by Anne Degrace
John tells me about his course of study. “Right now, people are just beginning to discuss the possibility that the earth is warming up. You wait: another ten years, it will be an accepted fact. In a hundred years Qikiqtaruk may even be under water,” he says, using the Inuvialuit name for Herschel Island. “The life Annie grew up in, that her ancestors knew, it’ll all be gone.”
“It’s not the same now,” I allow. “Everything changed forever a century ago. Earlier, really. Since Franklin. There’s no going back.”
“No,” he agrees.
We walk companionably, not speaking. It’s nice to be with someone and not have to feel like there are silences to be filled. In the afternoon we see figures in the distance, west of the cove.
“Some of Annie’s relatives are here,” John explains. “Ray told me they were going out to net seals today.”
“They net seals?” I ask, but it occurs to me I never really had any idea.
“In the spring, before the ice breaks up completely and when the water is muddy from the Mackenzie runoff,” John explains. “They set these big square nets across an open lead in the ice. Ray sells the pelts he gets, and his dogs, mostly, eat the carcasses. He stacks them up in winter like cordwood.”
The figures move in the distance, and we head toward the whaler’s graveyard. John squats to read a marker, clearly as interested as I am.
“Archibald Gorham,” John reads. “He was on the Mary D. Hume.” He looks up. “I wonder how he died. At sea? Disease? Frozen to death? He was only twenty-five.”
“I’m twenty-five next month,” I say, thinking aloud.
“And remarkably well preserved,” John grins, and I find myself blushing.
I look out across the graveyard. The graves here belong to such disparate groups: Inuvialuit, whaler, and Royal Northwest Mounted Police, all of them bonded by this place. In the distance, the sea sparkles under a finger of sunlight that breaks through the clouds, but there’s an odd quality of light that makes me uneasy.
“There’s a storm coming,” John says. “Maybe we’d better skip the Inuvialuit graveyard and just head straight back.”
I shake my head. “I just want to look at one, just for a minute.”
When we reach Kudnalik’s grave it appears oddly fragile, but perhaps that’s just the strange light, the bruised-looking sky, and way the wind has come up, causing the remains of the weathered fence to rattle like bones.
Andy, Barry, and Frank are all inside the barracks building when we drag open the door against the rising wind. The air has turned cold, and I believe I can smell snow. Frank and Andy are playing cards at the table, while Barry’s got something cooking on the old stove.
“There you are, you two,” he says as we walk in. Frank and Andy exchange looks, which I ignore. “Big storm coming. We’ll all be bunking here tonight.”
Everything from both camps is piled in the corner: tents, sleeping bags, equipment. The barracks is the most substantial building. I notice something resting on top of my sleeping bag and pick it up.
“The Lapierre kids came by a while ago,” Barry tells me. “The girl wanted to give that to you.”
“Nina!” I say, picking up the carved figure.
“That’s your name,” John agrees.
“It’s what Pauline named her doll.” I don’t know what to think.
John looks at me kindly. “I expect it’s a compliment,” he says.
AT THE TABLE, Kudnalik works on a piece of bone, scraping at it.
“What are you doing?” Gorham asks. He’s sitting at his usual spot on the other side of the table, packing his pipe and scratching at his head. “Damn lice,” he grumbles under his breath.
“Making something for the boy. I think he’ll like this.” Kudnalik holds up a small human shape. “A hunter. I’ll give him a harpoon.”
“I saw the boy in the doorway that night, didn’t I?”
“I don’t remember. He was probably there. After my wife died, he went to her family. It was a sad life for a small boy, but he made out okay.”
“How do you know?”
Kudnalik makes a gesture that Gorham can’t read. Instead, “My wife lived only a few more months,” he said. “They said it was smallpox. So many died, when lungs filled up, or fever took them. Sometimes it happened very quickly, alive and then —” Kudnalik looks up from his work, “— dead. Some with the smallpox would roll in the snow, and the snow would be red.”
