The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (27 page)

“I know what cowboys do when they ride horses,” she said, this time addressing Lecha directly. Lecha nodded; she was not sure where this might end. Suddenly the old woman shifted all her attention away from Lecha and away from all the others in the meeting hall. With all of her might, the old woman began twirling the tusk around and around in both hands. She never took her eyes off the tusk, and Lecha realized no one in that room could move his eyes away either. Lecha did not even attempt to shift her eyes away because the old woman was watching her.

As the ivory twirled, it seemed to become lighter and lighter until the old woman twirled it easily with one hand. Then the surface of the tusk had begun to glisten and sweat; the old woman’s hands and the lap of her dress caught luminous drops. Then the twirling of the tusk began to make a sound. At first the sound was faint, and Lecha could still hear the drone of voices on the television. But the whirring sound became louder, and as it did, the shape of the ivory tusk began to change. It spiraled like a giant ocean shell; it spread flat into a disk and then wobbled into a fluted wedge the shape of a fan or a bird’s wing. Then the tusk had burst into flames. The whirring sound became very loud then, and Lecha wanted to raise her hands to her ears to block it out, but again she realized she would not be able to lift her arms. Just then the sound began to subside, and the old woman’s twirling began to slow, and the ivory tusk lay in her lap once more. Lecha looked up and was surprised to see the old woman had fallen asleep, with her chin pressing on her shoulder.

Rose stood up suddenly. The theme song of “Love, American Style” came on the television as loud as the whirring sound had been. Lecha got up. Her legs were weak. She was exhausted. They walked back to Rose’s house in the twilight of the winter sun. The old woman’s performance had upset Rose. All Rose could talk about was fire. “The old woman,” Rose said, “should not have done that with fire.”

Rose heard the voices of her little sisters and brothers.

“Rose,” they cried, “come back home and take care of us.” Lecha saw tears running down her cheeks.

THE FOLLOWING DAY Lecha did not see Rose, and when she went back to the community house to watch the national news, there had been only a few people in front of the TV set. Lecha had to laugh at herself for bothering with the world news. Television took her mind off the anxious feeling she had when she was about to travel or move again. The shortwave radio at the priest’s house gave daily reports on the Iditarod Race. Her dogsled racer had been running fifth, but was only four hours behind the old Yupik man who had the lead. Lecha had promised to meet the racer in Nome.

The old Yupik woman came into the community hall alone. She did not carry the canvas satchel that had contained the ivory tusk the day before. The old Yupik woman did not seem to notice Lecha. The old woman got as close as she could to the television set, by scooting a folding metal chair across the floor with a terrible sound she seemed not to notice. Someone at the back of the hall laughed at the old woman. Lecha and the old woman both turned. It was Rose. “You should not play with fire,” Rose said, and Lecha did not know if Rose was talking to her or the old woman. The old woman spoke no English. Still, Rose seemed to be pointing her finger at the old woman. The few other people in the hall remained quiet. The TV screen flashed satellite weather maps one after another. Rose walked slowly toward the front of the room. She was staring at the television set. “They taught me all about this in school.” Rose spoke to the old woman in Yupik, then she sat down
beside Lecha and gave a deep sigh. “The old woman wants to know if you want to see more before you go.” Lecha nodded. She felt as if she were under the influence of a power such as old Yoeme had possessed.

Lecha had watched the old Yupik woman do it. She stood directly in front of the television set sliding her forefinger over the glass as she spoke Yupik in a clear, low voice. With her eyes half-closed as they had been the afternoon of her performance with the ivory tusk. Rose whispered to Lecha, “Watch. Another plane will crash.” Lecha thought Rose might be teasing because she had been laughing. Rose’s laughter had become less and less predictable. Rose did not want Lecha to go.

The old woman had not stopped while Lecha and Rose were talking, but the wild laughter caused her to open her eyes. The old woman seemed pained and concerned. “Oh, no! I’m all right!” Rose said. “It’s for the little ones, not me!” Rose had been speaking in English, but the old Yupik woman seemed to understand. She narrowed her eyes again and pored over the satellite weather map under her finger on the TV screen. What the old woman had been able to do was quite simple, really. As Rose described it, the old woman had realized the possibilities in the white man’s gadgets. Rose had been adamant. “You think I am making all this up. But look at her. Look at where she is pointing on the map right now.”

ROSE HAD EXPLAINED it using the closest words in English to what the old woman said in Yupik. They had been walking back from the village meeting hall. The old woman had gone off to a granddaughter’s house because she heard rumors of fresh seal oil there. Before she left, the old woman had insisted on shaking hands with Lecha. Lecha reached in the pockets of her heavy coat for her leather gloves lined in fox. They had cost $200 in Seattle. As Lecha offered the gloves, the old woman snatched them greedily. She had been smiling and talking to herself as she tried them on.

