Over the Darkened Landscape (20 page)

You don’t venture to the Arctic for a year without doing preparatory reading. Thank God I’m still lucid enough to entertain myself, I think, and give a frantic little chuckle in time with my shivering.

I close my eyes, keep them so for minutes, perhaps longer. I picture my grandpa fighting weather like this and winning, tough old bastard not knowing how to give up. Probably a shit-load smarter than his grandson, though.

The dogs again, howling and barking. And closer this time.

I try to open my eyes, but they are crusted shut. It won’t help the situation, but I peel off one mitt to wipe away the ice and snow, not even feeling the cold on my hand now. Both eyes open now, I see that I’m in another strange weather pocket, that the blowing snow has disappeared once again. And there is another lamp, this one bouncing through the air as someone carries it.

A yell for help comes out as a croak, and so I force myself up to my butt, not sure when I ended up lying on my side, then slowly push up to my knees, then standing, balancing with my still-ungloved hand. I cast about for the mitt for several seconds, knowing I’ll need it, forgetting it is clipped to my sleeve. When I finally find it and painfully slip it back over my hand, the light has stopped moving, not more than twenty feet away.

I can see now as I approach that there are two, smaller one holding the lamp while the other looks at the body of the Scandinavian who killed himself. I drop to my knees beside his body, directly across from them. “Please help,” I whisper.

“He’s still alive, Pete,” says the larger man. “I don’t know how, but we can’t leave him out here. Go get a sled so you can give me a hand getting him back to the cabin.”

Pete, I see, is young, just barely a teenager. His eyes are wide with fright, but he nods his head and turns to run, carrying the pool of light away with him.

“Pete’s a good son,” says the man, barely visible now. “Works well on the lines, big help with chores around the cabin. Too young for this, though.”

I nod, unable to speak.

“He liked Boris. Cried all night after the Constable came by on his sled and told us he’d been shot by Skinner. Wish they’d catch that son of a bitch.”

The light comes bouncing back now, Pete pulling a sled behind him. Dogs still bark, somewhere in the distance.

“Good,” says the man, standing. “Let’s get him on it and back to the cabin.”

Feeling grateful, I stand, but before I can take one step towards the sled the two of them are bending over and picking up the body of the Scandinavian. They gently lower him onto a bed of pelts, then Pete grabs the lamp and his father grabs the rifle and they start pulling the sled.

Shocked, I stand there for a second, blinking as I watch them begin to fade into the inky blackness. But only for a second, and then I am stumbling along behind them, trying mightily to raise my voice above a whisper, desperate for help and to know why they are ignoring me.

The sled appears heavy, and even in my condition I am soon able to pass them. I step in front of the older man, but he does not acknowledge me, just pushes me to the side like he knows I am there but is unable to see me. Like the Scandinavian did to me.

By now something is tickling the back of my mind, something that I know is there, but I can’t find it, can’t work my way through the fog of intense cold and desperate need. I try two more times to get the man’s attention, once his son’s, getting the same result each attempt. Bewildered by their reactions, I resort to just following, leaning on the back of the sled for support and to make sure I don’t close my eyes for a few seconds and lose track of them.

Soon we are at a small cabin, smoke drifting from a small chimney pipe, warm glow of light shining through a few badly-sealed cracks in the wall. I can still hear the dogs, but none appear to my sight.

Pete opens the door and lays the lamp on the floor, just off to the side. Then he comes back and takes the Scandinavian’s legs, and he and his father heft the man’s body into the cabin and lay it on a bedroll. Addled as my brain may be, I am not willing to let this opportunity go by, and so I step through the door just behind them, watch as Pete steps around me without acknowledging my presence to close it.

Blessed warmth! I pay no more attention to my companions or my surroundings, instead get as close as I can to the cook stove that sits in the center of the single room, painfully peel off each mitt and hold my raw, blistered hands so close that I am almost touching the metal. My shivering attacks with renewed force, and I can hear myself emitting a steady stream of hoarse nonsense syllables; “Buh-buh-buh-fuh-fuh-fuh-vuh-vuh-vuh-kuh-kuh-kuh,” and on, unable to control myself. I feel a desperate need to piss, overload on my kidneys from my surface blood vessels constricting and forcing fluids towards the center of my body in a last-ditch effort to retain my core temperature. But I squint and with an effort hold it back, not wanting to wet myself until I know whether or not I am in the midst of a hypothermic hallucination.

