TALIA AND THE WOLF by vicky gooding From:       canislupus@yahoo.com Subject:    hi from me Date:        September 2 12:30:45 PM MT To:           dharmabum@sfu.ca Dear Dad, well...we’re in a place called Fort St. Francis. very small. lmost at Fort MacKenzie, one more plane to go. Mom’s excited about her new job. I want to go home. is it hot at the ashram? Do you think you might be going back to Vancouver soon? your daughter, Talia

        Talia felt like she’d spent her whole life getting on and off planes. And ever since they’d left Vancouver yesterday, each plane had been getting smaller, louder and bumpier. Now Talia slouched beside her mom, Nora, in an eight-seat Twin Otter, worrying about her cat, Jack, who’d been stowed in his carrier at the back of the plane. Talia’s big sister, Zoe, was across the aisle, nodding to the beat from her headphones. They were starting their last two-hour flight into their new home—Fort Mackenzie, NWT. Mom kept smiling with both rows of teeth and saying, “What an adventure!” Every time she heard her mom say that, Talia felt the lump in her stomach get a little bigger.
Their plane had just cleared the mountains east of the Mackenzie Valley when the woman in front turned and shouted over the engine noise. “I didn’t know they allowed fourteen year olds to fly planes.”
        Mom laughed and leaned forward. “Did you hear his voice crack when he showed us the emergency exits?”
        “Mom!” Talia cried, yanking Mom’s sleeve.
        “What, sweetie?”
        “He can hear you!”
        “Don’t think so. Engine’s too loud. And he’s too busy reading his newspaper.”
        “What?” Talia leaned across her mom and peered down the aisle into the cockpit. Sure enough, the pilot was reading. Not only that, his paper was blocking the windshield.
        “Isn’t that dangerous?” she asked.
        “Nothing he can hit,” yelled the woman in front. She laughed. “Look out the window.”
        “She was right. Below them Talia saw grey-green muskeg, stubby trees, and a winding network of rivers and lakes—an expanse of interweaving blue and green curves. Talia watched the sunlight glint off the lakes below and the shadow of the plane ripple over the sparse trees. She pressed her face against the glass, hoping she’d see an animal, any animal—grizzly, caribou, moose. But what Talia wanted most to see was a wolf.

        Talia rested her head against the cool glass and closed her eyes. In her mind, she was walking up through the orchard at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, watching for bears in the apple trees. Talia rounded the side of the house and there was Mom sitting on the porch with Grandma. She’d just arrived from Vancouver and Talia could hear her saying, “Nursing station... Northwest Territories... one year... what an adventure!”
        The next day they were winding down the narrow inlets to Desolation Sound and then skimming across the Strait of Georgia with Grandpa, on their way to catch the first ferry back to Vancouver. For the first time in her life, Grandpa had let Talia take the helm. “A treat,” Grandpa had said, “Because we won’t see you for a whole year.”
        Talia opened her eyes and sniffed back the tears. Something was moving down there. She strained against her seatbelt, trying to get a better look. Two animals were chasing the shadow of the plane, but they couldn’t keep up. Talia closed her eyes again and imagined herself below, running close to the ground through the scrub willow, skirting the shallow lakes on her broad paws. She was just about to catch up with the two animals when her stomach dropped.
        “Snap on your safety belts,” the woman in front of them shouted. “In for a ride here.”
        “What’s going on?” Mom yelled.
        “Coming into Mackenzie. And we got fog!”
        “Fog? In August?”
        “Yup. Dangerous. Last week we came in at right angles to the runway. Pulled up just in time.”
        Mom reached across the aisle, “Zoe! Seatbelt!”
        Zoe turned, moved one of her headphones and gazed at her mom with a sleepy, puzzled expression.
        “Seatbelt! Make sure it’s good and tight!”
        Zoe smiled and mouthed “Okay!” and put her headphones back on, lost in her own world as usual.
        A large man seated just behind the pilot leaned forward and yelled into the cockpit, “You’re not gonna try to land in this, Andrew. Take us back to Francis. You hear me, Andrew?”
        “Stow it, Sean. You’re scaring the kids,” yelled a man with a grey ponytail.
