Waubgeshig Rice - Moon of the Crusted Snow

“Aaniish ezhebimaadziiyin?” he asked.

“Mino ya. I’m warm. I have lots to eat. I get a lot more company these days.”

“That’s good. We want to make sure everything’s okay around here.”

“How are you doing?”

He paused. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked him that. His pace had been frenetic in the strange darkness of this new era. “I’m, uh, good, I guess.”

“How are the kids?”

“Oh, they’re good. They’ve been spending a lot of time outside. I don’t think they miss school at all!” he chuckled, and she giggled.

“What about your bazgim?”

“Oh, she’s tired, but she’s getting by. She really appreciates all the things you are teaching her about the old medicine ways, but she still gets stuck at home a lot with the kids while I’m out here doing stuff.”

“Well, you make sure you spend some time with her. Go for a walk in the bush. When the spring comes, ask her to show you some of the medicines. She’ll know a lot now, if she remembers all the stuff from when I used to take her and all the young girls out there. It will be important if we don’t get any new supplies in from the hospital down south.”

Evan thought of Nicole at home, trying to prepare herself for the skills they would need if the power was gone for good while struggling to keep the children occupied. He felt a twinge of guilt. She often looked tired these days. She didn’t talk as much as she used to and hardly smiled anymore. No one smiled much this winter.

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “Maybe I’ll take the kids over to my parents’ place tomorrow or the day after.”

“Your mom will appreciate the kookom time.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

He brought the hot tea to his chapped lips and sipped. The liquid seeped into the cracks and burned, but he showed no reaction. He’d learned to keep his thoughts behind a careful mask. He could not show weakness, especially now. But the old woman could still make him smile.

“Did you find anything down there in Eddie’s closet?” she asked.

“I found one of his old army jackets, but I didn’t wanna take it.”

“The one he wore for ceremonies?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Ah yes. He loved that one.” She looked out the window.

Her husband had served in the Korean War and had been the last wartime military veteran in the community. He had died four years ago, disappointed that no young people had followed in his path. He had been celebrated as a strong warrior and a respected elder. Evan thought about him now, wondering if he would have been able to help guide the young people through this catastrophe if he were still alive.

Evan sipped the tea slowly. There was no need to fill the silence. If we can make it through this winter , Evan thought, we’ll be okay .

Often, Aileen shared a teaching or an old story with the young men when they came to visit. Once in a while, someone would bring a group of children or teens to hear some old Nanabush stories or her memories of the old days. There had been no electricity in this community when she was a child and parents sometimes brought the young ones to her to remind them that life was possible without the comforts of modern technology. Now it was critical that they learn how the old ones lived on the land.

“You know, when young people come over, sometimes some of them talk about the end of the world,” Aileen said, breaking the silence and snapping Evan out of his woolgathering. He looked up from the plaid pattern on the vinyl tablecloth to the old woman’s face.

“They say that this is the end of the world. The power’s out and we’ve run out of gas and no one’s come up from down south. They say the food is running out and that we’re in danger. There’s a word they say too — ah… pock… ah…”

“Apocalypse?”

“Yes, apocalypse! What a silly word. I can tell you there’s no word like that in Ojibwe. Well, I never heard a word like that from my elders anyway.”

Evan nodded, giving the elder his full attention.

“The world isn’t ending,” she went on. “Our world isn’t ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our original home down south on that bay and took it from us. That was our world. When the Zhaagnaash cut down all the trees and fished all the fish and forced us out of there, that’s when our world ended. They made us come all the way up here. This is not our homeland! But we had to adapt and luckily we already knew how to hunt and live on the land. We learned to live here.”

She became more animated as she went on. Her small hands swayed as she emphasized the words she wanted to highlight. “But then they followed us up here and started taking our children away from us! That’s when our world ended again. And that wasn’t the last time. We’ve seen what this… what’s the word again?”

“Apocalpyse.”

“Yes, apocalypse. We’ve had that over and over. But we always survived. We’re still here. And we’ll still be here, even if the power and the radios don’t come back on and we never see any white people ever again.”

Evan gazed back down to the table. He felt his shoulders ease and his chest open up. He was tired, but she gave him hope. “You’re right, Auntie,” he said. “I never thought of it that way.”

He smiled, and she smiled back, crow’s feet creasing at the corners of her eyes.

“Well, I should probably head back out there,” he said, as he tipped back the cup into his mouth.

“Okay then. Busy day?”

“Not really. Just gotta tie up some loose ends.” He didn’t want to tell her the morbid details of his next task. He got up and put on his jacket and zipped it up. He took the black toque out of his right pocket and pulled it over his shaggy black hair, which nearly hung into his eyes. He said miigwech and smiled before walking out the back door.

His sturdy yellow snowshoes were propped up against the porch. Evan sat on the step and, his hands bare, threaded the leather straps through the metal buckles at the heels and toes of both feet. He lifted each foot and shook it to ensure the shoe was snug.

He shoed around to the front of the house and through the deep snow on the driveway. The snow continued to fall, as it had for days, whiting out nearly everything, save for the homes and the trees that were tall enough to rise above the snowline. He looked back at Aileen’s house one more time and saw her in the large picture window, waving. He smiled and waved back. The smoke coming from the chimney put him at ease. She would be okay for another day.

He walked onto the road, now devoid of trucks and cars. Once the diesel supply became critically low, the ploughs had stopped running. Most of the town’s trucks and cars had run out of gas anyway. Within a few days of steady snowfall, the roads had become impassable.

Two weeks earlier, the diesel had finally run out. It came as little surprise to most. Still, it had resulted in a handful of frustrated people storming the shop to demand some sort of solution, still clinging to the idea that other people could fix their problems.

In reality, there was a small amount of diesel left for one last burst — to boost the generators to reconnect to the hydro grid, if it came back online, or to fuel up vehicles once again for some sort of voyage somewhere to get supplies or connect with another community to consolidate resources. Either possibility seemed remote.

So Evan was now doing his rounds on foot, checking in on the elderly, or those who needed help keeping their fires burning or making food. He didn’t really have an official job anymore. The band administration had essentially dissolved, save for organizing weekly food handouts from the cache. Some people still saw Terry and the rest of the council as the figureheads of the community, but their influence was greatly diminished. Walter was the one council member most people now turned to if they needed a problem solved. And Walter, in turn, relied on Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler. Otherwise, people had retreated to their family groups or had now fallen under the spell of Justin Scott’s promises of easier living under his authority. Alliances were forming and shifting, and Evan was uneasy.