Frozen Stiff (14 page)

“It takes more than a month to make such a journey, so all food and provisions had to be carried with them, packed on sleds and dragged over the ice like a team of sled dogs instead of men.”

The woman paused and stared into the fire. The flickering light danced in her eyes, adding to her quiet beauty. Then she continued, “The mountain is an icebound graveyard; the peak itself is a gravestone. Yet many are compelled to try to conquer it, not knowing that the mountain will demand a sacrifice in return.

“Traveling over ice fields and glaciers, each man was tied to the next in case he plummeted into a crevasse. The sleds were also tied with sturdy climbing rope, linked like deadweights between them. If the line to the sled wasn’t held tight, the sled could fall
into a crevasse on top of the man in front of it and crush him.

“My husband fell through ice no fewer than seven times, but the man behind him always held the sled line tight so that the sled never called him for the sacrifice.”

Cody listened intently, hardly aware that her feet had been slipped into a pair of fur boots much like those the woman wore. The insides were sheepskin, like her Ugg boots back home. Her tights had been slit with a knife, the wound cleaned and dressed with a fresh bandage.

“Then the storm came. It was completely dark at ten in the morning. The wind blew sideways at sixty miles per hour, knocking the men off their feet. It was colder than forty degrees below zero for many, many hours. Holding the sled line straight and stiff in the face of such a storm is how my husband lost three fingers on his right hand.”

Cody shivered, unable to imagine such bitterly cold conditions. Wildman’s gloves were worn to hide missing fingers.

The woman tucked a blanket around Cody’s shoulders and placed a cup of stew in her hands. Cody smiled a silent thank-you. Then she sipped the hot liquid, swirled it in her mouth, sloshed it over her teeth, and swallowed. The stew warmed her from the inside out.

“They huddled on an icy slope for hours, shouting and hitting one another to keep awake. For a brief spell the clouds broke and stars shone through. My husband
urged everyone onward, to find a safe camp for the night. But one man had untied himself from the rope. High altitude and little oxygen make people do crazy things. He stepped off the mountain, and was lost.

“My husband was the leader. He untied himself and climbed down after the man, and then
he
was lost. The tradition says to leave the dead on the mountain, like sailors who are buried at sea. The others thought that my husband was dead, so they left him. Another expedition found him and brought him back, but he’d lost his nose and much of his cheeks.”

The mask was to protect an ice-scarred face.

Derek had been right. Wildman—Eric—was trying to save them from the same fate as the man he’d lost on the mountain. If only she’d known.

“Since that time we have lived a subsistence life, alone in the woods except for a yearly journey into Yakutat to visit my family and trade for luxuries, such as fishing line and toothpaste. But the dead man haunts my husband still. That is all there is to tell,” the woman said, standing up in the predawn light. “Come, it is time to catch fish for breakfast.”

Cody felt warm in the poncho and fur boots. Too warm and, strangely, too safe. She felt guilty for being clean and well fed and so utterly comfortable in this raw untamed wilderness. She glanced back at the shelter before trailing the woman and her two fishing poles down a path to the water’s edge.

She felt bad about many things, good about many others.

Only the eerie fugue of wind and water broke the stillness around Cody and Mary Jane. They made an odd-looking fishing couple on the bank of a meltwater stream that drained into the fjord.

At first the sight of the fjord had surprised Cody; she hadn’t had any idea the fishing shelter was this close to shore. All that winding around on the trail had cut miles off the water route, a shortcut that put them closer to Hubbard, as Derek had said. She’d choked up at the sight of her kayak tied to a tree, the deep blue canvas-covered craft bobbing in perfect sync with the rising water.

She finally turned to Mary Jane, embarrassed by her curiosity but still needing to know. “What happened to the rest of the men in the expedition?”

Mary Jane raised her face to the east, embracing the rising sun. “We have spoken enough about the dead. It is now best to care for the living.”

