The Cage

by Audrey Shulman

  That second day, after her ten minutes in the cage, she found it more difficult to get warm. Even an hour after Beryl had returned to the bus, she shivered, her teeth chattered, her head hurt. Her limbs creaked and protested at each movement and felt heavy and dull. During lunch she tried to eat more meat and fat. She put on more clothing, drank warm liquids. She thought she must have spent too much time out there.

  Then she noticed that everyone else seemed cold as well. They all wore more clothing. Jean-Claude wore two sweaters, Butler had on a scarf. David had even draped a blanket across his shoulders. It was now thirty below outside. Maybe the heaters weren’t capable of dealing with this extreme.

  That night while the rest of them played cards, Jean-Claude worked on the heaters and read again through the lengthy documentation on temperature control.

  CHAPTER 21

  The next morning she woke in the gray hour before dawn, exhaling cold white mist into the air above her bed. She drowsily watched the mist for a while without understanding, simply admiring the beauty of its dissolution. Then she awoke fully. Jean-Claude had rolled into a small ball completely beneath the covers. Her body moved stiffly. Her head hurt from the cold. She pulled herself out of bed without waking Jean-Claude, dragged her robe on and limped to the thermostat in the hall. It was set to heat the inside of the bus to fifty-five. The inside thermometer read thirty-eight.

  She turned the thermostat up to seventy, held her hand over the heaters. Nothing. She looked out the window and saw three mounds of snow on the flat predawn plain about the bus. She knew each one contained a sleeping bear. She knew they would wake soon, shake off the snow, pace slowly along the ice. The sky was gray, the snow was gray. Nothing moved. The inside of the windows had frost on them. She scraped at a bit and it melted on her fingers.

  She walked into the kitchen, turned on a burner. She heard a click somewhere in the stove and the electric coil began to heat. She smiled, relieved, held her hands over it for a minute. The coil blushed slowly, the red spreading out across its metal. She could hear the rhythmic breathing of the three sleeping men. The moment seemed so peaceful. She held her face down toward the burner, as though to smell the heat. It made such a difference to know the bus wasn’t completely dead. Turning the burner off, she got back into bed.

  She held Jean-Claude close for one slow minute more. Her face still felt warm. She pushed it into the scoop of his neck, smelling salt and sleep and a hint of last night’s tomato soup, smelling everything clearly. She wanted this moment to last forever. The cold pressed down upon her.

  She woke him up.

  Jean-Claude checked several switches inside, then got dressed to go outside to check the tanks. Beryl dressed also. When she started to turn on the music, he shook his head. “Have to save the battery,” he said. He handed her a rifle. The door opened with a hiss, like the transit buses in Boston. She thought for a moment she would step out onto Mass. Ave.: stores, traffic, people.

  Outside nothing in all the flat gray moved. A perfect silence. She kept an eye on the snowy lumps of the bears. Soon they would be waking.

  Beryl and Jean-Claude looked beneath the bus. Immediately they saw that all the Mylar pipes had been chewed through. In some places only shiny black shreds remained. The edges of the tires had been gnawed on. Even some of the metal had the bright scratches of teeth. Frozen spots of yellow vomit with black threads laced through it sprinkled the ground. Beneath the bus their fuel froze slowly in oily puddles, clawed footprints all about. At the back, the reserve tank had made a smaller puddle. The fuel stained the ice and snow beneath the surface of each puddle in a wide bowl, creating a shadowy impression of something half-alive and crouched. Nothing dripped out now. Their fuel was gone.

  Beryl watched white heat roll from her mouth with each breath. The sky had soft touches of red. She stepped close to Jean-Claude, touched his arm. He didn’t respond. They went back inside.

  First they tried to call for help. The on-board radio crackled loudly with static. Jean-Claude put on the headphones and slowly twisted the dial, trying to find someone, his back hunched with concentration. His hands didn’t move hesitantly now, as they had the night before. They moved smoothly, with determination. She wanted to go back to bed with him. She wanted to wake up again, to have it be warm.

  Minutes passed with only static. Then the static began to get softer. Beryl watched Jean-Claude. He wasn’t touching the volume control.