I hear noise, wrenching me back to this strange world I find myself in. Now that they have placed him on the floor, the Scandinavian has miraculously sprung to life, screaming in agony and twisting his body this way and that, shouting unintelligible words to the air, eyes delirious and unseeing.

It is all he can do for the father to hold him down. “Pete,” he yells, “Get me the medicine bag!”

The boy jumps to obey, grabs a caribou-hide bag from beside a small pile of pelts. He delivers it, obviously frightened, and then his father directs him to get a pot and melt some snow. This he does as well, stepping outside for a few seconds and then coming in, once again stepping around me like he knows I’m there but can’t let me in on the secret. The snow quickly melts on the hot stove, and then Pete puts on one of his mitts and carries it over to where the Scandinavian is still thrashing about.

“Swede!” yells the father. Part of me smiles at the obvious name. “You’re hurt bad, Swede, and I don’t know if I can do anythin’ to help. But I gotta try!” He pulls a small red-tinged bottle from the bag, whispers “I’m sorry” and pulls the cap off with his teeth, still manhandling Swede to try to keep him in place. Then he pulls some cotton from the bag, and pours the liquid onto it. Iodine. He dips this cotton into the water, then swabs Swede’s wound with it, rubs it around the edges of the wound first, then replenishes it and daubs it directly onto the man’s leaking brains.

The ensuing screams and howls of protest are worse than I would have guessed possible for a man at death’s door. He jumps and thrashes with renewed vigor, crying and moaning and shouting to God. The father calls for his son to bring whiskey and a bottle is fetched, and with some effort he manages to pour some down Swede’s throat.

Eventually, stepping in time to my warming, Swede settles into a fitful, painful sleep. He lies there mumbling, twisting his arms or his body now and again, but still enough that the father can step away from him and take a drink himself.

I’m sitting now, head leaning forward as I fight off exhaustion. So tired that I almost miss the next thing the father says.

“You’ll have to go get Walker.”

It sinks in, and my head snaps up. I stare at him, trying to decipher if I heard what I think I did.

Pete shakes his head. “Uh-uh. I ain’t goin’.”

“You have to. We’ll need a witness for when the Constable can come up.”

“Nothin’doin’.”

His father stands from the floor, looks down at Swede. “It’s eight miles to their cabin. If you won’t go, then I’ll do it.”

Pete’s eyes are wide with fear now. “Uh-uh. I ain’t stayin’.”

His father runs his hand through his hair. I can see him fighting to be reasonable with a scared boy, but angry that he can’t do more. “All right, then. We’ll hitch up the dogs and both go. You get out there and get them ready while I try to clean up a touch.”

Pete dresses himself for the weather and is out the door in a shot. I try to watch the father as he wipes things up and then stokes up the fire, but the heat and the ordeal are making me drowsy. I feel my head tilt forward, and then lose sense of time.

I hear the door of the cabin slam shut, start awake realizing that they must be leaving. Dogs are barking again, this time with excitement. I’m sure they are going to my cabin, or near it, and so I jump and go to the door, wrestling into my mitts, hoping they can give me a ride back.

A hand grabs my ankle, and I stop mid-stride. Looking down, I see that Swede has a hold of me.

“I’m dying,” he whispers, the damage done by the bullet making him barely intelligible; I can see his tongue flapping behind the hole in his cheek. “Sit with me, angel. Keep me company.”

I don’t know what to say or do for several seconds, but the receding sound of the dogs snaps me out of it. “What did you call me?”

He moans. “Angel. I saw you just before I pulled the trigger, when you weren’t there before. God sent you,” he inhales, shuddering. “God sent you to stop me. Too late. My fault. Please sit with me while I die.”

Stunned, I sit on the floor.

“Talk to me,” he whispers, eyes rolling back so he can see me.

“About what?” Foolish question, but I feel at a complete loss about what to do right now.

“Heaven.” He tries to smile.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Swede. I don’t know anything about heaven. I’m not an angel, I’m just a man who got lost in the Arctic. I thought I was going to die.”

He grunts. “Angel, man. My fault for not seeing you.” He starts to cry now, sobbing like a child feeling true loss for the first time. “I’m sorry, Boris. I should have been there, shot him before he shot you.”

