by John Smelcer
So Isaac decided to stay with his friend throughout the long night. The boy gathered a great pile of dry branches and built a fire close enough to the dog to warm him. As darkness fell and stars and constellations came out, he cleaned the grouse and roasted it on a stout, green stick over the flames. The two shared the meal, which wasn’t much. Then he collected sap from a nearby spruce tree which he chewed until it was warm and soft, and then he rubbed it into the many wounds and cuts. It was old Indian medicine his grandmother had taught him.
As the night grew cold, Isaac laid the empty rucksack, like a canvas blanket, over the dog, which was whining less than before, and his breathing was quiet and uneven.
Occasionally, through the blackness at the edge of the campfire’s glow, came the sound of snapping branches, as if something was moving through the night, circling, kept at bay by the fire.
The anxious boy passed the long night with his shotgun on his lap, tending to the fire and caressing his dog. But somewhere before light’s first breaking, he fell asleep with one arm wrapped across his friend. He was awakened by the voice of his father leaning over him, calling his name and shaking the cold from his bones. But no matter how loudly he called or shook, the dog never woke again.
On a crisp fall morning, in a place far, far away, Isaac Demientieff, twelve years old, buried his best friend just above the timberline and marked the grave with a pile of stones.
The Lost Journal of the 1886-87 Swedish Polar Expedition to Alaska
January 23, 1887. -27F. Winds 20 mph from NE. Seventy-third day of our expedition. Encamped twenty-eight miles east of Resolution Bay. Haven’t seen the sun in almost two months. Nothing to eat since we shot one of our sledge dogs ten days ago. Svenson died this morning from consumption. Ferguson deathly sick. Poor devil. Beheld a strange vision today. Far out on the ice, so far out that at first we thought it a seal or walrus, a speck grew in the darkness until it was clear to us that the form was that of a person. Armed with rifles, Anderson and Magnuson rushed out to greet the stranger, who proved to be an Esquimaux woman with a child strapped to her back and two furs rolled up with some leather and slung over her shoulder. They brought the wretch into camp. Tikasook, our Esquimaux dog-handler, was able to converse with her, though he was resentful at first; still bitter about his dog. He said she spoke a different dialect, and so he was unable to translate every word. She said she had two frozen fish inside her rolled furs, which she kindly shared with us, insisting that we leave her a few small strips for bait. There wasn’t enough to feed us all properly, so cook made a pot of fish soup. He used everything, including the heads and tails. Everyone enjoyed the nourishing broth. Attitudes much improved afterward. Ferguson vomited up his meal. I fear he is too far gone. During supper, we asked the woman why she was alone so far away from any settlement. She related the following to us, inasmuch as our interpreter was able to relate her incredible story:
The people in my village were starving. None of the hunters had killed a seal or walrus for a long time, maybe two or three months. Somebody must have offended the spirits. That’s why they didn’t come to us no more. At first the very young and the very old died, but then the rest of my people began to die, including my husband. One after the other, everyone died but me and my child. I don’t know why I didn’t die. Perhaps I had enough fat to keep me alive and to make milk for my daughter. For a while we stayed in the village, but the white bears came to eat the dead. There were so many—a village of bears; so we left. I took only what I could pull on a sledge and struck out to find another village. On the third day the sledge broke through the ice. I managed to save some of the furs, but I lost everything else. After that, a great white bear stalked us for two days. But he found a den of seal pups to fill his belly. After that he didn’t follow us no more.
After so long without food, my body stopped making milk, and my child was crying all the time. She was starving. I was certain she was going to die. There was nothing to eat, only snow and saltwater. One cannot eat the wind. So one day I took my knife and cut a strip of flesh from my own thigh. I carved a hook from a small piece of ivory and chopped a hole in the ice and used that piece of flesh for bait, jigging it up and down. In no time, I caught a tomcod, which I ate raw. I used part of it as bait to catch other fish. In no time I was feeling stronger, and my body began to make milk again for my child. In the following days, she too grew healthier. Since before the sun was swallowed by the sea, I have fashioned small igloos from the snow for shelter against the wind, slept warmly in the piled furs, and caught fish through the ice for food.
At first we found her tale incredulous. Neither I nor any of my men could have survived the polar winter alone with nothing but a couple furs, a knife, and a bit of gut-string with a fishing hook. But that night, as the woman prepared to sleep, removing her parka and mukluks before crawling into her furs, I spied a scar on her right thigh, precisely the length and shape as she described in her story. –J. Sundquist
January 27, 1887. -31F. Winds 35 mph from E. Ferguson died during the night. He was frozen through and through when we found him. Had to pry him from the ice. Men restless. Talk of killing another sledge dog for food. Tikasook protested vehemently; drew his knife on Thorkelson. –J. Sundquist
January 29, 1887. -12F. Blizzard. Can’t see ten feet! Tikasook left during the night with the dogs. Ferguson’s body missing. Undoubtedly, bears dragged it away. They’re losing fear of us as our numbers dwindle. Boiled shoe leather. Inedible. Lost Anderson and Magnuson in blizzard after supper. Poor bastards won’t last an hour. Spring is months away. I don’t know how much longer we can last. –Sundquist
January 30, 1887. -38F. Calm. Blizzard subsided. Saw first seal in a month. Damnable rifle wouldn’t fire. Grease too stiff. Hammer wouldn’t drop. Everything’s useless this far north. Nothing eases our hunger pangs.—J. S.
p.s. There is no going forward and no going back. I fear this damnable place is where we shall perish.
