Ian Mackenzie Jeffers The Grey (20 page)

I walk on, following the cliff, watching the light fade, trying to mark as best I can things I might know in the dark, in a few minutes, that might help me be less lost, if the cliff top pushes me away from the river, for any reason, if I can’t hear it anymore.  But the river’s so loud, now, even louder than where I found it with Henrick and Tlingit, I think I can’t lose it, I can follow it home by its sound, if I have to, if I never see the sun again.

The trees open to a little clearing, ringed by another little bluff going up away from the cliff-edge.  I look down to the edge again, and the river’s even louder, now, which makes me think the cliffs are lower, and I want to go to the edge to see how low.  I think I even feel a cool push of air, up from the freezing water, but I don’t mind it.  It feels wet, the air, or I think it does.

But I look back to what’s ahead of me, and, ahead, among the trees, and the rocks, and the snow, and the air, I see the wolves are there.  The big one, again, and the others, more than I thought were left, up on a little hump of snow, between trees.  They’re looking down at me like the rocks are looking, like the trees are, and the sky is, patiently, not angrily, in particular, that I can see, just looking, and the winds moves and that’s them thinking about me, I think, if they think anything of me, it’s no more than that, the air, moving through the trees, something to sense. 

There’s enough light left I can see they’re cut, bloody, in places, their wounds look worse, somehow, than when I saw them before, and I realize why it’s seemed a long time since we saw them, they may have gotten tired of chasing us, and been distracted by dying, and by walking and walking to a place something was telling them they’d rather be. 
Like I’ve been doing.

Seeing them now, I know that to think I would have made it across the river, or made it home, without seeing them again, was something I was dreaming.  I breathe, looking at them.  I stare at them, a long time, before I do anything else.  I know my knife is in my pocket, or I think it is, and I’m so tired, now, I don’t know if I can get it out, or want to get it out.

Finally, the big one snarls.  I suppose we aren’t going to nod to each other, and let each other go on our ways, through the snow, to die, hour by hour, on our own, somewhere.  I fumble my knife out of my pocket, and look at them.  They step down, a little, looking weary, it looks like.  They’re slowing, maybe, but they aren’t finished.  The light’s going
though,
I don’t know what I’m seeing.  It’s going from my head, too.  I am in blur, more and more, I think they’re here, I think they’re real, but somewhere I’m not all the way sure of anything.  The big one shows his teeth and barks, and comes at me, and the others come with him down the slope.

I
blink,
I suck in air, get my eyes open. The big one is the fastest and he is coming faster every stride, coming at me like a rocket, suddenly, the others chasing him.  He looks like he’ll shoot a hole through me and not stop for ten yards after.  But when he’s still a good way off, with the others at his flanks, he launches up at me, and so do the others, all at once, it seems.  I see them jumping at me, and I know there won’t be any fighting this.  This is dying now.

I swing my knife up at the big one, but not fast, and not very hard, my arm just won’t move any faster than it does.  I feel bites and claws, I’m flailing, punching at where they seem to be, but everything is slowed, I can’t even tell with the big one up at my face, eye to eye with me, biting at me.  So I’m punching, drunken, at wherever the pain is, the light is dropping away, darker, what there was, and I’m going to die now, at last light of the last day before the long night.  The times I’ve thought I was going to die before seem
comical,
they were nothing, because even without them jumping on me I think I may be dying on my feet, anyway.  Things are starting to go, away, to where they’ve been going since I got here. 

The big one flies up at me, again.  I didn’t know he was off me, I thought he was up at my face, but he mist have come off but now he’s up over me, on me again, and there are others still pulling at me, and I think I’m fighting, I don't know.  I feel the big one slacken, somehow, like he’s sick of this game too, but I think I’m falling over, I fall to the snow with him on my knife, and as I try rolling out from under him and get up he’s flopping his paws in the snow, weakly, after me and then he drops.  The others are off me, I can’t see them all, but I’m bleeding now from several new places, it feels like.  It’s a lot of blood and I’m blurring, more, with cold, I’m fading away and disappearing, dreaming on my feet with, I think, the knife still in my hand. 

