Coppermine (26 page)

Suddenly the men were laughing and talking and clapping Creed on the back.

“Bloody marvellous!”

“Amazing effort!”

“How did you ever find them?”

“And they admitted it, just like that?”

“Weren’t you worried they’d just cut your throat?”

“How did you ever sleep?”

And dozens of questions they didn’t give him time to answer.

A jar of whiskey was put in his hand and he was encouraged to drink. Oberly raised his glass in a broad gesture.

“Here’s to Jack Creed! A hero! A friend ... and one hell of a Royal North West Mounted Police officer!”

Creed looked at the whiskey. He had gone for a year without a drink. There was a time he could barely get through an hour without one. Someone gave him a lit cigar, and in a little while he was telling his colleagues stories of the dances at Koeha’s camp, the weeks in total darkness, and the ice boat on the perfect skating rink of the Great Bear Lake.

Angituk sat in the far corner of the room and watched and listened to him. He was making the other men laugh. She felt invisible there, but that was what she expected and desired. She was pleased at the respect he was enjoying from his people. They liked good stories too. Angituk had made enough money from this job that she could properly outfit herself with a good rifle and gas stove, a good tent, even a canoe. She could order a canoe all the way from that village called Peterborough, where Creed was born. She’d like that, she thought, watching him, to have a canoe from there.

She rose to say good night to Uluksuk and Sinnisiak in their cell and go back to her little cabin near the tannery, but still she lingered, watching and listening. In a day, when the boat came, Creed would be gone. And she believed in her heart that, like her father, she would never see him again.

THEY MET OUTSIDE
the log detachment building under a full moon. The party inside continued with boisterous conversation, and someone merrily played a squeezebox. She yearned to kiss him and touch him as before, but felt the new distance now. She accepted it. He was with his own and had developed a level of formality toward her. She had expected this and knew it was necessary, but it still made her sad.

“The boat comes in tonight. Our timing was lucky. It leaves in the morning.”

Angituk nodded, making an attempt to smile. “Lucky.”

He glanced toward the door and then took her hand in his. “I’ll miss you, Angi. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Okay?”

Angituk nodded again, and the gesture caused a tear to slide down her cheek in the moonlight.

“Oh, no. Don’t be sad. After the trial we’ll have time together. I could take you across the mountains on the train to Vancouver. The winter there is very short. Flowers begin to bloom in late February. Would you like that?”

“Yes. That would be nice.”

“Good, then. We’ll have a great time. Angi?”

Just then a voice from the veranda called his name and Creed dropped her hand.

“Here.”

The duty officer approached them. “There’s a telegram for you, Corporal. From your Super in Edmonton.”

The moon was so bright he could easily read it:

HEARTFELT CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SUCCESS STOP HAPPILY ANTICIPATING YOUR RETURN WITH PRISONERS STOP REQUIRE SERVICES OF ADDITIONAL INTERPRETER COPPER DIALECT FOR TRIAL STOP PLEASE BRING WITH YOU.

SUPERINTENDENT G.S. WORSLEY

He turned to her, a mixture of emotions behind his smile. His life had just become much more complicated.

“They want you to come with us, Angituk.” Creed looked at the officer. “Reply to them that the message is received and I will do as ordered.”

“Yes, Corporal.”

The officer went back inside the detachment and Creed looked at her with excitement. “You’re coming to Edmonton!” he told her.

But her initial response was clouded in doubt. “Am I?”

“Of course! They need an interpreter. I should have known that. Of course they do.”

“But do you really want me to come, Creed? Won’t it be difficult for you?”

“Why would it be difficult? I want you with me, Angi.”

These last words pushed her doubts away and she kissed him. Creed glanced up nervously toward the door of the detachment to make sure no one saw them.

She touched his face and looked into his eyes. “I’ll stay as a boy so you won’t have to worry,” she teased him. “And I promise I’ll never embarrass you. You just go about your duties and I will be happy just to be near you, even if we can never …”

Creed held her for a moment and smiled into her eyes. “You’re incredible.”

NICOLE HARVEY STOOD
on the veranda of her uncle’s house holding in her white-gloved hand a copy of the telegram Corporal Cowperthwaite had sent over for her. She read it again, though there was not much to it. It gave the time of Creed’s arrival by train the week after next and stated that he was bringing the two prisoners with him. Creed had sent it to his commanding officer. She was a little irritated he had not sent her a telegram too, but she forgave him.

“Funny old Jack, his head in the clouds,” she said aloud.

Her love for him had survived a year of waiting. There had been other opportunities, other young men who sought her company, but love had triumphed. Her heart belonged to Jack, wherever he was, and it beat in giddy anticipation of seeing him and holding him again.

She would be at the station all smiles and embraces ready to greet her returning hero. It was so exciting. The papers were full of it, and everyone was talking about it. How Jack had made it all the way to the Arctic Ocean only to discover the priests had been brutally murdered. Probably tortured, the paper said. How he had single-handedly subdued his suspects and brought them home in chains! Speculation was rampant as to the vicious nature of these murderers. There were whispers on the street that they were cannibals.

Whatever the case, Nicole was delighted. She had already started to accept interviews with magazines on his behalf and invitations to dinner parties for them. It had been a long wait for him, but it had been worth it. Love had prevailed. And this time, when she had him back, she would be so good to him he would never imagine leaving her again. So what if he forgot to send her a telegram. She knew he loved her. He must. As much as any man can love with his head in the clouds all the time. She looked at the train’s arrival time again and smiled. This was going to be fun.

