Agviq

by Michael Armstrong

  “Okay,” he whispered, “take what you can carry and push the rest toward the edge.” He pointed at the north side of the roof. “Then we’ll head south and go over that way.” Tuttu handed the coil of rope to Natchiq. “I’ll kick the stuff over the edge and follow you.”

  “What are you going to do?” Claudia asked.

  “Go,” Tuttu said.

  They rummaged through the boxes, grabbing cans of food, bags of beans, guns, ammunition, whatever. Claudia stuck some packets of hooks and lures in her little daypack, crammed her pockets full of more shells, and topped it off with a bag of pinto beans. Natchiq grabbed the big duffel bag Tammy had salvaged, leaving the second duffel for Tuttu. Tammy and Puvak followed Natchiq to the south edge, running in a crouch. Claudia watched Tuttu, waited to see what he did.

  He pushed the boxes of food to the edge, and one box spilled open and rolls of toilet paper unfurled, streaming like comets. Tuttu grabbed a handful of shells and threw them over the side. Bullets pinged up at the roof, but the angle was wrong, whoever was down there couldn’t get a clear shot.

  “You got us!” Tuttu yelled down at them. “Let us get down safely and we’ll give you what we have.”

  “Throw it over,” someone yelled. Mick’s voice, Claudia thought. Definitely a tanik.

  “You won’t shoot us?” Tuttu yelled.

  “Of course not,” Mick shouted.

  Right, thought Claudia.

  “Okay,” Tuttu said. “It’s not much.” He looked over at Claudia, saw that she hadn’t gone to the other end, and waved her back. “Here it comes.” Tuttu started throwing cans, boxes of shells, the rest of whatever was in the boxes off the north side. The stuff thudded on the snow, and the brigands began scurrying around, shouts and yells rising up from the ground as they fought over the supplies.

  Claudia ran to the south edge. Natchiq had fastened the big coil of yellow rope to a vent housing, and she looped the rope around her, looked over the edge—clear—and walked down the side of the building. Natchiq helped her to the ground. He had a Mini-14 out—the one Kanayuq had used—and watched the front of the building. They’d come down in an alley between Stuaqpak and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation building. Puvak and Tammy were running toward the ASRC building and to the courthouse across the street.

  She looked up in time to see Tuttu on the edge, throwing the second duffel to the ground. Natchiq caught it just as it hit the snow, then threw it over with the other duffel. Tuttu rappeled down, rifle slung over his shoulder, with a big huge handgun stuck in his belt.

  “Here,” he said to Claudia, thrusting the rifle at her. “Natchiq, take both duffels back to the qaregi.”

  “Where you goin’?” Natchiq asked.

  “Go,” Tuttu said.

  The wind from the south kicked up, snow blowing at their backs. Smoke billowed out from the vent stacks on the roof of Stuaqpak, and flames and more smoke spilled out from the entryway. Something exploded from inside, and the brigands at the north end shouted, a great fireball gushing out from the loading bays. Someone ran across the street to the east, not noticing them.

  “It’s going to take the church,” Natchiq whispered.

  The flames from the north wall had spread out, backlighting Stuaqpak like a halo, and jumping across the street to the old white timber-framed Presbyterian church. Wind roared down the space between ASRC and Stuaqpak, pulling the fire north.

  Tuttu looked at the fire, at the flames leaping at a two-story building attached to the back of the church and directly across from Stuaqpak. “Go,” he said again. “Forget the church. Get to the qaregi.” Claudia and Natchiq stared at him. “Now.” He pulled out the big handgun from his belt. Forty-four magnum Desert Eagle, Claudia idly noticed. Her dad had had one, but she’d sold it when he died—too much gun for her.

  “Where you goin’?” Natchiq asked again.

  “Got to do something I should have done before,” Tuttu said, slamming a magazine into the butt of the foot-long pistol. “Now go—please?”

  Natchiq nodded, and Claudia helped him drag the duffels over to ASRC, and they scurried across the street to the hotel and the courthouse. Puvak had run ahead and gotten his dad, and Amaguq came up to Natchiq and helped them with the gear. Natchiq looked back at the fire, at the church beginning to burn.

  “We ought to save the church,” he said.

  “Too late,” Claudia whispered, “too late.”

