Wenjack Read online

  Rising to the shining surface now and exposing back and dorsal fin to air, we laze in the last of the season’s warm sunlight, wide mouth open and drawing water along scalpel teeth, gills flushing it out in a heartbeat rhythm. Our yellow eyes stare into the dry world above, poplar and black spruce shimmering up the bank. The weather will change. It will change by this time tomorrow, carrying first winter on its spine.

  We see the one named Chanie emerge from the trees and limp pigeon-toed toward us, breathing hard. We move closer with a swish of tail so that we may watch him fall to his knees by river’s edge, his face above a shiver in his dry world. His hands enter the water pale palms first, and then he merges the whole of his head into our wet domain, eyes closed as he gulps and gulps, lifting his head back out to breathe before sinking it back in to drink some more. Poor boy is so thirsty he forgets his father’s lesson to never drink this way but to drink with cupped hands instead.

  We laugh at Chanie’s forgetfulness and that’s when he opens his eyes underwater to stare into ours, catching a glimpse of us peering at him, amused. He startles and pushes himself back up and onto shore and so we flick our tail once more and cut along the bank, hugging it for a distance to where we know the uncle of the two brothers has built his weir. We will offer them a small gift today because we see their hunger, especially the smallest boy’s.

  We enter the weir of rocks that merge into a V, the channel we travel narrowing to the uncle and his long stick and snare, our head entering the circle of wire as he deftly yanks the long stick with his strong wrists’ flick, the wire tightening across our throat as he lifts the pole above him with us flopping in the noose tied to its end.

  The uncle carries us writhing in our stranglehold up the bank to his small cabin. He wishes we were bigger, for his two nephews have appeared ghostlike from the trees, which means two more mouths to feed. But alas, we are just a young pike. He will use every bit of us, though, his wife especially, who will boil even our head and sharp ribs down into a stock.

  Uncle sees when he reaches his camp a third young one now, a strange boy with wet black hair plastered to his forehead, and wonders how many more children the forest will birth. Another mouth to feed when his autumn hunt has been so unsuccessful is one mouth too many. He worries us from our noose and lays us belly down upon his plywood table, takes his thin and sharp fillet knife and, pinning our head with one hand, slices with a long draw of wicked sharpness across that place where skull meets spine.

  We shiver convulsions when he severs us from life and wriggle free from that coil just as the uncle whispers miigwetch and opens the pike’s mouth to place a small tuft of tobacco upon its tongue. Invisible on the wind now, we rise up to the poplars and tussle the dying leaves, rattling them in an honour song to one more day of life for those who gather around the blood- and scale-dappled table to watch this man prepare their meal.

  SPIDER

  I can see it’s the same fish, me. It’s the same giigoo, his eyes cloudy now on the table and he doesn’t look so big. But that’s him. I saw him with my head under the water. I went in his world and saw him. The nimishoome of my friends, he presses the fish’s neck with his knife, and me and them, we step up closer to watch. Nimishoome cuts the back of giigoo so it can stop moving around on the table and then he takes some cigarette from his pocket and sticks it in giigoo’s mouth. I swear, me, that when the nimishoome does that, the fish sticks his tongue out at me and whispers Gaaah! And then its open ear on the side closes for the last time and wind in the azaadi trees starts to hum and moan.

  A girl and her nimaamaa come out from the little cabin behind us and stare at me until I look back at them and they turn their eyes to my two friends. Lots of people here. Ever lots. Too many for such a small fish. My two friends. Their uncle nimishoome and his girl and her nimaamaa. How many is that? I count them on each finger with my other hand in a whisper mouth.

  Bizhig. Niizh. Niswi. Niiwin. Naanan.

  When I’m done, I see the nimishoome looks at me before he moves his eyes back to his shining knife turned red. I look back at my hand, at my fingers, and see none are left for me. What is my word for none? I bend each finger to meet my palm and when I’m done counting again I know this family has no skin for me.

