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honoured if you would.”
    Rod was embarrassed. What could he say without sounding rude? He took the pipe and drew in tentatively, expecting it to be horrible tasting.
    It wasn’t. Rod felt pleasantly surprised. He took another draw, deeper into his lungs. Time slowed down.
What does the old Indian have in this tobacco?
He looked at Peter Drum through the haze of smoke. The old man was smiling.
    â€œSleep now, young man. I am giving you a spirit guide. When you awaken, it will be the first sound you hear. Let it guide you and soothe you through rough times.”
    It seemed to Rod that it was Melvin sitting on the bank next to him. Melvin, whole and well. “Rod,” he said, “you are thinking that being in the logging camp is the worst thing that could’ve happened to you. But it’s not. In a few years the ship that you would’ve gone to sea on, the
Caribou,
will sink. You’re not meant to go that way, brother. Do your best with father. I’ll be around. You’ll know when you hear this sound.”
    Rod came awake suddenly. He was alone on the bank. His fishing pole had fallen over the bank into the water. There was no Indian and no pipe. The lonely, echoing call of a loon came over the pond, sounding near and far away at the same time, as loon trills do.
    Maybe the loon was his spirit guide, sent to him by his brother. When he was younger, he’d heard the Mi’kmaq boys talk about spirit guides in animal form. They said it could be the bear, otter, fox, crow, hawk or other beings in the animal world. Who was to say that the loon wasn’t there for Rod?
    He certainly would never tell anyone about this experience. Every white person he knew would laugh at him and he’d never live it down. Serious sober Rod believing in such things? Never.
    Rod kept the incident close to his heart. Whether it was all a dream or not, it comforted him, just as the Indian man had said it would. Over the years, when the going got rough, when Rod thought he couldn’t stand another minute of life in the woods camp, he would slip off alone, to a pond or to the River and listen for the call of the loon. Most times it would come, sounding lonely and lost. But Rod privately considered it a connection with his long-dead brother and it helped him continue on with his life.

    When he turned twenty, four years after Melvin died, Rod got married. Eli had been encouraging him to get a woman for the past three years. Rod’s mother had lived only a year past Melvin. One day, in high summer, she collapsed while pinning clothes on the clothesline. The doctor said that a blood vessel had burst in her brain.
    Rod and his father lived on alone, spending more and more time in the camp, and the house took on a neglected air. “Rod, me son,” said his father one day as they sat down to burnt meat and salty potatoes, “I thinks ’tis time you found a woman. Ain’t you got your eye on anyone around here?”
    Rod looked at his father. The old man was past fifty now and the hard life he had lived was catching up with him. He was constantly bothered with gout, arthritis and digestive problems. He kept saying he’d retire soon, any day now, but, season after season he went into the woods again.
    Rod still carried deep resentment inside him: against the oldman; against Melvin his deceased brother; against every tree in the forest; against the River. He was a bitter young man whose love for the ocean had been cut off too early in his life. To his credit, he worked steadily and never once spoke out his feelings to his father. But buried emotions have a way of coming to the surface, and Rod was known among his peers as being somewhat moody and morose.
    â€œYes, Pop, I dare say I do need a woman. I haven’t found one that suits me, though. There’s no one hereabouts and I never go anywhere to meet anyone else.”
    â€œI’m sorry that I keeps you so close to me, my son. I