The Great Death

by John Smelcer

  When the sun hung low on the edge of the horizon, the women and girls began to carry food into the community house, a long log house in the middle of the village used for special events and ceremonies, like the potlatch—a ritual involving feasting, dancing, singing, and the giving away of gifts to strengthen the bonds between kinsmen and clans and villages. They brought boiled porcupine and beaver, roasted bear and moose meat, roasted and dried salmon, and pots of fish-head soup. Maura carried a birch-bark basket partially filled with blueberries and cranberries, for they were ripe in the hills, while Millie carried a basket brimming with golden-brown fry bread, her favorite.

  Everyone was smiling and talking about the visitors and how good the food smelled. When everything was ready, the entire village joined in the feast welcoming the guests. There hadn’t been such a celebration since before the snow melted in the spring. After supper, elder men sang and drummed while the People danced—the men and boys in the center of the circle, women and girls in the outer circle, as was the custom. Millie and Maura took turns dancing and carrying their baby cousin, speaking to him softly, rocking him in their arms, and smiling. People thanked the man from downriver for bringing the news, for though it was unhappy news—and so heavily received—they would not have known otherwise. In this rugged country, word traveled slowly, like the distant glacier, or not at all.

  That night the three visitors slept in the community house, and the next morning, the strangers and their guide, who looked very sick indeed, began the long trek downriver. Millie and Maura stood among the people on the beachfront watching as the party disappeared down the trail along the lapping lake’s edge. The sisters wondered if they’d ever see the mysterious men again. They wondered about the hundred mosquito bites on the man from downriver.

  “Do you think they itch?” Maura whispered to Millie, imagining how terrible it would be if they all itched at the same time.

  The villagers were thankful to have had guests, to have welcomed them properly and according to tradition, even thankful in their own way to have received the grim news. Several of the village dogs followed the men for a ways but eventually turned around and trotted home.

  When the strangers were no longer visible, the villagers returned to the busy work of survival, catching and drying salmon, repairing snowshoes and dogsleds, collecting and sawing firewood, scraping and tanning hides, and mending and fashioning warm clothes against the winter, which still seemed far away, biding its time in the distant white mountains, nestled against glaciers, awaiting its coming release to the world.

  The People always prepared against death, for they knew how it crept steadily down the mountains toward them.

  “Life goes on,” they thought as they busied themselves with work. “Life always goes on.”

  Taa'i

  (Three)

  Raven had a wicked plan. “You must ambush the enemy on their way to your village,” he said, his black eyes blinking. “You must catch them by surprise.”

  “Where shall we wait to ambush them?” asked the chief, thankful for Raven’s help.

  THE GREAT DEATH BEGAN on a cloudless fall day. Geese flying overhead on their long journey south called down to the People, telling them farewell. Others, resting on a far shoreline, turned into the wind, clambered into the sky, and joined their cousins.

  Several days after the strange men left the village, the chief awoke with small red spots all over his body. Since there was no shaman in the village, some of the old women rubbed bear grease and ash on his skin and gave him weak tea made from the leaf of a local plant to drink. The men readied a steam bath hot enough to drive out the sickness. One of his sons even made him a pot of bear-heart soup, a traditional remedy to bolster courage and vigor.

  Two days later, some of the other men had the spots, then their children and their wives. In a week, almost everyone in the village had red spots like the man from downriver who had guided the strangers. Everyone remembered what the man had said about the deaths in his village.

  “The very old and the very young,” he had said.

  But they also remembered how sickly the man had looked when he left with the two white men. Death trudged along the path beside that man like a shadow, like a huge tiredness hanging off his shoulders. The people began to worry that whatever had befallen the village downriver was now upon them.

  At first the spots were unpleasant to look at but they were not debilitating. But day after day, the infected grew increasingly weary, until the entire village could be divided in half: those who were too weak to work or move about and those who looked after them. No one was hunting or cutting firewood or picking berries. No one was catching fish for the winter, though the salmon splashed weakly in the shallow stream, spawned out and dying. Their bodies were growing blood-red, their heads dark green, their mouths gnarled and hooked.

  Because there was so little activity throughout the village, bears grew bold, wading in the shallow creek below the footbridge to catch salmon. Soon, the creek banks were lined with partially eaten salmon, rotting and maggot-infested. Flies were everywhere, and the smell brought more bears.

  Some of the more fearless bears stole salmon from the drying racks, the people’s vital winter supply. The village dogs tried to drive them away, but the bears were unafraid. Bears, and especially wolves, were known to eat dogs, and so the dogs relented.

  Then the chief died. Everyone mourned his passing, but they were too sick to honor him with a potlatch, too sick even to bury him. His wife died two days later. Then four other elders died, and then the babies began to die, and then the children. Winter had descended only partially down the hills, and yet death was among them.

  It was a season out of season.

  For reasons no one understood, least of all the girls or their parents, Millie and Maura were unaffected by the plague. Perhaps, said one old woman between hacking coughs, the owl, that harbinger of death, simply could not see them. But no one could say for sure.

