by Don Reardon
John put a hand over the top of the screen to block the reflection from the fluorescent above. He brought his face close to the screen. “Shit,” he said under his breath.
“You know him?” Red asked.
John nodded and swore to himself again and said, “I think he’s one of my students.”
The figure appeared skittish, less than human, almost feral. His movements were sharp and jerky. Was this one of them? One of the girl’s wild people? He glanced at her sleeping on the bed, and he knew he couldn’t stand there in the warmth and safety of Red’s shelter. He knew if he woke her she would beg John to do something magical, save him, perhaps spit on the boy or take one finger and gently push him down into the frozen tundra.
John pulled his parka on and from his pocket removed the key to the cabinet outside. “I’m going to have to get my pistol out,” John said, walking toward the door. He stopped and pointed the key at Red and then the girl. “If something happens to me, take care of the girl.”
THE WEEK AFTER Anna and John’s Slaviq celebrations, the remnant of a monstrous Japanese typhoon crawled its way north, into the Bering Sea, and slammed into the Aleutian Islands first and then the Yukon and Kuskokwim deltas with hurricane force, bringing record winds and snowfall.
They struggled through the three- and four-foot-high drifts to get to school only to find out that the District Office had called off classes, anticipating the blizzard would worsen.
John turned on the coffee pot in the main office and while it percolated, sat at the secretary’s desk and listened to the radio, KYUK, a Bethel station, the only radio station in the area. Dave, the balding principal, poked his head into the office and waved.
“I’m heading home for a while. See what this storm does. I’m going to keep those main doors open, in case someone didn’t get the message over the VHF.”
“Looks like we’re the only ones who didn’t get the message,” John joked.
“I was about to stop by your house. I don’t know why they don’t have a phone hooked up at your place yet. Teachers are usually the only ones without the VHF radios. Anyway—you mind sending anyone who comes in back home? Walk any of the little ones, for liability.”
John nodded.
“This storm sounds like it could last a while,” Dave said. “Nothing like a good Bering Sea blow. Nothing. This thing might shut down air travel for several days. Well, enjoy the extra day of holiday. We don’t usually cancel school unless the chill factor is below seventy-five. Not many snow days, so make the best of it.”
“Yeah.”
Dave slipped out, and John heard the familiar intro music for the KYUK morning news. He reached over and turned the radio up. The young female reporter spoke with far too much gusto for a Monday morning.
“Top stories we are covering for today: The school district battens down the hatches for what might be a record blizzard, the father of the K300 Sled Dog Race has decided to run the Iditarod one last time, and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation struggles with a flu outbreak in Hooper Bay. But first, national news.”
John turned the volume button down until the red power light clicked off the radio. He filled two plastic cups with coffee and headed to Anna’s classroom. She had a radio in there, and he wanted her to hear news of their extended vacation from the radio and not him.
THE DAY BEFORE John and the girl would reach the old woman’s village, she told him another of her favourite memories from when she could see. They had stopped to rest and melt some snow for drinking when she began telling her story. As she spoke, he took out the pot and broke a handful of twigs from a spruce tree wedged between the riverbank and the ice. The tree had a small yellow rope tied around it, something he’d learned about from Carl. The rope meant someone had claimed the driftwood, but the hundred or so miles the large spruce had floated and the yellow rope meant little now.
The dry wood caught easily and he had a nice little fire crackling in minutes. He filled the pot with snow and began melting it. They would walk another couple of miles and he knew they hadn’t taken in enough liquid the night before, plus some water would quell the burn inside their stomachs.
“We used to make fires like this in August when we went picking berries. My dad would start the fire, then my grandma would keep it going. He would go catch some silvers and then bring them back, maybe just one or two, and Grandma would cut them up and cook them right on the fire. I can just taste that silver salmon now. I miss fish. I wonder if we could maybe catch a pike or whitefish?”
“I don’t have any fishing line and no way to chip through the ice,” he said.
“Maybe we can find some. Yup’iks used to make fish traps, too. They made them from willow. Round traps that look like those space capsules, except hollow and made with bent willow trees. Fish swim in the hole in the middle and they can’t get out. You could make a fish trap.”
“I don’t think I could. I’ve seen pictures. Don’t think I have what it takes to make one.”
“Darn. I could eat fish right now.”
“Me too,” he said.
She sat down near the fire and removed her mittens. She held her hands out, palms facing her, letting the flames warm the backs of her hands. He noticed the thin band of ivory on her right ring finger.
“Another thing I really remember, one of my favourite times, is getting down close to the tundra, with my face almost in it and just staring at all the plants and berries. My uppa, my grandpa, he was always smiling, he told me to do that once. He said, ‘Look down there, get real near the ground and see all that life. All those little tiny flowers, and moss, and lichen, the berries, the mushrooms, so many special things in one little space—then look up and out across the tundra and see how much there is out there. Don’t ever let no one tell you this is a land of nothing,’ he said, ‘never let them tell you that. Everything you need to survive is right there.’ He said that to me, and I’ll never forget.”
