When I’m finally warm enough I get the tent back up, moving aside a few old boards to make sure there’s room. Tomorrow I’ll start working on putting together a shelter that’s a little more durable. If I want to stay here for the winter, I could certainly use something more than a thin wall of nylon.
*
There was a cast-iron stove, rusting but still whole, lying in the weeds about fifty yards from camp. After spending over two hours wrestling it a few meager feet, it struck me that I could load it on the toboggan and slide it along. Still a lot of work, but I managed to get it into place, nestled into a bed of rocks and sand. Lying beside it was enough still-good piping to vent it off to the side and out a wall of my little cabin, and for the first time since the seasons began the change-over, I’m warm.
Three walls are wood, the back one is the side of the little hill. The roof sweeps one direction, down from the hill, and the small door I have to crouch to get through is set in the side, near the front. I managed to scrounge most of the wood for the roof, and spent a good three weeks chopping trees and planing logs with the axe, giving myself a good half-hour at the end of each day to sharpen the blade in anticipation of more chopping. Before the snow falls I even manage to construct myself a crude bed. But the stove is the true sign of civilization, in place only days before the first skiff of snow settles in.
Bath night. The lake and stream are all frozen now, so I scoop snow and, sometimes, chopped ice into my two buckets, melt them on the stove. I stand there, naked except for my boots, lather up my hair and soap up my body, then reach blindly for the second bucket and dash out the door into the minus-thirty-odd night, gasping in relief from the almost oppressive heat and steam that are built up, then gasping even louder as the cold penetrates the hot water I am pouring over my head and body. Then back inside, dry myself by standing by the stove, picking newly formed icicles from my eyebrows and beard.
When I’m all done, I settle down on the edge of the bed for some fresh caribou steak and canned peaches.
Eight miles or so from the cabin is the former camp of a compatriot of my grandpa’s, a man named Joe March. I have read in the diary how their paths would cross once in a while, and there is mention of some dark moment where their lives intersected, murder and mayhem hinted at, although it is nothing he expands on, and nothing he ever mentioned to me. What the diary does have is a sketched map and a set of directions to both the camp and to something he calls the “cairn.” I had not imagined I would be curious about this, but now that my northern life has settled into a routine, I find that I am.
And so I load up the toboggan with my tent, my sleeping bag, emergency supplies and food. Then I wax my skis and strap them on, sling my rifle across my back, and with one more check of the GPS unit in my pocket and the compass and map draped around my neck, head out.
The day is splendid, the sun out and low on the horizon, not a cloud in the sky. This time of year I should still have enough light to make it to the old camp and find a place to pitch my tent for the night.
Twice in the distance I see Arctic fox or hare, hard to discern white on white from such a distance. Too far for me to haul out my rifle, not that I have terrible need for food right now anyway.
My grandpa told me a story once, of he and his father and this Joe March and his son, riding their dog sleds, coming off a trap line and sliding out onto the frozen, snowy lake. There was a mother caribou and her calf, bounding through the snow and aiming for the shelter of trees, about a thousand yards away.
Grandpa reached down, still riding the back of his sled, and pulled out his rifle. The others laughed at him, told him he was crazy to think he could hit anything from such a distance. But he didn’t listen, jumped from the sled, and with the rifle held against his hip and still running from the momentum, let off a shot.
“Dropped that goddam mother with a bullet right through the spine,” he told me. “Shut up those sons of bitches real quick.” Then they rode to where she lay, warm blood melting and staining the crusty snow, and finished off the calf, standing and bleating helplessly for its mother to stand.
Food for them and for the dogs.
I had expressed doubt about this tale sometime later, talking with my father. Dad just laughed, and told me how Grandpa would knock the puff off a dandelion from fifty yards, and point out how every hunting season he was able to come home with a good-sized moose in the back of the truck.
