Carlos had not expected Hakan would provide so many reasons to be concerned, but he did not know the native boy well before adoption. Enola, a social worker, helped him with the legal issues surrounding the adoption, a process filled with forms, documents, paperwork, police checks, and home visits. This bureaucracy was not easy, even though he, a single man in his forties, in his second career, was already a social worker.<\/p>\n
Carlos had not done comprehensive research on Hakan, if that was possible when adopting a boy, but he heard about his delinquency. Some challenges Hakan might pose he expected, but he believed he could adjust and cope. The original plan, he revealed to Enola, was single parent adoption, once he moved into his new home down Floatplane Street and across the back alley from where Enola lived with her lawyer husband.<\/p>\n
After Carlos entered the profession of social work, he expected to adopt a child eventually. The spring after he bought a home and received a permanent position at the aboriginal social services agency would a good time to start an application, he thought, even if he was still a relatively young man, even if he was early in his career as a social worker. Warning him adopting an emotionally disturbed child might damage his career in social services, Enola tried friendly dissuasion. But this instinct to become a parent was strong. At age forty Carlos felt alone as a single man; he was not about to renege on his pledge to adopt or not marry a woman to have his child. He was not gay, but he felt no inclination to find a woman to be a mother of his child, not after the numerous rejections and rebuffs he suffered.<\/p>\n
Enola was married to a lawyer from a reservation up north, accessible only by floatplane. Enola and her lawyer husband helped Carlos find Hakan, an aboriginal child, who lived in her husband\u2019s reservation in Northwestern Ontario, accessible only by aircraft and ice road, a few hundred miles north of Sioux Lookout and Beaverbrooke. Enola said she rescued Hakan from his mother, an alcoholic, addicted to oxycodone, who neglected him. She and her husband swooped down from the skies in a floatplane, landing on the shore of his Indian Reservation, as did Hakan\u2019s biological father, a red-haired, bearded white man, who met Hakan\u2019s mother when he helped build a firebreak around the reserve while working as a forest fire fighter. Enola felt sorry for Hakan, who would spend entire weeks in silence. She tried to warn Carlos he was afflicted by a communication disorder.<\/p>\n
The summertime after a promotion and pay hike seemed an ideal time to adopt. Carlos had an interview with the chief social worker from the aboriginal social services agency. As the interview extended over an hour, Carlos realized he had analyzed in detail every piece of native art and handicraft on her corner office suite walls. The executive director asked more personal questions than he expected, including why he was not married and had no children. Then Enola took him aside in the coffee room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m warning you: The executive director doesn\u2019t like you; you\u2019re white and a man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought of myself as white. My parents were Portuguese immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the same thing to her. She also thinks you\u2019re gay. The fact you\u2019re a single man and might be homosexual concerns her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, I\u2019ll abandon the application,\u201d Carlos said. \u201cI\u2019ll just cancel the adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, you don\u2019t need to quit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019ll drop the adoption. I don\u2019t know Oji-Cree. How can I be adopting a First Nations child when I don\u2019t even know Oji-Cree?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it doesn\u2019t matter. Hakan doesn\u2019t know Oji-Cree, either.\u201d<\/p>\n
Something else was worrying Carlos, something he did not feel comfortable sharing with Enola. When he was a York University student, a rash youth, he acquired a criminal record after demonstrations and protests at a cruise missile factory in Toronto turned clamorous and noisy. He struggled with security guards and police and was handcuffed and arrested for trespassing and charged with resisting arrest. Now the same defence contractor whose asphalt parking lot he sprayed painted was now a core equity holding in his retirement investment portfolio.<\/p>\n
The executive director\u2019s judgement of him during home visits was more satisfactory. Carlos guessed they liked the collection of books in his library because they lingered at his bookshelves. Then Carlos\u2019 police criminal record check and vulnerable sector check arrived. Enola and her boss wanted to know why he had a criminal record. Why had he been charged with resisting arrest and trespassing? He had to explain his role in demonstrations when he was a York University freshman protesting at the barbed wire gates to a defence contractor. He climbed the high chain link fence and used orange spray paint to write Murderers on the asphalt surrounding the missile factory. That admission endeared him to the executive director and Enola, her underling. \u201cYour weakness became our strength,\u201d Enola said, chuckling. She reassured him she managed to persuade the boss to sign off on his adoption.
