Authors: Melanie Mcgrath
He'd
pretend to disapprove of today's 'unorthodox pedagogy', but it was all a sop to
his masters back in Ottawa. Head down, so she wouldn't have to make
conversation with anyone on the street, Edie trudged through dry and squealing
snow to the meat store at the back of her house, picked out a small harp seal
she'd hunted a few weeks earlier, attached a rope to its head and dragged it
back along the ice to the school building. She waited until no one was around
then smuggled the dead animal into the school through the side entrance.
The
moment the kids returned from recess and caught sight of the creature, their
faces, sensing an end to the abstractions of language lessons, lit like
lanterns. Edie got two of the oldest boys to help her lift the animal onto the
table. Then she handed over two hunting knives and left the kids to get on with
the business of butchering, instructing the older children to show the others
how to handle the knives, and to write down the name of everything they touched
and
the verbs to describe their actions in English and Inuktitut on the
whiteboard.
It
worked. Before long, the seal lay in a number of neat pieces on the table and
the kids were encouraging one another to dig deeper and cut more finely,
jostling to be the first to the front to write 'spleen' or 'whiskers' or
'flense'. Butchering the animal and noting its parts had become a gleeful and
very Inuit kind of a game. Even Pauloosie Allakarialak was joining in. He'd
forgotten the white man's death and the fact that he didn't know how to spell
'blubber'.
At
lunchtime, Edie trudged across to the Northern Store, thinking to buy some
Saran Wrap and plastic sacks she could use to package the chopped seal before
it thawed and became difficult to handle. Swinging open the door into the
store's snow porch, she banged her boots against the boot- scraper, glanced out
of habit at the announcements board (nothing about Wagner) and went inside.
The
Northern Store was officially a co-operative, owned by the inhabitants of
Autisaq, every one of whom had a right to a share of the profits, if ever there
were any. It was managed by Mike and Etok Nungaq.
Mike
was an affable, steady sort of guy. He had an interest in geology, which he
cultivated whenever geologists from the south came into town. As a thankyou for
some favour, an American geologist had left him a laptop a couple of summers
back and Mike was now the person anyone came to when they had computer
problems. Not that many did. Some of the younger generation had games consoles,
but few in the community had bothered with computers and there were only three
in public use connected to the internet: one in the mayor's office, one in the
nursing station and one in the library at the school.
When
he wasn't digging out rocks and fiddling with computers, Mike Nungaq lived for
gossip, though rarely the malicious kind. Mike just liked to know who was doing
what, with whom, and when. There was something in his makeup that meant he
couldn't help himself. If you needed to know what was really going on in town,
you just had to ask Mike.
Mike's
wife, Etok, disapproved of her husband's chattering. Around Autisaq, Etok was
known as
Uismuitissaliaqungak,
the Person with Crooked Teeth who is as
Scary as a Mother Bear. People watched themselves around her. She looked
harmless enough but at the slightest hint of gossip, Etok's eyes would freeze
over and she'd bare a set of fangs that wouldn't have disgraced a walrus. But
despite her best efforts to quash them, rumour and innuendo persisted, fanning
out through the aisles of the Northern Store to the farthest reaches of the
settlement, often transforming in the process from harmless titbit to
outrageous slander and loathsome smear.
It
was Edie's habit to pass by the cash till to say hi to Mike before she began
her shopping, but today she knew he'd want to know about the Wagner affair and
she didn't feel like talking about it, so she took herself directly to the
third aisle at the back of the store where the plastics were kept, between the
cleaning products and the snowmobile maintenance section. They didn't have the
extra-wide Saran Wrap Edie had seen advertised, so she picked up a packet of
the regular stuff plus some plastic sacks and was walking back up the aisle
when Pauloosie Allakarialak's mother,
Nancy,
appeared. Nancy Allakarialak was a cheerful woman, regretful at having brought
her son into the world with foetal alcohol syndrome, and keen to make amends.
She took a great interest in Pauloosie's education and was usually eager to
discuss his progress with Edie. Today, though, she only smiled faintly and
edged her way past down the aisle.
It
was a bad sign. Word had obviously already got around that a
qalunaat
had died on Edie's watch.
Edie
slapped the roll of plastic bags and the Saran Wrap on the cash desk. Etok was
standing with her back to the desk, sorting the mail. She looked around,
registered Edie then slipped through the door at the back to the store. Mike
Nungaq watched his wife go then sidled along the desk to the till.
'Hey,
Edie. Nice day out.' He met her eyes and smiled. As he handed over her change,
his fingers lingered over her hand.
'I'm
shunned already.'
'Oh
no,' Mike said. 'That thing yesterday? Folks a bit unsettled by it is all. Once
the council of Elders have met, everything'll settle right down.'
She
nodded and smiled back, appreciative of his attempt to reassure her. She
wondered if the council of Elders would see things the same way. They had the
right to revoke her guiding licence and Simeonie, at least, had the motivation
to do it. He'd been running for re-election as mayor when the business of Ida
and Samwillie Brown blew up.
Until
Edie got involved, everyone in Autisaq had been quite prepared to put
Samwillie's death down to an accident. He was unpopular and a known
wife-beater. Edie's intervention in the case - 'meddling', Simeonie Inukpuk
called it - had led to Ida's conviction for her husband's murder. It was widely
believed that Simeonie had lost the election on account of the bad publicity
and the affair had cast such a shadow over his political ambitions that it was
another four years before he finally managed to get reelected. Edie often
wondered if it was Simeonie who had been responsible for the death threat she'd
received not long after Ida's trial began.
