The Eskimo Invasion (15 page)

 

 

Dr. West realized Peterluk wasn't here to shoot now. Like farewell notes,
his dog's droppings were steaming in the intense cold. The trail of
Peterluk's sled curved over a low hill.

 

 

The young Esk crawled into the entry tunnel, cheerfully shouting. From the
igloo his voice came back to Dr. West. "Grandmother! This person happy
you wait for us."

 

 

In the translucent dimness of the igloo, Dr. West recognized old Eevvaalik
seated on the skin-covered ledge behind her strange ceramic seal oil lamp.

 

 

"Eh-eh! You -- " she laughed in instant recognition. "He is not afraid --
of you."

 

 

"Eevvaalik, when will your husband return?"

 

 

Her weathered face exposed stumps of teeth in what might have been a
smile of triumph. "When your airplane was smaller than a petrel bird,
already my husband was loading his sled. He has long eyes."

 

 

"He ran off and left you." Dr. West tried to create resentment of Peterluk,
so that Eevvaalik might tell the truth for a change, but she laughed at him.

 

 

"My husband says not even a woman should be afraid of you, you plain
whiteman who does not wear a gray uniform, not even a cap with a red star,
so he is not afraid of you," she sighed. "He is afraid of what he did not
tell you. After so many winters, in his dreams he cries out like a child."

 

 

Stinging snow particles shot across the dim igloo. The two men, the boy,
the woman blinked at the small bright hole which had appeared in the
snow wall. A muffled sound from outside had followed the rifle bullet
through the igloo.

 

 

Dr. West smiled apologetically at LaRue and lay down on the icy floor.
"I believe we've found Peterluk."

 

 

A second spray of snow and a distant rifle report brought Henry LaRue
erect in the igloo. "Mon dieu, the man is berserk -- or has formidable
humor." LaRue heaved his bulk toward the low exit tunnel. Head and
shoulders committed, he changed his mind and buttocked back against
Dr. West. "No doubt this Peterluk shoots only at strangers -- ?"

 

 

Both whitemen glanced up at their guide. The young Esk, with a smile
as quizzical as an Eskimo's, was kneeling on the skin-covered ledge,
poking his finger into the upper bullet hole.

 

 

"Get down here," Dr. West ordered, and the Esk peered down at them,
smiled like a Cheshire cat in the dimness of the igloo and slid down
beside them, his hand groping.

 

 

The Esk grunted with pleasure, having discovered an unidentifiable glob of
meat which the escaped Peterluk must have left. The young Esk's chewing
sounds were punctuated by Eevvaalik's tubercular coughing.

 

 

Even now while some people walk on the Moon, others live like this,
Dr. West thought vaguely, waiting for the next shot.

 

 

In the cold stench, Eevvaalik sat above him on the ledge, trimming the
seal oil lamp as intently as if her husband, Peterluk, were not shooting
into the igloo.

 

 

"Eevvaalik, a bullet might hit you," Dr. West said. "Come down here."

 

 

Another shot smashed through the igloo. Eevvaalik made no move to lie down
with the two whitemen. Smiling, she turned her head away from these two
whitemen hiding on the floor. "Bullets of this person's husband have eyes
-- for you -- he says."

 

 

With a spitting sound the fourth bullet passed through the snow wall.

 

 

"Tell her that we surrender," LaRue murmured, brushing snow from his face.
"Tell her surrender means we -- we whitemen will go away."

 

 

Dr. West told her to tell her husband. "Please shout to him."

 

 

The flickering flame line from the lamp reflected on her greasy face.
She smiled, exposing her tooth stumps. Dr. West knew from the records
she was forty-four years old.

 

 

"It is not a woman's place to advise her husband." Eevvaalik bowed her
head, and a fifth shot spat through the igloo.

 

 

Hopefully, Dr. West thought all the shots had been deliberately too high.

 

 

"How many bullets did Peterluk take?" Dr. West asked her even more hopefully.
"Only the bullets in his rifle?"

 

 

Snow sprayed inward, and the sixth little eye gleamed high in the igloo.
Dr. West wondered why the priest-pilot wasn't -- doing something. There
was a rifle in the plane. Would the priest -- ?