  A man’s voice suddenly boomed out of the speaker.

  “Eh, now tha’s really brilliant, Sammy,” the voice said. “What’s Marie think, eh? Over.”

  “Hello?” Jean-Claude spoke quickly into the microphone, each word crisp. “This is Jean-Claude Thibedeaux of Natural Photography’s Manitoba expedition. I need help. Do you read me? Over.”

  “Sammy, was that you? Over.”

  “Naw, Craig, you idiot, that’s some guy calling from Quebec.”

  “Quebec? He said Manitoba, didn’t he? I can barely hear him.”

  Jean-Claude looked confused. He leaned closer in over the microphone, began to shout. “This is Jean-Claude Thibedeaux of the Natural Photography Churchill expedition. I am in Churchill, Manitoba. I need help. Urgently. There are three others with me. Our bus is out of gas. Over.”

  “See, Craig, he’s not from Quebec. He’s from Manitoba.”

  “Shut up, Sammy. He’s in trouble.”

  “Well, he should get hold of someone closer. Hey, Jean-Claude, this is fucking Saint John’s. Go find a gas station in your own time zone. Over.”

  “Shut up, Sammy. Please continue, Jean-Claude. Please talk louder. Over.”

  Jean-Claude began to bellow. “I am forty miles east of Churchill, Manitoba. I am with the Natural Photography magazine. I am out of gas. We have no heat. We do not have the equipment to walk back. Please send help. Please contact the Natural Photography headquarters in New York City. Please contact Churchill police. Do you read me? Over.”

  There was a pause. Beryl had to lean closer to the speaker to hear them at all.

  “Is he still speaking?”

  “I can’t tell. Did you get any of that?”

  “I don’t know. He’s out of gas somewhere in Manitoba and he wants the church police. Something about photography. Over.”

  “Marie says he said something about ‘photography bed quarters.’ Did you get that? Over.”

  “Did she get anything else?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Craig. He’s just out of gas. He’s probably some fucking American tourist standing on a major interstate a thousand miles away. Get a life. Over.”

  “Jean-Claude, please repeat information. Please repeat information. Over.”

  The men couldn’t hear Jean-Claude again, although he kept yelling until the radio wouldn’t even hum and the bus’s battery was completely dead. Jean-Claude found a hand-cranked emergency radio in the storage cupboard. He set it on the same frequency as before, began to crank fast and hard. His face had gone solid as ice, vacant as a bear’s.

  The outside thermometer read twenty-nine below. From the front of the bus Beryl could see six more polar bear mounds, their backs built up into round tents by the drifting snow. The cold of her face felt unreal. She hugged her parka tighter, wished she could have just one last cup of hot coffee, some warm soup. She held her breath, listening. Nothing, not even static.

  Woken by the yelling, Butler and David appeared, standing in the hall holding blankets around them and breathing steam. They looked at her and Jean-Claude silently, eyes still puffy from sleep.

  The temperature inside the bus had dropped to thirty-four. Jean-Claude suggested they all use the bathroom one more time before the water froze. Beryl felt like a small child departing on a family trip with everyone going to the bathroom before they left. The light in the bathroom wouldn’t turn on. She crouched in the dark, the cold prickling the skin across her rear, trying hard to empty her bladder completely. Without the heaters on, they could hear so much better in the bus
. They could all hear the fast stream of her urine. She could hear David in the front room asking, “But why’s this happening? I’ve been on more than thirty expeditions. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  David cleared his throat, and she could see the way he would be holding his head to the side, sharp eyes looking about, mouth smiling. He would try to pretend this wasn’t serious. “If this was going to happen,” he continued, “why couldn’t it happen on one of my nice warm Thailand expeditions? I mean why here and why during the start of winter? Why with large carnivores instead of the tree slugs in Venezuela?

  “And while I’m at it, how could they have designed this bus like that? Didn’t they know the bears would do this?” No one answered. He said, “What a stupid question. I can’t believe I asked such a stupid question. Not enough Mylar occurring naturally in their diet? Why doesn’t someone else talk?” No one said a word.