Her
ex-brother-in-law had other reasons to hate her, too. He blamed her for the
breakup with Sammy. Too caught up in women's rights, he'd said at the time.
What about a man's right to have his woman stand by him? No matter to Simeonie
that, by the time she left, she and Sammy were drinking one another into the
ground. Most likely they'd both be dead by now if they hadn't split. Maybe
Simeonie Inukpuk would have preferred it that way. He was casual with his
family. Sammy had always been loyal to him, but Simeonie had never returned the
favour.
Edie
knew she had a lot to lose. It wasn't the investigation itself she was afraid
of. Joe was right. A man had died a long way from home and it was only fair to
his family that they get to the bottom of it. What she dreaded was that
Simeonie would use Wagner's death as an excuse to persuade the elders into
rescinding her guiding licence. None of the elders except Sammy thought
anything of women guides; some of them had probably been looking for an excuse
to get rid of her for years. In any case, most of them would be glad to see her
go.
For
herself, she didn't much care. The years of drinking had taken away what pride
she might once have had. But without her guiding fees, there was no way Edie
would be able to help Joe fund his nursing training. Part-time teaching barely
covered her living expenses. He wouldn't be able to turn to Sammy and Minnie.
His mother drank away her welfare and his father had an old-fashioned idea of
what constituted a real Inuk man, and it wasn't studying to be a nurse.
Besides, Sammy didn't want his son doing anything that might involve him having
to leave Autisaq. Over the years, Sammy had let a lot of things slip by him: a
few good jobs, a couple of wives and a whole lot of money. Along with booze and
American cop shows, his boys were one of the few comforts remaining to him.
After
school, Edie walked back home past the store and the little church she last
visited on the day of her mother's funeral. Sammy's shitkickers were lying
inside the snow porch and his blue government parka was hanging on the peg. Two
years after she'd kicked him out, Sammy still regularly treated Edie's house as
home. At first she'd discouraged it, then she'd given in, mostly because when
Sammy was at her house, Joe spent more time there too.
The
smell of beer drifted in from the living room, along with some other, more
chemical, aroma. Edie prised off her boots and hung up her hat, scarves and
parka, then opened the door into the house. Sammy and Joe were sitting on the
sofa watching TV.
Edie
said: 'Hey,
allummiipaa,
darling.' The remark was directed at Joe but
Sammy looked up with a hopeful smile on his face. Edie didn't miss the days
she'd called her ex darling, but Sammy did. If Sammy had his way they'd still
be married and she'd still be a drunk.
'I
put my stuff in my room, Kigga,' Joe said. The boy went to and fro these days -
a few nights at Sammy's, a week or two with Minnie - but right now he was
spending more time with his stepmother than usual, and she couldn't help liking
it.
'You
break up with Lisa, Sammy?' The past couple of years, Sammy had gone through
women like water. Lisa was just the latest. For some reason whenever one or
other finished with him, he came to Edie's house to lick his wounds. He gave a
little shrug, looked away.
'Sorry,'
she said. She wasn't consciously mean to him but sometimes a little bubble of
meanness popped out. She guessed that somewhere, somehow, she was still angry
about the situation, which probably meant that somewhere, somehow, she still
had feelings for Sammy and was doing her best to ignore them.
'My
TV bust,' Sammy said.
Edie
took a piece of seal out of her pack and put it on the surface in the kitchen
then switched on the kettle for some tea.
'Plus
I broke up with Lisa.'
They
laughed. Sammy raised his eyes to heaven. Even he'd come to think of his love
life as a bit of a joke. So long as he was the one to say it.
'Get
together with anyone else yet?'
Sammy
nodded, sheepish.
'Who?'
asked Edie, a little too quickly.
'Nancy.'
'Nancy
Allakarialak? Pauloosie's mum?'
'Uh
huh.'
For
an instant all three made eye contact, then just as quickly looked away. It was
odd how sometimes they felt like a family again. Odd and unsettling. Then Joe
got up to go to his room.
'Call
me when we need to leave?' Not his deal, this old stuff between her and Sammy.
After
he'd disappeared into his room there was a pause.
'I
didn't get a chance to say thanks for helping out with Felix Wagner,' Edie
said, wanting to change the subject.
Sammy
took a swig of the beer at his side and said nothing.
Edie
said: 'You spoke to Andy Taylor?'
'Simeonie
just left him. Seems pretty keen to forget the whole thing and get back down
south.'
'I
guess there'll have to be a police inquiry, right?' Edie said. 'They'll want to
call in Derek Palliser.'
Sammy
cleared his throat and made a study of his feet.
'That's
not what I'm hearing,' he said in a way that indicated he knew something and
was keeping it back. Edie gave him a long, hard stare.
'Listen,'
he said defensively. 'I don't control the council of Elders.'
Everyone
knew who did control the council of Elders: Sammy's older brother, Simeonie.
Sammy had always stood in his brother's shadow and he wasn't about to get out
of it now. Anything involving confrontation, particularly to do with his
brother, Sammy usually ran a mile. He rattled his beer can to make sure he'd
polished off the contents and stood to go.
'Edie,
stay out of trouble. Try to toe the line, for once.'
When
he'd gone, Edie put on her best parka and oiled her pigtails, then called Joe
from his room. They walked up to the mayor's office together. The elders had
asked them to the meeting on the understanding that they were there to give
their version of events, and would have no say in the outcome. For this reason
alone, Edie had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. It was typically
screwed up Autisaq politics. The elders paid lip service to inclusiveness but
when it came down to it, they huddled together like a group of harried musk ox.