SNOWFALL

by Mitchell Smith

  As a death, this seemed not bad at all. She knew she swam, but felt no body in such running cold. Little flakes and chips of ice came floating swiftly by her, and Catania reached out to catch them with stiff slow-folding fingers—caught one, and chewed on it like a child.

  She ducked her head under—and that was a shock. The cold renewed itself, slapped her face so it stung. When she lifted her head to take a breath, Catania felt water freezing in her hair.

  It was a puzzle, she thought, that discomfort sometimes felt better than ease—the world saying, "Wake up! Wake up!" and driving life into a person like a weapon, or a strong man's dick.

  But soon the stream began to hurt her more, so a slow, thudding ache coincided with the beating of her heart. Catania could trace cold flowing into her bones—could name each bone as it came in. Death clearing its throat, taking a first slow easy breath to begin its song.

  She tried to stand up ... lost her balance on mossy stone, then regained it and stood up out of the water into air that felt so warm she shivered with the pleasure of it.

  All those others died at Long Ledge. They're dead—but I'm not. She thought that, and was ashamed. ,.

  Catania climbed the bank and trotted through snow to their fire, toes and nipples stinging. Dancing in place on caribou-hide bedding, she picked up a wolf-fur to dry herself.

  Jack was already gone, and most of the Trapper men gone with him for a morning's hunting, trying for another wild bull or a forest deer. They didn't like depending on Gardens for food, and liked it less since the Garden people had been almost rude the last two or three days, offended in some way—perhaps by Mary's having shown Catania the first-pulping. Perhaps simply tired of visiting strangers.

  Mary hadn't asked Catania to come see her again. Garden Carlson hadn't come to play checkers.

  Catania finished drying herself, and laid the fur out by the fire's bed. She dressed in her buckskins, then sat to wrap her footcloths and pull on moccasin-boots.... A last light flurry of snow came down through pale sunshine, lay on the backs of her hands for a moment, then melted.

  A few women had gone hunting with the men, but most had stayed in camp. They bustled by their fires, heating washing water in trade-kettles, shaking out furs, neatening sled loads, sewing, combing out their hair. They did these household chores for comfort, since they had no houses, had no families anymore. Some had taken the gentler sled dogs off their lines, and hugged and spoke to them as if the dogs were children, or Warm-time pets.

  Catania walked across the camp to Torrey's sled. Susan lay on it, bundled in furs, her small face pale amid the pelts' harsh deep grays.

  "Are you feeling well this morning?" Catania put her hand on Susan's forehead, and felt proper warmth ... faint damp.

  Susan didn't answer. She lay beautiful and remote as a queen in a copybook, her black hair swept back in gleaming wings behind her ears. Lucy Edwards had been tending her, and Catania supposed she must have combed Susan's hair so beautifully and fastened it at the back with a long bone pin.

  Catania knelt at the sled. "Listen, little dear one; all this sadness is spoiling good health—for you and for Sam's baby."

  Susan looked at her, but said nothing.

  "—Maybe I've been treating you too gently, Susan. Maybe I should dump you out of that sled... give you camp-work to do so you won't be feeling so sorry for yourself. You are not the only person who has lost somebody. There are women here who have lost everyone—and have no baby coming to comfort them."

  "Catania," Susan said, "—Sam is alive. He's alive and hurt and lying under a hemlock tree, waiting for us to come back and help him."

  "... No," Catania said. "That's not true."

  "Yes, it is. I dream it every night. If it wasn't true, Catania, I wouldn't dream it every night. He's so badly hurt, and been lying there so long ... he's getting sicker and sicker!" Susan began to cry. "He looks like an old man, a little sick old man lying under the tree, hiding there. And he's so ashamed to have me look at him. He's dirtied himself because he's hurt so badly... and he's ashamed."

  "Susan...." Catania reached under Susan's soft heavy hair, gripped the nape of her slender neck, and shook her slightly, as if she were a distracted puppy., "Susan, listen to me. These are lying dreams. Sadness dreams.—Sam is dead. He died with the others out in Long Ledge fields."