  When Beryl flushed, something in the pipes began to block. The water murmured up, puddled over. Jean-Claude turned off a valve on the main panel. The water stopped. The puddle on the floor began to harden. It smelled light and sharp in the cold. She walked into the front room and there they all stood, holding blankets around their shoulders, waiting.

  Jean-Claude said, “We’re going to have to walk back.”

  None of them looked at the others. Without the heaters and motors, the snowy silence from outside seemed to ease into the bus. A bear bumped somewhere underneath and they all heard the rustle of its hair against metal.

  Butler nodded sadly. “Yeah, guess you’re right.”

  Beryl examined the small decorated details of the bus and then looked out to the wide white space beyond. “OK,” she said quietly, almost to herself.

  David looked from one to another. “Aw, come on,” he said. “What are you guys talking about?”

  She turned into the kitchen to pack the food they would need. She felt much better now that she had something to do. The fridge sighed when she opened it and let out a breath of air warm in comparison to the cold room. They would be eating only meat on the journey, lots of it. Two days, three. While she packed she ate the meat they had already cooked, ate quickly, efficiently, holding the slices in her gloves. She could feel the chill from the floor in her feet and ankles. When she had finished all the cooked meat she still felt empty, shivering. She looked at the raw meat. No way to cook it. It took her a while to cut off a slice with the knife, but her teeth went through each chunk keenly, easily. It tasted wet, cold. It left stains on her gloves.

  The kitchen was dark. She could see the snow getting brighter outside. She heard Jean-Claude cranking the radio. Not even static.

  She wanted to scream in fear. She wanted to dance in anticipation. She ate more meat.

  They heard a low buzzing. For a moment she thought the heaters had come back on, the bus had sprung to life, the radio would work. They all looked up at the ceiling. “A plane,” she said. “It’s a plane.”

  She yelled to turn on the music, forgetting for a second that it wouldn’t work. She ran outside, grabbing the flare gun over the doorway. She sprinted clear of the bus out into the snow, pointed the flare slightly ahead of the small bush plane, fired. The bright colors rustled up and across the sky—yellows, reds, smoke. The plane must have seen it.

  The back of her neck itched. Slowly she looked to her left. A bear sat facing her forty feet away. It looked sleepy, snow still across his back. He sniffed the air. She put the second flare in. She knew it wouldn’t kill the bear. It would only anger him. The animal and she faced each other. The plane continued straight along its path. She took a slow step back. Another. The bear stopped sniffing. His cheeks rolled back to show his teeth. He stood up. She couldn’t check to see if there was another bear behind her. She couldn’t turn her back on the bear’s stare. She stepped back. Dark eyes, small eyes, focused. She turned and ran, heard again the sounds of a bear’s claws through snow, its weight. No bars between them. She slammed the door behind her. The bear’s body bounced off the outside. The metal creaked.

  The temperature had dropped even further in the bus from the open door. The men were all leaning against the front windshield, watching the plane disappear.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jean-Claude gave them each a pair of snowshoes. He said to David, “I haven’t had as good luck as you with the expeditions I’ve been on. I always bring backups.”

  He assembled a five-foot sled he’d brought. It had curved wood runners and a stretched hide platform. The pieces lashed together with strips of gray leather.

  Butler said, “Hey, there are some nails in the tool chest. We could put that thing together tighter.”

  Jean-Claude shook his head. “The sled has to bump across the ice. Nails would shatter, crack open the wood. Narwhal’s flexible. It allows the sled to twist.” He stretched each lashing carefully over its post, flattening it with his fingers, pulling tight. The leather had light circular markings, like the rings of a honeycomb. Beryl hadn’t known narwhals still existed. She couldn’t picture one except from a seventeenth-century painting she’d seen; beneath the weight of its twisting horn, the small whale pulled back red human lips and smiled. When Jean-Claude was finished he packed the blankets and radio.

