by Paul Greci
And really, they were almost the same thing.
I had to concentrate day to day—sometimes moment to moment—on survival to have any chance of reaching the Sentinels. So, the colder weather worried me, but I knew I had to get the most I could from the deer. It didn’t matter if there were ten miles between me and the Sentinels or fifty. I still had to feed myself, build up my strength and stay warm. And take as much deer jerky as I could carry when I left because there was no guarantee I’d have anything else to eat. I still had my dad’s Meal Pack bars, but those weren’t for me.
The farther from the day of the kill, the longer I boiled the meat before eating, and the longer I let the strips smoke and dry on the alder, hoping to kill any germs. I didn’t want to puke my guts out from eating rotten meat.
I cut some deer skin into thin strips and soaked them in warm water until they were flexible, then inserted them into the fingers of my gloves. When the strips dried they stiffened up again, but were held in place and shaped by the fingers of the gloves. That was cool. But I didn’t know what to do with the rest of the skin, so I left it alone and dried more deer meat.
And I thought and thought about the big trees at the southern end of the island—the Sentinels—a place my parents had gone together. I could kinda see why my parents thought it was special. Maybe if my parents hadn’t planned on taking me there, my dad wouldn’t have felt like he had to do it. But it did make him start acting like a normal person again, like he actually cared about me. And then he disappeared after he’d come back to life.
“Disappeared,” I said. “He didn’t disappear.” I tried to wipe the thought from my mind. “We just haven’t found each other yet.”
If I could just get there and stay under those big trees. If a boat was gonna come across, that’s where it’d come because it was the shortest distance from the mainland. And dad—that’s where he’d go. But something else drew me there, too. Like I was gonna learn something, or understand something, but didn’t know what it was about.
When I pictured myself on this island surrounded by ocean, and then all that empty country on the mainland, I felt so small. When I was little, my mom used to read me that Horton Hears a Who book by Dr. Suess. And she’d tell me that there were so many tiny things, whole worlds underneath rocks, or in puddles. And then later she told me the Earth was like a speck of dust in the universe, and I didn’t quite get what she meant until Mr. Haskins did this thing where he showed us the Earth in relation to the universe. Then I thought it was cool. But I understood it even better now. If the Earth was a speck of dust in the universe, then I was less than a speck of dust on the Earth. And that made me think of God. I mean, if there was a God that created the universe, then who created God? And if there was another God that created the God that created the universe, then who created that God? That whole thing ran through my mind again. But if there wasn’t a God, then how could I find my mom’s popcorn bowl way out here? And what about the deer in the hole, and Dad’s voice? Still, those things didn’t prove anything.
Maybe God wasn’t some guy that controlled things. Maybe God was some kind of power or presence. Or maybe it was just within people. Yeah, I still didn’t know if God existed or not. But who did? How could anyone actually know that?
One thing I did know was this. My dad had done a brave thing by coming out here and facing the memories.
He was moving on. Healing. We both were. This was the start. I needed to finish the trip or at least try as hard as I could, and if the trip finished me, well, at least I’d tried, really tried. I owed that to my dad. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t change what had happened at the rock reef, or on my mom’s bike ride. I couldn’t change anything that already happened. But it was hard to shake the feeling that both accidents were my fault.
CHAPTER 25
FOR TWO more days, it rained. My wound still ran pink. I worked on a new song.
Where does the deer end?
And where do I begin?
Deer flesh in my veins.
I have no hunger pains.
The deer is in my blood.
Blood that feeds my brain.
I couldn’t even think a thought.
If that deer had not remained.
I looked it in the eye.
Beauty staring back at me.
I didn’t want to kill it.
But then where would I be?
That deer was gonna die.
Its legs were busted bad.
If I didn’t take its life.
A big old bear would have.
As I sang, I dried more deer meat. I now had about sixty pieces. My whole life consisted of collecting wood, drying deer meat and eating boiled deer. And thinking. I mean, sometimes my mind was just blank, focused on the task, but other times, when I wasn’t singing, it ran and ran.
Last year, Mr. Haskins put a world map on the classroom wall. Then he walked around with a shoe box and we each took three slips of paper. “Find out where the items are grown or produced,” Mr. Haskins said. “Then we’ll put them on the map.”
In Fairbanks I ate bananas from Mexico, drank OJ from Florida, and ate apples from Washington. Everything was shipped in.
But now, I got to thinking about Bear Island.
Everything I ate came from the island. Bear Island deer. Bear Island salmon. Bear Island blueberries. Bear Island porcupine.
And most everything I used, too. Bear Island water. Bear Island boughs for my bed. Bear Island deadfall for my house. Bear Island alder for my grill. Bear Island wood for my spear. Bear Island deerskin for my gloves.
I totally relied on Bear Island.
And I thought about people that lived before ships and planes, those people relied on their places, too. They ate the place, drank the place, breathed the place they lived.
And sure, maybe some people still lived like that, but I didn’t think there were too many. Right now, I was one of those people. Yeah, I had my clothes and the few things from the emergency kits, but the longer I stayed, the more I was becoming a Bear Islander. The only Bear Islander that I knew of.
