The Cage

by Audrey Shulman

  Butler led. He cradled the rifle across his body, in both hands, ready to jerk it to his shoulder and shoot. He held his head up higher than he had all week. He scanned for bears. He looked very tough except for the snowshoes, which gave him the exaggerated high step of Elmer Fudd.

  David followed behind him. She could see the hood of his parka turning about as he looked for more bears. She couldn’t see his face. The nylon made a raspy noise with each step forward. He stumbled as often as she did.

  Jean-Claude walked beside her. They pulled the sled, the rope looped across their chests, like reindeer, like dogs. They walked forward, hand in hand. He moved slowly, smoothly. He wasted no motion. After a while their gloved hands let go, their fingers too cold to grasp.

  She looked back over her shoulder. Their breath hung in the air behind and above them, gray and pall-like against the frozen blue of the sky. The bears were already ripping into the bodies. More bears trotted in from all over. More than she had imagined could be around.

  The bears stayed behind with the fresh meat. They would have time to follow later.

  After walking about twenty minutes, Beryl noticed that Jean-Claude was angling off to the left, while Butler walked straight on. Jean-Claude looked over at Butler. Twenty-five feet separated them before he stopped. “Butler,” Jean-Claude said, “where you going? The inlet’s that way.” He had to raise his voice slightly because of the distance between them.

  “What?” asked Butler, turning around. “Oh, come on. Going round’ll cost us ten miles.”

  “It’s too big a risk. The sled is heavy. We’re heavy. Sea ice is hard to judge.”

  “Let’s just try it.” Butler was smiling. Beryl wondered if he’d ever been on an expedition that had gone wrong like this. She wondered if he’d always imagined how he would survive, how well he would do. She knew he had enjoyed shooting the bears, feeling at risk.

  “You can’t judge it by looking at it. You can only judge it by walking across it.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Not a good idea.”

  “Well, I’m going. I’m too fucking cold to walk extra hours out here.” Butler gestured to David and Beryl. “And they’re going to be even colder. Think they can take an extra day out here? An extra night?” He turned and walked away from them in the direction of the inlet.

  The three of them watched him, the distance between them growing.

  “Now this is fucked.” David grimaced, watching Butler. He looked back to Jean-Claude. “Well?”

  Jean-Claude stood still, regarding David. He did not answer.

  “Beryl,” David asked, “know anything about sea ice conditions on Hudson Bay in early winter? Want to make any suggestions?”

  She and David faced each other without expression. His cheeks were flushed a mottled red.

  “Well,” he said, “then I say it’s a risk either way. I’m cold and my thermal underwear’s giving me a wedgie. Let’s try the shortcut.” He paced slowly after Butler.

  Jean-Claude watched David walk, awkward in the snowshoes. Jean-Claude turned to Beryl, studying her as he had that first time in the airport. Beryl watched him.

  He swung his snowshoes around and began to follow Butler.

  CHAPTER 23

  The sun rose slowly behind them, stretching their shadows out in front like elongated insects, exaggerating each awkward wobble. The snow was hard-packed at first, the sky clear, no wind. Jean-Claude said they had made good progress, four or five miles. They had no way of really knowing. The landscape didn’t change, no other creatures moved upon it. They saw the tiny cloud of Churchill in the distance, but it didn’t get any bigger. Their breath and the squeaking of the snow were the only sounds. The heavy sled jerked against Beryl’s chest with each step, bumping across the snow behind them.

  After a while, even David stopped talking about the cold. Their pace became quicker, more confident. They kept warm enough, except for their hands and faces, her feet. They stopped at noon for lunch. The meat had frozen through. They lit a fire on the large ceramic platter Jean-Claude had taken from the kitchen. They all crowded in around the warmth. Jean-Claude heaped a saucepan with snow, put it beside the fire to melt for drinking water. She couldn’t feel the fire through her parka. She could sense it on her face only as dryness, as a bright light. She touched her face, no longer exactly sure what her skin was supposed to be able to feel, what gloves against her cheek had been like. Her feet had gone completely numb. She felt her weight when she stood on them as a pressure in her bones.

