A Discovery of Strangers

by Rudy Wiebe

  The Doctor has reported, “Immediately on Michel’s coming up, I put an’ end to his life by shooting him through the head with a pistol.”

  That’s right. The Doctor cannot lie, I tell you, he doesn’t. But you think he just walks up to that big bastard with a loaded pistol, even when he’s never let him see he’s got it, an’ that Mohawk ready to kill us as he is just stands there, smiling till the Doc gets it all primed ready — “Just stand at attention, my good man” — an’ lays it up between his eyes an’ neatly blows his brains out? A clean, legal, proper — execution? Hah! Life on the polar Barrens ain’t no Admiralty report, nor a thick book neither like Sir John’s, so “picturesque”, as they call all those pictures and nice words put so nicely together to cost ten guineas.

  Listen to me, once we see that Dogrib Rock, we just have to get to it to see the Big Stone, south-west, an’ Fort Enterprise is on the straight line between. When we see that, we know: Michel doesn’t need us no more, nor our compass, which he always thought floating magic an’ couldn’t read anyhow an’ we would never explain. We have to move quick now, because he sure as hell will.

  So when he comes up with his rifle all primed to shoot us one after the other, an’ leave us for the wolves if they’ll have us, I walk straight at him as if I’m looking for brush for a fire an’ he brings up the rifle but not really expecting anything, my hands are empty, we’d been so quiet an’ convenient just getting weaker while he somehow stays so strong, we never say nothing about where he goes day after day an’ never brings back nothing to eat, though he always seems satisfied when he tells us there’s nothing to hunt, an’ lies down to sleep pretty easy with his loaded rifle, or even when he cursed “the French” as he called all Whites for stealing land from his people an’ using them for everything — even food! The shit Whites ate his three brothers one winter on the Ottawa River! Though I’ve heard it said his people were that cruel, an’ some priests say addicted themselves to the habit of eating human flesh — no, I don’t say nothing to him, not a word, then.

  I just walk close past him, he not quite suspecting me yet, but alert, an’ stumble hard as I can into him, I knock him down ramming against him an’ would of got his first bullet in my gut — would’ve if I’d been normal big-gutted, he sure as hell fired — but the bullet grazes my hip an’ I crush him deeper in the snow, I bury him with all the weight and strength I’ve got, I’m screaming it’s him or me, an’ the Doctor gets there an’ pokes the pistol in his ear an’ fires.

  Execution — but you can see we didn’t have time for prayer, not then. Though I heard him call himself a Christian. He thrashed under me pretty hard, but never moved after.

  God be praised for saving us by our own hand; an’ we’re three days snowbound, the Doctor reported. That’s true, there was lots of snow, falling an’ drifting, an’ we were too exhausted after that to move, I can tell you. He cleaned my wound with snow an’ sewed it with thin boiled babiche from Michel’s pants or I’d of bled to death, my hip didn’t heal till spring when I had some fat again. Michel froze fast right there in the snow where I dropped on him, an’ in those three days, “snowbound”, I ate a lot of him.

  Very careful, he so strong from the voyageurs he’d fed off, Canadians, as we called them, feeding a Canadian — an’ him an’ Indian — feeding me, a circle the way we’d done it anyways for two years, though this was slightly more personal, you might say, taking care of each other, me starting with slices off his good muscle, arm or thigh, the way the Doctor told me it would work, slow, slow, a little broth first, then boiled, then roasted, otherwise you vomit an’ destroy yourself worse.

  The Doctor himself wouldn’t have any of him, he was drinking only country tea with bits of Mr. Hood’s singed an’ boiled buffalo hide to eat. That man’s so strong in his head, an’ tough, o, a Scot beyond all Scots, give him oats — which are real hard to find on the tundra — or nothing, with principle enough to curl your hair a fine Christian grey, though at the time he wasn’t thirty-five. What he ate earlier, which Michel brought, wasn’t his responsibility, he said, though he suspected something, it was the shape of the bones. An’ he reported to the Lieutenant that I “exerted myself far beyond my strength” so that we did finally reach Enterprise an’ found the four that’s left there starving worse than us. Where did I get the strength to hunt an’ carry the gun an’ a bit of powder an’ bullets an’ hatchet an’ bedding hide we hadn’t eaten, an’ lug the Doctor too, which he did not report, not exactly? On my bloody back!

