Agviq

by Michael Armstrong

  And two of Tuttu’s dogs had swollen bellies and tits popping out, the two he called Libby and Susan. A third bitch, Roxy, was coming into heat, her vulva swollen and oozing yellow scent. When Roxy began presenting herself to the males, Tuttu said he’d let both males have a shot at her, just to mix up the gene pool as much as possible.

  Claudia smiled at the thought of the last two male dogs in Utqiagvik getting to be studs. In dog yards she’d seen among mushers down south, it had only been one or two males who got such rights—unless some male slipped his chain. Let there be a thousand dogs, she thought, and may the seas swim with seals.

  Or at least this hole, this seal.

  Shifting her leg slightly, her leg scraped the snow. Almost right at the noise something rasped from the allu. Claudia tilted her chin up, letting her hood fall back off her head, and then got a better look at the icy dome. Something had darkened the dome. It rasped again, a deeper rasp. Second breath, she thought. She clicked off the safety of the rifle—a round had been chambered when she first sat down—and brought the butt up to her shoulder. The seal breathed a third time, and Claudia squeezed the trigger.

  Sing! she thought. Sing, bullet, sing through the air! Her mind had gone numb from the cold, the breaths of the seal had been a roaring sea in her ear, and the bullet flying out of her rifle became a bee humming to the head of the seal. Sing, she thought, and sing death.

  The crack of the rifle came next, and a cloud of steam rose from the heat of the rifle barrel. Claudia stood and rose through the steam, the moisture sticking to the hairs of her ruff and her blond hairs poking out from under her wool cap. Sing, and cry! She set the rifle down on her foam mat, grabbed her unaaq and jabbed toward the shattered allu with the hook end of the staff.

  Cracked ice littered the edge of the hole, and water splashed around the smashed dome. The seal floated head up in the short tunnel leading down through the pack ice, blood dyeing red the black water and the white snow and the blue ice. She smiled, then grabbed for the seal with the unaaq, and pulled its head up onto the ice.

  The seal’s body jammed in the short tunnel, a tunnel cut only wide enough for its head and upper body. Claudia grabbed a short length of rope, a rope like a fish stringer with a sharp spike of metal at the end, and threaded the rope through the hole made in the seal’s head by the bullet. She pulled the metal through, tied it around the rope, and then looped the rope around her right foot. She held the seal to keep it from falling back down to the sea, to keep the sea current from pulling it away.

  Her shot had hit just behind the seal’s left orbit, between the eye and the ear. A clean shot, a good shot, but only by chance. The bullet had to have cut through the ice dome, would have been deflected by the ice, and landed where it had. Claudia whacked at the allu, widening the hole. She wrapped the end of the rope around her foot and pulled the seal out farther. Chip the ice, pull the rope, squeezing it out. A polar bear would just crush the seal with one blow, she knew, and pull the whole thing out, bones broken and the seal but a bag of flesh. That’s what Nelson said in one of his books. She had to widen the hole, ten minutes of steady chipping.

  The exercise warmed her, the elation of the kill warmed her. She yanked the seal out of the ice and the sea, and as she did it it reminded her of the violence of birth, the birth of Susanne’s daughter, the daughter fathered by the man who had raped her. Violence and joy. Susanne had cried at the joy of her new child, had screamed at the man who had done this to her and at the state that would demand she bear the child to term. Violence and joy. Claudia had seen that child come into the world, had watched it leave Susanne’s arms and off to some happy husband and wife. The child had been blond and blue-eyed. Claudia’s first niece? Where was that niece now? Had she survived, too?

  She pulled the seal out of its hole, out of the water where it got nourishment, back into the air where it got life. She chipped away at the ice, widening it to allow the seal’s hips to come out. Pull and yank, pull and yank, the edges of the ice bloody, the head of the seal bloody, the body of the seal bloody. Blood and violence and nourishment. Joy. Claudia brought the seal up onto the ice, laid it out on the ice. It rasped a breath—air trapped in its stomach?—and laid still.

  Joy! The excitement of the kill and the recovery warmed her. The thought of food for her house warmed her. She had made a kill, she, a woman, something a good Inupiaq should not do. But she was not Inupiaq, she thought, she was a tanik, and they were not Inupiaq, not really. Meat! She had killed this thing, this seal. How old was it? A year? Two? It looked to be barely a pup. She had killed some mother’s child so she could live. The seal had killed some mother fish’s child so it could live, and on it went. She had understood the process before, had grasped it intellectually. Kill to live.

