The Raven's Gift (30 page)

“I think you’re overreacting,” the principal said.

“Do you guys think so?” she asked and turned to the other teachers. John looked away. The woman annoyed him to no end.

“I hardly think this could be bird flu,” Anna said. “Plus, none of my students seem sick. A few snotty noses, but that’s at any school. I don’t think it will hurt to stress some hand washing habits.”

“Well, I’m not waiting around to find out,” Sandra said. “I’m not comfortable waiting to see if we all get quarantined. What sort of plan is that?”

The principal turned, sat back down in his desk, and jotted down some note on a yellow legal pad. “You know what? I’m not going to argue with you, Sandra. I’ve tried to run this school with a team approach, and if a little bump in the road is going to be too much for you to deal with, then maybe it’s better if you’re not around while this bug runs its course.”

“Good!” Sandra said and stomped out the door.

“Was I wrong there?” he asked.

“If anything, you were too kind, sir.”

“Thanks, John,” Dave said. “Listen, I didn’t mean to scare any of you. I just wanted to pass on what was passed to me. If any of you think you need to join Sandra, go right ahead. Those news reports on KYUK have been enough for me to think about bailing, too. I’d hate to see my wife or daughter get that sick.”

“PLEASE,” THE GIRL whispered again. He tried not to look at her face, but when he did he saw that her white eyes couldn’t carry the emotion her voice held. Her eyes seemed to search for an answer, but her white irises stared right into him.

“Just for a little while,” she begged, setting her grass bundle aside. “I’m too cold. So cold. I don’t want to freeze to death.”

When he didn’t answer, she took the silence as acquiescence and moved toward him. She felt for his sleeping bag and pulled it down enough for her to slide her feet in. She was shivering, and breathing hard. So was he. He closed his mouth and held his breath. She lifted his arm and put it around her and poured herself into him, nuzzling her face into his neck.

She lifted her shirt just a few inches and pressed the warm flesh of her stomach and hips against his. She touched her lips to his ear and whispered again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so cold. Just hold me, please, John? Just this once,” she asked.

His mouth felt dry, his arms too weak to pull her in and just allow himself to return her embrace. The sleeping bag shrank and tightened to the point where he didn’t know if he would be able to take another breath.

Her warmth, her skin against his skin.

He tore out of the bag and stumbled away from their camp into the dark. He dropped to his knees and felt like he had to vomit. When nothing came he just knelt in the snow and then took two handfuls and buried his face in the icy powder.

After a while he got up and slowly made his way back to camp.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

The girl was back in her sleeping bag, shivering. Anna’s old sleeping bag. He looked at his own bag and his stomach turned again. At least they had been in his bag. He sat down on the tarp and closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind.

They had done nothing, just held each other for warmth, he told himself. But even that felt wrong.

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R
ed opened the door just wide enough for John to slip through and then slammed it shut with a metallic clang. John leaned his head back against the door, closed his eyes, and tried to catch his breath. It felt as if the cold had frozen his rib cage tight so that his lungs could no longer expand.

“Should have put the kid out of his misery,” Red said.

John opened his eyes. The girl sat on the bed, her head in her hands. For a moment he was worried she thought he had left her, but then he noticed the old woman was gone.

“I tried to tell her to wait until you got back,” Red said. “Even showed you on the monitor.”

John looked down at the spot where the old woman’s makeshift sled had been.

“Why did she leave?” he asked.

Rayna raised her head. Her white eyes glared at the two of them. “She knew you were drinking. You were getting drunk, so she left.”

“Getting drunk?”

She stood up and walked to the table. She sniffed the air and picked up the glass that had held his gin.

“She smelled you guys. Said she wasn’t going to be around drunks with the hunter coming.”

“Did she say where she was going? Did you let her get her shotgun?”

Rayna shook her head. He looked at Red.

“You had the key to the cabinet outside. She wasn’t having nothing to do with me, anyways. I don’t think she would have taken one of my guns if I’d offered. And who the hell is the hunter?” Red asked.

John took the glass from the girl, slammed it on the table, and sat down on one of the folding chairs. He sat for a few minutes with the girl standing beside him. He stood up and looked at the monitor, half expecting to see the old woman, or the boy he had mistaken as Alex struggling against the blizzard picking up outside.

“You’re not going to drink more and get drunk, are you?” she asked in a quiet whisper.