  My friends push closer when their nimishoome slices the shiny sides away from giigoo and then his top too and lays the meat on the table. Then nimishoome turns him over to remove his insides. The long white stomach and bright heart and brown guts spill and I watch the shining knife slit open the white and out flops two parts of a smaller giigoo fish the bigger one had eaten. The nimaamaa comes up then with her bowl and scoops it all inside then turns and walks, her daughter following, into the dark mouth of their home.

  In their cabin I watch nimishoome and his wife make sure we young ones have some giigoo and a bit of fried potato and hot fish water in our cups. A lantern hangs above the table and I think I’m the only one who sees asabikeshii spider weaving in her corner of the cabin, the lantern making her web sparkle, a small bug like a dried leaf caught in it. The two who aren’t children don’t eat so we can and I am so hungry when I’m done I wish I could eat my plate. Nimishoome scrapes what is left from the pot onto his wife’s plate and she pushes it back across the table to him and he pushes it back to her. I take the rest of the fish water in my mouth and go from the table so I can lie by the fire in the woodstove and watch these people be a family. The girl who is so quiet watches me and doesn’t take her eyes away when I look at them. Ever good looking, her. My eyes can’t stay on her she’s so pretty. She sticks her tongue out at me and I smile. She’s lucky the Fish Belly ones who found me haven’t found her yet to take her away to school.

  Nimishoome tells his nephews their story instead of eating. He puffs on a pipe so the smoke makes his face go soft and he tells them the story of how their nindede, how their nimaamaa, both died near the train tracks. He doesn’t tell them this story to make them sad but to let them know they aren’t alone. I didn’t know till now that the brothers have no parents. All they have is this man, their uncle, this woman, their auntie, and this girl, their cousin. Nimishoome tells the boys the story of their parents, the boys listening at the table with their mouths open, so that they know they still have family.

  I move closer to the stove because the floor is cold tonight. My nindede and my nimaamaa and my sisters live near the train tracks. I will walk to them so we can be a family again. I reach in the pocket of my jacket as I listen to the uncle talk and watch the asabikeshii spider sitting like a grandmother in her web, listening also to the stories that the uncle tells, and I feel for the map in my pocket and run my fingers over the skull of the mouse. My eyes are tired from the smoke but I am warm and not so hungry and listening to the hum of the uncle’s words makes me feel as good almost as if I am home.

  Nimishoome talks and smiles as he watches his wife eat till she is full but then his soft look turns hard when we hear something outside. Each of us quiets to listen. Feet coming to the door and then the door crying open and I see the same Fish Belly man who came to take me away from my family standing big in the door, his boots like a black mirror and a gun tied to his side. His mouth opens to take the pretty girl away and I reach to stop him and wake to the dark cabin now except for the hot light that creeps out of the stove and someone has put a blanket over me and I am finally warm. I’m warm. The Fish Belly man is only a bad dream and I listen to the wood crack in the stove beside me and I feel like this is safe. The Fish Belly man is not coming for us. He has lost our path and he won’t find us because we are better in the woods than him.

  I reach in my pocket and take out the map, and in the jumping light of burning wood in the stove I unfold it and look at the lines that run across the paper and try to guess which way I will go. I can’t see her, but I know that grandmother spider watches me careful from the world she made from her body, wondering too which way tomorrow I will go.

  WOOD TICK

  We weave our web in
the corner of the trapper’s cabin and watch as young Chanie falls asleep by the woodstove. He’s as close to content as he’s felt since his last night at home two years ago, the night before being taken away by the pale strangers. He falls asleep not with a full belly by anyone’s measure but at least not one that feels gnawed from within. We take no pleasure when we share that this is young Chanie’s last warm night.

  Chanie awakes to the uncle stirring the fire in the stove to life again. It’s still dark but Uncle is up and preparing a journey. We watch from our web with our many glittering eyes as young Chanie stands from his sleeping place on the floor and tries to be helpful but doesn’t know what to do. The only thing the school he’s run away from has taught him is how to be fearful of adults.

