. From time to time I turn around to look at Pinamen. I am still amazed that I’m here with her. She is wrapped in a big plaid shawl that she hugs around her. In the wind her long hair streams out and flattens against her golden cheeks, hiding part of her face. She looks happy.

When I look at her, I know everything is going to be all right. I fill my lungs with the fresh lake air that presses against my body. My shirt flaps in the wind.

Logs that the lumberjacks have lost are drifting in the water, floating like wreckage at the mercy of the current. Sam has the eyes of an eagle. He gently skirts around them in broad arcs.

Sam shifts into neutral.

“Look, the camp is at the back there, at the mouth of the river.”

Across from me the red sun is slowly setting behind the mountain. I love this time of day when the soft light suddenly plunges us into twilight. I spot a column of smoke in the fold of the mountain. I follow it with my eyes to the camp tucked into the far end of the bay. My face lights up.

“I set my fishing net just to the right there.” Sam points to a string of white floats tossed by the waves of our wake.

“Tomorrow at dawn, you can go and lift them. We’ll get some big trout and pike for sure.”

“Okay, sure!” I nod happily, but I’m also a bit worried.

When I was little I went fishing with my father. I watched what he did, and I learned. I can remember his slow, careful movements. I’ve never done it myself, but I think I could.

Whenever we got close to the buoys, Shipu would always say, “No, nothing in the net this morning.” He would shake his head and look at me in a discouraged way. “We won’t be eating any fish today.” At first I believed him, but I soon learned how to read the lake. Certain buoys would be floating lower in the water. They would drop down and then bob up to the surface.

My father would pull in his net very gently. We never knew what would come out of the water, but nature was always generous. One by one they would appear — a trout, a pike, then another.

It’s delicate work. You have to keep the boat steady. But what if it’s windy tomorrow morning? Then you have to pull up the net slowly, inch by inch. And what if it gets tangled? What if a fish is caught in the mesh?

Pinamen rests her hand on my arm. She has seen the worry on my face.

“If you like, I could come with you.”

“Okay!” I nod. With her I can do it. We will be fishing partners. Sam knows he has set a challenge for me, but for him that’s how you learn.

“Bring back the net with you. This will be our last fish before we go back to the reserve.”

Sam is giving Pinamen and me a chance to spend a few hours together. Private moments are rare, and we have so much to say to each other.

“Nipishish,” Sam says. “Change places with me. You can steer us in.”

I feel myself blush with pride. My cheeks are hot. I try to hide my happiness but I can’t.

“Watch me. I’ll show you the route to follow and what speed to keep.”

“Okay!”

We slowly change places, holding on to each other and staying low so as not to upset the canoe. I take Sam’s place. I’m nervous. He gives me the signal to go straight. I speed up. The bow rises up as the canoe plows through the water.

Sam gives me the okay sign. I maintain the speed. My eyes sweep over the lake and the mountains. I keep an eye on my guide. With his back to me he points his finger, giving me signals.

“A little to the right…a bit to the left…okay now. Straight ahead…slow down.”

I don’t rush. I relax. For once I feel as if I’m capable of doing something of value.

The cabin comes into view and gets bigger. A couple of ospreys follow us, then dive and disappear. A large gull, white as a patch of snow, sits motionless on the back of a round gray rock that’s poking out of the water and watches us pass.

I head straight for the camp. Charlotte has heard us approach. She comes down to the little wooden dock followed by her two children, Nancy and Fred. They are a little younger than me. I slow down and cut the motor.

The silence is sudden and big. The canoe glides in. With a couple of strokes of the paddle Sam brushes us up against the dock. Fred and Nancy grab the canoe and pull us in.

I get out. Charlotte hurries forward and takes me in her arms. I feel her motherly warmth. Fred and Nancy are more shy. They shake my hand.

“Hey, what about the old folks? Are you just going to leave me sitting here like a sack of flour?”

And we hurry to help Manie out of the canoe.

• • •

Charlotte is Pinamen’s aunt. They are Attikamek from Manawane, in Haute-Mauricie. They speak their mother tongue together, but I can understand if I listen closely. I love the rhythm of their speech. It’s like singing. They have the same accent when they speak Algonquin, too, and it makes me smile.

Sam and Charlotte’s log cabin is one big room. Inside the door, facing the lake, is the kitchen with a big wood stove, shelves above the wash basin for dishes and pots, and a long table covered with a red-and-white checked oilcloth, surrounded by benches. On the forest side of the cabin, behind the stove, is the sleeping area with a row of beds. The ones along the wall are bunkbeds.

