Season of Death

by Christopher Lane

  “Loosely translated, the woman who gave birth to me was a whale.”

  “Bowhead,” Lewis specified, almost gleefully.

  “And yer gonna take that?” the cowboy asked, eyes wide.

  “Guess I have to,” Ray answered with a shrug. “Lewis is mentally impaired … you know, not right in the head. His brain was frozen when he was little. He was so homely as a baby, that his mother tried to get rid of him, dropped him into a seal hole on an ice floe. But the seals threw him back, said his ugly mug was scaring off the fish.”

  Lewis’s crooked, stained grin grew, his eyes glinting mischievously. “Eh … so dat’s how you want it.”

  “No,” Ray said, shaking his head. He could tell what Lewis was thinking. “Let’s get going,” he urged. “Gotta get to those caribou.”

  “Gotta be doo-el,” Lewis announced in an ominous tone. “Loser wins Fred.”

  “Lewis, I don’t want to duel.”

  “What kind of duel?” Billy Bob asked. “Ya mean with guns and all?”

  “Song doo-el. Old Tradition,” Lewis told him, his village English becoming even more stilted. His language skills always seemed to deteriorate when he discussed “Eskimo” subjects. “To settle ah-gu-ment. Old ones used to sing—try best each other.”

  “To humiliate each other,” Ray explained. “Nobody does it anymore.”

  “Sure. In da villages. Proves who da best man is, who can put down udder guy.”

  “Sounds kinda fun,” Billy Bob said. “A little like put-downs.”

  “Exactly like put-downs,” Ray said. “Except you sing them. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Aiiyaa …” Lewis said, throwing up his hands. “You carry Fred.”

  Ray gazed down at the shirt-covered lump. “Okay …” He groaned. “Who starts?”

  Lewis thumped Billy Bob in the chest. “You be judge. Listen, see who best is.”

  Billy Bob opened his mouth to object, and probably to ask for more information, but Lewis was already chanting. He hummed, sang out indistinct words, and uttered Inupiaq for two minutes, closing his performance with an evil snicker.

  “I didn’t catch a single thang ya said.”

  Ray rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t much. He called me a half-breed mouse.”

  “Shrew,” Lewis interjected. “Half shrew, half beaver.” He burst out laughing, as if this were the worst of insults. “And I say father Haida. Mother Tlingit. Parts of totem pole.”

  Billy Bob pursed his lips, assessing the quality of the insult. “Yer turn, Ray.”

  “This is stupid,” he muttered, struggling to think of something to sing. In the duel, at least in Lewis’s version, nothing was off-limits. Though Ray’s parents were long dead, they were fair game in this tried-and-true contest.

  “Okay … how’s this?” Ray launched into a lyrical story about Lewis’s misguided guide service, using the melody of “Louis, Louis” to disparage his ability and call into question his sanity. He concluded with “When Lewis says, ‘Come on Joe,’ just tell him no, no—you don’t want to go. Oh, oh, oh, oh …”

  Billy Bob laughed at this. “Perty good. Perty good. They were both perty good.”

  “Who won?” Lewis demanded.

  “I’d have to call it a tie, I thank. They was both good.”

  “‘Nother round,” Lewis said.

  He was clearing his throat when Ray waved him off. “You win. I’ll take Fred.” Suddenly the idea of having a disembodied skull onboard his kayak wasn’t as bad as listening to Lewis’s strained, whining voice hail him with ridicule.

  Lewis celebrated the victory with a pantomime of a sky walk, climaxed by a dunk on an invisible goal. “Fletcher monster dunk at da buzzer!”

  “Can we go now?” Ray wondered.

  “Sure,” Lewis answered cockily. “Just don’t forget Fred.” He cackled his way over to his pack and began stuffing gear inside.

  Ray retrieved the clothes and sleeping bag. The gortex parkas were dry, the rest still getting there. He decided that they could complete the airing-out process when they stopped to make camp that evening. After stuffing the apparel into Billy Bob’s pack, he placed the heavy cotton bundle in the stern, packing the hole with the nylon mummy bag, in hopes of keeping old Fred from making any unscheduled appearances.

  “I ain’t positive I’m up to this,” Billy Bob conceded. He had already loaded his pack and was standing two feet from the water, eyeing his craft suspiciously.

