No signs of life remained at this end of the community. The portal to the South was dormant and barren. The store itself lay in ruin with the door agape and the windows smashed. Isaiah squinted to look inside but couldn’t make out the empty shelves or anything else in the darkness. He turned his attention back to the path in front of him and saw the small white ridge that led to the old service road just beyond it.
Isaiah and Tyler reached the incline. Neither looked back to the body behind them. Their skin was ashen and dark bags hung under their brown eyes. Tyler wiped his brow on the arm of his jacket and tucked the straggling strands of long black hair behind his ear. Isaiah adjusted the beak of his ball cap. His ears were catching a bit of a chill. He nodded at Tyler, and they summoned the strength to lift Scott’s body to the top of the ridge.
The snow was soft and would soon melt, so it was easy for them to dig it in slightly and bring it to rest. They could no longer ignore the corpse. They had grown to loathe the man in his short time in their community but they pitied him in death. No one would ever know what had driven him or what had brought him to their town. Now they felt only relief that he would be gone, a blip in the communal memory of this terrible winter.
The friends looked at each other one more time, and Tyler gave the body a heavy shove. It slid slowly down the other side of the ridge. He looked away before it stopped, and both men turned to walk towards the community, the light sled skimming behind them.
Scott’s body slid over where Mark Phillips’s still-frozen corpse lay under a thick blanket of snow. It came to a rest in a slight dip in the snow. It was left to freeze in the waning weeks of winter, and when the melt came, the crows and wolves would arrive for a taste of flesh.
Epilogue
ZIIGWAAN
SPRING
Nicole lifted her sunglasses and rested them on her head as she turned back into the house for one last pass-through. The frames rested in the weave of the braid tied tightly against her scalp. She stood in the living room and gazed at the stripped-down surroundings.
The pictures were gone from the walls. The cushions had been pulled from the couch and the chairs. Anything wooden, such as a coffee or side tables, had long been removed. The large black rectangle of a television remained on the wall but it had been two winters now since it flickered.
She walked through the living room and into the kitchen where the absent cupboard doors exposed a small stack of dishes. The essentials had been moved out weeks before. All the kitchen furniture was also gone, taken out and stored for fire fuel.
Nicole had done her best to ignore any nostalgia for this home she and Evan had created for their family. The children were still young. They would forget. But the memories in this place were strong and lasting for her. She didn’t know if they would ever return, but she had stored a small collection of mementos in a corner of the basement in case they could someday come back for them.
Nicole started towards the door to the basement to go down and sort through the pile one last time, but she stopped and shook her head. She had already packed two photo albums and made bundles for both Maiingan and Nangohns to carry on their journeys to remind them of how their life once was.
So she decided not to go back downstairs and left the rest of the pictures, baby toys, electronics, and other mementos in a pile under the white wedding dress she never got to wear. She and Evan had always planned to get married eventually, and she was going to wear her mother’s wedding dress. But holding that kind of event made no sense now, and they’d never be able to mark an anniversary anyway. Still, she put her faith in the belief that this was not the last time she’d be in this place.
She pulled her scratched sunglasses back down over her eyes and walked back out into the mid-morning sunshine. It gleamed on her bare brown shoulders. She shut the door behind her without locking it and stepped down the creaky stairs. Her kids and their grandparents waited for her in the driveway.
Dan Whitesky leaned against the warm blue metal of Evan’s old truck with his arms crossed, his red cap pulled low to shade his eyes. Nicole’s father stood beside him, dressed similarly, but in different faded colours. They tied their long hair behind their heads with tiny strips of deer hide, concealing the ponytails. Her mother, Theresa stood in front of them, comfortable in her dirty grey T-shirt, tattered jean shorts, and sandals as the summer morning heated up. In the shade on the grass on the other side of the driveway, Patricia Whitesky and the two children threw a wobbly yellow frisbee back and forth.
Nicole approached the truck. Theresa put her arms around Nicole without saying anything. They broke the embrace, and Nicole stepped back to lift her glasses and wipe her eyes. Almost on cue, the children ran up to her, not sensing anything wrong. She smiled and laughed as they each wrapped their arms around her legs.
Maiingan looked up at her. His long brown hair fell over his shoulders now, as long as his little sister’s. Seven years old, the boy was growing taller. He had grown up so much since the lights went out nearly two years before, but his youthful exuberance remained intact. “Did you get my fishing rod, Mommy?” he asked.
“Yes, my boy,” she replied. His joy and enthusiasm grounded her and always reassured her about their family’s road ahead. “Your tackle box too. It’s all in there,” she motioned with her head to the packed trailer that the adults would take turns pulling into the bush.
The structures they were leaving behind would likely stand for a few more generations. The homes were perfectly viable shelters from the cold and rain. The band office, the shop, and all the other community buildings would probably last even longer. And all the infrastructure was most likely still functional. But there was no use for any of it.
Along with half the people who had lived here, the fledgling spirit they had been trying to nourish in this place had died. There was no use staying somewhere that had become so tragic. The bad memories and the sadness had smothered the good so many people had worked so hard to sustain, even in the wake of the darkness that befell them.
And when it became clear to them that they were never supposed to last in this situation on this land in the first place, they decided to take control of their own destiny. Their ancestors were displaced from their original homeland in the South and the white people who forced them here had never intended for them to survive. The collapse of the white man’s modern systems further withered the Anishinaabeg here. But they refused to wither completely, and a core of dedicated people had worked tirelessly to create their own settlement away from this town.
They also couldn’t be certain there wouldn’t be more visitors. None had come since the arrival of those from the South in those first scary months. But if civilized life remained in the cities and towns around them, the mass migration was likely already underway. No one wanted to deal with any more of them. Not now.
“Is my fishing rod in there too, Mommy?” asked Nangohns, now old enough to know how to cast — or at least drop — a line into the water.
“You bet, my girl.”
“Can we go fishing today?”
“Probably. It won’t take us that long to get there.”
“Yay!” the five-year-old started jumping up and down.
Patricia put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder. “Well, you ready?”
“As ready as I’m gonna be.”
“Okay then, let’s go.”
Nicole nodded and looked back down at her son and daughter. “Okay, guys,” she said. “Let’s go see Daddy. He’s waiting for us.”