Death on the Barrens

by George James Grinnell

  Joe murmured words of support for Bruce’s suspicion that Art was taking more than his share. There was silence while Bruce and Joe inhaled deeply from their cigarettes, and we all contemplated the nature of Art’s sins.

  Oatmeal was not the only issue that separated Bruce from Art. Earlier in the trip, Art had exercised his wit at the expense of “sportsmen,” thus relegating them to a pit in hell deeper even than that of imperialists and British mountain climbers. Art was not in favor of killing animals even when the alternative was to starve, but to kill an animal for sport was too base even to contemplate.

  Bruce was a sportsman. He liked to kill things. Part of the reason he had joined the expedition was for the unparalleled opportunity to kill “game” for “sport.” For those of us who were hungry, it was a lucky thing. Joe also had a rifle and had pumped several rounds into the first caribou we had eaten, but that was enough. He swore he would never kill another animal. I had a .22-caliber rifle that was effective against rabbits, ptarmigan, and other small creatures but was not suitable for killing caribou. So the expedition had become almost totally dependent on Bruce for food, and a new Bruce was beginning to emerge: Bruce the hunter, Bruce the killer.

  He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Art took SEVEN!”

  We nodded appreciatively at Bruce’s detective work, but now that there was plenty of caribou to eat, Art’s extra spoonfuls of oatmeal were of no great consequence to Joe and me—except, perhaps, as a topic for gossip.

  Once we had finished talking about Art, Bruce next took aim at Peter Franck. Peter and Bruce were the two youngest members of the expedition, but they were similar in no other way. Peter went his own way, kept his own counsel, and rarely entered into conversations, while Bruce was the exact opposite. Earlier in the trip, Bruce had bent over backward not to offend anyone. He had always asked our opinions and invariably nodded his head in agreement with everything we had said, no matter whether he agreed or not. When not asking our opinions, he was asking Art or Skip for permission to do this, that, and the other thing. Bruce appeared to be completely submissive, but beneath the surface simmered a cauldron of rage that was bubbling up to the surface now that he had become the hunter on whom we all depended.

  Joe and I were silent through his shots at Peter. Joe was willing to acknowledge that Art had his faults and that he was, as Bruce had suggested, perhaps helping himself to more oatmeal than the rest of us; but Joe had nothing against Peter, nor had I. At worst, Peter minded his own business; at best, he was the hardest worker among us. Having failed to arouse our ire, Bruce lowered his sights and changed the subject: “Say, Joe, how many cigarettes have you got left?”

  Joe dropped his head and mumbled something inaudible, his cigarette supply plainly not a comfortable topic. Along with his private supply of chocolate and gourmet cheese, Joe had brought along the most copious stash of tobacco. He had been teased about this, and now that Art and maybe Bruce too were running low on tobacco, the pressure to share was on him. He took a last drag on his cigarette, then handed me the butt. “What about you, Bruce?” Joe politely returned the question.

  “One tin and two cartons of tailor-mades.”

  “Hell, Bruce! You’re in great shape!” Joe exclaimed, relieved. I pinched out the butt of Joe’s cigarette, tore open the paper, and collected the strands of tobacco in an empty cigarette pack. After some serious study, I judged that I had almost enough tobacco for a cigarette. Joe was the most generous member of the expedition with his butts, for which I was deeply grateful. I had given up smoking when I had come on the trip, thinking it would be a good time to do so because no tobacco would be available. It was a mistake, and I spent much time hovering around the smokers. I kept my eye on Bruce, the remains of his cigarette beginning to burn his fingers. With his anger surfacing, I feared he would flick his butt into the river.

  “How much tobacco has Art got?” Bruce inquired.

  “Just one more tin.” As Art’s bowman and tentmate, Joe had insider information.

  “When Art runs out of tobacco, that’s when this expedition is really going to get a move on,” Bruce said. Joe chuckled. Bruce took a last deep drag, burning both his lips and his fingers, and then flicked the butt vehemently toward the river. Prepared, I sprang down the cliff and caught it before it hit the water. “Sorry, George.”

