The Haunted Igloo (12 page)

“
And so am I!” said
Cordell.

____________

C
hristmas morning the Ardoin cabin held a wonderful scent of
evergreen from a tree Cordell had cut at the bank of the Mackenzie
River. Decorated with stars and bells cut from old wrapping paper
and several large jingle bells from old dog harnesses, the tree
held an honorable position in the center of the large
room.

Beneath the tree lay a
special package for Jean-Paul. He looked at the tag, then frowned.
And for the first time since the blizzard, he spoke. “A—a present
from Chinook?”

His parents looked at each other in
surprise. Their son had opened his mouth for something besides
biscuits, stew, or cakes.

“
Wasn’t that nice of Chinook?” asked
Cordell. “Are you going to open it?”

Jean-Paul looked at the
package for a long time. He ran his hands over the paper, turning
it every which way, staring at it. There came a tinkling sound from
inside. He slowly removed the bright ribbon and wrapping, which
Chinook must have bought at the Hudson’s Bay post.

“
What’s this?” His eyes shone with
excitement. “A harness! Pa! Ma! Look! Chinook gave me a harness for
Sasha!”

Chinook had known exactly
what would make Jean-Paul happy.

Cordell, of course, had
known about it in advance. “Yes,” he said, “an
ano
. Chinook made it himself, just for
you.”

“
I didn’t give him anything,”
Jean-Paul said.

Lise slipped an arm around
her son, hugging him gently. “I suspect the only thing Chinook
really wants is your friendship. Do you think you could
try?”

Jean-Paul shrugged his
shoulders. He rolled his eyes toward his mother, then his father,
feeling embarrassed. “Well, I
might
.”

“
We often misjudge others until we get
to know them,” said Lise. “My own feelings about Chinook changed
when I saw how determined he was to make amends. He’s really a very
nice boy, though a bit mischievous.”

Jean-Paul pulled the
harness from the wrapping paper to examine it closer. “Sleigh
bells!” he shouted. The huge bells jingled when he shook the
harness. “Boy, this is great! It’s just what I wanted!”

The wrapping paper
fluttered to the floor and a small scrap of paper fell out.
Jean-Paul picked it up and read from the carefully-penned French:
JEAN-PAUL ARDOIN IS A MEMBER OF THE ICE PATROL. He looked at his
parents. He grinned from ear to ear, his cheeks puffing out with
delight. “Wow! They made me a member after all! And Sasha, too!
See? Her name’s right down here in the corner.”

Cordell rumpled Jean-Paul’s
hair and chuckled. He went outside, and when he came back in he
handed Jean-Paul his parka. “Bundle up. I’ll take you out to see
what I made for you. Hurry!”

Jean-Paul went outside with
his father. In a few minutes, he returned, shouting to his mother.
“Ma! Ma! Pa made a sled for Sasha! Does that mean I get to keep
her? Huh, Ma?”

Lise looked at Cordell. He
shook his head. She looked back at Jean-Paul and said, “Perhaps.
We’ll wait and see.”

Jean-Paul threw his arms
around his mother. She was much fatter now than she had been a few
weeks before. He recalled how fat Sasha’s mother, Lishta, had been
right before she had pups. He had known his mother would grow quite
large in the middle, but of course she wasn’t going to have nine
babies.

“
This is the happiest Christmas I’ve
ever had,” Jean-Paul exclaimed, his eyes shining.

Cordell threw back his head
and great barrels of laughter rumbled up from his chest. “That’s
what you say every Christmas, Jean-Paul!”

____________

S
hortly after the holiday, Cordell, Lise, and Jean-Paul visited
Chinook’s family. Jean-Paul was surprised at the way the huge
snow-block home looked inside. A bench of snow lay along the back
wall, spread with many layers of bear skins for sleeping and
sitting. At one side of the igloo was a whale-oil cooking fire.
Seal meat simmered in a big open kettle hung above the hot yellow
and orange flames. The spicy aroma made Jean-Paul’s mouth
water.