  Tuttu ran around the west side of ASRC, up the side of the building, and disappeared. Natchiq looked at Amaguq, at Tuttu running away. He and Puvak’s father stared at each other, some information being exchanged that Claudia couldn’t figure, and then Natchiq slammed a fresh magazine into the Mini-14 and followed Tuttu into the roaring night.

  Chapter 9

  LATER that night, Tuttu and Natchiq came back, soot on their faces and their beards frosted from hard breathing. When Amaguq quizzed them about where they had been and what they had done, they glared at him and said nothing. In the morning, in the brief daylight, old man Malgi took his army out to see what was left of Stuaqpak.

  The red paint on the steel siding of the building had bubbled away, and the bare metal was scorched black and brown where it had oxidized. Little curlicues of smoke rose up from the big squat building, the snow melted down to gravel a good hundred feet from its edges. No one dared enter, because of the heat, because there would be nothing left inside anyway. Someday, Claudia thought, other archaeologists will sift through this and wonder what had happened and why and how it had come to pass.

  Two whale ribs, old and bleached and honeycombed with foramen, still stood before where the church had been, their edges slightly charred. All the outbuildings had been connected to the main sanctuary of the church, and the fire had raced down the halls and burned everything—parsonage, church offices, social hall—to the foundation. Only scorched timbers and charred pilings poking out of the permafrost remained of the church—that and a cross that crumbled into charcoal when Malgi touched it. After the Stuaqpak fire had done its work on the church, the wind had to have shifted and blown back south, because the museum—a square building with a peaked, pyramid-shaped roof still containing some borough offices—had only been scorched on the south side.

  The public health service hospital was on the other side of the borough building; except for the clinic, the hospital had been almost totally torched in the bad days right after the war day. The village graveyard curved to the east beyond the three complexes: God, government, sickness. Only the temple of politics remained—it figures, thought Claudia. There was nothing neat and orderly about the cemetery: just clumps of crosses and whale ribs and jaws stuck in the tundra and blocks of concrete holding the dead in the hard ground. North of the graveyard was the lagoon and the old sewage treatment plant and then Browerville.

  Natchiq wore two rifles that day, the Mini-14 and the Ruger. They all carried an extra firearm, a sidearm or another rifle. Claudia thought they looked ridiculous and knew they felt scared half out of their hides. Natchiq squinted at a figure on the opposite shore of the lagoon, then raised his rifle and sighted through the scope. As he slid the bolt back, Tuttu reached up and pushed the rifle barrel down.

  “No,” Tuttu said, “not yet, not like this.”

  Claudia pulled out her binoculars, peered at the person in Browerville. He stared back at them, a fat man with a rifle slung over his shoulder, too. From behind a building came two more men, one of whom Claudia recognized as Mick. She thought the other could be Siqpan.

  “Tuttu,” she said, handing him the binoculars, “look.”

  He took the binocs from her, watched for a few seconds, then handed them back. Malgi moved around to Natchiq’s right, Puvak to his left, Amaguq by his boy, Tammy next to Claudia. Yeah, Claudia thought, one volley and they could wipe each other out and end the game once and for all. As she took the binoculars from Tuttu, he caught her eye, shook his head slightly.

  “Better get back to the qaregi,” he sai
d.

  They eased back around a big mausoleum that tipped crooked out of the snow. Natchiq had dropped the Ruger in favor of the Mini-14, and they slunk back to safety. One of the men in Browerville shook a rifle at them, the steel barrel flashing at them, and Mick and his army, too, retreated.

  Back at the qaregi entrance, James, Paula’s husband, waved at them from a watch post at the qaregi roof, where they’d been in a trapdoor over the skylight. A wooden platform had been built on the apex of the roof, and sandbags and blocks of ice had been stacked around the railing. Over the watch post had been built a little roof, also sandbagged, to protect them from grenades or firebombs thrown onto the platform. Yellow ice draped the sides of the qaregi, to make it slippery: yellow ice from piss and used washing water. It’d stink next summer, Claudia thought, if they made it to next summer. James ducked down behind the sandbags and rapped on the roof. At his signal, Masu unlatched the outside tunnel door and, climbing over a pile of rubble and old drums protecting the entrance, they went back inside.

