The Great Death

by John Smelcer

  After steadying the canoe so that Maura could make her way to the bow, Millie shoved it away from the beach and jumped in, the boat momentarily rocking side to side. The girls paddled toward the river outlet a mile away, looking back at the gravel shoreline and their village, at the vast surrounding wilderness—the frontier of the world. They suddenly felt small and lonely.

  The girls knew from their father and others that there was a village many days downriver. It was from that village that the Indian guide had brought the two strange men … and the sickness. Millie and Maura wondered if everyone there was already dead. Beyond that, there was said to be a large settlement where many of the men in the village went to trade. Father said the settlement was full of white people like the ones who had come to visit. It was very far away, at the confluence where the river emptied into a much larger river. Millie and Maura had no idea how long their journey would be, or if there would even be anyone left to greet them.

  Snowflakes swirled in the light wind and melted when they landed on the canoe. The temperature had risen somewhat, and this first snow could not hold its grip.

  At the river outlet, they came within view of a small cabin that belonged to an old man whose wife had died several years before. In his grief, he had built this house away from the rest of the community. Sorrow craves solitude. The old man was a first cousin to the man from downriver who had guided the strange white men. No doubt they had stopped at his cabin before walking the last mile into the village. Perhaps he had made a pot of tea for them and offered them something to eat.

  From their canoe, the girls could see two dogs tied up to a tree in the front yard of the house. The door was wide open.

  Millie dug the oar in deep, back-paddling enough to turn the bow toward the cabin. Perhaps the old man had escaped the sickness. Perhaps he was still alive. Yet they had not seen him in the village since the day the visitors left. Also, he would have been the first and last person on the lake to have seen the strangers as they passed by his cabin at the head of the trail downriver.…

  When the canoe landed softly, Millie jumped out and pulled the bow onto the beach. The dogs sat up and barked. Millie grabbed her rifle from atop the pile of supplies.

  “Stay here,” she warned Maura, gesturing with a hand for her to remain seated in the canoe.

  Millie approached the cabin cautiously, calling out the old man’s name as she walked up the worn trail. The dogs stopped barking. Instead, they whined and wagged their tails. When she was close, Millie could see that they were thin and starving. Their ribs showed through their mangy fall coats. She called out for the old man again. The only reply was the dogs’ whimperings and Maura’s voice from the canoe.

  “Is he there?” Maura asked. “Is anyone home?”

  Millie stepped close to the door and looked in warily, her rifle ready. The cabin was empty. Nothing was disturbed. There was no sign of anyone, no sign of a struggle. Had he escaped the sickness? But why had he left the door open, the dogs tied fast to a tree without food or water? Surely they would have accompanied him, as they always did whenever he came to the village.

  After Millie had searched behind the cabin, even near the outhouse, she waved for Maura to join her. Together, they untied the dogs, which bolted straightaway to the waterfront, drinking heavily for a long time, their brisk lapping like the sound of a moose splashing in the lake. When they had slaked their thirst, they trotted back to the girls, who fed them bits of dried salmon and moose meat they had found in the old man’s cache—slowly at first, hoping not to make the starving animals sick from gorging. The dogs were grateful, taking the pieces from the girls’ hands.

  As Millie and Maura watched them eat, they both felt the only joy they had known in weeks. Tied up as they had been for so long, the dogs could not have eaten the dead. The girls were grateful for these two dogs. They were good dogs, and the sisters decided to take them along, welcoming the companionship of two more survivors of the Great Death. They named the dogs Tundra and Blue, for the one dog, though its fur was black as a moonless winter night, had bright blue eyes.

  * * *

  The canoe glided noiselessly across the far eastern end of the lake toward the mounting current, where the blue-gray river began. A startled fox standing far out on the beach sprinted lightly toward the forest, looking nervously over its shoulder as it ran.

