Sleep now, you. You are acting like a crazy old man.
FOR THREE DAYS, they track the wolverine, setting leg traps baited with goose wings or beaver guts. They follow its tracks, set snares in the bush where the wolverine likes to slip into cover. Antoine is right. It has a damaged hind leg. But this isn’t keeping it from destroying Xavier’s cubby sets and frightening away any marten or fox or even lynx that he might have had a chance with. Its hunger is insatiable.
At breakfast on the fourth day, Xavier tells Abraham that he must go out with the dog team to check the most distant traplines. He says to Abraham that he needs some good news, some pelts brought in to sell. What he doesn’t say out loud is that he wants Antoine to stay with him because he is the more natural, the better hunter. To his relief, Abraham is excited for the adventure. He leaves with the dawn.
Antoine and Xavier head out after their tea balosse to continue tracking kikwaakew. They’ll stay together for the first few hours, and then Antoine will work his way farther down the lines, because he can move so much quicker. Both of them carry their rifles today. They bring fish and beaver guts to bait the cubbies and to place around the snares.
Xavier’s head isn’t clear this morning as they make their way from set to set. Antoine seems anxious about something. Xavier keeps expecting his favourite son to turn to him and demand that he move faster. Antoine can be short tempered, and has no patience with people who don’t live up to his standards. Xavier finds himself shuffling quicker than he’s used to on his snowshoes to please the boy.
He slept poorly last night, tossing in his rabbit blanket. The fire was either so hot that he sweated, or burned down so low that he lay there shivering, listening to the light snores of his boys. To be that age again, to sleep through the coldest night or the fullest bladder. Xavier’s not old, him, into his forties a little ways now, an age that twenty years ago he couldn’t have dreamt of being. Theresa and him, they used to talk about what they imagined the other would be like when they were old and in their forties.
Antoine came out first. Theresa died when Abraham came out a few minutes later, the umbilical cord tight around his neck.
The wind’s changed by noon, a bitch wind from the east. The cold snap is broken. By the white horizon, it’s easy to see that a big snow’s coming in fast.
Antoine speaks of it first. “Abraham will see it,” he says. “He’ll burrow down. We won’t see him tonight.”
Xavier knows that Antoine waits for him to decide what they will do. Xavier keeps pushing forward for now, angry that this weather will stop them from killing kikwaakew today, might keep them from ever killing it if it decides to move on. He’s become infected by the damned thing. As they push up along a trail that runs parallel to the creek, he finally admits to himself that his poor sleep last night wasn’t because of the temperature or because he had to piss. Niska is trying to tell him something from far away, something important. She’s done this before, working her shake tent, filling his head deep at night with images he can’t quite make out through the mist. She warned him about kikwaakew. He can see this so obviously now, dreaming its thick neck and black eyes and white teeth hours before finding its tracks. He had thought this was all. But something more comes. He knows. He knows his old auntie. She’s trying hard to warn him. It’s not good, she’s telling him.
Why can’t you see what it is?
The first snowflakes touching his face bring him back. They won’t get the wolverine in a snowstorm. “We’ll go home now,” he says to Antoine. “We’ll be able to follow his tracks easier in a few days.”
Antoine wants to say something to Xavier. He can see his boy opening his mouth and then closing it. Finally Antoine speaks, but it’s obviously not what he wanted to say. “It’s going to be a big storm” is all that he mumbles.
As they march back toward home, the wind blowing in earnest now, the snow falling thick enough to prevent them seeing more than a few feet ahead, Xavier wants to shout to Antoine that he is the beloved son. He opens his mouth to speak it, but the wind will swallow his words. And what would telling him accomplish?
Don’t be cruel. Don’t make him hate you like you hate yourself.
They stumble into the askihkan, Xavier’s hands frozen so stiff that Antoine picks up the wood to stoke the fire. “Abraham will be fine,” Antoine says, as if he reads his father’s mind.
Abraham has the same dumb ability to survive anything, just like his father has always had. Abraham. In everything he does, he reminds Xavier of himself. It is Antoine he fears for.
