by Lou Allin
Dorothy grinned at Belle, open-mouthed at the holocaust. “That toasty coat gone, too. You know, there’s a nip in the air. I’m not sure you’ll survive the night in that stylish little jacket. Now come here. I don’t want any surprises, like a note clutched in your cold, dead hand when you’re found, probably by a good Samaritan like me.”
Belle walked forward with trepidation, snow swirling around her. Visibility was less than a hundred feet. No weapon, no German shepherd. All those wasted nights watching classic films instead of playing Tai Chi tapes. Dorothy shoved the gun under her chin and searched Belle’s pants pockets, finding four batteries, which she bounced in her hand. “For the cellphone? I hope you get a charge out of these. And by the way, jeans aren’t very smart for winter,” she said with a chuckle, flinging the batteries onto the ground.
Backing away, she snapped her fingers at the cowering dog. “Come to Mother.” The poodle ran a few feet, then stopped with a whimper. “Strudel, here!” Dorothy repeated in a steely threat.
Tail tucked, the pup returned to Belle and sat at attention, sparkling marble eyes searching her astonished face. “Pea brain,” Dorothy said, getting into the Cherokee. “Runt of the litter in more ways than one. And that cape is ludicrous.”
Hearing little more than a few syllables, Belle shook an impotent fist towards the car. “If you didn’t have that—”
“My dear, hand guns are against the law in our fair country,” she said with a moue. “Skim milk masquerades as cream. Blanks. This is an old starter’s pistol from my biathlon days. Bragging isn’t my style, but I could have made the Olympic team if they’d accepted women. Born too soon. If you hadn’t moved on that hill, you wouldn’t be here today, for all that matters now.”
With a cloud of snow enveloping the car in an ermine stole, she drove off. Belle felt a chill more ominous than the falling temperature and the darkness to come. Think and think fast. Could she salvage anything from the van? The next twenty minutes would mean life or death.
Pocketing the batteries, she scrambled down the embankment in snow up to her waist, groping toward the bleak skeleton. The plastic seats and carpeting sizzled with toxic fumes, but the gas tank had spent its power. A reek of burnt feathers filled the air, and black shards blew on the gusts. Her heavy moosehide mitts, clipped together, lay perilously close to the open water. She used a pine branch to snag them from a soaking, realizing only when she felt the soft sheepskin lining that her hands were nearly useless meat slabs. Poking into the snow at her feet was the aluminum cylinder with her emergency kit. In her triumph, Dorothy hadn’t noticed.
Belle grabbed for it, when an explosion dropped her to her stomach. The shattered can of pepper spray sailed through the air over her head. Laughing, her heart breaking through her chest in hysteria, Belle pulled the kit apart, warm from the fire: safety matches in a container, then a mixture of melted candle, jerky and liquid chocolate, which she scooped into a ball. Most precious, a space blanket her mother had given her years ago when she’d bought the snowmobile.
Snow was covering her head and glasses, obscuring her vision. Each decision had to be perfect, covering all angles. Shelter was paramount. Did that hole she’d seen lead to a cave, an old bear den? If mere illusion, and wasn’t everything, she’d die in an hour. Girding herself against despair, she plunged through the drifts and headed for the cedar grove. Swimming rather than walking described the action, and the exertion was sapping her, the poodle gamely leaping behind. Gasping, her lungs bladders of ice, she pushed through brushy alders that drew blood from her cheek, and reached the white mound with a tempting dark place. Was it a mere cleft?
Pushing her hand in, giddy with sudden hope, she felt nothing palpable, nor sensed any movement. With a bear snoozing, perhaps better to go quickly, the poodle as appetizer with her the main course. Holding her breath, heart pounding, she crawled in, the poodle on her heels, nipping in fussy annoyance at dangling ice balls. The dog had made a choice, a fatal one if the odds stood.
Empty. A three-foot-high shelter etched into the earth by the fall of a cedar, bushy saplings sprouting around a root hole covered as if God himself had patted the white insulation.
In her last minutes before the blizzard reached maximum force and all light was extinguished, Belle went outside, bending against the punishing winds. She snapped nearby cedar and fir branches, gathering an armful of thick matting, which she arranged on the dirt floor of her sanctuary. Several she stuck vertically at the opening to catch the snow and seal the den.
