Solar Storms

by Linda Hogan

  Soon everything was splendidly dark, the wolves again spoke, the loons called, lovers met behind spindly trees. Tulik said, “There’s a kind of light. It just isn’t the visible kind.”

  In the midst of all this—the protest, the arguing, the fear—my heart opened as if I’d taken scilla, the plant which opens bodies in so many ways. I spent nights sitting on the ground before the fire, my heart and eyes feeling something like love in spite of the presence of police. Aurora sat on my lap or slept beside me. When awake, she watched the ghosts of trees all around us, the opening of lights and the closing of shadows. She was early learning to walk. She, so new on earth, heard the clacking of caribou feet walking over land. Once she said a word that sounded like Tulik’s name and he beamed at her.

  IN RARE SILENCE, even late in the season, there were still songs of frogs, although these were as endangered as they were beautiful. Sometimes, as we sat on what we called “the front lines,” the women brought fried fish to us, and I began to love the women as I had come to love the land. At times I felt so joyful that I forgot our purpose. We had a kind of hope, is what I’m trying to say. All of us together had found something back in our lives, something we had forgotten to miss. And now I was one of the Beautiful People. I knew this bone-deep, in my blood. So did the others. We painted the church bright red.

  Even with a few dissenters, we were a field of rich soil, growing. Once we started our act of defiance, we couldn’t quit. As certain as it was that the bulldozers would move earth, it was equally certain that we would stand in their way. Because not to stand in their way was a greater loss when they were making new geographics, the kind nature would never have dreamed or wanted, ones that would open us into a future we couldn’t yet know.

  I MISSED BUSH. She now spent most of her time with Arlie. One day I saw Arlie put his wide hand on her bony shoulder as he passed by, and my mouth fell open. I remember having three thoughts: that LaRue would be heartbroken; that Bush wouldn’t go home with us; and my last thought was one of childish jealousy, a fear that I would lose this woman who seemed most like a mother to me. “You slept with him,” I said one day, accusing her as if she had betrayed me.

  She only laughed, in the same way Tulik had done when Auntie accused him of a similar sin. I was as bad as Auntie.

  During the lengthening evenings, while we were singing, the white people from nearby towns, workers and their wives, arrived and stationed themselves on the other side of the blockade. They yelled at us, at our singing, our needs. They chanted “Bullshit. Bullshit.” This was their song. It was a song against life, against their own futures, but they did not yet know this. They wanted their jobs. They believed they were limited and could live in only one way and they wanted us to give up our way of life for theirs. They thought the land would starve them. Maybe it would. It couldn’t have loved them.

  We tried to sing louder, so as not to hear their voices.

  The mudflats continued to grow and water fell away from where it had lived as long as anyone remembered. The migration routes of the animals were being flooded. A river disappeared.

  At times, as we sat there, we were silent, each of us lost in our own worlds. It was the older people who were the most saddened. I could see it in their eyes. In these silent times, the only sound was that of water or animals in the distance, and in those silent times some of us would sing. Old songs, the kind Agnes had remembered. Some of us would stand in the way of the workers. If we were removed, others came in to take our places. “What shift are you on?” was a common question. “Swing or graveyard?” We tried to laugh because it carried us further than despair. By then we had also managed to close the filling station so the workers could not refuel their machines.

  ONE SOFT MORNING, Dora-Rouge sat in her white chair on “the front line.” The trees gave off a perfume in the heat. The air was still and heavy. It was going to be a warm day. But there was a tension to things. I felt anxious and didn’t know why. Aurora also seemed disturbed. I stood a short distance away from Dora-Rouge, speaking with Bush, and I heard a young policeman say, “Oh, shit. It’s one of those old ladies again.” He trained the gun on Dora-Rouge, set his sight as if to scare her, took aim.

  I ran toward him. “No!”

  But Dora-Rouge looked right at him and said, “I’m not that old.”

  It made me love her all the more. That in a moment of danger, she would make a joke of this. But many yards away, Bush looked on in silence.

