“I must not have heard properly,” Scott replied. “I thought I was to meet you all in the gym after the meeting. I thought it would have been done by now.”
“You could have waited when you saw it was still happening.”
“But if I’m gonna be a part of this community, shouldn’t I know what’s happening?”
“You’re not a part of this community.”
“Oh no?”
“No. You have to step up, just like everyone else. And then we decide if you can stay.”
“You don’t think I can?”
“I don’t know you.”
Scott towered over Evan under the pale glow of the fluorescent lights above them. Evan knew that he was no match for this man in a fight. He wasn’t intimidated; though he wasn’t quite sure why. He eased back from their confrontation and the stranger relaxed.
“Well, let’s get to know each other then. So what of this tour?”
Evan decided to show him the shop and then take him to the band’s main offices. For the first time, Evan considered the man’s own vulnerability. He’s stranded, thought Evan. He needs us more than we need him.
Eighteen
Maiingan stood on the counter on his tiptoes and peered into the dark cupboard. He gripped the bottom shelf with his left hand, a little nervous about the height from the floor.
“Okay, sweetie, tell me how many big cans there are,” asked Nicole.
The boy reached in with his right hand extended and touched each one as he counted the cans of tomatoes. “One… two… three…” He carefully tallied the wide tins wrapped in the familiar no-name label. “Four… five… six… seven!” His voice piped with pride when he got to seven.
“Good! Way to go, bud,” said his mother. “Now do it one more time just to make sure.” A tedious task for any older child, this was a fun counting exercise for Maiingan. He was thrilled to be able to help his mother with an important chore. And to be able to stand on the counter.
“Alright, my boy, now do the little yellow ones,” said Nicole. He opened the right cupboard and inspected the rows of cans of corn. “Found them!” he proclaimed. He proceeded to count and declared that there were nine in there.
Nicole jotted down 9 next to whole corn in an elementary-school scribbler. When they finished in the kitchen and in the hall pantry, she planned to tally the contents of the bigger pantry in the basement. But she would wait until Evan arrived home to watch the kids so she could do it on her own. She wanted to keep the lights off in the basement for now and knew she’d be faster without her son later.
She planned on counting the upstairs stores once again anyway. Not that she didn’t trust her son’s skills. She just needed something else to do to pass the time.
Nicole had grown up in a house much like the one she shared with Evan and her children. She had two older sisters. Geraldine, the eldest, lived on the other side of the rez with her husband and three boys, and Danielle had moved to Toronto for school when she was nineteen and had been there ever since. Her husband, Sean, was not Native and was often teased by everyone in their wider family, but he was loved deeply nonetheless.
Nicole thought now of her seven-year-old nephew, Will, and what might have become of him since the rez had been cut off from the world. She pictured his toothless grin and bright blue eyes. She wondered if Toronto was blacked out too. She thought of the chaos she’d heard about in Gibson and pictured her young nephew frightened as hungry mobs rolled through the bigger city streets where he lived. Fear crept up her back and she shuddered. She shook the thought from her head and focused again on Maiingan.
“Okay, bud, how many little green ones? Those are the peas,” she said.
“Ewww, peas? I don’t want to count them!” Maiingan scrunched up his little face. “Peas are gross!”
Nicole snickered. “You don’t have to eat them. Just count them!”
“Okay,” the boy reluctantly agreed. “One… two… three…”
“One! Two! Three!” Nangohns echoed from the table. She raised her head from her colouring book, apparently in need of attention. Nicole’s heart warmed every time she heard her daughter’s voice. “Can you count too, baby girl?” she asked. The three-year-old nodded enthusiastically and looked back down to the erratic lines of blue and orange crayon that breached the outlines of the picture she was colouring in.
Nicole heard feet stomping up the stairs to the front door and turned to see Evan’s head loom into the window frame, his breath visible as he exhaled. He opened the door, and Maiingan shouted, “Daddy! I’ve been helping Mommy count the cans!”
“Daddy!” Nangohns echoed. Nicole helped the boy down from the counter as the girl leaped off her chair.
“Aaniin, binoojiinyag!” he boomed. They ran up and wrapped their arms around him, cold coat and all. He leaned down to kiss the tops of their heads while he tried to wiggle out of his coat with the children stuck to his legs.
“Hey,” Nicole said as he walked over to kiss her. They hugged, holding on tightly. “Ah, this feels solid. This feels safe,” she said into his shoulder.
“Huh?” he said.
“Oh, nothing. Just glad you’re home.”
It was unclear to them both if this was the shape of their lives now. Evan still held out hope that it was temporary, but Nicole was less certain.
Evan’s workload had increased substantially with the electricity rationing. He kicked off his boots and collapsed on the couch. It was well past noon and he had been up since before dawn, ploughing the roads and then driving Candace North around to continue inventorying people’s household food stores. It was their third day — an intense, tiring routine that involved taking a lot of questions and requests from the worried townspeople. “When’s this blackout gonna be over?” most asked. “We don’t have no more meat!” declared others. “You sure this food is gonna last?”
He was thankful that he didn’t have to answer the questions. He just had to go through refrigerators, cupboards, pantries, and deep freezers to register what people had so the council could determine what would be needed in the rollout of rations. He was disappointed to discover how few hunted anymore. Many had grown complacent in the rut of welfare.
As he lay on the couch, Evan thought about the remaining homes they had to get to. Images of pickup trucks, blowing snow, and counting cans and weighing moose meat whirled through his mind.
He was driving the plough through a thick layer of heavy snow on the road by the rink. The truck struggled as the road became tougher to navigate the closer he came to the heart of the community. The overcast daylight cast everything in a sickly grey glow.
He drove up to the main intersection. He looked to his right to see if anyone was at the rink, but he could see that the metal roof had caved in. Ahead of him, the snow was nearly as high as the truck’s headlights. The wheels spun but gradually caught some traction and he kept ploughing his way to the community complex with the band office, school, and health station.
No one was around. It looked like no other vehicles had passed these roads in a very long time. The ghostly silence unnerved him. He reached the driveway to the community complex and frantically pulled on the steering wheel to make the turn, but the truck got stuck at the bottom of the hill.
Desperate, he tried to open the door, but the deep snow blocked his exit. He bodychecked the door with his shoulder, but it barely budged. He shifted in his seat to face the door and raised his feet to try to kick it open with both legs. That didn’t work either. So he kicked at the window to smash it open. His feet passed through, and glass flew into the cab and out onto the snow, now as high as the window itself. Still, no snow fell from the sky above.