  “That’s OK, Bruce,” I replied, not wanting to alienate my second-most-generous supplier of tobacco.

  Down by the river, I noticed the green canoe rocking in the wash from the rapids. If it had been the red or the gray canoe, I would have hauled it farther up the ledge, but it was Skip’s canoe, so I let it be.

  Two or three hours later, the sternmen returned, their lips purple not from the cold but because they had discovered a rich patch of blueberries. The wind was blowing strongly up the rapids, so Art decided to shoot them in the morning or whenever the wind died. Art’s solution to all problems was to postpone any definite decision until the weather improved—or until the next morning, or the morning after, or the morning after that.

  When Skip began to unload the green canoe, he was surprised to find so much water in the bottom, then angry when he discovered the hole. He launched into another of his “group consideration and altruistic behavior” speeches, well punctuated with righteous indignation. Bruce was apologetic, and Joe busied himself elsewhere; I pointed out how stupid he was to have left his canoe rocking in the wash of the rapids. This did not have a soothing effect.

  The next morning, Skip patched the hole with canoe glue. We shot the rapids without difficulty and arrived at a lovely campsite before evening.

  “SEVEN [spoonfuls of oatmeal]!” Bruce shouted indignantly.

  Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  The poet William Blake had a notion that a person goes through three passages in life: the first is as a lamb, the second as a tiger, and the third as a shepherd. Bruce had started the trip as a lamb, expecting Art to take care of him; now, after killing his first caribou, Bruce had become a tiger, and his next prey was our shepherd, Art.

  For four days we were held up by a steep gorge that was made even more threatening by intensely bad weather. When Art had set the tarp up the previous evening, he had cleverly made the fire on the leeward end so that the wind would blow through the tarp and carry the smoke away from his face while he cooked dinner. He had placed two wooden boxes under the tarp by the fire. These were the only warm, dry, comfortable seats in camp. On previous occasions they had been left vacant by Bruce and the rest of us in deference to Art and Skip, our leaders. But on this morning, when Art staggered down to breakfast, late as usual, what he discovered next to Skip by the fire, on the only other dry seat, was Bruce—the man with the poorly repaired boot, the hunter, the sportsman, and now, apparently, the self-appointed new leader of the expedition.

  Art dropped the serving spoon back into the nearly empty pot, poured some watery powdered milk over his soggy oatmeal, and stumbled over the rocks, seemingly oblivious to Bruce’s usurpation of his throne. Ducking his head, Art entered the tarp from the rear along with a gust of wet wind and sat down on a wet rock.

  He had just become settled when he mumbled something under his breath in the nature of an imprecation and crawled out from under the wet tarp to retrieve his can of sugar, which he had unintentionally left back in his tent.

  Before meeting the caribou, when we had all panicked about running out of food, Skip had passed out our weekly ration of sugar in the empty jam tins Peter had saved. We had clutched them firmly to our greedy little breasts; it felt so good to own something, to control a bit of our food supply in that all-too-uncertain world. Everyone had been smiling with glee—everyone except Art, who had not bothered to pick up his tin. Skip had had to carry it for him, and now, three weeks later, Art still could not reconcile himself with our individualist ways.

&nb
sp; After brushing through the wet willow bushes for the third time, he returned to the rear of the tarp and sat down once again on the same wet rock, which had become drenched once again while Art was recovering his sugar tin. A gust of wind shook the tarp and sprayed cold water down his neck and into his oatmeal. “From now on, this tarp is going to be divided into two parts: one for the cooks and one for the hoi polloi,” Art announced, reminded perhaps of the vow he had made two weeks previously to run the expedition more militarily.

  The silence would have been complete if not for the squalls that flapped and drummed the canvas. At the other end of the tarp Bruce sat warmed by the fire on Art’s seat, his back to Art. Bruce leaned over and whispered something to Skip. Skip whispered something back, but neither moved.

