Ordinary Wolves (38 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

JANET´S DOORKNOB WAS GONE
and a sock was stuffed in the hole. TV talk drifted out. I kicked my feet on the metal steps and went in; she would complain if I knocked.

“Cutuk!” She heaved herself off the linoleum and hugged me in her heavy arms. Her warm cheek pressed against my face. The lights and glare were stunning after miles of cold trail. Over her shoulder, a loud Mountain Dew commercial mesmerized me, flashing sexy bodies and music, water-skiing behind a horse.
Aana
Tessie Washington and
Aana
Mable Feathers sat on the floor beside the couch, sewing calfskin
mukluks.
Their faces were deeply wrinkled, sunken and beaming. The old women were giggly and tense, in the middle of a MacGyver episode.

Janet held my cheeks with her warm palms. “I'll make hot water!” Tessie and Mable smiled, no teeth. Stevie's little daughter, Daisy, stared wide-eyed from a high chair.

Treason stomped his boots and came in carrying the wolverine. The
old ladies' eyes lighted and they heaved and tilted to their feet. They gathered around, clutching at the long hair and conversing in Iñupiaq. He laid the animal on cardboard behind the stove. “You should learn to hunt,” they told me sympathetically. I didn't say anything. The windows were black—except the loud TV, a bright aperture to America. MacGyver reappeared with his porcupine hairdo. The ladies dropped the wolverine paws and scurried back to their places. MacGyver was under stress, in a hurry, wiring together a nuclear device or some such nonsense out of a washing machine and a Spam can key. I focused on my fix-it competition, MacGyver, trying to impress us with his ingenuity. Let him go a couple decades without a washing machine, he'd be walking around holding
that
up to the camera.

Janet handed us coffee. When the show ended, she lit a burner and heated soup. “I guess Melt's somewhere,” she commented to herself. She put bowls on the table. “Go eat.” A small skinny girl sat on the couch, gripping a Barbie doll by the hair. “Here's my brand-new girl, Whitney-Houston.” Janet kissed her. The little girl's eyes were black stones. “Her mom die in Crotch Spit. Her brother been bumped her to death with Honda. Feeling high.
Arii.
So lucky they find this one okay.” The little girl didn't shudder, cry, or even blink.

The CB squawked. “Meeting at Tribal Building. Anybody copy?”

The CB speaker garbled as villagers transmitted over each other, the volume so loud it made my teeth ache—a mike clicked on and off, a bored kid, sabotaging the village electronic connective tissue. “Don't play with CB!” an elder voice shouted. The mike-clicking intensified. “Fuck you,” a voice croaked.

Treason moved around Janet's kitchen looking for something to crack a caribou
patiq
bone he'd pulled out of the soup pot. He whacked the bone behind my chair leg and put it across my bowl and cracked another. Janet stuffed marrow into Daisy's mouth.
“Aarigaa, patiq, Bun.
I wonder what kinda meeting? You kids better go explain for elders.”

I sat staring dumbly at the fast images on the TV, replaying the day's events while knifing at the bone on my plate, swallowing meat that now could have been pieces of warm luggage. Around me, Janet was already
clearing dishes, scraping bones and meat scraps into a dogpot, and then Treason stepped in from smoking, wrapped in cold-air fog. He stomped his boots. “Com'on Cutuk. Go check that native meeting? Door prizes,” he grinned, “and you'll get to see
Taata
Woodrow's false teeth, before he goes out on the country and needs one for a screwdriver.”

 

 

TREASON WAS LUCKY,
though it was easy to discount the fact that if he grew his hair out it would be curly—not a good thing—and that his real mom was dead and his dad a nameless sperm donor; he won five boxes of ammo.
Aana
Hanna Skuq won a six-pack of pop, and her granddaughter, Elvisetta, in Pampers, won the pre-meeting grand prize, a drum of stove oil. Hanna took the fuel credit slip and gave Elvisetta a Coke. They were both happy, smiling, missing teeth.

The color TV, the important prize, was saved for after the meeting. The elders sat on folding chairs without taking off their parkas. The men had their mouths open, deaf from years of snowgoing and shooting. They hunched, elbowing their wives for information. Newt Clemens and Tommy Feathers and Woodrow Washington and others greeted me and asked after Abe. A good portion of the town and half of Uktu were at the gym, immersed in the Jimmy Skuq Memorial Basketball Tournament, in honor of Jimmy crashing on a snowgo, drunk. Jimmy, who one night had let half the dogs in town loose and in the ensuing dogfights broke into the Native Cache. Jimmy, who stole Janet's chain saw and ruined it trying to saw open the city office safe . . .

