Dogsong

by Gary Paulsen

  Much had changed.

  Oogruk had talked until he was done and when he was done he had fallen silent. It might have taken days and nights, it felt like years, and when he was finished Russel had fallen asleep, a real sleep this time. He slept without moving, leaning against the wall and when he awakened the room was cool—still not cold—and he got up stiffly and stretched.

  Oogruk was silent, with his eyes closed, the lamp burned out. For a moment Russel thought he was dead, but he was still breathing and Russel took a deerskin and wrapped it around the old man’s shoulders.

  He knew what to do. From the walls he took the lances and bow and arrows. He also took a pair of bearskin pants and the squirrel underparka and the deerskin outerparka with the hair on the inside. Some of the hair was brittle on the deerskin but it was still thick and warm.

  He did not think of the objects as belonging to him, just thought of them as being what he needed. Oogruk had told him to use what he needed, including the dogs and sled and Russel followed those thoughts as if they had been his own, as in some way they were.

  He was wearing store pants and a coat and he took them off and hung them on the pegs. For a moment he stood naked in the cooling room, felt his skin tighten. Then he pulled on the bearskin pants, with the hair out, the skin soft and supple. Oogruk had worked oil into the leather to maintain them as he had taken care of everything. At the top there was a drawcord and he pulled it tight. The pants were just slightly large, but the right length.

  On the wall were sealskin mukluks. He took them down and felt inside. The grass bottoms were still good and he pulled them on, tied them up around his calves over the bearskin.

  Then came the squirrelskin innerparka with the hair out, soft and fine, like leather silk. Last he pulled over the outerparka, thick deerhide, with the hair in, and when that was on and shrugged in place he took down a pair of deerhide mittens with a shoulder thong and pulled them on.

  As soon as he was dressed he went outside before he could heat up. He had to get the sled out of the lean-to on the side of the house and see how much work it needed. The harnesses were also there and the gangline.

  It was cold, standing cold. So cold you could spit and it would bounce. When the wind hit him he pulled up the hood and tightened the drawstring through the wolverine ruff. The long fur came in around his face and stopped the wind. Then he pulled up the mitten cuffs and felt the air movement through the parka stop. His body brought the temperature up almost immediately.

  Around the sea side of the house Oogruk or somebody had made a lean-to. The door had leather hinges and a wooden pin through the latch. Russel pulled the pin and worked the door open against the snow.

  Inside stood a dogsled and there were harnesses on a peg on the wall. He reached in and pulled the sled out to examine it more closely. The sky was light now, a gray all-around haze off the sea and out of the clouds at the same time, and he thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful as the sled in the gray light.

  It was the old kind of sled, the kind they called basket sleds. When the modern, white mushers ran the races, they used toboggans made with plastic and bolted together. Ugly little tough sleds.

  But in the old days the people used sleds of delicate hardwood lashed with rawhide, all flexible and curved gracefully. Oogruk’s was like a carving of a sled, with birch rails down the side and elegant curved stanchions. Around the front was a warped-wood brushbow—something he’d never need unless he ran where there were trees—and it had one-eighth-inch brass runner shoes that looked almost new.

  There was a steel snowhook tied to the bridle and a rope gangline with tugs and neck-lines already in place.

  He spread it out on the snow and studied everything carefully. The lashing on the sled looked old, but had been oiled and was in good shape. The rope on the gangline was a corded nylon and looked also to be in top condition.

  He pulled the harnesses down and spread them out and went over them carefully as well. They were clean, had been patched a few times but were good for all of that.

  All he needed was a dog team.

  The harnesses all seemed the same size so he put them on the tugs, using the small ivory toggles to tie them in. Then he set the snowhook and pulled the gangline out in front of the sled and stopped to see what he had.

  He had never run a team by himself. But he’d seen mushers go by in races—one longdistance race went by the village—and he knew how things should look.