Muttering a prayer, while she could still see, she set her watch alarm. For safety she placed her glasses in a handy niche, wrapped herself and the poodle in the space blanket and waited for what she knew would come. Under shelter, warm enough tonight. Sunday would be the killer. Minus twenty-five all day, back to minus ten on Monday, typical seesawing mid-February, tearing icicle teeth into weary Northerners. Entombed, she felt oddly safe. No robbers would seek her out as they had the legendary Marjorie Elphinstone, Mel’s supposed ancestor buried alive in Scotland. In the long deep-freeze tomorrow, she’d use the electric sox and jacket. Sparingly, because what lay ahead on her trek to Dorothy’s? And she would need a fire. Or she’d die.
Twenty-Nine
The night wove a black tunnel of uneasy dreams, faceless, nameless, impalpable, the sensation of being besieged by indecipherable terrors. Belle’s glowing wristwatch chimed her out of nightmares. Squinting at the blurry numbers, she prayed that she wouldn’t get too fatigued to ignore the warning tones and lapse into a stupor. Sleep was a dangerous luxury. More than once she fumbled instinctively for a glass of water on her bed table, then gave up and dozed. It was pitch dark, cancelling one critical sense, but sharpening others. A smell of peat and leaf mould, like an early spring, crept into her nostrils. The cedar boughs added a fragrance reminiscent of a sauna or a Christmas wreath. Though the snow muffled sound, the howling raged through the night. Glad that she’d chosen the lined jeans, she hugged the poodle in its fleece cape. A paper-thin reflective material, the space blanket did its noisy service. And bless her boots, mitts and hat. Head and hands were the major sources for heat loss. Through she shifted as infrequently as possible, confined by the bulky pants and clumsy boots, from time to time small lumps bit into her back.
Dorothy had planned well. Even if Belle had the laughable chance to scribble her name on birch bark, using a pine needle and her blood, who would be first on the scene? Everyone would believe that she’d slipped off the road and crashed into the river, disappearing downstream or wandering into the snow. Her body might not be found until spring’s revelations.
The scratches on her cheek stung, but not as much as an empty stomach. With its high metabolism, the poodle must be ravenous, too. Her mind floated back to her last meal, in a chronological not final sense, she hoped. First the floral-fragrant orange juice with extra calcium to shield her from her mother’s osteoporosis. Then with his robust coffee priming her tastebuds, Jack had served a luscious cheddar omelette with rye toast. The eggs were fluffy, the cheese snappy and smooth. How creamy and rich the butter had been. Bears supped all winter on stored brown fat. Pinching her love handles, she doubted if the extra ten pounds would last until the next thaw. And she’d miss her vitamins tonight, the B-75 bombs, lecithin, calcium, vitamin E, and halibut oil, but surely enough remained in her system to ward off scurvy or rickets. She didn’t begrudge her brain its antics, knowing that as long as it hummed a multipath miasma, she lived, and wasn’t that the point?
Thoughts of others pressed forward, Miriam first, awaiting a bloody fate, not a drifting, final sleep. Dorothy would wait until the storm ended, then sit out the brutal cold. Was the body chilling in some outbuilding? Cooler than the blue jewellery in the river, the woman probably would borrow Hamlet’s plan to “lug the guts” to a remote place, knowing snow would cover all grisly traces until she could arrange safer burial. Sociopathic, killing for expedience, Dorothy was demented, not crazy, a fearful difference in an ad
versary. But Miriam was no pushover. Belle had seen her face harden in determination many times since her collapse. Made stronger by her ordeal, tried by true Canadian ice, not fire, at some opportune point, she might determine that the gun was fake and make a fight of it, unlike her boss, cowering like the poodle at the crack of the impotent shot, fixated at the mere idea of a gun.
She thought of her father, safe and cared for at the end of a long tenure, preparing his usual joke for an April 1st birthday. With his gusto for life, his pleasure at the arrival of chocolate pudding, and the heart of a lion, would her disappearance signal his last hurrah? They’d lived a lifetime together, hit every Canadian National Exhibition since she’d been able to toddle by his side. The higher and more dangerous the midway ride, the better, and he’d wobbled off each one, shaking his finger at her mother: “Are you trying to collect my life insurance?” The prize livestock barns, galloping horses in the arena, the milk bottle ring toss where he’d won her a pink rabbit, miniature doughnuts, pink lemonade, hot dogs, webs of candy floss on her face. Then home on the streetcar, sleeping on his lap as her stomach rumbled. She groped for the emergency kit, opening it and locating the wax chocolate jerky ball, cramming her mouth with a Northern Ontario version of South American mole sauce.
