The Cage

by Audrey Shulman

  CHAPTER 24

  David’s face was a pale blue, ice gleaming on his cheeks. His eyes blinked behind his clear mask. Beryl turned and vomited meat and dark water onto the snow by her feet. The liquid burned hot on her lips.

  “Strip,” Jean-Claude said to David. “Fast, everything. Butler, give him every sweater you have.” Jean-Claude sat down on the snow, started to take off his outside pants. He looked at Beryl. “I told you not to be a hero. You almost killed us all. Get your jackets off. I’ll give you one of mine.” His face was stiff with fury.

  She tried to work her arms up to pull off her jacket but couldn’t seem to move her hands precisely enough to find her shoulders. David’s hands slapped around loosely near his parka’s zipper, making a light knocking sound against his shining chest. Butler stepped in and unzipped David’s parka, stripped it off and then removed his boots. He helped David off with all his clothing, as with a baby.

  Butler said, “Shit, I mean I thought the ice would be thick enough.”

  Jean-Claude roughly jerked both parkas over Beryl’s head. She looked down at her bare breasts and stomach in the cold. Her nipples gleamed hard as plastic, ice shimmered in her belly button. Butler looked away from David’s body, yanking the pants down over his heels, spilling water sluggish across the snow. David sat nude on the drift, his stomach sucked in, the hair on his head and between his legs shiny with crystals, his genitals shriveled and purple. His eyes were half-closed. His head listed. Jean-Claude took off both jackets, pulled his inner one down over Beryl’s shoulders. He stood there wearing just a pair of pants. This was the first time she’d seen his chest in the daylight. He had an outie belly button. Distantly, she looked at them, all this pink tender skin against the snow. She wanted to laugh but it seemed too big an effort.

  “Run.” Jean-Claude said to her. “Run around us, now. Don’t stop for anything.”

  The first few steps felt awkward, heavy. She looked down at her feet. Kicked them around in the snow to get them to behave. Her arms hung heavy as meat.

  “Slap your arms. Flex your fingers. When your skin starts to hurt again wrap your hands in a blanket and keep running.” Jean-Claude pulled his outer parka on. “Put David in my outer pants. Wrap blankets around his feet. I’m getting their sleds. We’re going to need them.” He walked smooth and fast back onto the ice, careful. He slapped his hands against his sides. The wind rolled around him and the hair of his pants shivered.

  Butler rubbed at David’s feet, trying to get circulation back in them. The skin looked gray and plastic. David gazed at them with his head cocked to one side and his mouth half open.

  “Hey,” Butler said to no one in particular, “I mean that ice should have been five feet thick by now. Don’tcha think? In this cold?” He fumbled awkwardly, pulling the pants on over David, looking away. When he had David clothed, he held him up and began to walk him around, then made him run. Without a parka, David wore several thickly knit Icelandic sweaters. Beryl thought it strange to see someone wearing a sweater out here, like it was just a fall day. Beryl could see the wind rippling the wool. The edges of David’s ears were white.

  When Jean-Claude came back, walking slowly across the ice, the two sleds dragging behind him, she could see the faces of three seals floating about in the open water. They watched Jean-Claude big-eyed and absorbed.

  Jean-Claude picked up Beryl’s Inuit parka. It had frozen with its arms held out in front, as though still reaching for David. He snapped the material twice hard against the ground. The ice tinkled off. He gave her the outside jacket, snapped clean the inside shirt to give to David to put over his sweaters.

  He repacked the sled and they left with her and David pulling it, running. Jean-Claude yelled behind them, “Faster, faster, bring your knees up.”

  After a while Beryl didn’t want to sleep anymore. She wanted to scream from the feeling returning to her fingers and arms. She ran half-sobbing until Jean-Claude said that was enough for her and Butler took her place.

  As she stepped out of the traces, she glanced at David. He stood breathing heavy with his head down, lips loose, a line of drool frozen across his chin. He hadn’t spoken since they’d pulled him out of the water. Butler picked up the traces, looking at him. When Butler started jogging forward, David stumbled. Butler held his arm out to keep him standing up, moving forward.