  This was the day Bush began to talk to the police and soldiers. It wasn’t just because she was a peacemaker at heart. It was because she saw the young man aim at Dora-Rouge that she began to speak with them. I could see why she did it, but after that, many young Indian men became suspicious of her. Tulik and Auntie stuck up for her, but by then divisions among our people came about more easily. There would be more and more splintering to follow, and even though I saw how straight Bush stood, how beautiful she was in her strength, there were times even I doubted her.

  The young men who were quickest to accuse her were the ones from the city, the ones of uncertain identity who had names and categories for themselves, who wore braids like those I saw on LaRue the day he walked toward us from the direction of water, limping slightly, as if his shoes pinched his feet. In spite of his black zippered shoes, bell-bottom jeans, and the clean ribbon shirt on which his medals were pinned, I recognized him immediately. He looked so good! I couldn’t help myself. I ran toward him. “LaRue!” I jumped against him, put my arms around him. He smelled of English Leather, and he was embarrassed. So was I, that for all my dislike of him, I was glad to see him. “Hey, watch it!” he said, smoothing his shirt. I was messing up his outfit.

  “How’d you get here?” I asked. “Boy, am I glad to see you! How’s Husk and Tommy?” He was my link to Adam’s Rib. “Are the roads blocked?”

  “Whoa.” He put up a hand to stop me, as if we’d traded roles. “One question at a time.”

  Husk, he said, hadn’t been well since hearing about Agnes. He and Tommy had been turned back from reaching Two-Town. Now Tommy was helping Chiquita care for Wiley, who’d had a stroke, and he was fiercely worried about me.

  I took LaRue up the hill and introduced him to the others. When LaRue saw Bush, his face reddened. “How are you?” he said. His voice was softer than usual.

  “Good.” Hunched over the typewriter, she hardly looked at him.

  But Rue was transparent in the way he looked at Bush, and later, when he saw her with Arlie, he tried to seem indifferent. But I knew better. I saw how his expression changed. I felt a little sorry for Rue. I’d come to like him the way a wayward brother is liked.

  Soon, LaRue’s presence became another source of division for the people. I believe it started when he stood up in a meeting and said, “I’m a warrior and a soldier,” and it wasn’t long before he began to tell some of the younger men what to do. They followed. Not the ones who were with Arlie, not the ones who worried about the land and animals, but the ones who wanted something different, another way of life, who pushed toward a monetary settlement.

  “LaRue,” I said to him one day. “I can’t believe you think this way.”

  “It’s logical,” he said. “It’s rational.”

  Even a few of the younger men who’d followed Arlie respected LaRue because he had been a soldier, because he had what looked at times to their young eyes like worldliness, and because of the medals on his chest. They were inspired by his aggressive manner, the very thing Bush hated about him. After that, her dark eyes sent him sparks of anger. The conflict between them, the differences of opinion, grew. A wide space opened between them, as far apart as the pieces of land that had split open when Pangaea had separated from itself.

  And with Bush’s angry reaction to LaRue, the younger men thought again about this woman. You could see it in their eyes, how their suspicions grew. But LaRue said to them, “That’s just her way,” and hitched up his pants, and no one looked more surprised at his words t
han Bush.

  ONE DAY it was dark and cold, the sky thick with rolling clouds of rain. Sometimes it was a heavy, male rain that descended on us, turning everything to earth-colored mud. At other times it was light and soft, but even then the wet ground could not absorb it all. It fell for three days and water ran everywhere across the surface of earth, settled into pools that reflected the pewter gray of sky. Nevertheless, where they could, on a rocky mound, the men set up a few tarps and a tent and we remained at the site. One evening, after the hardest rain, two women came with hot rice broth and fresh berries. “It hits the spot,” said Dora-Rouge, the wheels of her chair sinking into soft, wet earth.

  Work came to a temporary standstill. Frustrated by the weather and lost wages, the workers left. Some of our own water-soaked people dispersed and went home to be dry and warm.

