“If we could drag the skiff down to the river we could drift along until we found somebody who’d go after Dad for us,” Sidney said.
That scared me. The river ran awfully rough in the spring, and the boat looked much too big for little kids to handle. “Maybe somebody will come by soon,” I said.
But Sidney shook his head, and we went back up to the house. When we got hungry, he warmed some leftover beans. Spread on a thick piece of bread, they tasted very good. Later, though, I noticed Sidney counting the tins of condensed milk in the cupboard and looking around for some other food. But everything there needed to be cooked, except for some more of the beans and about half a loaf of bread. We worried about how to get another milk tin open for Marion’s next bottle—neither one of us could manage the can opener Mother used— and decided we’d try hitting it with a sharp stone. This finally worked, except that we spilled some of the milk, and Sidney got awfully mad. I tried to cheer him up by reminding him that we only had a few tins left anyhow, but he told me to shut up.
We ate the last of the beans for supper and went up to bed even before the sun began going down—it was the time of year when the days were long. We kept waking up, though, because the mosquitoes were very bad, and with Mother stuck in the door the way she was there was nothing we could do to keep them out. Marion got all puffy with bites and cried and cried, and finally Sidney lit the kerosene lamp and we decided to take turns sitting up and shooing the mosquitoes off her. But that didn’t work either because the light from the lamp drew them all the more and, anyhow, we kept dozing off. By the time the sun came up Marion’s face was so swollen that she could barely open her eyes. She seemed to cry all day long, except when she had the bottle in her mouth, and Sidney and I were scared that she was going to die, too.
For breakfast we cut up the rest of the bread and soaked it in milk. It tasted good but there was a funny smell in the house and we were anxious to get outside. The dogs began to yip and pull on their chains when they saw us. Sidney said we’d have to get them some more water, so we put Marion in a shady place on the bank with her bottle and began filling the lard pail from the river and hauling it back up to where the dogs were staked. By the time we were finished the sun was hot and I was good and thirsty and I told Sidney I was going to drink the rest of the milk in Marion’s bottle. He said I couldn’t. “We have to save all the milk there is for her. She’s a baby— she needs it.”
“But I’m thirsty.”
“Drink river water,” he said. So I did.
Sidney kept eyeing the skiff. “If we could just get it in the water, we’re sure to find somebody to help us,” he said.
I still didn’t want to, but I was hungry and lonesome for my dad. All the familiar things around the cabin and the landing had begun to look much bigger than they used to be—the boat, the trees back of the store, even the dogs. The whole world looked strange and big without anybody to run to when I was scared. Finally, when Sidney said we had to give the boat a try, I went over and began pulling on the transom with him.
Foot-by-foot we dragged it toward the bank through the softening ground. At the top, we rested for a long time, breathing hard and trying to figure out a way to get it turned right side up. Then, with both of us pushing from one side, we tipped it up on the gunwale and eased it down on the slope of the bank. Sidney ran around below to make sure it didn’t begin to roll, and I was afraid it would fall on him. But somehow he got it turned bow down and it slid slowly toward the water. One last shove from the stern and it was launched—for about two minutes. Lying up in the sun all spring, the timbers had dried out and that boat shipped water so fast that if Sidney hadn’t grabbed a line and made it fast to the landing we’d have lost it altogether.
He was very discouraged and hardly said anything all the rest of the day. By the afternoon there were no more clean diapers to put on Marion, so we took the dirty ones down to the river and washed them and hung them out on a pole to dry. We didn’t go in the house until almost dark, and then we edged around Mother and pretended that we didn’t notice the smell.
I fell asleep pretty soon, but I think Sidney was up most of the night. I know every time Marion’s crying woke me, he’d be there sitting up alongside her, sometimes feeding her the bottle. When I opened my eyes in the morning, he was all dressed. “Let’s go down and try to bail the boat,” he said.
