The Big Why

by Michael Winter

  I asked about the Dobies. Yes, Rupert said. That was an awful case. That winter was too bad to talk about.

  He showed me the house where it had happened. The house was empty now. No windows and no door. Inside, the hearth and the roof open above it. No chimney. There never was a chimney, Rupert said, just a wooden funnel. Along the walls were benches to sleep on. Where Robert Dobie had shot himself.

  I said goodbye to the Harrises. Mose was talking to an Inuk named Anasqasi. Her three young sons. The sons looked tall, something strange in their faces. They looked like me. There was a young black man too. I took Mose Harris aside. How did he end up here. That’s Henson’s child, Mose said. Matthew Henson? He nodded. And Anasqasi’s boys? Those are Peary’s.

  I stared at their faces, their height. I’ve met Peary and you could see parts of Peary breaking out on the faces. Eruptions of cheekbone and eyelid and earlobe.

  The American men, Mose Harris said, they all took on Inuit wives. Even the black man, Henson.

  Me: And Bartlett?

  Mose laughed. No, Bartlett stayed true.

  Stayed true. To who.

  That’s a good question. He never had no time for women. They were three years in Greenland.

  What Henson wrote: On this day the son of Ethiopia, the sons of Asia and of Europe, stand here representing humanity at the top of the earth.

  In Peary’s book: I felt almost nothing. It all seems so commonplace.

  45

  I bought my wife a sealskin coat. I bought it from the Greenland Eskimo Anasqasi, a beautiful woman who convinced me that Greenland was a place I had to visit. I confess I did not spend every night under Rupert’s roof. When I went to see the Eskimo coats I stayed over. I ate with Anasqasi’s family. I was exhilarated with their language, their faces and eyes. The texture of their hair and how we spoke in sign language, their humour. I was fascinated, and when I’m so entranced I forget the rest of the world. I wanted to absorb Anasqasi’s world for the short time I had.

  I was not watching the time, and then the time came to retire. They assumed I would stay, and I spent the night with Anasqasi.

  Did Rupert know this? Perhaps. And I was not happy that he would have to bear the burden of this information. He liked my wife. He did not wish to be complicit in my behaviour. He was happy when the steamer arrived to take me home. I’ll see you soon, he said. A telegram had arrived. His brother was safe. He’d found the Karluk survivors. He was steaming back to Turnavik to pick up Rupert and the Morrissey.

  It took us another ten days, owing to ice and fog, to sail back to Brigus. Judge Prowse boarded again at Cartwright. He was consoling a man with a broken leg whom he’d met below deck. He’d given up, Prowse said.

  The man was fifty-one years old now and first went fishing when he was twelve. I can’t recall, the man says, a summer when we didnt come away with a voyage of fish. I was twenty-six years old when I left my father and went for myself. It’s a hard thing for a man to give up what he is used to. A man that got any kind of fair play at the Labrador fishery, there’s no better way of making a living.

  46

  I came back to Brigus. The children were there with Emily Edwards. Kathleen stood over me as I tugged off my boots. She pushed me up against the door to my studio. She said, Rockwell Kent, I’m pregnant.

  I kissed her. I stroked her stomach. I put a hand under her heart. I have a coat for you.

  She loved the coat and the fact that I’d thought of her. There was a moment when we recognized each other and pushed away the ordinariness of pretending to live original lives. And in the background Emily Edwards on the floor with the children.

  Kathleen was a tall woman. Dark hair and quiet. But a surprise, like this pushing against a door, her heel lifting out of her slipper. This ability to deliver a secret. She told me once that she didnt like people. And that stuck. Even after, when I realized that what she meant was a type of people. She did not enjoy artists. Or ideas. She was not swayed by words that a particular time conveyed to be the truth. She was too aware of prejudice. But she enjoyed talking to Mrs Pomeroy about hens. Or the children with bits of nature. She admired Emily Edwards for both her brashness and how she cultivated a true sense of the seasons and the mystic nature of the sea and wind.

