The Middle of Everywhere (12 page)

Lenny rubs his belly. “Fresh-caught Arctic char tastes even better than ptarmigan liver,” he says. His eyes are shining, and I know he's watching for my reaction.

Somewhere in the distance, we hear a loud cracking noise. It startles me. “Was that thunder?” I ask Steve.

“We never get thunder during snowstorms. Must be the ice cracking somewhere out on the lake.”

“Or Kajutaijug!” Lenny says, cackling. “Maybe she wants to show us her titties.”

I don't think that's especially funny, but I'm way too tired to tell Lenny so. So I laugh instead. Another gust of wind hits me and nearly takes my ski tuque with it.

“Hey, look at that!” Tom points up at the sky. Somehow, when we were too busy to notice, the bottom of the sky has turned from gray to pink.

I'm reaching into my parka for my camera when Steve taps my shoulder. “Let's head back to the tent. Right now. These winds must be gusting at ninety kilometers an hour. We'll come back later when it's calmer and when the visibility's better.”

“What about the fish?” Lenny asks. “You don't want the polar bears to get 'em.”

“We'll worry about the fish later.”

“We should take some of the fish with us,” Lenny says.

“Let's go,” Steve says. “Now!” It's the same tone he used before with Etua.

“Roy! Geraldine! Matthew!” Steve shouts as we make our way back to the tents. It's almost impossible to see now. I can tell from the tension in Steve's voice he's worried about the others. “Can you hear me?” he shouts. The five of us are walking so close together now it's like we're one person.

The fact that Steve is worried makes me worry too. “Geraldine!” I shout.

Lenny makes a guffawing sound. “You got a thing for Geraldine?” he asks.

“No,” I say, a little too quickly.

“Guess you'd like to see her titties, wouldn't you?”

My ears get very, very hot.

Before I can think about whether what I'm about to do is a good idea, I punch Lenny. Right in the mouth. I do it for Geraldine and for all the girls I know, like Tammy Akerman and Chris L'Ecuyer's little sister, Irene. Mostly, though, I do it for me.

For a second or two, Lenny just looks surprised. “What'd you do that for?' he asks, rubbing his lips. But then his eyes narrow, and I'm pretty sure he's about to hit me back, probably a lot harder than I hit him.

But Steve pulls Lenny away. “Break it up, guys,” he says. “Right now.”

Lenny drops his arm to his side. I imagine he's making a fist, though I can't tell for sure because he's got mitts on.

“Sure thing,” Lenny tells Steve.

Lenny inches a little closer to me. He's smirking again. “Later,” he whispers into my ear.

I can feel my heart pounding in my ears. I shouldn't have started up with Lenny, but he shouldn't have said that about Geraldine.

“Roy! Geraldine! Matthew!” Steve calls again.

In the distance, we hear the dogs barking. They can probably tell too, that Steve is upset.

Up ahead, where the tents are, we can just make out a small dark figure.

“Etua!” Steve shouts as he runs toward the tent. “What's wrong with you? I told you to stay inside! Where's Joseph?”

The three of us are running too. Etua is jumping up and down again, only now he's crying too. “Hurry,
Ataata
!” Etua manages to say between sobs.

“What happened?” Steve asks.

Etua's eyes are wet with tears. “It's Joseph! He cut his thumb off! Oh,
Ataata
, there's blood everywhere!”

SEVENTEEN

T
he outside of Steve and Etua's tent looks like a crime scene. Etua is right—there's blood everywhere. Inside too. On the floor, on the walls, even on the stove door. Later, I wonder how the blood managed to splatter so far.

Joseph is sitting on the floor of the tent, rocking back and forth and moaning when we come in. His eyes are glazed over, just like Tarksalik's were after the accident. Joseph nods when he sees Steve, but then, a second later, his head sinks to his chest and he passes out.

That makes Etua sob even harder. “Joseph's dead! Dead!” he cries. “It's because of me! I told him we needed more wood for the stove. And now he's dead!”

Steve is crouched on the floor next to Joseph. “He isn't dead, Etua. He's in shock. He's lost a lot of blood, but he's not dead. Look at his chest! You can see him breathing!”

Etua chokes on his tears. “Are you sure,
Ataata
?”

