Through Black Spruce

Attempting to socialize Gordon, Annie takes him to a local bar but immediately regrets it. The place feels hostile; “a lot of people milling about there are Netmaker allies” (45). After two beers turn into five, Annie starts dancing, and Gordon heads to the bathroom. When three men follow him in, Annie follows and confronts the men, saying, “You’ll lose a cock if you don’t get the hell out of here” (48).

Annie’s next visit to see her uncle is short. She doesn’t feel like talking and her nurse friend Eva now works the night shift, so she heads out soon after arriving. Before she leaves, she tells Will that he and her grandfather would be proud of her: “I protected my own. I stood up for a loved one” (48).

Driving home on her snowmobile, she has a flashback of her sister Suzanne at a photo shoot. She was halfway naked during the shoot, a beauty. After she disappeared with Gus, Annie’s seizures came back. When she arrives home and Gordon isn’t there, she worries. He arrives hours later with a dead marten in a trap; “he smiles and I reach my hand out to him, touch his cheek” (50).

Annie starts to visit her uncle at night when Eva is working, despite being past visiting hours. She resumes her story of traveling to Toronto with Eva. They stay in a seedy motel and spend the days walking and going to bars. They run into a group of Indians speaking Cree; after they pass them several times, an old man starts up a conversation, and Annie is responsive. They make a few jokes, and he says, “A girl, she looked a lot like you, but skinnier […] She used to be generous like you” (54). Annie thinks he is talking about Suzanne; a man named Painted Tongue seems to know that name. Eva pulls Annie away from the Indians.

Will’s sister Lisette brings over some moose stew and his friend Joe brings beer. They spend the evening together, Lisette reading inspirational pages from Oprah’s book club. Will and Joe don’t enjoy listening to her read. Will reflects, “I always wanted to lie to Lisette, to tell her I was too tired for it, but the soul leaves the body just a little bit at a time with each lie” (56). When Lisette heads home, Joe and Will head out with the rifle to hunt the bear. When they find it, they realize it’s “too old to make it through next winter. It needed killing” (57). When Will realizes the bear is blind, he doesn’t have the heart to kill it. Firing high up, he lies to Joe and tells him he killed it.

Will reminisces about his past, telling his nieces about his flying days. He quits after his third crash, “when flying quit me” (59). He loses all his money, his home, his family, and resumes hunting and gathering. He works as a hunting guide for white men but stops taking people out over time. “I let things slip those last years before you both left. Maybe I didn’t have the taste for killing I once had,” he reflects (59).

At the Northern Store, Will runs into Dorothy Blueboy, an old flame from grade school. They flirt, and she catches him buying a Playboy. The cashier warns Will that “Marius says you’re a snitch. You’re ratting him out to the OPP” (61). Will recounts the story to Joe and Gregory when they visit that evening. They joke about murdering Marius, but Will feels like he might go through with it. After his friends leave, his rifle talks to him, saying, “Be careful, son of Xavier. This town is a place of talkers. No one can know” (62).

Back at the seedy motel in Toronto, Annie has a seizure. She has a vision of getting portfolio pictures taken by a photographer. Then she sees Suzanne playing in the water, then a motorcycle, then a room full of beautiful women, before she finally wakes up.

She had fallen asleep while talking to her uncle. She wanders through the hospital, visiting two other rooms before getting scared of being caught.

Eventually she resumes telling her story to Will, saying, “I didn’t go down to Toronto with the plan of looking for Suzanne […] you of all people would say it was more than coincidence that the first Nish I run into knew something about her” (67).

Annie decides to stay in Toronto longer than the week, borrowing $500 from Eva. She wants to talk with the Indians who know her sister. She goes and finds the grandfather, asking him where Painted Tongue is. She notes that “he doesn’t talk at all, but me, I think he can,” and he invites her to a Sunday evening feast “where the Maple Leafs play” (70).

Under an overpass the next evening, Annie dines with the group of Indians, though she is uncomfortable with the dirtiness and drinking. She asks the grandfather where the Dumb One (Painted Tongue) is, but he doesn’t know. She eats goose they poached and roasted before learning her sister had been there before; “she worked at a bar when she first moved here. She’d always leave us money after her shift” (74). They saw her with her boyfriend Gus; she was always fighting with him, and he had gotten into a bad crowd of motorcycle men. Painted Tongue arrives and hands Annie a couple newspaper pages, which turn out to be pictures of her sister.

A white man follows Annie on her way home; she throws her purse at him, and then he throws her to the ground. He beats her up and tries to rape her. She is saved when Painted Tongue arrives and beats him. It’s revealed that Painted Tongue is just his street name; his real name is Gordon.

Will starts to feed the bear that he failed to kill, leaving old hams and moose haunches out on his back porch. He develops kind feelings toward the old thing, despite knowing it is a wild animal. He attempts calling Dorothy Blueboy but always hangs up and ends up getting caught. “Caller ID? What the hell is that? It’s technology conspiring against me,” he grouses (79).

When Will was five, his parents took him to a white boarding school. This separation from his family was brutal, as Will didn’t understand why he had to go.

Several months after Marius beat up Will, he drives to Will’s house with a couple friends and throws a flaming bottle of gasoline through the window. Will “heard Marius’s friend screaming ‘Snitches die like witches’” (83). Will puts the fire out with a garden hose and then calls the police. The police don’t believe his story, thinking Will did it himself because he was drinking and smoking cigarettes.

This incident emboldens Will. He starts feeding the bear every day, he runs with his rifle, and he confronts a group of heckling teenagers, telling them that he knows they work for Marius: “Tell your boss that he will not feel the bullet that explodes his skull” (87).

Gordon and Annie go to her mom’s house for dinner. When her mom is embarrassed after asking Gordon questions that he can’t respond to, Annie gives him paper to write down his answers. The two of them get along well, and when they start playing cribbage, Annie heads to the hospital to visit Uncle Will.

When she shows up at the hospital, Joe is crying at Will’s bedside. He apologizes for not protecting her uncle. She asks about Uncle Antoine, who was taken to Timmins by the police. Annie tells Joe about the altercation at the bar, and they reflect that the Netmakers seem “broken since all of this happened” (90). Joe reflects, “I think even his own family knows Marius needed what came to him” (90). Joe leaves at the end of visiting hours, leaving Annie to continue her story about Toronto.

Gordon kills her attacker and brings her back to the Indian camp. He is now her protector and stays with her until she heals. The Old Man visits and urges them to travel to Montreal. Though all Annie wants to do is go home, she feels compelled to go anyway because Suzanne’s agent recently moved there.

When Annie goes to the agent’s office, he recognizes her as Suzanne’s sister. He tells her that he doesn’t know what happened to Suzanne but he is worried sick, and he suggests she ask the police for his interview transcript if she wants more information. Annie doesn’t like the vibe that he gives off. When he asks her if she has news of Suzanne, she shakes her head no. “I think I see something like relief cross his face before he covers it up,” she observes (94). Before she leaves, the agent gives her an envelope of cash. It’s Suzanne’s last paycheck, which never collected. He also offers Annie modeling job if she ever wants to get a paycheck herself and shares the names of two of Suzanne’s modeling friends.