My next recollection [Joe continues], hazy as it is, is one of being in a sleeping bag, with George giving me a brisk rubdown. He kept asking, “How are you doing, Joe?” and I kept telling him that I was doing fine and to quit pounding me. I remember that I felt warm and comfortable all over except for my feet, which seemed abnormally cold.
I could hear Pete and Skip talking worriedly outside about Art. They had undressed him and put him in his sleeping bag near the little fire Peter had built. Peter had attempted to resuscitate him, but to no effect.
I asked Skip if he wanted me to try to bring Art around. He seemed grateful and helped me off with my still-wet underwear so that I could share my body heat with Art. I crawled in; his skin was cold to the touch, and his naked body seemed very frail. The side of him facing the fire was warm, but the other side was cold. I lay on that side and rubbed him down, but he never warmed up.
Skip and Pete set up the one surviving tent, removed Joe’s long johns, placed his tormented body on my air mattress, and covered him with my blanket. Now that Joe and I had vacated his sleeping bag, Bruce crawled in. Skip was nearing the end of his strength but still helped Peter.
After about half an hour, when I realized that I was not doing Art any good, I left him and went back to Joe, sat astraddle him to hold him down, and tried to bring him out of his delirium. Every time he recalled the events of the day he would come to that “little ripple” and thrash about, his eyes wide with terror, until, as darkness spread over the tundra, I feared he would destroy our one remaining tent.
Suddenly, as if by miracle, he altered the sequence of his recollections and worked his way backward instead: “We had lunch … and before that, Peter caught a fish… and before that…” He seemed calmer, his eyes focused on the ceiling of the tent. He was concentrating hard.
“Yes, yes,” I encouraged.
“And before that we had breakfast …”
Joe sat suddenly bolt upright and stared at me. He was naked, and I was sitting astraddle him, also naked. He looked puzzled but lucid. “What are you doing?” he demanded, horrified. He gave me a vigorous shove, “Get off me.”
“You’re all right now, Joe,” I reassured him as I reestablished myself on top of him to restrain him.
“Jesus Christ! Get off me!” He batted me off to one side. In earlier thrashings, his arms had frequently struck me, but only glancing blows, as if he were unaware of my presence; these blows were very different. I knelt beside him. He looked around the tent, then noticed that it was my air mattress he was resting on, not his, and under my blanket. A puzzled expression clouded his face.
“You’re OK now, Joe,” I repeated, not at all convinced.
He seemed disoriented, and I feared he would escape back into delirium, but he looked me in the eyes and said, “I just had the most terrible dream.”
“Everything’s OK now,” I said.
“Where’s Art?”
“Art’s outside,” I answered.
He stared at me for a long time, as if he were trying to make sense of things. Finally he said, “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
“Everything is OK now, Joe.”
He continued to stare at me, lost in thought. After a while he said, “Thanks, George,” then rolled over, but before falling into a deep sleep he added in a barely audible voice, “You can have all my tobacco.”
It was his most precious possession, but, unfortunately, all his tobacco had been lost in the river along with so many of our other possessions. Joe later wrote,
When I came around next, I was surprised to find that I was completely naked and in a tent. I couldn’t figure out why this should be. I sat bolt upright. It was dark out. Someone [Peter Franck] thrust a large can under my nose and told me to take five swigs. I did. Then Skip came into the tent, undressed, and got into a sleeping bag. After a while, I looked out of the tent. I turned back and casually asked Skip where Art was. He replied that Art was outside. We lay in silence. Finally, I asked what Art would be doing outside. Skip replied, “You might as well know. Art is dead.”
CHAPTER 21
Our New Leader
Better is one hand full of quietness than two hands full of toil and striving after wind.