The native corporation speaker droned about projected finances. The corporation developed native land and sent out yearly dividends to Eskimos. It was big business now, being Iñupiat. The corporation had even invented a politically correct term for me: a “non-shareholder.”

Charley Casket shrugged in the door. He spotted my non-shareholder hair and came over to sit beyond Treason. He reached across and shook my hand limply. His hand passed over an artifact, a strip of antler sled runner. Swarms of kids chased back and forth. “You kids go play-out,”
Hanna shouted. They ignored her. Another speaker took the place of the first. He was named Joe Smith. He wore glasses, a new haircut, tight jeans, and a gold watch with nuggets lumpy on the band. His hands were large and soft. “Funny-looking Eskimo,” Hanna whispered too loud.

“I'm from the nonprofit arm of the corporation, and I'm here to inform you of our Cultural Edification Project. The project, or CEP, has been proposed through the regional elders, and a grant for one million dollars has already been procured.”

I glanced at the antler, a porous gray artifact. Over the years, Abe had unearthed some strips of antler sled runner; surely, he'd left them behind on a window ledge or a shelf. They hadn't been there today. The room still rustled—overhead fluorescent lights twitched and twirled, throbbing pearl shadows. The elders' faces held the same expressions they had held at the meeting when strange rangers told them the National Park Service suddenly owned millions of acres of the best hunting land, in every direction. When anthropologists, archaeologists, and con men with computer credentials had come and held meetings and gone. The elders' expressions, meeting after meeting, for decades: “What in ta hell they're talking?” and “What in ta hell they're taking?”

A snowgo roared up outside. The door kicked open. Condensation and frozen snowgo exhaust rolled under the chairs. Elvis Jr. walked in sheepishly, thawing his face. Lumpy's 9 mm pistol slid out of his jacket pocket and thunked on the floor. He stared at it for a second, bent and picked it up. “. . . all recorded forms of Iñupiaq knowledge will be compiled on CD. This is in terms of libraries and universities—and, of course, what you the people know. We will then utilize informational assets to organize a strategy for teaching it.” Lumpy didn't hurry putting the pistol in his pocket, glancing it over for a minute, pointing it randomly around the room. The native sitting behind Joe stood and translated for the elders. The elders listened, baffled, impatient to go home or back to the ball tournament.

I peered at the antler. Six hours had passed since Treason and I had left the igloo. Mice would be scurrying around in the last of the warmth seeping from the stove, nibbling any dropped morsels, huffing the spent cartridges. Charley leaned forward. “You find mastodon tusk?”

I raised my eyebrows, handed him the antler. “By accident. I was looking for a log to tie my dogs.”

Charley's mouth formed a quick smile. Nothing else moved. “In good shape? How big?”

“I never weigh it. Eighty-ninety pounds? It's in okay condition. Just the tusk, no mammoth meat on it. I didn't find the tongue or anything.” Treason and Lumpy snickered. I grinned and decided to prod Charley. “Today I checked on an old birch tree I found before. Ways up Jesus Creek. Back in the mountains. Something had been cutting it.”

Charley's expression didn't waver. “I been show Ted Brown the country. He ordered airboat, same like white guys always hunt crocodile in TV. Use lot'a gas and go anyplace. He's good friend a' mine. Always give me jug.”

Dismay tugged at my mouth.

On the other side, Lumpy nudged me. A bewildered grin flashed across his face. “What the fuck this fella saying, anyways?”

“They're gonna have classes, teach how to be Eskimo, just learn on your computer. Who knows, the new principal might get a better grade than you.”

Lumpy's face stiffened. His face had grooves it never had when we were kids—frostbite and Bacardi wrinkles. His lip slumped in where his rotted teeth clung. He looked haggard, confused, and sick—exactly how I felt. Up in front, a
naluaġmiu
scraped his chair back over the gouges in the Tribal Building floor and stood. Everyone stopped whispering. Everyone knew what those gouges were. They were cuts left by quiet men working with Skilsaws cutting too deep, building caskets, after too many four-wheeler accidents and drownings, dying elders and suicides, in a town of 210.

“Good evening,” he said. “First, I have to say how
glad
I am to be in your wonderful serene little village. I am also grateful to be able to meet so many of you and glimpse you living your traditional lives. I am here with Mi-tick,” he nodded at Joe, “to make you aware of the sixty-four
billion dollars
available in grants to communities like yours.”

