Free Annabel by Kathleen Winter Page B

true.”
    “There’re lots of things Dad hasn’t seen, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He’s never seen a giraffe. He’s never seen a hippopotamus. He’s never seen Bobby Orr in person. He’s never seen the Entire State Building.”
    “Empire.”
    “Has he?”
    “It’s the Empire State Building, Wayne.”
    “Is it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Could we get me a bathing suit like Elizaveta Kirilovna’s and not tell Dad?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Does that mean maybe?”
    “I don’t think so, Wayne.”
    “Even if I really, really, really, really want one and don’t mention it to him at all and he never finds out and I use my own money?”
    “I don’t know if I can be complicit in a thing like that, Wayne.”
    “What’s complicit?”
    Jacinta put the lid back on the jar of Skippy peanut butter. “Complicit is when you agree to something in secret and hide it from another person.”
    “Is it always bad?”
    “It could be, if you hide something important from someone you love.”
    “But it could be good too?”
    “It could be something you do to save your life.”
    “Could it be in between?”
    “This is giving me a headache, Wayne.”
    “Could it be when you hide something important from someone you love to sort of save your life in a way?”
    “Wayne.”
    “Because I really, really, really, really, really, really —”
    “Stop it.”
    “— want a bathing suit like Elizaveta Kirilovna’s. More than anything else in the world.”
    “I’ve got something” — Treadway stood in the kitchen doorway draining his cup — “you might like to see.”
    “What, Dad?”
    Treadway put his cup in the sink and went mysteriously out of the room. “If you want to come, come.”
    “But what is it?”
    But Treadway would not tell. He had a way of enticing Wayne out of the house, into the woods, with unexplained beckonings. One time it was to fish smelt on the ice at Bear Island. Another time it was to see his cousin Lockyer tar the joints in a dory. Wayne knew that whatever it was this time would be outdoors, hot and windy. He knew it would take a long time. He knew that before it was over he would be wishing he had not come. Still, there was something irresistible about the way Treadway started on a mission. There was, along with the mystery of it, an intangible promise that Treadway would love and approve of Wayne if he came. By the end of most such outings, that promise had turned into disappointment. Maybe this time it would be different.
    “Dad, where are we going?”
    Treadway drove the truck past the Hudson’s Bay store, which was the westernmost building in the settlement, and into the woods to where began the road everyone called the trans-Labrador highway, though it was only half built and was, for the most part, a one-way dirt track. Dust rose, and no matter how tightly Wayne rolled his window, dust got into the truck, past his shut lips and eyes and into his tears and his teeth. He hated it.
    “Are we going to the Penashues’ tent?”
    The Innu had tents in the bush all along this road. They had used the route long before anyone thought of starting a road. Treadway was not the one who had brought Wayne to the Penashues’ tent. Jacinta and Joan Martin had walked there with him to drink tea with Lucy Penashue. The women had given Wayne black tea boiled on a tin stove and bread that Lucy had kneaded and lain on the stove and torn.
    “No.” The truck lurched.
    Wayne wanted a glass of water but did not tell his father he was thirsty. “Did you bring any fly-dope, Dad?” He touched behind an ear and his finger was covered in blood crust.
    “DEET.”
    Wayne got the DEET out of the glove compartment and rubbed some behind his ears, on his neck, around his hairline, and into his hair. He hated its stink.
    “Want some, Dad?”
    “We’re here now.”
    The truck swerved into a huge cul-de-sac, a place in the road where men with backhoes were digging dirt out of the side of a hill and