The Great Death

by John Smelcer

  Shortly thereafter, the man was fast asleep in his narrow bed, snoring loudly. Despite the incessant noise, both girls fell asleep quickly, grateful for the stove’s rattling warmth, for the man’s kindness, and for their good fortune.

  * * *

  Millie and Maura awoke to the warmth of the cabin and the smell of brewed coffee. They could hear noise outside. Millie stood up and looked out the small window. The giant, hairy-faced man was sawing the log between the sawhorses. There was a pile of short logs on the ground, which he had already cut with a red-handled saw. They looked to be the right length to fit inside the woodstove. The dogs lay on the ground watching the man. They had seen men cut wood before.

  The girls rolled up their bedding and tied it into a bundle as they had done every morning since leaving their village. Millie set it atop the folded tarp lying beside the door, her rifle leaning against the wall behind it.

  The rest of the pot of beans and meat sat beside the coffeepot on the stove. The beans had cooked down until they were no longer soupy but thick and pasty. Two clean bowls and spoons sat on the table. Maura partially filled the bowls and sat on the log the man had brought in as a chair the night before. Millie sat on the chair again. They ate their breakfast and shared a cup of coffee. They did not like its bitterness. Millie poured the rest of the cup back into the coffeepot.

  They drank cold water instead.

  “We sure are lucky to have found such a nice man to help us,” said Maura, looking around the warm cabin.

  “Yes,” replied Millie. “Raven must be helping us.”

  But both girls knew that Raven rarely did anything nice for anyone. He was a selfish and greedy trickster who enjoyed causing suffering above all else. He reveled in deception.

  “I like it here,” said Maura, spooning out a piece of moose meat from her beans. “It’s near the river, for fish, and there must be plenty of game. And his cabin is sheltered from storms.”

  “We can’t stay here,” answered her sister. “He isn’t of our people. We have to continue downriver.”

  “Oh, Millie. Can’t we stay at least for a while? We can work for him. We can make him mukluks and mend his clothes.”

  “He’s a white man, Maura. We don’t know his ways, and he doesn’t know ours. We have to find the village. It must be nearby, just a little farther downriver.”

  For some moments Maura thought about this. “Perhaps he will guide us. I would be glad for that,” she said, smiling.

  Millie stood up and looked out the window. The man was rolling a large stump close to the pile of sawed logs. When it was in position, he set a log on the stump and cleaved it in half with a single powerful swing of his ax.

  “I’ll try to ask him. I don’t know how, but I’ll try,” Millie finally replied, and then she sat down to finish her breakfast.

  When they were done eating, the girls went outside to clean their bowls and spoons using handfuls of snow. The day was gray and cold and windless. After cleaning the dishes, the sisters helped the man. Millie set logs on the stump for him to split in half; Maura stacked them neatly on top of the woodpile against the cabin. When that chore was finished, he showed them how to fetch water from an open hole he maintained in the river ice. He also set a fishing line in the hole, using bits of moose liver as bait.

  Several times Millie tried to speak to the man.

  “Can you tell me how close we are to the village downriver? Can you take us there?” she asked in her language. She even pointed downriver and used her hands and fingers to gesture walking.

  But the man didn’t understand. He nodded his head and walked away.

  Around midday, the man put on his heavy boots and winter coat and then took up his rifle. The sisters looked at him questioningly, fearful that he was leaving them. He grabbed hold of a trap and rattled it. The girls understood that he was going to check his traps.

  While he was away, Millie and Maura heated water on the stove and washed themselves for the first time since leaving home. It had been their custom to take steam baths twice a week. Every village had a small structure built just for that purpose. Indeed, the names in their language for two days of the week were directly related to the ritual of bathing. Men and boys always went first, then women and girls, who had to fetch their own firewood and water.

  Maura had brought a comb from home. It had been her mother’s. She kept it tucked inside her parka. It was the one small comfort she carried with her, a reminder of happier times, of all the nights her mother used to comb out her long black hair while humming softly. The sisters took turns combing tangles from each other’s hair.

  As Millie was working on Maura’s hair, Maura whispered, “Remember how Mother liked to comb our hair, then spread it out in her hands?”

  “Yes, of course,” replied Millie. “Remember how she always hummed some tune?”

  Maura didn’t answer but fought back hot tears. She forced herself to concentrate on how Millie stroked her hair after each pull with Mother’s comb. Finally, she decided that Millie combed her hair as well as Mother, even if she did not hum.

  “I miss Mother and Father,” said Maura. “Do you think that means I’m weak?”

  “Of course not,” replied Millie. “I miss them too.”

  The girls were quiet after that, both recalling some fond memory of home.

  When they had finished combing, Millie cut a few pieces from the hanging moose meat and boiled them. Millie and Maura ate some, then gave the rest of the tasty soup to the dogs.

  The man returned before dark with a fat beaver, which he quickly skinned outside, giving the dogs the thick, flat tail. Dogs love to chew on beaver tails. For supper the man rolled chunks of the dark beaver meat in flour and fried them. He also mixed a batch of batter, which he fried in the splattering grease. The cabin smelled delicious. Maura liked the fried bread so much that she snuck a piece into her dress pocket along with a chunk of beaver meat.

