Through Black Spruce Read Online Free Page A

It’s lonely. Few people will ever appreciate your gift.
    I stayed as long as it took to drink a handful of rye and gingers before I told Joe I was tired out. When I saw he was tired, too, I told him walking home would be good for me. I walked Ferguson Road along the Moose River, the water flashing its nicest bits in the moonlight to my left, the black water pushing itself down into James Bay. I cut across the bridge again and onto Sesame Street, nicknamed for all the kids that live and play on it summer and winter.
    I thought I felt the grandfathers in my step that night, the town behind me now, the scent of the dump up ahead on the gravel road. A crisp night that whispered of summer. The flash of headlights somewhere far down the road to my back made me want to step into the bush. I knew, nieces, but I didn’t listen to my gut. I kept walking. The car gunned it behind me, then slowed when I saw my own shadow on the gravel ahead. It passed, then turned and came back so that its lights blinded me. Three men climbed out, the car idling. They stepped into the headlights. Three big men.
    “ Wachay there, Will.” I recognized Marius’s voice. My stomach dropped out from me. “Something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said. I could tell by the voice that he’d had more to drink than me. “Where’d that little bitch niece of yours disappear to with my brother?”
    “Don’t you call her that,” I said. I felt sparks behind my eyes. Marius walked toward me and I clenched my fists. I knew what was coming, nieces, but I didn’t know at the time why it was coming. I’d done nothing to him. He got up close enough to me I could smell his leather jacket. He looked back to his friends as if to say something and then used the momentum of turning back to swing his fist into my face, white light filling my eyes as his knuckles squashed my nose. I fell backwards like a tree.
    I lay on my back, the gravel sharp beneath my head, the sky above me like it was full of northern lights, and watched as the two white guys with him stared down at me. I could tell even by their silhouettes that they were ugly like only white guys who’ve been raised like dogs can be. They began to kick me, and I remember the sound of my ribs cracking, of my head being shocked so that I worried I’d die.
    Those Mohawk down south claim that a warrior doesn’t cry out when he’s tortured then slow-roasted over a fire. I’m no Mohawk, me. I screamed with each kick, my head splitting open, the blood choking down the back of my throat until my cries became gags. When his friends were done, through my eyes swelling shut I saw Marius bend down. He straddled me, sat on me with his full weight and leaned to my ear, whispered with his stinking breath, “I can kill you any time I want. And I will, one day soon.” I felt his breath on my earlobe.
    I don’t know how long I lay there. Something, someone maybe, told me that I eventually had to surface if I was going to live, and believe it or not, it was a tough decision to make. For me, my life’s been hard, and sometimes I’m so tired out from losing the things I love that it feels easier to just give up and slip away.
    A voice I knew, the voice of my father, talked to me, and in my head I saw him squatting beside me in the black, on his haunches, his one real leg bent under him, his wooden prosthesis straight out in front like one of those fancy Russian dancers.
    “It’s not you that you live for,” he said to me in Cree. “It can’t be. It’s the others.” Not very specific, but I knew who he was talking about.
    “What do I got to give to anyone?” I asked. I could tell he was looking down at me, staring at my wounds. He didn’t answer my question.
    When he got up to go, I did too. I did the same as he did, floating away from the ground and becoming a night mist that dissolved into the black sky.
    But this is not how I entered into the dream world, nieces. I just got a taste of it then. I