Dogsong

by Gary Paulsen

  Then he tried to ease it back so that the butt end of the harpoon would hang up on an edge. It was harder than it looked and took him ten or twelve tries before the harpoon shaft caught in a small hole. When it drew tight the point jammed and he took up the strain until he had the weight of the chunk moving. Slowly he pulled the ice through the dark water, slowly and gently heaving on the great weight.

  He gradually brought the chunk across the lead until the end butted against the edge he stood on, then, using the harpoon as a prod he jammed and pushed until the ice lay the long way across the lead.

  When it was in position he went back to the sled and pulled out the hook. “Up! Up and across the ice.”

  The leader knew what he wanted, but he held back, whining louder now. The ice didn’t look that steady, didn’t look safe. He didn’t move to the side, but he wouldn’t go, either.

  Twice more Russel urged him from the sled but the dog wouldn’t go and Russel threw the sled over on its side and walked to the front. The leader shook and crouched down but didn’t move away. Russel took his mittens off and hung them by their cords behind his back. Then he grabbed a handful of hair on the dog’s neck and another at the root of his tail and heaved the dog out onto the chunk.

  The leader fought for balance, found it on the teetering ice, then drove with all his might for the other side of the lead, clawing and scrabbling.

  So powerful was his tearing struggle that he pulled the next two dogs after him, and those three then pulled the rest of the team and the sled in a great leap onto the floating ice bridge.

  Russel grabbed the handle as it went by and barely got his feet on the runners. A kick left, another to the right and the sled flew across the gap of water at the far end, splashed once as Russel threw his feet up to stay out of the water—and he was across.

  Across onto the land ice. Off the floating pack ice. Safe.

  Safe with the dogs. Safe and heading for the village. Safe and moving to where he could now see the light of the fuel tank on the hill. Safe out of the steam of the water and back on the solid ice.

  5

  Shamans had great power in the old times before the church came. They could make stones talk, and the snow, and I knew one once that had two heads that talked to each other. They fought all the time, those two heads, and finally it was said that one of the heads told the body to kill the other. This it did and of course that made the whole body die. Shamans had great power but they weren’t always smart.

  —an old woman’s memory.

  Russel had moved away from life in the village but he was not rebelling. He was working toward something in his mind, not away from something he didn’t like. He had moved in with Oogruk, but his father knew it and approved.

  There was school, of course. He was not going to school but he was learning and everybody knew that; it would have been hard to stop him trying to learn what he wanted and needed to know and so nobody tried. It would not have been polite to try it and many considered Russel old enough to know what he was doing.

  Life in the village went on as it had before. Men took snowmachines out on the ice to find seals, when they could get through the leads. Other hunters took other snowmachines back into the hills and found caribou, sometimes killing six or seven to bring back for other people who could not hunt.

  In the long darkness house life took on a meaning that couldn’t exist in the summer. Families sometimes moved in with each other for a time, played games, fought the boredom that could come with the semi-arctic night. The village had a game room with television and it was usually crowded with both adults and children, watching the outside world.

  All but Russel.

  And Oogruk.

  Russel hunted caribou twice more but didn’t get any meat either time. He saw them at a distance, but couldn’t get the sled close enough to make a stalk and a kill. On the second attempt he set the hook, left the dogs, and with the bow worked up some small creek beds but the deer saw him before he could get close enough for a shot. He took rabbits and ptarmigan home each time, using a small net Oogruk had fashioned and showed him how to use. With the net, laying it on the ground and using a long line, he lured the birds with a handful of berries. When they were on the net he flicked it closed with a jerk of his wrist and caught five and six birds at a time.

  So he made meat. Light meat. That’s what Oogruk called it. And it was good meat, as far as it went. The small birds tasted sweet and were tender and soft, which suited Oogruk’s poor teeth. But the dogs needed heavy meat, heavy red meat and fat or they could not work, could not run long and hard.

  And heavy meat meant deer. Caribou.

  Or seal.

  So it came on a cold clear morning that Russel decided to go out for seal again. It was still dark when he awakened and sat up on the floor but before he could get his pants on Oogruk was sitting up and had lighted the lamp.

  “It is time for me to go out for seals again. For food for the dogs. I will go out on the ice.”

  Oogruk nodded. “Yes. Yes. I know that. But this time I will go with you.”

  Russel stopped, his bearskin pants halfway up. He looked at the old man. “To hunt seals?”

  “That. And other things. There are certain things that must be done at this time and it is for an old man to do them when the time is right.”

  Russel waited but Oogruk said nothing further. Instead he stood, slightly stiff, and feeling with his hands found clothes on the side wall. He dressed in pants and mukluks and another squirrelskin underparka. Then he took down an older outerparka, of deerskin, one with holes and worn places, and shrugged it on over his head.

  “I have the good parka,” Russel said. “Let me give it to you.”

  Oogruk shook his head. “Not this time. You keep it. You will need it and I won’t. Go now and harness the dogs.”

