Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  She will be angry if I die out there, but in truth I would welcome it. She would want to bury me in the traditional way—to prove to me only in death that she still embraces our culture. Perhaps it is my own small rebellion that I will not allow her that charade when the time comes. I have made my peace with the spirits in the sea. I visited Tynga-gyrgyn, the shaman, and between us an agreement was made. No disrespect will be taken by my choice, and I can be alone, instead of having to watch my body treated to shallow, empty platitudes by those who no longer truly believe.

  My hand drifts to the spear I carry with me, and which will eventually come with me to the afterlife—the only concession I made to Tynga-gyrgyn and the spirits. I will keep some of my tobacco for that final journey too. When the time comes, my final resting place will be the tundra that has been my home from the moment I first saw light through these now much older eyes: the untamed, majestic landscape that has nurtured our kind, and the umqy, for centuries. I am ready now, but I want to bring one last umqy to our village. To prove that youth has no more value than a wise, old head.

  I have traveled for several hours when I stop and squat down on the sled to cut strips of dried walrus meat on which to chew. The familiar taste and smell comfort me; they make me think that I am right to be here, being true to myself. I welcome that comfort.

  I am heading for the coast, across familiar wide-open tundra. The snow has begun to cede in places to tufts of dark grass that poke through its grey-white shroud. The hills and mountains surround me as they have always done. Yet still it is cold. I huddle against the wind as we glide across the snow; perhaps the Soviets’ disease is making it more difficult, or perhaps it is age. I cannot walk as quickly as I once did; when I set out from my camp I wonder if I will be stumbling through the snow like a child. The rifle, an old friend too, seems heavier now than it has ever been. I have oiled it and cared for it from almost the moment I was able to lift it as a boy. It catches from time to time, but I cannot afford anything to replace it. The garish apparatchik, with their dollars and rubles, want younger men to guide them in this wilderness now.

  I cough again, but this time so hard I have to close my eyes tight shut for fear they might drop from their sockets with the force of it. I ignore the spots of blood on the snow. I wonder for a moment whether taking my dogs would have been more sensible, but that would not have been fair to them. My grandchildren will see to them; they will love them almost as much as I have done these last years. They do not need to die with me, if that is what is intended for me. The reindeer will find their way to another herd.

  I am realistic. I might not be out here for very long.

  Scott

  We can’t leave the boom jarring from side to side. I hunker down and winch it in, securing it in the center of the cockpit. The boat has mostly righted, but the mainsail is flailing over the side, dragging in the angry sea, as a result of the severed halyard at the top of the mast. We’ll have to haul it in and stow it somehow. I loosen the genoa to get the boat under control a little more, knowing I’ll have to winch it in later.

  The rain and wind are slashing my face, but at least I’m warm. The suit is doing its job. My fingers aren’t too cold either—warm enough to work with as I slam on the autopilot and stagger over to the sail. We can’t do anything if the boat isn’t stable.

  The waves are vast now, towering walls of grey and black: seething masses that crash into the bow and then surge over the deck, consuming the cockpit and us with it. I don’t know where the hell this storm came from, and the wind is blowing so hard I can’t even guess the speed. More than eighty knots.

  “Let’s get the mainsail in and stowed!” I shout. Like he can hear me. Maybe he can, maybe he needs to know. He knows, I tell myself. He knows this boat’s in real fucking danger if we don’t get the sails down and secured. The genoa will be the worst—clambering over the deck in this weather is going to take some doing, and I just know I’ll have to.

  He shouts back, but I can hardly hear him. The bow pitches into the waves again and again, rising then falling over and over, each time drenching us.

  You’ve been in worse than this, I tell myself. But, the truth is, I probably haven’t—not on a boat this small. In a trawler, maybe, but in a twenty-three-foot sailboat?

  Where the fuck has this come from? The same thought, over and over. As if I need something to blame. Something that will tell me it wasn’t our own recklessness that brought this on us.

  We haul in the mainsail, hand over hand, trying to control it as we fold it, but the wind snatches chunks of it from us and we have to keep repeating sections we’ve already folded. Eventually it’s done and I rope it down to the boom. I can hardly keep my footing in the cockpit, the boat is tossed around so hard.