Gorham winces. “Do you have to talk about these things? Why don’t you talk about the good times?”
“There were good times,” Kudnalik acknowledges. “There was good trade, and some of the whalers treated us well. The best times were when we would meet relatives and go out on hunting parties. Or sometimes we would all come together and tell stories or dance. We laughed a lot. Sometimes we played sports.”
“Go on,” Gorham says. “It’s going to be a long night with that storm outside. Can you hear it?” He looks around at the dark forms, sighing and tossing. “It’s getting crowded in here. Bad as the hold of the Mary D.”
Kudnalik scrapes some more at the bone he holds, then pauses to run a finger over its curves. “I remember one storm, when we were two families together. We ate good food. We played games. Games of strength, or skill. The little ones and the women watched. It was a good time.”
“Before the community house was built at Pauline Cove, we did everything on the ship. You’d get a good blow and there’d be no fresh meat, just salt beef and potatoes and beans. And each other, farting away. One time a mate disappeared after acting strange for a few days. You know what he did? Tried to freeze himself to death. They found him, but he lost his feet to frostbite. Scared the rest of us, that you could go crazy like that.”
“You should have stayed home. Left this place to the Kigirktaugnuit.”
Gorham ignores him. “We had to start organizing more to do. We made skis and sleds from barrel staves. And baseball! We had teams: the Herschels, the Arctics, the Northern Lights, the Eurekas, and the Pick-ups,” he says, his voice warming. “Used ashes to mark the baselines and a sail for the backstop. Did I tell you I was number one hitter for the Arctics?”
Kudnalik doesn’t look up from his work. “Yes,” he says.
“The crack of the bat, when it’s thirty below, it’s a whole different sound than on the ballfield where I grew up. It was great fun, until that one game — you remember?”
“I wasn’t there, but it was told to me. The blizzard came up very suddenly.”
“It sure did. Hey — I thought you said you could tell when a blizzard is coming.”
“Even Kigirktaugnuit are sometimes surprised,” said Kudnalik. “Especially in Amaolikkervik.”
“Didn’t I tell you to speak English?”
“March. A storm can come up out of nowhere.”
“Well, it did. And after it passed, there were five found, frozen to death. One was only a hundred yards or so from shelter.” Gorham shook his head.
“There were six,” Kudnalik said. “You white men only count your own corpses.”
“The point is, it’s a cruel world in which you live, Kudnalik,” said Gorham, “where a man can freeze a hundred yards from his own front door.”
“And yet you thought you’d walk two hundred miles to Fort McPherson with a few guns and some stolen food.” Kudnalik holds up his carved figure. “I’m almost finished. He just needs his harpoon.”
IN THE CLAUSTROPHOBIC confines of the barracks, wind and snow lash the plank siding while we try to pass the time. With five unwashed bodies and piles of gear everywhere, the air becomes close by the third day of the storm. I think about the whalers in the hold of their ships, day after day of one another’s company, while winter storms raged. There must have been more than a little madness, emotions close to the
surface. I’m not much of a drinker, but all of us get into the rye whisky Frank brought. I let myself slip into the feeling, relaxing for what feels like the first time in years.
“Hey,” Frank says as I laugh at a particularly racy joke. “Is that the real Nina coming out?”
When I stand up to go and pee in the bucket we’ve put in the back room, I realize the walls are moving. I make it, though, and weaving back resolve to stick to my bunk, where I pick up my pen. I’ve been writing most of the evening, the whisky loosening my hand, secrets spilling out onto the page.
We’re well into the second bottle when what begins as a friendly game of cards disintegrates into a nasty argument between Andy and Frank that is barely pacified by Barry. I look up from my journal; I’ve missed most of what was said. The atmosphere is suddenly thick as smoking seal oil.
“Okay. Truth or Dare,” Frank says into the toxic air.
Barry’s voice is serious. “Time to shift gears.”
