The Great Death

by John Smelcer

  Father was asleep. As Millie checked on him, his lungs rattled in his chest like a crumpled, dry fish skin. When she was certain he was still alive, she took up the rifle and motioned to Maura that it was time to leave.

  Mother spoke to Millie. “Watch after your sister.”

  She said that whenever they left the house.

  “I will, Mother,” Millie replied sadly. She wondered if this might be the last time she answered her mother’s constant demand. Though she could not cure her mother, Millie could promise this one thing to her.

  Auntie lived on the far side of the village. On the way the two sisters saw more partially burned bodies of friends and relatives, blackened and rank, dogs feasting on the charred remains, ravens and magpies picking at them. Each time the girls approached, the birds fluttered away momentarily and then resettled on their meals. Millie thought about using her gun to stop the animals. But was Millie to shoot them all? Every dog? Every bird?

  There were bear tracks all around the village. No sounds came from inside the cabins they passed. Either no one was alive or no one was speaking—no one comforting the dying. Comfort didn’t help anyway.

  The living still died. The dead stayed dead.

  And the stench!

  The smell of rotting flesh, both salmon and human, crouched on the village like a thick, living fog, so full of decay it was as if the air itself were squirming with maggots. Occasionally, a breeze would arise and sweep the pungency from the village and out across the lake.

  Although little else stirred, the maddening clouds of mosquitoes still whined and bit.

  When they approached Auntie’s cabin, the girls were relieved to hear the muted sound of a baby crying weakly. At least two other people in the village were yet alive, they thought. But when they opened the door, their relief fled like squirrels from an angry dog. Auntie lay sprawled on the earthen floor, her blouse open, her naked baby lying atop her, suckling listlessly on a spotted, lifeless breast, crying because he was hungry, his little shuddering body covered with the red death.

  Maura picked up her cousin, laid him on the bed, wrapped him in a blanket, and sang to him softly, trying to calm him, while Millie tried to feed him water squeezed from a dampened rag. His entire body was covered with red spots, even his eyelids. This was the same baby they had played with joyously during the potlatch celebration the night the strangers arrived. After a few minutes, the baby stopped crying. Darkness was gathering outside. It was getting quite dim in the cabin. Millie lit a candle and brought it close to the bed.

  The two girls sat on the rickety bed while Maura held the baby, watching helplessly as his breathing slowed and then stopped altogether, his fixed brown eyes staring at the dark.

  Maura suddenly grasped her sister’s arm.

  “He isn’t dead, is he? He’ll be all right, won’t he? We can take him with us. He’ll—”

  “Stop it, Maura!” Millie’s voice was loud and stunned them both. “He is dead.” Her words trembled as she continued. “We can’t do anything for him. We should go home now and tell Mother.”

  The sisters carefully lifted their dead aunt and laid her body on the bed, setting her baby, still wrapped in a blanket, in her arms.

  Millie stood, grabbed the rifle, and blew out the candle. She guided her little sister outside by the shoulder, closed the cabin door tightly so that dogs couldn’t get in, and then she and Maura began to walk home without saying a word, too overcome by the burden of death and sadness. The stench in the village was insufferable. They felt as though they could not breathe. They were afraid to breathe.

  Even the air was sick.

  Arriving back home, Millie turned to her sister before she opened the door.

  “You have to be strong now,” she said, but not in the harsh, chastising tone she had used before. There was a soft urgency in her voice, a pointing out of the necessary.

  Maura looked away, tears welling in her eyes. “I know” was all she could muster.

  Mother was awake. She had been waiting for their return. Father was sleeping. Millie added some wood to the fire while Maura lit a candle.

  “Mother,” Millie whispered, leaning over her mother’s face, “Auntie is dead. So is her baby.”

  Tears streamed down her mother’s cheeks. The girls cried, too, as their mother’s grief opened the door to their own.

  That night, a bear tried to get inside the cabin. At first they could hear it snuffling and grunting. Then it scratched at the walls and at the door.

