Empire of Dirt: Chapter 1

Tikirarjuaq (Whale Cove), Nunavut, Canada

1613

To Henry James Watford of Bexfield, County Norfolk, please deliver.

My loving Father and Mother, I pray and trust in God that this finds you in good health, and to my faithful wife the same. I humbly thank you for the provisions and letter, both received with gratitude. We have adequate stores of fish, though the skins are not as plentiful as promised and shoe leather is at a premium. I am writing from a strange land with little else to report than the search for a Northwest Passage continues. As time goes so too does morale, but I refrain from any sorrow or regret as thanks be to God I am in fine health. It does no good to associate with the catastrophist who hath lost his faith. There are many without faith here. Dealings with Indians have proven they are, to a man, strong and clever, Godless though they are. Their customs and station are nomadic, understandable to a point as we too seek more hospitable climes.

I thank you once more, loving Father. My wife is, I hope, of help and comfort, and for her humble duty I send my thanks. If it pleases God, I shall return and take up my duty. To Evelyn, though my body is here, my heart is there with you. To young Anne, you would be in awe of the animals here. Walruses with great tusks, bears white as snow and a pale, strange looking whale that sings like a canary. I will tell you tales by the fire of a wild land and wild people, mother by our side. Until that day,

Your humble son, husband and father, Samuel Watford

1957

For Immediate News Release:

An exciting time is dawning for the Eskimos in the Ennadai Lake area: Moving day. The primitive people are moving northeast to brand new settlements in the modern convenience of aircrafts, the G and Air Divisions of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police aiding in this purely voluntary relocation. Similar migration programs in recent years have been a resounding success. Game has been scarce and famine rampant, but now, with plentiful resources at their new home, the Eskimos will find prosperity.

Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources

Now

“For posterity’s sake,” the government man said.

The arrowhead, out of the ice at Ennadai Lake, warm in my hands. The government man came on a plane, of course.

“It’s in remarkable condition,” he said.

If he said so. It was small and benign, dulled in the ice, dreaming of being more than a weapon. The government man fanned out photographs of similar artefacts he brought to town on my coffee table without asking.

“I came here because you weren’t at the ceremony today,” he said and coughed into his elbow.

“I had an appointment,” I said, not meeting his eyes. “How do you like the tea?”

“Delightful,” he said. “Mrs. Okpik—may I call you Margaret?” 

Margaret was my Catholic name and the only name I’ve used since coming here sixty years ago. My Ihalmiut name lay in the ice.

“You may,” I said.

“Margaret, we wanted you to have this,” he said.

They recognised centenarians in the newspaper or on TV. I was only ninety-two and never heard of anyone getting an arrowhead.

“It’s important that we repatriate Indigenous artefacts,” the government man said. “More and more will come.”

It sounded possible. The summers were warmer. The ice wasn’t as thick, even in the harsher months. Polar bears came closer to town. Old Samuel Mike said he crossed paths with one while walking back from the pub one night. Punched it right in the nose to send it running. At least that’s what he said. The only believable part of that story was that he was at the pub. I laid the arrowhead back in its box, something you’d house an expensive piece of jewellery in. The government man smiled at me with naked anticipation.

How did the arrowhead come to be here? Did the RCMP come, in a plane, dragging along sleds and Jon Vandal, a Métis trader, as a liaison? Did they show the government’s papers and, when that didn’t work, their guns? Did they place it on the plane, flying east over the red tin roof of the signal station, the ice creeping over the lake, the snow empty of caribou hoof prints, the herd off who knows where, following some new whispers on the wind? What did the arrowhead leave behind? Dogs, no room for them, watching the plane fly away?

“Thank you,” I said.

The government man nodded, job done, and got up. He studied the photos on the wall of my kids who weren’t kids anymore, but I called them that because I wanted to keep time from sweeping everything along quicker than it already had. I pointed out Mary, Matthew, Tyson and Elsie, grown up with families of their own, far away from Whale Cove. Only Matthew and Elsie were alive when we left Ennadai Lake, too young to remember. A small mercy. Sometimes you told children little white lies that seemed harmless, but they always came back to haunt you because they grew, even without being fed. I didn’t have to lie to them that everything was fine, I just had to hold them.

Next to the kids’ photos was one of Charlie, my husband, from the early days of Whale Cove, youthful and handsome, Tuberculosis a decade away. The government man leaned in for a closer look and the floor creaked, letting some of the grief out. It had been there since ’68, when a plane took Charlie to Montreal to treat his tuberculosis. He never came back. Every day for a long time, I suppose until they learned the order of things and where they stood in it, the kids thought every plane was the one to bring him home. My hope died under an empty sky. The house felt smaller in the emptiness, his absence larger than his presence. When I was alone, I let the grief out from its reservoir in the pit of me. Sometimes in long wails like the arctic wind, and sometimes silent, kneeling on the ugly orange rug Charlie liked, a pile of bones, watching the grief settle into the house to stay. The rest was in my marrow.