  The man took down a bottle from a shelf above his bed. He took a long drink from it and then offered it to Millie, who took and sip and almost spat it out. The clear liquid burned her throat and tongue.

  “That’s terrible,” she said, her face twisted in disgust. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

  The man laughed at her expression, grabbed the bottle from her, and took another drink.

  After supper the man brought the beaver pelt inside to scrape clean on a tanning board. Millie grew agitated watching him. His method of scraping the pelt was not right, not what she had learned from watching her father. Maura didn’t seem to notice.

  When the man was finished with his chore, he played his musical instrument again, stopping often to drink from the bottle, which was now half empty. His eyes were glassy and he swayed on the edge of the bed as if he wasn’t able to sit up straight.

  The girls visited the outhouse before bedtime. The night was cold, the sky star-filled, the snowy landscape brightened by a full moon hanging high above the hills. Both girls fell asleep quickly after slipping into their bedding.

  Millie was startled in the middle of the night. She opened her eyes, and although it was dark in the cabin, she could see the man on his knees beside her, one hand outstretched. His hairy arms and face reminded her again of the frightful stories of Bush Indians.

  He put a finger to his lips.

  Millie cried out and tried to wriggle away, but the man held her by the shoulders, speaking to her softly. The shout startled Maura, though, who awoke confused and frightened.

  “He tried to touch me!” Millie cried in their language, her voice shaky, terrified.

  The giant man stood up, grabbed Millie by an arm, and yanked her upright. He flung her to his narrow bed, bending over her, trying to grab her arms as she kicked and scratched and pleaded for her sister to help her. The dogs were barking outside.

  Maura could not think, only act. She seized a heavy piece of split firewood from beside the stove and struck the man on the temple with all her might. Anger and terror dr
ove her blow, and the sound was like a spruce limb snapping under the weight of snow. The man collapsed, unconscious, atop Millie, who struggled to get out from beneath his bulk.

  Millie grabbed her rifle, loaded a round into the chamber, aimed at the motionless man, and told her sister to dress quickly and to roll up their bedding. The man was making groaning sounds. When Maura was clothed and had donned her parka and mukluks, Millie handed the rifle to her sister while she quickly dressed, flung the bundled tarp over her shoulder, and took back the rifle.

  The huge man was trying to lift himself just as they opened the door to leave. Abandoning caution, the girls scrambled down the bank and onto the frozen river.

  “Go! Go!” Millie cried. “I’ll wait until you get halfway across—otherwise, the ice could break.”

  The light dogs ran ahead, careless of everything but the excitement of a late-night romp. Over another freezing night and day, the ice had thickened slightly; it crackled but held under their racing mukluks. Just as Maura reached the safety of the far bank and Millie reached the middle of the river, they heard the man yelling at them. Drunk as he was, he was running onto the ice, calling, “Come back here!”

  Tundra, his hackles suddenly bristling, turned and ran at him barking, his ears pulled back. He looked like a wolf.

  “Tundra, no!” Maura cried. “Come back!”

  “Keep running!” Millie shouted to her sister. She prayed to that deceiver Raven that the ice would not support the man’s weight.

  As Millie also reached the far bank, they heard a cracking sound, like the fracturing of the trunk of a great tree in a storm. They turned to see Tundra, his jaws latched to the man’s thigh, and the giant scrambling in the shattering ice. The man and dog splashed into the river.

  The girls watched the two struggling to get out from the icy water. But the ice was too thin. Each time the man tried to pull himself out, it gave way and he’d go under again. Nor could Tundra escape. He vanished as Maura screamed his name.

  While the giant was trying to save himself, Millie and Maura kept running, clambering up the bank onto the trail they had been traveling on before. Blue trotted beside them, stopping frequently to look behind him. Then he’d turn and race to catch up with the girls. For a long way they could hear the man shouting. They kept running, afraid that the hairy-faced giant was behind them.

  Parents had been right to warn their children of monsters in the forest.

  Nadaeggi Uk'edi

  (Twelve)

  For the rest of the spring and summer, Raven taught the woman how to catch fish in fish traps. He showed her how to build a suitable dwelling, how to make fire, and where to find bird eggs and edible berries.

  THE SISTERS PITCHED no camp that night, convinced that every rustling branch was the shaggy man creeping up on them. They didn’t know if he had escaped the river.

  Blue stayed close to Maura’s side.

  Instead, they built a fire beneath the shelter of a wide-limbed spruce tree and sat wrapped in blankets on a pile of green boughs with their backs to the trunk, the loaded rifle across Millie’s lap. The untended fire died as they napped, and Blue occasionally whined in his sleep. While they slept, the temperature rose somewhat and low clouds slipped into the windless valley, concealed the gleaming moon, and released a foot of snow without a sound.

  The girls awoke in the morning, astounded that so much snow had fallen during the night. Millie rebuilt the fire, breaking dry, needleless branches above her and feeding the small but hungry flames a handful at a time. While they hunched close to the growing fire, Millie and Maura wept for the loss of Tundra. They had saved him from the raging river, but the river took him nonetheless. Between those two moments, he had helped them, protected them, maybe even saved their lives.