  I saw the giigoo we ate last night before you caught him, Chanie says to the uncle. I saw him underwater when I put my head in to drink.

  The uncle doesn’t understand this young boy. He understands the words, the Ojibwe weaving through the stubborn English. He fears the boy carries a burden that will kill him. And the uncle doesn’t want this curse passed on to his family.

  The uncle brews bitter tamarack tea, for it is all they have to drink this morning. When its scent awakes his wife she comes to him and he whispers in her ear. I will take our nephews today up the lake to the trapline. We will go a week. You stay here with our daughter. Eat from the last store of food.

  The aunt shakes her head.

  Don’t worry, the uncle explains. We will come back with something to eat. We have no other choice.

  It’s not the food, the aunt says. She looks to the boy who sits by the stove and stares into it at the shimmering light, the light out the window beginning to come.

  Your job is to send the stranger away, the uncle says. Someone broke something in him. We don’t have tools to fix it. Send him back to the school. Or find out where he lives and send him there. Give him a little food for the journey.

  The uncle rouses his two nephews and they climb from their shared bed, rubbing eyes and standing. They pull on their thin jackets when they see Uncle head to the door. Chanie stands, too, and finds his own jacket. When he joins them, the door open now, the uncle turns. Four will be too dangerous in my canoe. We head north on the lake and I can see the weather’s changing. He walks away, the two boys following. None of the three look back to Chanie. It isn’t their way.

  The girl lies in her bed and stares at this strange boy. She can see something in him, she thinks. Someone hurt him bad. Ever bad they hurt him. So bad that it is stuck inside him and he’s so scared of it but more scared to let it out. She watches as the boy sits back down by the fire and she thinks she sees his shoulders quiver. She watches as he reaches in his pocket and takes something small out and studies it before he places it back in. And then he pulls out a piece of paper and traces his finger along the lines sketched on it. He folds the paper and puts it back in his pocket and stands. He sees she stares at him but she won’t move her eyes. She dares him with her dark eyes to tell her why he hurts.

  I’m going outside alone to play, the boy says, then walks to the door. Quick as we can, we secrete a single silver strand of gossamer from our abdomen, spinnerets crocheting to drop us down from our web and onto the shoulder of the boy as he passes through the door.

  We ride him to the edge of the woods to a bed of dried leaves where he drops to his knees and begins to cry so hard his shoulders shake us from him. He buries his face into the leaves so that the girl and her mother won’t hear. The wails slow to sobs slow to hiccups as we shiver the last of the leaves above him, separate leaf from branch and drift down to him as small offering that we watch. And so that he can’t shake us from him again, some of us turn into a wood tick and crawl up from this bed of leaves and latch ourselves to his calf.

  When all the tears have left his body, Chanie walks with something as close to certainty as he knows. He’s made a decision. He will follow his friends and their uncle by land to the camp and make himself useful so that the uncle will like him. And when Chanie’s chest has healed some and he has earned some food to take, he will then begin the long walk down the tracks to home.

  Inside the cabin he tells the mother and her daughter that he is ready to begin his journey home. Although it isn’t a lie per se, Chanie knows to leave out that first he will find his friends and their uncle, but still this makes him feel wrong. The girl’s mother explains the path he needs to take to the railroad tracks and where the path divides, how he must turn with the river rather than follow the lake to where her husband’s trapping cabin sits.

  Chanie nods and the mother wraps a few pieces of dried moose meat in waxed paper and places it in his pocket. Remember, she says, when you get to the tracks you must go this way back to the school. She takes his right arm and holds it out from his side. If you go the other way, she says, you will have too much bush to walk. She drops his arm. Which way do you go at the tracks? she asks. Chanie lifts his right arm from his side.

  He looks to the mother and then to the girl. He walks to the door. The girl reaches him before he leaves and slips into his palm a small screw-top glass jar that holds seven matches. These will keep you warm at night, she says.