  Butler talked to him, trying to sound tough and hard as a coach. “Come on David. Keep going, you wimp. You can do it. Faster, you lazy slob.” After running for a few minutes pulling the sled, he was gasping on his words.

  Beryl could see he kept one hand under David’s arm the whole time, keeping David moving, the sled bouncing along behind. He did not stop talking to David the whole afternoon. Once Beryl jogged in closer and she heard Butler say that David should just pretend this was all a game, imagination.

  “Me and my brother,” Butler gasped, trotting forward, “used to play this game all the time, pretending we were other places, other people. That’s what you should do now. Like you could believe you’re really in Central Park right now, walking on a hot day, near Central Park West and Seventy-sixth, sweating. Imagine you’re there and just pretending to be in a cold place to forget the heat.” Butler jogged on, catching his breath, then added, “Yeah, that’s right. Can’t you just smell the summer in the park? What is that smell anyway? Horses’ turds and the grass, sweat and beer, grilling hamburgers. Can’t you just smell it?” Butler watched David’s face.

  David never looked up from his feet slogging forward. He leaned more and more of his weight on Butler.

  Beryl gasped and half-jogged behind them, her head hanging.

  Near the end of that first day she tried running ahead as fast as she could. The slow jogging hurt her. She wanted to get there, to get warm, to stop moving. But her feet had no feeling and she fell and had to get up again. She pushed herself up slowly, her legs clenched, her butt waving from side to side. Her hands rolled about slack. She had to watch them to check that they moved as she wished. After that she continued to jog on at a steady pace.

  That night they slept under the snow like bears. Jean-Claude scouted about for the right kind of snow. With his knife he cut the blocks out of a hard bank, built the igloo up steadily. She didn’t understand how his hands could still work. His parka snapped loosely in the wind without the fur shirt beneath it. She walked about him, circling in the cold, scared to stop moving. David fell asleep quickly, dozing against a drift. The sweat had frozen shiny against his skin.

  They all had breath trails iced visibly across their faces, making masks that glimmered white and hairy with frost. Their eyes stared out like animals’. Small icicles hung from their nose hair; it tinkled and shattered under their gloves. The air she breathed had felt warm for a while now.

  The trim of Butler’s hood dipped down with the weight of icicles. He looked out slightly askance, from beneath, only his open mouth and chin visible. His breathing sounded slow, labored.

  When Jean-Claude completed the igloo Beryl dragged David in, hooking her forearms up under his shoulders. Her hands were unable to close and grip any longer. His fur shirt hiked up. She could see the skin of his belly beneath, white-gray. He didn’t wake up. She put him on the blankets in the center of the igloo, pulled the shirt down over his stomach and back, covered him with the rest of the blankets.

  The blankets formed a platform in the center of the room. Jean-Claude lit a fire on the ground beside it, using the trip’s journal as kindling. The wood caught quickly and the pages of the journal shriveled in the fire. Most of the pages were empty. If they didn’t make it out now, Beryl thought, no one would know what had happened.

  This time Jean-Claude propped the fire up on the backs of what remained of the dining room chairs. The meat thawed unevenly. It steamed, burned, blackened, filled the igloo with smoke. Her body warmed in patches, hummed, tingled. She could no longer tell where the frostbite ended and her living body began.

  They ate quickly, feroc
iously. They couldn’t wake David up to eat. She ate until she felt her stomach push against the thongs of her pants, until her abdomen registered a dull pain.

  Jean-Claude said, “We have to arrange watches for the bears.” He was the only one who could speak clearly at this point. Beryl didn’t understand. The bears couldn’t fit in through the front entrance. The snow gleamed ice blue and warm all around them. Slowly she looked up. The roof and sides were only a foot thick.

  Jean-Claude looked at her and Butler, frozen, tired, beaten. David simply huddled as a lump beneath the blankets. Jean-Claude settled for placing two rifles on top of the blankets, loaded. She knew that if the weight of the ceiling and a full-grown bear fell down on them while they slept, the guns would do them no good.

