But it all dried up. He was told that oil works that way. The ebb and flow of the market. Tidal riches. After two years of no work he was sitting on the cement. His ass ached. His knees crumbled. His spirit was gone. No work. No money. No apartment. Was this Southern comfort? He spent more and more time at Hope Mission looking for anyone who looked like him. He wanted to find his own, even if it was one of those Inuk women who had fucked their way South.

There was one woman who had caught his eye. He had heard someone call her Aviak. If he got enough money from today’s sidewalk fishing, he would ask her to come out with him. He would take her out to Mr. Sub for a footlong. Kunak giggled quietly—he could give her a foot long all right.

The cold spring breeze made his patience slim. He checked his ball cap and saw that he had about ten dollars in loonies and toonies, a few nickels, fewer quarters. And today someone had given him a token from a casino. He placed the token into the palm of his hand, blew on it carefully and rubbed it gently across the knee of his blue jeans. When he looked at it, he saw the image of his Grandpa Chevy.

“Ha!” he shouted out loud. “I’m too hungover to think or see straight! Grandpa Chevy—as if you could sit inside a casino token!” Kunak shuffled over to the icy wall behind him and shimmied his way up, curving his hips from side to side like an old bear scratching his back against some bark. He wondered if he looked like a Northern pole dancer.

He laughed to himself, remembering the day that Grandpa Chevy tried to explain polar bear mating rituals to him.

“Now, Kunak,” Grandpa Chevy began after clearing the mucus out of his throat. “Aahhhmm, now Kunak, today when we are out there on the ice . . . you know that it is springtime. Well . . . we might see some bears doing some stuff.” Grandpa Chevy had said those last words very fast. It sounded like “youmightseesomebearsdoingstuff” or “umitecsomearsdoingtuff” or “youmiteseebearsuff.”

“Like what, Gramps?” Kunak recalled asking. The innocence of a thirteen-year-old boy. The innocence of not understanding that the opposite sex could hold his attention longer than a game of marbles. The innocence of a boy whose voice was not crackling and whose body was hairless still. The innocence of a testosterone-free life. The innocence that lies inside of each of us when we are only a child.

“Well, Kunak. It’s that time of year, you know, the time of year when a momma and papa bear look for each other. To, you know . . .”

“To, you know—what?”

“To make other baby bears . . . I mean, it’s not like that happens every day for bears or for most people but most people could where bears can’t and . . . shit.”