Heart So Hungry (17 page)

“What a lovely place you’ve made!” she said.

“You can’t eat fresh goose in a buggy tent,” Joe told her.

She was both humbled and flattered by the way the men took care of her. They did so, she knew, not because she was their employer but because they truly cared about her. There was no drama or ulterior motive to their affection; it was quiet and unassuming and real. Each of the men was as tough as a river stone, hardened by his life, but they were some of the kindest and gentlest men she had ever known. There was little anger in any of them and not the slightest trace of malice.

She remembered the way Wallace had described the Labrador natives in his book—as mostly uncouth Indians and half-breeds, incapable of doing much more than following the simplest of
directions. Those descriptions were an embarrassment to her. Caspar Whitney had harboured even harsher sentiments for Indians and had often made his low regard for them known. How was it, she wondered, that her own experience, and Laddie’s, had been so different from the others’?

Because kindness begets kindness, she told herself. And contempt begets contempt.

Just in time for goose, Job returned from his long hike up Red Rock Hill. He was soaked to the skin and carrying a pound of mud on each pantleg. Mina asked him, “What was it like up there, Job?”

“Like bein’ in the clouds.”

Gilbert asked, “Did you see any angels?”

“Seen one. But she just passin’ through.”

“Can’t you at least tell us what she looked like?”

“Looked like girl I knew back home. Only better.”

The men laughed and nodded. The goose was too delicious to be shared with conversation, its skin crisp and smoky and dripping with grease, the dark meat buttery in their mouths. They also had flatbread fried in lard, and strong tea sweetened with sugar.

When nothing remained of the goose but a pile of bones to be boiled for broth in the morning, George said, “Did you see anything useful up on that hill, Job?”

“Two rapids up ahead,” Job answered. “Then a little lake.”

“How far to the rapids?”

“Two mile, maybe.”

The rain continued without a break through the next afternoon. After lunch beneath the tarpaulin, George told Mina, “The boys all want to go climb that hill. Get a good look where we’re headed.”

“That’s a fine idea. Just let me change into my boots.”

“Oh no, missus,” Job said. “Hill too steep for you. Too slippery.”

“Nonsense. I’ll be fine, won’t I, George?”

George looked uneasy. “Job said it wasn’t an easy climb, not even for him. There are lots of places where a person could fall off and get hurt.”

“A person?” she said. “Or a helpless little woman like me?”

George lowered his eyes. “I’d just rather you didn’t try it.”

“Well, I am not going to sit here all day with the rain and the mosquitoes while you men have all the fun.” Then she had an idea. “You can take me up the rapids, George!”

“That’d be no less dangerous than climbing the hill! With just me paddling we’ll turn over for sure.”

“I could go with you,” Gilbert said.

But Mina had other ideas. “No, you go climb the hill with the men. George will take me up
to
the rapids. We can go at least that far, can’t we, without placing my life in jeopardy?”

The way she looked at George when she said this, her eyes sparkling with firelight and the corners of her mouth turned up in challenge, he felt a fluttering in his chest.

“You needn’t look so frightened,” she teased. “I have no intention of throwing myself into the rapids. But to just sit here and swat mosquitoes all day? How ignominious is that for a famous explorer such as myself?”

She was baiting him, and all the men knew it. George knew it too. And to think that she had turned down Gilbert’s offer to accompany them, right in front of everybody! It took George’s breath away.

The first set of rapids proved to be nearly three miles above their camp. It swung toward them around a high sandy point that extended a third of the way into the river. South of this point was a little bay, and there George landed the canoe. Afterward he and Mina approached the rapids by foot. The rocks scattered along the shore were in various shades of red and green and blue. Mina stooped to pick up a small green one, a smooth oval speckled with
brown. “It looks just like a bird’s egg,” she said. “See how pretty, George?”

“Put it in your pocket for good luck.”

“Can a stone bring good luck?”

“Anything beautiful can. Put it in your pocket and let’s find out.” She did so. “We’ve had good luck so far, haven’t we? Do you think it will last?”