And Cody understood that they were buried in some icebound grave.

With enough fish to feed four people, they slogged back to camp in the face of biting winds. Derek knelt
by the fire, straining to shove his sleeping bag into its stuff sack. The daypacks lay open on the ground, awaiting supplies to be carried through the day’s journey.

Derek had changed back into rubber boots and a rain slicker and looked almost normal, except for the lost weight, the untamed hair, and the calm in his voice. “Breakfast?” he asked, unmoved by Cody’s new wardrobe.

“Yeah.”

Mary Jane took the fish from the twig stringer and wrapped them whole in large leaves, pushing them into the ashes—all without regard to the shelter door, which remained closed.

Cody finally said, “He doesn’t need to stay inside.”

Derek glanced at the shelter before speaking up. “Eric isn’t here. He hiked back to our camp, for the tent and the other kayak.”

Cody was disappointed. She wanted Wildman to know she wasn’t afraid of him and understood about the mask.

Derek misread her expression as worry about getting back on the water. “It won’t take him long.”

“My husband knows the fjord better than the otters,” Mary Jane said, looking at the sky for a hint of sun behind the lightest clouds. “One hour more, maybe.”

They ate the whole fish in silence, picking the steaming meat from the loose skin and saving the bones. The early morning passed quickly with the
chores of washing up after breakfast and preparing a sack lunch for a day away. The sack was a tanned deerskin pouch. The lunch was venison and fish jerky dried for the winter and the last of the fresh huckleberries, glossy and black.

“I will make another poultice for your wound from the root of devil’s club. It is part of the ginseng family,” Mary Jane said, taking a brush to Cody’s hair. She brushed it smooth, gathered it into a braid, and tied it with yarn. “You will take the poultice with you.”

“Thanks,” Cody said, though she was hardly limping. Long before sunset, still more than fifteen hours away, she and Derek would be safe and warm inside Yakutat Lodge, their mothers fussing over their every need. At Hubbard, one of the helicopters or a bush plane would fly them back. The day really would be marked
The End
.

Cody spent too much time with every chore, as if she were in the last chapter of a good novel and didn’t want to turn the final pages. The day before, if someone had told her she’d be sorry to see an end to this story, she would have said he was crazy.

Down at the water’s edge she loaded her kayak, talking to it as she worked, as if she were renewing an old friendship. She finally gave up the fur mukluks and wool poncho in exchange for her boots and rain slicker. The rubber felt like cold steel against her skin, and out of place here. Her dance tights were little more than shreds but helped keep the bandage in place on her wound.

Mary Jane scooped rainwater from a large yellow-cedar canoe, handcarved like those that had belonged to her ancestors thirty-five-hundred years ago. The smile in her eyes said Wildman had come into view.

Cody took in the sight: A man with a wild beard and a mass of white-streaked hair guided the kayak with broad, powerful strokes. The craft responded effortlessly and without a single ripple at the bow.

Wildman didn’t come anywhere near her. Instead he steered to the shallow water next to Derek and handed him the bowline. Then Wildman trudged up the rocky bank and disappeared in the shadows of the trees.

Cody had just settled into her kayak when Mary Jane removed her shell necklace and placed it over Cody’s head. Cody fingered the smooth white shells, searching for special words, something more than thank you. When nothing came, she simply said, “Thank you,” meaning it with all her heart.

Mary Jane smiled her words. “It is you who brought the gift.”

Cody smiled back and squeezed her hand.

Before snapping down the rubber skirt, Cody spotted bubbles seeping through a slit in the bottom of her kayak.

“What is it?” Derek asked, one boot inside his wobbly craft.

“A hole in the canvas,” she said. “It’s small, so it should be okay for one more day.”

Mary Jane steadied the kayak with her strong hands. “There is no such thing as a small leak,” she
said. “My husband will repair it for you. First we must remove your kayak from the water.”

