Ian Mackenzie Jeffers The Grey (14 page)

“Keep heading the way you were,” I yell up to them.  Try to keep in sight of the lip, if you can.”  I look ahead again.

“OK” I hear Henrick yell.

“We’ll try to meet up, if this bluff drops, ahead.  OK?” I yell.

“OK,” Henrick yells back.  I still can’t see them. But Henrick doesn’t say anything else, and I guess they’ve gone.

“Fuck,” Tlingit says.

“Yeah,” I say.  I realize that might be the last we see of Henrick, or Bengt and Knox.  The terrain might push them away from the lip, they might lose it, or this face might run forever, or we’ll split wide, and never find each other, and either make it back or die in our separate ways. 

I find myself hoping, praying, I think, that they’ll be alright.  I don’t know what I’m praying to.  The love of my son, I suppose. 
My wife’s love of my son.
  I’m praying.  I think maybe if the wolves are on Henrick and the others they’ll see they’re fewer, now, and leave them alone.  Maybe down where Tlingit and I have fallen, that break of land between
us,
could be some kind of boundary.  Maybe we’re away.  But there’s a little moon, and I look back, and I think I can see an easier slope behind us, I don’t know how far, but it looks like a place, where wolves could come down, easily, if they wanted. I couldn’t make it out before.  I wonder of Henrick and the others could get down that way, and it looks too far back, too much in the direction we last saw the wolves, and I don’t think they’d have it in them to backtrack that far.  They’re gone, by now.  I hope again we’ll find them ahead.

I feel my pocket.  My knife is there, and I’m glad it isn’t sticking out of my side.  I see some of the sticks we had, scattered on the snow, they fell down with us, not all of them, but some.  Tlingit and I pick them up.  I look in front of us, and I head away with Tlingit, knowing, like any of these things, nothing’s going to fool the wolves, not falling off a cliff, or splitting up, not really.  But my imaginary advantages are keeping me going right now, so on I go.  Then the further away we get I realize, with more and more certainty, that nothing we try, or fall off, is going to change anything.  They’ll be on us, again, eventually, and on Henrick and Bengt and Knox, and we’ll die on our separate trails.  Or be lucky fools.

I look ahead, as we go, following the face of the bluff, and sure enough, the terrain starts to split us away from the bluff, it seems.  There’s a slope rolling down from the bluff it’s going to be too much work to traverse, so we let it lead us down, and I hope we’ll still be able to get to someplace we could possibly ever find the others, but I don’t know.

We let the slope force us down, and as we drop down with the slope from the bluff on one side, and another slope rises across from it, bounding us.  I see we’re in a gully, slopes on both sides, stretching as far ahead as I can see.  Nothing to do but follow it, and hope we’re keeping to the bluff.

“This is some fucking thing, isn’t it?” Tlingit says, lifting one boot after the other, like me.

I breathe out.  It is.

“
We going
to live it out?”  Tlingit asks.   He doesn’t want an
answer,
he’s just saying it out loud.  We keep walking.  A long time, boot after boot, I don’t know how long. 
Miles, hours, or minutes.
  I’m dreaming, anyway, wolf-dreams, about wolves
who
aren't wolves at all, just things coming to show you. 
The wolf in the heart.
  But it seems like miles.

“You think they’re OK?” Tlingit asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.  “I hope they are.”

“You think they’re on them by now?”  Tlingit asks.

I keep going, watching the dark, my ear cocked for paws in the snow or yells far away, of terror from Henrick or the others or barks or yips or anything.  I know they’re too far to hear, by now, or I think they are.  We keep going.

The gully starts to blunt, a little, the slopes are lower, not as towering.  I can’t see the rise we came from, or the cliff, or anything but where we are, the little gully.  But up ahead I think I see it bottoming out, broadening to flat land again, and I imagine it’s even curving toward the side where the cliff was.  I wonder if we’ve all bottomed out, and the rise we left the others on and the drop down here have joined up, already.  I get a little hopeful we might find the others, if the two trails met as soon as this, instead of in three days walk.  As soon as I think that though, I remember the thought I had in my head, of the wolves getting ahead of us, like they did in the clearing, and if the drop has opened out to the rise above it, we’re walking into somewhere the wolves might be. 
Which is foolish to worry about, because they’re wherever they want to be.

We keep going, watching the slopes, and the mouth of the gully, and I look at where it opens out and I start trying to see how the ground lies ahead of us, trying to think whether we should find a place to wait for the others, or cut back for them, or keep going and hope we catch them. 

I’m very busy thinking this when I realize I’m forgetting the wolves, like all I have to wonder about is the easiest way to walk home.  And finally, sure enough, we have one, on the rise above us, following along parallel with us, looking down.  He’s alone, which makes me worry, the others are either behind me where I can’t see, about to rush me from behind, or ahead of us, off quietly killing all the others.  But I’m not surprised, and almost relieved, to see him.  I look to Tlingit to see if he sees him, and he does.  Tlingit’s seen him already, maybe before me, and he’s watching him too.  We both seem to think the thing to do is keep walking, for now. 

Then we see another one, on the rise on the other side, above us like the other one. 

“What do we do?”  Tlingit says.  As if I know.

“Keep on,” I say.  I’m looking for a place where it looks good to try something, and I'm not seeing it yet, but I look ahead in the dark where the rises shallow out on both sides and I think if we’re going to try anything, that’s an easier place to do it.

“When we’re where it shallows out, you take that one, I’ll take this one.”

Tlingit thinks about that.

“What about ganging up?”  Tlingit asks.

I don’t know what I’m thinking, I can’t think any more. 

