The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  A second spray of snow and a distant rifle report brought Henry LaRue erect in the igloo. "Mon dieu, the man is berserk -- or has formidable humor." LaRue heaved his bulk toward the low exit tunnel. Head and shoulders committed, he changed his mind and buttocked back against Dr. West. "No doubt this Peterluk shoots only at strangers -- ?"

  Both whitemen glanced up at their guide. The young Esk, with a smile as quizzical as an Eskimo's, was kneeling on the skin-covered ledge, poking his finger into the upper bullet hole.

  "Get down here," Dr. West ordered, and the Esk peered down at them, smiled like a Cheshire cat in the dimness of the igloo and slid down beside them, his hand groping.

  The Esk grunted with pleasure, having discovered an unidentifiable glob of meat which the escaped Peterluk must have left. The young Esk's chewing sounds were punctuated by Eevvaalik's tubercular coughing.

  Even now while some people walk on the Moon, others live like this, Dr. West thought vaguely, waiting for the next shot.

  In the cold stench, Eevvaalik sat above him on the ledge, trimming the seal oil lamp as intently as if her husband, Peterluk, were not shooting into the igloo.

  "Eevvaalik, a bullet might hit you," Dr. West said. "Come down here."

  Another shot smashed through the igloo. Eevvaalik made no move to lie down with the two whitemen. Smiling, she turned her head away from these two whitemen hiding on the floor. "Bullets of this person's husband have eyes -- for you -- he says."

  With a spitting sound the fourth bullet passed through the snow wall.

  "Tell her that we surrender," LaRue murmured, brushing snow from his face. "Tell her surrender means we -- we whitemen will go away."

  Dr. West told her to tell her husband. "Please shout to him."

  The flickering flame line from the lamp reflected on her greasy face. She smiled, exposing her tooth stumps. Dr. West knew from the records she was forty-four years old.

  "It is not a woman's place to advise her husband." Eevvaalik bowed her head, and a fifth shot spat through the igloo.

  Hopefully, Dr. West thought all the shots had been deliberately too high.

  "How many bullets did Peterluk take?" Dr. West asked her even more hopefully. "Only the bullets in his rifle?"

  Snow sprayed inward, and the sixth little eye gleamed high in the igloo. Dr. West wondered why the priest-pilot wasn't -- doing something. There was a rifle in the plane. Would the priest -- ?

  The seventh shot whined across the icy floor between their faces. Ice crystals gleamed on LaRue's cheek.

  "Mon dieu!" LaRue's hand swept from his cheek to the Esk's arm, "you must go out and tell him to stop shooting."

  As if understanding his meaning without needing to understand the words, the young Esk obediently crawled out through the tunnel to the little entry dome where outer parkas are hung.

  "He's so much shorter than we are. That madman will notice this boy is a fellow Eskimo," LaRue muttered. "After all, they know each other."

  Dully, they heard the eighth shot. No hole appeared in the igloo. Dr. West scrambled along the snow tunnel and blinked at the darkly spreading blood from beneath the boy on the snow glare.

  "Murderer!" Until that moment, somehow it had been as if he hadn't really believed Peterluk's bullets would kill. "Murderer. Inhuman!" I should have stopped the boy from going out. Whirling inside the entry dome, he saw a coiled line with a massive bone-splint tied to a stone. It was for snagging the floating body of a seal.

  Dr. West's arm and momentary exposure of his head did not draw fire. As Dr. West yanked the gasping body of the Esk toward the entry, two more shots resounded from the hillside but no snow kicked up near the moving body. No snow holes spat through the tunnel at Dr. West.

  "He died. Peterluk killed him." Dr. West's agonized voice ignited LaRue.

  "Savage!" LaRue grabbed Eevvaalik by the shoulder, pulling her down on to the floor. "Why? Why is your husband killing? Ask her, West. Demand to know."

  Dr. West asked, as Eevvaalik firmly removed herself from LaRue's grip, and climbed back up on the sleeping platform.

  Compulsively she trimmed the seal oil lamp. "This person's husband says too many more people hunting every year. There are not enough seals anymore." She seemed to be speaking seriously, truly. "So many hunters on the ice they frightened away the seals of my husband. That is why he shot the hunters on the ice."

  Dr. West blinked at this, and told LaRue: "Peterluk has already murdered some Esks who were hunting seals."

  "But we do not come to shoot seals," LaRue protested, squirming like a seal on the icy floor, suddenly directing his anger to Dr. West. "You -- If I -- if my Uncle had not listened to you, I would be in my warm office. My secretary would be bringing hot coffee et croissants . Instead I am being fired upon, frozen, murdered by savages who don't even vote. I do not think all the maniacs are out there. For leading me to this savage I think the maniac is you!"

  Dr. West had no reply. It was deathly quiet outside the igloo. Ten shots had been fired, he thought. Some rifles, old British service rifles, had ten-shot clips. "Eevvaalik, does your husband practice shooting every day because he has so many bullets?"

