The Provider

by John Hunt

  FIFTEEN

  “Time for you to scale up, Jim. This is for you,” Bob said as he handed over his Winchester M70.

  “For me? Really? You mean it’s mine? Wow!” I stammered out my thanks.

  He nodded. “It’ll handle anything around here on four legs, or on two. Now we’re going to go out every day, whatever the weather. If you can’t fire a rifle in the rain, you can’t do it in a blizzard when you’ve got a bear coming at you. Don’t rely on the safety catch, it can be tripped loose easily. Keep the chamber empty, with a round to hand.”

  A few hours later and we were some miles away from the lodge, faced with an impenetrable tangle of hawthorn and alder.

  “Here, we’ll need to portage, slash our way through this patch, to get over to the next valley. Use this brush ax, its one step up from a machete.”

  “No, not that way,” he said, as I slashed at a branch and it bounced back. “Take it nearer the trunk, lower down. You don’t want to be coming through here at night and get a stump in your face.” After half an hour I was drenched in sweat and dirt, with a mass of cuts and insect bites.

  In the next valley we stopped every now and again to look around, Bob with his spotting scope, me with my binoculars.

  “Tough to see animals when you’re moving. We’ll have to get you one of these.” He handed it over to me. “Try it. More like a telescope, sixty times magnification.”

  “Wow. I still can’t see any animals though,” I said after a few moments. “There’s nothing here.”

  “They’re often still, or browsing. Look for a movement, a change of shade. Try that hill over there. What do you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Lame, Jim. Next to that lonesome pine, on the right, about two miles away?”

  “Only a brown rock.”

  “You see any other brown rocks around?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s a bear. Watch for a while, you’ll see it move.”

  “Gosh! It’s moved. Shall we go get it?”

  “Too far, Jim, and we’re downwind of it. And I’d sooner you had more practice before taking on a bear. And see all that thorn we’d have to fight our way through? It would hear us too early. Let’s carry on. Looks like good hunting around here, we’re at the neck of the peninsula between the two halves of the Chugach National Park. Lots of animals migrating through.”

  We were walking rapidly along a creek. It was a lovely morning, the wind was still, the spruce black in the shadow, gleaming in the light, willows alive with chattering redpolls. The sun was already high in the sky, the water gurgled over the pebbles in the creek. Jessie would be up by now, washing her face, the water splashing back into the bowl…

  Bob shook my shoulder. “Wake up, Jim, what do you see?”

  “Sorry, guess I was dreaming.” I looked around, scanning the hills again.

  “Nothing.”

  “At your feet, dimwit.”

  I looked down; we were walking over deer tracks.

  “This is a whitetail,” Bob said, as we knelt down for a close look. “A buck. See the even walk, the prints a couple of hand widths apart? In a straight line? It’s healthy, taking it easy. See these older, fainter prints? The trail’s well used, and it’s passed this way earlier this morning.”

  We stood up. “We’ll build a hide with saplings, under that rise over there, downwind, should give you a clear shot of a hundred yards or so.”

  The next day we were back early, before the sun had risen above the hills.

  Something was on my mind, had been all the way here. I had to ask, I’d be no use all day otherwise, and I trusted Bob. “Have…have you had girlfriends, Bob? Been married?”

  Bob rubbed his thumb down the side of his face. “Figured that was on your mind. She’s a class act. Knows what she wants, and is gonna get it.” He squinted at me. “You’ve got the hots for her? She been putting the moves on you yet?”

  “Gimme me a break, Bob, you know I’m a loser with girls,” I spluttered, blushing.

  “No you ain’t,” he said, thumping me on the shoulder. “You just wanna work up some courage. Anyway – you know what they say about an Alaskan chick?”

  I shook my head.

  “What’s the first thing she does when she wakes up in the morning?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She walks home.” He laughed hoarsely.

  I thought about that for a minute.

  “But why wouldn’t she be at home? Oh, I see…that’s dirty, Bob.”