  I loved Kathleen for this graceful disposition. She sat with her back slightly erect. I watched her take steps and it was as if each time her foot landed it was to feel the texture of the step in the sole of her shoe. Every move was considered. We married and my love for this movement lasted three years. It’s true that I marvelled that foot-testing for three years. We call that early love. And then those same mannerisms began to annoy me. Why does she always look like she is entering cold water.

  Gerald, a shit disturber. A woman at a party had said, There are no men. Gerald: Kent has left his wife. The woman was interested. So interested that Gerald had to retract: It’s not true.

  But the idea was planted. A lazy lie takes on a bit of the truth. It was the same with Alma. The reason she left Gerald. He’d had a tightening in his chest. He’d said, Call an ambulance. He was working upstairs. What? A cab, call a cab.

  They went to the hospital. There was a man waiting with a pitchfork in his chest. George started to describe his symptoms in metaphorical terms, but as soon as Alma said her husband was having chest pains they took him in. They studied his body for thirty minutes. He was okay. A heart attack, the doctor said, feels like a vise clamp on your chest. It crushes you.

  But as they went home Alma thought about how she’d felt during that moment of fear. She’d thought, I’ve wasted my life. I havent lived enough.

  Her attitude changed. And while she stayed with Gerald, she could not love him. So she left him. Perhaps for men it is not such a blow: years later Gerald found his way back to Jenny Starling.

  Alma said to me after she left Gerald: Funny thing is this — if he had a chest pain now I’d think, Why didnt I stick it out with him. Why did I go so easily.

  So in a way, Gerald’s joking at a party about Kathleen and me being finished, well, that precipitated the thought of finishing. We like to coddle the thought of ending things, even if those things are good. It’s the nature of sabotaging one’s own happiness. Jenny Starling’s husband had left her. Luis Starling. Before they’d married Luis had said, The next woman I’m with will be the one. Jenny had believed he meant her. But Luis Starling was describing the woman after Jenny.

  After Kathleen had left me, that’s when Gerald and Jenny got together. Jenny said to me: I dont see what the problem is. Youve got me. Youve got me like this and the rest of the world too. Would you really be happy with me and two children and nothing else? Because you’d have to be faithful. See, I’m not going to do anything to hurt Gerald. I love Gerald and —

  Yes, I said. I’m not saying anything about your predicament.

  It’s not a fucking predicament.

  Okay, your choice.

  Kent, why do you have to see it that way? This is the situation. This is the way it is.

  Oh, so that’s different from a predicament.

  When I married Kathleen, my friends had quietly complained of her. And when I first moved to Brigus, she’d stayed with Gerald and Alma in New York. She received but did not exude. And Gerald had felt drained as one is drained after visiting a hospital. Except I had brought them the hospital. She was a ward.

  But she was good with the children and now we would have a fourth.

  Are you happy? she said. She was three inches from me.

  It’s terrific, I said.

  47

  I was ordered into Judge Prowse’s temporary offices. He’d put on a dickey and his robes. His rooms were bare of ornament. Sun through high small windows. A cold woodstove and a pale oak desk.

  Sir, you have been charged with assault.

  He said it formally. And I realized he was bein
g a professional now.

  It was a prank, Judge. No one was hurt. Someone should have been hurt, but they werent.

  You will come to a hearing?

  I would find a hearing fascinating.

  Fine. He got up and hung up his robes. You do any hunting.

  I have been known to accompany hunters.

  Well, come on then.

  The Judge borrowed a rifle from Bob Bartlett’s father. It looked long and dubious. A gun to shoot seals with, William Bartlett said. We took it to a gravel basin to sight it in. I drew a portrait of Jim Hearn with antlers on the side of a wooden crate, paced off fifty yards, and fired three rounds. A bullet at fifty yards will hit the same target at two hundred yards, Prowse said, such is the trajectory of a rifled bullet. The sights were top-notch.

