The others eat ptarmigan for lunch. I wait for my stomach to settle. Then I have half a cheese sandwich and a few bites of a granola bar with chocolate chips. Small bites. Chew well! I can almost hear Mom’s voice.
The cabin, which was ice cold when we came in, has warmed up quickly, thanks to the fire and our body heat. At first, I leave my parka and mitts on, but soon I take them off. My wet socks are already hanging on a makeshift clothesline over the stove. The smoke from the fire stings my eyes.
Lenny is roasting chunks of breast meat over the fire. “You sure you don’t want to try some more?” he asks me.
“I’m sure.”
“You still look a little green, Noah,” Steve says, shaking his head.
The cabin we’ve come to belongs to a guy named Jean. It turns out he was senior English teacher at the school before Dad came to George River. The cabin’s pretty simple. There’s only one room. It smells musty, and you can’t really call what’s in it furniture. The couch is the backseat of someone’s truck, only it has two orange-and-yellow crocheted pillows on it, which you don’t usually find in a truck. The table’s a plywood box and the bookshelves are made from pink plastic milk crates. There are a lot of books in those crates: a dusty encyclopedia, a collection of fairy tales from around the world and a pile of how-to books. How to Build a Garage: 12 Easy Steps. How to Do Your Own Plumbing. Since the cabin doesn’t have either a garage or plumbing, I figure Jean never got around to reading those two.
There are photographs, too, on the crates and on the plywood box. A bare-chested man in shorts with a small kid on either side. Pictures of him with the same kids looking more grown-up. The man, grinning, with his arms around the kids’ shoulders.
“Where’s Jean now?” I ask Steve.
“Went back to Toronto. Too bad. He was a lot of fun. When we used to stop here on our way to camp, he’d be waiting for us. The fire would be roaring, and he’d have a pot of tomato soup going. He always said it was homemade, his secret recipe. The funny thing is, after he left we found a whole pile of soup cans out back. Campbell’s Tomato.” The memory makes Steve chuckle.
“If he liked it so much up here, why’d he leave?” I ask.
“Maybe he ran out of Campbell’s Tomato,” Tom jokes.
“Nah, that’s not why,” Steve says. “Jean missed his kids too much to stay up north for good. Said he didn’t feel right being so far away from them.”
I bite my lip. The vomit has left a sour taste in my mouth. Water helped, but not enough.
Steve must know what I’m thinking. “I’m sure it’s hard for your dad too.”
I unwrap the second half of the cheese sandwich from the waxed paper it’s packed in. “I guess we never lived together long enough for him to miss me,” I say.
“That must’ve been tough for both of you,” Steve says.
Lenny’s sitting on the floor at the other end of the room, eating roast ptarmigan. But he’s listening. I know, because he mutters, “At least you’ve got a dad.”
Does that mean Lenny doesn’t? But when I turn to look at him, he’s concentrating on his ptarmigan, gnawing the last slivers of meat off the bone. The Inuit sure don’t let a thing go to waste.
Etua pulls at the sleeve of the fleece jacket I wore under my parka. “Can you play yet? I’ll be Spiderman. You try to catch me, okay?”
“Give Noah some time to let his belly settle,” Steve tells Etua.
Etua is quiet for about three seconds. “Is your belly settled yet?” he asks me.
“Not quite,” I tell him.
“Lenny told me I should make you play with me. He said it’d be good for your belly.”
Steve sighs. “Lenny thought he was being funny.” Steve says this loudly so Lenny will hear him. Tom is squatting next to Lenny. Jakopie is sitting on the floor too, in the same position. I don’t understand how the Inuit can stay sitting like that for so long. My legs would kill. Jakopie is whittling a piece of caribou antler. I wonder what he’s making, but I’m still too queasy to ask.
Joseph hands me a mug of steaming tea. “It’s Labrador tea,” he says, winking. “Good for your belly.”
I bring the tea to the couch. There are burn holes in the vinyl, but I figure it’ll be better than sitting on the cold floor. Sitting down on the couch is more work than I expected. My thighs ache from running with the dogs. When I finally sit, my body starts to relax. Squatting on the floor to eat might be an Inuit custom, but couches and chairs are more my style. Besides, somebody went to the trouble of inventing those things, so why not take advantage, right?
“I think your old man’s pretty cool,” Lenny says, without turning to look at me.
Cool isn’t the first word I’d use to describe my dad. Goofy, maybe. A little boring. But not cool. Definitely not.
But I don’t want to tell Lenny that. “He’s okay,” I say.
“He tells good stories,” Lenny says.
Yeah, I think, if you don’t mind the puns or how he tries to turn everything into an educational opportunity.
“Yeah,” Tom joins in. “Like that story about how he spent the night on a rock ledge when he was a kid. That was pretty cool.” Tom slaps his thigh.
I take a sip of tea. It tastes like leaves and dirt. Still, compared to ptarmigan liver, it’s delicious. “Rock ledge?” I say. “My dad slept on a rock ledge?” I can’t picture Dad anywhere near a rock ledge. Where would he go to do his morning stretches?
“Yeah,” Lenny says, and now his voice starts to sound a little more excited. “He was with a friend from school and they were out on a day hike. In New York State, I think he said. Only there was a bad storm, and him and the friend got stranded. They ended up sleeping on a rock ledge. Your dad said it wasn’t more than about two feet wide.” Lenny uses his hands to demonstrate. “He said if he rolled over, he would’ve fallen off and died. Your dad said he was scared out of his mind, but he also said that, when he thinks back on it, it was one of the best nights of his life—sleeping under the stars and all.”
I can sense one of my dad’s lessons coming. Something about how sometimes time has to go by before you can appreciate the stuff that happens to you. Or maybe something about how it’s easier to get through tough times when there’s a friend with you. But Lenny doesn’t say anything about lessons. “When your dad told us that story, he made us feel like we were right there with him. Shivering on the ledge, afraid to turn around, you know?”
This time, when I take another sip of tea, it gets caught in my throat. I gulp to make it go down. “Funny,” I say, “my dad never told me that story.”