The Provider

by John Hunt

  She was so proud of that, often standing in front of it, saying things like, “It’s so huge! Look at it. I can’t believe I did that.”

  Louise made her a necklace of the claws. “Oh my God, this is so much my favorite thing ever!”

  I think something changed in her that day as well. I guess she reckoned she’d earned a role, a place at the table. There was less of the drama queen. The mutterings about how awful everything was died down. She wore the necklace every day. Years later, she was known by the natives as “Bear Woman.” There were strong taboos against women killing bears, or eating bear meat. The fact that she had done it, without harm, meant she was a powerful spirit, not to be crossed.

  That first skin took a long time, but we were getting the hang of it. When it was done, Louise showed me how to make waistcoats out of it. I’m wearing one of them now, as I write this.

  There was another day, shortly after that, when Jessie shot a whitetail. I was unpacking the knives from the rucksack, and Jessie, looking at the paintbrush a few feet away, said, “Hang on, Jim, what’s this? It’s her baby. Oh God, I’ve killed her mother!”

  The fawn couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old, only a few pounds, spindly legs. Silky skin, reddish brown, covered in hundreds of white spots.

  “We’ll take it back, Jessie, nothing else we can do. Perhaps Sue could look after it.” I tied her legs together with a scarf and we carried her back. After a few struggles she lay quietly in my arms.

  “Oh, it’s so beautiful,” Sue said, after we carried it back to the lodge. “Can I touch it?”

  When I untied her, she wobbled on her spindly legs and then nosed around the room. Sue stroked her and she nuzzled her hand, licking it.

  “She wants feeding,” Louise said.

  Matthew got a little non-fat powdered milk we had left in the stores, boiled up some oatmeal, added sugar, and gave it to Sue with a rag.

  “Dip the rag into this,” he said, “and let her suck it.”

  After sucking it all up, the calf followed Sue around the room till she went to bed, when it lay down by her side. But the next morning, it was still and cold.

  Sue was distraught. She cried all day.

  “It wasn’t meant to be, Sue,” said Louise. “It had lost her real mother. Let’s give it a nice burial in the garden, and make a headstone for it.”

  One evening we were talking around the fire.

  “We’re still snowed in up here,” Dad said. “But I’ve been talking with Theo, he says the Seward Highway is clear around them now. They’re having problems with people trying to get out of Kenai, fighting them for food. Armed bands wandering around. I wonder what it’s like down on the coast.”

  “I thought our batteries had all run down in the cold?” Mom asked.

  “They have,” Dad replied. “But I’ve managed to get through on this crystal radio I’ve built. There are far fewer operators around now though, I guess most have run out of power. Or they didn’t last the winter.”

  “We should go see if anything’s moving on the highway. Jessie and me could get there and back in a day. Or maybe we should go as far as Alyeska? That would take two or three days.”

  “That would worry me, Jim. If we do that, I think it should be more of us, going in the truck, when we can get that out through the snow. Which might be only a few days away, if this weather stays. As it is, I’d come with you to the highway, but I’d slow you down, I can’t keep up with you two anymore.”

  “Sure you could, Dad,” I replied. “But I’d feel safer if you were here.”

  “Do be careful, please,” Mom said. “I know I’m just being a silly old woman, but I remember what Bob said about taking things slowly, not taking unnecessary risks, because you only get one chance out here.”

  “We will Mom,” I replied. “But you know how it is, don’t worry if we’re not back tomorrow.” And I remember thinking back then, that I really had better be careful. If they didn’t have me or Bob, I wasn’t sure that they’d survive for long.

  “I’ll pack you some grub,” said Matthew. “Jerky, biscuits, juice, OK?”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Jessie and I left first thing the next day, wearing backpacks, and with three rifles between us. I had the Winchester strapped to the pack for moose and bear and carried the Ruger for the opportunistic shot at small game. I also now carried the Magnum which we had taken from the cabin, as extra protection. It all added up to a fair bit of weight, along with the tools, and a year ago I would have complained about that, but it had become second nature to me, no more trouble than the heavy parka. Jessie had her Winchester. The sun was shining, our hearts were light. Around the lodge, the snow was still piled high. Drifts covered the track, it would be a while before we could take the truck or a jeep out. But as we descended, it thinned out. Where it had melted there were sheets of wild flowers growing in the warming earth, the different yellows of cinquefoil and violet, the purples of iris and fireweed, the air alive with the hum of insects and bees.

  By around midday we were getting close to the highway. Then I froze, and held Jessie still. Over the last few months I’d started to sense movement in the landscape before I registered what I was seeing. Off in the distance, to the right, a couple of miles away, there were several forms moving. At first, I couldn’t tell what they were, my mind was so attuned to looking for animals they seemed like an alien presence, unknowable. And then I realized, they were people. The first living outsiders we’d seen for six months.

  “Over here, Jessie.”

  We scrambled uphill to take cover behind some rocks and I looked at them more closely through the scope. Then I handed it to Jessie.

  “Two men and two women, one of them supporting another. They look in a bad way, shuffling along, stumbling. And they’re not dressed for outdoors.”