Derek tied his kayak and started clearing a space near shore. Rocks, driftwood, and other debris were tossed in a pile. Mary Jane used a flat rock to dig a long groove in the damp earth.

“Should we unload first?” Cody asked.

“What for?” Derek said, already swinging the kayak’s bow onto land.

A gust of wind lifted the hem of Cody’s slicker as she stepped into the icy water. She balanced carefully on the slippery rocks, making her way to the stern. With Mary Jane helping Derek at the bow and Cody pushing on the rear, the kayak slowly slid into the cleared area.

They maneuvered the kayak until it was sideways over the long groove. Mary Jane fingered the slit: a clean cut and less than a half inch long. “This can be mended from the inside,” she said, scooping out the offending water. Then she called to her husband.

Cody glanced up when Eric ambled down the embankment. She quickly looked away, not wanting him to think she was staring. She followed his movements from the corner of her eye. He knelt on the other side of the kayak and opened a pouch. Inside, freshly cut wild grass spilled out, and a fist-sized wad of an amber-colored object.

Cody didn’t want to stare but the mask drew her gaze. She wanted to speak so he’d know that she wasn’t afraid. She longed to tell him she was sorry about the accident. But her thoughts kept turning
into questions about his face. Instead she looked away.

Where trees had blown down, sunlight trickled through and opened the forest floor to a maze of grasses and wildflowers, vital prewinter food for wildlife. At the mouth of these streams and rivers, salt and fresh waters usually mixed, stirred twice daily by ocean tides. But that was no longer the case, not since a seventy-mile river of ice had slid across the opening at Disenchantment Bay.

Derek picked up a knife with a hand-hewn handle and antler blade. “How are we going to repair the hole?”

“Tree sap,” Eric replied. His words were nearly smothered by the mask, so he was hard to understand. “We’ll make a patch.”

Cody was startled by the sound of his voice. “How long will it take?” she asked quickly. It came out sounding as if she couldn’t wait to get away.

Eric’s eyes smiled kindly over his mask. “Not long.”

Mary Jane rose, and the shells on her mukluks played a tune. “We need something to eat while we work.”

Eric passed a wad of sap to Derek. “From a pine tree,” he said. “Chew it until it’s soft.”

Cody held out her palm. “I’ll take some.”

Cody and Derek chewed while Eric spread the cut grass on a flat rock. Cody kept looking at Eric, looking away, then looking back. Eric cut off a piece of sap for
himself, but turned his head before slipping it under the mask and into his mouth.

The wind blew from the north, whipping off ice fields and glaciers, promising subfreezing temperatures in the coming days. Waves churned by the wind rolled onshore, several feet from the kayak. Something would have to give in the fjord; the water couldn’t rise forever.

Cody tried imagining winter in Southeast Alaska, the boughs of conifers keeping snow off the ground directly beneath trees, making it easier for deer and other animals to forage for scarce winter food. No wonder the forest was so thick. The constant dampness prevented natural fires from lightning strikes, the kind that swept through the interior forests, and those in California.

“Is Hubbard ever going to recede?” Cody studied Eric’s eyes for an answer.

“The water pressure is building up.” Eric turned his head to remove his wad, then worked it like putty into the hole with a gloved finger. The sap hardened instantly in the cold. “Soon water will burst through the ice dam.”

Cody added her softened sap to a mixture of grass and sand. Derek used the knife to spread it over the first layer.

Mary Jane brought a basket of berries, salmon jerky, and a gourd of tea steeped from herbs. Derek dug into the food. “I’m starving.”

Cody took a piece of jerky for later, then passed
the basket to Eric, who shook his head. “I ate on the water.”

She figured he didn’t want to eat in front of them.

The others ate berries while Eric poured cold water over the patch to harden it. “A person’s weight will be the true test,” he said, dragging the kayak down to the water.

Cody followed him. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for all the terrible things she had thought about him. “I am happy to have known you,” she wanted to say.