The big stove is roaring and tea is boiling. It’s nice and warm in the cabin.

We sit around the table. Charlotte pours tea into the tin cups. Pinamen lights the oil lamp. The light makes a yellow halo on the tablecloth. I can just see our eyes and our hands resting on the table. We are like ghosts.

The two ospreys give one last long cry. Thousands of frogs, barely awake from their winter sleep, burst into their mating songs. It’s truly spring.

Now we all wait for the oldest person to speak. Manie sips her tea and puts down her cup.

“Nipishish,” she says, “an agent from the Ministry of Indian Affairs gave Pinamen your letter. He’s the one who told her that you were from Lac Cabonga. She immediately arranged to come to see her aunt Charlotte. Last week, around this very table, she read us your letter several times. We were very moved and worried. We could hear your cry for help.”

My heart swells when I listen to Manie. If I open my mouth I will start to cry, like a big cloud that suddenly bursts.

“We decided to go and find you right away, before it was too late, to tell you that your place is here with us.”

She reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers. They are warm and firm, but trembling lightly.

“It’s time for us to say that we need each other. We have to gather our forces. There are so few of us and we are so far away from each other.”

“Manie’s patient work is finally bearing fruit,” says Sam. “More and more of us have come together. We’re tired of being led by the nose by the ministry, the missionaries, the forest companies, the police. But our worst enemies are those among us who think of nothing but money and who are prepared to disown their own people. They don’t realize that they are also disowning themselves. By granting favors to one or the other, the ministry is dividing us so they can rule us better. But we cannot give up. Little by little, our circle is growing. We are like the tortoise. We will move ahead slowly, but we will go a long way.”

“We are not demanding a lot,” Manie adds. “We want respect and the right to live in peace. You will help us, Nipishish. We need someone like you who speaks all three languages, who knows the city and the customs of the whites. You know deep inside yourself what we want. Your father, Shipu, knew it, too. He saw the threat before we did. He was dangerous to them. He is no longer here to speak on our behalf, but his blood runs in your veins.”

“We’ve been fleeing the reserve,” Charlotte says. “There is too much alcohol, too much violence. The men get drunk and they can’t control themselves anymore. They have had to stop hunting and fishing, and those are the only things they know how to do. They think there is no future for them. They feel useless and ashamed…”

Frank and Nancy are listening to us. Suddenly, Fred says in a strong voice, “No one is listening to us. No one is taking us seriously. The whites are wrong, and soon we will take them out in one final blow that they will remember for a long time. Enough of this servitude! Enough of living under the laws of foreigners!”

Sam gets up and puts a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“Let’s go to bed,” he says.

3

ALL THE OTHERS are in a deep sleep, but I am awake, waiting patiently for first light. This morning I have to go out to pull up the net.

I feel as though I’ve lived through several years in just one day. I know Manie is counting on me to take up her cause. But I just want to live in peace, find a job, a place for myself. And to marry Pinamen. I want to have children, teach them to speak our language, to fish and hunt, to share with our fellow creatures. That’s my dream.

I’m nice and warm wrapped up in my blankets. I gaze through the blackness at the window above the wash basin in the kitchen. The pale light of day is just taking shape.

Quiet as a lynx, I slip on my clothes and tiptoe over to Pinamen. I kneel at the head of her bed. She is lying on her back and I can scarcely see her. I bring my lips to her ear, bury my face in her hair. I stay like that for a moment, not moving. I drink in the scent of her.

“Pinamen…it’s time,” I whisper.

“Mmmm…” She barely stirs.

“Are you coming with me?” I’m worried that she has changed her mind.

But she nods.

“Yes, I’m coming,” she murmurs.

I lean my head against her chest. The beats of her heart are steady. In my ear they sound like the beating of a drum from far away. She puts her hand on my head and strokes my hair. She is breathing deeply, still wrapped up in sleep.

Daylight starts to creep in the window. It’s time for us to leave.

“I’ll wait for you on the dock.”

“I’m coming.”

It rained during the night, and the roof is still dripping. The damp earth is dark, and the long lacy branches of the pines are bent over with moisture. The canoe is covered with dew.

Pinamen comes down. She hands me Frank’s jacket and I put it on. She is wrapped in a thick shawl, and her black beret is pulled right down to her ears in the Attikamek style. She is so beautiful and calm. She tucks her bag under the bench and unties the ropes. The canoe glides on the still, early-morning water.

I love the peace and quiet of early morning. It’s as if a new life is being born. Even in town, it was the time of day that I liked the best.