  The dogs on the beach had been something else: reaction to danger, a quick response. Defending the store had been something else, too, the same as the dogs: kill or be killed. This seal was different. She had deliberately waited for the seal, had hunted the seal, had consciously and with no regret set forth to take its life. The seal had come to her, she thought. It had come to her and taken three breaths and she had taken it. Claudia felt glad. She felt joy. This, this was her first real kill since the war, her first deliberate hunt.

  “Aaaairrrrigaa!” she shouted, the Inupiaq song of joy. The sound echoed against the ice ridge, bounced off the small mountains and to the sea. Thank the seal, she thought. Thank it. As if in response, a rifle shot cracked through the still air just north of her, from the direction of the village. The seal had come to someone else.

  Quickly, while she still felt warm, she stripped her mittens off and opened up the thermos from her pack. Warm water steamed out of the stainless steel flask as she poured a cup. The seal lay on its belly, mouth slightly open and the rope strung through its upper jaw. She kneeled down and poured the cup of water into the seal’s mouth, as they had done for Puvak’s seal. Give it a drink of fresh water. Let the seal’s spirit know that they were grateful to it for letting them have its body, its parka.

  Frozen crystals of blood fell into the cup, melted in the little bit of water on the bottom. Claudia held the cup to her lips, swallowed it, the melted blood and briny seal’s breath. It tasted salty, bitter, warm on her throat. She poured another cup of water, a full cup, drank, felt the water rush through her gullet and into her stomach. Warmth.

  Claudia replaced the thermos in her pack. She undid the knot on the rope, retied it, slipping a loop around the seal’s neck. She put the rifle back in its case, the foam pad in her pack, tied the rope to her pack and slipped the pack over her shoulder. She slung the rifle across the top of her pack, its long loop falling across her chest, around her breasts, the belt of her pack snapped through the strap. Lean forward and the rifle would follow over her head, instantly ready. She set out back to Utqiagvik.

  * * *

  On her walk back to the village, Claudia heard at least two more shots—four shots total, counting hers. Tuttu met her at the trail over the ice ridge, dragging a seal behind him. Ah, she thought, good. His seal was bigger than hers, almost twice as large—an old bull male, she decided. He nodded at her as she walked up.

  “Did you water your seal, anthropologist?” he teased.

  “The seal was thirsty.” Claudia shrugged, smiled. “It seemed the right thing to do.” She pushed her hood back, looked at him, motioned with her chin at his seal. “And you?”

  “Hah! Superstition,” Tuttu said. He looked down, then back up, and grinned. “But maybe you and that old man are right, so I gave my seal a drink. You think it worked with Puvak’s seal? That spirit must have told his brothers we were worthy of them.” He pointed at her seal, then back over her shoulder to someone else coming up behind her.

  Claudia whirled, still fearful of the tug of nanuq on her kill, as she’d heard polar bears did—grab the seal from a hunter, and who would argue with that? But behind her came either Amaguq or Natchiq. No, not them, she saw, they didn’t have
a white atigi with wolverine trim around the bottom. Malgi! The old man pulled a seal behind him, too. He strained with the weight, a seal at least twenty pounds more than Tuttu’s. Azah, she thought. Azahah.

  Malgi wheezed as he came up to them, but his steps were strong and sure. He stopped, flipped back his hood, and smiled at them through an ice-crusted mustache. The old man bit on the icicles frozen to the fine hairs, bit them off and sucked at his body’s breath.

  “Two seals?” Malgi asked. “You see, Grandson? You see why we should wait for the seal, instead of chasing him? Was I not right? And look at this seal”—he waved at his—“I did not think I could lift it out of its allu. You see?” He tilted his head back, laughed. “You see! Three seals! Three, now!”

  Claudia smiled, happy at the old man’s joy, at her joy, at Tuttu’s joy. “I heard four shots.”

  “Amaguq?” Tuttu said, pointing beyond Malgi.

  Claudia took her Nikons out from a parka pocket—she’d remembered them this trip—and scanned the twilight. Someone in a white atigi, coming from the southwest. Who had come with her, with Malgi? Yes, Amaguq: Natchiq had gone northeast with Tuttu. Puvak had stayed back at the qaregi.

