The Raven's Gift

by Don Reardon

  He shook his head. “Do you think it’s going to get colder? This is cold enough,” he said.

  “I don’t know when, but it will get cold. Real cold.”

  “I’ll figure something out when it does,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He took a bite of the hare leg, and then took his knife and cut off half for her. The dark red meat, charred black on the outside and deep red on the inside, tasted wild and rich. His body screamed to him to cook up the rest and devour it all.

  She ate silently, and when she finished he asked if she wanted the leg bone. She did. He watched as she chewed the end off with her teeth and then sucked at the marrow. She turned the bone around, bit through the other end, and handed it to back him.

  “Here,” she said, “this will give you more energy.”

  He took the bone and followed her example. The marrow tasted like he’d bitten his own tongue, bloody and raw.

  “Do you think the rest of the world is having to do this?”

  “Eating hare?” he said, trying to joke, not wanting to contemplate a real answer.

  “I mean survive like us. What’s the rest of the world doing right now? Don’t you wonder that? Are they starving too, or are we the only ones who’ve been forgotten?”

  He handed the bone back to her and placed a few more sticks on the fire. He didn’t have an answer for her. He rarely did. Instead, he just let the silence hang over them like the smoke that rose from the embers and drifted through the willows along the riverbank like a parade of spirits.

  19

  He stopped at the riverbank and looked back. “Is she watching us? Is the hunter going to follow our tracks?” the girl asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  And he didn’t. Instead, his thoughts were on the school, the food in the school, and the missing kids. The sled was loaded with all he could pull. Any more would be wasting his energy. The two of them had food now and that was all that mattered. That and moving on up the river. They had already stayed too long. The cold was coming. He could feel it in the wind. He wondered if he shouldn’t go back and burn it before someone else, the hunter, discovered the gym full of bodies and put the pieces together.

  He slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled the rope tight around his waist. He’d retrieved the ice pick from the school, and one quick glance inside the gym confirmed it—there were only a handful of kids. Four or five. There should have been at least thirty or forty. He hoped they had escaped the sickness, the outcasts, and the hunter, if there really was such a person. Ski tracks and an old woman’s ramblings were all he had to go on. He couldn’t let a mystery man continue to haunt him.

  He tapped the point of the pick into a frozen chunk of dirt at the top of the riverbank.

  “Let’s get moving,” he said.

  “Will you talk while we’re travelling today? I just want to listen to you talk. Talk about anything,” she said.

  “We’ve got a ways to go today. Shouldn’t be wasting time talking about nothing. She said we’ve got about ten miles to Bethel.”

  “Why we going to the town? Will we look for them there?”

  “I want to see it. Maybe at night, from a distance, like she suggested. And no more talk about the kids. What makes you think they are alive any more than the kids in the other villages?”

  “Because she knows something,” she said, pointing back toward the old woman’s house. “I think she knows. She keeps saying they might be qimakalleq, I think that means runaway and becoming wild or something. She knows they are alive, too. I don’t know why you don’t open your goddamn eyes. She knows.”

  They dropped down the riverbank slowly until they got to the ice. He let the sled slide down in front of him, holding on to it to keep it from flipping over. Once they reached the river ice, he slammed the pick down. The steel bar gave a dull thunk, and a grapefruit-sized chunk of ice erupted from the surface. The ice was much thicker than when they had arrived. Not four or five feet thick, as it would get in a couple of months, but at least safer for them to walk on, half a foot thick, maybe more.

  He led the way, pulling the sled with their supplies and food.

  “I’m sorry I was mad. Will you tell me about where you came from today? I want to know about how you grew up. Please. Just talk today. Talk for me. Will you?”

  He widened his stride and set a course down the edge of the river toward a large bend where he planned to cross to the other side to get out of the icy breeze, which was beginning to pick up, drying his eyes and nipping the end of his nose.

  Off to the west, across the tundra, he could see the wind lifting ghostly wisps of snow. He didn’t want to be walking with a gale cutting through them all day. It would be best to walk beneath the riverbank so that the cold wind would sail right over the top of them for at least a few miles until the river made another oxbow and headed straight into the line of fire.

  “I just need something else to think of, that’s all. Something other than my jerk uncle back there. Other than the scary man on skis. Other than my cousins, who I know need me. That’s why. Please?”

  The girl picked up her pace and trotted to be at his side. The river in front of them spread out flat and smooth, and the girl walked with confidence, as if she knew this, as if she could see out in front of them, the broad expanse of nothing spreading before them into the horizon in a fine white line.

  “If you don’t talk, I’m going to think about him. I’m going to think about what he did to me before I burned him, and I’m going to keep wondering if I should have pushed harder. Crushed his throat until he was dead like the others, dead like he should be. And I would be no better than him. That’s all. And I’m going to think about the hunter and how he’s going to come after us when he finds our trail. And then he’s going to go after the kids and then there will be no Yup’ik people left in the world.”

  They walked for a while in silence.

  “You could tell me about when you were little and I could just listen. I don’t want to keep thinking what my uncle could still do to some other little girl he finds, or what the hunter could do to the old woman back there all by herself.”

