The Middle of Everywhere (2 page)

We bring Tarksalik straight to Mathilde's house. Mathilde's the town nurse. She works at the clinic, but because she and Dad are friends, Dad knows she has Tuesdays off.

Mathilde doesn't panic either, even when we turn up at her door with a bleeding dog. She lays Tarksalik out on her living-room floor, and she doesn't seem to notice when her beige carpet gets spattered with blood. Then she runs her hands along the length of the dog's body, feeling for breaks. Tarksalik yelps again, but Mathilde doesn't think there are any broken bones. “She's in shock. I'm going to the clinic to get her some pain meds. These first few hours are very important,” she says.

Mathilde grabs her backpack. It's black with hot-pink and turquoise stripes, and it looks like it might be Mexican. There I go noticing weird stuff again.

A minute later, Mathilde is out the door and on her way to the clinic. Luckily, it's just down the road. She'll be back soon with the pain medication.

Dad is chewing on his lower lip. He loves that dog. Until I arrived in George River yesterday, Tarksalik was his only family up here. The dog was living outside when Dad first came to town. He used to feed her scraps, but then one really cold night, she came into Dad's apartment, and she's lived there ever since.

Tarksalik is the Inuktitut word for
spot
. Dad named her that because she's got a white spot on her forehead and because when Dad was learning to read, the dog in the reader they used at his school was named Spot. So Tarksalik's the Inuktitut version of that dog. “It's a bilingual play on words,” Dad explained to me. “Get it?”

Tarksalik follows Dad everywhere, even when he takes a pee. Dad says she's the best pet he ever had. “Probably because she's so darned grateful,” he told me.

Now Dad strokes the spot on Tarksalik's forehead. “You're going to be okay,” he tells her, but his voice doesn't sound too sure.

“What can I do?” Sitting around watching Tarksalik, and watching Dad watch Tarksalik, is only making me feel worse. I need to
do
something.

“You'd better get to school, Noah,” Dad says. He stops stroking Tarksalik to check his watch. “You've got forty minutes till the bell goes.” He eyes my jacket. It's smeared with Tarksalik's blood. “There's time for you to clean yourself up, change your clothes. We're in room 218. Listen, tell the other kids I'm going to be a little late. And tell them to work on their compositions till I get there.” Dad sounds less broken up when he talks about school.

Being back at Dad's apartment without Dad or Tarksalik for company feels weird. I stop to look at a picture of me on the living-room mantel. It must have been taken ten years ago, after Mom and Dad split up. I'm standing on one leg and my arms are spread out like wings. It looks like I'm pretending to be an airplane. Dad must have taken the picture when he got back from one of his trips and I went to meet him at the airport.

The blood on my jacket comes off with a little cold water and some scrubbing. I shower and toast myself a bagel and smear some peanut butter on it, but I can't stop hearing the thud Tarksalik's body made when the truck hit her or picturing Tarksalik flying up into the air or seeing the black puddle of blood.

If only I hadn't gone for a run. If only I hadn't offered to take Tarksalik. If only I hadn't come up north in the first place.

There's a No Boots rule at Dad's school. You have to leave your boots in the front hallway. It's a way to prevent tracking in snow. So the first thing I see when I walk into school is this long row of boots. I park mine at the far end. I'm glad there aren't any holes in my socks.

I already met some of Dad's students yesterday afternoon when I got off the plane from Kuujjuaq. Dad thought I might as well meet them right away, considering I was going to be in their class till June, when the school term ends.

“Not to worry,” Dad told them after we'd all shaken hands, Inuit-style. Actually, from what I can tell, the Inuit don't shake hands, they just grab your hand and hold it, not pumping it up and down the way we do. “I'm not going to give Noah here any special treatment, even if he is my own son. Even”—Dad's voice went up a little, which meant he was about to sing. I cringed. Dad has a really terrible singing voice—“if he is
the sunshine of my life
.”

“D'you get it?” Dad asked his students. “
Sun
shine—and he's my
son
.”

To my surprise, the students cracked up. I guess they have lower standards for humor up here. They also don't laugh the way kids do in the city. The noise Dad's students make is more like a twitter, and they cover their mouths when they do it. Like they feel bad for laughing.

