Consumption (23 page)

Apart from her intense and complicated relationship with Emo, she had no friends among the local adults. She was known to the community and she was aware of this: the Kablunauk woman musher who spent her weekends and holidays alone on the land. It was a big deal when she finally decided to go to Okpatayauk’s apartment.

“I’m Penny Bleskie,” she said at the door, shaking Okpatayauk’s hand. Inside, she nodded to Elizabeth Agutetuar, Madeleine Tuktuk, Jerome Nappigak, Uluyuk Tartuk, the social worker, the two nurses, and the three teachers who were there, all of whom knew who she was and had spent long hours speculating about her and the old man.

She sat down on a pillow. The smoke in the room was thick, and her eyes stung so much that when Pauloosie Robertson walked into the room five minutes later, she didn’t recognize him at first. She had not seen him since she had found him on the tundra. His attendance
at school had become steadily more sporadic and it had been assumed that he would stop attending altogether soon. Still, here he was at the meeting, and it could only be because he was concerned about the mine—the principal advocate of which was his father.

He sat down on the floor against a wall. He and Penny and Okpatayauk were the only people present under thirty. He regretted coming immediately but realized that leaving would only make himself more of a spectacle. He didn’t know any of the Kablunauks except the teacher with the dogs and he couldn’t remember her name. Okpatayauk was talking about the mine as some sort of power struggle. Between Inuit and Kablunauks, Pauloosie supposed. Why were there Kablunauks in his apartment then? His grandfather had told him that the first mine here changed the way everyone lived. People left the land then; now they hardly even went out onto it.

Everyone but Penny understood that Pauloosie was also there as a gesture of defiance to his father. His father, who had learned Inuktitut, and how to shoot straight and how to dig in for bad weather, and now refused to acknowledge any familiarity with these skills at all. It was worse than mysterious to Pauloosie—it felt like a repudiation.

“The thing is, we have to get people to understand that this is
our
land,” Okpatayauk said. “These southerners come up and they see a way they can make money by wrecking it and they just go ahead and do it. So many people here in town think they have nothing to say about it. But they do.”

“I think maybe things are changing,” Elizabeth Agutetuar said. “In the grocery store today, five people came up to me to talk about the town meeting, and why it was good we are doing all this.”

“So who wants to head out now to put up the last of these posters?” Jerome Nappigak asked.

Pauloosie put up his hand. Anything to get out of here. So did Penny.

“How are your dogs?” he asked as they stepped outside, each holding a bundle of yellow posters.

“Fine thanks, yours?”

“I need a new lead.”

“I heard Apilardjuk has one for sale.”

“He wants five hundred dollars.”

“When did dogs start going for five hundred dollars?”

“When they started getting fashionable.”

“When did that happen?”

“You tell me.”

“Your Ski-Doo working better these days?”

“Yeah.”

October 15, 1988

Dear Keith:

  How are you? I am fine. I hope it’s not too cold up there. Ha! Ha! I wish you were still here. If you were, I’d play my new Guns N’ Roses album for you. Sad to say, but my interest in the viola may be ebbing. Don’t tell my mother. Speaking of which, things on that front are only getting crazier. My dad is starting to drink too much. The other night I came home from music lessons late and he was
loaded
. He was kinda sweet though, all apologetic and everything. Mom wouldn’t even talk to him.

Anyway, if you were here, I’d also have some questions for you about birth control. Write back when you have a chance!

Love
,

Amanda

At the Woodchopper’s Ball
by Woody Herman and his orchestra was more mainstream and much more mannered than the priest’s usual fare; nevertheless, since Balthazar had found the original recording in the city, Bernard was prepared to enjoy it. Beauty runs in many rivers. Less deeply, perhaps, in all-white orchestras led by an egomaniac like Woody Herman, but one of the lessons of art is that, despite themselves, the blind stumble across sublimity too. And then, in the break, the clarinet—that was gorgeous. He could see why people liked it. One of the lessons of God.

“You seem distracted tonight, Father.”

“I’ve been thinking about the mine a great deal. Several people have asked me to address the subject in church.”

“Are you going to?”

“Good heavens, no. The church of St. Peter has not endured for two thousand years by being
topical.”

“But what do you think of the whole plan, really?”

“I think that if it had gone ahead ten years ago, there would hardly have been any discussion.”

“And now?”

