Between Two Worlds (16 page)

“Mitti Peary,” Bag of Bones began. “We didn’t find the lieutenant. We didn’t get to the fort, or anywhere close.”

“Then where have you been all this time?”

“Only a few days away from the beach. Travel to the interior is impossible, Mitti Peary. We sheltered ourselves
during the storm. And we had a
nanoq
to track. We worked hard to get that bear.”

Angulluk shot Bag of Bones a warning glance.

“I see,” she said stiffly. “I gave you all valuable guns and you didn’t even try to find Lieutenant Peary.”

“It’s winter,” I said angrily. “It’s our way to follow animals. It’s not our way to walk long distances in blinding snow and storms.”
Her love for her husband is a dangerous thing
, I realized.
Because of it, she can justify anything
.

Angulluk, with a cup of tea in his hands, looked at Bag of Bones and frowned. Marie, red-faced, slipped onto Mitti Peary’s lap. She began to cry. “I want my dad!” Mitti Peary took her away, and my husband put down his empty mug. “I’m ready to go back to the village. Find your belongings and put on your
kapatak
, woman.
Qaa, qaa!
” He spoke as any hunter would, in the same tone that he used on his dogs.

The pungent smoke of three faraway cooking fires met us as we approached the shore. The orange flames stood out in the darkness, rising above the igloos. The feast for the
nanoq
had already begun!

On the beach, a pack of dogs fought for entrails, bones, and bloody scraps. Angulluk pointed at one of our puppies. “How large he’s grown!”

“It’s true,” I said. How could I have spent so much time on the ship that I hardly recognized our own pack?
I’d barely given the dogs a thought. Tooth Girl’s family had been feeding them.

We made our way toward the towering fires of crackling blubber and dried mosses. In the center of the village between the houses rose a high scaffold of stones, where the hunters had hung great slabs of
nanoq
meat on a rack. Holding knives, people crowded around steaming pots. Some sat, others stood, eating chunks of meat. The flames of the fires climbed high over their heads. How strange, yet familiar and exciting, it all felt after many nights of sitting with a knife and fork at a table.

I followed Angulluk into one of the crowded shelters. In the darkness, I could only see faces of those closest to the spitting flames. It was hard to recognize anyone. Soot from the fire blackened their cheeks and mouths. The aroma of blood mixed with the smoke. Angulluk took a knife and speared a chunk of meat from the pot. We passed the juicy, hot meat back and forth, chewing lustily.

How proud I was of Angulluk; how glad I was to see him.

I hadn’t even said good-bye to Duncan, but my sadness passed in the closeness of all the people.

A short, hooded figure slipped in beside me. Fat and oil dribbled down his cheeks.

“I helped to kill the
nanoq
,” Bag of Bones said.

“So I’ve heard. You’re making something of yourself.”

I let him tell the story again. “I threw my harpoon. Once, twice! Growling, the bear towered on hind legs,
glaring at me.” He imitated the bear. “Piugaattoq shot the bear in the chest. Then Angulluk finished it.”

Angulluk gestured. “Piugaattoq’s eating the liver. He earned it.”

Piugaattoq sat with Ally; Sammy was in his mother’s hood. Blood and soot smeared his face. By now he was a fat toddler, his hair long as the fur of a baby musk ox.

A dipper of water was going around. Angulluk drank and handed it to me; then I passed it on to Piugaattoq. Ally squeezed blood from a piece of meat into the empty dipper for Sammy.

We ate and ate until we were completely full.
This is the way life is supposed to be
, I thought.
Feasting, sharing fresh meat, not canned mush
. And the
nanoq
fur would make a coat and new pair of trousers for Piugaattoq. There would be leftover for my husband’s clothes.

Angulluk pressed in close. He never left my side. He picked up one of the last pieces of meat from the pot. “Take it.”

“It’s yours,” I said. But he put it into my mouth.

When the meat was gone, we passed around the dipper and drank the hearty broth.

“Come,” Angulluk said. “We’ll bring the empty pot out to the dogs.”

“First I want to put my things in the tent.” We left the bonfire and walked past the row of rock igloos. Whale oil smoke filtered out of them; they were warm and cozy. But ours was dark and cold.

I set down my bag. “You’ve been gone for a long time.” I had remembered my anger toward him. “Fat One! You said you wouldn’t leave me on the ship for more than a few nights.”

“I wanted to come back, but the snow was very deep. I’m here now!”

He put the pot down and we rubbed noses. I took his hand and pushed open the flap of our igloo. “Come inside, Angulluk,” I said.

“I have to tend to the dogs. You light the lamps and I’ll be right back.”

I yanked his arm and pulled him into the tent. “The dogs don’t need to lick that pot right now.”

“I need to tie them—”

“They can wait,” I said. “I want you. Now!”

He smiled and grabbed me. Still wearing our furs, we rolled into the tent. As he began to tug at my
kapatak
, I felt the cold. “Let’s light the lamps,” I said. But Angulluk kept on pulling off my furs.

“Even the ship would be warmer than this tent,” I said.

“But you don’t want to be on that ship. You’re glad to be with me, Eqariusaq. Aren’t you?”

I was. A surprising thought came to me:
I’ll stay in the village with Angulluk from now on. I won’t return to the ship. Not for a long time, maybe not ever again
.

That was what I wanted to believe.

