A Chapel of Sorrow

His back against an gnarled old tree, Officer Trottier was smoking his first cigarette of the day and flicking the thick coat of grey mud off his new boot; he hadn’t eaten anything all afternoon but he didn’t feel a thing, other than the nicotine raging through every one of his arteries. He felt a storm coming—in fact, anyone could have seen it coming—the sky was melting into transparent tar, like a bruise as black as Indian ink. You’d have thought an octopus had blown its deadly, lingering kisses through the sky in Abitibi. The humid air smelled like spruce trees and musty earth, Trottier recognized this smell that came before death. He had trod past kilometres of makeshift housing: prefabricated houses with sides molded like black wallpaper, decrepit homes with rotten wooden verandas gnawed away by the humidity. All these buildings threatened to cave in. In front of the cracked windows of the convenience store, a few kids were having fun looping back and forth on creaky bikes blistered with rust. They were imitating the sound of engines, one of them was wearing a motorcycle helmet to make the race seem more legit. A little girl with long hair streamered in braids swished a maple-tree branch every which way to signal the takeoff. Trottier knew he wouldn’t be able draw any information out of the kids, they were too absorbed playing grownup games before the rain. The adults would turn out to be no more talkative, everyone knew Any McDonald, but no seemed to concern themselves with her comings and goings; it was extremely rare for anyone to share anything, Trottier never noticed that his words, tinged with disdain, brought the conversations nowhere. He had promised Any’s family that he would find her as quickly as possible, but he stared the “Indians” down, shot dirty looks at the ones who were gathering beer bottles. Trottier was unfamiliar with Anishinabeg customs, heedless of whether they spoke Algonquin, and never did he stop and wonder what could have happened to the individuals who plodded down the dirty, paved streets of Lac-Simon like remote-controlled zombies who were led by a troubling instinct that was not their own. He saw them only as miserable beings, stiffened by alcohol and tobacco. He decided to go, tired of the accumulating frustrations. On his way out, he plucked a handful of dry wheat between his wizened fingers—his hands perfectly blended with the sinuous plants—and climbed back into his RCMP patrol car to write up his meager report. The no-see-ums had left their marks all over his body, he was covered in bites from head to toe; his arms were already speckled with rosy little bruises, he swore and told himself that, when he got back, he would ask a colleague to join him the next day, he had no intention of going through this investigation alone. He certainly didn’t feel like facing the ghosts that lorded over Lac-Simon all by himself.

Any McDonald was still missing, no one could find her, her room served as an obscure chapel for anyone attempting to offer prayers of reconciliation with time. Her scent was starting to disappear from the room while her mother filled it with her tears, exhausted from smashing her worry against the window. Fumbling, she gathered up the dirty clothes to make odd little heaps, then she pulled herself together, tried to take in the snippets of her daughter’s life. Any was one of those elusive sorts, a rare butterfly that could never be caught in full flight; she often took off for whole days without leaving a note and they got used to her not being there for supper or Mass. When she was little, they often found her in a far-off field gathering green fruit or adding another special bug to her collection. She left early, early in the morning and came back at night, just before dark, her mother worried she wouldn’t see her daughter’s figure appear at the end of the street. When she became a teenager, she often ran off, sick of her mother’s advice; she missed her dad, she reminisced about evenings they spent together and she hoped for the day she would see him coming home for good, suitcase in hand, face smiling. She filled her red binder full of photos of this man, dated his exploits, studied his bright black eyes, two dark pearls. This time, her mother had an uncomfortable sense of foreboding, prowlers and bodies that had turned blue from the cold and death occupied her dreams. She couldn’t block these fears from her mind, Any’s brother started to imagine the worse too, especially when his mom phoned the police station only to slam down the receiver a few minutes later. At her wits’ end, she finally passed out in Any’s room, half immersed in the heaps of laundry on the floor. Her son pulled her into his puny arms, rested his head against hers, sharing the same tremors of sorrow.

