Best Canadian Stories 2020

The Last Big Dance Conor Kerr

We ran out of hooch at that last big barn dance. It was good timing because the mounties showed up right afterwards and busted up the party. They came roaring in, with their usual big fuss and grandeur, pretending they were real tough guys, and not just a bunch of hooligans looking for booze and drunk ladies. Granny hated when they showed up. She didn’t want anyone in a uniform drinking the hooch she made, and she didn’t want anyone interrupting her fiddle music, least of all the mounties. Granny hates mounties. She’s got good reason too, they’re always showing up at her place looking for the stills, taking all the canned meat and vegetables from the cold cellar, busting up the horses, and lighting the wood pile on fire. They tried to bust her up once too but she smacked the man’s chubby cheeks red with her spoon and threatened to let loose her wolves on them. She didn’t have any wolves, but the city boys from Ontario who were posted on their first tour to northern Alberta didn’t know that. So instead of busting up Granny, they settled for busting up the barn dances.

That same night Uncle Jim went through the ice on the Amisk River on our ride back home. He was right pickled and somehow managed to fall out of the back of the wagon, off the bridge, and went all the way up to his neck in the muck and water even though the river’s only about three feet deep in that spot and he’s six foot plus. He kept screaming bloody murder about the beavers dragging him under the ice. Said he’d be back to “light them toothy fuckers up.” My cousins and I threw him the rope, tied it off to the wagon. Granny got the horses going and we pulled him right out of his hole and over the ice to the bank. We got him out of his clothes and wrapped in a woolen blanket in the back of the straw-laden wagon. First thing he did was grab a bottle of hooch he must have stashed in the straw and took a big swig. Then he winked at me.

“You and me girl, it’s just you and me,” he said with a moonshine slur before he passed out. My cousins and I killed time on the rest of the ride home by putting straw up his nose. We tried to see how many pieces we could get up there before he would swat them out in his drunken stupor.

“Jim never could handle his hooch,” Granny said as we unhitched the horses and headed into her cabin.

I moved into Granny’s one-room shack shortly after my tenth birthday in 1942. Granny had just celebrated her birthday by shooting a two-year-old bull moose off her front porch right in between the eyes with her old lever-action rifle. All the family and neighbours came over to help butcher up the moose and celebrate Granny’s good aim. It was at that party that my parents told me I wasn’t coming back with them. My mother and father had just had their ninth child and there was no room in their own one bedroom cabin. It didn’t bother me none. I liked the idea of having my own bed and not sharing it with four of my brothers and sisters. Uncle Jim had recently left Granny’s to go and fight the Nazis over in Europe. My parents told me that Granny was going to need a hand around her cabin. I figured that meant chopping wood, getting water, and shooting the odd deer or bird, tasks I was well-suited to having done them for as long as I could remember. In reality it meant spending days doing all those tasks plus carrying the fifty-pound sacks of grain half a mile back into the woods to the old copper still. The trail to the still wasn’t defined like the one that led back to my parents’ house. It was rough, tough walking. You were continually dodging around the fallen birch and pine trees and old spruce boughs with all that grain or wheat or corn or barley or horse feed on your shoulders. Worst of it was covering your tracks on the way out. If even a little hint of a trail was showing, a footprint in the snow, a tree moved out of the way, even leaves crunched up, Granny would hammer on you with her wooden spoon.

“You going to lead dem mounties right to it,” she’d yell. “Can’t cover a track, walking around out there like a goddamn mooniyah.”

At night, we’d sit around the wood-burning stove drinking spruce needle tea from the cast-iron pot permanently steeping on top of the stove. My night tasks were to make sure that pot was permanently full of water by melting snow in it and adding cups of spruce needles Granny had dried out during the summer. My other task was to place the beads on or thread Granny’s beading needle. In the last few years, her hands had taken to shaking and she couldn’t do either anymore. But once I got those on there for her, she’d be flying through the tanned moose hide creating elaborate flower designs. While she beaded, she’d tell stories of the land and all our relations that lived here with us. She told me about where mosquitoes come from, and why you should never trust a government official, a banker, or a mountie. She talked about long lean months in the winter when her, my mother and Uncle Jim wouldn’t have anything to eat except for the donations from some of the neighbour families who were also on the verge of starving. How she would have to do the hunting since there wasn’t a man around to go and get deer, birds, and moose. She talked about Jim, and how good of a shot he was with the rifle, how he learned to shoot animals in the head to ease their suffering and preserve more of the meat, how he had been doing that since he was six years old. Then she’d laugh and talk about how she pitied those Germans who got in the way of Jim’s rifle.

