Over the Darkened Landscape (19 page)

Ken didn’t move. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“The government pays citizens to host prisoners now,” the man said. He frowned as he reached down to scratch around the cuff on his leg. “Cheaper than building new prisons.”

“What’d you do?”

The man gave another toothy, hungry smile, held out the cup like he was offering a reward. “Get me that drink of water and I’ll tell you.”

Clink
.
Clank
.

Scrape
.

Northwest Passage

I
stand on the shoreline and watch as the plane races across the lake, waves slapping at its floats. The pilot guns the engine, the whine of the propellers rises in pitch, and then it heaves itself into the air. The plane banks to the right, still over the lake, then the pilot waggles his wings. I wave in return, then watch and listen as it fades out of sight and hearing.

The wind is a bit blustery and cool today, but the sun is shining and it is certainly no worse than I might have been expecting. I pull the canoe farther up onto the rocky shore, then grab some gear from the great pile of it on the ground and load it into the canoe. A nearby copse of awkward-looking trees will provide shelter from the wind for the night, I hope, and so I drag the canoe across the ground, straining against the weight on the rope and against the wind.

There is indeed a small clearing, enough to pitch my tent. I flip the canoe on its side to act as a windbreak, then get the tent up and tied down. After that, I dig a hole for the fire, gather wood, then start it up and get to work on supper. Hunched in behind the canoe I only feel the wind in its brief forays as a Southerly, and the sun will remain in the sky to quite late tonight.

From my pack I pull out my grandpa’s diary and read, pausing only to top up my coffee or stand and look around whenever I hear a twig crack or another unfamiliar sound of nature, so far away from home.

*

For ten years, at the peak of the Depression, my grandpa was a trapper up North. It was here on Artillery Lake where he had his trap line, he and his father, one line reaching like a finger due north before looping back south, the other crooking northeast and then southeast, eventually forming a rough diamond.

He told me stories of his life up North, and even in those sullen teen years when he sounded only like a cranky and insignificant old man, a part of me still yearned to hear tales of real-life adventure, although no doubt embellished through years of retelling.

As both of us got older I lost touch with him, me moving to a different city and he folding himself into that private space old age often brings. But those stories stuck with me, and now, looking for a different challenge in my life and even more, a connection with the man grandpa was, I am here.

It is three days since I arrived here, and I believe I am at the location of the cabin where my grandpa and his father once lived. It isn’t much; bushes and stunted trees sticking out from amidst old planks, a circle of blackened stones nearby that signifies a former campfire. The sod roof would have collapsed and disintegrated decades ago, and any furniture they had I suppose they would have either burned near the end, or else took out by dog sled or canoe and barge.

It’s a good spot, better than the one I had chosen. Nearby is a stream, and while the cabin was built up higher, it is still protected by a little hillock and a stand of trees. I break down my campsite and throw as much as I can in the canoe, follow the shore as I ride the choppy waves, spray and foam blowing up against my face and hands. By the end of the fourth trip my fingers are blue, and it is all I can do to pile loose kindling and light a new fire in the old circle of rocks. As I sit there warming up, I imagine that my grandpa and his father sit beside me doing the same, waiting for my say-so to get the camp put together.

When I’m finally warm enough I get the tent back up, moving aside a few old boards to make sure there’s room. Tomorrow I’ll start working on putting together a shelter that’s a little more durable. If I want to stay here for the winter, I could certainly use something more than a thin wall of nylon.

*

There was a cast-iron stove, rusting but still whole, lying in the weeds about fifty yards from camp. After spending over two hours wrestling it a few meager feet, it struck me that I could load it on the toboggan and slide it along. Still a lot of work, but I managed to get it into place, nestled into a bed of rocks and sand. Lying beside it was enough still-good piping to vent it off to the side and out a wall of my little cabin, and for the first time since the seasons began the change-over, I’m warm.

Three walls are wood, the back one is the side of the little hill. The roof sweeps one direction, down from the hill, and the small door I have to crouch to get through is set in the side, near the front. I managed to scrounge most of the wood for the roof, and spent a good three weeks chopping trees and planing logs with the axe, giving myself a good half-hour at the end of each day to sharpen the blade in anticipation of more chopping. Before the snow falls I even manage to construct myself a crude bed. But the stove is the true sign of civilization, in place only days before the first skiff of snow settles in.