  “You’ll be fine,” Ray assured, wondering how in the world the cowboy would navigate a swift river when he couldn’t handle a calm, glassy lake. “Tell you what …” He scanned the driftwood strewn about the beach. “No … These won’t work. Lewis, I need a couple of tent poles. And some rope.”

  “What for?”

  “To lash our boats together—sort of an outrigger setup. It’ll be more stable.”

  “Stable? Eh … But a real dog to turn. Bet you hit da first rock we meet.” He bent to dig his pack out of the kayak. A minute later, he threw Ray two aluminum shafts and a ball of yellow climbing rope. Together he and Billy Bob jury-rigged the boats, binding them together.

  “That’ll keep us from butting together all the time,” Ray explained. He took hold of the poles and tested the arrangement with a firm shake. “Pretty solid. Should last through most of what we’re heading into. We can always make repairs.”

  “Not to da head,” Lewis teased, patting his scalp.” ‘Specially not Fred da Head.”

  “Ignore him,” Ray said. After Billy Bob was aboard, he pushed their double-hulled craft away from the shore and climbed in.

  “Now we start next leg of da trip, floating da Kanayut,” Lewis informed, playing the guide again. “Ready, Mista Attla?”

  “Ready,” Ray sighed.

  “Ready, Mista Cleava?”

  “Naw. Not really,” Billy Bob replied, swallowing hard.

  “Ready, Mista Fred da Head?” Lewis answered his own question in a deep voice. “You betcha. ‘Cept I can’t see from in here.”

  Lewis’s choppy, high-pitched chortle resounded over the water, hit the far shore, and came back. Billy Bob found this hilarious as well, adding his twanging laugh to the mix.

  Ray had to admit, it was funny. The whole thing was humorous in a pathetic sort of way: Billy Bob’s motion sickness, the cowboy’s inability to stay afloat, almost drowning, losing Ray’s pack, being forced to wear skintight pants and a muscle shirt, snagging a skull with a spinner, even the song duel … The three of them would never forget this trip. Just hours old, it had already been memorable.

  Hopefully, the remainder of their time in the Bush would be less eventful.

  NINE

  QUNNIKUN, QUNNIKUN—GIVE US smooth water. That had been Lewis’s prayer as they left the lake. The petition had fallen on deaf, disinterested ears, Ray decided as he eyed the Kanayut. The river was high, manic, licking at its banks, reaching up muddy shoals, swallowing miniature islands of willows like a hungry serpent on a binge. An unusually warm summer had worn away the hidden pockets and reservoirs of snow that normally existed throughout the year in the shadowy recesses of the Endicott Mountains. Though not quite a torrent, the river seemed intent on achieving the status before the return of winter.

  Lewis is a complete and total fool! Ray surmised as the shore flew past. They were traveling at an easy 30 mph, virtually hurtling forward, and it was all he could do to keep the two kayaks pointed in the right direction. Lashing them together had seemed like a good idea thirty minutes earlier. Now? The question wasn’t if they would meet with tragedy, but when. Catastrophe was clearly headed in their direction. Or rather, they were racing to meet it.

  Thankfully, the first few miles had been without obstacle. The river was wide here, the smooth, green veneer offering a pretense of comfort. But it was swift. Deceivingly powerful. The kayaks were being driven along like toothpicks, wholly unnoticed by the river. It was flowing effortlessly, relentlessly north, toward the Colville.

  Somewhere a
long the line, they would reach their stop: the holy grail—caribou. But as Ray struggled to guide the rig, he wondered if they would even slow down before being dumped into Beaufort Sea, a hundred miles downstream.

  “You okay?” he asked Billy Bob without looking at him.

  “Yeah … I thank so.” He didn’t sound convinced. In fact, he sounded queasy. Ray decided that the cowboy was probably a few turns away from another bout of motion sickness. The good news was that they were on the open water, rather than in a small floatplane cabin, with two feet between their kayaks.

  “Dis da greatest!” Lewis shouted. He followed this with an energetic wolf howl, as if the moon were full and he had just stumbled upon a fresh kill.

  “Da greatest,” Ray agreed cynically. He paddled hard on the left, then assaulted the water on his right.

  “No maw trouble,” Lewis encouraged. “Dis da life, man!”