LOCKED DEEP IN THE HOLD
of the steamboat
Mackenzie River,
Uluksuk and Sinnisiak sat in a storage area outfitted with wooden bars and two small cots. Angituk had a third cot in an open space outside. They were surrounded by bales of fur, barrels of salted fish and whale meat, crates of geological samples, several drums of benzoline fuel, and two heavy internal combustion engines in crates addressed to the Hay River Corporation. Uluksuk was softly chanting to the throb of the ship’s engine.

“Bad spirits in this land,” the shaman sang. “I am an innocent traveller in this dream world and mean you no harm. I wish you well. Please leave me and Sinnisiak in peace.”

Sinnisiak was nervous and agitated by his confinement. Those white men in Fort Norman were bad enough, but there would be even more where they were going. When Uluksuk paused in his chanting, Sinnisiak spoke his mind.

“We should have escaped. The time he was blind.”

“Are you talking about that still? They would have found us again. We had to go with him to face this thing.”

“We should escape now.”

The old shaman revealed his impatience at his student’s imprudence. “How?”

“Angituk will open that door. Then use your powers to sink the boat.”

“I can’t swim. Neither can you.”

Sinnisiak realized this was true. Outside their cell, Angituk had been listening to them.

“Stop talking about things sinking, you two. This is a good boat. And most of the whites are good people. They won’t hurt us.”

“What if we meet the bad ones?”

“You’re going to be okay. Don’t worry. You know that Creed will look after us.”

This made them all feel better, and they settled down to sleep as the
Mackenzie River
pushed its way upstream toward the big village of the white men.

THAT NIGHT,
Creed stood under the stars on the deck of the sturdy little steamboat again, its iron heart thumping away below as they headed south, upstream, against the current, a slower journey back toward civilization, or “outside” as Hornby had called it. Angituk was sleeping down in the hold with the hunters. He looked out over the moonlit surface of the water and went back again to the vivid memory of her making love to him in the sun-warmed waters of the Great Bear River. He could not get the event out of his head. But what about Nicole? His thoughts were returning to her as he drew nearer to Edmonton. He could not live a lie with her. He had to be honest. If he was lucky, she would have found someone else. That would be best. That could have already solved the problem, he thought hopefully.

The prospect of Edmonton did offer its share of apprehensions. Only now was it truly hitting him that his friends Uluksuk and Sinnisiak were facing murder charges. As the investigating officer, his role in this drama would be crucial. He had a responsibility to be clear, accurate, and professional in all of his conduct. He knew the prosecution would sniff out and illuminate any personal bias on his part. Yet his testimony could send them to prison for a long time. He had to stay focused on the trial. As he looked out at the rounded peaks of the Franklins, backlit by a deep, starry sky, he knew both he and Angituk would have to be strong.

He thought then of the simpler time before the “revelation,” when somehow she had convinced him she was a boy. It was with amazement again that he remembered it. How she had faced up to the Cree on the Great Bear River, how she spoke to the huge bear she called her spirit guide at the mouth, how she saved Creed’s life in the middle of the big lake. And he remembered her face at the top of the high ridge when they first looked down on the valley of the Coppermine that was her home. And how she had taught him to listen to the Earth and contemplate its question:
“Il-viunna-hugi-vit?”
Are you who you appear to be? All that time she was hiding herself from him. She was a woman, and the most amazing woman he had ever encountered. And now it was his turn to answer the Earth’s question, and the Earth would want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

Thirteen

AUGUST 3, 1917

EDMONTON

ALBERTA

The train from Peace River slowed like a toboggan after a good downhill run. It passed brick-walled factories and rows of little clapboard houses, unpainted in the haste to accommodate the ballooning workforce. It slowed to a crawl as it approached the Canadian National North Station in the city of Edmonton.

Creed took a deep breath to calm himself, focus, and prepare for his re-entry into civilization. He realized he was dreading this on many levels: living for weeks in a crowded city, resisting the temptations of any intimacy with Angituk, sorting out his relationship with Nicole, carrying out his job properly as a peace officer while trying to protect Uluksuk and Sinnisiak. The latter worried him the most. He had almost blocked from his mind the potential outcome of this case, but now, as the train neared their destination, he knew that the full weight of the judicial system, not to mention the Catholic Church, would be brought to bear on his two prisoners. How could he think it would end any way but badly?

As he spoke to Angituk and the hunters, he could not keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Welcome to Edmonton, ‘Gateway to the North,’” he announced.

“Don’t you mean ‘Gateway to the South’?” Angituk corrected him.

“You’re absolutely right.”

Sinnisiak stared with amazement at the size of the white man’s village, on the verge of outright panic. Before Fort Norman he had never seen large wooden buildings or horses, or even wheels. The houses appeared like long, uniform rows of little square mountains. So many white people, and the noisy motor cars and trams, possessed of malevolent spirits. Edmonton was overwhelming to him, a fearful, magical land. “Are all of these people our enemies?” he asked. “When we go outside, will they all fall upon us like the men in Fort Norman? How will we ever get home? Where will I relieve myself with all these people around?” He paused. “Do you think they have seal meat here?” Sinnisiak turned to Angituk for answers.

“I don’t know,” she responded.

“Will we have to shake hands with everyone?”

“I don’t think so.”

Sinnisiak stared out at the baffling, congested village, his heart pounding. “I’m hot. Does it get even hotter here?”

“Maybe. I’m not really sure.”

Uluksuk gave Sinnisiak a look that told him to stop asking questions and observe and learn. Uluksuk took in the sights of the white world with a detached interest. He had, after all, experienced exotic travel before, to the moon and the bottom of the sea. But this was no less interesting to him as he gazed out the window.

“We must remember, this is only a dream,” he told his nervous companion. “I sense there will be just as many evil spirits here as in the North—probably more, so we’ll have to be careful. I will use my charms and chants often. I hope they will work here. But what will be will be, and in the face of it we must retain our dignity and perspective.”