Bath night. The lake and stream are all frozen now, so I scoop snow and, sometimes, chopped ice into my two buckets, melt them on the stove. I stand there, naked except for my boots, lather up my hair and soap up my body, then reach blindly for the second bucket and dash out the door into the minus-thirty-odd night, gasping in relief from the almost oppressive heat and steam that are built up, then gasping even louder as the cold penetrates the hot water I am pouring over my head and body. Then back inside, dry myself by standing by the stove, picking newly formed icicles from my eyebrows and beard.

When I’m all done, I settle down on the edge of the bed for some fresh caribou steak and canned peaches.

Eight miles or so from the cabin is the former camp of a compatriot of my grandpa’s, a man named Joe March. I have read in the diary how their paths would cross once in a while, and there is mention of some dark moment where their lives intersected, murder and mayhem hinted at, although it is nothing he expands on, and nothing he ever mentioned to me. What the diary does have is a sketched map and a set of directions to both the camp and to something he calls the “cairn.” I had not imagined I would be curious about this, but now that my northern life has settled into a routine, I find that I am.

And so I load up the toboggan with my tent, my sleeping bag, emergency supplies and food. Then I wax my skis and strap them on, sling my rifle across my back, and with one more check of the GPS unit in my pocket and the compass and map draped around my neck, head out.

The day is splendid, the sun out and low on the horizon, not a cloud in the sky. This time of year I should still have enough light to make it to the old camp and find a place to pitch my tent for the night.

Twice in the distance I see Arctic fox or hare, hard to discern white on white from such a distance. Too far for me to haul out my rifle, not that I have terrible need for food right now anyway.

My grandpa told me a story once, of he and his father and this Joe March and his son, riding their dog sleds, coming off a trap line and sliding out onto the frozen, snowy lake. There was a mother caribou and her calf, bounding through the snow and aiming for the shelter of trees, about a thousand yards away.

Grandpa reached down, still riding the back of his sled, and pulled out his rifle. The others laughed at him, told him he was crazy to think he could hit anything from such a distance. But he didn’t listen, jumped from the sled, and with the rifle held against his hip and still running from the momentum, let off a shot.

“Dropped that goddam mother with a bullet right through the spine,” he told me. “Shut up those sons of bitches real quick.” Then they rode to where she lay, warm blood melting and staining the crusty snow, and finished off the calf, standing and bleating helplessly for its mother to stand.

Food for them and for the dogs.

I had expressed doubt about this tale sometime later, talking with my father. Dad just laughed, and told me how Grandpa would knock the puff off a dandelion from fifty yards, and point out how every hunting season he was able to come home with a good-sized moose in the back of the truck.

*

A storm is brewing. The wind has picked up, more often than not raking rock-hard pellets of snow against my face, and the clouds are building swiftly. I hunch over to peer at my GPS unit, compare it briefly to the map while holding a flashlight in my teeth, then swear as I angle myself more towards the north. Fighting this I must have veered away from the winds.

It is now getting dark, the sun dropping below the horizon earlier and faster every day. I should have been there, or at least nearby, an hour or more ago. I make for shadowy shapes that I hope are trees, swearing at the toboggan, which feels more and more like nothing but dead weight.

And then I see a light, waving and blinking through the blowing snow. Not too distant, I think. I try shouting, but doubt that I am heard. Still wrestling with the toboggan, wax on my skis no longer gaining me much purchase, I fight my way through small patches of pine, limbs all pointing in one direction from flagging, trying their best to impale me as I slip and slide.

Now I can hear dogs barking, yips and moans and howls coming in brief snatches through the wind. Exhausted, I stop and tie the toboggan to a tree, anxiously wrap the yellow nylon rope around a high branch, then kick off my skis and stand them up next to it, quickly remove my ski boots and slide my numbing feet into my Sorels.

I mark my position with the GPS, and then I march towards the light, listening to the dogs.

