Hooks Are Money

   Published: in South Dakota Review, 
Spring 2007, Vol. 45, no. 1.
copyright@Jerry D. McDonnell, 2006

by

Jerry D. McDonnell

This young man before him did not wear skins. He wore thick, heavy dark pants with side pockets like the gusiks wear. Alexie wanted to touch these pants, to feel them. The pants looked coarse and heavy, not soft like fur or smooth like a caribou hide. Black straps went from the pants over the young man’s shoulders, over a shirt with lines on it forming small black and red, organized squares presenting a pattern rarely seen in nature. The young man didn’t wear a coat, as it was a warm, sunny day on the tundra. His hat was also coarse and checkered with a part of it sticking out in front and flaps held up on each side connecting on top. Alexie silently questioned how warm these clothes would be in winter. Would these clothes protect if wet on a day when someone could see someone’s breath painting the freezing air? And this young man talked much, mostly in English. Alexie’s command of English was like a hole in a fish net, some words escaped. Alexie, being polite, did not touch the pants. He turned away and studied the river, watching the small ripples of the current sliding by the mud bank. He was tempted to show this young man the new baidarka (kayak) he had made, but Alexie wasn’t sure yet if this was his son. Alexie was old and trying to remember. The world was always a trickster; decades ago, Alexie thought he knew it better than today.

This last son of his had been only 8 years old when Alexie and his wife had to send this young man and their 7-year old daughter away to the boarding school. Years before some gusiks had taken his wife away. His first four children had died years ago, and these younger children had never come back. The young man jerked back when Alexie, completely out of character, thrust his face into the young man’s and gazed long at his features. “It has been many seasons.” What name do you carry now?” Alexie said quietly.

“Carl,” the young man answered.

“Come with me . . . Carl.” Alexie jumped up and quickly walked this possible son several hundred yards up river. He stopped at a place of tall grass, looked again at the young man, and pulled from the grass two one-holed baidarkas. One was new, the walrus skin over the wood frame smooth and clean, the other was old with patches and scratches on the skin hull. “This one I make for you when they told me you were coming home.” The son looked at the new baidarka, but shied away from it. “Where is your sister?” Alexie asked his son while handing him a paddle.

“She is not coming back, father,” the son looked at the paddle like he had never seen one before. “I wrote you letters. Once I came to Dillingham to find you, but everyone said you were up river and no one could find you. They said you did not want to be found.”

“I lose them,” Alexie said.  “I didn’t want them read to me. The words coming told you were alive, that was enough. And your sister?”

“A new family took her in to try to make her well, but then she died coughing.”

“And you . . . ?”

“Yes father I am well. I have seen many things in the world, and I learned many things in the school. It is much different than here.”

“How old are you now?” He looked up at this son who was a head taller than Alexie’s 5 feet 4 inches.

“Twenty-eight, they think.”

 “What does that name Carl mean?”

“It has no meaning.”

“Then why do they call you that?”

“I did as you told me when I left. I would not tell them my name. They gave everyone new names. To them, I am Carl now. They didn’t want us to speak our language.”

Alexie listened to the sound of the river and thought about that.  “How is it different . . . that place you have been?”

“I have been in several places. In some places people live in houses all built next to each other.”

“Is a house like a gasigih?”

Carl frowned, searching for the Yup’ik word in a language he had been trying to learn again, “ The houses are all above ground and made of wood. The men and women live together in the same house.”

“There is no gasigih for the men?”

“They have meeting places, but the men don’t sleep or live there.”

Alexie thought about that, thinking that might not be so bad since he had lived alone now for sometime.

“They call the houses all in one place towns or villages,” Carl continued. “Down river, at the winter meeting place where the water is wider, a village has been started. Then big boats called barges can come up. The white people, the gusiks are going to help us build more houses.”

Alexie watched the river flow for a time before he suspiciously whispered, “Are these Russians?”

“No, they are not the Russians your father told you about. They have been gone for many years. Things are safe now. The new people are from someplace else. They don’t take slaves.” Carl examined the well-made paddle in his hand.

“Our people always welcome guests, but what do these people want from us?”

“There are many things we can use from them to make our life easier. Maybe they want us to have a better life, I’m not sure, yet. They are different people. They call themselves Alaskans but they come from many different places.

“Someone must have many things to give us their houses and their villages.”

“They are not giving us their villages or houses, they are giving us new ones,” Carl said patiently. “I want you to come live among the people again, father. I have been told you have been much alone.”

