Heart So Hungry

by Randall Silvis

  She had no choice but to retreat to her tent. There, with a couple of candles giving off a sooty smoke, she found a semblance of relief.

  About an hour later a silhouette appeared outside her tent, and she knew by its shape that it was George. He scratched at her tent flap.

  “Yes, George?”

  “I thought you might like to try to eat something now,” he said.

  She untied the flaps and pulled them apart. Hunkered down low, George held a bowl of broth in one hand, a cup of tea in the other. She told him, “It’s hardly any better in here. If I take this mask off they will eat me alive.”

  “All right,” he said, but he did not turn away.

  “I don’t know how you men stand it. You don’t even wear your veils.”

  “Our skin is tougher. And the pipe smoke helps a little.”

  She nodded. “How’s your stomach?”

  “Job’s soup helped, I think. We’re all feeling some better. We’ll be ready to put in a full day tomorrow.”

  “I only hope it takes us away from these pests.”

  “I hope so too.” He looked at her a moment, then smiled. “If we come across any Naskapi with you wearing that bag on your head, they’ll shoot you for sure.”

  His remark had the desired effect; she could not help but return his smile, even though he could not see it beneath her suffocating mask. “Oh, George, I’m sorry to be such a complainer. I will be better tomorrow too, I promise.”

  “You’ve got no need to apologize, missus. I’ve seen some men couldn’t handle it as good as you do.”

  “Some men?” she asked.

  “Not Mr. Hubbard, I didn’t mean that.”

  “Did he never get dispirited, George?”

  “Not that I saw, he didn’t. Now Mr. Wallace, that was another matter. He needed a bit of shoring up from time to time.”

  “And how did you accomplish that?”

  “Wasn’t me. It was Mr. Hubbard was always the strong one. I can see him sitting there at the campfire right now. Sitting there with his pipe going and him looking up into the sky. And then pretty soon he’d recite us something from that Kipling fella.”

  Mina could see him too, could see him as clearly as if he were there in the flickering light and shadows behind the campfire. The northern lights were fluttering overhead and the smoke from Laddie’s pipe slowly swirled in the subtle hues of reflected firelight, orange and red, and the smoke wreathed his handsome, sculpted face as he sat there thinking, smiling, and as he then drew the pipe from between his lips and declaimed, as movingly as the finest actor might,

  When first under fire, if you’re wishful to duck,

  Don’t look or take heed of the man that is struck;

  Be thankful you’re living and trust to your luck,

  And march to your front like a soldier.

  Mina’s eyes filled with tears, and when she blinked them away Laddie was no longer at the fire, no longer in the smoke. She could see past George to Job and Joe and Gilbert seated there, the two older men on a piece of log and Gilbert seated on a rock. But Laddie was gone.

  She was glad then for the bag over her head and for the layers of veil over her eyes. The tears stung her cheeks, making the insect bites burn even more. Yet somehow she felt better. “And that’s what I will do as well,” she told George. “Just what Laddie always said. I will march to the front like a soldier.”

  “You always have, missus.”

  “Not always. But I will not complain again. I promise.”

  “Far as I recall, you didn’t complain this time.”

  “Maybe not aloud, but inside my head I certainly did.”

  “You oughta hear inside of mine sometime.” He smiled again. “You want I should leave the tea and soup?”

  “No, but thank you. I think I will try to get some sleep now. Will we be getting an early start in the morning?”

  “As early as we can manage. Good night then, missus.”

  “Good night, George. And thank you.”

  He widened his smile and gave her a wink before letting the tent flaps fall shut. The wink took her by surprise. In her entire life only two men had ever winked at her—her father and, years later, Laddie. And now George Elson could be added to that very short list. It was just a tiny gesture, yet so uplifting that for a while it made even the mosquitoes seem less troublesome.