Sometimes one of Granny’s regular customers, usually one of the town folk from St. Lina or St. Paul, would make a special request for a fancy bottle. They’d show up with husked corn instead of the usual grain. Granny liked making corn moonshine. With the grain stuff, she would never bother checking it or caring what kind of proof it was. She would just bottle it up and send it off. With the corn mash moonshine, she would take extra time. She’d wait about a week after the mash first got cooking until the “dogs head” got going, watching for the large single bubbles coming up every twenty to thirty seconds. She’d slop it back, pouring it onto itself to kick out the cap. Then wait another three days until she really got shining. When she figured it was done, she’d fill half a jar from the still, take it in her right hand, and hit the wrinkled palm of her left hand with the jar three times. Not four times, not two times, but three times. She’d turn the jar onto the side and the shine would separate into three consistent pools if it had been done right.

“Hundothree proof, looking good.” She’d take a little sip. She never drank the shine, would just sip a tablespoon’s worth to check the flavouring. “She’s good my boy, let’s get this bottled up and out of here.”

Granny and her husband were both little kids when the Canadian government dissolved the Papaschase First Nation. All the band members had been off hunting or at the Fort and they took advantage of that and declared the First Nation null and void. When they tried to go back to their home to get some supplies, the mounties were already there and the house was up in flames. They fled with their families to the bush north of St. Lina, Alberta. Eventually, they grew up and started having kids until Granny’s husband up and died one day. My mother told me he died from heartbreak from being forced off the land he had loved, Uncle Jim told me it was TB. Either way, Granny never talked about her husband. And she never talked about the Papaschase land she had grown up on. But she loved woodpeckers. Anytime a woodpecker would be hanging around the cabin she would spend all day rolling hand-made cigarettes, drinking tea, and watching the bird work its way around a white poplar tree.

Uncle Jim showed up back at Granny’s cabin a few days after I turned fifteen. He spent a year after the war “showing those Quebecois ladies how to really jig.” Then he ran out of money and hopped a train back out to Alberta. When he first arrived, we’d sit around Granny’s cabin night after night and listen to him tell stories about Europe and the war. Everyone who was anyone, plus a few others from the area, would be over at Granny’s drinking ’shine and listening to Jim describe how the underwear looked on this lady from Trois Rivieres.

“You watch out she might be your cousin,” Granny would yell, smiling, with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth as she ladled out drinks for the listeners. That summer was a real party. We went through more ’shine than we had in a long time, partly because of the nightly story session, partly because Jim drank it all day every day.

Even if Uncle Jim drank the still dry the night before, he would be up for the sunrise. Didn’t matter if the sun was coming up at 8:30 in the winter or 4:30 in the summer, he would rise with it. I woke up every morning to the thwock of the axe splitting birch from the wood pile. The smell of tobacco trailed behind him as he walked past my bed carrying an armful of wood for the stove. I always tried to wait until the stove had the cabin roasting before I got out from underneath the wool blanket.

The morning after Jim fell through the ice on the Amisk River he was moving like a bear with an itch. After the stove got fired up, I could sense him standing right above me, but I refused to open my eyes, hoping he would get bored and wander off to check on the stills. He poked me in the gut with the barrel of the 30-30 lever action rifle we kept by the door.

“Hey girl, those beavers are probably dragging some kid under the ice right now.” He poked me again with the barrel of the gun. “Might even be one of your brothers or sisters.”

“Get out of here, you reek like booze you old bum.” I turned over and pulled the woolen blanket over my head. “That thing better be unloaded.”

“How would you feel about that?” Jim said.

“Don’t really care.”

He wasn’t going to leave me alone. The stove had taken the frost out of the air in the cabin. Jim sat on the chair across from my bed and started rolling a cigarette.

“Roll me one of those and I’ll help you out,” I said.

Jim finished rolling a smoke and passed it to me. Then he started rolling another one for himself.

