Heart So Hungry

by Randall Silvis

  These were Mina’s thoughts as she stood on a large, odd-shaped boulder a quarter-mile above the camp. The boulder was black and slick with spray where it stuck out above the water and the top of it was scooped out like a bowl, which made her footing uneven. Surging beneath and beyond this boulder was the first set of rapids she and her crew would encounter on the Naskapi. The water was fast and loud and frothing white. It banged into rock and sluiced around depressions and tossed geysers of spray into the air—all of which generated so much noise that a single shot from George’s rifle registered on her ears only as a distant pop.

  She inched her way out to the very edge of the slick rock. Heavy drops of cold water splashed onto her skirt. We will have to portage around this, she thought. But despite the river’s constant boom and splash she did not feel any malice in it. The violence was not evil but a natural thing. Even playful. She was not the least bit frightened by it. In fact she found the noise and rush of the water quite soothing. The churn beneath her feet was nothing if not hypnotic, and she wondered what it would be like to be immersed in that water, to be a part of it, all darkness and wild thrashing on the surface, all deep serenity at the river’s smooth-washed bottom.

  George’s voice was just a whisper at first, just another murmuring of water. “Missus Hubbard. Missus Hubbard, please.”

  She became aware of him only after he had crept to within three feet of her, had leaned forward and pulled lightly on the hem of her sweater. “Missus Hubbard, please.”

  She turned abruptly. How had he got so close? Where had he come from?

  “What are you doing sneaking up on me?” she asked.

  “Come on back a bit, missus. Will you do that for me?”

  It did not make any sense to her. He was standing there with his rifle in one hand, his free hand reaching out to her. A dead porcupine lay at his feet. “What?” she asked.

  “Just come back toward me a step or two. Will you do that for me?”

  “For goodness’ sake, George! Do you think I intend to jump in?”

  “You don’t intend to, I know. Nobody ever does. But you wouldn’t be the first person to get dizzy and fall in by accident. I know you don’t intend to.”

  “Of course I don’t intend to!” Why did he look so pale all of a sudden? Why was there a tremble in his voice?

  “All I want is for you to come toward me a step or two.”

  “You are being very silly,” she told him. But she said this without looking directly into his eyes. Because now, as she did as he asked and moved gingerly away from the water, she felt how shaky her legs had become, felt the bubble of nausea in her stomach as she wondered, as if waking from a dream, just what she had been thinking about all those minutes on the slippery lip of the boulder, all those minutes while George, unnoticed and no doubt terrified, had crept up close to her, petitioning softly, waiting for that awful moment when she might lean out just a few inches farther …

  She came down off the boulder and stood beside him. “And what is that for?” she asked with a nod toward the porcupine.

  “Tonight’s supper,” he told her. But even as he bent down and picked the porcupine up, holding it by its hind legs, his face remained white, his eyes wide.

  Blood dripped from a hole in the animal’s side. Mina watched a few drops fall onto the black, wet stones. “I’m sure it will be delicious,” she said.

  After lunch, as Job scoured the frying pan and Gilbert rinsed the plates, George pointed to a stream that entered the Naskapi just downriver of them. “Me and the boys is pretty sure that’s the Red Wine,” he told Mina.

  All through lunch she had been quiet, even sullen, stinging from something she could not put into words. She felt as if George had scolded her back there at the rapids. Though his tone had been gentle, he had scolded her with his eyes and his fear. Moreover, she had deserved it.

  But now, at the mention of the Red Wine, her spirits lifted. “Did you find the Indian trail?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Let’s go have a look at it.”

  At the French trading post, Mina had obtained a crude map of the trail from one of the local Indians, and had been told by him that it was possible to reach Seal Lake by this route in two weeks. The trip from Seal Lake to Lake Michikamau would take twenty-two days. A trapper at the post had opined that she would need at least a month to reach Seal Lake if she held to the river. If these two observations were true, the Indian trail might save her party as much as two weeks of travel.

  She and George walked downstream to the Red Wine. He had already built a bridge of stepping stones so that she would not have to wade up to her shins to get to the other side. She did not know whether to be angry or amused.

  “Take hold of my hand,” he told her, and held it out to her, so callused and brown.

  But it was not the hand that offended her. “I can make it across on my own, thank you. Besides, what do you plan to do—wade across through the water while I prance over the stones?”

  “My boots won’t take on water the way your moccasins will.”

  “My moccasins are well oiled.”

  “Even so….”

  She disregarded his hand. She disregarded the stepping stones as well, and plunged forward into the stream, splashing across. George stood there for a moment watching, shaking his head. Then he stepped across using the stones.

  Approximately fifty yards beyond the Red Wine, George pointed to a slender path snaking into the alders. “Here it is,” he told her. The trail looked little wider than a deer path. Sparse grass and thorny vines grew ankle-high from the trail’s floor.

  “Are you certain this is it?”

  “It hasn’t been used in quite a while, so it’s getting all grown over again. But this is it all right.”

  She stepped to the head of the trail and peered into the dimness. “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “I think it might be pretty rough going. We might lose a good bit of time just hunting for the trail. On the other hand, we might go in there a ways and be able to stick to it as easy as a country lane.”