  During these days of rain, one of the bulldozers was vandalized. Two young men were taken in for questioning. Dora-Rouge thought the workmen had done it themselves in order to bring the confrontation to a head. Whichever way it was, the next day, at Tulik’s, with the dog curled at my feet, a blue-eyed man in a dark suit came and stood outside the door, beneath an umbrella, to try to convince us we were wrong. He tried to “reason” with us, he said. I eyed him, his large coat, his pant hems muddy. He came to talk about a settlement.

  “Be sensible,” he said, adjusting his sleeve, looking around at the little house, uncomfortable.

  But after a while, Tulik turned off his hearing aid and stopped listening. He took a jar of aspirin out of his pocket and swallowed two without water, and he didn’t look at the man in the suit again.

  “SHE’S LOOKING GOOD, just good!” Tulik said of Aurora. She had put on weight and in spite of her narrow bones she had a fat, cheery babyness. She was a relaxed child and she laughed often, joyfully. We could all tell Aurora would grow up beautifully, and we called her “Our Future,” as Dora-Rouge had called me. She held a fullness we longed for.

  AFTER THE DAYS of rain there was heat, and soon the earth seemed scorched and the trees began to dry out. The place where water had once been smelled like old fish, rotting. Soon it dried into tiles, sunbaked and curling up at the edges. I kept Aurora inside the post to keep the sun and insects, born of the recent rain, from her. I took Agnes’ coat to the post for her to sleep on, and its closeness seemed to calm her.

  We were singing old songs, newly revived, the day we heard Tulik’s name being called from the distance. A man came running toward the post, yelling, “Tulik!” He clattered up the steps. “It’s your house!” But Tulik had already seen the smoke. He jumped to his feet, and the two men ran together toward the house, trying to talk as they ran, the wind blowing against their words, the smoke rising ahead of them.

  Quickly I picked up Aurora and followed behind them.

  When we reached Tulik’s house, flames were shooting out of the roof and dark smoke filled the sky. Tulik’s little wood house was an easy meal for hungry fire. We could see that it was a lost cause. There was no reason to get water, even if water had still been there. We could only watch as Tulik’s world became a charred black ruin. Tulik, now and then, ran in close to the fire, coughing, yelling, “Mika. Mika.” He moved toward it again and again, searching for the dog, seeing if anything could be salvaged, but he couldn’t get close for the heat and smoke. He coughed, holding his arm over his mouth, his eyes watering.

  I realized in that moment what we’d been fueling. I knew instinctively that it was a set fire. I knew no dog would come out of that inferno. I knew our lives, too, could disappear like the smoke, becoming invisible and thin, rising up to the sky. I prayed silently, “Please, God, whatever you are, help us.”

  Aurora cried.

  “Shh,” I said to her. “It’s all right.” Lying.

  Smoke drifted toward me and I stepped out of its way, holding Aurora so tightly she whimpered. Suddenly I was very tired and I sat down on the ground. Aurora stood on her chubby legs and held on to me, my arm about her. She stared at the fire the way we did, helplessly as the raging flames dwindled down to black wood and smoking embers. Then the charred black house collapsed and everything became cinders. By then, Arlie and the others were there, Auntie with them, crying, trying to comfort her father.

  Arlie circled the house to see what evidence he might find.

  “Look,” he said to Tulik.

  I saw them, too, what he pointed at. All around the house were wolverine tracks. A chill went up my spine. Tulik thought at first it might have been his dog, but looking closer, he said, disheartened, “No, it can only be human mischief. Someone wanted me to think it was a witch come here.”

  Even before it was cool enough, Tulik went through the rubble, poking at everything with a stick, as if the dog would be dug in somewhere, alive and panting, tongue hanging out from the heat.

  When the fire cooled, other men, too, poked at the debris, smothered the remaining hot spots, searched out smoke and cinders. All that was left in the ashes and black wood were some traps, a glass jar of instant Lipton iced tea, a few black pans, and the rake that had been leaning against the house. Some dishes with smoke stains were on the ground. I looked at the tracks that circled the dark haze, smelled the strong, smoky odor of the house. And then, not knowing what else to do, I sat on a rock and watched Tulik rake and sweep the wolverine prints away. He worked as if he believed he could sweep trouble off our backs. He didn’t notice that he’d burned the soles off his shoes and that his feet were blistered in places.

