The Grey

by Mackenzie Jeffers, Ian

  “Yeah, it fucking matters. I’ve got a baby girl, I want to go home.”

  “OK,” I say. “Of course you do.”

  “You fucking have kids?” Henrick says. He’s gotten angry. I don’t say anything. Not for me to say.

  “Well I fucking do, and I want to get home,” he says. “You don’t know, you don’t have kids, you don’t know shit.” Tlingit and Bengt and the others stare at Henrick and me.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t,” I say. “I have a son. I don’t see him, OK?” Henrick looks at me. He’s still angry.

  “And it doesn't matter to you, if we get back? Why don't you let the next wolf eat you?”

  I look at him, I nod to show he’s right, and I don’t want to fight. I go back to shaving the point. I shrug.

  “Somebody’s got to look after you babies,” I say.

  He looks at me sharp, shrugs, finally, still mad. ‘Fine, if you’re trying to get me home, fine, fuck you very much,’ he’s thinking. ‘We don't have to swap baby pictures.’ He goes back to shaving too. We aren’t going to get up and kill each other, so we’re OK. I don’t feel good I upset him. He wants his little girl. I don’t blame him.

  We try to let the fire soak into us, stomachs empty, wolves watching us, maybe, sniffing out their next, maybe, who gives a fuck. Fuck them.

  “How old?” Tlingit says. He's looking at Henrick. Henrick looks at him, finally.

  “She’s two.”

  Tlingit nods.

  “She cute?”

  Henrick laughs, much as somebody can in what he’s in. He nods.

  “Yeah, she’s my angel.”

  That’s what everybody says about their little girls. But I’ve heard enough guys say that I know it’s true, I see it, looking at him anyway, freezing to death, inch by inch, terrified, thinking of his baby girl. It’s true, she is his angel, I know. He’d die for her.

  I look at Henrick.

  “She have a good laugh?” I say. “Your girl?”

  Henrick smiles. He isn’t angry at me, so much, now.

  “She's got a fucking hilarious laugh,” he says. “Your boy?”

  “Fucking hilarious,” I say. “First time he peed standing up he thought it was the funniest thing in the fucking world. Laughed his little butt off. Made us proud.”

  Henrick laughs, the others too. Tlingit looks at Knox.

  “You have family?” he asks Knox.

  “I got three,” Knox says, and I see his eyes light, and then, like Henrick, he looks like a stone just got heavier, thinking about them, worrying he may not get home, by the odds. I put the spear I’ve sharpened into the fire, turn it.

  “I’ve been trying, with my wife,” Ojeira says. “When I’m down-shift.”

  “That’s hard work there,” Bengt says. Ojeira laughs.

  “I’ll take that over this,” he says.

  “Maybe you have one in the works then,” Tlingit says.

  Ojeira doesn’t seem to have thought of it. His eyes brighten, then go empty, like Knox’s did, and Henrick’s.

  “I tell her I hate her three times a week,” he says. The others laugh. He’s smiling, then he looks sorry he said it, and he sits there, thinking of her, more kindly than he sounded, it looks like. Bengt shakes his head.

  “I got an ex-girlfriend who thinks I’m an asshole,” he says. “And that I should marry her.”

  The guys laugh at that, again, little grunt laughs.

  Tlingit looks at me, like he’s waiting for me to say something. I look at my boots, then at the point I’m turning in the fire. It gets quiet again, wind gusting.

  “Your boy with his mom?” Tlingit asks. He never asked me about my boy before, or my wife. Because I know how to have people not ask me things.

  “He does,” I say. “He’s better off.” I guess I say it in that way that sounds so sorry for itself , or just so sorry, nobody wants to say anything more after that. It gets quiet again, everybody carving, making shucking and squeaking sounds in the cold. I start cutting a point on another stick.

  “You see though?” Henrick says. “That’s why you’re alive. Your son.”

  I don’t say anything at first. I nod, looking at the point I’m carving.

  “I’m alive because I’m lucky,” I say.

  I should have died in the plane, I think. Maybe I did, it’s just taking some extra hours to conclude the business. We all fall quiet again. Henrick looks at the fire.

  “I do not want to fucking die,” he says. We stay quiet, look at the fire too. He looks at me, finally.

  “What do we do? If those wolves stay on us?” Henrick asks me. I’m quiet a moment.

