She’s reluctant but wants to follow traditions. Her human brothers, despite their cruelness, were excellent hunters and fisherman. Early one morning she secretly leaves her boy at his uncles’ house. The uncles recognize he might be related so they take him in. For several years the boy stays with his uncles, learning how to hunt and fish. In the forest, though, the Bear-Wife is lonely for her son.
One day, the Bear-Husband tells her it’s time for him to die because he’s old and, like all creatures, he must die. The fall air is crisp and the leaves have fallen off the trees. He says hunting season will begin soon, and although all of her brothers are hunters, he will only allow the youngest brother to have the honor of killing him, since it was the youngest brother who was kind to her.
The Bear-Wife is upset at the thought of losing her Bear-Husband and tries, unsuccessfully, to talk him out of it. Eventually, he convinces her to help him with the rituals necessary for his death. She says to him, “Remember our own son will be among the hunters. He’s been taught well by his uncles.”
The Bear-Husband considers this and, in preparation for the hunt, he instructs her to attach a piece of brass to the hair on his forehead. This ornament will let their Bear-Son recognize his father. Finally, the Bear-Husband instructs her about how his body should be treated after his death.
One day, the Bear-Wife goes outside and sees a red mark on the rocks above the opening to their den. This tells her that soon her brothers will come hunting for her husband. After the first snowfall, the hunter-brothers, along with the Bear-Son, arrive in the woods and make their way to the den. The Bear-Husband greets them outside. He stands up on his hind legs, roars, and snaps his jaws. He does not allow the older brothers to kill him. Instead, he fights back the older brothers and bites them, wounding them so they can’t spear him. Then he turns to face the younger brother, allowing the younger brother the honor of killing him. The younger brother thrusts the spear into the bear and the Bear-Husband dies.
The Bear-Wife lumbers of the den. Outside, she stands up. Her coarse hair silkens along her back, her jaw flattens, and her teeth shorten. She clenches her paws as her claws form to fingers. The brothers are amazed at their sister’s transformation. She says to them, “You have killed my Bear-Husband and now we have to honor him.” The Bear-Wife’s brothers do not challenge her. Her Bear-Son is sad, though. He has participated in the hunt that unknowingly killed his own father. She explains to him and the other hunters if they do as she instructs, the Great-Bear will be reborn again and again, giving them the honor of the hunt for many generations. She instructs them in the proper way to dispose of his body and the ritual feast that accompanies the kill.
After the feast in the village, the Bear-Wife remains with her human family. Her brothers try to make it up to her and give her the finest bed in the house and offer her the best food at the table. She accepts their apology, but, once in a while, when the leaves on the birch turn gold and the air stings her lungs, she reaches out for the husband who isn’t there.
And one night, some years later, she finds herself waking to the crunch of snowy earth beneath her bare feet. The pull of winter shortens and thickens her legs. She shakes her head rapidly as her jaw snaps into its proper place, long and wide. She huffs the crisp air, her breath circling a new form, and she lumbers toward her old den without ever looking back.
Date: 1980s
Recorded by Tooch Waterson
The Girl Who Paid Attention
She wanted to pull a birdskin over her head and fly away. Instead, she raised the .243 like her dad, Karl, had shown her. They had practiced at least twice. The rifle was still too big for her nine-year-old hands. Her father stood beside her, and her mother, Mina, sat on a log nearby. Her mother didn’t seem bothered by hunting so she shouldn’t be bothered either, right? But why did she want to slip down into the moss and become a shrew, or open her mouth and growl at her father like a bear. She couldn’t escape this lesson: she was learning to hunt.
She pulled the trigger. The shot rang out, deafening her. The deer, only fifty yards in front of her, dropped dead. She followed her dad and mom over a large log and through knee-high alder to the place where the deer once stood. The deer lay dead on the ground. Her dad offered her the knife, but she shook her head.
“Tova, what’s the matter,” he said.