John added another handful of snow. The pot began sizzling and the snow melted quickly. His mouth seemed to be drying out faster than he could melt the snow. He wondered if they shouldn’t just camp there since they were out of the wind and near a good source of firewood. He didn’t like how exposed they were, though, no real shelter or cover from anyone approaching.
“He died before I couldn’t see any more,” she said. “So I remember that, too. I remember his body in our house before they took him to the church. They had him on a bed in my mom’s room. Just dressed in black jeans and his church shirt, a white shirt that was too big for him. He was still kind of chunky when he died, but he looked happy. No smile. I remember wishing he was still smiling. He was the first dead person I ever had in my house. For a while I wouldn’t look in her room because I was afraid I would still see him on that bed, even though they buried him. That was the mattress you found me under.”
One of the sticks in the fire popped and a large piece of ash dropped into the water. He pulled it out with his fingers and the lukewarm liquid made him suddenly wish he could bathe. He glanced down at his icy brown beard and wondered just how awful he really looked and smelled.
A chill began to settle into his bones. Not enough food, and not enough water, he thought. He’d overexerted himself and could feel the chills taking hold. He clenched his fingers and began to move his toes inside his boots. Somehow during the day he’d quit paying attention to the signs from his body and now, as if his heart pumped ice water, everything began to constrict. He could feel the chill enveloping him right down the back of his spine to his testicles.
“Maybe you should get into your sleeping bag for a while,” the girl said, as if she could hear his shivering, his front teeth beginning to tap lightly. “You can warm up with me. If you need to. If you want,” she said.
He couldn’t.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Let’s get moving. I just need to keep moving.”
30
“Alex!” John yelled over the wind.
The boy turned toward him. His
body swayed. He could hardly stand.
“Wha-choo-want?” His speech was slurred and he struggled to remain standing.
John held his pistol at his side and approached slowly. The wind gusts carried thin sheets of snow knee high across the drifted roadway.
“Alex, it’s me. John. Your teacher. John.”
He moved closer, slowly toward John, like the ground beneath might give way.
“It’s okay. I’ll help you!” John yelled.
John was too far away, but he reached out his hand anyway. When he did this, the boy started to laugh. He giggled and reached into his inside jacket pocket.
“Don’t do that,” John said. “Keep your hands out.”
“You’re too late, kass’aq man. Way too late.”
His hand slid into his jacket and John raised the Glock. The boy pulled his hand out and John aimed.
The boy held up a narrow-necked yellow plastic bottle. John recognized it. He didn’t need to see the blue lettering. HEET. Isopropyl alcohol.
The boy turned his head and stared out into the darkness. John followed the boy’s stare into the approaching blizzard. The boy dropped the bottle and began staggering into the wind.
“Alex, is that you?” John lunged forward and with his free hand grabbed the boy by his jacket. The boy’s black hair was long and tangled and his face was sunken, the skin stretched taut across his cheeks. His lips were cracked black and bleeding, most of his teeth missing. The air around him reeked of chemicals and death.
He called for him again, but it wasn’t Alex. He looked like the boy he had taught, but older, worn. The person, barely able to stand, wasn’t Alex. At least he hoped not. The boy’s eyes were lifeless, as if what they had seen had burned the shine away.
“Death is coming for you, too,” the boy slurred.
He tried to pull away. John held him tight. The boy stared out at the darkness, and turned his eyes back to John. For a moment, the boy’s eyes seemed to clear, to connect.
“I seen the ghost of an old woman out there, John,” he said.
“Yes, it’s me. It’s okay. It’s me, John. I’m your teacher, Alex.”
“Alex? My brother? He was one of the lucky ones in Kuigpak.”
John let go of the boy and took a step back, his mind racing through his memories of the dried and withered faces in gym.
The boy swayed like a thin tree in the wind and pointed his middle finger at John as he took another step away, “I’m not like my brother. I wanted to watch it happen. And now I seen everything.”
JOHN AND ANNA were the last of the school’s five teachers into the principal’s office. Dave shut his door, pointed to the remaining two seats, and then sat in the oversized chair behind his desk.
“I’m sure you heard about the flu virus spreading through the Yukon villages,” he began and then took a drink of a diet cola and cleared his throat. “From what the District Office has told me, this flu thing has hit the schools pretty hard. We’re trying to be proactive and head this off at the pass.”
“What kind of flu are we talking about?”
The question came from Sandra, a frumpy middle-school teacher in sweatpants, who overreacted to every announcement that had ever come from the principal’s mouth.
“They aren’t sure. Two years ago we had a really bad RSV outbreak. Half a dozen medevacs of babies and toddlers from just about every village in the area. This sounds similar. They’ve sent twenty or thirty folks from Hooper Bay to Bethel for treatment. A few villages on the Kuskokwim side have sent in a few kids, too. I’m sure you’ve been listening to the news on the radio.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Anna asked.
“Good question, Anna. For now the D.O. wants us to promote hand washing and keep an eye out for kids with runny noses and coughs. Any sick kids are to go straight to the clinic. If you can also try to wipe desks and keyboards and doorknobs, that will help, too.”