  “OK, I’m not saying Jess is like that, it’s just a joke.” He looked away from me, to the sun-dappled leaves of an old sugar maple. “I gave up women years ago, Jim. Happened to a lot of guys, after the army. Hard to adjust.” He picked up a small stone and weighed it in the palm of his hand before closing his fingers over it.

  “Anyway, they’re a different species,” he said. “Expensive to keep. Ya can’t kill ’em, let alone eat ’em, not as amenable as other animals. Now, take your mind off Jessie and start concentrating; we’re here. We’ll leave some corn on the ground to slow it down.”

  An hour later he touched me on the shoulder. “Look, isn’t that a beauty,” he whispered. “It’s headed for the corn.”

  “But it looks like Bambi,” I whispered back.

  “We all have to eat, Jim,” he replied softly. “Now don’t screw up here. Stay cool. Aim for the chest if it’s head on, or just behind the shoulder if it’s broadside to you.”

  I gently squeezed the trigger. In the still air, I could hear the thunk of the bullet hitting.

  “Well done.” Bob clapped me on the shoulder. “Your first deer. Through the heart. It’s hell tracking them down if they’re just wounded.”

  “I feel bad about it though. Worse than when I killed Mr. Trinker, to be honest. He wanted to hurt us, the deer had no bad intentions.”

  “There are no intentions out here, Jim – eating, fucking, dying, that’s all there is. You’ve got to eat, fuck if you can, and you’ll die anyway. Now let’s quit jabbering and get to work.”

  I took my butchers knife and he showed me how to slice away the heart and liver.

  “Don’t puncture the gut sack, it’ll spoil the meat. Now, here’s how to separate the joints.”

  We left the entrails for the wolves and other animals and birds. Then we hung the carcass up on a tree to let the blood drain out. After an hour or so, we skinned it, wrapping the meat up in canvas to carry home. We washed our bloodied arms in the creek.

  “We all need to know how to do this,” said Bob, when we got back. “We cut the meat into strips, hang it up for a few days to dry, and turn it into jerky. We scrape the skin and dry it, stretched out on a frame. That’ll make better clothing than anything you can buy on Sixth Avenue. Now, Jim, the knives need sharpening.” He picked up the whetstone. The surface was worn away, shaping it into a curve. Spitting on it, he described fast circles with the knife, in an oval shape. “Don’t pitch the blade too high, or the edge won’t last. When it’s sharp enough, just touching it to your thumb should bring blood.”

  SIXTEEN

  Thanks to Bob, with the deer and the salmon, we now had enough to eat, though the diet was boring.

  “Can’t we have something different?” Bess complained, staring at yet another pan full of frying salmon. “What happened to normal food?”

  “Bess!” Mom laughed, setting the plates on the table. “At least we have something to eat.”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever eaten better,” Dad added. “Salmon and venison every day – we couldn’t afford to live like this in Anchorage.”

  A couple of days later we shot a mountain goat, and saw a moose, though it was too far away to kill. “Look,” Bob said, “see that? The pointed pods of its track? That’s how to recognize you’re following one of those.” He nodded towards the distant animal.

  Gradually, as we came across them, he taught me to identify the prints of a coyote, and the trail of a wolverine crashing through
the brush. He trained me to know the tracks of caribou, mink, marten, otter, beaver and muskrat: and once we even saw the huge, pancake-like, shallow pads of a lynx.

  “You’re not likely to ever see one of these, unless you can manage to trap it, but you can always see where it’s been. See the distance between the prints? It was running.” He grinned. “And where there’s lynx, like coyote, it’s a sign there’s plenty of game around – there’ll be other prey you can shoot.”

  He’d explained some of this to me before when we’d been out hunting, but I sensed an urgency in him to take it to a different level. I had lessons on how to snare ptarmigan with picture wire: how to keep one eye on the ground and another looking ahead to avoid getting caught in a canyon or trapped in thick, black spruce.

