I can tell Dad is really upset about the dog, because he hasn’t checked the temperature since I left for my run this morning. But I don’t need a computer to tell me it’s way friggin’ colder here at night than during the day. The air is so cold it bites. If I hurry, I figure I can make it to the community center in about five minutes. One good thing about George River is that nothing’s very far away. Back home, I have to take the bus or métro to get anyplace.
A couple of dogs bark when I pass them. They’ve got bent-back ears and the same black, brown and white coloring as Tarksalik. When one bares his teeth, I back away. The dogs don’t seem to belong to anyone; something tells me they haven’t had their rabies shots. I think about Tarksalik and how she used to be like them, fending for herself in the cold and living on scraps. Grateful, Dad called her. Only now that I let her get hit by a truck, she’s probably not so grateful anymore. She’d have been better off out here with these drooling mongrels.
I can’t say I’m looking forward to my night out. If this were Montreal, I might be able to score tickets to a Habs game at the Bell Centre. Chris L’Ecuyer’s dad has season’s tickets, and sometimes he lets us have them. Or I could meet Chris at the Second Cup in our neighborhood and we could pretend to do homework while we check out hot girls. Right now, though, my life in Montreal feels like it never really happened.
Besides the school, the community center is the biggest building in George River. It has these enormous glass windows that look out over the river. Like everything else in town, the community center looks new. New buildings don’t do much for me. For one thing, the houses in George River all look pretty much the same. They have aluminum siding, small square windows and little closed-in porches out front. They look like someone without much imagination dropped them from the sky.
Where Mom and I live in Montreal, most of the houses are at least a hundred years old and the neighborhood feels like it has history. Not to mention trees. Big old trees that in summer make a canopy over our street and in winter get blanketed by snow. I never realized how cool trees were until I got here and there weren’t any.
Dad told me tonight’s talk is in the upstairs meeting room. It looks like there’s a No Boots rule here too. I park mine in the front hallway. I pass a kitchen on the ground floor. When I peek in, I see a couple of Inuit ladies laying cookies out on a tray. Though I’ve never met her before, one of them waves when she sees me. “Ay!” she says. I’ve noticed that’s the Inuit way of saying hello. I wave back. Maybe I’ll get my hands on some of those cookies later.
Upstairs, a few people are sitting on metal folding chairs, but most are squatting on the floor, their legs tucked underneath them. Man, that looks uncomfortable! In Montreal, people would be scrambling for the chairs. But here it works the other way around; the Inuit seem to think squatting on the floor is the better option.
Rhoda, Steve’s wife, is sitting on a folding chair. Celia is with her. Rhoda waves me over. She’s saved me a place on her other side. Dad must have let her know I’d be coming. “How ya’ doin’, Noah?” she asks when I sit down. I can feel her watching my face. Celia is peeking at me too.
“Tarksalik’s not so good.”
“I heard,” Rhoda says, “but what about you?”
It’s the first time all day anyone has asked how I’m doing, and I feel my throat tighten. It’s been an awful day. “I can’t stop picturing the accident,” I tell her.
“Poor you,” she says, rumpling my hair the way my mom sometimes does. Then Rhoda looks straight at me. Her dark eyes look kind. “Replaying the accident in your mind is perfectly normal, Noah. You’re having what’s called a post–traumatic stress reaction.” She says those last words slowly, as if she wants me to realize she’s just said something important. “It’s perfectly understandable. You just have to remember one thing: what happened to Tarksalik wasn’t your fault.”
I try to smile, but I can’t. My lips feel frozen. “If only I hadn’t taken Tarksalik out with me. If only I’d kept her closer. If only I hadn’t gone for a run in the first place,” I mutter. The thoughts have been hovering in my mind all day, and now, saying the words out loud makes me feel even worse. If only.
Rhoda looks me in the eye. “It wasn’t your fault,” she says again.
If only I could believe her.