  "Eh-eh, not for many years. In those days the great iron box of bullets on a belt he hid because the angry men from the whale -- " Eevvaalik's voice stopped, but Dr. West guessed the rifle must be a model which fired the same ammunition as a machine gun, and over the years Peterluk's supply of bullets now ought to be low.

  The eleventh bullet splattered through the igloo.

  "Mon dieu, that is the tenth shot." LaRue laughed unhappily. "That savage has enough ammunition to drive both the English and French from Canada! I am cold and I do not want to die. Listen, I think we should chop through the opposite wall of the igloo and run for it."

  "To where?" Dr. West demanded.

  "Toward the plane. Don't be cowardly. Eskimos are all poor shots."

  "Running all the way down there would only attract Peterluk's fire. He would shoot at the plane."

  "Too much logic. We go! A brave pilot will start the engines when he sees us approaching. Where is that cowardly pilot? Why has he not started the engines?"

  "He's damn cold if he's outside the plane. I hope he's still alive. I hope Peterluk hasn't already visited the plane."

  "My friend," LaRue blurted, unexpectedly flopping his arm around Dr. West's shoulders, "so do I. So do I. This igloo is as cold as a crypt. Poof, that was another bullet! He is firing lower. I do not care; I no longer wish this Eskimo's vote," LaRue laughed nervously. "We must run for it." But he didn't get up.

  On the sleeping platform, Eevvaalik coughed and spat blood near the two whitemen lying on the icy floor shivering and waiting.

  "Doctor, in your fanciful distinction," LaRue said finally, "is this woman an Eskimo or an Esk?"

  "She is an Eskimo. Of these people, only Eevvaalik has had TB, the only one. Perhaps Peterluk has it too. The rest, Esks, do not appear to be subject to tuberculosis. They don't even have lice!" Dr. West's voice rose as if it were a means of escape from bullets. "Bacteria and parasitic organisms may not have had time to adjust to body chemistry differences between Eskimos and Esks."

  "Fine words and a theory of which you admit you have no proof. Did you not tell my uncle that Esks appear like swallows from the mud, something like that," LaRue's voice rushed. "You have confused the old man -- and me. I saw all of these people back in the camp where you picked up the guide, rest his soul, and they were the cleanest, the most happy Eskimos I have seen in my many trips to the North." His voice rose in outrage. "Certainly, they are human! Are you insane? Everyone in my family knows my uncle is insane. I wish I were in my warm office."

  "I wish it were true," Dr. West muttered as bullet number twelve or thirteen zipped through the igloo from a new angle.

  "Anyway, I don't need to be freezing here to know Eevvaalik is a real Eskimo," LaRue sighed. "My uncle and I have a copy of the old Family Allowance Census taken when the Government still had the
integrity to give to these Eskimos food and clothing. They have as much right to Family Allowances as other Canadians," he exclaimed. "Of course this Eevvaalik is an Eskimo. In the old Family Allowance records must be found her fingerprints, her chest X-rays. This Eevvaalik and Peterluk, they are old enough to be listed among the original families of Boothia Peninsula imprisoned in this -- this concentration camp."

  "Yes, and where are the other original families now?" Dr. West replied. "There were 112 names on the census list made by the McGill ethnologists. But twenty years later I have found only two of them, Peterluk and Eevvaalik." He looked up at Eevvaalik.

  Dr. West smiled winningly. "Eevvaalik, where are your father and mother, your sisters and brothers?"

  With womanly pride, she smiled back. "Peterluk stole me and my first baby son. My first husband had a -- a boat -- motor very loud but the whitemen took it away. Peterluk took me -- away from the old camp. This person thinks her first husband and other people fled that winter from this land. The whitemen could not keep them in this one land. We are people who travel far."

  "But not Peterluk."

  "Eh-eh, Peterluk stayed in this land because there were so few people." She laughed or coughed. "He thought this would be his hunting land for him alone," her voice sank, "and for my baby son who died, and other sons this person would have -- "

  "But it is Esks, hundreds of young people crowding this place, spoiling the hunting," Dr. West argued. "It is not we whitemen who crowd Peterluk. Tell him to stop shooting. Whitemen are friends, men like he is -- "

  Eevvaalik smiled back. "A good husband never listens to his wife, at least not when there are others nearby to hear them."

  "Then go out there to him. Whisper to him not to shoot," Dr. West said with exasperation.

  Eevvaalik frowned. "This person might obey you as stupidly as that boy did and be shot. No, this person is not one of her stupid children from the big camp." Eevvaalik wiped her mouth with her hand. "This person knows death. She is Eevvaalik! An Innuit ! A true Eskimo! Not one of these young fools who think death is the sled to happiness in the sky."

  "And Peterluk is different from the young people now in the camps," Dr. West insisted, translating as she talked, because he was trying to convince LaRue how different from Eskimos these young Esks were --

  "Eh-eh, my husband is braver than those meek children in the camps," she agreed. "Our bellies are hungrier than theirs. We do not like to be told what to do. My husband needs much land to hunt."

