Ordinary Wolves (6 page)

I stopped listening and watched frost-laden twigs pass. Abe liked to mull things over until he got them complicated. A discussion with him was like rolling a log uphill in sticky snow. Ideas glommed on. I started to offer ten-year-old facts, but the dogs sped up and we dropped into a slough and lost the trail of the conversation when the team piled up on the leftovers of the calf moose. Backbone, hair, hooves, and the head with the nose and eyes chewed down, all scattered in a red circle. Fine wolf trails and deep moose trenches mapped out the battle.

The dogs bit at the frozen blood and woody stomach contents. Abe bent, careful not to let go of the sled handlebar. He touched a clean wolf paw print. “Soft,” he mused. “Been back to finish her up.”

The dogs raced west, up a narrow slough. “Abe,” I whispered, “should we maybe not shoot that ma moose? She's had enough bad luck. Didn't you want to shoot a barren cow, to be fatter?”

I wanted to get out of the overhanging willows before she charged. The snow was soft and deep. Anyone knew moose were more dangerous than bears. Especially on a dog team. As a child, I had been petrified during the night with fear of a moose dropping in our ground-level skylight. The thrashing black hooves would crack our skulls. The wind would sift the igloo full of snow. Shrews would tunnel under our skin and hollow us out, and when travelers found our bodies we'd be weightless as dried seagulls. Abe nourished the nightmare, shrugging, conveying the impression that, sure, given time, my prophecy was bound to come true. Abe was that way. Realistic, he called it.

He ran behind the runners, dodging willows that tried to slap his eyes. He panted over my hood. “Might be the only moose in fifty miles that doesn't care either way.”

I knew I could argue with him, and he'd leave the animal. He'd welcome the discussion—and the chance not to kill. I shut my stiff lips. Willows whipped past. Abe climbed on the runners and rode. He cleared
his throat and whistled encouragements to the dogs. I squinted in frustration, thinking,
Now I'm definitely not going to get to shoot.

“My parents split up after the war,” Abe said. “People didn't do that back then. That-a-girl, Farmer. Haw. Haw over. I was thirteen then.”

In the sled I stared at my
mukluks.
Shocked—not that his parents divorced, but that he was telling me. His past was always as distant as the cities.

“I came home from school one day, in trouble with Sister Abigail for saying I trusted animals more than people. Dad's flannel shirts were all gone from the floor and the backs of chairs. I knew without those shirts, he was gone. He went off hunting fame or fortune, I guess.” Abe sounded like he was telling himself the story, too. I stayed silent, pretending indifference. Those seemed to be the manners I'd been taught; I just couldn't remember learning them.

“Even in Barrow, I usually drew animals instead of shooting them. I would've liked to be a hero. Of course I wanted to be one. It just felt . . . phony. Wearing the clothes. Strutting and flexing. Shooting some poor creature. It just wasn't me.”

Had he told Iris this yesterday? Probably not; she didn't have my mouth that had always wanted to know how to be someone else.

“I propped the Super Cub for my dad, the day he crashed. Kind of a heroic thing to do?”

Willows slapped my face and the crook of his arm. Snow sifted down my neck.

“The engine sounded funny. I could have said something but Dad would have hollered to stand clear. Guess life's like shooting a caribou, huh? You want a fat one, but if you end up with a skinny one, you don't waste it.”

“People leave a skinny caribou, Abe. Or feed it to the dogs and shoot a sledload more.”

“You kids!”

We plowed out of the willows, onto a lake. I saw her across the ice; she stood on long graceful legs, huge black shoulders. The backs of her ankles were pale yellow; along her flank stretched a white gash in the hair.
Figment hollered and lunged, cheering the other dogs on. The moose cantered into low brush. The brake ripped furrows in the snow. The sled slid across the ice.

“Stand on the snow hook!”

I jumped out with the hook. It bit into the packed snow. I held it down with knees and palms. The moose waded in deep snow, disappearing into the willows. Abe raised the gun and shot. The moose went down, and WHOMP—the bullet hit sounded like an air-dropped box of nails. Fresh meat! I forgot my frozen cheeks. But not that I wanted to be the one to shoot. Abe wasn't going to change. He didn't believe it made any difference which hunter pulled the trigger. Since he was already an expert, of course he always shot.

 

 

A FEW YARDS FROM THE DOGS,
I stood beside the steaming gut pile. Under the snow, the lake was solid six feet down, and I pictured lethargic pike and whitefish squeezed in the dark silence between mud and ice, waiting with cold-blooded thoughts for winter to go away. I felt strong withstanding the cold.