The guy who’s talking tonight is one of the elders in the community. In his case the word “elder” is an understatement. He looks like he’s about 200. He’s got stooped shoulders, and his face is so wrinkled his skin looks like it’s made out of tissue paper. I guess he never heard of sunblock. The only thing not so ancient-looking about him is his hair: it’s still mostly black, with wiry gray streaks.
The guy’s name is Charlie. Charlie Etok. Why are half the people in this town named Etok?
I spot Lenny in the audience, sitting at the back with a couple of guys I don’t recognize. They’re probably some of the local dropouts. At least Lenny’s awake. He nudges one of his friends when he catches me looking in their direction. Again, I can’t help thinking of Roland Ipkins. He’s got a gang of henchmen too. I look away as fast as I can.
Someone dims all the lights, except for one spotlight that’s shining on Charlie. He clears his throat, and then he clears it a second time. “Tonight,” he says in a voice that is surprisingly strong for such an old guy, “I’m going to tell you a legend my ataata and his ataata told me.” He stops to take a rest. If this is how the guy tells stories, stopping for a nap after every sentence, it’s gonna be one long night.
“This legend is about a couple of kids, a spirit and a dog team.”
My back stiffens. I’ve had enough of dogs for one day, thank you very much. I consider getting up and going to the bathroom so I can skip this part of the legend, but Rhoda pats my hand. It’s just a story, I tell myself, and with the lights so dim, maybe I’ll be able to catch a few z’s. Isn’t that what Inuit legends are for?
People have been talking, but now that Charlie has started, the room is quiet, except for a black-haired baby wailing in the front row. The baby is sitting inside a pouch on the back of his mom’s parka, but now she lifts him out and settles him on her lap. I’ve never seen so much hair on a baby. Charlie grins. Let me guess: that kid must be another member of the Etok clan.
I fidget in my chair. The guy hasn’t even started telling his grampa’s legend, and already I’m restless. I cross and uncross my legs, but it doesn’t help.
“We didn’t always live in towns like this one,” Charlie says. He lifts his chin to the big windows. Not only does he talk really slowly, but his voice doesn’t go up and down the way I’m used to.
“No, we Inuit never used to stay in one place too long,” Charlie continues. From the way he says it, I can tell he thinks moving around like that was a good thing. I remember what my mom said about Dad having a restless soul. No wonder he gets along so well with the Inuit. But when I think about how cold it is outside, I’m glad not to be some nomad spending the night in an igloo. Charlie must be a pretty tough old guy.
“The Qallunaat—the white men—made us settle in one town,” Charlie says. For a second, his eyes land on me. I scan the room. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before, but I’m the only white person here. It’s not a feeling I’m used to.
Part of me wants to call out, “Hey, don’t go blaming me for what some white guys did before I was even born.” On the other hand, what Charlie just said is pretty interesting. It helps explain why so many of the buildings in George River—the community center, the houses, the medical clinic and the school—look new. The Inuit were nomads until white men showed up here. And even if I wasn’t born when all that happened, there’s no denying I am a white man.
Charlie’s droning on again. I sure wish he’d hurry up and get the legend over with. “We used to follow the caribou and hunt for seal, setting up camp along the way.”
Charlie closes his eyes and smiles. I figure he’s remembering those days. I sure hope he was wearing a warm parka. “Tonight,” he says, “I’m going to tell you the legend of Kajutaijug.”
Kajutaijug? What kind of weird name is that?
There is a low moan from the people sitting at the front. They seem to know the legend. Judging from their reaction, I figure it’s a scary story. On the other hand, what do these people know? They don’t even have a movie theater in George River. I bet most of them have never even seen the first Halloween movie. Still, with any luck, maybe the old guy’s story will take my mind off Tarksalik and the rest of my troubles.
Charlie takes a deep breath. “One time, a long, long time ago, our people were preparing to move to a new camp. It was the end of winter so the days were getting longer. We had to pack everything up, and of course, in those days, we traveled everywhere by dogsled. Let me tell you,” Charlie says, looking up at us, “our sled dogs were something. Even in the worst snowstorm, they could find their way better than any gps system ever invented.”
