Read Online Coppermine by Keith Ross Leckie - Free Book Online Page A

had been a relief at first, the boy’s silence. It was as Creed wanted it. But after all these days, he realized he knew very little about him. And then, as if to deepen his curiosity, when Angituk was unpacking his dry bag, Creed noticed a thick leather-bound book that had half slid out onto the earth beside the fire. He was amazed to read the title: Canterbury Tales.
    “Where the hell did you get this?”
    “From Father Ducot.”
    “You stole it?”
    “No,” the boy said with sudden indignation. “He loaned it to me.”
    “Do you understand it at all?”
    He caught the flash of anger in the fire-lit blue eyes and immediately regretted the question. The boy recited, like an accusation:
    And specially from every shires ende,
    Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende,
    The holy blisful martyr for to seek,
    That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.
    “Why would I not understand? It is a journey. Journeys are what I understand. Though Herman Melville is better at it than Chaucer. Twain is good too, but Conrad is the best of all.”
    The boy offered nothing further. Creed stared at him, astonished.
    As the silence between them thickened, Creed realized he had lost the opportunity that night to pursue the questions in his mind about the boy.
    THE NEXT AFTERNOON they approached the enormous inland freshwater ocean that was Great Bear Lake. Three hundred miles of water stretched out before them. A brisk northerly was whipping up three-foot breakers. Even so, it was nothing the canoe couldn’t handle easily once they found deeper water beyond the breaking waves. The wind was dropping and clocking around slowly. It should be southeast by morning.
    Creed and Angituk paddled in amiable silence, coming up to the mouth until they came in sight of a red beach. There, where the Great Bear River flowed out of Great Bear Lake, stood a large brown bear. For a moment Creed was sure he was seeing things. It stood in the shallow waters, nose elevated, taking in their wind-carried scent. It nodded to them several times. No stranger to bears, Creed was cautious, and he glanced down at the claw marks on the side of the canoe, determined not to share the fate of the previous owner. But as much as he paddled the craft out from the shallows, Angituk tried eagerly to take it in, closer to the creature with whom he was speaking softly in the Copper dialect.
    “Close enough!” Creed finally told him tensely, but the boy was not listening, and as they drifted closer Creed felt an odd, dreamlike exhilaration.
    The big bear—and it was larger than Creed had first realized—stuck his nose out toward the boy, his head bobbing at Angituk’s words as if in agreement. They drifted within twenty-five feet and Creed saw that they were in very shallow water. The bear, if he followed an urge, could sprint to the canoe and be on them in three, maybe four seconds. Creed glanced at the old .38-55 lever-action rifle in front of him in its leather case. His hand went to it and the boy noticed the movement.
    “Don’t,” he whispered in a tone that stopped Creed cold. His pistol was more accessible, but a pistol would never stop this brute, it would merely anger him. He forced himself to stay calm and simply observe the bear and the boy.
    As he watched, he listened to the boy’s youthful voice, an oriental murmur with a high, questioning lift on certain words and a rhythmic guttural consonant caught in the back of the throat, like a three-octave song. He was hearing the Copper language for the very first time. What had Freeman said at the barracks? A Siberian language. Even close to Chinese. And the beast actually seemed to answer in a series of grunts. It was to Creed as if the world held its breath. Then suddenly the bear turned west and lumbered slowly away, down the red beach toward a promising copse of black pine.
    The boy watched the creature for a moment, then began to paddle again. Creed had the overwhelming desire to pose the ridiculous question,