mind drifted back to the time when I was young and falling in love for the first time in a horse-drawn carriage as it meandered the streets of the old town.
At one point, the waitress brought us fresh plates of succulent salmon and a new bottle of wine. Yves sampled his fish and declared it perfection. I concurred.
“Marguerite, there is something I think you should know before you get too deeply involved in proving this Indian’s innocence,” Yves suddenly said and woke me from my reverie.
“John-Joe may not be as innocent as you believe.”
“Of course he is,” I declared.
“I am not sure how well you know this young man, but he may be involved in activity that is not so innocent.”
“What do you mean?”
“Drugs.”
My heart lurched.
“Yvette saw him give another young man a small plastic bag containing a dried greenish substance and receive money in return. She didn’t know what it was, but I believe it was probably marijuana.”
“When did this happen?”
“The day of her accident.”
“She sure?”
“Oui, I believe so.”
“She might have been confused. The other young man was probably this guy Pierre. Perhaps he was the one selling the drugs.”
“Perhaps, but she was upset when she told me. Although she didn’t know what was being sold, she still felt they were doing something wrong. That is her reason for telling me. It pained her to see this John-Joe involved. She likes him, I think.” He paused. “My poor sister, so alone. It is good you are her friend, Marguerite.”
Not wanting to discuss John-Joe any further, I used his last words as an opening to ask about his younger sister and her confined life at the farm, but when I posed the question, he deflected it by saying she would soon be leaving the farm to live in a convent, where she would have the company of other young women. I started to ask if this would be his twin sister’s convent, but Yves had already changed the topic.
The intimate mood of the evening had vanished. I couldn’t stop worrying over the possibility that John-Joe had lied to me. Nor could I readily accept that a convent life for Yvette would be an improvement. She would only be leaving one type of prison for another. By the time Yves dropped me off at my doorstep, I was thankful he made no attempt to invite himself in. Still, I would’ve preferred a lingering kiss on the lips to the chaste French peck on both cheeks he gave me.
seventeen
All night long I tossed and turned while Yves’s damning information about John-Joe festered. By the time I rose in the morning, I knew I had to lay my doubts to rest. Although I didn’t want to believe that John-Joe had lied to me about his involvement with drugs, I couldn’t readily dismiss what Yvette had witnessed. I also knew that if Sergeant LaFramboise learned of this, he’d believe Yvette long before he’d believe anything John-Joe would tell him. And he’d use this as further evidence of his suspect’s criminal behaviour. I had to do something. But what?
I could verify the story directly with Yvette, but if she remained convinced she’d seen John-Joe sell Pierre drugs, there was little I could do other than to try to come up with a way to minimize the damage to John-Joe’s case.
He’d vehemently denied selling drugs to those kids in my shack, and I still believed him. Perhaps if I could prove that someone else was the drug dealer in the area, the police would place less weight on Yvette’s evidence. The trick was how to get this information.
Obviously, the kids knew. But they weren’t talking; otherwise the dealer would be in police custody. And if the kids were refusing to tell the police, it was hardly likely they’d give me the name.
There was, however, one person who might tell me, Ajidàmo. But would he? After all I was off-reserve and white. But perhaps my role as his rescuer might persuade him to open up. It wouldn’t hurt to at least try. A call to the nurse at the Migiskan Health Centre soon confirmed he was safely at home with his grandmother.
Figuring Sergei would make a good silence-breaker, I hustled him into my rusted-out pickup along with a pot of freesia I’d bought in Somerset with just such a visit in mind. Even if Ajidàmo’s grandmother couldn’t see the pale yellow blooms, she would be able to smell their penetrating fragrance. For her grandson, I’d picked up a game guaranteed to capture a young boy’s interest, Jenga, a skill-testing game with wooden blocks.
As my truck bumped along the road to the Migiskan Reserve, the dog, ever hopeful for a deer sighting, perched alertly on the seat beside me. Although I’d never been to Ajidàmo’s house, the nurse’s instructions were clear enough to get me to the extreme end of the inhabited part of the reserve, where the white plain of an unplowed lane dipped down to the edge of the forest. Afraid my truck would get stuck, I left it on the main road and followed a well-trodden trench down the hill to the last two houses on the lane. Unfortunately, her description of an old log squat applied to both buildings. I looked for signs of a child and saw a sled propped against the side of the most dilapidated house. Smoke curled from its blackened metal chimney.
I walked towards the front steps, but Sergei knew better. He bounded to the side of the other house, to a small snowsuited figure emerging from behind the house, rolling a giant snowball. With a yelp of recognition, the dog tumbled into the boy and was lost in a turmoil of flying snow and gleeful shrieks.
The noise brought Ajidàmo’s grandmother to the door. Clad in a thin cotton dress and ragged wool sweater, she stood silently in the cold air, her clouded eyes directed towards the sound. Her stooped but solid frame displayed no unease with the sudden ruckus, only a waiting alertness like a mother bear confronted by the unknown. Finally she said something in Algonquin, but her grandson, too intent on playing with the dog, didn’t hear her.
Not wishing to keep her in ignorance of my presence, I said hello to her in my limited Algonquin, “Kwey Kòkomis,” then switched to English. “It is me, Meg Harris. We met the other day at the Health Centre.”
Silence greeted me. I started to call out again when a slow smile crept over her ancient face, and she nodded knowingly. She gestured me inside, then called out once more to her grandson. Thankfully, Ajidàmo, our would-be translator, obeyed his grandmother, otherwise our conversation wouldn’t have gone beyond hopeful nods and smiles.
She led me into the heat of an unlit room made darker by a boarded-up broken window. The darkness at first surprised me, until I remembered the old woman had no need of light. Ajidàmo, familiar with his grandmother’s ways, ignited an oil lamp, which brought the extent of their poverty into stark reality.
The long, narrow room stretched across the front of the house. With a small kitchen at one end and a sagging sofa and a potbelly stove at the other, it appeared to be the focal point for all aspects of daily living, except sleeping. And even that was a possibility, given the pillows and neatly folded Hudson Bay blankets that were piled on a low table. Perhaps in this cold it was warmer to sleep next to the stove than in one of the back rooms, which were likely unheated. I assumed that the two closed doors on the back wall led to bedrooms and possibly a bathroom, though I doubted the latter. The lack of a sink in the kitchen apart from a metal washbasin suggested no indoor plumbing, the same way the oil