  Chanie puts the jar into his pocket, his finger brushing the little mouse skull. He takes it out and places it on his palm and presents it to the girl. This is the most beautiful thing I own, he says.

  She stares at it. Waawaabigonoojii.

  Take it, Chanie says.

  She holds it up to the sun in the door and smiles when the black eye of us winks at her.

  He travels most of the day as we gorge just a little on his blood with our tiny fangs’ pierce, and when he reaches the place where the path divides, he steels himself and hurries along the lake as best he can, reaching the uncle’s cabin by mid-afternoon. But no one is there. Chanie sits on the step and waits, staring out at the lake, an east wind rippling it, the wind cold. Weather will change, and it won’t be good.

  Chanie takes out the jar of matches and can see his reflection just a little in the glass. He daydreams what it would be like to see the girl’s reflection in it too. He curls up in the last bit of sun on the shallow rough porch, dark clouds skittering. He doesn’t know he’s been sleeping until the footsteps awake him. The uncle stares down at him, a look of surprise on his face. The look turns blank again and Chanie peers through the man’s legs to see his two friends squatting a short distance away. They watch, red willow sticks in their mouths.

  You can’t stay here, the uncle says. You must return to the school. Look, the bad weather approaches and I have no room for you. Stand now and begin your walk back.

  Chanie stands as he’s told.

  When you take the path that will get you to the tracks, the uncle says, you turn this way to your school. He lifts Chanie’s right arm from his side. Don’t forget. If you travel quick, you will beat most of the weather. And if you see one of them workers on the track, you ask him for a bit of food.

  The uncle walks into his cabin, and the two friends stand from their crouch to follow. When they pass Chanie, each reaches a hand out to brush his left arm.

  BEAVER

  Push out of the forest to where the straight and shining lines they built cut through my world. I stare, me, at these tracks. It’s that time now when day wants to become night but wants to stay light, too. I can see the sun smiling as it leaves through the white legs of azaadi poplar and the furry arms of gaawaandag spruce. Sun winks at me from the way I’m not supposed to follow the tracks. From my other arm that will lead me back to the school the sky has turned the colour of a fire after it’s dead. Ash snow and its cold is coming from that way, and maybe it is sent to me from the teachers at the school, from the men the colour of a fish belly who hunt me to take me back. They won’t find me. I won’t let them. I won’t go back to that place.

  I walk up on the little rock hill that holds the long straight lines. Ever long when I look each way. Ever long. The wind blows cold from my
arm where the school lives when I turn that way. It makes me hold my skinny jacket closer. When I look the way my nindede and my nimaamaa and my two nimiseyag live, where they wait for me, I watch the last sun set the two steel lines on fire. I think of my nindede, of what he would say. Eat. Don’t make decisions with no food in your belly. Think of your nimaamaa and what she wants for you.

  The strips of mooz soften with spit. I don’t want to but swallow all the mooz down to make my belly feel better. Shiny paper that held it fits my pocket. I will keep it. It will find its use. The wind gets harder and cold up here on the tracks and outside of the trees. Which way? Nindede’s smile when I walk through our door. My two animoshag barking and jumping on me with wet tongues. My two nimiseyag laughing till we cry. Whispering to my nimaamaa that I am home now and she cries till she laughs. Follow the sun. There is no choice. I must walk till the sun comes back to push me from behind again. My two friends touched my other arm for a reason. They said to me loud as they could to not go back to where we ran from.

  The map asks me to look at it to make sure and so I do. The wind shakes it and it almost sounds like the map wants to talk to me. I think I have it turned the right way. I’ve watched older people study maps and I do what I remember them doing, running my finger along what must be the railroad tracks to where I must live because it is away from the school, then taking my chin in my hand and staring some more, tapping my finger on my lips to see if this will help the map speak to me.

  The sun is leaving and so I try to catch what I can of it, jumping from wood to wood between the iron lines. But one is too short and two is too long and so I try to walk beside the track on the rocks but this is worse. Me, I would rather the wood and so I go back to it and step short and quick.