I tried to hustle the nearest kid outside, but he roused himself out of his stupor and fought back, kicking and swearing. I gave up on him and tried a young girl with a mop of thick black hair who looked to be about twelve.
Her sweet but flaccid face made my heart weep. In fact, the sight of all these lethargic kids made my heart weep. They should be outside having fun, making snowmen, throwing snowballs, doing what all kids do with winter’s first snow. Instead, these poor souls were lost in their own drug-induced stupor, obliterating not only the bad but the good in their young lives.
Although the girl spat and tried to claw my face, I was able to half carry, half drag her outside, where she promptly crumpled into the deep snow, which made me wonder if it was such a good move. Still, the sudden jolt of cold might serve to erase the effects of the drug faster.
I returned inside to tackle a boy who couldn’t be more than eight. He lay curled up on the frozen ground. His eyes were closed and his thumb was in his mouth as if he were lying snuggled up in his warm bed, except he wasn’t. Even I could feel the icy cold of the abandoned shack through my layers of long johns and fleece. And I was dressed for it. He wasn’t. His unzipped jacket revealed a thin cotton T -shirt. His dirty bare feet stuck out from the bottom of his jeans. His boots lay beside him.
He rocked back and forth as tears trickled down his cheeks. I tried to rouse him as I felt his violent shivering. I looked to one of the older teens for help, but he only nodded his head drowsily and said, “Everything’s cool, man,” as if repeating words he’d heard on TV .
I realized there was nothing further I could do on my own. Trying to wake these kids up and get them moving was not going to work. I needed to get help. So I zipped up the boy’s jacket, put his boots on and brought the girl back inside the hut, where she would be marginally warmer. I had Sergei lie down beside the shivering boy to provide warmth and hoped the dog would stay put once I’d gone.
Then I did the one thing I could do, removed the source of their intoxication, a plastic bag filled with the dried weed, some cigarette wrappers and a lighter lying on the ground beside them. I clamped my skis back on and headed off to the Fishing Camp to get Eric.
I followed the path the kids had made through the blackberry canes. It appeared well used, suggesting this wasn’t the first time my abandoned shack had served as a drug den. I decided that once the kids were safely removed, I would rid my land of any further temptation and demolish it and any other unused outbuildings.
Thankfully, Sergei remained behind. Perhaps he recognized in his doggy intuitive way that the young boy needed him more than I did.
A hundred metres later, I encountered a single snowshoe track which split away from the tracks I was following. No doubt another kid doing drugs in the shed. Then I noticed with shock an all too familiar orange cap disappearing over the next ridge. John-Joe’s signature hat. What was he, an adult, doing smoking up with a bunch of kids? But then again, maybe drugs were at the root of his abrupt change in character.
Angered that he would leave those kids in such condition, I started after him, but quickly checked myself. Getting help for the drugged children was more important than giving John-Joe a piece of my mind. I continued along the kids’ path. Within a couple of hundred yards, I skied onto the plowed road of the Fishing Camp and hurried to find Eric.
seven
Although it had taken me less than thirty minutes to return with Eric on his snowmobile to the abandoned shack, only a few pairs of snowshoes remained by the entrance. Clearly some of the kids had roused themselves enough to escape. To ensure they were okay, Eric sent Bob, one of the other crew leaders who’d come with us, after them while the rest of us checked out the remaining kids in the shack.
Sergei, still lying beside the little boy, rose to greet us, but the boy didn’t move. He lay as I’d left him, curled into a fetal ball, lost in his own drug-induced world. The girl was at least conscious. She attempted to stand, lost her balance and fell giggling back onto the frozen ground. Another boy, slightly older, sat wedged into a back corner, a silly smile plastered on his young face. But they were the only kids left in the shack. The rest, the oldest, were gone, leaving these poor tykes to fend for themselves.
“Hey, dude,” the older boy cried out as Gerry, another crew leader, rushed towards him. Shouting angrily, the father hustled his son outside. Within seconds, a skidoo engine roared into life and faded as it sped away.
“Stupid kids. Destroying their lives like this,” Eric muttered, mirroring my own thoughts.
While he told the last crew leader to take the girl straight to the reserve’s Health Centre, I knelt beside the little boy and tried to wake him. There was no response. His limp arms lay where I placed them. His sprawled legs remained equally lifeless. Worried, I put my cheek to his mouth and smelt the lingering odour of marijuana. Thankfully, I felt a faint whisper of air. When Sergei gave him a gentle lick on his hand, he smiled faintly, but kept his eyes closed.
“We’ve got to get him to a doctor immediately,” I said, picking the boy up. “Clearly something’s not right, and I’m worried about hypothermia.”
Although he looked to be about eight, he couldn’t have weighed more than a six-year-old. I wrapped my arms around his shivering body.
Behind me, Eric swore, “Christ, I was worried this would happen.” In his hand he held a Ziploc bag containing marijuana. I showed him the one I’d found.
“Damn, it looks as if we have a dealer on the reserve. And if they’re selling this stuff to kids. I hate to think what other drugs they might be harming my people with.”
“Worry about that later, we need to get this child out of here.” I carried the boy to Eric’s snowmobile.
Eric wrapped the boy in an emergency blanket, then placed him on the skidoo seat between the two of us to keep him warm. We sped off to the Health Centre, leaving Sergei to follow as best he could.
* * *
Forewarned of our arrival, Judy, one of the Centre’s two registered nurses, was waiting for us inside the glass front door of the two-tone brick building. Built in the mid 1980s, the precise lines of its urban architecture seemed at odds with the tangled web of the forest that surrounded it. Although band members called it the Health Centre, the one-storey building housed both health and social services, including home care, an addiction program and a shelter for family violence. Because of the closeness of the community and the potential for family interference, the Centre’s director preferred to hire First Nations staff from outside the reserve. Only two out of the complement of twelve were Migiskan Anishinabeg. Judy was one of them.
She held the door open for Eric as he carried the stillunconscious child into the large foyer. Since my shack had provided the opportunity, I felt partially responsible for his drugged state. So I followed them through another set of glass doors and into the treatment room, where Judy checked him over.
The girl lay in a neighbouring bed with an intravenous tube inserted into her arm. A plump woman, her brow creased in worry, patted her daughter’s hands and muttered repeatedly, “All my fault.”
I turned my attention back to the boy. “Is he going to be okay?” I asked as the nurse checked his blood pressure. Eric, standing beside me, gave the boy’s other arm a comforting pat.
“His blood pressure’s a bit low,” she replied before bending over to listen to his chest with a stethoscope.
She stood up. “Same