We have to stop the bleeding. Even I know that. “What can we do?” I ask Steve. Tom, Lenny and Jakopie are standing next to me, ready to pitch in. Geraldine, Roy and Matthew have shown up too, probably alerted by Etua's wailing.

Steve barks out orders. “One of you get the first-aid kit! Someone else get towels! You'll need to cut them into strips. And get me the satellite phone—quick! Matthew, I'm gonna need your snowmobile to get Joseph back to George River. Can you clear it off for me? Two of you had better go do it. It'll be safer.”

“I'm not sure you should be traveling in this kind of weather,” Matthew says.

“We don't have a choice,” Steve tells him. “Go clear it off.”

Since I know where the satellite phone is, I get it from Steve's backpack by the tent door. There's blood on the backpack too. After Joseph injured himself, he must have stumbled into the tent, probably to look for a towel to help stop the bleeding.

I'm squatting on the ground, rifling through the backpack, when I happen to turn my head and look outside through the crack in the tent. That's when I spot it—Joseph's thumb, covered by a thin, thin layer of snow. Seeing it gives me that same lurching feeling in my stomach. It's fat and flesh-colored; the nail at the top is thick and gnarled-looking. The thumb is lying under a spruce bough next to Steve's ax, the one Joseph was using to cut logs for the fire.

I have to tell the others. Can't doctors reattach body parts like thumbs? Only where are we going to find a doctor?

I suck in my breath to steady myself. “Uh, Steve,” I say, trying to keep my voice level, “Joseph's thumb's out there, on the ground.”

“Go get it,” Steve calls out as if he's talking about a log for the fire. “Someone's gonna have to sew that thumb back on. Etua, get Noah some snow to keep Joseph's thumb cold.”

Eating ptarmigan liver is nothing compared to picking up someone's thumb from the snow. I'm afraid I'll puke again, but thank god I don't. It's a big thumb, nearly a third the size of my palm, and even though it's been out in the snow, it's still slightly warm. Is it my imagination, or can I feel it pulse inside my hand, almost as if the thumb has a heartbeat? I carry the thumb back into the tent.

“We've got to stop the bleeding,” Steve is saying. “Joseph, can you hear me?”

Tom and Jakopie have found towels, and Geraldine is cutting them into strips. I think about telling her to be careful, but I don't. I don't want to do anything that might set Lenny off again.

Steve has wrapped one strip of toweling around Joseph's hand, but the blood is seeping through like a red river. Again, I think of Tarksalik and the pool of blood and how she managed to drag herself to the side of the road. Joseph's blood is the same color as Tarksalik's.

“I've never seen so much blood!” Geraldine says softly as she hands Steve another strip of towel.

“We've got to make a tourniquet—fast,” Steve says. “And we need to keep his hand elevated so it's over his heart. That'll reduce the flow of blood.” Geraldine helps Steve make the tourniquet. Then she and Steve use another piece of towel to make a sling that will keep Joseph's hand higher than his heart.

Etua is back with the snow. “I need some strips of towel too,” I tell him. “To wrap the thumb in.” In a way, it's a relief to wrap Joseph's thumb inside the towel. I pack it in as much snow as I can. At least this way, I won't have to keep looking at the thumb or feel its strange pulse inside my palm.

Lenny grabs the satellite phone. “Do I phone Mathilde? Is that what you want me to do? What's the number at the clinic?”

“Three, three, seven…” Lenny dials as Steve calls out the number. I hope Mathilde answers.

The phone makes a buzzing sound as it rings and rings. No one's there.

“Now what?” Lenny asks.

“Try my dad's. Maybe she's at his place.” Only I don't know Dad's number. When I'm in Montreal, he's always the one who phones me. Every Sunday at exactly 11:00 am. He's never missed a Sunday since he moved to Nunavik.

“I know the number,” Tom says, and he tells it to Lenny. Tom must notice me looking at him. “I call him once in a while,” he explains. “When there's trouble at home,” he adds, lowering his voice.

I'm glad to hear Dad's voice on the other end through the crackling sounds of static. Even if Mathilde isn't there, he'll know where to find her.

“Good to hear from you, Lenny Etok,” I hear Dad say. “I've been worrying about you guys. I'm watching the weather on the net and listening to the fm. It looks pretty bad up where you are. Gale-force winds. It's way calmer down here. Minus seventeen right now, but hardly any wind at all. So tell me, how's my boy doing?”

