The Raven's Gift (20 page)

T
hey rounded a long bend in the river when the girl stopped and turned back toward the old woman’s village. He kept walking, but he didn’t make it far. The square structures were barely visible, just a row of dark boxes pressed between the white sheet of ice and the grey sky.

“What is it you’re trying to see? Quit worrying about someone who we don’t even know is out there.”

“It’s not too late to go back,” she said.

“We’re not taking her with us.”

“We’ll need her. She knows things we don’t know.”

He nodded, but said nothing.

He started walking again, but when he didn’t hear her footsteps behind him he glanced back over his shoulder and stopped. She had already started in the other direction, and somehow she was heading straight for the village, and at a pretty fast pace. The thought of leaving her, them, made sense enough. There was plenty of food in the school. Maybe even enough for them to make the spring. Without the girl he could travel quickly and efficiently.

She didn’t falter in her progress. He had no doubt she could make it back to the village on her own. She didn’t need him. Or at least that was what her display of independence told him—but he knew better. An old woman and a blind girl were not going to improve his chances, and their odds of making it weren’t that great either. Travelling alone
would afford one other luxury. He wouldn’t be responsible for anyone any longer, and he wouldn’t have to deal with the girl constantly hounding him to go find her cousins.

He thought about calling out to her, to give her one last chance, but decided against it. She was far enough away. She wouldn’t hear him if he tried. He spun back around, pulled the rope tight, and continued on, his back to the village and the blind girl.

He bit at his lower lip as he marched on through the snow. Using his left mitten he brushed the freezing tears from the corners of his eyes and tried to convince himself he would be better off without the girl, and that the tears were from the cold winds and not her decision. He pushed the memories of first finding her and her voice from his thoughts and tried to replace it all with images of Anna, of his students, of anything but her. Then the ice pick caught a hard ridge of snow and he suddenly remembered the heavy steel there in his right hand.

One glance at the pick was enough. In his mind he saw the girl swinging it, smashing into the man in the gym and then nearly crushing his throat. She still had fight in her, and despite everything, she would continue to fight. Her uncle was still there hiding in the village somewhere. Maybe he watched them leave. He might even be watching her return.

And then there was the old woman’s hunter. If he was a hunter, he would find the old woman and the girl, and then, if they were still alive as the girl insisted, he would find the children.

John made a small arc to avoid having to jerk the sled around and started back toward the village. His strides were long and brisk, the wind at his back. He could catch her before she reached the riverbank.

HE SAT ON THE cold green linoleum floor of their house, clicking away at the keyboard of a school laptop. He was commenting on Alex’s online journal. The kid had zero understanding of grammar or writing
conventions, but his writing had a unique voice. The kid’s bitterness cloaked a sense of despair and hopelessness.

“Listen to this,” he said, reading to Anna. She stood at the stove heating oil for their nightly popcorn snack. “‘Most nights I sleep on a foam pad, if I’m lucky enough to sleep. The TV stays on all day and all night. There is always someone watching movies or shows. I’ll put the pad down, on our plywood floor, somewhere I can still see the screen. I don’t see little houses like mine on those shows, and I never once seen someone sleeping on foam mats in houses with no water, only one or two bedrooms. Thirteen maybe fourteen people. Babies crying. My sister and her boyfriend humping, like no one knows what they are doing under those blankets. I don’t never see real life like that on the TV. That world is supposed to be the real world. I hear teachers say that. “Back in the real world,” they say. I’ve never seen their real world, just TV. I probably never will live to see it. Don’t really want to. I don’t think I would fit in there, it would be like trying to find space to sleep for me here, me and my sleeping pad and nowhere quiet. It’s funny that the outsiders who come here call that the real world, and they don’t even know what Yup’ik really means.’”

“What does Yup’ik mean?”

John shrugged. “Guess he’s right.”

“Is that Alex again?” she asked. “Man, that kid. You wish you could … I don’t know, help him out somehow. You’re probably the first teacher ever to give him a chance. Think what he could do.”

“Think what any of them could do,” he said, closing the laptop and stretching out on the floor. At the floor level he could almost feel the wind from outside, cutting straight through the walls. The cold air felt refreshing against his face, the back of his head pressed against the cool floor, his eyes on the square tiles of the ceiling. “They have had shitty teachers and zero challenge from day one. How can anyone expect them to even feel good about themselves, let alone maybe go to college or a tech school?”

The corn started to pop. She shook the kettle.

“Maybe that’s the point. For the culture to survive, they’ll have to stay here. Education at once seems like the answer and the problem. Go to school and lose your way of life, or don’t and live your way of life. If they go away to college, what’s going to bring them back? There aren’t jobs. There’s no economy.”

“They could teach, for one. There has to be some sort of sustainable economy that could be created here. There’s always telecommuting. Anyone can work from anywhere. Even here. Plus, I’m not buying the culture thing because three-quarters of my students tell me that all they do is go to open gym, watch movies, play video games, and hang out. Only a couple of them hunt. The girls help with raising the little ones, but that’s it. That’s why I hope I can keep them fired up about this project stuff. I just hope it doesn’t get me into trouble with the district office.”

She turned off the burner, slipped on the oven mitt, and dumped the popcorn into a large stainless steel mixing bowl. “I hardly think the district is going to care if you’re inspiring your students to study their own cultural history.”

