Satellite must still be out, he thought. They’re usually not talking this much.
He located some clothing on the floor and pulled on a pair of track pants and a T-shirt. He squinted as he stepped out of the hallway into the kitchen. The sun was now well above the horizon, shining through the big picture window that faced east.
Nangohns’s pigtails swayed as she turned her head in his direction. “Hi, Daddy!”
“Mino gizheb,” Evan answered. “Good morning, my sweetheart!” He approached the table and kissed her on the forehead. She beamed at him while he turned to greet his son. “Hey bud!” Evan rubbed the boy’s short brown hair.
“Good morning, Dad,” Maiingan replied. Evan walked into the kitchen, kissed Nicole on the cheek, and poured himself a cup of black coffee.
The morning sun caught the maple and oak trees in front of the house, burnishing them gold and rich brown. The trees and some of the wildlife around them were preparing to sleep while the humans prepared for the great annual test. Evan sometimes envied the trees and black bears that could shut down for the winter.
A sip of the hot, strong coffee snapped him out of his reverie and he walked over to look at his phone that he had left to charge. Nangohns and Maiingan smiled at him from the phone’s screen. No notifications or messages. Not even a text, though his phone had been dead the whole afternoon before. He picked it up for a closer look and saw that there were no bars showing in the upper left corner.
“No cell service,” he muttered.
“Really?” said Nicole. “I’ll go check mine.” She walked to the bedroom and emerged a moment later, peering down at her own phone. “Hmmm, mine’s out too.”
Cell service outages were common. The cell tower had gone up only a few years before, when the community was finally connected to the wider hydro grid. Even then it only happened because the construction contractors from the South wanted a good signal while they built the massive new hydro dam farther north on the bay. The tower had stayed up after they left, a new luxury for people who lived on the reserve. Many of them hadn’t yet developed any sort of serious dependence on the service. An outage didn’t evoke any real sense of frustration or panic.
“Whatcha doin’ today, Dad?”
His son’s voice brought Evan’s focus from phone service back to his family. He turned to face the kitchen. “N’gwis, my boy,” he said, “I got a lotta work to do. A moose — a moozoo — gave himself to us yesterday.”
“You got a moose?!”
“Yep. A big one. It took me a long time to get him out of the bush. That’s why I wasn’t home when you went to bed last night.”
“Cool!”
The boy was eager to join his father on his first hunt but that was still a few years away. Evan first went on an actual hunt with his own father when he was nine, after spending years learning about the land. He had shot his first buck that fall. They didn’t offer tobacco when they killed animals to eat back then — Evan only learned about that ceremony years earlier, when an elder took it upon herself to teach him and some of the other young people the old ways.
Maiingan shoved the last spoonful of cereal into his mouth. He dropped the spoon and cupped his small brown hands under the bowl, lifting it to slurp up the last of the milk. Nicole emerged from the bedroom in a pair of jeans and a grey hoodie, her hair gathered in a tight bun. She urged their son to put his bowl in the sink and get dressed for school while Evan cleared the rest of the table. He piled the dirty dishes on the counter, plugged the sink, and turned on the hot water.
As he squeezed the bottle of yellow dish soap into the water, he wondered how long the cellphones would be down. Shit, he thought, I was gonna ask Isaiah to come over and help with the rest of that moose. He stopped himself and smiled. The landline. It was still what most of the older generation used, and since the cell tower was unreliable, Evan and Nicole kept it around. Evan picked up the house phone, relieved that the familiar dial tone still hummed.
“Can I come hunting too, Daddy?” said Nangohns behind him.
“Eh n’daanis,” he replied. “Yes, you can, my girl. But not until you’re older.”
“Where’s the moozoo?”
“Moozoo gojing. It’s outside.”
“Can I see it?”
“Gaawiin, not yet, my sweetheart. He’s not ready.”
“Okay.”
He took her small hand in his and looked down into her wide brown eyes and smiled. Her pigtails stuck out like antennas on the old TVs. But the little girl’s questions often lingered in Evan’s mind long after she asked them, and he believed she held the wisdom of countless generations, despite her youth. She was an old soul. He wanted her to question everything. He wanted her to grow up to be strong and intelligent. He wanted her to be a leader.
The morning silence was eerie but soothing. Often, the TV would be on throughout the weekday morning routine, and again on Saturdays for cartoons. Evan hadn’t even thought about turning it on, and the kids didn’t seem to mind that they ate at the table rather than on the couch. I dunno what she said to them, he thought, but it worked. Maybe they could keep the TV off in the mornings.
Evan assumed that the satellite reception was still out. Or maybe Nicole just didn’t even bother to check. Either way, the kids always listened to her and he appreciated how she guided their children, patiently and with love and respect. He tried to think about how her parenting fit in to the teachings he was learning, but his mind was racing so he ran his fingers over his buzzed hair and let it go.
There had been no satellite TV in the community when Evan was little, just a CBC signal from a tower near the bay that the rabbit ears could pick up as long as there wasn’t a storm. But people did have VCRs, and the tapes kept him and his siblings entertained when they were inside. Mostly he remembered playing outside.
Nicole came back with a dressed Maiingan in tow. “Okay, I’m taking the boy to school.”
“We’ll be here.” Evan looked at their daughter, who was still at the table, and she flashed a bright smile. “Let’s go wave bye to your brother,” he said. He picked her up and they stood in the window to wave as Nicole and Maiingan got in the blue pickup and pulled out of the driveway.
Maiingan was one of only a dozen kids in his class. The community’s elementary school was small, with an enrolment of a little more than one hundred, but it was in a new building and the people on the reserve were happy that their kids could finally be educated in a decent facility. Nicole and Evan had gone to school in mouldy prefab makeshift classrooms that had finally, blessedly, crumbled.
There had been lots of infrastructure improvements on the reserve over the last few years, including their connection to the hydro grid. The old diesel generators that had run their lightbulbs and appliances for decades were still around, but they didn’t need them anymore. They remained for backup, and the band no longer had to constantly truck in fuel for them. The hydro lines had also opened up a permanent service road that ran some three hundred kilometres south and connected to the main highway. They relied less on the airstrip for supplies and travel and now had the freedom to drive out on their own, theoretically. The weather and lack of maintenance often played havoc with that fine thought, though.
Evan looked down at Nangohns. This place has changed a lot, he thought. It’ll be a lot better for you, my little star.
Once Nicole returned, Evan finished tidying the kids’ toys in the living room and poured himself another cup of coffee. He sipped slowly from the blue mug and looked out the kitchen window. Better get to work, he thought. “I’m going out to the shed,” he called. “Gotta finish up that moose.”