I’m sure the government man was wondering why I was still in this draughty old house, considering the settlement from the government fifty years after the relocation. $100,000. That’s how many zeros there are in “I’m sorry.” The kids wanted me to buy a house closer to them. I couldn’t think of much to do with the money, but using it to move again seemed the worst thing to do. I bought a new heater for the bedroom and a bigger TV.

The government man dabbed at his ashen face with a handkerchief, an act he was committing so often he no longer bothered performing the delicate ceremony he had repeated throughout our conversation: crisply refolding the handkerchief, slipping it into his breast pocket and fanning it to perfect symmetry with his thumb and forefinger. Now it was balled up in his fist, limp, like a dead bird.

“Are you feeling all right?” I said.

“I think I just need a rest,” the government man said. He swept up the photographs of the artefacts into his folder. “For the history books,” he said.

History books are a map of despair. That’s why I only read romance novels and murder mysteries. Lovers end up together and murderers are brought to justice.

“I’ll be seeing you,” the government man said at the door. He wouldn’t. He’s dead now, along with everyone else as far as I can figure, because when he came in by plane, he brought death with him.

None of my shows were on that night. I stared at the arrowhead nestled in its velvet bed. Who forged it so long ago? Did they sharpen it next to a fire as the family fed from the kill, or did they sharpen it alone, the carcass the only thing keeping them company as the light faded? I wandered the house with the arrowhead sitting in the palm of my hand, and it lead me to the mantle, its new home. I placed it next to a carving of a caribou my father made me when I was a child, the only thing I had left from Ennadai Lake, hidden in my jacket before we got on the plane.

The knock at the door the next day was insistent enough for me to abandon putting the kettle on before I answered it. It was River, a nurse at the Health Centre, wearing a mask and holding a clipboard, which was trembling.

“Hi, Mrs. Okpik.”

“Hello, River. Is everything all right?”

“How are you feeling?” She said.

“Well,” I said, “my hip’s been giving me some trouble, but no worse than usual.”

“No fever or cough?”

“No, why?”

“Can you come with me to the health centre, please?” Her car was running. “We’re doing contact tracing,” she said. “You had a visit from a Mr. Phillips yesterday, is that right?”

The government man.

“Yes, I did.”

“Doctor Lawson would like to see you,” she said, not an invitation.

“Would you like to come in while I get dressed?”

“I’ll wait here,” she said, brushing a dusting of snow off her shoulders.

Vehicles choked the health centre’s driveway. A trucks’ bumper rested against the stairs, long gashes in the snow behind it. The front door had a new boiled water advisory taped to it, replacing the old one that time had turned to tatters. River rushed off to find Doctor Lawson, so I just stood there in the doorway, watching. There were beds in the hallway, all of them full. Family members wandered from room to room, aimless, their eyes wide. I’d seen this scene before. A few months before we were taken from Ennadai Lake in ‘57, the wolves came, emboldened by hunger. The dogs paced in their pens, yowling into the night, pushing against the chicken wire, digging underneath to get free, pissing into the dirt.

Doctor Lawson was awful busy, so I was standing there for a while before Trudy Enuapik, my next-door neighbour, burst in with her young boy, Adam. He had sweat through his pyjamas in dark blotches, and his mother needed to guide him as if he’d never been here before.

“Trudy,” I said, when she went right by me without saying a word. She must not have heard me.

“Doctor Lawson!” She said, steering Adam along the hallway.

The Doctor appeared, rushing to take Adam, without questions, to a bed.

“Trudy,” I said again.

“Margaret, Hi.” Now that her hands were free of her boy, they pinched at phantom cigarettes. She quit last fall.

Doctor Lawson put an IV into Adam’s arm. He was mumbling something I couldn’t hear.

“How are you and Michael feeling?” She said to Trudy.

“I’m fine. Michael’s away for work,” Trudy said. “What’s going on?”

An alarm from some machine went off. Doctor Lawson handed her a paper mask.

“Wait at admitting, I’ll come see you.” Turning to me, she said, “How are you feeling, Mrs. Okpik?”

I was here getting a shot for my hip the night Robert Adjuk’s snowmobile flipped back on top of him and crushed him. They wheeled Robert right by me. If it wasn’t for that yellow jacket he always wore, I wouldn’t have recognised him, he was so messed up. Doctor Lawson was as calm as she’d be pulling a splinter from a child’s finger. Now, looking at her made me take a step back.

“I’m fine,” I said.The machine alarm went off again, adamant.

“Can I stay with him?” Trudy asked.

“No,” Doctor Lawson said and rushed off.

Trudy took Adam’s hand. He was a good hockey player, a decent student and a lousy guitar player who practised every night I watched my shows. I didn’t fuss, because he and Trudy took me out to hockey games and bingo nights.

I placed a hand on Trudy’s shoulder. “Let’s have a seat, like she said.”

Trudy nodded, unmoving.

“Trudy,” I said.

She squeezed her boy’s hand, and placed it down on the bed like it was as fragile as the arrowhead. “I thought he was faking,” she said once we sat down. “He has a math test tomorrow. He’s done it before. I caught him heating the thermometer against a light bulb once.”

“He’s a strong boy. He’ll be fine,” I said.

“What about everybody else?”