  Mr Pomeroy had told Prowse that several caribou had been visiting the gardens and munching the tops of his turnips. If we got up at dawn and cruised down there.

  I was up at five oclock and I walked down to wake up Prowse. He was putting a leg into his tweed knickers. He looked like an Austrian skier.

  There is something cold and reluctant in my bones about getting up in the dark. But the thing is, it’s terrific to choose to get up early. This has to do with control, of course. In deciding what one wants to do.

  Prowse loaded the rifle and we strolled out to the back acre of Pomeroy’s garden.

  Want to carry that, son?

  The word surprised me. I hadnt thought of the judge as much older than me. If your father dies while youre young he takes the standard with him and you forget to age. Or else you grow up immediately and bypass the idea of aging. So here was the judge, calling me son. I knew that he meant the word as an affectionate one. But it made me think that I was with a man who could be my father. That I was learning to hunt.

  The rifle in one hand felt heavy and powerful. The sky was dark but promising. I stared at tree stumps. I picked out the rows of turnip and potato. I lifted the barrel and loaded the magazine. It made a loud metal shunking.

  Prowse pointed at something. He gestured for me to give him the gun.

  I stared at this flatness, this quiet stillness. Nothing moved. The bushes were heavy with dew.

  Prowse: Just past that flash of marsh.

  A smudge. The smudge was what caught your eye. I looked for the smudge and some tree branches moved across the far shore of the bog. The branches were not branches. They were antlers, and three quiet caribou jogged up to the edge of the garden and halted. They were alive and silent.

  Prowse levelled the rifle on them. Then he knelt on one knee. He lowered the rifle.

  We moved up with them. When they moved we moved. Then they heard us. Prowse sighted them again. And they trotted on. Suddenly he ran. He got far ahead of me and they froze. The first light was banking off their flanks.

  We tracked them like this for another twenty minutes, a little deeper into the woods. I wasnt sure if Prowse was really considering a shot. He froze when they froze. He was enjoying this mimicry. I was breathing hard from the false shots of adrenaline. There was nothing in the world for me now except Prowse and these caribou.

  We were a good hundred yards away from the three of them. But a clear shot. Prowse raised the stock of the rifle to his cheekbone. He levelled it at the neck of the stag. Then he let out a little whistle. A loud crack. Something struck my bare hand — it was the bright brass casing of the bullet. It had ejected from the chamber and struck me. It was hot.

  Nothing.

  Damn ya, he said.

  He reloaded. The caribou turned their necks to look at us, curious. I realized then that Prowse was eighty years old and probably half blind. He squeezed out a second crack and the back of the stag slumped down.

  You got him.

  I got him.

  He knelt down and I came up to him. I waited for his advance. He put a hand on my shoulder.

  Just wait.

  He patted my shoulder and laid his back on the brush, the rifle across his knees. He chuckled. He was delighted with himself. He just lay there for a minute, then he got up.

  Let’s get a bit of kindling from under that brush.

  Why’d you whistle?

  Theyre skinny when theyre front on. You have to make them turn their head.

  We collected some old dry boughs and built a fire. Prowse walked to a brook and came back with a wet kettle. It made the fire hiss. We flaked out there in the fresh sun. The bushes full of dew then drying out. Water bubbled out the spout.

  Now a cup of tea.

  We drank the tea. About twenty minutes had gone by. Prowse then got up. There was nothing to see.

  He was up by that birch stand, wasnt he.

  I thought he was over by the brook more.

  We walked towards the far end of the bog. The stag lay there on his side, his big white belly exposed.

  If someone shot you, he said. And he started running after you. What would you do.

  I’d run.

  You got to give the animal time to die. Give him peace and he won’t run far. He’ll sit down and rest and end up bleeding to death. He won’t even know it happened till he closes his eyes.

  But as we got closer the caribou jerked his neck and lifted a hoof. It was a wild, thrashing hoof motion near my head. It could have slit my throat.

