Dogsong

by Gary Paulsen

  The dogs went faster still and he was afraid that he would burn them out. He stopped them and let the right point dog loose—the one just in back of the leader on the right. He seemed to be the strongest dog and the most excited by the smell of the bear tracks. Perhaps he would catch the bear and keep it busy until Russel could get there and bring it down. Or try.

  There was much doubt in him now about the bear, some fear, and more doubt. But the dog tore away up the streambed and Russel took the killing lance from the tie-down on the sled and loosened the bow case and quiver.

  Then he let the dogs take the sled after the loose dog. They were clamoring to run—even though weakened by hunger. They smelled it now, saw him take up the weapons and knew that he would try to kill soon and the sight made them crazy.

  Up the old stream they wound, following the tracks, faster and faster until at last they came around a corner and there it was.

  The bear had his rear back against the bank, his head low and teeth bared. He was immense, the largest bear Russel had ever seen, even in pictures. The fur was dirty white, almost yellow. It was an old male, with his teeth worn down, but full of the winter death that makes a polar so awesome. When he saw the sled coming he raised on his hind legs and Russel’s heart almost stopped. The bear was a tower, a white-yellow tower standing over the loose dog. The dog had been dodging back and forth, trying to worry the bear, but when the bear raised he went in to bite at the white back leg. It was his last act.

  The bear’s head snaked down in a great curve of power and his jaws closed on the back of the dog and broke its back in a bite so savage that the dog was dead before it could scream. Then the bear shook its head—a tearing shake—and the dead dog flew sideways in a spray of gore.

  All in silence.

  But now the bear rumbled in its throat and turned to Russel and the sled and the team. Here was an enemy, a thing to face, and it would face it and kill it.

  But wait, Russel thought. But wait, bear. It is the same as the mammoth. There is sadness here for the same reason. A dog is dead. You will want the other dogs and you will turn your head sideways and the lance will enter you like light. But wait, bear. Wait for me. Wait for the sadness of your life that you must die to feed the man. Not all the time. But wait for the sadness this time, bear.

  Russel took the lance and stood away from the sled and let the dogs go. They went for the bear in a pummeling scream, and with the same sharp movement the bear lowered on all fours and came for Russel.

  The bear did not want the dogs. He wanted Russel. He wanted to kill the enemy standing with the little stick, kill the man. Kill the man-thing.

  Russel felt a great calmness. He wasn’t Russel. He was the man in the dream and the bear wasn’t a bear but the great stinking beast and Russel set the shaft of the killing lance in the ground and held the wide-ivory point at the right height to take the bear at the base of his throat and now the bear came and now the dogs swerved in to take him and the bear’s head went sideways for the dogs and the bear, stinking with the same smell as the beast in the dream, and now the bear had his head sideways and now the lance entered.

  Like light. It slid through the hair and the fat and into the center of the bear, into the center of the center of the bear and Russel screamed a savage roar of triumph and the bear was on him.

  On him and over him, hitting him with a stunning blow of his right paw even as the lance took his life. Russel knew he had killed the bear, but felt the pain and saw the flash as his own life seemed to fly from him and he thought with a violent clarity: but wait, bear.

  But wait, bear.

  And then he saw nothing.

  And these things happened when Russel’s life folded into the dream and the dream folded into his life:

  When he came back into his life from where the bear had knocked him away the bear was dead and dogs were chewing at his rear end and Russel was underneath his left front shoulder, the blood dripping down on him from where the lance shaft had entered the bear.

  He fought to get from under and crawl to the side. When he could stand, his head aching and dizzy, he looked down on the bear and felt his heart go out of him and into the bear.

  “Thank you. The meat will be welcome.”

  A sadness took him, because he had no food for the bear. Such a bear it was, so big, but he had nothing for him but the thought of food. It would have to be enough.

  The bear was a mountain of meat. It weighed close to three quarters of a ton. More meat than he could eat, than the dogs could eat in a month. More even than the woman-girl …

  He remembered her suddenly.

  He would feed the dogs and take some meat and go back for her. As fast as possible.

  He used his knife to lift the back-end hide and took a large chunk of meat from the rear leg. This he fed to the dogs, who ate and puked and ate again. Then he took another large chunk of fat meat, which he put in the sled, and he turned them and started back.

  They didn’t want to leave the bear. The meat had given them strength almost miraculously fast, but they didn’t want to leave the kill. He finally had to get in front and drag the leader back down the streambed until they had gone around two bends and were well away from the dead bear. Even then they worked reluctantly for a time.

  But he let them seek their own pace and kept them going and in two days—feeding them liberally from the meat as he drove them—they had come within sight of the tent.

  It was day—clear and cold—and he saw the lean-to half a mile before they got to it. It was not tattered, but there was no steam coming from the opening at the top and he feared for her.

  “Nancy!” He called her name when he came near the tent. “I am back …”

  But there was no answer. He set the hook and grabbed the meat and ran for the tent. It took him just a second to lift a corner and get inside but he felt the cold immediately.

