Born With a Tooth
ALSO BY JOSEPH BOYDEN
The Orenda
Through Black Spruce
Three Day Road
CONTENTS
EAST • LABOUR
Born With A Tooth
Shawanagan Bingo Queen
You Don’t Want to Know What Jenny Two Bears Did
SOUTH • RUIN
Painted Tongue
Bearwalker
Men Don’t Ask
WEST• RUNNING
Kumamuk
Legend of the Sugar Girl
Abitibi Canyon
NORTH • HOME
Legless Joe versus Black Robe
Gasoline
God’s Children
Old Man
EAST
Labour
BORN WITH A TOOTH
My wolf hung at the trading post for two weeks until that new teacher up from Toronto bought him. My longlegged Timber with half a left ear. A local trapper snared and sold my wolf to Trading Post Charlie, who skinned him and pinned him on the wall next to the faded MasterCard sign. He was worth more than $250.
The teacher’s been here less than a month, sent to us by the Education Authority at Christmastime so the rez kids can learn the Queen’s English. They gave him a little house and a parka, and I think he’s lonely like me and has got a lot to watch and learn. He knows nothing about a snowmobile or guns or the bush or the insult and danger of looking in the eyes. I can tell by watching him. Maybe I can teach him. He’s got a thin face and he’s tall and awkward. My face is round, and I can drive a snowmobile as good as Lucky Lachance.
The one and only Lucky Lachance is my uncle, gone for four days of every week. He knows something’s wrong because lately he comes back from work saying, “Just because your name’s Sue Born With A Tooth doesn’t mean you have to stay on this reservation the rest of your life, Jesus fuck.” He works for the Ontario Northland railway on the Polar Bear Express. His train runs from Cochrane to Moosonee, mostly taking tourists in summer and supplies in winter across Northern Ontario and up to our stomping ground on the bottom tip of James Bay. The tourists call it the wilderness, but Lucky Lachance calls it the asshole of Hudson Bay. He’s French Canadian and he’s got a dirty mouth. His sister is my mother, and I think my father’s most probably dead. My father came carrying my name with him from somewhere out west. He brought my name to this place of Blueboys and Whiskeyjacks and Wapachees and Netmakers and even in this place my name stands out. Eighteen years ago my mother sewed my father his first suit, and seventeen years ago he got her pregnant with me. All I know is he was full-blood Cree and belonged to the Bear Clan. In grade four I learned that the name for French and Indian mixed is Metis. I always thought that around here that made me nothing special times two.
Lucky says I’m looking into my fucking womanhood, and if I want to see the world he’ll get me a free train ticket to Cochrane. He says it’s time to stop moping around. “If you’re not in school, it’s time to work,” he says. But I don’t want to leave Moose Factory. I can’t imagine another place where in summer you have to canoe or take a motorboat or a water taxi to the mainland and in winter they plough a road across the ice so cars can come back and forth. My mother wants me to learn how to sew.
Trading Post Charlie might have wondered why I was around the store so often the two weeks the wolf was there. I didn’t buy anything. Charlie’s fifty and is comfortable around me and pointed out all the pictures of his grandkids under the glass countertop once, but I could see his wife was jealous, me coming every day to drink free coffee and smoke her husband’s cigarettes. She figured my visits out, though. Charlie’s wife sold my wolf to the teacher yesterday.
For fourteen days I just showed up in the morning, knocking snow off my boots and letting a steam of cold air in through the door. I tried to learn how to drink Charlie’s coffee and tried to make Charlie tell me everything he knew about the wolf. I think Charlie probably did know it was the wolf I came for, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye, or anyone else for that matter. He’s OjiCree and too polite. He doesn’t talk much, just sells milk and bread and shotgun shells to the locals, pelts and Indian crafts to summer tourists.
