“WHEN?”
It was a stupid question and Cole knew it, but he didn’t know what else to say. Clearly, it happened between the time they left the trailer to follow the tracks and the time they reentered the community from Blackwood Forest, the time that they were without cell reception. From what Cole had heard since his return to Wounded Sky, Chief Crate had been an amazing leader. Brady and Eva looked devastated, perhaps more today than they would have on any other day.
Another death to process.
Cole felt a sense of loss too. He’d never known Chief Crate as his chief, but there was no severing the connection he had with his home, try as he might. Sam Crate was a part of that connection. And if Cole were straining to feel like he was part of the community again, and discovering how many people thought badly of him, he at least shared something with everybody: loss.
Brady answered obligatorily. “Tonight. Just now.”
“What the hell kind of monster flu is this?” Eva asked.
“Never mind swine flu,” Brady said. “This thing’s like the kraken of flus. He got sick last night.”
“How many people are sick now?” Cole asked. “What did Dr. Captain say?”
Brady shrugged. “Lots.”
Cole motioned to the forest—to the killer who was now, in all likelihood, hundreds of yards away—then to some nondescript place in the community, weighing two options that he didn’t need to articulate. “What do we do?”
“My kókom’s probably over at the clinic right now,” Brady said, clearly conflicted, following Cole’s aimless motion. Did they deal with the man in the woods, or did they put that on hold?
“You should go,” Eva said to Brady. “She’ll need you.”
“I guess I should,” Brady said.
“I’ll come too,” Eva said. “Because you’ll need me.”
“Me too,” Cole said. “If we’re a team, we’re a team, right?”
“Right,” Brady said.
As they started walking, Eva said, “Maybe it wasn’t even the guy. Maybe it was just some hunter with a neat camp and he was trying to chase off some teenagers.”
“You don’t have to make me feel better,” Brady said. “The tracks lead right there. It wasn’t some peeping Tom or something.”
“We need to tell your dad,” Cole said. “Something else could happen, or he could bolt, even if it looks like he’s sticking around. Maybe we scared him off.”
“Kids scared him off?” Brady asked. “He just killed one of us; why would he be scared off?”
“I’m just saying, Mr. Kirkness should check it out,” Cole said.
“Okay, I’ll let him know, give him the directions, whatever,” Eva said.
The Wounded Sky Health Clinic wasn’t far from where they’d come out of Blackwood Forest. Soon, they were approaching the building. A large crowd was gathered outside the clinic, holding a vigil for Chief Crate. From the back Cole could see that many in the crowd heeded Dr. Captain’s advice, too. Wounded Sky residents were holding up candles, lighters, or cell phones, and a good number had masks over their mouths. Younger residents had drawn pictures on their masks: mouths with fangs, clown smiles, zipped lips. The trio held steady at the perimeter of the vigil, and Cole saw that Eva and Brady, taking their cue from the crowd, had lifted their shirt collars up over their mouths. Cole did the same. It would be a shame if he got sick and died before he fulfilled his end of the bargain.
Cole looked at the faces around him. They had been through pain and never had the luxury of being taken somewhere far away. While the pain never really seemed to leave for Cole, even though he was hundreds and hundreds of miles away, there were moments where he’d forget. He’d always cherished those moments. How could anybody forget the pain when they were living in it?
The mourning crowd was quiet like Cole hadn’t heard before, like they were all holding their breath, just waiting for the moment to end. Cole could hear the collective flickering of tiny flames, from wicks to butane, like whispers. He also heard the sound of shuffling feet, and he saw people moving away from him. In a strange way, this movement was done almost respectfully, like sorry, Cole, we don’t want to offend you, but we still don’t like you all that much. Or maybe it wasn’t that they didn’t like him, but rather they were scared of him. He honestly didn’t know.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Cole craned his neck up. He tried to look over the crowd to see who’d said it.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming to a vigil for a man you killed!”
It was Mark. He saw a black hat bob up and down several feet away. It weaved its way through the crowd, like a shark through water, towards him. Moments later, Mark and Cole were standing face-to-face. Mark got real close. Cole could smell his breath. Beer. Cigarettes. At the same time, Michael appeared from the vigil, drawn by Mark’s shouting, and stood beside Cole and Eva and Brady.
“What are you talking about?” Cole backed away, but Mark closed the distance. Cole decided not to go any farther. This was going to happen, whether they were in the forest or here. At least here he’d have his friends.