  “It’s trying to get in,” Maura whispered, clutching her mother’s hand, her voice trembling.

  Millie sat up half the night drowsily aiming the rifle at the door. Maura kept the fire burning and the ax close. Eventually the bear wandered off. The girls’ parents slept fitfully, waking up frequently in coughing spasms. Maura finally dozed off, and even Millie’s head slumped forward, her chin resting on the shoulder that hugged the heavy rifle’s butt.

  Outside, stars clustered like mosquitoes and the moonless night dwindled into nothingness—and within the nothingness, rising to the stars, were a multitude of spirits of the dead.

  ‘Alts'eni

  (Five)

  After the chief explained Raven’s plan to his people, he told them to prepare for the journey. As the villagers packed their supplies and readied their dogsleds, Raven flew away, cawing and cawing loudly, which was his way of laughing.

  THE GIRLS’ MOTHER DIED in spasms, her convulsions on the thin bed waking Millie and Maura near morning. They tended to her as best they could, trying to hold her still, wiping her with cool water, crying and telling her how much they loved her.

  But love wasn’t strong enough to stop the Great Death.

  Only after Mother’s violent death did the girls notice that Father had already died. His body was cold and stiff. He had passed quietly sometime during the endless night. The sisters were orphans now, without other adults to turn to. They were exhausted, not simply from lack of sleep but from the unrelenting burden of sorrow heaped on sorrow.

  Maura began to cry, only a little at first, then uncontrollably—her small body shuddering in great sobbing heaves. Although it was her people’s custom to hold back sentiment, to be as strong as the pitiless land itself, she couldn’t do so any longer. She ran to Millie, threw her arms around her waist, and wept with her face pressed against her sister’s heart.

  It was too much even for Millie, who felt the first tears roll down her cheek, tasted tearsalt. There was a growing tightness in her chest, as if a strong hand gripped her heart so fiercely that her lungs were afraid to breathe. A great wave of helplessness drowned her. She held her sister close, and they cried for a long time.

  “What do we do with Mother and Father?” asked Maura finally, wiping tears from her cheeks with the palms of her hands and kneeling by the fire.

  “We need to bury them so the dogs and birds and bears won’t eat them,” answered Millie. “We can’t bury everyone else, but we must bury our parents.”

  Maura stood up, brushing dirt from the back of her long dress. She opened her mouth to speak but could not. She wanted to ask her sister how they could live and continue. She grabbed the shovel and the ax from beside the door. Only then did she find her voice.

  “We’ll need these,” she said, her eyes bloodshot from crying and from weariness.

  The ax would cut stubborn, shallow spruce tree roots, which did not reach deep but spread out, clutching their fingers into the soil against high winds that sometimes blew across the lake, uprooting trees. The village was built on an ancient lakeshore made of mostly sand and gravel. Although it was late fall and the ground was cold, it would not be difficult to dig in.

  Millie took up the rifle, slung it over a shoulder, opened the door, and looked around warily.

  They decided to bury their parents behind the house. They took turns hacking out roots and digging. They dug only one hole, but cut it deep enough so that the dogs wouldn’t undo their work.

  When
the grave was ready, the girls returned to the house and rolled Mother and Father, one at a time, onto a blanket and dragged them out the door and around to the back of the cabin. They lowered each parent into the hole and filled the grave. They breathed hard from their labor but said nothing. Both were lost in their own thoughts. They listened to the sound of the shovels scooping dirt, a squirrel chattering in a distant tree. When finished, they stamped on the surface, packing the earth below.

  It was a good burial. Their parents would have been proud.

  Afterward, the girls sat inside their cabin, resting from the miserable task. Millie thought of Father sitting by the fire in the evenings tanning beaver and marten hides, telling stories while he worked. Maura thought of Mother preparing meals with the girls, and sitting on the edge of the bed each night combing out Maura’s long hair.

  “What should we do now?” Maura asked, drinking a ladleful of lake water from the pail, then wiping her mouth on her long sleeve.

  Millie also took a drink before replying.

