Only the Dead

by Vidar Sundstøl

  Just like seven years ago, when he’d dreamed for the last time. He was standing at the deepest spot in Lake Superior. If he’d stood there in reality, it would have been 1,332 feet below the surface. A blue-shimmering landscape all around him. Icebergs reaching up like sharp peaks in a mountain chain, each one higher than the last. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. But the marrow in his bones had started turning to an icy slush. If the dream had continued, there would have been nothing more than a skeleton of ice left of him. And in the form of that ice skeleton, he would have kept on moving around at the bottom of the lake. He pictured a skeleton, shiny with frost, plodding along. He heard the sound it made, like the most delicate of chimes. I never would have woken up from that, he thought. I would have died in bed. Ever since that time, he’d had the feeling this cold place was waiting for him. That it was still there. He just didn’t know in which world.

  Andy hadn’t yet appeared below. Anyone who wanted to pass through the valley would have to make a great effort not to cross that open plain. The only other option was to cross the ridge itself, to climb up the steep slope and come up here. But why would Andy do something like that? In terms of the hunt, it would be utterly pointless. It was down on the valley floor, in the stands of maple trees, that the deer would be found. The buck would most likely continue along the valley when it noticed the driver coming from behind. Up here, on the other hand, it would be impossible to predict which way an animal would head. There was nothing about the landscape on the ridge that pointed in any specific direction, as it did in the valley. If Andy chose to come straight over the ridge, that decision would have nothing to do with any deer.

  Lance was still leaning against the pine. He was freezing. The external cold stinging his hands and face was one thing. It had also crept under the layers of clothes he was wearing and turned the skin on his thighs numb. This was the sort of cold he was used to, since he’d grown up in Duluth, after all. Cold that stung your skin was no cause for concern. It was the cold that seemed to be coming from inside him that was worse. It didn’t cause any clear, tangible pain, but it had seized hold of his guts and organs, as if the cold hand of a giant had grabbed him from inside.

  He started walking as fast as he could toward the post near the small logged area. His body soon warmed up, and a light film of sweat appeared on his forehead. Now he just had to get there before Andy. But what if his brother was already on his way across the ridge? Maybe they were actually very close to each other. Lance paused for a moment to listen, but he realized instantly that it was pointless. If his brother could sneak up on a deer and shoot the animal, as he’d done so many times before, it would take a stroke of luck for Lance to hear him.

  It was hard going through the tall heath, but even though he quickly tired, there was no way he could stop to rest. First, because he had to reach the post before Andy did. And second, because he was afraid he’d start freezing again if he stopped. The air was definitely colder than only a few minutes ago. It was no longer raining. He huffed and puffed as he made his way through the pine forest at the top of the ridge. There wasn’t a deer in the world that wouldn’t have heard him coming from far off. Suddenly this whole thing seemed stupid and degrading. He was a grown man who had gone out hunting since he was thirteen years old. And a forest cop, on top of it. Yet he was carrying on like this. He should have stayed calmly in position, with all his attention focused on waiting for a deer. A big buck might have passed the post while he was out spying on his brother as he took a leak.

  It didn’t take long for Lance to cross the ridge. Fortunately, Andy was nowhere in sight when he reached the post. He took up position, partially hidden behind the same shaggy spruce tree as before, and tried to get control of his breathing.

  By now it seemed unlikely they’d do any more hunting even though they hadn’t shot any deer on this drive either. Lance felt like the whole way of life he was familiar with was coming to an end, and he couldn’t even imagine what would happen after today’s hunt. Couldn’t imagine anything “after the hunt” at all. For a moment he pictured Andy as he’d seen him in the scope of his rifle a short time ago. He now felt there was something irreparable about that moment, that he’d crossed a line, and it would be impossible to cross back over. Aiming at a human being was practically a crime. Even though he’d been very careful not to let the crosshairs touch the figure of his own brother, he’d stood there with his rifle raised and studied Andy through the scope. In all the years they’d gone hunting together, he’d never done anything like that before; the thought had never even occurred to him. And if it had, he would have certainly felt horrified. But that was no longer true.