“I found the spot. Ain’t no more beavers going to be dragging poor unsuspecting folk under the water any longer.”

We saddled up the wagon horses. They both snorted and stomped their appreciation for going for just a little ride and not hauling the wagon around. Granny walked by us on her way down to the still. She nodded at us, the customary cigarette hanging out of her lips, unlit until she finished her walk. Granny never smoked while walking.

“If you see a moose, take that instead of the beavers. We could use the meat,” she said.

Jim gave a faux salute and we set off through the bush. It was a good dozen miles or so to the spot on the river where Jim had gone through the ice. I settled into the saddle and lit the cigarette Jim had rolled for me. The sun had a warmth to it that we hadn’t felt in months. All around us the land was waking up from its winter rest. Birds chirped and fought between the bare branches of the poplar and birch trees, squirrels chattered to announce our arrival as we passed underneath them on the trail, a couple coyotes howled in the distance. The worst of winter was behind us and everything in the bush was out in full celebration. Even Jim seemed to momentarily forget that he had a score to settle with some beavers.

The melting snow had left a series of cracks through the ice on the Amisk River, and you could clearly see the spot where Jim had fallen through after the party. There was a thin layer of ice over the hole and in the busted-up area where he had been dragged out. Whiskeyjacks swooped all around us checking out what we were doing in their area, their grey and black feathers bristling with the prospect of a free meal.

“Awas,” Jim yelled at them, then muttered. “You’re giving away our goddamn position. Damn beavers will know we’re coming now.”

“I think the yelling gave us away, not the whiskeyjacks,” I said.

“No one cares what you think,” Jim grumbled and pulled a jar of hooch out of his saddle bag. “Shouldn’t be too shooken yah think?” He took a big swig.

“Not many beavers around here,” I said.

“Oh they’re coming, believe me, those toothy motherfuckers are coming.”

Jim and I hopped down from our horses and tethered them to a couple birch trees. They immediately started pawing up the snow to get at the old grass underneath it. The horses both seemed more than content to bask in the sun and eat the grass while we figured out where the best place to watch for beavers was. Jim made sure to bring the hooch, rifle, and the rolling tobacco from his bag while I kicked snow out of the way to try and make a dry spot for us to sit. For the next couple hours, Jim and I sat beside the creek and he drank the first bottle of hooch, and then the second bottle of hooch, and then started to get into a third. At some point during the second bottle Jim started firing the 30-30 randomly at the ice.

“Think I got one there.”

“Think the bullet ricocheted off the ice, Uncle.”

“Yeah, ricocheted right into a beaver. Just like I was planning.” He fired another one. “See, got another one.”

“Don’t know if you did, Uncle.”

“How many men you ever shot kid? Huh? I think I know when I hit a beaver or not.” Jim’s dark brown eyes were rolling circles in his head. “Think that’s enough killing for today. Let’s head back and see what Granny’s doing,” he slurred.

I got the horses and saddled them up while Jim ‘kept watch for beavers’ while rolling smokes for the ride back. As soon as I helped Jim up on his horse, he lit one of the smokes and then immediately fell asleep. I grabbed the reins from his mare and hitched her up to my horse and we went down the trail. The animal noise and chatter had faded with the setting sun. The only sound now was the snorts and snores from Jim as he half dozed and half smoked from behind me on the trail. At one point he woke up from his drunk, looked at me and said, “You know any Cree?”

“Not much,” I answered. “How about you?”

He had already fallen asleep before I finished asking. The smell of hooch on him was so strong it overpowered the mare’s breath, which wasn’t exactly mint fresh. All I could think of was getting him dropped off in a bed back at Granny’s.

As we got closer to Granny’s cabin, I noticed something was happening. I could hear shouts coming from inside. I stopped the horses, hopped down, and snuck up to the cabin. The shouts kept getting louder. It sounded like a couple of rough male voices with Granny’s mixed in. As I got closer, I realized I should have grabbed the 30-30 from Jim. Then I decided that it might be some of the family from down the road getting into it after a few too many drinks. I eased up a bit with this thought and walked through the woods with a bold step. I was almost at the cabin when Granny came flying out the door, and not of her own free will; two mounties followed. Their pale cheeks red with rage. I ducked behind the wood pile and watched as the one hit Granny across the face, knocking her back down.