  The girls stayed in their house caring for their parents. Father had been among the first of the strong men to be stricken. The red spots were all over him. His body was always hot or cold, afire or shivering. Mother wasn’t as sick, though she also had the spots, but she was too weak to haul water or cook meals. Maura wiped sweat from Father’s face when he was hot, covered him with blankets when he was cold. Millie swept the earthen floor and cooked meals, though neither parent would eat or drink anything. She had to force herself to eat.

  “We have to stay strong for Mother and Father,” she told Maura, who had also lost her appetite. “We have to take care of them.”

  The fresh water and firewood ran out. Millie turned to Maura and said with hesitation in her voice, “We need to fetch water and firewood, and the honey bucket is full.”

  In their sickness, both parents were using a bucket, too weak to walk to the outhouse.

  Maura went to the door, opened it, and looked out over the village to the milky blue-gray lake beyond.

  “I wish Father would get better,” she said sadly. “If he did, we could all go away somewhere. Mother can still walk a little. We could all go away.”

  She twirled some hair that hung limp over her shoulder. She often did that when she was nervous or afraid.

  “Wishing will not make Father better,” Millie replied. “We have to keep him clean and warm and offer food. We have to get water and firewood and empty the honey bucket. Mother is too weak to do it.”

  Millie turned back toward her father and felt the burn of tears welling up, not for her father or mother, not for herself, but for her little sister, who stood like a shadow in the doorway. Suddenly she no longer hated the idea of watching after Maura, who was too small, too young, too frightened, and who now must help care for their parents. She wanted to help Maura.

  Maura turned from the door and stood over the bucket, holding her breath as she looked at the contents. Emptying the honey bucket was the worst chore. The sloshing liquid always threatened to spill out
. When Millie came over to her, Maura gripped her sister’s forearm.

  “Are they going to die?” Maura whispered, looking at their sick parents, her voice rising slightly.

  “Stop it, Maura,” Millie said gently but firmly, pulling her arm free. “We need to fetch water and firewood. We must do what must be done.”

  Millie gingerly lifted the honey bucket, and Maura grabbed the empty water pail. They would go together. The girls always left the house together now. They had heard the sounds of bears splashing in the river, prowling near the village, and the sounds of weeping and lament from nearby homes. They were afraid to go outside, especially very early or very late. Everyone in the village was afraid. They feared each day as much as each night.

  Horror is most visible in daylight.

  As they moved quietly toward the door, so as not to disturb their parents, Father sat up, coughing, and pointed toward the corner. “Wait. Take my rifle,” he said hoarsely.

  Millie carefully set down the honey bucket, picked up the rifle by the barrel with both hands, and carried it to her father.

  “But I don’t know how to shoot it,” she said.

  “Bullets,” he croaked, motioning to where the box lay on the ground beside a double-headed ax.

  Maura brought him the box.

  Although he was very weak and his spotted hands shook terribly, Father took a bullet from the box and slid it into the loading gate.

  “You try,” he said, addressing Millie.

  Maura watched intently, setting down the empty water pail. Mother leaned up on her elbow and watched too.

  Millie tried to force the cartridge in backward.

  “The other way.” Father coughed, his body trembling.

  Millie turned the brass cartridge around and pushed it into the loading gate until it clicked shut.

  “It holds five,” Father said softly, closing his eyes while Millie loaded more bullets into the rifle. Then he opened his eyes again, startled, as if he had forgotten something.

  “Load a round into the chamber,” he said. “Grab that lever and pull down on it.”

  Millie held the rifle against her thigh and pressed down on the lever, which broke open easily. The whole top of the gun seemed to slide apart.

  “Now pull it back up,” said Father. “Good. Careful. It’s loaded now.”

  Father taught Millie and Maura how to safely lower the hammer when they weren’t ready to shoot. He showed them how to aim, warning them to hold the butt firmly against their small, bony shoulders, and how to look down the barrel to align the sights. He taught them never to aim the barrel at anything they didn’t want to kill. He was too weak to take them outside to practice. Besides, he had only half a box of ammunition. He had meant to trade some furs for more.

  After the short lesson, Father fell asleep, his breathing hard.

  Millie slung the rifle over her shoulder and lifted the sloshing honey bucket. She felt safer with the gun firmly pressing against her back. Maura grabbed the water pail, and together they stepped outside. No one was moving about. It was as if the entire village were asleep or, perhaps, abandoned. First they emptied the honey bucket in the outhouse, returning afterward to set the empty bucket outside the door. Then the girls walked toward the lake to fill the water pail. Now they could hear wailing and crying as they passed cabins. Death was everywhere.

  When they stopped by one house to check on a friend of Millie’s, they learned that another infant and two elders had died in the village during the night, too young or too old or too weak to fight off sickness for long. Millie’s friend had the red spots, and she was weak and coughing. She was looking after her mother, who was lying on the bed, covered with spots and shaking terribly.

  “She’ll be all right,” she said, wiping her mother’s forehead with a wet rag. “I think she’s a little better than she was this morning.”