  Lance raised his gun into firing position a couple of times, just to make sure he still had it in him. He wasn’t entirely convinced he would get into proper position, but of course he did. He’d handled a rifle since he was eight and gone out hunting from the age of thirteen. He went on his first deer-hunting expedition with his brother as a twenty-year-old. He wasn’t particularly interested in guns, but he liked the focus and the precision a perfect shot demanded. The correct line between his eye, the scope, and the target. Ever since his father first taught him to shoot with an air gun, he’d enjoyed hunting and felt it was something he was good at. But not once in all that time, at least as far as he could remember, had he ever raised his rifle to his shoulder because he was uncertain about whether he still had it in him.

  Andy had not crossed the open plain at the bottom of the valley. At least not while Lance was watching. What if he’d gone straight over the ridge and was on his way here from behind? The post was at the base of the slope, and the terrain rose up steeply behind him. There were a lot of trees up there, relatively speaking, mostly aspen and birch, but it wouldn’t be impossible to find a spot, maybe fifty yards away, with a clear sight down to him. Lance turned halfway so that he could alternately keep an eye on the clear-cut and the slope. The temperature must have dropped below freezing, because now the leaves were crunching under his boots. That would make it more difficult for Andy to sneak up on a deer, but also easier for Lance to hear him. He listened for the snapping of a twig, the crackling of almost-frozen leaves, but he heard nothing.

  The cold had begun to seep inside him again. A faint trembling was spreading through his torso, his breath was white with frost. He felt an urge to jump up and down or to flap his arms, but it would be best if he didn’t make a sound. He was just going to have to let the cold eat into him.

  Again he raised the rifle into firing position. He was still able to manage it just fine, but he had no idea how much longer he could do it. Soon the cold inside his body would start to hamper his movements. That’s when the deer will show up, he thought. When I’m no longer capable of taking a precise shot. That’s when it will suddenly be standing right there. Either the deer, or Andy. His brother would appear when Lance could no longer defend himself. Yet he was also the only one who could release him from the cold. As soon as Andy turned up, Lance would be free to move about as much as he liked. Until then, he was at the mercy of the cold, which was penetrating ever deeper inside him. If I stand here long enough, I’ll freeze into ice, he thought. Just like at the bottom of the lake. And it’s 1,332 feet up to the surface.

  HE JUST BARELY REGISTERED the vibrations against his numb thigh. He opened the pocket flap and took out his cell phone. It was Andy’s number on the display.

  “Yep?” he said, but his voice was almost inaudible. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello?”

  “I’m right below you,” said his brother.

  “Good.”

  “See anything?”

  “Nothing. Did you?”

  “Nothing,” said Andy.

  “Hmm . . .”

  “Well, I’ll be there in a sec.” Andy broke the connection before Lance could say anything more.

  Lance leaned his rifle against a tree trunk and began flapping his arms. His brother soon emerged from the edge of the wood
s.

  “Are you cold?” asked Andy when he came closer.

  “Naw.”

  Lance slung his rifle over his shoulder. They avoided looking each other in the eye.

  “So you didn’t see anything?” he asked.

  “No deer, in any case.”

  “Something else?” said Lance.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “What?”

  “I saw a man,” said Andy.

  “A man? Where?”

  His brother looked at him. Lance thought he held his gaze a little too long, and finally he had to look away.

  “Up on the ridge.”

  “Well, at least he won’t cause any trouble up there.”

  Andy looked like he wanted to say something more. He cleared his throat a few times and seemed about to speak. Instead he turned around, lifted his Minnesota Twins cap, and scratched his scalp. Then he put the cap back on.

  “Not a single deer,” he said with his back turned to Lance.

  “What should we do now?”

  “Keep going,” said Andy.

  “But where?”

  Andy turned back to face him. “Between the highway and the lake. We’re allowed to do that, right?”

  Lance wondered if he should lie, but that would just mean they’d have to go out again next weekend. They might as well be done with it now.