The deer lay at her feet. It had offered itself to her. At least that’s what her mom claimed. She tried not to puke. What was the matter? The eyes. It was the eyes. She didn’t want to see into them. She turned her head. Breathe. Breathe. She inhaled a small shallow breath, and then let it out slowly. She breathed for the animal lying on the ground. She breathed for the little alder trees surrounding her, trying to grow up in the logged forest. She breathed for the old rotten log beside her, nursing small trees along its spine. She wanted to reach for the deer’s warm hide, stroke the hair on its side. But, no, it was meat. They were going to eat it.
Her mom placed her hand on her shoulder. “You can do it.”
Tova shook her head. No she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready.
Her dad stood, knife in his hand, waiting. “Whatever,” he finally said. He knelt down.
She turned her head as her father started to gut it, eventually making it into a pack. Her father put the pack on his back and started walking. Tova followed behind him and her mom walked behind her. She slipped, and her mother caught her. They lagged behind, but her dad didn’t stop. He kept on hiking. She hated it when he did that. Her dad always walked in front of her and her brother, Jorma, leaving her to hold her little brother’s hand. Now, out in front, packing the deer on his back, blood dripping down onto his raincoat, her dad appeared like some kind of creature. Maybe the kind they whispered about, like a troll. Maybe something Raven had created but didn’t tell anyone about. She shook her head. This wasn’t the time to make up stories or to imagine what was lurking behind the trees. She had to focus. Pay attention. She jerked. The sting of her father’s handslap against her head still stung—“If you don’t pay attention, you can die.”
Tova’s boot sunk into the muskeg. She pulled it out, and then searched for a stump root. She stepped on the root, getting her footing again. She took a deep breath. This wasn’t so bad. Getting deer for food was harvesting, not killing. That’s what Mom always said. “You’re an elder in the making.” She was supposed to be a hunter like her mother and father and her grandparents before her. She was supposed to learn to provide for herself and her family. But some of her parents’ friends claimed hunting was men’s work. They didn’t make their kids shoot deer. They didn’t make their kids go fishing or berry picking for food either. Mom said her ancestors had both men and women hunters. After all, Mom went hunting with her girlfriends. They came back with deer every fall. She’d seen her mom in the shed, skinning the deer. Her mom made jewelry out of the antlers. They used the hides for drums. Once, her mother had shown her a photo of an old rock carving: Woman-with-a-bow. And Tova had once traced her fingers on the photo of a Sámi drum, outlining the woman hunter. Hunting was expected.
While heading back to town in their skiff, her mom sat in the bow, where she always liked to ride, wind in her face. Today, though, it was unusually warm out. Her dad tried to make small talk in the noisy, open skiff, but Tova pretended not to hear him. She would rather listen to the motor’s whine. Once they were at the dock, her dad tied the boat up and she helped him put the deer into a harbor cart and pull the cart up to their truck. On the ride home she sat in the middle. Her mom leaned against the passenger door. As they drove, the truck filled with the scent of warm blood.
Her dad gripped the steering wheel, his hands covered in dried blood. “Pretty good shot,” he said to her.
“Yes,” she said. A good shot. She’d killed it. At least she’d done that. She’d heard the stories about bad kills. That was a strange phrase, but it meant Cousin Cory had to have his father make the kill shot after Cory had missed, wounding the deer in the butt. But Cory wasn�
�t good at much, anyway. He wasn’t even good at being good. He’d told her killing deer was easy. At first she didn’t believe it could be true. But she knew better now. It was easy and awful. She’d killed her first deer.
Her dad parked the truck in the narrow driveway. She ran ahead and flung open the door. Auntie Rikka had been watching her little brother while they went hunting. “Jorma! Auntie Rikka, I got a deer! I got a deer!” She stopped suddenly, her voice echoing in her head. Grandma Berta told her never to brag, but she’d sounded happy. Why was she happy? The deer looked more like a pet than a wild animal.
Auntie Rikka rushed into the entry hall from the kitchen. “You did? You got a deer? That’s great.”
Tova stood in her brown rubber boots, her oversized coat hanging below her knees. “It’s a buck.”