  He took the lead dog off the chain. It growled at him and raised its hair but he tightened his grip and paid no attention to the snarl. The dog held back and Russel had to drag him to the gangline. The dogs had run for Oogruk but that was more than two years earlier. They had not run since for anybody. And this stranger had to earn their respect, earn the run. The leader turned his shoulder in the curve that meant threat, the curve that meant attack, and lifted his lip to Russel. It was an open challenge and Russel cuffed him across the head with a stiff hand. Still the dog growled and now took a cut at Russel’s leg and Russel hit the dog harder.

  Then a thing happened, a thing from the trance with Oogruk, and he leaned down so his head was over the top of the leader’s head and he growled down at the dog. He did not know why he did this, did not know for certain what the growl meant but when it was finished he curved his head over the dog’s head and, still without knowing for sure why, he bit down, hard, across the bridge of the dog’s nose.

  The leader growled and flashed teeth but quickly backed down and that was the end of it. He stood to in harness, pulling the gangline out tight while Russel turned to bring the rest of the team.

  The other four dogs came nicely and settled into harness as if they’d been working all along. Russel smiled. It almost looked like a dog team.

  He had in mind this first time to just take the dogs out on the ice and see what happened. He took no weapons or other gear because he wasn’t sure if he could control the team and didn’t want to lose anything if the sled flipped.

  The first run was rough. The dogs ran as a gaggle, wide open, in a tangled bunch and not lined out as they should have been. Russel ran into them with the sled more than once when they stopped—before he could get the brake on—and when they hit the so-called pressure ridges a mile offshore, where the ice from the sea ground against the shore ice and piled up, he almost lost the sled.

  They tipped him and dragged him on his face for a quarter of a mile before he could get the snowhook set in a crack.

  When he had stopped them he put the sled upright and sat on it for a moment to think. It was close to dark, the quick three-hour day all but gone, and he would have to head back to the village, yet he did not want to leave the run.

  The wind cut at his cheeks and he turned his hood away from the force, took the cold.

  “You will have to know me,” he said quietly to the dogs after a time. “Just as I will have to know you.”

  Two of them looked back at him. It was perhaps not an invitation. It was perhaps not a look that meant anything at all except they looked back and their eyes caught his eyes and he knew they would run. He knew they would run. He knew when he put his feet to the sled and took the handlebar in his hands that they would run and he did not know how he knew this but only that it was so.

  When he was on the runners he reached down and disengaged the snowhook and used the small lip-squeak sound that Oogruk had told him to use to get the dogs running.

  They were off so fast he was almost jerked backward off the sled. It wasn’t a gaggle now, but a pulling force with all the dogs coordinating to line the sled out across the ice, a silent curve of power out ahead of him.

  The feeling, he thought, the feeling is that the sled is alive; that I am alive and the sled is alive and the snow is alive and the ice is alive and we are all part of the same life.

  He did not try to steer them that first time and they ran up the coast on the ice for three or four miles before their fat caught up with them and they slowed. When t
hey were down to a trot, tongues slavering off the heat from their run, Russel stopped them again.

  Oogruk said the leader had been geehaw trained the same as the white freighters did—to go right on gee, left on haw.

  “Gee!” Russel made it a loud command but he needn’t have. The lead dog turned off to the right and started out again, back in toward shore. When they got along the beach edge, where the ice was mixed with sand, Russel turned right again and headed back for the village.

  The dogs automatically headed for Oogruk’s house and their chains, and Russel let them go. When they pulled in he took them out of harness and put them back on the chains and went into the house.

  Oogruk was awake and sitting by the lamp. He had moved, Russel could tell by his position, but he was back and he smiled when Russel came in.

  “Did they run for you?” the old man asked. “Did they run for you?”

  Russel shrugged out of the parkas, down to bare skin. He laughed. “They ran, Grandfather. They ran for me like the wind.”

  “Ahh. That is fine, that is fine.”

