by Don Reardon
“Do you really think it’s like this outside?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“John?” she asked. “I want you to promise me something. You’ve got to promise me this one thing, okay?”
She pulled him close and whispered her impossible demand into his ear. He closed his eyes and tried not to listen, but it was too late.
“Promise me,” she cried. “Promise.”
“Promise,” he said, trying to forget what she’d asked him. “I promise.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her sick, frail frame against his, hoping that her coughing, the snot, the tears, her breath— anything—would find its way into his body as they slept so that in the morning he would wake with his own shivers and chills, sick.
39
At dark, they set up the tent Red had given them. The four-person shelter was made from a strange foam-like material and John didn’t like how bright the orange stood out against the snow, so they moved it back off the river into the willows.
Rayna didn’t ask him what happened when he went back to Red, but he expected she would, and when she didn’t that night, he wondered if she knew how scared he was or if she had sensed him looking over his shoulder all day—if somehow she could see into his head and watch the scene that kept playing and replaying in his mind. Over and over. Red lying at the steps of his bunker, a pistol in one hand, the AR15 at his feet in the blood-clumped snow. If she could see it the way he had, she would know Red did all that he could for them.
She cuddled close, but stayed in her own sleeping bag. He half wished she would climb in with him so that he could just hold her, but she didn’t. He wondered if it was because it was almost too warm with the miniature aluminum woodstove and narrow chimney pipe. Or if it was because she sensed him struggling for air. Or perhaps she could see in her mind’s eye Red lurch forward and then topple into the snow, the shadow of the hunter, of a wind turbine spinning over his body, blood trickling from Red’s nostrils, and his blue eyes trying to fix themselves on the Colt revolver’s barrel lodged in the snow near his face.
The old woman had said little except that she would have only waited one more day for them. And then she told them about a strange dream. “During one of those nights,” she said, “I made a shelter in the brushes, and was sleeping on a bed I made from willows and my caribou skin. I got real cold and started seeing a man and a woman walking across the tundra. They were the only two people left in the world, and they were so sad.”
John sat up and opened the shoebox-sized stove, slid in another piece of driftwood, closed the door and shut the damper down. It was dark, so he felt smoke wouldn’t give them away any more than the snow-machine tracks leading straight to their tent. If the hunter hadn’t caught them by now, then maybe he wasn’t going to bother following them. He checked the airways to make sure the tent could breathe, as Red had insisted. Then he stretched out on his back and stared at the peak of their warm new shelter.
The old woman coughed once and continued her story. “The man wanted to maybe turn into animals and quit living like people, but that woman, she wanted to have a family and start a new village. Then they met a thing, the thing was part wolf, part bear, and part human. That thing told them he was once human and life was too difficult so he wanted to become a wolf, and then when he was a wolf he was not happy and he wanted to be a bear. As a bear he was too lonely and wanted to become human again. That was how he became that horrible thing. He never was happy with what he had or where he was. The thing went away alone and that man started building a new house and the woman started collecting grass to weave their new bed.”
The old woman fell silent. John felt as if she’d been talking directly to him, but he didn’t know what she meant. He wanted to ask, but didn’t know where to start. How long had he been like the thing?
The girl rolled on her side, facing him. She pulled her sleeping bag down and slipped her hand into his. She gave a soft squeeze and he closed his fist and held her hand tight.
“It’s almost ready,” Rayna whispered.
“What is?” he asked.
She said nothing and closed her eyes.
He wanted to lie and to tell her that he rode back and told Red he couldn’t do it. He thought that might help her not think of him as someone who could kill a friend. But then again, he still didn’t believe what Red had told him before he died. What bothered him most was that after all Red had done for them, he still couldn’t believe his story.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
“You know?”
“I couldn’t smell any gunpowder on your gloves. But he’s dead. The blood. Red hurt himself?”
“No.”
“The hunter?” she asked, in whisper he could hardly hear. “He’s coming for us.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably.”
“I know,” she said. “I know he is.”
She squeezed his hand back and rested her head on his shoulder. Her hair smelled clean, and he nuzzled his nose and lips against the top of her head and inhaled deeply through his nostrils. The scent of apple shampoo brought back a flash of almost foreign memories of Anna and carefree college days, cheap shampoo and long hot showers, but then the memories were gone and he only smelled Rayna.
He thought of Red again and wondered why he’d left the safety of the tank. Why he had sacrificed himself like that for them.
The girl turned her face toward his, as if she could hear the tears building at the edges of his eyes.
“Did he tell you?” she asked.
“Tell me what?”
“Where they are hiding,” she said.
“No. Rayna, I don’t think your cousins are alive. I’m sorry.”
“But they are, John. I think he told me where.”
John sat up on his elbow and from the small bits of light coming from the woodstove, he could see her white eyes. “He told you?”
She nodded. “He gave me an idea. If we’re lucky, we’ll take the sno-go there tomorrow,” she said.