  “Amaguq,” she said. She focused tighter on the dim figure. “No seal—but he’s carrying something.”

  The hunter, the wolf, came up to them, held up the thing as he approached. He waved the thing at them, a thing about two feet across, arms thrust out in eight different directions, body like a triangular wedge. A crab! Hah, she wanted to shout, We got seals, you got a crab. The man laughed at the sight, Amaguq laughing with them.

  “You shot that?” Tuttu said.

  “Did you give it water, too?” Malgi joked.

  “Yah,” Amaguq said. “It was a fierce fight! He bit the cup!”

  The hunters chuckled, packs came off and they all pulled out thermoses. Malgi poured tea from his thermos into their cups, and they stood, rocking on their feet, sipping on tea while Amaguq caught his breath and told them his story.

  “I shot a seal—I did!” he said. “An ugruq, I think.”

  “Bearded seals don’t use allus,” Malgi said.

  “Well, as big as an ugruq. Anyway, as you told us, I quickly tied a line to the seal, held the line with my foot. I was reaching over to get my unaaq when something pulled on the seal. I grabbed the rope, thinking maybe the current had the seal, or maybe the seal wasn’t quite dead.”

  “You should loop the rope around your foot right off,” Malgi said. “Tie a circle in the end. That current can get strong.”

  “It wasn’t a current!” He sipped his tea, shook his head. “I had the rope in my hand—I hadn’t put my mitten back on, so I had a good grip—when something pulled, hard. I pulled back, and it pulled harder!”

  “The seal woman,” Malgi said, nodding. “She wanted the seal back.” He smiled, to show he was joking.

  “No, no, not her—oh! Anyway, I pulled, something pulled harder. I figured out that something was eating the seal, biting at it. So I yanked hard, thinking it was a fish—I don’t know, it acted like a fish. And the thing pulled back real hard, disgusted at the game, I guess. It pulled my hand down into the water of the broken allu. Yai, that was cold! But I held on.” Amaguq tapped his chest. “It wasn’t going to get my seal.”

  “Something did,” Tuttu said.

  “Yes,” Amaguq said, “something did. So when that thing yanked, I got smart”—he tapped his forehead—“and thought, okay, better not keep getting wet. I slipped my unaaq through the loop on the rope, and let that thing pull the rest of the rope down into the hole. I figured I could pull the seal back up after I got my mitten back on. I took off my wet glove liners, slipped my hand back in the mitten.

  “I watched that stick wobble back and forth. The thing pulled on the rope, yanked and pulled. I thought it was going to break the unaaq, just pull the whole thing through the hole, it pulled so hard. And then it yanked real hard, one big pull, and the unaaq bowed in the middle, and bounced back out. I grabbed the unaaq, pulled back on the rope, and brought up—this!” Amaguq held up the crab.

  “That crab ate the seal?” Tuttu asked, eyebrows raised in mock astonishment. “Azah, he must have shit a lot already! How big is his stomach? Did he puke on you?”

  “No, no,” said Amaguq. “An aaglu ate the seal—a killer whale. I was about fifty yards from the lead. After I pulled the crab up, I heard a whooshing noise out from the open water. I looked out there and saw this huge fin cutting through the sea, and then the whale spouted again, and dived, like he was giving thanks to me.”

  “The killer whale?” Claudia asked. “You think a killer whale took your seal?”

  “It could happen,” Malgi said. “Once I saw a polar bear lying in the sun, on a little ice floe. Out of the water this aaglu rises up, pulls nanuq into the water, and eats him in about two bites. The wolf of the sea—he knows his brother, Amaguq.”

  Amaguq shrugged, as if to say, believe me or not. “I think the aaglu left a little meat on the end of the line, and the crab took it. So I got the crab, at least.” He held it up again, and the hunters laughed at his story.

  Claudia smiled. Three seals and a crab. But better, they had a story. The thrill of the hunt, the joy of the kill, and the laughter of Amaguq’s story washed through her. What did it matter that Amaguq got a crab? The bond, that was what counted: he had hunted well, even if he hadn’t completely succeeded. They had all hunted well. I hunted well, she thought. This is what matters. We have hunted, I am a hunter.