 

 

The seventh shot whined across the icy floor between their faces.
Ice crystals gleamed on LaRue's cheek.

 

 

"Mon dieu!" LaRue's hand swept from his cheek to the Esk's arm,
"you must go out and tell him to stop shooting."

 

 

As if understanding his meaning without needing to understand the words,
the young Esk obediently crawled out through the tunnel to the little
entry dome where outer parkas are hung.

 

 

"He's so much shorter than we are. That madman will notice this boy is
a fellow Eskimo," LaRue muttered. "After all, they know each other."

 

 

Dully, they heard the eighth shot. No hole appeared in the igloo.
Dr. West scrambled along the snow tunnel and blinked at the darkly
spreading blood from beneath the boy on the snow glare.

 

 

"Murderer!" Until that moment, somehow it had been as if he hadn't really
believed Peterluk's bullets would kill. "Murderer. Inhuman!"
I should
have stopped the boy from going out.
Whirling inside the entry dome,
he saw a coiled line with a massive bone-splint tied to a stone. It was
for snagging the floating body of a seal.

 

 

Dr. West's arm and momentary exposure of his head did not draw fire.
As Dr. West yanked the gasping body of the Esk toward the entry, two more
shots resounded from the hillside but no snow kicked up near the moving body.
No snow holes spat through the tunnel at Dr. West.

 

 

"He died. Peterluk killed him." Dr. West's agonized voice ignited LaRue.

 

 

"Savage!" LaRue grabbed Eevvaalik by the shoulder, pulling her down on
to the floor. "Why? Why is your husband killing? Ask her, West. Demand
to know."

 

 

Dr. West asked, as Eevvaalik firmly removed herself from LaRue's grip,
and climbed back up on the sleeping platform.

 

 

Compulsively she trimmed the seal oil lamp. "This person's husband says
too many more people hunting every year. There are not enough seals anymore."
She seemed to be speaking seriously, truly. "So many hunters on the ice
they frightened away the seals of my husband. That is why he shot the
hunters on the ice."

 

 

Dr. West blinked at this, and told LaRue: "Peterluk has already murdered
some Esks who were hunting seals."

 

 

"But we do not come to shoot seals," LaRue protested, squirming like a
seal on the icy floor, suddenly directing his anger to Dr. West. "You --
If I -- if my Uncle had not listened to you, I would be in my warm office.
My secretary would be bringing hot coffee
et croissants
. Instead I am
being fired upon, frozen, murdered by savages who don't even vote. I do
not think all the maniacs are out there. For leading me to this savage
I think the maniac is you!"

 

 

Dr. West had no reply. It was deathly quiet outside the igloo. Ten shots
had been fired, he thought. Some rifles, old British service rifles,
had ten-shot clips. "Eevvaalik, does your husband practice shooting
every day because he has so many bullets?"

 

 

"Eh-eh, not for many years. In those days the great iron box of bullets on
a belt he hid because the angry men from the whale -- " Eevvaalik's voice
stopped, but Dr. West guessed the rifle must be a model which fired the
same ammunition as a machine gun, and over the years Peterluk's supply
of bullets now ought to be low.

 

 

The eleventh bullet splattered through the igloo.

 

 

"Mon dieu, that is the tenth shot." LaRue laughed unhappily. "That savage
has enough ammunition to drive both the English and French from Canada!
I am cold and I do not want to die. Listen, I think we should chop through
the opposite wall of the igloo and run for it."

 

 

"To where?" Dr. West demanded.

 

 

"Toward the plane. Don't be cowardly. Eskimos are all poor shots."

 

 

"Running all the way down there would only attract Peterluk's fire.
He would shoot at the plane."

 

 

"Too much logic. We go! A brave pilot will start the engines when he sees
us approaching. Where is that cowardly pilot? Why has he not started
the engines?"

 

 

"He's damn cold if he's outside the plane. I hope he's still alive.
I hope Peterluk hasn't already visited the plane."

 

 

"My friend," LaRue blurted, unexpectedly flopping his arm around Dr. West's
shoulders, "so do I. So do I. This igloo is as cold as a crypt. Poof,
that was another bullet! He is firing lower. I do not care; I no longer
wish this Eskimo's vote," LaRue laughed nervously. "We must run for
it." But he didn't get up.