  She awoke at two-thirty on Friday morning, July 28. The first thing she noticed was that the mosquitoes were gone, chased into hiding by the coolness of the air. Immediately she untied the bag from around her neck and lifted it off. How delicious and refreshing was the morning air. She crawled to the tent flaps and untied them and laid them back, then pulled her blankets around her again and lay on her side looking out at the eastern sky, a clear and cloudless firmament, pale blue and softly lit as if by distant lanterns.

  Bit by bit the sky brightened, its blue colour deepening until, after an hour, the sun showed itself between the hills. Now the peak of her tent took on a golden glow and she felt the warmth of the sun settling into the tent. She rose to her knees and crept forward until she was half outside. A mist was rising off the little lake in front of their camp, a gossamer mist near the shore, no heavier than the vapour of her breath in the chilly air, but looking so much thicker farther out, a solid white wall of mist down the length of the river.

  Gilbert was the only one moving about outside. When he had a good fire going he set the teakettle on a flat stone on the edge of the fire. He filled a frying pan with thick strips of bacon and set it over the fire. He then went to the men’s tent and scratched on the canopy. “All aboard!” he called.

  When he came back to the fire to turn the meat, Mina asked, “Any mosquitoes out there this morning?”

  “Not a one, missus. Too cold for them. I went down to the lake and tried to wash, but I had to leave off, it was so cold.”

  She moved back inside the tent and closed the flaps. As she pulled on her clothes for the day she could hear the men gathering around the fire, speaking in their sleepy, hoarse voices. It was always astounding to her how smoothly the men worked and took care of each other. There were no assigned duties and no need for them because every man simply assumed whatever task was required at the moment. Gilbert had awakened before the others so he had gotten the fire going and started breakfast. On other mornings it had been George or Joe or Job. When breakfast was over, one of the men would gather up the plates and cups and carry them to the water’s edge to be scoured clean. The others would go about the business of breaking camp. All without a single word of instruction to each other.

  This time the men had a quick cup of tea while Mina was still in her tent. Then Gilbert moved the frying pan away from the fire and the men each shrugged on a heavy pack and marched forward for a half-mile portage. By the time they returned, Mina was seated by the fire with her own cup of tea. “The bacon’s ready,” she told them.

  By seven a.m. breakfast was long over and the canoes and other gear had been moved forward past the rapids at the head of the lake. Mina’s party took to the canoes again, had smooth paddling for over an hour, then portaged around more rapids, then paddled a while longer. Around noon they glided onto another lake expansion, but here the lake appeared to curve to the east. At George’s suggestion the canoes were beached and the entire party disembarked to climb a low, moss-covered ridge. From the ridge George hoped to see the river flowing out of this maze of lakes, their path clearly demarcated.

  Job and Gilbert set off at a much faster pace than the others. By the time Mina reached the top of the rise, she could only just make out the figures of the two men as they crossed a valley to her left, heading, she assumed, toward a higher hill to the northwest.

  Every way Mina turned revealed nothing but lakes and more lakes, the water the colour of tea and often surrounded by a soup-green bog. There was no sign of the river. “Have we made a wrong turn?” she asked. Neither Joe nor George ventured an answer.

  As they set o
ff down into the valley, following Job and Gilbert, Mina’s heart was in her throat. Again she felt that familiar nausea of fear. What if they had indeed made a wrong turn somewhere and paddled up the wrong channel? This land was a labyrinth of streams and trickles and swamps and lakes. Had she allowed her party to become nonchalant in the relative ease of their progress? If they were lost they would probably have to backtrack, and that would mean the loss of precious time. If they lost too much time they would fail to reach Ungava before the last ship departed in advance of winter. And perhaps, if they lost too much time, they might never reach Ungava at all. All of a sudden the precarious nature of their situation hit her with full force.

  She was out of breath and leg-weary when they crested the next ridge. There they found Job and Gilbert sitting near the edge of the ridge on the bare knob of a smooth grey boulder, their backs to the others. But when Gilbert heard them coming he turned to look at them. His wide grin made Mina’s stomach flutter, but this time it was a good feeling, and suddenly the strength returned to her legs and she had no trouble keeping up with George’s long strides as he hurried to where Gilbert sat.