But Charlie finally began to talk when he saw I wasn’t going anywhere. “The trapper got the wolf in a snare. That blizzard come up off the bay, and the trapper figures it was two or three days the wolf choked slow before the lines could be checked again. The trapper said he ended the choke with a bullet in the wolf’s brain.” Later Charlie said, “It’s the rare one that comes to the island and stays for long. Trapper’d seen the wolf’s prints in the snow last winter. This winter too. He tracked him a while. Usually a pack comes across the ice for a night of following moose, but they never stay so close to humans long.”
I imagined I could see the black wire mark when I ran my hand against his fur. He’d already started collecting dust.
My wolf was skinny but brave. He came to see me often that winter two years ago, disappeared before spring, then came back again the next freeze. I watched him and loved him.
I still can’t sleep, my head wandering and thinking the wolf waits outside for me. There aren’t too many reasons to go outside in the dark when it’s minus forty and trees pop and crack in the cold. Tonight marks that night two winters ago.
I couldn’t get comfortable in bed so I pulled my parka and mukluks on and went outside. It was the cold that makes your fingers burn through mittens and the moisture in your nose freeze and your toes ache no matter how many pairs of socks you wear. I walked just to walk, south on our road, smelling the woodsmoke and watching sparks fly from neighbours’ chimneys. I looked up at the black and tried to find Mars and Venus, the stars that don’t twinkle. I was hoping to see the northern lights. I wanted to walk quiet like the ancestors because I could sense them behind rocks and perched in the scrub pines, watching me and judging me. But my feet crunched on the dry snow and echoed in my ears under my hat loud enough that I felt silly. If the ancestors had been around, I had scared them away.
When I got to the edge of Charles Island, I lit a smoke and looked out at the ice highway running across the bay to Moosonee’s twinkling lights. That’s when I first came across him. I heard his paws in the snow, so I took my toque off to hear him better. I walked home slowly and felt his eyes on my back, but it wasn’t spooky, only like an old friend come back to visit. Even though my ears hurt, I kept my hat off because I knew he was there. He followed me home but didn’t show his face till the next night. That’s when I laid my trap. Lucky’s friend had gutted a moose, and I stole some innards and put them in a snowbank in our backyard. That next night I waited by the window for him, waited until past two. Then he appeared like a ghost or a shadow, slinking, lean, sniffing and jittery. I watched him drag my present into the bush.
Charlie tells me his name is Michael and he’s only been teaching for two years. Lucky calls him a city slicker cocksucker and asks me what this guy thinks he can teach anyone. I follow this teacher to the trading post and coffee shop and post office. He never knows it. I wait for school to let out and follow to see where he lives. He walks along with his parka hood up, dragging his boots and humming.
I start thinking I want him to notice me, so I get bolder, crossing the street when he does and walking by him, or taking a seat near him at Trapper’s Restaurant and only ordering a coffee. When he looks at me, I look away. When he smiles at me, I walk away.
It was three months, close to the ice breakup that first winter, before my wolf finally trusted me enough to stay in sight when I came outside. All winter I’d watched from the living-room window after Mom and Lucky had gone to their beds. At first I tried luring him with pieces of chicken or whitefish. I’d sit on the back step with my hand outstretched, wait
ing. But he wouldn’t leave the shadows. So I’d arrange the scraps in a circle and go inside to my window perch and watch him slink across the yard. He knew I was there but wouldn’t look up. He grew fuller and less jumpy. The night he finally ate from my hand, I knew something was going special.
Michael comes up to me at the coffee shop today and asks if he can sit by me. I say, “Okay,” so he sits directly across the table and asks questions.
“Why don’t I see you at the high school?” he says. I just shrug. He’ll learn soon enough. Most of the rez kids make it to grade nine. That’s when the government says it’s legal to leave school behind. And that’s when a lot of us know it’s right. He asks me what my name is, and I tell him I’m Sue Born With A Tooth. He stares at my eyes, and I want to ask him if he’s trying to insult me, but that would be rude. He’s got little whiskers and his skin is very white and the fur on his hanging parka hood frames his jaw nicely. He says my hair is long and black and pretty, and I tell him I have to go. I leave change on the table and walk outside.