Officer Trottier had a face like a hardened plain, the deaths he had encountered had left their mark on his aging face. He brooded over the different papers he shifted here and there over his desk: testimonies, photographs, the girl’s private notebooks. He was beginning to get a sense of the first signs of her death: the repeated excursions away from home, the absence of a witness, the sparing words of the Indigenous people, the hours ticking by far too quickly. He had often run into baffling and troubling investigations like this before, investigations where death constantly lurks about, settles cruelly into the hearts of the missing person’s family. Trottier himself recognized that the chances were slim, forty-eight hours later, he hadn’t taken the first call-in seriously, thinking it was just another one of those frustrated teenagers who spiraled out of control. He had hoped that, during the first search, they would find a piece of clothing, that a dog would catch scent of her, that someone would finally decide to explain what happened to Any McDonald. But no one said a word, not even the forest would give him a clue, they never found a body. He had seen Mrs. McDonald’s son that morning, careening down the streets with his shaky old wheelbarrow, he was slapping posters of his sister’s face on telephone poles, vacant walls, bright-red mailboxes; Any’s face wasn’t a rare sight anymore: everyone locked eyes with her, memories stirred.

Trottier’s superior urged him to organize a second search, the rain threatened his plans, enormous downpours pelted down on Lac-Simon, leaving behind only slippery mud that streaked trenches across the streets. Trottier protested, rain would make the expedition too difficult, no one would put themselves at risk scouring swampy footpaths. Besides, he thought, they had probed the trails of a ghost long enough.

Thirty volunteers ploughed through the underbrush, they made little headway in their raincoats. The officer changed his mind and decided not to bring the dogs since mud caked every inch of ground; the area would be unnavigable for them. Only Mrs. McDonald’s dog stood watch from the steps of their balcony, he observed the scene, sniffing all the while at the scents the storm spread far and wide. At the end of the day, Trottier was swearing, exhausted, he didn’t know whom he should take his anger out on: his superior who pushed him too hard or this community that buried any clues beneath a heavy layer of silence.

The wind slapped Any right in the face. She waved several neurotic insects away with her pale hand, the fresh smell of moist dirt filled her lungs. She savoured this liberty she had hardly dared wish for as she trekked through the tall grasses. She finally reached the highway, she had already prepared a big piece of cardboard in hopes that a car would stop at the sight of the brandished sign. She had brought only essentials with her for her road trip: some savings, enough clothes for a week, toiletries, her plan was to start looking for new lodgings only after she got to Montreal. Her ultimate goal for the moment was still escape. She thought about her mom and her never-ending advice, how to do the chores, how to behave, how to dress well, and how to work hard. She had had enough of bending over backwards for her mother and all her rules, of wandering through this town that shut down every night at eleven o’clock, she couldn’t stand its streets anymore. She wanted liberty now, to explore the streets of Montreal, to have a place to herself, to be part of this disorganized but animated buzz of people. One of her friends had promised her casual work in a music store in the evenings and on weekends, when she got there, in two days.

Cars flew past on the highway, the day started to fade away, Any lit a cigarette, lifted her thumb high, surely someone would decide to stop before nightfall, she had no intention of walking a whole lot longer along the side of the highway. Only twelve minutes had passed and she could already see the moon settling onto its perch, casting its glow below, when a white car finally pulled up. Any seated herself in the passenger seat and let her cigarette butt spin in the wind that had now grown cold.

Mary McDonald went through her routine altered by sorrow; she needed a long moment of recuperation for every movement she made. Sometimes, she carefully went through the heaps of clothes on Any’s floor, forgetting all about her son who was also trying to survive this alienating grief. The patter of the rain staccatoed Mary’s sobs, cut through them, she didn’t hear her youngest son softly singing a country song in his room. Erik was joining in with Johnny Cash, as he watched the beads of rain sidling down the window pane. He had slept a good part of the night before in his sister’s bedroom, oscillating between tears and despair; his sister’s perfume had since disappeared from the room, which was now cold and filled with the family’s sorrow. He contemplated the rather worn photos tacked up on the bedroom walls, searched out Any’s oval face on each one, remembered the campfire, the guitar that was out of tune, the fireworks that sparkled in his sister’s delighted eyes, the snow fort they had sculpted with their own hands every winter, spending entire days perfecting their construction.