—ECCLESIASTES 4:6
While the rest of us had been working through our deliriums, Peter was busy trying to bring some order to the chaos outside. He paddled across the basin to the island where we had emptied the red canoe after shooting the falls and there recovered our sack of tiny driftwood twigs, a tin can, and some cornmeal. The pots and pans, in Skip’s canoe, and the cutlery, in Art’s canoe, had been lost to the river, so Peter made do and bent the lid of the tin into a spoon and used the bottom as a pot. He built a fire with the driftwood twigs we had been carrying in the red canoe for just such an emergency and cooked up cornmeal mush, which he then passed into the tent.
Because Joe seemed to be the worst off, we handed the mush to him first. Taking the bent tin lid, Joe made one of his expert scoops and scored a large, nourishing lump, but rather than gulp it down as he would have done earlier in the trip, he stared at it for a moment and then passed it to Bruce on his right. Bruce looked at it and offered it to Skip. Skip looked at it and handed it on to me.
There was a time when I had taken comfort in the thought that, should things get as bad as they could get, I would likely not be the first to die, but now, as I stared at that delicious lump, I had desires other than mere survival; the thought of death was difficult enough, but the thought of dying alone was worse. I passed the enticing lump back to Joe; he ate it and then passed the can of warm cornmeal over to Bruce.
When the cornmeal was gone, Peter handed in a package of Velveeta cheese. I gave it to Skip; he took out Art’s hunting knife, sliced the cheese into six pieces, as was customary, and passed them around for each of us to choose. When the cheese came back to him, he picked up the fifth piece. We all stared at the sixth and thought of Art lying in the cold outside. Finally Skip divided up the sixth piece and passed it around; again, one tiny piece remained.
Joseph Conrad tells a story of a British naval captain on patrol off the west coast of Ireland who comes across a tramp steamer in a cove while searching for arms smugglers. The captain of the tramp claims that he has taken refuge in the cove because of a storm at sea. There is no proof that the tramp has been smuggling arms to Irish rebels, but the ship is a rusty mess, and there is the smell of alcohol on the tramp captain’s breath. From the British captain’s point of view, everything is wrong about the tramp that could possibly be wrong, so he assumes that the captain of the tramp must also be lying about having been blown into the cove by a storm. When the captain of the tramp asks for a safe heading back out to sea, the British captain deliberately gives him a false bearing that will put the tramp on a reef at the mouth of the cove, believing that the captain of the tramp will prove his own guilt by steering around the reef at the last minute. The tramp captain, however, follows the British officer’s instructions exactly; the tramp strikes the reef, and all hands aboard are lost.
Outwardly Skip had always been well turned out and had always acted “by the book,” like the proper British captain. Art, on the other hand, had resembled more the captain of the tramp. His clothes were full of holes, he cared nothing for appearances, and he indulged himself in late hours by the campfire sipping tea and dreaming of being reunited with his family when he should have been getting some sleep. Because of Art’s late starts in the mornings, we were not where we ought to have been on September 14, the day he died, but when faced with the moment of truth, Art looked death in the eye and went silently while the rest of us had saved ourselves. Art’s final words, as he knelt on the frozen ground, his numb fingers unable to unzip his ice-covered moosehide jacket, were only, “What do you want me to do?” Shortly thereafter, he died, and Skip became our new leader, but after Art’s death, Skip had also become a new man. He remained self-sacrificing, but he never again passed judgment on anybody or anything,
except perhaps on himself.
Joe’s pack was frozen solid. The following morning I smashed it against a rock to break the ice, extracted Joe’s spare clothes, knocked the ice from them, and then spread them out on the rocks to dry. Skip was nearby, giving Bruce’s clothing the same treatment. After the accident, Skip had dried his clothes on his own body, an act of extraordinary willpower in the face of that murderous cold.
Later that morning the sun broke through the clouds. I looked up and then sat on a rock to bask in it. Its radiance had never felt so healing. I looked down and watched the puddle of ice between my feet begin to melt. Through the clear water, an orange dwarf-birch leaf glittered in the sunlight. Its beauty carried me into an ecstasy at the very joy of being alive, and a deep peace descended over me.