We sat in silence until Trudy’s restlessness drove her to her feet. To stop her pacing, I tried the TV remote. Nothing. Someone had unplugged it from the wall.

Trudy broke off from her pacing like her chain had snapped to hunt down the doctor, so I followed. We found her behind drawn curtains, pulling the sheet over the government man’s vacant face. Trudy stepped on his handkerchief on the floor.

“What the hell is happening?” Trudy said.

“Go home and pack,” Doctor Lawson said. “We’re going to be evacuated.”

“I’m not leaving my son,” Trudy said.

“You can’t do anything for Adam. We need help.”

“Please, tell me what’s going on.”

Doctor Lawson wiped her brow. “Whatever it is, it’s happening everywhere.”

The drive home in Trudy’s car was quiet, and several cars passed us going towards the health centre.

“Are you going to pack?” I said.

“Yes,” Trudy said, pulling into my driveway. “You should stay in. When I know we’re going, I’ll come get you.”

She made the three-point turn to pull into her own driveway, and I stood there, the snow crowning me. The house stood on the spot we picked on our first day in Whale Cove, the community just a handful of people off the plane, left on the naked rock, the wind working up a gale. No calls of wolves, loons and owls. A strange new planet with nothing but two big piles of wood, canvas and tools. One pile for temporary housing, the other for a church. Charlie hefted several two-by-fours and a roll of canvas over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” I said, towing the kids behind me.

“I’m walking until it feels right to stop, or until you tell me to,” Charlie said, “which ever comes first.”

What came first was me telling him to stop.

I went inside after Trudy parked. I called Matthew first, in Churchill. It just rang and rang. Next, Tyson, in Winnipeg. His voice mail. I told him to call me and said I loved him. When I hung up, the phone rang. It was Mary.

“Mom, we’ve been told to stay indoors. What’s happening there?”

“The town is being evacuated,” I said.

“You call and tell me where they’re taking you soon as you find out, and call me again as soon as you land,” she said. “Get them to bring you here if they can.”

I called Elsie next. A calm, canned voice said circuits were busy.

Sirens came early in the night, Constable Marchand or one of his men, and the wind swallowed them. The next day was Friday. Bingo Night. The cash for that and the boys’ hockey 50/50 on Saturday was in my purse, but while I laid there looking at the ceiling’s lines and bumps from the grief, the sickness ate up bingo and hockey and church and everything else.

It was still dark when I gave up on sleeping to wander the house. A sliver of pale light fell on the mantle. The carving and the arrowhead. I followed the light to the window. A fresh blanket of snow covered everything in silence. Broad flakes, the kind that stuck to you and kept their form, letting you marvel at them marooned on your sleeve. Soft under foot. No headlights from Father Patterson’s car as he left the church late, no boys dragging their hockey bags home from the arena. The hospital, hidden from view, out there in the dark. Past it, the airport, its gravel runway, collecting snow. The wind, this place flush to the sea, sang.

Trudy’s front door swung open without the porch light coming on. She emerged, barefoot and in short sleeves, into the night. She stumbled and flailed, crawling her way down her driveway. A wolf, wounded and lost. Throwing my coat on and making do with my slippers, I went out onto the porch. Trudy was gone, swept away into the night by wind and delirium. I followed, searching for footsteps.

“Trudy!”

I stumbled down onto the road. No sound of her, no sight of her, no footsteps. Like she never existed. I shook and my feet were numb, slippers covered in a cotton layer of snow.

There was no answer at the RCMP station.

The suitcase Mary gave me last Christmas, a subtle hint, was somewhere in the hall closet behind the old clothes and trophies. Things whose importance had dulled enough to hide away but not enough that I, or the children, could bear to part with. I knelt down, making my hip angry. Grief hides in the most peculiar places. It settles in the floorboards, seeping out onto your stocking feet. It bleeds through framed photos and gets on your fingers, and then the hot knife is in your heart. There was no grief in this suitcase, tucked away in the closet. No pain in my heart, just an assurance that it was beating, loud and strong, part of a harmony. If I put my ear to the floor, I would find the heartbeats of my family. There were other things, warm things, settled in the walls. Grief was not an orphan.

When we came here, we had no dogs, no sleds, no rifles. The tides were a mystery. Seal. Black, oily and foreign, on my kitchen counter. I had no clue what to do with it.

“We couldn’t be any farther from home,” I said into Charlie’s chest as he held me.

“Oh,” Charlie said, “I don’t know. All we need for a home is right here,” and then he danced me around the kitchen and into the bedroom.

I shoved the suitcase aside, pulling out the box of candles, a lighter, and a big pack of batteries Matthew brought me on his last visit. Filling the bathtub with water, I emptied the freezer of meat and carried it outside to bury it in the snow. When I was done, I scooped a smaller hole with my hands and put the arrowhead in it. One day, someone will come on a plane and find it. They will wonder about its story like I wondered how it came to be in the ice at Ennadai Lake. Perhaps somewhere below where it lay for so long are the bones of what it felled, a caribou or some long extinct thing. It was mine now, so I chose its story. Uneasy with its purpose, it only wounded its prey and fell out where it came to rest. The animal was a survivor, and the arrowhead was proof it had lived.