The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  From the ice, kneeling upward, gasping with breathless panic, he unslung his rifle. In the glare, his twitching eye could barely distinguish the front sight as it shook back and forth. Aiming ahead of the dogs he fired.

  Unchecked, the dogs ran into the blinding distance. He fired again. The lead dog turned end-for-end biting his rump as the other dogs dragged it along. With a crushed yelp, it was mounted by the sled runners as the team swept on. Dragging the writhing dog and the swerving sled, the dog team charged on like troops into battle. They were running suicidally straight toward an open lead.

  At the last moment, abruptly they stopped at the edge of the lead, and the sled skidded sideways, braked only by the body of the wounded dog from sliding into the dark water. Dr. West ran furiously. With stupid grins, the dog team looked back at Dr. West, their breath fogging. If there had been a seal, it was long gone.

  Whiteman, you panicked. Dr. West blundered toward the team's watching eyes and steaming grins.

  His unprotected eyes were shimmering and blurring, but he had to recapture the sled before he could go back to search for his dark glasses. His face twisted in pain and guilt as the wounded dog whined and sniffed its shattered spine.

  The other sled dogs watched, their tongues lolling out of great grins, while he pointed the rifle muzzle at the wounded dog's ear and pulled the trigger.

  His hand trembling, with his knife Dr. West cut through the leather strap and freed the dead dog. Rising, squinting against the whiteness, he tried to see back along the sled runner's trail all the way to the indistinct pressure ridge where he thought he had fallen, where he had lost his glasses.

  He was afraid Edwardluk and the other two would have heard the shots, but they should be a long way off near the iceberg. Surely this was a different iceberg. His eyes were killing him!

  To reduce the glare, he slit his handkerchief and tied it across his eyes. Almost blinded, he shouted at the dogs, pushed the sled, yelled, cursed, flailed with the whip while dogs dodged in every direction, and suddenly the dog team darted, curved and flowed along their back trail toward the pressure ridge. He intended to allow himself one minute to search for his sunglasses.

  "Here are your snow eyes!" Edwardluk stood up holding the dark glasses above his head.

  Dr. West tore off the handkerchief, squinted around in a semicircle and did not see the other two men in ambush.

  "Hand me the glasses." Dr. West did not point the rifle directly at Edwardluk.

  Edwardluk's small hand extended the sunglasses. "Bad dogs run away," his voice murmured as if in apology, and he ducked his head as if ashamed. He shuffled his mukluks on the ice. "This poor person couldn't run fast enough."

  "I cannot return to camp," Dr. West interrupted. "I must go find the other whitemen now."

  "The other whitemen," Edwardluk agreed like an echo, and his real thinking emerged circuitously. "Bad ice. Wisest dog is dead. This is the dog's fault not to understand you. We do not understand you, but we like you. We want to help you always. When ice is safe, we go. Tomorrow. Each day you will like us better. Tomorrow."

  Dr. West became aware of movement behind him, another Eskimo.

  "I cannot go back now," Dr. West protested. "You must understand I'm trying to help you. I'll tell the whitemen your babies are hungry. I'll bring back food for the winter. Because I like you," he insisted rapidly. "I like you. Grandfather Bear eat me if I lie."

  Edwardluk looked up at the sky, and he laughed. "West, you are stronger than my fear. Eh-eh, you want to go, we go! This person understands so little, but perhaps some day we people will help the whitemen, too. When we are many, we will help much. Help whitemen of whole world." Like a tiny giant, Edwardluk spread his arms and laughed, unaware that the world was 24,000 miles in circumference at the equator, that there were six billion white-whitemen, yellow-whitemen and black-whitemen, that their vast machines rumbled and lurched toward the stars.

  "Go back," Edwardluk said to the other two young Eskimos. "Tell Marthalik her husband's safe with Edwardluk. We will return in a -- ?" He looked questingly at Dr. West.

  "In a month," Dr. West said, intending to allow plenty of time so she wouldn't worry.

  "We go!" Edwardluk shouted at the dogs and cracked the whip. The sled rushed off carrying Dr. West, with Edwardluk running alongside, shouting: "There is the island."

  Beyond the furthest iceberg on the horizon, Dr. West could see the gray smudge. "A Guard Station of whitemen is truly there?" Dr. West knew Edwardluk had never been there, and other Eskimos who approached had been herded away by the Guards' helicopter. Perhaps antipersonnel radar would mistake him for another Eskimo, he thought. The helicopter might try to herd him back into the Cultural Sanctuary. "Has anyone seen the whitemen, spoken to them?"

  "Peterluk has been close," Edwardluk shouted, "but the ice was not this bad. If there is much open water, we will have to turn back to the camp. We will try again next winter."

  My god, Dr. West thought, by then I'll be snowblind and the Eskimos will be starving. If necessary he could threaten Edwardluk with the rifle. They would have to go on. If there was too much open water out there, he would build a signal fire and try to attract the helicopter.

  Dragging the sled over pressure ridges, the dogs soon slowed. Tiring, Dr. West trotted beside the sled toward the gleaming horizon. Always there was another crack or ridge.

