Landfalls (20 page)

I was tired of them all, so I wandered away from the fire. There is a rock I like, up the hill behind our summer village. You can look at the whole world from there. Standing high on the rock, I could see the fog over the ocean like a rolling plain of snow, lit from above by the sun. The Snow Men had come out of that fog, and I wished they would go back into it. The bay was purple below me. What was Kah Lituya doing down there? How could he not notice when the Snow Men came with their giant canoes? Why would he take one of our canoes and not theirs? Maybe it is not true about the bears, I thought. Or maybe the Snow Men's canoes are too big. Maybe Kah Lituya and his bears are afraid of the Snow Men.

I heard whistling behind me, and I spun around so fast I hurt my neck. I thought it was my cousin, the dead one, I even saw him for a moment, smaller than he should have been, but with the same straight nose and the eyebrows that came to a slight point over each eye. But it was just my little cousin. I had never really noticed before how much he looked like his brother. The setting sun made his skin look better. Did I scare you? he said. I wish you would stop following me, I told him. He climbed up onto the rock. We are supposed to marry, you know, he said, panting. So? I said. So maybe we should— he began. Should what? I said. I don't know, he said, Never mind. I scrambled down the rock and headed home. Wait for me, my cousin said, you are too fast. I never asked you to come along, I said. His wheezing grew fainter and fainter behind me as I walked, and when I heard nothing, I got worried, so I stopped and waited till I could hear him again before moving on, and that was how we got home that night, with me always ahead of him but making sure I could hear.

The next morning Kah Lituya took two of the Snow Men's canoes. I saw it.

Their giant canoes had many smaller canoes inside, all different sizes, some with oars and some with wings and some with both. That morning three of their canoes came out to our side of the bay—two of them big enough for ten men each, and a smaller one that fit six or seven. They looked like they were fishing, dropping strings in the water, and we all laughed and said, What are they doing? They will not catch anything like that. But then the canoes started running, running on the water, running toward the ocean, and we all stopped laughing, and someone said, Kah Lituya. One of the larger canoes turned and turned in the water, huge waves filling it and soaking the men, and then we saw the other big canoe rowing to help them, and Kah Lituya caught it too. Only the smaller canoe got away. Even from the hill we heard the Snow Men screaming, but only for a moment because the water swallowed them so fast. And then our men—my brothers, my father, my uncles—raced to their own canoes, to go to the two giant canoes by the island, the floating villages, to tell the Snow Men what they saw.

A strange excitement comes over people when something very bad happens. It happened the day our own men drowned. I felt it too. Even while I was crying, I was excited. I was thinking, This is one of those terrible things that I will remember always, I will tell this story to my children and grandchildren. It happened again when the Snow Men drowned, but without any sadness—just the excitement. When our men came back, their canoes were filled with presents from the Snow Men—metal tools, more beads, pretty cloth. There is more if we find any bodies, my brothers shouted, then they were off again. Some of the children started playing with their toy boats, pretending to turn them over, making screaming sounds and then starting over. I went and kicked away their toys and slapped the biggest child. Stop that bad game! I shouted. The aunts came running over and pulled me away by my hair. What are you thinking? they yelled. They are only playing! They thrust a large basket at me. Make yourself useful, they said. Go fill it with berries.
Ripe
berries, they said. Our men will be hungry when they return.

I made my way down the hillside and through some thickets and ate almost all the berries I picked, and I knew I could go home if I wanted to, but I kept walking. I wandered out onto a narrow finger of land, with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other, and just a line of spruce trees growing in between. For once I was not thinking at all. I just kept seeing the Snow Men's canoes disappearing into the angry water. I kept hearing the screams before they all went under. And I kept saying, Oh, cousin, my poor cousin. I had not actually seen him drown that day. I was in the group of canoes that came after. We did not know what happened till we landed safely and found everyone else shouting and crying at the landing place.

