The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [17]
“Quyana,” she whispered.
“Ii-i,” said the old woman. She plucked a branch out from the saucepan and sucked on it and dipped it into her cup. “I don’t know who that hunter is. But I seen him. He wears a mask and white clothings. He think he is invisible like a snowshoe hare. He was going downriver. He never stopped here, just waited for a bit across the river, watched this way for a while, like he maybe hunting something, and then went floating away on top of the ice.”
“Why do you call him that?” the girl asked. “The hunter?”
“That’s what he is,” she said. “He’s a hunter. He hunting for someone, maybe those bad people, maybe all human beings left. Even us. But he not a real hunter from here. We don’t think when we hunt. I don’t say, ‘I’m hunting caribou. I want caribou.’ I just go out and hope the earth will provide. A real hunter don’t think about what he hunts. Otherwise the hunted know he’s coming and they know what the hunter wants and they know how to get away.”
THAT FIRST NIGHT in Bethel, Anna and John roamed the streets. They held hands, but let go to cover their mouths against the plumes of fine dust that would billow up from the pickups, cars, and ATVs that raced past them. The intersections, some gravel, some paved, allowed for an odd sort of lawless short-cutting, with vehicles often leaving the roadways to cut off a meaningless amount of distance.
“What did you think about today’s festivities?” Anna asked.
“The in-service? I don’t know. Guess I just want to get out there and see the classroom and get ready. This is just a strange distraction.” John squashed a mosquito on his forehead. He looked down at the small spot of blood on his finger and wiped it against his jeans.
“I liked the whole culture presentation. I’m not so worried now,” Anna said.
A cherry-red monster-sized truck roared by them. The muffler and bass boomed.
“That’s obnoxious,” Anna said. “It could shake those houses off their little stilts!”
“I would have thought we could escape that crap.”
“They can’t have trucks like that in the village, can they?” Anna asked.
John reached down and picked up a flattened plastic soda bottle. “I hope not. I don’t think they have roads.”
“Look,” Anna said, stopping and pointing to a reed-filled pond alongside the road. Two young Yup’ik boys stood inside a large white plastic box. “What are they doing? What is that?”
“It’s a fish tote, for commercial salmon fishing probably. I think they’re going to try to float in it.”
The boys pushed off from the bank, each of them attempting to paddle with sticks. The white box began to tip and the boys lurched to the far side. Water poured in as the box began to sink. The boys crawled over the edge and jumped to shore. The box sank until it sat just at the surface. The boys threw the sticks at it and meandered away.
“Are they just going to leave it there?” Anna asked.
John gestured to a blue van, its tires flattened, the windows broken out. “Looks like things get left where they die out here on the tundra,” he said.
HE WATCHED THE GIRL eat the last bit of creamed corn. Of the remaining supplies, the creamed corn was the easiest to part with, and probably the easiest for her to stomach. Even starving, he hated creamed corn.
At first he didn’t want to share any of what little food he had left. It didn’t seem possible that she had lived as long as she had, and he’d read plenty of stories about people who survived against incredible odds, only to die almost immediately after being rescued. If she ate up a bunch of his food and then just died, he would have just wasted months and months of calculated and torturous rationing. He would also have to rethink his food supply for the beginning of his trip.
When she was finally able to sit up and feed herself again, she would tell long, rambling stories that helped him understand how she’d managed by herself. Alone. Blind. Starving.
“My dad was a nukalpiaq, a good hunter