by Don Reardon
“Whatever,” John said. “Cold water sounds perfect.”
Carl waited. John pulled the door open and crawled out with the cloud of mist that erupted against the cold air in the entry. Carl followed and closed the door.
“Holy shit, that’s hot,” John said, looking at the red splotches appearing on his shoulders and arms. “I hope this goes away.”
Carl smiled. “We’ll do that a couple more times and then wash up.”
“Wash up? Hey, I’m clean. I think I burned the dirt out that round,” John said as he dipped the ladle and handed Carl the first drink. Carl drank half and poured the other half on his head. His black hair glistened and steamed in the cool air.
“This is how we stay clean with no baths or showers. Steam for a while and then wash up. Not bad, eh?”
“It’s something, all right. Wow.” He felt light-headed.
“That was nothing. You should steam with me and my brothers. Probably melt your skin right off the bone.”
Carl cracked the door to the outside. The chilly night air rushed in, and John leaned back against the wall and sighed. The heat poured off his body and he felt relaxed, alive, rejuvenated, and tired all at the same time.
“Maybe next time your wife can meet you here when we’re done. That’s how most of our kids entered this world. Steam bath’s the best way. Best way for romance. You guys can’t have kids?”
“We’re still kids ourselves. Not yet.”
“Shoot. Here, most people your age got six or seven kids. You’re way behind. Ready?”
“It’s going to be hotter, isn’t it?”
Carl smiled and headed inside.
HE HAD BEEN pulling the girl in the sled for hours when she asked about Anna again. When he didn’t reply, she asked another question that made him even angrier.
“You said ‘I promise, I promise’ in your sleep last night. What did you promise her? Promises get people into trouble, you know?”
He was about to tell her to shut up, to never open her mouth again, when he spotted a thin snake of smoke rising from a plywood shack on the riverbank ahead of them, the roof of the smokehouse half covered by a green plastic tarp. He slowly sank to his knees and looked back to the girl on the sled.
“I smell the smoke,” she said.
“Just a little ways upriver. Looks like a fish camp.”
The girl closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and lifted her nose. She took a deep breath and her face shifted. She took another smell of the icy air and then shook her head.
“It’s not good,” she said. “The smoke. It’s … not a fire. They’re smoking meat.” Then she added, in a scared whisper, “Bad meat.”
Fear replaced his anger. He surveyed their choices. They could turn around and waste energy they didn’t have, or try to sneak past, below the fifteen-foot-high riverbank, just out of sight of the camp, and hope no one would see them. The problem with sneaking past was the tracks they would leave. One set of size-twelve boots pulling a heavy sled.
Either way, they would leave tracks, and either way he wouldn’t sleep knowing those tracks would lead from that smokehouse straight through the snow and right to their next camp. He wondered if the skier had somehow doubled back and was waiting for them.
He sat in the snow for a long time without saying anything. The girl held the rifle across her lap and he took it from her, put a round in the chamber, and handed it back to her. He pulled her behind the round shield of roots from a limbless spruce tree that had washed down from far upriver during the spring flooding.
“I’m going to have to go up there,” he said. “I want you to start counting to yourself slowly. When you get to two hundred, start screaming. Loud as you can. When you hear me shooting, quit screaming.”
She nodded.
“You’ll come back?”
“I’ll come back. Anyone else comes near, start shooting. You’ll know when it’s me.”
27
They had a hard time pulling the two sleds up the dozen steps that led to the heavy metal door of the fuel tank. The space beneath the platform that held the tank was wrapped in two layers of chain-link fencing with a gate locked shut by five or six heavy padlocks.
“Why he want you to put the guns in there?” the old woman asked as he closed the metal cabinet and began to lock it. He stopped, opened his jacket, and took out the Glock. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving the pistol, but he wasn’t about to betray the demands of the man inside the tank. For all he knew the guy would make them walk through a wind-powered metal detector.
