Out of the Wilderness

by Deb Vanasse

  PRAISE FOR OUT OF THE WILDERNESS

  “The complex interplay of feelings in this troubled family, set against the pristine beauty of backwoods Alaska, imbues an already compelling read with a refreshing combination of action and psychological depth.” Kirkus Reviews

  “A coming-of-age novel with moments of true adventure, this title will find an audience in libraries well beyond Alaska.” School Library Journal

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  The October wind blew down from the Alaska Range, rattling the dried yellow birch leaves until they fluttered to the ground. Hiking behind his father, Josh felt the cold sting hit his face like a slap.

  As he picked his way through the brush, Josh listened to the crunching of leaves under his father’s eager stride and his own steady step. Far behind on the trail, he could hear his half brother Nathan’s light gait. It was a forlorn sound, Josh thought, a final farewell to summer, as the once healthy leaves were ground beneath their boots, to be soon buried beneath layer upon layer of snow.

  Beyond the sound of their footsteps, there was silence. Sometimes the quiet of the wilderness bothered Josh more than anything else.

  Abruptly the sound of his father’s footsteps ceased. Instinctively Josh stopped, too, and looked up to see his father pointing toward a clearing.

  The sound of Nathan’s footsteps grew closer. Josh turned back and raised a gloved finger to his lips, but Nathan’s eyes were on the trail. Look up. Josh spoke the words in his head. He dared not speak them out loud. If his father was pointing at a bull moose big enough to shoot, Josh’s voice would spook the animal and ruin what could well be their last chance to have meat before winter set in.

  Nathan’s footsteps would spook it, too. Despite his thin frame, each step resounded as he drew nearer, announcing their presence. Look up, Josh willed again. The pain in his stomach, reminding him that they’d been on the trail for hours since breakfast, made the matter more urgent.

  Not that they were starving. Not yet, anyway. But they were down to dried fish and berries and rice. Nathan had said they should be satisfied with that. People all over the world survived on less.

  Nathan’s steps came closer and closer to giving them away. His brother might be an adult, but sometimes he acted younger than Josh, insisting on foolish ideas that defied the laws of nature. Ideas like living on berries and rice, after the fish ran out.

  It was only at his father’s urging that Nathan had come along on their hunt. Maybe now, if his brother scared off an animal because he wasn’t being careful, his father would realize that they didn’t have to drag Nathan into everything they did.

  Josh glanced ahead at his father. He stood in the same spot, no longer pointing but with one finger at his lips and the other motioning them forward.

  Behind him, Josh heard Nathan’s footsteps stop at last. He turned to face his brother, just a few feet back, and repeated his father’s signals to come forward quietly. Josh felt a wave of irritation as he looked into Nathan’s brown eyes staring back from his gaunt face.

  Nathan could look sad about nothing and everything, especially when they were in the woods, and especially when they were hunting. His eyes said the words his mouth had repeated far too often, as far as Josh was concerned. They were intruding on the wilderness. Yet it had been Nathan’s idea to leave the city behind and live off the land a hundred miles from Anchorage. The way Josh saw it, they had to intrude, if that’s what shooting something meant, or the unforgiving wilderness would intrude on them in a big way.

  Josh turned and picked his way slowly and carefully through the leaves to the place where his father stood. A smell of decay, stronger than the familiar autumn scent of rotting leaves and rose hips, surrounded them. Ahead in the clearing lay the remains of a moose, a moose they could have been cutting and caching had fortune dealt them a better hand. Instead, they stared at a black bear, its muzzle deep in the kill.

  Josh felt a rush of adrenaline surge through his body. “Can you get a good shot?” he whispered.

  “I think so,” his dad whispered back. “He’s busy with that carcass and upwind of us to boot. Hasn’t even looked up. Think he’s big enough?”

  Josh studied the bear. Fifty yards in the distance, it was hard to gauge its size. But against the remains of the moose, it looked to be a little over four feet long.

  “Second-year cub, I’ll bet,” Josh whispered. “Maybe one of those two that prowled around all summer with their mother.”

  Josh’s dad tugged at the sling that held his rifle on his back, lifting the gun over his head. Each movement was studied and careful. Josh saw the sweat beading up along his brow, in spite of the wind. His father’s years of hunting back in Wisconsin, when he was Josh’s age and younger, all came together in moments like this.

  Josh admired his father’s steady arm, his controlled breathing, as he brought the rifle to his shoulder and set his sights on the bear. His own hunting experience was limited to the past year and a half they’d spent at Willow Creek, living in the wilderness, killing rabbits and ptarmigan, eventually learning to hit more than he missed. He was glad for his father’s steady finger on the trigger right now.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The voice rang out from just behind them and echoed back from the hills in the distance. The bear reared up on its hind legs with a grunt, sniffing at the air. It opened its mouth, releasing an eerie series of woofs, primitive sounds like those a cowering dog would make. But the bear wasn’t cowering. It stood erect, its black coat gleaming.

  His father had told him, had told him and Nathan countless times, that a bear woofs just before it charges: before it charges to protect its young, before it charges to protect its food. The smell of decay seemed to suddenly overpower them. Had the wind picked up? The thought came to Josh as if through a fog.