Three more days passed and still it rained. I told myself I’d leave Deer Camp—yeah, that’s what I’d named it—as soon as the rain let up—one last push for the Sentinels. I could’ve left in the rain but didn’t want to leave the fire, trade my warm camp for the cold, wet, forest.
A camp with food.
If I hadn’t killed the deer, no way would I be staying here. This place was defined by that deer. I’d just keep eating it until the rain stopped, keep singing its song. It’d only make me stronger.
And it was defined by my dad. This was the last place we’d camped together. Somehow, some part of him was here with me. It didn’t matter if he was at the Sentinels, or down the coast a ways, or at the bottom of the ocean, I could feel him here too. He was in the air I breathed and the water I drank.
And the bowl? Maybe it really was a gift from my mom. I didn’t know what to believe.
It was pretty amazing that I’d lived at Fish Camp, and now at Deer Camp, for almost forty days. Just that I was alive was amazing. But the longer I stayed alive, the more I wanted to survive and make it out of this mess. You know, keep living my life, whatever that life might look like. Any life was better than no life.
I kept gathering wood and drying it out by the fire so it would burn better, but my supply still ran low. One more night I told myself, and then rain or no rain, I’d leave at first light, and go, go, go until dark, and hopefully not hurt myself on the journey. That was one thing about staying put. At least I knew what was around me. And a solid shelter with a fire was like a security blanket. Just like Fish Camp, I knew I had to leave but didn’t want to.
I pulled branches from a tangle of deadfall. And carried an armload the hundred yards or so to my shelter. Maybe I could get by with just one more load.
I slogged back to the deadfall and pulled more branches. I was about halfway back with another armload when I saw my shelter bulge
and shake.
I stopped walking. My first thought was ‘earthquake’ followed by ‘tsunami,’ but the ground wasn’t shaking under my feet.
I’d missed an earthquake in Fairbanks once when I was riding my bike on the one flat spot on our driveway. I noticed the leaves shaking in the trees above me and thought it was weird that there was a breeze up there and nothing down on the ground. When I went inside, my mom was freaked out. Turns out it was the biggest earthquake in Fairbanks in fifteen years and I hadn’t even felt it. Maybe the driveway was just bumpy. I don’t know. We get lots of small quakes that you only feel if you’re inside and the house shakes.
And I hadn’t felt any earthquakes since I’d been out here.
The summer before my mom died we were on a camping trip and were all lying in the tent, and there was an earthquake. I don’t even know how big it was, but I remember it shaking my whole body, like it had gotten under my skin and started vibrating in my bones. Maybe the more of you touching the ground, the more likely you are to feel it. If it just comes through your feet and you’re walking, then you miss a lot of it.
At least if an earthquake destroyed my shelter while I was inside it, I’d live. Having a bunch of sticks and branches fall on you would suck, and maybe you’d get scratched up, but it’s not like falling glass and crumbling walls.
Out here if there’s a big earthquake, then you’ve gotta head to high ground to avoid a tsunami, you know, a huge wave that basically destroys everything. The tsunami that followed the 1964 Earthquake destroyed a few villages and towns on the coast, and in some places the ground fell by thirty-five feet. Maybe that rock reef that I didn’t see in time used to tower out of the water.
Some more boughs and branches fell, creating a hole in my shelter, and I still didn’t feel anything. Maybe the shelter was just falling apart. Maybe one of the main deadfall supports had finally broken after all that sagging. Oh well, I could figure it out for one more night. Maybe move the fire inward and hunker down in the back part. I could even burn the extra shelter wood to stay warm. I laughed. I could burn the whole thing little by little and have nothing left by morning.
But then I glimpsed something dark through the hole. I thought it was the tree trunk until it moved. Then more sticks fell, creating a huge hole.
“No!” I screamed. “No!”
CHAPTER 26
THE BEAR had its back to me. I dropped my load of sticks.
My deer. My deer. The bear was crouched over it. I picked up a big stick and hurled it at the bear, hitting it right in the back, but the brute didn’t even turn around.
“Hey bear!” I yelled.
It turned its head. I threw another stick, hit it in the shoulder, and it let out a growl. I took a step back. It was bigger and more rounded than the other bears I’d seen.
The bear turned back to the deer, its neck flexing as it tugged. I wished it’d just take the deer and leave. All I wanted was my stuff, my jerky, and I’d hike in the rain right now.
I kept yelling, but it was focused on the deer and didn’t seem to care. I ran to the stream, grabbed some rocks, came back and started throwing them. One connected on the back of its head and it turned and growled again. I didn’t know if I should keep on throwing or not. I mean, I didn’t have a fire to stand behind. I had nothing. Not even my spear.
“Go on,” I yelled. “Get!”
But all the bear did was turn back to the deer. I hit it with another rock. Then another. And kept yelling.
The bear started dragging the deer, and the rest of my shelter tumbled to the ground. Then the bear lifted its head and carried the carcass off.
I watched the bear fade into the forest, then approached what used to be my shelter. Sticks and boughs and limbs lay in a pile. Smoke rose through a bunch of spruce boughs on top of the coals in my fire ring.