Some people at the front of the room laugh. Even if they don’t own cars, they all know about gps systems. Maybe they have seen Halloween.
“And those dogs were strong too. They were bred for pulling. A team of sled dogs could pull hundreds and hundreds of pounds. They could pull five caribou carcasses or a polar bear.”
This legend is going to take forever—and then some— to tell. I wish I could stretch my legs, but there isn’t any room.
Charlie is still yakking away. I think he likes the attention. “But there was so much to bring when they moved that time, even the sled dogs couldn’t manage everything in one trip. So the elders had to leave a group of people behind. ‘Don’t worry,’ the elders told those people. ‘We’ll be back soon. We promise. Just wait for us here, okay?’”
Charlie looks up at the audience, and I can tell he wants us to feel like he’s one of those elders and we’re the people he’s leaving behind. It’s not working for me. All I can think about is how bored I am. I don’t see the point of telling legends.
“Two days went by, then three days, then four.” Charlie’s getting tense. I can tell because he’s finally speeding up. Thank god for that. Maybe I’ll score a couple of those cookies in the next half century.
“The people that were left behind got tired of waiting. They were hungry too. They ate up all the provisions.” That gets me wondering some more about those cookies. Were any of them chocolate? I’ll eat chocolate anything. “The seal meat and the caribou. They shot some ptarmigan—”
“Ptarmigan?” Without meaning to, I say the word out loud.
A woman in the front row turns and shushes me.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
Celia leans over her mom to poke my arm. Once she has my attention, Celia bends her elbows and flaps her arms. A ptarmigan must be a bird.
“Thanks,” I whisper to Celia.
“—but a few ptarmigan weren’t enough to fill their empty bellies. So on the fifth day, a boy and a girl”—I notice Charlie’s eyes land on Lenny and his friends—“kids about your age—well, they started heading for the new camp. On foot.” I can tell from the way Charlie is shaking his head he doesn’t think that was a very wise move.
A small girl sitting on the floor groans. “What did their anaana and ataata say?” she calls out.
Charlie shrugs. “You know how young folks are. Those two kids wouldn’t listen to anybody, least of all their anaana and ataata. The two of them just headed out into the snow, following the tracks the dogsleds had made five days before. After they’d been walking for two or three hours, the snow came. At first, it was just light flakes, but then the sky grew purplish black and a storm—a fierce one—blew in. The tracks got covered in no time.” Charlie pauses, and when he starts to speak again, his voice is so low it isn’t much louder than a whisper. “And then, they heard a terrible sound.”
One of the grownups actually whimpers. Sheesh, I think, what’s wrong with you? It’s just a story.
“The sound those kids heard,” Charlie continues, “was louder than a scream, deeper than a moan and higher pitched than a dog’s bark. It was the worst sound they ever heard, so they covered their ears.” Charlie covers his ears now too, then bends over a little as if that might also help protect him from the sound he’s describing. “But the sound went right through their mittens and their nassaks.”
This time Rhoda translates. She taps the black and red wool cap on her lap.
Nassak. I nod and mouth the word so the woman in the front row won’t give me the evil eye again.
Charlie picks up even more speed now that he’s finally come to the climax of his story. I hope the old guy won’t have a heart attack. This is probably the most excitement he’s had in, like, 150 years.
“The boy saw Kajutaijug first. He wanted to warn the girl, but he was too frightened to speak, so he just pointed.” Charlie lifts one hand and points a wrinkly finger at the audience. “There—right in front of them, not more than a couple of feet away—was Kajutaijug.”
There’s another moan from the audience. Louder this time. I remember Dad telling me about something called “the willing suspension of disbelief.” Basically, that means people who listen to stories or read them or watch them on tv or in a movie, have to buy in; they have to believe the story could be true. Well, Charlie’s audience is suspending their disbelief all right.