  Using her paddle, Millie swung the bow into the lazy current that pulled the canoe downstream. So close to the outlet, the river was slow and wide and deep, and the canoe drifted leisurely at the pace of an unhurried walk.

  It required little effort from the girls to keep to the main channel.

  Their confidence grew, and they began to think that their entire journey might be so effortless. They wondered why the river was called “swift water.” It certainly belied its name. They were content simply to sit and watch as they passed sand and gravel bars, from time to time drawing close to rolling hills where worn game trails came down to the water. Ducks floated on the surface. Geese rested on sandbars. And hungry bears, rummaging along the banks looking for spawned salmon, dashed noiselessly into the forest when the canoe passed by, the dogs barking madly.

  There were moments in the first hours that passed with a kind of quiet, restful relief. But even though Millie and Maura tried not to think about their village, the faces of the dead kept rushing back to them.

  Around midday they stopped on a sandbar to eat. While the girls made a small campfire, the dogs played in the nearby woods, chasing and barking at squirrels and flushed grouse. Millie took the matches from the tightly sealed jar inside the shovel crate and lit the tinder of dry grass and small twigs, just as her father had taught her. She remembered how he had told her to use paper-birch bark, which burned quickly and easily, and how he said not to smother the flames too soon, adding only a few twigs at a time until the fire grew large enough to breathe on its own. She took out a blackened pot and filled it with water for tea, setting it, teetering, across two stones. While the water rose to a boil, the sisters picked rosehips and blueberries and highbush cranberries from along the riverbank.

  They were afraid of venturing too far into the woods.

  Tundra brought them a decayed salmon he had found washed ashore. Its soft flesh was white and moldy. It was a putrid gift. But the girls petted him, thanking him for his generosity, even as they tossed it into the river with a stick. The dog waded into the water to retrieve the salmon, but the girls called him back.

  When the water was ready, Millie and Maura sat around the smoking fire, feeling its warmth, drinking hot tea, and eating dried salmon, which they shared with the dogs, who stared intently each time either of the girls yanked off a piece with her teeth.

  “Why do you think this happened?” Maura asked.

  Millie finished chewing her meat. “What do you mean?” she replied.

  “Why did everyone get sick and die?”

  “I don’t know,” Millie said simply.

  “Why were we spared?” Maura asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Maura appeared to have a whole list of similar unanswerable questions.

  “Why did Mother and Father have to die?”

  Millie thought of her father, his spotted hands shaking as he patiently showed her how to use the rifle. She thought of her mother convulsing on her thin bed, slipping away in spite of their pleas. She couldn’t take any more questions, couldn’t take the still-fresh memories.

  She said, more harshly than she meant to, “No more questions. I don’t have any answers. Perhaps there are none. Some things simply are.”

  Millie wondered whether she should make up something, some reason why all this was occurring in their lives. She wondered what she might say as she sat avoiding her little sister’s eyes.

  “Millie?” Maura half whispered.

  “What?”

  “Are you angry with me?”

  Millie finally looked directly at Maura and saw she was crying.

 
“No, of course not. I just don’t know what to say. All I know is that we have to follow the river. We have to find other people who aren’t sick.”

  They sat quietly after that.

  Then Maura spoke, slowly and apparently after much thought.

  “That’s okay. I’ll try not to ask so many questions. I wish I could help more. I’m small, but I’m getting bigger.”

  Millie smiled. “Yes, you are, little sister. Yes, you are.”

  They packed up after lunch, kicked sand on the smoldering fire. Because the weather was fair, they carefully folded the tarp and lashed it with a short length of rope, stowing it atop the boxes. Maura climbed into the canoe first, and then the dogs leaped aboard and took their positions amid the pile of supplies. When they were ready, Millie shoved off and jumped in, to settle into her place in the stern.

  The two sisters were once again on their way.

  Konts' aghi

  (Seven)

  Raven jumped up and down, he stomped and stomped, until the overhang avalanched down, killing all the people below. For the rest of the winter, he dined on the corpses, savoring the delicate eyeballs, which were his favorite.

