Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  Dawn pushed back the night several hours ago; the sun’s fiery glow seeped slowly over the cliffs of the cape some miles away until it lay low in the sky and the beauty of my wild home was displayed. I had thought it might be a good day to hunt. Yet now, far out to sea, lightning flares within dark, boiling clouds.

  I cough again, and this time there is no mistaking the blood that is mixed with the phlegm. Each time I cough—a great wracking claw that tears at the inside of my chest—I am a little weaker. Despite the cold, I grow hot as my wife did. Sweat gathers on my brow and face, then freezes in the frigid wind. My eyes blur and I wipe them bitterly. Not now, I tell myself. Be strong. You have a job to do. A debt to repay.

  I force myself to walk, knowing the weakness will pass if I keep moving. I continue to scan the snow for tracks, as I have been doing since I left my village, but as yet I have found nothing. The hunt might last several days. It would of course be quicker with my dogs, and for a moment I miss them. They have been my companions for many years. They will not understand what I have done, where I have gone. But they will accept the love of my grandchildren.

  The umqy can smell the breath of a seal from a great distance, even deep within the seal’s breathing hole in the ice. It will remain hidden, perfectly still and silent, until a seal emerges. Then it will crush its skull with its teeth. Its patience has come from centuries of understanding that food on the tundra is scarce—that opportunities do not come very often. It will wait, sometimes for many hours, until the timing is perfect. It can creep up on a resting seal, slowly, quietly, only rushing to attack when it comes within the length of six men from it. Rarely does a seal see this attack coming.

  I am looking for tracks to find the stalking trails the umqy are using, but I will also look for seals. It is by their breathing holes and burrows that I have the best chance to locate the umqy. The traditional way is to hunt with dogs and shoot from distance. That is not my way. It is not why I am here.

  When I reach the coast, the sky is dark over the sea. The waves, even this close to shore, are like churning mountains of angry black. The hills behind me are sheathed in snow, but otherwise, this vast wild place is flat. There is no break from the frigid, rising wind that sears the skin on my face.

  Something on the sea attracts my attention. Green and red lights that wink at me. I kneel to give myself some respite from the wind, because I want to understand what it is I am seeing. Is it a boat of some kind? It cannot be—no one would be foolish enough to be out in this weather, even the American fishermen.

  I realize the lights are not far from me, and as the waves rise and fall in their violent dance, I see a soft sheen of glistening white, with a dorsal fin like a shark. It is a hull. The lights are from a boat, and it has capsized.

  I can only stare, watching in horror.

  The sea is bringing it toward me—toward the bank of ice that waits on the fringes of the shore.

  There might be sailors in that boat, and if they have survived, if they have made it out of the sea, I know immediately they will need my help. I cannot rely on other coastal anqallyt hunters to have seen the boat and be close enough to help, and the small township of Yanrakynnot is too far away—perhaps as much as thirty miles. Besides, that is not our way. To temper the harshness of the tundra, we have always been generous to each other, and to strangers. It is the only way we have survived.

  Another thought strikes me. A storm such as this one often leaves dead seals, walruses, sometimes even whales, on the beach. There are scattered bones of such whales not far from the township. Storms like this bestow rich gifts for the umqy. I have no doubt there will be silent hunters roaming the tundra near the shore. The umqy knows there is little in this wilderness that can kill it. It will not shrink from hunting a wounded man.

  I change my direction and head to where I estimate the boat will strike the shore.

  Scott

  The immersion suit and the thermals I’ve layered beneath it are doing their job. I’m still warm enough to stay alive. In the Bering, the cold water is enough to kill: temperatures at this time of year will be in the low forties. Without suits, both of us would be dead in maybe half an hour, and unconscious way before that. The suit might keep me alive for a few hours, maybe four or five, but Mike has less time than that. I can feel some cool water running up my arms and I know the seals won’t last forever.