The crowd laughed.

Treason muttered. “Com'on, let's go spark a bowl.” He and Lumpy and Elvis rose and headed outside; each had a hand in his pocket.

The man glanced around quizzically, shuffled papers, and retreated into a forest of overgrown words and Accountant English. The meeting trailed into whispers and tittering. Back on the metal chairs, we chuckled at the man's pronunciation of Joe Smith's Eskimo name. We heard “my dick.” We laughed, not because we were mean, but because laughing was traditional, it was something we were good at, and tonight we still remembered how.

 

 

ʺWHO WON THE TV?ʺ
Janet asked.

Lumpy opened her refrigerator. He squinted at the pots and containers. “How you know what the fuck anything is in here?”

Janet dropped the marten skin she was tanning. “What you want, son? That fish—take it off the way. Wait! I bought peef. I'll make soup.” She put a pan of water on to boil, sharpened her
ulu,
and expertly chopped the sirloin into cubes and dropped them into the water. Daisy crawled into my lap. Whitney-Houston pressed beside me on the couch, encircling the Barbie in her arm. I felt the little girl shaking. I pulled twine out of my pocket, tied the ends, and made a caribou.
“Tuttu.”
I pointed at my string. “That's
tuttu.”

Daisy's big brown eyes glanced up under my jaw. “Care boo?” She raised a finger, red polish on her tiny nail, and made a gun bang and hit the string. I flopped the loops on my knee. “Boom. You shot him, now you have to skin him and take care of the meat.”

“Again.” She giggled. “Shoot it again.”

“Mom!” Lumpy shouted. “My Kmart COD come?”

Janet bent over the stove, tasting the soup. She pointed.
“Takanna!
By the bed.” Lumpy ducked into Janet and Melt's heaped bedroom and came out with a box. “So, how's them dogs I give you, Cutuk? How about Mike?”

Janet glanced up. “Lumpy never tell you? That dog's funny. When it was puppy kids put it forty seconds in microwave.”

Lumpy opened the door, wadded his glove onto his bent fingers, grabbed his box, and went out.

Janet sighed. “I guess he won't eat.” She took an Eskimo Pie out of the freezer, cut it with her
ulu,
and gave half to Whitney-Houston and half to Daisy. She clicked the TV off and sat down.
“Arii.”

The CB made gasping sounds. “Help me!” a young girl screamed. “Help me, somebody!” Her voice turned wild, a primal scream.

“That's Sara Skuq!” Janet leaned forward. “She was go Anchorage to bleach her teeth for school pictures.”

“Sara!” Her mom shouted from a CB, somewhere, high, her voice hoarse. “Sara? You
shudup!”
The CB went silent.

“The meeting was about teaching Eskimo,” I said quietly.

“You kids need to speak Iñupiaq. Better than last meeting, that white lady tape-recording women's traditional work.” Janet giggled. “I told her, ‘Women work, too much.'”

“Not words only. Eskimo everything.”

A fly buzzed in the kitchen, wings frozen in the window ice. Outside, the temperature was falling. Daisy was still on my lap; chocolate and ice cream ran down her arms in big muddy drops. I felt more exhausted than I could remember; Abe and Anchorage hugely distant; the land somewhere not real. I got a rag and wiped Daisy's hands, then went and melted the fly loose.
Take advantage, mister fly, of your abilities to hibernate, and fly.

I yawned. “I'm tired. I'm going up to Iris's.”

“Cutuk.” Janet peered seriously. “That pox. Lumpy get Aqua Net. Those boys been drink it. Melt even always drink that kind. You need to let them quit.”

 

 

AN EAST BREEZE BLEW
thirty-below air down the Kuguruk Valley. The Darkness was boundless, the bottom rim of outer space. Two houses behind
Aana
Mable's stood Lumpy and Stevie's house. Three Polaris snowgos and an Arctic Cat were parked on the snow, the modern machines
sleek and predatory. Figures rushed into the cold-fogged
qanisaq.
Inside, the room was gutted, the faces blue in the TV wash. A battered television sat on a fifty-five-gallon drum, snowmobile shocks and scored pistons and a moose hoof piled beside it. Rifles and a shotgun leaned in a corner. A chain saw lay on the kitchen linoleum. The air smelled like cornstarch and gassy gloves, sour meat and cigarette residue.