  "He's hurt so badly," Susan said. "His side ... his right side is black with old blood. We need to go back. Sam would never have left us, Catania, if we were hurt and alone. I have to go back. Jack has to go and help him!"

  Catania suddenly saw Jack believing this dream might be true, saw him leaving to go back to the mountains, and the Cree, to try to save his brother. She put her hand over Susan's mouth. "Don't say that! Don't say these things to Jack, or I'll kill you!" Then, Catania took her hand away. "I... I didn't mean that I'd kill you. But Susan, you stay quiet, and let me talk to people about these dreams. I promise I'll talk to them. And if we decide Sam needs our help, then we'll all go north... and we'll make him well, and bring him back to you."

  "Soon," Susan said. "Soon."

  "Yes," Catania said. "Soon." She kissed Susan on the cheek, then stood and walked away through the camp, searching for someone to talk to.

  Tattooed Newton hadn't gone with the hunters. She saw him standing down on the creek bank, looking at the flowing water.—Catania had never felt comfortable with Newton. Hadn't known him long enough... hadn't grown up with him. A good hunter, though not the best—and a wonderful fighting man, likely strong as Jack, if not quite so quick.... And he was strange, not really a Trapper though Lucy Edwards loved him, and they were married.

  Even before Lucy, though, Newton had never come to Catania on Sundays after service. Perhaps he thought that kindness fucking was a funny thing to do, as he thought so many things were funny. He had come to the Range as if fleeing something—something that must have been dreadful, a tale-monster, if Tattooed Newton ran from it.

  Catania walked down to the creek, wanting a man—not some sorrowful woman—to talk to about Susan.

  Newton noticed her coming, and raised a hand in greeting.

  "Newton ..." she said.

  He turned his crop-haired head, his broad clean-shaven face, and looked at her with small brown eyes that rarely blinked.

  "Newton, Susan is not getting better."

  No answer. He stood looking at her.

  "—She dreams about Sam. That he's alive and hurt under a hemlock tree."

  "He's dead." Newton looked up as a flight of ducks came in over the trees, whirring and wheeling, looking for still water to settle into.

  "She's sure not. Newton, did your people—your other people—did they have a medicine for such sadness?"

  The ducks, disappointed by this quick-running creek, sailed off with swift wingbeats.

  "My 'other people,' " Newton said, "—would ask for an order come down the river from some petty lord, or magistrate, or two-dot clerk at Island. And when the order came, they would break Susan's neck, cut the baby out, and set it sucking on some slave milker 'til Market." He smiled an odd smile. "A practical people."

  "I see...."

  They both stood for a while, watching the water. It seemed Newton wouldn't say any more, but he did. "Susan thinks she died when Sam Monroe died. She's only staying in her body until the baby comes."

  It sounded like a truth Catania should have known, a truth that Mary One-eye would have known at once. A truth Catania also would have known if she'd been more interested in her patient and less interested in herself, and Jack, and happiness. *

  "But will the baby bring her back?"

  Newton smiled. "Possibly, if it's a charming baby."

  Catania couldn't recall the Warm-time word 'charming' ever being used in conversation before.

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon, through a Gardens grown quieter than usual, Catania walked to Mary's house, summoned by a Gold-bracelets.

  When she climbed down the root entrance a
nd went in, she saw that only May was there, making something out of goat-hair yarn with two straight little clicking sticks.

  May looked up, but said nothing. She kept clicking the sticks, and Catania saw she was doing a sort of weaving in her lap. "Is that the old crocheting?"

  "Knitting," May said, and said nothing else.

  Catania sat and was quiet, too. It was embarrassing to be always asking questions of these people, who were only almost civilized. It was tiresome having to do that, while being careful not to ask such a wrong question that Mary might kill her and all the Trappers, so the question wouldn't be asked again.

  We're orphans, Catania thought—worse than orphans, because we have no parents and no families either. We are lost people. It was a thought sad enough to make her cry. Instead, it made her angry.

  She and May sat quiet, except for the clicking knitting-sticks. It was a sound that grew annoying.