It’s darker, still, my eyes are going darker from the edges in, like the night has crawled up to me from the snow and is leaking into the last part of me now, though shreds of light are in the sky, and I blink, trying to keep seeing, or maybe I am trying to be awake.  I don’t know for sure if the big wolf is up again and coming at me or not or if I am standing or not or if my eyes are open or not, or if I’m dreaming or not, and I twitch my hand to tell if the knife is there and I look, in my dream, to see if the big wolf is coming, but in my dream he’s still standing on the rise above me looking down, or he’s trotted up there, and then I see that’s another wolf, the big one is in front of me, up on his paws again. 

I think of my son, and my wife, and I think I was a man once, far away I was a man, in the world,
I
was not this bleeding dream floating into grey.  I blink, looking at him, and I say do your best with me, kill me, there’s nothing to me but ghosts and what I remember of the last things in me, my wife, as she was, my son, when he was mine, and if you’re my death come on, if you’re all the wrongs I’ve done, if you’re the blackness in my father or the blackness in me, I’ll die killing you, and none of the things I am and none of the things I’ve done will touch my boy, or my wife, I’ll end here forever, and clean the world of me for good.

I look at him, I dream, and he looks like death again, and he leaps into the air, finally, and he hits me and I think I fall
again,
I hit the snow very hard.  And I don’t try to move, not much, I try a little but there is nothing of me, I think, but I hit at him and I see the last shred of light in the sky goes out. 

He’s dead, I think, but I’m dreaming that.  I’m swimming in the snow, in dark, and blood, and dreaming that instead of bleeding in the snow, I’m standing over the big wolf, and all the others are dead in the snow too, but standing all around me at the same time, and I dream I hoist the big one up on my shoulders, because seeing him in the snow, breathing out, last breaths, is too much to bear, and I lift him on to me, and I wrap him in magic blankets, under the sky.  I carry him with me, and I am sliding, and sliding, bleeding, off the edge of the cliff where Tlingit and Henrick went.  The wallets are open to the wind, blowing, Henrick’s worn down to bones, now.  The wind has gotten in and taken the wallets and all that’s in them to itself, blowing them away, like me, blowing down to the river, carrying my wolf, and all my wolves, through the dark to the cold water and rocks and ice.

And then I dream something floats away and I don’t feel anything, but soft dark, turning over, drifting, down a river over rocks and mud and ice, all soft, all tumbling softly onto itself, turning inside out in the night like liquid dark falling over and under me, rushing and thundering and water flowing through life and death and heaven, and I am fighting him, or I’ve fought him, and I think he has stopped, I think I beat this one, the last one, or he is tired of fighting and wants to die, if I’ll carry him, and I think a last thing, quite peacefully, I think goodbye, and I am nearly gone, then gone, sleep in sleep.

I’m standing in the motel, in Anchorage, at the door, staring at the picture I left crumpled on the nightstand, leaving it there.  I’m a hundred yards up the hall, a thousand yards, standing there, duffle in hand, swaying,
a
mortal fool.  I’m walking the endless way back to my room, stuffing the picture I tried to leave behind back into my wallet, my wife, smiling, my son, laughing, taking them with me. 

I’m dreaming, I’m somewhere on the snow, near the plane, the picture that’s all that’s left of me is blowing, tumbling over snow, through the dead, through the cold, far from the world, lifting into air, I am blowing away with it toward all that’s gone from me, to my wife, to my son.

 Then there’s moonlight, I think, as bright as headlights, or the sun but there’s no more sun, but there is water pounding somewhere, thundering, my face half drowning
  in
freezing mud and rock, and there are magic wolves and my magic river and magic blankets, there are sounds like airplanes and helicopters, but it’s only the wind, thundering, or the river, thundering.  I dream of ropes and lights, coming to take me to my boy, again, around the little curve of earth, and I’m praying, dying, maybe, and I see then the lights are aurora, green-gold, purple, and I realize, finally, that they are souls, lighting the sky and dancing, that’s all.  Anybody can see that.  It should be obvious to anyone.  I close my eyes, and open them again, and from somewhere in the dark there is a hand, reaching down, to take me to my boy, telling me I can go home.

In my dream, I take the hand.