  They held the meat over the fire on slivers of wood. None of them talked. Ten feet above them the smoke from the fire and the steam of their breath froze in the air. It hung above them, white and thick. She wondered if she stood on one of the men’s shoulders and reached up, what it would feel like. A small tearing, the tinkling of broken glass.

  The platter heated slowly from the fire, melted down through the drift. Snow and water slid in, putting out the flames. Butler and Jean-Claude lit the fire again, but the snow melted beneath the platter even faster. Finally they gave up trying to cook the meat slowly and simply tossed it into what remained of the fire. The beef sizzled in the boiling water and flames. The pieces were wet, charred on the outside and frozen in the center. David made a joke about Cajun-style beef. He slurred his words as though he were drunk, his lips moving too slowly. He held his chin down tight in his hood, against his chest. All of their faces were bright red except where the white spots were beginning to form. The water in the saucepan didn’t get hot. It only melted, with transparent chunks of ice remaining in the center. They each drank a mugful of water from it, spitting out the ice. Beryl noticed that they all drooled a bit with their numb lips.

  Everyone ate the meat as she’d been doing for several days, chewing efficiently, no conversation. She and Jean-Claude crouched together on one side of the fire, leaning against each other. A wind began to rise, sweeping in at them from the north. The sky was no longer clear. The arm that leaned against Jean-Claude was the only warm part of her. On the other side of the fire, Butler and David kept their distance from each other. Butler held the rifle across his lap, looking around carefully every few minutes. He wanted to shoot more bears. Still none came closer than half a mile, scenting the air as they passed then trotting methodically on toward the bay. While they were walking, they had all looked back now and again, searching the snow behind them.

  When they packed up to leave, she kept a frozen chunk of beef in her mouth to suck on as she walked. Butler and David now pulled the sled.

  That afternoon walking became much harder. The snow no longer squeaked beneath their feet, hard-packed. The edges of the snowshoes sank into the drifts if they didn’t put their feet down exactly flat. They would have to struggle for balance, jerk the shoe out and walk on. The snow swirled about them at each gust of wind, stung their faces, melted in their eyes. The sled dug itself down into the powder. Every five feet Butler and David had to lift the front of the sled up and over. David couldn’t lift or pull as well as Butler. At one point David slid sideways and the sled tipped. Some wood fell off. Butler cursed. David took a while getting up, wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. Beryl could see a thin sheen of sweat across his face. His breath wheezed. Their hands wouldn’t grasp, so it took time to pack the wood on again. Jean-Claude worked five minutes to make a knot tying the wood down. Beryl stamped around, slapped her arms against her sides. David stood still, his face sunk deep into his hood. They walked on.

  She thought it was getting colder. They had no thermometer. The smudge of Churchill seemed no closer. If anything, the horizon seemed farther away. The plain of white snow stretched out in front of them, beautiful, sparkling, misleading. A mound in the foreground could turn out to be a hill many miles away or a bear sleeping much closer. Butler looked around constantly, scanned the whiteness for dots of black, the bears’ noses easiest to spot from a distance. He’d swung his rifle across his back now, but he reached around often to touch its
weight. Of all of them, he walked the most easily. He seemed full of energy. She could hear him sometimes sucking the air deep into his lungs as though he’d just stepped out onto his porch in the country. Jean-Claude walked on with his head down, concentrating, his feet moving smoothly.

  She turned her face to the white circle of the sun, keeping her eyes open. She felt no warmth. Her eyes didn’t hurt. She felt nothing.

  At several points during the day, one of the men would drop back, face the way they had come and hitch down the front of his pants. Steam rose from the urine.

  Early in the afternoon she couldn’t wait any longer. She let them walk ahead while she crouched upon the snow, pulling down her pants. None of the men looked back. She spread her legs farther. She had to look down once to make sure she was urinating. She was no longer capable of feeling more than the general movements of her bones. Her body existed only in vision.

  The warm urine melted a hole straight down through the powder. The snow had refrozen even before she stood up.

  She hurried to catch up with the men.