When I eventually looked up, I noticed Skip making his way slowly toward me, head bowed. It occurred to me that he was about to admonish me for my cowardice in crawling into Bruce’s sleeping bag the previous afternoon to save my own life while leaving Art outside in the cold to die. I had resented his lectures in the past, but now I saw Skip in a different light. I now agreed with all his criticisms of me.
I smiled as he approached, but he did not smile back. His brow was furrowed, and when he was about ten feet from me, he stopped and stared at the ground. During our innumerable arguments earlier in the trip, his stance had always been that human beings can survive happily together only through altruistic behavior. The previous day, I had committed my worst offense.
There is a story told of Saint Francis, who, while walking down a road, was accosted by a man and accused of being a vain egotist. Saint Francis embraced him. “At last I have found someone who understands me,” he said and thanked the man.
Skip had seen my faults, but instead of the criticism I was expecting, he bowed his head and surprised me by saying, “You’ve been right all along, George.”
Skip stared long into my eyes, as though willing me to understand. I looked back at him but was too wrapped up in my own guilt to understand. I frowned and contradicted him again: “I have not been right about anything in my entire life.”
Skip was silent for a long time, then: “I just came over to thank you for saving my life.”
It occurred to me that he was feeling guilty too, for having called out for help. Peter and I had been heading for Art and Joe because they, clinging to their overturned canoe, had been in the icy water the longest, but when we heard cries of “George, Pete, help!” from downstream, we turned away from Art and Joe to rescue Skip and Bruce because they were being swept out of the basin toward what appeared to be inevitable death down the next rapids.
I continued to stare into Skip’s eyes and eventually realized that we shared the same guilt. At the moment of truth, it had been Art who stood silently last in line while Skip cried out and I saved myself. Art spoke his last words as he fumbled helplessly with the zipper on his moosehide jacket: “What do you want me to do?”
At the beginning of the trip, in the vanity of our youth, Skip and I had aspired to sainthood, but when to be a saint meant the reality of dying, he had called out for help, and I had crawled into Bruce’s sleeping bag. We both knew that it was not right and just for the brave man to have been killed while the two cowards lived, but for all that, the sunlight warmed us, and we were both glad to be alive. The forces of guilt and gladness worked an alchemy of humility. We stood before one another in search of forgiveness, which I eventually came to realize only God could grant.
As I looked into his eyes, I remembered Skip’s heroic self-denial the day before. It was only after everything had been done that could possibly be done for Art, Joe, and me that he finally, in the darkness of the night, removed his frozen clothes and entered the tent to lie down alongside the rest of us to share what little warmth he had left to give. More particularly, I remembered him as the one who had called me back from that heavenly realm from which I had been born and into which I had tried to escape through recessive dreams of childhood.
He turned and walked away. My eyes followed him in sorrow, for I felt very alone without him, but after a few paces he stopped, looked up at the sun, and turned his head to look back at me. “I can understand now why primitive people worshiped the sun.”
I nodded. He had come over to me in guilt and humility to thank me for saving his life.
As he turned away again, I looked at the ground and thought, “Thank you for saving mine.”
CHAPTER 22
The Last Farewell
I was found by those who were not looking for me.
I appeared to those who were not asking for me.
—SAINT PAUL
The ground was frozen, and we had no tools; it was impossible to bury Art, so we tucked his frozen body into the gray canoe, carried the canoe up the hill, and turned it over, with his body suspended on the thwarts above the ground. There were no wolves around. Wolves follow the caribou, and the caribou had long since migrated south. Skip suggested that we take a moment to pay our last respects.
We stood around the gray canoe, silent for a while, heads bowed. I glanced at the sun. The winds were calm. Shallow lakes, already frozen over, were visible from atop the hill.
The previous day, with most of our clothes still frozen blocks of ice, Skip had suggested that he and Peter (both of whom had dry clothes) take the green canoe and make a dash for Baker Lake, which was, if we continued at the same rate we had been traveling for the previous three months, another month away.