For an entire week, the moon shone bright and silvery in a clear sky, as if to welcome Angulluk. Our lives fell into a comfortable rhythm, though we lived in deep winter’s shadow, when death often comes, when people as well as animals can freeze. I liked seeing the village and the frozen sound by moonlight, and smelling the burning seal fat in our lamps, the soft lights they cast; the white man’s lanterns had been too bright. At night, Angulluk and I enjoyed each other’s company in the warm, fur-lined darkness and I pushed away thoughts of Duncan.

I’d told Angulluk that I suspected something terrible had been done to my parents in America. “Maybe they’d had to take off their clothes, pose for photographs. The sailors said that Minik
saw
something. What could have upset him?”

“I don’t know.” Angulluk agreed with Duncan that the sailors were stupid men who told lies. “After everything that has happened, how can you not hate Peary?”

I didn’t completely understand it myself. “He wasn’t responsible for my parents’ deaths. He wasn’t there.” I could never truly hate Peary, who was so friendly, or Mitti
Peary. Though she’d sent Angulluk on a mission in which he could have died, she’d acted out of desperation. Neither she nor her husband seemed to do bad things on purpose. Or did they?

“You’re far too forgiving of the
qallunaat
,” Angulluk said.

“You may be right.”

After that conversation, I noticed he insulted me less. He didn’t talk of trades. We spent all our time alone together or with his friends, sledding the snow-beaten trail to the valley to check our fox traps and searching for the elusive herd of musk oxen. Then one day, Duncan and two other crewmen, rifles on their shoulders and sacks on their backs, appeared in the village. The sailors wanted to hunt, and they chose Angulluk, of all people, to be their guide!

I didn’t volunteer to go. It was too awkward to see Duncan and my husband together. Before the men set off, Duncan and I talked in low voices.

“The captain is sending us for musk oxen,” he said.

“I didn’t know you knew how to hunt.”

“I’m a poor shot.” He shrugged. “But food is running low and our skills as sailors are worthless now. And the captain will give me what I need to—”

He looked at me hard. The silence revolved between us like swirling snow. “Billy Bah, would you be willing to—” he started, then broke off. “We have to go now.”

Did he want me to divorce Angulluk?

I watched as the men set out. If only the Fat One’s brothers could see him, at the reins of the dogsled, proudly leading the
qallunaat
across the snow fields in search of a great prize. The group came back empty-handed that night. The Fat One, puffed up, tried for musk oxen for the next eight days. Most times Duncan went with him.

I used any excuse to stay behind. Navarana’s family needed me, I said, which was true. The old grandmother lay in bed with a fever, and in the meantime, Mikihoq could hardly keep up with her chores.

One afternoon, just as I was gutting a seal on the ice with Mikihoq, I heard the barking of an approaching dog team. Angulluk, Bag of Bones, Duncan, and the other men trekked toward the village, while Angulluk drove a sled full of musk ox fur and meat.

“We killed two!” he said. “Men from the village took in two others.”

Bag of Bones told us, “Angulluk killed both musk oxen with just a few bullets. I helped to bring down one of them.”

My husband grinned at me. “Come, woman! We’ll feast in the village tonight!”

I jumped for joy.
“Kiiha!
Someone has worked hard to bring home tasty meat.”

Duncan gave me an angry look when he saw me rub noses with my husband. He and the other
qallunaat
followed the crowd at a distance as we moved toward the village. Angulluk steered the heavy sled, which overturned
as the path inclined, and then there was a dogfight. Angulluk shouted and swung the long dog whip, while Bag of Bones and I kicked the dogs to keep them from eating the meat. One bit Bag of Bones and he fell back, blood streaming from his nose. He struggled to get up. Villagers ran down to help us.

In the meantime, another group of hunters arrived with their own full sled. There was such a crowd, and I was so busy pulling back the dogs, cursing at them, then lifting slabs of the heavy meat, that I hardly noticed Duncan and the crewmen standing by themselves, Duncan turned away from the others.

With the dogs under control, Duncan stepped forward. “Come to me soon, Billy Bah,” he said quietly, “for a day, or a few nights?”

I stood back, but looked into his eyes. “I can’t come to the ship alone,” I managed to say in a low voice. “I belong to Angulluk.” Then, “I’m sorry. Good-bye.”

Duncan knitted his brows. Angulluk scowled at him, then at me.

Duncan and Angulluk started over the ice to take meat to the ship, crossing from one world to another. Of course the sailors wanted meat, but now I saw that Duncan had become a hunter and chosen Angulluk to be his teacher in an attempt to see more of me. Duncan had a plan; he was ready to do something—and if he did, I feared the two men would fight.

As the day went on, after I helped cut the meat and
smelled it cooking, my heart turned toward Angulluk. He’d provided well for the village, and I couldn’t wait to share in his happiness. Feasting was one of life’s greatest pleasures, and no
qallunaaq
could ever truly understand what it was to us.

Angulluk returned as the feast was starting. It didn’t take long to finish off the musk oxen. We picked the ribs clean and boiled the tongues. Then we crushed the bones and boiled down the fat, opened the skulls, and boiled the hooves into soup. I took broth to old Navarana, lying ill in her igloo.

She sent me away before I could visit for long. “Go to your husband. The proud hunter is waiting for you.”

With full stomachs, we felt strong enough to face the storm that began that evening. Wind and snow blew fiercely for three days. Angulluk and I were glad to stay in the igloo. In the darkness, I spoke his name. Perhaps it was finally time for me to stop calling him the Fat One.

“You are a good enough hunter to feed not only a village but a ship full of
qallunaat
as well,” I said. “Are you going to provide for us from now on? Or will we still live on birds’ eggs when we return home?”