Up close the moose was alarmingly big. Abe and I loaded the huge hindquarters and butt on the basket sled. He hurried off to break willows, the springy sticks shattering like glass in the cold.

“Making stick towers to scare the ravens?”

“Get dry wood. I'll start a fire.”

I discovered with dismay that one of us was staying with the remaining meat. Abe stepped away from the newborn fire and cut snow to clean his bloody knife.

I pretended to break the ice off my eyelashes. I peered about nervously. A couple of the dogs whined and tugged at the anchored sled, their feet and noses freezing, their hearts anxious to run toward home and dinner. The rest had curled up, conserving warmth. I longed to go, tented between the companionship of my father behind on the runners and the huskies panting faithful in front.

“I'll try to make it back 'fore too late.” Abe planted the .30-06 stock-first in the snow. He stepped carefully, keeping his moosehide-bottom
mukluks
out of the circle of blood around the kill. “At home I'll have to lash on the gee-pole. And my skis.” The gee-pole tied onto the front of the sled and Abe skied behind the wheel dogs—in front of the sled—and used the pole to steer when the load was heavy or the trail deep. I hefted the gun. The weight was powerful. The cold steel seared my bloody fingers and I knelt and thawed them in the pool of blood coagulated in the moose's chest. I wiped my hands on the coarse fur, slid my mittens on.

Suddenly all the dogs held their breath. Nine pairs of ears swiveled north. Abe and I turned. Across the distance floated shivers of sound: wolves howling. Abe straightened up bareheaded. His hair, aged gray with frost, slapped me with a glimpse of the future. We scanned the horizons. Finally, he took off his mittens and cinched the sled rope. Abe hated loose loads the way he hated whiny kids. “Nice to hear the wolves,” he murmured. “Country's poor without them. Cutuk, it means there's other animals around.”

I shifted, uncomfortable with him using my name. Abe had heard and seen hundreds of wolves over the years since he'd been a teenager in Barrow. He didn't shoot them; why did he care so much to see more?

Plato raised her muzzle and poured a perfect howl into the frozen sky. The other dogs joined in a cacophony of yips and howls that swelled out over the tundra. “Shudup!” Abe growled. He whipped the billowy gut pile with a willow. It made a hollow crack. We'd empty the rumen and take it and the fat intestines home for dog food, second load. We'd leave the lungs, windpipe, stomach contents, and some blood that the dogs didn't gnaw off the snow. The team sat, rolling their eyes apologetically.

“Don't hurry,” I mumbled, casual. I glanced down at the gun. Already loneliness was settling like outer space pushing down the sky. The arctic twilight would fade and Abe would be under the stars before he slid into our dog yard.

He threw a caribou skin to me to lie on. Handed over dried meat and a chunk of pemmican with currants, dried cranberries, and caribou fat. “You don't need to shoot any wolves. You hear? We still have a piece of a wolf skin
in the cache.” His face twitched with sudden guilt for leaving. I opened my mouth to encourage the feeling, but he'd stridden back to the runners.

“Okay! Getup there! Hike!” Away they went, the sled heavy and the dogs heaving with their hips out to the sides and their tails stiff with effort. In minutes they had disappeared to a black dot on the tundra, silhouetted by the orange horizon that lay along the south pretending the sun had been up half the day and burnt that strip of fire.

I held my breath. Listened to the silence. The land at cold temperatures waited in molecular stillness; sound traveled far, though very little of it lived here anymore. My heart boomed. My ears filled with a waterfall of ringing. The land's thousand eyes watched. I knelt and tried to concentrate on the fire and the smoke, sweet with the smell of warmth and company. A noise startled me.

From a lone spruce on the far side of the lake a raven cawed. “Caaawk,” I answered. I glanced behind. The watchful bird cawed again, urging me to leave the fat meat to him. I saw him standing on my face, feasting on my eyes. I saw him on Abe's face and I hummed quickly and fed the fire.

 

 

THE PASTEL SKY HAD DARKENED.
In the south a last strip of orange and greenish blue lingered. The walls of blackness grew and leaned close over my head and joined. An icy east breeze thinned the smoke. The night cold was a monster now, merciless, pinching my face with pliers, sneaking fingers under my parka. It didn't seem possible to keep my cheeks thawed, and they froze over and over again. The flames sizzled the two-foot-long moose ribs I speared on a stick, burning the crisp fat while the ends froze. In the flickering light my pile of dry willow shrank. I scratched my neck to steal glances behind. The raven had gone.

