VenCo(41)

Lettie laughed. “He is pretty, right? Takes after his grandpa, on my side, of course.”

“Sooooo,” Wendy said, placing a plate with a fresh stack of pancakes in the centre of the island. “How are you feeling this morning?”

Something about Wendy made Lucky want to open up. “Confused, I guess. I came here for a job interview, and now I’m dreaming about murdered witches.”

Wendy chuckled. “Yes, you are as in this as you can be at this point.”

“But why me? Also, is there seriously a job here? I have Stella, and I’m all that’s standing between her and the Abandoned Grandma Shelter.”

“As to why you, maybe you need to readjust your idea of what makes someone worthy of having something like this happen to them. As to the job, we take care of our own. And yes, there is a position waiting for you.” Wendy piled a couple pancakes onto a plate and slid it over to Lucky, followed by a bottle of syrup and a fork. “Eat.”

“Thanks. No, I just mean, there’s no way this is right.”

“You think maybe someone deserves this opportunity, this community, more than you?” Lettie asked.

“Exactly.”

“I used to think just like that. I thought the small life I had, with its big problems, was just the world showing me what I was worth. That the better things were for someone else.”

“How’d you change that?”

“I left the asshole who made me feel that way.” She put her hands up, indicating the big, bright kitchen and the sweet boy beside her. “Suddenly things are a whole lot better.”

“Lucky, you and I have a lot more in common than you might think,” Wendy said, sliding into the seat opposite. “So I’m going to tell you how I got here.”


Cape Croker First Nation, Ontario, 2015



There was a party on Saturday night, and Wendy was trying to persuade her weed dealer, who also happened to be her cousin, to spot her. Ever since the divorce, she had been taking it easy, or rather trying not to think too much about anything. Meaning, she didn’t have any kids and both her parents had passed by the time she turned forty, so why not have some fun?

Her cousin wasn’t having it, though.

“Don’t give me that ‘we’re relatives’ shit, Wen. ’Cause the guys who supply me sure as shit ain’t my cousins and I have to pay in full.”

Cheapskate.

Her job in the reserve school office didn’t pay much. And after she’d made Junior move out, she still had to cover the mortgage and bills on a house they’d bought in anticipation of the children who never appeared. She knew what people said. “Oh, there’s Wendy Kiwenzie, thinks she’s so big. Couldn’t hack it in that city school, so she had to come home.”

She had come back a decade ago, sure, but only to take care of her father. Then her mother followed him into the ground as fast as she could. After burying them both, she realized she’d lost more than her parents, which was enough to lose all at once—she’d also lost herself. She wanted to stay home, but the whispers were probably the reason she agreed to marry Junior. The whispers of a girlfriend back in the city. Now all she had was a three-bedroom ranch by the water that she couldn’t afford to heat.

So, with no extra cash, she’d asked Auntie Ethel if she wanted company picking morels. It was hard work, wandering the bush that hemmed in three sides of the reserve from the highway, scouring the base of dead trees. A morel looked like a little brain left to dry on the forest floor. Wendy hated them. But the white people in town? They loved them. And they paid on delivery.

Which was how she now found herself dragging a mesh bag a quarter full of fungal brains through the woods early on a grey Saturday morning. She had one earbud in, the other left out so she could listen to Ethel telling her who was shacked up with whom and how third cousins were still cousins so people should be more careful. Gossip was usually a welcome distraction, but Wendy had spent her Friday night playing euchre and had already got all the rez news from her auntie Maureen on her father’s side.

She rolled her head around on her neck. Already sore and bored and they hadn’t been out for more than a few hours. The air was heavy with held rain, and her hair was frizzing out of its bun.

“I’m going to check by the creek,” she called, slipping into the more tangled brush that Auntie Ethel, with her arthritic knees, avoided.

“Try the birch, they like birch,” Ethel yelled back, settling on a flat-topped boulder. “I’mma take a little breather, me.” She pulled up her long skirt to her knees, revealing tie-dye yoga pants tucked into woolen socks. “Don’t fall in.”

Wendy waved and put the other earbud in, and the music spread evenly over the crunch of her boots. Right away she found a small patch of mushrooms under a birch. Ethel knew her shit. One by one, she twisted their pulpy stems, releasing the little brain while leaving the root—an investment for future hunts, and a band harvesting rule. The band also dictated the mesh bag, which allowed spores to fall out, ensuring there were enough morels for every member, even reformed lesbians too old to be collecting mushrooms for weed money, but who were, in fact, collecting mushrooms for weed money.

She dumped the new finds into her bag and wiped her fingers on her jeans. “Gross.”

As she headed back towards her aunt, the wind picked up. Spring was unpredictable around here. Dressing in layers was essential. Wendy untied the flannel shirt knotted around her waist and slipped it on. Debris blew dizzily on the ground: dead leaves, shed bark, broken twigs. She watched them flex and coil. For all her angst and lack of direction, there was still something out here for her, something that soothed her. Something . . .