Far North (16 page)

After studying the construction of Johnny's hand drum, Raymond had removed the torn drumskin and fitted his new one over Johnny's
birch frame. He reworked the fine spruce roots in a perfect imitation of Johnny's lashing where it ran through the birch frame and crisscrossed on the underside of the drum.

We would work silently for a long while, and then we'd get to talking. Our conversations went on far into the night. Raymond had much more curiosity than I'd ever realized about what life was like down in the States, or “the South,” as he called it. At first I thought he was talking about Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and so on, but then I realized that everything south of the Northwest Territories was “the South” to him. He was trying to picture how big San Antonio was, and I told him it had more than a million people. He kept trying to picture all those houses, all those people, all those cars and freeways. “I don't think I'd want to live there,” he said. “Too many people. What we got up in the North is lots of land.”

I told him about the piece of land close to my grandparents' place, how it used to be covered with hundreds of live oak trees, and how I would always climb into this one certain tree and hang out there. I told him that when they built a big shopping mall on that land, they didn't even save one tree when they made the parking lot.

“How come?” he said.

“Because it was too much trouble, I guess, and would've added cost. To find open land, you have to go farther and farther away.”

He was trying to picture it. Then he asked, “Is it true that people are always shooting each other? Like it looks like on TV?”

“It's in the news every night,” I admitted.

“What about suicide?”

It seemed like a strange question. “I guess it's a big problem,” I said. “I don't know much about it, really.”

Then he talked about growing up in Nahanni Butte, about fixing snowmobiles, about the winter road, about the boat they would use to get back and forth to Fort Simpson in the summer when it was light all night. “What about mosquitoes?” I asked.

“They get real bad in June,” he said. “But the gnats and the blackflies later are worse.”

He went on to tell me all about his family: his mother and his father, his big sister, Monique, who was nineteen and lived with his grandmother, his younger brother, Alfred, who was nine, and his younger sister, Dora, who was seven. In the midst of this, to my surprise, he told me that he wanted to go back to the boarding school at Yellowknife. “I want to graduate from there,” he said. “Not
many kids from Nahanni ever did. I thought I could do it. I knew I was smart enough…. I just didn't have my mind made up strong enough.”

“I'm sure you can,” I said. “I know you can.”

“Johnny thought it was important. Even if it's going to be hard.”

I could tell there was something else he was wanting to say. “What is it?” I asked.

Raymond looked away, then said, “I had an older brother…he got angry a lot. He went to that school in Yellowknife. My parents say he got lost there. They told me to come back if I felt like I was going to get lost.”

“Your brother doesn't come home anymore?” I wondered, all confused.

“He killed himself.”

I felt like all the breath had been knocked out of me. I didn't know how to react. I tried to say something, but I couldn't find any words except “I'm sorry.”

Raymond was looking down at the drum in his hands. “Don't feel sorry about it—that's what my mother says to me. She'd say, ‘Don't feel sorry for him or yourself. You can't change the past. You can only change the future.' She'd say, ‘Just remember, Raymond, life is the greatest gift.' I always thought that was just something she heard
at church. Now I know it's the truth. It's the truest thing there is.”

Then Raymond looked up from the drum and caught my eye. “I'm not going to make it, Gabe.”

He'd said it with such certainty, it scared me bad. “What are you talking about?” I shot back.

“My foot. I'll wait here for you to send somebody back. Maybe they can get a helicopter in here or something.”

“You're kidding,” I said, racing to think of objections. But I could see he wasn't kidding.

“It's been a week. I can't put any weight on it. It's busted up bad. You have to go by yourself.”

“I'll pull you out on the toboggan.”

He was shaking his head. “It's too far. It's too much to pull, with all the camp gear and everything.”

“I pulled half a moose.”

“Not nearly as far. What about your knee?”

“It's okay,” I said, which wasn't exactly true. “How would you get firewood and water back here by yourself? I'd have to take the fire starter. What happens when your fire goes out?”

His dark eyes were back down on the drum. “You'd have ten times better chance if you went by yourself. We'll split up the food. You can make some more firewood before you go, and I'll make
sure the fire doesn't go out. You'll make it out much faster without me. Then you can send back help.”