“He wants to make sure we aren’t going to rob him.”
“Maybe he gonna rob us. Maybe take our food,” she said.
“If he does that, the ghosts will haunt him. Right?” he said.
“You shouldn’t joke with her like that,” the girl said quietly.
John gave a light rap on the door. A square peephole opened and a light blue eye appeared. He looked away while the man behind the door evaluated them, and then several metallic clicks from the other side preceded an oiled and silent opening of the door, a thick, solid door that reminded him of a bank vault.
A lanky, bone-thin man stood behind the door. He held a light snow-camouflaged assault rifle in one hand and quickly waved them in with the other.
“In. In. Move it. Come on,” he said.
“Our food?”
“Pull it in. It’s not safe out there.”
The man reached down to grab the rope to the old woman’s sled and pulled it in. They followed. With the toboggan inside, the door swung shut and the man clamped two deadbolts and locked several baseball-sized padlocks. The man turned and looked at a four-by-four-inch security screen, never putting down the assault rifle. The screen flashed the images from at least three cameras mounted somewhere outside, each one covering a different side of the tank.
“You’re alone?” he asked.
“Just the three of us,” John said.
He looked at the girl. “Christ, she’s blind?” he asked, then added, “From the sickness?”
“No. Before,” the girl said.
“Blind. That makes for good winter travel, no? Here, you ladies sit down. With all that’s happened, I’ve lost my manners.”
He pulled out two metal folding chairs. The old woman and the girl sat.
“Let me get some tea brewing,” he said, turning to a small hotplate with an old teakettle.
While he filled the kettle from a small silver spigot that drained into a deep sink, John looked around the small structure. The building was insulated with some sort of spray foam and then painted white. One small fluorescent bulb lit the space. Against one wall sat a double bed, beside that a desk with a computer and a small ceramic space heater. Against the other wall a woodstove, a plywood table, and a workbench, complete with ammunition-reloading equipment.
The man turned and gave them a thorough once-over, again. He was balding, with long, stringy red hair in the back and on the sides. The wisps of hair on his face and chin didn’t constitute much of a beard, and his icy blue eyes were set behind a pair of flimsy wire-rimmed glasses.
“Name is Raymond. Folks used to call me Red.”
He extended his hand toward John.
“John Morgan. This is—” he said, and stopped, stunned. After everything, he didn’t even know the girl’s name. He looked down at the floor.
“It’s okay, friend, it’s just a name,” Red said, slapping John on the shoulder.
“I’m Rayna,” the girl said. “This is Maggie.”
“Where’d you guys travel from?” Red asked.
“Nunacuak,” the girl said, “and she’s from Kuigpak.”
“You related to the Alexie family there?” Red asked.
The old woman nodded.
He pointed to a small photo of a wedding picture, a healthier Red standing beside a smiling Yup’ik girl. “My wife’s mom was from Kuigpak,” he said.
“I know her,” the old woman said. “She’s my husban
d’s cousin.”
“Nulirqa tuqumauq,” he said, the Yup’ik words coming with difficulty from his mouth. He shifted in his boots, and then turned away from them to tend to the tea.
He poured the tea into small blue plastic coffee mugs and passed them out.
“I thought I’d taken every precaution to keep us safe,” he said.
He poured himself a cup and just held the cup for warmth. After a while he took a sip and said, “You want news.”
John nodded, glanced at the girl and looked away.
The man took a sip of his tea and sighed. “Well,” he said, “I don’t suppose the answers I have will do any of us much good. Tell me that you’ve got some sort of real meat in your sleds there, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“IT’S THE OFF-SEASON NOW. We can hit Mexico or Hawaii for cheap,” he argued. “A little break would be nice. A little escape. I could use it. I should have ordered some skis. I’m starting to feel trapped again. Hell, I should have flown out of here on Santa’s Blackhawk.”