        The woman behind Talia leaned forward, “We’re okay!” She smiled. “Andrew knows what he’s doing.”
        “Fog’ll lift after Hecate’s Bend,” Andrew shouted.
        Talia pulled her seatbelt snug across her lap and leaned back in her seat. She gripped the armrests and closed her eyes.
        But the fog lifted as they approached the runway. They had a perfect landing, taxied across the gravel and up to the smallest airport terminal Talia had ever seen—a small brown trailer perched between the edge of the runway and the bush. Zoe declined the pilot’s extended hand as she picked her way down the rickety stairs from the plane. Talia scrambled down next and stopped.
        “Keep moving, please,” said the pilot.
        “What about Jack? Mom?”
        “What’s the hold up?” asked the pilot.
        “Her cat,” said Mom.
        “He’s with the baggage,” said the pilot. “Be on the other side of the terminal, after the cops check the bags. Let’s go now.”
       

Just outside the terminal door, they passed three RCMP officers who studied the passengers from behind mirrored sunglasses, nodding curtly at a few. Their hands were folded behind their waists and their jackets hung open to reveal the guns slung on their belts.         “Why the armed guard?” muttered Zoe.         “Not now, dear,” whispered Mom through her teeth. She smiled at the officers and they stared back.

        The terminal was jammed. Small children raced around, screaming and laughing and weaving in between the adults and the older kids. They were talking in a language Talia didn’t recognize. She thought she could hear the steady heartbeat of drumming but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
        A boy Talia’s age leaned against a wall, head inclined towards an old woman who was holding his arm. He was a little taller than Talia. He had green eyes and his black hair was streaked blond and cut short, making his cheekbones look even higher. Talia felt a tingling from her feet to the top of her head, but especially on the back of her neck. She wished he’d look at her. As if he could feel her gaze, he glanced at Talia and met her eyes. The boy then said something to the old woman and nodded in Talia’s direction. Talia blushed and turned away, trying to look unconcerned, but her eyes kept moving back to him.
        “Nora? Nora Lovell?” A tall woman in a black leather jacket was striding through the main door. She had short, bright red hair brushed firmly away from her face and two deep vertical lines between her eyes. A man with salt and pepper hair followed her into the terminal.
        “Am I glad to see you!” said the woman, grabbing Mom’s hand and holding it fast. “I’m Mona. Head nurse ‘til now. Thanks to you. Worried you wouldn’t make it. Or that you’d change your mind. Then I’d be stuck in this godforsaken place for another day.”
        For just a second, everyone in the terminal stopped talking. Talia thought she heard the word “bushed.” Mom turned towards the man with Mona and smiled.
        “Oh, yeah. Alfred,” said Mona. “Drives for us and cleans up.”
        “I’m so glad to meet you,” said Mom, shaking hands with Alfred. Then they were all shaking hands.
        Alfred’s hand was warm and dry. He had a broad face with fine lines around his eyes and mouth, and a gap tooth smile. His left eye was cloudy and didn’t seem to focus very well. Like Jack. “Mom, what about Jack?”
        “Hello!” boomed a voice behind them. Everyone jumped a bit and Talia turned to face a man so tall she had to lean back to get a good look at his face. It was one of the police officers. He’d taken off his sunglasses.
        “Alfred,” he said and nodded. He ignored Mona. “You’re the new nurse,” he said, shaking Mom’s hand. “Corporal McLaughlin, but you can call me Bob. Pretty new here myself. Just last spring. All the way from Port aux Basques.”
        “Nora Lovell,” Mom said, and she gave him a big smile.
        Corporal Bob turned to Alfred. “Not very often I see Rosie at the airport, Alfred.” He nodded towards the old woman with the green-eyed boy.                            “What’s up?”
        “High school kids going to Smith, school next week,” said Alfred.
        “High school kids!” said Mom. “But they told me there’s a high school here. Zoe, and Talia…”
        “Don’t worry. They got high school,” Mona interrupted. “Just some of the parents know the only way their kids’ll get a decent education is to fly them the hell outa here. Not that your kids have anything to worry about, of course.”
