The Raven's Gift (24 page)

The storm during the night had created new drifts, and the girl and old woman struggled until they reached the crest of a small hill, where the wind had blown the surface clear, leaving hard-packed frozen tundra. The old woman kept watching behind them, searching continually, he suspected, for the hunter. They made better time, and before long, the giant black shield loomed over them.

“What are you going to do?” the girl asked when they reached the base of the tower.

“I’m going up. See if I can spot anything,” he said.

He handed his rifle to the old woman, went inside, and grabbed the first rung on the ladder that led to the top, some seventy feet above them in the darkness. He began to climb. His arms and legs barely seemed to have the strength to lift him, but slowly he managed to pull himself up.

At the top, he hoisted himself up and over the edge. He rested for a moment, on his stomach, as he tried to catch his breath.

“You okay?”

He leaned over the edge and held his finger to his lips, and remembered she couldn’t see this. “Quiet!” he said. They were a mile from town, but he didn’t want to take any risks.

He crawled on his hands and knees to the far edge and scanned the horizon. An orange haze began to appear in the distance with the rising sun. From the top of the tower he could see the town, the wide, sweeping river, and the rolling mountains in the distance. Before surveying the town he looked back at their tracks and followed them toward their last camp beneath the bluff. If someone was following them, he didn’t see any movement.

The town looked as lifeless as the white wasteland surrounding it. The single red light he had seen the night before, perched high on a radio tower, was still lit, but that was the only sign of life. No smoke. No movement. No sounds.

Parts of Bethel bore the familiar snow-covered blackness of ruin, just on a much larger scale. The monstrous white fuel tanks that once bordered the river at the centre of town were gone, replaced with twisted, blackened metal craters. The half-charred ruins of the town stretched out before him like a commune for the undead. The vision of a burnt and frozen town reminded him of a Robert Frost poem, something about the world ending in either ice or fire. Bethel appeared to have died twice.

ONE SATURDAY MORNING Anna and John awoke to snow. A soft, light blanket covered the ground overnight, and the worn and dirty village appeared renewed, refreshed, and the two of them could feel a strange sort of excitement bristling through the community. Men dragged their snow machines out from beneath their houses or removed the tarps that covered them. Young boys tried to stockpile snowballs as more snow began to fall.

John sat on his steps watching what he thought was probably the last outside basketball game of the season. Four boys played in their
T-shirts and rubber boots on the wooden play deck. The chill in the air bit at his ears, but apparently had no effect on the boys, or their game.

Anna came out and sat on the steps beside him, wearing the same as he did, her new winter boots, wool hat, and Gore-Tex parka. She was ready for the change in seasons. They both were. Frozen lakes, rivers, and tundra meant they could get out for walks somewhere other than laps around the school gym or through the hallways or down the icy boardwalks.

“How soon until the river freezes?” Anna asked.

“Carl said it will all be frozen by next week. Safe to walk on in another couple of weeks, maybe, and then safe for snow-machine travel by the end of the month. If it stays cold.”

“If?” she said, picking at a frozen chunk of mud on the bottom step.

“He said it warms up often now, sometimes twice a winter, and makes the ice rotten—treacherous. Climate change, worse here in the Subarctic.”

John stood and stretched. He’d been playing open gym with the men the last few weeks, trying to get back into shape, and had pulled something in his back going up for a rebound.

“You think we should order some cross-country skis or something?”

“What did Carl say?” she joked.

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. He’s just your answer to everything now. I thought you would have asked him.”

“He said once in a while every few years a teacher will try skiing. No one else skis.”

“So you did ask him?” she asked with a laugh.

“It seems like something we could do to get out and get some air, you know? That or buy a snow machine. Which we can’t afford.”

“Think they can ship skis out here?”

“If they can ship out snow machines and four-wheelers I think they can ship out some skis.”

“Are they expensive?”

“Who cares? If they let us get out and see some country, they’ll be worth it. Skis would make all the difference trying to get around.”

She pointed to the flat landscape. “I can see all the country I’m going to see from here. Maybe next year we get them. We should save our money for now.”

One of the boys undercut another going up for a shot. The shooter’s legs came out from beneath him and he crashed to the hard wood deck and cried out in pain.

“Ouch. That hurt,” John said.

“It looks like he might have busted up his arm. Think we should check on him? What do they do if someone gets hurt like that?”

“Carl said … Just kidding. They send a medevac flight out from the Bethel hospital. I’m going to go see if he’s okay.”

“What if they can’t fly and can’t travel by river?” Anna asked, holding her hand out to catch some of the snowflakes. “What happens then?”

“They shoot ’em, I guess. That or wait.”

THE GIRL ASKED HIM how it felt to shoot one of them. She didn’t ask him if he had. Just how it felt. “Did you feel bad?” she asked.

That morning the air burned cold deep inside his lungs. The breeze cut through his clothing and felt like lit cigarettes pressed against his cheeks and face. Even his teeth were cold. He pretended that he couldn’t hear her behind him in the sled over the sound of the ice and snow scratching beneath the plastic toboggan.