Now I saw five men walking along the shoreline, and at first I thought they were the drowned Snow Men coming out of the water, turned into Land Otters. I was so frightened a little water leaked out of me and down my leg, and I had to set down my basket to make it stop. But then I started thinking again. It was daytime, and it was too soon, and Land Otters are supposed to be invisible. Also, after what I had seen, I knew it was Kah Lituya who ruled these waters. If I was going to see anything unusual, it would be bears. These were Snow Men, living Snow Men.

One of them was far ahead of the others and walked right past without seeing me. His clothes were so strange—dark on top and white below, and so tight on his body I wondered how he could have put them on at all, much less moved around in them. I also wondered how the white coverings on his legs could stay clean, but when he got closer I saw that they were dirty. The man was looking down, down at the ground and down into the water, and his face was so sad. I knew he was looking for his lost people. He bent over a dead gull washed up on the beach, and at first he looked relieved to see that it was only a bird, but then he uttered a loud, choking cry and kicked it hard into the water.

You will not find them, I said out loud, and I was surprised by my voice in the air. My voice often surprises me like this. My father says it has a spirit of its own, but my aunts say, Spirit? What spirit? She talks too much, that is all.

The Snow Man turned around quickly when he heard me, and for just a moment I saw the wild unhappiness on his face before it opened into surprise. Now that I saw one of them close, I saw that their skin was not anything like snow, which is clean and bright. They should be called Raw Salmon Men because that is what they look like, like salmon flesh before we smoke it. The man was now smiling at me, and I did not like that. Why would he smile, when two of his canoes were gone and so many of his men? But his strange, pale eyes were still sad, and then he spoke, and his voice was even sadder. I remembered my brother at the fire saying
shwa la la la
to imitate the Snow Men, but it did not really sound like that. It was more like the babbling of babies before they can talk. The man touched his chest and spoke again, and I was afraid he was saying his own name, which is something children do before we teach them not to. He held a yellow stone in his hand, still wet, and I thought of our boys—they also like stones, they fill their hands with them and save them under their mats, and when their mothers and sisters and aunts sweep the stones outside, they shout as if their best arrows have been taken away. Maybe, I thought, Snow Men are people whose bodies grow big but whose spirits stay small. This explained many things, like the way they just took whatever they wanted.

The man stepped toward me, and I had almost decided to run when he sat down on a low rock and spoke again. He held out his hands and turned them over, and I knew he was showing me the canoes he had lost. His eyes filled, which I could tell even though he took a flask from his side and hid his face behind it. I wondered what was in the flask, if it was the red poison water. But it wasn't. I could tell because he spilled some of it. It was water, our melted ice water, the water our men said the Snow Men collected in great round vessels and rolled onto their canoes. I could not blame them for taking it. It tastes so good—better than the lake water we drink at our winter camp—and there is so much of it. And then the Snow Man held his flask out to me, but I did not need his water, which was actually
our
water, and I stepped back so he would know.

He laughed then, either at me or at something he said—he was still talking—and even as he laughed, he was still crying, and I felt ashamed to be there, although he was the one who should have felt ashamed, crying in front of me, a stranger, a girl. I hate that—feeling someone else's shame because they are not feeling it like they should. If he were one of our boys instead of a giant Snow Boy, I thought, I would rap the top of his head with my knuckles and say, Come now, be a man! But he might not understand. Where he came from, a girl rapping on your head might mean something else. It might mean, Yes, I will marry you and have your babies. So I just stood there looking at his bent head before me, wishing he would stop but also wanting to touch his hair, which was the color of moose hair, but tangled, like moss. Some of it stood away from his head, floating in the breeze, and I could not help reaching out my hand. I must have brushed a few hairs against my palm, but they were so thin I could not feel them.

Then I saw, behind the man, one of the other Snow Men coming toward us. I pulled my hand away and stepped back, which made the first Snow Man, the crying man, look up and turn around. He called out to the man, who said something in return. The new man was very thin, which I could see even though his clothing was looser on his body, and he was carrying one of the Snow Men weapons in his hands. There was something scared and hungry about the way he moved that I did not like. I liked him even less when he looked at me. I saw in his eyes the same wanting that I sometimes see in our men when they look at women, and that I sometimes saw in my cousin, the one who drowned, when he looked at me. I used to get a strange, watery feeling low in my stomach when my cousin looked at me that way, but with the thin Snow Man, it was more like cold fingers against the back of my neck.