The motor catches on the third pull, and soon the camp disappears behind us. The canoe looks ghostly in the mist clinging to the lake.

For the first time, Pinamen and I are really alone. She is staring at the black water lapping against the canoe. She is lost in her thoughts, her arms crossed in front of her chest, a bit bent over.

I can navigate with no problem, but I go slowly. I don’t want to rush these wonderful moments.

Not far away, the mist is breaking up, burned away by the first rays of sun. I would like to pull Pinamen out of her daydreams, but I don’t know how to start. I slow down, and the canoe glides on the dark blue mirror of the lake.

The lacy tops of the big pines are reflected in the calm water. A couple of ospreys dive from a good distance, as if they are watching us out of the corner of their eyes.

As we approach the floats, I cut the motor. The silence is big and it wraps itself around us. Pinamen hurries to take the paddle. Her movements are precise and efficient. She brings the canoe parallel to the net, and I grab the first float.

Suddenly I let the net fall. A memory comes to me.

“The day is beginning badly. There’s nothing in the net. Nothing!” I say loudly.

I’m surprised to hear my voice echoing in the distance. My words sound harsh and dry, like the blows of a hammer on an anvil.

Pinamen whispers back, her eyes mocking.

“We’ll see…” Her voice blends in with the sound of the waves lapping against the round belly of the boat.

I plunge my hands into the cold water, slowly lift the dripping net and let it fall in a pile at my feet. I can feel it getting heavier. I see a flash of silver in the water and my heart leaps. It’s a trout, a fat gray trout! I bring it out of the water, pick it out of the net and dump it in the middle of the canoe.

Pinamen and I exchange smiles. We carry on working in silence. My heart quickens each time I see another gleam in the water.

Manie will be pleased. She loves fresh fish.

I get back to work. Soon seven big fish are lying beside the wet net. The air is filled with the smell of fresh water and silt.

“It’s not an amazing catch, but it’s a good one.”

I shake my hands to dry them. Pinamen pulls her canvas bag out from under the seat and takes out two pieces of bannock and a thermos of tea. The canoe drifts gently. We sit facing each other, straddling the wooden seat. The bitter smell of the hot tea fills the damp air. We pass the cup back and forth and the hot drink soaks through the bread and warms our stomachs. Our knees are lightly touching.

Pinamen is so beautiful. She is slim, with an oval face and lively black eyes that have little stars dancing in them. They are almond shaped and just peek out from under the hem of her beret.

She blushes but doesn’t turn away.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’re making me nervous!”

I put my hands on her warm thighs. Her body trembles through her flowered dress. She places her long, delicate hands on my forearms.

“Pinamen, you have been in my heart ever since I first saw you at the station in Parent. At the residential school and later in the city, when life was tough for me, I hung on to the hope that I would see you again. You’re what saved me…”

She smiles. “I’ve had the craziest dreams about you, the most wonderful dreams.”

She takes off her beret. Her hair is pulled into two long braids that fall over her shoulders. She folds back the lining of the hat and pulls out a worn piece of paper that has been folded over and over.

It’s the letter I sent her from Mont-Laurier.

“Nipishish, I’ve read your letter dozens of times. I believed I could hear you talking to me. Your voice echoed in my heart. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, but this letter lit a fire inside me.”

“You are even more beautiful than I imagined in my dreams. I want to marry you.”

There is silence in the canoe. I see the shadow of a big bird pass rapidly over her face.

“I know, I know!” I say. “I have no money, no skills. I don’t even know how to set a beaver trap or kill a moose with a rifle. That’s not what they taught me during all those years at the school. I have no territory, nothing to pass on. But I swear that I will do anything for you, for us, so that we can be happy!”

“No, no, it’s not that,” she says. “But when I was born, my mother promised me to another boy.”

“And you love him?”

“No! I love you, but it isn’t that simple.”

“Pinamen, times have changed. Your mother can’t make you marry a man if you don’t want to. You’d be unhappy for the rest of your life.”

Her hands are gripping my arms tightly.

“Nipishish, my whole family would reject me. But there’s more…”

Her voice is faint. I can see her turning pale.

“Please, Pinamen, tell me.” My voice is dull. I want it to be soft and convincing. “What is it that’s so hard to say?”

“Nipishish…”

She rests her hands on my shoulders and breathes in deeply.

“Nipishish, you’re a Métis!”

I feel as if I’ve been knocked over. I’m not sure I’ve understood. She doesn’t want to live with me because I’m Métis. My ears are humming. I feel as if I’m hearing her from a great distance.

