The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [49]
“You’ll not make it,” Joseph said. He’d grown fond of Bull, and he was grateful to him for bringing along the laudanum, which was all that kept them from dying in the snow with their pants around their ankles, he was sure. “Don’t go,” he begged. “Don’t let him,” he entreated Henri. But the guides only nodded and looked away. They understood that the doctor’s housekeeper was the only reason Bull was living yet. Like most men of large muscled stature, Bull had suffered the pangs of starvation more cruelly than the others. He had even gazed hungrily at English Bill’s dog and so, that night, English Bill and the guides were the only of the men who did not try to dissuade Bull from making his attempt.
The ice broke and by morning the river was outside the door of the cabin. By noon that day, as Bull got ready to leave, the water had entered. The men gave him half of the cornmeal they had left, and he took a butcher knife. All of the men shook hands before he walked off, and nobody expected to see him again. The melt was grave—not only had they built too close to the river, they now realized, but the prairie between them and St. Anthony would be swimming. There would be no crossing. Bull would die in the mud. There would be no B. J. Bolt with a wagonload of food. Perhaps an Indian pony could get through, said Joseph, but the guides said no and Henri calmly sliced apart the extra pair of moccasins he’d brought and stewed them up. Joseph added the lacings and tops of his elkhide overboots. They had sent Bull off with more than his share of the laudanum and the dose they took that night, as it was the last, inflicted them with melancholy.
When they woke the next day the water had risen to just below their platform bed, and they resolved with their remaining strength to build a higher temporary shelter on a rise behind the cabin. As they were slowly attempting to build, Joseph had a sudden bolt of fear that he’d left the Meditations within reach of the water and he ran back to the cabin to retrieve the book. He had his gun with him because he was keeping that dry. As he entered the cabin, he saw a watery slur of movement. In the light from the open door an otter popped his head up and regarded him with the curious and trusting gaze of a young child. Slowly, not taking his eyes off the creature, Joseph aimed and shot. The otter died in a bloody swirl and Joseph found, when he fished it out, that his eyes had filled with tears. In a moment he was weeping helplessly over the gleaming and sinuous body of the creature.
The book was safe. He put it in his coat. Embarrassed at himself, he took the otter to a dry place and skinned and dressed it out. He’d got hold of himself by the time he brought the meat to English Bill, but he was unnerved by the great emotion he’d felt. For he’d had the instant horror that he had committed a murder. And that conviction still filled him. The creature was an emissary of some sort. He’d known as they held that human stare. Joseph himself was part of all that was sustained and destroyed by a mysterious power. He had killed its messenger. And the otter wasn’t even edible. English Bill tried to roast the meat without parboiling it first, and the otter’s taste of rotting fish gagged the men. Not so the terrier, who had a feast.
The dog was so full that the next day she didn’t eat even one of thirty-six snow buntings that she found huddled in a pile, frozen dead and perfectly preserved. The Buckendorfs heaped the birds in their laps and with swift hands plucked them bare. Then the men put the birds on spits, roasted them, and ate, shivering with pleasure as they cracked and sucked the tiny bones.