  With the fire ax Beryl broke up each of the dining-room chairs for wood to burn. She swung the ax hard in the small area. The wood cracked loudly. Splinters fell about. Her arms felt strong, her body heated up. The edges of the rug tore away from the corners of the room. Underneath she saw particleboard. She tied together the pieces of the chairs, working quickly and carefully. Her whole being concentrated on what they would need. For kindling she added the five books of bus documentation, their notebooks, the trip’s journal. She and Jean-Claude broke the legs off the dining-room table. They packed it all tightly on the sled, balancing the weight carefully, lashing everything down. They wouldn’t want to repack outside. Their hands wouldn’t move as well out there.

  Packing, they didn’t have to say a thing to each other. They both understood. Her body was warm with work.

  David watched them. He said, “I hate to disagree with you all, but I don’t understand. It’s still warmer in the bus.” His lips looked blue. He wore every layer of clothing on the Natural Photography list, the parka’s material straining, bloated with all the clothing beneath. He touched his lips with his gloves. “Why don’t we wait for the plane? One went over yesterday, one went over today. Can’t we sit tight here and hail it tomorrow?”

  Butler faced him, impassive. “Both planes were heading into Churchill. If it’s a daily flight and not just a coincidence, then it’ll pass us tomorrow on the trail. We’ll bring the flare gun. If not, then we don’t waste a day in this cold.”

  David smiled weakly. “You know, I moved to California to get away from this kind of cold.” He looked at each person in turn. He was the only one who still spoke conversationally, when he didn’t have to. He stood by, watching them prepare. “Anyone have some Blistex?”

  Butler cleaned the rifles. They had four of them, long and heavy. They swung open with soft clicks and well-balanced weight, wood and metal. Butler cleaned each of them carefully, loaded them, packed the ammunition. He put straps on the rifles and gave one to each team member.

  It was eight in the morning. Normally she would have just woken up. Smelled hot coffee. Walked slowly to the bathroom in her bare feet, working the sleep out of her eyes with her fingers. She slung the rifle across her back. It rolled against her body, a solid weight.

  They made a last quick check. Nothing left in the bus they needed. Every cupboard opened, all loose wood ripped up and packed. The clean, designed environment gone. It looked as if the bears had broken in already.

  They stood in the front room and ate the last of the unpacked raw meat, standing, chewing, not talking. Their teeth made grinding noises. David only ate one bite. He grimaced at its texture. “I never liked steak tartare,” he said. He threw the piece into the garbage. The other three turne
d to look at it.

  David smiled. “A little fasting’s good for everyone. Cleans out the old system.” He thumped his chest like Tarzan. “No one has any trail mix, huh?” The temperature in the bus registered twenty-seven. He wrapped his arms tight around himself. “You know, I can’t tell you how serious you all look, like an ad to join the fucking army. Can’t we take this with a little graceful groveling and fear? Can’t we make some jokes?”

  No one had much to say to that. Beryl touched the elbow of his jacket, smiled at him. She did not stop chewing.

  Just before they left she went back to her room, put her favorite roll of film in the front pouch of her parka. She knew the film would freeze. But it would freeze on the bus anyway. She wanted it close to her. She left the picture of her parents, holding hands, on the wall facing out to the snow. Steam from her breath had already frozen to the edges of the picture and the window. Steam from when she’d been sleeping, still unaware.

  Butler walked out first. With a quick swinging motion he shot two bears full in the face, giving the second bear no time to do more than jerk her head back. Both bears fell over. The reports echoed loud against the sky and the bus and returned several times. The other bears watched the two fall, then whirled and ran away. Beryl recognized one of the dead bears as the female whose tongue had gotten stuck to the metal. The other lay on his side with one palm extended, the young male who had stood on top of her cage, who had slapped the bars. The fur of both shivered a little and then stilled. The bodies lay heavy and white. Steam rose from the blood.

  She wanted to lay her hand on the back of their wide flat skulls, to stand quietly by their side for a minute.

  Jean-Claude and she lifted the sled down. It was heavy, a hundred fifty, two hundred pounds, a body between them. It cracked the skin of the snow when they set it down. They each put on their snowshoes and walked around the bodies. She found walking with the snowshoes awkward. She had to lift her toes up high, feeling like a heron. The wounds on her feet hurt for a while, then gradually numbed.