Alexie became very quiet. He closed his eyes and listened to the water traveling toward the Bering Sea and heard the flapping of a raven’s wing flying overhead. Minutes later when he opened his eyes, his son, now called Carl, was still examining the paddle. “Whisper your true name in my ear,” Alexie said. Carl did so and Alexie went to the baidarka and shoved it in the water, motioning for Carl to get in. Carl stepped back. “Someone should try this new baidarka,” Alexie said. “It is made like the ones the Sugpiaq people make.”

“I don’t know how,” Carl said.

“What did they teach someone in that school all these years? Someone has lessons to learn. Breakup is over. It is time to think of winter. We must gather food.”

“I have learned how to build houses. We will get a skiff with a kicker,” Carl said.

“Everyone knows how to build houses,” Alexie said gently, not wanting to insult this son.

“But this is a new way and you won’t have to build or repair one each year,” Carl said turning the paddle over in his hand, wanting to please his father, but afraid of getting in the baidarka. If it tipped over he would feel foolish.

Alexie had seen skiffs with kickers; the kickers were loud and unnatural and the hard metal of the skiffs lacked spirit, but he had heard enough talk for today. Carl was talking too much . . . like the gusiks. And much to his disappointment, Alexie also found he also was talking too much.

“And a rifle,” Carl said, stepping near the baidarka to make his father happy.

The emerging of bothersome gnats and a few early mosquitoes didn’t have to whisper in Alexie’s ear to tell him summer had taken its first step.  Keeping a steady rhythm with his paddle against the current, small ice chunks bounced off his baidarka as he dodged the sections of the river still holding ice. His stomach growling, Alexie was looking for meat. A moose or a bear would be good luck for the coming winter, but for tonight a duck or a muskrat would do . . . or a beaver tail. His mouth watered at the thought of the fat in a beaver tail. He had some dried salmon—the last of his dried salmon—stored safely in the baidarka and some bread his sister had given him before he left her dugout early this morning. His sister had wanted to give him other food, but he was stubborn, only taking the bread to be polite and besides he didn’t like gusik food. All someone needs is meat and fat. Alexie knew she had just enough for herself till the salmon run this summer. In the Yup’ik culture, people shared. Since her husband had died, Alexie had been taking care of his sister. The salmon run last summer and fall had not been as plentiful as he wished and a bear had destroyed one of his nets. But at this moment he desired a big piece of meat. Glancing back at the sky in the west, he read the clouds and knew it would be dry at least until morning. If luck was good a caribou would come to him. Or a bear. He would rather have a caribou even if in the spring the hides were no good and the meat would be lean. Bears were much work. At 64 years old, Alexie didn’t want to work that hard. But if the bear came . . . he still knew how to work for his food. He was here, making a living, but his son wasn’t. Carl had gone to Dillingham to work on a fishing boat. “Why I am being tricked this way,” he whispered to the river.

Alexie paddled the baidarka into a creek feeding into the river. The deep channel, confined by high brushy banks, created a tunnel with a slit in the roof. The late afternoon sun shot through the brush casting abstract shadows on Alexie’s leathered face. In these calm waters he hoped to find a fish for dinner, maybe a big pike. His old sinew net had broken and having no fish trap, he let out some line that had no color that Carl had given him.  It had taken Alexie some practice to learn how to tie his bone hook onto this line. Carl had sold the other bone hooks Alexie had made to a gusik in Dillingham who would sell them again in Anchorage to other gusiks. This, Alexie didn’t understand. Some things did not translate. Alexie was trying to learn English as well as he could, but Yup’ik was still his primary tongue. Carl tried to explain it to him in Yup’ik but the concept did not make sense to his father, and Carl had been away so long that his Yup’ik was rusty.

“Then if this man sells them again he won’t have any hooks,” Alexie pondered seriously. “Why would he . . . “

“He will sell the hooks for more money than he paid me,” Carl said.

“But still he won’t have any hooks,” Alexie said. “Maybe he has some relatives that will give him hooks?”

“He doesn’t need hooks. He sells them to gift shops in Anchorage.”

 Alexie didn’t bother to ask anymore. Translations for the words into Yup’ik were difficult. The gusiks used so many words to say so little. The concept of “gift” came easy, but the concept of “buy” and “sell” was more complicated.  It must be like trading, but one person gets this money instead of something useful, Alexie thought. It was too strange, this world that had captured Carl. “Tell me again what good is this money?” Alexie asked, holding up a piece of paper with images on each side and some writing he couldn’t read. Alexie pulled on the twenty-dollar bill, snapping it back and forth to test its strength.