  “We try to kill them,” I say. “If we have to. If we can. If they aren’t letting us walk out.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Ojeira says.

  “One at a time. Tip the numbers,” I say. I keep carving the point. “That’s what they’re doing to us.”

  I don’t believe we have a hope, in hell, of winning a thing like that. But I want them to believe it. But maybe they won’t come at us again, and maybe if they do we’ll get lucky, fend them off, at least. And now I’m thinking about my son, and my wife, which I’ve tried not to do, but here they are, around the fire with me. I try to think of what we need to do, and not think of them at all. But here they are.

  Before our son came, my wife had a dream that wolves took me, dragged me off in the snow somewhere, she dreamed they went mad hungry, and when she got to me I weighed nothing anymore, I was light and half-gone, and in the dream all she thought was ‘But you haven’t known our son.’ Because this was the time when she thought of me the way people do before their children come. She had it again, the dream, after he was born, and that time she thought ‘But our son won’t know you,’ because now, she had the worry of our son not having his father, like I did too. She sobbed and sobbed, in her sleep, as she dreamed, for our son, that time. She wanted him to know me then, in her dream she did. Or maybe she was sobbing for only wanting him to know me in her dream.

  I used to pray to things, I’ve had my discussions, stumbling drunk, or facing a knife in an alley, looking at guns, the bad end, or harder times in cold houses, on night walks I didn’t bargain on, in the shadow of the world, on hunts that went wrong, when, for a moment of stupid gone worse, a mountain has almost killed me, or the forest, because I was foolish. But I’ve found myself praying time over time to the memory of that dream, to the love of our son and me she had in her dream, without her knowing, I suppose, that was God to her, once, sleeping in that cave of her night. It was to me, anyway. And now my son is across a curve of earth from here, and I don’t know what time it is, it’s dinner, or he’s going to bed, without his father, and better off for it, I have to think. And I’m the only one here who thinks, if I get back alive, chances are better than not his life will be worse. I think disappearing out here, might be as good a thing as I could give him. That’s what I’ve tried to think, away from him, that I’m doing what’s best. But it’s a hard thing to think, every day. It’s not nothing, to choose that. Not for me it isn’t.

  I look up at these babies, making their spears, and I suppose in my haze I have been trying to get them home alive, even if I don't need to. Doesn’t matter, though, like I said, but I'll do it for some fucking reason. Because I’ll do it.

  We have been sitting a while making these silly little spears and having our fireside all-going-to-die-soon time, and I wonder if it’s enough that we could get up and move again. Stopping the night when it’s nothing but night has lost its meaning, as good as. Everybody sits, quiet, watching the dark and the fire by turns. I look at Ojeira, see him nodding, falling asleep, and Bengt looks the same. I feel myself slipping too.

  I look up from the fire, suddenly, wondering if I’ve fallen asleep, and how long, if I have. The fire’s down, cold’s crept into me, from sitting too long. I see everyone’s asleep. How we can fall asleep when a thousand yards back, or two, wolves were on us, I don’t know. It’s an e
scape, maybe. What do you do after watching people die? Eventually you’ll sleep again, it’ll come.

  Suddenly I feel we’ve stayed too long. I knock my boots together in the snow to clean the treads, like that's going to matter after two steps. I haul myself to my feet, and reach to Henrick, shake him.

  Henrick snaps awake, startled, looks around.

  “I think we keep moving, if we can,” I say. Henrick nods, shakes Tlingit, who does the same, hauls up. The others wake up, too, see we’re still here, and look unhappy. I pick up the sticks I sharpened, nod to the sticks we haven’t sharpened yet.

  “Let’s bring those too,” I say.

  I pull my pack on, as the others get to their feet, except Ojeira, who’s struggling. Henrick and I bend down to help Ojeira up, and I stop.

  The wolves have come in by the fire, standing there, staring at us. Maybe they were here all the time we slept, staring at us, I didn’t hear them come, they’re just there. Three, I see right away, and my heart’s pounding wondering where the others are.

  Henrick sees me staring, looks, the others too. They’re very close, at the edge of what’s left of the firelight, looking at us. Nobody wants to move. I see more, then, now I’m looking, like I should have been looking, four more, dotted between the trees, could be others. They’re there somewhere.