  She was lying on her side, the end of a skin wrapped around her as a sleeping bag and she was either sleeping or dead or in a coma.

  The lamp was out. The fat was gone. He took some from the bear, rich yellow fat, and cut pieces into the lamp. He found some moss and got the lamp going—as the first time, only with great difficulty.

  The warmth came out from the flame at once and he opened the skin around the woman-girl to let the heat reach her.

  When he moved her he saw her eye flicker and he thought: twice. Twice she has come back from death.

  But this time she was not frozen, as she had been the first time, or not frozen to such depth. There was not that wrong with her. She smiled at him.

  “I did not think you were coming back.” She spoke in a whisper that was almost a hiss.

  “I said I would be back.”

  She said nothing more. He cut meat in small pieces and heated them on the lamp and put them in her mouth and she chewed and swallowed and where there had been an end there was once more a beginning.

  But worse was wrong. Worse than he thought could be.

  Even with the meat she did not revive. She ate, but when he thought she should eat more she held back and she did not come up and because he had come to know the woman-girl he worried.

  “You are sick,” he said. Outside it was dark and the wind was blowing again. Or still. “What makes you sick?”

  She didn’t answer at first. Then she grunted. “It is the baby. The baby is coming early. I cannot stop it.”

  “Ahh. That is not good, is it?”

  “No.” She turned away from him, face to the back of the tent. “Maybe you should leave me alone.”

  But he had run once, left her to go for meat and he would not leave her again. Leaving had torn him and he still thought of the dream and the tattered tent with the foxes. “I will stay.”

  She said nothing to this and he took that as acceptance—or perhaps she was too sick to argue.

  “Is there a thing I can do?” he asked.

  But again she did not answer. He put more fat in the lamp, pulled the wic
k up to make more heat, then went outside and fed the dogs. They would sleep for days now, he knew, and that was fine. He had enough meat to last a long time and by then they would be able to travel. If not, he could just go back to the carcass and get more. With a strong team it was only a day and a half away.

  With food anything was possible.

  When the dogs were fed and the meat pulled back in the shelter, he felt the exhaustion come down on him and it was not possible for him to stay awake.

  In the warmth of the lean-to he slept, the ringing, deep sleep of the utterly tired when it seems as if nothing can awaken the mind. His head lay back against her feet and he slept and thought he would not dream.

  But a thing came. He could not say if it was a dream or if it was real. But a thing came to happen in that night that he knew—and if he knew it sleeping or knew it awake it did not matter.

  Foldings:

  The woman-girl became a woman in the night. She was quiet at first, but moving and throwing her body back and forth and then in the yellow of the lamp she gave short-sharp sounds, sounds from the center of her center.

  And he saw-felt that.

  She strained and heaved and pushed and in the folds of the skin and the agony of it was not something he understood but he knew the sadness because it was the same sadness somehow that killing the bear had been.

  In his mind he tried to help her but he was not sure if he really did or only wished that he could.

  And still she worked. The cries became closer together, and shorter, and deeper, and then she screamed, and then a time, a lifetime of almost animal whimpers and another scream and the thing had happened and it was in his hands and there was not life in it.

  “Take it away!” she screamed. “Take it away now. Before I see it. Put it away from me. Outside.”

  And either he did or dreamed he did or wished he did—he went from the tent with the baby and up on the hill in back of the tent and he walked in the cold and put it on the hill and he thought that he had never been so sad. A tearing sadness.

  But there was not life in it. There was not life.

  And when he got back to the lean-to or thought he did or wished he did she was either asleep or unconscious and he fell back on the skin and slept with her.

  And he wished then that he had stayed in his village.

  * * *

  And these things happened when Russel’s life folded into the dream and the dream folded into his life:

  Nancy lay for five days in the lean-to while Russel fed her meat from the bear, warming small pieces on the end of a willow and handing them to her.

  But there was some trouble he did not understand with the woman and soon she went back to being a girl-woman, looking small and pale, and when those five days had passed he knew they would have to go.

  “You need help,” he said. “From a doctor. We will have to go to a settlement.”

  She said nothing. Her face had taken on the yellow of the lamp but it was the wrong yellow, the kind of yellow that stayed even when he opened the tent flap and let the daylight in.

  “Here is the way it is,” he told her, though he was not sure she knew what he meant, or even that she listened. “I do not know for sure where we are or how far we’ve come. But I think it is closer to the north coast and a village there than it would be to try to get back to your village. We came a long way. My dogs are strong.” Even now, he thought, even now it is hard to keep pride away. “So I think we will go to the carcass of the bear and get meat and fat and then run for the north. As before. It should not be far to the edge of the land and there will be a village as there are villages along the coast everywhere and there will be help for you.” It was the longest talk he had made since finding her. “That is the way it is.”

  Still she said nothing. But she nodded so he knew that even weak she understood and had been listening and he felt better for that.

  So began the race.

