Coppermine (20 page)

She paused for a moment, thinking. “But heaven? No. The afterlife for us is not a good place. We do not like to think about it. We think about surviving each day. Our beliefs are about life now, while your religion seems to be about death and what comes after. I’ve never understood that.”

Creed did not know how to respond.
Maybe that’s what allows us to fight the wars,
he thought.
It allows mindless, wholesale slaughter. The belief in life after death. Our arrogant preservation of the ego.

“You were a soldier in the war, weren’t you.”

Creed looked up at her, startled. “How did you know?”

“Some of the men in Norman told me about the war. Do you think the ‘harmless white men’ were killed there with respect?”

For a second Creed felt anger at her sarcasm, but it quickly left him. “No. The men were not killed there with respect.”

The shaman had been listening to them, and when Angituk translated for him she had no word for “war” and used the English word. Uluksuk asked what it meant.

“It is a fight between people, only much bigger.” Creed considered for a moment how to explain it and then began to tell him, with Angituk translating every few lines in a comfortable rhythm. “Far away, across the land and then beyond a very wide ocean, two large bands of white people are fighting each other. They face each other every day in a field and dig holes to live in and they fight sometimes in the day but usually at night. They fight with rifles and bigger guns, twenty times as big as a rifle. A barrel this wide”—Creed held his hands as if around an artillery shell—“where one shot can kill many.” Uluksuk and Sinnisiak now listened closely, amazed. “And many are dying and continue to die, and this has been going on every day for three years.”

“This is really true?”

“Yes, it is true. We call it war.”

“They continue to kill each other every day?”

“Yes. Every day.”

Uluksuk was bewildered. “But why? Is it over hunting rights, or respect, or revenge, or fear?”

Creed thought about the question. “I don’t know, Uluksuk. It started over some of those things, but then it changed. I don’t think anyone knows what it’s about anymore. It just keeps going on.”

“How many people have been killed?” Uluksuk stopped his work and held up his hand, fingers splayed. He made a fist and then opened his hand two more times to indicate fifteen people. “This many?”

Creed looked at him sadly. “If you did that with your fingers over and over for as long as it takes to build an igloo, the number of dead would still be many more.”

When Angituk translated, Uluksuk’s and Sinnisiak’s eyes widened trying to fathom that number. Outside, the wind was full of howling, muttering voices.

“Can no one stop it?”

“No. It goes on and on. It is like
perleromeq,
winter madness.”

They all worked in silence for a few moments, thinking about so many restless, angry spirits. It was good they were so far away.

“I remember a time of death when I was little,” Angituk began. “We were hunting over near Paulatuk on the Horton River but the caribou didn’t come at all. Then the seals didn’t come. No walrus. No fish in the rivers. And there was nothing else. We ate our dogs and then we ate our boots.”

She translated for Uluksuk and Sinnisiak. They knew the place and remembered the year of hunger. She continued. “Any extra scraps of food found had to go to the hunters so they could continue to look for animals, so the old began to die. There was one night I was in pain from no food and could not sleep and I remember my grandmother gave me a last bit of meat she had saved and talked to me. She told me the stories of her life again. She called me
Amaamak
—Mother—because my
attiaq
was my great-grandmother, and I called her Daughter. I slept then and dreamed about her all night. Her spirit was in me. The next morning we found her dead out on the ice with no clothing.

“Her death was near the beginning. Afterwards the mothers’ milk went dry and the babies began to die. And I think some were smothered to spare them the pain of a starvation death. I think that’s what happened to my baby brother. My mother had had a second child with a man named Akuluk who treated us well and was a good hunter. I remember the night he died out on the ice, kneeling beside a seal hole. He froze to death. He knew if he came back empty-handed he would not have the strength to go out again. The next day my little brother died.

“There were stories from the camps of other people like the Kanghir y uarmuit, stories of people eating the old ones and even the babies, but that didn’t happen in our camp. Such things turn people into
Wenigos.”

“What finally saved you?”

