“Yes, apocalypse. We’ve had that over and over. But we always survived. We’re still here. And we’ll still be here, even if the power and the radios don’t come back on and we never see any white people ever again.”
Evan gazed back down to the table. He felt his shoulders ease and his chest open up. He was tired, but she gave him hope. “You’re right, Auntie,” he said. “I never thought of it that way.”
He smiled, and she smiled back, crow’s feet creasing at the corners of her eyes.
“Well, I should probably head back out there,” he said, as he tipped back the cup into his mouth.
“Okay then. Busy day?”
“Not really. Just gotta tie up some loose ends.” He didn’t want to tell her the morbid details of his next task. He got up and put on his jacket and zipped it up. He took the black toque out of his right pocket and pulled it over his shaggy black hair, which nearly hung into his eyes. He said miigwech and smiled before walking out the back door.
His sturdy yellow snowshoes were propped up against the porch. Evan sat on the step and, his hands bare, threaded the leather straps through the metal buckles at the heels and toes of both feet. He lifted each foot and shook it to ensure the shoe was snug.
He shoed around to the front of the house and through the deep snow on the driveway. The snow continued to fall, as it had for days, whiting out nearly everything, save for the homes and the trees that were tall enough to rise above the snowline. He looked back at Aileen’s house one more time and saw her in the large picture window, waving. He smiled and waved back. The smoke coming from the chimney put him at ease. She would be okay for another day.
He walked onto the road, now devoid of trucks and cars. Once the diesel supply became critically low, the ploughs had stopped running. Most of the town’s trucks and cars had run out of gas anyway. Within a few days of steady snowfall, the roads had become impassable.
Two weeks earlier, the diesel had finally run out. It came as little surprise to most. Still, it had resulted in a handful of frustrated people storming the shop to demand some sort of solution, still clinging to the idea that other people could fix their problems.
In reality, there was a small amount of diesel left for one last burst — to boost the generators to reconnect to the hydro grid, if it came back online, or to fuel up vehicles once again for some sort of voyage somewhere to get supplies or connect with another community to consolidate resources. Either possibility seemed remote.
So Evan was now doing his rounds on foot, checking in on the elderly, or those who needed help keeping their fires burning or making food. He didn’t really have an official job anymore. The band administration had essentially dissolved, save for organizing weekly food handouts from the cache. Some people still saw Terry and the rest of the council as the figureheads of the community, but their influence was greatly diminished. Walter was the one council member most people now turned to if they needed a problem solved. And Walter, in turn, relied on Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler. Otherwise, people had retreated to their family groups or had now fallen under the spell of Justin Scott’s promises of easier living under his authority. Alliances were forming and shifting, and Evan was uneasy.
The hypnotic crunch of his steps was the only sound he heard on this still day. The afternoon chill was deep and people kept indoors if they could. Grey smoke pumped from each chimney.
The crust of the snow he broke was thicker than his snowshoes. He kicked up frozen shrapnel each time he raised a foot. A fine powder lay underneath. The conditions made him think of the specific time of year. There’s a word for this, he thought, trying to remember with each high step across the hard snow. His knees raised as if to rev his mind into higher gear. He looked up to the lumpy clouds in the hope that the word would emerge like a ray of sunlight through overcast sky.
“Onaabenii Giizis,” he proudly proclaimed out loud. “The moon of the crusted snow.” His words fell flat on the white ground in front of him and he wondered which month that actually was.
Onaabenii Giizis usually referred to February but it could also apply to early March. He remembered hearing two teachers dispute about it when he was younger. One of them was convinced it meant the time at the peak of winter when the weather was so cold the snow simply froze over. The other said it was later in the season when the weather fluctuated between freezing and milder temperatures, causing the snow to melt and then freeze again, creating a crust.
Evan thought it must still be deep winter and that this crust he was walking through was what the first teacher from his memory was talking about. There had been no mild weather yet. The deep freeze was unrelenting. The wind howled. Blizzards continued to blow in. There were calm, sunny days of bearable temperatures, but otherwise there was no real respite from the harshest of seasons here in the North. The crusted snow moon sounded severe to him. He agreed with the first teacher. This must be the peak of Onaabenii Giizis, he thought.
He had stopped counting the days and weeks long ago. There was no point anymore knowing if it was Tuesday the twenty-first of whatever. All that mattered was getting through each season and preparing for the next.
Now the milestones he used to mark time were the deaths in the community. The toll was rising steadily as people perished through sickness, mishap, violence, or by their own hands. Even in a place as familiar with tragedy as a northern reserve, it had reached levels he had never experienced.
Evan’s trips to the band office, the elders’ homes he served, and back home had become routine. He had trained himself to think deliberately, to ponder things that settled his mind. He thought about spots where they could gather more wood. He reviewed rabbit snare knots. He visualized pulling back an arrow and letting it fly at a target. He had discovered that reviewing routines in his head helped him keep desperation at bay. As long as the wind didn’t blow too harshly and the snowfall abated, he even enjoyed these walks.
He trudged up to the side of the garage at the band office. He opened the heavy green door that was never locked anymore and propped it open with a grey cinder block to let in some meagre light. He stepped inside and went right to the chains that opened the garage door manually. He pulled down, and it slowly lifted, letting in a sliver of white daylight underneath. A few more solid yanks of the chain and the door was up, illuminating the garage behind him. He ignored the rows of bodies wrapped in blankets and bags and stepped back outside to await the others.
Two figures appeared on the hill in the distance, pulling a sled. Evan recognized his friends by their walk, even in snowshoes. They were immersed in conversation, making animated hand gestures. The two young men had become accustomed to their grim task as makeshift undertakers.
The plastic sled scraped loudly against the hard snow, drowning out their voices as they neared. Its heavy cargo dug into the crusty chunks and powder, sinking in slightly. The two seemed to ignore it as they greeted Evan.
“Hey, Ev, get a load of this fuckin’ guy,” said Isaiah. “He figures Toronto woulda been in a playoff spot by now.”
“Fuckin’ right they woulda been,” said Tyler. “They had the hottest start ever! And if they kept it up, playoffs would be starting pretty soon.”
“Well, one of you is full of shit, that’s for sure,” Evan smiled, shaking his head. “But I guess we’ll never know who.”
“Just watch, all this shit’s gonna come back on, and they’ll be in the playoffs. They probably been playing this whole time, and we just been in the dark,” said Tyler. He had been one of the best young players on the reserve and had been scouted for a junior team in Gibson when he was fifteen. But there was a blizzard the day he was supposed to fly down, stranding him on the reserve, and the opportunity never arose again.