“Me! Me! Me!”

The women have closed ranks. Their bodies are like the trunks of the huge black spruce, deeply rooted, pressing against each other. Their eyes flash. Under their left arms they carry tin pans filled with moose meat. In their right hands they hold long butcher’s knives, their blades gleaming.

The wardens have been caught off guard. Suddenly they are aware that they are outnumbered, and they are trapped. The situation has got out of control. They are actually afraid, because anything can happen now.

Without taking her eyes off them, Manie slowly raises her knife and lets the side of the blade fall on the edge of the pan. She strikes a hard blow followed by three light beats and repeats this rhythm, keeping time, like heartbeats. Gradually, the other women join in, each one beating the edge of her pan with a knife. They spread out.

The wardens understand that this is their last chance. They quickly make their way through this forest of women. Then they leap into their truck and disappear in a cloud of dust.

• • •

Charlotte, Sam Brascoupé’s wife, is Attikamek, from Haute-Mauricie. She is thin and very tall. When she speaks, I can hear Pinamen. One day I casually asked her if she knew a Pinamen Petitguay, a girl a bit older than me. She wasn’t sure, because she’s been living with Sam for a long time, but she thought they might be related. I didn’t say why I was asking, but I think she guessed. I can still remember the way she smiled when she saw the way my cheeks turned red and my eyes lit up.

6

ONE AFTERNOON IN the middle of July, the ground suddenly begins to shake and hum. Two ducks fly off in a panic, honking as they struggle to climb into the air. Their silhouettes gradually turn into a blur on the horizon.

What’s going on? The humming continues, and slowly but surely it gets louder, like rolling thunder.

The sound is coming from the road.

We hover around the doors of our tents and cabins. Some people watch from the shelter of the trees. All eyes are turned toward the road, that bloody road that never brings any good. The dogs are whining, their muzzles pressed flat between their paws.

There’s a dazzling streak of silver light, like the reflection of the sun on the water. It’s an enormous white truck with wheels as tall as a man. It takes up the whole road as it pulls a huge flatbed trailer. On the trailer is a gigantic yellow bulldozer, its shovel gleaming like an ax blade so wide that it extends beyond the sides of the trailer.

And then there’s more. Other trucks loom into view, coming one after another in single file like a brigade of canoes in the spring.

It is an amazing sight.