  “Shit. Shit,” Ojeira says, whispering, still on the ground, fumbling for his knife, which he’s dropped or something, he can’t find it. He has his sticks but we all seem to want as many sharp things as we can have our hands on, not that we know what we’re going to do. He’s the only one moving, he keeps patting around in the snow trying to find his knife and finally he finds it behind him, he was almost sitting on it, and he half gets up and falls back down with it, point up, holding all his sticks up too.

  “If they come at us, we fight them,” I say, staring at the wolves in front. “If any of them gets on one of us, we gang on that one, OK? Try to get a stick into him, or a knife, if you can.” They’re all staring, paralyzed, like that’s the last thing they’ll ever be able to do.

  I keep looking for the big one, I don’t see him. Finally he comes out of the dark, stands there, staring with the rest of them. I don't know what they’re doing, sniffing us out, again, choosing one of us to kill or deciding to kill all of us at once, or just waiting to see what the big one does. I breathe, watch them breathing.

  The big one straightens his body out, suddenly, leans forward, makes a line, nose to back, pointing at me, low. I think he’s getting ready to come at me.

  “What the fuck is he doing?” Ojeira says.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Choosing.”

  The big wolf looks from me to Ojeira, sniffing. Then he shifts, barely. He’s pointing at Ojeira, now.

  “Is he fucking looking at me? He’s what— choosing me?”

  I don’t know what they’re doing.

  “If they hit you, we’ll get them off you. You’ll be OK.” I know I’m lying, but we can try.

  “You beat them away from me before, you can do it again,” I say to Henrick and the others. Henrick and Tlingit just stare at them.

  Behind the big wolf, I see the other wolves lean in too, setting low, like the big one. They’re all looking at Ojeira, it looks like, which is turning Ojeira into jelly, he’s panting, shaking, starting to scrabble backwards.

  “Stay put,” I tell him.

  “Oh Jesus. God, Jesus,” he says.

  Ojeira jumps, suddenly, flicks his eyes to a skinny wolf on his flank, gasping. I didn’t see him before, but there he is, and Ojeira yelps and half-shoves backwards, looks the wolf in the eye. The wolf looks at Ojeira, takes a step closer, low, straight, like an arrow. I half-turn to be ready, but I can’t turn too far or I’m showing my back to the others.

  It doesn’t matter. The wolf shoots in, rushes toward Ojeira. Ojeira screams, holds his knife and his spears up all at once, fumbling. He’s too scared to have any strength, but he’s actually half-keeping the wolf at bay, it stops.

  We wait another quarter-second and then the wolf shoots in the rest of the way to Ojeira, jumps him, and all the other wolves, all but the big one, run around us and past us, shoot in at Ojeira too. Ojeira’s eyes go wide and his sticks scatter and fly and I grab up my stick and lay my knife along the shaft and I charge after them, hoping the big one doesn’t charge up from behind again. Henrick and Tlingit and Bengt and Knox do the same. The wolves have all jumped on to Ojeira by now, they’ve put their backs to us, and none of them is turning on us or getting between us and Ojeira this time, either they’ve counted us out, or counted we were going to let them take Ojeira.

  I’ve run a few steps closer. There’s one the one at Ojeira’s middle but I have to get past the one closest to me who’s got Ojeira’s knee in his maw, I’ve started roaring, at some point, we’re all roaring, sticks high, and I don’t know how to go about this but I try to jump up over the one at Ojeira’s knee and fall down at the flank of the one at Ojeira’s middle with the point of the stick, as Ojeira’s scrabbling back trying to push him off.

  The point catches, and I’m amazed to see it sink under his fur but then it slides right through, I’ve just poked in under his fur and now I’ve fallen in the snow and lost my knife. I look back, still down, scared, to see where the big one is and he’s gone.