We dressed Marion and walked her down to the landing. Sidney took his shoes off and rolled up his pants, and standing in ankle-deep water in the boat, began to scoop with the lard pail. I stood on shore holding Marion. And little by little, the skiff sat up in the water; the timbers had soaked and swelled tight, and by noontime she looked trim and ready to go.
Sidney was proud and seemed to know exactly what had to be done. First we would pack some water up to the dogs, he said, then we’d load the boat with blankets, clean diapers, and the last of the milk, and we’d be all set to shove off. I was terribly hungry, but I didn’t mention it because Sidney had so much else on his mind. Neither did I say anything about the wind that had blown up and was stirring white water in the river. I just did what he told me.
When everything was ready, I sat down in the bow holding the baby, and Sidney untied the line, pushing us far out into the current with the paddle. As soon as we were out where the dogs could see us, they set up a terrible howl, tearing against their chains and clawing at the ground. It was as though they knew we were headed for real trouble, and I was more scared than ever. Even Sidney, looking around at them over his shoulder, seemed worried. But all he said was, “They’re hungry. We’ll have to send food back for them.”
Not that he could have turned back if he wanted to. The current must have been running a good five knots, and the wind pushed our bow from side to side, and hard as he swung that paddle, Sidney wasn’t strong enough to do much more than steer around the worst of the shallows and deadheads. Spray splashed up in our faces, and Marion began to cry. Sidney hollered for me to give her a bottle, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that churning river. We hit a deadhead, scraped free, then hit another. Holding on to Marion, I couldn’t keep my seat, so I set her, screaming and kicking, on a blanket in the bottom of the boat and crouched over her, clinging to the gunwale and praying that Sidney would turn us in to shore.
We came sweeping around a bend, and all at once the roar of shoal water was loud as thunder, I straightened my knees, stretching up until I saw it, foaming and angry and studded with gleaming rocks that seemed to reach clear across the river.
“Sidney!” I yelled.
He had already seen, but what could he do? If there was a channel through the shoal, he was much too close in to reach it, so he leaned on the paddle with all his might, trying to aim the skiff at the bank. I didn’t see how we could make it. Even when he got the bow turned toward shore, the force of the current kept us running downriver broadside, and I was absolutely sure that we had to go smashing into those rocks. I took a good grip on the front of Marion’s overalls—she was soaking wet now— and made up my mind that as soon as we capsized I’d grab for a rock with one hand and hang on to her with the other.
“The willows! The willows!” Sidney was screaming.
A little closer to shore now, the bow of the boat where I crouched was sweeping under a canopy of overhanging willow branches. I let go of the baby and stood, bracing my knees against the gunwale, and reached way out. Leaves and branches slid through my palms, bruising and burning them, but I didn’t let go. I clenched with all the strength in both hands, and finally held fast, and the bow nosed in while the stern came pivoting around me, slamming into the bank so that Sidney was knocked off his feet. But we had come to a stop—not twenty feet from where those rocks would have dashed us to pieces.
For a long time I just hung on for dear life, feeling the river fighting to tug us free. I wasn’t strong enough to hold with just one hand and pull closer with the other, so Sidney came forward and grabbed hold, too. And between us, we pulled the bow
up onto the beach so he could jump out and tie us down.
We got Marion and the few supplies out, then sat on the bank, just resting while we gaped at the river. After a while we realized that the poor baby had never stopped crying. We gave her a cold bottle. That was the best we could do. She was sopping wet, but we didn’t have anything dry to put on her. The blankets were soaked. So were the clean diapers. Soon Sidney said that we had to start back to the cabin.
“Through the bush?” I said. Dad had always warned us to stay out of the bush or we’d get lost. “We can’t do that.”
“What other way is there? I’ll pack Marion. You bring the rest of the stuff.”
He knelt down so Marion could climb up on his back and put her arms around his neck, and started off upriver while I still sat there worrying about the dangers of going into the bush. “Wait a minute!” I yelled, more scared of being left alone than anything else. I rolled the milk tins in the diapers, snatched up the blankets, and chased after him.