When the ribs were nicely burnt, I gnawed on the meat pressed between my mittens. I worked a bone clean, tossed it into the dark. Back home it was Jerry's day to bake bread; probably he was sliding loaves out of our oven box in the bottom of the barrel stove, rapping the brown
bottoms to hear the hollow done sound. I wished for a hot slice, and walls behind my shoulders, and Iris's teasing squeezes.

Jaws crunched a bone.

I dropped the rib and snatched the rifle. The dark was made of dots, walls of eyes. A scream tore the night.

A fox!
Was it rabid? I hissed out a hoarse fox bark. Silence rang back. I barked again. To the left I heard a soft thump. Then running feet and the quick sounds of a chase. My stomach tightened. The wolves had come!

If the fox was crippled the wolves would eat him. I wished bad luck on him until I remembered that Enuk would say he could wish the same on me. Above, aurora wavered, green smoke ghosting in the dark, quick pale brush strokes, the bottoms tinted pink, twinging up in the black. The fire had sunk, hissing and steaming down on the lake ice. I knelt forward to salvage some coals. Smoke stung my eyes. Snow squeaked. The darkness moved into shapes. Slowly, I turned my head. Behind stood more.

The
chik-chunk
of the rifle loading sounded as loud as river ice booming. I aimed over the dark shaking sights. My thoughts scattered down terrified trails. The pack couldn't have forgotten that a man had shot one of them yesterday. Now I would never get to be Eskimo, or see a 747, or know for how many years President Nixon had to go to jail. I tried to place myself in a future story to milk heroism out of my bad luck, but all I saw were clumps of bones and yellow hair. A voice I hadn't heard whispered, “Shoot!
Shoot!”
I gripped the gun. I was ten. My chance to be Enuk! People in the village would know it the next time they teased, “Catch any weasel in your trap, Cutuk?”

The steel trigger froze through my fox mitten liner. I yanked back. The gun lurched. The black wolf I'd aimed at sniffed his paw.

The safety.
I flipped the lever. Now Abe's disappointed face floated in the way. I looked over the barrel, tried to aim. The northern lights had dimmed. It was harder to make out shapes. Abe wouldn't cuss or even kick things around. He would help skin the wolf. That was the thing about Abe, he'd help someone else before he helped himself. The thing about me was I couldn't accept that all people were not like that. I saw
Abe as a boy, searching for his dad's shirts. I clicked the safety back. The wolf lifted his nose and howled. The pack joined.

Fear and elation skated on my skin. Were they cheering? Or voting? I felt cruel for lusting to kill one. I had eaten; I had a warm wolf ruff on my hood—but the gnawing inside was jittery and big, a hunger to kill and be great for it. It wasn't good, it was mean, but it felt glued all over inside me.

The harmony ceased. The wolves stood, listening. Finally, miles east, upwind, across the tundra, I heard the snap of branches, and fainter still, runners squeaking on cold snow; eventually came a low mumble that I knew as Abe's encouraging “Atta boys. Good girl, Farmer. Haw over now. Haw over.”

The wolves circled, their claws tacking the hard snow. I aimed, barehanded now, my fingers burning on the metal. Under the green luminescence from the sky the wolf pack fanned out north across the lake. The animals I'd wanted to kill mingled and faded. That wolf—how many miles and years had he walked under this smoky green light? Walked cold, hungry in storms, wet under summer rain; walking on this land I'd always called
my
home. He knew every mountain, every trail along every knoll so much better than I ever would. And the wolf, I only knew him dead. I didn't want to be an Outsider. Not here, too. How was it that I'd never considered carefully that an animal would know infinitely more about something than I could?

The whisper of their feet disappeared under the sounds of the coming dog team. Two people pitched and clawed inside me. One whispered in awe: “They were so close.” The other mocked: “You dummy! Ten years old, same age as Enuk, and
you
didn't shoot.” My fingers screamed in the pain of warming. I hunched over them, humming to hide the anguish. Abe had said to watch, but he was a painter. He read books and watched the sky too much. Enuk said to respect the wolves, but he'd have shot as many as he could. Even the last one. Under my skin, so well I knew, in the village “could have” meant nothing without the mantle of a dead animal. I wanted the stars to drop some silver stranger, an alluring alien like Wax Tiera, to tell me what I should think. But there was only the dark, the cold, the miles and miles of snow.