  The four of them curled tightly together, between the layers of blankets icy from being dragged across the bay, the rifles hard weights above them. They had only four blankets between them and the snow they lay on. The cold rose slowly in her bones, the warmth from running gone. They kept David in the center. She and Jean-Claude hugged him tightly from both sides. Butler pushed in against her back. He breathed in her ear, put his hand on her thigh. She found it didn’t bother her. She was relieved she could still feel that much. His large body warmed her back. She pushed in tighter against his heat, pulled in her arms, legs and head, breathed the air beneath the blankets. He wrapped one arm around her stomach. She curled into a small ball and slept.

  During the night she woke several times. Each time she did her muscles were shivering. The fire died slowly and it got much colder. David moved around a lot at first, murmuring, talking, even screaming at one point. Later on he quieted. Then Butler became restless. Shivering, rustling, touching his face, talking to himself. She curled tighter and tighter into herself. Near morning she dreamed she was crawling once again through the storm, forward into the bend of the bear’s legs. This time his fur was icy blades, the skin frozen, the bear unafraid. With a slight tinkling of ice he reached forward to scoop her tighter into his center, the cold seeping into her as clear as water.

  CHAPTER 25

  She overslept. The sun had risen. Jean-Claude had already left the bed, had lit the fire. He was dragging David out of the igloo by his feet. She could see only the skin of David’s wrists from this angle. Thin wrists, the skin watery blue. His face turned away, his arms covering his head, his knees huddled up by his chest. The body slithered across the ice solid and stiff, the parka rustling.

  Butler sat up beside her, his mouth slack and open, breathing in slow, his eyes surprised with new understanding.

  A large mound of snow lay beside the igloo when she came out. The clothing David had worn was heaped beside it. Jean-Claude handed the sweaters back to Butler, pulled on his outer pants and fur shirt. She knew there was nothing more they could do. The ground below was frozen solid, they had nothing to dig with, but David slept under the snow already like a part of the bears.

  Butler held the sweaters in his hands for a long time before putting them on. He said, “I … I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.” He looked earnestly at Jean-Claude, then her. “I didn’t think …”

  Jean-Claude kept his face down, tying the waist of his pants. She noticed he looked at both of them less often now. He didn’t try to stand near her or touch her, didn’t offer advice. She wondered if he believed either of them would survive.

  That morning they packed lighter. In the igloo they left David’s gun, some of the food. Beryl looked back in. The fire still smoldered, the food lay by the gun. It seemed as though someone might return at any moment.

  With two of them pulling the sled, only one of the three rested at any one time, carrying a rifle, watching for bears. Butler turned frequently to check her and Jean-Claude’s faces, their energy levels. He looked around for bears less eagerly. He no longer took deep breaths, filling his lungs with the fresh air. None of them talked, not even to offer directions.

  Toward midmorning the sky began to get overcast. Churchill’s smudge of smoke became fuzzy, then invisible in the clouds. They came to a stop, unsure of the exact direction. This far north, any compass would only have spun lazily in its case. On this gray day, even the location of the sun was impossible to determine.

  Jean-Claude stepped forward. They followed. Beryl had no idea how he navigated. She noticed that his eyes followed the direction of the drifts about them, tracing the rise and fall of the land, moving frequently to the indistinct horizon. Sometimes he turned to look back toward where they’d come from, his face careful, concentrating, checking the direction of their path. To her eyes the land stretched tight and straight to the gray horizon, unchanging, without detail. She wondered how much the drift of snow altered the lay of the land.

  To heat their lunch, they burned the tabletop. The flames warmed her face. In the heat something inside her relaxed. She could now feel the tight warmth of her chest and stomach, the harsh cold of her back. They tried the radio again and could hear static for the first time. They listened to the soft crackle as they looked off toward what Jean-Claude said was Churchill. The radio sputtered out slowly. They packed it again.

  When the fire burnt down, Beryl felt much colder. Her scalp tingled. Her eyes watered. She looked down at her seated body and thought it looked like a heavy object, like carved wood. She wished she could get up without it. She looked up. The two men were standing. Jean-Claude picked up the rifle, began to scan the horizon. She noticed him sniffing the air. The sea, she thought, proud of her logic. He’s trying to smell the sea. He turned his nose to the prevailing wind.