  His heels draggin’ two furrows behind me, though there was nothing to sow in that godforsaken snow. Sir John wrote in his book for anyone to see who can read an’ has ten guineas, “John Hepburn, an’ English seaman, and our only attendant, to whom in the latter part of our journey we owe, under Divine Providence, the preservation of the lives of some of our party.” How lucky, me of the bottom class somehow had all this amazing strength to offer them.

  Believe that, an’ I won’t mock you. But I say, if you care for them, you serve. An’ I cared for them, every one, even Back, who could outwalk anybody except Solomon an’ wouldn’t let nothing stop him finding those Yellowknives again an’ talking them dizzy until they brought us meat an’ saved us — though I wasn’t there an’ I’ve got nothing to say about how he an’ St. Germain an’ Bélanger le gros lived long enough walking to find them, I wasn’t with them an’ I’d never ask. Back reported they left Gabriel Beauparlant — he always called him his servant — to “rest” in the snow somewhere near Roundrock Lake, an’ his body was never found, like none of them was, who’d go find them? — God, Back would’ve eaten anything an’ walked into blazing hell to save us, I know that an’ I served him, before an’ after, just as well as I served young “Robin” Hood, poor churchly bugger, he at least got some good loving in that hard country, for a little while, till it got all bust up. It’s not for me to talk about. If you care for them, you do what’s needed so they can return home with their great principles safe an’ precious as the crown jewels of England. How many English servants, you think, have had the strength to save the upper class their shining Christian principles? Or, if they couldn’t save them, have never said a word about it neither?

  “Long pig.” It’s a good name. The Fiji Islanders with their curly hair sticking out call it that, an’ English sailors too, since they started talking about it after Captain Cook. That’s the exact taste of it, I tell you we’re closer to the suffering beasts than you’d think, an’ plenty of Englishmen know it; more than may tell you. An’ they’ve drunk each other’s piss too in the rotten tubs they sail off in, that bust up so easy in all the storms an’ rocks of the whole bleedin’ world. You want principles? The big world’s bloody harder than any “principles”.

  Listen to me, I been on every ocean in the world, ships good an’ ships bad an’ ships worse than that, an’ even in canoes in the worst of all, the Polar Ocean. Meat is … meat. If I have to I’ll eat anything. Even bacon, though I can’t stand the smell of it, always stinks too Mohawk to me, ha-ha! “Long pig” — stand an’ English tar to a few pints an’ he’ll tell you that, long pig it is. An’ any officer’ll tell you the same, if he don’t lie.

  DOCTOR JOHN RICHARDSON

  Wednesday November 7th 1821 Fort Enterprise

  In the morning we heard the report of a musket, and soon after a great shout, and on looking out beheld three Indians with sledges below on the river. I imparted this joyful intelligence to Lieutenant Franklin, who immediately returned thanks to the Almighty, but poor Adam could scarcely comprehend it.

  The Indians, The Rat, Crookedfoot and Boudelkell, had been sent from Bigfoot by Mr. Back with dried meat and fat. We devoured their food, and they incautiously permitted us to eat as much as we could; in consequence, with the exception of Adam, we suffered dreadfully from distention of the abdomen, and had no rest during the night. The Indians were unwilling to remain in the house where the bodies of our deceased companions remained exposed, but Hepburn and I
were now able to drag them out a short distance and cover them with snow.

  Friday November 16th 1821 Travelling

  Our feelings on being at last able to quit the Fort, where we had formerly enjoyed much comfort, if not happiness, and latterly experienced such a degree of misery scarcely to be paralleled, may be more easily conceived than described. The Indians treated us with the utmost tenderness, gave us their snowshoes and walked without themselves, keeping by our sides that they might lift us when we fell.