  He adjusted the rifle strap digging into his shoulder and stopped to check the sled. He remembered the pack of cinnamon gum he’d found in the school office and tried not to think of the haunting note sitting on the desk as he opened a piece, took a small bite, and gave her the rest. The wind burned his fingers and he quickly stuffed them back into his gloves. He thought of the chocolate chips at the school and regretted not taking them. His childhood and his grandfather’s wild stories about Alaska seemed so distant it couldn’t even matter. He thought of the chocolate chips again.

  “I used to stack firewood all around the porch of my grandpa’s house. He’d pay me in candy or gum,” he said.

  “Tell me what his house was like,” she said.

  “It was a log house in the woods. Small, one room and a loft, with a woodstove for heating and cooking. I slept in the loft when I stayed with him, and he would keep the fire going constantly. It would get so hot up there in the loft I’d sweat right through the old wool blankets and down sleeping bag. He always had a big cast-iron Dutch oven sitting on the top with a chunk of deer or elk roasting with some onions and potatoes. He’d cook it until the meat just fell off the bone. That meat would cook until it was so tender and juicy. And he would sit by the stove on a thick larch stump and hum old country songs and sharpen his hunting knife and tell me that he never should have left the north. Then he’d get up and dig in his ratty old leather hunting pack and pull out a Hershey bar and tell me to go split and stack more wood if I wanted the chocolate.”

  “You’re making me hungry,” she said. “Please, tell me more. Did he tell you stories?”

  “Not really, but he used to joke, ‘I’ll trade you back to the Eskimos for an old Winchester rifle and some chocolate,’” he said, and as he said it, he could hear his grandfather’s raspy old voice, but
it felt like some past life he’d only imagined.

  “YOU CAN USE that 20-gauge,” Carl said, pointing to the shotgun leaning against the bow of the skiff. “You ride up front and shoot.”

  The tide had dropped the river several feet, leaving the bow high and dry. The two of them pushed the aluminum boat down into the water. He glanced at the baseball cap, light jacket, and jeans his new hunting companion wore and wondered if he wasn’t overdressed with his camouflage Gore-Tex rain pants, rain parka, hat and gloves.

  “Your wife said you were going crazy being stuck in the village. She told me you liked to hunt. Surprised me that you never went hunting with me yet,” Carl said.

  Carl climbed over the edge of the bow, past the two bench seats, and leaned over the motor. He flipped the latch and the prop dropped into the water. He squeezed the black rubber ball on the hose and primed the fuel line.

  John stood by the bow, still not in the boat, waiting for Carl to start the motor. “Didn’t know how hunting worked around here,” he said. “I didn’t want to impose.”

  Carl chuckled. “You don’t impose. You just go hunting,” he said.

  Carl gave a quick pull and the motor sputtered. He pulled the small choke out, pushed it in, and gave John a nod. John pushed the boat out and jumped in. He grabbed the shotgun and sat on the second bench. He faced the bow and rested the weapon across his legs. The weight of the gun felt good there. Carl eased the boat forward into the current. He tapped John’s shoulder and pointed to a box of shotgun shells lying in a plastic grocery sack behind his seat.

  John opened the box and took out a handful of shells. He stuffed them into the oversized pocket of his rain jacket, broke the barrel, and slid one shell into the chamber. The single-shot gun had the look of a relic. The long barrel was rusted, the bluing of the metal long gone, the trigger guard cracked. The sight on the end was simply a small shiny silver bump. He snapped the gun back and rested it again on his lap.

  The boat picked up speed, raising the bow up out of the water until they were on step and speeding along the edge of the steep cut of the riverbank.

  “See the high bank here?” Carl hollered over the motor. “This is where the deep water is. Shallow over on that side. If you’re ever going to travel here, you’ll have to learn how we navigate the water.”

  John nodded and asked, “How can you ever know where you’re going with all these lakes and rivers everywhere?”

  “I guess you learn or get lost and die,” he said with a grin as he turned the tiller and cut the boat sharply across to the other side of the river. “There’s a big sandbar right there,” he said. “It goes all the way down there. You have to cross here. If you hit the sand right under the water, you’re stuck, big time. You know which direction we’re headed?”

  John shook his head. “No idea! Just going around that big bend has me all turned around, these rivers are so twisted.”

  Carl pointed behind them. “That way, straight across the tundra, is Bethel. That way, down this river, you can get to the Kuskokwim River. This way, if you went far enough, you could get to the Yukon.”

  “You can get to the Yukon River from here?”

  Carl raised his eyebrows. He had two white splotches, one on his cheek and another on his neck. They didn’t look like scars or burns, more like skin with no pigment.

  “It’s a long ways, across some big lakes and a few beaver dams, but you can make it,” he said. “It’s not on any maps, but we go that way for moose hunting. Probably not this year because gas is too much.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Eight fifty something.”

  “A gallon?”

  Carl raised his eyebrows. “Makes hunting almost too much. Any more expensive and we’re going to be in real trouble.” He let off the throttle. “Get ready,” he said and he pointed to the horizon.