He pulled his parka back on and stood at the door. “Let me see if I can catch up with her,” he said. “We’re not getting drunk. Don’t worry.”

He put his arms around her. He’d never held her that way before, tightly in his arms; he’d never tried to comfort her like that.

“I’ll find her,” he said.

ANNA AND JOHN hid out in their home, listening to the AM radio and waiting for the all-clear sign.

“I wish we had a goddamn phone,” Anna said, while she heated up the teakettle. “I just want to call Mom to tell her we’re okay.”

“She knows you’re fine.”

“It’s just sort of ridiculous that we don’t have a phone, you know. In this day and age. It didn’t bother me until now.”

“Or running water. The bucket is about full, and I’m not exactly thrilled to go dump it with everyone sick like this,” he said.

“Do you think I could just run over to the school and call her?”

“No. Why don’t you just email her?”

“The stupid internet isn’t connecting. Plus, that’s not the same, John. She needs to hear my voice. She needs to know this is just temporary and that we’re okay.”

“Shh—news time.”

John turned up the volume on the radio he had brought home from the school.

The reporter’s voice sounded thousands of miles away through the radio’s single speaker. “For KYUK News, I’m Shane Keller. Here is a look at our top local stories. Army guard troops from the region may have their deployment extended. Lower Kuskokwim School District has cancelled class district-wide in response to a respiratory infection that has hit many area villages. Local health officials call for help from state and federal agencies to respond to the growing number of sick infants. And the controversial free fuel program from Venezuela will continue this year, but an announcement that fuel will be delayed until spring is drawing concern from local leaders who say supplies are already too low. All this and more for your KYUK midday news report.”

“Turn it off,” Anna said. “I can’t listen to it any more. How many more ways can they say more people are sick and nothing is being done? No one is doing anything to help! How can they just sit back and do nothing?”

John shrugged. He turned the radio off and looked out the window. The village was a picture of lifelessness. Nothing moved outside except for a few thin golden grass stalks poking out through the snow. The winds shook the small dead stalks. No children played. No snow machines zipped past. For all he knew, the entire village had disappeared during the night.

   32   

W
hen he returned without the old woman, they ate their dinner in complete silence. When he was done, John ran a finger around his bowl and licked it. The curry powder had given the canned chicken a strangely exotic flavour. That or his tongue had stopped working the way it was supposed to. He set his bowl down and picked a piece of meat from between his teeth with a fingernail.

“Which way did she go?” the girl asked.

“Toward the river,” he said.

“She’ll be okay,” the girl said. “Maybe she’ll go—where we talked about meeting up if we needed to, or somewhere else, somewhere safe.”

John looked over to the girl. She hadn’t touched her dinner yet.

“Maybe,” he said. “I wish you’d made her stay. I’m worried. She’s unarmed.”

“Good luck making that old woman do anything you say,” Red said.

“I tried,” Rayna said. “I really tried, John.”

“Well, I guess I can’t sit here and worry about her. I can’t. I mean I tried, but the wind. Her tracks were disappearing and I didn’t know if I could find my way back. We’ve got enough to worry about. I can’t worry about some old woman,” John said.

“The hunter,” Red said, in a half statement, half question.

John rested his head in his hands. “She kept talking about some man she thought she saw. Someone in all white, travelling downriver.”

“Not an outcast. Someone else,” the girl added. “Tell him about the hunter, John.”

“It’s probably nothing. We cut some ski tracks at the mouth of the Johnson River.”

“Ski tracks? Like cross-country skis?” Red bit at his lip and stood up. He turned to the teapot and pressed his hand against the metal to see if the water was still warm. He turned the burner on and sat back down. “I don’t like that news. Not one bit,” he said. “Ski tracks? Are you sure? Not a dogsled or something?”

John nodded and took a drink of water and then reached over and took Rayna’s right hand. He opened her fingers and slid the spoon between them. He lifted her hand and guided the spoon into the curry broth. She didn’t resist as he brought her hand to her lips. She opened, and sipped the warm curry. He let go and she slowly dipped her spoon and began feeding herself.

“I want to check out what’s here in town. See if I can salvage anything that will help us head upriver. Something to make travel a little easier.”

“To help us find my cousins and the other kids,” Rayna said. “And Maggie,” she added.

“What cousins are you looking for?” Red asked.

“In Kuigpak, most of the kids disappeared. My cousins. I think they are still alive somewhere. I’m going to find them.”