  Helping lift the sled, slipping, tiring, falling, he accidentally jammed the muzzle of his rifle into the ice and rose muttering, staggering after the relentlessly gliding sled. He was encased in perspiration as he slogged into the blinding sun. His thoughts became confused. In his exhaustion, he became suspicious. Perhaps Edwardluk's plan was to wear him out and then seize the rifle --

  When the sled snagged on the thousandth pressure ridge, dizzy with exhaustion, Dr. West lay down on the sled. The dogs lay down.

  "Eh-eh, you rest in camp." Cheerfully Edwardluk scampered about with seemingly inexhaustible energy simultaneously trying to sight a seal while forcing two harpoon shafts into the ice and erecting a tattered caribou skin windbreak.

  "Eh-eh, this person will talk to that seal." Edwardluk hefted the third harpoon and walked away into the blurry distance.

  The wind hissed over the ice, bending the caribou skins into a funnel, a wind tunnel directed at Dr. West's congealing body. Edwardluk had vanished. Shivering, Dr. West ceased to know he was shivering until his ears awoke him to the distant grunting of the polar bear.

  "Eh-eh," Edwardluk's voice laughed. "He don't find no seals either."

  The dogs' voices whined, but their tone was not hunger. Dr. West's eyelids felt glued together. The dogs' voices whined with fear. Alaskan Eskimo dogs would have been roaring with eagerness to rush along the scent of the polar bear, he thought. These dogs were whining.

  Dr. West slid his fingers under his sunglasses to his throbbing eyelids. Overpowering light penetrated, although his eyes were closed. His head ached with pain messages from his overloaded optic nerves. When he tried to open his eyes, he gasped, drowned in dazzling liquid light.

  He was snowblind.

  The hoarse coughing sound was so distant he knew it wasn't Edwardluk. Edwardluk was moving here beside him. From the blind distance came a grunting sound as if from an indecisive hog. Dr. West's hand tightened on his rifle.

  When a bear is hungry enough, he thought, it will stalk sled dogs lying on the ice like seals. When a bear is starving it sees nothing but seals, and I am blind.

  "Eh-eh," Edwardluk's voice laughed, "nothing but seals. Give me the rifle. Big noise will tell the bear we are not seals."

  "I will hold the rifle," Dr. West replied; he was afraid to let go of it because the rifle was all he had, snowblind and helpless. "I know how to work the rifle."

  "This person knows how to work it," Edwardluk volunteered, and Dr. West could hear him moving closer. "Peterluk shot his rifle many times, and this person watched. It is not magic. It is shot with the finger. This person could shoot."<
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  But not at bears, Dr. West thought.

  "Close to the bear," Edwardluk answered his thought. "Give me the rifle."

  "You would not shoot the bear even if I gave you the rifle," Dr. West replied, clinging to its stock.

  "This person would not shoot too close," Edwardluk agreed, tugging at the rifle. "This person is not a bear killer like Peterluk, who will never rise into the sky. This person would only shoot a loud noise so the bear understands we are not seals. Give me -- "

  "Get back." Dr. West clicked off the safety catch, pointed the barrel down and squeezed the trigger. The supposedly recoilless rifle blasted, kicking viciously. There had been ice in the barrel, he realized, but it had not burst. "I have frightened the bear," Dr. West blurted. "Now there is no need for you to have the rifle."

  "If this person had the rifle, a seal could be shot," Edwardluk's voice persisted.

  "There are three harpoons," Dr. West replied.

  "But your eyes are bad," Edwardluk murmured circuitously.

  "I will not give you the rifle."

  Further away the polar bear emitted a mooing noise.

  "This person watched you while you sleep," Edwardluk said, as if this was more important than the circling bear. "Eh-eh, asleep you frown, you twist. In the encampment it was this way also. You look unhappy when asleep. The same as you, Peterluk is that way. Even with your arms around Marthalik, your sleep-face is unhappy. Are all whitemen unhappy when they sleep?"

  "How the hell should I know?" Dr. West slung the rifle over his back and crawled blindly onto the sled. "Let's go!"

  "Whitemen do not shoot us -- " Edwardluk asked what really must have been worrying him, " -- as if we are dogs?"

  "No, I was frightened when I shot the dog. I thought they were running away. I thought they were leaving me alone to die. I only shoot things that are leaving me to die."

  On the moving sled, Joe West clung to his rifle, his head muffled in the futile darkness of caribou skins, his eyes throbbing and flashing with lights of pain. Once he heard Edwardluk shouting at someone, and his stomach contracted. He dreamed Edwardluk had circled all the way back to the encampment. No escape. Then he realized Edwardluk had merely admonished the dogs.

  The sled was moving sporadically, as if the dogs were exhausted again. Finally the sled stopped. Their whining faded.

  Motionless, Dr. West was awakened by the distant crackwhoosh of a recoilless rifle. Whitemen? Dr. West's fingers crawled along the oddly thin stock of his rifle. He was holding on to a harpoon shaft. "My rifle. He's stolen my rifle."

