I played the message. “Hello, hello. You there, Missie? Oh, dear. Gotta say somethin’.” The click of the caller’s phone abruptly terminated the monologue.
Having encountered this reaction on previous occasions, I’d come to realize that Marie became flustered when suddenly faced with the challenge of leaving a voice message. Once her courage was mustered, she invariably called back.
“It’s Marie,” began the next message. “I want you to look at something I got. I think it what you want. Mooti give me before she die. Meet me at General Store after work.”
A quick glance at the clock told me it was four thirty, the time Marie usually finished work. If I didn’t leave now, I would miss her, which could be a big mistake. What she was prepared to tell me today might be refused tomorrow.
Very curious to know what she wanted, I drove as fast as I dared along the dirt road to Migiskan Village. Bumps were the problem. Teeth-jarring waves of corduroy bumps, which reduced the life span of my seen-better-days pickup to yesterday.
It took me fifteen minutes to reach the Migiskan Village. Although the twelve hundred band members were scattered over the southern third of the expansive reserve, most lived in or near the Village, which sprawled along the western shore of Lake Migiskan. The store was situated in the centre of town, where any bustling commercial establishment should be.
I turned right on to the main road, which took me past the new cedar strip building of the Band Council Hall and the equally new rec centre, where a group of kids were setting up the boards for their outdoor hockey rink. A little further along I waved to Eric talking to someone outside the Algonquin Cultural Centre, the centre he had established to re-introduce the Algonquin culture and its language to the band’s youth.
Over the years, because of the educational system and other outside influences, English had become the operating language of the reserve. Today only the old spoke Algonquin and remembered the traditional ways. Eric wanted to change that.
Another minute, and I was driving into the parking lot beside the General Store. Located across the street from the church, the clapboard building looked as if it couldn’t make up its mind to be a house or a store. While the back still bore the original bungalow structure, the front with the flat roof, enlarged windows and neon sign proclaimed it to be a going business concern.
The parking lot was packed. The only store for twenty miles around, it was the centre not only for supplies but also news. I felt the charge in the air the moment I opened the door. While one or two people were lined up at the check-out, the rest crowded around the coffee counter that the manager, Hélène Tenasco, had set up at the back of the store when she’d realized customers sometimes just like to sit and talk. They were certainly talking now. They were talking so loudly, it drowned out the country music Hélène blasted from the radio, day and night.
I searched through the crowd for Marie but didn’t see her red scarf. I checked the aisle with the movie mags. If she was waiting anywhere, she was bound to be there, quenching her thirst for famous people’s troubles. But no Marie. The other aisles didn’t produce her either. I was early.
I squeezed my way through the raised voices and firmly planted bodies to where Hélène propped herself on her bar stool behind the counter. A long drink of water, that’s what Aunt Aggie would’ve called her, and she looked like one today, with her tall, slender body clad in stone-washed jeans and a pale blue sweatshirt. The usual cigarette dangled from her thin lips.
Today’s sweatshirt glittered “J’aime Paris” in purple sequins. This shirt wasn’t quite as gaudy as her favourite, “Las Vegas or Bust”, with a holographic design of a female bust that only served to emphasize her own shortcomings. While she seemed to have an unlimited supply of souvenir sweatshirts, I wasn’t sure how she’d acquired them, since as far as I knew, Hélène had never been beyond Somerset, the closest town to the reserve, twenty miles away.
I shouted above the noise, “Hi, Hélène. Has—”
The talking stopped. A dozen pairs of eyes stared at me from under the multi-coloured brims of baseball caps.
“Marie been in yet?” I finished in a whisper. I tried to tuck my bare red head into my shoulders.
“What’s with you guys? You know Meg, eh? She lives over on Echo Lake,” Hélène offered.
The talking, this time a low murmur, started back up.
“What do you wanta know?” she asked.
“Have you seen Marie?”
Hélène sucked deeply on her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a slow thin stream.
“Got lots of Maries around here. Which one?”
“Whiteduck.”
“Got lots of them, too.”
“Come on, Hélène. You know Marie Whiteduck works for me. Has she been in yet?”
“Nope.” She took another deep draw, chewed on the smoke then let it out. “Not likely to either, not government day, eh?”
After moving to the area last year, it hadn’t taken me long to learn what “government day” meant. It was the day many band members received their government benefits.
“I’ll wait,” I said. “I’ll have a coffee and one of those chocolate doughnuts.”
Hélène slopped the coffee into a Styrofoam cup and slid it along the counter. It left a trail of black liquid, which she erased with the swipe of a wet cloth. I wiped my cup with a napkin, grabbed my doughnut and retreated to an empty chair on the edge of the group.
I wondered what was eating her. Although many people on the reserve still treated me with distrust, Hélène was usually friendly. But then, maybe her sociability had more to do with keeping a good customer.
I looked the crowd over. They were all men, dressed in an assortment of windbreakers, lumberjack shirts and one greasy buckskin jacket. Thankfully, none of them wore bright yellow. I hadn’t quite decided what I’d do if I did come across someone wearing yellow.
The buckskin belonged to one of Hélène’s regulars. Frosty they called him, not because of his white hair, but because he’d lost a couple of fingers to frostbite. We often ruminated on the hit and miss state of the fishing on Echo Lake whenever I dropped in for a cup of coffee and other people’s company. He nodded his head in hello. I nodded back.
I didn’t know the others. Their ages ranged from late teens to early thirties. Under their baseball caps, they sported various hairstyles from braids to brush cuts. A couple of orange and black hockey jackets identified the wearers as members of Eric’s hockey team. They emitted a strong sense of fully charged testosterone.
“Charlie wants the gold mine, that’s for sure,” expounded one young man with the design of an eagle shaved into his brushcut and a bone choker around his neck. “Says it means jobs and money, lots of it.” He pounded his fists on the counter.
Several baseball caps nodded in agreement with loud thumps on the counter and a few hollow stomps on the wooden floor.
I sure didn’t like the sound of this.
“He say how much they gonna pay us?” piped up one skinny guy with a nervous twitch to his top lip.
“Nope, but hell, it’s a gold mine. We can dig our own money,” the guy with the shaved eagle replied.
A few chomped on their doughnuts while they mulled this over.
“Yeah, but what’s this gonna do to Echo Lake?” joined in another with what I could only call sudden insight.
“Charlie says why should we care about a few acres of ruined land? This mine’s not gonna be near the rez. The only people