The Hunter

Photo by Ansgar Walk

The nurse and I had our faces covered by woolen scarves, gloved hands in our pockets, as we walked up the hill towards the RCMP station.

I’d learned the hard way to cover up after skin had begun to peel off my cheeks and forehead, even a thick layer of foundation not hiding the damage.

I’d arrived on Baffin Island only two weeks prior, but the short November days were already getting to me. I often ran out of the clinic around noon for ten-minute breaks and stood barefaced towards the low-rising sun, watching the rainbow colours just below the surface of the still waters of the bay. The arctic wind slashed my cheeks at –40°C until they turned pink. Soon they blistered, my skin peeling and pus staining my pillow.

“Sorry to have called you so late,” the nurse, Carolyn, said.

“It’s good that you called,” I said.

We were both panting, exhaling warm, humid air into our scarves and raised collars. This town was a new place for me, since I was usually based at the psychiatric ward in Iqaluit, where I worked two to four weeks per year when I wasn’t working back home in Toronto. There were no lights as we walked away from town. There was an orange hue to the sky that illuminated the dark road. In silent agreement, we walked faster than was necessary. We’d been warned about polar bears by the locals, not to go far without a rifle. They decapitate you in one blow, we’d been told. They spot you from very far, from the rims of the hills, and speed up to hunt you, we’d heard. Even ten huskies would be of no use.

“So what do you know so far?” I said.

“Not much, actually. He’s thirteen. Recently dropped out of school. His friend called the police.”

“His friend? That’s unheard-of around here.”

“I know. The friend was concerned for his safety, so they apprehended him. With all the recent suicides, you know.”

“He’s young.”

“They all were.”

We climbed the stairs into the small station that overlooked the town. The town’s one clinic closed at five, and the RCMP detention centre was the only locked facility that could hold the suicidal patients until they were cleared by the doctor or the nurse or shipped out to Iqaluit. In the light of day, you could see the whole town from up here, cabins arranged in a seemingly haphazard way around the crescent of the bay. On cloudy days, the water became a mirror, doubling the rocks, the houses, the blue and purple colours of the sky. The town was a tiny island surrounded by endless lands of snow. No shrubs, no trees, no colours, except for the black spots here and there of maybe a hunter with three huskies running after him or a lone coyote searching for shelter.

I’d come up here a few times by myself before I knew about the polar bears. To my novice eyes, the small town seemed deserted, but over time I’d learned to spot the movement of people and dogs from cabin to cabin, the motorboats leaving the bay towards the ocean, the echoing bangs of a hammer on a rock as somebody carved, and every once in a while, a teenager with a rifle on his back riding away from town into the vast whiteness. Over time, I’d also come to spot the invisible, the secrets passed between the locals, not shared with us—the city people. This town, I’d come to realize, was not, on the surface, what it was down below.

One suicide attempt per week was what I’d been told when they dispatched me here from Toronto. The rest of the story I’d deciphered through rumours here and there. It was a girl’s suicide note four months ago, in which she’d made allegations against the schoolteacher, that had forced the RCMP...