It was dark and tangly under the alders, and there always seemed to be threatening sounds behind us. I hated it worst when we stopped, but Sidney could only carry the baby for fifty feet or so before he had to put her down and rest. Once he tried to lift her onto my back. I fell down as soon as he let go. Then we begged her to walk, but she couldn’t—her little legs were swollen with bites and the wet diaper was burning her raw—so we kept pushing on a little way at a time, trying to keep the sound of the river close on our left. Pretty soon it started to rain and the wind blew harder than ever, and I remember a sudden feeling of hot anger at my mother for being dead and letting all these bad things happen to me.
And then, way up ahead, we could hear the dogs barking. I don’t know if they’d caught our scent or whether they were still agitated because we’d left them, but the racket they made was as sweet a sound as I’ve ever heard. We guided ourselves by it, and it grew louder and louder, and when we finally came out into the clearing I thought those dogs would tear loose of their chains in excitement and joy.
We were glad, too, but mostly we were tired. We had come only half a mile or so, but it had taken us three hours. We went up to the house to get out of the rain, but by now the smell was too much for us. It was the smell of death and we knew it and it reached all around the cabin.
“I’ll go fix up the lean-to,” Sidney said. “You wait here with Marion and I’ll holler when it’s ready.”
But I wouldn’t stay there alone, not when death was so real to me, so close, and so we all went back out into the rain together. I held the baby while Sidney raised a sort of canvas shelter that Mother used to clean fish under when the sun was very hot. We stretched the blankets out underneath and, wet as they were, we curled up in them, too worn out to care, and fell into exhausted sleep. The last thing I remembered was the sound of Marion sucking away on that cold bottle.
Sidney shook me awake. It must have been past midnight but in that far north country the sun was already coming up. “What’s the matter?” I said, but he hushed me. I noticed that the rain had stopped and heard the dogs whining and was going to ask him again when finally I saw the bears.
There were three of them, black bears, a fat waddling mother and two cubs. They weren’t thirty feet from the lean-to, between us and the dogs, sniffing and moving slowly over the wet ground, making a squishing sound as they went. I didn’t breathe.
“If I could only get past them and turn the dogs loose,” Sidney whispered.
I was terrified that he would leave Marion and me alone.
“Don’t!” I begged. “Maybe they’ll go away.”
The she-bear turned her huge shaggy head toward us—she must have seen us!—and sloshed deliberately on. Very softly Sidney said, “If she starts this way, we’ll each grab one of Marion’s arms and run for the cabin.”
I nodded. I was sitting up now and had got my feet under me and that made me feel a little braver. Then came the most terrible fear of all: what if the bears smelled Mother? What if they went up to the cabin and began eating her? I took a deep breath. If they did, I decided, I would go and turn the dogs loose. I would find a stick or something and try to chase them. I would do anything—even if they killed me—because nothing was worse than the thought of those bears tearing away at my poor dead mother.
I was about to lean close and tell all this to Sidney when the big she-bear turned up toward the woods, circling wide of the dogs, the cubs scurrying to keep up with her. In another moment, they had all blended into the dark bush. Soon Sidney lay back on his blanket, but I kept sitting there, just staring at that place where they’d disappeared. For a long time after that, I had it in my head that the mother bear had looked us all over before we were awake; she had seen Mother, and us kids alone in the lean-to, and she had decided that we were as helpless as her cubs would be if she were dead. And so she’d gone away without harming us. And the truth is, I’m not so sure I don’t think the same thing now.
I didn’t go back to sleep. I was so hungry that pains as sharp as knives tore through my stomach. I felt very weak. I asked Sidney if he was awake and he said yes. I told him how hungry I was.
“I’ll go down to the river later and try to catch a fish with Mama’s net.”
He was just trying to shush me. I knew he couldn’t catch a fish because it was very hard. And even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to cook it. But what was the use of making him feel bad?