We bowmen replied that Skip was free to leave if he wanted to but that we had no intention of sitting around on this desolate island in the hope of being rescued.
The only way we could thaw and dry our clothing was to wear it, as Peter had burned the last of our emergency supply of driftwood two days earlier in trying to revive Art. So we dressed our naked bodies in our frozen clothing and, thirty-six hours after Art’s death, were ready to leave the island.
As we stood around Art’s canoe, I wondered how much time we had before the three larger lakes that still separated us from the illusive safety of that seemingly mythic outpost at Baker Lake would also be frozen. One of those lakes—Aberdeen Lake—was more than fifty miles in extent and would be difficult to navigate even in the finest weather. We had another lake yet to cross before reaching Aberdeen Lake, though, and the two were separated by a hundred miles of dangerous rapids. Aberdeen Lake would then be followed by another lake, Schultz Lake, and it by another seventy-mile stretch of fast water. If we dawdled, Schultz Lake, at the least, would be frozen. We did not have enough food to walk the last two hundred miles.
I glanced at the others.
Skip was wearing Art’s hunting knife, the blade of which Art had ground from a piece of steel; the beaded moosehide sheath he kept it in had been sewn for him by a Cree woman. It reminded me of Art.
Skip looked up, then simply turned and walked down the hill. Silently, we all followed.
I took my seat in the bow of the red canoe, dipped my paddle into that cold, forbidding water, and pulled us into the current. The canoe rocked; I slammed my paddle down and held on to the gunwales, paralyzed with terror. Doing his best to suppress a laugh at seeing my fright, Peter steered the canoe skillfully into the approaching rapids.
I glanced back. Art’s gray canoe, silhouetted against the gray sky, stood sentinel on top of that bleak hill. The choice was immediately clear: either face death with Art on that desolate island, or face the river.
My hands trembled as I picked up my paddle again; I took a deep breath, then unsteadily pulled the canoe through the rapids. Art’s island disappeared from view.
The already brief hours of daylight were darkened by a damp and threatening sky. We built a secure camp that night by lashing our two remaining tents together, erecting a stone wall, and placing the two canoes to windward, well secured with ropes and rocks, in defense against the impending storm.
Gone were the days when I desired to set a tent on the crest of some distan
t hill to enjoy the buffeting of stormy winds in solitude. My greatest comfort now was to sleep as close to the others as possible in order to garner some of whatever warmth the five of us could generate.
The following morning as we paddled north, Peter cast his lure. We were moving so fast that his spinner skipped from wave top to wave top and I doubted that any fish could swim fast enough to catch it.
“Lady Marjorie Nicholson,” J. B. Tyrrell had named it when he had crossed this lake in 1893. The name conjured up visions of civilized society—Victorian tea on a veranda surrounded by gardens of blooming flowers. The reality that confronted us was damp moss, gray rocks, and a black, icy lake under a bleak and threatening sky.
When we embarked, J. B. Tyrrell, at the age of ninety-seven, was still alive. He had warned Art that the Dubawnt was a dangerous river, and that it turned out to be. We were all afraid of the river now, and of the sky, of the blizzards, of starving, of freezing. I tried to take comfort in the name—Lady Marjorie Nicholson—as perhaps Tyrrell had done more than sixty years earlier, but his vision of Victorian elegance seemed incongruous with the bleak reality that confronted us.
After the war, planes had flown over Lady Marjorie Nicholson Lake to take aerial photographs, and with information from these photographs the Canadian Topographical Survey had printed its maps. We studied them carefully. There were still great white areas marked “unmapped,” and the scale was small; they were designed for planes flying overhead rather than for canoeists paddling on the water. But despite all that, they definitely showed the northernmost extension of Lady Marjorie Nicholson sprawling to within twelve miles of the southern shore of Aberdeen Lake.
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