But not me. I don’t believe in spirits, especially ones with hard-to-pronounce names.
“Kajutaijug had no body.” This story is getting weirder by the second. “She was just an enormous head on top of two feet. And those feet were big, as big as tree stumps. And her face, oh Lord, what an ugly face she had! The ugliest face those two kids ever saw. And Kajutaijug had a breast growing from each cheek.” That part of Charlie’s description makes some people in the audience—even me—laugh.
“I guess Kajutaijug couldn’t get a job for the Playboy channel,” I hear Lenny whisper to his friends.
Charlie doesn’t seem to mind the interruptions, or that Lenny just mentioned the Playboy channel. I’ll bet Charlie doesn’t even know what the Playboy channel is. Still, he slaps his thigh. “You’re right about that, Lenny,” he says, grinning. “Breasts are nice”—that makes us laugh again—“but not when they grow where cheeks should be.”
“Gross! That’d be s-so gross,” one of Lenny’s pals calls out. The way he slurs his words makes me wonder if he’s been drinking. It’s illegal to buy or sell alcohol in George River. The law is supposed to eliminate alcoholism, but Dad told me how people get around it by buying bootleg liquor or ordering it up from the south.
Charlie clears his throat. I can tell he wants to get back to his story. “And when Kajutaijug walked, dragging one foot-stump after the other, she made those terrible noises again. Only louder. The whole tundra shook from the sound of her. Even the river and the sky shook.”
It’s so dark outside now that we can’t see the point where the river meets the sky. The only light is coming from a few houses near the shore and from the smattering of stars in the sky.
“Did Kajutaijug eat them up?” the little girl calls out.
Charlie wags his finger. “Hold on,” he says, “I’m not at that part yet.”
Rhoda leans forward onto the edge of her chair. I can’t believe she is suspending her disbelief too.
But I guess for a made-up story, this one isn’t all bad. It’s got suspense, at least, and I’m starting to like the sound of Charlie’s voice.
“The children tried running away from Kajutaijug, but she was too fast for them, even on those stumpy legs of hers. Besides, by then the kids were tired and hungry and afraid. Charlie looks up at the audience. “Fear can tire a person out worse than anything else.”
“Kajutaijug opened her mouth—it looked like a cave inside there—and licked her lips. She used her long tongue to scoop those two kids up from the snow. Then, just as she was about to gobble them up, she heard something. At first, the sound was low, like a rumble, but it got louder. And it frightened Kajutaijug.”
The little girl laughs and then covers her mouth. She likes the idea of something frightening Kajutaijug. Other people start laughing too.
“It was the sled dogs. They came back for the Inuit who were left behind. Just in time too. Those dogs bit the fat ankles on Kajutaijug’s stumps. Kajutaijug cried out in pain, and when she did, the children fell out of her mouth and back onto the snow. When they turned around, Kajutaijug was gone. Vanished into the frozen night.”
Charlie bows his head. Suddenly, he looks very old again.
“It’s a good story,” someone calls out. Someone else claps, and then others start clapping too. Lenny and his friends put their fingers in their mouths and whistle.
I clap too. Not just to be polite, but also because I’m looking at Charlie’s lined skin and black hair and thinking about what a tough life he’s had, how he’s lived on the land and hunted for his food. And I’m looking at all the other people in the room lining up to thank Charlie and clap him on the shoulder. You’d think he’d just given them a present, which I guess, in a way, he did. If you don’t mind stories for presents.
Through the window, the stars seem to have grown brighter. As Rhoda, Celia and I get up from our chairs, there is a loud boom outside. So loud it makes the windows rattle.
“It’s just thunder,” a woman says.
The little girl doesn’t believe her. “It’s not thunder,” she says, planting her thumb in her mouth. “It’s Kajutaijug.”
I think of telling the girl there’s no such thing as Kajutaijug. But then the lady from downstairs appears with her tray of cookies. I think I smell chocolate.