  I was standing in the rain outside, near the fire, trying to remain as motionless as possible. Every time I put my spoon to my mouth, rain ran down the back of my neck into my shirt. I made various attempts to stem the flow, but whether I kept my neck straight and raised my arm or left my arm low and bent my neck, the rain managed to get down my neck or up my sleeve. When I moved, water flowed off my poncho into my boots, so I preferred to stand still, but if a palace revolution was taking place I wanted to affirm with whom I stood, so I walked around to the rear of the tarp and took a seat on a wet rock next to Art. “Not ‘the’ hoi polloi,” I whispered companionably. “‘Hoi’ means ‘the’ in Greek.”

  “I stand corrected,” Art replied, still annoyed, and resumed eating his cold oatmeal in silence.

  After dinner on the following evening, after Art had stalled indecisively for three days about whether to shoot the gorge, Skip announced that he had been checking our supplies and that we were nearly out of powdered milk. Ostensibly, he wanted to know whether we would prefer to preserve the quantity by adding more water or preserve the quality by simply using less milk. Beneath the surface, however, reporting on our diminishing supplies was Skip’s subtle (or not so subtle) way of inciting rebellion against Art’s lackadaisical mode of leadership.

  Art spoke in favor of preserving the quality (such as it was), reasoning that to water it down yet again just meant adding more cold water to our oatmeal and to our tea, but the rest of us voted against his motion. Under the pretense of democracy, Skip said he would honor the wish of the majority. It amounted to another no-confidence vote in Art’s leadership.

  Art picked up his camera and, mumbling something about molting geese, left the evening campfire. Peter and Skip went downstream to scout the gorge one more time.

  While the sternmen were gone, Joe, Bruce, and I sat around the campfire roasting the last of the caribou. Although the weather had been wet, it had also been warm, so the five-day-old meat of our second caribou was now crawling with maggots. Roasted, the maggots tasted like fried eggs, but despite their delicious flavor, they hung the camp with an aura of decay.

  As darkness settled over the gorge, Skip returned. Bruce asked him to speak to Art about the amount of oatmeal he had been taking each morning. “He trusts you, Skip,” Bruce added with sycophantic flattery.

  Skip frowned but looked at Joe and me as if to ask if we agreed with Bruce. Joe agreed, and I smiled my Iago smile and repeated Bruce’s words ironically. “He trusts you, Skip.”

  Skip started to speak, looked down at the ground, looked at Joe, looked at me, hesitated some more, and then nodded and walked away.

  The wind was still up in the morning. After three days of procrastination, Art had not yet come to a decision about shooting the gorge, but facing a potential mutiny, he eventually asserted his authority and told us bowmen to portage a load of indispensable equipment over the cliff. He and the other sternmen would scout the gorge one more time before shooting it with lightened canoes.

  As we bowmen climbed to the top of the cliff with our heavy loads, the sky clouded over and showered us. For the third straight day our clothes got a soaking. Bruce and Joe decided to take shelter under a ledge until the squalls passed, but I preferred to complete the portage and then head back. By the time I returned to camp, I was drenched.

  Art and Skip emerged from their tents conspicuously dry. Art was very solicitous and volunteered to wring out my socks for me, which I thought showed generosity of spirit beyond imagining because my socks had not been washed since the beginning of the trip, except by muskeg water squishing in and out of my increasingly dilapidated boots, and by the rain.

  August 15: All along we could see it was a very heavy current and big waves. We were hungry. It was late now and I was tired. I knew this was no time to make a decision.

  By the dawning of the fourth day, Art had still not made a decision. Skip and Bruce were preparing a coup d’état, but before they could act, Art loaded his canoe and told Skip to take the bow seat. Together they shot the gorge. Skip then walked back up the rapids and shot them a second time, with Peter as his bowman. I was about to shoot them with Peter when Bruce approached me to ask if he might take my place. I looked at him quizzically. “For the thrill of it,” he explained, as if we had not had enough of this kind of “thrill” already.

  As it turned out, the portaging had proven to be an unnecessary precaution; the rapids in the gorge were no worse than many others we had successfully shot. Perhaps Art had been right to be cautious, though, even if it did mean wasting the better part of four days. In the wilderness, with our food, our rifles, and other irreplaceable supplies at stake, one mistake could be fatal. On the other hand, further delays could also be fatal.