Auntie Rikka pointed to her. “Great. Well, you’d better get out there and help.”
“But …”
“Go on,” her aunt urged. “We’ll have heart and liver tonight. You like that.”
“Yes,” Tova said. Eating the heart and liver after her dad or mom returned with a deer was tradition. She liked the taste of it. She was used to seeing beating salmon hearts fresh out of a fileted fish. And she’d even helped her mom fry fish hearts and deer hearts before.
Behind her, the door opened. Her mom stepped inside the entryway. “Your dad wants you.”
Tova turned and headed back out to the shed. It was almost dark outside now and her dad had turned on the light. The shed, like a carport, opened on three sides and was tall enough to pull a truck inside, but not much taller. The deer hung from its legs from the rafter above. Her dad had said it was too warm out so they’d have to skin it right away. Now, her dad stood beside the deer, a knife hanging at his side. Seeing her, he handed her the knife.
Tova reached out for it then stopped. “I have to pee.”
“Jeez. Well go. Hurry up.”
She ran back into the house. Now that she was inside, she didn’t really have to pee. She leaned against the door and took a deep breath. She turned her hand in front of her. Dried blood. Deer hair. Her mom walked into the entryway and seeing her there, said nothing, and cocked her head as if to say, Well, what are you waiting for? Tova knew that look.
Her mom finally spoke, “The deer expects you to do this.”
Expect? How can a dead deer expect anything? She’d seen its eyes. Dead. But a lot of people in her life talked about animals having spirits and even trees and stuff too. They said sometimes the spirits linger around even after something dies. If the deer expected her to skin it then it might feel it, right? That didn’t sound good. She slowly turned around, opened the door and went outside.
In the shed, her father had already started skinning the deer. As she approached the deer, the rocks from the gravel beneath her boots rolled. The scent of animal and old tools filled the air.
Her dad handed her the knife. “We’ll take some steaks to Grandpa Ole. He loves deer steak for breakfast.” He pointed to the place where he had stopped pulling the skin from the meat. She grabbed the hide with her left hand, like he showed her. In her right hand she held the knife. She put the knife blade between the skin and flesh and started to slice, tugging at the skin. The more she cut, the more the deer didn’t look like a deer anymore. It was shapeshifting, becoming something else. She thought about the shapeshifting stories she’d heard. Humans pulling birdskin and feathers over their heads and flying away. Women who became bears. Women who became salmon. Many times she’d imagined being someone or something else. And most definitely someplace else. If she pulled this warm skin over her head, could she run through the alder thicket behind her house? Could she run up the ancient deer trails to the alpine, to the place where she could look down the mountainside? There, she would graze on the blueberries, leaves and all. There, she would bed down and watch the humans who would be little dots in the town below.
Date: early-mid 1980s
Recorded by: John Swanton
Wrangell Town Fire Story
Speaker: Nillan Hetta
1962. March, I think it was, anyway. It was me and Bernie Dietrich and Warren Frederick. We had been out fishing for spring halibut. We were up at Warren’s house drinking. The house was a little tiny shack. We’d spend the night. We had a little kerosene heater in there. We heard the fire siren go off and a bell clanging at the police department. They had a big curfew bell there. Anyway, we looked out and sure enough, there was a big fire downtown. We said, Man let’s go see what’s going on, you know. And sure enough, that was when Wrangell had the big fire.
We went down there and looked, and Captain’s Hardware and Dry Goods store, Captain Jinks’ place, was completely ablaze: It was going big time and it was pretty windy too. Anyway, they were trying to control it but couldn’t control it. There was ammunition going off and everything. The fire was jumping over to the other buildings. It completely wiped out the beach side. It was all beach side in those days. It completely wiped out that side of town. It burnt several buildings on the other side pretty bad, and it burned the drug store building that’s still there now. And it burned the Wheeler building, which is where Far North Gift Shop is now. It burned Dammen’s, too. It burned Dammen’s first store, which is where the T-shirt shop is now. It burned Harbor Market, where their store is rebuilt now. It didn’t burn them down, but it scorched them. They were on fire, too.