Is it that terrible to be born of an Indian father and white mother?

I must be pale. I’m trembling. Pinamen sees my confusion.

“You have no band number,” she says quickly. “And if I marry you, I will lose mine. I become a white. That’s the law. Any Indian woman who marries a white is thrown off the reserve, and their children are whites without status. And I want to have lots of children…with you, Nipishish.”

She’s right. I know the law. I see the fix we’re in. I never thought of this. It’s like I’ve been struck by lightning, right here in the middle of the lake.

Long minutes pass while we drift. Pinamen is weeping silently.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I say quietly. “Let’s talk to Manie. She’ll find a solution. At least she can talk to your mother for us.”

I can see a glimmer of light in her eyes through the big tears that are rolling down her cheeks.

“It’s something that needs to be arranged by the women. I’ll take care of it,” she says.

I put my arms around her waist. Our lips touch softly. Then Pinamen buries her head in my neck like a bird burrowing in a nest. She wipes her hot tears on my skin. I wrap her in my arms and lean my forehead on her shoulder. I breathe slowly and deeply, and we let ourselves be rocked by the waves lapping against the sides of the canoe.

4

WE’RE ALL SITTING around the big table eating. The morning mist is still breaking up over the lake.

Suddenly Sam holds his cup still. He pricks up his ears and turns to look at the lake.

Someone’s coming. We hear the light gurgle of a paddle dipping in the water. A canoe touches the dock. We hear slow, heavy, sure steps. It’s someone who knows the place. He climbs the steps and stands in front of the screen door. I see him lit from behind.

He’s a giant. He fills the doorway. He looks in, his big hands on either side of his eyes like blinkers.

“Kwe!” he shouts.

It’s Old Tom! He’s still spry, with long gray hair, straight as a spruce. His cheeks are furrowed with deep lines, like land that has been eroded by heavy rains.

“Tom! Come in, come in!” Manie says happily.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

He pushes open the door with his big steady hand. Everything suddenly seems small and fragile next to him. Charlotte pulls a chair up to the end of the table, the spot reserved for important visitors.

Tom has lived a long life as a hunter and trapper. He knows every corner of our huge territory. They say he can communicate with animal spirits.

He sits down and looks at me, curious. He pretends to be surprised to see me.

“Nipishish?” he says, smiling. “Didn’t expect to see you here. You mean you didn’t meet up with a nice white girl in the city?”

I shrug. “No.”

“Too bad for them. They’ve missed out on a good catch.”

We laugh. Charlotte passes him a plate.

“I’m getting ready to hunt up on the Rivière des Rapides. I haven’t been there for a couple of years, not since my wife died. But I want to go back for the whole winter this fall. I’m suffocating on the reserve. I miss my land so much that I dream about it every time I close my eyes. I’m going up there now.”

“You’re lucky to be able to go into the bush,” says Sam, a touch of envy in his voice.

Tom looks at Sam, his eyes gleaming.

“That’s just it, Sam. I wanted to invite you to come with me.”

Sam thinks, caught off guard.

“Come with me, you and the boy. Tonight we’ll sleep at my camp. With the three of us the work will be done in a couple of days — clear the path, cut wood for the stove. As we go we can check the beaver lodges, check for mink, marten, moose.” He looks at me. “Besides, this young city boy needs to stretch his limbs a bit. It will do him good to get back to nature.”

Sam turns to me. He can see that I am dying to go.

He lets the minutes tick by. Then he says, “Okay, we’ll go!”

Now everyone leaps into action. It’s as if we’re going on a big trip.

“Yes,” says Tom happily. “We should get there before dusk. The days are getting longer.”

He swallows his bread and empties his cup of tea in one big gulp.

In a few minutes everything is ready. The sleeping bags, the bannock, the oil, a big piece of smoked trout, the ax, the rifle, the tea kettle.

Pinamen helps me pack my bag. Our hands brush against each other.

“Have a good trip, Nipishish,” she whispers.

I give her a wink. I can see that she’s happy for me.

“I’m going to miss you,” I say. “When I get back, we’ll make up for lost time.”

“Then come back quickly.”

We kneel in the little canoe — Tom at the bow, me at the stern, Sam in the middle. We are loaded up to the gunwales, and I feel the water very close. Fortunately, the breeze is light. Already the dock is disappearing behind us. Tom handles the paddle masterfully and without effort, and his strokes pull us forward. Each of his movements is precise and measured. I try to match his stroke, but before long my legs are itching, my shoulders ache and there are knots in my arm muscles.

