Waubgeshig Rice - Moon of the Crusted Snow

Joanne tapped out the message, printed off a copy and brought it back to the chief.

Terry turned to the others. “Should we really say there’s a delivery coming?”

Walter smoothed back his greying ponytail. “Well, we originally worked it out with Donny for next week. That’s still the schedule.”

“Yeah, but we haven’t heard from anyone in more than a week. We don’t know what the fuck is going on out there!”

“Terry, relax. We’ll be okay,” said Walter.

“That’s easy for you to say. I’m supposed to be the goddamn leader here! What am I gonna do, deliver these bullshit pieces of paper to every single fuckin’ home on this rez and tell everyone it’s gonna be okay? We have no goddamn answers.”

“Terry, take it easy…” It was Amanda’s turn to try to calm the chief.

“There’s something seriously fucked up going on out there. Why haven’t we heard from anyone? Why is the power still off? If we run out of that diesel, all the water lines are gonna freeze. Then it’s gonna be fuckin’ chaos here.” Terry slammed his fist against the desk. “Fuck!”

Joanne jumped and the others winced or stared at their feet. Walter gazed at Terry from under his furrowed brows. Evan felt the tension rising between the two. As this crisis unfolded, he found himself gravitating towards Walter, who always kept his cool and had a calming and confident demeanour.

“Print them up, Joanne. Tyler and Evan, take them out,” commanded Walter. “They’re gonna want to hear something from us, and this is all we can do.”

Terry inhaled deeply and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry for getting mad. You guys can all go home now. Someone will come for you when we need to meet again.”

Joanne turned back to the computer screen and slid the mouse about in short bursts to print more copies. Tyler squeezed her shoulders and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. She let out a cough to stifle a sob.

“Hey, wake up.” Nicole nudged Evan again. He opened his eyes in the pitch-black bedroom. He couldn’t tell if he was awake or still sleeping.

“Evan, wake up.”

Her elbow in his side stirred him out of his deep sleep. But it was the tremble in her voice and her rigid body that really woke him.

“I’m awake. What’s up?”

“I had a really weird dream.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m scared.”

He turned to face Nicole and inched closer. “Come here,” he said. She buried her face into his T-shirt. “What was your dream?”

“I dreamt that me and the kids were outside,” she said. “And we were trying to run through the snow. But it was that kind of snow that’s hard on top and real powdery underneath. Nangohns was on one side and Maiingan was on the other. I was holding their hands real tight. I was trying to run on top of the snow. But I kept falling through every couple steps. The kids would pull me back up, and we’d start running again until I fell back through. I don’t know what we were running from or running to, but we had to get somewhere. You weren’t around anywhere.

“The kids kept saying stuff like ‘Don’t worry, Mommy’ and ‘We’re gonna make it,’ but it wasn’t their same voices. It was like they were elders speaking to me. They were calm. They were smiling at me every time they pulled me up from the snow. I was getting tired and they made sure I made it out of there. I was falling deeper and deeper into the snow every time the crust broke.

“Then I finally fell in over my head. I was struggling, trying to get up. The snow was getting in my eyes and in my mouth. I thought I was gonna suffocate, but they reached all the way down to pull me back up. But this time, their hands felt bigger.”

Evan lay perfectly still, listening. He stroked the top of Nicole’s head, soothing her while he grew increasingly frightened.

She sniffled, and he knew she was on the verge of crying. “They pulled me all the way to the surface, up to my feet. But we weren’t running anymore. We were in the middle of the bush, and there was a whole bunch of other people there. There was a fire going. It looked like a winter camping site.

“I turned back to face Maiingan and Nangohns, but I saw a young man and a young woman wearing old patched snowmobile suits. They both had long hair that flowed so beautifully. They smiled at me, and then I knew it was them. It was our kids. But they were adults. All grown up. They started talking to me in the old language, but I didn’t understand them. It was a place I didn’t recognize. I didn’t recognize anyone else there either. I was panicking.

“Then Nangohns reached out to grab my hand. She squeezed it tight and looked into my eyes. Her eyes were so big and brown. Her cheeks were so high and proud. Her hair fell so beautifully down the sides of her face. She was the strongest and prettiest young woman. Then she reached up and touched my cheek. She said, ‘Welcome home, Mommy.

“And then I woke up.”

He squeezed her gently. “It’s okay. It was just a dream.”

He held her close to him as she fell back to sleep. He remembered his father’s dream, and his eyes stayed open in the darkness as the competing omens forced the calm from his mind and body.

The snow came again overnight, pounding the small community at an unforgiving pace. Another thick layer of heavy snow lay on the roads, driveways, and rooftops, keeping Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler too busy to worry. They formed their usual snow-clearing formation — Evan driving the plough in the middle with the other two staggered behind him in pickup trucks outfitted with large yellow blades to clear the excess.

A full pass through the reserve took all morning and most of the afternoon. The two main roads that ran north-south and east-west and intersected right in the middle of the community were always first. Then the secondary roads that branched off from them in straight lines. The boreal region they lived in was mostly flat and allowed a practical, grid layout of the rez roads, driveways, and homes at regular intervals.

From his high seat in the plough’s cab, Evan didn’t notice much activity around the houses they passed, the unremitting snowfall keeping people inside. A few children played happily as full-blown winter held steady.

The convoy came to the end of the road by the Northern Trading Post, where they’d decided to stop in the parking lot for a break before driving the equipment back to the yard. The store had been closed for nearly a week, since the townspeople had ravaged its stock. Was that really a week ago? Evan wondered. Without any steady routine, the days were beginning to blur together and time was becoming more fluid. Despite the chaos, Evan felt more relaxed in some ways, falling into the natural rhythm of the days and the tasks that needed to be done.

They parked the trucks randomly. There was no worry of impeding any other vehicles. The air was a little milder as it usually was following a major snowfall, so they left their heavy jackets in the trucks and stood around in insulated construction overalls and sweaters adorned with the logos of sports teams and sportswear companies.