by Don Reardon
One glance at the pick was enough. In his mind he saw the girl swinging it, smashing into the man in the gym and then nearly crushing his throat. She still had fight in her, and despite everything, she would continue to fight. Her uncle was still there hiding in the village somewhere. Maybe he watched them leave. He might even be watching her return.
And then there was the old woman’s hunter. If he was a hunter, he would find the old woman and the girl, and then, if they were still alive as the girl insisted, he would find the children.
John made a small arc to avoid having to jerk the sled around and started back toward the village. His strides were long and brisk, the wind at his back. He could catch her before she reached the riverbank.
HE SAT ON THE cold green linoleum floor of their house, clicking away at the keyboard of a school laptop. He was commenting on Alex’s online journal. The kid had zero understanding of grammar or writing conventions, but his writing had a unique voice. The kid’s bitterness cloaked a sense of despair and hopelessness.
“Listen to this,” he said, reading to Anna. She stood at the stove heating oil for their nightly popcorn snack. “‘Most nights I sleep on a foam pad, if I’m lucky enough to sleep. The TV stays on all day and all night. There is always someone watching movies or shows. I’ll put the pad down, on our plywood floor, somewhere I can still see the screen. I don’t see little houses like mine on those shows, and I never once seen someone sleeping on foam mats in houses with no water, only one or two bedrooms. Thirteen maybe fourteen people. Babies crying. My sister and her boyfriend humping, like no one knows what they are doing under those blankets. I don’t never see real life like that on the TV. That world is supposed to be the real world. I hear teachers say that. “Back in the real world,” they say. I’ve never seen their real world, just TV. I probably never will live to see it. Don’t really want to. I don’t think I would fit in there, it would be like trying to find space to sleep for me here, me and my sleeping pad and nowhere quiet. It’s funny that the outsiders who come here call that the real world, and they don’t even know what Yup’ik really means.’”
“What does Yup’ik mean?”
John shrugged. “Guess he’s right.”
“Is that Alex again?” she asked. “Man, that kid. You wish you could … I don’t know, help him out somehow. You’re probably the first teacher ever to give him a chance. Think what he could do.”
“Think what any of them could do,” he said, closing the laptop and stretching out on the floor. At the floor level he could almost feel the wind from outside, cutting straight through the walls. The cold air felt refreshing against his face, the back of his head pressed against the cool floor, his eyes on the square tiles of the ceiling. “They have had shitty teachers and zero challenge from day one. How can anyone expect them to even feel good about themselves, let alone maybe go to college or a tech school?”
The corn started to pop. She shook the kettle.
“Maybe that’s the point. For the culture to survive, they’ll have to stay here. Education at once seems like the answer and the problem. Go to school and lose your way of life, or don’t and live your way of life. If they go away to college, what’s going to bring them back? There aren’t jobs. There’s no economy.”
“They could teach, for one. There has to be some sort of sustainable economy that could be created here. There’s always telecommuting. Anyone can work from anywhere. Even here. Plus, I’m not buying the culture thing because three-quarters of my students tell me that all they do is go to open gym, watch movies, play video games, and hang out. Only a couple of them hunt. The girls help with raising the little ones, but that’s it. That’s why I hope I can keep them fired up about this project stuff. I just hope it doesn’t get me into trouble with the district office.”
She turned off the burner, slipped on the oven mitt, and dumped the popcorn into a large stainless steel mixing bowl. “I hardly think the district is going to care if you’re inspiring your students to study their own cultural history.”
“Well, I’m not exactly getting them ready for the standardized tests,” he said.
She held a piece of popcorn above him. “I don’t mean to change the subject,” she said. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. “But …”
“But what,” he asked, opening wide.
“I’m out of birth control,” she said, dropping a large white kernel into his mouth.
HE NUDGED THE GIRL from her sleep and stretched his legs and looked down at them. His black snow pants looked more like a rodeo clown outfit; his legs, butt, and midsection had lost so much muscle mass that the pants felt and looked ridiculously huge. The whole scenario felt off that morning.
“Can I sleep a little longer?” she asked.
“Yeah. A little. I want to get moving soon.”
“I can get up now.”
“Sleep. I’ll wake you.”
He stood and walked a few yards and relieved himself. The light rain the night before had crusted the very top layer of snow. Walking in the crunchy surface would take extra energy.
He watched the horizon for any signs of movement. Life seemed to be in short supply lately.
By the end of the day he hoped to be on the main river, and that the ice of the Kuskokwim would be sound for travel. They couldn’t walk across the lumpy tundra in the snow, or fight the tangled willows and alders that clogged the banks.
There were a couple of villages between them and Bethel. They would find food or survivors at one of those three, he wanted to hope, but on this morning, the hope just wasn’t there.
“John,” the girl whispered, just loud enough for him to hear her. He saw her sitting up in her sleeping bag, the blue tarp covering most of her. He followed her finger and saw what she was pointing at.
He crouched and slowly crept to her as she felt around beneath the tarp and came up with the rifle.
“Thanks,” he whispered. “Cover your ears.”