  He showed me the difference between the tracks of a black bear and a grizzly, whose big toes are on the outside. “If you see a pile of grizzly scat that’s steaming,” he said, “that’s the time to look for a tree to climb, if you can find one. Or play dead, if it’s on to you. Lie down on your front with your hands over your neck. Don’t curl up into a ball, it’ll just roll you over. Black bears climb trees. Grizzlies don’t. But they can both move as fast as cats. If a black bear wants to attack, don’t play dead, you’ll just have to fight it. They can be nastier than the grizzlies. You haven’t a chance if you’re unarmed, even if it’s a small one. So be prepared.” He snorted. “The only real insurance you’ve got, apart from the gun, is to be alongside someone who’s slower than you are. So you’re safe enough with me.”

  “I always feel safe with you, Bob.”

  “Then don’t. You need to be able to look after yourself out here. More seriously, Jim, I wouldn’t say this in front of the girls, but they start eating you from the bottom up. They’re not like the big cats, who start at the head, that’s not much use to them. They like the nutritious bits, so they’ll be eating your liver and kidneys while you’re still alive – it can take a good hour or two. They can amble off when they’ve had enough, and come back the next day when they want more. Not a good way to go.”

  “Gee, thanks, Bob, that’s really comforting.” I forced a laugh.

  Bob locked eyes with me. “Think of it as a picnic if you like, Jim, but just remember, everything out here’s food for something else. And look, see this spruce here?” He pointed to one we were passing. “See the claw marks? It’s a marking post, to let others know he’s around.” He plucked off a long brown hair from the bark. “It’s a big one, look how high the claws reach. It’s a heck of a lot bigger than we are.” He gave me a long, appraising look. “You need to step up your game. Think like an animal. Be like them. Then you’ll be fine, and be able to look after your family.”

  He sniffed the air. “Can you smell the rain coming? See those clouds rolling in from the Gulf? The ground’s nice and wet. So you’re going to make a fire. Look around for dead willow branches, or for spruce trees, there’s always these dry twigs underneath. This hard resin here is good for starting fires, but don’t use it in the stove, it gives off too much soot. Best of all, see this birch tree here,” he took his knife to it, “it’s got to be a live one – scrape off a patch of bark like this, doesn’t matter what the weather is, you’ll find tinder fungus underneath. It’s like cork. It’ll light from a spark.”

  It was as if time was short, and he was passing on everything he knew. It felt like learning to read. I began to understand what the words meant, rather than looking at it from the outside. The more I learned about the landscape, the more I was inside it, and it was inside me.

  We made a detour to a rise where we could just about see a small stretch of the Seward Highway in the far distance, a dozen or so miles away. “Look at that, the road’s jammed solid,” Bob said as he checked it in his scope. “We got out by the skin of our teeth.”

  “Should we go and see if we can do anything to help?”

  “Nothing we could do, Jim. What that jam means is that there are going to be thousands of desperate people around, with guns, getting hungrier every day. We’ve been lucky so far. This has been a holiday. But it’s not going to last. And I want us to keep this between ourselves, OK? No point in getting the ladies in a tizzy. Shake on it?”

  “OK, Bob.”

  “It’s odd, though,” he added, searching the sky, “there don’t seem to be many birds around.”

  I pointed. “There’s a flock of starlings over there.”

  Bob shook his head. “I meant eagles, vultures…anyway…sun’s going down fast. I want you to take us to that hill over there, using cover, keeping off skylines – assume we’re being hunted ourselves. Then you can try taking us back to the lodge in the dark.”

  SEVENTEEN

  We were about as remote as it was possible to be in the Kenai Peninsula while still having a roof over our heads, but it still surprised me that there were so few people around. A few days later, nearly a fortnight after the Event, and we were ranging a few miles from the Lodge. The morning’s rain had stopped, and the sun was steaming our clothes and twinkling on the leaves as they dried out. The insects and mosquitos were back in action.

  “There are rabbit warrens around here,” Bob was saying. “See all the pellets? Now there’s two ways to hunt. One is to shoot, the other is to trap. Better for your prey to come to you, rather than you have to find it. And it saves on ammo. So what we’ll do is set up a stone deadfall here for the rabbits, bait it, and check on our way back. The meat on rabbits is too lean to keep us in serious food, but they’re great in a stew.”