  Tuttu’s dogs had been quartered off the entrance tunnel, in a storeroom cleared out for them and blocked off by a chain-link gate. The dogs rushed to the gate as they came by, begging for scraps. Through the gate Puvak scratched the neck of a dog he called Rick, a mottled male with a hound’s big head but pointy, husky ears. Masu had propped the katak hatch open and they rose up into the redoubt.

  Amaguq’s and Tuttu’s families had been crammed into the qaregi, sleeping bags rolled up to make room during the day, boxes of food and jugs of water stashed along the sides. A low fire burned in the wood-coal stove, the room barely above freezing. James climbed down a ladder from where the skylight had been, and at a nod from Amaguq, Puvak took his post.

  Masu sat on the bench by the stove, stitching a pair of mukluks. When they came in Paula started dishing out some sort of stew with mysterious bits of meat floating in it (Claudia could guess, but didn’t try), and the big extended family sat down to eat, to prepare for the siege, to think the next week out.

  “We’ve got a problem,” the old man said. “Those guys want to kill us.” No one really had to say it, but Malgi did, anyway.

  The light of two candles, and the glow from the glass window in the stove, barely lit the dim room. With the steel hatch shut over the skylight, even the meager sunlight didn’t come in. Claudia looked over the faces, at the grime etched in wrinkles and folds of skins, at the bags under their eyes from little sleep, and she sighed. Somebody wanted to kill them? she thought. We’re killing ourselves.

  “We can hold out,” Amaguq said.

  “Maybe,” Malgi replied. He turned to Tuttu. “You revise your calculations?”

  Tuttu nodded, tapped the ENTER key on his laptop PC, watched the numbers roll up on the little screen. “We’ll do okay. With just the food in here, on full rations, we can last three days; half rations, six days. We’ve got enough water for ten days, if we just drink it. That’s if we play the defensive and just wait and don’t go scrounging food.”

  “Why wait?” Natchiq asked.

  “Yah,” said Tuttu. “That’s what I’m gettin’ at.”

  “I know,” Malgi said. “But I think we should wait.” He stared at Tuttu, stroked the raven’s head around his neck. Authority posturing, Claudia thought. “Grandson,” he added.

  Tuttu looked down, then up, daring the angatkok. “I respect that, Grandfather, but we can’t wait forever. Mick, Karl . . . They probably have more food than we do—they ought to, since they’ll probably rob it from the rest of the village.”

  “We want them to do that,” Malgi said.

  “I know!” Tuttu yelled. He looked down, mumbled an apology. “I mean, we agreed on that, Grandfather.”

  Right, Claudia thought, the original plan: let the bullies starve their victims into rebellion.

  Amaguq looked at Malgi, then at Tuttu, confused. “I don’t understand, Cousin. You don’t think that plan will still work?”

  “It will eventually,” Tuttu said, “but it’s already failed.” He shook his head. “We thought we could defend Stuaqpak long enough for the bullies’ victims to starve and come to us, see Stuaqpak as salvation. We’d then unite and crush the oppressors, right?” Claudia smiled as the Marxist rhetoric slipped into his speech. “But it didn’t work out that way—we didn’t count on Mick and his gang just smoking us out, burning Stuaqpak down.”

  Good point, Claudia thought. She didn’t know if Mick or Karl had figured out Malgi’s logic, or if they had just gone crazy. It didn’t matter; that plan had failed. Without the lure of Stuaqpak’s riches, they couldn’t count on recruits.

  “The victims could still rise up,” Amaguq said.

  “True,” Tuttu said. “But could they rise up soon enough? Can we count on them to do our work for us before our supplies run out?”

  “The tuvaq will form soon,” Malgi said. “We can hunt seals.”

  Tuttu shook his head, the longer hairs at his nape whipping out. “No, not while Mick’s gang lays siege to us. They can pin down the qaregi, shoot us coming and going. That’s what I’d do.”

  “I could sneak out,” Natchiq said.

  “Too risky,” Tuttu replied. “Besides, we have to settle this. It’s a war, don’t you see? It’s Mick’s way or ours, and if we don’t take care of Mick . . . well, we have to take care of him, if we want to survive.” He stared hard at Malgi, and Malgi smiled, then nodded.

