Domenic Jejeune strolled slowly along the narrow streets of Fort Smith. He could feel the sun on his shoulders, but the air carried a hint of coolness, and many of the gardens he passed were still struggling to display their spring flowers. In some ways, the tidy fenced-off plots in front of the single-storey houses reminded him of Saltmarsh. The vegetation was different, of course, with the preponderance of conifers and subarctic shrubs here, but there was the same orderliness to carefully-tended gardens; the same evidence of pride.
There were other ways in which the town resembled the English village half a world away; like how the residents flapped a hand or nodded at each other with familiarity. Domenic got the impression that here, as in Saltmarsh, the sense of belonging would be strong. Victories would be shared; tragedies, too. A family member lost in the wilderness just beyond the town’s tidy grid pattern of streets would be a public concern, and the community would rally round to offer their assistance and support.
He headed north and walked along the top of the ridge, looking down at the Slave River as it curved around the town’s northern perimeter. Was this wide, glittering band of light a barrier, hemming the town in, or a protective blockade against the untamed lands that existed beyond the far bank? He supposed it depended on your point of view. He mounted a rise and stopped at an open information pagoda that told him the white water he could see from his vantage point was the Rapids of the Drowned.
A man approached and stood at Jejeune’s shoulder. For a moment, neither of them spoke as they watched the water coiling into rope-like wraiths of white foam as it threaded its way between the rocks.
“The Dene could have told those trappers running these rapids is a bad idea,” said the man. “Seems nobody thought to ask them.”
Jejeune turned to look at the speaker. His lean, tanned face was patterned with deep lines, but there was no hint of grey in the long black hair that hung loosely over his shoulders. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a black shirt with a white eagle embroidered between the shoulder blades. The man’s black hat, like the jeans, showed signs of wear. It was a wide-brimmed style known as a Plateau. Even with no elaborate band, if it was the one hundred percent beaver felt it looked to be, it would have been an expensive item when it was new. Jejeune suspected he might already know the man’s name, but he waited for him to introduce himself.
“Gaetan Robideau.” The man didn’t offer a hand. “Guessed you’d probably come looking for me sooner or later.” He moved his head. “Thought I’d save you the trouble.”
“I heard that you’d gone into the park,” said Jejeune, “to observe some kind of ritual.”
“Drinking birch sap. A traditional purification ceremony. One-man show,” said Robideau flatly. “Done now.”
“How were the conditions? I mean, would it be easy enough for a person … people to survive in the park at this time of year?”
Robideau gave a small shrug. “Water’s still cold, ground’s still hard. Be a while yet before the last of the snow disappears. But life is coming to the land. The temperature won’t get much above ten degrees this time of the year, cooler at night. But if you had the right equipment, I suppose a person … people would be okay. Still hard to find food, though, unless you took enough in with you. You’d need to know where to find edible plants this early in the year.”
“The kind of wisdom that would be passed down by the tribal elders,” said Jejeune, nodding earnestly.
“Or you could Google it. This person you have in mind, it’s that woman?”
“Annie Prior. Yes. I’m told you met with her before she went into the park.”
“And now she’s gone missing.” Robideau shook his head slowly. “Those park people don’t like me much. They’d be happy to tie me into this woman’s troubles in some way.”
“You think she is in trouble, then?”
Robideau spent some moments looking out at the rapids, following the tumbling of the white waters intently. Despite the bright whiteness reflecting back at them, he wasn’t squinting. “A few weeks, there will be pelicans down there. You fly or swim, that river’s a good place for you. You sit in a boat and float along, maybe not so much. I told her she must pay the water, to ask for its protection and safe passage — nothing elaborate, a small offering of tobacco, just before she entered it. But she said she had her own faith. She would get all the protection she needed from her own god.” He fixed the detective with his look. “You start telling the spirits you don’t need their help, bad things are going to happen to you.”
“Can you tell me why Ms. Prior came to see you?” Jejeune was surprised to find how uncomfortable he felt asking these kinds of questions without the safety net of his police identity.
“She wanted to know if the Dene created middens. I told her the Dene moved with the seasons. We never stayed in any one place long, and anything the spirits gave us, we returned to its rightful place. You took an animal from the land, like a deer, you put its bones back in the earth; a creature from the river, like a beaver, you put those bones back in the water. There was no one place we’d stockpile them.”
Jejeune was quiet for a long time, but Robideau seemed content just to stand there, letting the wind wash over him as it crested the ridge. Whether or not he had more business with Jejeune, he appeared willing to wait for him to process the information he had just given him.
“Was she interested in where the Whooping Cranes were nesting?” asked Jejeune eventually.
“She didn’t ask me about them.”
To Jejeune, it seemed that Gaetan Robideau was being careful to make sure his responses were true. But that didn’t necessarily mean they were complete. There was more that he and this woman had shared, Jejeune was sure of it. But if a man as taciturn as Robideau had decided to keep secrets, it was unlikely, to say the least, that the detective would be able to extract them.