Anna and John headed upstream in the dark, where the river led to one lake after another. The wind had died down enough to make walking on the ice possible. A few days earlier they cut the nightly walk short because Anna was getting blown sideways and could hardly stand. The fresh coat of snow gave their boots some grip, and the relative calm made the sub-zero temperatures feel almost warm. The clear blue-black sky seemed within reach, and a waning pale moon lit the snow.
“Let’s wait until summer. You can make it. Save our money and then take an extended break somewhere special,” she said. “Ten days isn’t enough. It’s a day and a half to travel each way! Besides, didn’t Carl say he would take you caribou hunting?”
“Not enough snow to travel where the herds are this year,” he said. “Carl said they might just appear out of nowhere at any time, but probably not this year.”
“Like Santa’s magic reindeer! Look, we can celebrate Christmas with them and go starring. Carrie said it’s so much fun.”
“This is starring enough. Packing this entire village into one house? Singing and eating fish-head soup or moose stew for hours does not sound like fun to me,” he said.
“Don’t be a Grinch. Wow. Look at those stars. Turn your headlamp off. You don’t even need it.”
He snapped off his headlamp and let his eyes adjust. The snow crystals covering the lake ice sparkled in the moonlight.
“That feast we went to last week nearly killed me. You know I can’t handle being crammed in like that, with so many people.”
“Well, I’m going to try it. You’re the one always talking about participating in village activities. Fighting your fears will be good for you, remember?”
“So we’re staying?”
They stopped walking. She leaned in close to him and warmed her nose against his neck.
“I think we should,” she said. “We’ll cuddle up, read some good books. Go for some walks on clear nights like this. It’ll be nice. Maybe Carl will let you borrow his snow machine and we can try to drive to Bethel or something. Get some Chinese food.”
“We’ll need more snow for that.”
They continued walking. The moon hung just above the snowy tundra plain, and two long shadows walked beside them. He pulled back his parka sleeve. His watch read 6:30.
“I can’t wait until the sun sticks around a bit longer,” he said.
“I kind of like the long nights myself. It’s romantic. Can you imagine that three or four hundred people will be coming here for Slaviq?”
“You’re really excited about this whole Russian Christmas thing, aren’t you?”
“What’s there not to be excited about? A week of celebrating Christmas? Food? Singing? Come on, Ebenezer.”
“I just can’t visualize it,” he said, reaching down to scoop up some snow. “Packing so many people into these little houses. I don’t see how they can hold the weight. It just sounds crazy to me. Plus it’s Russian. Don’t you find that odd?”
“They were here first.”
“Second. The Yup’ik people were here first, remember.”
“Excuse moi.”
“Now if this was some sort of traditional Yup’ik celebration, I’d be all about it.”
“You don’t have to be so anti-Christian all the time, you know. Maybe this celebration has some roots in their old ways of life. You don’t know.”
“Okay, I give in,” he said. “Just promise me we don’t have to host dinner for the whole community. We don’t have enough food to pull something like that off. I don’t know how anyone does.”
She grabbed on to his arm. He flicked some of the snow he was carrying in her direction. He scooped up another handful and pressed it into her face and rubbed it playfully. She laughed and when he pulled his glove away, the snow remained on her cheeks and lips. He pulled her toward him and licked it off her salty cool skin.
“Mmm.”
“Thanks a lot! Now my cheeks are going to freeze,” she said. “Let’s go home and you can make me dinner.” They turned back and headed toward the village. Then Anna stopped. “It’s so beautiful. I love how the moonlight makes it look like a desert of white diamonds that just lead to the edge of the earth. We’re lucky to be here. Together, under this azure sky … I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. We don’t need to go anywhere else for the holiday, John.”
“Is that what colour it is?”
She took a deep breath and turned to him. “You think anyone can see us this far out?” she asked, pressing her hips against his.
“Why?”
