The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [71]
“Think we’ll be able to get out caribou hunting?” John asked.
“Maybe if we get more snow,” Carl said. “Maybe if the herd comes on this side of the mountains this year.”
“What’s the deal with the news people?” Anna asked.
Carl scowled. “Showtime. Look at how we bring happiness to the cute little Natives.”
Anna elbowed Carl and said, “What turned you into Mr. Scrooge!”
“Anna,” John said, embarrassed at her jibe.
“You’re right, Anna,” Carl said. “I shouldn’t get mad about those news people. It’s just how they only show our kids to the rest of the state when they’re getting handouts from Santa in a Blackhawk. I’ll quit being Scrooge.” Then he smiled, and added, “And then I’ll gladly take a case of oranges from Santa!”
They watched as the children gathered around the portly, white-bearded man in the Santa suit. The braver older kids pawed at his soft red jacket, the long pointy hat hanging down the side of his face, and his white gloves. The younger, shyer kids giggled behind their mittens and trailed behind him toward the gym for an early Christmas celebration. The news crews followed, with one petite reporter trying to walk and report, talking into the camera lens and struggling against the wind to keep her long brown hair from covering her face.
Anna laughed. “I think Mr. Scrooge here should be the village spokesperson,” she said.
“Me? No way,” Carl said. “I’m too shy.”
“Speaking of shy,” Anna said, patting her little sidekick on the head. “Go on, Nina! Go see what Santa has for you.” The little girl shook her head and buried her face in the side of Anna’s snow pants.
Anna nudged Nina toward the group of kids. The girl clung to her leg, and Anna made exaggerated clown-like steps toward Santa with the little one in tow.
HE SPOTTED A MAN in the distance, staggering across the tundra with no apparent direction or destination. As soon as he saw the dark figure, he pushed the girl to the snow, pulled off his mitten, and rested his right index finger on the icy metal of the rifle’s trigger. His eye focused on the round red bead of the sight at the end of the barrel. He held it half a foot above the approaching man’s head to compensate for the distance.
The person stopped, and for a moment John worried they had been spotted.
“One of them?” she asked, her voice barely audible in the wind.
“Can’t tell.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Stopped. Now he’s turning in circles.”
“Maybe he’s lost?”
“Maybe.”
He squinted to see if he could see the man’s face. Something didn’t seem right with the man.
“What’s he wearing?”
“A black jacket. Leather. Basketball shoes. No hat. No gloves.”
“Is his jacket zipped?”
The man turned around again, toward them, and he could see the jacket was open. The man waved at the air in front of him as if dismissing someone and began to stagger toward the endless white of snow-covered tundra and lakes.
“He’s leaving.”
“Which direction?”
“West.”
“There’s nothing that way. Not for a long ways.”
“How did you know his jacket was unzipped?”
“He’s freezing to death. Too far gone. He thinks he’s getting warm.”
They waited until the man was just a black spot on the flat white horizon before John stood and helped the girl to her feet.
“Why didn’t you ask me to help him?” he asked.
“There’s nothing we could do for him,” she said. Her milky eyes seemed to scan the grey wall of clouds the man was headed toward. “When someone used to get lost on the tundra, if the searchers didn’t find the body they would say he became tenguituli, wild. If a raven finds the person and removes part of his liver he becomes light and can’t understand humans no more and becomes part of the wild nature. If you find a wild man you have to spit on him or take one finger and push him down into the ground to save him. That man’s not wild, not yet.”
26
The flashing light sat mounted on the top of a skinny metal radio tower, surrounded by three black wind turbines, at the north edge of town. The two-foot-wide windmill blades were beginning to whir as the wind picked up. The three of them waited on their stomachs, watching