Carl was trying to be patient. He had tried to avoid it, but he had picked up the gusik way of wanting things done quickly. A Yup’ik man had then reminded him that unlike the gusik ways one must show respect to elders. It was the correct way.  “I have told you, I need the money to buy a skiff and kicker and fuel so we can go hunting.”

“Yes, you have told me.”

“I bought you that fishing line so you could save time and not have to make line out of caribou sinew or from the seal. With money I could buy you a net made of good strong line already put together. I bought you those steel hooks that you won’t use. I bought you that coat . . . which you never wear.”

“Thank you. That is a very fine coat. I will wear it when it is warm and I go someplace important to show my son made me a coat.”

“I didn’t make it father.  I’m not a woman. I bought it,” Carl said calmly, but frustrated.

Alexie thought about that. He watched the tall brown grass swaying in concert as the breeze petted the tundra. A pair of cranes returning from the south glided down, melting into the grass; a flight of ducks dotted the horizon.“ But I still don’t know why this money is important.”

“Please just know that I need it, father. We need it. Someday they may be bringing an airplane into the new village. There is talk about when someone will build a runway. A runway is where the airplanes can land and take off.”

“Yes. I would like to see that. I have never seen that. I used to wonder how those airplanes came up and down out of the sky. At first I thought they just stayed up there, until I found out people were in them. Your Aunt saw one first. It came in off the Bering Sea from the west and had a big red circle on the side.”

“You and Aunt Anita can move into the village when the housing is completed,” Carl said, laying his hand on his father’s shoulder.

“We will talk later about this housing. Just now I need to know how to tie a knot in this strange line that has no inside. It has a mind of its own. It fights back like a green twig. I tried heating it, but it melted.”

“It is called nylon line. It is the very newest kind of line.” Carl said. “Let me show you some knots I was taught by the man who sold it to me.”

Alexie’s line jerked. It was a pike; he could tell by the way it fought. Keeping tension on the line, he slowly pulled it toward him hand over hand using his fingers and thumbs in a way that the line could not slip through and cause burns if the fish began to run. The thick alder on the edge of the creek caught his paddle lying across the baidarka. He saved the paddle, but lost the tension on the line; it went slack. Hauling in the line, he found the pike’s sharp teeth had bitten through it. The fish was gone, and so was his last bone hook. Some line, this nylon, weak like all money things, Alexie thought. Caribou sinew would have brought him a pike dinner if tunghit, the spirit beings, thought him worthy. Alexie wondered if tunghit knew about this nylon line. Stubbornly, he left the steel hooks in his pouch as the light began to fade around him. “I will spear a fish.”

Seeing a rising moon and knowing that this early in the summer it would be dark for less than six hours, he decided he would paddle all night and get to his hunting camp before first light. The light of the moon contrasted the shapes of the night like a negative. Paddling upstream, he heard small creatures rustling in the bush on the banks. Two ducks flew low over his head; an eider stood on a sandbar upstream; further above, he saw the outline of a crane. He lifted the paddle gently from the water to quell the sound of the splash. Closing in on the eider, he placed his hand on his bow, but before he could use it, the eider flew off; next he saw the crane take flight when a fox approached. His stomach growled again; Alexie decided dried salmon would be his food this night and dug in his paddle in to make speed.

In the light of predawn, Alexie maneuvered his baidarka through the rapids below the site of this summer camp that he knew well. Shortly after the sun rose, Alexie pulled the baidarka out of the water into the clearing surrounding this hunting house. Pausing when he saw the door of the log dwelling hanging open, he took several minutes looking deep into the tall grass surrounding the large open space. Like a wolf stalking a bird, taking one step and looking and listening and then another step and looking and listening, he methodically approached the small log house. Small birds chirping in a nearby bush became quiet: the air was still, the five-foot tall, brown, grass at attention. Stringing an arrow in his bow and laying his spear close at hand, he watched a section of the grass less than 30 yards away moving like a boat plowing the sea. As the moving grass approached the edge, Alexie drew the bow back. The grass stopped moving. Alexie breathed slowly, steadied his hand, and waited. A small black nose peeked out of the grass. Alexie’s waited motionless for a good shot. The animal, trying to retreat, turned to the side just as Alexie’s arrow flew. The beaver died quickly. Alexie’s stomach applauded.