“Well, I’m not exactly getting them ready for the standardized tests,” he said.

She held a piece of popcorn above him. “I don’t mean to change the subject,” she said. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. “But …”

“But what,” he asked, opening wide.

“I’m out of birth control,” she said, dropping a large white kernel into his mouth.

HE NUDGED THE GIRL from her sleep and stretched his legs and looked down at them. His black snow pants looked more like a rodeo clown outfit; his legs, butt, and midsection had lost so much muscle mass that the pants felt and looked ridiculously huge. The whole scenario felt off that morning.

“Can I sleep a little longer?” she asked.

“Yeah. A little. I want to get moving soon.”

“I can get up now.”

“Sleep. I’ll wake you.”

He stood and walked a few yards and relieved himself. The light rain the night before had crusted the very top layer of snow. Walking in the crunchy surface would take extra energy.

He watched the horizon for any signs of movement. Life seemed to be in short supply lately.

By the end of the day he hoped to be on the main river, and that the ice of the Kuskokwim would be sound for travel. They couldn’t walk across the lumpy tundra in the snow, or fight the tangled willows and alders that clogged the banks.

There were a couple of villages between them and Bethel. They would find food or survivors at one of those three, he wanted to hope, but on this morning, the hope just wasn’t there.

“John,” the girl whispered, just loud enough for him to hear her. He saw her sitting up in her sleeping bag, the blue tarp covering most of her. He followed her finger and saw what she was pointing at.

He crouched and slowly crept to her as she felt around beneath the tarp and came up with the rifle.

“Thanks,” he whispered. “Cover your ears.”

He quietly put a round in the chamber and crept forward. His breathing picked up, and he tried to steady himself and the barrel to get a clean shot. He wished he had kept the girl’s rusty .22. With his gun, such a big calibre, he had only one chance.

The ptarmigan clucked and pecked at the black lumps of tundra protruding through the snow. There were half a dozen of the bright white birds, but that did nothing for his odds. One shot and they would be gone. He knelt with one knee in the snow and the other up as a rest for the rifle. He first placed the red bead of the sight on the head of the lead bird. Its wide, round black eyes on the white head
seemed like the perfect target. Then he hesitated and lowered his aim toward the midsection and waited for the right moment.

A head shot, to preserve as much meat as possible, was risky, and missing meant no food. A solid body shot meant fresh meat, gunshot or not. He held steady. Then he thought about the trajectory of the bullet, and how he might wait until the birds lined up, and then shoot.

He waited. At one point he had two, then three, almost in a line. He paused for a fourth. He rested his finger against the icy metal of the trigger, waiting. Waiting.

Just as he started to squeeze a round off, the lead bird lifted its head, and they started running, their little legs scurrying, their heads leaning forward. He followed them with the gunsight. They picked up speed and lifted off into the air before he could get a shot.

“No! No!” he screamed at the birds as they set their wings and glided to safety several hundred yards away. An impossible distance with no cover or chance to sneak up on them.

He slumped to the ground, clutching the rifle to his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the girl, remembering something she once told him about thoughts and the animals you hunted being able to hear those thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and the weight of his mistake began to press him into the frozen moss and snow beneath.

   21   

H
e reached the girl before she started up the riverbank. She sensed him coming and turned to wait. He wondered how she envisioned him behind her white eyes, just how she saw him, or if she saw him at all. Maybe he was just a voice, a presence that made sure she ate and drank.

“I knew you’d bring my grass back to me,” she said.

“I just came back for more canned peaches,” he said.

“You lie!”

“Wait here,” he said, climbing up the bank as he pulled his rifle off his shoulder. The strange sense of déjà vu grew as he peeked the rifle over the edge of the bank and scanned the village for movement. A black rubber boot stepped on the end of his barrel.

He pulled back on the stock and swung the barrel skyward, just as the old woman’s laugh cracked the cold silence.

“How you live this long being so dumb?” she asked.

He took a breath and tried to ease his pounding heart.

“Jesus, woman. I could have shot you.”

“I would have shot you first,” she said, and she lifted into the air an old 20-gauge pockmarked with rust, the cracked and weathered wood stock wrapped in black electrician’s tape.

“This was my husband’s. Got a half box of shells left, too.”

She pointed to a blue-grey plastic fifty-gallon garbage can lid, upside down, with a blanket tied to it. A rope extended to her waist.

“I got the foods you gave me in here, most of it, my knife, and a caribou hide.”

He helped her down the bank to the river ice and the girl. They hugged, as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. The old woman put her bare hands on the girl’s face.

“You knew we would come back for you?” the girl asked.

“No. But when you left I thought I could hear their voices.”

“Scary,” the girl said.

“Not those ones in there,” the old woman said, pointing first to the school and then up the river. “The kids.”

CARL, THE SCHOOL’S CUSTODIAN and maintenance man, quickly became his new best friend in the village. They would have coffee in the morning, while the kids shuffled into the gym half-awake to stand in line for plastic bowls of government-issue cereal or thin, dry pancakes or instant scrambled eggs. The two of them would eat together at lunch most days, sitting with the students on the folding cafeteria tables in the gym, and then have another cup of coffee afterwards, watching the students clean up and put the tables away before the kids began their pickup basketball games until the next class started. They would talk about hunting, fishing, and the classic days of professional basketball with Larry Bird and Doctor J.