  Claudia caught the unspoken dialogue in that smile and nod. Settle it: Mick’s way of greed and tanik values—wait for rescue, every man for himself—versus Malgi’s way of sharing and Inupiaq values—work together, survive together.

  Malgi sighed, smiled again. “I did not mean wait forever, Grandson.” He held up a finger. “Wait one day, two days. Let them attack. We can hold them off—how much ammunition do we have?”

  Natchiq grinned. “Boxes. Maybe a thousand rounds, various calibers.” He glanced at Tammy. “Thanks to Little Nuna.”

  Tammy blushed. “It was the nearest thing to grab.”

  “Okay,” Malgi continued. “So we take an attack or two, figure out who’s in Mick’s army, who he’s got fighting for him—”

  “I know who,” Tuttu said. “Karl—well, he’s strategy, the boss, I guess. Mick’s wife, Pat; I think Puvak’s pungi sticks got her. Uh, maybe Siqpan, probably Uugaq, a couple others.”

  “—and then we go out and kill them.”

  Natchiq nodded. “Fucking ay—you got it, Grandfather.” He crinkled his brow. “But, hey, Tuttu and I know where those guys are in Browerville. We can get ’em right now. Why wait?”

  Tuttu clapped his cousin on the back. “Ai, I see.” He smiled, a broad smile, gums spread back from his teeth. “Let them think they have the upper hand.”

  “Yah,” said the old man.

  “You know where they are?” Amaguq asked.

  “Tracked ’em back last night,” Natchiq said. “That bitch, Pat: she bled in the snow, and we just followed her home.”

  “So why didn’t you take ’em then?” James asked.

  “Because, Aluaq,” Tuttu explained, “we didn’t have them all together, in one place. I want them all, every one of them.” His voice got deeper, lower. “Grandfather’s right. Let them come. Let them use up their bullets. And when they think they have us”—he rubbed his palms together—“we will kill them.”

  * * *

  Amaguq had the watch when the next attack came. The shrill siren they had hooked up—a smoke alarm wired to a simple doorbell switch—broke the relative quiet of muffled snores in the dancehouse. Tuttu woke up first, shaking the other men alert, and Puvak dashed down the katak before anyone else could make it up the ladder. The boy passed the five dogs back into the house—Masu took their leashes and tied them each to a corner post—and then he ran up to the front entrance. James—Aluaq, “coal,” Claudia had to remember to call him, he’d finally picked an Inupiaq name—joined Puvak, and Claudia and Tammy went up top.

  Claudia peer
ed over through a gun slit, listening to Amaguq as he whispered to Tuttu. Tammy passed Mini-14s up to them, laid magazines out on the little shelves arranged around the edge of the guard post, next to gun slits. Something moved from around the pilings of the hotel, and in the quiet Claudia thought she heard boots crunch on snow.

  “At least six men,” Amaguq guessed. “They think they’re sneaky, dashing around the Top o’ the World pilings.” He pointed up at the sky. “Moon reflects right off the ice and lights up the whole area.”

  Another figure ran out from under the hotel, around the big pilings that supported the whole structure. Chain link fence had once circled the foundation, but Natchiq had gone out the day before and cut holes in it, gaps on the Browerville side. Natchiq called it his fish trap—“Funnel them in like burbot,” he said.

  “Let them get into position,” Tuttu said. “Puvak ready?”

  Amaguq pressed a switch on a CB, spoke into it. “You ready to go to bed, boy?”

  “Getting sleepy, Dad,” Puvak came back. Code, Claudia remembered, in case Mick’s brigands had a CB, too.

  “Okay,” Tuttu said. He looked around the guard tower, at Tammy, Natchiq, Amaguq, Claudia, then checked his watch. “You guys get ready. Draw their fire, hit ’em if you can, but try to wound. On three. One, two, three: fire!”

  Claudia peered through the gun slit, focusing on a corner of the hotel foundation, where a stairway came up to the east entrance. Someone crouched between two posts, chain link fencing blocking the way. The Mini-14 felt light in her hands, its weight almost like a toy, but she kept remembering the holes a gun like it had put in Kanayuq. The Mini was small and the bullets light, but they could chew up a body; that was the idea. She fired on Tuttu’s signal, one quick burst.