“What are you writing?” John asks me from across the room, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Andy is shuffling the cards, but they splay across the table, and he swears.
“Nothing,” I say. I close the book.
“Truth or Dare,” Frank says again. His words are slurred. “How about Little Miss Nina over here?”
“Aw, leave her alone,” says Andy. Barry moves to twist the cap back on the bottle, but Frank reaches over and tops up his glass again. “Okay. You then,” he says to Andy, gesturing with his full glass, sloshing a bit.
“Dare,” says Andy guardedly.
“Right.” Frank thuds over to the corner, boots hard on the cold floor, and from his duffel hauls out a bottle we haven’t seen before. “Picked this up in Whitehorse. Dare you to eat the toe.”
We all lean forward and look. Sourtoe whisky is a Yukon legend, but there’s no way Frank would have a bottle of his own complete with human appendage.
“No, it really is,” says Frank. “I got it off a guy who got it from an emergency doc at the clinic. It’s a real honest-to-god amputated toe. He was selling shots for five bucks. I bought the whole bottle for fifty.”
I get up off the bunk to look. We all peer into the amber liquid in the bottom. “God,” I say after a few moments. “I think it really is.” Barry starts to laugh.
“Whatever,” says Andy. “It’s a stupid game.” He’s looking a slight shade of green, but it may be the shifting light as the wind screams around the building.
“You can take dare number one,” Frank says, holding up the bottle. “Or dare number two.”
“What’s dare number two?”
“Go outside and walk once around the building.” We all stare at Frank. “Without touching the walls,” he adds.
We all know this could be suicide. You could walk two feet and lose yourself in something like this. The two stare at one another. There’s something else here, something besides just the cards. Stuff can happen over a few weeks of isolation; this life isn’t for everyone. It’s one thing for Annie and her ancestors, quite another for Herschel’s temporary immigrants, past and present.
Andy looks as if he’s actually considering it. His jaw is set, eyes narrow. John’s watching him, glass poised near his lips, waiting.
“Frank,” I say, scrambling to diffuse the situation. “You asked me first. I’ll play. I’ll take Truth.” How bad can it be?
Frank looks at me for a long moment. “Okay, Miss Cool-As-a-Cucumber Nina,” he says. “Read us what you just wrote.”
He gestures at my journal, which I hold on my lap. I feel the heat rise, a nauseating combination of alcohol, and embarrassment. What had I been writing?
In the embrace of my alcohol haze it had flowed onto the page: horrible, embarrassing, adolescent words about John, about attraction and about hope, and now I can see the ridiculousness of that, the impossibility, my words maudlin and juvenile. Not a grown-up at all, more five than twenty-five, mousy and boring and pathetic. Nothing at all like my beautiful sister.
As Andy lunges for the book, I suddenly see my colleagues as they are: men, sure of themselves and stupid with drink. These are the whalers who came with their alcohol and their diseases and their opportunistic, murderous, lecherous ways, to change irrevocably everything that was perfect.
Because everything perfect dies.
The air becomes thick, the walls close, and I hear the moans of ghosts from the walls around me, or perhaps from inside my own head, the roar of emotion and alcohol, or perhaps it’s the wind — before anyone can stop me, I take the dare: I throw on my parka and push through the door, my journal clutched to my chest.
Instantly, the cold wind reaches down my throat and seizes my lungs in an icy fist. I can’t breathe. A gust nearly picks me up and I stumble a few feet and turn to see the building I left has disappeared completely. All I can see is white; all I can hear is wind. In the maw of the storm I can’t tell which direction is safety, which direction death. I am nothing at all in the face of this.
The sound that comes from my throat can’t possibly be mine.
In a moment John has hauled me back inside and he wraps his arms around me while I sob. I am terrified, and ashamed.
“She’s just had too much to drink,” Barry says. “I mean, she’s just a kid. I shouldn’t have let this happen.”