“What about open water?” I asked him. “What about that? If I fall into the river, what happens to you?”

He shrugged. “That's the way it goes, I guess.”

“I won't even think about it,” I said. “You'd be waiting and nobody would ever come. Everything that's happened, we've been through it together, right? Except for that once when I was on my own, and I nearly got myself killed.”

“You won't let that happen again.”

“Listen,” I pleaded. “You're the best friend I'm ever going to have. That's what I'm talking about. I've just been hearing about what your mother said, how life is the greatest gift. She's right. That's why we've been trying so hard to stay alive. But friendship, that's as close to the top of the list as you can get.”

Raymond seemed surprised by the strength of my outburst, but gratified. “Okay,” he agreed. “We'll see if you can pull the toboggan with me on it and everything else, too. But if you can't, I stay here.”

“I can pull you out of here, I know I can.”

“Musk-ox!” he said with a smile.

D
ON'T THINK ABOUT
how far a hundred miles is, I told myself. Don't turn around and look at the cabin. It's probably not even out of sight yet. Don't think about the hundred miles or the snow being soft or how much your load might weigh. Don't think about how much energy you've expended to get a quarter mile. If you do, you'll make yourself crazy. You'll have to admit that Raymond has to be left behind, like he said.

Think about the note you left in the cabin for your dad, the one you signed “Going for broke.” That's what you have to remember. It's everything or nothing. Give it everything you've got and a whole lot more. Pull like there's no tomorrow, but don't get stupid and make mistakes or there won't be a tomorrow. It's going to take a lot of tomorrows to make it to Nahanni Butte.

I rested, panting, taking in the looming gate of the lower canyon. “There's the starting gate,” I said over my shoulder.

I looked up high, maybe a thousand feet above, where the wind was whipping the snow off the high ledges. It would have made a beautiful postcard, I thought. I would title it
The Brutal Beauty of the Nahanni.
I pointed up there and said to Raymond, “We sure ain't in Texas!”

“You talk funny,” he said.

“Just layin' on the accent…. I was thinking how Clint promised he was going to give us ‘a sightseeing tour we'd never forget.'”

“Hah!” Raymond snorted.

“He delivered!” I yelled, and I leaned into the rope, lurching the toboggan into motion. That was the hardest part.

Now just keep pulling. Don't set your sights way down into the canyon. Set a goal just a hundred yards or so ahead at a time, that's plenty. One football-field length. One football field and then the next.

The cold seared my windpipe and my lungs. My sweat was falling into my eyes and freezing the lashes shut. The packsack was so heavy, digging into my shoulders, but there wasn't room for everything on the toboggan.
So far to go!
I
thought, and I'm starting out a complete wreck. My knee is gimped up, and that's a fact. I just don't want Raymond to know how bad it still is. And then there's my ribs, from when I slipped on the ice and dropped the moose meat. My side's aching again from that. My lips are split open in a couple of places, so's the palm of my hand, always there throbbing to remind me. My fingers are a mess, burned in spots, chapped, cracked. Somewhere along the line frostbite got the tip of my nose and my chin….

Can't do that!
I told myself angrily. You wouldn't do it before; don't give in to it now. Think about somebody else—think about Raymond. Is he cold? Yes, he's cold. Will he get frostbit not moving around? I hope not—he's wearing your boots, they're warmer than his. He's wearing enough clothes to start a surplus store; he'll be okay. Johnny's parka is over him for a blanket.

What about Raymond's foot? Think about that. Think about how bone surgeons can do amazing things, even if they have to rebreak some of the bones and fasten everything with pins before they cast it. It'll feel awful good to come out of that operation with a cast on his foot finally, and then to hear he'll get normal use of it back. Maybe Wayne Gretzky won't have to worry
about him becoming a hockey star, but he'll be able to do just about anything else, whatever he wants to do.

What will he want to do?

What are
you
going to do? Head back to Texas, what do you think? Head back where it's warm as soon as you can get out of here—your grandparents will take you back in a heartbeat. Spring in San Antonio! Fiesta! Think about the Battle of the Flowers, what a parade. And the Flambeaux night parade with all the torches. Think about squeezing into a few blocks with about ten thousand people at “A Night in Old San Antonio,” all those girls with flowers in their hair…. Think about the River Walk, taking a girl out to one of those nice restaurants along the river…. Think about summer…. Think how you could lie there on a real bed with a real mattress, with only your sheet and you wouldn't even need that…. Think about it being too hot to sleep, what that feels like. You'll be lying there trying to remember what the cold felt like back up here in the Northwest Territories.