  The light attached to the suit is blinking brightly—the water has activated it. Good. The life jackets are keeping us afloat, on top of the waves rising up underneath us, kicking us forward and then dragging us down again. I blink away the sting of the ocean’s tears from my eyes. The rain is hammering down from above.

  I’m terrified. My heart is pounding so hard I can actually feel it in my throat. I want to throw up. I’m hanging on to Mike with one hand and swimming with the other. Where? Where the fuck are you going to go?

  The yacht will right itself at some point, if it doesn’t sink. Its natural buoyancy, and the keel catching the water, will see to that. But it’s taking in water. It’s heavily laden with the crates Mike was taking to St Lawrence. If we’re too close, it could drag us down in its wake. I swim away from it, drawing my arm through the cold water, battling and shouting.

  The beacon is on, I tell myself. Someone is coming. In a storm like this, the moment they see the beacon, they’ll come.

  It’s desperation, I know, but I look for the lights of a Coast Guard helicopter above us. I really expect it to be there, a rescue swimmer ready to drop from the heavens into the sea to get us. I’m almost stunned when I see nothing but the seething grey of the storm. Another wave throws me upward and I feel small and completely at the mercy of the sea.

  I fumble around, rubbing spray from my eyes, choking and spitting salt water, trying to time my glances around me with the rising waves. The walls of black tower above me so I can’t see more than a few meters, but with each rise and fall, we go too. As we rise, I search feverishly for something, anything, that looks like land. St. Lawrence, we might be close, it’s just possible.

  I glance at the slick hull and the keel sticking up. The boat is being kicked around worse than we are—there’s more for the sea to grab hold of. We’re riding it as much as anything else, but the big waves, the breakers, send us crashing under, and I have to swim hard to keep on top. Without the life jackets, we’d be gone.

  On what must be the tenth crest or more, I see it. A subtle line of humps on the horizon. If I can see them, if that’s land, it’s no more than a few miles away. It’s swimmable. On the next crest, I battle to get up so I can see, and I am sure of it. They’re hills. Christ knows where, probably St. Lawrence, but it’s something.

  I can hear myself screaming, shouting for joy. I can do this. I can get there. Mike is clipped into my life jacket, so I let the line play out and start swimming for the ice. He’ll drag me, slow me down, but there’s no way I’m going to leave him here. I can do this.

  I haul myself onto the ice, my fingers clawing for grip. I slip and tumble back down into the water. “Get up there,” I growl, and I can hear the panic in my own voice. I claw again for grip and try to kick out of the water, throwing my leg up.

  Again I fall. I’m about to cry in frustration.

  Suddenly, against the clamor of the wind, I hear something. I can’t quite pick it out, but it’s there. Was that a shout?

  I try to pull myself up again, and I see something moving in the distance. A shambling, light silhouette against the grey tundra ice.

  Someone is running toward me.

  Umqy

  My age and disease are forgotten as I run. The creak of my bones and the scars on my lungs are gone as I stumble and slide, trying to keep my footing on the ice. There are two of them, but one looks dead. Unconscious, I hope fervently. The other is trying to pull himself up onto the ice. Without the suits they wear, bright yellow and easy to see, and the flashing lights on their chests, I might never have seen them.

  I see the face o
f the one pulling himself up contort as he sees me; his eyes widen in surprise. He is not expecting to see another person, or he is not expecting to see my strange features, my darker skin. In short, he knows my face is not that of his own, western people. My clothing tells him what he cannot possibly have known when he was in the sea.

  He is not where he should be. He is far away from home.

  I kneel quickly, bracing myself as I have done many times before to pull someone out of the freezing sea and onto the ice. Between us, struggling without a language, but understanding the desperate need of the situation, we manage to get him onto the ice. Immediately he looks at me, but he does not pause. He turns and hauls on a harness of some kind, dragging his friend toward him. Together we drag him, too, onto the ice.

  But he is barely conscious. The tear in the hood at the back of his head is immediately apparent, and my heart sinks. I stare at the first man, who is checking his friend, and I know what he does not seem to: this man will not survive out here. He might as well have died in the sea.