  “Uh-huh. Our licenses include the area along the lake between the Temperance River and the Cross River.”

  “I’m sure there’s gotta be some deer down there,” said Andy.

  “But there’s also a greater risk we’ll run into tourists.”

  “No, the weather’s too lousy. I think we’ll have the woods to ourselves. But first let’s eat. I’m hungry.”

  THEY REACHED THE PARKING LOT near the Cross River without exchanging a word during the half hour it took them to get there. Lance went over to his Jeep and opened the tailgate. While he was wrapping his rifle in the brown blanket, he heard his brother’s voice right behind him.

  “What the hell have you been doing?”

  He tried to turn around, but it was difficult since he was bending forward into the vehicle. Andy reached in next to him and grabbed the wrench. Lance had forgotten it was underneath the blanket.

  “Oh, that,” he said.

  “Did you kill somebody, or what?”

  Lance backed out of the Jeep and straightened up.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Andy laughed nervously.

  “I ran over a cat last night. Had to kill it.”

  “On your way home after hunting?”

  “No, later on. Up near Reservation River. Didn’t even see it before I hit it.”

  “Why were you up there yesterday?”

  “Visiting Willy.”

  “Willy?”

  “Dupree.”

  “Oh.”

  I don’t think he’s a gypsy, this man sitting wrapped up in a blanket and humming over there in the corner. He’s an Indian. In the light from the fire that’s burning between us, I see things no gypsy would travel around with. I can’t even guess what those things might be. One looks like a small snowshoe, no bigger than my hand. Several big feathers are hanging from it. White feathers with black tips. I must have swallowed a lump of ice, and it’s not melting, just spreading cold through my body. I can’t feel the heat from the fire at all. I just see the light. I think I might be dying, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I can’t remember if there was something important I needed to do first. Don’t think so. I wouldn’t mind dying now, if it’s like when I was in the lake. Down there, at least, I wasn’t cold. And there were stars and the moon and blue mountains. The ax went with me into the water and came back up with me again. I can barely feel the handle in my hand, but it’s still there.

  The man over there is moving. I hear something clattering, like a cooking pot. He crawls on his knees over to the door and pushes aside the big piece of birch bark. He wears the round-brimmed black hat indoors too. Underneath the hat he has on a scarf. I can hear him scratching in the snow with something. Oh, I think he’s filling the pot with snow. Then he backs in through the door and closes it up again. He hangs the pot over the fire. Is he making soup? Pea soup with chunks of pork? Not even that would thaw the ice inside me. That’s how cold I am. He sits down in the corner again. Pulls his knees up to his chin, wraps the blanket around himself, and settles down like before. There is some sort of picture on the blanket, but I can’t see what it is. There seem to be strong colors too. Red and white, I think, but there’s not enough light in here for me to be sure.

  Now he’s starting to hum again. Is it some sort of song? He rocks back and forth. I don’t like it. But they don’t eat people here, do they? I’ve never heard that Indians eat people. Maybe they did before the white folks came here, but not anymore. My lips feel like they’ve been flayed raw. My mouth froze to the packed snow, and I’ve broken a rib. I’m shaking all over. Only my right hand refuses to move. It’s clamped like the claws of an eagle around the ax handle. But the rest of me is shaking so hard I can barely see. I think even my eyes are shaking in their sockets. My teeth are chattering. I catch a glimpse of the Indian above me. He bends down closer, but I’m shaking so bad I can’t see his face. It’s nothing but a dark patch.