“My mother’s cousin’s camp up the river killed a muskox. They brought some down to us. We could not get up—they had to feed us in our beds. Then there were more muskox and finally some caribou and we were okay then. But we lost three babies, four old ones, and Akuluk. It was the next year they took me away to the mission school.”

“That was a terrible thing to live through.”

“I never heard my mother laugh again. But pain is part of being alive.”

Creed watched her as she went back to her work and there was silence for a long while. He was still struggling with his first snowshoe, trying to weave the strips of gut evenly over the frame without pulling too hard and distorting the oval shape. Uluksuk eyed his work and made a joke. Angituk laughed.

“What did he say?”

“He said if you are this slow with all the chores in your life, you will have to live a long time to get them all done.”

Angituk moved over against Creed and took his hand in hers, guiding him through the special whipstitch to secure the gut to the frame. “See, you loop it around … a tight hitch will make sure it won’t slip on the frame, then back across, nice and straight and tight, well spaced, not too tight … that’s it.”

She pressed her shoulder against his chest and her forearm rested on his and their fingers touched as she guided him through another weave. She sprinkled some meltwater on the g
^ut
.

“Keep it wet. It’s important to keep it wet so it will dry and shrink tight and hard. That was a good stitch. Okay, then back across again like this.”

Creed breathed in her warm aroma—sweet, a little musky, like freshly baked bread—and felt the weight of her thin, muscular body against his. She had tied her hair up on her head—it was quite long now—and he found himself staring at the soft nape of her slender neck, exposed and presented by the slight bow of her head to the left. The delicate blue tattoo lines on her strong, slender hand as she worked had never seemed so sensuous.

There was a sudden rise in the wind and Angituk stopped her work to listen and then spoke quietly to him. “We believe it is the Spirits of the Dead that cause blizzards. Sometimes … I think I can hear the voice of my mother in the storm. But I’m not sure of the words. Of what she wants to tell me.”

She turned and looked up into his eyes, their faces close, her lips parted, brown skin so smooth, blue eyes inquiring. “Do you ever feel that some spirit is anxious to tell you something but you’re just not sure what it is?”

Creed felt a very sudden, intense urge to kiss her. And he knew without doubt if he did so, she would welcome it. But instead he turned and moved away from her and aggressively focused all of his attention on the snowshoe.

“No. Well, maybe sometimes. I don’t really know. Anyway, thanks for your help on this. I can finish it up now.”

Angituk looked at him for a moment askance, a thin smile and a ghost of disappointment revealed only in the set of her eyebrows. Then she resumed her work on her second snowshoe.

IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS,
life continued in much the same way. It was a strange existence with no day or night. No dusk or dawn. The construct of time dissolved into a continuum with no future or past. The entire world existed here in this snow house. They ate and slept and made things and told stories and played games and ate and slept some more as they felt like it. Creed and Angituk read their novels again. Creed stopped bothering to wind his watch.

He exercised daily, doing push-ups and sit-ups and squats to keep his muscles firm. The others had never heard of this before and treated it like a strange dance and joined in with him. All found that the exertion did limber up their muscles and free their stiffening joints.

Angituk had finished her surprise: caribou trousers and a hooded shell for Creed that fit him beautifully. He was touched by the many hours of work she had put into them, and he had nothing for her in return. Sinnisiak had fashioned an intricate model kayak frame about eighteen inches long for his new baby. Uluksuk asked Creed’s permission to make a small hunting bow and Creed allowed it. With a long length of thin caribou sinew Angituk created cat’s cradle–like images between her slender thumbs and forefingers, for the entertainment of the prisoners. She made the network of sinew form two polar bears that came together and fought elaborately; one was killed and then they disappeared. With a few deft finger moves she fashioned a man carrying a kayak, and a walrus swimming through the sea. They all murmured their pleasure and Creed applauded her as they recognized each image. For his part Creed became quite adept at shadow puppetry, his hands close to the flames, the images of his fingers huge against the dome of the igloo, forming a rearing bear or a dancing fox.