*
A storm is brewing. The wind has picked up, more often than not raking rock-hard pellets of snow against my face, and the clouds are building swiftly. I hunch over to peer at my GPS unit, compare it briefly to the map while holding a flashlight in my teeth, then swear as I angle myself more towards the north. Fighting this I must have veered away from the winds.
It is now getting dark, the sun dropping below the horizon earlier and faster every day. I should have been there, or at least nearby, an hour or more ago. I make for shadowy shapes that I hope are trees, swearing at the toboggan, which feels more and more like nothing but dead weight.
And then I see a light, waving and blinking through the blowing snow. Not too distant, I think. I try shouting, but doubt that I am heard. Still wrestling with the toboggan, wax on my skis no longer gaining me much purchase, I fight my way through small patches of pine, limbs all pointing in one direction from flagging, trying their best to impale me as I slip and slide.
Now I can hear dogs barking, yips and moans and howls coming in brief snatches through the wind. Exhausted, I stop and tie the toboggan to a tree, anxiously wrap the yellow nylon rope around a high branch, then kick off my skis and stand them up next to it, quickly remove my ski boots and slide my numbing feet into my Sorels.
I mark my position with the GPS, and then I march towards the light, listening to the dogs.
The light has disappeared. I have been walking in what I hope is an ever-shrinking circle for the past half-hour or so, but even that is no guarantee. The cold has affected the batteries and the LCD in the GPS unit, and my last glance at it provided only a blank screen, black draining in a tiny pool in one corner. It should have stayed warm in my pocket, but like everything else, it isn’t working for me any more.
I stop and scan for any sign of horizon, but I see nothing but black and white; in close, distant, who can tell? Too damn stubborn to lie down and succumb, I trudge onwards.
*
The light again, this time sitting still, accompanied by the sound of more dogs and by the report of a rifle shot. I hurry towards the sound, falling once but catching myself before planting my face in the hard snow, getting back up as quickly as I can.
The light proves to be an oil lamp, sitting on the ground. I move out of the wind and into a pocket of relative calm, no snow blowing and seemingly less on the ground. Dogs can still be heard in the distance, but I see none. No sign either of who owns the lamp or who fired the shot.
I stand for a moment, staring at the lamp, bewildered by both the sudden change in weather and by this light, sitting alone in the middle of nothing. And then I hear a sound behind me, and I turn.
He’s a large man, taller than me by a head, broad at the shoulders, dressed in fur and wearing mukluks. He is carrying a rifle, cradling it really, and there are tears in his eyes, glistening in the light of the oil lamp. Long blond hair sticks out from beneath his hood, and his slight beard is moist with half-frozen tears and snot.
Before I can say anything he hefts the rifle, points it straight into the air, pulls the trigger. The blast sets the distant dogs to barking again, and the man joins them in a howl that sounds so much of pain and loss that my gut, even my bowels, tightens up into a desperate knot.
“Joe!” he yells, holding the rifle close to his chest again. His accent sounds Scandinavian. “Help me, Joe! Joe!” The last time he shouts this name he drags it out, turns it into another howl to join the unseen dogs.
I stagger over to him, sure now that I am witnessing someone despondent over something, drunk
perhaps, suicidal for sure. “Hey!” I yell, thinking maybe I can redirect his thoughts by getting him to help me. “Can you help me?”
He looks up from staring at his rifle, looks me straight in the eyes. Then he whispers, “Oh, Boris, I miss you so. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there.” He sobs, wipes snot away from his nose, turning his sleeve stiff and shiny as it freezes. “Murdering bastard,” he growls, and lifts the rifle again.
I move to stop him, try to push the gun to the side, but without even looking at me he pushes me away and as I slip on the snow he slides his mouth over the barrel. “No!” I yell, rolling and scrambling to my feet, and as I rush towards him he looks me in the eyes again, and this time his own eyes go wide just as he pulls the trigger.