In the creek running by the log house, Alexie found a muskrat house and set a snare. Under a tree, he placed another snare in hopes a ground squirrel would come to him. Maybe tomorrow he would have more fresh meat.

At the house, claw marks told that a bear had wanted inside and had broken the door. The bear had not found much, only a small amount of seal oil, but it had damaged some drying racks stored inside. It was not a good door or house anyway, Alexie thought. He had tried to make a door like he had seen in a picture with things called hinges, which he made out of bear hide. Alexie shrugged. It was only a summer hunting hut, Alexie thought, built above ground. He knew that this log house would not be good in the winter.  It was not as efficient as a sod house and much more work, but he would use it now and maybe use it later for firewood.

After cooking beaver, Alexie repaired the door made of small logs and branches lashed together the best he could for tonight. This summer maybe he would make a better door. Several years ago, after he found himself alone, it had taken many weeks to cut enough wood and prepare it to make this house. Alexie laid his spear, his darts and his bow by his caribou skin bed with his metal long blade knife he had got in a trade years ago. The man said he had gotten it from a Russian many years ago. Alexie’s father had first heard about the Russians from his father who had told him that Alexie was a Russian name that he should take to keep him safe. Alexie’s father said, “The Russians killed my father, your grandfather. These Russians are to be avoided. But if they find you, tell them your name is Alexie. Don’t tell anyone your real name.”  After his father died, Alexie still went to the coast in the summer to net salmon and hunt the seals and the belugas, but one day when he saw the big boats of the gusik’s, first with large skins that caught the wind and later with smoke coming from them, he went inland to try and catch caribou and trap muskrats. While Alexie was up river these people off these huge boats (maybe they were Russians, he didn’t know) took Alexie’s wife, who was helping her mother dry fish. For two years he searched for her and heard bad things had happened to her and that she had been taken far away and then he quit looking for her. He came back only with the long knife.

Next came the strange people with sticks crossed talking about a man hanging on these sticks. Alexie was told these people were not like the ones before and would not hurt him. But they took his son and daughter away to a place called a boarding school. After that, he avoided the coast for many years.

Exhausted, but disappointed that his son had not come with him, Alexie lay awake in his hunting hut, too tired to sleep after paddling for over 24 hours with only short naps. Carl would not come in the new baidarka. Carl said if he worked on a fishing boat out of Dillingham he could get enough money to buy a skiff, a kicker and maybe a rifle. Carl had spent the first winter home in Dillingham, working at a new store. Before Carl left, he told Alexie it was a year called 1940 and that they may see more airplanes with red circles on them like Anita had seen. Alexie had no idea what a 1940 was and soon forgot it, as it was not important. Carl said men were fighting in a war across the Ocean. He said they had not taken him because of his feet. It had been many years since Alexie had gone to war against the Athabaskans inland. Alexie had never heard of the war people Carl was talking about.

About to fall asleep, he heard a scratching on his door. Sitting up, Alexie placed his hands on his bow and arrow and his spear. The door of the windowless house began to shake. Then came the pounding. This was not the way he wanted to catch a bear. He pounded on the door with the butt end of his spear and shouted. The pounding from outside stopped. Alexie stepped back, checked his knife at his side, leaned his spear within reach against the wall and strung an arrow in his bow. All he could hear was his heartbeat. Stepping near the log wall, ear and nose close to the cracks in the door, he listened. The breath he at first thought was his was soon realized to be coming from the other side of the door. His nose at the small crack by door hinge recognized the strong odor of bear. A snort and sniff blew inches away from Alexie’s nose. Jumping back he banged against the door with the butt end of his spear and then clapped his hands loud and fast. Then quiet. Alexie heard nothing but his heartbeat. He waited. The swishing sound of disturbed brush came from the rear of the cabin. He now knew this was a bad bear. It was looking for a weak spot in the cabin. Alexie also knew that the flimsy door was the weak spot. The light in the windowless hut was poor, but he knew this structure well. Slowly and quietly he stepped on a shelf and pulled himself up into the rafters. Arranging his spear across the rafters where he could grab it with one motion, he planted his feet and braced his back against a log beam.  He was just notching his arrow when the door came crashing in bringing enough light to give shape to the bear’s silhouette. It’s head was down; it’s ears were laid back. From the angle above, Alexie couldn’t find a good killing place for the arrow. He also knew that one arrow would probably not stop the bear. The bear’s nose led him to the rafters. He raised his head and saw Alexie. It was a large bear, standing on its hind legs his head was even with Alexie’s feet. Alexie loosed the arrow, sinking it deep into the bear’s throat. The bear howled, dropped to the cabin floor, spun around trying to bite and swat at the arrow. Then up again on its hind legs, it swatted a powerful blow and swiped Alexie’s leg and the rafter before Alexie could grab his spear: rafter and Alexie crashed to the cabin floor. The bear was on him in an instant, biting at Alexie’s head. Alexie rolled over onto his stomach, curled into a ball, and put his hands behind his head. The bear’s roar shook the cabin; the next swat rolled Alexie across the floor. Alexie then felt the bite in his left shoulder and knew the bear would not let him live.