  I was whittling away at some sticks, Bob showing me where to put in the notches that would trigger the deadfall when the bait was taken, when he touched my arm, pointing. A small flock of sparrows were scattering out from a bush. “That’s twice they’ve done that, something’s coming this way. Here, behind these trees. We’ll wait for it.”

  A mile away, two people were coming around the bend of the canyon.

  “Fuck a duck. What’ve we got here?” Bob looked through his scope. “They don’t seem in great shape for this kind of thing. Some jerk with his floozy.”

  We watched them stumbling towards us. The man in front was tall, large, in his fifties or sixties, a few days stubble on his jowls, dressed in brand new threads – they looked expensive even from a distance. The woman was in her thirties, attractive, dressed as if she was on her way to work, with a short skirt, but evidently struggling. As she got closer we could see her face, legs and arms were a mass of bites and scratches.

  We could hear them now. He was irritated.

  “Come on, Sarah, for Christ’s sake. I’m not carrying you. Keep moving.”

  We stepped out into their path.

  “Finally, some goddam fucking people in this wilderness,” he said. “Can you help us?”

  “What help do you want?” Bob asked, as we introduced ourselves, shaking hands.

  “Fucking mosquitoes,” he replied, slapping his face. “Why don’t they trouble you? Don’t tell me, you’re natives. Got no red blood left for them.”

  “What help do you want?” Bob repeated coldly.

  “Look, old timer, I’m not trying to be difficult. We were staying at Moose Park, at the Tern Inn,” he said, anger washing his cheeks in a red tide. “We were there for a week, after that solar flare, waiting to get away. Couldn’t get a connection. Then those bastards wouldn’t share any more. I’m going to have them arrested, put in jail for what they’ve done. Where are the fucking police when you need them? The local cop was an Indian,” his voice dripped scorn. “What do you expect? I need to get to Valdez, pronto. So we set out walking. This bloody damn wilderness goes on forever. No signal anywhere. No airports around here, figured we had to get to the coast, to Whittier, get a boat. We’ve been walking for days, run out of food, nothing to eat in this God forsaken place. So,” he plastered a smile on his face, “great to meet you.”

  “Here, take this,” I gave him our packed lunch. They wolfed it down, tearing at it. No “tha
nk you” was said.

  “What happened when you asked the cop to help?” I asked.

  “Fuck-all. He wasn’t interested. I thought there were meant to be Mounties around here or something.”

  “That’s in Canada, in the Yukon,” I replied.

  “Whatever. I just want to get out of this.”

  “How do you expect us to help with that?”

  “Look, I’m not asking for much. You must have some kind of transport around here. Just get us to Whittier. Here—” He pulled a roll of notes from his pocket. “I’ll pony up for it. A thousand bucks to get us there, with something to eat along the way.”

  “Are you for real? We don’t want your money,” Bob replied. “What can we do to help you?”

  Giving Bob a sharp, speculative look, he said, “Are you retarded or something? Or do you want more? Look, I have to get to Valdez. I’ve got important meetings next week. The Secretary of State for Energy is going to be there, the Russian ambassador for Christ’s sake. It’s about the new pipeline. It’s important I’m there. We need to get more oil running.”

  “Does it matter now?” I asked.

  “You really are something, aren’t you? Look, Jimmy boy, if that’s your name. I’ll come clean. I’m a big gun at Exxon. Have you heard of them? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. But here’s my card.” He shoved it at me. “And I can get you a job, a proper job. Right now, all I’m asking is for you to help me get to Whittier. Can you manage that? Look, I’ll make it easy for you, I’ll bank you five thousand, as an advance.”

  I looked at Bob. I guess it was more money than either of us had ever seen. He had stepped back. I noticed for the first time that his rifle was cocked.

  “Sorry, mister,” I said. “I’m not interested in your job, or the pipeline. Don’t you realize what’s been happening?”