  “It was a feeling, a feeling like being alive. The sled flew across the ice and I was alive with the sled.”

  “Yes. Yes. That is so—this is how it should be. You are correct.”

  “Is there meat left? We should eat meat.”

  The old man laughed. “You are a true person. Eat when you are happy. No. We ate it all last time. Get more from the cache. But first feed the dogs. Give them meat three times bigger than your fist. Always take care of the dogs first.”

  The words were not meant as a rebuke but they made Russel stop and think that perhaps he had been inconsiderate. He pulled on the light innerparka and went outside. It took him a few minutes to chop meat for the dogs and to get some for themselves and when he got back in the cabin Oogruk had the pot on the flame waiting. He had already put snow in the pot to melt and Russel was mystified as to how the old blind man could have gotten out and found snow and gotten back in to sit without Russel seeing him.

  Russel put the deer pieces in the pot and took his position on the floor. He had, essentially, moved in with the old man. Not that it was strange. In the normal Eskimo culture people moved around on a whim, especially young people. It was as natural as calling old people grandparents whether they were actually related or not.

  “This is good meat,” Oogruk said as the deer cooked. “But we need fresh. Fresh meat. You will have to hunt for us.”

  Russel nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. But what should I hunt?”

  Oogruk snorted. “Whatever there is. But maybe you should start small. Go out after we eat and sleep and try to get some hare or ptarmigan.”

  And they had eaten, and slept, and Russel had the team out in the hills to hunt fresh meat for the old man: for himself and the old man.

  He was hunting with the bow and had had many shots at both hares and ptarmigan but hadn’t hit any yet. The arrows wouldn’t fly true, wouldn’t go where he wanted them to go. Always they were just under or over or left or right—just enough to miss. On one ptarmigan he shot six times with the roundheaded bird arrows and the bird just sat as the arrows shushed past. Finally he flew.

  Russel looked at the dogs. They were all down, but not out of tiredness as much as boredom. The country has nothing for them to see, he thought; it is my mind that is wrong. Not the bow. It is my mind.

  “What should I do?” he asked. “What is it that I am doing wrong?”

  He closed his eyes and when they were shut the answer came to him. Oogruk had told him during his trance, had told him how to use the lances and the bow.

  “Look to the center of the center of where the point will go. Look inside the center,” the old man had said.

  And so he pulled the hook and squeaked the team up and ran a few miles over the rolling hills until the team scared up another flock of ptarmigan. This time the dogs saw them and heard them and he had a good ride until he could get them stopped as they chased the birds. When he finally got them down he set the hook and took the bow off the sled.

  The quiver he put over one shoulder but he kept out two of the bird arrows and put one of them in the bow.

  The birds had flown over a small ridge and he followed, walking slowly, keeping his head down as he approached the top of the ridge.

  Most of them had gone across. But eight or ten had landed just past the high point and two of them were hunkered under a small piece of willow, nearly hidden white-against-white.

  Russel drew the bow, but Oogruk’s advice stopped him. He looked at the nearest bird more closely. Rather than just see the bird he tried to find the exact spot he wanted the arrow to hit. Then he tried to see in the center of that tiny spot and he drew and released the bowstring and the arrow moved across the space, floated across and took the bird in a shower of feathers, and the commotion frightened the other birds away in a cloud of flying white streaks.

  Russel ran over to the bird and picked it up. He had killed many ptarmigan with the small rifle that spit—the .22—but never one in the old way, with the bow.

  “When you kill the old way,” Oogruk had said, “it is because the animal wishes to be taken then. You must thank the animal by leaving the head with food in the mouth—if it’s a land animal. With sea animals, you put fresh water in their mouths.”

  He pulled off the head and found some dried berries on a branch and put them in the bird’s beak and put the head under the bush. “Thank you for this good meat,” he said. “It will be enjoyed.”