TWO DAYS LATER, the storm finally dies away. Xavier wakes early, believing that he has cursed Abraham. Is this what Niska’s tried to warn him about? Antoine seems unworried when Xavier brings up Abraham’s name as they prepare to head out to the traplines again.
“He’s like a bear when it comes to this weather,” Antoine says. “He’s probably still curled up in a drift, sleeping like a child.”
When they return that evening, though, with two foxes and three snowshoe hares, there’s still no sign of the boy. Again, Xavier sees that Antoine wants to speak, to tell him something. The two sit, awkward in the silence, until Antoine asks what they should do about kikwaakew.
“It’s what he wants to do with us,” Xavier says, hating the words as soon as they come out of his mouth. He picks up his cold cup of tea and sips it. “He might have left our territory, I think.”
Antoine looks up and then looks away. “Mona. No. I felt him today.” Antoine suddenly looks guilty for speaking. He’s never questioned Xavier in such a matter before. But he knows Antoine’s right. The rest of the night, there’s an uncomfortable silence, until he wishes his son a good sleep and crawls under his rabbit blanket.
THEY TAKE TURNS chopping through the ice in front of a beaver lodge, trying to free the pole that holds the snare in the black water below the frozen surface. An arm’s length of new snow has fallen in the last storm, and Xavier focuses on the work, on what needs to be done. Antoine takes over the axe, and Xavier removes his fur hat to cool down. That’s when he hears the baying of dogs, of his dogs. His legs nearly buckle with the relief. He turns to the sound and waits. Antoine stops chopping and joins him.
Abraham, heavily bundled but obviously so cold that he has a hard time stopping the team and stepping from the sled, still smiles as he stumbles into the snow. Xavier tells Antoine to start the fire. He limps to his other son and helps him up, leading him to where Antoine is already blowing on the tinders.
Abraham huddles by the fire, his teeth chattering and his body shaking. Antoine feeds more wood, and Xavier positions the kettle at the hottest spot.
Abraham smiles through his chattering teeth. “Ever big storm,” he says. His lips are purple.
After an hour, Abraham’s violent shivering has stopped, but Xavier can see how his fingers and toes must be screaming with pain by the way he grits his teeth when he talks. “I have a special gift for you, Father,” he says, pointing his lips to the sleigh.
The dogs, snouts tucked into their tails, stand to sniff and whine at Xavier as he walks up. He takes off his mitts and begins to untie the ropes. He pulls back the canvas, feeling the eyes of his sons on his back. Lying frozen across a few small marten and a couple of hares lies the biggest, most beautiful fisher he has ever seen. It’s bigger and thicker than a large fox, the fur a rich and shining black. Its head is like a marten’s but many times the size. Its large, sharp teeth are bared in death, the snare wire still taut around its neck. Xavier marvels at the size of the paws. Its tail is as long as its body.
He turns to Abraham with a grin. “You’ve made our season,” he says. “We will eat rabbit stew with dumplings tonight to celebrate.”
AS PROMISED, Xavier uses the last of his flour supply and much of his lard and baking powder. He makes a feast for his sons, raiding his stores of all the flesh his boys desire. Goose and sturgeon seared in his iron pan, dumplings and bannock dipped in the fat, rabbit boiled then fried. He doe
s this with an abandon he’s not known since he was a young man himself. Both of his sons are alive, and the one who Xavier fretted over has delivered an animal that will make the next year comfortable.
With dinner finally done and all of them lying on their sides, their bellies distended, he makes the joke that he hopes a wolf with an axe doesn’t discover their askihkan and their feast. “We are far too full to run away if he showed up.” The three of them laugh together, and Xavier feels a fullness he hasn’t felt since Theresa.
Abraham, his mouth smeared with grease, laughs the loudest. He is a simple boy, but he is good. Xavier watches, smiling, as Abraham leans toward Antoine and says, “You told Father what we’ve done, yes?”
Antoine looks at his brother as if to silence him. Antoine then looks at Xavier to see if he has heard. Xavier looks away when their eyes meet.