I don’t say anything. I just paddle. I fill my lungs. I feel good, and gradually I find the rhythm. I forget about my aches and pains. I let the landscape cast a spell on me, the immense evergreen forests bordering the river. I have time to notice the ducks and swarms of ducklings. We stir up a flock of geese that suddenly take to the sky. A muskrat breaks the water with his black nose.

In my imagination, I am navigating, swept along by the current. I see Pinamen’s smile among the silver flashes of the rippling water. She is everywhere, in my thoughts, my movements, my sight.

But I also know there are barriers between us. I’ll have to sort that out when I get back to the reserve. I know that things don’t necessarily turn out the way we want in life. There are always grains of sand in the gears.

We come to the foot of a stream that tumbles down from the mountain. This is where we’ll begin the portage that will take us to Tom’s cabin.

The sun is already high. The mosquitoes have come out in the heat, and they are tormenting us, sticking to our damp skin.

The climb ahead is steep, rocky, broken by big twisted roots. Sam and I are carrying the packs on our backs. Tom has grabbed the gunwales. With a twist of his back he lifts up the canoe, flips it over and rests it on his shoulders. We’re on our way.

We slowly climb up, following the stream. The walk warms my muscles. I have to watch that I don’t lose my footing. This time Tom leads the way. Once we reach the plateau, the path is easier. We zigzag through a grove of white birch.

Tom stops and puts down the canoe. His face is red with sweat and effort. We take a break, sitting on big rectangular rocks. He wipes his forehead with the polka-dot handkerchief that he wears around his neck. The breeze chases away the mosquitoes.

He smiles, looks around and says, “This birch forest is the prettiest in the whole area. Look how straight and smooth they are. This is where we get the bark to make our canoes and baskets. Kitchimanitou gave us the birch to make our lives easier. It is a good gift.”

We carry on along the path. It’s wide, well beaten down. We are on the other side of the mountain. I realize that this route has been walked by thousands of my ancestors — men, women, children — just like Tom, Sam and I are doing today.

We go down into the bottom of the valley. We must be getting near the end. The day is almost over.

Tom hurries on, his eyes focused on the spot in front of his feet. His head is buried in the belly of the canoe. The old man is flying, he knows the way so well. He is at home here. Before long he’s way ahead of us, down below.

Sam and I are up high, so we can see a long way.

And what we see is so strange that we stop short, in utter shock.

“Tom!” we both say at the same time.

Tom has realized that something is wrong. He stops in the middle of the swamp and raises the bow of the canoe. We hurry to join him while he puts down his load.

His old face is tight and drawn. His lips begin to tremble.

In front of us not a single tree is standing. Just piles of brown and yellow debris scattered everywhere. The valley and the wide flank of the mountain have been razed as far as the eye can see.

The loggers have come during the past winter. They have completely stripped the land of trees.

We move forward like sleepwalkers, not really believing our eyes. It’s like being in another world. There is no more path. We wade through the mud that stagnates in the deep grooves cut by the big steel rollers of the caterpillar tractors.

The door of Tom’s little log cabin is open. The inside stinks of gasoline. Gasoline barrels are littered everywhere. The loggers have used the place to store their fuel.

Tom’s hunting territory has been completely destroyed, and there is nothing we can do to comfort him. We follow him step by step, silent in our grief and powerlessness, as the extent of the damage sinks in. We sit down on a bench in front of his cabin. The sun is setting in a big red ball right in front of our eyes.

Tom’s voice is choked.

“Right there was an enormous red pine that’s been there since the birth of my father, my grandfather, my ancestors. Now the pine is gone, and my grandfather’s spirit is lost forever. This forest was my memory. If it disappears, my people will be forgotten. It’s so stupid! What will be left for our children? Nothing! And all this for what? For money! One of these days they will take our water, too. Are they going to sell the winter cold, the summer heat, the air that we breathe? Nipishish, you must get ready to fight, get ready for difficult times. Me, I’m old. But I have never felt as old as I feel tonight. I wish I could have died before my eyes had to see this sacrilege.”

That night, as he lifts the canoe onto my back, Sam says, “Walk slowly and steadily, and don’t stop. Watch where you step. That way you will go a long way.”

I take the lead. Tom takes up the rear. As we walk, our sadness gives way to a heavy, deep anger. I feel it seep through me, as if it is coming out of the ground beneath my feet.

The moon is high, as round as an owl’s eye. It lights the path ahead, while behind us a fierce fire burns down Tom’s camp forever, spreading thick black smoke across the ivory sky.