  “We have to leave this place. If we linger, we may yet catch the sickness ourselves. But first we should search the village for survivors. It won’t be easy, but we have to, I think.”

  Maura agreed, though neither had seen or heard anyone moving about all morning as they’d dug their parents’ grave.

  “It would be terrible to leave someone behind,” Millie continued. “I know it will be hard for you, Maura. I dread this too. But you just helped me bury Mother and Father. You’re stronger than you think you are.”

  Maura smiled a little, the first time she had smiled in a long while, and straightened her back.

  After drinking some weak tea, the girls began the search. Millie carried the rifle, and Maura carried the ax. At first whenever they opened a cabin door, the overwhelming stench caused both girls to convulse. Maura threw up again, and Millie’s stomach swooped like a small bird on the wind. But after a few times, they learned to cover their mouths and turn away. The sight of the dead was ghastly, each corpse contorted and bloated, covered with red spots and flies and maggots. They tried to avoid seeing the grimaces. It was better that way. These were the faces of friends, close and distant relatives, people who had been kind to them, and people whom they had not liked very much.

  But the most terrible thing they saw fueled their worst imaginings. Bear tracks of different shapes and sizes surrounded the cabin at the farthest edge of the village. Millie thought she could count the tracks of three or four bears. She said nothing, but kept the rifle ready.

  The family who lived in the cabin included a grandmother and two children. Maura had sometimes played with the children, who were close to her age, and the old woman had taught Millie how to make bead necklaces. The door was wide open. Clothing and blankets and pots and pans were strewn all over the yard.

  The girls braced themselves before looking inside. They knew it would be bad, but it was worse than they’d imagined. There was no sign of the family, no stiff and spotted bodies, but the earthen floor was soaked a dark reddish-brown, almost black. And flies swarmed on everything.

  Millie surmised that bears had dragged the bodies into the nearby woods. Grizzly bears often move large game, like a moose or a deer, to a safe place where they can eat what they want in peace, burying the rest for later. There are even stories of people who had been mauled by a bear and left for dead, only to awaken partially buried in the cooling soil.

  Millie closed the door, and then she and Maura finished checking the rest of the houses, calling out the names of the people who lived in each one as they peered through a window or opened a door. No one answered. No one else was alive in the entire village. Even Millie’s friend who had been looking after her mother was dead.

  “What should we do now?” asked Maura for the second time. “Where shall we go?”

  Millie had been thinking about the question even while they buried Mother and Father.

  “We have to go downriver,” she said. “It’s our only choice. We’ll take one of the canoes.”

  For the rest of the day, Millie and Maura took what they needed from the homes of their dead relatives, neighbors, and friends. There were some cabins they refused to return to, such was the horror and stench. For the most part they searched houses near their own, averting their gaze from the dead, taking what they needed quickly, holding their breath as long as they could, ever vigilant for bears.

  Millie had to reassure Maura frequently.

  “I know it’s hard,” she said before they went into their aunt’s cabin, “but we have to get supplies. We won’t survive without them.”

  They found more bullets for their father’s rifle. Maura took a small-caliber rifle for herself, a rabbit-and-grouse gun. They gathered bedding, pots and pans, axes, traps and snares, rope, and a long shovel. They collected hunting knives, candles, matches, and bundles of dried salmon from a cache that had escaped pillage by the animals and by the sick and starving. They found boxes of salt, good for preserving fish or meat. They even found a white canvas tarp, which folded out to a dozen feet square—perfect for pitching over a pole for shelter against rain, snow, and wind. One of the men in the village had traded furs for it. The girls folded it up, guided by the deep creases, and tied it crisscross with a short rope.

  In their hurry to gather supplies, Millie worried that she might forget something important.

  From their own house the girls took winter clothes Mother and Auntie had made for them: two warm parkas, the hoods trimmed with wolf fur; mittens and mukluks trimmed with the fur of black bears, caribou, wolves, and beavers. Beaver fur was best for winter.