“I’m not going to buy that it’s some coincidence. That the same night you get here, Chief Crate gets sick.” Mark scanned the crowd, who were all watching the pair now, and asked, “Do you think anybody is going to buy that?”
“Man, do you really think I brought some kind of crazy virus in a little bottle to Wounded Sky, like this was some movie or something? Are you kidding me?”
“Maybe you’re sick too!”
“Do I look sick? If I were sick, I’d be dead by now, or at least in the clinic.”
“And then Ashley gets shot, and who’s there? Cole Harper.”
“So you’re just going to ignore the fact that I’m not sick? What are you, Donald Trump?”
“His blood was all over you, wasn’t it, city?”
“That kind of happens when somebody is shot right in front of you, Mark.”
“Do you really believe him!?” Mark asked the crowd. Cole saw some masked faces shaking their heads. He wondered if they still would have if they weren’t wearing masks. “We don’t have none of this shit happen when he’s gone, and then when he comes back, look at what happens!”
“The whole place is going to shit!” somebody shouted.
“Are you guys even listening to Cole?” Brady asked.
“There’s nobody to save here, city boy!” another person said.
“Mark is right!”
“He killed Ashley!”
“Ashley was his friend!” Michael shouted.
“So were all the kids he didn’t save!” a voice called out.
Somebody threw a candle at Cole. It landed against his chest and fell to the ground. The flame went out before it hit him, but it might as well have burned him. Other candles followed.
“He brought this flu here! It had to be him!”
Brady moved closer to Cole, shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Hell, yeah! The Chief got sick right when Harper came in!”
“Get outta here you coward!”
Eva moved to the other side of Cole and put her hand on him protectively.
“You’re city, Harper! We don’t need you!”
“We don’t want you, city!”
“There’s nobody here to save, Harper,” Mark said. “Why don’t you go the hell home?”
“ENOUGH!” Reynold yelled over the shouts of the crowd. The chaos died down gradually, like a volume dial being turned from ten to one. “Please, hear me out,” Reynold continued. “Let’s be reasonable. I understand what’s happening here, and I feel your pain. If I could have Chief Crate back, I would take him. I don’t care about this election. Whatever our differences, he was a good leader.”
The crowd voiced its approval. Reynold continued.
“We all knew Ashley too. In many ways, he was our hope. He was going to do great things. I could see that in him.”
Brady was crying. He’d been staying strong for Cole through the onslaught, but that strength was slipping away. Cole put an arm around him.
“And this all happened when Cole Harper came back to Wounded Sky, yes,” Reynold said. “We’ve lost so much, and now we have lost more. We’re angry. We’re confused. We want somebody to blame.”
The crowd approved of this as well. The wave of anger began to rise, but Reynold quieted them once more. “But this boy,” He pointed at Cole. “This boy right here isn’t to blame! We should welcome him. We lost him, as we’ve lost so many others, and now he’s home again.”
Some heads nodded. But Cole felt too many eyes on him, too many voices against him.
“Let’s not forget, either, that this boy is a hero,” Reynold said.
“He’s a liar! No kid could lift a wall!”
“He was faking it! They would’ve got out of that fire anyway!”
“He’s a hero!”
“He saved them!”
“He saved his friends!”
“Selfish punk!”
“He could’ve saved everybody, that little bastard!”
“He should’ve stayed there with the rest of them!”
“Burn, Harper!”
Another candle.
“What makes him so special!?”
“I was just a kid!” Cole shouted. “I never asked for any of this! You people want to know why I got moved away? I never knew. I never knew until now, and this is why. Imagine hearing this when you’re seven. SEVEN!” Cole shook his head. He backed away from Eva and Brady. “Maybe…” his lip began to quiver, tears started to fall “…maybe that makes me a coward.” He moved farther and farther away from them all. “But what does that make all of you?”
His thoughts had always focussed on what he’d done, and what he could’ve done differently when he’d saved his friends, if he would’ve noticed the school burning earlier, if he could’ve run there faster. Maybe he could’ve saved more kids. Maybe he could’ve saved everybody. Maybe he never should’ve left the school in the first place. But now he just felt angry, and tired, and lost and, really, that nothing he did back then would’ve changed anything now. And he wasn’t mad at his auntie anymore, or at Ashley, or at his grandmother for keeping this from him, that people felt this way.
Cole stormed away from the clinic, leaving the crowd, now stunned silent, behind. He heard footsteps chasing after him.
“Cole!” Michael followed him.
“Yeah,” Cole said.
“Come back, alright? Please?”