  They reached the inlet when the sun hung about halfway down the sky. Jean-Claude had them wait while he walked slowly along the edge of the broken ice, studying its color, the thickness of the shattered pieces that angled up above the others. He unpacked the sled, made three other sleds from the blankets, packing the weight of the wood and supplies evenly across all of them. He created a long leash for each blanket sled.

  “It’s about a mile and a half across here. I’ll cross first. Butler next. David, then Beryl. Beryl,” he said, “you’re the lightest. You get the worst position. Take the sled. It’ll spread the weight better. Ice changes thickness fast. I’m going to pick a path across the best of it. Follow me exactly. Exactly where I walk. Drag the blankets as far behind as possible. If they start to sink, let them. Sea ice is different from freshwater ice. It gives beneath you. Don’t stand still no matter what. Keep thirty feet of distance between us, the sleds far back. If one of us goes in, keep walking. Don’t try to be a hero. You’ll just go in too. OK?” He looked at each of them. They nodded. He looked at Beryl the longest. There was snow, she saw, in the white of his eyebrows.

  Jean-Claude started out. He examined the ice, stepped slowly, smoothly onto it. Butler watched him carefully, then followed. The ice stretched out blue, gray and even yellow in places. Where the wind had pushed it together it heaved upward into walls, ramps, tabletops, small castles with spires and broken doors. The ruins of some ancient town, sparkling along the edges. Snow danced about in the wind. Butler’s snowshoes skittered across the ice. He had to lean into the edges for traction. The blanket bumped along after him.

  David said, “There’s never a cab around when you need one.” He looked slowly across the broken moon surface. “Hey, Beryl?”

  She turned to him.

  “Good luck, eh.”

  She tried to smile. She wasn’t sure if her lips moved at all.

  He stepped out, tracked himself carefully after Butler. When he reached the end of the leash on his blanket sled, he pulled forward into it to get the blanket sliding. She watched him, waiting, then walked after him. She couldn’t tell when she’d left land and began walking on ice. The sled moved easily behind her. Its runners scratched like knives. She kept turning to look at the sled, tried to keep it on the flatter surfaces. She didn’t want it spilling over on the uneven plates. Looking ahead, she could no longer see Jean-Claude. He was somewhere behind the walls of ice.

  After she walked a hundred yards out, she felt the ice begin to give a little beneath her. At first it felt like she was stepping on a thick rug, then maybe Styrofoam, something stirring beneath her feet each time she shifted her weight. The feeling gradually changed to that of walking along a thick plastic plank, the material stretching out beneath her, swaying downward. She heard the cracking and popping of the crystals inside, saw a slight indent appear around her snowshoe with each step. She slid her feet forward smoothly, half-skating, her shoulders swinging with the motion. Breathing loudly with her effort, she alternately watched David’s progress ahead of her and then the ice beneath her feet. She searched for the lighter streaks of ice, the gray of stone. The ice felt firmer there. Sometimes it felt completely solid. The next step could sway beneath her again. She wondered what she would do if she saw a bear out here. The bears lived on the ice most of the year. She couldn’t imagine sleeping anywhere on this treacherous creaking surface.

  Her sides began to itch. She rubbed her arms against her ribs. Gradually she realized she was sweating, breathing harder than she should have to for this effort. She tried to slow her breath down, to think of other things. Pushing back the hood of her parka, she could feel the wind in her sweaty hair, could see so much more clearly all around her. She felt the sweat freezing against her scalp.

  She tried to get perspective on how far they were walking. A mile and a half would be the distance from her house across the river into Boston. She pretended she was stepping from her house: that ice wall was the neighbor’s house, the one with the magnolia tree. That mesa top was the drugstore on the corner. She crossed the street, saw the Indian restaurant, the supermarket, the park. After a time she approached the bridge into the city. She saw the water passing below the bridge, warm and soft, the brown-blue of a temperate world. Sailboats, people tanning on the decks, their bared flesh and easy smiles. A woman in a rowboat held a beer to her cheek, the glass sweating, the liquid sloshing about inside.