“Damn squaw, you’re going to tell us where the still is or we’re going to burn this all to the ground,” the one who hit Granny yelled. The other mountie went and kicked her while she was on the ground.

I panicked. Granny swore at them in Cree and got up. The mounties kept pushing her back down. I gotta get Jim I decided, forgetting that he was wasted off his tree. The mounties, too obsessed with Granny, didn’t notice me start running back towards where I had left the horses and passed-out Jim. The shouting from Granny and the mounties followed me. When I got there, I found the horses, but no Jim. Stupid drunk, probably passed out under a tree nearby, I thought. I had to figure out what to do about Granny and the mounties. I thought of riding to my parents’ cabin and getting my father. It was only about fifteen to twenty minutes at a full gallop. In the distance the screaming continued. I was about to hop up on the horse when I heard the gunshot. And then another gunshot. And then another.

Back at Granny’s cabin, I found Jim standing over the bodies of the two mounties pointing his 30-30 rifle at them, red blood splattered across the white snow. One had been shot in the arm and the leg, the other just in the arm. Their firearms had been thrown into a pile over by the cabin’s steps. They stared at Jim with horror. Both young men from somewhere in Ontario, never guessing that they would be facing death in the northern Alberta bush. Jim held the rifle with the authority of someone who had killed before.

“Well now, why would you two go and beat up on an old lady for something as silly as moonshine?” Jim asked, his voice calm now, lacking the drunken stupor of earlier. Both the mounties stared at him, neither daring to answer. The one who had been shot twice started hyperventilating. “Alright, go on both of you back inside the cabin. We gotta get you bandaged up.” Jim prodded them with his rifle. Neither of them could move on account that they had been shot up, so I took to dragging them inside on the sled we normally used for wood. They were both heavy boys, definitely had been eating well inside the depot back in St. Paul, and there was a good yellow piss stain on the snow mixed in with the blood under where the one guy had been laying. Inside Granny’s cabin she had been prepping bandages and tourniquets and got to fixing up their bleeding. She wrapped them both in wool blankets and sat them down by the wood stove to help with the shock.

“Relax, no one’s going to die tonight,” Jim said. “But if either of you ever think of coming back to this area, well, that’s going to be a different story.” He lit a cigarette from where he sat in the chair with the 30-30 pointing at them. Granny finished fixing the mounties up and started pouring tea. I stood back in the corner trying to stay as close to the door or a window in case Jim changed his mind.

“After we finish this tea, thank you, Granny, by the way, you two boys are going to head back into town and tell the sergeant that you got in a fight with a couple of beavers out by the Amisk River. Got it?” Both the mounties nodded their heads as fast as they could. “Or as we said in Quebec, a good old castor fight.” Jim exhaled smoke in the faces of the two mounties. “Now you going to thank Granny for being so kind to make you tea?”

“Th-th-th-thanks,” they both said.

“Now let’s get you boys on those horses.”

As the mounties set off on the horses towards St. Paul, Granny, Jim and I turned back to where the 30-30 cartridges sat in the snow surrounded by blood and piss stains.

“I think it’s about time you headed back to your parents for a bit,” Granny said to me. “At least until your goddamn trigger happy uncle figures out his place.”

“They would have shot all three of us if I hadn’t of stepped in,” Jim said. “Should of known they would have been waiting until after we took off. Goddamn beavers.”

“Mounties, Jim, mounties.” Granny said. Her eyes were fixed on the blood. “Hooch is getting to that brain of yours.”

“You know what, I think I’m going to go and fix those beavers up right now.” Jim said. Without turning back to face us he walked over to where his horse was still standing saddled up from earlier that night. He hopped on the horse and headed back down the trail we had come from, the darkness quickly enveloped him.

“Should I go after him?” I asked Granny.

“Leave him be. Come on, let’s get this cleaned up.”

Jim didn’t come back that night. Granny told me not to worry about him and to save my own skin and head back down to my parents. She figured the mounties would be coming back with everything they had. The next day, instead of heading in that direction, I went towards the river where I found Jim’s horse tied up to the same birch tree that he and I had tethered up to the day before. A couple of empty hooch jars lay haphazardly in the snow beside a dozen cigarette butts that led in a trail towards a hole in the ice that hadn’t quite frozen over yet.