The light has disappeared. I have been walking in what I hope is an ever-shrinking circle for the past half-hour or so, but even that is no guarantee. The cold has affected the batteries and the LCD in the GPS unit, and my last glance at it provided only a blank screen, black draining in a tiny pool in one corner. It should have stayed warm in my pocket, but like everything else, it isn’t working for me any more.

I stop and scan for any sign of horizon, but I see nothing but black and white; in close, distant, who can tell? Too damn stubborn to lie down and succumb, I trudge onwards.

*

The light again, this time sitting still, accompanied by the sound of more dogs and by the report of a rifle shot. I hurry towards the sound, falling once but catching myself before planting my face in the hard snow, getting back up as quickly as I can.

The light proves to be an oil lamp, sitting on the ground. I move out of the wind and into a pocket of relative calm, no snow blowing and seemingly less on the ground. Dogs can still be heard in the distance, but I see none. No sign either of who owns the lamp or who fired the shot.

I stand for a moment, staring at the lamp, bewildered by both the sudden change in weather and by this light, sitting alone in the middle of nothing. And then I hear a sound behind me, and I turn.

He’s a large man, taller than me by a head, broad at the shoulders, dressed in fur and wearing mukluks. He is carrying a rifle, cradling it really, and there are tears in his eyes, glistening in the light of the oil lamp. Long blond hair sticks out from beneath his hood, and his slight beard is moist with half-frozen tears and snot.

Before I can say anything he hefts the rifle, points it straight into the air, pulls the trigger. The blast sets the distant dogs to barking again, and the man joins them in a howl that sounds so much of pain and loss that my gut, even my bowels, tightens up into a desperate knot.

“Joe!” he yells, holding the rifle close to his chest again. His accent sounds Scandinavian. “Help me, Joe! Joe!” The last time he shouts this name he drags it out, turns it into another howl to join the unseen dogs.

I stagger over to him, sure now that I am witnessing someone despondent over something, drunk perhaps, suicidal for sure. “Hey!” I yell, thinking maybe I can redirect his thoughts by getting him to help me. “Can you help me?”

He looks up from staring at his rifle, looks me straight in the eyes. Then he whispers, “Oh, Boris, I miss you so. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there.” He sobs, wipes snot away from his nose, turning his sleeve stiff and shiny as it freezes. “Murdering bastard,” he growls, and lifts the rifle again.

I move to stop him, try to push the gun to the side, but without even looking at me he pushes me away and as I slip on the snow he slides his mouth over the barrel. “No!” I yell, rolling and scrambling to my feet, and as I rush towards him he looks me in the eyes again, and this time his own eyes go wide just as he pulls the trigger.

The roar of the rifle is muted, and I watch helplessly as the bullet tears open the side of his head, his jaw and cheek and ear vaporizing in a spray of blood and flesh and bone. The rifle slips from his hands and he slowly tumbles backwards, falling to the snow with his arms spread wide. Bits of brain hang from his skull, and the snow there is almost black with the lamp sitting on the ground on the other side of him.

“Jesus,” I say, and go to see if he’s dead, although there can be no doubt, and then the pocket of calm disappears and the storm moves in again, and just like that I can see nothing more than my hand in front of my face, and the lamp seems to have been blown out with this latest gust. I walk ten paces, know that I have gone too far, stop and pull out my flashlight. It only helps to light up snowflakes whipping by at a right angle to the ground.

I stagger like this for what seems to be more than an hour, sheen of sweat building into layers of ice on my face, hands and then feet slowly deadening with the cold. Finally I can go no further, and I sit on the snow, wondering how long I’ll have until hypothermia begins to settle in. A part of my mind views this situation with analytical detachment, going over what I can expect.

The exertion I’ve gone through has warmed me, but in the process has pulled heat away from my core. Sweat freezes and stays frozen now, chilling me even more. Soon I know my core temperature will plummet, a degree Fahrenheit every half-hour or so. Two hours to partial amnesia, another hour to apathy, thirty more minutes to a stupor. Two hours after that I’ll stop this infernal shivering, and all of my organs apart from my kidneys will begin preparing to shut down. Another two hours and my heartbeat will become irregular, and then thirty minutes after that I may feel like I’m burning, so much that I’ll begin to strip off my clothes to escape the flames and heat.