Dogsong Read online

  Oogruk sighed. “I will tell you about something. We used to have songs for everything, and nobody knows the songs anymore. There were songs for dogs, for good dogs or bad dogs, and songs to make them work or track bear. There were songs for all of everything. I used to know a song that would make the deer come to me so that I could kill it. And I knew a man who could sing a song for whales and make them come to his harpoon.”

  The flame guttered in the lamp and Russel saw Oogruk use a small ivory tool to brush the burned moss away to clean the flame. A new-yellow filled the room, cut through the smoke, then paled down as the twisted moss burned on the end.

  Russel shifted and stuck his legs out straight in front of him—Eskimo fashion—and relaxed. He leaned back against the wall. There were things he wanted to ask but he did not know what they were. Part of his mind was turning over, but another part was full of a strange patience and so he waited. Sometimes it was better to wait.

  “Mebbe you could bring in those eyes and put some snow in the pot and we’ll warm them up. Cold eyes are bad to eat.”

  Russel got up and went outside. The wind was stronger now, bringing cold off the ice, but he didn’t wear a coat and liked the tightness the cold caused when it worked inside his light shirt. He used his belt knife to pop the caribou eyes out of the two skulls—they levered out with surprising difficulty—and stopped by the door to take down the pan hanging on the wall and fill it with snow.

  He put the eyes on top and took the pan and snow inside and handed them to Oogruk, who held the pan over the lamp.

  “One misses women,” the old man said. “I had some good wives but they are gone. Two died back before the white men came, died bearing children, and the last one just left. She went up to the mining town to a party and didn’t come back. One misses women.”

  Russel said nothing. He was seated again, leaning against the wall, and as with dogs he knew nothing of women. The girls smiled at him with round faces and merry eyes but he was not ready for women yet and so knew nothing of them.

  “They cooked and sewed for me. Eyes and meat taste better when cooked by women. That’s the truth.”

  Russel had never eaten eyes. He knew the fluid in them would be too salty. He smiled. “Were there songs for the women, too?” He wanted Oogruk to talk of the songs again.

  Oogruk grinned, the teeth worn down to the gums, the hair hanging down past his cheeks. As the memory grew so did the grin until finally, after a couple of minutes, he laughed openly. “They always shined in the snow houses, shined with fat and oil. It was a thing to be young then—it was everything to be young then. It wasn’t that there were songs for women,” he said, coming back to the subject, “it’s that the women were the songs.”

  Russel reached over. The pot was tipping in Oogruk’s hand and the melted snow was about to spill into the lamp and douse the flame.

  Oogruk stuck a finger in the water and found it to be warm. He reached into the pan and took out an eye and popped it in his mouth, using his gums to crush it and swallow the juice noisily.

  “Have one.” He held the pan out. “They are good.”

  “I brought them for you. Besides, I ate before I left our house. I had meat.”

  Oogruk nodded and slowly, one by one, ate the other three eyes, smacking his lips with the joy of it. When he was done he slapped his stomach. “They are good. Later, when you are gone for the long time, you will wish you had eaten of them.”

  Russel almost missed it. Then it hit him. “What do you mean, ‘gone for the long time’?”

  But Oogruk was again in his memories. “I saw a thing once that was hard to understand. We were talking of songs and this man lived when I was young and he was very old and he had a song for the small birds. They would fly in flocks that moved this way and that and would flick the light of the sun off their breasts. Snowbirds. So this man was named Ulgavik and he had a song to make the birds dance. When he sang it one way they would fly that way and when he wanted them to change he would sing it another way and they would take the light and go the new way.

  “It was a thing of beauty.”

  But Russel was fixed on the earlier comment.

  “What did you mean about being gone for the long time?”

  “This man Ulgavik knew dogs. He knew birds, but he knew dogs, too, so that when he got old and his eyes went to milk it did not matter. He would run his team blind and knew the dogs so well that what the dogs saw came back up through the sled and he saw that, too. The dogs were his eyes. Maybe if Ulgavik were alive he would tell you how to know dogs and birds.”

  Russel closed his eyes and thought of Ulgavik running blind out across the sea ice, blind into the white—but such a thing couldn’t be.

  “What we need is some muktuk,” Oogruk said. “I haven’t had any for a long time. Do you know where there is some muktuk?”

  “No. Everybody is out of it.” Russel thought of the delicate little squares of whale blubber that had been fermented all summer in rancid seal oil. They had a nutty, sweetstink taste. But the village had not taken a whale that year, which was considered very bad luck. Russel thought it was because of the snowmachines, because they scared the seals and whales away by sending their ugly noise down through the ice. But he didn’t say what he thought. “There will be no whales until the ice is gone and then I don’t think they will come.”

  Oogruk was quiet for a time. Then he sighed. “Because of the machines.”

  Russel started. “Is that what you think?”

  “No. That is what you think. I think they will not come because we are wrong now and don’t deserve them and they know that. We don’t have the songs anymore and they don’t hear us singing and so they know we don’t deserve muktuk. Of course I could be wrong and it could be the machines.”

  “How did you know I felt that way about the snowmachines?”

