Am I ever glad to hear the sound of a snowmobile on Monday morning. It sounds better to me than the school bell on Friday afternoons, better even than the roar of the audience when Saku Koivu scores for the Canadiens. The sky is perfectly clear. There’s no sign there was ever a whiteout. And, except for the bullet shells and a trail of enormous paw prints, some of them dotted with blood, there’s no sign of the polar bear.
Etua and I help Jakopie feed the dogs. “No wonder the dogs were barking this morning,” Jakopie says. “They must’ve smelled polar bear.”
P’tit Eric wolfs down two fish heads straight from the bucket. Jakopie wants to hear more about the polar bear. Though he’s lived in Nunavik all his life, he’s never seen one. Not a live one anyway. “It’s good you guys were able to scare off the bear. The elders teach us not to kill a bear unless we need the food. And we’ve got plenty of food.”
“Will his paws heal?” I ask.
Jakopie raises his eyebrows to say yes. “He’ll lick his paws, and they’ll get better soon. That’s why Etua’s ataata knew to aim for the paws.”
“Ataata!” Etua shouts when he hears the snowmobile. He jumps up and down the way he does when he gets excited. It makes me realize that even if Etua didn’t act like he was worried about his dad, he must’ve been. I guess keeping his emotions to himself must come from his Inuit side. In the end, it’s not such a bad trait. But I don’t think I could do it. I couldn’t keep my feelings in yesterday, when I was frustrated about being stuck up here, or this morning, when I was terrified by the polar bear.
When the snowmobile appears and I see Steve’s bright green nassak underneath the hood of his parka, I feel like jumping up and down myself. It’s partly because I’m relieved we’re getting out of here, but partly, I think, because of the polar bear.
Hands down, that was the scariest moment of my life, but now I feel—what’s the right word?—exhilarated. Yes, exhilarated is right. I faced my fear. And together with Etua and the other guys, I helped chase away a polar bear. Not bad for a Qallunaaq! And now I’ve got an amazing story— one I’m sure I’ll tell my whole life. Just like Dad’s story about spending the night on a rock ledge. Maybe stories are more important than I realized. Maybe even old Inuit legends have a point. Maybe that’s why people bother to pass them on.
P’tit Eric spots Steve too, because he starts barking like crazy. Soon the other dogs are barking too.
Etua runs toward Steve. But Matthew, who has been loading fish onto his qamutik, reaches Steve first. From where I am, I can see the two men patting each other’s shoulders. Though they don’t seem to be saying much, I can tell they are communicating, filling each other in on what has happened since Steve left Short Lake.
But Etua interrupts, jumping into his dad’s arms. Steve laughs and holds him tight. “Is Joseph’s thumb sewed on?” I hear Etua ask.
“Good as new,” Steve answers. “Mathilde got everything arranged with the hospital in Kuujjuaq. She’s still down there with Joseph.”
There’s another snowmobile on its way. Even when I see the familiar parka and nassak, it takes me a few moments to realize it’s my dad. What’s he doing at Short Lake? Shouldn’t he be teaching today? And what about Tarksalik?
I wave, and when Dad waves back, I walk toward him.
Lenny and Tom want to see him too. “Hey, Bill!” Lenny shouts. “A polar bear dropped by this morning. Your boy helped take care of him.”
Dad grins and opens his arms to hug me. “I was worried sick,” he says into my ear. “What with the weather and all. We’ve haven’t had a storm like that in ages. And the temperature dipped to minus forty-two…”
“When I was a kid and we were out on the land, it got colder even than that,” Matthew is saying.
For once Dad’s not interested in the
weather. “What’s this about a polar bear?” he wants to know.
You’d think a person would get tired of telling the same story over and over, but that isn’t what happens. Over lunch, I tell Dad and Steve the story of the polar bear. Etua, Lenny and Tom help tell it too.
“That bear was yellow-white,” Etua says.
“I nearly shit myself,” Tom says.
“You shoulda seen me when my rifle didn’t shoot,” Lenny adds.
I leave out the part about the beer. It’s another thing I learn about stories: they change depending on who you tell them to.
“It’s a good thing you remembered
about Etua’s rocks,” Dad says, reaching for my shoulder and
squeezing it hard. “Sounds like those rocks and the bullets to his
paws got rid of the bear. Your mother would have had my head if
anything happened to you.” I know that’s Dad’s way of saying he’s
glad I’m safe.
I get to mush on the way home. “If you can help fend off a polar bear,” Steve says, “you can mush.” It feels a little weird at first, standing at the front of the sled, holding the sled handle. But when I shout “Oyt!” the dogs take off just like they’re supposed to. And when the first hill comes, the dogs pull me up over it, and it’s Steve and Etua who have to run alongside to keep up.
Later I take a turn on Dad’s snowmobile. “Hold on a little tighter, will you?” Dad says when I’m perched behind him, my hands around his waist.
It’s the nearest I’ve been to Dad since I was a little kid.
Dad must be thinking the same thing. “Remember when I used to read to you in bed at night?”
“Kind of. How’s Tarksalik?”
“Doing a little better every day.”
“Is she home alone?”
“Rhoda promised to look in on her.”
We’re quite a bit ahead of the dogsled teams, so Dad slows down, and then he stops altogether. Matthew and Geraldine are on a snowmobile too, following the dogs.
Dad and I get off to stretch our legs. It’s cold, but the sun is out and the sky is very blue.
“So did you know the kid who committed suicide a while ago?” I ask him.
“Tim Arvaluk. He wasn’t one of my students. But he went to the school. A ninth-grader.” Dad rubs his mitts together. “He had some pretty serious family trouble.”
“How come you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t think there was any point upsetting you. Mathilde got called to the house after it happened. Tim hanged himself.”
I don’t say anything at first. I just look out at the snow. Today, Nunavik looks like a postcard. But there’s a lot about this place you don’t see on postcards.
“There’s lots of shades of white,” I tell Dad. “See that out there?” I say, pointing to a small clearing with some low brush surrounding it. “Gray-white.”
“I like blue-white best,” Dad says. “You see that mostly around the river.”
“So are you and Mathilde having a thing?”
Dad actually blushes. “I guess so. D’you like her?”
“Sure. She’s good with dogs.”
“And people too.”
“Thanks for coming out to Short Lake, Dad.”
“Like I told you, I was worried sick. Look, Noah,” Dad says, and he makes a point of looking in my eyes, “I’m proud of you. And not just on account of the bear, though that was pretty impressive. I’m proud you had the guts to come up here. And that you’re getting to know the place. That you’re open to it.”
“How come you never told me about the night you slept out on the rock ledge in upstate New York?”
Dad laughs. “How’d you know about that?”
“Lenny and Tom both knew about it. But not me.”
“I guess it never came up.”
“It’s a good story. I wish you’d told it to me.”
Dad rubs his hand along the outside of my shoulder. His touch feels good. “We’ve got some catching up to do, Noah,” he says.
Dad laughs when I raise my eyebrows.
“You know something,” I tell him, “you fit in well up here with the Inuit.”
Dad looks pleased. “How so?” he asks.
I raise my eyebrows again. “You say how you feel without saying a lot.”
“I do?”
“Uh-huh. You do.”
Dad is still rubbing the side of my shoulder. “You could be right about that,” he says.