“Can we have coffee again?” he asks, following me out.
“I guess,” I say.
“When?” he asks. “Tomorrow?”
“I guess,” I say.
On the night he first touched me, I had no meat to offer the wolf, just a bone and gristle. But he was lonely and I was too. It was the act of offering and the middle of a long night and each of us growing used to one another. I held the bone in my bare hand and felt the moisture on my fingers freeze to a throb. I walked to the middle of the yard. He was in the shadows but slowly walked up when I stretched out my hand. He padded slow and tense from his hiding place and raised the fur on his neck. It made him look bigger and mean, and he kept walking out as I stood slumped and relaxed but wanting to explode inside. He stopped a couple of metres from me. I thought that would be as close as he’d come, but I kept my stare focused on the snow by his feet. He walked closer, till his nose twitched by my hand. He flattened his ears back and I looked at the left one, ragged and bitten or shot half off. I felt his eyes on mine, so I looked too. Yellow eyes. Harvest moons. He smiled at me with his black lips and opened his mouth and the white teeth gently took the bone. He turned around and trotted slowly back to the edge of the bush, then turned his head to me before disappearing.
I often wondered where he went all day, whether he was safe or if his visits put him in danger. I wanted to ask Lucky about the hunters on the island. I wanted to know if they knew about my stray. No one ever talked about any wolf tracks near their door in the mornings after a new snowfall. But still, I worried for him.
My mother talks so little that there are people in Moose Factory who believe she doesn’t know how to. She works with her sewing machine out of the house. She’s very small and very smart. You can see it in her shiny black eyes. “C’est dommage. It is too bad there is so much of your father in you,” she tells me. “Unable to sleep at night, always wanting to dance with the ghosts.” I wonder how much she actually sees and how much she knows to sense. I’ve watched her sew for hours, and the day comes that I will stitch too, but for now I get everything I need from a few coins in Lucky’s money jar.
Michael asks me out to drink coffee most days after his teaching and continues staring at my eyes. I want to tell him that I don’t think I really like coffee after all and that we should go to his house and smoke cigarettes instead. Lucky saw us and teases me at home.
“Sue hangs out with the city fuck. The skinny cocksucker thinks he’s going to get some French and Indian ass at the same time, eh? He thinks the Metis like to mate, eh?” His words make me run to my room. But Lucky always knocks gently and tells me he is sorry. He says, “Metis means that you are stuck in the middle, Sue.”
Whenever he says that, I know he’s going to finish his talk. He reminds me that Indians consider me a Frenchie, and whites look at me like I’m Indian. But I imagine I don’t feel different from most of the rez kids. Maybe I’m lonelier. My best friend has a husband and a baby now, and another friend moved to Thunder Bay. Tonight Lucky says he is not here enough to watch out for me and I should be careful with the city boys.
Michael has him somewhere in his house. I want to sit by Michael’s stove and look at him. Michael talks a lot when we go out to the coffee shop. He tells me about Toronto, the woman mayor, the Canadian National Exhibition, the men who sleep on heating grates in the middle of winter underneath huge glass buildings. He tells me about his little brother and parents. Michael asks if he can come over to my house for dinner. He says he’s writing a paper on the Aboriginals of Northern Ontario. But I can hear Lucky saying, “Do you want another potato, cocksucker?” so I say I’ll go to Michael’s house instead.
It’s a small cottage on Ministik Road, outside the rez boundary, just a clapboard living room and a kitchen with dried flowers on the tiny table and a wood-burning stove. I help him carry wood in, and we leave our coats and boots by the stove. He cooks dinner and fumbles with the plates while setting the table. He talks a lot, asks a lot of questions about me and Moose Factory. I tell him my daddy was a full-blood Wolf Clan Cree. That he worked in the bush and was the son of a hunter. I lie and tell Michael my father was killed while hunting. I don’t know why I say this. I look down at the floor, then at the walls. I don’t see him.
After dinner we sit on the sofa and listen to music, drinking beer.
