Otherwise (36 page)

While we watched the passing parade of caribou, a human figure appeared over a distant ridge and trotted toward us. It was Ohoto’s cousin, Halo, also bearing gifts, including a
tuglee
, a delicately carved woman’s hair ornament of antler bone that he shyly gave Fran. He told us most of the other men were close behind.

By midnight the cabin was bulging. In addition to Ohoto and Halo, Fran found herself entertaining Alekahaw, Ootek, Onekwa, Yaha, and Yaha’s six-year-old son, Alektaiuwa. The stove glowed as Fran produced a torrent of tea, not just steeped but boiled in a five-gallon pail and served in whatever mugs, pots, and old tin cans could be found. Andy and I provided tobacco, and every Inuit, including young Alektaiuwa, lit up a stone pipe.

For a young woman from a middle-class Toronto milieu, Fran not only appeared surprisingly at ease, she seemed to be having the time of her life. Despite the fact that she spoke not a word of Inuktitut, and none of the Ihalmiut but Ohoto had a word of English, she and our guests got along so famously that the Great Inaugural Tea Party, as we later called it, lasted until dawn, when we finally packed our guests off so we could catch a few hours’ sleep.

As more Ihalmiut arrived, they also became Frances’s admirers, guests, and helpers. Ohoto and Ootek took over our fish nets and every morning brought in more trout and whitefish than all of us could use. Others roamed the plains, armed now with new rifles and ample ammunition, and saw to it that our larder was overstocked with meat. Youngsters scoured the Windy River valley for wood to keep the big cook stove glowing and so ensure there would always be tea ”on tap.”

Our social life became positively hectic. Every evening (and at frequent intervals during most days) the cabin would become crowded; tea would flow, and conversation, storytelling, Inuit drum-dancing,
kablunait
singing, laughter, and high spirits would erupt and continue until, having had enough, we would shepherd our ebullient guests out the door and thankfully crawl into our sleeping bags. The Ihalmiut proved themselves indefatigable party-goers.

The boy Alektaiuwa became Fran’s inseparable companion. One day he took her to nearby Soapstone Point to demonstrate his expertise as a hand-line fisher. Using a spinner I had given him, he hooked a twenty-three-pound lake trout that he did not have the strength to pull ashore. He and the fish engaged in a desperate tug-of-war. The fish fought silently but Alex shouted so loudly in his incongruously gruff voice that everyone within hearing turned out to watch the duel.

Alex eventually dragged the great fish to within a few feet of shore where, in a last act of desperation, it snatched the line right out of the boy’s hands. Without hesitation he plunged into the river to grapple with the fleeing fish. When his chilled fingers proved in capable of maintaining a
grip, he sank his teeth into its tail and, sitting shoulder-deep in the fast-flowing and icy water, held on for dear life.

At this juncture Fran fearlessly waded in and stunned the fish with a rock and together, they hauled their prize ashore. Thereafter, boy and woman became such fast friends that on occasion I had to chase the lad out of our room to keep him from sharing the bed with us.

Life for Fran as the centre of attention from ten males (including Tegpa) seemed to imbue her with an energy and vivacity I had not seen before. However, as September drew on the days began to darken. All our Inuit visitors departed for their own camps, armed with new rifles and anxious to get on with the hunt upon which their survival depended. They would have no more time for visiting until late November, when their meat caches should be full and the tuktu herds would have abandoned the Barren Lands.

By then we, too, expected to be gone. The original plan had been to have Gunnar fly us south to Brochet early in October, to take up quarters in the heart of the caribou winter range. But as time passed we began to wonder if this plan could be realized. Since our little radio produced only ominous silence or bursts of crackling static, we had no way of knowing what was happening ”outside” and when, or even if, the Department intended to implement the plan.

Andy and I knew that unless we were flown out before freeze-up we would be stranded at Windy Cabin until the ice on the bay could support a ski-equipped plane.

So while trying to avoid alarming Frances, we began making surreptitious preparations for a prolonged stay. We spent weary hours in the little copses scattered along the river valley cutting and stacking wood to be hauled back to
the cabin on hand sleds once sufficient snow had fallen. Closer to home we netted scores of trout and whitefish. These we gutted, split, and racked to dry or freeze in an outhouse in which we also hung haunches of deer meat and strings of ptarmigan.

Impelled by primal instinct we, like all the Others around us, were working compulsively to ensure survival during the dark and hungry times that would soon be upon us.

We could not conceal what we were doing from Frances and she grew increasingly uneasy. The absence of other human beings, the disappearance of the deer (together with most other visible forms of life), and the imminence of arctic winter heightened her anxiety until she began slipping back into the quagmire of depression that had engulfed her before my visit to Toronto.

She was not the only one of us with problems.

