“The Hairy Man? Oh brother.”
Tim jumped. Amelia gave him a questioning look.
“Quiet, woman.” Moses fixed a piercing eye on the two younger members of the group, and began to speak.
It was hard to say, afterward, just what it was about his voice that so compelled the attention. It dropped to a low tone you had to strain to hear, it fell into a cadenced rhythm that had your head nodding in almost hypnotic attention. He donned finger fans, made of woven straw and trimmed with caribou ruff, and used them to help tell the story, palms out, forefingers crooked around the tiny handles, hands moving in minute, precise jerks back and forth, up and down, side to side, expressing joy, fear, laughter, pain. Once Tim thought he heard drums sounding faintly in the background. Once Amelia looked around for the other singers. Even Bill was seduced, hearing the stamp of mukluks, the rustle of kuspuks, the cheers of the crowd.
It was an old story, never written down, known only to those who told it and those who listened, deep in the tiny settlements and villages of the Yupik. It was a story your grandfather told your father, and that your father told you, and that you would tell your children, in hopes that it would keep them safe inside after dark. It was a story that gave meaning to otherwise mysterious disappearances when it did not.
And it was a way to maintain a sense of cultural identity in a world increasingly white and Western.
“Uuiliriq lived in the mountains,” Moses began.
“High in the mountains he lived.
“High in the mountains, in a dark cave.
“High in the mountains, in a dark cave.
“That cave so high, nobody climb there.
“That cave so high, nobody see it.
“That cave so high, nobody find it.
“Only Uuiliriq.
“All alone he live in this cave.
“He have no mothers.
“He have no fathers.
“He have no brothers.
“He have no sisters.
“All alone he.
“All alone he sleep.
“All alone long he sleep.
“Sometime he wake up.”
Moses’ voice deepened. “Sometime Uuiliriq he wake up.
“Sometime he wake up hungry.”
Something not quite a shiver passed up Tim’s spine. “Are you okay?” Amelia whispered.
He managed a smile and nodded.
“Sometime he wake up so hungry, he go get food.”
The beat quickened.
“Sometime he leave that cave so high up in the mountains.
“Sometime he come down from those mountains.
“From those mountains sometime he come to village.
“One time he come to our village.
“Our little village by the river.
“The river she is wide.
“The river she is deep.
“The elders tell children to stay inside after dark.
“Children stay inside or the river will get them.
“But this one young boy he don’t listen.
“This boy he wait till everybody sleeping.
“Everybody sleeping he go outside.
“Go outside he go down to the river.
“Can’t catch me! he yell to her.
“Can’t catch me! he yell to the lights in the sky.
“Can’t catch me! he yell to the mountains.
“He yelling so loud.
“So loud Uuiliriq creep up behind.
“Creep up behind and grab him.
“Grab him and take him up the mountain.
“Up the mountain to that cave he got there.
“That cave so high, nobody climb there.
“That cave so high, nobody see it.
“That cave so high, nobody find it.
“The village it wakes.
“It wakes and that boy gone.
“The men they light torches.
“Light torches and climb those mountains.
“Climb those mountains and search all night long.
“All night long they see the torches from the village.
“From the village they see the torches go far away.
“Go far away and come back.
“Come back without that boy.
“Without that boy and his mother cry.
“His mother cry and his father cry.
“His father cry and his sisters cry.
“His sisters cry and his brothers cry.
“His brothers cry and his aunties cry.
“His aunties cry and his uncles cry.
“That boy gone.
“That boy long gone.
“That boy gone forever.”
The fans slowed again, beating a dirge against the air. Moses’ voice dropped to the merest breath of sound.
“Some nights.
“Some night when dark outside.
“Some night when dark outside that village wake up.
“That village wake up and hear something.
“Hear something crying
“Crying far off in that night.
“Maybe that boy.
“Maybe that boy he crying for home.
“Crying for home.
“Those people they lay in their beds.
“They lay in their beds and they listen to that crying.
“They listen to that crying.
“But they don’t go out.”
The fans beat the air, the white strands of caribou fanning the air in precise, graceful arcs.
“Stay inside after dark.
“After dark stay inside.
“Stay inside after dark or Uuiliriq come.
“Uuiliriq come.”
The fans stopped in midair. The room was still, the wind only a faint howl outside, the lamps the merest hiss of sound. Did a dark shape shift in the shadow near the door?
“AND GET YOU!”
Amelia screamed and grabbed Tim. Tim, to his everlasting shame, yelled and jumped. Bill spilled the rest of her cocoa and cursed roundly.
Moses fell backward laughing, a deep bellow of a laugh that rolled out of his chest and reverberated off the patchwork ceiling.
“Uncle!” Tim said. “You’re scaring the women.”
“Yeah, like you weren’t peeing your pants afraid,” Amelia said, and patted her chest as if reassuring her heart that everything was all right. “Uncle, you sure know how to tell a story.”
Moses sat up again, still laughing, and stripped the fans from his fingers. “Gotcha,” he said.
“Okay, that’s it,” Bill said, rising to her feet. “Story time’s over. Everybody hit the rack. And as for you, old man.” She leveled a glance at him. He grinned back at her irrepressibly.
“You’ve got to sleep sometime,” she warned him.
She stoked the stove while Moses turned out the lanterns. A lecherous murmur and a reproving slap came from their bunk, followed by the sound of a long kiss and a rustle of covers as the two elders nestled together like spoons and settled in for the night.
Tim stretched out in his sleeping bag, arranging things so his head was near the head of Amelia’s bunk. He wished he could crawl in with her, but he hadn’t been invited. Besides, he didn’t know how Bill and Moses would feel about it.
The howl of the wind, held in temporary abeyance by Moses’ voice, was back with a vengeance, snarling and snapping, making the trees outside creak and the cabin shudder.
“I’m sure glad I’m not outside in this,” he said unthinkingly.
“Me, too,” Amelia whispered.
“You awake?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
She was silent for a moment. “How come you jumped?”
“What? Oh. You jumped, too. So did Bill.”
“Not then. Before. When he said the story was about the Little Hairy Man.”
“Oh.” Caught in the spell of the old man’s story, he’d forgotten his initial reaction.
He was silent for a long time, so long that she thought he had fallen asleep. “In my village, there was this girl,” he said finally. His head twisted on his pillow and he looked up at the face pressed against the side of the bunk. “She was teaching me Yupik.”
“You didn’t grow up speaking it?”
“My birth mother wouldn’t. She said it was a dead language of a dead people, and if I wanted to get anywhere in life I had to speak English. She spoke only English at home.”
His voice was matter-of-fact, but the undertone of bitterness betrayed him.
“But in school, you had to be fluent in both. So the teacher got a girl from the high school to teach me. She was really nice, so nice. She showed me how to learn. I never knew I could learn anything before her, but I could. She gave me that.”