“Etua!” Geraldine shouts. “Where are you? Etua!”
Geraldine’s dark eyes have a wild look. “He was right n-next to me,” she says, her voice breaking. “Then I turned around and he was gone. Etua!”
The rest of us are shouting too. “Spiderman!” I call, thinking maybe he’ll hear that better than just his name. But when we stop to listen for him, all we hear is the wind’s fierce whistle, the dogs’ barking and our own frightened-sounding echoes.
“He can’t be far,” Matthew is saying. His voice still sounds calm. He raises one hand over his eyes to help him see better.
“Then why isn’t he answering?” Geraldine sounds like she’s about to cry.
“Maybe he can’t hear us over the wind and the dogs,” I say. “I couldn’t hear you before, and you were screaming.” I’m chewing on the inside of my lip. I bite down so hard, I taste blood.
I shouldn’t have gone out onto the lake when Lenny called me. I should’ve thought about Etua. I promised to keep an eye on him. I screwed up. Again.
“We should split up into three search parties,” Tom says. Nobody argues. Not even Matthew.
“Jakopie, Roy and I’ll head into the bush. Matthew and Geraldine, check the tents. You two cover the lake,” Tom tells Lenny and me. I don’t complain about being stuck with Lenny. The only thing that matters now is finding Etua.
The lake looks bigger and snowier than ever. Is Etua out there somewhere? I feel inside my pocket for the ptarmigan feather Tom gave me. At first, I can’t find it, but then I feel something thin and hard way at the bottom of my pocket, where the lint collects. Yes, that’s it. I must be getting desperate if I’m starting to believe in lucky feathers.
“We’d better find him soon,” Geraldine whispers, and now I can tell she’s really having trouble fighting the tears. “He could freeze to death out here.”
I pat Geraldine’s elbow. “We’ll find him.”
“Etua! Spiderman!” I shout as Lenny and I trudge along the ice.
“Etua! Spiderman!” a voice echoes back. This time, it isn’t my voice echoing. It’s Geraldine’s. She’s out there calling for Etua too.
I keep my eyes on the snow near my feet. Maybe we’ll see small tracks. Maybe Etua fell and he’s having trouble getting up. His parka probably weighs more than he does. But with the snow coming down so hard, Etua’s tracks will be covered in no time, and so will Etua.
“He’s wearing a red parka,” I say to Lenny. “And a red nassak.”
“I know,” Lenny snaps. You’d think I’d said something really annoying. I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it does. Again, I think of Roland Ipkins. I remember the anti-bullying workshops we had in elementary school. The lady who came to talk to our class told us we should feel sorry for bullies. At the time, I thought she was out of her mind. Imagine feeling sorry for Roland Ipkins, who used to squash my sandwiches at lunch and once put dog shit in my rain boots. There was no way I could feel sorry for him! But I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Lenny isn’t a bully after all. At least not the kind of bully I’m used to. Maybe Lenny is more into tricks than torture. Maybe kids up north don’t just have a different attitude to animals; maybe kids up here also have a different attitude to other kids. Maybe they’re not mean the way city kids can be.
Lenny stops for a few seconds to look out at the lake like Matthew did, using his hand for a visor. “You shouldn’t have left him alone,” Lenny mutters. There he goes again, criticizing me. And I’m not just going to keep taking it. Just like I shouldn’t have kept taking it from Roland Ipkins all through elementary school and then into high school.
“You shouldn’t have called me over and tried to trick me,” I say. “And you shouldn’t have taken my ski tuque.”
“Who started it?” Lenny says. “Who punched me in the face?”
“You started it. You’ve been ragging on me since I got here.”
Lenny doesn’t have anything to say to that.
I’m not done yet. “We all said we’d watch Etua. Not just me.”
Lenny doesn’t have anything to say to that, either.
We trudge a little farther. Lenny is breathing hard. Or is it me? The wind burns my face, and my lips are so chapped they hurt.