        She turned on Corporal Bob. “Shouldn’t you be searching for bottles? Get a move on, eh. I gotta plane to catch—tonight.” Mona spun around and charged out the door to the parking lot. “Just one more reason why I’m glad to get out of here,” she called.
        “Why are they looking for bottles?” asked Mom as she walked out beside Alfred.
        “MacKenzie’s dry,” he said. “Almost two years now.”
        Across the parking lot, Talia saw a dusty blue 4x4 with NWT Health Services, Fort Mackenzie on the passenger door. The writing was almost hidden by grey mud and dust. There was some writing underneath in a language that Talia couldn’t read.
        “What language is that?” Mom asked as they approached the truck.
        “Dene language,” said Alfred.
        “Dene,” said Mom. “Do you speak Dene, Alfred?”
        He nodded.
        “I’d like to learn. How do I say ‘hello?’”
        Alfred looked away for a minute. He sighed. “We don’t really say hello,” he said. “But you can say ‘mahsi cho’ when you meet someone.”
        “Mahsi cho,” said Mom. “You try it Talia.”
        But Talia pretended not to hear. She’d learned one thing from eight years in French immersion—she wasn’t good with languages. Well, sure, she could carry on a conversation (sort of) with her two best friends, Miles and Karimah. The reading wasn’t so bad, but she was hopeless at writing. All her teachers seemed to sharpen up their red pencils just for Talia.
        “I’ll just wait over here,” she said. “And watch for Jack.”
        More than two dozen massive black ravens lined the edge of the terminal roof and clustered on the cabs and boxes of the trucks in the parking lot. They croaked and preened, making sounds Talia had never heard before. The one closest to them, on the back of the Health Services truck, was strutting back and forth and squawking. You look just like Mona, thought Talia. The raven stopped for a moment and looked at Talia, cocking his head to one side.
        Talia laughed out loud. She thought of her sketchbook and pencils in her backpack. Would she have time to draw him? But as soon as she opened her pack, the raven flew off.
        Zoe was leaning against the fence beside the runway watching the RCMP go through the baggage from their plane. The man from the plane, Sean, the one who’d been so scared, was talking to her.
        Typical, grumbled Talia. I stand here by myself while Zoe gets all the attention. Not that she wanted attention from this guy. No way. He was kind of tall and skinny, and really old—probably in his twenties. But still, it would be nice to have a little attention herself, for a change.
        Talia felt the skin tingling on the back of her neck again. She turned and saw that boy, the one with the green eyes, standing at the top of the steps leading down to the parking lot. He and the old woman were looking towards Talia. Probably something to do with Alfred, or Zoe, more likely. Talia sighed. She wondered if he’d be in her class at school. At least he’s too young to get all hung up on Zoe. I hope.
        “I don’t even know if we’ll have our own phone,” Zoe was saying.
        “Sure you will. What do you think, we don’t have phones up here?”
        Zoe shrugged and looked away.
        “Hey, what’s taking so long?” asked Talia. “Jack’s probably terrified.”
        Zoe put her arm around Talia’s shoulder and gave her a hug.
        “The police are checking for bottles. Alcohol.” The man smirked. “But I don’t suppose you need to worry about that.”
        “Talia, this is…”
        “Sean,” he said, looking a little peeved. Talia guessed he’d already told Zoe his name.
        “Sean, this is my sister Talia. She’s twelve.”
        “Almost thirteen!”
        “Your sister?” Sean said. “Step-sister, right?”
        Zoe turned towards Sean with a look of innocent surprise. “No. My sister,” Zoe insisted, smiling.
        “How can she be your sister?” Sean said. “I mean...”
        “Yes...?”
        “Well, you two do look kind of different,” he said.
        “How?”
        “You’re...”
        “Black?”
        “Well...yes,” said Sean.
        “Mom says you never know what you’re going to get when you have artificial insemination,” said Zoe. “Anyway, I wouldn’t really say black, would you? More like...coffee and cream?”
        Talia covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a laugh, as she watched Sean’s face fall. “Oh, I see my bag,” said Zoe. “And Talia, there’s Jack! Bye…Sean!”          
        Talia held up the pet carrier close to her face so she could peer through the slats. “Are you okay, Jack?” Jack was standing. His one eye was all red pupil reflecting the light.