He quietly put a round in the chamber and crept forward. His breathing picked up, and he tried to steady himself and the barrel to get a clean shot. He wished he had kept the girl’s rusty .22. With his gun, such a big calibre, he had only one chance.
The ptarmigan clucked and pecked at the black lumps of tundra protruding through the snow. There were half a dozen of the bright white birds, but that did nothing for his odds. One shot and they would be gone. He knelt with one knee in the snow and the other up as a rest for the rifle. He first placed the red bead of the sight on the head of the lead bird. Its wide, round black eyes on the white head seemed like the perfect target. Then he hesitated and lowered his aim toward the midsection and waited for the right moment.
A head shot, to preserve as much meat as possible, was risky, and missing meant no food. A solid body shot meant fresh meat, gunshot or not. He held steady. Then he thought about the trajectory of the bullet, and how he might wait until the birds lined up, and then shoot.
He waited. At one point he had two, then three, almost in a line. He paused for a fourth. He rested his finger against the icy metal of the trigger, waiting. Waiting.
Just as he started to squeeze a round off, the lead bird lifted its head, and they started running, their little legs scurrying, their heads leaning forward. He followed them with the gunsight. They picked up speed and lifted off into the air before he could get a shot.
“No! No!” he screamed at the birds as they set their wings and glided to safety several hundred yards away. An impossible distance with no cover or chance to sneak up on them.
He slumped to the ground, clutching the rifle to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the girl, remembering something she once told him about thoughts and the animals you hunted being able to hear those thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and the weight of his mistake began to press him into the frozen moss and snow beneath.
21
He reached the girl before she started up the riverbank. She sensed him coming and tur
ned to wait. He wondered how she envisioned him behind her white eyes, just how she saw him, or if she saw him at all. Maybe he was just a voice, a presence that made sure she ate and drank.
“I knew you’d bring my grass back to me,” she said.
“I just came back for more canned peaches,” he said.
“You lie!”
“Wait here,” he said, climbing up the bank as he pulled his rifle off his shoulder. The strange sense of déjà vu grew as he peeked the rifle over the edge of the bank and scanned the village for movement. A black rubber boot stepped on the end of his barrel.
He pulled back on the stock and swung the barrel skyward, just as the old woman’s laugh cracked the cold silence.
“How you live this long being so dumb?” she asked.
He took a breath and tried to ease his pounding heart.
“Jesus, woman. I could have shot you.”
“I would have shot you first,” she said, and she lifted into the air an old 20-gauge pockmarked with rust, the cracked and weathered wood stock wrapped in black electrician’s tape.
“This was my husband’s. Got a half box of shells left, too.”
She pointed to a blue-grey plastic fifty-gallon garbage can lid, upside down, with a blanket tied to it. A rope extended to her waist.
“I got the foods you gave me in here, most of it, my knife, and a caribou hide.”
He helped her down the bank to the river ice and the girl. They hugged, as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. The old woman put her bare hands on the girl’s face.
“You knew we would come back for you?” the girl asked.
“No. But when you left I thought I could hear their voices.”
“Scary,” the girl said.
“Not those ones in there,” the old woman said, pointing first to the school and then up the river. “The kids.”
CARL, THE SCHOOL’S CUSTODIAN and maintenance man, quickly became his new best friend in the village. They would have coffee in the morning, while the kids shuffled into the gym half-awake to stand in line for plastic bowls of government-issue cereal or thin, dry pancakes or instant scrambled eggs. The two of them would eat together at lunch most days, sitting with the students on the folding cafeteria tables in the gym, and then have another cup of coffee afterwards, watching the students clean up and put the tables away before the kids began their pickup basketball games until the next class started. They would talk about hunting, fishing, and the classic days of professional basketball with Larry Bird and Doctor J.
After school, he would hurry to their house, grab his rain gear, and do his best not to run down the boardwalk to the house Carl lived in with a wife, six kids, mother, and grandmother. Once at the house he would climb the steps and take a deep breath before going through the arctic entry, where Carl had an old white drop-in freezer on one side loaded with birds and frozen fish, and coats and boots and other outdoor gear hung on the opposite side.
In the middle, in the path that led to the next door, which opened into the main living area of the small three-bedroom house, were various obstacles to avoid—all of them foul smelling. A full honey bucket might be waiting to be dumped, or a pile of geese ready to be plucked, or a black garbage sack bulging with fish or bird guts. Always something new, and always something odorous awaited his arrival.
Once inside, he would exhale quietly and say his hellos to the usual crowd of people gathered around the television. Carl or his wife would say, “Kuuvviara. Have coffee.” And he would. He would pour himself a cup of lukewarm coffee from the pot sitting on the stove, and then pull out a metal folding chair and wait to see if Carl felt like hunting.
While he waited his eyes would roam the items covering the wood-panelled walls, the paper elementary school certificates and awards, the gold-framed paintings of the Virgin Mary, Russian saints, and several pro basketball posters. Most of the time he would watch Carl’s wife, Carrie, or his mother prepare the evening meal. Usually, one of the women would sit on the floor, uluaq in hand, cutting a bird or a fish. Once, it was a beaver Carl had shot the night before.