That was when I started to understand why Dad likes it so much up here. It's not just the snow and the fresh air. No one in the civilized world could put up with his goofy jokes or his singing. Up here they thought he was funny.

Geraldine Snowflake is the first one to say anything when I walk into room 218. Geraldine's pretty in a way I'm not used to. She's nothing like Tammy Akerman at my school in Montreal. Tammy has blond wavy hair, and she wears tight T-shirts that drive me crazy.

Geraldine has long dark hair in a thick braid down her back. Her eyes are so dark they look like they're navy blue. She's wearing a baggy sweatshirt, though when she gets up to sharpen her pencil, I can tell she's got a nice body underneath it. Geraldine doesn't try to be pretty; she just is.

I cracked up when Dad mentioned over the phone how he had a student whose last name was Snowflake. “I laughed when I first heard it too,” Dad said. “It's a translation from Inuktitut, and I guess the name stuck. Like snow.”

Dad's the king of lame jokes. After he makes one, he actually waits for you to laugh. And if you don't, he says something like, “Don't think your old man is funny, hey?” Then of course I have to tell him how funny he is. What I don't say is I mean funny strange, not funny ha-ha.

Geraldine's dark eyes look worried when I walk past her desk. She's still watching me when I slip off my ski jacket. “What's wrong?” she wants to know.

I can feel the other kids' eyes on me too. “Where's your dad, anyhow?” Earl Etok asks. “He's never late.” Earl has dark circles under his eyes and he's wearing khaki-colored cargo pants that hang so low on his hips they look like they're about to fall off.

Lenny Etok comes in after I do. He's a big guy with wide shoulders and a gut that spills out over the top of his jeans like a spare tire. There's something familiar-looking about him. “What's going on?” he wants to know.

“English teacher's late,” Geraldine tells him, without looking up from her composition. They sure keep their sentences short up here.

I take a deep breath. My nerves are shot, and I'm afraid I might start to bawl. Then what'll they think of me? “His dog got hit by a truck,” I manage to say. “I took her out for a run. That's when it happened.” I pause to catch my breath. “We're supposed to work on our compositions till he gets here.”

At first, no one says a word. Lenny sits down at his desk and reaches inside for a sheet of loose-leaf paper.

I shift from one foot to the other. Don't they have anything to say? Don't they want to know if Tarksalik's all right? And what am I supposed to do now? Work on some dumb composition and pretend everything's fine?

Lenny breaks the silence. “A run?” he asks, rolling his eyes. “Why would you go for a run in the middle of winter?”

It's the kind of question that doesn't need an answer. What Lenny really means is he thinks I'm stupid.

Earl looks up from his composition. “Who hit her?” he wants to know. His voice is totally flat, without any trace of emotion in it.

“I don't know. The guy just kept driving.” I clench my fist under the desk. If the driver had stopped, we would've been able to get Tarksalik over to Mathilde's sooner, and Tarksalik wouldn't have had to drag herself to the side of the road. The thought of her doing that is almost worse than the memory of seeing her body fly up into the air.

The bit about the driver taking off gets Lenny and his friends a little more excited. Now they're all looking at me. “What color truck was it?” Lenny and Earl ask at the same time.

“Red. It was a red pickup truck.”

“I bet it was Stanley from the airport. He's got a red pickup truck,” Earl says. “Did he have straight black hair?”

I don't bother answering. Everyone up here has straight black hair.

No one asks about Tarksalik. Don't they want to know how she is? People wouldn't act like this in Montreal. Even if I told the story to a complete stranger—say, someone on the bus—he'd be concerned about the dog. Do I ever wish I were home!

In the end, it's Geraldine who finally mentions Tarksalik, only when she does, she doesn't sound too sympathetic. “Dog dead?” she asks, shrugging her shoulders. She makes it sound like it's no bigger deal than what we're having for lunch. My whole body tenses up. What's wrong with these people? Don't they have hearts?

“Tarksalik's not dead,” I tell her, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as she does. “Mathilde doesn't think she broke any bones.”