  Again the flame sputtered and again Oogruk trimmed it to bring the light up and Russel only then realized with a start that if Oogruk was blind, truly blind, he could not see the flame sputter.

  “It is the way one thinks,” Oogruk said. “I know the way you think and so I know what you feel about the machines and the whales.”

  “How can you tell when the lamp goes down if you can’t see?” Russel blurted.

  “Questions. Questions. Did you come here to ask questions or did you come here to find the way it was?”

  And Russel knew he was right. In truth he had not known why he came to Oogruk’s house, just that he had to come, that something had been bothering him. Just as his father had known that something had been bothering him, and that Jesus probably wouldn’t be able to help him, even though he helped Russel’s father quit drinking.

  But Oogruk was right. That’s why he had come. There was something wrong with the way things were now, something wrong with him. He wanted to be more, somehow, but when he looked ahead he didn’t see more, he saw only less.

  Oogruk wiped his face with his hands and smoothed the shine of the oil and sweat. He turned to face Russel and his voice grew serious. “Some of my memory is like my eyes, dead and gone. That is the way of age. And so some of the things I should tell you I can’t, because they are gone. Just gone. Like melted ice in the spring. I held them as long as I could but many of them are gone now.”

  “That is all right. Tell me what you can and that will be enough.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it will be enough for what you have to do. But it is all I have. Still, one is hungry.”

  Russel thought of the food cache outside. “Is there meat in your cache? I could bring some in.”

  Oogruk nodded. “There is much meat. Deer and a seal that some young men brought by. Why don’t you bring in a piece of the deer and we’ll put it in the pot and get it warm? Maybe the warm meat will help my memory.”

  Russel went outside and opened the cache. There was no seal but there were some parts of caribou, two back legs and eight or nine front shoulders. Oogruk obviously couldn’t hunt f
or himself and so people brought him spare meat. That explained all the front shoulders—it was not the best part of the animal. The tenderloin down the back was gone—the best part—so Russel took one of the back legs out. He used an ax leaning on the shelf to cut off large slivers, long chunks, of the marbled meat, happy to see the fat streaks and thick layer of fat on the legs.

  Fat was everything. And while deer fat wasn’t as good as whale or seal or even pig lard from the trading post, it was good enough when it was hot. It turned to tallow on the lips when it cooled, but at first it was all right.

  Some of the chips from the ax flew into the nearest dog’s circle and he got up slowly and walked out on his chain to pick them up.

  “Lazy dog,” Russel said aloud and was answered by a low growl. Not one of anger but of shyness and suspicion—a low rumble that came from the dog’s chest.

  Russel didn’t know the dog’s name, didn’t know any of the dogs. Always they were just Oogruk’s dogs; it was Oogruk’s dogs making noise howling, or Oogruk’s dogs who had bitten somebody, or Oogruk’s dogs who had gotten into a fight. He didn’t know their names.

  With the meat under one arm like large red pages from a thick book he went back into the house. It was still light, hazy light, but the light only held for three hours a day. He knew it would be dark soon. Across the ice would come the late afternoon wind and light, both hitting the village, the light dying as it always did in the winter, dropping fast, and the wind making huge drifts off the beach. Sometimes, in the late middle of the winter, the drifts became so large they covered the houses.

  Inside he put a couple of slivers of meat in the pot and Oogruk held it over the lamp to warm it up.

  Another question was bothering Russel, one inspired by the dogs and he decided to ask it. “You have dogs but there is no sled. Don’t you have a sled?”

  Oogruk nodded. “In the lean-to next to the house. It is old but made of hardwood that came from the sea and so has strength.”

  When the deer meat was heating on the lamp—Oogruk holding it over the flame with a corded arm, a wire arm—the old man let breath out of his nose.

  “I have not been counting the summers and winters of my age,” he said. “But I am old. I am old enough that I hunted before we had guns, old enough to remember what it was like before.”

  Russel was once again seated, legs sticking out straight, leaning back against the wall. The smell of the heating deer meat mixed with the smell of the smoke from the lamp and made him hungry. The smoke smelled like burned meat, the salty smell of burned meat. “It must have been something back then.”

  Oogruk made the chaa sound. “It was more than that. We lived so differently, so far back and different that it almost cannot be understood now. Now they use guns and make noise, back then we were quiet and the animals felt different about dying. But that’s just one thing, one little thing that was different.”

  A third time Russel got up. He went to the wall where the weapons hung and took down a small bow, made of wood laminated with slivers of horn, wrapped with rawhide. It had a string made of sinew and after much grunting and heaving he got the bow strung. When he tried to pull it back his shoulders knotted but the string only came back four or five inches.

  All this while Oogruk sat quietly, waiting, an air of study on his face.

  Russel unstrung the bow and put it back on the wall. There was a skin pouch of arrows that he took down and he pulled several arrows out of it. They had bone and antler points, some with jagged barbs, others with smooth edges.

  “There is a museum in the mining town,” Russel said. “I was there once when I was sick and went up to the doctor. In the museum are many things like this bow and those lances. Some of them from back a long time.”

