“I do not want to fucking die,” he says. We stay quiet, look at the fire too. He looks at me, finally.
“What do we do? If those wolves stay on us?” Henrick asks me. I’m quiet a moment.
“We try to kill them,” I say. “If we have to. If we can. If they aren’t letting us walk out.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” Ojeira says.
“One at a time. Tip the numbers,” I say. I keep carving the point. “That’s what they’re doing to us.”
I don’t believe we have a hope, in hell, of winning a thing like that. But I want them to believe it. But maybe they won’t come at us again, and maybe if they do we’ll get lucky, fend them off, at least. And now I’m thinking about my son, and my wife, which I’ve tried not to do, but here they are, around the fire with me. I try to think of what we need to do, and not think of them at all. But here they are.
Before our son came, my wife had a dream that wolves took me, dragged me off in the snow somewhere, she dreamed they went mad hungry, and when she got to me I weighed nothing anymore, I was light and half-gone, and in the dream all she thought was ‘
I used to pray to things, I’ve had my discussions, stumbling drunk, or facing a knife in an alley, looking at guns, the bad end, or harder times in cold houses, on night walks I didn’t bargain on, in the shadow of the world, on hunts that went wrong, when, for a moment of stupid gone worse, a mountain has almost killed me, or the forest, because I was foolish. But I’ve found myself praying time over time to the memory of that dream, to the love of our son and me she had in her dream, without her knowing, I suppose, that was God to her, once, sleeping in that cave of her night. It was to me, anyway. And now my son is across a curve of earth from here, and I don’t know what time it is, it’s dinner, or he’s going to bed, without his father, and better off for it, I have to think. And I’m the only one here who thinks, if I get back alive, chances are better than not his life will be worse. I think disappearing out here, might be as good a thing as I could give him. That’s what I’ve tried to think, away from him, that I’m doing what’s best. But it’s a hard thing to think, every day. It’s not nothing, to choose that. Not for me it isn’t.
I look up at these babies, making their spears, and I suppose in my haze I have been trying to get them home alive, even if I don't need to. Doesn’t matter, though, like I said, but I'll do it for some fucking reason. Because I’ll do it.
We have been sitting a while making these silly little spears and having our fireside all-going-to-die-soon time, and I wonder if it’s enough that we could get up and move again. Stopping the night when it’s nothing but night has lost its meaning, as good as. Everybody sits, quiet, watching the dark and the fire by turns. I look at Ojeira, see him nodding, falling asleep, and Bengt looks the same. I feel myself slipping too.
I look up from the fire, suddenly, wondering if I’ve fallen asleep, and how long, if I have. The fire’s down, cold’s crept into me, from sitting too long. I see everyone’s asleep. How we can fall asleep when a thousand yards back, or two, wolves were on us, I don’t know. It’s an escape, maybe. What do you do after watching people die? Eventually you’ll sleep again, it’ll come.
Suddenly I feel we’ve stayed too long. I knock my boots together in the snow to clean the treads, like that's going to matter after two steps. I haul myself to my feet, and reach to Henrick, shake him.
Henrick snaps awake, startled, looks around.
“I think we keep moving, if we can,” I say. Henrick nods, shakes Tlingit, who does the same, hauls up. The others wake up, too, see we’re still here, and look unhappy. I pick up the sticks I sharpened, nod to the sticks we haven’t sharpened yet.
“Let’s bring those too,” I say.
I pull my pack on, as the others get to their feet, except Ojeira, who’s struggling. Henrick and I bend down to help Ojeira up, and I stop.
The wolves have come in by the fire, standing there, staring at us. Maybe they were here all the time we slept, staring at us, I didn’t hear them come, they’re just there. Three, I see right away, and my heart’s pounding wondering where the others are.
Henrick sees me staring, looks, the others too. They’re very close, at the edge of what’s left of the firelight, looking at us. Nobody wants to move. I see more, then, now I’m looking, like I should have been looking, four more, dotted between the trees, could be others. They’re there somewhere.
“Shit. Shit,” Ojeira says, whispering, still on the ground, fumbling for his knife, which he’s dropped or something, he can’t find it. He has his sticks but we all seem to want as many sharp things as we can have our hands on, not that we know what we’re going to do. He’s the only one moving, he keeps patting around in the snow trying to find his knife and finally he finds it behind him, he was almost sitting on it, and he half gets up and falls back down with it, point up, holding all his sticks up too.
“If they come at us, we fight them,” I say, staring at the wolves in front. “If any of them gets on one of us, we gang on that one, OK? Try to get a stick into him, or a knife, if you can.” They’re all staring, paralyzed, like that’s the last thing they’ll ever be able to do.
I keep looking for the big one, I don’t see him. Finally he comes out of the dark, stands there, staring with the rest of them. I don't know what they’re doing, sniffing us out, again, choosing one of us to kill or deciding to kill all of us at once, or just waiting to see what the big one does. I breathe, watch them breathing.
The big one straightens his body out, suddenly, leans forward, makes a line, nose to back, pointing at me, low. I think he’s getting ready to come at me.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Ojeira says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Choosing.”
The big wolf looks from me to Ojeira, sniffing. Then he shifts, barely. He’s pointing at Ojeira, now.
“Is he fucking looking at me? He’s what— choosing me?”
I don’t know what they’re doing.