Lise had never been inside
an igloo, either. Now she watched curiously as Chinook’s mother,
Arnayak, sewed a piece of leather with a length of tough sinew. The
Inuit woman looked up from her work now and then to smile at Lise.
She pointed once to Lise’s golden hair and giggled, and Lise, not
knowing what was wrong, felt herself blush. The two women’s eyes
met as they smiled shyly at each other.

Then, Taguk entered the
igloo and spread his fur mittens on a rack to dry by the fire. He
spoke rapidly in
Inuktitut
. There was a smile for Lise,
an Inuit handshake for Cordell, and a pat on Jean-Paul’s head
before Taguk sat flat-legged on the sleeping ledge before
them.

Jean-Paul thought Chinook
looked much like his father, for he had the same broad chest, thick
neck, and flat cheeks as Taguk. Their smiles were alike, too, as
well as their deep black eyes. Chinook sat nearby, wearing brightly
colored indoor clothes, his face turning orange from the fire
light. His eyes snapped and sparked in mischief as they reflected
the flames.

Before anyone could speak,
a plump, dark-eyed child climbed into Taguk’s lap. Her eyes darted
from one stranger to another. Lise reached to touch the child, and
the little girl giggled like the tinkling of chimes.

“
My sister, Lichen,” Chinook told the
Ardoins. “She’s a pest!”

“
I knew you had more family,”
Jean-Paul said. “But where are your brothers?”

Chinook shrugged and
pointed to an ancient-looking old man who sat quietly in the
shadows. “Only my grandfather, Kiakshuk, and one uncle live here
with us. Grandfather is nearly blind and mostly just sits.
Sometimes he tells stories, but not as often as he once did. And my
uncle is away, tending his trap lines. My three brothers are much
older than I. They all have wives and live by the mouth of the big
water.”

“
Do you ever see them?” asked
Jean-Paul.

“
Sometimes.” Chinook laughed. “It’s
not that far away, you know. It’s where we go to hunt seals. But I
have too much to do to miss my brothers.”

Both boys fell silent. Then
Chinook asked, “What are you thinking, Jean-Paul
Ardoin?”

A slow smile spread across
Jean-Paul’s face. “I was just remembering the raw fish you guys
made me eat.”

Chinook giggled. Cordell
glanced sideways at his son, his eyebrows going up. “Eh? You never
told us you ate raw fish. How was it?”

Jean-Paul made a face, but
said, “It wasn’t that bad. I had forgotten about the fish until
just now.”

Chinook laughed again. “The
hardest part was thinking about it before he ate it, right,
Jean-Paul?”

Jean-Paul nodded and
grinned. “Yeah. I almost got sick.”

“
Oh, Jean-Paul,” said Lise with a
frown.

Jean-Paul turned to his
mother. “It wasn’t that bad, Ma.”

Taguk spoke now, his short,
strong hands pacing the words in the air. Cordell smiled at the man
and turned to Chinook. “You’ll have to translate again, Chinook.
One of these days I’ll have to learn
Inuktitut
.”

“
Well, you already know some words,”
said Chinook. “Taguk says he is much honored by Jean-Paul’s visit
with his father and mother.”

Jean-Paul smiled at Taguk.
Then, to Chinook, he said, “Please say I thank him for saving my
life.”

Chinook repeated the words
to Taguk, who grinned and clapped his hands in delight. Many more
Inuit words followed.

Chinook said, “He says not
to thank him. That it’s his duty to help his neighbors.”

Cordell took Taguk’s hand
in a firm clasp. “We’re grateful,” he said. “Perhaps we can help
Taguk someday.”

Chinook said, “We didn’t
mean for Jean-Paul to get lost. We wanted only to trick him for a
while. All of us felt very bad about what happened.”

After a while, Jean-Paul
said, “I brought something for you. I was saving it for a special
friend.” He dug into his pants pocket. “Here.” He handed Chinook a
small stone from his collection. It had beautiful silver and green
streaks running through it.

“
Wow!” cried Chinook, his eyes growing
wide. He held the stone up and examined it from all angles. “This
is great! Where did you get such a pretty rock?”