  Prowse put the rifle to its ear and squeezed. A crackling as if the world had broken. He opened the breach and handed the gun to me. Dont lose it, he said.

  He removed his pack. He plunged a knife into the caribou’s neck and rummaged through the neck to bleed him.

  Help me get him on his back.

  He put a front leg over the antler tines, to get him balanced. Then slit through the hide to the breastbone and down to the penis sheath. He avoided puncturing the gut. In the pack was a small saw — a tenon saw. He handed it to me.

  You know how to handle one of these fellows.

  Me: I’m afraid I’ve only accompanied hunters.

  Saw through the chest.

  We had to work fast. The bright stomach and organs spilled up. They were fresh and clean. I worked deep into the body and scraped at the pelvic bone. I sliced with the knife some hitches to the chest. The organs were warm. The hoofs were black blades. Four bits to a hoof. This gutting was getting to me.

  Did I tell you I was vegetarian?

  No one’s asked you to eat anything.

  The neck and chest were open now. Prowse cut through the windpipe and slit a hole in. He pushed a finger through and hauled the windpipe down. It was like hauling an inner tube out of a bicycle rim. The guts followed. He stopped, shifted his feet, and carved deep down into the chest, loosening it all. He sliced the diaphragm.

  There’s a bit of pelvic bone, he said, that needs to be sawed through.

  Green intestines pushed up like links of sausage. He carved around the anus and sloughed the guts out. I helped him. They poured out over the caribou’s side. The guts were outside the body now. The body was gutted.

  How quickly an animal can be reduced to meat. Essence rubbed out. This should be a time for mourning, for prayer, and yet all we can do is rush to get this great animal out of the morning heat.

  Prowse sliced down between the second and third ribs. Then sawed through the backbone. He cut off the head. Now there were two halves. He removed an inch of fur from the backbone. Then tipped up the rear half and I sawed down through the marrow of the vertebrae. The bone was warm and pliable and peeled away from the saw. We did the same to the front half.

  Want the antlers?

  I chopped out the antlers. Fragments of skull splintered like coconut. I was crazed now with the butchery. I turned back to the organs to rescue the heart. The heart was a small pyramid and it covered the platter of my hands.

  My watch was smeared in blood. It was nine oclock in the morni
ng and we were done. The whisky-jacks arrived to peck at the guts. Prowse handed me a green apple and we sat and ate apples. The green against the blood on my fingers.

  So what are you going to do with your half?

  Pardon?

  Of the meat. If youre not going to eat it.

  I’m just your scout, Prowse. I’m your labour for getting this animal out.

  Give some meat to Hearn.

  Youre a very forgiving judge.

  We each hoisted a quarter on our backs and walked it out. We used the leg as a lever, hide side on our shoulders, draping an arm over the ankle.

  Handy, isnt it? The leg.

  We went back for the other half. Then we hung the quarters in the Pomeroy shed. Mrs Pomeroy was happy for us and delighted with the meat. She inspected it thoroughly. You did a good job with it.

  I explained that I was giving a quarter of the meat to Tom Dobie. Of course, she said. I want Tony Loveys and George Browiny and Dr Gill and Marten Edwards and the Bartletts, I want them all to get a steak or a roast. I want anyone who wants one except Jim Hearn.

  She laughed at that. The judge, he likes to get a bit of gaming in.

  The next morning he showed me how to skin the meat. I peeled the velum off the antlers. Tom Dobie took a quarter for his mother. A good meal of fresh, he called it. He brought it over in his wheelbarrow.

  48

  Kathleen made a picnic. She packed a suitcase with French glasses and English plates. It was the day of my hearing. She chose the small forks and a bottle opener. She had a thermos of cocoa and there were five sandwiches. We were each to have a sandwich and I would finish the crusts of the children’s. I like the crust, as long as there’s a bit of something still stuck to the bread. I like the remnants of things.