“I don’t think I would feel bad,” she said. “I was sure I would have to kill them, but they never found me. You shouldn’t feel bad. They would have killed you and ate you. I know it. Especially since you’re
kass’aq
. They would take your guns and your stuff and think nothing of it since
kass’aqs
started this sickness.”

“What if I told you I’m not gus-suck?” he asked.

“Are you black?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Indian?”

The weight of the girl and the gear in the sled became too great. He stopped, took a breath, and tried to pull again. He couldn’t move her. The snow conditions were changing, creating resistance against the bottom of the toboggan. Or he had run out of juice.

“My cousin once asked me if I would kill someone to have my eyes back. I said I couldn’t, but now I think I could. If they were bad, I could do it. Why would some people choose to stay and help and those others leave? How come people are so different? Do you think it takes something like this to show people’s true side? Like you can see their soul?”

He turned and looked down at her, sitting in the sled, with his pack resting on her legs, the rifle across her lap. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you don’t ask another question all day,” he said.

“What would I do with a hundred dollars?”

“That’s another question.”

“I’m just killing time.”

“You’re killing me. You might as well be one of them and kill me.”

“You don’t have to be mean.”

“Mean? Mean would have been to leave you.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. How many people would have chosen to help me? That wasn’t a question. Not many, that’s how many. I don’t think many people would have helped me. I don’t know why you are different, but you are, John. That’s why I don’t think you should feel guilty.”

“Why would it matter if I’m a gus-suck? Or black? Indian? Or Eskimo? And who said I feel guilty?” he asked.

“That doesn’t matter. Your skin colour. Not to me. And I’m not talking about feeling guilty for killing outcasts, John. I mean sorry for still being alive. If you’re like me, then you feel bad, too. Maybe
that’s why I cry at night sometimes. I think that is why you have those dreams. The guilt is for getting to live. Isn’t it?”

John replied, “When I was a kid my grandpa told me that in the wilderness people died of shame and guilt. I’m not going to die out here of shame
or
guilt.”

“I wish I could pretend I didn’t feel bad, too,” she said.

“Pretend? What do you want me to say? Yes, it haunts me. Every breath I take hurts. Every time I blink and I’m still alive, I ask why. Why me? Why this place? Every sunrise seems unfair and wrong. And every night is purgatory revisited. Is that what you wanted me to say?” he asked. “Is it?”

The girl lowered her face to the rifle sitting in her lap. “Well?” he asked again. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No,” she said softly. “That doesn’t sound like guilt at all.”

“No? What does it sound like, then?” he asked, a flash of anger warming his face.

She looked up at him. Her white eyes staring at him—through him. “Selfish,” she said, her voice sad, but full of defiance, “you sound selfish.”

He reeled around and began pulling, the cold surrounding him, pressing against his skin, chilling his muscles, slowing him, grinding him into the ice beneath his frozen feet.

   25   

T
he three of them headed north from the tall radar tower and turned east, skirting the houses at the edge of town. To the north the land flattened out into an unforgiving expanse of frosted tundra and lakes. The unabated wind blew the snow elsewhere, leaving them with hummocks and frozen clumps of moss to contend with. They weren’t leaving tracks, but they made almost no progress until they hit a slight ridge where wind had packed the snow hard.

The old woman had said little since they left the snow cave. He didn’t know if she was worried, or just mad at him. She protested his decision to explore what was left of the town, but since the tower and his mention of the light, he noticed her pace had quickened. She held the 20-gauge out in front of her as if a ptarmigan might fly up in front of them, or worse.

“Where we going to sleep tonight?” the girl asked.

The old woman pointed toward the darkening sky behind them. “We’re going to need somewhere protected,” she said. “Maybe it’s going to get real windy, and bad cold. Least the snow will cover our tracks.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“It’s still now. See those high, thin clouds over there? Wind is coming.” She stopped walking and turned to him. “What do you expect to find?” she asked.

He shrugged and looked out over the town. He hoped no one
was watching the horizon because he wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping below the skyline.

“We can keep going straight across here,” she said. “The river comes back around and past town. We can shortcut. We’ll camp in the brush by the tall bluffs, and then we won’t have to go into that bum town.”

“Maybe you two should go. I’ll check out town, and then come find you.”

“No,” the girl said. “I don’t want you to leave us.”

He pulled the rope to the sled tight. “Look,” he said to them both, “I need to know what the deal with the light is, maybe see if I can find some snowshoes, skis, or a sled. Anything to make travel easier. If it’s bad in town, we’ll get out. We’ll head that way and meet at the bluffs. Okay? Maybe we can find something out about the kids
here
.”

“If it’s bad, next time you’ll listen to what I have to say,” the old woman said.

THE DOOR TO THE FIRST BLACKHAWK opened and a man in a Santa Claus suit shouted and waved to the villagers gathered at the edge of the mechanical blizzard settling around the two choppers. The door on the other aircraft slid open and two Anchorage-based news camera crews poured out, followed by unarmed National Guard troops carrying cases of Florida oranges, presents, and of all things, ice cream.

“I love it when Santa brings us fresh fruit,” Carl said with a smile.

“They do this every year?” Anna asked. She stood beside John, her arms folded around Nina, her new constant companion.