It’s darker, still, my eyes are going darker from the edges in, like the night has crawled up to me from the snow and is leaking into the last part of me now, though shreds of light are in the sky, and I blink, trying to keep seeing, or maybe I am trying to be awake. I don’t know for sure if the big wolf is up again and coming at me or not or if I am standing or not or if my eyes are open or not, or if I’m dreaming or not, and I twitch my hand to tell if the knife is there and I look, in my dream, to see if the big wolf is coming, but in my dream he’s still standing on the rise above me looking down, or he’s trotted up there, and then I see that’s another wolf, the big one is in front of me, up on his paws again.
I think of my son, and my wife, and I think I was a man once, far away I was a man, in the world, I was not this bleeding dream floating into grey. I blink, looking at him, and I say do your best with me, kill me, there’s nothing to me but ghosts and what I remember of the last things in me, my wife, as she was, my son, when he was mine, and if you’re my death come on, if you’re all the wrongs I’ve done, if you’re the blackness in my father or the blackness in me, I’ll die killing you, and none of the things I am and none of the things I’ve done will touch my boy, or my wife, I’ll end here forever, and clean the world of me for good.
I look at him, I dream, and he looks like death again, and he leaps into the air, finally, and he hits me and I think I fall again, I hit the snow very hard. And I don’t try to move, not much, I try a little but there is nothing of me, I think, but I hit at him and I see the last shred of light in the sky goes out.
He’s dead, I think, but I’m dreaming that. I’m swimming in the snow, in dark, and blood, and dreaming that instead of bleeding in the snow, I’m standing over the big wolf, and all the others are dead in the snow too, but standing all around me at the same time, and I dream I hoist the big one up on my shoulders, because seeing him in the snow, breathing out, last breaths, is too much to bear, and I lift him on to me, and I wrap him in magic blankets, under the sky. I carry him with me, and I am sliding, and sliding, bleeding, off the edge of the cliff where Tlingit and Henrick went. The wallets are open to the wind, blowing, Henrick’s worn down to bones, now. The wind has gotten in and taken the wallets and all that’s in them to itself, blowing them away, like me, blowing down to the river, carrying my wolf, and all my wolves, through the dark to the cold water and rocks and ice.
And then I dream something floats away and I don’t feel anything, but soft dark, turning over, drifting, down a river over rocks and mud and ice, all soft, all tumbling softly onto itself, turning inside out in the night like liquid dark falling over and under me, rushing and thundering and water flowing through life and death and heaven, and I am fighting him, or I’ve fought him, and I think he has stopped, I think I beat this one, the last one, or he is tired of fighting and wants to die, if I’ll carry him, and I think a last thing, quite peacefully, I think goodbye, and I am nearly gone, then gone, sleep in sleep.
I’m standing in the motel, in Anchorage, at the door, staring at the picture I left crumpled on the nightstand, leaving it there. I’m a hundred yards up the hall, a thousand yards, standing there, duffle in hand, swaying, a mortal fool. I’m walking the endless way back to my room, stuffing the picture I tried to leave behind back into my wallet, my wife, smiling, my son, laughing, taking them with me.
I’m dreaming, I’m somewhere on the snow, near the plane, the picture that’s all that’s left of me is blowing, tumbling over snow, through the dead, through the cold, far from the world, lifting into air, I am blowing away with it toward all that’s gone from me, to my wife, to my son.
Then there’s moonlight, I think, as bright as headlights, or the sun but there’s no more sun, but there is water pounding somewhere, thundering, my face half drowning in freezing mud and rock, and there are magic wolves and my magic river and magic blankets, there are sounds like airplanes and helicopters, but it’s only the wind, thundering, or the river, thundering. I dream of ropes and lights, coming to take me to my boy, again, around the little curve of earth, and I’m praying, dying, maybe, and I see then the lights are aurora, green-gold, purple, and I realize, finally, that they are souls, lighting the sky and dancing, that’s all. Anybody can see that. It should be obvious to anyone. I close my eyes, and open them again, and from somewhere in the dark there is a hand, reaching down, to take me to my boy, telling me I can go home.
In my dream, I take the hand.