“There was a man with her when she went into the park,” said Jejeune.
“He missing too? Two people have got a better chance out there than one, providing at least one of them has some knowledge of how to live off the land.”
“He does,” said Jejeune. “He’s got survival skills, and he’s spent quite a bit of time in the area. He knows the park and the ways of the people. The traditional landowners, I mean … the First Peoples, the Indigenous Peoples,” stumbled Jejeune.
“Can’t help you with that one,” said Robideau evenly. “Last I heard, I believe I was some kind of Indigenous First Person. Singular, presumably.” He shrugged disinterestedly. “I’m Dene. That’s all I need to know.”
Jejeune coloured with embarrassment. Would he have been better-versed in these cultural nuances if he had spent his recent years in Canada? Or would he still have felt as disoriented as he did up here, as alien in this tiny, tidy outpost teetering on the edge of the great northern wilderness?
“I saw her once before,” said Robideau flatly. “Long time now, when she lived here.”
“Annie Prior was a native … a local?”
Robideau shook his head. “No. But she stayed here for a while. She came to the band one time to ask if the elders would re-enact some of the old rituals while she filmed them. Wanted them for a degree she was doing at that university in the south, Black Hills State. Elders didn’t think the spirits would like them acting out sacred rituals for the camera, so they refused. Didn’t stop her asking a couple more times, though. She was persistent, I’ll give her that.”
Jejeune was silent for a moment. “You said the park staff don’t like you. Why?”
Robideau looked Jejeune in the eye. “I cause trouble. The water management programmes in the park are being mishandled. Too much interference has disrupted the natural channels and drainage systems. These days, the water levels in the lakes rise too high too fast after a storm. That one that hit us recently will have backfilled the rivers way up into the interior of the park. We get another one anytime soon, the land’s going to drown.”
“So, you’re asking them to address this?”
“No, I’m asking a lawyer to make them.”
“You’re suing the park?” Jejeune looked at Robideau in surprise. Suddenly the claim that the man caused trouble seemed to make a lot more sense.
He nodded. “Them, and Parks Canada, and the federal government they represent. At least I would be, if I could get my lawyers the proof they need.”
“What proof is that?”
“They say they’re going to need empirical evidence, like a dying ecosystem leaves a track in the sand or a snag of fur on a bramble.” Robideau shook his head sadly. “The land is giving us all the empirical evidence we need, every day. Fish are drowning, plants are dying of thirst. People keep telling me the effects of climate change will be with us soon. They’re already here. Every time I go down to visit my brothers, the Mikisew Cree down in Fort Chip, the poplars are filled with caterpillars. That never used to be the case. Fewer mosquitoes, too, now that the land is drying out.”
Jejeune, who had already been chewed upon by more than his share of insects since he arrived, reflected that some impacts of climate change were going to concern people more than others.
“What are you hoping to get the authorities to do, if you eventually succeed in bringing a lawsuit?”
“Nothing.”
Jejeune gave a puzzled look.
“They say they are working to restore the natural balance. As if this is something that is in their power to do. Humans cannot restore nature. Only the Great Mother Earth can do this. Forget management, forget remediation, forget restoration. The best thing humans can do is stop causing the damage. Do nothing. Cause no harm, and let the park take care of healing itself.”
Robideau fell silent, and Jejeune got the sense it was a long speech for him, and now he had made his point, he had nothing more to say.
“When Prior came to see you, did you happen to notice if she was left-handed?”
An updraft from the escarpment tugged at the brim of Robideau’s hat like a polite inquiry, tousling his hair. His eyes showed no surprise at the question, only a kind of understanding. “You thinking of going after these people?”
“Would you have any advice for me, if I was?”
“Get yourself a comfortable pair of slippers and a housecoat.”
“To go into the park?”
“To wear in your hotel room while you wait for them to return. College degrees like that woman has are one thing, but you need a different kind of knowledge out there. Anybody planning to go into Wood Buffalo had better ask themselves if they have it. You believe you are a wise man, and I think maybe you are. But yours is not the kind of wisdom that will keep you alive in that park. You won’t be able to out-think the challenges the land offers. You start convincing yourself you’re in control out there, and the spirits will pretty soon show you otherwise.”
“The man who went into the park with the woman is my brother.”
This time, Robideau’s expression did change. He seemed to recognize now that nothing would prevent Jejeune from going after them. “You plan to go in there, you need to think about making your own offering to the waters.”
“I don’t have any tobacco,” said Domenic simply.
“Then you’d better hope any rivers you come across are non-smokers.” Robideau turned away and looked out over the river once again. It was clear he felt he had no more to offer this man. Jejeune murmured a word of thanks to Robideau’s back and began to descend the steep slope leading from the overlook. As he reached street level, he heard Robideau’s voice calling him. “Hey, mister people person.” Jejeune turned to see the man still at the top of the rise, his lean frame silhouetted against the bright sky. “That woman, Prior. She was right-handed.”