When I get back, Dad is asleep in his armchair. The tv is off, but he’s still clutching the remote in one hand. There’s a pile of compositions and a red pen on the floor next to him.
Tarksalik is lying on her bed of blankets and green garbage bags. Her head is extended between her forelegs. The light from a streetlamp makes the pale spot on her forehead glow. Though she seems to be asleep, she makes a groaning sound when I come in. Even from where I’m standing in the hallway, I notice how the fur around her belly and hind legs looks matted. Must be from all the dried blood. Guess it’ll be a while before she can have a proper bath.
Poor girl. And for what must be the hundredth time today, I replay the morning in my head—only now I try changing the order of things.
“How ’bout I take the dog out with me on my run?” I ask Dad, who is opening the curtains and going on about the beauty of the landscape.
Only this time, Dad says no. “I’ll take her myself, Son. I can use the fresh air. Go enjoy your run. Just be careful. I was just checking the weather online and you’ll never believe…”
Of course, that wasn’t how things went.
I tiptoe down the hallway to the bathroom. The only noise in the house is the steady hum of Dad’s freezer. Dad has an unnatural attachment to his freezer, which he paid a lot of money to have shipped up from Montreal last summer. The first thing he did when I arrived was show me all the stuff he’s got stocked in there: chicken breasts and steaks and frozen mini pizzas and tourtières.
“And two dozen containers of my homemade spaghetti sauce,” he said proudly. You’d think he was a pirate showing off his treasure chest and that those frozen dinners were gold bars. “I try to cook ahead on weekends. I’ve got enough food in here to last all winter. Or nearly.”
Thinking back on that conversation reminds me of the legend of Kajutaijug. It must’ve been scary for the people who were left behind to realize they were out of food. In all my life, I’ve never once had to worry about going hungry. All I ever had to do in Montreal was open the fridge. If there wasn’t anything I felt like eating, I’d write down what I wanted, and Mom would pick it up for me the next time she was at the grocery store, which was just about every single day.
I reach for the dental floss. Mom made me promise to floss every night. I watch my reflection in the mirror as I slide the floss between my front teeth. Something about my eyes makes me look older than fifteen. Then again, it’s been an awful day, and I need sleep. But I have a feeling I won’t be getting much of that tonight. Not if those pictures of the accident keep looping around in my head, like the road in town that goes from the gas station to the dump and back again.
“Don’t let Tarksalik die,” I whisper. It isn’t exactly a prayer, but kind of. I don’t press my palms together or go down on my knees, but if I thought that would help, I’d do it. Still, I hope somebody—somewhere—is listening.
I don’t hear Dad get up, so I’m startled when I see his reflection behind mine in the mirror. We have the same brown curly hair, only I’ve got more of it. I wonder if thirty years from now, I’ll be going bald at the top too. I hope not.
Dad rubs his forehead. I can tell he’s only half-awake. “How was the talk?”
“Pretty cool.” I figure that’s what he wants to hear.
“Everything’s pretty cool in George River. In fact, it’s minus forty-two tonight.”
I try to laugh. Dad must be feeling better if he’s been back on the weather website. “How’s Tarksalik?” I ask.
Dad stretches his arms out behind him and sighs. “I can’t tell for sure. But I’m going to the store for a box of diapers. In case…you know…”
I put the dental floss back on the shelf next to Dad’s shaving cream. “No,” I say, “I’ll go.”
I’ve only been back in Dad’s apartment for five minutes and already I can’t wait to leave. At least, I tell myself when I open the front door and a gust of minus forty-two degree wind practically knocks me over, I’m doing something and not just sitting around, feeling lousy.
George River only has two stores: the Co-op, which is owned by the Inuit community, and the Northern, which used to be part of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Co-op closes at six, but the Northern stays open later. Luckily, it’s only a few doors over from Dad’s. January nights in Montreal can get pretty cold, but they’re balmy compared to what the cold feels like up here. It isn’t just the temperature; it’s the dry air and maybe, too, the feeling that I’m hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away from a real city. I pull up the collar of my jacket so it covers my chin.
A snowmobile roars by, followed by two others. I wonder where they’re all off to at this time of night. One of the drivers waves in my direction, and I wave back.
A fourth snowmobile stops to let me cross the street. The driver looks like he’s in his twenties. A girl his age is sitting behind him, her hands clasped around his waist. “Where you headed?” I ask them.
“Over to the dump,” the guy says.
“No place,” his girlfriend adds.
I guess driving round in circles beats hanging out at home, watching tv or listening to their grandparents tell legends.
There aren’t too many places in George River for teenagers to hang out, especially at night. I’m not surprised to see a couple of guys smoking in the narrow hallway leading into the Northern. They stop talking when I squeeze past them. I can feel them watching me, checking out my ski jacket and ski gloves, so different from their fur-trimmed parkas and caribou-skin mittens. I get the same feeling I had at the community center. I’m the only white guy here too. I wonder if Dad feels the same way when he goes out or whether he’s stopped noticing.