  About three miles distant from the house we encamped, as I was unable to continue. The Indians cooked for and fed us as if we had been children, evincing a degree of humanity that would have done honour to the most civilized of nations.

  13

  THE SPLIT-FOOTED CARIBOU

  Then, suddenly as always, the caribou appeared like the wandering wind they were upon the shores of the lake beyond the Tetsot’ine camp, and in the sky between stones along the high ridges. When all the hunters went to them, quickly and with great care, they were welcomed by so many bodies steaming open in the darkening winter that everyone knew they could eat for at least four days, and sleep full-gutted for another four. And they sang:

  How glorious to see,

  How unutterable, the great animals

  Who live by voices we may never hear.

  Another People like ourselves, splendid

  And complete, always travelling, always held

  Like we are in the magnificence and travail

  Of the long land.

  But the very next morning, the men ordered the women to take half the meat they hadn’t yet eaten and go, pile it up in Bigfoot’s lodge.

  Why? Because Boy English had appeared out the north. Even more abruptly than the animals, more or less dead from hunger, with Twospeaker and an’ emaciated voyageur half-carrying him, and starving as well — and obviously, wherever and whenever Whites appear they always need food, right now, food! When the women heard what the men said they cried aloud in protest; all the children, with most of the dogs, soon joined them.

  Every woman had gone out the day before in such laughter and happiness, praying gratitude with singing, onto the lake to bring in the considerate animals the men had hunted. Draping ribs in pairs over their shoulders, the legs and hides, barely frozen, stacked carefully on their sleds, the children pushing caribou heads by their giant racks before them over the windswept ice, steering them with shouts of laughter to the crested tops of drifts, riding them down. And the feasting all night, at last everyone was again stuffed tight with heart, liver, intestines, the marvellous sponginess of brains and cooked stomach — and the men and larger boys had eaten their fat, bloody fill of penises and scrotums and udders and wombs, torn them apart with laughing teeth and swallowed them as thick as they could to make sure no woman came near these special gifts from the animals and so destroyed the next hunt — for who could say, today and tomorrow and the day after, when there might again be nothing on the lake, not a caribou anywhere within dreaming. But now all these racks of ribs, these haunches like massive frozen clubs striated with fat, these tongues — why must an English with his two bony slaves come again from the dead and receive all the delicious tongues?

  Fifty-nine tongues, someone counted through her enraged tears, many of them taken from caches to celebrate the tender returning-winter concern of the animals. Why could These English, even when hunger twisted their guts tight and chopped their faces down to bone, eat nothing but the tastiest, the most celebratory parts? Always returning, these Whitemuds, how often could that happen, every year now for ever returning and returning; if they were fed now and went south to the traders, would they blunder back north next summer again only to come starving again a winter later? The women had thought they were rid of them last summer when they trudged off, their overburdened slaves hauling canoes across rotting ice north and east to where every person knew the Raw-Meat Eaters lived on the Everlasting Ice of the stinking water, whatever it was they wanted to do when they got there — look at its endlessness? Any fool could see the limits of that in one turning glance, had they no eyes, how long did it take them to see?

  And they said then they wanted to go away east, east, not come back here — so why hadn’t they? Because there were no animals to eat there, and no People to hunt for them while they travelled — but they had been told that! Couldn’t they hear what they were told?

  But that doesn’t matter now, because here they are again. Just as the long darkness closes in, one of them comes staggering back, somehow, though most of their slaves, he admits, are already dead — but every English is still alive, yes! — well, everyone knows why These English will live longest — but we must hurry, food, quick!

  What child doesn’t know, the women cry to the air blazing in the brief noon sun, that in winter everyone needs food? How stupid can you be?

  And everyone dies. We ourselves are always dying. When the caribou and the rabbits vanish, to whom can we run and cry pathetically, “I am here, feed me or I die!” Who pulls us out of vicious rapids or sews our clothes? Who kills himself carrying us around portages and over snow?

  But These English come staggering out of the winter and announce, “Look! We’re here! Behold how we suffer, we’re almost dead! We’ve eaten the pants you sewed us, our hairy legs are freezing, quick, Thick English is naked, his name is become He Cannot Walk Because He Has Eaten His Boots! Feed us!”