Say it.
It takes a few moments for Abraham to recognize that something’s wrong. Xavier watches his poor son’s face.
Antoine clears his throat. “The parish priest in Moose Factory,” he begins, clearing his throat again. “He said it is our duty to fight”
“We’ve joined the army, Father,” Abraham says, sitting up, his eyes wide. “We want to do what you did.”
Xavier looks at Antoine, willing him to take back the words. “Mona,” Xavier says. No. He wants to say more, wants to explain to his sons that the excitement of this will soon turn to boredom, and then to absolute horror.
We need you both here with us. Mona. No more loss.
“Father Ignatius said that the Nazis kill people like us,” Abraham says. “We must make a stand for our country.” These are not his son’s words.
“Did you sign papers?” Xavier asks. Abraham smiles. Antoine nods.
XAVIER HAS TAKEN the last days to make the boys new snowshoes, despite knowing that they will have to sell them or give them away when they reach the town. He was going to just let them have his dog team to travel the 120 miles, but all of them know how much he needs it. The boys stand in front of his askihkan, stomping their feet, admiring their new gifts. Antoine will pull their toboggan. Abraham will cut the trail along the river ahead. In this way they’ll make good time.
Xavier shuffles to the askihkan and reaches inside the entrance, taking the frozen fisher in his hands. As he returns to the boys, he thinks he can feel eyes in the forest watching him. Kneeling by their toboggan, he unties the canvas and lays the fisher on top of their supplies before refastening the ropes.
Antoine shakes his head when Xavier stands. “No, Father,” he says. “We can’t take that. You will need the money it brings.”
“You will need it more,” Xavier says. “Don’t let the company men take advantage of you. They know its worth.” Abraham smiles. “When you get to the city,” Xavier continues to Antoine, “take your brother to a fancy restaurant and have a big meal.”
There’s so much Xavier wants to say, all of the lessons and warnings from years of war that he wants to pass down before his boys begin walking. But he knows it’s not possible. They will learn what they learn, and if fortune smiles upon them they will come back to him. He wishes his Auntie Niska were here, but immediately feels like a foolish child for thinking it.
Xavier rolls three cigarettes, then places one in his mouth before handing the other two to his sons. He lights a match and touches it to his smoke. He’s about to shake it out but thinks better of wasting. He holds the lit match in the calm morning to Antoine, who looks surprised and a little guilty.
He’s a man now. But Abraham isn’t.
Xavier rushes a bit to get the dying flame to Abraham’s cigarette, the boy grinning silly with the smoke bit between his teeth. Some distant memory, some long-ago fear, flares up in Xavier as Abraham puffs his smoke to life. They all stand silent in a circle, not saying anything. No need.
It’s time to go now. Antoine pulls the toboggan straps over his head and shoulders. Abraham gives Xavier an awkward hug. When Abraham lets go, Xavier immediately wants to do this all over again, to take away the soft pat on the back that he gave to Abraham. He wants to hold his sweet son tight and whisper something good in his ear, something that will protect him, that will make him come home. But he knows there are no words like this as he watches his two sons walk away from him, one behind the other, until they fade into the white.
Fearless. Witty. Thoughtful. Canadian.
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COPYRIGHT © 2012 JOSEPH BOYDEN
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in 2012 by
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Boyden, Joseph 1966—
Kikwaakew / Joseph Boyden.
Story published in the July/August 2012 edition of the Walrus magazine, as part of a collection of three short stories.
ISBN 978-0-9879989-4-1
I. Walrus Foundation II. Title.
PS8501.T86I2 2012 C813'.54 C2012-901829-5
Designed by Brian Morgan at The Walrus.
Set in Arno Pro
Ebook Conversion by Coach House Books
Cover image for Kikwaakew
COPY
RIGHT © CC-BY Pink Sherbet Photography (D. Sharon Pruitt)
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/2110766472/
Story based on characters from Three Day Road, 2008, Penguin.
Joseph Boyden, Kikwaakew
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