  A long while later, a Gold-bracelet man Catania didn't know came down into the house with his ax in his hand. He gave Catania such a bad look that she stood up and backed away. She thought she might be able to kill him with her knife—the house was small, cramped for swinging an ax.

  Mary came down behind him, pushed him aside, and said, "Your Cree have come following you, Catania. And who is to blame for that?—You and your people." She put her finger to her cheek and pulled the skin down to make something like Catania's scar. " 'Just Jack,' " she said, imitating Catania's voice very well. " 'Just Jack thinks they may follow...."

  "How many?"

  "Fifty-two, and a foolish boy who leads them."

  "How far?" Catania said.

  "Those who've been watching, say only one morning away, now. It will cost me peoples' lives to kill them, and we must kill them or they will go back and bring more south to take what we have."

  Mary's daughter put her knitting down, and said, "And how will you pay us for that, you tall ugly?" May's face looked like an angry dog's. Her teeth were showing.

  The Gold-bracelets swung his ax slowly back and forth—and Catania heard bird calls outside Mary's house. It sounded as if birds of every different kind had begun to sing ... then more and more of them.

  Catania's heart was beating so fast it took some breath away. "We'll fight them for you, Mary. It will be the last of our battles, not the first of yours."

  "Even so," Mary said, "—even so, you will pay me if I lose a single man."

  "Pay what?"

  "What I fucking choose," said Mary One-eye, and made a motion with her hand that folded air three times.

  ... On her way to tell the Trappers, Catania had to stop to vomit a little by the path. Her fear, and the unfairness that Mountain Jesus had allowed in sending the Cree, made her sick. And she was sick at Jack's having known the tribesmen would follow ... having known it so well that he might have been the bad luck that called the Cree down.

  She trotted along the lower path that ran by the creek. Garden people hurried past, her the other way, the women with small children in their arms. Catania looked up and saw people gathered high on the swinging bridges ... high in the little wooden houses in the trees. The women up there were making bird sounds, whistling birdcalls that rang louder and louder, until together they made only a great shrill noise. Several Gold-bracelets ran down the path with crossbows in their hands. One turned a little to hit her hard with his elbow as he passed.

  Catania began to run; the tumult of whistled birdcalls seemed to drive her. At the paper-mill bridge, she saw lance-heads shining in sunset light. The Trappers, armed, were coming from their camp across the creek. They had two sleds and two teams with them. The other dogs were barking in the lines, concerned at being left behind.

  As she ran to them, Catania saw that Jack was leading, looking calm ... content. Seeing that, she understood he was only at ease, only fully himself in fighting. That seemed to her the saddest thing of all.

  "The Cree," he said.

  "Yes. Fifty-two ... fifty-three of them." Catania wiped a little vomit off her buckskin shirt. "A young man—a boy—is leading." She saw that only Susan had been left in camp.

  "And Mary's people?"

  "They'll kill any Cree we don't, but they blame us for bringing the tribesmen down."

  "Oh, thank you, Lord Jesus," Rod Sorbane said, and there were tears of happiness in his eyes. "—Oh, thank you!"

  And other Trappers called out, "Thank you, dear Lord!" So happy, now they were rested, to have a chance to face the men who had killed their loved ones.

  Catania was surprised, then not surprised, and found she now felt better herself. She'd thought only of the unluckiness—not of the luck.

  "How close?" Newton said.

  "They're tomorrow-morning away. The Garden people have followed them in the forest."

  "Then we go to meet these warriors," Torrey said, and seemed as happy as if it was to be a wedding, in the woods.

  * * *

  In early evening, Buddy called a halt, but allowed only one fire of dry fallen branches, so little smoke would rise to drift among the trees.

  The warriors gathered as close to the fire as they could, and held hands in groups of clansmen. The eagerness they'd had when they started, the willingness to run deep into strange forest to avenge the deaths of friends and recover future-looking luck, had turned to thoughtfulness... concern that now, more friends might be lost.

  Despite Buddy's dream of the white bear leading them, the men felt uncertain, disliking such close woods. It also seemed to many that the snow-devils' luck, so disastrously bad in holding a range the Cree must have ... that this luck was bound to turn if the Trappers had any magic at all. And they must have some magic, or they wouldn't be men and women, but only animals.

