I would have told you this story, Bear, when you were a little older; maybe I would have taken you on a similar trip. We wouldn’t have had to go to another country. We could have found one of the wild places at home, rambled from one world into this other, and I could have built you a fire and told you this story and hoped you gleaned from it some sort of wisdom. Maybe you would have, or maybe, like most men, you would have ignored your father and gone off to make your own mistakes. Because these are the sorts of things that build a life: crossing water to another country and wondering about ghosts and suffering the humiliation of being bested by an animal dumber than you and with more time to lose.

15

Anouk

Ottawa River, 1987

Mr chester trooped Anouk’s class to the school gymnasium on a morning when they weren’t normally there, and everyone got excited. Thought they’d be doing something physical with balls or hula hoops or rope. But when they got to the gym, there was a woman from St John Ambulance waiting for them, and on the floor lay a manikin dressed in a blue-and-white tracksuit.

Someone said the manikin looked like the killer from a Halloween horror movie. Anouk thought she looked like Red when he fell asleep on the couch with the newspaper.

The class sat in a circle around the manikin and listened as the woman from St John Ambulance explained something called cardiopulmonary resuscitation. CPR. Cardio: relating to the heart. Pulmonary: of the lungs, or, the nature of the lungs. Resuscitation: to revive, especially from apparent death. She showed them how to check the victim for signs of breathing, to listen to the nose and mouth, to see if the chest was rising. She showed them how to tilt the head back with one hand on the forehead, to open the airway by lifting the chin, to check the mouth for food or debris. She showed them how to pinch the victim’s nose and make a tight seal – rescuer’s mouth around victim’s mouth.

The class jittered.

She showed them rescue breaths, two together, steady. She showed them chest compressions. Arms straight, the heel of one hand on the breastbone, the other hand on top for added support. Fingers laced.

She asked for volunteers to practise on the manikin, and when Anouk raised her hand some of the kids groaned. Someone else said it wasn’t fair if she went first. Because of the germs.

Mr Chester stood up in the middle of the circle, and held his palms up flat the way teachers did when they wanted everyone to shut the hell up and listen.

‘I know something about this manikin that you don’t,’ he said. ‘I have a story about where she came from. We’re all going to have a turn and we’re going to be kind to one another and afterwards, I’m going to tell you what I know.’