Trying to remember the cold? I thought. What, are you crazy? Try to
forget.

“You're doing good,” I heard Raymond call from behind me.

I stopped in my tracks, turned around, and
grinned. “I'm going a lot of places in my head,” I said.

“Me too.”

“Think I'll go to Bermuda next. Or Hawaii. Maybe Tahiti.” I finished my bottle of water.

“Trade you bottles,” Raymond said. I knew he was right, I needed to keep drinking water. I took his full one and gave him mine.

Take a deep breath, heave, lean, grunt, pull. You're rolling again. Push off with that left foot, lift the right snowshoe high, swing the left arm forward and across to keep your momentum going, nothing solid down there to push off of but push anyway, left snowshoe high, right arm across. Keep believing, I told myself. Just keep pulling.

That first open water we'd met after Christmas was all iced over now. Everything looked different. Our hopes soared, but we weren't going to talk about it.

The days are longer now, I thought. That's in our favor, too. Toward twilight I set a goal of reaching a timbered island far down the frozen river. I kept pushing, and we made it. I found a spot protected by the trees. I'd have to use the remaining light to get ready for the night. It was thirty below and dropping. A ragged night coming
up. No cabin; you remember what that's like. How far had we come? Don't know. Don't worry about it.

I got busy with the ax, cut plenty of spruce bedding, layered the boughs across each other, finished up with enough tips to make the endless night-torture tolerable. Then I helped Raymond out of the toboggan. He didn't think he should lie down right away, and I knew he was right. I cut him a stick to lean on and encouraged him to hop around a little, get his circulation going. Then I grabbed a snowshoe to dig a fire pit in the snow, slashed dead branches for kindling, found my birchbark, coaxed a flame into fire, and nursed it into the living force that would keep us alive through the night.

I caught my breath, warmed my hands. Then I took down three small dead spruces and dragged them over. Raymond wanted to help, so I had him start melting some snow.

I kept the fire blazing, scooped more snow into the pot, built a lean-to, then talked Raymond into lying down. He kept trying to help, but I was afraid he'd fall, and that would make things worse. I could see how tough this was going to be on Raymond, not being able to do hardly anything. I started some water to boil meat, drank
some of the hot water I'd already made, and took some to him.

“You're like a house burning down,” Raymond said. “Where'd you learn all this stuff?”

“Texas hill country. In Texas it gets a
lot
colder than here, and the canyons are a lot deeper.”

“And there's little animals that look like armored cars?”

“Exactly. In the winter they just roll themselves up in a ball and freeze solid. What'll it be for dinner tonight?”

He flashed his bright smile. “How 'bout some moose?”

“Good selection. Specialty of the house.” I took the ax and hacked out maybe a couple of pounds. After I got the meat boiling, I made some more hot water in the second pot. I knew I was already getting dehydrated and that would be a big danger, as hard as I was pulling. At night I had to make sure to drink all the water my body could take.

With the first sign of twilight in the morning it was time to convince bone and muscle that I could even get out of the sleeping bag. The pain in my knee was still there. I needed to find more firewood, I needed to get some water going, I needed to get a little more food in my belly and
Raymond's too. I needed to remember before we started out again to fill both of the water bottles full of hot water.

At last it was all done. I packed Raymond into the toboggan, laced up my snowshoes, took my place up front, stepped inside the rope. I asked Raymond if he'd ever had a dog team.

“Snowmobiles are better,” he said. “Go faster too.”

He could see I was playing games with my head, just stalling for time. “Don't they break down?” I asked.

“Then you fix 'em.”

Once I broke the toboggan loose and started it forward, all my conversations had to take place in my head alone. Imaginary conversations, remembered conversations. Conversations with my father, conversations with Raymond, conversations with my coach back in San Antonio. My coach was trying to get me to stay. Lots of compliments. “You're hard to knock off your feet,” that's what he'd said. “I like how you get the extra yards after you get hit.”