  Russel finished dressing and went out for the team. They knew him now, knew him well, and greeted him with tails and barks when they saw him take the harness off the pegs. He laid the gangline out onto the snow and harnessed the team quickly, wondering why the old man wanted to go.

  When the dogs were harnessed he took the weapons—two harpoons and one killing lance with a plain sharpened point—and tied them into the sled. When he turned back to the house Oogruk had come out of the door and was looking across the ice.

  His milk-white eyes stared across the ice. But he was seeing nothing. Or, Russel thought, maybe he was seeing everything.

  “I smell the sea out there,” Oogruk said. “It is not too far today. The ice lets the smell come across.”

  “The dogs are harnessed.”

  “I know.”

  “Would you drive them?”

  “No. I will ride. Put me in the sled and you drive.”

  Russel took his hand and put him in the sled, settling him back against the cross-pieces at the back. When Oogruk was settled Russel pulled the hook and called the dogs up.

  They tore away from the buildings and out across the ice. When he was away on the ice and the fire was burned out of them a bit he dragged the brake down and slowed them and looked back at the village.

  Small gray buildings and caches on the dirty snow of the beach, with people here and there. Someone he did not recognize waved at him and he waved back. Dirty smoke came from chimneys and slid off with the wind and he watched as they moved away, picked up speed on the clean ice-snow, until he rounded the point heading north and the buildings were gone.

  He waited for some kind of sadness to come but it did not, did not, and he turned back to the sled and the dogs lined out in front and he moved them over to the right a little, using a soft “Gee,” to let them know it was a gentle turn. The sea was a blue line on the horizon when they crossed the high points and could see ahead.

  Oogruk said nothing, but when they got within a couple of miles of the sea and the spray smell was heavy in the cold air he held up his mittened hand to signal a halt.

  “There will be seals. Watch for seals.” H
is voice was excited, hushed but alive. “They will be on the edge of the ice. Watch for them.”

  Russel looked out on the edge of the ice but saw no seals. The light was half gone now and he knew that he would have to leave the sled to hunt.

  “I will leave you with the dogs and go out on foot.”

  But now Oogruk shook his head. “No. No. It is time to talk one more time and I must leave you. But I wanted to come out here for it because I missed the smell of the sea. I wanted to smell the sea one more time.”

  Russel looked down in the sled at the old man. “You’re leaving me?”

  “Yes. But first I must tell you what to do …”

  “Where are you going?”

  “It is time to leave,” Oogruk said simply. “It is my time. But there is a thing you must do now to become a man. You must not go home.”

  “Not go home? I do not understand.”

  “You must leave with the dogs. Run long and find yourself. When you leave me you must head north and take meat and see the country. When you do that you will become a man. Run as long as you can. That’s what used to be. Once I ran for a year to find good birds’ eggs. Run with the dogs and become what the dogs will help you become. Do you understand?”

  Russel remembered now when Oogruk had said he would take a long journey. He spoke quietly. “I think so. But you, what are you to do?”

  “You will leave me here on the ice, out here by the edge of the sea.”

  “With respect, Grandfather, I can’t do that. There is a doctor. Things can be done if something is bothering you.”

  Oogruk shook his head. “An old man knows when death is coming and he should be left to his own on it. You will leave me here on the ice.”

  “But …”

  “You will leave me here on the ice.”

  Russel said nothing. He didn’t help Oogruk, but the old man got out of the sled himself. When he was standing on the ice he motioned Russel away. “Go now.”

  Russel couldn’t. He held back, held the sled. “I will stay with you.”

  “You will go.” The milk-eyes looked through him to the sea, to the snow, to the line of blue that was the sky. “You will go now.”

  And there was such strength in his voice that Russel knew he must go. He took the handlebar in one hand and pulled the hook, and the dogs surged away and Russel let them run without looking back. He went mile after mile, and finally he could stand it no more and he called the team around and headed back, his eyes scanning the ice in sweeps as they ran.

  When they were still half a mile from where Oogruk had gotten off, Russel could see his small figure sitting on the ice and he smiled.

  He would talk the old man into riding back to the village, that’s all there was to it. The old man would come back and tell him more about living the old way, would sit at night and tell the stories that made the winter nights short.

  But when he drew close he saw that Oogruk was sitting still. Very still. His hands were folded in his lap and his legs were stretched out in front of him and the eyes were open and not blinking with life.

  Russel stopped the team before the dogs were close to Oogruk and walked ahead on foot.

  Oogruk did not turn his head but stared out to sea, out past the edge of ice where his spirit had flown, out and out. His face was already freezing and there was some blown snow in the corner of his eyes that didn’t melt. Russel brushed the snow away with his mitten, a small gesture he made unknowingly, and a place in him wanted to smile and another place wanted to cry. “You left too soon, Grandfather. I was coming back for you.”

  He stood for a time looking down at the dead old man. Then he thought of something and he went back to the sled and took the small harpoon with the ivory toggle point from the weapons lashing. He put the harpoon across Oogruk’s lap so that it balanced on his knees.

  “You will want to hunt seals. Use it well and make much sweet meat.”