  "Why wouldn't Peterluk tell me," Dr. West explored, " if these younger people's night stories are true? Is it because he told them the stories that they now believe? Why won't he tell us where they came from?"

  "Eh?" Eevvaalik laughed. "Why do you men always want to ask my husband? This is a woman's question, where babies come from."

  "All these people were not born here?" Dr. West asked, as another leading question.

  "I am the mother!"

  Dr. West stared up at her in disbelief while she tittered. "You do not even believe this person is the grandmother," she taunted, countering with an Eskimo legend. "There also was a girl who was carried off by a bear to live in his igloo. She is barren now, but they began from me, and whatever Peterluk tells is lies."

  Angrily, Dr. West retorted: "You joke while he shoots at us."

  "His power is weak because he is not at the Burned Place."

  "So the Navel of the World," Dr. West asked, thinking of his struggle there with Peterluk for the rifle, "is of -- importance."

  "This person was not there that night."

  "What night?"

  "This person does not know what night," Eevvaalik replied with an irritating smile.

  "Was it the night a sub -- a whiteman's boat which swims under the ice -- ?" Dr. West was remembering Peterluk's lies. "Whitemen came ashore?"

  "This person does not know." Eevvaalik answered too quickly, Dr. West thought.

  "Then the legend of the man who fell from the sky," Dr. West challenged her with wry humor, "whose back split open so that he bore a son, that is false?"

  "Who can say what is false? Peterluk was only a young man then, and how could he recognize his Grandfather?" The woman shook her head with distaste. "No, it would have been better if a bear truly was his Grandfather. His Grandfather! I was but a young girl who had borne only one child when Peterluk stole me, and my son died. Peterluk, how angry he was. He wanted many sons."

  She coughed, gurgled, spat blood. From the icy floor Dr. West argued from a new direction. He was trying to talk his way free from Peterluk's bullets.

  "Eevvaalik, when you were a girl you remember the whitemen called doctors ? I am a doctor. Your coughing will become worse and you will die soon unless you are taken to a hospital . You remember that is a place of beds and white-women in white clothing. You will be given injections . You remember the sharp needles which make people well? Tell your husband to stop shooting, so we may help you."

  "You are afraid of my husband," she laughed triumphantly. "He is stronger than whitemen, with more sons than you will ever have."

  "Are they really his sons?"

  "Eh? Is it better to believe all these people began when Grandfather Bear's back split open. No? Then, believe a sharp needle in a tube of glass," she laughed contemptuously at Dr. West, "as this person lay on the sleeping ledge waiting for her husband. Oh, so big! A whiteman's harpoon that makes love! This person was surprised when she swelled up and had a baby in a month!"

  "What is she talking about now?" LaRue hissed.

  "She has an active imagination," Dr. West replied. "She's just invented her own artificial insemination for some reason -- "

  "Disgusting. Was that fiend a scientist?" LaRue accused, having missed the point of the conversation, and not clarifying his own antiscientific fears rising from his subconscious memories. "I do not approve of any tampering with the human body."

  He gawked. Eevvaalik was grinning, gesturing crudely, deliberately catching their attention.

  An explosion slammed through the tunnel. The murderously low path of the bullet had ripped between them, and the two whitemen scrambled apart, up on the sleeping platform on either side of the low entrance to the room. The acrid stench of gun powder and the hoarse sound of Peterluk's breathing came from the tunnel.

  "Listen my husband," Eevvaalik called cheerfully, "we have two visitors. One is waiting on each side above the door hole."

  Peterluk's voice began only a few feet away. "Tell them to come outside."

  "They are afraid you will kill them," Eevvaalik answered, compulsively trimming the lamp.

  "Tell them to come out or I will break a hole in the side of the igloo and shoot them where they are." Peterluk evidently didn't want to risk lunging blindly through the low entry. "Come out!"

  Neither whiteman spoke.

  Dr. West watched as LaRue discovered that a lump under the caribou skin was a stone axe. Vaguely, Dr. West thought this flimsy-handled slab of stone would have made Hans Suxbey, Director of the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary, smile with pride, a genuine Eskimo artifact!

  Finally, Eevvaalik called, "My husband, you had better do it, or go away and not do it."

  "Woman, close your mouth!"

  The three people in the igloo crouched waiting. The sounds of Peterluk's breathing softened. Silence.

  "Children who grow big as a man are very good," Eevvaalik remarked like a housewife making conversation during an embarrassing pause. "But too many. Children have children so quick, too many. Never enough seals. When this person was a little girl, my mother told me it was a hungry winter when I was born and she would have left me out on the ice but changed her mind because that day three seals were killed. With meat again she would have milk in her breasts. Eh-eh, customs were wiser in those days. There were not too many Eskimos because enough new babies were left on the ice. Everyone had enough to eat. Better not too many girls to feed, better enough hunters."