Waubgeshig Rice - Moon of the Crusted Snow

“Okay, just wait then,” her son replied. “Where do you want me to put these?” He held up the clear bags of moose meat.

She turned to look and smiled, her cheeks pushing into the bottom of her glasses. “Ever the good son! Just put that on the counter, and I’ll take them downstairs to the freezer later. I gotta rearrange the other one your dad just got.”

Evan set the meat down on the scarred white countertop in the kitchen. He could navigate this house with his eyes closed, and every step through each room was like muscle memory. The heavy oak dinner table anchored the house, the centre of so much family history. He went back into the living room to assist his mother, walking past the comfortable black leather couch, love seat, and armchair and wishing they had been there when he was a kid. They were all so soft, and they still smelled new.

He stood behind her as she slammed the black mouse again. “What the hell is wrong with this? I gotta check my email!” Evan smirked, knowing that his mom was hooked on online euchre tournaments. There wasn’t any money in it but there was international glory, and she liked the idea of playing her favourite game against people from all over the continent.

“How long has yours been out?” he asked.

“Just since yesterday afternoon. I was chatting with your sister online and then it crashed. Then I tried to text her and that didn’t work either.”

Evan raised his right eyebrow. “Your TV’s not working either, eh?”

“No, not since around the same time. I thought all these new dishes and towers and stuff were supposed to be better!”

“Well, I guess it’s not all totally reliable all the way up here,” he assured her and himself. “All this stuff doesn’t go out as much as it used to.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Now you have more time to make supper. Maybe we’ll actually eat on time for once!”

She elbowed him in the gut. “Oh, you shut up,” she huffed as she stood up to go to the kitchen.

The truth is , Evan thought, these things do work better than they used to . High speed internet access had been in the community for barely a year. It was provided by the band, but connected to servers in the South via satellite. Still, the fact that TV, phone, and internet were all down at once made Evan uneasy.

Metal pots and pans crashed together, and Evan realized he was staring blindly at the computer screen that read Can’t connect to server . He blinked hard and gave his head a little shake.

“So when are Nic and the kids coming?” Patricia asked from the kitchen.

Evan cleared his throat. “I dunno, I’ll go get them in time for supper, I guess. She said she was gonna get the kids to help her make pies when I left.”

“Mmmmmm. What kind?”

Evan smiled, picturing his children on chairs across the counter from his wife, watching intently as she opened a can of cherries. “I’m not telling. It’s gonna be a surprise.”

“Oooooh!” Pat placed a big steel pot of peeled potatoes in the sink. She turned on the tap to fill the pot and grabbed a salt shaker from the top of the stove, shaking salt into the water.

“I’m gonna head back outside,” he said.

“Okay then.”

Outside, Dan had begun to strip the hide of its fur. It was usually the easiest step in the process, and he appeared to be making good progress. The dead leaves on the ground rustled around Evan’s feet. “About time,” Dan said without looking up.

The son took his spot beside his father again. “What you thinking about doing with this one?”

“I dunno, maybe your mom can make something of it.” Patricia usually made moccasins and sold them to trading posts and souvenir shops throughout the North. It was good extra money.

They stood quietly again. That comfortable, easy, important silence between a father and a son fell upon them. Evan pulled out his pack of cigarettes once more, and so did Dan. They took long, soothing drags on their smokes, staring into the hide and occasionally into the forested horizon.

Without turning, Dan said, “I had a dream last night.” Evan’s head turned slowly in his father’s direction. “It was night. It was cold, kinda like this time of year. But it was the springtime. I dunno how I could tell because it was so dark, but I just knew that it was.

“I was walking through the bush. I remember I had my shotgun over my shoulder. I had a backpack on too. I dunno why or what was in it.” His sentences came out slowly, with a precise rhythm. Evan dragged on his cigarette again, transfixed by his father’s unusually candid speech.

“There was this little hill in the distance. I could see it only because it looked like there was something burning on the other side. There was this orange glow. It was pretty weird. It wasn’t anyplace I recognized. Nowhere around here, anyways. So I kept walking towards the hill. The light on the other side got brighter. I knew it was a big fire, the closer I got.”

Evan couldn’t remember the last time his father had spoken so much at once. He wasn’t known as a storyteller or a talented orator. He never talks about dreams , Evan thought.

Dan continued, “As I went up that hill, I started to see the flames. They were so high. The fire roared, kinda like the rapids down the river. It was popping and cracking real loud. And then I got to the top.”

Evan’s face tightened and the hair at the back of his neck stood up.

“The whole field on the other side of that hill was on fire. I couldn’t see nothing in that field except fire. But it wasn’t spreading. Then I looked around and seen a bunch of you guys standing and looking at it. It was you, Cam, Izzy, some of your buddies, and even Terry. There were a bunch more too, but I couldn’t tell who they were because they were too far away. You were all spread out, just looking at the fire.”

Evan inhaled deeply. His cigarette had burned down to the filter between his fingers, singeing the orange paper.

“Everyone was wearing hunting gear and had their guns in their hands. But no one had any orange on, like right now. And when I looked closer at your face, you looked real skinny. Cam too. And the other guys looked weak. It was pretty weird.

“Then I understood what was going on. We had put the burn on to try to get some moose in. I can’t remember the last time we had to do that around here. But everyone in my dream must have been hungry. No one was saying nothing. I looked over at you —” He paused and turned to look at Evan. “You looked at me. You looked scared. And that’s when I woke up.”

Dan went silent, and Evan stared at his feet. When he looked back to his father’s face, Dan’s eyes were locked on the bush in the distance.

“Well, maybe if you didn’t hunt out them moose this year, we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Evan blurted, with a nervous chuckle. “We got a good haul of them anyways.” He anxiously watched to see if Dan’s hardened, blank face would break. When the corners of his dad’s mouth turned up in a small smile, Evan was relieved.

“You young buggers are the ones hunting them out!” Dan said, as he playfully punched his son in the shoulder. “Shoulda never taught you how to shoot a gun.”

They both laughed and turned to go back into the house.

Nicole opened her eyes to see daylight punching through the narrow gap in the thick blue curtains. It created a rectangular halo in an otherwise dark and cold bedroom. The frigid air made her nose numb. Suddenly, she was wide awake, well-rested but uneasy.

She looked over to the alarm clock and noticed that its red glow was gone. Evan was still asleep beside her. She cast aside the covers and stood up, putting on her thick robe over her T-shirt and pyjama pants. It was Friday, and she was certain Maiingan would be late for school. She stepped into her deerskin moccasins by the door. The soft rabbit fur of the lining caressed the tender skin between her toes, putting her momentarily at ease.