Edie Kiglatuk's Christmas (2 page)

‘Now that Tommy's dead, maybe that's the best way out for Willie right now.' Freddie sighed. ‘Derek said you're about the only person who'd give a damn.' A mean glint came into his eye and he let out a little chuckle. ‘Tell the truth, he also said you'd be about the only one who wouldn't have anything better to do this near Christmas than go out looking for a suicide.'

Edie saw the truth of this too.

‘So, I'll leave it with you?' Freddie said in a tone that implied it wasn't really a question.

She picked up her tool bag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘Does a walrus shit in the sea?'

The super's forehead vee'd and he scratched his head. Edie held open the door. The air blew in ice crystals, gritty and dry as sand, and caught the super off-guard. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. ‘Can't say I've seen a walrus shit. Had one piss on me once, though.'

‘My point exactly.'

■ ■ ■

Back in the house, Edie sat down to a bowl of hot blood soup and allowed her mind to scroll through all she knew about the missing boy. Somewhere, she'd have the school yearbook from that time stored away, a sentimental habit. An easy find, too, as it turned out. She opened up the book and found Willie's picture, the tell-tale distortion of his right pupil, a little outgrowth in it, the blackness seeping like a tiny hand reaching out. You could easily miss it, most likely you would miss it, but once you noticed, it stayed with you. Likes: hunting, sledding. Voted boy most likely to graduate.

He'd started getting into trouble at school not long after the picture was taken, turning up loaded or failing to turn up at all, then he dropped out. Before then, he'd been a sweet, conscientious kid, a little on the shy side, maybe. Not the most obvious candidate for teenage rebellion. His generation were the first to grow up with TV and computer games. While many spent their teens piling on the pounds, Willie had taken care to stay lean and fit and kept himself that way in the winter by tending trap lines and, in the summer, by paddling out in his kayak. What happened to that kid? Edie rubbed a finger along the image. The old, two-to-the-penny lethal cocktail of a bad family and teenage hormones, she guessed. At the time, she remembered hoping he'd somehow grow out of it.

But the only direction Willie grew was wilder. As the drinking took hold of him, he spent less time out on the land and more time exercising his fists. By the time he hit fifteen he'd morphed into an all-round troublemaker. Went to live with his aunt, but she kicked him out and, after a year or so sleeping on floors, he wound up alone and homeless. This low point in the kid's life happened to coincide with Edie's own time of struggle. She'd sworn off booze, left her marriage and gone to live alone. When Willie was made homeless, she took him in on the strict understanding that they each respect the other's need to stay clean and sober; so when Willie reneged on his side of the bargain and came home boozed up one day, she'd reluctantly asked him to leave. She'd spent so long trying to fix the kid, she realized, that she no longer really knew him. The boy must have hit rock bottom then because the next she heard, he'd found himself a place at the halfway house on the other side of the settlement and for a few months it looked as though he'd managed to pull his life around. The drinking stopped, he started a twelve-step programme and was even showing his face at the church.

But that was a few months ago. The only time she'd seen him since then was when he'd turned up at her door several weeks back after the halfway house had thrown him out, loaded and refusing to talk about it. During the few days he'd stayed with her, she'd sent him to old man Koperkuj to pick up some
Qaujimajatuqangit
, old-timer Inuit ways, while she worked on Freddie, the super, to take him back. She had some back history with Koperkuj, had rescued him from a bad situation one time. He'd not forgotten.

Willie had returned from the old man's schooling brighteyed and babbling at all the traditional knowledge he'd picked up and anxious to get himself back on track. A couple times she'd seen him heading out on foot on the track which led to the old man's house and he'd smiled and waved. This time she really thought he'd cleaned up his act.

And now he'd gone missing, four days before Christmas, with a possible murder rap and temperatures hovering on the wrong side of -45°C, or -55°C if you accounted for the wind chill.

It was hard not to draw the conclusion that Willie Killik was one righteous fool.