  “What shall we do?” Jessie asked.

  “We study them till they get here, looks like they’re going to pass within a hundred yards of us. We’ll check there’s no one else around, see if they’re armed. Then talk to them. I’ll get up and do the talking, you cover me.”

  It must have taken them an hour to get to us, they were so slow. But they seemed harmless. When they were opposite, a few yards away, I stood up. “Hi, folks.”

  The reaction wasn’t one I’d intended. One of the women started running away, the other collapsed. One of the men sank to his knees, the other looked wildly around.

  I hadn’t realized I looked so threatening. I probably looked like a hunter to them – tanned, heavily armed, dressed for camouflage. Well, I guess I was. I slowly put my rifle down on the ground, took my hat off and laid it alongside, kept my arms away from my sides.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to talk.” The woman who was running stopped and took a few steps back. I walked towards them. “It’s OK, Jessie, you can come down.”

  The man still standing asked, “Who are you?” His speech was slurred, his jaw didn’t seem to work properly. Gaunt, ashen-faced, with a long, straggly beard, he looked like he’d been in a cell for the last year. They all did. A couple were emaciated, in rags, blue and shaking in the cold.

  “We live around here,” I replied, as Jessie joined me. “My name’s Jim, and this is Jessie. Who are you?”

  “I’m Ethan, and this is Noah, Emma and Abby,” he replied, indicating them. “We’ve walked from Anchorage.”

  “Why don’t we sit down in the shade over here,” I pointed to a tree, “and you can tell me about it. Would you like some tea? Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll get a fire going.”

  “We’d be very grateful for that,” he replied.

  As we sat down and waited for the fire to boil a pan I’d suspended over some twigs, the story came tumbling out.

  “…and they were all roaring drunk, we managed to creep out. That was three days ago. A couple of months after they caught us. We’ve found some berries, drunk water from streams. There were five of us, but one fell through the ice – w
e hadn’t realized it was thin. We couldn’t get her out. She died so quick. It was terrible.”

  “Here,” Jessie said, “we’ve got some food. Do take it. We’ve plenty.”

  “Slowly, slowly,” I said, as they scarfed it down. “Bad for your stomachs if they’re shrunk and you eat it too quick.”

  “They’re animals, these convicts,” Ethan was saying. “There’s little food in Anchorage, no meat anyway, so they’re eating people.”

  Jessie paled. “No way!”

  “It’s worse than that,” Noah went on. “They keep them in the prison cells, sometimes just take a limb at a time, cauterize the wound with tar. You can hear the screams all day and night.”

  I stood up and walked around, trying to escape the gloom that seemed to envelop these poor people talking of horror under the midday sun.

  “How many of them are there?”

  “About two hundred, hard to tell exactly.”

  “Why aren’t you walking along the road?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “It would be quicker.”

  “Because they could be looking for us along the road, we felt safer inland.”

  “You could stay with us,” I said. “There’s a spare cabin a few miles away, we could look after you.”

  He shook his head. “They’ll find you, you know. It’s not far enough away here. They’re raiding places all around Anchorage for food, doesn’t matter whether it’s animal meat or human. Children or old people. And everyone’s raped. The leader, Brutus, a serial killer, he’s the worst. He enjoys torturing people. Sometimes they put them in with wild animals in the yard, for fun. In front of the lady here, I don’t even want to start describing some of the things they do. We’ll keep walking.”

  “You don’t look in good enough shape to get far.” I shook my head. It’s a long way to get anywhere, Ethan, and it’s not going to be any different when you get there.”

  He glanced back in a hunted fashion, to check there was no one following. “I don’t believe that, I can’t. There’s got to be somewhere where people are living normally. But thanks for the offer. Really appreciate it. This is nowhere far enough away. If I was you, I’d start running as well.”

  “OK, though we’re staying put. Anything else we can do for you?”

  “Do you know what’s happened down in California? I’ve got family there.”

  “I’m sorry. Seems like everywhere’s a mess.”

  “My God. What’s going to come of us all?”

  “We’re going to be alright, Ethan. We’ll make it work.”

  “Really? When I thought about the world ending, I always assumed it would be with a bang, you know? I’d never have figured it would be because we couldn’t switch the lights on.”

  “But a century or two back we didn’t have lights, we just have to live like they did – they managed.”

  “I guess you’re right, but this was so sudden…it’s not the lights that’s the problem, it’s the people. Seems like the worse you are, the stronger you are. I’ve never been particularly religious, but it’s Satan who rules here now, not God. How do you fight evil like that?”

  After they had rested, we parted.

  “Something to think about,” I said.

  “What are we going to do, Jim?”

  “I don’t know, Jessie, we’ll talk back at the lodge. What a bummer. One thing for sure, we’re going to have to fight, and the killing hasn’t ended, it’s barely started.”

  When we walked back into the lodge, I could sense immediately that something was wrong.

  “Dad, are you OK?” Jessie ran over to Matthew, lying on a bed. Mom was bent over him, feeling his leg.