It burned all night long and the next day, and it was about out but there was still smoldering ruins, you know. So, Bernie, Warren, and I, we wondered what we could find down there in the smoldering ruins. I knew they had called the Coast Guard to come from Ketchikan, but they hadn’t arrived. We went down there that night digging through the rubble, through the burnt area and the thing was still smoking. In fact, there were some money safes that were still hot, so we couldn’t crack the safes. We thought, well, what are we going to scavenge out of here?
We were going through one of the liquor stores and there were all these beer bottles. Cases and cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon lying there. The place was all burnt down. Everything fell down on the beach. And a lot of them weren’t broken. We had big gunny sacks so we started throwing in all the Pabst Blue Ribbon. We were going to take them.
We were going through there and it was darker than hell. And nobody was watching the place or anything. And we heard something in the dark ahead of us. I said, “Hello there.”
A man’s voice said, Hello.
It was Mauri Sarell and he’s down there with a big gunny sack and he’s throwing whiskey bottles, full whiskey bottles, into his sack. Of course, we stopped and talked to him. Mauri was the mayor back then.
He said, “Ah, guys, don’t say anything about this. I’ll give you a ride home.”
He had an old Dodge pickup truck. He had that damn thing full of whiskey. Anyway, we threw our sack of beer into his truck, and he drove us home. The next day, we cleaned up all the beer bottles. And we had a whole bunch of Pabst Blue Ribbon to drink. The next day after that, the Coast Guard showed up and they posted guards all along there because of all the safes. There were lots of businesses along there. Every safe was down on the beach and hadn’t been opened yet so they had all that money in those safes and records too. Whatever didn’t get destroyed was still in the safes. Some of the safes got so hot it even cooked the stuff inside.
Anyway, that was our experience with the town fire. It was pretty traumatic. We actually got some movie film of it my dad took from the house. Quite traumatic. Big fire. There were lots of businesses burned: a big hardware store, a cold storage. There was a bakery, a big theater. There was another bar, a big gift shop, and a curio gift shop, Walters, a big outfit. And, there was a big hotel. There was another clothing store, another liquor store. It was several blocks long there. The buildings were one right next to another. And, the whore house. Anyway, they all burned down right down to the beach. Nothing left but a few smoldering pilings and a lot of debris.
They said it was started b
y a furnace in Captain’s. They had a furnace in the store, and they said something malfunctioned and the furnace started it. There was always the suspicion, though, that some young boy started it. His name is Dewie Lee. He grew up to be a fireman. His younger brother is a fireman now too. Anyway, I don’t know if that’s true or not but that’s what the rumor was. You know how rumors in small towns go. But, the official story was it was the furnace. So, that’s the end of that story.
Date: 1962
Recorded by: John Swanton
Ceremony after the Wrangell Fire
The night after the town burned down, Main Street smoked while kids plundered through the remains of planked and false-fronted buildings. The rain and spray from the water hoses soaked their clothing. Berta, twenty-five years old, rummaged through old Mary Bjelland’s Alaska Curios store and discovered her great-grandmother’s basket in a broken safe. Mary had refused to sell the basket back to the family, saying it was worth more than the fifty dollars Berta’s mother had once offered for it.
Now, Berta left ten dollars and took the basket home and dried it near the woodstove. After it dried, she held it in her hands, running her fingers over the half-salmonberry and the splash-of-raindrops pattern woven on its sides.
All summer she went berry-picking, filling the basket with red huckleberries, salmonberries, and blueberries. Berries bulged the sides of the basket. Leaves and worms made their way into woven raindrops. Berta’s fingertips whorled with purple juice, the juice oozing between spruce fibers.
At the end of summer, the weight of ancient memory became too great and the bottom fell out of the basket. Berta dug a hole and buried what remained of her great-grandmother’s basket in a shallow grave beneath the berry patch without ceremony, that is, until she spread the jam she and her mother made on a piece of toast, taking her great-grandmother inside.
The Dead Go to Seattle Page 5