■ ■ ■

The snowmobile ride out to old man Koperkuj's cabin wasn't far, yet by the time she arrived, Edie was breathless and out of sorts, the super-frozen air boiling in her lungs, the hair in her nostrils pinching, little rocks of ice sitting at the openings to her tear ducts. The old man was slouched in front of his stove smoking a pipe and carving something from a block of soapstone, completely unrattled by the din of the window frames trembling in their sockets, the shriek of the wind roaring across the roof.

‘Willie Killik's gone missing. You any idea where he might be at?'

The old man put down his awl and puffed a few times on his pipe. His eyes were rheumy and red-rimmed from decades of open fires and tobacco fumes.

‘No.' The old man went back to carving.

‘I think he might be in real trouble.'

The old man sucked his teeth disapprovingly.

‘Check out back, in the outhouse. He goes around there sometimes, got something he's working on. I don't always hear him come.' Koperkuj went back to his soapstone, indicating that the encounter was over. He waited until she was at the door then, shaking his head, he added, ‘You young folk never look further than your kneecaps.'

The outhouse was an old-style
qarmait
sod house, long since abandoned as a residence, but still perfectly serviceable as a workspace or shed. To get inside, you literally had to walk the plank, a four-by-two balanced precariously on the edge of a rocky ledge, which led downwards to the partially subterranean house. Edie trained her flashlight along its length and trod carefully so as not to slip on the ice. As she reached the door, a piece of corrugated material which looked alarmingly like asbestos, no doubt cannibalized from a construction site, she shouted Willie's name. No reply. She let herself in, strobing her flashlight around the room. At the far corner she could just make out a work bench. Assorted tools were hung on nails along the back wall. She took a step forward and her foot hit something hard. The flashlight illuminated an arc of wood, immaculately sanded and planed to a gleaming finish. She outlined the object in light. Another arc, parallel to the first, around five feet in length and connected by slats elaborately laced together with what looked like plaited strips of seal hide. A komatik: a beautifully crafted, traditional Inuit sled.

Stomping the snow off her boots she went back inside Koperkuj's cabin.

‘It's gorgeous but it doesn't tell me where Willie Killik might have gone.'

Koperkuj looked up, unimpressed, grunted and went back to his pipe.

‘Then you're not listening carefully enough,' he said.

Edie eyed the old man beadily but it was clear she wasn't going to get any more out of him.

‘You're lucky we still respect our elders around here,' she said. ‘Or there'd be one or two I can think of who'd be talking riddles from their assholes.'

■ ■ ■

By the time Edie got back into the hamlet, the place was buzzing with the news that Nancy and Tommy's baby, Aggie, had been taken. No one was in any doubt that Willie Killik was responsible. After the bad news about Tommy's death hit, Nancy's mother, Alice, had put her little granddaughter to bed and gone back to the living room to console Nancy. When she went to check on the child a while later she found the window prised open and the toddler dis- appeared. Her lover gone and now her kid, Nancy had become so deranged with grief that the nurse, worried for her safety, had given her a sedative. The women were at home now, Nancy staring ahead, hands trembling, eyes empty from the Ambien. Her mother sat by the phone biting her lip. When Edie reached out a consoling hand, she cringed and shrugged it away, finding the touch unbearable.

‘Why do you think it's Willie took her, Alice?'

The woman's face grew dark. ‘Leverage,' she said simply. ‘That boy got the devil in him. He never forgave my daughter for breakin'up with him.'

‘So … he's trying to punish her?' Edie looked around, noting the cheap, plastic strings of little reindeer strung across the room, the shiny little baubles, the bright, spangly, sweet trash of Christmas.

Alice, seeing her looking, said, ‘Aggie loves Christmas, like all kids that way, I guess.' A smile came into her eyes, but faded before it reached her lips. ‘“Rudolph the Red- Nosed Reindeer”. She adores that song.' Tears began to stream down her cheeks.

Edie got up and paced about, trying to give the woman a little space in which to gather herself. A plastic Christmas tree stood in the corner of the room, a fairy on top of it. Someone had pasted a photo of the little girl onto the fairy's face. Edie peered at it. Aggie peered back, a little hand poking out from the left pupil, as though waving.

The shock made Edie lose her balance and for a moment she thought she might careen into the plastic tree, before she managed to steady herself and calm her breathing.