  She looked back toward the river. “Plus,” George said, “there’s no telling what it will be like from here to Seal Lake. Could be mossy most of the way, which makes for nice spongy walking. Or it could be mostly boggy. Fact is, we’re likely to find a fair amount of each.”

  She stared down the trail a while longer, then turned to face the river.

  George said, “Maybe I’ll take Job and go scout ahead a mile or so. See how this trail looks farther on.”

  Mina studied the river upstream and down. She gazed not only at the water but at the shoreline.

  “I walked all along here looking for footprints and drag marks,” George told her. “If anybody’s been here, they was walking on air.”

  “And what does that suggest to you?” she asked.

  He chewed on the corner of his lip for a moment before he spoke. “Either they went right on by here without stopping … or else they haven’t got here yet.”

  “Might we have passed them somewhere on Grand Lake?”

  “We didn’t lay up long that second night. On the other hand, maybe they didn’t either.”

  She wished he would do more than simply report the view from both sides. “What is your opinion on the matter, George?”

  Again he paused before speaking. “My opinion, missus, is that you’d of kept your moccasins a lot drier if you’d of used that little bridge I built.”

  She spun to look at him but found him smiling. He possessed such an innocent countenance, all good nature and noble intentions. And with that smile he made his point about the stepping stones. She had been obstinate and ungrateful. He had only meant to help.

  As for the question of whether to take the river or the Indian trail, the first choice appealed to her; the unpredictability and dimness of the second did not. She might not always appreciate the confines of the canoe but she liked the sound and smell of the water and she liked the way the river fel
t beneath her.

  “Why would the trail be any easier to follow farther in than it is right here?” she asked.

  “It’s not likely it is. Not all grown over like it is.”

  “So we might in fact lose more time by going that way.”

  He nodded. “The only thing we know for sure is that the river’s going to get rougher from here on up. It won’t all be smooth paddling. We’ll be fighting the current all the way to the Height of Land.”

  Mina could see Job and Joe and Gilbert standing near the canoes, no doubt wondering if they should pack up the teakettle or start unloading everything for a long portage up the trail. Finally she said, “I should like to stick to the river, George. If it’s all right with you.”

  He grinned at her. Then he turned upstream and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Load ‘er up, boys!”

  This time when Mina and George crossed the Red Wine, she tiptoed nimbly over the stepping stones. On the other side, she turned to him and curtsied. He smiled to himself all the rest of the day.

  The river turned north and grew swifter. At a place called Point Lucie, still some forty miles from Seal Lake, Mina’s party encountered another set of rapids, a torrent of noise and water that made Mina tremble. The crash and boom and angry spray both terrified and attracted her. According to George, this was the place where trappers would leave their boats and make no attempt to take the canoes farther up, portaging their gear the rest of the way to Seal Lake.

  Both banks of the river here were lined with last winter’s ice, great layered blocks and sheets of ice stacked eight feet high in places. Scattered along the half-mile width of the river beyond the rapids were sand islands and gravel-covered hummocks of ice. When the wind gusted across all this ice it chilled her to the bone, and a part of her felt helpless in the face of it all, the leaping, foaming river and the frozen sentinels that guarded it.

  But the men knew what to do. The canoes were pulled to shore just below the rapids. Then George, Joe and Gilbert, again speaking only in Cree, set about building a fire. Job disappeared into the woods alone. Once the fire was blazing, Mina huddled close to it, trying to stay warm. She did not wish to have to say anything to George about the isolation she felt at being left out of their conversation, for she was reluctant to pull rank on them—especially in the face of the icy obstacles ahead. She was the expedition leader, yes, but, as she knew better with each passing day, in title only. George was the real leader. The best Mina could do was to trust in his plans.

  Within a half-hour Job returned from the woods carrying four stout poles, two balanced on each shoulder, his strong arms wrapped around them. The poles had been cut to the same length, about nine feet long, and each was approximately two and a half inches in circumference. These were laid by the fire while Job rummaged through the packs until he found four metal cones. These shods had been brought by George, made in the factory at Missanabie. Quietly and with deft strokes of the axe Job shaved one end of each pole until it was a snug fit for the metal shod. With the shods nailed in place and the teakettle drained, the party was ready for the water again.

  “Let’s you and me get on up around the point,” George told Mina. Without waiting for her acquiescence he set off along the shore, picking his way past the rapids. She had no sooner caught up with him, where the rapids were strongest, the river deep and dark and loud, than she asked, shouting above the roar, “What about the others?”

  He grinned and pointed downstream. To Mina’s amazement Job was coming up the middle of the river, right through the rapids, standing in the canoe as he poled against the current, the canoe bucking and turning as it rode the wild water. Before long the second canoe, with Gilbert and Joe doing the poling, also came into view. Mina thought she had never before seen such a wondrous sight, three men standing in the midst of the waves, climbing and falling, climbing and falling, working hard as they shoved their poles into the water and pulled themselves and their loads along, all the while laughing like daredevil boys, utterly fearless.