Carl had waited for a calm day before he left Dillingham in his new aluminum 18-foot skiff with kicker. It took him a good part of the day to come from Bristol Bay out into the Bering Sea and then find the mouth of the river. Thirty-three miles up the meandering river, he pulled the boat onto the mud bank at the site of the new village. Several houses were already up and had families living in them. Within an hour, Carl had permission from the newly organized Village Council for a site to build his house. Things moved fast that summer. The barge brought up the building materials he had ordered, and Carl put in a foundation. He left again to work on a salmon fishing boat in Bristol Bay and made enough to pay off his skiff and the lumber. By the end of August the state had put in a water system and Carl had his house up before they had completed the village generator. This was truly to be a modern village, he thought. He went up river to find his Aunt Anita in her summer tent camp.

“You may come live in my new house in the new village,” Carl said.

“Alexie told me to wait here,” she said.

 “How long has my father been gone,” Carl asked.

“Many days. Since the ice in the river broke up.”  Anita said.  He went hunting. Up to one of his hunting camps.“

“But that has been over two months. Where are these places?”

She shrugged, “It depends on where the hunting is good, he has several places where the animals are lucky for him. I only know they are a long paddle.”

“He must be in trouble. Didn’t you tell someone?” Carl asked.

“Yes I told someone. They took their new skiff and kicker up river, but were afraid to go through the rapids and they came back.” 

“Did they see any signs of my father?”

“No, but don’t worry, your father usually spends most of the summer up river. He no longer takes his fish down by the sea. He takes his fish up river, and he catches many caribou and sometimes a bear. You don’t know how it has been with him since they took you away.”  Anita looked around her dugout and began picking up things and putting them in the grass baskets she makes. “Alexie is the only elder left who knows the fast water . . . I don’t think he will want to live in the new village. Each year he wants to be more and more alone. This is not good. It is better to camp with others to have help to bring the meat. He is getting old.”

Carl stared out over the flat tundra toward the mountains far up river. “I will take you to the new village tomorrow. While you gather your belongings I will get us some food, maybe a fresh fish. Father will know where to find you.”

Two days later, his Aunt placed in his new house, Carl was packing his skiff for a trip up river when William, the father of one of his cousins, came to him, “Someone must know the river well to go up so far.”

“I must find my father,” Carl said. “Do you know of his hunting places?”

“No. I only know they are above the rapids, below second lake. Alexie is not seen much these past years.”

“Someone must look for him.”

“The fast water has been forgotten. No one knows how to get through anymore. Everyone breaks a prop or tips over,” William warned.

“Still someone must go.”

 “Maybe your father and his baidarka is best suited for rapids. Maybe these new skiffs and kickers are not so good for that.”

By his Father’s winter sod house, Carl pulled the skiff into the bank. From a storage place, he picked up some of his father’s spare things, a spear and a throwing board and a bow and some arrows. He found some darts for close range and a long piece of caribou sinew rolled up neatly. Placing them in his skiff, he paused, and looked back at the new baidarka. When he motored up river, he was pulling the baidarka behind the skiff.

The river, the side channels, the ducks, the eagles, the brown grass hanging over the banks on each side of river carried Carl home. His happiness increased as the water became crystal clear above the tidal influence. He cut the kicker and listened. A beaver slapped his tail and dove; Carl laughed loudly, his voice breaking the air like a cannon. Tossing his store cap aside, he let the wind toss and tangle his black hair. Standing up in the skiff, the throttle wide open, he could see over the banks onto the tundra of tall grass and brush. A fox ran for cover as he came around a bend. Ptarmigan in their brown summer plumage flew up from their nests. A bald eagle roosted on a lone, scraggly treetop, and further upstream a falcon stood his ground on the branches of a tall bush. An hour up river he stopped to see how much gas he had left. Spruce trees were beginning to fill in the landscape; the river became nestled between thousand-foot mountains. Several hours upstream, just before the river narrowed into a shallow canyon, he saw a brown bear walking slowly up the hillside. Suddenly, around the next bend, the rapids were before him. He tried to negotiate the white water, but the rapids were shallow in some places and rocky in others. In a short distance, he sheared his prop while trying to avoid a submerged rock. With his oars, he managed to get the skiff back down river and pull into a side channel without losing the baidarka.