I think of Steve and Joseph out on the snowmobile in this storm. Will they make it back to town in time for Joseph to catch the plane to Kuujjuaq?
Then I remember Joseph’s thumb on the snow outside the tent and Tarksalik lying on the road in a pool of blood. And now Etua is missing. People, even grown people, die in weather like this. How’s a little kid going to make it?
It’s starting to feel like the whole world is falling apart around me. I’m not angry the way I was a few minutes ago; now I’m more sad than anything else. And hopeless.
“Steve’ll never forgive us if something bad happens to Etua,” I say. I am talking more to myself than to Lenny.
Lenny stops in his tracks. When he raises one hand in the air, I feel the muscles in my back and stomach contract. I’m wondering if now is when he’s going to punch me or maybe strangle me instead. When Lenny puts his hand on my shoulder, I feel relieved, but still a little nervous. I can’t trust him. He doesn’t like me any more than I like him. Probably less.
“Will you cut it out?” Lenny says, looking me hard in the eye. “Nothing bad’s gonna happen to Etua.”
I shake my head, but I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is: How do you know? And if you’re so sure and so big and tough, how come your hand is shaking?
“Etua! Spiderman! Where are you?” Lenny is shouting now. We’re walking again, side by side, not saying a word except to call for Etua.
“What’s that?” I say, pointing to a spot of color on the shore about thirty feet from where we are, though it’s hard to judge distances with the snow blowing so hard.
“I don’t see nothin’,” Lenny says.
You mean anything. You don’t see anything, I think. Something tells me Lenny wouldn’t appreciate a grammar lesson right now.
I tug on Lenny’s arm. “I see something.” My chest starts to feel a little lighter. It hasn’t been long since Etua went missing. If we find him now, he should be fine. “Maybe it’s Etua.”
We pick up our speed. “Do you see it now?” I ask Lenny.
“I see somethin’,” he says. “But it’s not red.”
We are walking against the wind. But I don’t care about the snow or the cold or the wind. I don’t even care about whether Lenny plans to try and kill me.
Lenny’s right. Whatever we’ve spotted isn’t red, so it can’t be Etua. The heavy feeling in my chest comes back. Maybe we shouldn’t have bothered heading to the shore. Maybe if we’d kept walking straight out on the lake, we’d have found Etua by now. Maybe we should turn back right now.
I don’t realize I’m talking out loud.
Lenny grabs my elbow. “Can you quit saying ‘maybe’ all the time?” he says. “You’re driving me nuts. But I’ll tell you one thing: Etua shouldn’t have gone off by himself. What was he thinking?” Lenny releases his grip.
“He’s just a kid.”
“A dumb kid. Can you believe he thinks he’s Spiderman?”
I don’t like Lenny calling Etua dumb. “He’s got an imagination. Usually, that’s a good thing.”
“Not if it gets you lost in a whiteout, it isn’t.”
I try imagining what might have made Etua wander off without telling any of us where he was going. “Maybe Etua was thinking like Spiderman,” I say, thinking out loud. “Maybe he was trying to save somebody.”
Lenny groans. “Now what are you going on about? You sound like an old lady.”
I decide to ignore him. “I’m just thinking maybe Etua had a reason for taking off the way he did.”
We’re getting quite close to whatever it was we saw from out on the lake.
“Looks like some branches that musta got loose from a snare trap,” Lenny says. “But it’s not Etua.”
I’m not so sure. If Etua thinks he’s Spiderman, maybe he saw—or heard—something out here he thought needed saving.
“Spiderman!” I shout. My voice is getting hoarse.
“Spiderman!” Lenny joins in.
The snare trap is only a few feet behind the branches. It’s a wire noose attached to a small stump with some greenery around the wire. The trap is empty.
“See that?” Lenny says, leaning down to inspect it. “It’s got fur on it. Over here. Looks like there was something in this trap not too long ago.”
“Spiderman!” I call again.
I think I hear rustling in the low brush up ahead, so I head there. But Lenny pulls me back. When I turn to look at him, he’s holding his index finger to his lips, leaning forward. He’s listening, straining to hear sounds my own ears aren’t trained to pick up.