  I don’t understand what he’s saying. I can’t tell whether it’s English or an Indian language. I think he sounds scared. Or maybe angry. I try to say something, but all I hear is the chattering of my own teeth. He puts his hand on my forehead and mutters something. His hand is ice cold now. Even colder than I am inside. I’m freezing inside and out. When the cold outside meets the cold inside me, I will die. I think that’s how it will happen. Because then there won’t be any warmth anywhere. Even the fire seems cold now. It’s glowing, but it gives off no heat. It’s glowing in the middle of the darkest forest. In the middle of the night. The forest animals stay away from the fire. They fear it, just as we fear the Lord. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. That is, above all else we shall fear and love God and put our trust in Him. There is only one true God, the Creator and Lord of all things. The heathens’ gods are dead idols.” They are hollow tree stumps. If you kick them, rats and toads come out. That’s what their gods are: rats and toads and snakes. The Almighty Lord is in heaven, but these unhappy souls have never heard of him. Or of Jesus Christ. The man sitting over there doesn’t know who Jesus is. He offers young goats and lambs to Baal.

  But I have almost been in heaven. I’ll be going back there soon. Up into the vault of the sky, and through it, beyond to God’s Kingdom, where its radiance will warm me again. There it might take two years before I have enough money for my own boat. If you’re not afraid of hard work, of course. And there’s so much fish that you can earn more in a week than a man does in a whole year back home. That’s why I have to go there, to earn money. I want to have my own boat and my own house. I want to eat pea soup with pork. He has taken the pot off the fire. He’s crumbling something into the water. I don’t know what it is. It looks like a piece of bark. The whole time he keeps up that cursed humming. As if he’s singing something into me. I don’t like it. Maybe it’s idol worship. And now he sticks his hand under his blanket and takes something out. It looks like a small pouch. He sticks his fingers down into it and then sprinkles a pinch of something into the pot. He’s probably not making pea soup. It’s a witch’s brew. And he wants me to drink it.

  “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.” So he will return here to earth, to judge us all, whether we are alive or dead. But where on this earth will he find the dead? Will Jesus open the graves
? Every single grave in every single cemetery in the whole world? Won’t they come out as skeletons and half-rotten carcasses? Is that what will happen? If so, a terrible stench will spread over the day of resurrection. And it won’t be a pleasant sight either. There must be many more dead than people who are alive. What will they all do? Maybe the same things they did when they were still alive. The dead baker will set about baking again, and all the fishing boats will be rowed by skeletons wearing oilskin hats. That seems very unlikely, even though it says as much in the catechism. The classrooms will be filled with skeleton children. No matter where you go, you will meet the dead.

  But surely that’s not the way it will happen. There must be more than a sudden mass ascension to heaven for both the dead and the living. Well, at least for those who have been God’s obedient children. The others, the sinners, will plunge straight down into the blazing embers, where they will burn for all eternity. And I suppose that afterward the earth will be empty. Or maybe the animals will remain. Because animals and fish cannot be judged, can they? So there will probably be good fishing, but no one left to fish. The heathens live in hell here on earth. That’s what I’ve heard. It’s because they are living without the grace of God. The man sitting over there in the corner is without grace. But I have grace. That’s why I’m no longer freezing. Because now I feel nothing. Not the cold, not the heat. Maybe that means I’m about to die. But what does it matter? Won’t I just rise up again? Up to the moon and the stars? Yes, and then beyond them, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven on the other side.

  But there was something important I was supposed to do first. And now I remember what I’m doing here. I’m only a couple of hours away from the log cabin that belongs to Knut. And I’m very good at hiking. But then I fell through the ice. I have not been up in the vault of the sky. That was just something I imagined. I almost drowned. I was practically dead when the heathen rescued me. Because that’s what he did. And because of that, I don’t know whether I need to be scared of him or not. But I will never drink that witch’s brew of his, if that’s what he wants. It’s un-Christian, what he put in the water. I have such a yearning for pea soup with pieces of pork, but I refuse to think about everybody back home. When I get to Knut and Nanette’s cabin, they’ll probably give me porridge and coffee. And that will taste good, even though pea soup with pork would be much better. If I don’t get warm inside soon, I’m going to die. I make an attempt to sit up, but when I manage it, I see that I’m naked. The fur rug slipped down when I sat up. I didn’t even know I was lying under a fur. I thought I was just stretched out with my clothes on. But I’m naked to the waist. The fur is covering the rest of me. Did I take off my clothes? Did the Indian take off my clothes? When did that happen? Did I fall asleep?