  A part of him felt silly for that. He was far enough away from the old way still to almost not believe in it. Yet another part of him felt right, more right than he’d been in a long time.

  It was coming dark as he trudged back to the sled. The dogs were sitting up as he came toward them and they wagged their tails when they saw the bird.

  “Some meat,” he said to them. “Not much but a start. A start.”

  He put the bird in the sled bag and tied the bow and quiver back on the sled, pulled the hook and called the dogs up.

  He did not want to go back to the village yet. Even if it was too dark to hunt more he could run out along the tundra and see the country. There was no trail and he let the dogs have their heads, or let the leader run. The rest followed wherever he went.

  Russel stood easily on the runners and held the handlebar loosely. When he’d first run the dogs he was tight and rigid—afraid of losing them—but he was quickly coming to realize the sled had a life of its own. It was very flexible, giving and taking the bumps with a flowing motion, and it made gentle sounds. The rawhide lashing points creaked softly and the runners hummed, a kind of high-pitched ssssss sound that was very pleasant to the ear. Riding was more a matter of fitting in to the sled than trying to control it. With his knees relaxed and his hips loose he could shift his weight only slightly and the sled turned with him. It became almost an extension of his body, just as he was becoming almost an extension of the dogs.

  They started down a long slope, across at an angle, perhaps a mile of downhill running, and the snow was packed so they didn’t sink in. In seconds they were running wide open, their tongues flying, their ears laid flat, tails down.

  Russel kept one foot on the claw brake to keep the sled from running up on them and a great joy grew within him.

  The silence was broken by his laugh but the dogs didn’t look back. They drove on down the hill, the sled flying from hummock to hummock, Russel laughing and playing the sled back and forth to miss the larger mounds. Twice it flipped on its side but he stayed with it and it bounced back onto its runners, all the time careening down the hill.

  When they finally reached the bottom he stopped the team and set the hook.

  It was then he saw the caribou. She was standing, side to him, part of the gathering darkness, part of all he could see. She had a ghost quality, the light fur of her belly blending with the snow color. He held his breath.

  Hold for me, he thought, hold for me,
deer. He moved slowly and took the bow from the case. It was still strung from when he was hunting the ptarmigan and he took out one of the wide-ivory-tipped big-headed arrows and fitted it to the bow.

  Inside the center of the center of the caribou, he thought—that’s where the arrow must fly.

  Still she stood. Waiting, looking at him and the dogs, and he pulled the bow and released it and did not see it fly in the dusk but he knew, he knew that it flew as his mind would have it fly.

  The caribou hunched slightly at the shoulder and took four steps and folded down, the front legs bending slowly, almost as if she were going to sleep. The dogs had held silently but when they saw her hit and going down it triggered the prey response from the wolf memory and they went mad. They slammed against the harnesses, again and again until the hook jerked out of the snow and the sled came loose and the team was on the deer in a tangled mass, some tearing at her throat, some at her back legs, some at her belly.

  Russel ran after them. Using the bow as a club, yelling and hitting and throwing them back, he finally got them under control and off the dying caribou. It took five more minutes to get them lined out in the opposite direction from the animal and when he turned back the deer was dead.

  He stopped and looked down at her. The feathers of the arrow protruded from just in back of the shoulder. The arrow had gone through the heart. She had died with her head to the east, which was good, and Russel found some of the sweet tundra grass the caribou liked and put it in her mouth. When the ritual was done he stood away from her and looked above the deer’s head and said: “Thank you for this meat, deer. It will be enjoyed.”

  From the sled back he took the short knife he’d gotten from Oogruk and made the gut cut, from the ribs back, and dropped the large stomach. He reached in for the liver and heart and cut them out and set them aside for Oogruk. The old man could get the eyes later. Reaching up and in he jerked the lungs out and cut them in five pieces and gave them to the dogs, only just keeping his hands safe from their lunging, again using the bow as a club to stop their fighting. The blood smell was strong for them and they wanted to fight.