“Now that you’ve got your good luck stone, it will.”

A few minutes later they stood together on a flat rock under which the rapids surged and chortled. “They look so wild and fine,” Mina said. “I feel almost giddy standing so close to them like this.”

“That’s what I told you about getting dizzy and falling in.”

“I can see how it might happen. It could happen to me now.” With that she leaned forward as if losing her balance.

George lunged toward her, but she turned to him, smiling, just before he grabbed her arm, and he stopped himself short.

“Don’t you want to save me?” she asked.

“You’re only teasing me now.”

“But I could tumble in at any moment. Don’t you at least want to take hold of my hand, just to be safe?” And she offered her hand to him.

“What if you pull us both in?” he asked. “Do you think I might?”

Instead of answering immediately he only looked into her eyes. They were wild and fine too, and every bit as dizzying as the rapids. Looking at her like that did something to his balance, made the world seem to tilt beneath him.

“I’d rather we both went in,” he told her, “than let you go in alone.”

It was late when they returned to camp, past sunset, and the men, having long ago returned from climbing Red Rock Hill, had cleaned up, prepared a supper of four partridges and begun to worry.

“It was hard paddling against that current,” George told them as explanation for his and Mina’s late arrival.

But the men noticed how quiet Mina was all through supper, and how George kept his eyes lowered, staring at the fire, so the men were mostly silent too, and only smiled to one another across the dance of flames.

The rain continued through Saturday but in the afternoon it showed signs of coming to an end, and Mina’s party, restless to be on the move, took to their canoes. By evening the rain had ceased and they enjoyed their first dry camp in several days.

Next morning they agreed that they should take advantage of the dry weather and forego their Sunday rest. As the canoes were being reloaded, Gilbert happened to look far ahead where the river widened into a small lake. He saw a dark shape moving across the water. “What is that?” he asked.

The others looked up. Before they could follow Gilbert’s gaze, he cried out, “It’s a deer!”

In a flash the last of the gear was tossed into the canoes and tied down. Mina quickly climbed aboard. Too excited to fiddle with the knot that held the canoe tied to a willow, George whipped out his knife and slashed through the rope. In seconds both canoes were plunging toward the lake, the men digging in hard with their paddles, lifting and driving the slender crafts with every stroke.

“He seems too far away,” Mina said.

But the canoes closed quickly. The caribou, which they could soon identify as a stag, was swimming toward the north shore, fighting the current just as the canoes were. George reached for his rifle, slammed a bullet into place, took careful aim, and fired.

Mina saw the bullet’s splash a yard or so in front of the caribou, and she secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Fresh meat would have been a welcome treat but their provisions were in no danger of running
out and she did not share the men’s thrill in hunting and killing. She understood that thrill but she did not share it.

Her relief, however, was short-lived. She soon realized that George’s intention with that first shot had not been to hit the caribou but to turn it from shore before it could bound away to freedom. And the ploy worked perfectly. The caribou swung east, its thick neck and heavy head ploughing forward with short, plunging movements.

The animal was broadside to the current now, and its pace slowed even more. Soon the canoes were a mere twenty yards from overtaking it. George laid the rifle aside and pulled his revolver from its holster. He stretched out his arm and sighted along the barrel. Mina pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned forward, doubling over, and clamped her hands over her ears.

She jumped a little in her seat when the revolver barked. She expected to hear the men cheering, but when they did not she looked up. The stag was still ploughing toward shore. Thank goodness! Mina thought. Then she saw the dark stain spreading out alongside the animal, the blood streaming from its neck, the terror in its round, dark eye.

“Oh, George, please,” she said. “Use your rifle this time. Please put an end to it.”

He did so, and a few seconds later the animal stopped swimming. One last stroke of the paddles and Job had the stag by its antlers. Its legs no longer churned the water.

“Is it dead?” Mina asked.

“It is,” George said.

“Please make sure it’s dead, Job. It isn’t fair that it should suffer.”

“No suffer,” Job told her. “No feel nothing any more.”