  I stand and back away, watching them both. What must I do now? What can I do? My yaranga is barely big enough for two, let alone three, but I cannot leave them.

  I place a gentle hand on the first man’s shoulder to attract his attention, but he turns sharply, mouth open, eyes flashing. There is madness in them. “We must get my sled,” I say to him. “I have a camp. We must get your friend there. He cannot stay out here. Your clothes will soon freeze.” I am trying to make him understand with gesticulation—hand signals to symbolize the sled, the yaranga, his friend.

  But he looks at me blankly. Whether it is exhaustion, or fear, or the emotion of what has happened to him, he cannot understand. He seems unwilling, or unable, to move. A bag of some sort dangles from a cord on his arm.

  I jab a finger at the valley between the hills, toward my camp. My sled is there, and with it, we can take the man to my camp. Inside the yaranga, they can at least be warm. I can build a fire in there. It will grant us some protection from the storm. Perhaps dry their clothes.

  I turn to leave—it is as much as two hours’ walk there and back and the weather is worsening. The man grabs me. He shakes his head and says something I don’t understand, but his tone is pleading.

  “We cannot carry him,” I say, pointing at his friend. “I have a sled.” But I know this is useless; I cannot make him understand. He is young; I can see it from his face. Why was he out in a storm like this? The foolishness of youth, I think angrily. The brashness of you stupid Americans. Risking your own lives for what—for fun? This is not a place for fun—the sea is to be respected, feared, in a storm like this. Even my grandchildren understand that. And now that self-serving foolishness has robbed me of what was truly important to me—the chance to prove my worth for the last time. I feel the heat of anger rising inside me.

  It is then that something else attracts my attention. I take my rifle from my shoulder, and the man backs away. I shake my head to make him understand it is not for him. I beckon him to kneel, and I do the same.

  What was it? A smell? Movement I have caught in the corner of my eye, but which is now gone? I cannot say. It was a fleeting moment; something that feathers the edge of my hunter’s instincts. Decades I have spent out here; I know this place.

  Umqy. There is one nearby. I know it for sure, although I cannot see it. The snowstorm is making it hard to see much of anything now. I glance at the bright yellow suits of these two men; the bloodied bandaged head of the one lying barely conscious on the ice.

  It is too late for the sled.

  I make what other Chukchi would consider an absurd gesture—it might even cause hunters who know me to laugh. I pretend to be a bear, making claws with my hands and growling. The man’s jaw drops and his eyes widen again. He glances out to the sea, but I don’t know why. Does he think that is where the umqy will come from?

  He turns back to me and takes his friend by the arms and nods back to the hills where I indicated my camp is. I nod to him, and with one hand, I take his friend’s legs.

  And we carry him together, hefting this almost dead man as we clamber over the ice.

  Scott

  I’m in Russia. Christ. The man in front of me—his face, his language, the sealskin and fur-lined coat and trousers—all of it tells me where I am, no matter how much I can’t believe it. The concept stuns me. How far did the goddamn storm take us? Right the way across the Bering. St. Lawrence is thirty-seven miles from Russia, but something tells me we never got anywhere near St. Lawrence.

  I don’t know who he is or what he wants; I can’t understand him when he speaks. Yet the moment he slips the rifle off his shoulder, my heart kicks. He was going to walk away, but when he turns back to me, I can see the anger in his face. He’s made a decision; changed his mind. Maybe he wants my suit—I can see him staring first at mine, then at Mike’s—or maybe the contents of my grab bag. Out here, the Eskimos, or whatever the fuck they are, can take whatever they want. No one will miss me if something happens to me. He knows that. He knows they’ll think I was lost at sea. He can dump our bodies back in the Bering and no one will ever know. Two immersion suits and the rest of my kit is worth more to him than I am.

  He sees it in my eyes, the fact I know what he’s about to do. If I move now, I can take the rifle from him—get inside it before he brings it down.