  Aside from the fact that Lewis was an imbecile, unfit to be a Boy Scout leader, much less a Bush guide, and the fact that the trip had thus far been a comedy of errors, Lewis was right. This was the life. Being in the Bush, shooting the Kanayut … It did offer a notable rush: the velocity, the technical challenge, the exhilarating sense of flowing with the force of nature, of yielding to and embracing the Land. It was precisely what adventure travel brochures promised but seldom delivered, Ray realized.

  The speed, physical challenge, and danger seemed to be heightening his sense of expectancy. They were literally rushing to greet the nomads of the north. Ray had visited the migration route every year for as long as he could remember. Except for the half decade he had been away at college, he had never missed a procession of the caribou.

  Growing up, hunting had been a seasonal routine, almost a religious rite. Grandfather had seen to that. There was something unique about each hunt, special stories giving life and voice to various creatures.

  Awaiting the caribou was a ritual unto itself. A party atmosphere prevailed as families gathered in the migration path, setting up makeshift dwellings, preparing meals, talking late into the night. Grandfather and the elders beat drums, danced, and sang about the man who left his wife and mother-in-law to become a caribou.

  The semiannual gathering was punctuated by the arrival of the grazing herds. When the lookout signaled their approach, a wave of excitement would ripple through the camp: the long-anticipated moment had finally come!

  The hunt itself had just one hard-and-fast rule: take only what you need. In good years, when fishing and whaling and other hunting had been plentiful, the hunters downed fewer animals. In lean years they harvested more, sometimes shooing whole skeins into crude corrals to be butchered en masse. Virtually every part of every animal was utilized: the meat dried and stored for winter, the skins tanned and fashioned into parkas, mukluks, gloves … There was no waste, no spoilage, no killing for sport.

  Which was precisely what they were doing at the moment, Ray reminded himself as he used the paddle to deflect a glossy, amber rock. Ray wasn’t exactly proud of that. He accepted and understood the need to kill for subsistence, but was uncomfortable with the idea of ending life for fun. What, exactly, was the thrill of robbing a living thing of its breath and spirit, of its kilal Maybe Margaret was right. Maybe in the absence of necessity, hunting was an act of barbarism.

  Ray had participated in the hunt for nearly three decades and, despite his wife’s objections, planned to continue. Hunting caribou was part of who he was. He would honor that, dutifully and reverently taking an animal per season, selling the skin and putting up the meat. And he would pass the practice on to his own son one day.

  One day? What had been a vague hope in the vastness of an undefined future just hours earlier was now a specific date on the calendar. Ray shivered at the thought. The son, or daughter, he had imagined having one day, was on the way. He or she would arrive … soon … in less than nine months! Ray let the oar rest against the gut gasket as he made the mental calculations. This was September. October, November, December …

  “Look out!” Billy Bob warned.

  Dazed, Ray blinked away the daydream and realized that they were slipping into a turbulent trough of angry river rocks. Cursing, he paddled hard and managed to catch an eddy. The craft spun full circle and rocked radically before narrowly missing the trough.

  “Lewis!” Ray called impatiently. “What’s the story with this river?”

  “Uh?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Story? You mean, how it come to be?”

  “No. Like are we gonna be dumped off a twenty-foot falls around the bend?”

  “Uh? Naw!”

  “You said you’d floated it before, right?”

  “Yah.”

  “And there wasn’t any serious water?”

  “No.”

  “What did the Park Service say about the junction with the Anaktuvuk?”

  “Uh? Park Service?”

  “Didn’t you call them to check on water level …? To find out if there’s been a flood warning issued? This baby is really high right now.”

  Lewis shrugged at this. “I do river once. Early summer. No problem.”

  “Early summer? That’s before most of the thaw.”

  “Eh … Worry too much,” Lewis replied. “It be fine. Everything smooth.”

  Somehow, Ray wasn’t convinced. He still had the nagging suspicion that at any moment they might reach a cascading drop-off that had slipped Lewis’s memory.

  The next section offered submerged sandbars, a few malevolent-looking slabs of moss-covered granite peering up from the depths, and an occasional whitecap. Ray was sweating beneath his parka, arms beginning to ache as he pulled at the water on one side, then the other. He had just ruddered them around a gravel peninsula when the current swept them into an arching right turn. Both boats were sideways again. Suddenly, Billy Bob yelled, “Duck!”