A rope was looped and tightened around the stag’s head and the animal was towed to shore. Mina spent the next hour sitting alone, well upwind of the men, as they gutted, skinned and butchered the stag. The meat was cut up and packed in waterproof bags. George
washed the hide clean in the river, wrung it dry and folded it as neatly as he could and stowed it in the bow of the canoe. He washed his hands and forearms and then he walked upshore to Mina.

“Two hundred fifty pounds of fresh meat,” he told her.

“I suppose it’s a good thing,” she said. “I just can’t stop thinking of how fine he would have looked bounding over the hills.”

“We need fresh meat for energy, though.”

“I know. I only feel bad for the caribou.”

“Life through death,” he said quietly. “That’s how it works out here.”

“I know.” She looked up at him and smiled.

She climbed to her feet, brushed the dirt off the back of her skirt. “I know you have to kill animals to keep us fed. I’ll try not to mind so much in the future.”

“Don’t be anything but what you are,” George answered. Then he turned away quickly, blushing, and without waiting for her he returned to the canoes.

They made good time all the rest of that day, moving upriver through one small lake expansion after another. The mountains on each side were barren of trees, with sharp, craggy faces of naked rock. From lake to lake there was no telling which way the river might turn next or what lay ahead.

Toward sunset they were moving smoothly across another small lake when George tapped her shoulder. When she turned, he pointed to the northeast. There, approximately eighty yards ahead, the river appeared to be gushing into the lake out of a large hole in the side of the mountain.

“We might as well find a good place to camp,” George told her. “We’ll be portaging in the morning.”

“And now with an extra two hundred fifty pounds of meat to carry,” she said.

“Two-forty maybe. I’ll make us a nice roast tonight.”

And he did just that. The block of meat was seared in the skillet until the outside was crusted black, the centre pink and sweet.

Mina told the men, “I’m almost ashamed to admit how much I’m enjoying this.”

“Why ashamed?” Gilbert asked.

“Because I was secretly hoping that George would miss when he was shooting today.”

Joe said, “Even George couldn’t miss from that distance.”

They laughed and chewed and continued shaving away at the roast until the skillet was empty.

That night, before turning in, Mina went to the river to wash her face and hands. George soon left his seat and followed her. He knelt a yard or so from her and splashed water over his face. As always, he kept glancing her way out of the corner of his eye.

But tonight she did not mind his overprotectiveness. Tonight she felt the warmth of it, the depth of his affection. When she had finished washing she sat back against the rocks and gazed into the night sky. Directly overhead, three long fingers of blue-green light were reaching tremulously toward the centre of the sky, fluttering like banners in the wind. All around them was a misty glow of white and pale orange, it too gently undulating, bathing the river and the campsite in soft luminescence.

“The northern lights are so beautiful tonight,” she said.

“The Indians claim it’s from the glow of lanterns carried by spirits as they lead the new dead into heaven.”

“Somewhere in the Bible it’s described as ‘horsemen charging in mid-air, clad in garments interwoven with gold.’”

“I’ve not seen them any prettier than they are right now,” George said.

After a few minutes he stood and walked toward her and stood there looking at the camp some thirty yards away. He and Mina could see the two tents pitched well behind the fire, could see Joe and Job and Gilbert seated in a half-circle, sucking on their pipes. Neither Mina nor George was in a hurry to join them again.

“Do you know what’s strange?” she asked.

“What, missus?”

“I don’t feel lonely any more.”

“You’re getting used to the place.”

“I know that everyone at home would expect me to feel lonely out here. And maybe I should still. Maybe it’s wrong that I don’t.”

He lowered himself to his haunches, sat there gently rocking back and forth. He said, “I don’t see how it could be wrong. I really don’t.”

They sat without speaking for a while. She looked over at him once and caught him looking at her. She smiled, then turned away. He imagined then that she would stand and say good night and return to her tent. But she gave no indication of wishing to be anywhere but where she was.

“I think I feel less homeless here than I ever have, ever since Laddie went away.”

George felt something thickening in his throat. He tried to swallow it down.