  I glance at the genoa, flapping hard. I yank the winch to reef it, but as usual, it sticks, and I know I need to go free it.

  Fucking hell, Mike, I think. I told you to get that damn thing fixed!

  “Help me reef the genoa!” I shout. He nods. He knows what’s happened, but says nothing.

  I jump onto the top of the cabin, but the boat is pitching all over the place, and I have to grab for the shrouds—the wire rigging holding the mast up—to keep myself from going in. A wave hits from the side and the black ocean rushes up to meet me as the boat leans hard to starboard. I’m harnessed in—no sailor would be without a harness in the Bering—but I don’t much fancy my chances of getting back onto the boat from this sea. I steady myself until there’s a window—a fleeting moment where the boat isn’t being tossed around.

  We keep a wrench stowed near the roller furler, because this isn’t the first time the genoa has stuck during reefing.

  “Fucking hell, Mike,” I shout. “How many times have I told you to get this fixed?” It’s petulant, I know, but the speed with which this thing came on us has freaked me out. This is serious shit. I’ve never seen anything get so bad so damn quickly.

  “You really want to get into this now?” he shouts back. No, I want to slug him.

  The boat pitches again as another wave hits from the side, and one of my rubber boots loses grip and my foot drops toward the sea as it rushes up to meet me. I make a grab for the lines around the front of the boat. I make it, just, but the wrench falls away into the sea.

  I can only stare in horror.

  There’s no way I can get the genoa in now. I try kicking it, again and again, but it needs a wrench, not a boot. We’re fucked. It’s only half reefed—it’ll still catch the wind and destabilize the boat, probably even drive it forward under sail. In this weather, instead of letting the sea do the work and remaining pretty stationary, we’ll go where the wind takes us.

  Fuck.

  We can’t stay on deck and steer—we could be washed overboard in a heartbeat, harness or not. I make my way back to the cockpit to tell Mike.

  “I lost the fucking wrench,” I shout. There’s nothing in his face. He glances at the genoa, then points to the cabin. I nod, and offer: “We can’t get upwind, so let’s bear away twenty degrees and see what happens.” It’s the only good plan, so we set the autopilot and head down.

  Somehow, retaining my balance by banging against the hatch to the cabin, I get down the slick steps behind him. The benches inside have been taken up by crates lashed to anything and everything, and which have mercifully not worked free. I don’t have time to check they’re still secure—I leave that to Mike. I want to check the charts to see if I can work out where the hell we are.

  I don’t get the chance.

  I’m a child of terabyte Hollywood—awe-inspired by more streamed visual imagery than I could ever properly digest. I’ve stared open-mouthed at countless movies showcasing car chases, motorbikes spinning through the air, even airplanes carving deep furrows in the earth as foliage bursts through smashed windows. Each has been rendered as though time itself stretches and every detail occurs in slow motion; big-budget stunts designed to eke out every last second of drama.

&nb
sp; The reality could not be further from the truth. The reality is savage, brutal, and unrelenting. It moves so quickly it’s impossible to follow what’s happening. The mind stores images—flashes, really—and processes them much later. At the time, all you can think is: Am I going to die?

  The first thing I know is the rush of the wind on my face—a siege of rain and frozen air clawing at my skin and eyes. It can only be one thing—one of the hatches is open. How? I scream. They’re all secure. Smashed, perhaps? I don’t know, but I do know water might come in. I’m about to get up when everything changes.

  The seat at the desk pushes upward beneath me; my spine contorts as the pressure of rising builds on me. We are keeling over, capsizing, I can feel it. The boat has stopped pitching from side to side, floundering in the sea like some dying animal, and has begun to lurch.

  I fall off the seat and slam against the bulkhead, banging my head against the small cooker on the wall. It dazes me, and I have to fight off nausea. I need to be ready for this. This is life or death.

  The boat continues to tilt, then pitches forward, and the next thing I see through the plastic door of the hatch is the all-consuming ash-grey pall of the sea.