Sandra chuckled. “You’re kidding, right? Promote hand washing? These kids don’t have running water at home! Half of them have coughs and runny noses at any given time. We’re supposed to send them home?”
The principal nodded. “For now,” he said, “send them home.”
“That’s the plan?” Sandra said. “No offence, but that’s ridiculous.”
John felt like telling her to shut up. Anna gently patted his knee.
Dave made circles on his desk with a black pen, rubbed the top of his shiny head with his other hand, and then stood up and paced behind his desk. He stopped in front of his office window, which looked out across the open tundra plain to the west. He tapped the pen against the window. “There’s something else,” he said, “probably nothing, but my wife’s friend at the hospital in Bethel said if this outbreak comes back as a possible strain of bird flu to expect quarantine for at least a couple of weeks. Minimum.”
Sandra gasped and pushed back from the table. “Bird flu? Bird flu? Quarantine? What do you mean?”
“Now relax, Sandra. I said it’s probably nothing.”
“Nothing? I’m not staying here to find out. I’m taking sick leave and heading to Anchorage. I’ll wait this sickness out somewhere safe with adequate medical facilities, running water, law enforcement. Half of the men in the village are away at war. We’ll be helpless quarantined. I refuse to be put in such a compromising position.”
“I think you’re overreacting,” the principal said.
“Do you guys think so?” she asked and turned to the other teachers. John looked away. The woman annoyed him to no end.
“I hardly think this could be bird flu,” Anna said. “Plus, none of my students seem sick. A few snotty noses, but that’s at any school. I don’t think it will hurt to stress some hand washing habits.”
“Well, I’m not waiting around to find out,” Sandra said. “I’m not comfortable waiting to see if we all get quarantined. What sort of plan is that?”
The principal turned, sat back down in his desk, and jotted down some note on a yellow legal pad. “You know what? I’m not going to argue with you, Sandra. I’ve tried to run this school with a team approach, and if a little bump in the road is going to be too much for you to deal with, then maybe it’s better if you’re not around while this bug runs its course.”
“Good!” Sandra said and stomped out the door.
“Was I wrong there?” he asked.
“If anything, you were too kind, sir.”
“Thanks, John,” Dave said. “Listen, I didn’t mean to scare any of you. I just wanted to pass on what was passed to me. If any of you think you need to join Sandra, go right ahead. Those news reports on KYUK have been enough for me to think about bailing, too. I’d hate to see my wife or daughter get that sick.”
“PLEASE,” THE GIRL whispered again. He tried not to look at her face, but when he did he saw that her white eyes couldn’t carry the emotion her voice held. Her eyes seemed to search for an answer, but her white irises stared right into him.
“Just for a little while,” she begged, setting her grass bundle aside. “I’m too cold. So cold. I don’t want to freeze to death.”
When he didn’t answer, she took the silence as acquiescence and moved toward him. She felt for his sleeping bag and pulled it down enough for her to slide her feet in. She was shivering, and breathing hard. So was he. He closed his mouth and held his breath. She lifted his arm and put it around her and poured herself into him, nuzzling her face into his neck.
She lifted her shirt just a few inches and pressed the warm flesh of her stomach and hips against his. She touched her lips to his ear and whispered again.
“I’m sorry. I’m so cold. Just hold me, please, John? Just this once,” she asked.
His mouth felt dry, his arms too weak to pull her in and just allow himself to return her embrace. The sleeping bag shrank and tightened to the point where he didn’t know if he would be able to take another breath.
Her warmth, her skin against his skin.
He tore out of
the bag and stumbled away from their camp into the dark. He dropped to his knees and felt like he had to vomit. When nothing came he just knelt in the snow and then took two handfuls and buried his face in the icy powder.
After a while he got up and slowly made his way back to camp.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
The girl was back in her sleeping bag, shivering. Anna’s old sleeping bag. He looked at his own bag and his stomach turned again. At least they had been in his bag. He sat down on the tarp and closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind.
They had done nothing, just held each other for warmth, he told himself. But even that felt wrong.
31
Red opened the door just wide enough for John to slip through and then slammed it shut with a metallic clang. John leaned his head back against the door, closed his eyes, and tried to catch his breath. It felt as if the cold had frozen his rib cage tight so that his lungs could no longer expand.
“Should have put the kid out of his misery,” Red said.
John opened his eyes. The girl sat on the bed, her head in her hands. For a moment he was worried she thought he had left her, but then he noticed the old woman was gone.
“I tried to tell her to wait until you got back,” Red said. “Even showed you on the monitor.”
John looked down at the spot where the old woman’s makeshift sled had been.
“Why did she leave?” he asked.
Rayna raised her head. Her white eyes glared at the two of them. “She knew you were drinking. You were getting drunk, so she left.”
“Getting drunk?”
She stood up and walked to the table. She sniffed the air and picked up the glass that had held his gin.
“She smelled you guys. Said she wasn’t going to be around drunks with the hunter coming.”
“Did she say where she was going? Did you let her get her shotgun?”
Rayna shook her head. He looked at Red.