  After sharing the fried bread and the piece of beaver that Maura had stuffed in her pocket, the girls rolled up their bedding, helped each other into their burdensome packs, and started off downriver again—the going made more difficult by the foot of powdery new snow on top of the crusted snow that had fallen several days earlier. They were both grateful for their mukluks and the skill with which their mother and aunt had made them to keep their feet warm and dry.

  So early, the entire world was still sleeping beneath the white blanket. Only a curious raven moved on the silent land, following the three travelers, watching them from one treetop and then another, until he finally flew away to search for something to eat, cawing his lonely name.

  Gaw gok! Gaw gok!

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon they mounted a ridge overlooking the village the Indian guide had said was plagued by death. They had known, from comments their father and uncles had often made, approximately how far downriver it was from their own village. Bend after meandering bend in the river, they had been expecting to find it.

  But it was not what they had hoped.

  Nothing moved except wagging tree limbs unburdening themselves of new snow in the rising wind. No smoke rose from the houses. No dogs or children ran out to greet them. No tracks disturbed the bright, thick blanket of new-fallen snow. The whole village, which was slightly larger than their own, was as quiet and as white as a ghost.

  “There’s no one here,” Millie said.

  Maura did not respond. The two girls stood for several minutes taking in the scene. Most of the cabin doors stood open, frozen amid drifts.

  Millie and Maura had often wondered about the village during their journey, whispering about it at night around the campfire, as if they were afraid to speak of it aloud. They worried that if the man from this village had carried the red spots up to their village, then it stood to reason that the sickness could have killed everyone here too. They didn’t know what they would find or if anyone would still be alive. They knew only that they couldn’t stay home. They had to find other people. They couldn’t survive for long on their own.

  Finally, Millie began tramping down the ridge toward the houses. Maura followed in her tracks, having learned that it was easier to walk in her sister’s broken trail. They stopped beside a salmon-drying rack just like the ones in their own village.

  “No one here,” Millie repeated softly, to herself or to the air, the wind blowing her hair in her face.

  Maura took her sister’s hand. Blue sat between them.

  “Where are all the people?” Maura asked, squeezing Millie’s fingers.

  As much as they had feared it, neither sister had actually expected to find the village as dead as their own. The sickness had been here first, but this was a larger village. They had hoped to find survivors like themselves.

  “They’re all dead,” Millie said. “The spotted plague has killed all of them, just as it did in our village.”

  Maura began to shake a little. The bitter wind seemed to creep into her clothes, into her bones.

  Not again, she thought. Not everyone.

  Millie and Maura imagined the last days of life in this village. Had starving dogs consumed the dead? Had the bears come? Were there any survivors who left to go downriver in search of the white settlement? Was the deep, mounded snow concealing half-burned corpses?

  “What do we do now?” Maura asked. “Is everyone dead everywhere?”

  Millie thought about that for several moments before she answered.

  “I don’t know. I just know that we have to keep going. We have to look for others. We have to find the trading settlement where the rivers join. From the way Father described it, most of the people who live there are white.” The sisters remembered how the two white strangers were not sick when they left their village. “Surely there are people alive there—people kind enough to take us in, maybe even some of our own people who also survived the sickness.”

  “How far away is that?” asked Maura, looking up at Millie the way she used to look at her mother when she needed to know something.

  “A long ways, I guess. We may be only halfway there, maybe not even that close. But we have to keep going,” Millie re
plied, suddenly tired. She wanted to be the one to ask questions, to hear answers.

  “Everything is so still,” Maura whispered.

  Strangely, the buried cabins looked peaceful beneath the clean, trackless snow. The three trudged through the empty village, avoiding looking into each house, fearful of what they might find. They had seen enough of death.

  “Do you think there are ghosts here?” asked Maura, staying close to her sister, remembering the timid spirit of the drowned man they had seen running across treetops.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think Mother and Father are ghosts?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.… Maybe,” replied Millie.

  “Do you think they would remember us?” Maura asked, wiping away a streaming tear with a parka sleeve.

  “I think so.”

  “Do you think they miss us?”

  “Yes,” Millie answered, mostly because she missed them so much.

  The girls wondered if the spirits wandering the village were fearful for the safety of the two living girls. Millie wondered if the wind, rising to a howl, was made by the shouts of the dead warning them to run away before the red spots awakened. Maura wondered about her own abandoned village. Did it look like this one now, the blasting wind off the lake breathing darkly in long, hard breaths through open doors? Were the dead there buried beneath a peaceful blanket of snow?

  Although the girls were too frightened to enter any of the deserted homes, which now belonged to the wind and the drifting snow, they peeked inside every cache, climbing the rickety ladders. In the back of one, they found a bundle of dried salmon, which looked as though ravens had pecked at it. But the meat was still good. They split the fish equally, tucking them securely inside their packs. Millie also took two pairs of snowshoes from the wall outside a cabin, figuring the spirits would not begrudge her. After all, it was a long way to the trading settlement far below, where the two rivers meet.