The roar of the rifle is muted, and I watch helplessly as the bullet tears open the side of his head, his jaw and cheek and ear vaporizing in a spray of blood and flesh and bone. The rifle slips from his hands and he slowly tumbles backwards, falling to the snow with his arms spread wide. Bits of brain hang from his skull, and the snow there is almost black with the lamp sitting on the ground on the other side of him.
“Jesus,” I say, and go to see if he’s dead, although there can be no doubt, and then the pocket of calm disappears and the storm moves in again, and just like that I can see nothing more than my hand in front of my face, and the lamp seems to have been blown out with this latest gust. I walk ten paces, know that I have gone too far, stop and pull out my flashlight. It only helps to light up snowflakes whipping by at a right angle to the ground.
I stagger like this for what seems to be more than an hour, sheen of sweat building into layers of ice on my face, hands and then feet slowly deadening with the cold. Finally I can go no further, and I sit on the snow, wondering how long I’ll have until hypothermia begins to settle in. A part of my mind views this situation with analytical detachment, going over what I can expect.
The exertion I’ve gone through has warmed me, but in the process has pulled heat away from my core. Sweat freezes and stays frozen now, chilling me even more. Soon I know my core temperature will plummet, a degree Fahrenheit every half-hour or so. Two hours to partial amnesia, another hour to apathy, thirty more minutes to a stupor. Two hours after that I’ll stop this infernal shivering, and all of my organs apart from my kidneys will begin preparing to shut down. Another two hours and my heartbeat will become irregular, and then thirty minutes after that I may feel like I’m burning, so much that I’ll begin to strip off my clothes to escape the flames and heat.
You don’t venture to the Arctic for a year without doing preparatory reading. Thank God I’m still lucid enough to entertain myself, I think, and give a frantic little chuckle in time with my shivering.
I close my eyes, keep them so for minutes, perhaps longer. I picture my grandpa fighting weather like this and winning, tough old bastard not knowing how to give up. Probably a shit-load smarter than his grandson, though.
The dogs again, howling and barking. And closer this time.
I try to open my eyes, but they are crusted shut. It won’t help the situation, but I peel off one mitt to wipe away the ice and snow, not even feeling the cold on my hand now. Both eyes open now, I see that I’m in another strange weather pocket, that the blowing snow has disappeared once again. And there is another lamp, this one bouncing through the air as someone carries it.
A yell for help comes out as a croak, and so I force myself up to my butt, not sure when I ended up lying on my side, then slowly push up to my knees, then standing, balancing with my still-ungloved hand. I cast about for the mitt for several seconds, knowing I’ll need it, forgetting it is clipped to my sleeve. When I finally find it and painfully slip it back over my hand, the light has stopped moving, not more than twenty feet away.
I can see now as I approach that there are two, smaller one holding the lamp while the other looks at the body of the Scandinavian who killed himself. I drop to my knees beside his body, directly across from them. “Please help,” I whisper.
“He’s still alive, Pete,” says the larger man. “I don’t know how, but we can’t leave him out here. Go get a sled so you can give me a hand getting him back to the cabin.”
Pete, I see, is young, just barely a teenager. His eyes are wide with fright, but he nods his head and turns to run, carrying the pool of light away with him.
“Pete’s a good son,” says the man, barely visible now. “Works well on the lines, big help with chores around the cabin. Too young for this, though.”
I nod, unable to speak.
“He liked Boris. Cried all night after the Constable came by on his sled and told us he’d been shot by Skinner. Wish they’d catch that son of a bitch.”
The light comes bouncing back now, Pete pulling a sled behind him. Dogs still bark, somewhere in the distance.
“Good,” says the man, standing. “Let’s get him on it and back to the cabin.”
Feeling grateful, I stand, but before I can take one step towards the sled the two of them are bending over and picking up the body of the Scandinavian. They gently lower him onto a bed of pelts, then Pete grabs the lamp and his father grabs the rifle and they start pulling the sled.