  Chapter 14

  ON January the twenty-third the sun rose for the first time in sixty-five days. Claudia and Tammy were out drilling for water on the freshwater lake, walking around and around a long auger bit, when Claudia glanced to the south and saw an orange arc rise up above the horizon. The battery on her digital watch had died a month before, its crystals freezing and fading in a lethargic dance; she had no idea of the time when the sun rose, but later calculated it to be about one o’clock in the afternoon. Claudia slowed on her side of the auger. Tammy glanced up.

  “Look,” Claudia said.

  “Ah,” Tammy said, “azahah. The sun. It’s that day?”

  The anthropologist nodded. “I’d forgotten. The night’s over—the twilight, anyway.”

  The great orange ball rose over the frozen lake, the windswept lake. Drifts and mounds on the ice cast long shadows toward them, and Claudia turned to the north and saw her own shadow pointing to town. Three satellite dishes, like hubcaps on cones, pointed straight across the tundra, almost flat to the horizon. The sunlight caught the dishes, making them glow pink, the ends of the receivers glinting. Tuttu and Natchiq had been messing with the satellite dishes, trying to get one to work, she remembered—trying to fix the satellite that picked up signals from Anik II, a Canadian telesat. The dishes, too, cast shadows. Shadows!

  Overhead, the sky was clear, a dark blue that faded to pale, the color of new ice. A wisp of a cloud swung from horizon to horizon, as if the sea had raked the sky with foamy fingers. But no dark clouds blotted the dome of day above. No ash swirled in the upper atmosphere. All was clear, the winter of war gone with the winter of night.

  The sweat at her back grew moist and cold and clammy. Claudia and Tammy looked up at the sun, then resumed their work, drilling through the new ice to the water below. Water from the lake tended to be more brackish, fouler tasting than the clean, pure water from piqaluyak ice, but Claudia thought it easier to get to than hiking all the way out to the landfast ice ridge. The auger broke through into unfrozen water, and they heaved the bit up just as a buzzing noise hit them.

  Something that sounded like an angry mosquito hummed to the north, just beyond the satellite dishes. Claudia searched for the sound, trying to place its origin and location. It sounded familiar but ancient, a sound, like the New York Philharmonic playing Beethoven’s Ninth, she knew but had not heard in a long, long while. Her memory played with the noise, put a tag on it, and then she made the connec
tion. She heard the throaty roar of a motor coming from the satellite dishes down the road. She looked for the thing with the motor and saw a light bob down the road toward them. ATVs. Four-wheelers.

  She half expected to see Jim and Horace and Oliver roaring up on ATVs; Claudia hadn’t heard a four-wheeler since Ataniq, right after she and Rob had emerged from their fallout shelter and started their walk to Wainwright. But of course it couldn’t be Jim or anyone from Ulguniq; despite trying, no one had heard from Wainwright since the war, not over the CB, not over any sort of radio. If anyone lived in Wainwright, they’d have to wait until spring and the water cleared enough to boat down to find out. The gas for a trip by snowmachine couldn’t be spared, and who’d want to hike down there?

  Claudia and Tammy laid the auger down, and watched the light grow larger. They noticed another light follow the first light. Two ATVs, then.

  “Who’s that?” Tammy asked. She pushed the hood back from her atigi, ran a hand through the shorter hairs on the top of her head. Claudia smiled at the gesture, thinking of Tammy’s obsessive attention to her appearance. Unlike Claudia, with her shabby bangs hanging down in her face, Tammy kept the vestiges of her punk cut neatly trimmed. No one else in the qaregi shared her obsession. Tammy kept teasing Claudia about her unkempt hair, threatening to “whack that shit” out of her eyes some night when she was asleep.

  “Got me,” Claudia said. “Didn’t know anyone could get gas. Natchiq guards it like gold.”

  The two ATVs turned off the road and onto the lake. Tuttu and Amaguq. Tuttu drove out on the ice, and pulled up to them, the four fat wheels of the ATV skidding and whipping the machine around. He kept the engine on idle.

  “Been lookin’ for you, anthropologist. Something’s come up.” Tuttu patted the seat behind him. “Get on.”

  “What’s going on?” Claudia asked. Why would they waste precious gas searching for her? she thought. A chill went down her spine. Someone hurt? Had Malgi or one of the elders died? “Anything wrong?”