Night Moves by Richard Van Camp (review)

Richard Van Camp, Dogrib (Tlicho) Dene author, writes in a variety of genres. His collaborative works (with a number of visual artists) include comic books, graphic novels, children’s books, and baby books. His prior solo works, and what one might argue are his more adult enterprises, include his first novel, The Lesser Blessed (1996), for which he is probably most well known, as well as three short story collections. With Night Moves, Van Camp brings that number to four.

Ronny, the narrator of the opening short story, “bornagirl,” remarks on the denizens of Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories, the “Métis capital of the north,” “They say Fort Smith is home to the rough and ruthless and the tough and toothless” (11). Readers of Van Camp’s previous works will likely recall the roughness and toughness of his usually teenage and young adult characters, depicted in the rather hard shell exteriors they put on to mask their insecurities, weaknesses, frailties, and even human decencies. To term it macho posturing would be inaccurate, as often female characters succumb to such poses. Perhaps it’s merely adolescent angst, unmercifully turned up a few degrees (ironically) in the frigid Northwest. Of course, beyond the harsh, yet often beautiful, landscape are the harsh realities that filter into a number of Van Camp’s adult works: violence, sexual abuse, and self-hatred.

In “bornagirl,” a tough opening to this collection, the narrating Ronny confesses his role in the physical abuse of a transgender Brian; in “Blood Rides the Wind,” Bear (another first-person narrator) returns to Fort Simmer a week early ostensibly for his final year of school, but he is actually seeking revenge for the sexual molestation of his cousin Wendy; and in “Because of What I Did,” Flinch (aka Radar) is the threatening bear of a man (sometimes called “The Finisher”) who is troubled by his own capacity for violence. Yet each of these stories holds some redemption for the narrating protagonist, as Ronny faces his own misunderstandings about his own sexual longings, Bear finds a way to avoid being the Dogrib “ninja” he reluctantly set out to be, and Flinch helps rescue a girl from Lester who used “black medicine” to bewitch her into replacing his deceased wife.

Most, but not all, of the eleven stories have first-person narrators, but not all of them exclusively feature teenage characters. One of the strangest, more mysterious stories, “Skull.Full.Of.Rust,” is the lone second-person narrative. It involves a young man who, due to his special talent or gift, becomes, unbeknownst to “you,” one of the “Sniffers” (120) for the cia. Telling “you” this information after many years have passed and “you” have potentially traveled through uncounted loops within loops brings into question who the “you” really is or becomes, except an artist who once “asked” “you” “‘Why do you place such haunting red hand prints throughout all of your paintings?’” (123). Mystery abounds in “I Double Dogrib Dare You,” in which Valentina is a “witch” (or is she a “Holy Woman”?) (44) who returns to Fort Simmer for her twentieth anniversary high school reunion but hasn’t aged a day since (or since a photo was taken of her in 1921). Despite the ambiguity of these two stories, they are unsettling, yet oddly satisfying.

As is the case with most short story collections, Night Moves is a somewhat mixed bag. Crow is a sort of medicine woman in the previously mentioned “Because of What I Did” who is tasked with, among other things, bringing the young woman Lester has abducted back into reality. But for some reason, Van Camp follows that with a “story” entitled “Crow” that offers one and a half pages of first-person Crow observations. It serves to a certain extent as a coda to the preceding story, but there is not really enough there to term it a separately titled story. “Crow” seems a tossed-off fragment. The story that follows is “If...