After he replaced the shear pin on his prop, he tried to walk along the bank. It was impossible. If it wasn’t thick brush, it was quagmire and each time he touched the brush mosquitoes or noseeums swarmed his exposed skin. Ten impossible yards up the shore, he tested the first feeder stream with a long branch. It was deeper than he was tall and too wide to jump. Sitting back in the skiff, he listened to the sounds of the land. A gentle breeze carried strong smells of vegetation and something acrid, like something dead. He called out his father’s name and waited for an answer. There was no reply. He called again; the result was the same. He looked for a long time at the baidarka before he attached the waterproof walrus intestine garment to his waist and got in. His weight adjusted and the waterproof intestine securing the hole, he began paddling. He almost tipped over once but quickly gained confidence. The distance wasn’t far; in less than half an hour, he was in calm water.

            The hut, set a hundred yards from the river, couldn’t be seen from the river, but 50 yards above the rapids he saw a low cutback bank where a person would pull out. Approaching the hut his senses became acute. Standing motionless, he scanned the area around the structure. He listened so hard he almost jumped when he heard his heart beat. The smell of death was strong. The door was broken off and lying in the grass. His father’s baidarka lay in the grass a short distance away. “Father,” he called.  A blue sky with a bright sun framed black flies swarming in the warm air. Clutching the spear tighter, he walked slowly toward the hut. Peeking in the door, he saw his father’s caribou parka on the floor and a damaged log rafter hanging down to the floor. Expecting the worse, Carl picked up the parka. It was ripped badly in the shoulder and stained with dried blood. The shelves ripped off the wall, the damaged rafters, the broken door and traces of blood on the walls and floor and clumps of hair in the wood spoke of a fight. Carl ran outside. Calling his father’s name, he frantically searched the area, looking for sign or a body . . . or bones. Finding a well-worn trail leading from a side channel, he followed the trail up the mountain. The grass between the trees and the brush was as tall as his head. The trail was not a deep rut like a heavily used bear trail, but still he thought of the bear he had seen walking up a hillside a short time ago. He adjusted his father’s spear in his hand and wished he had had enough money left to buy that rifle.

He found his father lying in sun in the mouth of a cave. The old man was very still. Part of his hair was gone. Carl saw a man he barely knew; a man who was part of the land, not a part of a new village. An old man without a rifle, without a skiff and a kicker. Carl saw the drying racks by the cave with the fish and small furs hanging on them like banners. Banners not made for show, but for food. His father’s spear was by his side, his bow and arrow leaning close by. He was wearing the coat that Carl had given him. The shiny blue, puffy, down coat looked out of place against the rocks, the trees, the drying hides and fish and the tattered and torn, caribou hide pants Alexie was wearing. Carl thought back to that first day they had deposited him in boarding school. He was only 8 years old. He didn’t know where he was or why he was there. He had felt like that coat looked in this place.

Carl reached down to touch his father. Alexie sprang up. Carl fell onto his back, his mouth open, his heart thumping. “Why does it take someone so long to get here? Did you want me to nap into winter?” Alexie said. Carl could only make sounds; no words came out. “Get the dried meat from the cave, son, we have to get back down river. Winter is not far off. It will take several trips, many days, in both baidarkas. But we can leave some meat here and come up with the dogs and sleds when the land is deep in snow and ice.” 

 Carl found his voice, “I have a skiff and a kicker below the rapids. We can get all this meat in one trip.”  Inside the cave he found three-dozen caribou skins and a large bear skin. All had been scraped and were soft. 

“That bear skin is for your Anita. She will make something useful from it,” Alexie said sheathing his steel knife. “Maybe a coat for both of us.”

“The house in the village is ready. Anita is moved in, father.”

Alexie looked at his son and then down at the rapids running through the river far below and sighed. “Someone would like to see that,” Alexie said walking down the trail with a hide pack of dried meat on his back. Carl noticed his father was favoring his left shoulder and that he looked much older than he had this spring. “Someone did good coming up the rapids, but someone still has things to learn. Someone also has dried fish. Those steel hooks work good, son. I see you now.”

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