  Millie knew that winter was impatient to throw itself onto the world.

  They carefully packed everything into two wooden boxes. One was a waist-high steamer trunk with a lockable clasp. The other was long and flat and rectangular. Although the girls could not read them, words on the side of the crate said that the box had contained a dozen long-handled shovels shipped from Seattle and then transported over plains and mountains to gold camps. Whereas the gold pan and the sluice box were vital to toiling, weary gold-seekers, the shovel was the most indispensable tool of all.

  The girls managed to drag the boxes, one at a time, to the edge of the lake. A grizzly approached while they were packing the canoe, walking noiselessly along the beach, shaking its massive, shaggy head. Millie fired a shot at the bear and missed—the bullet whizzed harmlessly over its head. But it was enough to frighten the bear away.

  So late in the fall, the sun fell quickly behind the mountains. By sundown, they had filled the belly of the long canoe with enough provisions to help them endure the coming hardships of the wilderness. It was too late and too dark to navigate the river. They would set off in the morning.

  The girls took the bundles of dried salmon into the house so that they wouldn’t attract hungry dogs or bears.

  That night, Millie and Maura slept lightly, tossing from nightmares, waking often, despite their fatigue, eventually drifting back into a restless sleep only to dream once again of the horrors of the long day. As they turned in their blankets inside their cabin, warmed by a small, crackling fire, low clouds blew down from the north, and the moon gleamed white and cold through breaks in the cloud cover. Sometime around midnight, the first sign of winter arrived in the valley, hushed as a lemming.

  Gistaani

  (Six)

  Two days later, the villagers arrived at the place Raven had described. They made camp at the base of the steep cliff and waited for Raven’s signal. But that sly Raven flew to the top of the cliff, where a great overhang of snow loomed above the camp.

  WHEN THE FIRST FLURRY of snow fell briefly—when it lay swirled lightly on the gravel beach and on the sod roofs of houses, when it made the footbridge treacherous, when the white covering crunched underfoot thin enough that it would surely melt under the same day’s sun, when the creeks and rivers and ponds were still without ice, when restless bears first gave thought to their musty w
inter dens—then the sisters abandoned their village, now more cemetery than home.

  * * *

  Millie was the first to awaken in the morning. She looked out the small window and saw the world whitened during the night.

  “Wake up,” she said to her sister, shaking her. “Wake up.”

  Maura opened her eyes and looked up at Millie, trying to focus the world.

  “It snowed last night. We have to leave.”

  Millie was afraid the lake and the river might freeze. But of course it was much too early for that. She pulled the heavy blankets from her sister, who quickly curled into a ball. It was cold inside the cabin. Neither had got up in the night to keep the fire burning.

  “Get up, Maura. We must go.”

  Maura whimpered. “Can’t we sleep just a little longer?” Her own voice ruined her foggy detachment. Even before Millie replied, she forced herself to sit up, wiping the crusty flakes of sleep from her eyelids.

  “No. Come on and help me.” Millie tried to sound firm and sure of herself without scolding.

  From the corner of her eye she watched her little sister begin to move about. How small and frail she seemed, draped in her nightshirt. Mother and Father were gone. Millie hadn’t been able to save them. But there was one thing she could still do for them—for Mother, especially. She could take care of Maura. Watching her sister fumble with her clothes, Millie made a vow. She would be strong for both of them. She would keep Maura safe. Thinking of the long trip ahead, Millie had to stiffen herself to keep from trembling. She had to tell herself over and over to be strong, like the wolverine or even the weasel, which is fierce for its size.

  The girls dressed warmly. Then they boiled a pot of weak tea and ate some of the dried salmon from the bundles they had found in the undisturbed cache. They stood in the doorway of their small house, looking inside one last time, both thinking of happier days. It had been their home for all of their lives. Then they went around to the back of the cabin to say good-bye to Mother and Father. Shortly thereafter, they were standing on the beach, their blankets and dried salmon loaded into the canoe. The white tarp was unfolded just enough to cover their provisions from the wet snow.