\n
\nWhen Hakan was first brought to his home, from Enola\u2019s house just up Floatplane Street, Enola suddenly seemed nervous and had a hesitant manner. She vaguely warned Hakan, who lived at her home up the street the past several weeks, was something of a problem child.<\/p>\n
\u201cA problem child? That sounds like code for him neglect and undiagnosed disorders.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHis communication disorder manifests itself as red flag for parents considering adopting him.\u201d Enola made these gestures with her hands, as if she was literally wiping herself clean of Hakan.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you saying that\u2019s the reason nobody will adopt him?\u201d Carlos asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy co-workers on the reserve believe he is autistic. Since he is on a break and the school year is almost over, you shouldn\u2019t worry about school for him until the start of the fall term.\u201d Enola also warned him Hakan was cunning, but refused to elaborate or provide any details.<\/p>\n
One Sunday afternoon, during which he was completely mute, Hakan suddenly complained the man on the television news told him to start a fire. Carlos was not much of a television viewer; he preferred the latest information updates on the twenty-four hour news channels. He quickly turned off the wide screen television, which he bought to make to the kid feel at home.<\/p>\n
That night, Hakan divulged he communed with the native spirits, and they would tell him to do things. Carlos realized early it would be wise to follow the warnings and admonitions of the native spirits. It was best to heed Hakan\u2019s words whenever he generously offered a fair warning.<\/p>\n
On a hot July night, Carlos decided that he would give him some ice cream before he went to bed. While they ate some vanilla ice cream, Carlos\u2019 favourite food and dessert, they watched the news on television. Despite what Hakan told him earlier, about the man on television urging him to start fires, Carlos changed his mind. He did not see any reason he should withhold the news, or subject their television viewing to censorship. Then he saw Hakan off to bed. Intrigued by the disorder of autism, he resumed his research on academic reports and studies that recently consumed and obsessed him. Having conducted some extensive reviews of the clinical literature, Carlos decided he might attempt to make some original contributions in the field. Positioning himself comfortably at the desk in front of the widescreen monitor of his computer, which featured the latest version of the word processing program he pilfered from the offices of the social services agency, he continued to struggle to write some original coherent sentences based on the latest clinical research into autism spectrum disorder.<\/p>\n
Half his mind and consciousness was on the cable news network. Then, at eleven pm, he heard what sounded like sheet metal being hammered, or the furnace starting with a bang. But why would the furnace burn oil on a warm, humid night in mid-July? Carlos headed downstairs and checked the basement. The temperatures on the thermostats had not been adjusted, the furnace had not ignited, the fans were not blowing heated air. Then he saw the pumper truck from the volunteer fire department turn and race and rumble down the back alley alongside the back of the house towards Enola\u2019s house. Enola\u2019s garage was on fire. He pulled aside the heavy curtains and glanced out the storm windows. Virtually breathless, he was hypnotized by the sight of flames shooting up in the sky from the garage behind Enola\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
When he recovered from shock, he went to check Hakan, but the boy was not in bed or asleep on the living room couch. The washroom door was locked, but he noticed the small window to the washroom was wide open and the screen was missing. Carlos hurried out of the house to observe the flames and returned for his digital camera. He watched the volunteer fire fighters spray brilliantly coloured chemical fire retardant powder and extinguish the flames and blaze with blasts of water from the pumper truck. He even managed to capture images of the fire with the digital camera and some blurred images on his cellphone.<\/p>\n
When Carlos returned later to the house, after the smoke died down and the firefighters and fire truck had left the scene, and the Enola had been comforted, he checked Hakan\u2019s bedroom. Carlos poked the beam of his flashlight in the boy\u2019s bedroom, but whereas Hakan had been gone, disappeared an hour before, and the bathroom window had somehow been left open, he now appeared to be sleeping soundly. Usually, he had a scowl or a grim expression on his face, but he thought he saw him wink and discerned what might be a suspicious smile, or a faint smirk, on his tanned face. Carlos went to washroom, flushed the toilet, and noticed a wind gust against the shower curtain and the window had been somehow closed. Then he felt a fear grow in his stomach as he envisioned that unusually tranquil expression on his face.<\/p>\n