The two Snow Men talked to each other, and although I did not understand anything they said, I could see that the first Snow Man was chief over the second one. They should have been saying, Our people are dead, we cannot find them, let's go back to our canoes and leave this place at once. But the new man kept staring at me while they spoke, and then the chief Snow Man looked at me too, so maybe they were talking about me. I should have been afraid. I should have run away, snaking through the spruce trees and back up the hill to my village. I could have outrun them, the chief Snow Man in his tight clothes and the skinny Snow Man with his heavy weapon. But I did nothing. I just waited to see what would happen.

Once, when I was very small, I wandered in front of a large tree the men were felling for a new canoe. It started to fall toward me, and someone screamed for me to get out of the way, but I just stood there. I looked up and watched as the tree grew larger and larger. My father threw himself on me and rolled me away from the tree. That is the story everyone tells, anyway. I do not remember my father saving my life. I only remember waiting for the falling tree.

The chief Snow Man stood up from the rock, turned the other man around by the shoulder, and started walking away. The new man did not follow, though, until the chief turned back and said something short and sharp, like a bark.

Now that they were leaving, I was suddenly very afraid, afraid of what might have happened to me, stuck out on the spit with five Snow Men between me and our village, and I hid myself among the trees. My aunts would say, See, there you go, you always think afterward about what you should have done, when it is too late and no good. This time they would have been right.

The first Snow Man turned around once when he got near his canoe, and I thought he looked surprised not to see me anymore. I wondered if I should step out from behind the tree so he would know I was alive and not a spirit. But that might look like an invitation, and then maybe he would come back. Still, I was disappointed when I lost sight of him. This is what is wrong with me—I am always wanting and not wanting something at the same time. Like wanting to marry my handsome cousin, but also not wanting it. No one else ever seems to feel this way. But I saw it in this Snow Man, the way he leaned over the dead gull, hoping it was one of his men and also hoping it was not.

Then I noticed, on the rock where the man had been sitting, his flask of water. Had he forgotten it, or was it a gift? I picked it up—it was round and hard, cold to the touch, and closed with a stopper made of some kind of soft wood. I could see my own reflection in the side. It was like looking into really smooth lake ice. I was pleased to have it. I had never had anything so wonderful in all my life, not for myself.

Then I heard a familiar cough behind me. It was my little cousin. I could tell without looking. They are gone, I said, you can come out. I could have killed him, he said, I could have killed them both. How? I said. With your bow and arrow? I was sorry as soon as I said it. His aim is terrible, but it is not his fault. He is too sick to practice much. I was still watching the Snow Men, who were now getting back in their small canoe. I couldn't see their faces anymore, but their bodies still looked sad. They had not found any of their people. Would they worry now about bears or about Land Otters? I wish I could have asked them.

What do you think happens when you drown? I asked my cousin. He cleared his throat. I don't know, he said, but sometimes when I cough and I can't stop, I think it might be like that. He had not understood me, but I said nothing. I felt sad all over again for the cousin who drowned. I knew my little cousin was thinking about his brother too, and I wondered if love could start like that, with two people feeling sad about the same thing. I turned around to look at him.

I should not have laughed. But I could not help it. He looked so serious with his bow and arrows, which were so big on him. I am glad you did not try shooting, I said, You might have killed me too. His face turned muddy-red with shame and anger. I felt sorry right away, and was about to offer him some of my berries, but he pointed to the flask in my hand and said, You should not have that. Why not? I said. Everyone will say you are like the Eagle women who go into the woods with the Snow Men and come back with gifts, he said. I looked down at the shiny flask, then back at my cousin. He was still looking at it, not at me, looking at it with wide-open eyes, panting a little. I walked forward and thrust the flask at his chest, hard enough to make him stagger. The flask fell to the ground.