Andy had about had his fill of ”studies in the field” and was itching to return to university to process his data and get on with acquiring his degree. Furthermore, he and I were increasingly at odds over my growing suspicion that science was
not
necessarily the absolute source of truth and understanding. During one of our disagreements about what I had begun to disparagingly refer to as the New Religion, I accused my friend of becoming a ”fact addict.” To which he heatedly replied that I was allowing myself to be led astray by ”sheer emotionalism and an addiction to fairy tales.”

Whatever his reasons (sexual frustration may have been one of them) the gap between us widened until a day late in September when he announced he would not go to Brochet but would return to Toronto when Gunnar came for us.

I ought to have felt bad about this, and how it might affect our friendship but I was more worried that Fran would want to return to Toronto.

As autumn slid precipitately toward winter, Fran took to spending more and more of her time in bed, seemingly immersed in one of our few books. Occasionally I was able to persuade her to go for a short trip in the canoe or a walk over the ridges behind the cabin, where hundreds of cackling ptarmigan were assembling before heading south. However, such interludes gave her no real relief. Only Tegpa seemed able to lighten my wife’s inner darkness.

Andy was now spending most of his waking hours out on the land gathering data about food available to caribou in winter. When at the cabin he isolated himself, doing analysis of tissue samples or identifying and preserving caribou parasites. I chiefly occupied myself with camp chores and with my journals, while remaining ever alert for the distant whine of an aircraft engine.

Meaningful communications among us almost ceased. Tegpa seemed to understand that his little pack was in trouble and did his best to rectify matters. Playing no favourites, he made himself available to each of us on equal terms, providing a conduit between us.

Early in October, after several days of sleet squalls and snow flurries, a clear, bright morning provided an excuse to put some distance between myself and Windy Cabin. Claiming that I needed to examine the inside of the wolf den at Smith House Bay now that they had moved out, I donned my parka, gathered my gear, and launched the canoe. We had no more gas for the kicker but an exhilarating paddle took me to the shore of Smith House Bay, where I
landed and walked half a mile to Wolf Knoll, the high sandy esker that held the den. No wolves were about, nor was there any recent evidence of their presence from which I concluded the den had, indeed, been abandoned for the season.

Setting my rifle aside, I shed parka and sweater, got out a measuring tape and a flashlight (whose batteries were almost exhausted), and began wiggling headfirst into a tunnel just large enough to admit me. The flashlight was so dim I could hardly read the numbers on the tape as I squirmed along, descending at a shallow angle. I had gone about eight feet, with sand in my mouth and eyes and feeling increasingly claustrophobic, when the tunnel abruptly bent to the left.

I pointed the failing beam from the torch around the corner and four green-glowing orbs announced that the den was not empty after all. In a millisecond the companionable feeling I had earlier developed for the wolves of Smith House Bay vanished, to be replaced by pure terror inspired by the absolute conviction I was about to be attacked and torn apart.

Angeline, the alpha female of the Wolf Knoll family, and one of her pups of the year were crouched motionless against the back of the nest cavity staring fixedly at what
they
may well have believed was the approach of death.

They did not move.

They did not so much as growl.

Except for the steadfast glow from their eyes, they might have been figments of my imagination.

But I knew they were not, and panic overwhelmed me. I wriggled backwards up the slanting tunnel as if pursued by devils. My mind seethed with imprecations that I may
have yelled aloud. I am not certain about that now, but I remember with total clarity what I did when I scrambled out of the tunnel’s mouth.

I seized my rifle and began firing point-blank into the tunnel. One – two – three – four roaring explosions to accompany my scream:

”I’ll … blow … your … fucking … heads off!”

The magazine was empty, and I stepped back to reload. Though the wind was blowing chill, a witless fury boiled within me. I was determined to force the wolves into the open, where I would almost certainly have killed them.

Slinging the rifle over one shoulder, I set about gathering branches, twigs, and leaves that I stuffed into the den mouth until it was stoppered almost full. Then I set the mass on fire. As yellow flames licked upward, I fanned them with my parka to drive roiling black smoke into the depths of the den.

No movement and no sound came from within.

As the flash fire burned down, sanity began returning to me. I put the rifle aside, lit a cigarette, and began considering what I had done. There was no avoiding recognition that in this encounter with creatures for whom I had earlier professed feelings of admiration, empathy, and even affection, I had behaved execrably – in fact, murderously. As the cigarette burned down, I began to see just how viciously I had denied all that my experiences with the Others in this land of theirs had taught me about them. And about myself.

Disgusted by what I had done, I stamped out what remained of the fire and again began waving my parka over the den mouth as a fan – this time driving fresh air into it.

When no more wisps of smoke emerged, I crawled back in myself.

As I paddled miserably homeward a wolf howled somewhere to the north – howled lightly, questioningly. I recognized the voice for I had heard it many times before. It was George, the alpha male and pack leader, sounding the Barrens for the absent members of his family.

His was the voice of a lost world. A world and a fellowship that had once been ours.

Until we humans chose the alien role.