From the wreckage, I pulled my bowl, two life vests, two emergency blankets, one of which had a large tear down the center, and my spear and gaff.
And the dried deer meat? I found just seven pieces spread among the boughs and sticks. How it hadn’t sucked those down with the other fiftyodd pieces I didn’t know.
My head drooped. My shoulders collapsed forward as I sat down against the tree. Tears streamed down my cheeks. My chest was hollow, like I’d been opened up with a knife.
I wished I could go back in time, so I could’ve lugged the jerky around with me. But I didn’t want the jerky exposed to the rain, and I hadn’t seen any bears, not even any bear sign at this camp, and I had a fire going, and I was never even out of sight of the shelter. How much more careful could I get?
But if I could just have those few minutes back again.
Get sad. Get mad. But move on, Tom. Move on.
I took one of the knives out of my pocket, opened it and thrust the blade into the ground. I pulled it out and then stabbed the Earth again and again.
I just wanted to be dead already.
It was my fault that I was here. My fault that my dad wasn’t. My fault that my mom died. My fault that I’d lost my deer meat. My fault.
The cold seeped in. My fingers turned to ice. My arms shook. But still, I just sat against the tree. And even with all the deer I’d eaten these past days, I felt weak, like I hadn’t eaten in over a month.
I put a piece of jerky in the bowl and boiled it to make broth. It tasted weak compared to broth made from boiling fresh meat.
I fed the fire and the wind blew smoke into my face and stung my eyes. Then I thought:
2 knives
1/4 of a fire starter stick
7 matches
1 lighter
1 fishing lure unused and one on the gaff
1 bundle of fishing line
4 small pieces of rope
2 small pieces of flint
2 Meal Pack bars that I refused to eat
6 pieces of jerky
This was it—all of it.
CHAPTER 27
THREE DAYS later and I was picking my way along a jagged coast. Fallen columns of black rock jutted into the water every couple hundred yards. The hiss of waves smashing, retreating, and forcing their way between the rocky teeth sounded like static from an untuned radio turned up full blast.
The constant drizzle made it so I was never dry. A pale outline of the sun, masked by gray clouds, hung low in the southern sky. And there was less and less daylight every day.
I’d hoped to kill something, anything, but all I’d seen were sea otters floating on their backs and diving for food, dozens of them. Some with this year’s young riding on their chests. I couldn’t get close enough to them to even try for a kill. I found a few shriveled berries here and there, clinging to mostly bare branches.
A tiny wail invaded my ears. Like a cross between a crying baby and a whining puppy. Then a louder, deeper call. Then the tiny wail. Then both of them at once. I turned toward where I thought the sound was coming from. The rounded head of a sea otter bobbed in the waves as it swam back and forth close to one of the black rocky points of the coastline.
I saw it open its mouth, heard the deep cry, and then from somewhere, a softer cry. The otter kept swimming back and forth. An eagle flew low over the point and the otter went crazy, continually screaming. I caught snatches of the softer wail, too. The eagle circled back and the otter screamed louder.
My mind ran with ideas. Most of the otters along this stretch had babies riding on their chests.
Two cries.
A loud one and a soft one.
I could see one otter.
A Bald Eagle circling.
I took a breath. A baby otter. This had to have something to do with a baby.
My stomach jumped into my brain and said, “Go see. Go see. Food. This could be food.”
I set my gaff and bowl above the strand line, and with my spear in hand, started to work my way out onto the black rocks. My stomach said, “Hurry, you fool. Before the eagle swoops in.” But the rock formation was a deadly combination of slippery and sharp.
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I used my hands for stability, thankful for the deerskin protecting my fingers. The water was hissing on three sides of me as I approached the end of the point. The otter looked larger now that I could see it up close. Its coal black nose, shaped like a heart, sat in the middle of a rounded gray face between two small black eyes.
It opened its mouth and let out a series of prolonged cries. And from somewhere out of sight, I heard a softer cry in response. I took a breath, then crawled forward on the slick rock, the cold pressing into my chest and empty belly through my clothing. The otter continued to cry. The eagle was circling but hadn’t swooped down since I’d been out on the end of the point, but sea gulls were starting to circle too.
Food drives everything, I thought. If you don’t go after a meal when it presents itself, then something else will get it. And you had to weigh the danger.
I mean, the eagle had backed off, probably because of me. Had it known I’d gotten my butt kicked by a swan, maybe it would have challenged me. And the gulls were just in it for the scraps. They didn’t care who did the killing as long as they got to clean up afterward.
I inched forward, my heart pounding against the black rock. At the very edge I peered down, and on a little ledge I saw it. Crammed between two sharp black teeth, letting out a soft wail, was a smaller version of the crying otter just off shore. It had the same plump heart shaped nose and black eyes, but its fur was light brown instead of gray.
A wave touched the ledge, briefly covering the baby otter, but then it was back in full view, wailing.
My stomach did a little dance. Meat. All that meat. And since the eagle had backed off, that made me the top predator. The only thing I needed to watch out for was the waves. The mother otter was still screaming, and the baby was answering her over and over like a recorded message stuck on replay.