  “Shoot, Dad,” he urged in a loud whisper. He could feel Nathan upon them, could see his arm reach forward to topple the rifle.

  At the same time, a shot rang out and the rifle clattered to the ground at Josh’s feet. The slow blur of his thoughts turned into a rush of action as the bear dropped to all fours and charged toward them, a bounding bundle of black fur. Nathan pushed between Josh and his father, throwing his father off balance. His father tumbled over a fallen log, and Nathan reached for the rifle.

  Dazed, Josh grabbed for it, too. His grip tightened on the stock as Nathan pulled at the barrel. A thick scent clouded the air. Bear. Nathan had never shot at any animal, not even a rabbit. Josh tugged harder at the rifle, freeing it from Nathan’s hands.

  Nathan stared at the approaching bear, mesmerized. Their father crouched where he had fallen. It was the play-dead stance, the one he had told them to use if a bear ever attacked and they didn’t have a gun. But at this moment, Nathan seemed oblivious, and Josh had a gun.

  “The trees!” his father yelled from the ground. Did he mean run or climb? Josh’s question half formed itself as he raised the rifle and found the charging bear in the sights. Through the scope, everything seemed to be shaking, and he couldn’t get a steady fix. Now the bear looked huge, monstrous. Its teeth were bared and blood flecked its fur where it had wallowed in the moose carcass.

  Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten. As he pulled the trigger, Josh was aware on
ly of the pounding of his own heart.

  2

  The sharp crack of the shot left Josh’s ears ringing. Through the scope, he could see the fury in the bear’s eyes. Josh’s heart beat wildly. Steady, he told himself. You have another shot if you need it.

  With trembling fingers, he reached for the bolt of the gun. Then, in a split second, he saw a dazed, almost sad look overcome the animal. A sense of recognition nudged Josh through the panic, as if he had seen those eyes before. Then came a flood of relief as the charging bear faltered, stumbled, and rolled to its side five feet in front of him.

  Josh stood, frozen, watching the mound of fur for any signs of movement.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Shot him stone cold dead,” his father said. “I’m proud of you, Josh.”

  Josh took a deep breath and steadied himself. He felt more shaken than proud. The lifeless form that lay before him seemed another creature entirely from the charging mass of angry bear that could have emerged the victor from the attack. For a moment, Josh pictured himself as the bear, lifeless on the ground, blood pooling up beneath him.

  He felt his father’s hand lift from his shoulder. “Nate, if you don’t play dead, you gotta go for the trees. Climb and hang on for dear life. And how you got so excited that you knocked that rifle from my hands I’ll never know. Moves like that, and we won’t be just playing dead.” His father’s tone was too light for his serious words.

  So his father thought Nathan had just gotten excited and knocked the rifle from his hands. An accident. Josh looked at Nathan, who was staring at the dead bear as if he had come under some kind of spell. His brother had done strange things before. His rash move today was an unlikely accident.

  If his father had any doubts, they weren’t apparent. He ignored Nathan’s stony silence and continued, “Well, bear meat’s as good as moose, I guess. A little fish taste maybe, after a summer of feeding on salmon, but it’ll get us through the winter.” His father knelt beside the bear, spreading out the carcass, examining the shot.

  “Almost five feet long, he was. Must be a second-year cub, all right.”

  Something flickered beyond Nathan’s stare, a flashing of defiance. Josh had seen it before, at times when Nathan had challenged their father.

  His father went on smiling, studying the carcass. “Looks like my shot was high in the shoulder, just enough to aggravate him. But you got him right through the chest.”

  “Then you’re both to blame.” Nathan’s voice was deep, almost a growl.

  Their father stood. “Blame? This is meat for the winter. That’s what we came for.”

  “Not we. You. And you came for moose. Not bear. Not this cub.” Nathan fairly shook with the words.

  “Nate, let’s be reasonable. We have to eat, moose or bear. And this bear was charging, remember?”

  “You intruded.” There was Nathan’s favorite line. “It was protecting its food.”

  His father took a step closer to Nathan. “And we were protecting ourselves.”

  Nathan held out his arms and stepped backward, as if keeping an invisible shield between himself and his father. “This time you’ve gone too far. You’ve killed a brother.”

  “A brother? Nathan, this is your brother.” He pointed at Josh. Josh looked down at his scuffed boots and the barrel of the rifle growing cold in his hand. He felt a knot forming in his stomach. His father’s voice was steady, soothing, as it was whenever he tried to calm Nathan.

  “This—” Josh looked up to see his father swing his pointing finger back at the bear “—is just an animal. We meant to get a moose. We got a bear. No difference.”

  Nathan pulled at his scraggly brown beard, as he often did when he was agitated. “Big difference. You said yourself it’s one of the cubs we’ve seen all summer. I watched it fish for salmon with its mother. Watched it wrestle with its brother. Watched it forage for berries. I watched it until I knew it was no more an animal than I am.”

  Josh stared at the bear, remembering its charging fury. How could Nathan claim kinship with such an animal?

  “Nate, even if you felt that one bear was special, we don’t know for sure that this is the same bear.”