January 31, 1887. Cold and clear. Mercury bottomed out. Can barely move fingers to write. Esquimaux woman and her child gone this morning. Took her furs and a hatchet. Must have decided odds of survival better without us. At least someone may live to tell our story. God have mercy on our souls. —J
Crash
“Look, Honey, I got to live in it, too, you know,” said the man, as he turned on the headlights without taking his eyes off the road ahead. “Can’t we paint it gray or something a little more neutral?”
“I like yellow. It’s a happy color,” replied the wife, looking down at the unfolded road map on her lap. “I grew up in a yellow house.”
“What about greenish-gray? I like that.”
“Oh please,” begged the woman, “can we paint it yellow with white trim?”
The husband didn’t answer right away. He was staring at the rearview mirror.
“Did you hear me?” snapped the wife.
“There’s a pick-up behind us coming up pretty fast.”
The woman turned to look out the back window.
“Crazy fool! You can’t drive that fast on this gravel road, especially with all the potholes,” she said and then turned back toward the front.
Within seconds the approaching truck was alongside. It was rusty-white. Both the driver and the passenger were young women, and both looked to be about twenty. The passenger, whose long black hair whipped her face, looked at the man with an expression that seemed to say, “What’s your problem?” and gave him the finger. When they passed, the man squinted to read a bumper sticker on the tailgate that read “Native Pride.” As the speeding truck passed, its rear tires kicked up a rock that hit the windshield so hard it left a crack.
“Shit! Not another one,” said the man. “That’s the third one this trip! Why can’t people be more considerate when they pass?”
“Did you see it was two American Indians?” asked the wife.
“Native
Americans,” replied the man in a teacherly fashion.
“Native Americans. American Indians. First Nations. Whatever you call them, I think they were from that village we passed about thirty miles back. I bet they’re drunk.”
“That’s stereotyping, dear. Just because they’re Indian doesn’t mean they have to be drunk,” replied the man, turning on the radio. But no matter how far he turned the tuner dial left or right, only static came from the speakers.
“Chrissake!” he complained, turning it off. “We haven’t got a goddamn radio station in a hundred miles. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere!”
“I’ll have to go pee soon,” said the woman. “Can we stop?”
“Where? We haven’t seen a rest stop all day.”
“Well, all I know is you’re going to have to stop soon.”
A few minutes later, as the evening sun was colliding with the edge of the world, they saw the white truck that had passed them crashed against a tree about a hundred feet off the road. The taillights were still on, and steam was rising from the busted radiator.
“Oh my God!” the wife cried out, placing a hand over her mouth.
The husband steered the car onto the shoulder and turned off the engine.
“Stay here,” he said, as he opened the door and grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. “Let me check this out.”
The wife rolled down her window.
“Be careful, Honey,” she said, leaning out the window. “It could catch fire and blow up.”
Tire tracks told the man what had happened. The truck had come out of a sharp turn, fish-tailed, lost control, and shot off the road and into the woods, where it plowed through brush and saplings before it slammed into the birch tree.
The door on the driver’s side was open. The man looked inside the cab. It was empty and clean. The windshield was gone, and both seatbelts lay uselessly across the blue vinyl seat. He stood up and looked around. One of the women was lying in front of the truck facedown beside the shattered windshield. He gently turned her over and felt for a pulse. With his own heart racing, he couldn’t tell if he was feeling his own pulse in his fingertips. He pressed his ear to her chest.
Nothing.
He opened her eyelids and shone the flashlight onto the wreckage of her face. Her pupils were fixed, glazed, and unresponsive.
“This one is dead!” the man shouted to his wife who was standing on the gravel shoulder with her arms across her chest.
“Oh my god!” the woman sobbed.
A groan came from the closing darkness.
The man looked around and saw the other woman lying half against a tree trunk about thirty feet away. He recognized her as the passenger who had flipped him off. Her eyes were open and she was holding a hand against her head. The man scrambled over to her and checked her wounds. There was a deep gash on her forehead at the hair line, which was bleeding a river. Bits of glass were embedded in her scalp. Her left foot was twisted impossibly backward, and her blue jeans were torn midway on the thigh, which was bleeding.
In a panic, the man stood up and yelled to his wife.
“This one’s still alive, but she’s in bad shape! Try to flag down someone with a cell phone to call for help!”
“We haven’t seen another vehicle in half an hour!” the woman shouted back.
“Just do it!”