Later, the weekly community newspaper reported the probable cause of the blaze was arson. The garage for Enola\u2019s house, down the back alley from where Carlos lived, was firebombed, but little evidence remained at the scene. Police and firefighters said the arsonist knew what he was doing.<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, again in the Enola\u2019s backyard further up the street, another fire was started, not in a garage but a utility shed. Carlos scrambled out of the house, pulling up and buttoning his pants as he stumbled through the door, and donning pulled on his sweater as he strolled up the back alley.<\/p>\n
Moving back to escape the heat of the fire, he watched as the local volunteer fire department extinguished the blaze in Enola\u2019s utility shed. This time the firefighters had difficulty putting out the fire because of flammable chemicals stored inside the shed. Carlos checked up on Hakan, but he was not in his bed. He tried to inspect the bathroom, but it appeared to be locked. He knocked on the washroom door, but there was no reply. That did not mean much with a boy like Hakan, because one never knew when he would respond. After he stepped outside, he again noticed that the washroom window was open. A person as dexterous and agile as Hakan could easily fit through that portal. He made a mental note to make certain he had the fine mesh screen on the insulated storm window replaced.<\/p>\n
The following day, Carlos arranged to take Hakan to Toronto to a prestigious mental institute where he could have him assessed by a few of the best neurologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. He arranged the appointments, air travel, and hotel rooms at great personal expense. Enola complained he was wasting his money, but, if he was intent on a trip to have Hakan assessed and diagnosed, he should apply for grants from the reservations and social service agencies.
\n
\nA team of specialists subjected him to a battery of tests, examinations, and diagnostic imaging, including electroencephalograms, CAT scans and MRIs of the brain. Hakan physically struggled and fought with some of the best technicians and psychiatric, neurologic, and psychological professionals in the region during the tests and interviews lasting hours and stretching over several days. By week\u2019s end, Carlos found himself and a rather angelic appearing Hakan at the focal point at a meeting with experts. They chatted amicably, drank apple juice and coffee, and ate pastries and doughnuts. At the end of the coffee klatch, they opined, \u201cHe\u2019s not very vocal, is he?\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, Carlos told Enola that was about the most intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful comment he heard made during the entire meeting with medical, psychiatric, and psychological doctors and specialists. Still, he thought he owed it to Hakan to take him to absorb the sights and sounds in the most populous city in the country. He wanted him to experience the same positive vibes he had undergone as a university student several years ago when he was first studying for his degree in social work in Toronto.<\/p>\n
He took him to the largest mall in the city, the Eaton Centre, a supersized shopping mall downtown he often visited when he was a student since the campus of his alma mater, York University, stood in an industrial landscape, and the mall featured several restaurants and cafes that served reasonably tasty and affordable food and coffee. In fact, the food court in the basement was also a place where he managed to complete a significant portion of his homework when he was still a student at York University.<\/p>\n
So he brought Hakan to the food court, which had been renovated, expanded, and upgraded, expecting that they would have some time to check out and peruse the shops and stores a little later. Since he needed to use the washroom badly, he then escorted him to the public restrooms. Hakan gestured that he wanted him to wait outside the doorway. So, despite some personal misgivings, Carlos stood outside the door to the men\u2019s washroom, which was huge and had a capacity for several dozen men standing at the urinals and sitting on the toilets in their cubicles and stalls.<\/p>\n
Still, to assuage his own worries, he reassured himself he was capable of taking care of him. That much was true, Carlos told himself, even though he was only a child, an elementary school student allegedly possessing a learning disorder.<\/p>\n
