He figured he could no longer keep this child. Hakan was aboriginal, and Carlos was a first generation Portuguese-Canadian, who, albeit, was often mistaken as aboriginal because nearly a majority of residents in his hometown were First Nations and he possessed dark features. Carlos suspected Hakan was possessed and influenced by spirits that had their origins in his indigenous culture and religion, over which he had not only no control but no comprehension. Hakan’s ethnicity and his upbringing on an Indian Reservation was a social, cultural, and anthropological barrier which he could not ford. He was so distraught he became persuaded he was being punished for cultural appropriation, for attempting to adopt a child not belonging to his racial background or Portuguese ethnicity. He was even starting to believe Hakan might be possessed by demons, spirits, evil.
In Beaverbrooke, he thought his position was still untenable with Hakan. By the following day Carlos became convinced the boy was capable of great harm. Still, he thought they still both needed healing and relief from the stress and tension, which they might only find in the outdoors or from the native spirits. He drove beyond the boundaries of Beaverbrooke into the countryside and headed through the bush and forests for some fields and cutover. He told Hakan they were destined for an area in the bush where they could pick fresh ripe blueberries. They drove a dozen miles up the gravel road that etched a line through the bleak rock and stunted forests north of Beaverbrooke and then down some logging roads.
Carlos considered abandoning Hakan, leaving him alone in the bush. They reached a section of the clear-cut forest, where, long ago, the trees were felled for harvesting as stud and pulp. Where a single huge boulder overlooked the site, he parked the car. Beside the massive boulder that was practically a natural monument to the indomitability of nature, over ten metres high, he told him to wait while he took care of personal business deeper in the bush and muskeg. Carlos decided to abandon Hakan in that section of clear-cut bush. He returned to the massive boulder, and he thought the huge rock might serve as a useful landmark at which they could part ways. Carlos started to believe frightening Hakan, and the shock value of cruelty and tough love might work. He told Hakan he was on his own and had to try to survive alone.
He drove his car along a dusty, sandy logging road into a field of clear-cut bush bordered by forest. Then he needed to stop for a washroom break. As he squatted in the bush and used moss as toilet tissue, the enormity of what he did struck him. By the time he finished in the privacy of the bushes, a cloud of smoke arose from the forest around him and plumed in the sky above, as flames licked the pine and spruce forest, the clouds warning not of stormy weather but a forest fire. He sped back along the logging road, kicking up huge plumes and clouds of dust, but Hakan was not at the huge boulder where he ordered him to wait.
He plunged through the brush, striding briskly along the trail and the clear-cut brush, searching around the logging road for Hakan near the boulder where he had left him, and where he had disappeared. The smoke grew thicker and thicker as flames licked the sky above the melee. By the time, he returned to the boulder, where the surrounding bush had been blackened by fire. Hakan had somehow managed to reach the top of this immense smooth boulder, which reached a height of forty feet, and from which he surely would have died if he had fallen. Amidst plucked feathers and small puddles of blood and entrails, he squatted, crouched on his haunches, on the summit of the huge rock. He had caught a ruffed grouse with his bare hands, skinned the bird on the spot, tore the flesh apart, ripped out the entrails, and bit into the rich succulent wild meat. Fresh blood and feathers stuck to his hands and around his mouth and cheeks on his face as he voraciously ate the raw breast of the ruffed grouse.
Carlos reached up with open arms and told Hakan to come along. After he finished devouring the partridge, he climbed down from the boulder. Like a seasoned rock climber, he climbed down most of the length from the peak and then slid for a dozen feet from a smooth face. He proudly landed on his feet like a seasoned gymnast, in a cloud of thick white smoke from the forest fire that raged around them.
Carlos drove his enfant terrible home where he took the bucket of gourmet ice cream he hid for a special occasion in the freezer behind the frozen pasta dinners and served him bowl after bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, which he garnished with chocolate shavings, crushed peanuts, and a hot fudge sauce. Hakan ate so much ice cream that night he woke several times during his sleep to vomit in the toilet.
Over the next several weeks, Hakan grew sultry and withdrawn. He kept muttering, “Pow wow, Pow wow, Pow wow.” When Carlos attempted to explain they wouldn’t be able to attend the Pow wow because he didn’t have a sports utility vehicle that could easily drive down the bush road to the reservation on the shores of the lake Lac Seul for the feast and ceremony, the boy grew sultry and bitter, refusing food and even dessert. Carlos reassured him he would talk to Enola; she drove a four-wheel drive and he would ask her to drive them to her home reservation for the Pow Wow or lend him her truck.
One night, as Carlos conducted research on a paper for a social work course he took through the Internet from Lakehead University, to improve his social work credentials and qualifications, Hakan again insisted on “Pow wow, Pow wow, Pow wow.” Growing angry, Carlos explained they did not have the use of a Jeep or heavy-duty sports utility vehicle that would allow them to drive along the bush road to the reservation to attend the jamboree and Pow wow. Carlos promised Hakan he would ask Enola if she would lend him her four-wheel drive pickup truck, and the boy grew silent.
They went to bed early, as Carlos was tired and had not been getting much sleep. Later, Carlos noticed the smirk on the boy’s face as he read a bedtime story to him, since the peculiar smile was a red flag to Carlos. The last time he remembered seeing that facial expression was the night when the smoke appeared in the women’s washroom and the fire alarms sounded at the north end of the Eatons Centre shopping mall in downtown Toronto on a summer afternoon humming with activity.
Carlos went to bed and the last thing he remembered from that night was nightmarish, with the thick smoke drifting through the room of his house and flames devouring the house and falling timbers and crashing rafters. Then there was darkness, blackness, and he woke up in a sterile hospital room, in agony, recovering from burns and smoke inhalation.
Enola visited him in the hospital with a handful of letters and newspaper clippings, and tried to bring him up to date. She held a letter towards him. “The letter from the fire marshal says they found no evidence of Hakan in the building.”
“A fire marshal sent a letter?”
“They thought you might need a document for insurance and legal purposes.” She folded the letter and left the thick creamy paper alongside the telephone beside his hospital bed.
“That building they’re talking about was my house, my home. Anyhow, I’m not surprised. Hakan is the ultimate survivor.”