Suddenly, he heard the woman speaking softly.
“Help me.”
The man fell to his knees beside her.
“I’m here.”
“Wha . . . what happened?” she asked, her dark eyes wide open but seeing nothing.
“You were in an accident,” replied the man, using his handkerchief to wipe blood from her face. “But you’re going to be okay. It looks like you have a broken leg and a few nasty cuts. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“My side hurts.”
“Where?” asked the man. “Can you show me?”
The woman slowly touched her right side, just beneath her armpit.
“Let me see,” said the man as he pressed several fingertips against the place.
The woman flinched and moaned.
“I think you have some broken ribs. Try not to move.”
The man didn’t say anything, but he wondered if she might be bleeding internally from the injury. He wiped more blood from her face and placed his jacket over her to keep her warm.
“You’re bleeding pretty badly. I’m going to hold this against your wound to stop the bleeding,” he said, quickly folding the blood-soaked handkerchief into a square and pressing it against the gash.
The woman seemed to calm.
“Do you see anyone coming?” the husband yelled to his wife.
“Nothing!” replied the woman, after looking both ways and then shrugging her shoulders.
For a few minutes no one said a word as the man held the flashlight in his mouth while he wrapped his belt around her thigh as a tourniquet.
“This may hurt a little, but it’ll help to slow the bleeding,” he said reassuringly as he cinched the belt tight, although he was altogether uncertain if he should use a tourniquet at all.
The woman bit her lip and grunted.
“I’m sorry, Father,” she said weakly after a while.
The man didn’t know what to say.
“It’s alright,” he said.
“Hold my hand.”
The man held her hand.
“Please hold my hand. I’m scared.”
“I’m here. I’m holding your hand,” said the man, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
The woman coughed several times.
“I’m sorry for everything,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright. You need to be still.”
“Do you forgive me?” she asked, coughing up blood.
The man struggled to say the right thing. He knew she must be going into shock from her injuries and from the loss of blood, and he wanted to comfort her.
“Yes. I forgive you.”
The woman’s breathing became sharp and labored.
“Father, do you love me?”
“Yes. I love you,” the man whispered as he kissed her on the head.
He felt his sense of guilt melt away.
The woman’s body tensed and loosened several times until at last she became as still as the stars coming out in the night, shining like broken pieces of glass.
The Boys Who Would Be Men
Peter Frank was one year older than his best friend, Johnny Peters, and his cousin, Matthew Charley was the same age as Peter, whose sister was married to Jimmy Joe. Most Indians have names like that. First names for last names. There’s a good reason, but almost no one remembers it any more. There’s a lot of things Indian don’t remember anymore, like their Indian language.
The word for language.
The word for word.
The story goes something like this: Way back when gold-miners and fur trappers and traders first came into this northland, they opened little trading posts where they sold booze and guns, coffee and tea, flour and salt and pepper and anything else they could sell or trade. They had to keep records of what they sold to whom and how much and when. But since the white people wouldn’t learn to speak Indian, they didn’t know the names of their Indian customers. So when an Indian bought something or traded furs and beaver pelts, those white trading post owners just gave them white names to put down in their ledgers.
“From now on,” they’d say, sizing up an Indian customer, “you’re going to be Joe.”
But after a while there were too many Indians listed in the ledger and those store owners ran out of white people first names, so they’d ask where them Indians came from. Which village? What river?
“Ok,” they’d say, adding to their columns. “Fro
m now on you’re going to be Tazlina Joe because you come from that village.”
But soon enough they ran out of villages and rivers, so they started to give them first names for last names, because them trading post owners had very little imagination.
“Alright. You’re going to be Peter Frank. How’s that? Like it? Who cares. You don’t speak a word of English anyhow, but that’s who you’re gonna be in my books from now on.”
Eventually those trading post ledgers became the official rolls of Indians for the government.
That’s how Indians got to have first names for last names, and why no one remembers what their family names used to be.
Peter, Johnny, and Matthew were all around sixteen. None of them had a driver’s license and none were likely to get one since there were no cars in the village, only snowmobiles in winter and flat bottom river boats in summer. Robert Fred had a ‘68 Ford pick-up, but it hadn’t moved since ‘75 when the distributor cap cracked and his wife planted a garden in the bed because rabbits and moose couldn’t get to it there. It still sat in the field behind the village, tireless on blocks, with fireweed growing up through the rusting frame, every window broken from a generation of children using it for target practice.
They were down at fish camp listening to one of their grandfathers tell stories about the old times. It doesn’t matter whose grandfather he was. You see one old Indian man in a village, and he’s likely related to everyone there. He was telling stories about how Raven made this or that, or why Indians do that or this, when he at last told a story about how young Indian men in their village used to become men.
“Back in dem days,” he said slowly while gutting a salmon and tossing the guts into the river where hungry sea gulls fought for the soft, dangling pieces, “we used to climb way up in a tree and pull a feather from an eagle’s tail while it sat in its nest.”