Carlos stood at the open door to the men\u2019s washroom waiting for him. He waited while he glanced at the headlines in the newspaper. Someone noticed smoke seeping from the women\u2019s washroom. He assumed some young woman, holed up in a stall, sitting on a toilet seat cover, was taking puffs on her cigarette on the sly, unable to smoke openly because of numerous by-laws and prohibitions on smoking. Then the fire alarm rang.<\/p>\n
The noise alerting occupants of a fire buzzed through the vast and cavernous shopping mall at dozens of locations at an incredibly loud sound level. The largest mall in the nation was evacuated at nearly the busiest time of the year because the fire alarm was activated. First, he went into the men\u2019s washroom, despite the security guards\u2019 warnings to evacuate the building.<\/p>\n
He checked every stall, but Hakan was not hiding, concealed, or lost amidst these glistening toilets. He was about to return to the woman\u2019s washroom and tell the security guard his son might be stuck inside a stall when Hakan suddenly appeared at his side. Hakan leaned against his thigh and gripped his hand, gazing up with large round eyes, which looked mournful with those exquisite, curly eyelashes.<\/p>\n
Gripping Hakan\u2019s hand tightly, he took him back to the hotel room several blocks away. Upset and trembling uncontrollably, Carlos hyperventilated and started to feel a heaviness and a weight pressing in his chest. He worried he suffered a heart attack and considered taking a taxicab to the emergency department of Mount Sinai hospital, but Hakan smiled as they fell asleep watching a classic Charlie Chaplin movie on television, although Carlos originally hoped to set aside some time for both of them to read.<\/p>\n
The next day Carlos took him to the beach. He did not anticipate any harm or trouble occurring on the lakeshore, but he accompanied Hakan to the quietest part of the crowded city beach. On that hot sunny day, Hakan swam like a beaver in the cold chill waters of the lake. He swam far from the shoreline of the lake in water far above his head. The lifeguard gave up chasing him in her rowboat because he demonstrated such speed and proficiency as a swimmer. He swam the breaststroke, the butterfly, the backstroke, the front crawl. Then, between swimming styles, he dove beneath the waves and disappeared for minutes at a time under the lake surface only to re-emerge from the water dozen of meters away, grinning and laughing. Carlos had never seen Hakan so happy. Hakan disappeared beneath the water for so long a lifeguard thought he had drowned. For a long while, he swam with his head bobbing just above the waves, as he treaded through the water like a beaver. He swam with exceptional skill, but another lifeguard attempted to steer him back towards the shores and away from deeper water and turbulent waves.<\/p>\n
Hakan spotted a little girl, who had wandered from her pregnant mother and was caught by a rogue wave and flung and carried out by the undertow. He swam to intercept her and gripped her. The little girl panicked and initially scratched his back as she clung to him and he swam back towards the shoreline of Woodbine Beach. He held the other hand of the small girl, who feared she was doomed after straying far from the shore, as she panicked and struggled, splashing and thrashing the cold water with own frenetic version of the dog paddle. Swimming with her on his back, Hakan led and escorted the little girl back to shore, while her mother, holding her round belly, squinting against the fierce sunshine, stood anxiously at the edge of the broad beach.<\/p>\n
When Carlos saw him rescuing that little girl, he could not help thinking of the beavers he occasionally observed swimming through the waterways around Beaverbrooke. The little girl cried as she waded and crawled along the shore and Hakan helped her to her feet. The pregnant mother ran towards her daughter, picked her up, and bounced her. As she approached Carlos, he tried to warn his son against swimming out to far from shore.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour boy saved my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlos shrugged; he had become somewhat jaded to the antics of his own adopted son, for better or worse. The mother, who wore a revealing bikini, looked quite attractive, and Carlos could not resist gazing the length of her body. Her belly was large and round with her baby. Tears welled in her eyes. \u201cYour boy saved my daughter\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s quite a skilled swimmer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw him rescuing my little girl, I couldn\u2019t help thinking of the otters I see on the nature documentaries on television, since otters hold paws, like people hold hands, as they nap or sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy son reminded you of an otter?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two of them together, I mean. Listen, I\u2019m just grateful he saved my daughter. What\u2019s his name?\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlos coyly squinted against the brilliance of the sunshine, poked the beach sand with his bare, gnarly toes, and gave her a peculiar look. \u201cWhy do you need to know his name?\u201d
