He would have liked to have kept the hide intact. If his dad and a couple of his cousins or buddies were with him, they could have loaded the whole moose onto a truck and done all the skinning and cleaning at home. There they could clean and eventually tan the hide to use for drums, moccasins, gloves, and clothing.
By the time Evan was finished, the sun had crept below the horizon and it was nearly dark. It wasn’t a long trip home and he knew this bush intimately, but he didn’t want Nicole to worry, so he steered his vehicle back to the trail that led to his community.
Evan rolled up to the simple rectangular box of his home. The lights were on in the living room but the rest of the house was dark. The kids must be in bed, he thought. He pulled up his jacket sleeve to check his watch. It was well past Maiingan’s and Nangohns’s bedtime. He would see them in the morning.
He backed up to the shed that contained a freezer, a refrigerator, a large wooden table, hanging hooks, and everything else he’d need to finish preparing the moose. It would get cold overnight but not so much that the meat would freeze. He loaded everything inside, shut the heavy door and locked it, and headed into the house.
Evan walked through the front door to an unusual silence. The flat-screen television on the living room wall was off. By now Nicole would usually be watching a sitcom or a crime show. “Aaniin?” Evan announced himself, accentuating the uptick at the end of the word as if to question what was going on.
“Oh, hey,” his partner said from around the corner. “You’re back.”
“It’s so quiet in here,” Evan replied, taking off his heavy outer layer.
“Yeah, the satellite went out earlier,” Nicole said as she stepped into the living room. “I dunno what’s going on. Wind musta blew it offline or something.”
“That’s weird. I thought you’d be laid out on the couch this time of night, as usual,” he teased, with a playful smirk.
“As if. So how was it out there?”
“Got another moose.”
“Right on!”
“Yeah, it took all day. Didn’t see nothing out there all morning. I was gonna give up, then I seen him on my way back to the four-wheeler. Had to quarter him out there. Took longer than I thought.”
“We can give some of that to your parents, eh?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
He untied his boots and stepped out of them before moving into the living room in his sock feet. “Phone died. Woulda called you to say when I’d be home.”
“I figured as much,” she said.
Evan reached for the charger cable that lay on the side table by the couch and plugged in his phone. He pulled off his black hoodie and threw it over one of the wooden chairs of the modest table set. In the still indoor air, he noticed his hunger.
“Hey, where’s my sugar?” Nicole teased, beckoning for a kiss.
“Oh!” He stepped closer to her, his lips in an exaggerated pucker. He placed his hands softly on her hips and gave her a simple kiss.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Yeah, I just noticed,” he replied. He had finished his last sandwich just before spotting the moose. “That chi-moozoo distracted me, I guess.”
“Well, I put a plate in the fridge for you. You just gotta throw it in the microwave. You’re lucky the kids saved you some.”
She nudged him toward the fridge, and he took out the plate, peeling back the tinfoil covering to reveal a sparsely seasoned chicken leg, mashed potatoes, and frozen peas. His stomach growled as he waited for the meal to heat up.
Evan Whitesky and Nicole McCloud had been in each other’s lives since childhood. He could trace the path of his own life by his signpost memories of her, and she could do the same. He remembered the first time he saw her, swimming at the lake the summer before kindergarten began. She wore a light blue bathing suit and her wet hair was tied into a long ponytail. Her older sister Danielle was watching her. Nicole was smiling and laughing.
They crossed paths again on their first day of kindergarten. She still teased him about the awkward outfit he wore that day: baggy overalls and a red T-shirt with fading yellow cartoon characters on the front and a bowl hair cut that made his head look big. He was shy and didn’t talk much most of the morning, and shortly before the school day broke at noon, he cried for his mother. He went home with wet cheeks and a runny nose.
Being somewhat unacquainted at such a young age was unusual in a community as small as theirs. Their parents knew one another but weren’t close friends or relatives — his mom and her dad both came from different reserves in the South. Basically, they weren’t cousins, and that perhaps destined them to bond as curious friends in elementary school and become a couple by high school. Innocent attraction became intense passion and, despite a year apart when Nicole went to college in the South, it eventually evolved into the loving partnership that bore two beautiful young children. The eldest, Maiingan, was five and had school in the morning. Three-year-old Nangohns was still at home with Nicole.
The kids were what pushed Evan through the bush on the hunt. Feeding them always motivated him to see the task through. He still hadn’t used up all his allotted hunting days from his maintenance job at the community’s public works department, so he decided he’d use the morning to finish dressing the moose. The microwave beeps interrupted his thoughts and he pulled open the door to grab his plate, sitting down across from Nicole, who’d come to the table to join him.
“Well, if the TV’s out, looks like you’re gonna have to entertain me,” he said.
“We might actually have to have a conversation!” she retorted. Her black hair that he loved unbound was pulled back into a tight, practical ponytail and her brown eyes squinted with her laughter. He chuckled and began to eat, careful not to get any mashed potatoes in his patchy black goatee.
“I don’t even remember the last time it was quiet like this in here,” she said. He nodded. “We should keep the TV and that computer off more often,” she continued. “Get the kids outside while we can.”
In the coming weeks, the temperature would drop and the snow would come. Soon after, the lake would freeze over and the snow and ice would be with them for six months. Like people in many other northern reserves, they would be isolated by the long, unforgiving season, confined to a small radius around the village that extended only as far as a snowmobile’s half tank of gas.
Evan finished eating, and his eyes drooped under the weight of his fatigue. He raised his thick black eyebrows to force his eyes open. “That moozoo took a lot outta me.”
Nicole reached under the narrow table and patted his thigh. “You’re a good man,” she said. “You should go to bed. It’s another big day tomorrow. My nookomis keeps saying this winter is gonna be a rough one.”
Two
They awoke to the rapid, high-pitched buzz of their alarm. Dull red numbers announced that it was 6:30. Hearing nothing from the children’s rooms, Nicole hit the snooze button. Evan rolled over, away from her. The light of dawn had yet to creep in through the cracks in the curtain. Sleep was still thick in the room.
The alarm buzzed again and this time Nicole sat up and shifted her feet over the side of the bed. She stood up, reached for her robe in the dark, and slipped it on.
“You got them?” mumbled Evan.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it. You had a long day yesterday. Go back to sleep. I’ll get them breakfast.”
He awoke some time later to the chatter of the children in the kitchen. He heard something about one of their favourite TV shows that he couldn’t quite make out.