In the middle of the night they heard screams. A woman was shouting something neither of them could make out. They did their best to ignore the havoc, even as fists pounded on the door of the room where they hid. “We didn’t make any noise,” Kevin spoke softly. “We hoped they would think our room was empty.” Even in the darkness, they were paranoid about the others seeing their packed bags or any other hints of their impending escape. They didn’t sleep.
After what seemed like hours, they opened the door and cautiously carried nearly full hockey bags of clothes, food, and supplies downstairs and out the side door. They were still unsure of how they’d transport their gear with the snowmobiles, but they figured it was safer to stash their gear by the machines now, instead of scrambling for sleds or other towing implements in the heat of escape with big hockey bags on their backs.
They slipped through the frigid early morning, a half moon lighting their way. “We moved quick because of that,” he added. They took the same route back and were relieved to find the door still propped open. They said they ditched their hockey bags, closed the door, and made their way back to Kevin’s room. Everything was as silent as when they’d left.
“We slept for a couple hours, I guess, and then got woken up by voices outside in the hall,” said Nick.
“That’s when shit really started to get crazy.” Kevin picked up the story again. “I opened the door and a whole bunch of people were crowded at the end of the hall. They were looking in one guy’s room. His name was Dylan. I guess he got sick and died. Someone said he was diabetic. Someone else said he mighta OD’d. No one knew what happened to him.
“We walked over to look in his room. People cleared the way as we got to the door. Girls were crying. A couple of the guys were freaking out. Dylan was lying in his bed. His face was grey and his mouth and eyes were still open. It was pretty fucked up.”
Nick jumped in. “All of these kids who were still in the residence weren’t from Gibson. They couldn’t get a hold of their parents. Their parents couldn’t get a hold of them. So unless someone came and got them in those first few days, they were stuck there. They were abandoned. I think they all started to realize it when that kid died.”
“This was yesterday. And that’s when we really knew it was time to go,” said Kevin. He talked about how they consoled the students distraught by the death, even though they weren’t very close with non-Native classmates. It could have been their shyness and how they mostly stuck together. It also could have been racism. But chaos brought them together, even just for a moment. Kevin continued. “Some of them just got up and left. They didn’t know where they were going, just that they had to leave too. So we just waited out the rest of the day.”
But they still needed something to cart their gear, said Nick. Between them, there were four hockey bags and four gas cans. “Then I remembered the plastic sleds in storage on our floor,” he said. “They were there for students to use to go tobogganing. So we decided to take a few on the way out. We knew we’d have to double them up because they’re flimsy.”
“When we thought everyone was asleep, we went looking for them. Finding the storage room was hard, though, without turning on the flashlights. But we finally did. I guess those plastic sleds weren’t much use to anyone, because they were still there. We grabbed them and went back to the other end of the floor to take the stairs down.”
From there, they retraced their steps to the shop. The back door was as they left it, much to their relief. “So we started getting ready. We went through all the gear there and took what we thought we’d need, like a hammer, chains, a blow torch, stuff like that. We stuffed all that in the bags. I found some bungee cord, and we started tying everything to the sleds.”
“We still had to get out of there,” said Nick. “The shop door to the outside was locked. It was this big automatic garage door and we realized we were going to have to figure out how to raise it without power. We looked it up and down using the flashlights, and saw a chain connected to this box on the side. We were gonna have to smash that thing off the chain so we could pull it ourselves. And it was gonna be fuckin’ noisy.”
Kevin jumped in, his words coming faster now. “I’d seen a sledgehammer in the far corner. I went and got it and started hitting the lock thing as hard as I could.”
“I started up the machines,” said Nick, “because I knew as soon as he had that thing open, we’d have to hurry the fuck outta there.”
“But it wasn’t breaking or moving, and I dunno how many times I had to hit it. I asked Nick to take over. So he did, and it only took him a few more hits before it finally busted right off. He pulled hard on the chain to open the door. It came up real quick. And then I saw them.”
Kevin took a deep breath through his nose. He held it in for a few seconds before exhaling from his mouth to ready himself to tell this part of the story. “There were two guys in big jackets and jeans and ski masks standing right there in front of us. They must have heard the banging on the door and came over from wherever they were. They asked what was going on. They sounded like white guys. I told them to fuck off and get out of the way. Then they started coming at me.”
“They didn’t see me though,” said Nick. “So I swung the hammer at the one closest to me. I got him in the head and he went right down. The other guy was startled, so Kevin tackled him and punched him in the face a bunch of times. I told Kevin to move. He got up, and I brought the hammer down on his face.”
Nick went silent and stared at the table. His mother began to weep, while his father stared sightlessly at the wall.
Kevin looked at his friend, whose face was stoic. “They were ready to kill us,” he reassured him. “We got right on those snowmobiles. The sleds holding the supplies were tied tight to the back. We didn’t have time to think, so we just ripped right out of there. I knew that wherever those guys came from, there were probably more like them. We went straight for the street to find our way out of town. We kept the headlamps off. It was still dark, so we didn’t see anything. Luckily.”
They found the road north and rode until the sun came up. Once they were safe inside the forest, they stopped to eat and refuel. They rode again until they found the hydro line, following it until they arrived at the outskirts of the rez and ran into Isaiah, Evan, and Tyler.
No one said anything at first. Nick’s mom wiped her eyes. Joanne rubbed Kevin’s back. Evan stood up and walked over to light the sage again. He picked up the feather that lay beside the shell and fanned the smudge gently. He approached the young men and their family, who all took their turns receiving the smudge. Afterwards, he left the shell in the middle of the table.
Terry stared at the orange embers of dried leaves and stems. The smoke thickened and rose. Still fixed on the medicine, he broke the silence. “Chi-miigwech, niniwag,” he softly muttered. “Thank you to our brave young men for sharing their story. You’ve been through a great deal. You’ve survived. You made it all the way back home against incredible odds. We are thankful.”
“Howah,” said Walter and Jeff in agreement.
There was an eerie calm to Terry’s voice, as if he hadn’t yet registered the implications of what he had just heard. “Go home now and be with your families. You need to rest, and you need to eat.”
“We’ll figure out what to do next,” Terry went on. “But for now, on behalf of council, I ask you not to tell anyone yet about what happened down there. People here are already scared — we gotta make sure we don’t set them off any more. So please, try to keep a low profile for the next day if you can. We can’t afford to have this whole place fall apart. We need a plan.”