Alaskan: Stories From the Great Land. John Smelcer
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they arrived at the house, Two Fists led George to the bathroom and started a hot shower for him. He helped him take off his boots and socks while Victor made a pot of coffee and dried Sam with a towel he found hanging in the kitchen.
“Hey, George,” said Two Fists before he closed the bathroom door, “don’t forget to put something on those scratches when you’re done. Damn dog got your face pretty good.”
The two men sat in the kitchen drinking coffee laced with shots of whiskey from Victor’s flask until George finally came out wearing a bathrobe and warm house slippers.
“I want thank you guys,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table.
Two Fists poured a cup of coffee and slid it toward the man.
“Drink up, George. It’ll warm up your insides.”
George drank from the hot cup, holding it with both hands, warming them.
No one said a word after that. It was so quiet that the ticking clock on the wall filled the room.
“Listen George,” said Two Fists after a while. “I’m sorry about what happened, Man. You know, about your kid and all. It was an accident. Maybe we’re even now, eh?”
“Yeah, Man,” said Victor nodding in agreement, “we’re real sorry about what happened. We didn’t even see her until it was too late. Shit happens, you know?”
George stared into his cup, rubbed a thumb along the rim. He didn’t breathe until the clock’s ticking again filled the room.
“Did you hear us, George?” said Two Fists, placing a hand on George’s arm. “We said we was sorry.”
“I’m tired,” said George without looking up. “I think I’ll take a nap.”
The two men stood, gathering up their coats from behind the chairs.
“That’s a good idea, George. You get some rest,” said Victor. “We gotta get going anyhow.”
Two Fists turned before he closed the door.
“Remember, George,” he said. “We’re even now.”
He closed the door, and a moment later George could hear the sound of snow crunching beneath tires as the van backed into the road and drove away. He sat at the kitchen table. After a while, he got up and walked into his daughter’s room. He sat on her bed holding a picture that was taken on her sixth birthday. In the photograph, Tabby is holding the puppy against her chest, while George and his wife are kneeling beside her with their arms around her. Everyone is smiling.
Sam ambled in, his nails clicking on the wood floor, and plopped down on the hook rug with a sigh.
George knelt beside the dog and petted him. He wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck and held his head close to his own, weeping for all he had lost. He wept for the long-abandoned bird nest that was his heart.
The dog occasionally licked the man’s face.
Later, as the sun began to set, George got up, wiped his face, dressed, and put on a dry coat, boots, and a hat. He called to the dog, still sleeping on the floor.
“Come on, Boy. Let’s go for a ride.”
The dog followed him outside and, when George opened the creaking door, jumped into the truck. At ten ripe years, jumping up onto the bench seat was getting harder and harder for Sam.
George drove to the pond with Sam sitting on the seat beside him, watching the white world pass by. The night was clear, and the moon shone with a hard-edged clarity, casting shadows. When they arrived, George parked along the edge of the road, near to where the blue van had pulled over. Although it was dark, he could see the footprints leading out to the pond, see them vanish at the thinly-frozen place where he and Sam had fallen through. For several minutes he sat in the warm truck and stared at the scarred surface of the pond. He was struck by how the recently formed ice gave the appearance of something solid, solid enough to bear a man’s weight. He laid a gentle hand on Sam’s head. The dog turned and looked into the man’s eyes.
George climbed out and let the dog jump down. He reached behind the seat and pulled out his rifle, checked to make sure it was loaded.
“Let’s go for a walk, Boy,” he said, without looking at the dog.
Eagerly, the dog trotted toward the pond, occasionally turning around to make sure he had not lost the man.
Darkness
Andrew Angiak struggled to lift himself from his thin bed. The steel springs squeaked until he finally sat upright, his bare feet on the floor, which was always cold. This far north, the ground never thawed. Ice penetrated the earth hundreds, even thousands of feet deep. In summer, only the first couple of feet thawed, forming a thin bed of soil on which tundra flowers grew quickly, for the sun lasted briefly here.
The old man bent over, feeling for his slippers. He lit the oil lamp beside his bed and coughed for a long time. Then he checked the oil stove. It was empty again. With little income, the old man had to ration what money he received. He could not afford to keep his house warm all the time. He had to balance the high cost of heat against the high cost of food.
Eat or stay warm—one or the other—never both at the same time.
In the old days, men did not purchase heating fuel. Instead, they earned it through labor hunting whales and rendering fat into oil, which warmed and lit their homes and fed their bellies. There was never a shortage. No family went cold or hungry.
Andrew carefully poured a gallon of oil into the small tank and lit the pilot, turning the knob to its lowest setting. The fire would burn until sometime after noon, then it would die, and the temperature inside would drop until bedtime, when he would again feed the thirsty tank. The old man measured winter by the gallon. Sixty gallons a month sparingly spent, one gallon at a time.
“Five hundred gallons of oil,” he often told the other men in the village. “Spring will be here soon.”
And the other men would begin to prepare for its arrival, mending nets, oiling rifles, tuning outboards, making plans for the short-lived season when the sky releases its burden of light and color. In the old days, all men knew the coming of spring by the shifting of the ice pack, by the way beluga whales arrived from the south following schools of salmon and herring. Back then, men knew how to live off the land, and the land provided to them. Now they remembered only a little.
Andrew looked out his only window, small and frosted. It was dark outside, and the darkness went forever—distant and deep. In the middle of winter, as it was, the sun had not visited the horizon for over a month. Sled dogs lay curled inside their little houses, trying to retain what little heat they could muster, and polar bears nestled in their ice-hewn dens, smelling the relentless wind, their hunger rising. Out of the darkness, the silence of the ice pack mounted toward him. Nothing moved, not even the shivering sled dogs. There was nothing against which to gauge time’s passing.
Nevertheless, it passed.
Still looking out the window, the old man thought of the story of how long ago Raven had brought light to the world, how before that, the world had toiled in darkness. He understood the deepness of such dark. Priests had long ago told him that such stories were childish. Raven was nothing but a black bird. God has no wings. But Andrew liked the old stories. They were of the north. They explained things—why the moon rises and falls, the origin of seals, the northern lights. He wondered what harm there was in their telling.
Once the small heater began to radiate warmth, the old man cut a thick slice of whale fat, which he laid across pilot bread, a thick unsalted cracker popular in the north. He sat a dented kettle of meltwater on the heater, tossing in a single bag of black tea. When it was hot, he drank it slowly in the only cup he owned, looking at the twenty year old calendar hanging on the wall—his only art.
Andrew Angiak was a simple man. He had lived a long, full life—ninety years in fact. He had been a great hunter in his youth, a boat captain on