  “THEY BURNED DOWN Tulik’s house,” Dora-Rouge said. She repeated it over and over. “They burned it.” This broke Tulik’s heart even more. He closed his hand over hers. She leaned against him. She looked tiny and gray, her sharp bones poking through her skin.

  For several days, on his sore feet, Tulik walked the land and called for Mika, searching in the trees, walking through Holy String Town, even through the workers’ settlements. After that, he seemed bent and tired. He had hopes that the dog had run away in fear. At every moment, I half-expected Mika to come out from between trees. Mika, strong and old, pale-eyed, long-legged.

  A little at a time, we tallied all our losses. Things we’d barely noticed when they existed were suddenly heavy with meaning, as were the important things: the sleeping potion, the photographs, the amber. What we all missed most was Mika. Ek’s book was gone, too, the one with the beautiful drawings of plants on bark. Now Luce had no magnifying glass, nothing to read words with. After that she was forced to be patient while someone else read to her. So much, Tulik said, was only junk, but not the sealskin clothing he had traded for in 1937 and the salmon-skin coat he so prized for its tiny, waterproof stitches. With all that gone, Tulik hardly missed the radio he’d so valued before the fire. Its importance faded next to the loss of Mika and Ek’s book.

  I, at least, had Agnes’ coat.

  I had loved Tulik’s house, the way thin lines of light came inside it like long fingers of gods and spirits, touching the floor in slants and angles of warmth.

  And now I became more aware of our danger. Even now, they would send death with its long white hair. Like Eron saw before he killed my mother. Its white ragged clothing and its red, bloody hands.

  LUCE SAID there were witches who turned themselves into wolverines. “I saw it once with my own eyes,” she said.

  Auntie said she’d been going to sleep the afternoon of the fire, but something had told her to get up and go to the church.

  “It must have been your guardian spirit that sent you there,” said Miss Nett.

  Auntie looked pale.

  “It saved you.”

  Miss Nett agreed with Luce. “Yes, it is true there are witches who turn themselves into wolverines in order to do their work, just like the old people always said. Like Wolverine, they make themselves invisible. They can pass right by you and you’ll only feel a chill or catch the smell of them. Old Wolverine is just a mask. There’s a man or a woman underneath the mask, wearing it, you see. That perso
n can walk on all fours, and has learned to be sly. They move so soft, like a whisper, and all you see is a shadow.”

  “Like the agents in their shoes over there!” Luce said. She could still see far into the distance. “Do you see them?”

  Miss Nett said, “Did you ever see a wolverine with a pair of shoes? That’s how you know.”

  “No,” said Luce. “I’ve never seen a wolverine at all.”

  People came from all around to offer condolences to Tulik, and in hopes of seeing the wolverine tracks.

  Perhaps they were hopeful it was the trail of a spirit they could follow. As one woman said, “We want to know if it was the feet of Mondi.” Because it was Mondi, Wolverine, who’d made the world and the sun and the moon. They wanted to follow Wolverine’s spirit path, but at the same time they were afraid of the tracks.

  One day, listening to them talk about Mondi, I realized why Wolverine had destroyed the food of humans. It came to me like lightning out of the sky. It was so simple, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. Others knew this, I was sure. Wolverine wanted the people to leave, he wanted to starve them out of his territory, his world. Just as quickly, like thunder following the lightning, a plan sprang to my mind: I would starve out the soldiers and police.

  I told my plan to no one; I couldn’t risk it. I knew they would say it was foolish and dangerous.

  Quietly one night, in the brief hours of northern darkness, I slipped out of bed, pretending to be Wolverine, thinking inside myself the way a wolverine might think. Once the floor creaked and I stood still, to see if anyone woke, then I walked down the mound of land near the church, going unseen across the lines of their territory, straight toward their food supply. I knew Wolverine and his destruction perfectly well. Without words, I, like Wolverine, would tell the men to leave our world. Without words, I, like Wolverine, would speak, would destroy their food so they would grow hungry, so they would have to leave. I could hardly breathe for my nervousness and excitement. I knew it would work.