        “Meow?” he asked.
        Talia laughed. “You’re fine. We’ll be in our new home soon. I can’t believe Mom wanted me to leave you back in Vancouver.”
        “I’ll come see you at the nursing station,” called Sean as they walked away.
        “Full marks for persistence,” Zoe murmured. “Sean lives right here in Fort Mackenzie, so we’re probably going to be seeing a lot of each other.” She rolled her eyes and shouldered her bags.
         “Why don’t you tell him you like girls?” asked Talia as they loaded their bags into the truck.
        “Because that would be telling,” said Zoe.
        Talia sighed. It wasn’t going to be easy to spend a whole year with Zoe. Talia had just gotten used to having her gone and now they were going to have to share a three-bedroom apartment.
        Zoe had quit school almost two years ago and announced she was going on a road trip with her girlfriend, Reena. Mom and Dad had had minor heart palpitations and they’d called endless family conferences on the importance of finishing school and going to university and family sticking together. Even Zoe’s dad, Dr. Thomas, who Talia had only met once, had called all the way from Toronto to try to convince Zoe to finish school. In the end, Zoe said, “I’m not going back to school and you can’t stop me.”
        After Zoe had left, Talia wasn’t sure whether she missed her sister or if she was relieved. Sometimes it was hard to be Zoe’s little sister.
        “You’re my ray of sunshine,” Mom always said to Zoe.
        And Zoe was a ray of sunshine, with her big smile and her sunny disposition. That was the problem. She was impossible to hate. With Zoe around, Talia felt like she was invisible. With Zoe gone, Talia didn’t have to fight for attention all the time. But once Zoe left, their whole family fell apart. Talia’s father moved in with his girlfriend who was just a few years older than Zoe—over twenty years younger than Mom. Not to mention Dad.
        That’s probably what made her move us up here, thought Talia as she looked out the window of the Health Services truck. They were rattling down a narrow gravel road with a steep ditch on both sides. Alfred said they were on their way to town, but where was the town? All Talia could see were rocks and road and short spindly trees.
        “There’s the hotel,” Alfred shouted as they roared around a corner and bounced past what looked like a large log cabin. Seconds later, they pulled up in front of a low, two story brown box facing a muddy parking lot. A large sign hung over the front door with “Nursing Station” in English and underneath some words in Dene language.
        “Welcome to your new home,” said Mona with a sneer in her voice.
        “How much longer do we have to put up with this woman?” Zoe whispered.
        Talia carried Jack up the steep steps, past the clinic on the main floor and up more steps to the apartments above the nursing station. Mona unlocked the door and showed them into a small apartment at the end of the hall. A suitcase was open in the middle of the floor and clothes were strewn over every available surface. “I just have to finish packing and then it’s all yours,” said Mona.
        “Let me know if you need anything,” said Alfred. He nodded at Nora and smiled at Talia and Zoe.
        He was barely out of the room when Mona snarled, “They’re never here when you want them and they’re always hanging around when you don’t want them. These people have no boundaries.”
        Now that they weren’t in public, Mona seemed to have burst her own boundaries. Talia felt the lump in her stomach getting harder.
        “They walk right into your office, into your apartment! No knocking! Just walk in! Day or night. Doesn’t matter.” While Mona talked, she grabbed shirts, pants, T-shirts and sweaters, and rolled them, one by one, into precise, tight cylinders. “That social worker,” she continued. “What’s her name? Bernice. Alfred’s wife. She’ll tell you it’s cultural. But I don’t buy that. They’re just rude!”
        Talia perched beside Mom on the edge of the hard brown couch.
        At the kitchen table, Zoe was staring out the window. She had her headphones on again. Mom’s lips were a thin line, turned down at the corners, her arms folded across her chest. Her eyes narrowed a little as she stared at Mona and she looked like she could smell something bad.
        Mona snapped her suitcase shut and disappeared into the bathroom, still talking. Talia tried to remember the word she’d heard at the airport when Mona was yelling about wanting to get out of town. “Bushed.”
        Is that what happened to Mona? Will it happen to Mom? To Zoe? To me?