Ian Mackenzie Jeffers The Grey (13 page)

“Yeah!
  Fuck you,
  fuckers
!” they yell again, and Henrick’s smiling.  Not really smiling. 
Sort of a shocked and beaten half-happy.
Tlingit too.
  Then I see Tlingit look to Ojeira, and his face drops.  Ojeira’s eyes are still open but he looks cloudy, suddenly not there, and I hear him trying to breathe, but he does not sound right, and he just does not seem to be there any more.  It’s hard to tell by the fire but he looks like he’s turned white, or grey, or whatever you call the color when you’re dead. But he’s still
breathing,
somehow, even when he’s dead he won’t die.

I go and look at him, lift his jacket, the shreds of it, his sweater, everything’s soaked in blood, and I see he’s all ripped, they got into him, I don’t know how they did so quick, get so much of him, because it was all damn quick, and I know I broke my promise, we got them off, but we took too long.  I tell myself we got one, but it doesn’t help Ojeira much.  His legs all ripped too, deep in the thigh.  I thought we’d have more chance to save him. 
Bad calculation.
 

I look around the dark again, the blood on the snow, our knives and sticks scattered everywhere, bloody now.  Ojeira’s out.

“He’s going,” I say.

The others stare at him.  He’s breathing, but less and less, a kind of shallow gravel noise.

Then I see the big one, again, closer to us, but on the other side of the slope, watching.  The other wolves
come,
flank him, watching us too.  The big one looks at me again, I think, and he leans low, like he’s going to come in at us again, and I don’t know if I’m ready yet but it won’t be a choice, I’m sure. 

I stare at him, waiting, breathing steam, and I haven’t picked up any of the sticks or knives, like an idiot, but one is not too far from me, I dip down to get it in my hand without taking my eyes off him and we all stare, like we did before, and the big one takes a step in at us, down the slope, very slow, pointing, and I think now he’s going to really charge but he just looks at me, showing his teeth, pulling his nose back, staring.

I have this brave theory that if we charged them we might scatter them, run them, get another one, even, but I am not as brave as my theory is, and I don’t believe it as much as I would have to, to try it.  I tense to go, once, but stop, my courage leaking, dumping out of me, in buckets.  I’m still stupid enough to say it.

“We could run at them,” I say.  “Scatter them maybe.”  The big one is up front.  He looks like too much to run at.  The others don’t have anything in their hands, I don’t think.

“We can wait with Ojeira, or go,” I say.  “Maybe they’ll stay and watch him.  Maybe he’ll buy us a few minutes.” 

“For what?”
Henrick says.  I don’t know. 
To think.
  I don’t say anything.  I don’t want to tell them what to do.

“You sure he’s going?” Tlingit says. 

I nod. 

“He’s going before we get him anywhere,” I say.  “He isn’t going home, anymore.”

We all stare at Ojeira a minute.  We don’t try to find his wallet or say anything, we just look at him, and Bengt and Knox look at me, like hurt boys, again, then Henrick too, even Tlingit.  Hurt boys, staring at me, and doing it anyway.  Great are my ways.

We
  could
leave without trying to get any more of the sticks or knives but I’m almost more afraid to do that than I am of trying to get them.  I move as slowly and as lightly as I can, like a ghost drifting, to where the rest of my sticks fell, behind me.  I reach down, pick them up, watching the wolves.  They react a little when they see the sticks, and I point them down, to look less threatening.  The others move too, as much as they dare, get sticks, knives, watching the wolves, like me.  The sticks ahead of us we’re going to leave there, rather than step toward the wolves.  But I see my knife, ahead of me, between me and the wolf, and I have to choose leaving it there or getting it.  I edge toward it.

“Fucking
leave
it,” Henrick says.  I think he’s right.  But I look at the
wolf,
and edge a little more.  He stares, and
low-growls,
and I stop.  I start again, he growls a little louder, but I’m there, now.  I reach for it, my eyes on him, and he snaps forward a little just as I snatch it up and I back up, and stop, and he stops too.  I wonder now if I’ve offended him enough he’s going to run on us.  I stay still, watching.

I start backing away.  The big one advances on us, a little, and I stop, and I look at him, and since I’ve lost my mind I lean in, a little, almost stepping in.  I’m trying to say ‘
Don’t
come after us, we’ll fight you
.’  He stops, watching us, and we back away more, and only turn around to guess where we can put our feet in the dark, the rest of the time looking at Ojeira, lying there, breathing, as much as we’re watching the wolves, and we keep backing away and backing away until finally we feel we’re far enough we can dare turn forward, and dare walking, leaving Ojeira there with them, to save ourselves.   If I get any of the others out alive at least they won’t have to damn themselves, I’m doing that for them.  Seeing Lewenden off, letting Feeny go, Reznikoff, Ojeira.  Somehow they’re on my head.  I look back at the wolves watching us leave, watching Ojeira like a curiosity, as if he’s going to do something other than stop breathing. 

We keep going, step after step, looking back at them, at Ojeira, as long as we can see him, waiting for the wolves to come at us.  But step by step, more and more trees and dark are between us, and finally we’re just walking, slogging, leaving the wolves and Ojeira behind.

“Are they following us?” Henrick asks.

“Yeah,”
  I
say, though I don’t see them anymore.

7

We move a little faster without Ojeira, though we’re more tired and more afraid than before, if that’s possible, because we are getting fewer, with regularity, and it seems like a clear road to none of us left at all.  Sneaking away while they watch Ojeira die buys us a few steps and nothing more, and I don’t know what we bought them for, entirely.  They could be on us now, already, around us in the dark, or a minute from now.  I don’t have a sense anymore of where we’re headed except what feels like away, west
is
a gone dream, as if we could ever or could have ever walked to the coast.  Maybe we’ll see the sun a few minutes again, and find west again.  Maybe we won’t.