  Fifteen minutes later, with Mina and George again in the canoes—Mina seated, the four men poling—she fought the urge to cling to the gunwales and hugged her knees instead. Even with the rapids behind them the current remained swift and filled with dangerous eddies, the water so deep that the men’s hands sometimes dipped below the icy water as they worked the poles. Occasionally one of the canoes would scrape across a chunk of ice, and when this happened to Mina’s canoe she gritted her teeth and held fast to her knees. Each time a pole was lifted from the water to be repositioned, the canoe stopped moving momentarily, and if the shod was not quickly plunged back into the river bottom the craft would slip backward with the current.

  It was gruelling work, but Mina alone did not appear to be enjoying it. She could only sit rigidly in place, wondering when a shod would slip and allow the canoe to spin sideways and be swamped.

  In time the water grew even rougher. George looked to Joe in the bow of the other canoe and gave a nod, and both canoes turned toward shore. Now, Mina thought, the first of the heavy portaging will begin, over and around the ice banks, the rough and slippery shore. She climbed eagerly out of the canoe, grateful for the chance to stand on solid ground again and to warm her fear-numbed limbs with movement.

  She and George set off in advance of the others. Mina carried her rifle and cameras, George a light pack. She assumed that Job and Joe and Gilbert would soon follow, each laden with as much as he could carry. When the entire outfit had been moved ahead to calmer water, the canoes would be repacked and set afloat once more.

  Along the way Mina spotted a pair of tiny blue violets growing amidst the gravel and ice. She picked these and held them to her nose and inhaled the subtlest of scents, but enough to gladden her heart. Laddie, upon making a discovery like this, these violets in the snow, would have placed them in her hair and recited a couplet or two, his hand to her cheek, his eyes gazing into hers, and she would have fallen in love with him all over again.

  George gave her a nudge, bringing her back to the present. She looked at him, then followed his gaze downstream. There came Job again, poling a fully loaded canoe up the dangerous rapid.

  Later that night she was still reeling from the wonder of it, and she made this entry in her journal:

  The wilder the rapid the more he seemed to enjoy it. He would stand in the stern of the canoe, right foot back, left forward with leg against the thwart, with the pole set and holding it steady in the rushing, roaring water while he looked the way over, choosing out his course. Then he would move the canoe forward again, twisting its nose now this way, now that, in the most marvelous fashion, and when he drove it into the rush of water pouring round a big rock the pole would bend and tremble with the weight and strain he put upon it. Sometimes I could hardly breathe while watching him. After taking one canoe some distance above the bend he went back for the second, and all the remainder of the afternoon Job climbed hills of water in the canoes.

  That night she went to bed contentedly, her tent pitched on a bank high above the river, where the ubiquitous mosquitoes were not so abundant. She lay there listening to the music of the water. Such men these were in whose hands she had placed her trust and her life! She knew that night that she could not have chosen better. And Labrador, for all its chill and danger, now seemed a wonderful place. Two violets in the snow … a marvel.

  At that moment, she could think of only one thing missing from her life.

  Dillon Wallace’s expedition, June 29, 1905

  “HERE’S THE INDIAN TRAIL,” Wallace said. His voice was flat with weariness, heavy with resentment. They had been searching for it a long time and now would have to make camp for the night. Worse yet, the shoreline was veritably trampled with footprints made by moccasins and boots not their own, and in one place they found the skid marks where two canoes had been dragged ashore.

  “How in the world did they pass us?” Stanton asked.

  Easton said, “We spent a lot of time back at Gr
and Lake. On shore, I mean. Collecting data.”

  Wallace tried not to sound as irritated as he felt. “This is a scientific expedition. Not a canoe race.”

  He had a lot more to say, too—about how a couple of the men had handled, or rather, mishandled, their canoes; about all the time Richards and Stanton had wasted on an earlier scouting mission to locate this trail, only to report back on the presence of three trails, each of which then had to be explored. Yes, they had brought back a caribou for dinner, but was fresh meat, this early in the venture, worth the loss of time?

  And then there were these damnable mosquitoes and blackflies! Never had Wallace encountered such a plague of biting and stinging insects. Even the smoke from his pipe failed to discourage their attacks on his face, neck and hands. His hair was matted with their carcasses, his flesh dotted with their blood mixed with his.

  And now, most discouraging of all, the Indian trail, discovered at last, bore evidence of recent visitation. “Do you think they took it?” Stanton asked.

  Wallace bit down on his tongue. It would do no good to snap at the men. A foolish question was best left ignored. Instead he told them, “We might as well make camp here for the night. Pete and I will see what we can learn from the trail; you other men get busy setting up camp.”

  What Wallace and Pete found was that the trampled grass and broken twigs ended only thirty yards beyond the trailhead. Apparently the Hubbard party, daunted by the heavy underbrush, had returned to the river. Too rough for a woman, Wallace told himself, his first happy thought of the day.

  Back at camp, where the fire was blazing, he announced that his party would here abandon the river in favour of the Indian trail. “It will provide us with better opportunity to conduct our studies of the area.”

  “Plus it’s faster,” Easton said with a grin.