  Millie and Maura thought the woman looked worse than their mother.

  “Where is your father?” Millie asked.

  “He died yesterday,” she said. “My uncles took his body away.”

  Millie worried about her own father, and she wanted to hurry back to him.

  “We have to go now,” she said, nervously. “We must take care of our parents.”

  Though neither said a word as they left the cabin, Millie and Maura felt guilty that they didn’t have any sign of the sickness. As far as they knew, they were the only ones in the entire village.

  The People had always buried their dead, but since the sickness arrived, no one was strong enough to drag away the corpses or to dig the many graves. Instead, they tried to burn the corpses, thinking it would kill the disease, but no one was strong enough to gather the great quantities of wood needed for funeral pyres. As the girls slowly passed nearby houses, they saw partially burned corpses lying scattered atop too-small fires, some still smoldering. They even saw the scorched body of Millie’s friend’s father. Millie and Maura turned their heads, frightened by the burned and disfigured faces of people they had known all their lives, many of them relatives.

  They were too shocked to speak. Maura vomited twice. Millie held it back, barely, though more than once she felt it rush up into her mouth.

  The dead lay everywhere—inside, outside—the dying sitting or lying beside them, the living brushing away flies from the bodies and holding cloths to their faces to lessen the stench of decay that rose from their dead and from the rotting salmon along the creek. The village that was all the girls knew of life and place and home had transformed into a smoky shadow of death.

  Millie and Maura walked close together, careful to step around the dead. Millie halted when she saw the body of an older boy whom she had liked. Then she pushed on. The girls made their way down to the lake, wary of bears, filled the pail with water, and collected dry driftwood from along the beach.

  No wind blew over the land. The surface of the lake was flat. A raft of mud ducks bobbed on the milky-blue water.

  Millie motioned for her sister to pause with her before turning back. She looked around, at the hills, the distant mountains to the south, the broad, flat, silent lake. To Millie it seemed almost beautiful, in spite of the horror. On such a day, village children might have played in the lake or along its banks, staying close to shore, frightening one another with stories of monsters that were said to live in the lake. Father had seen one when he was a young man. He had told the story of how he was paddling his canoe along the western shoreline, looking for caribou or moose or beaver, when a giant, scaly fish, longer than his canoe, swam alongside, splashed, and dived. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. Others had seen it, too.

  Was the great fish also dead, killed by the red spots?

  Was all the world dying?

  Denc'i

  (Four)

  “There is a steep cliff two days up the coast,” said that sly Raven. “You must make camp at the bottom of the cliff and await my signal.” Raven smiled as he lied to the chief, happy that his deception was working. He was an accomplished liar.

  A DOG TROTTED BY on the beach carrying something in its mouth. It lay down and began eating, tearing off pieces with its teeth. The girls thought it was a salmon at first, but when they were close enough, they realized that they were wrong. They could see fingers.

  Millie picked up a stone from the beach and hurled it at the dog, striking it squarely in the side. But it didn’t move. It kept eating, greedily gulping pieces. Both girls dropped their bundles of firewood and ran at the dog, yelling and waving their arms.

  “Go away!” they shouted. “Go away!”

  The dog stood up, growling at the meddlesome girls. Millie picked up another stone and hurled it with all her strength, hitting the dog again. This time it dropped the arm and skulked back toward the village with its tail between its legs.

  The dogs were eating the dead. For many days, no one had been feeding the dogs, and so, hungry as they were, they turned to the only food they could find.

  Millie and Maur
a picked up their bundles of wood and the pail of fresh water and returned to their house. Father was still asleep. Mother was awake but too weak to sit up.

  “Daughters,” Mother said hoarsely, as if her words were dying, as if they too had red spots, “go check on my sister and her baby.”

  Auntie had given birth in early spring, when the ice melted on the lake. Both mother and child had caught the sickness the day after Millie and Maura’s father first showed the spots. Uncle had been among the first men to die.

  Before leaving as Mother asked, the sisters rekindled the fire, warming the cabin. Maura washed her mother’s face, tried to get her to drink some water. She studied the tattoo on Mother’s chin: three blue-black lines running vertically from just below her lower lip. All the women in the village had tattoos on their faces, some of the lines solid, some dotted, but all the same color. It was a sign of beauty and maturity, of reaching the marrying age. The lines were made by stitching strings of gut smeared with bear grease and ash into the skin, leaving the permanent blue-black lines after the stitches fell out.

  “Are you cold?” Maura asked Mother gently.

  “No, child.” Her mother did not open her eyes to speak, but she trembled from time to time, as if shivering. Maura pulled the blanket a little higher and looked closely at her mother’s face, tracing the tattoo softly with a finger.

  One day, she thought, Millie and I will have tattoos. Then she began to cry a little, quietly, not letting her sister see her. It was a mother’s role along with her sisters and other women of the village to sew the stitches. Maura worried that her mother wouldn’t be here to do this for her. She was afraid that no one would be here.