In the black hours, she planned survival strategy like a Civil War general. At daylight, she would make a quick blaze and nurture it until the weather turned. Then she recalled Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” Minus seventy-five degrees, or so the sentient dog had known in that story, though that seemed an exaggeration even in old Yukon. In a fatal error, the tyro bushman had planted his fire under a snowy branch, which extinguished it. No worries here, she thought, tracing the dry roof of her den. And would the poodle creep from a dying mistress to join fellow creatures in the wild, asking a helpful wolf to bite off iceballs? Man’s creature, more likely it would remember where Dorothy’s vehicle had gone when it realized that . . . A warm tear leaked from the corner of her eye, and she felt a snuffling nose tuck under her chin as she fell into another shallow dream.
Seconds or hours later, a sour taste in her mouth, she was aware of discomfort and numbness in one arm. A stroke? Why was the waterbed so hard? Diffused grey light illuminated the den. The dog’s faithful heartbeat drumming softly against her chest, she snapped to attention with a surge of elation. They had survived the first night. Now a new challenge squatted outside like an unwelcome guest. Her breath puffed clouds, common enough even at zero degrees, yet wrapped in the blanket, she lay rigid. Had the predictions been wrong and the cold front perversely headed south? For irrational seconds, she hesitated to breach the protective barrier and learn the truth, but the dog licked her ear, stretched and yawned with a comically normal “eeuuw,” and wormed through the snowy branches for a morning pee. Brittle, icy air slapped her face like a cold shower. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Fire and shelter, then water. Parched during the night, she’d been too wary to fall to the temptation of eating snow. The trade-off left a body temperature deficit.
Stay one degree ahead of hypothermia, she told herself, fumbling for her glasses. Time for technology to strut its stuff. Like a hopeful amateur magician, she turned on the electric sox and coat, smiling as a rolling warmth suffused her torso and feet. According to the brochure, the jacket’s sensor monitored activity. Under heavy exertion, it cut back; with severe cold and minimal movement, the lithium batteries would last only a few hours. Thank God for the spares Dorothy had used for a wisecrack.
Knowing that activity would heat her, yet draw on diminishing resources, she shrugged off useless fears and joined the dog outside. It was digging for dear life, sniffing, then digging again. Taking one assessing deep breath contracted her throat, iced her nose hairs, and drew wracking coughs, sure sign of minus twenty to twenty-five degrees. A Northerner needed no thermometer. Wood was first on the list. After scanning the area, she tramped snowpaths like clock hands to several trees. Her prize was a grandmother spruce with dead twigs the first six feet. Excellent kindling. She snapped off a handful and dropped it at the mouth of the den, concentrating on one goal, no dithering, no wasted movements. A handy white birch, papery bark separating, provided starter materials. Into her pockets she stuffed the thin, life-saving sheets. For thumb-thick fuel, she traipsed to a fallen pine limb and cracked off branches, breaking them over her knee. Her face stung from the cold, her breath crystallizing the neck of the jacket rucked over her chin. Only a foot of snow had fallen, but gale-force winds had swept three-foot drifts. Luckily her territory had been protected by the thick conifers.
No axe, no saw. Trappers often built a lean-to with a fire in front, but they had fur coats and blankets. She would have to use smaller branches like the economical aboriginals. The cave would serve as clothing, yet a tiny fire at the entrance might blow out. Inside, with no chimney, she’d smoke like a Virginia ham. For precious seconds, she considered the logistics. The cave lay within a porous rootball. Could she make a hole in the ceiling through the fibery filaments?
The poodle was out of sight, its prints leading over a rise, probably tracking an intriguing smell. She crawled into the den and probed overhead with a stick, blinking back dirt and peat which dropped onto her glasses. Then through a small hole, blue sky winked. This she enlarged with a few judicious pokes. Barehanded, gritting her teeth against the assault on her skin, she curled the birch bark into a small pile, adding raspy spruce and fir twigs the size of insect legs, then fingers of greying pine. Compact so that it wouldn’t collapse and extinguish itself, the growing pyramid resembled a fatal game of pick-up-sticks in reverse. No second chances.