I turned a bend in the canyon and saw up ahead what I'd been dreading most: a black strip of open water snaking its way down the canyon. There was an ice bridge across it, but fortunately
we didn't have to try it. There was room to get around the open water on the left.

On the third day a gift came along. Just like the creeks do, the Nahanni had burst its frozen lid and spilled overflow slush for miles, melting the drifted snow that had covered the ice and refreezing it into a surface as hard and solid as an interstate highway. For a few miles we went flying around the bends in the canyon—at least that's what it felt like. I pictured it would be like this all the way down to the hot springs at the foot of the canyon. But the free ride ended where the now-frozen overflow had encountered a patch of open water. The open water was easy enough to get around, but now I was back to breaking trail through the drifts.

The following day, no more patches of open water. Maybe they were all behind us.
Pull,
you mule, you donkey, you draft horse, you dog team, you musk-ox. Think about the winter bear, the way it laid its ears back right before it charged. It can't hurt you now. Maybe it never came back because Raymond called it friend, spoke to it in Slavey. More likely it got scared off by that threat about flossing its teeth. Think about the old man finding those beaver hideouts. Now, that was slick.

Think about Johnny Raven. Remember his voice, the rivers in his face, the quills in his chin. Think how fond he became of Raymond. Think how much he wanted Raymond and you to live. Think about his hand drum, how Raymond rebuilt it, think about it right here in your packsack, going back home with Raymond. Picture your model log house, complete with tiny rock fireplace, sitting on the table back at the cabin. How your dad would love to see that model. Try to remember everything about Johnny's letter. “Take care of each other,” that's what he'd said.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw that, up ahead at a bend, open water was pushing up against a cliff on the right. But we were able to pull around it once again, on the left side this time. The canyon narrowed. More open water, which was rushing out from under the ice and down to a cliff on the left side. We crossed to the right to avoid it. But the open water, after it hit the cliff on the left, angled back across the canyon, under an ice bridge, to another cliff on the right. It was the exact same situation we'd faced before.

This time the open water was only thirty feet across at the ice bridge. The bridge itself was fifteen feet wide. I stood there, imagining my body
disappearing under the Nahanni ice. Eventually it would get hung up on the limbs of a tree pinned in the riverbed, or else it would just keep tumbling all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Raymond broke the silence. “You should go across with just a packsack, with everything you'll need to make it to Nahanni Butte.”

I asked him, “How come is that?”

“In case it breaks behind you. If it holds you, you can do another load and so on, until it's just me on the toboggan without any gear. That way we won't have any more weight on the bridge than we have to.”

“And if I don't make it across…,” I said. “If I fall in, like last time…”

“I guess I can't pull you out. Anyway, we can't turn around and go back this time.”

“So if I make it across, but the ice breaks behind me, or if I don't make it and I end up in the river, in either case you're sitting here in the toboggan—and then what?”

“Out of luck, I guess.”

I thought for a second, but I already knew how I felt. I said, “How about we both make it or we both don't? That's the way it should be. Quick and dirty.”

“You sure?”

“Why not?”

I looked at the bridge a long time, breathing deep, thinking about what I had to do. This time I wasn't going to tiptoe and get caught halfway, but I couldn't stomp across either—the bridge might be as fragile as the one before. I was going to try to go fast as I could, keeping it as smooth as I could. Better to go fast in case something happened.

I studied the bridge some more, stalling for time. I said to Raymond, “I've been thinking a lot about Johnny's letter, all the things he said.”

“Me too.”

“I forgot to ask you if you left it in the cabin where it could be found.”

Raymond tapped his chest. “I've got it right in my pocket. I wanted to read it at the potlatch.”

“Then we have to make it,” I said. “Or what he said is all going to be lost.”

“We'll make it. I have a feeling we're going to make it.”

Then Raymond croaked like a raven, two, three times, a perfect imitation. The sound carried far in the cold air.

“Raven medicine,” I said with a smile.

We waited then, savoring our friendship, knowing that everything could end in moments.

I asked Raymond if he was ready. He said, “Anytime, little brother.”

I was ready too. Whatever happened, I thought, we'd done our best and you can't ask for more than that.