JUST ARRIVED
Canadian North American
INDIANS!
Headed by Two Chiefs
Alongside Grant’s corpse, secured to his trouser belt, was what appeared to be a ceremonial Indian hatchet or tomahawk. On close examination the blade was seen to be impressed with the logo of its Birmingham manufacturer.
The deep scars on Grant’s back proved that he had been flogged more than once, but Franklin was known to consider the practice abhorrent. Furthermore, such punishment seemed inconsistent with the sterling character described in the letters buried with the assistant-surgeon.
Finally, there was consternation.
A researcher who had the wit to write to the College of Surgeons in Edinburgh discovered they had no record of a student named Isaac Grant, never mind one who had graduated summa cum laude. The archives of the British Medical Registry had no intelligence of a surgeon with that name and a search at Somerset House yielded no Grant born on October 5, 1807.
Put plainly, except for the evidence of his corpse, it seemed that Isaac Grant, MD, had never existed.
Seven
Sean Riley was the first person Moses Berger looked for whenever his research obliged him to pass through Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories. Riley had gone right from Spitfires over Malta during World War II into three years of crop dusting in Kenya. Then, back in Canada, he had enrolled in a Trans-Canada Airlines school, emerging as a Viscount pilot in 1951, a tour of duty that ended in ignominy. One day, before setting out on a run from Montreal to Halifax, Riley read aloud to his passengers a head-office edict that cited the variegated role of a Cunard liner’s captain and enjoined TCA pilots to be entertaining hosts as well as fliers of unrivalled skill. “I am now,” he said, yanking a harmonica out of his pocket, “going to play ‘Kisses Sweeter Than Wine’ and will accept two more requests before taking off into the wild blue yonder.”
Inevitably Riley, like so many free spirits or undischarged bankrupts, runaway husbands, unredeemed drunks and other drifters, retreated to North of Sixty, flying DC-3s, Cessnas and Otters out of Yellowknife. He became the favourite pilot of the NWT’s Superior Court Justice, flying him over the barrens on the court circuit again and again. One night in 1969, drinking late with Moses in The Trapline, Riley told him that he was flying the court party, as well as a few reporters, out on the circuit in the morning. Moses, who was bound for Tulugaqtitut, the settlement on the Beaufort Sea where Henry Gursky had been rooted for years, could hitch a ride with them.
The court party was comprised of the judge, a crown prosecutor, two defence lawyers, and a clerk. They were joined by three reporters, two of them from “the outside”. The two men from “the outside” represented the Toronto Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun. The third reporter, a girl named Beatrice Wade, was a native of Yellowknife, then with the Edmonton Journal. A raven-haired beauty, with breasts too rudely full for such a trim figure and coal-black eyes that shone with too much appetite.
Riley, assembling the passengers on the runway, couldn’t resist performing for the reporters from “the outside”. “This old heap, held together with bobby pins and glue, is a DC-3, which some call the workhorse of the north, our own Model-T, but what more experienced northerners refer to as the widowmaker. Anybody want to take a picture of your intrepid flyboy before we take off?”
One of the reporters obliged.
“Now, hold on a minute, this may not be O’Hare or Kennedy, but safety is our first consideration. We’ve got to have this baby de-iced.”
Riley gave Beatrice the nod. She promptly slipped two fingers into her mouth, whistled, and an Eskimo boy arrived on the trot, clearing the wings of snow with a kitchen broom.
Moses, who had hoped to sit next to Beatrice on the flight, was outmanoeuvred by Roy Burwash, the tall sallow Englishman from the Vancouver Sun, and had to settle for a seat across the aisle.
“Oh, Vancouver’s all right,” Burwash allowed, “but something of a cultural desert, and journalistic standards aren’t what I was used to in London.”
“Who did you work for on Fleet Street?” Moses asked.
“I have been published in Lilliput and Woman’s Own.”
“Who did you work for is what I asked.”
“The Daily Sketch.”
“And what do you miss most in Vancouver? The gas fire in your bed-sitter in Kentish Town, luncheon vouchers, or your weekly night out with the lads at Raymond’s Revue Bar?”
Beatrice, seated by the window, leaned forward for a better look at Moses. “You’re bad,” she said.
Light snow began to fall as the DC-3 lowered into the first settlement on the court circuit. Moses, taking advantage of the stop, slipped away to seek out aged Eskimos who might remember tales told to them by their grandparents about the man with the hot eyes who had come on the ship with three masts. He also looked out for any Eskimo who had four fringes hanging from his parka, each fringe made up of twelve silken strands.
After lunch Riley took off in a partial whiteout, soon rose above it, and a couple of hours later found a hole in the clouds, plunged through it, and skittered to a stop just short of a signpost thrust into the ice.
WELCOME TO AKLAVIK
Pop. 729 Elevation 30 ft.
Never Say Die.
A party of bemused Eskimos greeted the DC-3. “You guys bring the mail?” one of them asked.
“We haven’t got your bloody welfare cheques,” Riley said. “We’re the court party, come to fill your jail, and standing right over there, well that’s the hanging judge.”
The Canadian flag was planted in the snow outside the community hall even as the judge hurried into his robes. The first defendant was a surly, acne-ridden Dogrib sporting a Fu Manchu moustache, FUCK inked immediately above the knuckles of one hand and YOU on the other. Charged with breaking and entering he stood before the judge, swaying on his feet.
“Did you heave a rock through the window of the Mad Trapper’s Café in order to gain access?” the judge asked.
“It was closed and I was hungry.”
MOSES SAT NEXT TO BEATRICE on the flight into Inuvik and that night they became lovers, Moses apologizing for his inadequacy. “Sorry. I’m afraid I’ve had too much to drink.”
“How long have you known Henry Gursky?”
“Ever since I was a child. Why?”
“Are you also filthy rich?”
Unwilling to tell her about his legacy, he said, “I’m just a stop-gap teach filling in here and there until they find out about me.”
“Find out what?”
“That I’m a drunk.”
“Why?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“But there has to be a reason.”
“Why are you left-handed?”
“That’s not a proper analogy.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Have you ever tried stopping?”
“Christ.”
“Have you?”
“Regularly.”
“What gets you started again?”
“Enduring other people mostly.”
“Nosey ones like me?”
“Like that bloody Burwash.”
“But he’s no worse than you. Or didn’t you also want to get me in the sack the minute you saw me on the plane?”
“That’s not fair.”
“I don’t mean that I’m special. I mean that I was there, that’s all, which is enough for most of you.”