  The following day, Art wrote in his diary: “Today we shot a couple of heavy but short rapids, only the second of which I looked over. Not very smart of me. I probably should be more careful.”

  CHAPTER 15

  His Hour Come Round at Last

  If you let cloudy water settle, it will become clear. Your course will also become clear.

  —BUDDHIST ADAGE

  Skip was furious. He was so angry that he slammed the bow of his green canoe full-speed onto the rocky bank. Looking ready to kill Art, he leaped forward out of his seat and scrambled over the load. Fortunately, he lost his balance and ended up under the contents of his capsized canoe.

  With each passing day, Skip was becoming angrier and angrier. At first he had been angry just with Joe because he disapproved of Joe’s table manners. Then he was angry at me for not getting all the scales off the fish that he, Bruce, and Pete had caught. He had gradually become angry at Bruce for fawning over him, and he was angry with me again for doing a poor job of skinning a caribou. He claimed that I left too much fat on it. Traditionally, the way to get the fat off a hide is to chew it off, which also softens the leather. Skip wanted the hide, but he did not like the idea of chewing the fat.

  Now he was angry at Art.

  It had been a glorious, sunny day, the wind blowing unusually from the south and causing giant waves to sweep us along Dubawnt Lake at a rapid rate. With a hundred-mile fetch, the waves became so large that we were invisible to one another except when all three canoes happened to be cresting a wave at the same time. By noon the pattern had become increasingly irregular, lending a syncopated rhythm to our disconnectedness until eventually the rest of us lost sight of Art and Joe altogether.

  After a while, Skip and Bruce in the green canoe and Peter and I in the red canoe pulled alongside one another. Every time a wave lifted us up, we searched the horizon for some sign of Art and Joe and finally spotted a repetitive flash in the distance a mile or so away, which we guessed was the sun reflecting off Joe’s paddle. The frequency of the flashes suggested that he was paddling fast. We feared the gray canoe had taken on water, but we were too distant to be of any immediate assistance, so we just drifted and watched.

  We were relieved to see them finally disappear around the lee side of an island, but then Skip and I fell predictably into an argument. He wanted to turn our canoes broadside to the now dangerously high waves to check on Art and Joe to make sure that they were safe. I felt that he was being unnecessarily c
oncerned, as usual, and favored continuing on in the direction of wind and waves and letting Art and Joe catch up when, and if, they desired. Bruce and Pete kept out of the argument, and for a long time we just continued to drift down the lake, hoping the gray canoe would reappear around the far side of the island, thus settling our dispute and determining our course, but the gray canoe did not reappear, so Skip picked up his paddle, swung the green canoe around, and headed for the island. Peter followed.

  After more than an hour of paddling broadside to ever larger waves, we neared the shore. Suddenly, from the top of a cliff, Art called down to us: “Hold it, guys. I want to get you coming in on a big one.” The next wave nearly swamped our canoes. We heard Art’s movie camera whirring, then, “OK! Got it!”

  Skip’s face turned various shades of crimson, and his knuckles whitened as he tightened the grip on his paddle. Rounding the cliff to the safety of a calm cove, he drove the bow of the green canoe up a flat rock, sprang from his seat, ran up the gunwales on all fours, lost his balance, and tipped over his canoe.

  Mark Twain observed that “nothing is quite so difficult to live with as the annoyance of someone else’s good example.” As the trip wore on, Skip’s good example, and the moralizing lectures that went with it, began to grate. In the beginning, when we had all been scared and thought of the wilderness as malevolent and murderous, we had preferred Skip’s disciplined approach to Art’s more lackadaisical, easy-going, meditative style, but after we met the caribou, our attitudes had changed.

  Bruce had become our principal provider. Bruce—the most reticent, self-effacing, insecure member of the expedition in the beginning—now stood tall, walked with confidence, killed caribou, fed us delicious steaks, and sat in Art’s seat by the fire. Like dogs, we loved anyone who would feed us, so as Bruce’s posture improved, Skip’s declined.