  He cut the motor and whispered, “Maybe you’re good luck, John. Cranes.”

  A giant black checkmark circled high in the air above them. The flock of slender, dark birds dropped toward them like thin black crosses and then turned again and descended out of sight several hundred yards away.

  “They’re on the river around the next bend,” Carl said, starting the motor. “We’ll go fast around the corner and you can shoot. Get ready.”

  “Are they legal? Cranes?”

  “Only thing Fish and Game and the scientist guys care about lately is blood samples to check for bird flu. We shoot what we need to eat. Tonight, hopefully, it’s crane.”

  He gunned the boat forward and John slipped his hand into his pocket and took out two shells and held them in his left hand between his index and middle finger like two cigars so that he could get off a couple of quick shots and impress his new hunting partner. He tried not to think of what Anna would say about shooting cranes. You might as well have shot an albatross, he imagined her saying in disgust.

  JOHN AND THE GIRL ate the last of the hare, and he’d kept the bones, just in case they would need to break them open and boil them for the marrow. They tucked the tarp in a grove of willows so that the fire couldn’t be seen from the river. All he wanted to do was curl up in his sleeping bag beside the fire and sleep. That night, for some reason, he wanted to sleep almost worse than he wanted something of substance to eat. Just a night with solid, restful sleep. No nightmares. No waking up and straining his ears for approaching footsteps.

  The girl crawled into her sleeping bag between his bag and the fire. He knew she somehow felt safer there. Safe between the warmth of the fire and his gun. She set the bundle of grass beside her. Touched it once, and then put her hands inside her bag to warm.

  “Why do you think I lived?” she asked.

  He thought for a while, even though he had no answer. Her survival made little sense. He didn’t want to tell her that she wouldn’t have survived much longer if he hadn’t found her, but he didn’t know that either. The girl was tough enough to do whatever she put her mind to. She’d already proved as much. But why had she lived? Why had either of them lived?

  “What are you weaving?” he asked.

  She ignored him and asked her question again.

  He couldn’t find the words to answer. He almost wanted to ask her if she thought this was really living, if they really had survived, but he didn’t.

  “Why do you think you survived?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I think I’m just here to help you get to where you think you need to go. Maybe even I wish that’s why I’m here. When we’re walking and not talking I think about what’s left in my life and it’s just all empty. I feel empty, you know? Hollow like a drum. My heart’s a drum, a tundra drum that pounds and there’s no one to listen, no one to dance. I have no one. Nothing. I can’t even see all that I’ve lost. I’ve lost everything. My family. All my cousins. The village. If I’m here to help you get somewhere, then there’s at least a reason for this.”

  “I hope there’s a better reason for you being here than to just help me. I doubt that’s reason enough,” he said.

  “I do help you, don’t I? I’m not totally useless to you, am I?” she asked.

  He pulled his arm out from his sleeping bag and ran his hand down the back of her head. Her face was turned away from him, but he knew she was crying from the way she held her breath to hide her sobs.

  “I don’t think I would have been brave enough to leave, if I hadn’t found you.”

  He was nearly asleep when she asked him one last question that left him searching his memory until she was fast asleep.

  “Was I pretty when you saw me before? John, do you remember ever seeing me before, at Christmas, the Slaviq starring celebration at Carl’s house?”

  20

  They rounded a long bend in the river when the girl stopped and turned back toward the old woman’s village. He kept walking, but he didn’t make it far. The square structures were barely visible, just a row of dark boxes pressed between the white sheet of ice and the grey sky.

&
nbsp; “What is it you’re trying to see? Quit worrying about someone who we don’t even know is out there.”

  “It’s not too late to go back,” she said.

  “We’re not taking her with us.”

  “We’ll need her. She knows things we don’t know.”

  He nodded, but said nothing.

  He started walking again, but when he didn’t hear her footsteps behind him he glanced back over his shoulder and stopped. She had already started in the other direction, and somehow she was heading straight for the village, and at a pretty fast pace. The thought of leaving her, them, made sense enough. There was plenty of food in the school. Maybe even enough for them to make the spring. Without the girl he could travel quickly and efficiently.

  She didn’t falter in her progress. He had no doubt she could make it back to the village on her own. She didn’t need him. Or at least that was what her display of independence told him—but he knew better. An old woman and a blind girl were not going to improve his chances, and their odds of making it weren’t that great either. Travelling alone would afford one other luxury. He wouldn’t be responsible for anyone any longer, and he wouldn’t have to deal with the girl constantly hounding him to go find her cousins.

  He thought about calling out to her, to give her one last chance, but decided against it. She was far enough away. She wouldn’t hear him if he tried. He spun back around, pulled the rope tight, and continued on, his back to the village and the blind girl.

  He bit at his lower lip as he marched on through the snow. Using his left mitten he brushed the freezing tears from the corners of his eyes and tried to convince himself he would be better off without the girl, and that the tears were from the cold winds and not her decision. He pushed the memories of first finding her and her voice from his thoughts and tried to replace it all with images of Anna, of his students, of anything but her. Then the ice pick caught a hard ridge of snow and he suddenly remembered the heavy steel there in his right hand.