Coppermine (24 page)

Multicoloured butterflies flitted from flower to flower. He recalled with amusement a version of purgatory that Angi had described to him where the meat-obsessed Eskimos—those who had offended the spirits—were doomed to an eternity of eating nothing but butterflies.

Before he reached the pond, he noticed a slender figure bent double in the frigid river, feet apart for stability, studying the bottom. It was Angituk. Her hands hovered just above the surface of the water like a fortune teller’s above a crystal ball.

Creed stopped on the bank, curious, to watch her. He noticed she had built a primitive weir of rocks to direct the fish into the shallows near the bank where she stood. Suddenly her hands moved, broke through the surface, and clutched at something, but they came up empty.

“It’s impossible to catch a fish with your bare hands,” he called out to her.

Angituk studiously ignored him. Creed sat down on the bank to watch.

“You know, you’ve told me many things about your childhood and your people, but I feel, after all this time, I don’t really know that much about you.”

Angituk’s eyes followed a movement in the pool below, her hands poised, thumb and fingers spread.

“I’d like to know more about your mother.”

“Shhhhhh.
I’m busy.”

“And the mission school. What was the mission school like? And who was your father?”

She did not respond. Her hands were still, and then they plunged. She was fast, but not nearly fast enough.

“You are ruining my fishing.”

“I told you, it’s impossible.”

Angituk stood up straight, arching her slender, curved back into a stretch. She put her hands on her hips and faced him.

“My
amaamak
was a Copper Eskimo woman, as I told you. Her name was Kunee. My father’s name was Angus McAndrew. He was a Scottish fur trader whom I never met. My mother was very beautiful, with pretty tattoos, and they loved each other very much, but he had to go away. I grew up in hunt camps with my mother and my uncles in the Coppermine and each year we travelled to the west as far as Tuktoyaktuk and the Mackenzie River.”

“Where did you learn to say ‘whom’?”

“I learned to read, write, and speak English at the mission school, the Mission of Notre Dame at Fort Good Hope on the Mackenzie River. Most of the teachers told us we were a backward people and God was punishing us. They beat us for speaking our language. Many of us got sick and some died. But there was one special teacher there, Miss Calhoun, and we read Shakespeare and Robert Burns and Balzac together every night. She taught me to say ‘whom.’ Anything else?”

“How did your mother die?”

“Consumption. Tuberculosis they call it now. Five years ago. In Fort Norman. I ran away from the school to be with her at the end and they didn’t make me go back. I stayed with her for three weeks before she died. I sang the songs to her. I told her back the stories she had told me about the green ice caves. And I told her back the stories of my handsome father just before she died. Then I worked for the priest at Saint Theresa’s who buried her there—Father Ducot. He was kind to me. He had books. Kipling and Conrad. Have you ever read Joseph Conrad?”

“Yes, of course. He’s a favourite.”

“English was his second language too.”

“I know.”

“So that was good for two years, until another priest came to visit Father Ducot and he tried to touch me. He thought I was a boy. I threatened him with a knife. So I had to leave there.” She saw a movement below the surface. “Now excuse me, because I made a promise to Uluksuk, for
whom
I will catch dinner.”

“Impossible.”

Angituk bent over again, hands poised, back arched, breasts almost touching the smooth surface of the water. She would never pass for a male in her undershirt, Creed thought. She remained motionless for several moments. She waited. Then she plunged. With two hands she raised the struggling fish up in the air in triumph, to Creed’s amazed expression.

“I’ll be damned.”

“My mother said nothing in the world is impossible.”

She waded over to the bank, her forefinger deep under the gill flap so it couldn’t struggle free. She disengaged her finger and threw the struggling char in Creed’s lap. It was big, maybe eight pounds. Creed almost lost it and let it slide back into the river. Angituk giggled at his attempts to secure it. He found a fist-sized rock and killed it with two blows. He laid it on the grass, tail toward the river.

“No! Don’t you know anything?” Angituk turned the fish sideways, parallel to the river. “You have to lay it in the direction it was swimming so the spirit can continue on its way and be happy.”