  SOON ENOUGH, THE CURRENT quickened as the river increased its descent from the high glacial lake. The girls no longer wondered at its name. Rushing water poured itself faster through the valley, and the canoe gathered speed. Both had to work harder and harder to avoid obstacles, which came at them faster and faster. They had no time for rest. Several times the canoe almost smashed into boulders jutting up into the sunlight, the roiling white waves spraying around them.

  “Left!” Millie yelled above the din of the raging river. “Go left!”

  And Maura would yell back from the bow, pointing to some approaching object, “Look out!”

  The girls paddled so forcefully their arms and shoulders soon sang with pain, but still they fought the water, blinking wetness from their eyes, desperately searching for the next threat. It took all their strength to keep the craft from being swamped. All the while, the dogs tried not to fall out of the canoe as the current twisted it this way and that, dipping into falls and shooting rapids.

  Up ahead, on a sharp bend, the girls could see that a bank had given way and a large spruce tree, its roots still holding fast, leaned over the river, some of its branches dragging the surface: a sweeper. The girls paddled frantically, trying to win some distance from the danger, but the current was shoving the little boat straight at the tilted tree. As the canoe passed beneath the drooping boughs, almost sideways, the girls flattened themselves against their supplies.

  “Tundra!” Maura shouted.

  Millie looked up to see that the dog had been swept into the river. He was bobbing in the raging current, his paws working madly. Canoe and dog were careering together downriver, Tundra drifting farther and farther from the boat. Millie tried to turn the bow downstream, back-paddling to straighten the craft.

  “Get ready to grab him!” she yelled once the bow was turned.

  For a long, straight stretch the boat and the dog were side by side on the swift river. Maura reached for Tundra and tried to catch hold, but she was not strong enough to grip him to any good effect. He was tiring, the frigid water sapping his strength. His muscles were too cold to do as his brain told them. He was having trouble staying afloat. Maura was crying. It would have been better had the girls left him tied and starving outside the old man’s empty cabin. At least there he would have survived the day.

  “We have to save him!” Maura shouted. “Get closer!”

  She leaned over the canoe as far as she could, and this time she managed to grasp Tundra’s scruff and pull him close, holding him tight against the side of the craft with all her strength. His eyes were wide and terrified. Millie crawled over the pile of supplies. Together, the sisters managed to pull the sopping, exhausted dog back into the boat.

  No sooner had Millie crawled back to take her place at the stern than the boat struck a submerged boulder. The impact turned the canoe sideways again. Downriver, a series of boulders, like the humps of a dozen giant bears, awaited them. The girls could hear the water rushing around the great stones.

  It was thunderous.

  Millie looked for a gap big enough for the craft to pass through.

  “Right side!” she screamed at Maura. “Paddle hard! Harder!”

  Both girls paddled furiously, digging deep, making each stroke count. But the rocks came too fast. The canoe smashed into one of the boulders, which held the craft for only a few seconds, tucking it against stone while the river poured itself into the canoe, swamping it. The dogs jumped out as the supplies were lifted out of the boat to swirl around the boulder, the chests and the tarp and the dried bundles of salmon, all spinning together, held fast by the foaming eddy.

  The screaming girls gripped the gunwales of the canoe. But when the gushing water had entirely filled it, the boat sank, taking Maura’s small game rifle with it, and the girls and the dogs were swept downriver amid the flotsam of their provisions.

  Unable to swim, Maura could only try to stay atop the current. As Blue swept by, she managed to grab hold of him. But the skinny sled dog was not buoyant enough to keep them both afloat. Dog and girl went under. Millie swam to her sister and grabbed her around the neck, holding her head above water, as the current tossed and twisted them remorselessly. She looked for a safe place toward which to swim.

