Like Sam, I am leaning back against the door, sitting on one hip, my left arm resting along the back of the seat. Pinamen is dozing beside me. I can feel her thigh against mine. Her black hair falls over my arm and her head is resting in the crook of my shoulder. I dare not move for fear of disturbing her. I know that she is not completely asleep, that she can feel the warmth of my body, the purr of the motor and the jolts in the road. When we pass a transport truck filled with logs, she presses against me.

I don’t want this trip to end. I could drive my entire life with Pinamen at my side.

Suddenly I want her to know I’m here. I touch her arm gently. Her skin is so soft. She opens her eyes. They are black and luminous. She smiles at me, then goes back to sleep. My heart turns over and beats hard in my chest. I’m not the least bit tired.

The truck slows down. Sam concentrates on the road and turns right onto an almost invisible turnoff into the forest.

I can feel the blood rushing in my veins. I know where we’re going, and it makes me happy. I didn’t want to go back to the reserve right away to face everyone’s nosy questions. I can already hear them, see their crooked smiles.

“So, Nipishish, things didn’t go too well in the city? You’ve come back to us? What are you planning to do now?”

“Well, here you are again! Tell us, how was life in the city?”

And I know what I’ll say. “You want to know what I learned in the city? I learned that the whites don’t like Indians. I learned that there are even whites who hate us, who think that the sooner we disappear the better. That’s what I learned. We Indians can expect nothing — absolutely nothing — from the whites.”

This old path leads to Sam’s hunting camp. I came here when I was just three or four years old, with my father or Manie’s husband, Jos. Here I can see them clearly in my memories. They were fine men, brave and strong. People said they were forces of nature.

We crawl along bumpily between the trees. Sam drives carefully. The engine groans. We go around large boulders, follow the brook, ford a river.

We are all wide awake now. Sam and I have lowered our windows. There’s no more dust here. Just the fresh smells of resin, of damp undergrowth, of tender leaves. Birdsong invades the cab. In places the road is so narrow that the leafy branches brush the old bodywork.

We’re still following an old logging road left over from the days when men cut down trees with saw and ax and hauled out logs with teams of horses. They knocked down the big pines, the most beautiful, oldest trees in the forest. Huge rotting black stumps are dotted here and there.