“You and I can get these guys.  Run them off, or get them.”  Tlingit looks at me.  Yes, I’m mortal crazy, he seems to see, and I dead mean it.  “We can.”

Tlingit stares at his wolf.  I look up at mine.  They’re both staring down at us, setting low, like before.  I recognize them.  I’m still worried about the other wolves, and the other guys, and wondering if these two tracked us from behind or were ahead of us, hard to say.  I can’t see tracks.  They’re just here. 
From the dark.
  I feel as sure as I can be of anything they aren’t going to let us by, for long.   They are setting low, looking at us, still as stones, ready to fly at us.  I fumble my knife out of my pocket, and hold it along my stick like before.

“We charge them.  If they run around on us, charge them again.  We keep doing it until they jump up at us, then we fight them, or until they run.”  Tlingit keeps looking at me.  It makes a mad sort of sense, a hopeless sort.

“You ready?”

Tlingit doesn’t say anything.  I take a breath. 

I start yelling and running up the rise at the wolf closest to me, raising my stick and Tlingit does the same with his, each after our own wolf.  My wolf and the other actually look halfway surprised, they spring up, split away, loop behind us, and we both turn on them and charge again, like madmen.  They watch us coming, but they still don’t jump at us, they jump to the side, go behind us, circle us, but as we each keep turning on them and trying to look like we’re brave enough to go at them they’re backing towards each other down the slope and they each look back to see what the other is doing and I think this means they’re off-balance for the first time.  But I remember they’ve been better at this than we’ve been, every time, and sure enough mine hops around to the uphill side again, looking down at me, ready to jump at me from above and close enough to do it, and I don’t like how that looks at all. 

I roar and charge up at him with my stick again, and Tlingit goes at his at the same time, and my wolf gets sick of the game this time, backs onto his haunches and barks and jumps at me.  I see him coming down at me and I manage to drop to my knee without falling backwards down the slope, and get the back of my spear jammed in the snow thinking I can land him on it, but I’m scared, I change my mind and come back up to drive it into him as he falls on me and he is stuck.  I’m holding him on the stick and holding his weight and mine from tipping over backwards down the hill, but he’s barking and reaching at my face with his teeth, snapping, getting closer, and I think he might be the one who got on my face before, back at the plane, and remembering his teeth on me I’m terrified, and as quick as that he gets my arm in his teeth and bites down and rips, I flinch back away, turn his weight downhill and throw him down away from me to the snow, and then I fall after him, hard.  I get to my feet, sideways, and jump back from him, my knife ready. 

I look at him stuck with that thing and like an idiot, I feel sick to have done it, I should be dancing, but I’m sick, like I was before.  He’s trying to pull himself off, I didn’t drive it in enough, even with his weight, or he’s just so frantic pushing his paws into the snow and wriggling backwards he's coming off it, somehow. 

“
Fuck you
,” I yell, because he’s trying to get free, instead of stopping and dying, and because I don’t want to feel guilty for doing it, when he was trying to kill me.  But he’s making it look like he’s getting free, or he will be, and I panic and roar again and jump on him with my knife, and fall away backwards right away again, leaving the knife too.  I’m flinching and jumping at everything he does, I remember his teeth too well,
I
think he is the one who was on me before.  He fights the knife too, thrashing and trying to get up with the stick poking out of him, but he stops trying, suddenly, his paws go out from under him and he lies in the snow, blinking, panting,
making
a gravelling sound.  And I’m still afraid of him and sick and afraid to have killed him and I’ve never felt like more of a coward in my life.  I’ve done my share of killing things, after all.

I wanted him dead, but I'm still sick, looking at him.  He’s making me think of things I don't want to and no time to anyway.  Or the fear or whatever I needed to dig out of my guts to let me run at him is making me sick, like I thought before.  I run in at him to grab my knife and jump right back, I’m still afraid he’ll snap up at me, and I leave the stick in him and grab up my others and run back up the gully toward Tlingit in the dark with a new stick ready, knife alongside it, the rest under my arm like before, which makes running awkward but I’m not brave enough to leave them.

I can just see Tlingit’s wolf still circling him and snarling.  Tlingit’s held his wolf like this all the time I was busy with mine.  He looks ready to jump at Tlingit or run, darting looks behind him and forward at us.  I look at him, but I look around too because I’m sure we can’t be this lucky to have just these two.  I’m waiting for mine to get back up and come after me, or for the rest of them to come.  But this one looks mad enough to rip us apart all by himself and I want to tell him we did not come here to bother him, but his answer would be to rip my lying throat away so all I’m going to be allowed to do is kill him.

I get my stick ready and we charge at him.  He’s backed toward a crop of
rocks,
he can jump up over it or come at us.  He flashes his teeth, comes up at Tlingit, and Tlingit steps aside and falls backward, and I drop my sticks and swing the knife at his side as he flies past me turning in the air toward Tlingit, but I don’t think I get him.  He drops to the ground and bounces up, I don’t think I touched him at all, and he hops left and right of us and then he lopes away, few paces, and looks at us.  And then he streaks away, into dark.  He didn’t look particularly afraid of us doing it, he just went.

We stand there, looking into the dark, listening, waiting for him to come out at us from the side or the back or anywhere.  I look at the rocks stacked up above our heads, lining the gully wall, covered in snow, and they’re all black shapes in the snow and all hiding wolves, as far as I know.  But I don't hear paws, or panting, and he doesn’t show himself, he just leaves us to worry about where he is.  I look all around, Tlingit does too.  We stand and watch a long time.

“Gone for now,” Tlingit says.  I’m watching the dark, and the rocks, afraid to let any bit of guard down.