The last evening they took the boat out together, Carl stood in the kitchen, gazing out the window that faced the river. He slid a hand beneath his shirt, a thin white cotton tee with STOP PEBBLE written in large red letters. “Probably not much reason to go out tonight,” he said, “but if you want to, we can.”
He turned and smiled at John.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Me neither,” Carl said. “River could freeze up any time. Maybe when we get back you could help me pull the motor on the boat. Get it ready for winter.”
“No problem. That’s the least I can do.”
Carrie looked up from the stainless mixing bowl in her lap, while her hand continued stirring the mixture of lard, sugar, and berries. “I’m making your favourite kind, John. Salmonberry akutaq,” she said. “Carl, we’re almost out of water, too. You’ll have to haul some when you get back. Have John help you if he wants my famous Eskimo ice cream.”
“Yours is the best a-goo-tuck I’ve had,” John said, attempting to say the word as well as he could. He looked at the plastic garbage barrel that they used for their drinking water, a green can sitting beside the stove with a round plywood cover.
“Do you think you’ll ever get running water in the houses?” he asked.
Carl finished his coffee and set the mug in the sink, a traditional white sink, except there was no faucet, just three holes where the fixture should have been. “Not in my lifetime,” he said. “If we had oil wells here, or if there were more kass’aqs, maybe then. Some company is putting a gold mine up the Kuskokwim. Maybe if they take a couple billion dollars of gold out they will think about helping us get running water, but I doubt it. No one in the Lower Forty-eights cares that we shit in buckets and have to haul our water. Nobody cares if they deploy three-quarters of our best men and women to the desert. No one cares if our kids have tuberculosis. Sorry, enough complaining. You ready to go?”
John nodded. He finished his coffee and put the cup in the sink. “Thank you,” he said to Carrie. She smiled and raised her eyebrows.
“We say quyana,” she said.
“I know. I’m working on learning some words,” he replied.
As they packed their rain gear and guns in the boat, John asked about the mine. He hadn’t heard about any gold mines nearby.
“It’s not that close,” Carl said. “Maybe two hundred miles up the Kuskokwim from here. Lots of old mines in the Kilbuck Mountains. There’s the old Nyac ghost town, a mine where the school district used to have a summer camp. Real nice up there. The kids love it. Maybe if they ever have it again, you and me can work there. There’s some active gold mines around there, too, but they’re pretty small. Mostly old family operations. This Donlin mine is going to be way bigger. They say it could really cause some problems for our fishing on the Kuskokwim.”
“Mining isn’t known for ever saving any fish,” John said.
“People round here need work so bad, though. I don’t see anyone stopping that mine. Climate change is killing all our salmon. Commercial fishing is all but dead here on the Kuskokwim. Not doing well on the Yukon either. Not like Bristol Bay. They still got good fishing there. Now the Pebble mine could be a fight. Fishermen and environmentalists and Natives and politicians and a giant mining company. Might get dirty.”
“What’s going on in Bristol Bay?” John asked.
“You never heard of Pebble?”
John shook his head.
“Just a little pebble. They say it’s going to be one of the largest open-pit mines in the world. Five hundred billion dollars’ worth of gold at the headwaters of the world’s last great wild salmon run. How do you like that? Five hundred billion, with a b. How can people like us, with nothing, have a voice against money like that?”
They stopped on the boardwalk, just above Carl’s boat. The tide was down again and they would have to climb down the bank and push the boat
several feet to get it floating.
“Five hundred billion? You sure?”
Carl raised his brows again and said, “Those Natives there over the ridge, I think some people will help them try to fight the mine, but only because of the salmon industry. Not here, not on the Y-K river deltas, man. Who cares much about what happens around here, to us? They never did. Never will. We’re the invisible people. But sometimes, maybe I think that’s okay, you know. Real people can’t live off oil and gold forever. Yup’iks used to know how to live without these things. Maybe if all of this goes to shit, maybe some of us could still survive like we used to.”
John stepped aside as a young boy raced past them on a bike, a yellow five-gallon bucket in one hand. A group of sled dogs stood up from the dirt mounds they were staked to and started yelping and howling. The sound echoed across the village. Feeding time.
JOHN AND THE GIRL had been trudging through the knee-deep powder for hours. He stopped and looked back and thought he could still see their camp from the night before, a small bank of snow just at the bare horizon like a miniature white haystack. He doubted they had travelled over a mile, and sunset was just another hour away.
“Did my story about the Big Mouth Baby scare you last night?” she asked.
“You didn’t really tell me any story. Just said some baby with a big mouth was out there, and no. It didn’t scare me,” he said as he gave the sled a sharp tug to get it moving again.
“I thought maybe what I said gave you bad dreams, because last night you asked me if the baby was coming. Do you remember that?”
He stopped walking and turned to her. “No. I don’t. And let’s quit wasting our breath talking for a while, okay? Can you do that? I don’t want to hear about some toddler with wolf teeth or about the outcasts or what your grandpa taught you about living off the land. Okay? We haven’t made it anywhere today. Nowhere, you get it? We won’t survive if we can’t make it more than a mile or two a day. At this rate it would take us ten years to get anywhere.”