One last breath, and then he’s still.

And God help me, I still have to piss. But I’m deathly afraid to leave this cabin, afraid I won’t be able to get back in. Gingerly, I remove Swede’s hand from where it remains laying on my foot, stand up and sway unsteadily for a moment, then spot the piss can over on a stump in a corner.

This operation takes more energy than I would have imagined, and so when done, I add more wood to the fire and then curl up on the floor.

The door slams open, letting cold and daylight into the cabin. I roll over and sit up too fast, my head swimming.

“Jesus, the stove’s still hot,” says the first one in the door, Pete’s father. Pete is right behind him, and then two other men, both slowly peeling off their winter gear as they stare down at Swede’s body.

“He’s dead for sure, now,” says the taller of the two. He pulls back his hood and unwraps his scarf, and I blink, thinking
It can’t be
.

The slighter one behind him does the same, and I gasp, knowing him not only from pictures, but from an older face, one that stood the tests of time for longer than this one. Matt Walker.

Grandpa.

He looks to the other man, obviously Mike Walker, his father, my great-grandfather. A man who died years before I was born. “What now?”

Mike, Great-Grandpa, looks to Pete’s father. “What do you think, Joe? Ground’s frozen, we can’t plant the sorry S.O.B. But you sure as hell don’t want him in here getting higher than week-old caribou.”

Joe, obviously Joe March, scratches his head. “Guess we gotta leave him outside ’til the snow melts. I got an old tarp we can sling over him.”

“Cover that with spruce boughs,” says Grandpa. If I recall correctly, he’s only about twenty-one right now. “Keep the smell down so the dogs won’t go after him.”

“Same’s the wild animals,” says Joe.

“The dogs will try to eat him?” asks Pete. He looks concerned by this.

“Sure,” says Mike. “It’s just meat for them. And if it’s high, hell, they like it even better.”

“This his bedroll?’ asks Grandpa, toeing the blanket Swede’s body is lying on. Joe nods. “Good. Let’s wrap him in this and take him out, get this started.”

All four bend down to do the work, and I hurry to pull on my hat and mitts, follow them as they walk out into the sunlight. About noon, sun at about twenty degrees over the horizon. It seems unbearably bright, but I can’t find my sunglasses.

“Where?” asks Grandpa. Joe gestures to a spot near some trees, and we all head to where he points. I walk beside Grandpa.

“You know,” I say, knowing he can’t hear me but wanting to speak with him one last time, “I couldn’t be there at the hospital when you died. Stuck in a stupid fucking meeting in another city, nobody even told me you were so sick.” I shake my head. “You were good to me. Fair. I learned a lot just hanging around you, more than I thought I ever learned.” I smile. “Hell, you’re no less talkative right now than you usually were, and yet somehow it all got through.”

They lay the body on the ground, Grandpa and Pete kicking snow over it. Joe runs back to the cabin to get the old tarp, and Mike cuts down some boughs with a knife from his belt. When the body’s properly covered, they all stand in silence for a moment, hoods off and hats in hands. I bare my head as well, wincing at the cold nipping at my frozen ears.

After about a minute, Joe speaks. “Goddam if I won’t miss him and Boris,” he says.

The others nod their heads and follow this statement with “Amen” and “Yup.” Then Joe pulls a bottle from his pocket and takes a pull before passing it on. Even Pete has a drink, albeit a small one. Finally, all four gather small stones, Grandpa piling them into a small marker at the head. A cairn. “This’ll keep until we can do something more permanent,” he says.

They head back down to the cabin then, me still walking beside Grandpa. “Stay a spell?” asks Joe.

Mike shakes his head. “Don’t think so, thanks. I have to get back out onto the line, and Matt needs to run some pelts down to Reliance.”

“I’ll take word about Swede to the detachment there,” says Grandpa. “Talk to Constable Marquardt if he’s back from hunting down Skinner.”

Joe nods. He and Pete shake hands with Grandpa and Great-Grandpa Mike, and I’m almost caught off-guard, they board their dogsleds so quickly. I run over and swing myself onto Grandpa’s sled, settle back and wrap my scarf around my face to fight off the wind.

The dogs are running fast, knowing they’ll be fed when they get back. I lean back on one arm, watch Grandpa as he steers the sled, yelling at the dogs, pushing off with one leg or leaning his body out to keep the sled upright.