\n
\n\u201cHe saved my little girl. I want to name my baby after him.\u201d She patted her round belly.<\/p>\n
Carlos recalled the nickname of an indigenous friend from his youth. \u201cHis name is Beaver.\u201d She looked mortified. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I had a brain fog. His name is David.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I have a baby boy, I\u2019m going to name him after David, in honor of him. If it\u2019s a girl, I\u2019ll name her Davida.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDavida? Hmm. You don\u2019t know the sex of your baby?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d She hugged her daughter, shivering from the cold water, wrapped in a thick towel, still wrought by emotion over having observed her daughter nearly drown.<\/p>\n
Hakan did not linger on the beach near the pregnant woman for accolades or even the gifts she offered, spitting a huge gob of salvia at the sand when she extended her hand with a huge pizza slice and ice cream cone, recoiling when she tried to embrace him. Hakan dashed back into the water and swam out far from the treacherous shore. Still, Carlos supervised Hakan closely as did a lifeguard, who watched vigilantly over what she warned him was the most deadly stretch of shoreline for drownings in the province and indeed in Canada. The lifeguard nearest to Hakan, Carlos later concluded, did her job too well. She saw Hakan disappear under the waves when he dove under the water, but she did not see him resurface.<\/p>\n
One minute went by. Then two minutes passed as he closely scrutinized the surface of the lake through his sunglasses, as fear grew inside him. A third crucial minute passed, and Hakan still had not resurfaced anywhere around in that section of Lake Ontario. Carlos could not comprehend how his boy could possibly hold his breath for so long under the water.<\/p>\n
The lifeguard looked around vigilantly and scanned the smooth, calm lake surface. When she still could not see his small head with its thick mantle of long dark hair, she panicked. She forcefully blew the whistle, making the signal for a drowning. Their hand-held radios squawking, lifeguards gestured with their hands and signalled, whistles were blown, radios cackled, and rows boats were boarded and lifeguards sprinted along the shore. Another two rowboats further along the shoreline were launched as lifeguards paddled towards a potential drowning. Crowded with hundreds of swimmers, the beach was large and, in the middle of the city of Toronto, well frequented, and the sheer size and numbers of swimmers and sun bathers still left Carlo, born and raised in Beaverbrooke in northwestern Ontario, impressed. Dozens of sunbathers and swimmers and beach volleyball players scurried about the lakeshore, attempting to help, and he was in the midst of panic. The lifeguards cleared the stretch of beach along the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world of literally thousands of swimmers. Then the wading swimmers and sunbathers formed a line as they aided the lifeguards in searching for a potentially drowned child. Stricken, the pregnant woman saw what was happening and made a call on her cellphone to 911 for them to hurry and send more emergency services<\/p>\n
The initial lifeguard used her radio to summon the police, ambulance, and paramedics. The police marine rescue unit even sent divers on a speedboat. As Carlos was about to approach the lifeguard, Hakan appeared seemingly from nowhere. Shaking, shivering, Carlos held a towel tightly around his narrow shoulders.<\/p>\n
After impatiently flagging down a taxi on the lakeshore boulevard, he took him back to the hotel room and allowed him to rest and sleep, even though Hakan was filled with almost manic sort of energy. He started pounding the walls and beating the drum Carlos had bought him in a music store in the mall; he was trying to make Carlos understand he wanted to watch the late night drama on television, The Sopranos. In an agitated state, Carlos no longer knew how to react. Carlos feared the authorities in Toronto might become so concerned by his parenting of Hakan that they might send a social service worker from one of their aboriginal child and welfare agencies to investigate him. He cancelled the remainder of the trip to Toronto. He telephoned the twenty-four hour airline reservations desk and booked two seats aboard the next flight home. Staying up the entire night, he kept vigilant watch over him, as he slept soundly. The following morning, at great expense to his pocketbook and bankbook they abruptly flew back to Beaverbrooke.