  But Broadface says to Greywing, “You, carry this good meat to Bigfoot.”

  “What I once heard,” Keskarrah says to them all, “I found hard to believe, then, but now I know it is wrong. These English can’t keep death from us, nor from themselves.”

  Greywing looks at Broadface, laughing. “Those Whitemud mouths are too stupid,” she says, “they can’t chew good brains,” and she jerks forwards, her hand catching, as it were, her own vomit; Broadface laughs with her. Greenstockings thinks: they do that best together, laughing at someone.

  “We couldn’t, of course,” Keskarrah continues, eyes closed, as if he had heard nothing, nor any wailing outside, “withhold food from anyone if we have some, especially from those to whom we have already given hospitality. And accepting a gift is an’ obligation as well, even after you recognize it has become dangerous. Richard Sun’s gift — dangerous or not, I accepted it — we all accepted and gave hospitality.…” He opens his eyes to Greywing, who is no longer laughing; as if he were about to enter a memory of weeping. Then he looks at Greenstockings.

  “Perhaps,” he concludes, “you accepted something once too, from this Boy English who has now arrived starving so well.”

  Broadface stiffens, and Greenstockings says deliberately, “No. I accepted nothing but a little laughter from him — I thought about more, but only once.”

  “Ah-h-h-h,” and Keskarrah sighs heavily. “Doing is very simple, we all do things. But thinking — even once — that offers many more possibilities.”

  And it may be that Birdseye is still in the lodge with them, her body still taking a breath at such long intervals that, bent closely over her and watching intensely, Greenstockings is convinced: yes, surely now, with this lengthening pause her mother will at last, mercifully, forget completely how to breathe. But Birdseye is not there; there is no one to answer Keskarrah if Greenstockings will not.

  Broadface stirs his big body with impatience, as always, but it will be a long time before he dares to interrupt the father of his wives. He can only order the youngest, even more loudly,

  “You will carry meat!”

  and gesture with as much dignity as he has at the share of animal bodies he hunted. What of it Greywing will pick up is her decision.

  While outside the wailing dialogues of the women move on towards Bigfoot’s lodge, the shrilling of dogs excited by so much passing meat drifts along the ice of the lake the English will later name “Greenstockings”, where the Yellowknife River (they already named that the summer before) continues its long, stony descent, now chewing its p
aths through ice towards distant Tucho. And already Crookedfoot and The Rat and Boudelkell have left; Bigfoot sent them immediately in the night when Boy English arrived, with a sled of meat in case Thick English really was still alive in the log and mud house they lived in last winter, but several People have been suddenly lost in both Bigfoot’s and The Hook’s camps during the past month and they are all quite destitute, so impoverished that Keskarrah has almost stopped dreaming the hunt of the animals altogether.

  “Where do the animals go? Where will their trails be for our snares?” The Hook and Bigfoot have kept urging him.

  Keskarrah has responded very deliberately, lying as it seems comatose in his bare furs whenever the large winter camp is not moving.

  “We have always dreamed, praying as the drum speaks,” he says finally. “That is our way. But now someone has to think as well. There may be others now who must start to dream; it has come to me after this hard beginning winter that I must dare to think only.”

  And they understand that he says this because of Birdseye; why, when they wait for him silently, he suddenly speaks of something else, as if their present hunger were no more than a mere hesitation in their lifelong travel.

  But despite their mournings and Keskarrah’s refusals since they joined Bigfoot travelling from great Sahtú, the many People all gathered together now have been eating no more poorly than they often do after a slim summer, when the caribou rut and can still dig easily through the first snow. However, since they arrived severally with The Hook, Bigfoot has continued moving steadily south, towards the traders’ fort on Tucho. There, he reminds them, promises are waiting from Thick English, promises he wrote down to stand for ever on paper before he left north: there they are to receive every White thing they want for all the food and clothing they have already given the Expedition. That promise is there, he insists, waiting to help them, and they must get it before the traders hear that Thick English is dead.