“
I found it where I used to live, in
Quebec. It was on a lakeshore where Pa and I used to fish. It’s the
nicest one I had. You can keep it if you want. I have many others.
I’ll show them to you sometime.”

Chinook gave Jean-Paul a
big grin. “You proved you are very brave when you stayed in
the
apudyak
,
Jean-Paul. But I’d be your friend even if you weren’t.”

Lise and Cordell exchanged
proud smiles. Then Lise said to Chinook, “Tell your mother it would
be nice if we could all be friends.” She glanced at Arnayak and
smiled.

Chinook spoke to his mother
in
Inuktitut
.
Arnayak grinned and patted her belly while pointing to Lise.
“
Nutaralak
,” she
said, nodding.

Lise felt her face redden
as Chinook explained Arnayak’s words.

“
She says you will have more
nutaralak
. That’s
Inuktitut
for baby,
Madame
Ardoin.”

Lise found herself
relaxing. She smiled warmly at the Inuit mother. “Tell her,
yes,
enfant
!
” Lise patted her own tummy. “Ask her
if she can say it in French.
Enfant
!
”

Quick words were tossed
between the two mothers by way of Chinook’s translations. Lise had
resisted coming along on this trip. But now she was glad she
had.

For the next half hour, the
group talked about Ice Patrol and hunting and Sasha. Jean-Paul
thanked Chinook for the bear statue and the harness.

“
I’ll teach you to carve ivory,”
Chinook said. “And I’ll also help you train Sasha. She’s a fine
husky.”

Jean-Paul thought for a
moment. “I’m glad she was in the igloo with me that day. I didn’t
tell you I’m afraid of the dark.”

Chinook roared with
laughter. “And so is Nanuk! But I want to know what happened in the
haunted igloo. What did you see?”

Jean-Paul leaned closer to
Chinook and whispered, “You would not
believe
! I saw the eyes of the
torngark
, all slimy green
slits! No bodies, Chinook, just those terrible eyes, blinking on
and off, coming closer and closer! Then a stinky red smoke came up
from the floor. There was screaming, howling, and moaning.
Then,
a very old man—” He
stopped talking and opened his eyes wide at Chinook. The igloo was
filled with breathless suspense.

“
Come on, Jean-Paul! And then what?”
Chinook was almost jumping up and down. “
What? What?”

Jean-Paul could hardly keep
from laughing at the look on his friend’s face. “Well, the old man
was sitting on the back of the biggest, blackest, meanest-looking
wolf in the world!”

Chinook stared open-mouthed
at Jean-Paul. His eyes had taken on the red of the fire. “But
you’re
alive
.
How did you get away from
them?”

Jean-Paul crossed his arms
over his chest and shivered. Chinook shivered, too. Even Cordell
and Lise shivered. Then Chinook’s mother, thinking it a game,
crossed her arms and shook her fat body and giggled. Lichen didn’t
shiver. She babbled a long chain of Inuit baby words that nobody
understood. Taguk didn’t shiver, either. He sat staring from one to
the other, wondering why everyone was cold when there was a
perfectly good fire going.

“
It was very simple,” Jean-Paul said,
finally. “When I was scared enough to die, Sasha jumped at the
wolf! And the whole thing started flashing colors. And then it just
curled up and disappeared out the smoke hole. Poof!” He threw his
hands into the air. “Just like that, it was all gone!”

“
Wow!” exclaimed Chinook.

“
And the green eyes disappeared. But
after everything was gone, I could still hear that wolf howling. I
still smelled that awful smell.” He held his nose and said,
“
Phew!”

“
Poo!” cried Lichen.

Chinook said, “Wait till I
tell Aiverk and Nanuk!”

Cordell laughed and said,
“That’s some story, Jean-Paul! No one would believe it in a million
years!”

Chinook said, “We were only
teasing Jean-Paul about the
apudyak
being haunted,
Monsieur
Ardoin. But now I think it
really is. I hope it melts all the way to the South
Pole!”

After they left the igloo,
Cordell said to Jean-Paul, “I think you stretched the truth a
little, eh?”