  Tundra was already standing on a gravel bar, shaking himself dry. Blue and Millie, hauling Maura, who continued to struggle, swam as hard as they could. The river’s iciness was already taking effect, so piercing even their bones ached.

  This far north and this late in the season, it didn’t take long for the cold to steal every last ounce of body heat, stiffening muscles.

  Finally, Blue and both girls managed to reach the shallows about a hundred yards downriver from where Tundra had landed. They waded ashore, drenched, holding on to each other, trembling. Blue clambered onto the beach, shaking the river from his fur, spraying a rain of droplets over the dry pebbles, turning them dark.

  Tundra ran to greet them, dripping a long, thin, shining line in the sunlight.

  The girls looked downstream just in time to see the two chests disappear around the bend. Perhaps they could salvage them. Though shivering and sopping wet, their clothes heavy as chains, Millie and Maura ran along the shore after the crates. The dogs followed. The running warmed them.

  They caught sight of the steamer trunk as it vanished again far ahead of them at the next sharp curve. They did not see the other chest and assumed that it too was gone. The sisters stood on the wide shore, defeated. The oblivious dogs wandered through a thicket of leafless willows, snuffling the vague scent of rabbits or grouse.

  Something downstream caught Maura’s attention. She stepped closer to see what it was.

  “Look! The other box!” she yelled, pointing.

  Millie saw it, too. The long rectangular crate had not been carried away by the current but had been drawn into an eddy, wedged against a logjam. The sisters ran to it, plunged knee-deep into the icy water, and dragged the wooden box ashore. They opened the lid. Inside was the pile of folded blankets, their winter clothing, the cooking pot they had used to boil tea, the waterproof jar of matches, their father’s rifle, a box of cartridges, a knife, a hatchet, and a coil of rope. Only a little water had seeped into the box.

  As they stood celebrating their good fortune, the folded tarp floated by close to the riverbank. It must have been caught by a sweeper or back-eddy. Millie trudged into the water and grabbed the rope-tied bundle as it passed. It was waterlogged and heavy.

  Maura helped her pull it out beside the open crate.

  Shaking from the cold, the sisters untied the tarp, unfolded it, and draped it across a stand of willows to dry. They built a small fire beneath it, took off their wet clothes, and hung them on sticks close to the flames. They sat together on a weathered log, huddled under a blanket. When their clothes were dry, the girl
s collected enough firewood to last the night and picked handfuls of overripe berries for supper. There was nothing else to eat. The bundles of dried salmon were lost, returned to the river.

  The sisters had survived again. They had lost the steamer trunk, which contained extra clothes, the frying pan, traps and snares, the candles, and other important equipment. They had even lost the long-handled ax and a shovel. But though they had no canoe and few provisions, they still had hope—the steadfast resolve of those who have nothing else.

  That night, as green ribbons of northern lights arched across the sky, the girls and the dogs slept, exhausted, close to the fire, which snapped and popped and hissed in the darkness—the thieving river sliding beyond the yellow dim light.

  Łk'edenc'i

  (Eight)

  Then, in the spring, Raven flew away to look for someone else to deceive. He was hungry again. He saw a woman with three young boys walking along a woodland trail. She was poor and hungry and filthy. Her children were sick and starving.

  A WET, SLUSHY SNOW was falling the next morning, turning the hills and trees in the valley silvery-white below a steel-gray sky. Although it was a wet snow, which would not outlast the morning, the girls were dry beneath the tarp draped over the low willows.

  Far off in the hills, a lonesome wolf howled.

  The howling awakened Millie, who slowly opened her eyes, resentful that she had been stirred from a dream. She crawled out from the tarp’s shelter and stood up, the heavy red blanket hanging from her hunched shoulders like a shawl. Her muscles were stiff from sleeping on the hard ground, her ears and nose cold. As she looked at the cool, gray ghost of the fire, she suddenly realized that the spot across from her, where her sister had fallen asleep, was vacant. Maura’s blanket was lying across the weathered log. The dogs were also gone.