“You’re not the most talkative person,” Michael says. “Aren’t there things you want to know about me?” He leans closer and takes my hand in his. It’s sweaty.
“Do you have a girlfriend in Toronto?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “There’s a woman I like, but ...” and I stop his talk with a little kiss.
Lucky would be angry if he knew I was alone with Michael in his house. But Lucky’s on the train tonight, somewhere near the Soo.
I want to tell this one about the other. About how close we were by the second winter. How he’d come up to me in the middle of the night almost as friendly as a dog and take gifts from my hand, then go back to the edge of the bush to eat. He wouldn’t let me touch him, didn’t want the smell of human on his fur. I want to tell him about that time when the ice was beginning to break up on the bay and even snowmobilers weren’t crossing anymore. It was late and I offered him a strip of venison. He walked up and ignored my hand. Instead he nuzzled me hard between my legs. He could smell my blood. I felt his hot breath and tongue against my jeans for just a moment.
Michael looks awkward pulling out the sofa bed. “If I had known I’d be living like this,” he says, “I’d have shipped my futon up with me.” He’s holding onto me and unbuttoning my shirt. I want to know what a futon is, but I lie back and let him struggle with my jeans.
I can feel his tongue and his breath in the dark. He’s come back to me, nipping and licking, tasting me. He slides up and I can feel the hair of his chest on my belly, on my breasts. He is hard against me and pushes inside for my first time, his shoulder across my neck. The white flash of pain is his smile and dark lips. He nudges my legs wider. I bite his ear and he yelps and I can feel him release inside of me.
Michael mumbles and half talks in his sleep, so I quietly get up and pull my clothes on. The stove’s gone out and I can see my breath, so I squeak the stove door open and fill it with wood. I leave and walk down Ankerite Road, listening to my boots crunch in the snow and trees moan in the cold. Tonight it’s so dark and empty I wonder if anything is alive.
The days are getting longer again. Michael and I don’t go out for coffee much anymore. People in town started talking, asking why the teacher and a seventeen-year-old half-Indian girl were hanging out so much. Michael ran into Lucky and thought he was a big bearded lumberjack come to chop him down. Lucky says he didn’t say a word to him. Just looked. When we do meet for coffee, this teacher doesn’t look at my eyes anymore, just mumbles into his cup and watches out the window, then kisses my cheek and leaves. I wanted to tell him he was the first, but I can’t now.
“That pelt, the damaged one?” he said. “I sent it out on the mail plane to my woman friend in Toronto. She loves northern stuff.”
I try not to think of my wolf anymore, sent to hang in that woman’s house.
Michael calls me today after the first freighter canoe race of the year, the one from Moose Factory to Moosonee celebrating the spring. He asks me to meet him at the usual place.
“I’m leaving, back to TO,” he says as I stare out the window at the river and people on the water taxi dock. The trees will bud soon. He lights a smoke. “I thought I might want to renew my contract and stay through the summer. But I’ve got business to take care of back in the city.” He smiles. A casual smile. “Besides, I hear the blackflies drive you crazy in spring. Don’t worry, though. I’ll write. Maybe you can come visit me sometime.”
He always talks too much. I light a smoke and look him in the eyes. He looks back for a second, then looks down and plays with his cigarette pack. I stare at him till he gets up and leaves.
The last night he visited me a few months back, I knew my wolf could smell the evil in the air. He was jumpy and his yellow eyes looked dull. I was tired and didn’t want to get out of my warm bed. But I knew he was there, looking up at my window from his shadows at the tree line. I knew he wanted to see me. There was no food to offer so I poured him a bowl of milk and went outside. He sneaked up to me, then looked over his shoulder. He sniffed at the saucer but let the milk freeze. I wondered what he had done all day, if he had caught a hare or run from his enemies. Half awake and not thinking, I reached out to scratch his torn ear. I lazily ran my fingers over his scruffy head and scratched his neck. Just as I realized what I was doing, he nipped at my hand and walked away, looking back over his shoulder at me until he disappeared into the dark. He had the smell on him.