  Then he went to the sled. The dogs were nervous. They smelled the death and didn’t like it. The leader whined and fidgeted and was glad when Russel called them around and headed north.

  Before he let them run he turned back to Oogruk one more time. “I will remember you,” he said, then let the dogs go.

  He would run north for a time, then cut across the ice and head northeast into the land. He had weapons and dogs and a good sled. The rest would come from the land.

  Everything would come from the land.

  PART TWO

  The

  Dreamrun

  6

  The Run

  Out.

  Into the sweeps, into the great places where the land runs to the sky and into the sky until there is no land and there is no sky.

  Out.

  Into the distance where all lines end and all lines begin. Into the white line of the iceblink where the mother of wind lives to send down the white death of the northern storms.

  Out.

  Into the mother of wind and the father of blue ice.

  Russel went out where there is nothing, into the wide center of everything there is.

  Into the north.

  His village lay on the northern edge of the tree line. Here and there in small valleys nearby there were scrub spruce, ugly dwarfed things torn and ripped by the fierce wind. But as the run went north even these trees vanished to be replaced by small brush and gnarled grass. Snow was scarce, blown, and the landscape looked like something from another planet.

  Still there is beauty, Russel thought.

  It was hard to believe the beauty of that torn and forlorn place. The small mountains—large hills, really—were sculpted by the wind in shapes of rounded softness, and the light …

  The light was a soft blue-purple during the day, a gentle color that goes into the eyes and becomes part of the mind and goes still deeper and deeper to enter the soul. Soul color is the daylight.

  At night, Russel knew, often the wind would die and go back to its mother and the cold would come down from the father of ice and the northern lights would come to dance.

  They went from red to green and back again, moving across the sky in great pulses of joy, rippling the heavens, pushing the stars back, and were so grand to see that many people believed that they were the souls of dead-born children dancing in heaven and playing with balls of grass and leather.

  Even in the wind there was beauty to Russel. The wind came from the north in a steady push that made the dogs work evenly, and the wind made the snow move, change into shapes that blended into the light of day and the soft glow from the sky at night.

  Out.

  When he’d gone far enough north along the coast to miss the village, Russel headed back into shore and moved up onto the land in a small gully, headed mostly north but slightly east.

  He moved into the dark. He ran the dogs out and down. Ran them steadily for a full day, eighteen hours, letting them find the way. He stood on the sled’s runners and moved to get away from what he knew, ran to get away from death sitting on the ice in Oogruk’s form.

  When the first dog started to weave with exhaustion, still pulling, but slipping back and forth as it pulled, he sensed their tiredness in the black night and stopped the team. He had a piece of meat in the sled, deer meat from a leg and he cut it in six pieces. When he’d pulled them under an overhanging ledge out of the wind and tipped the sled on its side, he fed them. But they were too tired to eat and slept with the meat between their legs.

  He didn’t know that they could become that tired and the knowledge frightened him. He was north, in the open, and the dogs wouldn’t eat and they were over a hundred and fifty miles to anything. Without the dogs he would die.

  Without the dogs he was nothing.

  He’d never felt so alone and for a time fear roared in him. The darkness became an enemy, the cold a killer, the night a ghost from the underworld that would take him down where demons would tear strips off him.

  He tried a bite of the meat but he wasn’t hungry. Not from tiredne
ss. At least he didn’t think so.

  But he knew he wasn’t thinking too well, and so he lay down between the two wheel-dogs and pulled them close on either side and took a kind of sleep.

  Brain-rest more than sleep. He closed his eyes and something inside him rested. The darkness came harder and the northern lights danced and he rested. He was not sure how long it might have been, but it was still dark when one of the dogs got up and moved in a circle to find a better resting position.

  The dog awakened the remainder of the team and they all ate their meat with quiet growls of satisfaction that came from their stomachs up through their throats. Small rumbles that could be felt more than heard.

  When they’d eaten they lay down again, not even pausing to relieve themselves. And Russel let them stay down for all of that long night. He dozed now with his eyes open, still between the two wheel-dogs, until the light came briefly.

  Then he stood and stretched, feeling the stiffness. The dogs didn’t get up and he had to go up the line and lift them. They shook hard to loosen their muscles and drop the tightness of sleeping long.

  “Up now! Up and out.”

  Out.

  They started north again, into a land that Russel did not know. At first the dogs ran poorly, raggedly, hating it. But inside half a mile they had settled into their stride and were a working team once more.

  But they had lost weight.

  In the long run they had lost much weight and it was necessary for Russel to make meat. He didn’t know how long they could go without meat but he didn’t think it could be long.

  He had to hunt.

  If he did not get meat the dogs would go down—and he was nothing without the dogs. He had to get food for them.

  The light ended the dark-fears but did not bring much warmth. Only the top edge of the sun slipped into view above the horizon, so there was no heat from it.

  To get his body warm again after the long night of being still he held onto the sled and ran between the runners. He would run until his breath grew short, then jump on and catch his wind, then run again. It took a few miles of that to get him warm and as soon as he was, the great hole of hunger opened in his stomach and he nearly fell off the sled.