  "They have luck," Buddy said to Philipe Cruizan, one of the oldest warriors, when Philipe mentioned this at the fire. "They have luck, but it's mauvaise fortune, weak luck and bad luck, while ours is strong. I feel it humming in my chest."

  "Please The Weather," Cruizan said, "—that you're right."

  To make themselves less uneasy, since a spirit chase allowed no totem masks or furs, the men began to paint. Dipping in the color pot, they coated their hands bright red ... then pressed them to their faces, so palm prints and prints of fingers showed scarlet in the firelight across their eyelids, noses, and mouths. When they were painted, they felt better, felt lucky enough to dance the circles-within-circles—but only to soft humming, without drums.

  * * *

  As the Trappers went along the creek through Gardens town, the shrill birdcall chorus slowly quieted, so they left silence behind them.

  As they climbed the valley path, a spruce cone fell in front of Catania. She looked up and saw Mary One-eye standing high above, on a swaying bridge of woven vine-rope. Naked in the cold, her fat round body striped in coils of green, she stared down at Catania as if they'd never met.

  At the head of the valley, Carlson Gold-bracelets appeared from the skirt branches of a hemlock, and walked along with Jack. "Our wager's proved," he said, "—of fighting together."

  "Yes. But this is our battle, first."

  "Yours if you win it," Carlson said. "We will be as a weapons belt, buckled loose in the forest around you as you go." He walked away, stepped into the woods in an odd sidling fashion, and was gone.

  Jim Olsen and Newton had come up. "Back-trail our trail?" Newton said to Jack.

  "Simplest is best." Jim Olsen said, and said nothing more to start an argument.

  "Yes," Jack said, "—back-trail, then wait for them to come. And knife-cut spruces for plant sap to rub on ourselves, so their dogs won't smell us if they bring them up."

  "Only knife-cuts," Catania said. "Don't ring the bark and kill them. Be careful not to kill any of Gardens' trees."

  Torrey and Tom Olsen led out, scouting at a trot through scattered woods ... then on into deeper forest, back the way they'd come almost a Warm-time week before. After a long while running, they reached the Trappers' last camp, and wa
ited for the others. They had seen no Garden men at all.

  "Here?" Myles Weber looked impatient, happy to be getting ready to fight.

  "No," Jack said. "This smells sour from our old fires' ashes. I noticed it—and they'll notice it. We'll back-trail a little more, set fresh fires for them to smell as they come on. I want a small open space. We'll show them we've camped there—and just left. They'll find fresh sled tracks, dog-shit... and an old knife-sheath thrown away."

  ... Near dark, backtracking, they found a small clearing in heavy brush, with greater trees beyond. Jack looked around, and said, "Yes."

  "How could it be better?" Newton said, and called softly, "Start fires, and feed the dogs. We need them shitting."

  "We wait here for them?" Jennifer Weber stepped in place as if she had to pee.

  "In a way," Jack said. "We stay in the clearing only long enough to make a camp to draw them in." He made a gathering motion. "The tribesmen will be tired of close forest. They'll want to come into the clearing, to be together with no trees touching." Jack spread his arms wide, to show how much the Cree would want openness. "They'll come with first light, and it will seem that we've just left. They'll see the sled-tracks, hear our dogs going south—and they'll think they have us. They'll gather here, then run us down."

  "How do you know what they'll do?" Pete Richardson said.

  Jack smiled. "Tribesmen have little patience, and Mary One-eye said their leader was young, a boy. More impatience.... They'll come in all together—and we'll be in the evergreens, with this clearing held in our hands." Jack cupped both hands together, to show how. "—A still hunt, left hand and right. And a few of us back on the path ... to hold it, and keep them grouped here under the arrows."

  "It will work," Tall-David said, and most of the others listening agreed.

  "Martha," Jack said, "—just before first light, you and Myles drive the dogs back the way we came. And not quietly."

  "I won't do that," Martha Sorbane said.