The Night Wanderer (3 page)

The way in and through the reserve was circuitous and somewhat confusing to the uninitiated.

Tiffany knew the road into the Otter Lake Reserve better than the back of her hand. Twice a day to and from school since grade three (grades one and two were taught at the school on the reserve), and on the weekends for grocery shopping, the occasional movie, or whatever, Tiffany had passed these same trees and curves in the road with numbing frequency. It was the only way in or out of the reserve. However, her grandmother was better. Scarily better. Granny Ruth had once surprised her by keeping her eyes shut and describing in amazingly timed detail all the familiar landmarks on the road as they passed them. She knew every pothole, every bee nest, and every dead tree.

Still, Tiffany knew far more about this section of the reserve than she cared to. For instance, they had just passed her Uncle Craig's place—the lone house in the vast expanse of wilderness that made up the northern part of the reserve. Lots of wood out front, stacked neatly beside the dog kennels. He liked to raise hunting dogs. Tiffany always thought he was a little weird, with just dogs and trees for company. He had once hired her to clean out his backyard and shed. Although she needed the extra money, she tackled the task with as much enthusiasm as she would a visit to the dentist. She found a box packed with sleazy magazines hidden in the back of the shed. Grossed out, she picked up her pace in an effort to finish and get out of there as quickly as possible. At the end of the afternoon, an impressed Uncle Craig complimented Tiffany on her work ethic and told her he also had a basement that could use a good cleaning. She declined, fearing what other icky things she might find down there, then grabbed the twenty bucks and raced home on her bike, putting it behind her.

She didn't usually bike this far out of the village, since the highway meandered back and forth across the countryside like a confused river. Picture an upside-down muffin and that was the visual image of Otter Lake: a huge, square-ish area with a towering drumlin located just south of dead center. Invisible straight lines boxed in the reserve, established a hundred years or so ago by long-forgotten surveyors. And near the south end of them uffin was the irregular shoreline of the actual body of water known as Otter Lake. Obstacles like a ravine, some farmland, a stream, and the large drumlin made a straight road into it impossible. On maps, the highway looked like a four-year-old had drawn it to the beat of a heavy metal song.

Uncle Craig's area was called Jap Land, a racist name given to it several decades ago by returning war vets, and it was located near the north end of the muffin. It was covered in bush and rocky outcroppings and one large swamp that gradually drained into the lake. Generally an unpleasant place. Even the crows stayed clear of it. After the Second World War, newspapers had been full of reports of long-lost Japanese soldiers hiding out on deserted islands, still thinking the war was on, and it was Archie Tree who had first called the northern part of the reserve Jap Land.

“Geez, there could be a whole squadron of Japanese soldiers living in there and we'd never know.” And then he'd laugh. Uncle Craig was practically the only person who lived in the area. Said he “liked all the elbow room.”

There was supposedly more than just elbow room in Jap Land. There were also stories of monsters and demons of the forest, prowling just beyond the roadside ditch. Nobody really believed in them anymore, but the swamplike terrain and the forbidding nature of the forest didn't make too many people want to challenge the legends. Tiffany had heard tales of murders, evil spirits, witch lights, and other assorted stories of supernatural mischief happening out here. Nobody actually knew the names of anyone who had been murdered or attacked in these dense bushes, but the stories thrived anyway. Tiffany wondered what Otter Lake would do if a real-life monster came out of those woods and into the village.

Native mythology was full of dangerous and mysterious creatures—wendigos who were cannibal spirits that ate anything and everyone, spirits that took over a body and made people do crazy things, demon women with very sharp elbows and teeth in parts of the female body that weren't supposed to have teeth. Tiffany occasionally thought of them when she and her friends played video games. The monsters she often battled on Darla's Xbox paled in comparison to some of the stories she'd half heard. Luckily, the beasts she fought on screen were far more real to her than whatever might be out there in the woods.

It wasn't long after she'd given Tony the
weekah
root that he tracked her down just outside the cafeteria, near the end of the schoolday. “Hey, that plant . . . root thing you gave me tastes like garbage. But it works. My throat feels better already. What is this stuff?” he asked excitedly.

“
Weekah
root,” Tiffany responded.

“Wow, you should bottle it. Got any more?”

The young girl smiled. “A whole swamp full.”

That was the beginning, almost four weeks ago.

“Ah, civilization,” said Tony, and Tiffany giggled. The glory of downtown Otter Lake lay ahead of them. On their right they passed Betty's Take Out, the best and only take out burger-and-fries joint in the village. This western part of the reserve was called Hockey Heights because the arena was located here. This was also where Tiffany's cousin Trish lived. Right over there on the right—the big brick building. Tiffany used to be friends with Trish up until they started high school.

Tiffany could see the church at the top of the hill. That's where her family used to go to services every Sunday, a long time ago. Now, for a variety of reasons, only Granny Ruth made the weekly pilgrimage, and Tiffany occasionally felt guilty for not going with her. When she was young, Tiffany used to love singing hymns with her grandmother, but one day Tiffany realized she believed in God but wasn't sure if he was doing a good enough job with her life. So, rather than be a hypocrite, she decided sleeping in was a better option.