  Oogruk nodded. “I have not been up to the town, though I have had many chances. But I have heard of the museum and the old tools. There is a difference. I have used these weapons to take meat. They do not belong in a museum,” he snorted, “any more than I belong in a museum. These tools are for using, not looking at.”

  Russel took down a lance. The shaft was of wood that had been scraped and straightened to take the ivory cup and point on the end. The point itself was a small toggle, razor sharp, that would tip once it entered the animal and be impossible to pull out. The toggle point was attached to a piece of supple leather, a long lashing, that had been kept soft and greased. Just as the bow and arrows had been kept in good shape.

  “All these years,” Russel said. “All this time you have taken care of these things.”

  “When I was a young man I came down this coast in a umiak with four other men. We had some trouble back in a village up north and we came down to make this village. After we found meat we went to get wives and we made this place where we are now.”

  “You made this village?”

  “At first just us. Then others came because there were good fish here and much game. And so it was a good place and we had good food and good songs. Everybody had a song then and that song was just for that person. That’s how it was.”

  “What happened to the songs? Why don’t we have them anymore?”

  Oogruk set the pot down and rested his arm. The meat was still too cold to eat. He picked the pot up and held it over the flame again, using the small tool to clean the moss wick first. “We had those songs until the first missionary came. He said they were wrong for some reason or another, like dancing was wrong. At first nobody believed him and we laughed at him. But he kept talking about it being wrong to have the songs and the dances and said how we would go to hell if we did not give them up. Of course we laughed again because we did not understand what this hell was …”

  He took a breath. Russel knew about hell from his father, the same way he knew about Jesus.

  “It was not that we were stupid,” Oogruk continued. “Just that we didn’t know about hell. So he told us. About the fire and pain and these demons—as he called them—who would tear the strips of meat off us. So, many of the people quit singing and dancing because they feared hell. And even when the missionary became crazy with the winter and we had to drive him out the damage was done. People were afraid to sing and dance and we lost our songs.”

  Russel frowned. “Can we get them back? Could I get a song?”

  Oogruk thought for a time. “It is not like that. You don’t get songs, you are a song. When we gave up our songs because we feared hell we gave up our insides as well. If we lived the way we used to live, mebbe the songs would come back. Mebbe if we lived the right way again.” His voice took on a sadness and became soft. “But nobody is doing that.”

  “I will.”

  It came without Russel knowing it was coming. A simple statement. Two words. And when he said them he knew he meant them. He needed to go back and become a song.

  “I will,” he repeated, leaning once more against the wall. “I will try to get a song. No. I will get a song, I will be a song. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do it.”

  Oogruk nodded. “That is true. There has been nobody to teach you. All the fathers have moved from the old ways and so have the mothers and so the long time required to pass on the right information is not there.” Oogruk fell into silence.

  “If you wanted to,” Russel prompted, “you could tell me the way.”

  At length Oogruk nodded again. “That is why you are here, of course. You are here to learn. And I will try. I will try. But I do not know it all and there will be things I miss. Still, we will do what we can.”

  All this time he had been holding the meat pot over the fire and now he set it aside. The meat was steaming and he took a piece out and produced an ulu and bit down and cut and chewed with worn gums, swallowing when the meat was softened. Russel took some meat and tore with his teeth—he had no knife with him—and he chewed and swallowed and they made no talk while they ate.

  There was some fat on the meat and the grease ran down their chins and hardened and Russel used his arm to wipe it aw
ay.

  They ate until the meat was gone. And when they were done with the meat Oogruk picked up the pot and drank deeply and handed it to Russel, who did the same. The water-blood soup was still warm and went down easily.

  The silence grew when they’d finished eating but it was not wrong. Russel felt like sleeping yet when he closed his eyes it wasn’t sleep that came. It was more a trance, a gentle lowering of his thoughts until he was relaxed, his belly full of warm meat and juice, his mouth full of the taste of the deer meat.

  And while he was so, his mind warm and down, the wind tearing through the darkness around the house, bringing snow off the ice to make the big drifts, covering the dogs and the garbage of the village; while he was down, down and back, Oogruk started to talk.

  3

  I was round and had great beauty. For that reason I had no trouble getting husbands and that was good because they all died. I had three husbands and they all died before I had twenty summers. The sea took two of them when their kayaks were ripped and a great bear took the third. All I found was his head on the ice. It was hard then but not bad although I missed my husbands for a time. But I got a new one and he lasted.

  —Eskimo woman relating her youth.

  North and east of the village the land rose away from the sea in rolling hills that led to mountains. Even in the middle of the winter the land fought to hold the snow. The short tundra grass gave no foothold and so often the surface was blown free of snow and the grass was out all winter.

  Arctic hares fed in the bare areas, as did ptarmigan, the small white grouselike birds sometimes flocking two and three hundred birds in a single place. Now and then, even in the dark-cold of winter, it was possible to see a frozen blue or purple flower—winter flowers.

  Russel sat on the edge of the sled and looked down at one such flower by his foot. It had round petals, and he did not understand how it could have gotten through the fall and into the middle of winter. But it had. And it had grown in beauty for it, the color rich against the cold brown of the grass.