Surviving Bear Island (18 page)

I took a tentative step toward them and the giggling ceased like it'd been cut by a knife. Then it was replaced by something like screams.

“Wait,” I said. “Wait.” I did the giggle-noise again but their screams just grew louder, and all together the family of river otters disappeared into the forest and my heart sank. I mean, besides my dad's voice, I was actually talking to some people. Well, not people exactly, but still, I was hanging out with them.

If only I hadn't moved. But I couldn't have stood there forever. Still, they'd talked back to me in giggle-talk before they'd seen me. They'd accepted me, that's how it felt. And maybe they would come back and maybe they wouldn't panic and scream and run when they realized that I didn't want to hurt them, that I just wanted to be with them.

And then I thought of the deer I'd killed. Could they sense I was a killer? Is that why they ran? But they were meat eaters too. I'd watched a video of a river otter eating a salmon. It started from the fish's head and ripped and tore and swallowed.

The next day the clouds started dumping rain. But it was a colder rain, like it might change to snow. And the air had that metal taste you get before it snows.

All the fingers in my gloves had holes. My rain pants had split between the legs. And the heels in my socks were see-through thin.

In Fairbanks sometimes we'd skip fall, or have it for a week or two, and go right to winter. Once you got into September you just never knew when, as my dad likes to say, “the hammer would come down.”

Out here, I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't have any winter boots or gloves. I didn't have any winter anything. If the hammer of winter dropped, I'd be pounded over and over.

I spent most of the day inside, drying deer meat. And thinking.

Since the accident I'd turned into a nomad. Traveling until I found food and then staying until the food source disappeared. I knew I needed to get to the Sentinels, knew that it was unlikely I'd see anyone anyplace else, but my day-to-day actions were driven by basic survival.

And really, they were almost the same thing.

I had to concentrate day to day—sometimes moment to moment—on survival to have any chance of reaching the Sentinels. So, the colder weather worried me, but I knew I had to get the most I could from the deer. It didn't matter if there were ten miles between me and the Sentinels or fifty. I still had to feed myself, build up my strength and stay warm. And take as much deer jerky as I could carry when I left because there was no guarantee I'd have anything else to eat. I still had my dad's Meal Pack bars, but those weren't for me.

The farther from the day of the kill, the longer I boiled the meat before eating, and the longer I let the strips smoke and dry on the alder, hoping to kill any germs. I didn't want to puke my guts out from eating rotten meat.

I cut some deer skin into thin strips and soaked them in warm water until they were flexible, then inserted them into the fingers of my gloves. When the strips dried they stiffened up again, but were held in place and shaped by the fingers of the gloves. That was cool. But I didn't know what to do with the rest of the skin, so I left it alone and dried more deer meat.

And I thought and thought about the big trees at the southern end of the island—the Sentinels—a place my parents had gone together. I could kinda see why my parents thought it was special. Maybe if my parents hadn't planned on taking me there, my dad wouldn't have felt like he had to do it. But it did make him start acting like a normal person again, like he actually cared about me. And then he disappeared after he'd come back to life.

“Disappeared,” I said. “He didn't disappear.” I tried to wipe the thought from my mind. “We just haven't found each other yet.”

If I could just get there and stay under those big trees. If a boat was gonna come across, that's where it'd come because it was the shortest distance from the mainland. And dad—that's where he'd go. But something else drew me there, too. Like I was gonna learn something, or understand something, but didn't know what it was about.

When I pictured myself on this island surrounded by ocean, and then all that empty country on the mainland, I felt so small. When I was little, my mom used to read me that
Horton Hears a Who
book by Dr. Suess. And she'd tell me that there were so many tiny things, whole worlds underneath rocks, or in puddles. And then later she told me the Earth was like a speck of dust in the universe, and I didn't quite get what she meant until Mr. Haskins did this thing where he showed us the Earth in relation to the universe. Then I thought it was cool. But I understood it even better now. If the Earth was a speck of dust in the universe, then I was less than a speck of dust on the Earth. And that made me think of God. I mean, if there was a God that created the universe, then who created God? And if there was another God that created the God that created the universe, then who created that God? That whole thing ran through my mind again. But if there wasn't a God, then how could I find my mom's popcorn bowl way out here? And what about the deer in the hole, and Dad's voice? Still, those things didn't prove anything.

Maybe God wasn't some guy that controlled things. Maybe God was some kind of power or presence. Or maybe it was just within people. Yeah, I still didn't know if God existed or not. But who did? How could anyone actually know that?

One thing I did know was this. My dad had done a brave thing by coming out here and facing the memories.

He was moving on. Healing. We both were. This was the start. I needed to finish the trip or at least try as hard as I could, and if the trip finished me, well, at least I'd tried, really tried. I owed that to my dad. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't change what had happened at the rock reef, or on my mom's bike ride. I couldn't change anything that already happened. But it was hard to shake the feeling that both accidents were my fault.

FOR TWO
more days, it rained. My wound still ran pink. I worked on a new song.

Where does the deer end?

And where do I begin?

Deer flesh in my veins.

I have no hunger pains.

The deer is in my blood.

Blood that feeds my brain.

I couldn't even think a thought.

If that deer had not remained.

I looked it in the eye.

Beauty staring back at me.

I didn't want to kill it.

But then where would I be?

That deer was gonna die.

Its legs were busted bad.

If I didn't take its life.

A big old bear would have.

