Season of Death (9 page)

Q
UNNIKUN, QUNNIKUN—GIVE US
smooth water.
That had been Lewis’s prayer as they left the lake. The petition had fallen on deaf, disinterested ears, Ray decided as he eyed the Kanayut. The river was high, manic, licking at its banks, reaching up muddy shoals, swallowing miniature islands of willows like a hungry serpent on a binge. An unusually warm summer had worn away the hidden pockets and reservoirs of snow that normally existed throughout the year in the shadowy recesses of the Endicott Mountains. Though not quite a torrent, the river seemed intent on achieving the status before the return of winter.

Lewis is a complete and total fool!
Ray surmised as the shore flew past. They were traveling at an easy 30 mph, virtually hurtling forward, and it was all he could do to keep the two kayaks pointed in the right direction. Lashing them together had seemed like a good idea thirty minutes earlier. Now? The question wasn’t
if
they would meet with tragedy, but
when.
Catastrophe was clearly headed in their direction. Or rather, they were racing to meet it.

Thankfully, the first few miles had been without obstacle. The river was wide here, the smooth, green veneer offering a pretense of comfort. But it was swift. Deceivingly powerful. The kayaks were being driven along like toothpicks, wholly unnoticed by the river. It was flowing effortlessly, relentlessly north, toward the Colville.

Somewhere along the line, they would reach their stop: the holy grail—caribou. But as Ray struggled to guide the rig, he wondered if they would even slow down before being dumped into Beaufort Sea, a hundred miles downstream.

“You okay?” he asked Billy Bob without looking at him.

“Yeah … I thank so.” He didn’t sound convinced. In fact, he sounded queasy. Ray decided that the cowboy was probably a few turns away from another bout of motion sickness. The good news was that they were on the open water, rather than in a small floatplane cabin, with two feet between their kayaks.

“Dis da greatest!” Lewis shouted. He followed this with an energetic wolf howl, as if the moon were full and he had just stumbled upon a fresh kill.

“Da
greatest,” Ray agreed cynically. He paddled hard on the left, then assaulted the water on his right.

“No maw trouble,” Lewis encouraged. “Dis da life, man!”

Aside from the fact that Lewis was an imbecile, unfit to be a Boy Scout leader, much less a Bush guide, and the fact that the trip had thus far been a comedy of errors, Lewis was right. This
was
the life. Being in the Bush, shooting the Kanayut … It did offer a notable rush: the velocity, the technical challenge, the exhilarating sense of flowing with the force of nature, of yielding to and embracing the Land. It was precisely what adventure travel brochures promised but seldom delivered, Ray realized.

The speed, physical challenge, and danger seemed to be heightening his sense of expectancy. They were literally rushing to greet the nomads of the north. Ray had visited the migration route every year for as long as he could remember. Except for the half decade he had been away at college, he had never missed a procession of the caribou.

Growing up, hunting had been a seasonal routine, almost a religious rite. Grandfather had seen to that. There was something unique about each hunt, special stories giving life and voice to various creatures.

Awaiting the caribou was a ritual unto itself. A party atmosphere prevailed as families gathered in the migration path, setting up makeshift dwellings, preparing meals, talking late into the night. Grandfather and the elders beat drums, danced, and sang about the man who left his wife and mother-in-law to become a caribou.

The semiannual gathering was punctuated by the arrival of the grazing herds. When the lookout signaled their approach, a wave of excitement would ripple through the camp: the long-anticipated moment had finally come!

The hunt itself had just one hard-and-fast rule: take only what you need. In good years, when fishing and whaling and other hunting had been plentiful, the hunters downed fewer animals. In lean years they harvested more, sometimes shooing whole skeins into crude corrals to be butchered en masse. Virtually every part of every animal was utilized: the meat dried and stored for winter, the skins tanned and fashioned into parkas, mukluks, gloves … There was no waste, no spoilage, no killing for sport.

Which was precisely what they were doing at the moment, Ray reminded himself as he used the paddle to deflect a glossy, amber rock. Ray wasn’t exactly proud of that. He accepted and understood the need to kill for subsistence, but was uncomfortable with the idea of ending life for
fun.
What, exactly, was the thrill of robbing a living thing of its breath and spirit, of its
kilal
Maybe Margaret was right. Maybe in the absence of necessity, hunting was an act of barbarism.

Ray had participated in the hunt for nearly three decades and, despite his wife’s objections, planned to continue. Hunting caribou was part of who he was. He would honor that, dutifully and reverently taking an animal per season, selling the skin and putting up the meat. And he would pass the practice on to his own son one day.

One day?
What had been a vague hope in the vastness of an undefined future just hours earlier was now a specific date on the calendar. Ray shivered at the thought. The son, or daughter, he had imagined having
one day,
was on the way. He or she would arrive … soon … in less than nine months! Ray let the oar rest against the gut gasket as he made the mental calculations. This was September. October, November, December …

“Look out!” Billy Bob warned.

Dazed, Ray blinked away the daydream and realized that they were slipping into a turbulent trough of angry river rocks. Cursing, he paddled hard and managed to catch an eddy. The craft spun full circle and rocked radically before narrowly missing the trough.

“Lewis!” Ray called impatiently. “What’s the story with this river?”

“Uh?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Story? You mean, how it come to be?”

“No. Like are we gonna be dumped off a twenty-foot falls around the bend?”

“Uh? Naw!”

“You said you’d floated it before, right?”

“Yah.”

“And there wasn’t any serious water?”

“No.”