“Where? What did he tell you?” John asked, suddenly feeling strange. Warm. Something that felt like hope flooded his body.
“He said I would find gold where I’m going. There’s only one place where the kids here ever went to find gold.”
“Where? Tell me where,” he whispered.
“I said I would never ask you to promise me anything,” she said.
“WILL YOU GET something for me?” Anna asked in a hoarse whisper. “There,” she said, weakly trying to pull a hand out from beneath the covers to point to the one-drawer nightstand on her side of the bed. “In the back, a plastic bag,” she wheezed, using the last bit of her energy before she collapsed on the pillows.
He pulled the drawer open and dug through the letters, photos, lotions, and massage oils. Behind all of it he found a sandwich bag, with a white plastic object inside. He held it up to the last of the evening light coming in through the frosted window.
She watched him as he opened the bag. As he began to pull it out, his hands started to tremble. He turned the thin white plastic device over and over in his hands, but he didn’t need to see the blue + to know what it was, or what it meant.
He sat beside the bed and held her.
“I wanted to wait to be sure,” she said. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her sobs turned to coughing that came from somewhere so deep inside her chest he thought she might burst in his arms.
He didn’t know why she had bothered to tell him. Or why she’d waited to tell him. Or why, when they had the chance to leave, she didn’t say something. Now it all meant nothing. It could mean nothing. He couldn’t think of it, or allow himself to be angry with her. Not now. Not ever.
The white plastic cracked inside his trembling fist.
40
When he awoke, Rayna was gone. He sat up and strained his ears to hear her outside the tent. He could hear nothing but the soft whistle of air streaming in and out of the old woman’s
nostrils. The tent had become unbearably hot during the night and he had kicked off his bag and stripped down to just his underwear.
He felt for the pistol near his pants he’d used for his pillow the night before. It was gone. The girl’s parka, clothing, and boots sitting at the entrance to the tent made his mouth suddenly dry, and his pulse quickened. Far off he could hear the whine of an approaching motor.
He gave the old woman’s shoulder a rough shake. She was sleeping with her parka pulled over her. “Wake up,” he said, “he’s coming.”
When she opened her eyes, he pointed to the girl’s boots. She sat up, coughed out a mouthful of phlegm, and wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“How long she been gone? Where’s my caribou hide?” the old woman asked.
He shrugged and tried to listen for her, hoping she was just outside. The machine drew closer. Closer.
“She took my pistol, too,” he whispered.
“What you done to her?”
“Nothing. I would never hurt her.”
“Maybe she thinks you don’t need her no more. You’ll leave her.”
“No. She knows I do. I won’t leave her.”
“Go, then. See where her tracks take you. I’ll wait for that man.”
He pulled his down parka over his naked back and reached for the rifle leaning against the wall of the tent. He slid his boots onto his feet, not taking the time to put on his pants or socks. The sound of the zipper angered him. He stuck his head out and took a deep breath of the cool air. He couldn’t believe he had slept so deeply and he hadn’t heard the girl open and close the tent door.
As he zipped the door of the tent all the way open the old woman opened the breech of her shotgun, checked the shells, and spoke again. “When you find her, maybe he’ll have found me and maybe not. Piuraa, John.”
“Quyana,” he replied and stepped out into the pale dawn light. The air burned cold and a sick sinking feeling spread through his gut. The snow machine wasn’t far now. To the east, the sky glowed pink, the arctic sunrise minutes away. Her tracks, small, soft prints of bare soles, headed away from the river, through the birch and black spruce.
He followed them quietly, with quick, sharp strides, watching each track, noticing their deliberate pace, the distance between each step, and how she allowed the whole bottom of her foot to sink into the snow, as if that solid connection with the earth would allow her safe passage through the woods.
In places he could see where she had bumped a branch, knocking the snow free. The motor drew closer. Closer.
At one point, he found where she stopped, long enough to pick up a stick to help guide her. He knew this from the small, round black holes spaced evenly between each barefoot track.
He wanted to call out her name again, but the sound of the snow-machine motor racing closer and his heart drumming against his chest was already too much.
41
The trees thinned and turned to willows. The remaining spruce were black and leaning. The distance between her footsteps had increased and she had abandoned the stick she had used for walking. He picked it up and wished it was still warm where she had held it. In his mind he imagined her running now with the pistol, through the willows, the thin branches whipping against her face.
The motor had died and he suspected the hunter was making his stalk on their camp. He hoped he would spare the old woman.
Where was the girl going? Why was she running? What was she running from? Did she know he was coming? Did she know the hunter had found them?
He pushed his way through the willows until they opened up to a steep tundra bluff that rose above a long, frozen oxbow slough. Her tracks made a straight line across the ice, up the fifty-foot slope, and out of sight.
He squatted down and put his bare fingers to a footprint. He touched each toe impression, the ball of her foot, traced the arch, and then stopped at her heel. The track had a small spot of blood. The ice beneath the snow was beginning to cut her feet. If she was still alive when he found her, he would tend to her feet and tell her everything. They would make a stand and he would protect her.