Tony turned right onto a dirt sideroad and drove east until they reached the part of the village known as the Valley. It was there in a small gray house that Tiffany lived with her father Keith and the oversized-shoe-buying, hymn-singing Granny Ruth. It was just the three of them. Her mother, Claudia, had been gone for going on fourteen months now. Left with another man. A white man, or
chuganosh
as Granny Ruth called them in Anishinabe.

Like a stone thrown into a tub of water, that action had rippled out to the other members of the family, soaking each of them in their own way. To Tiffany, her mother's departure was like an early-morning jump into a cold November lake. The shock knocked her off her feet. One day it seemed she was part of a happy family, though the mother-daughter bond had shifted substantially as Tiffany entered her teens. Once close, they had drifted apart as other interests came flooding into Tiffany's world. Now there were times when Tiffany could remember her mother seeming upset, distant, almost depressed. Though not overly conscious of it, she felt a bit guilty for not being able to prevent what had happened.

In Claudia's absence, Granny Ruth felt a double burden. Tiffany needed a mother more than a grandmother at this stage in her life, and Granny Ruth struggled to be both. Her son also needed a certain kind of mothering in his attempt to understand the breakdown of his family. This was more responsibility than a woman her age should have to carry. What bothered her was that, unlike Tiffany, Keith didn't show his pain and confusion. He hid it. Kept it in a place where nobody could see it.

So, as a result, Tiffany's father had become distant and more sullen than ever, if possible. It also explained his blatant dislike of Tony. First of all, Keith had never actually contemplated the fact that his daughter would date. Like some fathers, Tiffany felt, given a choice he probably would have been happy for her to reach thirty without ever having dated a boy, let alone kissed one. Secondly, Tony was a
chuganosh
. Like Claudia's new man. And here he was, dropping Tiffany off. It was like showing up at the mouth of a cave, with a pot roast stuck up his shirt, knowing there was a hungry bear inside.

“Cool. Here we are,” Tony said with false enthusiasm. The car stopped in the crescent driveway of her house. It was a small, three-bedroom, government-built house typical to the community. Fairly generic, it was made of brick, with two windows facing the road plus a large picture window with drawn curtains. It had a longish driveway, sheltered by half a dozen poplar trees. Tied to one of the trees was a large, jet-black Labrador-mix mongrel named Midnight. And he was barking up a storm.

“Midnight, shut up!” Tiffany said in a forced whisper. Midnight complied somewhat, reducing it to a low grumbling.

Tony had been here several times before. The last time, he'd noticed a scarecrow leaning against the side of the house. It was wearing the same type of shirt he had worn on his first visit, when he discovered Keith wasn't quite comfortable with him dating his daughter.

Tiffany told him to ignore the scarecrow. “We've harvested the garden, so we don't need it right now. Dad's probably going to put it in the shed for the winter.” Tony also noticed the artificial man was his height. Same hair color too.

Upon further investigation, Tony had discovered what appeared to be bullet holes in the scarecrow and shirt. “Oh yeah,” explained Tiffany, “sometimes he shoots at crows and things when they're not afraid of it. Sometimes he hits the scarecrow, which is strange because he's such a good hunter.”

Not surprisingly, Tony remained in the car as Tiffany hopped out. “Uh, does your father still hate me?”

Smiling, Tiffany closed the car door but leaned in through the window. “He doesn't hate you. Besides, my grandmother likes you.”

Tony pointed at the scarecrow. “Yeah, but does your grandmother own a gun?” After one of their quicker good-byes, Tiffany watched him drive away, leaving behind a glow in her heart and a small trail of road dust. Tony appeared to be driving faster than usual as he disappeared. Tiffany, on the other hand, found her walk to the house long and ominous. At the other end of the gravel driveway, behind that screen and metal door (still showing scratch marks from a predecessor of Midnight's, a beagle named Benojee, her dog long since dead), was her family. And every time she made this walk from the road after school, she wondered what fresh new hell she would be walking into. Sometime in the last little while, the house had changed from a refuge to a prison. There had been a lot more fights with her father, and even once or twice, she'd caught herself ready to snap at her grandmother. Life had changed so much over the past year, and it was often impossible for her to know what to expect, from them and herself. She loved both of them, but Tiffany longed for the stability that disappeared with her mom.

Today, she was lucky. Nobody was home. Off went the offending shiny black shoes and on went the beat-up old Nikes. Add to that a ham-and-cheese sandwich, the last half hour of
The Young and the Restless
, and the day might not end too badly. That's when she saw the note on the coffee table, right in front of her favorite spot on the couch. It was in her father's handwriting. It had been waiting for her to get comfortable.

Tiffany,

I moved some things around in the basement. I've made a little room for you in the corner underneath the stairs. Could you move your stuff from your room to down there? You're going to be staying there for a week or two. I'll explain when I get home.

DAD

Basement? Her father was asking her to move into the basement, banished like some discount fairy-tale princess? Inside, Tiffany steamed and boiled and burned. This was just like her father. Making life-changing decisions without bothering to mention it to her. Tiffany had put up with a lot, but this was really too much. There was almost a Dickensian quality to this letter. She didn't know what that meant exactly, but she'd heard it used on television and was sure it applied.

“The basement,” she mused. No, Tiffany decided. She would not move a thing until she knew exactly what was going on. The basement would wait. And so would she.