But we keep going, and all I want is to get a minute to think, before they’re on us again, but it’s hard to think.  I think about trying to make a deadfall.  I’ve never done it but I know how it’s done, and I know the ground is too hard to dig and we have no bait, and I can’t think of any other kind of traps we could make or what to make them with.  I stop, look back, think of waiting for them, picking a place where we can wait and go at them, like madmen, but not as mad as walking along like stalking-goats, like this.  But I don’t know that they’re going to follow in our steps anyway, they don’t have to, they could be to our flanks, or circling ahead, and still know where we are, and stay on us, without us knowing at all. 

Something’s gone out of me.  Leaving Ojeira, or the last fight, or fear going through me, circulating, like blood, or the sight of the dead wolf, on the snow, that made me sick when I should have yelled, like the others.  I’m so frozen and stupid by now I don’t know whether to believe what I’m thinking, or if it matters.  But I get that in my head I suppose, waiting for them, as if we could surprise them, which we wouldn’t.  That’s what I would do if I was trying to kill us, get ahead of us, and wait for us to walk along up, like the idiots we are. 

I don’t know what I have the courage to do, at all, anymore.  By now we’re good and haunted by them.  They got another of us, we’re into our fear with both legs, and up to our middles, and we’re all praying by now, to one thing or another, if we didn't start that when the plane was going down.  Maybe we did all die on the plane, and we’re walking in a dead dream.  The wolves are saying I am your death, come to get you, I am every wrong thing you’ve ever done, things you’ve killed, things you’ve left behind, come for pay.  They aren’t
wolves,
they’re ghosts, of all I’ve done, taking revenge.  My head is dreaming, in the cold.

The forest is less thick than it was, and clouds must have shifted or the cover is sparser, moon is coming down, I see openings pop out here and there, not giant clearings like the one we came from but little spaces, rocks bulging up, little snow gullies that seem easier going than stepping over the roots and logs.  We walk and walk.  I slow down, slower than the dead-leg crawl I’ve been doing, even, to try and catch a little breath.  I try to think, again.  I don’t know if we’re walking out of their turf or deeper into it.  Maybe they could tell us which way is out, and let us leave, but they wouldn’t tell us if they could.  Because, I realize, they want us dead more than they want us out, by now.  We could go on forever changing directions and praying one of them will be the direction that isn’t driving deeper into a place they’re willing to protect by killing us.  But I realize I’m crazy with lack of sleep, and all the rest, and they’re just going to stay on us, like I've known all along.  It was nice to think there was a way to make them happy and let us live, but there isn’t, anymore. 

 “I think they’re probably circling ahead of us,” I say.

“Like before?”
  Henrick asks.  I nod.  That doesn’t explain anything, but Henrick nods, Tlingit and the others too.  They stop, look ahead.

“We’re walking into them?”  Henrick says.

“Maybe.”

I stand there, trying to breathe, again, or think, again, at least think a little about where we’re heading, so we aren’t just circling back on ourselves, or the wolves.  The cold has slowed everything down, even more than before, more than at the plane. The way ahead of me slopes down to a little lip and it looks like an easy slope to follow, and I’m weak, now, so I follow what’s easy.  Tlingit sees me take that line, or just follows my back, not even looking up, or thinking.  The rest take Henrick’s line, I guess for the same reason, we’ve been tramping so long,
you
just follow the back in front of you.

I get down as far as the lip, what I can see of it in the dark, and I start walking along it, easy snow.  Then the air feels different, in the dark.  It feels like there’s nothing in front of me, off the lip, but air.  I don’t know how I sense that, an empty sound, or the way the air’s moving, I don’t know.  But as soon as I realize I’m on a drop, it drops away under me, the lip crumbles and I smack down on my hip and slide, spinning, my sticks flying, Tlingit tumbling down after me, and I’m banging and spinning my way down a face of ice and rock and dirt and roots are smacking me and one of my sticks falling after me shoots into my forehead and bounces off, and I’m bang-sliding down faster and faster, Tlingit too, and in the dark I'm clambering like mad to get my hand on anything that will slow me down, so is Tlingit, and not seeing anything below us I’m dreading the launch, when the cliff stops banging us and we’re in thin air, before we land and die on whatever’s on the bottom. 

We keep slithering, banging, faster and faster, and I almost grab a root but it tears out of my hand, I wasn’t fast enough, and then here it is, we’re in air, empty, falling, and I can’t see anything, I am just waiting to fall and fall a thousand feet and die.  Then we bang on the bottom.  Rock or ice or snow, I don’t know, but I smack and bounce and roll, Tlingit does too, and I realize we didn’t drop far enough to die, or even break.  We just dropped.

I hear Henrick and the others yelling down to us, and then I realize they were yelling as we fell. I hear Tlingit groaning.

“Motherfuck,” he says.  “Jesus.”
Groans again.

“You break anything?” I ask him.  “You OK?”  I can barely see him, but I see him feeling his limbs and moving, to see if anything's fucked more than it was.  He winces and grunts, but he says, “I’m OK.”  I think I’m OK too.  Everything hurts, my head’s ringing, like I got hammer-punched, again, and the wounds I got from the wolves before are pulsing and pounding, and some new things hurt enough I think maybe I did break something, or several things.  But I can move without crying.

I yell up to the others.

“I think we’re OK,” I yell.  I try to see them up at the lip, and I think I make heads out, Henrick’s and the others, but they could just be branches.  I try to look along the direction we were heading, down here, wherever we are.  I can barely see, but I can make out whatever this cliff is, it doesn’t disappear soon.