“We just killed it. I can’t imagine the spirit is very happy.”

“It
is
happy. There is an understanding. It moves on.”

Creed looked at her as she took the knife from her belt and quickly began to skin and fillet the char. “Angi … It was a long time ago, I know, but I’m very sorry for how I behaved when I thought Uluksuk and Sinnisiak had escaped. I treated you badly, and I am sorry.”

Angituk listened to what he said very seriously.

“Okay.”

“Will you accept my apology?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then.” Creed left her thoughtfully filleting the fish.

THE SHALLOW, CALM POOL
he was looking for was an eddy off the river, and though it was surrounded by pine trees, at this time of day the high sun shone down intensely, warming the smooth surface. The water travelled in a gentle circle in this shallow pool removed from the icy river and was several degrees warmer. Creed stripped off his clothing and swam out to the centre. After crouching on the bottom for a full minute, Creed blasted up through the water to the welcome sunlight above. He broke the surface gasping and immediately began to scrub his naked body with the sudsing leaves Uluksuk had provided. It took a little work to establish a lather, but with them he thoroughly addressed all his neglected parts until he felt pristine, almost pure.

He realized in this moment how much he had enjoyed this journey. His desire for solitude had been replaced by a renewed joy in companionship. Maybe he should give up the long patrols and settle down. Edmonton was as good a place as any. Maybe with Nicole, if she would still have him, though the thought of a future with her did not stir the excitement it might in other men. He dipped himself into the water to his shoulders to rinse the thin lather from his body.

Suddenly he became aware he was not alone and turned to find Angituk making her way along the bank. Her movements were slow, slightly self-conscious. Though it was obvious she knew he was there, she did not look at him at first but found a flat rock at the water’s edge and knelt down to wash. She dipped her long hair into the cool water current and rubbed mosses into the tresses, giving them a silvery sheen, and then worked it all through with her tattooed fingers. Creed watched her, his arms around himself to help keep warm.

Her movements became even more languid, sensuous. Their eyes made contact once. Then she pulled the tail of her flannel shirt out of her trousers and undid the buttons, then the buttons of her long underwear underneath to her waist. Slowly, she lathered the cloth again and began to wash her underarms and breasts in a slightly dreamlike slow motion. Creed tried to look away but could not. She wanted him to watch her; there was no doubt in his mind. She had never behaved like this before in front of him, at least knowingly, and he wanted her to stop. She undid her belt next and the buttons of her jean trousers, loosening them on her thighs, and then the rest of the buttons of her long underwear as far as they would go. She lathered her belly well, then much deeper between her legs. She looked up at him again as she continued her intimate ablutions, and he tried to assess her. He stared back at her, his breath quickening, body shivering.

She smiled. “Are you coming out?”

Creed glanced down, embarrassed at the physical effect she had had on him even in the cold river. “Ah, no. You go ahead back to camp. I’ll be along shortly.”

Angituk looked down and laughed a little. Then she took off her shirt and slid out of her jean trousers and long underwear and slipped naked into the water. She swam out to him where he was standing waist-deep in the Great Bear River, her body a shimmering flash beneath the sun-dappled surface coming very quickly toward him. He found himself backing away a few steps, his bare feet negotiating the slippery shale on the river bottom, stubbing a heel.

She stopped short and stood up suddenly before him less than an arm’s length away. Her blue eyes looked into his. He watched the water flowing from her hair down along the contours of her body, licked his lips once, and tried to speak.

“Angituk, I … we …”

She stepped forward, their bodies not quite touching, and put her nose against his neck and cheek, smelled the sweet scent of the leaves on his skin, and nuzzled him. He put his hands on her shoulders, at first to hold her back. He looked deeply into her eyes. She desired him.

“Angi ...”

He found his hands moving gently to her face and he drew it close to him. He kissed her mouth. He knew he had a strong affection for the girl, but when he kissed her it was with a passion he did not know was there. It was deep and mysterious, like an ocean tide rising suddenly in green caves of ice.

“I love you,” he told her, catching himself completely by surprise. But then he realized it was true. It had come to him in this moment, when his heart was about to burst, and he knew it was forever.