  We’re over.

  It’s happened to me before and it’ll happen again, but it scares the shit out of me every time. The keel will almost certainly bring us back upright—we just have to wait. More waves hit, then I feel a big one and the boat starts going round again. I’m trying to keep my balance, but in the end, I slam against something hard. I have no idea what.

  One of the crates is working free somehow. It’s rocking as we roll back over, and then it’s loose. Mike is directly in front of it. I shout, but he turns too slowly—he can hardly hear me above the roar of the storm and the waves hammering the hull. The crate hits him hard, and he crumples to the floor as though the skeleton has been sucked from his body. Blood seeps from a gash on the back of his skull—thick and dark, glistening within a jagged tear in the hood of his immersion suit.

  “Jesus Christ, Mike!” I shout. “Mike!”

  He can’t hear me. He’s unconscious. Maybe worse.

  Instinctively, I reach for him. I wedge him on his side, under the table in the middle, between the benches and on the floor, keeping his airway open as best I can. I catch a pulse, and the relief is palpable. I’ve seen hits like that on trawlers; concussion is the best-case scenario. There are far worse.

  There’s a good first-aid kit hanging on the wall that I picked up when one of the Dutch Harbor trawler captains bulk-ordered. I rifle through it for bandages first and then pull Mike’s hood down. It’s a bad gash, and blood seeps from it. He’s still unconscious. The chance that it’s only a concussion is drifting away by the minute. All sorts of things wash through my head as I try to stop the bleeding: spinal injury, so maybe I shouldn’t have moved him; maybe cerebral compression, maybe fractured skull, maybe he’s bleeding into his brain. Shit, you shouldn’t have moved him? He’d have gone over, you dick.

  I need to keep calm. When the wound is clean and bandaged, rough and ready and no awards for bedside manner, I stumble to the radio. It’s almost worse being down here like this—I can’t see the horizon and seasickness is harder to keep away in a small room, in a storm like this. Even trawler guys get seasick; it happens and it’s the worst fucking feeling.

  I try to get something out of the radio, but I’m greeted with static on every channel. What the fuck is wrong with the radio? Even an electrical storm shouldn’t mess with the radio, but then I think back to the GPS. What could put the radio and the GPS out? Nothing I know of. I send messages anyway, broad spectrum, and activate the emergency beacon at the same time.

  I glance down at Mike. There’s nothing I can do now except put some blankets over him and keep him warm. Support his head with a pillow from one of the sleeping bunks.

  I stagger round the cabin and secure all the crates. It hits me as I do this: there’s nothing I can do for myself either, except wait. And hope. My mind flicks back to the damn genoa, and I wonder how much it’s dragging us away from help. If we head south, we could be drifting for days. Depends how long the storm lasts before it blows itself out. We’ve got food and water, so we’re not looking at some major survival gig here, but Mike needs medical help immediately.

  I run my face with my hands. I don’t mind admitting I’m scared right now. I sit at the desk, bracing myself against the bulkheads, and wait.

  It’s maybe fifteen minutes before the next huge damn wave hits us and we roll again. As we do, I see it.

  Water is coming in through the bunk cabin at the front. This time I know we’re in the shit.

  I have the crazy thought that I have to get us both out. That we can’t get trapped in here. Water’s coming in and this is the second time we’ve rolled. I start thinking we might actually go down.

  Every sailor has a grab bag. In it we pack the things we’ll need if the worst happens. Searching for your grab bag is second nature. It’s drilled into you from day one. I reach for mine without even realizing and clip it to my immersion suit. Mike hasn’t moved; hasn’t made a sound. I keep calling his name, shouting it until my throat is raw, but he gives me nothing in return.

  So I drag him to the hatch and slide it open. He’s a fit guy with a lot of muscle, so he’s damn heavy. We’re rolling again, and I know this is our only chance. I grab his suit and glance back inside the cabin. It’s warm and mostly sheltered, but I don’t know how long this old boat can take this hammering.

  Suddenly, both of us are in the sea.