As I sang, I dried more deer meat. I now had about sixty pieces. My whole life consisted of collecting wood, drying deer meat and eating boiled deer. And thinking. I mean, sometimes my mind was just blank,
focused on the task, but other times, when I wasn't singing, it ran and ran.

Last year, Mr. Haskins put a world map on the classroom wall. Then he walked around with a shoe box and we each took three slips of paper. “Find out where the items are grown or produced,” Mr. Haskins said. “Then we'll put them on the map.”

In Fairbanks I ate bananas from Mexico, drank OJ from Florida, and ate apples from Washington. Everything was shipped in.

But now, I got to thinking about Bear Island.

Everything I ate came from the island. Bear Island deer. Bear Island salmon. Bear Island blueberries. Bear Island porcupine.

And most everything I used, too. Bear Island water. Bear Island boughs for my bed. Bear Island deadfall for my house. Bear Island alder for my grill. Bear Island wood for my spear. Bear Island deerskin for my gloves.

I totally relied on Bear Island.

And I thought about people that lived before ships and planes, those people relied on their places, too. They ate the place, drank the place, breathed the place they lived.

And sure, maybe some people still lived like that, but I didn't think there were too many. Right now, I was one of those people. Yeah, I had my clothes and the few things from the emergency kits, but the longer I stayed, the more I was becoming a Bear Islander. The only Bear Islander that I knew of.

Three more days passed and still it rained. I told myself I'd leave Deer Camp—yeah, that's what I'd named it—as soon as the rain let up—one last push for the Sentinels. I could've left in the rain but didn't want to leave the fire, trade my warm camp for the cold, wet, forest.

A camp with food.

If I hadn't killed the deer, no way would I be staying here. This place was defined by that deer. I'd just keep eating it until the rain stopped, keep singing its song. It'd only make me stronger.

And it was defined by my dad. This was the last place we'd camped together. Somehow, some part of him was here with me. It didn't matter if he was at the Sentinels, or down the coast a ways, or at the bottom of
the ocean, I could feel him here too. He was in the air I breathed and the water I drank.

And the bowl? Maybe it really was a gift from my mom. I didn't know what to believe.

It was pretty amazing that I'd lived at Fish Camp, and now at Deer Camp, for almost forty days. Just that I was alive was amazing. But the longer I stayed alive, the more I wanted to survive and make it out of this mess. You know, keep living my life, whatever that life might look like. Any life was better than no life.

I kept gathering wood and drying it out by the fire so it would burn better, but my supply still ran low. One more night I told myself, and then rain or no rain, I'd leave at first light, and go, go, go until dark, and hopefully not hurt myself on the journey. That was one thing about staying put. At least I knew what was around me. And a solid shelter with a fire was like a security blanket. Just like Fish Camp, I knew I had to leave but didn't want to.

I pulled branches from a tangle of deadfall. And carried an armload the hundred yards or so to my shelter. Maybe I could get by with just one more load.

I slogged back to the deadfall and pulled more branches. I was about halfway back with another armload when I saw my shelter bulge and shake.

I stopped walking. My first thought was ‘earthquake' followed by ‘tsunami,' but the ground wasn't shaking under my feet.

I'd missed an earthquake in Fairbanks once when I was riding my bike on the one flat spot on our driveway. I noticed the leaves shaking in the trees above me and thought it was weird that there was a breeze up there and nothing down on the ground. When I went inside, my mom was freaked out. Turns out it was the biggest earthquake in Fairbanks in fifteen years and I hadn't even felt it. Maybe the driveway was just bumpy. I don't know. We get lots of small quakes that you only feel if you're inside and the house shakes.

And I hadn't felt any earthquakes since I'd been out here.

The summer before my mom died we were on a camping trip and were all lying in the tent, and there was an earthquake. I don't even know how big it was, but I remember it shaking my whole body, like it had gotten
under my skin and started vibrating in my bones. Maybe the more of you touching the ground, the more likely you are to feel it. If it just comes through your feet and you're walking, then you miss a lot of it.

At least if an earthquake destroyed my shelter while I was inside it, I'd live. Having a bunch of sticks and branches fall on you would suck, and maybe you'd get scratched up, but it's not like falling glass and crumbling walls.

Out here if there's a big earthquake, then you've gotta head to high ground to avoid a tsunami, you know, a huge wave that basically destroys everything. The tsunami that followed the 1964 Earthquake destroyed a few villages and towns on the coast, and in some places the ground fell by thirty-five feet. Maybe that rock reef that I didn't see in time used to tower out of the water.

Some more boughs and branches fell, creating a hole in my shelter, and I still didn't feel anything. Maybe the shelter was just falling apart. Maybe one of the main deadfall supports had finally broken after all that sagging. Oh well, I could figure it out for one more night. Maybe move the fire inward and hunker down in the back part. I could even burn the extra shelter wood to stay warm. I laughed. I could burn the whole thing little by little and have nothing left by morning.

But then I glimpsed something dark through the hole. I thought it was the tree trunk until it moved. Then more sticks fell, creating a huge hole.

“No!” I screamed. “No!”

THE BEAR
had its back to me. I dropped my load of sticks.

My deer. My deer. The bear was crouched over it. I picked up a big stick and hurled it at the bear, hitting it right in the back, but the brute didn't even turn around.

“Hey bear!” I yelled.

It turned its head. I threw another stick, hit it in the shoulder, and it let out a growl. I took a step back. It was bigger and more rounded than the other bears I'd seen.