“Come back to that? No thanks.”
“You were right, what you said.”
Cole stopped and turned to face Michael. He hoped that Eva might have chased after him, but it was her boyfriend. Great. And why was Michael being so nice to him? Did he feel guilty for stealing her from him? Was he making amends?
“It doesn’t matter if I was right or not. It’s not going to change anybody’s mind. It’s not going to change anything.”
“It matters to us. Your friends.”
“Are we friends?” Cole asked.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you the same thing,” Michael said.
Cole pictured Eva. He pictured Eva and the necklace she wore. Did Michael know that necklace was from him? Did it matter? “I didn’t think she was just going to wait around for me, you know. Better you than some asshole.”
“So…” Michael laughed a bit awkwardly. “Friends?”
Cole put his hands in his pockets. He shifted the pill bottle back and forth with his fingertip. He wanted to take a pill right now, but there were so few left. It was funny. He hadn’t thought about taking a pill after they’d been chased by a killer, but he wanted one now, when he was completely out of danger. “Friends.”
Michael put his hand on Cole’s shoulder, gently pulled him back in the direction of the clinic. “Come on. You don’t have to be anything for anybody.”
Cole shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t be there right now. I just want to clear my head.”
“Sure, okay.” Michael nodded at Cole, then turned around and jogged back towards the clinic. Cole watched until Michael got to the crowd and stopped beside Eva. They were talking, and Cole could tell it was about him. Michael threw up his arms, like there was no convincing Cole to come back. That would be accurate, Cole thought, maybe even if Eva had chased after him, not Michael.
He took a last look at the couple as they and Brady pushed their way through the crowd towards the clinic, where they’d undoubtedly spend the night helping others. Cole thought he should be there, and on another night he would’ve gone with them and ignored the crowd, but not tonight. He left the clinic and his friends behind with the crowd and their masks and lighters and candles. Cole took out his phone.
“Hello?” His grandma picked up the phone after far too many rings. He’d watched her do this, wait to answer the phone while she was sitting right beside it, testing the will of whoever was calling her, and her own patience for technology. He had convinced her to get a cell phone last year. It spent most of its time untouched, on the coffee table in the living room.
“Hey, Grandma.” Cole found it hard to hide the fact that he was crying from her. The tears had stopped after his outburst, but as soon as he dialled her number, they started again.
“What’s wrong, my boy?”
Cole paused. He searched for the words. What was wrong? Everything. Was everything a valid response? “I want to come home.” He cried harder. “Auntie Joan was right.” He felt like a child. He felt like the seven-year-old boy that had left Wounded Sky, not the seventeen-year-old that had come back. Not the kid who’d been given this strength. No, he felt weak.
“Oh, Cole. You only just got there.”
“I know, but everything’s going wrong and everybody hates me.”
“That can’t really be true.”
“It feels like it is.” He thought of his home back in the city. He thought about what he’d be doing right now if he were there, probably reading a comic, doing homework, listening to music. The things a kid like him should be dealing with. And then he thought about what would be happening here if he’d have stayed home. How could things have been any worse? And what good was he doing?
“Ashley’s dead.”
There’d already been a long pause, and this extended it. He could hear his grandma’s breath on the other line. He could almost hear her trying to think of what to say.
“That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
“Grandma?”
“Yes, nósisim?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” He barely got those words out and hoped she could understand him through the sobbing. “I don’t belong here, I—”
“Do you remember when you first started at your school, when we came to the city?”
“Yes.”
“That I was the only First Nations kid in my class and all the other kids were white. I was scared.”
“You thought they’d make fun of you, that they’d hate you. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“And did it matter if they did? What did I tell you?”
Cole took a deep, calming breath. He wiped at his cheeks. “You said it only mattered if I liked me. It didn’t matter if anybody else did.”
“That’s right, grandson. That’s exactly what I told you.”
“And then I had a panic attack, so what good did that do?”
“It didn’t make it not true, and it’s still true now. If you can accept yourself for who you are, you belong anywhere. Cole, you belong there, and whatever you have to do, you do it.”
“Okay, Grandma.” It felt like the conversation was ending, but he didn’t want it to. He kept the phone hugged against his cheek like he could hold her there, like she, and his home back in the city, the place that made him “city,” was that close. He even missed his auntie, as hard as she could be.
“And, grandson, what else do I always tell you, when you are feeling this way? Troubled?”
“To find my peace.”
“Find your peace,” his grandma said.
“Thanks, Grandma. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“I love you, grandson.”