  Butler stood in the traces of the sled, waiting for her. Jean-Claude turned back. She realized she hadn’t yet stood up. She moved her feet into position in front of her, pushed up. Her knees wouldn’t straighten. She fell over on her face in the snow, looked up slowly to see both men watching her. Jean-Claude’s face showed nothing. He looked away from her into the wind. She pushed up again. She remembered the stiffness of David’s body, an object, something to be left behind. Butler and Jean-Claude could do nothing. They couldn’t carry her. Her face hit the snow again. Her arms hurt from trying. She’d come so far.

  Butler stepped forward, surprised her by holding out his hand. They had to try several times. Their hands had a hard time grasping. She had touched only snow for so long. His arm felt firm, different from the drifts. She tried hard. He pulled her up, overbalanced himself backward, sat down on his butt with a sigh as she stood. He pushed himself up slowly, wobbling, like a baby learning to stand. She watched him, felt fear for them both.

  She walked forward into the traces of the sled with Butler. No one said a thing. They staggered a bit getting started. For the first mile he kept one hand at her elbow to make sure she did not fall. It reminded her of the way a man was supposed to lead his date into a reception, as though there was the danger of falling there too.

  Later in the afternoon the toe of his snowshoe caught and he windmilled forward. She grabbed the edge of his shoulder and he stumbled against her, both their bodies striving to stay upright, awkward as logs. He caught his balance again. The hood of his jacket nodded once, then they walked on into the weight of the sled.

  She took an extra turn pulling. She warmed up. Her body felt heavy with strength, warmer than she’d ever imagined.

  That evening as Jean-Claude built the igloo, she shuffled mechanically around and around the site, staring entranced at the changing colors of the clearing sky. During the day she’d gotten so used to the white of the snow, the gray of the clouds. Now with the sun setting there was orange and lilac, green and a wide belt of soft pink like the inside of a dog’s ear. The shimmering drifts mirrored every color. Each small bump and depression in the snow extended long lines of shadow like thin fingers pointing the way home. She walked around and around, looking at the flat plate of the earth, the bowl of sky above. In all of it, the only break in the unearthly grace was their small awkward igloo and the trampled snow that surrounded it.

  She inhal
ed the air, which felt warm in her lungs, held her face up to the slow blue easing its way across the heavens with the first of the stars. She did not know if any of them would make it, but she was glad, so glad she was alive.

  That night the men crawled under the blankets on both sides of her. She felt their male warmth, their height and thick chests expanding against her. Her body prickled with returning feeling: prickled, hurt, screamed and raged. She heated up, grew powerful and tall.

  When she woke in the morning, both men seemed smaller. Since lunch the day before when she could not stand, she had been somewhere they had not. She looked at the exit to the igloo, to the snow and cold sunshine. She wanted to get outside, to stand again under that clear blue sky.

  Butler crawled out of the igloo first. Jean-Claude followed, then Beryl. She kept looking up at the sky. Butler stood back from them and the igloo, watching with the gun while they crouched over the blankets, strapping everything back together. He stood tall, big, the gun jutting out from his hip. He scanned this world from the stance of a hunter.

  The bear stepped out from behind the igloo, ten feet from Beryl and Jean-Claude, Butler on the far side. It moved slowly, curious, scenting the air. It looked at them, the bones of its shoulders tall and thin, its skin raw at the elbows. Against that huge white world it looked like a starving alley cat.

  She and Jean-Claude froze, down low over the sled, watching. Butler stepped forward, waving the rifle. Beryl saw that he felt pity for the thin bear, meaning to frighten it. “Hey,” he barked. “Shoo. Go away.”

  The bear lunged. Beryl wasn’t sure what happened. The world was white. The body was white. It flew by Jean-Claude, flew around her. She felt one of its claws pinch all its weight into her foot. The gun discharged once, wildly. The bear hit Butler.