\n
\nHe 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Over the next several weeks, Hakan grew sultry and withdrawn. He kept muttering, \u201cPow wow, Pow wow, Pow wow.\u201d When Carlos attempted to explain they wouldn\u2019t be able to attend the Pow wow because he didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cPow wow, Pow wow, Pow wow.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
They went to bed early, as Carlos was tired and had not been getting much sleep. Later, Carlos noticed the smirk on the boy\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cThe letter from the fire marshal says they found no evidence of Hakan in the building.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA fire marshal sent a letter?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey thought you might need a document for insurance and legal purposes.\u201d She folded the letter and left the thick creamy paper alongside the telephone beside his hospital bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat building they\u2019re talking about was my house, my home. Anyhow, I\u2019m not surprised. Hakan is the ultimate survivor.\u201d
\n
\n\u201cNo. You don\u2019t understand. When the fire marshal said no evidence, he meant no sign of him, no proof of his existence. It\u2019s as if he didn\u2019t exist, as if it was a dream. The investigators and forensic lab found no DNA they could trace back to Hakan. Not a burnt hair, a bone fragment, a tooth, or a razed piece of clothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds like Hakan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo totally disappear, without a trace?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose. He\u2019s only a kid, but he\u2019s the ultimate survivor. That boy is capable of anything. Enola, I suspect he burned down your garage and shed. I didn\u2019t say anything because I didn\u2019t have much evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspected the same thing,\u201d Enola said. \u201cBut I was quietly delighted because the insurance company paid for a new garage with room for both our cars. Besides, my husband wanted to tear down and build a cottage where he could study.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlos watched the nurse change the intravenous bags that dripped medication and antibiotics into his vein. \u201cStill, I need to find out what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re lying in a hospital room, recovering from first degree and second degree burns and healing from skin grafts. You shouldn\u2019t worry. You\u2019re alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to know what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf so, you\u2019re probably best off playing detective in bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m grateful I\u2019m alive. They say I\u2019ll survive, and I feel better despite the scarring and weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least you can say you survived. While we\u2019re on the subject: There\u2019s another letter here for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother letter? I lie in the hospital bed for three months, near dead in the hospital, nobody knows me or recognizes me in my own hometown, or even recognizes me, and now I\u2019m getting mail everyday.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt a dispute resolution memo from the insurance company.\u201d
\n
\n\u201cDispute resolution? What? I never had any dispute with the insurance company.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s because I went to bat for you. The insurance company said they can\u2019t make a payout for Hakan\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can\u2019t? I didn\u2019t even know they had insurance for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had the prescience to get insurance; you knew he could be destructive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that you mention it-yes. I was afraid something might happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe insurance company said they\u2019ll pay for the value of the house.\u201d Enola busily ruffled the letters and papers. \u201cBut their lawyer wrote there is no legal evidence Hakan died in the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, what happened to him? The house burns down, I could hear his screams\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would a boy want to die in a fire he started in the house where he lived? I think I know the answer, but I\u2019m just playing devil\u2019s advocate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he was possessed by the devil. For Christ\u2019s sake, Enola, he was self-destructive and impulsive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re certain he started the fire?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think even the fire marshal agreed it was arson, started by Hakan exactly how I indicated.\u201d Carlos glanced at the newspaper clippings about the fire Enola had insisted leaving at his hospital bedside and which a nurse had read to him. \u201cHe didn\u2019t accuse Hakan, though \u2013 nobody did. You\u2019re not suggesting I committed arson, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, of course not, and what you say might make sense, if they could find any evidence of Hakan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTrust me. It doesn\u2019t make sense to me, either.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m beginning to think he was so badly burned he didn\u2019t leave behind a single molecule. He was incinerated, vaporized.\u201d
\n\u201cI still think he escaped.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAn eleven year old boy escapes a fire and runs away and survives in the bushes around town, alone, unassisted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised. It\u2019s in his blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Enola stood and kissed him on the cheek before she left the hospital room when a nurse arrived with a crew of student nurses to change his dressings and bandages.<\/p>\n
Later, as Carlos looked out the hospital room through the open door he caught a glimpse of Hakan. His jeans were torn and faded and his t-shirt was grimy with dirt. His face, tanned from the sun and flecked and caked, bore scratches and scars, but he looked relaxed and bore the most soothing expression on his face. The boy looked serene, as if he had found spiritual enlightenment, inner peace, self-fulfillment. Hakan lingered a moment and smiled through the grit and charcoal that marked his face and then continued walking down the hospital corridor past Carlos\u2019 doorway. Carlos somehow managed to lift himself from his hospital bed and wheeled his injured body to the corridor. He pushed himself in the wheelchair around the ward, which was shaped like a square, and even entered the lobby of a hospital but he found Hakan nowhere. \u201cHakan!\u201d he shouted. A nurse spotted the distressed look on his face and thought he was traumatized or in severe pain. The boy was gone, and the nurse pushed Carlos in a wheelchair back to his hospital room and bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Native Son Carlos had not expected Hakan would provide so many reasons to be concerned, but he did not know the native boy well before adoption. Enola, a social worker, helped him with the legal issues surrounding the adoption, a process filled with forms, documents, paperwork, police checks, and home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2763,"parent":148,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-567","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2900,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/567\/revisions\/2900"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}