By the time the sun was up over the hills, the dogs had begun to moan and howl and wouldn’t let up, not even after we brought them water. They kept walking slowly around their stakes, their tongues hanging down and a look on their faces when we came near them as though one of us was hiding a whole stack of dried salmon from them. It was now three days since they’d been fed anything but water, and although we didn’t know it yet, worrying about them was to keep the three of us alive.
“We have to get them some food,” Sidney said.
I looked at him as though he was out of his head. “What about us?”
“Us, too.” He turned away and said, “We have to go in the store, Jimmy.”
The store! I’d never even thought about it. There were two things Dad had drummed into us from the time we could understand him: we were never to go into the store alone, and we were never to touch anything in the store unless he gave it to us. But now ...
“Is there food in there?” I asked.
Sidney shrugged. “There must be something.” He stood there a little longer, then went to make sure Marion was still asleep. “Come on,” he said when he came back. And I ran after him, half-scared my father would suddenly appear to punish us, half-hoping he would—and so hungry that neither of those possibilities was as important as the food we might find.
Inside, it was cool and dark. Racks of furs and ammunition boxes were stacked in front of the counter. Hanging from the ridge poles were four big hams. They were raw and covered with a slimy mold that I’d seen Mother scrape off before she cooked a piece, but my mouth went all dry at the thought of chewing on a big juicy chunk.
Sidney got the butcher knife hanging on the back wall.
Then he climbed up on the counter and, reaching up as high as he could, sawed back and forth until—crash!—the ham went slamming down to the wood floor. We both looked at it. I thought: well, we’re in for it now — then I said, “Come on, cut it up.”
We squatted on the floor, jamming pieces of ham in our mouths as fast as Sidney could cut them, wiping some mold off and not worrying about the rest, and barely tasting any of it because we barely chewed any of it.
I don’t know how long we might have stayed there gorging ourselves if, after a while, we hadn’t heard Marion crying. Full of guilt, we jumped up and tried to lift the ham. It was too heavy, so we grabbed the rope it had been hanging by and dragged it out of the store and over the damp ground to the lean-to. The dogs went crazy, thrashing and howling, but the first thing we did was cut little slivers for the baby. Then Sidney hacked off big chunks
, and I threw them to the dogs, who snapped each one out of the air and bolted it down in a single gulp.
We fed them half the ham, then packed some water up for them. They were happy and, for a little while, so were we. Then Marion threw up all over the blankets, and Sidney and I were suddenly sick and barely made it outside before we heaved, too.
“I guess you’re not supposed to eat it raw,” he said sadly, and I wanted to cry because I was hungry all over again.
After that, we never ate another piece of that raw ham, no matter how hungry we got. Next day Sidney went back to the store and found a sack of hard candy, and we lived on that, and a can of beans from the counter that we finally pried open with the butcher knife. But more than once, just feeding the ham to the dogs, we’d gag on the slimy smell, and the memory of our great gluttony.
The days and nights began to get all mixed up. We got steadily weaker and slept a lot of the time, and it made no difference if the sun was up or not. Somewhere along the line we ran out of milk for the baby and had to put river water in her bottle. But she hardly cried any more. She’d just lay on the blanket, half asleep, never really awake. The bites on her body turned to angry red sores, and the mosquitoes never let up on her.
Once Sidney went up to the house to look for some food, but he didn’t find any and he came back crying because Mother was in such bad shape. We didn’t go near there anymore. In fact, we didn’t go ten feet from the lean-to except to get water. We were very downhearted, and all we wanted to do was stay close together with the dogs watching over us. Sometimes at night we’d hear them barking at something, and we’d huddle close with Marion between us, too scared to look, just hoping that whatever it was would go away.
The time came when we weren’t strong enough to pack any more water back for the dogs, but they only whimpered now and then, as if they understood that it wasn’t our fault. We slept more and more, waking once in the middle of a pelting thunderstorm. We crawled farther back in the lean-to and listened to the rolling thunder, and Sidney said, “I hope Dad’s not out on the river now.”
On the Edge of Nowhere Page 4