  Under him the sled jerked, and the dogs whined, hungrily straining, while the sled creaked immovably because Edwardluk had anchored it to the ice.

  Edwardluk's plodding return with a dragging sound was engulfed by the roaring lunges of the dogs. Edwardluk was feeding the dogs first, hurling thuds of meat within their harnessed range. Then he was beating them off. "No more! Got no more!"

  "Here is the seal's liver." Edwardluk must have carried it under his parka. "Eat. Do not be afraid. This person left a little blubber by the water for the bear. Eat. Grandfather Bear will see how we helped this bear. Eat. Soon this person will shoot a bigger seal. You eat. Around us there are many wide cracks and soon another seal. Then this person also will eat."

  From the distance rose a long-drawn howling roar like a giant, insane.

  "My god! Was that the bear?"

  "This person don't know. The bear, it was the bear. A little taste of blubber wake up bear's stomach. Eh-eh," Edwardluk laughed nervously. "Bear want to eat world."

  "Give me my rifle."

  "Eh-eh, he is only a bear." Edwardluk clicked the rifle's safety on or off; there was no way for Dr. West's ears to tell which. Edwardluk's voice diminished as he moved away. "Bear don't like man's smell. Once Peterluk's rifle don't work. He said he lie still and bear sniff him and go away."

  The snarling was the dogs.

  "What are you doing?" Dr. West meant: don't leave me alone.

  "This person sees a seal far off. Dogs not fed enough to sleep only fight each other. This person must shoot this other seal." Edwardluk added with practicality: "Your smell will keep the bear away from eating the dogs. Soon this person come back -- "

  Dr. West groped on the sled for the harpoon shaft, clutching it.

  "Best thing is sleep," Edwardluk's voice said, softer, but closer. Instead of leaving, Edwardluk squatted down so close Dr. West could feel his radiated warmth, hear his excited breathing.

  "The important thing, will the whitemen like us?" Edwardluk blurted. "We don't harm anybody. We helped you. We want to help everybody because -- we know. You don't know what's happening, but we know. We sleep happy all with the same dream because we are here, we are there, we know why."

  Edwardluk's voice hoarsened with emotion, with joy, and his hand gently closed on Dr. West's wrist. "We sleep happy because we know that Grandfather Bear will come. He will come down when there are enough of us and -- "

  Dr. West had stiffened involuntarily, and Edwardluk stopped, as if sensing rejection. Again, Dr. West knew what Edwardluk was thinking: you don't like us. For over a month Dr. West had been bombarded by the confusing love and mythology of these people.

  If these strange Eskimos escaped from their cage, from their Sanctuary, Dr. West wondered wryly, would they be scurrying door to door, knocking and disturbing housewives with their joyfully apocalyptic message?

  "He will come," Edwardluk's voice insisted, "when we have covered the world for him." Edwardluk's grip tightened on Dr. West's wrist. "Our bodies will reward him for our birth." Edwardluk's voice rose in confidence and joy. "His great hunger is for us, for us. To this world and all worlds, he comes."

  Abruptly, Edwardluk released his grip, standing up. His footsteps shuffled away over the ice. The dogs whined with hunger, with hope of more seal meat.

  Through the wind drifted loud then softer, grunting as if the bear were circling. The wind hissed across the sled. Under the stiffening caribou skins, Dr. West lay shivering and trying not to sleep or perhaps to sleep, to escape. Eskimos say dream life is real life, beginning while sleeping cold, dreaming cold, awakening into sleep like a wolf inhaling the scents, like a caribou hearing the most distant sounds, like a hand feeling --

  Smoothly he dreamed Marthalik, warmly moving in love, and he were gasping together. In his arms was Marthalik loving him, and he knew she was more wonderful than any woman he had ever known. Relaxing, awakening, she became cute and dimpled. Rising, she became determined and efficient. Proudly she was nursing his son. Then she was flowing back into his arms, and he dreamed they were moving together stronger and stronger, rising again toward that distant sun. Coupled with her he was dreaming toward the green planet he could never quite see. With indescribable horror he saw the green planet was brown.

  Writhing from smoothness, he was falling from the ape forest of his ancestors. He was running, lost from Marthalik. In his dream he was trying to run away from the grunting sounds of the polar bear. The terrified whining of the dogs awakened him. He sat up blindly on the anchored sled. The grunting sound was the bear approaching.

  With his finger and thumb, Dr. West peeled one eyelid open and gasped with pain, stabbed by the blinding white light. His eyes flooded with tears. He couldn't see. Along the sled he groped for the two harpoons.

  "Edwardluk!" he shouted, and the vast emptiness of sea ice swallowed his voice and returned like a false echo the grunting of the bear.

  His hand gripped the harpoon shaft, best weapon for a blindman? To his own surprise he laughed. A bit shrilly, but he laughed. Turning his head to follow the piglike noises of the bear, he extended the harpoon. "Come on, you invisible spook! I'm a man, not a seal."