‘Forgive my not knowing, but is Aggie Nancy and Tommy's baby, Alice?'

Alice looked up with a furrowed brow. ‘Now what kind of question is that?'

■ ■ ■

Outside a search team was already mustering, led by the mayor. The men had brought their hunting rifles. Now that Tommy was dead and the little girl was missing, they weren't minded to think well of Willie Killik. Not so long ago, before anyone paid much attention to southern law, they'd have taken him up to the cliff and pushed him off. A few of them looked as though they thought that wouldn't be such a bad idea.

■ ■ ■

Willie's parents, Josephie and Lizzie, had gone to ground. Edie found them hiding out in the house of a distant cousin with a large bottle of Canadian Mist. In the last few years they hadn't had much to do with their son and it was clear from their hostility to Edie's visit that they didn't want to have much to do with him now.

‘Damn kid took our snowbie,' Josephie grunted. He was a tall man, unusually so for an Inuk, with a barrel chest and huge arms. Years of booze had ruined him, but he must once have been powerfully frightening to a skinny kid like Willie.

‘The snowmobile isn't top of my list right now,' Edie said.

Josephie shot her a look. Guilt, but resentment too. ‘Well that's just fine, lady, but who's gonna get us another one?' he said. ‘We ain't got no money.'

‘You help me find your son, you get your old snowbie back.'

Josephie shot a glance at his wife, who shrugged as if to say
why not
?

‘Like how?' he said.

‘You think of any reason he might have taken Aggie Muttuk or where they might have gone?'

Josephie shifted in his chair, hawked up some phlegm, swallowed it. Edie looked around the dimly lit room, the greasy couch, the plain, unloved walls, the complete lack of any kind of Christmas cheer.

‘He ain't never been too keen on Christmas,' Josephie began, nervously scraping his hands together. He flashed a look at Lizzie.

‘Anything else you can think of?'

Josephie held the whiskey up to the light. ‘I guess he always was sweet on Nancy. High school sweethearts. Thought he'd end up with her. Always was a boy who could hold a grudge.' Looking at her bright-eyed suddenly, he said, ‘Say, is there a reward for information?'

■ ■ ■

On Edie's way back into town she passed the land search team heading out towards the tundra, the mayor waving to her as they sped by, their headlights cutting wires of light into the darkness. Unless they had some idea of where to look, they'd have trouble finding Willie. The wind was taking away vehicle tracks as fast as they were made. But Inuit were nothing if not dogged and there was a kind of glee in their voices Edie didn't much like. She knew that tone only too well. It was the thrill of the hunter on his way out to the hunt.

There was only one thing for it and that was to return to the old man, try to get out of him whatever else it was he knew. Maybe he'd take pity on Nancy and Alice, want to help them find their little girl. He was an ornery old walrus but it was Christmas and somewhere inside that raddled skin there was a heart that beat same as everyone else's.

‘You again,' Koperkuj said at the door. He lowered his shotgun. ‘Well, you better come in.'

‘Your boy's in trouble, elder.' She told him about the abducted girl and the search team who would find the boy sooner or later. ‘How's about you let me help him?'

Koperkuj went over to the table, picked up an old pipe and lit it. The smell of cheap tobacco drifted by. He didn't seem in any hurry but Edie could tell by the worried look on his face that he was thinking. She moved across the floor. As she pulled out the chair opposite him his expression changed.

‘Young Willie, he's not gonna hurt that little girl,' the old man said.

‘Listen old man, you and I both know the truth of that. Aggie Muttuk is Willie's daughter. I'm guessing that's no surprise to you. But the fellas in the search party don't know that, and you should have seen them, they got their hunting blood up.'

Something passed across the old man's face. Concern. A little anxiety, maybe.

‘Now's the time to talk, elder,' Edie said.

Koperkuj nodded. ‘Not long after you left, Willie came by for his komatik, hitched it up behind his snowmobile. Honestly, I don't know where he went,' the old man said.

Edie shot him an icy look.

Koperkuj shrugged. ‘Really, lady, I don't. You might follow his tracks a while.'