Could be a bear. Lenny mouths the words.
At first, I think he’s kidding. I know he’d enjoy seeing me panic. But Lenny’s not smirking, and when he looks up at me, his pupils look really big. That’s how I can tell he’s scared.
So am I. The panicky feeling I had when I heard those heavy steps—that turned out to be Geraldine on snowshoes—and when I thought Lenny was going to beat the crap out of me comes back. Polar bears aren’t like the ones you see in the Coke ads. They don’t wave or smile when they see you coming. They hunt and stalk their prey. Sometimes for days in a row, waiting till the time is right to attack. I know because I’ve seen them do it on the Discovery Channel.
What if Lenny is right and there’s a polar bear out there? What if he’s been stalking us since we arrived at Short Lake? And what if Etua is out there too? My whole body shivers, and this time it isn’t because of the cold.
Lenny is Inuit. He’s lived here all his life. He’ll know what to do. I look at him and mouth the word Etua.
Lenny raises his hands to chest level, then lowers them slowly, as if he’s pressing down on the keys of an imaginary piano. I know that means there’s only one thing to do: wait.
I’ve never been much good at waiting. In Montreal, when there’s a line at the store or the bank machine, I usually take off. I’ve got better things to do than stand around staring into space. I like to think of myself as a man of action.
Lenny closes his eyes, which strikes me as a weird thing to do. Now he’s rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. What in the world is he doing—going into some kind of trance? If I were a polar bear, I’d go after Lenny first. The thought makes me feel a little better. Lenny’s big. He’d make a square meal even for a polar bear. Unless it was a really hungry polar bear. One who hadn’t caught a seal recently. In that case, Lenny might just be an appetizer.
I have to fight an overwhelming urge to scream. I know I can’t. The last thing you want to do when a polar bear is around is draw attention to yourself. But inside my head, I’m screaming.
Lenny opens his eyes and leans forward again. I can tell he’s still listening. I try listening too, tuning in the way Lenny is doing.
All I can hear is the wind, and the soft ping the snow makes as it lands on the ground. And now I hear the rustling sounds again. Only now, those sounds are getting farther away. Is it a polar bear?
When Lenny sees me open my mouth, he shakes his head. I’m going to have to wait some more.
The first noise that comes out of Lenny is a sigh. A long, deep sigh. That must mean the coast is clear. “D’you really think it was a polar bear?” I whisper.
“I think I heard him breathing. But he’s gone now.”
“Do you think it’s safe to start calling Etua again?”
“Soon,” Lenny says.
In the end, though, we don’t have to call for Etua. Because just after we turn to head back out onto the lake, Etua walks up to us as if he was there all along. “Etua!” Lenny and I cry out at once.
“Hi, Noah. Hi, Lenny,” he says as if he has no idea we’ve been searching for him.
The fur collar on Etua’s red parka is covered with snow, and his cheeks are as red as the parka. He’s carrying something he holds out to show us. At first, I think it’s a stuffed animal or a baby in a fur coat. Of course that makes no sense. A baby in a fur coat?
It’s an animal, just not a stuffed one. It’s an Arctic hare. A small dead white Arctic hare with black ear tips and strong sharp claws, freshly caught in the trap we spotted. Etua must have pried him loose. He probably shouldn’t have done that. The hare must belong to whoever set the trap.
“I heard a squeaking noise,” Etua says. “I thought someone needed me. But it was just a hare. He squeaked when he got caught in the trap.”
“You shouldn’t have gone off without telling us,” I say.
“Especially not in weather like this,” Lenny adds.
Etua isn’t paying any attention. He’s pulled back one of the hare’s furry white front paws—as if the hare is a hand puppet—and is waving it at us.
Part of me wants to throttle him. He gave all of us a bad scare, and he almost made Geraldine cry. But he’s back now, and there’s something about the sight of that dead hare waving its paw that cracks me up. I laugh so hard my side hurts.