Rose laughed wildly and shook her head. “
Fur
and
hair.
That’s
exactly
what she said.” The cold, clear air seemed to calm Rose. “Natural
electricity. Fields of forces.” Rose had looked closely at Lecha as if she were trying to decide how much Lecha really knew about the use of natural forces.

“They rub special fur pelts. Kit fox or weasel,” Rose explained. White people could fly circling objects in the sky that sent messages and images of nightmares and dreams, but the old woman knew how to turn the destruction back on its senders.

It had taken the old woman months to perfect her system. The first time the communications satellite transmitting to their village had failed, the village people were told by researchers its batteries were defective. Rose knew better, but kept quiet. The old woman had gathered great surges of energy out of the atmosphere, by summoning spirit beings through recitations of the stories that were also indictments of the greedy destroyers of the land. With the stories the old woman was able to assemble powerful forces flowing from the spirits of ancestors.

It had not been an easy matter to get to the village meeting hall and have the television set to herself. Almost always somebody had been sitting in front of the TV even if they were just staring at the test pattern. Sometimes Rose had helped the old woman by going to the meeting hall first and pretending to hear voices. Rose usually had been able to spook the two or three old men dozing in front of the television set, who did not take chances with angry ghosts. The old woman had to work quickly while she had the TV set and controls of the satellite dish to herself.

Many village people did not trust the old woman. The local Catholic priest had done a good job of slandering the old beliefs about animal, plant, and rock spirit-beings, or what the priest had called the Devil. In her childhood she had watched a medicine woman who took a small quartz crystal found at the edge of the river and used the crystal to see exactly what people living hundreds of miles upriver were doing. Medicine people had quartz crystals that performed like tiny tiny television sets, although lesser medicine people might see actions clearly but not hear what was being said. Although the old woman had tried to stop roaming about the village after midnight to prevent further accusations of sorcery, she could not resist. She had asked Rose to help her the night she perfected her plane-crashing spell.

Inside the meeting hall only the strange bluish light of the television screen lit the room. But the old woman could hear an old man snoring. He was slumped over on the metal folding chairs directly in front of the TV. All the better. Because no one could imagine she would dare perform her mischief with old man Pike sleeping right there. The test pattern was
on the screen, but she had used the test pattern last time. It was good to try something a little different. Careful to turn down the volume knob, the old woman tuned in the channel with the satellite weather map and weather information in print below it. She reached into her grimy canvas satchel and pulled out the weasel pelt. Old man Pike kept snoring right along. Thirty years ago she had gone with him upriver to trap mink and beaver. Even then he could not be awakened unless snow was rubbed on his balls.

She rubbed the weasel fur rapidly over the glass of the TV screen, faster and faster; the crackling and sparks became louder and brighter until the image of the weather map on the TV screen began to swirl with masses of storm clouds moving more rapidly with each stroke of the fur. Then the old woman had closed her eyes and summoned all the energy, all the force of the spirit beings furious and vengeful. The old woman intoned the power of the story Rose had told Lecha the first day they met:

“My dear little Rose, you must not see them so often. The fire! The fire gives no warmth. What fire touches becomes brittle as ice. Touch the charred hand, it falls to ashes. Touch the faces. They peel away in your hands. You want to get warm. You are cold. Where are they? The little ones. You often dreamed and you knew. But you can not get there in time. Do they know or is it all soothing—all warmth and no fear to them. They melt. What you find flows in the ashes.”

Lecha had never forgotten what had appeared on the television screen at that instant: the junction of the big river and the sea. White steam rises off the river, but gray sea fog rushes over it, rapidly filling the river bank to bank. In the distance there is a sound that wavers in the wind and disappears in the slap of the river against the big rocks. The airplane-engine sound fades in and out with the gusts of wind. The engine strains under full power, climbing. The river presses higher and higher against the banks. The pilot descends, then climbs and descends again, searching for a hole, searching for a break in the fog he entered only a minute earlier. The needle of the compass whirls and shivers in magnetic fields of false and true north. The altimeter is frozen at 2,000 and nothing can dislodge it. The copilot works frantically. They twist the knobs and desperately try to calculate the distance to the ground.

Then the screen goes white. The old woman is doubled over in the chair, arms around herself, rocking slowly, singing to herself in a tiny voice. Years later when the ill-fated Korean Air flight went off course
and was shot down in the ocean, Lecha had not been surprised to learn that the magnetic compass of the autopilot had malfunctioned twelve miles north of Bethel, Alaska.

LECHA AND THE DOGSLED racer flew out of Nome on the same flight. The racer had been too heartbroken to take the seat beside her. Lecha had been able to hear the faint barking of his sled dogs in the baggage hold below. The dogsled racer understood Lecha was leaving because he had not won the race. Earlier he had offered to leave his wife and kids for Lecha, but she had refused. She found it difficult to explain.