“The Inuit have changed.”

“Are you sorry to see them more politically assertive?”

“Of course not.”

“But you reject the worldliness that assertiveness demands.”

“Bien sûr
. And who could but mourn that? Must we all be exactly alike?”

“The Church has had a hand in that, Father.”

“Oh, I know it.”

“I’m surprised that you’re liking the Woody Herman.”

“I am too, to tell you the truth. Just don’t be coming over here with any Glen Miller, if that’s your plan.”

“Don’t you worry.”

“So how is your niece these days? You haven’t mentioned her lately.”

“I got a letter from her just the other day. It sounds like she’s growing up quickly. Her parents are the same though, it seems.”

“Poor child.”

“I think she’s got a handle on things.”

October 25, 1988

Dear Amanda
,

  I’m sorry that your mother and father are still struggling so much, and that your father is drinking. That is, actually, a bit of a habit among the men in our family. Your paternal grandfather had the same problem, as did his father. But your father has not drunk excessively, to my knowledge, until now, and presumably this has to do with the fighting between him and your mother. So what I’m saying is, when that gets resolved, as it must, soon, then I think he will stop drinking. Though I can only imagine the effect that behaviour has on your mother.

You know, if you wanted, you could come up here to visit me sometime. In the summer, you might find it especially beautiful, when the tundra flowers are all out and there are caribou and muskox everywhere. It can be quite gorgeous. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you when you asked for it just before I left. I still regret that. Do you know what you want for Christmas this year?

Love
,

Uncle Keith

The town meeting was scheduled for three in the afternoon on a Saturday in early December. The weather was gorgeous all that week, and everyone involved in the anti-mine movement had felt
buoyed by the sunshine and warmth. If two hundred people requested it at the meeting, a plebiscite would be arranged for the following month, they had learned from the hamlet lawyer. It could all go so well. Penny and Pauloosie and Okpatayauk and the others had been all over town, extracting commitments to attend, and were looking forward to their triumph.

Dawn broke beautifully on Saturday, around 10a.m., and Penny awoke as it streaked through her window. Her first impulse was to leap to her feet and head out onto the land. And then she remembered that it was the day of the town meeting and turned over in bed. She hoped this wouldn’t be the last of the good weather.

She dressed and walked down to the sea ice to feed her dogs, the sky glowing orange with the morning sun. Most of the dog teams were already out, and her own dogs were agitated beyond soothing that they were still chained. Not that it stopped them from devouring the seal carcass she had brought for them. She turned around and made her way to the hockey rink. She’d volunteered to get there early to help set up for the meeting at three.

The town was oddly quiet for a weekend. The Northern Store should have been bustling and the street traffic ought to have been incessant. But it was as if it were summer or something.

When she arrived, the rest of the committee were already there, unfolding chairs. Okpatayauk and Elizabeth Angutetuar were huddled together beside the podium, reviewing his speech. The last few days, in the grocery store, you heard hardly anything else discussed. There could be fireworks today, she thought. Penny hung her coat on a chair and set to work.

By two o’clock the arena was ready and the committee members could hardly contain themselves. The chairs and tables were all laid out, everyone knew how the meeting was going to be structured, and they knew when they were to applaud and when not to. The Ikhirahlo Group directors were the first to arrive, Robertson and Betty Peters and Melvin Anders. They stood in one corner of the room and watched their opposition chatter gleefully with one
another. At two-thirty, members of the town council began drifting in. The mayor, who was to moderate the discussion, arrived last, breathless and windburnt. He brought news that had escaped the radar of her committee with him. The beautiful weather had brought the caribou out of the central river valleys to forage wildly in huge numbers. They had been spotted within twenty miles of Rankin Inlet. “I’ve never seen so many
tuktu
so close to town. You should see them, thousands of them! Clive Akpalik got six fat bucks in ten minutes. Practically the whole town is there.”

By three, no one else had arrived. There were more people sitting at the table on the stage than in the audience. Père Bernard sat beside Dr. Balthazar in the front row. Johanna was behind them. At ten after three Pauloosie burst in, breathless, his face wind- and sunburnt. He started to apologize to Okpatayauk, who just cut him off. “I know. It doesn’t matter.”

At four, the mayor declared the meeting cancelled due to lack of interest. The committee members began folding up the tables and stacking the chairs. They hardly spoke.