One of the guys burps, and I smell beer. Definitely beer. Dad says some Inuit don’t hold their alcohol too well. Of course, it was white people who brought alcohol to the North in the first place. I guess it’s one more problem we’re responsible for.
“Who’s he?” I hear one of the guys whisper as I step inside the store.
Word must spread quickly in a town of only 700 people, because someone else answers. “His dad’s a teacher at the school. You know that guy Bill?”
I consider saying “Hi,” but I decide that’d be too awkward. Instead I lift my hand and wave it behind my head as I pass them.
“Have a good night,” one of the guys calls out.
That takes me by surprise. In Montreal, some guy my age who I didn’t know would never wish me a good night. More likely, he’d ignore me, or maybe say something rude. I slow down for a second. “You too,” I tell the guy.
It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the fluorescent lighting inside the Northern. “Hey, Noah,” a voice calls from behind the cash register. I look up and see Geraldine. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that in a town as small as this one, I’d actually know someone. Still, it’s nice to hear her call my name. It makes me feel like I’m part of something.
Geraldine’s resting her elbows on the counter. “You work here?” I ask her.
“What does it look like?”
“It looks like you work here.”
Geraldine grins. Her black hair gleams under the harsh lights. “Every day after school and all day Saturday.”
“Cool,” I say, mainly because I can’t think of what else to say, and I really don’t want to ask her what aisle diapers are in.
The store carries mostly dry goods like cereal, soup and pasta, frozen foods and soft drinks. There’s a whole aisle of Coke bottles, but only half an aisle of fresh fruits and vegetables. Some of them look like they’ve been sitting around since the Paleolithic era. I notice broccoli that has gone yellowish brown at the tips and carrots with fuzzy white spots. Gross.
“It’s not a good day for produce,” Geraldine calls from the front of the store. “Fruits and vegetables get flown in tomorrow. You better wait till then if you want to make a salad.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I call back.
Because grocery prices are so high in Nunavik, Dad e-mailed me a two-page shopping list of stuff he wanted me to bring up: ten dozen Montreal bagels, hamburger meat and boneless chicken thighs, oranges, apples and grapefruits, toothpaste and shampoo. And eight cases of beer.
I find the diapers in the last aisle. “They’re for Tarksalik,” I tell Geraldine when I get to the cash.
“Uh-huh,” she says as she rings up the diapers. From the sounds of it, you’d think Geraldine was used to people buying diapers for their dogs.
“She’s not doing too well,” I say. Geraldine hasn’t asked about Tarksalik, but I feel like I need to talk to somebody about everything that’s happened, and right now she’s my only option.
“Uh-huh,” Geraldine says again.
I have a feeling I’m not going to get a lot of sympathy from her. Maybe she also thinks we should have shot Tarksalik to put her out of her misery. “See you tomorrow,” I say, tucking the bag of diapers under my arm and zipping up my coat.
Geraldine touches my elbow. “Did you go to the talk at the community center?” she asks.
“Uh-huh.” I’m starting to sound like an Inuk.
“I wish I could’ve gone, but I had to work,” Geraldine says. “I’m saving up to buy my nephew something nice for his birthday.”
“You’ve got a nephew?”
“Uh-huh. Jeremiah. He lives with us. So what did you think of our community center?”
“I liked it.” It’s not a very cool thing to say to a pretty girl, but I can’t think of anything else. And now it’s as if I can’t stop talking. “You get a great view of the river from those windows. Your school’s nice too. Every school I ever went to in Montreal was, like, a hundred years old. You guys are lucky to have a new school. Usually I like old buildings, but not when it comes to schools.”
I expect Geraldine to say “uh-huh” again, but this time she doesn’t. “Did you hear what happened to our old school?” she asks, dropping her voice.
“Nope. What happened?”
“It got destroyed. In an avalanche. New Year’s Eve 1999. We were having a New Year’s Eve celebration there. Nine people died.” Geraldine looks right at me. “Including my little cousin. He was only two. We tried and tried, but we couldn’t pull him out from under the snow. My sister named her boy after him.” Geraldine takes a deep breath. I can tell she’s not used to saying so much all at once.
I shiver, and it isn’t because of the cold air that blows in when another customer enters the store. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I had no idea. And I’m sorry about your cousin. That must have been awful.”
If I can’t forget what happened to Tarksalik, how does Geraldine forget trying to pull her little cousin out from under the snow? I wish I could ask her how she does it. How she manages to keep going to school and working at the Northern even after all that.
Geraldine reaches for a bottle of spray cleaner. She sprays the counter and then dries it with a sheet of paper towel before she looks back up at me. The air around us smells like ammonia. “Accidents are part of life,” she says. “Death too.”