 

 

On the sleeping platform, Eevvaalik coughed and spat blood near the two
whitemen lying on the icy floor shivering and waiting.

 

 

"Doctor, in your fanciful distinction," LaRue said finally, "is this woman
an Eskimo or an Esk?"

 

 

"She is an Eskimo. Of these people, only Eevvaalik has had TB, the only one.
Perhaps Peterluk has it too. The rest, Esks, do not appear to be subject
to tuberculosis. They don't even have lice!" Dr. West's voice rose as if
it were a means of escape from bullets. "Bacteria and parasitic organisms
may not have had time to adjust to body chemistry differences between
Eskimos and Esks."

 

 

"Fine words and a theory of which you admit you have no proof. Did you
not tell my uncle that Esks appear like swallows from the mud, something
like that," LaRue's voice rushed. "You have confused the old man --
and me. I saw all of these people back in the camp where you picked up
the guide, rest his soul, and they were the cleanest, the most happy
Eskimos I have seen in my many trips to the North." His voice rose in
outrage. "Certainly, they are human! Are you insane? Everyone in my
family knows my uncle is insane. I wish I were in my warm office."

 

 

"I wish it were true," Dr. West muttered as bullet number twelve or
thirteen zipped through the igloo from a new angle.

 

 

"Anyway, I don't need to be freezing here to know Eevvaalik is a real
Eskimo," LaRue sighed. "My uncle and I have a copy of the old Family
Allowance Census taken when the Government still had the integrity to
give to these Eskimos food and clothing. They have as much right to
Family Allowances as other Canadians," he exclaimed. "Of course this
Eevvaalik is an Eskimo. In the old Family Allowance records must be
found her fingerprints, her chest X-rays. This Eevvaalik and Peterluk,
they are old enough to be listed among the original families of Boothia
Peninsula imprisoned in this -- this concentration camp."

 

 

"Yes, and where are the other original families now?" Dr. West replied.
"There were 112 names on the census list made by the McGill ethnologists.
But twenty years later I have found only two of them, Peterluk and
Eevvaalik." He looked up at Eevvaalik.

 

 

Dr. West smiled winningly. "Eevvaalik, where are your father and mother,
your sisters and brothers?"

 

 

With womanly pride, she smiled back. "Peterluk stole me and my first
baby son. My first husband had a -- a boat -- motor very loud but the
whitemen took it away. Peterluk took me -- away from the old camp. This
person thinks her first husband and other people fled that winter from
this land. The whitemen could not keep them in this one land. We are
people who travel far."

 

 

"But not Peterluk."

 

 

"Eh-eh, Peterluk stayed in this land because there were so few people."
She laughed or coughed. "He thought this would be his hunting land for
him alone," her voice sank, "and for my baby son who died, and other
sons this person would have -- "

 

 

"But it is Esks, hundreds of young people crowding this place,
spoiling the hunting," Dr. West argued. "It is not we whitemen who crowd
Peterluk. Tell him to stop shooting. Whitemen are friends, men like he
is -- "

 

 

Eevvaalik smiled back. "A good husband never listens to his wife,
at least not when there are others nearby to hear them."

 

 

"Then go out there to him. Whisper to him not to shoot," Dr. West said
with exasperation.

 

 

Eevvaalik frowned. "This person might obey you as stupidly as that boy did
and be shot. No, this person is not one of her stupid children from the
big camp." Eevvaalik wiped her mouth with her hand. "This person knows
death. She is Eevvaalik! An
Innuit
! A true Eskimo! Not one of these
young fools who think death is the sled to happiness in the sky."

 

 

"And Peterluk is different from the young people now in the camps,"
Dr. West insisted, translating as she talked, because he was trying to
convince LaRue how different from Eskimos these young Esks were --

 

 

"Eh-eh, my husband is braver than those meek children in the camps,"
she agreed. "Our bellies are hungrier than theirs. We do not like to be
told what to do. My husband needs much land to hunt."

 

 

"Why wouldn't Peterluk tell me," Dr. West explored, " if these younger
people's night stories are true? Is it because he told them the stories
that they now believe? Why won't he tell us where they came from?"