  I feel sick. I can’t speak to him, make him understand. I have money! I can give him money—the suit is worth jack shit now, but there’s money in my grab bag. Dollars. Even over here, that’s worth something, right?

  If I jump him, get the rifle away from him, I can show him.

  But he shakes his head at me and beckons for me to kneel. I don’t understand what he means. Then he does something that floods me with both relief and a new terror.

  He engages in what is clearly a pantomime of a bear.

  Whatever threat I see in him, we are not alone out here. Of course not. There are enough in Alaska, but here in Siberia, the polar bear is more prolific. I turn my head to look at the Bering, the waves still crashing violently in the distance. I survived that, I think bitterly. Saved Mike from drowning, clawed my way up onto the ice after a swim that has left me exhausted and frozen. To this? To be stalked by a bear? I know polar bears. Anyone who surfs in Alaska knows about polar bears. There is no land mammal more dangerous, more powerful. Yet polar bears actually stalk their prey—a park ranger up in Noatak once told me they call it still-hunting. The bear moves with almost perfect silence on its own terrain, and this is sure as hell its own terrain. In this snowstorm, with the wind masking its every movement, we won’t even hear it coming.

  I glance at the rifle. It’s good, heavy caliber, but old. Shooting a bear from a distance, where it’s no threat, is one thing. But right now, we can’t see or hear a damn thing with the storm. If it comes charging out of the grey, it will be on us before the Eskimo can do anything about it.

  I wonder then whether in fact we are worth more to him alive. If a bear attacks, he can leave us to it. Protect himself by sacrificing us. Maybe we have a dollar value. Maybe he’ll hand us over to the Russian authorities for a nice baksheesh. There have been reports of tourists without a visa being arrested, and suddenly I see myself paraded on a Moscow news channel: the stupid American, caught in a storm on the Bering. A white man in a world he doesn’t understand, on Russian soil without permission. I cannot see my own paranoia; all I can see is this man in front of me with a rifle who almost certainly earns less in a year than I do on a trawler for a season. Even me, with a handful of dollars and a crappy clapboard two-bed that needs painting. This man lives in a tent made of reindeer hide. His clothes are from the skins of seals or walrus. All I can think is: What sort of payday would he get from the local police if he were to hand us in? My mind doesn’t stop swimming with these thoughts, and it dizzies me more than the storm raging around us ever could.

  Right now, he wants me to go with him. What else can I do? I can’t stay here
. I pick up Mike’s legs, and the Eskimo shoulders the rifle and takes Mike’s arms. He’s old, but still strong enough to help carry Mike. I watch him ahead of me through narrow eyes, this man wrapped in animal skins, and wonder if the bullets in that rifle are now meant for us.

  Umqy

  He is heavy, this American, his body fat with fried food and Coca-Cola. I doubt he has ever been forced to struggle as we must do in this unforgiving wilderness of Chukotka. No doubt his life was a gift from the moment he was born. In truth, although the spirits might chastise me for my uncharitable thoughts, I resent carrying him. He is keeping me from the final chance I have to repay my debt to my village; to prove myself useful. It is his own stupidity that has brought him here—a lust for hedonism that has no place in a landscape as capricious as the sea—yet it is I who suffer because of it.

  I cough again, the agony of it spasming in my chest and throat, but I press my chin into my shoulder so the other American will not see this weakness.

  I bow my head against the wind and snow that claws at my face, but I search, too, the grey, swirling chaos which surrounds me. The umqy knows we are here; I am sure of it. I can detect his scent on the wind. He is silently, patiently stalking us. I have no doubt he knows one of us is wounded. I wonder whether he might strike us a glancing blow—dart in and tear as much damage as he can, then come back. Western hunters come here and think they know this white bear, but they don’t. It is more intelligent than they are, and their successes are due only to their numbers and their snow machines. We have no such luxuries. We are the prey now, despite this old rifle of mine.

  Scott