He touched his tongue to hers and she responded quickly and with enthusiasm, licking his lips and nose and plunging her tongue into his mouth. She arched her back and pressed herself against him. Her strong legs encircled his waist, and together they guided him into her. The cold river lapped against the heat of their bodies working together and they lost themselves in their eagerness to give each other pleasure. The girl began a faint chanting under her breath that matched their rhythm, and though Creed had long forbidden himself this day, there was no hesitancy now to his lovemaking.

When finally they were both spent, they slid down into the cold water of the Great Bear to cool their lust. They looked at each other, wet and shivering, and Angituk laughed out loud at what had just happened between them. Here they were again in cold water together. She stroked the furrows of his frowning brow and made him laugh too. Her eyes had the intense glow of the aurora.

“Let’s do it again.”

“Okay.”

“Now?”

“Soon.”

Twelve

They lay beside the roaring fire that night as the green lights crackled and pinged in the sky overhead. Creed had never seen them this active; a glorious rainbow of colours grew and radiated in spirals and long silver threads. Uluksuk and Sinnisiak snored in their makeshift shelter nearby. Creed was exhausted. Angituk was insatiable. She lay in his arms and watched him with gentle wonderment as he dozed between lovemaking, and touched his lips with her tattooed fingers as if she thought he might disappear.

“What does your great-grandmother’s spirit think of all this?” he asked her.

“She is my spirit. My great-grandmother outlived three husbands. She wondered if there was something wrong with us that we did not do this before.” Angituk snuggled against him, looked into the fire, and spoke a word.
“Quvianaqpiaqtuq.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, his eyes closed.

“It means like a … an indulgent enjoyment of something. It is the joy you feel looking up at the lights, or coming into a warm igloo, or seeing a fresh blanket of snow—or when I put my lips against yours.”

“Quv-ianaq-piaq-tuq,”
he repeated, leaving his lips open. He opened his eyes and went to kiss her, but she pulled away, teasing.

“No. Now it is time you were educated,” she told him. “The word for earth:
nuna.”
She patted the ground.

“Nuna.”

“Good. The word for sea:
tarjuq.”

“Tarjuq.”

“Good. The word for sky:
qilak.”

“Qílak.”

“Good. We call the weather spirit Hila, so if the weather is fine we say
Hilaqijuq,
or ‘Hila is absent.’ If it is stormy,
Hiladlutuq:
‘Hila is upset.’”

“Hiladlutuq.”

“Good. Okay, now in Eskimo language
inuk
means one real person.
Inuuk
means two.
Inuit
means three or more. The language is Inuktitut …
titut
means ‘in the manner of.’ Our Copper dialect is called Inuinnaqtun. It is very precise. For instance, there is no one word for ‘fish.’ There is a word for a char going upstream, another for one going downstream, one for one resting in a pool. Three separate words. And for ‘snow,’ in any Eskimo dialect, the list of specific words goes on forever, as you know. Wet snow, dry snow, blowing snow, snow with a crust, snow with ice below, snow accumulated behind a rock …”

“The most important thing in Arctic life.”

“Yes. It’s important to be precise. And our words can be very similar. This will be hard for you. For instance,
ugjuk
is a bearded seal,
uqhuq
is fat from a seal or walrus,
uuttuq
means a seal sleeping on the ice,
uujuq
means boiled meat,
utsuk
is a vagina,
usuk
is a penis.”

“I would not want to get all of those mixed up.”

“No.” They laughed together. “What else can I teach you today? As I told you, we have no words for hello or goodbye. We feel to make such a big moment of things is posturing, arrogant … intrusive. It ‘implicates’—all of these are Miss Calhoun’s words—it implicates others unnecessarily. So when white men needed some kind of greeting, we came up with
guanuippit,
which means ‘What has gone wrong for you today?’”

Creed grinned at this. “Not very optimistic.”

“The world is an uncertain place. We don’t even have simple words for yes and no. We would say
qu-immaqa,
which means ‘probably yes,’ or
immaqa,
‘probably not.’”

Creed tried the words and Angituk became distracted a little by his mouth.