  “We had an accident,” Dad explained. “Me and Matthew were fixing some loose titles up on the roof. A rung of the ladder broke under Matthew and he slipped down. Fell awkwardly on some rocks and broke his leg.”

  Matthew tried to make light of it. “Oops! That was so stupid, so sorry,” he groaned. He was grey and in pain.

  “Wasn’t your fault,” I replied. “We should have fixed that ladder better. That was careless of us.”

  “I can’t tell definitely without an x-ray,” Mom said. “But it looks as if it’s a clean break in the fibula, between the knee and the ankle. It could have been a lot worse. Matthew, you need to keep the leg raised like this, on the pillows. You’ll just need to rest it for some time. I’ll put ice on it every hour to reduce the pain and the swelling. Donald, could you and Jim go and find or make some splints for me to strap around the leg. And we’ll need crutches for Matthew for when he starts to walk again. That’s a few weeks away.”

  Dad and I left to get what she wanted. I couldn’t help feeling relieved that it was Matthew who had fallen down the ladder rather than me. Who would then be the provider? Who would bring in the meat? We really were only a step away from disaster. One accident, and we were finished. Dad was right. We had to be part of a larger group, with room for specialisms, for different kinds of knowledge and skills.

  “Dad,” I said once we were out of earshot, “I need to tell you about the people Jessie and I met.” His face grew grim as I spelled it out.

  “Don’t tell your Mom about this, it’ll worry her silly,” he said. “I’ll talk with Theo, we’ll need to meet up. I guess we’re stuck here for a few weeks till we can get a jeep out. Still, at least the snow means they can’t get to us yet.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  Our birthdays were fairly evenly spread through the year and we got into the habit of letting the birthday person decide what they wanted to do that day. On mine, the third week in April, when I put my head outside the cabin, the day was cold, but crystal clear; you could see for miles, and I knew what I wanted.

  “I’d like to go for a walk with Jessie,” I said over a quick breakfast. “Not to bring back game, this time, just to get to the highest point we can.”

  We set off with our backpacks, full with rations, rifles, emergency supplies and snowshoes, heading uphill. I was feeling jacked up, it was so good to be out. We hadn’t gone far when I heard a bird song which was new to me, a musical chattering, dying off at the end, coming from a clump of hazel and willow. We crept closer.

  “I love that,” I said, handing over the binoculars to Jessie. “A warbler, I think it’s a Wilson’s warbler, with that bright yellow and black cap. First time I’ve heard it.”

  “And how did that little thing survive the winter?”

  “It couldn’t. It flew down to Central America instead, probably just got back.”

  “You’re kidding! It’s no bigger than my thumb.”

  “Well, it’s done it. Makes our job look easy, doesn’t it? If a bird like that can commute five thousand miles…Now, I just want to get a good view of where we are, of where we’ve been over the last few months.”

  We walked fast, cruising speed, almost running, shaking off the lethargy of winter, steadily climbing, rarely stopping to look at tracks, ignoring the tempting sounds of partridge and squirrel and the sheep droppings. Huge rockfalls covered the mountainside, waterfalls poured over granite lips. After a few hours we were well above the tree line and we sometimes had to stop to put on our snowshoes to cross over blinding white drifts. The air got cooler, the tracks less common.

  I suddenly stopped. “Several fresh wolf tracks here,” I pointed out to Jessie.

  “Look,” she replied.

  On the far hillside there was a group of them, loping along with tails down. I got out Bob’s scope from the rucksack. “Five of them, a big male in front, a female, three youngsters.”

  “A family.” Jessie nodded thoughtfully. “Your Dad was right, Jim, families come first. There are no friends out here.”

  We skirted a glacier, the dirty grey ice soaring above our heads, carved into bright blue fissures and canyons by the wind and rain. We jumped from rock to rock across the streams that tumbled musically down from it. By early afternoon we were about as high as we could get, short of having to cross the glacier itself.<
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  A pair of sea eagles flew below us, swooping around the sky, heading for a clash at high speed, tangling their claws, spinning over and over, tumbling through the sky, locked together, separating at the last minute, when it seemed as if they were just going to crash to earth.

  “Are they fighting?” Jessie asked.

  “No, courting.”

  “I don’t remember you coming after me like that, Jim.”

  “Next time, I’ll try harder.”

  The views around us were glorious. We could see across to Prince William Sound in the east, across Turnagain Arm to Lake Clark wilderness in the west. To the north and south there were the mountain ranges and glaciers of Kenai and Chugach. Far below us I could just make out, through the scope, the smoke rising from the lodge. In the far, far distance, to the north, I could see the Denali range and the distinctive twenty-thousand-plus-foot peak of Denali itself, sacred to the Indians, spearing the sky.

  “Wow, that’s incredible, what is it?” said Jessie.

  “It’s Denali, means the mighty one, it sure is. Tallest mountain on earth, if you take it from the land base. It’s about a hundred miles away.”

  “Wasn’t it called McKinley?”

  “Some bureaucrat called it that, after the guy who became president – neither of them had ever seen it.”

  I felt a sense of destiny up there, a foretaste of what was to come.

  “This is our territory, Jessie,” I told her. “This is what we’re going to have to take.”