Anna kissed him and pulled him down, on top of her, to the snow-covered surface of the lake. She rolled over on him, her legs straddling his waist, and stuffed a handful of snow into his face. She pulled off her mitten and unzipped the front of his snow pants. Her icy hand slid beneath the waistband of his fleece pants.
“What’s the occasion?” John asked as she kissed him again and he tugged at the zipper at the front of her parka with his gloves.
She unzipped the snow pants’ sides and pulled off the Velcro enclosures and slipped the back of her pants down. She eased herself onto him and giggled and kissed him again. She sat up and he pressed his back into the frozen lake and he rested his head on the ice and snow and stared up into the night sky. She floated above him, warming him, loving him as only she could. As she rocked her hips on top of his the world seemed to split into three, Anna, her white diamonds surrounding them, and the blue-black sky above—and together the three felt endless, limitless.
WHEN THE GIRL STARTED SCREAMING, four men burst from the smokehouse carrying axes and knives. John stood behind the open door, his back pressed against the plywood wall, his pistol ready.
Her scream at first sounded too real, and he had to fight the urge to dive back down the riverbank. The shriek filled the still air, and for a moment the men stopped to locate the awful sound.
Through the crack between the door and the jamb he could see no one was left inside. Just a small flickering fire and the green light coming in through the tarp-covered roof.
He stepped from behind the door and fired two shots into the first man who turned at the motion behind him. The screams stopped and the other three men wheeled and he unloaded his clip into them.
Silence followed the ringing in his ears. He took his final clip from his parka pocket and jammed it home with the flat of his palm. As he turned to make sure the first man he shot was dead, something inside the smokehouse caught his attention. He kept an eye on the soot-coated bodies of the men, strewn on the riverbank in front of the smokehouse, as he walked forward, pushing closer, the shaking pistol out in front of his body, his finger clenching the trigger.
The room was bare, except for a pile of dishes and bedding. He half expected a pair of cross-country skis to be leaning outside, but there were no skis or poles. Smoke drifted out the door; the barrel stove had no chimney and instead emptied the smoke into the shack. His eyes rose with the smoke to t
he two slender logs that spanned the roof. Thin red strips of drying meat dangled from one of the logs. Hanging from the other log, tied with yellow anchor rope, two long, thin limbs. When he leaned in and squinted in the smoke, his eyes followed the limbs to their end. Two small brown hands swayed in the green smoke.
He spun away from the door and vomited what little was in his stomach. His morning meal—two bites of hare meat—the rest acid and blood from his stomach slowly devouring itself.
When he was finished, he rolled the men onto their backs. He wanted to remember their faces. He wanted to know what sort of men would become worse than animals.
Soot and grime covered their foreheads and cheeks. The first two men were Yup’ik, the third a white man, his mouth opened and in a half snarl, his teeth rotted to sharp points. When he rolled the fourth man over, the man closest to the riverbank, John cried out.
The dead man staring into the grey-clouded sky above them wore what had once been a white cotton T-shirt with red lettering. The lettering had faded, the words STOP PEBBLE barely legible among the blood and stains.
He knelt down and put his cold hand to the dead man’s warm forehead. With all the soot and dirt, the starved, tight skin of his face, he couldn’t tell if the man was Carl, but it didn’t matter. In his heart it was his old friend, stretched out dead in the snow, and he understood a little more about what a man would do to survive.
PART III
The
Raven’s
Gift
“You will be very lonely by yourself,” said Raven. “I will make you a companion.” He then went to a spot some distance from where he had made many animals, and looking now and then at Man, made an image very much like him. Then he fastened a lot of fine water grass on the back of the head for hair … waved his wings over it as before and a beautiful young woman arose and stood beside Man.
—YUP’IK CREATION STORY, RECORDED BY EDWARD NELSON, 1899
28
Red, as he insisted on being called, talked them into cooking up one of the canned chickens. He seemed hesitant to share the news John wanted. “I got all the spices. It’ll be delicious,” he said.