Creed was quite taken with a game of skill called
nugluak,
consisting of tossing an egg-sized piece of soapstone with ten holes drilled in the side up in the air and trying to catch it on a wooden pin. The stone and pin were attached by a length of sinew. Creed spent days aiming for ten successful catches in a row. His fellows clapped their hands, though Angituk teased him: she was sure he had only managed nine. The hunters became a little confused after counting past six or seven, but they believed him. Occasionally they would venture out of the snow house when the stars or the moon came out to illuminate the world. Creed was anxious to continue their journey after these weeks of inactivity. They could travel by moon and starlight, he thought, but Uluksuk advised against it. It was the season of bad spirits in the darkness. Be patient a while longer, he advised him; the sun would soon return to them.

Quite uncharacteristically, Creed had fallen behind in his daily journal, missing a few days’ entries over the weeks of their seclusion and losing all track of time. But he calculated that it was about February 21 or 23 when the horizon first brightened with the return of the sun. Less than a week later they saw it, the top of the orb’s light refracting over the curvature of the earth. It stirred the blood to feel its weak rays, if only for a few minutes, and everyone left the snow house to stand in the light, smiling. Creed remembered some obscure quote in Ecclesiastes and spoke it aloud: “The light is sweet; and it is delightful for the eyes to see the sun.”

Angituk heard him and smiled and said to him, “I haven’t told you yet where the sun came from. You want to know?”

She had told him so many stories. Their eyes devoured the last seconds of the divine illumination before night closed in.

“Of course.”

“Pay attention,” she told him sternly in an impersonation of one of the teachers at her mission school. “In the beginning … there was no light. Everyone on Earth hunted in the dark. The wolf, Amaguq, and the wolverine, Kalvik, were digging in a cave. In those days all creatures spoke the same language. They were all brothers and sisters. Suddenly they uncovered part of the sun. It scared them both to see something so bright, and they covered it up again! The wolverine ran away in fear, but the wolf remained. He realized the sun would help him become a better hunter, so he dug it up and brought it out to illuminate the world. The goddess Kakivak was furious the sun had been released, but she could not convince the sun to hide again after he had been given his freedom. Through negotiations, she and the sun determined that he would hide for part of the day and part of the year. And as punishment for his impudence, the wolf had to do most of his hunting at night. There. You like that one?”

“Yes. So Kakivak has allowed the sun to come out for us.”

“Very good. You are learning. Give thanks.”

Ten

A week later, on a morning that dawned very cold and sunny, the party broke camp to continue south. The inside walls of the snow house had begun to rot, turning increasingly to ice and undermining the insulative effect of snow. They packed quickly. Sinnisiak took care with the miniature kayak he had made for his son. Uluksuk packed his little hunting bow made of spruce seedlings bound by tight-braided sinew backing with a muskox-horn handle, a quiver with four arrows, and a repair kit in a skin bag.

As they bade farewell to their snow house and set off, their long shadows extended to the right, behind them. The storms had deposited several feet of snow and Creed realized how helpless they would have been, floundering around without snowshoes. The frames proved light and very efficient compared with the heavy wooden versions Creed had used in the South. He was heavier than the others and occasionally one or the other foot would break through the thin crust and he’d go down in snow up to his crotch and they’d have to wait for him, but if he kept his feet spread and his weight distributed evenly and kept moving, he was okay. The other three never once broke through. Creed expressed his thanks to Uluksuk with a thumbs-up, and the prisoner returned the gesture.

The two dogs pulling the sled also seemed to float over the deep snow, and Angituk explained about their webbed toes. “They were our inspiration for snowshoes.”

That night, Creed made a good inspection of Star’s paws, and it was true, there was a wide webbing between the toes that kept them on top of the fragile crust.

Even better than the snowshoes, though, were the caribou trousers and jacket Angituk had made for him. They were so light and warm. There was a shell of fur next to his skin absorbing moisture and then a second layer of fur facing in, for additional insulation. She had added ermine trim and decorative panels of lemming pelt and lynx that she had traded for at Koeha’s camp. The clothing was miraculous compared with his heavy, porous old fur jacket. Creed had not been this comfortably warm outside in almost a year. And Angituk knew it.