“Uh, look, Bill,” Lenny says, stumbling for words, “I'm not calling about the weather. We got a bit of a problem. Is Mathilde around?”

I hear Dad suck in his breath. “I'll put her right on.”

Lenny passes Steve the phone. Steve gestures for Lenny to come and press down on the toweling on Joseph's hand. “Hey, Mathilde,” Steve says, cradling the phone under his chin, “Joseph's cut his thumb clean off. It's bleeding pretty bad. He's in and out of consciousness. We've made a tourniquet and we're keeping the hand elevated. But you're gonna have to tell me what to do next.”

It's hard to make out exactly what Mathilde is saying since she isn't a loud talker the way Dad is. But I can tell from the steady rhythm of her voice she is giving Steve instructions. Steve listens and nods. Then he catches Lenny's eye and raises one hand in the air. “Raise his hand even higher,” Steve whispers. “That'll help with the bleeding.” Steve nods again in response to something else Mathilde says. “Yes, we've got the thumb,” he tells her. “Noah found it. Okay, I got that. We can't let the thumb freeze.”

But even with Joseph's hand elevated, the bleeding doesn't let up. Joseph opens his eyes and moans as he looks around the tent. His eyes land on the blood splattered on the stove door. “I'm sorry,” he whispers. “I didn't mean to cause any tr—” But he passes out again before he can finish his sentence.

EIGHTEEN

M
athilde says we'll need a surgeon to reattach Joseph's thumb. If it wasn't so stormy up here, she'd try to arrange for a medevac plane to come out to Short Lake. But in conditions like these, it makes the most sense for Steve to try and get Joseph back to town. There's a flight scheduled to leave for Kuujjuaq this afternoon. If the sky stays clear in George River and the winds don't pick up too much—and if Steve can make it to George River in time—they can get Joseph on the plane. Mathilde will call ahead to the Kuujjuaq hospital so they'll be ready to operate as soon as Joseph arrives.

It sounds like a good plan, but of course it depends on a lot of things going right. I pack Joseph's thumb in a plastic bag that's half-full of snow. The bag goes into a cooler that Tom helps me strap down to the back of Matthew's snowmobile. We also pack water, food, a portable stove, tarps, a pup tent and the satellite phone. If all goes well, the trip should take about two hours by snowmobile, but if anything goes wrong, Steve and Joseph will need emergency supplies.

“We'll be fine,” Steve keeps saying when we tell him what we've packed. But the way he repeats himself makes me think he's worried too.

Matthew offers to come along, but in the end, he and Steve figure the extra weight on the snowmobile will only slow things down. “Besides,” Steve tells Matthew as the rest of us gather to see Steve and Joseph off, “I'm going to need you to keep an eye on these guys. And I don't just mean Spiderman here.” Steve leans over to hug Etua. Then he turns to Lenny and me. “You two behave yourselves, okay?”

I nod my head.

“Sure thing, man,” Lenny mutters.

Joseph lifts his good hand to wave good-bye. He's too weak to speak. I sure hope Steve can get him on that plane to Kuujjuaq and that the plane won't be grounded. The snow is still coming down hard, and the wind is as strong as it was when I got up.

Steve and Joseph are headed into the wind. Steve lowers his face as he turns the key in the ignition. Then he presses down with his thumb on the throttle and the two of them take off.

When Etua squeezes my hand, I squeeze his back. I'm supposed to be looking after him, but in a weird way, being responsible for him makes me feel a little better too.

At first, Matthew doesn't say a thing as the snowmobile heads away from the camp. But once the buzzing sound of the motor fades, he turns to face us. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, calm. “We're going to need to empty those nets and feed the dogs,” he says. “It makes the most sense for us to work together as a group. But let's clean up first. The sooner we get rid of the smell of blood, the better.”

We hear a thud, followed by an echo that is almost as loud. Somewhere not too far from us, another heavy branch must have fallen to the ground. My shoulders tense up.

Am I the only one thinking about Kajutaijug?

Because Etua is getting tired of hanging out in the tent— even after we've washed away all the blood—we decide to let him come out to the lake with the rest of us. “Just as long as someone keeps an eye on him,” Matthew says.

“No problem,” I say.