  Everything is now a blur of frigid grey. I hunker down, cold wetness seeping into my mouth and ears. I choke and spit. Shake my head, driven by panic. I swim as hard as I can, then pull the cords on both our life jackets at the same time.

  I am sure we are going to die.

  * * *

  CLASSIFIED

  EVIDENTIAL BUNDLE, TAB TWO

  Call between 1-907-555-9484 (attributed to James Burak) and 1-907-555-6354 (attributed to Aidan Pearson)

  Date: 02-27-2014

  Time call begins: 07.36

  Time call terminates: 07.37

  Call duration: 0' 52"

  Cell-site for -9484: Gakona Lodge and Trading Post, Mile 2 Tok Cutoff, Gakona, AK 99586

  Cell-site for -6354: Glennallen’s Rustic Resort, 187 Glenn Highway, Glennallen, AK 99588

  CALL BEGINS

  BURAK: Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you been answering your cell?

  PEARSON: I was busy, what the hell—

  BURAK: I called your house.

  PEARSON: What the fuck, why’d you—

  BURAK: You weren’t answering your cell, man. Where the hell are you?

  PEARSON: Look, Jim, you didn’t say anything to Jane, did you?

  BURAK: I don’t give a shit if you’re getting a piece with someone else, have you been watching the news?

  PEARSON: No, I’m not—

  BURAK: Anderson jumped straight to phase three.

  PEARSON: No way, fuck, we’re not ready. We haven’t done any simulations. Why didn’t you—

  BURAK: Don’t put this on me, Aidy. This is your screw-up.

  PEARSON: What did he say?

  BURAK: He said we didn’t have time to wait.

  PEARSON: Fucking Air Force. What’s happening?

  BURAK: You’re right, we got serious numbers. There was a front coming down from the Arctic Circle and we just blew the shit out of it. I mean it was only a single-cell, right, might have even blown itself out in thirty minutes, and we just turned it into a multi-cell squall line.

  PEARSON: Shit.

  BURAK: Shit is right, you dick.

  PEARSON: What do you mean?

  BURAK: The system picked up an emergency beacon. Radio’s down all over the Strait, so we’re the only ones who got it.

  PEARSON: No, no, no, there’s not supposed to be anyone out there.

  BURAK: Well there is, and you know what Anderson said?

&n
bsp; PEARSON: He called in the Coast Guard.

  BURAK: No man, he said to leave it. He gave me an order. Told me to go home. I’m in the fucking car now, outside the Lodge in Gakona. The beacon’s in Russian territorial waters.

  PEARSON: So what’s he going to do?

  BURAK: I think he’s going to leave them, man. I think he’s gonna just fucking leave them out there.

  CALL TERMINATES.

  Call is terminated by -6354, attributed to Aidan Pearson.

  Umqy

  Eventually, I find a suitable place on the snow to set my shelter and stop. Building a yaranga has always been hard work alone, but those hunters like me who prefer to hunt alone are used to it. This yaranga is smaller than is traditional—it has more in common with the Nenet chum—so I am able to quickly lash the long sticks I have brought together until the frame is made. It takes fifteen skins to cover it, and I dig the snow over their edges to seal it. It will be warm enough for me in here. When it is done, I unload the rest of my sled—my food and skins to sleep on—and then rest the sled against the walls of the yaranga. I tether the reindeer and take in a long, unsteady breath.

  Behind me, I can see my tracks in the snow. Each of them takes me a step further away from a life marked by both agony and joy: the joy of the births of my children; the agony of the death of my culture, my home, my history. My wife, long since taken from me by the very disease that now rots my own lungs, and the terrible pain of her passing, which now ravages my empty heart. At least she cannot see what has become of us. How would she react? Less angrily than I, of that much I am sure. Yet it would trouble her. In that sad way, I am glad she is not here to see it.

  It is time.

  The wind grows in strength as I walk away from my camp; it tugs at me, seeking to toss me stumbling into the snow. It is a startling change, as if the spirits it carries within it feel some great anger, and that anger has abruptly overflowed. I wonder for a moment if their anger is with me, and if my pact with Tynga-gyrgyn was not successful in persuading them.