He desperately clung to what his sister liked best: Johnny Cash, a book on plants that cracked when he opened it, the rock collection he used to find ridiculous, he didn’t get her obsession with slight differences in shape and colour. He studied them one by one before putting each into its assigned place. He was angry with Any, he was angry with her for not sharing her escape plan with him like all the other times. He was also angry with her for the sorrow she had caused their mother, the worry that was slowly becoming a fear for the worst.

He plopped the collection on her bed, a fine cloud of grey dust mingled with the sheets, ashes, Erik thought. He couldn’t bring himself to recall any more memories connected with the rocks, he snatched one from the box and hurled it as hard as he could toward the window.

Any watched the countryside disappear into the darkness of the night; through the midst, she could make out a few trees, slender figures in this ghostly place. She didn’t want to get into a conversation with the guy on her left, she hardly spoke, she didn’t like her driver’s prying questions, she felt like these questions were tracking her down, and she drowned her answers in evasive sentences. She tried to make the time pass by drawing on the foggy window, skyscrapers and a mountain overshadowed by a cross towered over the scene that was lit up by a gigantic sun with long rays. The man, amused, suppressed a smile, nosily cleared his throat.

“What are you going to do in Montreal?”

“Visit my family.”

“Ok, if you want, I can drop you off right at their place; that way you won’t have to take the bus and you’ll save yourself some time.”

“You’re going to Montreal?”

“Sure, I can do that.”

Any felt cornered, she had a hard time imagining spending so many long hours in the same car as this man, he made her feel uncomfortable, she found him intrusive and didn’t like the sidelong glances he shot at her from time to time. He was in his late thirties, freshly shaved, a bit awkward looking, beady eyes that made Any feel scared. She watched the rain that was now streaming down the car windows, she thought of Erik, felt bad for not telling him anything about her escape, she mentally begged him to forgive her. She would have liked to promise him a letter, a phone call once she got to Montreal, so he wouldn’t worry. She knew he was sad and worried, she tried really hard not to think about it, she promised herself that she would phone him once she got there. The man opened the glove box above her knees, unstopped a flask, offered it to Any.

“You look a little tense. Is it the first time that you’ve hitchhiked? A little stressed, eh. Take a swig. It will calm you down.”

“No thanks. It’s ok. I’m just a bit tired. I don’t want any. Really.”

He laughed.

“I guess it’s true. I forgot, you Indians, once you start drinking, you start making trouble. You can’t hold your liquor. You’re all the same. It’s genetic.”

As he parked his car, Trottier almost toppled the shelving unit cluttered with paint cans and tools; the garage stank like oil and stale tobacco, a thin layer of dust smothered the place. Still seated in the car, he lit a cigarette; he thought about every minute of his day and swore under his breath, fighting back the intense urge to punch somebody. His irritability only provoked his chief, who pushed back, pressuring him a little more every day to walk up and down the worn-out streets of Lac-Simon. He was annoyed with Mary McDonald, who retreated into her chapel of sorrow, he was annoyed with the whole family who cried out for help in prayer. They were praying for a dead person, a dead person who had had enough of life in this secluded community, a dead person who had risked her life to escape from them, this is how Trottier explained Any McDonald’s disappearance. He climbed out of the car, chucking his jacket onto the bench, he heard steps inside, probably his wife who was already home.

In the kitchen, his wife was busy chopping up a selection of herbs, the odour of overcooked roast wafted through the room, a few clumps of fat imposed upon a bloody plate, and a bunch of freshly picked herbs managed to seep their scent through the smell of carbonized meat. Trottier seized a bottle of wine that had been cracked open, its smell reminded him of the bag-in-box wines of his teenage years, those four litres he belted down with his cousin, head thrown back, completely drunk from the cheap booze. He had no idea how his wife could drink this plonk without thinking twice about the taste.

“Damn, I’m hungry. I thought it would be ready.”

“We’ll eat soon. Had a bad day?”