  The dogs were strong almost past measuring. Though there were only four left they had been fed meat and run so their legs rippled and were hard to the touch. Their heads were also hard. They had seen and done much and now they knew the man on the sled, knew that he was part of them, knew that no matter what happened he would be there and that made them stronger still. The strength in them came back to Russel and he fed on it and returned it as more strength still.

  We have fire, he thought as they left the camp and went for meat to begin the final leg of the run. We have fire between us that grows and grows. Fire that will take us north to safety, fire that will save Nancy.

  So began the race.

  They took meat from the bear, as much as Russel thought they could carry, but had to leave the hide, the beautiful hide, because it was too heavy. He took the skin from the front legs to make pants, but the rest had to stay.

  She brightened when they reached the dead bear. “You did this,” she whispered. “With a spear you did this?”

  He looked away. “And with the dogs. A man does not kill a bear alone. The dogs helped.”

  “Still. It is a huge thing, is it not?”

  And now he chose not to answer. The dead bear made him sad, doubly so because they had to leave so much behind. It seemed wrong to talk of it as being a big thing—killing the bear with the lance. He did not wish to speak cheaply of it. Or brag of it.

  So began the race.

  They left the bear and headed north again, running in sun and light wind. In the dark and some gentle snow they ran; up the edge of the saucer of light they ran, day into day they ran for six days, stopping only to feed the dogs and rest them in three-and four-hour naps, sleeping on the sled—or Russel sleeping next to it and Nancy on the skins—then up and gone again.

  I must win this race, Russel thought. I must win. The girl-woman named Nancy got worse, grew weaker, but his strength grew with her weakness, his strength grew and went into the dogs.

  Now they had more light. Winter was still there, but the sun was coming back and he ran through the sun, grateful for the warmth. Even the nights were not so cold.

  The dogs did not go down now. They were everything he would have wanted them to be and he drove them with his mind, drove them to the edge of the land, drove them until he felt the land start to tip down and then he smelled it, finally saw the sea ice out ahead.

  When he got them to the edge of the sea he stopped and leaned over.

  “See? We are north. We have come to the edge of the land.”

  She was still, but the edges of her eyes were glowing with life, with happiness, with the pride in his voice at what his dogs had done. She was weak, weak and down, but there was still life, enough life, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a smile, a smile that went into Russel.

  “See?” he said, raising the team. “We will be in a village soon.”

  And he brought them up and ran them with his thoughts and on the ice they cut a snowmachine trail and he followed it to the left because that is what his leader said to do and he was the leader and the leader was him.

  They drove down the coast, drove on the edge of the sea-ice and land-snow, drove into the soft light of the setting spring sun, drove for the coastal village that had to be soon; the man-boy and the woman-girl and the driving mind-dogs that came from Russel’s thoughts and went out and out and came from the dreamfold back.

  Back.

  PART THREE

  Dogsong

  Come, see my dogs.

  Out before me

  they go,

  in the long line to the sea.

  Out they go.

  Come, see my dogs.

  They carry me

  into all things, all things I will be;

  all things that will come to me

  will come to my dogs.

  I stand on the earth and I sing.

  Come, see my dogs.

  See them, see them

  in the smoke of my life,

  in the eyes of my children,

  in the sound of my feet,r />
  in the dance of my words.

  I stand on the earth and I sing.

  Come, see my dogs.

  My dogs are what lead me,

  they are what move me.

  See my dogs in the steam,

  in the steam of my life.

  They are me.

  Come, see my dogs.

  I was nothing before them,

  no man

  and no wife.

  Without them, no life,

  no girl-woman breathing

  no song.

  Come, see my dogs.

  With them I ran,

  ran north to the sea.

  I stand by the sea and I sing.

  I sing of my hunts

  and of Oogruk.

  Come, see my dogs.

  Out before me they go.

  Out before me they curve

  in the long line out

  before me

  they go, I go, we go. They are me.

  If you enjoyed Dogsong, we feel sure you’d like another book by Gary Paulsen. Here is a sample from his popular novel Hatchet.

  Brian Robeson stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below. It was a small plane, a Cessna 406—a bushplane—and the engine was so loud, so roaring and consuming and loud, that it ruined any chance for conversation.

  Not that he had much to say. He was thirteen and the only passenger on the plane with a pilot named—what was it? Jim or Jake or something—who was in his mid-forties and who had been silent as he worked to prepare for take-off. In fact since Brian had come to the small airport in Hampton, New York to meet the plane—driven by his mother—the pilot had spoken only five words to him.

  “Get in the copilot’s seat.”

  Which Brian had done. They had taken off and that was the last of the conversation. There had been the initial excitement, of course. He had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the copilot’s seat with all the controls right there in front of him, all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off, had been interesting and exciting. But in five minutes they had leveled off at six thousand feet and headed northwest and from then on the pilot had been silent, staring out the front, and the drone and the sea of green tress that lay before the plane’s nose and flowed to the horizon, spread with lakes, swamps, and wandering streams and rivers.