  But the wolf I went at has noticed the stick, and me, and as I bang around in the snow for my knife and as Tlingit and Henrick and the others are roaring and swinging sticks and logs the wolf next to me twists and snarls and half-flips away from Ojeira to see what just bit him, and I forget the knife and hold tighter on the stick that’s still snagged in him as I try to get up. He doesn’t like it, but it isn’t doing anything, either, and he sees me getting up off my knees and I yank the stick back out of him but I stumble back in the snow and I drop it, and he notices that too. He barks and hop-jumps half in the air and comes down on his forepaws and stares at me. He’s off Ojeira, at least, and on me. I grab for the stick and scramble back to my feet as I see Henrick ram his stick at the next one and hits its side, I think, but it twists away and flips away under Henrick and backs up, looking at him like mine is looking at me, then it hops to the side and into the dark and we don’t know where it is at all, running around to come at us another way, I think, and all this at the same time as Knox looks to be wrestling with one and keeping it off him well enough for the instant, I hear the others yelling and yelping barking yips but I can’t see everybody, Tlingit’s out of sight, Bengt too.

  But more wolves have jumped in at Ojeira and Henrick tries to get them off him, and I face mine, wondering if I’ll live if I charge it or he’ll swipe me in half, and as I’m deciding if I can charge I hear them running, somewhere around us. I think I see blurs in the dark, dark in dark again. But I have mine to think about. He’s blocking the way between me and the wolves on Ojeira. Suddenly I see Tlingit fall backwards out of the dark and scrabble back to his feet looking back into darkness, at whatever he was facing, but he’s got a log in his hands and he sees Ojeira and he turns to help Henrick, swinging and swinging his piece of wood at the heads of the wolves at Ojeira’s middle with all his might and barely getting their attention, and then I see Bengt has been there all along but he’s down, for some reason, beating and poking at the wolves on Ojeira without bothering to stand. They’ve been on Ojeira too long.

  I finally go in at mine he dodges me and scurries back, like the big one did to me before. Then he stands off, watching me, and I give up on him, I pray he won’t run me down and I run to help Bengt and Tlingit and Henrick get the others off Ojeira while Ojeira’s screaming, trying to shove the ones closest to his neck off him, but my wolf does run me down, I turn just as it’s on me and about to get his teeth on my legs and I roar at it and try to tower up big and drive at it with the stick and all I do is poke him again and he twists away like he’s nothing but night air and jumps back, watching, and I chance leaving him again and turn to Ojeira and I see a wolf pushing clos
e to his neck no matter how much the others are pounding and poking and pulling at it, and not knowing what else to do I shove in at him and grab him under his belly like I’m picking up a puppy and pull him backwards off him, falling backwards with his weight. He weighs a frightening weight, moving, and alive, and he turns to snap at me and still falling backwards I spin and throw him off me into the snow, but I as good as run into the one I left to run in at this one, he lands on him instead, and falls into the snow, and they both hop back up barking, staring at us.

  I look for the big one again and in all the blur I think there were others who came in at Ojeira that I can’t see now, I think, and I finally see some running around us up a rise, maybe the big one is with them, but I lose them in the dark right away. Then I hear Bengt and Tlingit and Henrick yelling and grunting behind me and I look back and they’re jabbing and pounding at the last wolf on Ojeira, or trying to, but he’s rolling away under the knives and the sticks and he wriggles out and runs away up the slope into the dark as if nothing happened to him at all, and he stops with the big one and the others and they all look down at us. I think they do, but I don’t know, because I can’t more than half see them.

  One rushes back in right away, out of the dark, down the slope, straight toward Ojeira, it looks like. He looks very big coming down at us. He isn’t the biggest one, but I know he’ll go through Ojeira like he’s nothing and I’m so afraid my skin tightens and I step in his way and try to get my stick up but I get it snagged in his paws and it knocks away or I don’t know how, but I drop it, and I try to grab it but he hits me and the weight of him coming at me that hard slams me back in the snow and he is on me, at my face. I try to grab his fur but he is right up at me and I can’t get my stick, I have nothing, he’s going to get me. Then I see Tlingit and his arm swinging like a windmill and I see Feeny’s knife in his hand, and he punches it sideways and almost knocks him off me but the wolf pushes back in at me and Tlingit punches him again and the wolf finally flinches and jumps off me to the side and falls into the snow. He hunches and twists, but he doesn’t get up, then he’s still. I stare at him, and my belly creeps, I should be glad he's dead, and I am, but my belly creeps all the same, looking at him in the snow. I feel sick. It’s from fear, probably, because the half-minute he was on me I thought this time I’d die. His fur’s wet, with blood I guess, and there’s red in the snow now, and I look at him and feel sick still, more, churning. Probably fear, I suppose. I don’t know.