Lenny is slumped over on his desk. Something tells me he was up late, and probably not because he was working on his composition. He lifts his head, and when he speaks, the words come out slow and choppy. “If the dog's in pain, how come you guys didn't just shoot her?”

Lenny makes a gun with his fingers. Then he points it at the side of his head and pulls the trigger. His dark eyes shine like embers. The other kids twitter behind their hands.

At first, I don't say anything. I can't believe Lenny just said that or that the others think it's funny. Then again, they laughed at Dad's dumb joke yesterday. “You've got to be kidding,” I say to Lenny.

Lenny doesn't bother to cover his mouth when he yawns. “I'm not kidding. I'm thinking of the dog.” He leans into his chair and rocks on its back legs.

For a second, I feel like I'm going to be sick. Imagine suggesting we shoot Tarksalik! How can that be “thinking of the dog”?

“You shoulda shot her,” Lenny mutters into his sleeve, but loud enough so I'll hear him. “Put her out of her pain.”

It's the sneer that comes afterward that makes me realize why Lenny seems so familiar. Why didn't I see it before? Lenny reminds me of Roland Ipkins. The thought makes me feel even sicker.

The one good thing about coming up to no man's land was finally escaping Roland Ipkins, a first-class asshole, who, since grade two, has made tormenting me a personal hobby.

Only now it feels like I've just met Roland Ipkins's Inuit double.

And I thought this day couldn't get any worse.

THREE

“A
ll right, ladies and gents,” Dad says, shaking the snow off his parka before hanging it over the back of his chair, “let's see what progress you've made on those compositions.” Dad's voice sounds forced, and I can tell from the fine lines at the outside corners of his eyes that he's worried.

I want to know how Tarksalik is doing, but I can't ask in front of everyone. Especially not after what Lenny just said. Besides, Dad and I have this arrangement: for the next five months, I'm just another student in room 218. Students don't go asking their teachers personal questions in the middle of class.

I try catching Dad's eye, but he's already working his way around the circle of students, checking topic sentences and saying how important it is to find just the right words to express your thoughts. “There's no point saying ‘very cold,'” I hear him tell Lenny, “if what you mean to say is ‘freezing.'”

I can hear Lenny scratching out the words. “Okay, I get it,” he says. “Freezing.”

“Very good,” Dad tells him.

Lenny nudges my dad and makes a loud guffawing sound. “Hey, Bill, you just said ‘very'!”

It's weird hearing Dad's students call him Bill. Dad only has eight students—nine, if you count me—and the atmosphere in room 218 is way more relaxed than in any classroom I've ever been in. Dad's class is a mix of grades ten and eleven. “The reason my group is so small,” Dad had explained over dinner last night, “is because many kids in George River drop out by grade ten.”

“By grade ten?” Most kids I know in Montreal at least finish high school.

“What do they do all day?” I asked, looking out the window and seeing nothing except a lot of snow and a few houses with satellite dishes.

“Some of them go hunting or fishing. But most of them stay home and watch tv. Too many of them drink and do drugs,” Dad said, shaking his head. “The ones in my class are the cream of the crop.” Dad looked up at me. “I'm lucky to be their teacher. They're good kids. Decent kids.”

Lenny's head is back on his desk, and now he's started to snore. The sound reminds me of an old radiator. It's hard to think of Lenny as the cream of anybody's crop. I expect Dad to say something, but when he passes Lenny's spot, all Dad does is pat Lenny's shoulder.

Small classes are one of the things that attracted Dad to the North. But Mom says it wasn't just that. “Your father's always had a restless soul—all that traveling he used to do. He's always looking for the next adventure,” she told me. “It's one of the reasons we didn't last. I'm the sort of person who likes to stay in one place. I think you're a mix of the two of us. You know, Noah, you might end up enjoying this adventure more than you expect to.”

If it weren't for Roland Ipkins, I'd have been perfectly happy staying in Montreal and having Dad visit at Christmas and for a few weeks in the summer. Mom's the one who pushed me to come up here. I think she was looking forward to having the house to herself. Not that she ever said so, but I got the feeling. What she did say was that she thought it was important for a guy my age to know his father. “You're a young man now, and you need a role model. Even if your dad and I didn't get along, he's a good man. And it's high time you got to know him better.”