  “It’s the same bear, all right. One of the cubs. You don’t get it, do you? I’ve studied this sow and her cubs. I know where they feed and when. I know their grunts and their walks. I know every mark on their faces. Look there.” He pointed at the muzzle of the dead animal. “That scar by his nose. His brother did that when they were just yearlings.”

  Josh could barely see a jagged scar beneath the whiskers on the bear’s snout. The pounding in his chest had ceased, and he felt drained, wanting nothing more than to be transported far from his brother’s raving. He turned away from the bear, away from Nathan and his father, and looked across the clearing, above the treetops, where a lone eagle circled in the gray sky. Through the wash of emotion, a thought came to him: Nathan knows this bear better than he knows me. Better than he wants to know me. Better than I want to know him.

  “Let’s be reasonable, here, Nate,” Josh heard his father saying. When he turned to look, he saw Nathan backing farther away from his father’s outstretched hand.

  “I’ve had enough.” Nathan’s voice was loud but uneven against the wind. He backed toward the woods. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “What isn’t going to work?”

  “Living with you and your indiscriminate killing.” The wind swallowed Nathan’s words, making them faint and distant.

  “It has to work. You can’t survive on your own out here.” The redness rising in his father’s face betrayed his frustration, but he kept his steady, even tone.

  “Watch me!” His face set with determination, Nathan turned and strode into the woods.

  “Nathan!” his father called after him, but Nathan kept walking. Josh tried to summon some emotion, some sense of urgency or regret. But he felt only an emptiness. He looked up again, searching for the eagle. It made one final, banking turn and glided toward the top of a towering spruce that swayed in the wind. With precision, its talons clasped the uppermost branch. There it sat, regally surveying the wilderness that stretched out in all directions. It had only to spread its massive wings and be gone, never to return.

  Josh’s father stood staring at the woods where his older son had retreated. Josh stepped to his side.

  “He’ll be all right, Dad. Just let him get this out of his system.”

  His father shook his head. “I hope so. Seems like nothing I do or say lately pleases him.”

  Josh knew the feeling. Everybody liked Nathan when they first met him. But once you got to know him, you figured out that the same high standards he set for himself he extended to everyone else. Josh tried to ignore Nathan’s outbursts. But his father took them to heart. He had searched five years to find Nathan. Five years of moving from city to city, traveling ever westward, until finally they had found him in Anchorage.

  His father had held fast to Nathan from that moment on, clinging like the eagle to the branch of the swaying tree. He had embraced Nathan’s dream of living in the wilderness as if it were his own. As if Josh, the son who had been with him all along, mattered not in the least.

  Perhaps if Nathan made good on his promise to head out on his own, his father would abandon the wilderness idea and they could return to a more normal life. The tiny hope fluttered to rest, like a falling birch leaf, atop Josh’s thoughts.

  “Let’s take care of the bear,” Josh said. “Let Nathan take care of himself.”

  His father shook his head. “I can’t just let him go off on his own, angry like that. I didn’t know he felt that way about this bear.”

  Josh stepped closer to his father. “How could you have known?” Josh reasoned. “Just give him some time to cool off. You know how he likes to be alone. It’ll only make him madder if you go after him now.”

  His father stared again in the direction Nathan had gone. “I guess you’re right. He’ll get over it. Can’t me
ss with that independent streak of his.”

  In silence, father and son set to the task of dressing the animal. As he watched his father’s gleaming knife slice the carcass from tail to chin, Josh detached himself the way he had learned to do whenever there was an animal to be skinned or dressed. You had to forget that minutes before, this had been a living, breathing creature. You had to look at it clinically, as a coroner or mortician must look at a cadaver. You had to see the animal this way, or you couldn’t survive. It wasn’t fun or easy, but it was the way of the wilderness.

  Josh knelt on one knee, pulling back the skin as his father carved it free from the thick layer of fat underneath. It was always Josh who helped his father with the skinning and butchering. Since their first day at Willow Creek, Nathan had neither killed an animal nor helped to skin one.

  But he had said he respected the need to do so. For the first few months, he’d even eaten as they had. More recently, though, he’d refused all red meat. And now there was this business with the bear.

  Josh helped his father pull the warm guts from the carcass, making a pile on the ground beside them. He wondered whether his father understood Nathan, because he didn’t. For all of his charm, independence, and principles, there was a strange, moody side to his half brother that unsettled Josh. After what had just happened, he felt something more than unsettled.

  The putrid smell of the bear’s insides grew stronger. Josh faced into the wind and took a deep breath. Turning back toward his dad, he said, “I know bears feed at moose kills. But what will come along and clean up the mess from a bear kill?”

  His father looked up, wiping at the sweat on his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Bears,” he said grimly. “No qualms about feeding on other bears.” He paused. “Male bears will eat their own cubs, given a chance.”

  Josh shuddered inwardly.

  Within an hour they had the bear skinned, gutted, and quartered. His muscles aching, Josh strapped one quarter and shoulder of the bear to his pack, while his father took the other quarter and shoulder, along with the hide. Now, on his pack, the meat was just meat, not flesh of a living creature.