“A bad day, eh? Oh, I don’t know! I’m fed up with those fucking Indians who won’t say a fucking word. No one saw anything. No one knows where the girl would have taken off to. Dead silence. Not a single clue. The volunteers are fed up with combing the forest and the surrounding area. It’s been a pain up the ass for them and for me. And then there’s this whole investigation. It pisses me off. The two guys who came with me got no leads either, and one of them thinks it’s the momma who’s hiding something. Of course she’s hiding something. Fuck! They’re all crooks, the lot of them! I haven’t taken a look at the list of repeat offenders in the area and I’ve got no desire to. I’ll make Giroux do it. He can deal with it. I just want to get back to my other investigation. The RCMP will deal with the Indian girl; as for me, I don’t want anything more to do with it!”

“Oh, Lordy! The roast is overcooked!”

Trottier spit out a swearword; for years, his wife had persisted in carbonizing, blackening, rubberizing every piece of meat to go through her hands, she wasn’t gifted and didn’t know even the basics of cooking, but she drew a certain satisfaction from her experiments. Making the meals allowed her to escape between two recipes, to forget about her husband and her kids; to serve them an indigestible dish that basically served as an underhanded punishment, she hoped to keep the family in check this way. Trottier shot his fist through wall, a few centimetres from his wife’s face, they could hear the drywall crack into pieces, slivers of paint clung to his knuckles.

Erik McDonald didn’t abandon his sorrow, he stayed put on his sister’s bed, which was both a lifeboat and a vessel of sadness. After a forty-eight-hour fast, he forced down a few mouthfuls of food; he ate cereal right out of the box, flipping all the while through the photo albums. Memorizing Any’s face was now the only way to preserve the connection they shared, the last communion possible before giving in to complete despair and hysteria.

His mom had never scolded him about the rock he threw at the window; she simply stuck a piece of wood over the window, she didn’t ask him any questions, she didn’t even look at him. Erik had hoped that she would lose her temper, that she would turn into an angry monster, that she would punish him, slap him, just to feel alive again. He felt like his mom was dead by proxy and that she was sinking deep into the sea of stupor and sadness that is gauged by the passing days and nights.

Any was still everywhere on every street in Lac-Simon, her face was on every mailbox and every billboard and wall, these posters helped keep her alive and Erik didn’t give a damn about Trottier’s reproachful explanation of his sister’s disappearance. He despised Trottier and the perpetually sullen look on his face, this type of guy oozed with racism and disgust, it was unbelievable that someone so arrogant, so condescending, so racist could be responsible for a missing-person case, he didn’t have the drive or the delicacy that this kind of investigation required. The cop always spoke to them grudgingly, never looked them in the face, and spent awkward silences chewing on a toothpick or barking orders at other cops.

Erik made his way toward a grey house, wildflowers whose names he couldn’t remember grew along the driveway; he felt at home here. He looked into the backyard and saw Victor, curled up in a hammock, earphones in, he was murmuring a melody that was familiar to Erik. He seemed relaxed, completely in control of himself, he greeted Erik with a checked smile and thrust one of the earbuds into his ear.

“It’s her favourite song. I listen to it every night before I go to sleep and I tell myself maybe she’s listening to it too.”

“I doubt she’s still alive. I’ve given up hope on them finding her. You should see my mom. She bawls her eyes out beside the phone all day long. As for me, I don’t know what to do. Two of my uncles searched the whole entire forest and didn’t find a thing. I thought there was a good chance we’d find her alive. And you know what makes me absolutely sick about this whole thing? The cops don’t even try to find her—my sister—don’t even try at all; to them, she’s just another native girl who’s beat it and who means nothing to anyone outside her reserve. She’s nobody now. It’s like she doesn’t exist.”

“Erik, I couldn’t tell you anything before Any got there; now that she’s arrived, I’ll tell you where she is.”

Tucked under her jean jacket was the most recent photo Any possessed of her dad; the corners were dog-eared and the writing on the back was faded, but the lively eyes of Chris McDonald were still untouched. Any gets off the bus, the 69 Gouin, the building in front of her is covered in barbed wire, a stone prison. She walks up the paved entrance to Bordeaux Prison, she didn’t expect anyone to be concerned about her being there for her dad’s fortieth birthday; only a bit of wire separates them now.