  Beryl imagined that by now she would have reached the other side of the river, would have reached Boston. She still couldn’t see any land ahead of her. She couldn’t tell if she was judging distance correctly, if she was scrolling the scenery by at the right speed. What if they were walking straight out to sea? She shuffled her feet along, scanning the ice around her.

  The smoother curve of land appeared ahead. At the same instant she noticed the open break in the ice off to her left, a long gash running parallel to their path. The water steamed up into the air. They would walk within forty feet of it. The ice beneath her feet shifted colors to dark gray and then to almost black. She could see the waves shiver the ice up and down near the open water.

  As she concentrated on skating in David’s footsteps, something brown and heavy flitted by just beneath her feet, under the ice. She almost stumbled. The next form blinked its brown eyes as it passed beneath, its round cat face looking up at her. It flew by beneath the surface, as fast through the water as though in air, as though beneath the ice stretched a whole new world where heavy creatures could fly on their outstretched stubby hands.

  “Hey,” yelled David, “seals!” He stood still for a single moment, pointing down. “Check it out.”

  Beryl watched as the ice began to rip beneath him.

  “Whoops,” he said and slogged forward, but the rip followed him, rolling forward beneath his feet. She saw his motions go silky smooth, serious, as he realized the danger. The ice dipped beneath him, his snowshoes scraped for purchase. The ice tore, noisy as soggy fabric. His feet slid backward leisurely. His hands clawed out for balance.

  “Butler!” screamed Beryl. “Jean-Claude, help!” She slipped out of the straps of her sled, jogged forward. With each slap of her snowshoes the surface rolled beneath her. She wasn’t quite sure how she would stop when she reached him. She had no traction.

  “Lie down!” Beryl yelled. “Lie across the ice.”

  He started to ease down, but his feet slipped. With a scratch of nylon he slid into the hole. Gone. The water glugged up against the lip.

  She threw herself down, sliding across the ice toward the rip as if into home plate. She held one arm out for the far side.

  The freezing water hit her flesh like a knife. Her heart shocked still. Her arm slapped onto the other side of the ice, swung her back, the material rolling with her weight. Her head, chest and right arm lay in the water, her back and legs on the surface above. Hanging. Completely dark all around her. Her body was quiet. Death,
she thought; this is what death is like.

  David sank slowly just in front of her, pulled down by his billowing clothes, a fading dream. Beryl couldn’t see the bottom, only blackness everywhere. A pebble clicked somewhere below her. His face gleamed very white in the gloom as he looked up at her. He blinked like a seal.

  She rolled her hand through the water, grabbed the edge of his hood, surprised that her fingers could still close, could hold on. He bobbed in her grasp, reached up and took hold of her arm. He gripped hard. The ice she lay on ripped a little. The first half of her belly slid into the water. She felt the weight of her wet parka pulling her down, the weight of David. She kicked her legs out, trying to get any purchase with the edges of her snowshoes. Trying to kick the edges down into the ice, to pull up. She couldn’t back out.

  She and David hung together in the water looking at each other. The ice creaked again, rotten and soft in her ear.

  He smiled sad and wide, let go of her slowly, shook his head. His hair rolled soft against his face. She looked at her hand wrapped hard around his hood. Her lungs began to swell against her ribs. Even if she let go, she didn’t know how she would back out of the water.

  The first yank on her feet shocked her so much she almost lost her grip on his parka. Then she clenched as tight as she could and David grabbed hold of her again. He was dragged after her through the water and up, his jacket rolling around him heavy as a wet towel.

  They came out gradually, pulled up onto the ice, which bent and groaned with their weight. As her head broke the water she sucked air in again and again, cranked her head around to see. Butler lay with his face buried in her ankles, his arms locked around her knees. He crawled backward, digging in with his elbows and toes. Fifteen feet beyond that Jean-Claude gripped the lashes of Butler’s sled. He walked backward, straining into the weight. When they had moved twenty feet from the rip they all let go of each other, spreading out across the ice, slithering away from the danger area on their stomachs like seals, like animals groveling. After forty feet they crawled. After a hundred feet they stood up on the flat white plain of land.