  Ahead of them lay the river—their beautiful river, dark and deep and inviting, a wide, clear path to Michikamau. There would be more lake expansions along the way, more waterfalls and rapids to bypass, more portages, but Mina did not care. They were not lost. They had now travelled some fifty miles beyond Seal Lake and, best of all, there was the river, the wonderful Naskapi, precisely where it should have been. Just to see it again felt like a kind of homecoming.

  To the north the hills were low and wooded, the trees thick with green. Some thirty miles away the highest of the hills were capped in glowing white. “I wish I had brought my cameras,” Mina said.

  George said, “It’s good to look at, isn’t it?”

  After a while Joe mentioned that his stomach was in fine shape again. He thought he could tackle another pound or so of fried venison. In fact, all the men were ravenously hungry. And so they turned away from the magnificent view, Mina most reluctantly, for the long march back down.

  As they walked, Mina turned to George. “Why shouldn’t I come back up here after dinner with my Kodaks? The walking is tiresome but it isn’t rough at all.”

  George pursed his lips but said nothing. Obviously, he was not comfortable with the idea.

  “You men could go ahead up the lake,” she suggested. “I’ll take my pictures and then catch up with you.”

  Still he said nothing.

  “George, really. There’s not a thing to worry about. I couldn’t possibly lose my way even if I tried.”

  He came to a halt and stood awhile looking down their path, checking from side to side for rough places where, on her own, Mina might slip and fall. He turned to look back to the top of the hill. And finally he told her, “Well, since you want to so bad, I guess you might.”

  The prospect of being on her own for a couple of hours, of moving about wherever she wished and not merely following somebody else, of doing something self-chosen and purposeful, thrilled her more than she could say.

  “If you go back down this way,” George told her, and pointed out the path she should take, “you’ll be able to meet us at the end of the lake. You’ll be able to see from the hilltop when we come along in the canoes, and that will give you time to walk down to meet us.”

  “Oh, thank you, George! Thank you for trusting me!”

  She was so eager to be on the hilltop again that the two-mile hike back to the canoes, most of it through low sandhills where the heat of the day seemed to pool, felt like six miles to Mina. Back in camp at last, she rushed through lunch and, only because George begged her to do so, she lay down for a while to rest her legs.

  When she came out of her tent thirty minutes later she was ready to go. In addition to the two cameras and the notebooks she carried, she wore her revolver and Bowie knife and had stuffed her leather pouch with cartridges, a barometer and a compass.

  George said, “I think you’d better take your rubber shirt too. It’s going to rain some this afternoon.”

  Mina studied the sky. A few silvery clouds drifted above the hills. “Oh, I don’t think I will. I have enough to carry already. Besides, I don’t think it’s going to rain at all.”

  George wanted to say more but he held his tongue. This was, after all, her expedition. He wished he could tie a rope around her waist and pay it out as she worked her way up the hill. She was just too darn eager to make this hike alone. The prospect of having her out of his sight for two hours or more made him sick with worry. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to disappoint her.

  After lunch the party travelled by canoe to a little cove at the base of the hill Mina would climb. She all but leapt out of the canoe. “Goodbye!” she said with a quick wave, and then she was on her way, striding briskly into the trees.

  “It seemed beautiful to be going off without a guard,” she later wrote, “and to think of spending an hour or two on the hill top, quite alone, with a glorious sky above, and the beautiful hills and lakes and streams in all directions.”

  Below her, the canoes shoved off again, but George could not force himself to look away from the trees. “I hope I don’t live to regret this,” he said.

  Joe told him, “That goes for all of us.”

  Mina thought it a perfect afternoon. To be alone like this, cameras slung around her neck, revolver on her hip, made her feel like one of the early explorers, like Meriwether Lewis trekking into the rugged unknown, or Champlain ridge-walking above the St. Lawrence. She was standing atop a hill where, quite probably, no white person had ever stood. Certainly no white woman. No shy little nurse from Bewdley, Ontario.