42
He swore that he would keep track. He would record each day forward from the day she died. Never forgetting. Never losing count. That day was the day he awoke with Anna cold in his arms. The day he could not stop trying to imagine being a father. Of Anna finally a mother. He just couldn’t do it. He had no images in his mind of what that son or daughter might have looked like. Would he or she have his grandmother’s eyes? The eyes he never looked into?
But worse, it would be the day he would have to start trying to keep his word to Anna.
And on that day, he knew in his heart, he couldn’t keep it. She had whispered into his ear and asked him to do the unthinkable. And he said he would. He would have told her anything she needed to hear. And he did.
Anna whispered her dying wish in his ear, “Promise me you will love again, John. Promise me.”
“Promise,” he replied.
Asking him to promise he would keep on living would have been too much in and of itself, but to love again?
Impossible.
43
He crested the bluff just as the sun broke from the snow-covered mountains on the distant horizon. Streaks of orange and red sunshine shot out from the sky and swept across the blinding white span of land before him.
Somewhere in the light was the girl lying on her stomach. Covered only by the old woman’s caribou hide, and beyond her, a herd of caribou stretched east and west along the edge of the mountains and out across the tundra plain as far as his eyes could see.
Rayna sat up and waved for him to join her.
Relief swept through him.
The pistol sat in the snow at her side. He crouched low, worried the caribou closest might spot him, and he half ran, half crawled to her. The snow crystals cut against his bare knees. When he reached her, he held her two frozen feet in his hands. Spread out beneath her naked body was a wide, tightly woven grass mat.
“What are you doing? I was worried. You’re going to freeze to death,” he whispered as he ran his fingers over the grass braids.
“I heard the wolves howling in my sleep. I thought it was a dream. Then I heard them, the caribou. The tendons above their hooves, clicking. Lie down here. Listen. You hear them? You hear that clicking? Like the tundra’s heart. A spirit drum. Close your eyes and just listen,” she whispered.
“But the hunter,” he whispered, “he’s coming.”
“Shh …”
He looked back in the direction of their camp beneath the bluff. Caribou were beginning to move around them. He lifted the caribou hide, took off his parka, and wrapped it around her body. He slipped beneath the hide and stretched out beside her and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and held himself still.
Then he heard them. At first just a faint sound, like fingers snapping together. Click. Click. Click. The sound of a pistol firing on an empty chamber. The tap of a stick against the rim of a drum. The clicks grew louder and louder.
CLICK.
CLICK.
CLICK.
She pulled the caribou hide over their heads and eased herself closer to him, opening the parka, and pressing her warm naked body against his. She took his hand and held it against the frozen moss in front of them.
The soft clicking of the caribou hooves filled the world around the two of them. Above. Beneath.
“He’s going to kill us,” he whispered.
“You feel them?” Rayna asked, holding her hand over his, and pressing his palm down into the frozen moss and snow. “These are the tundra spirits,” she said.
“I feel them,” he said, “I can feel them through the ground. They are everywhere.”
“Maybe this is how we became Yup’ik, how we became the Real People. We could feel the earth’s heart beating and we would transform.” As she said this she lifted one hand from the cool earth and pressed it against her breast and the other on the grass
mat she’d woven.
“And here,” she whispered. “I made this for us.”
He opened his eyes and she held the parka open and he slid his arms around her naked body. She lifted the caribou skin just enough that the morning sunlight radiated brilliant gold against the snow and reflected against her irises, forcing him to snap his own eyes shut tight against the glare.
But even with his eyes closed he could still see the piercing light, as if in that single moment the morning rays had somehow snow-blinded him.
He felt the caribou around them, running above their bodies, and below through the ground. He could smell their earthy hides, their wet, mossy breath. He could hear them panting, clicking, eating. Living.
He imagined the two of them melting together, the grass mat weaving itself into their skin, the hide becoming their own skin, the herd surrounding them, engulfing them.
Protecting them.
He kept his eyes shut tight as the blinding white enveloped them, bathing their bodies in warmth. The clicking of the hooves, the rumble of the herd against the permafrost, and their breathing coalesced into a single steady rhythm, into one beat that filled the world around him.
“Just listen to them,” he whispered, and he held her like he would never let go.
Beneath the heavy caribou hide the gunfire was muffled, the echoes and the sounds of a motor came from some distant place. The hunter would be coming and it didn’t matter any more. The hunter. The cold. The outcasts. Or the hunger. None of that mattered.
Under the warmth of the hide, the cold frozen world beneath them fell away. The light around the edges of the hide was too bright for him to see. He held her close, and imagined himself rising, escaping, her hands wrapped around him, his arms becoming two wide black raven’s wings. He flapped the wings once, rolled to his back looking down at the tundra below, and then lifted them into the sunlight.