Shocked, I stand there for a second, blinking as I watch them begin to fade into the inky blackness. But only for a second, and then I am stumbling along behind them, trying mightily to raise my voice above a whisper, desperate for help and to know why they are ignoring me.
The sled appears heavy, and even in my condition I am soon able to pass them. I step in front of the older man, but he does not acknowledge me, just pushes me to the side like he knows I am there but is unable to see me. Like the Scandinavian did to me.
By now something is tickling the back of my mind, something that I know is there, but I can’t find it, can’t work my way through the fog of intense cold and desperate need. I try two more times to get the man’s attention, once his son’s, getting the same result each attempt. Bewildered by their reactions, I resort to just following, leaning on the back of the sled for support and to make sure I don’t close my eyes for a few seconds and lose track of them.
Soon we are at a small cabin, smoke drifting from a small chimney pipe, warm glow of light shining through a few badly-sealed cracks in the wall. I can still hear the dogs, but none appear to my sight.
Pete opens the door and lays the lamp on the floor, just off to the side. Then he comes back and takes the Scandinavian’s legs, and he and his father heft the man’s body into the cabin and lay it on a bedroll. Addled as my brain may be, I am not willing to let this opportunity go by, and so I step through the door just behind them, watch as Pete steps around me without acknowledging my presence to close it.
Blessed warmth! I pay no more attention to my companions or my surroundings, instead get as close as I can to the cook stove that sits in the center of the single room, painfully peel off each mitt and hold my raw, blistered hands so close that I am almost touching the metal. My shivering attacks with renewed force, and I can hear myself emitting a steady stream of hoarse nonsense syllables; “Buh-buh-buh-fuh-fuh-fuh-vuh-vuh-vuh-kuh-kuh-kuh,” and on, unable to control myself. I feel a desperate need to piss, overload on my kidneys from my surface blood vessels constricting and forcing fluids towards the center of my body in a last-ditch effort to retain my core temperature. But I squint and with an effort hold it back, not wanting to wet myself until I know whether or not I am in the midst of a hypothermic hallucination.
I hear noise, wrenching me back to this strange world I find myself in. Now that they have placed him on the floor, the Scandinavian has miraculously sprung to life, screaming in agony and twisting his body this way and that, shouting unintelligible words to the air, eyes delirious and unseeing.
It is all he can do for the father to hold him down. “Pete,” he yells, “Get me the medicine bag!”
The boy jumps to obey, grabs a caribou-hide bag from beside a small pile of pelts. He delivers it, obviously frightened, and then his fa
ther directs him to get a pot and melt some snow. This he does as well, stepping outside for a few seconds and then coming in, once again stepping around me like he knows I’m there but can’t let me in on the secret. The snow quickly melts on the hot stove, and then Pete puts on one of his mitts and carries it over to where the Scandinavian is still thrashing about.
“Swede!” yells the father. Part of me smiles at the obvious name. “You’re hurt bad, Swede, and I don’t know if I can do anythin’ to help. But I gotta try!” He pulls a small red-tinged bottle from the bag, whispers “I’m sorry” and pulls the cap off with his teeth, still manhandling Swede to try to keep him in place. Then he pulls some cotton from the bag, and pours the liquid onto it. Iodine. He dips this cotton into the water, then swabs Swede’s wound with it, rubs it around the edges of the wound first, then replenishes it and daubs it directly onto the man’s leaking brains.
The ensuing screams and howls of protest are worse than I would have guessed possible for a man at death’s door. He jumps and thrashes with renewed vigor, crying and moaning and shouting to God. The father calls for his son to bring whiskey and a bottle is fetched, and with some effort he manages to pour some down Swede’s throat.
Eventually, stepping in time to my warming, Swede settles into a fitful, painful sleep. He lies there mumbling, twisting his arms or his body now and again, but still enough that the father can step away from him and take a drink himself.
Over the Darkened Landscape Page 15