  A beautiful sky that seemed to go on forever, pale blue, a few slow-scudding clouds. Rock-studded hills and calm lakes and glittering streams as far as the eye could see. From Mina’s perspective it hardly seemed “the land God gave to Cain.”

  “Fit only for wild beasts,” Jacques Cartier had said. Well, maybe so, Mina told herself. Yet I feel quite at home here.

  She took as many photographs as she thought necessary, a few in every direction. Then she wrote awhile in her notebook, describing what she saw. Every fifteen seconds or so she scanned the lake for a sign of the canoes. But two hours passed and her party did not come into view. Who would have thought the men would take so much time to make the portage? Maybe in her absence they had dallied awhile before getting started, had smoked an extra pipeful of tobacco. But a proclivity for dalliance hardly seemed in their nature.

  She decided to walk down to the lake anyway and wait for them there, because, just as George had predicted, the sky was beginning to darken. A thunderstorm was on the way. How had he known? It must be a kind of instinct, she thought, such as birds and animals have. Like having a barometer in your blood.

  No, it would not be a good idea to be caught in the open on a barren hill when the lightning and rain began. She might find a bit of protection down by the lake, though. And there too she would be able to see the men coming in their canoes. Even if the rain came hard and fast and cold, they would not leave her stranded there. But it would be nice to have her rubber shirt now. Why must George be right all the time? It was infuriating.

  She had no more than begun her descent, however, coming down off the ridge along the route George had pointed out earlier, when something appeared below her, something anomalous in her intended path. It was too far away to distinguish clearly, but by size and shape and colour it looked for all the world like a huge brown bear. She stared and stared, heart pounding, breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. Maybe it was just a log. But no, it was much too wide for a log, wide in the middle but thinner at both ends. A moss-covered boulder? Maybe, but … had it moved? Just a little, a shift at one end, maybe? Yes, she was sure of it, almost sure—the thing had moved!

  Well, what now? she asked herself. Think, Mina. Think! Should she fire a shot from her revolver and hope to frighten the bear aw
ay? Or would the noise merely wake him from his torpor, provoke him into looking up the hill, sniffing her out? If she veered away from her intended route to find another one and had to go crashing through the brush, surely the bear would come to investigate. She could never outrun him, that was for certain. And there wasn’t a tree sturdy enough to support her out of his reach for miles around. If she backtracked to the top of the hill, hoping to wait him out, what if he too decided to investigate the view from on high, and found her cowering there like a mouse? The only thing she knew for sure was that she had no desire to be anybody’s supper.

  But what if that thing below wasn’t a bear at all? Once before, during the early days of the trip, she had cried out that there was a bear on a distant lakeshore. The men had merely smiled to one another but paddled closer so that she could see. A flock of ducks. And what a ribbing she had taken for that mistake! Could that large brown object below her be a flock of ducks? But what would ducks be doing sitting in a small opening surrounded by alders? Having a picnic?

  It must surely be a bear. What else could it be?

  There was only one way to find out for sure. She drew the revolver from its holster and, hand sweaty on the grip, index finger nestled close to the trigger, inched forward. Her heart was beating like a hummingbird’s. She walked as tall as she could make herself, even held her left hand up beside her head for a moment, thinking it might make her appear larger. Then she realized that a bear might see her hand and outstretched fingers as an antler. So she quickly brought her hand down again, held the palm flat against her hip.

  With every cautious step she strove to keep an eye on the bear lest it hear the slow crunch of a footstep and lift itself up and turn toward her. But more than once as she picked her way around obstacles, her path dropped or twisted through the lower brush and she lost sight of the creature. When that happened she would freeze in position, holding her breath, and attempt to hear through the thunder of her pulse whether she was being pursued. When she heard no such sound she would reclaim a tiny bit of aplomb and move on.