“None of us should have,” I hear Andy say, but I have my head down, not looking at anyone, weeping and weeping like a small child.
“Shhhh,” says John. “Shhhhhh.”
“IT’S NOT FOR everyone, the North,” Kudnalik says. “And drink is the worst. It brings out the devil.” He waves his hand at the empty liquor bottles on the table.
“You’ve been listening to that preacher,” says Gorham.
“I’ve been spending too much time with you,” Kudnalik answers. “Look. I have finished my little man. I’ll give it to the boy as soon as the storm passes. Do you think he will like it?”
Gorham picks it up and squints at it in the dim light. “He’ll like it,” he tells Kudnalik, his voice soft. “Give it to him tomorrow. The storm will be over by then.”
They sit, backlit, observing the sleeping bodies, the air permeated with sweat and alcohol. In one bunk, two are intertwined, still bundled up against the cold. The fire has almost died.
“I’m sorry I killed you,” says Gorham after a while. “I couldn’t see. I had all those people after me, Eskimos, the goddamn lynch mob from the Mary D. I was scared. I thought you were going to kill me.”
“I was going to kill you.” Kudnalik turns his head to look at Gorham, and the pale light catches his eyes. The storm is abating, the sky brightening. “I was protecting my family.”
“But another bullet killed you, first.”
“Yes.”
“It was supposed to be for me, but you had already shot me from behind.”
Kudnalik doesn’t answer.
“And then later, your wife died. She got sick.”
Kudnalik, turning over the figure in his hands, nods once.
“I’m sorry,” Gorham says. He turns to fully face Kudnalik, and the two regard one another across the table. Around them is the gentle breathing of the sleepers, and outside, the quieting air. “What about the boy?”
“The boy grew up.”
AT THE WASHOUT site, the first house is gone completely. There’s no sign of the berm we made, or the pit or driftwood remains. The sea is wild, the waves sweeping up, and over, and out, and with each receding wave I imagine it takes with it more of the past. Barry is emotional, pacing and swearing.
“There are still two more,” offers Andy.
For John and Frank, the storm has been a disruption only, and after the fact presents an opportunity to measure its effects on the shoreline, an unexpected windfall in a way. They stand back, keeping a respe
ctful silence as if at a funeral. John catches my eye, and there’s a silent agreement between us. We’ll go see how the graves have fared.
Archibald Gorham’s wooden marker has blown over. I right it, and pile stones around the base to hold it up for now. The wind has calmed slightly as we walk to the Inuvialuit graves, but it’s cold and damp as if making sure we won’t soon forget the force it can be.
Annie and Pauline are there, checking the damage. We join them at Kudnalik’s grave, and I can see as we approach that the storm has taken a greater toll here, blowing away sand and soil, ripping up the cover of grass and lupine. Inexplicably, I want to pick up some of the flowers and put them there, but it’s not my place. A crevasse has opened up along one side; it feels as if I could reach into that shallow, frozen grave and for a moment hold hands with the past. Some day in the future the earth will heave, and the wind will blow across Kudnalik’s bones.
Pauline runs up to me, holding something out. It’s a small figure.
“I found it there,” she said, pointing, and we all look at Kudnalik’s grave.
“Pauline! You have to put it back.” Annie’s eyes are wide.
Pauline grips the figure more tightly. She wants to keep the little man. “You should do what your mother says,” I tell her. In my pocket, my fingers close on the carved doll, the one Pauline named Nina. “Here,” I give it to her. “So he won’t be lonely.”
WE ALL WALK back to Annie and Ray’s to sit in their bright and cluttered home, drink tea, and talk about the storm and the damage done. John holds my hand as we walk, and I catch Annie smiling at me.
The house held up well, but around the house tarps and boxes have blown around. The boys come around the corner pushing the wheelbarrow, now full of driftwood. The storm has delivered a fresh batch of firewood. Pauline runs ahead to meet them. We’ve all been through something, but these kids seem to take it in stride.