“What did the Park Service say about the junction with the Anaktuvuk?”

“Uh? Park Service?”

“Didn’t you call them to check on water level …? To find out if there’s been a flood warning issued? This baby is really high right now.”

Lewis shrugged at this. “I do river once. Early summer. No problem.”

“Early summer? That’s before most of the thaw.”

“Eh … Worry too much,” Lewis replied. “It be fine. Everything smooth.”

Somehow, Ray wasn’t convinced. He still had the nagging suspicion that at any moment they might reach a cascading drop-off that had slipped Lewis’s memory.

The next section offered submerged sandbars, a few malevolent-looking slabs of moss-covered granite peering up from the depths, and an occasional whitecap. Ray was sweating beneath his parka, arms beginning to ache as he pulled at the water on one side, then the other. He had just ruddered them around a gravel peninsula when the current swept them into an arching right turn. Both boats were sideways again. Suddenly, Billy Bob yelled, “Duck!”

Ray did, and a cottonwood branch peeled a layer of skin from the top of his head. It hurt, but was infinitely preferable to getting clotheslined. He rubbed at the scrape and grimaced as he found blood on his fingers. At that instant he decided that he would visit revenge on Lewis Fletcher. Somehow, some way, he would get him back for this.

“Looky thar,” Billy Bob said. He was gesturing to the right bank where a boat had been docked on a mudflat, its leash tied to a tree: a gray, rubber Zodiac with an eighty-horse Evinrude outboard motor. Ten yards farther up on the shore, another, identical raft sat like a beached whale. A half dozen wooden crates were stacked next to it. A stencil marked them as property of the U.W.

“‘Spose they’re huntin’ too?” Billy Bob wondered. “Maybe they got a radio.”

Ray opened his mouth to answer, then forgot the question. The canyon had narrowed, and a new army of obstacles was rising to oppose them: a half-submerged tree trunk, a puddled bar of scree and a scattering of boulders. Lewis attacked them playfully, howling as he dodged, backpaddled, and gyrated his way through the slalom course in the glossy black fiberglass kayak. Ray groaned and started beating the water to avoid meeting them up close and personal.

A hundred yards later, the river widened and grew calm. Clouds of mosquitoes performed frenzied aerial maneuvers on both banks. Ranks of alders and willows stood in stiff formation along muddy, tapered islands, their orange and yellow leaves trembling in the breeze. White-barked birch lined one shore. Reaching up the eastern hillside, they formed a wine red curtain that blazed under the sun’s critical glare. It was picturesque. Peaceful. Serene.
Ominous.

“See!” Lewis yelled back at them. “I know what I talk about. I’m …”

“…An expert guide,” Ray grumbled. “So we’ve heard. Save it for the tourists.”

Lewis cackled, clearly amused. Lifting one end of his paddle, he dug at the water and shifted his weight. The kayak flipped obediently and its dwarf of a captain dived beneath die surface. He reappeared an instant later, screeching like an injured bird.

“Is he okay?” Billy Bob drawled.

“Physically?” Ray answered. “Yes. Mentally? No.”

“Aaaigaa!!” Lewis exclaimed, grinning. He paddled away, purposefully working toward the shore, where the most hazards were lurking.

As a married man and a soon-to-be father, Ray had no desire to go looking for trouble. Accepting a challenge was one thing. He was as adventuresome as the next guy. But cheating death? Actually seeking out ways to put yourself in danger? That was insane.

Ray decided he would be perfectly happy to float the river and make it to the pickup point in one piece. Bagging a caribou would be an added bonus.

The concept of avoiding death by drowning, death by collision with a boulder, death by being clotheslined by a tree branch was percolating through his mind: a low, threatening rumble. It sounded like a 737 coming in on approach. Or a freight train chugging by in the distance. Or a thunderstorm rolling across the valley.

But airliners didn’t buzz the Range. There were no railways in this wilderness, and the weather was impotent to produce lightning. The roar grew in intensity, taking on a throaty bass that pulsated in Ray’s chest. “Lewis!”

The guide had already pulled up at the mouth of a gently flowing tributary and was peering downstream as he trod water with his paddle. When they reached him, he was smiling, his countenance buoyed by an expression of delight and wonder. Raising an arm, he pointed and sighed,
“AayagaV’

Ray followed his gaze and promptly chose a different word to express his feelings. Shaking his head, he repeated the curse. “I’m gonna get you for this, Lewis.”

TEN

“G
OOD GOLLY,” BILLY
Bob gushed, mouth agape. “Looks kinda … rough.”

Rough was an understatement. The wide ribbon of polished emerald that they had been following ended abruptly a quarter mile ahead, dumping into a field of frantic white foam. Stone demons lurked in the froth, their shiny ebony heads rising and falling.

“I portage here last time,” Lewis explained. “Not enough water last time. But now …” The smile widened, displaying a gleaming array of coffee-stained teeth.

Ray squinted at the white water, chiding himself for being so stupid. What had he been thinking when he agreed to come on this trip? A trip led by Lewis!

At the moment, sitting just upstream from what had to be the wildest, most hellish piece of water he had ever faced, Ray had his doubts. The decrepit rig would never make it. Scrutinizing them, he tried to outline a route, choosing places to turn, spots to backpaddle, boulders to avoid. He was good with a paddle and had shot his share of rivers. Yeah, he could do it. Maybe. Possibly. The question was: Did he want to? Why take the risk? Especially with
two
people depending on him to return home safely. Ray urged the floating couch toward the shore.