Then the Terrible Day came. The day when Kunak stood out on the porch watching for the hunters to come back in. The day that Grandpa Chevy’s red toque was not in among the rest of the group. A white man came to him and said that Grandpa Chevy was lost. That they had waited overnight for him and he had not returned to their camp. A search party went out. After a week of Ski-Doos and helicopters screaming around Kunak’s village, the Rangers gave up. Kunak was fourteen years old when Grandpa Chevy disappeared. He never fished again.

Kunak was alone. Times changed and no one fished anymore. Not like they used to. They ate Kraft Dinner and warmed up frozen KFC in microwaves and called that supper. The people hunted at the Northern Store. Kunak got older. He littered the tiny village with empty bottles of Southern Comfort and cheap wine. He became lost in his own little town. He didn’t fit in. He was seventeen years old when he packed a duffel bag and hopped the train in Churchill.

He found day work in Winnipeg, but he wanted to be as far away from home as he could. He wanted to forget Grandpa Chevy. He wanted to forget the old life. He wanted to forget how there were no parents to raise him. No mother to hug him. No father to call his own. No grandpa to lick his cheeks.

The village women could leave on the arms of any white man they chose. That was how they got South. That’s how they got away from a life of welfare and food stamps. That’s how they got out of Northern housing projects. All they had to do was spread their legs to their Great White Hope and they were headed South. Inuk men didn’t have that same option. Inuk men found their Southern Comfort in other ways.

Kunak worked his way west until he found himself in Alberta. First Edmonton, then north to Fort Mac. The money was unreal. His bank account flowed over. He didn’t know that so many zeros could sit in one building. On days off and back in the city he would drink and eat and fuck and sometimes he would do all three at the same time. He loved it. He loved the hard work in camp, the lifting and grunting of a labourer. He loved the exhaustion it brought and the sleep that covered him like the caribou blanket of his boyhood.