Muscles tensed from cold and fear as she twisted open the emergency kit for the boxed safety matches, her lifeline. Only nine. Nine levels of angels, archangels, thrones, powers, virtues, whatever the other four, she couldn’t remember, fondling them like million-dollar chips at the casino of life. Her hands were so shaky that she snapped several, the rounded tips falling onto the peaty floor. Refusing to waste the incendiary powers, she nudged them onto the fire pile. Then the sixth match caught, igniting the birch paper. She bent to shield the precious maiden flames from drafts. Its oily black smoke clogged her insulated chimney at home with creosote. Maple was her wood of choice, oak when her provider got lucky. The twigs caught quickly, inviting the pine. She added small branches to the fragile assembly. White smoke roiled up, wreathed around her head like a succubus, then mercifully snaked out the hole. Coughing, she rocked back with a groan and buried her throbbing hands in her armpits for a moment before putting on her mitts.
Small fires needed constant attention. She’d have to spend the day replenishing her wood supply. Using a camping trick, she went outside to drag back two fallen maple branches too thick to break. She snubbed their thick ends into the fire, let the remainder trail out the entrance. As they burned, she would shove them closer.
Still no sign of the poodle. She felt an odd new kinship for her partner in the ordeal. Carried off by a fox? That end was quick and merciful. Something would be eating in the forest today. Or drinking. So intent on fire-making, she had relegated fierce thirst to a dusty corner of her brain. One end of the metal cylinder she stuffed with snow, then placed on the coals. Two cups yielded a scant volume of water, but it laved her cracked lips and soothed her dry throat better than Big Syl’s elixir. As she sipped, savouring each drop, wizened corpuscles sucked moisture and begged for more. The dog would be eating snow as Freya did. Different science for animals, or maybe as one benighted neighbour whose dogs never saw the inside of his house claimed, they had anti-freeze in their blood. “Strudel!” she yelled at the opening to the den until her voice grew hoarse.
An hour had passed since she’d seen the creature, and she felt an emptiness around her, wishing it snuggling close to share hard-bought warmth. Now she had the leisure to better survey the den. The objects that had plagued her sleep were the toothmarked vertebrae of a medium-sized animal, a porcupine or fox. Then a proud bark of joy
sounded, and the poodle trotted through the doorway, dropping a dead shrew at her feet. Lying on its silky grey back, minuscule claws clasped in prayer, except for shovelled incisor teeth, the plump body resembled Browning’s Bishop atop his tomb. The skin was unbroken. Soft mouth on the little hunter.
Belle laughed until her stomach hurt from something more poignant than hunger. With her boot, she nudged the pliant shrew toward Strudel’s twitching black nose. “Chow down, mighty hunter. I’ve turned vegetarian.”
Watching it crunch the tiny bones and lap the blood, smearing scruffy new whiskers, she marvelled at the way the pampered dog had dug prey from sheer instinct. With fur growing out, its face losing that show ring distinction, she saw the resemblance to terriers, fierce and instinctive. Toasting by her tidy blaze, she sipped water, then poured some into her hand for Strudel, more intent on clearing its feet of ice. Belle massaged each foot until the tiny toes relaxed. The cave was warming. As insurance, she went outside and stuffed more conifer branches into the snow, a green door which would keep the heat but allow oxygen for the fire.
Through the late morning and afternoon, Belle was comfortable enough to turn off her electric lifesavers. But with nothing but chocolate jerky memories, hunger began gnawing at her vitals until she was almost sorry she’d passed up the tiny shrew snack, fleas aside. In Never Cry Wolf, as part of his study of lupine life in the lower Arctic, amateur biologist and author Farley Mowat had concocted and consumed with apparent relish a curious stew. Observing that wolves could survive on mice alone, he tested the idea that eating the heads and entrails of the rodents boosted fat intake. Practical camp fare, Souris à la Crème consisted of white flour, sowbelly, salt, pepper, cloves, and a generous cup of ethyl alcohol. But by his own admission, yarn-spinner Farley never let truth stand in the way of a good story. Booze was probably the critical ingredient.