  Ray did, and a cottonwood branch peeled a layer of skin from the top of his head. It hurt, but was infinitely preferable to getting clotheslined. He rubbed at the scrape and grimaced as he found blood on his fingers. At that instant he decided that he would visit revenge on Lewis Fletcher. Somehow, some way, he would get him back for this.

  “Looky thar,” Billy Bob said. He was gesturing to the right bank where a boat had been docked on a mudflat, its leash tied to a tree: a gray, rubber Zodiac with an eighty-horse Evinrude outboard motor. Ten yards farther up on the shore, another, identical raft sat like a beached whale. A half dozen wooden crates were stacked next to it. A stencil marked them as property of the U.W.

  “‘Spose they’re huntin’ too?” Billy Bob wondered. “Maybe they got a radio.”

  Ray opened his mouth to answer, then forgot the question. The canyon had narrowed, and a new army of obstacles was rising to oppose them: a half-submerged tree trunk, a puddled bar of scree and a scattering of boulders. Lewis attacked them playfully, howling as he dodged, backpaddled, and gyrated his way through the slalom course in the glossy black fiberglass kayak. Ray groaned and started beating the water to avoid meeting them up close and personal.

  A hundred yards later, the river widened and grew calm. Clouds of mosquitoes performed frenzied aerial maneuvers on both banks. Ranks of alders and willows stood in stiff formation along muddy, tapered islands, their orange and yellow leaves trembling in the breeze. White-barked birch lined one shore. Reaching up the eastern hillside, they formed a wine red curtain that blazed under the sun’s critical glare. It was picturesque. Peaceful. Serene. Ominous.

  “See!” Lewis yelled back at them. “I know what I talk about. I’m …”

  “…An expert guide,” Ray grumbled. “So we’ve heard. Save it for the tourists.”

  Lewis cackled, clearly amused. Lifting one end of his paddle, he dug at the water and shifted his weight. The kayak flipped obediently and its dwarf of a captain dived beneath die surface. He reappeared an instant later, screeching like an injured bird.

  “Is he okay?” Billy Bob drawled.

  “Physically?” Ray
answered. “Yes. Mentally? No.”

  “Aaaigaa!!” Lewis exclaimed, grinning. He paddled away, purposefully working toward the shore, where the most hazards were lurking.

  As a married man and a soon-to-be father, Ray had no desire to go looking for trouble. Accepting a challenge was one thing. He was as adventuresome as the next guy. But cheating death? Actually seeking out ways to put yourself in danger? That was insane.

  Ray decided he would be perfectly happy to float the river and make it to the pickup point in one piece. Bagging a caribou would be an added bonus.

  The concept of avoiding death by drowning, death by collision with a boulder, death by being clotheslined by a tree branch was percolating through his mind: a low, threatening rumble. It sounded like a 737 coming in on approach. Or a freight train chugging by in the distance. Or a thunderstorm rolling across the valley.

  But airliners didn’t buzz the Range. There were no railways in this wilderness, and the weather was impotent to produce lightning. The roar grew in intensity, taking on a throaty bass that pulsated in Ray’s chest. “Lewis!”

  The guide had already pulled up at the mouth of a gently flowing tributary and was peering downstream as he trod water with his paddle. When they reached him, he was smiling, his countenance buoyed by an expression of delight and wonder. Raising an arm, he pointed and sighed, “AayagaV’

  Ray followed his gaze and promptly chose a different word to express his feelings. Shaking his head, he repeated the curse. “I’m gonna get you for this, Lewis.”

  TEN

  “GOOD GOLLY,” BILLY Bob gushed, mouth agape. “Looks kinda … rough.”

  Rough was an understatement. The wide ribbon of polished emerald that they had been following ended abruptly a quarter mile ahead, dumping into a field of frantic white foam. Stone demons lurked in the froth, their shiny ebony heads rising and falling.

  “I portage here last time,” Lewis explained. “Not enough water last time. But now …” The smile widened, displaying a gleaming array of coffee-stained teeth.

  Ray squinted at the white water, chiding himself for being so stupid. What had he been thinking when he agreed to come on this trip? A trip led by Lewis!