LITMIR.BIZ

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this child out of here.” I carried the boy to Eric’s snowmobile.

      Eric wrapped the boy in an emergency blanket, then placed him on the skidoo seat between the two of us to keep him warm. We sped off to the Health Centre, leaving Sergei to follow as best he could.

      * * *

      Forewarned of our arrival, Judy, one of the Centre’s two registered nurses, was waiting for us inside the glass front door of the two-tone brick building. Built in the mid 1980s, the precise lines of its urban architecture seemed at odds with the tangled web of the forest that surrounded it. Although band members called it the Health Centre, the one-storey building housed both health and social services, including home care, an addiction program and a shelter for family violence. Because of the closeness of the community and the potential for family interference, the Centre’s director preferred to hire First Nations staff from outside the reserve. Only two out of the complement of twelve were Migiskan Anishinabeg. Judy was one of them.

      She held the door open for Eric as he carried the stillunconscious child into the large foyer. Since my shack had provided the opportunity, I felt partially responsible for his drugged state. So I followed them through another set of glass doors and into the treatment room, where Judy checked him over.

      The girl lay in a neighbouring bed with an intravenous tube inserted into her arm. A plump woman, her brow creased in worry, patted her daughter’s hands and muttered repeatedly, “All my fault.”

      I turned my attention back to the boy. “Is he going to be okay?” I asked as the nurse checked his blood pressure. Eric, standing beside me, gave the boy’s other arm a comforting pat.

      “His blood pressure’s a bit low,” she replied before bending over to listen to his chest with a stethoscope.

      She stood up. “Same symptoms as the other child, shallow breathing, slow heart rate. I’m hoping an intravenous drip will flush out the drug. Fortunately, he wasn’t in the cold long enough for hypothermia to set in.”

      My thoughts returned to the orange hat. “How could John-Joe leave a child in this state?”

      Eric started. “What does John-Joe have to do with this?”

      I told him about the single snowshoe track leading away from the hut. I finished by saying, “As far as I know, John-Joe is the only person around here with an orange baseball cap.”

      “Damn him. Doesn’t make sense he’d be selling marijuana. I thought he’d overcome his cocaine addiction and turned against drugs of any kind,” Eric replied. “I’ll talk to him when I get back to the Camp.”

      “If you can find him,” I muttered, figuring the young man would take off once he learned about the discovery of the kids.

      I brushed the boy’s tangled brown hair away from his eyes and smoothed it over the pillow. His thin face seemed so forlorn in the sterile expanse of the bedding.

      “Shouldn’t we be calling the boy’s mother?” I asked.

      “His mother’s dead,” Eric replied. “And his father’s in jail.”

      “He must have someone looking after him.”

      “His kòkomis, grandmother, but she doesn’t have a phone.”

      “Give me her address, and I’ll get her.”

      “No, I’ll do it. She’s blind and doesn’t speak much English.” Eric made for the door. “You stay with Ajidàmo.”

      “Ajidàmo?”

      “Little Squirrel,” Eric replied with a faint smile. “And usually about as frisky.”

      I looked down at the still, thin body and hoped it wouldn’t be long before he was darting up a tree like his namesake, but when Eric returned with Ajidàmo’s grandmother twenty minutes later, there was little change in the child’s condition, although his breathing had become stronger.

      Leaning heavily on Eric’s arm, the old woman shuffled into the room. Concern mixed with fear deepened every line on her square face. As if directed by an unknown force, her cataract clouded eyes stared straight at her silent grandson as she moved towards him. Murmuring in Algonquin, she ran her trembling arthritic fingers tenderly over his body and his face, then retrieved a small leather pouch from inside her old woollen coat.

      When she started to open it, the nurse intervened. “Could you put that stuff away?” she snapped in English.

      But the old woman, not comprehending, continued to work loose the thin leather thong that held the pouch closed.

      Judy took the pouch from the old woman. “You can’t use it here.”

      As realization dawned, perplexed anguish spread over the grandmother’s face.

      “Give it back to her, Judy,” Eric interjected. “Kòkomis doesn’t mean any harm.” Besides, you might discover our old people’s ways have just as much healing power as the modern.”

      Judy pursed her lips in disbelief but said nothing further to prevent the ancient practice.

      The old woman shook out bits of stones and shells from the amulet and scattered them around her grandson’s head. She extracted another amulet from her pocket, along with a thin flat stone. Using her gnarled fingers as a guide, she deftly poured a trickle of dried cedar from the pouch into the slightly hollowed centre of the stone. She turned her blind eyes to Eric and said something in Algonquin, at which point the nurse cried, “Stop. You can’t burn the cedar with oxygen in the room.” She pointed to a red cannister propped in the corner of the room.

      Eric spoke to the old woman, who shook her head angrily and cried “No! Make Ajidàmo good.” Tears slowly seeped from under eyelids that had probably shed more than their fair share of sorrow.

      Eric, disconcerted by the weeping, looked at me helplessly.

      I glanced at Little Squirrel, who seemed to be breathing easier. “Can’t we take him to where there isn’t any oxygen?”

      “Yes, a good idea,” Eric added thankfully.

      Judy hesitated, then perhaps finally accepting that modern medicine could sometimes use some help, grabbed the intravenous stand and expertly wheeled it together with the boy’s bed into the hall. We followed behind.

      Eric lit the dried cedar. Kòkomis gently blew on the small flame and soon had a faint wisp of smoke spiralling into the air. She then placed the four of us in a circle around the head of Ajidàmo’s bed. To close the circle, I reached across the bed to Eric’s outstretched hand. He grasped it firmly and smiled. With no beginning and no end, the Anishinabeg call this ceremonial circle, the cycle of life. I squeezed Eric’s hand in return. Maybe this experience would give our relationship renewed life too.

      Kòkomis extracted a long, speckled brown eagle feather from inside her coat. Using this sacred item of a respected elder, she slowly washed smoke over the still figure of her grandson. She chanted softly. Eric joined her chanting, and finally Judy, who had probably decided she shouldn’t cast aside all the traditional ways of her people.

      I closed my eyes, breathed in the cleansing scent of the cedar and found myself gradually uplifted by the love that flowed from the old woman to her grandson. A feeling of peace settled over me, and I found myself lost in thoughts that had more to do with my own need for a sense of wellbeing.

      A small cough brought me out of my reverie. I opened my eyes to see two shining brown eyes staring up at the smiling face of his grandmother. Smiling back, Ajidàmo whispered, “Kòkomis.”

      “Amen,” I said to myself, while I tried not to think of what would have happened if I hadn’t heard the giggling in the shack.

      Although the boy appeared to be suffering no ill effects other than a lingering grogginess and some minor frostbite in his toes, Judy felt he and the girl should be more thoroughly examined by a doctor.

      “This was more than straight marijuana,”

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