“Who sees the others?” I say to Henrick.
“We’re here,” Bengt says. I hear them clamber through the snow, come in closer, wheezing, then I see everybody, Knox and Ojeira. We’ve slowed down so much in here he’s kept up with us. They drop their packs again, collapse again, everybody still wheezing and puffing. It makes me feel better to see us all. Mother hen. I don’t want to lose anyone else.
We sit there, catching breath, or trying to, looking around in the dark.
“You think they’re in here?” Tlingit says. I look around us.
“I don’t know,” I say.
We’re freezing, but we’re afraid to build a fire, in case it tells them where we are. We’d rather stay in the dark and freeze. We’re all more exhausted than before, and more scared than before, after Reznikoff and Feeny.
“We just fucking left him,” Bengt says. “I fucking ran.”
“We all did. We left Feeny too,” Henrick says. He's trying to make less of it. He’s looking at Bengt like Bengt should forgive himself.
“Yeah, Feeny too. Fucking left them,” Bengt says, shaking his head. “Fucking watched.”
Nobody wants to argue. We’re too scared. It will occupy your mind, it's true what they say, about death, if you think it's right behind you, about to lay a hand on you.
Afraid or not, I know we’ll freeze sitting here. After a minute I get up, start pulling branches off a downed tree. They’re long-dead, they snap when I pull them, dry but rotted. They’ll burn, once they start, flare up fast, but won’t last long.. I toss them in a pile with some smaller pieces and more solid ones and feel for the lighter in my jacket, and I realize my hands feel like they died a long time ago too, they’re like pieces of cold meat. But I can feel the little lighter in my pocket and I fumble for a good half-minute trying to get it out, then another trying to light it under a little bundle of twigs, but the wind is still sucking everything away.
“We want to do that?” Henrick asks.
“They know where we are,” I say, because I’ve known that all along, whatever I thought. “If they want to, they do.”
Finally I get a little flame out of the lighter and I shelter the lighter and the little twigs I want to light down by Henrick and Knox. They turn to block the wind the best they can, but nothing’s catching. Tlingit steps in too, and I hold the little bit of there-and-gone flame to the smaller pieces and I’m happy when they start to catch a little. I get the pieces down without them blowing out and lay the bigger dry rotted ones on and it starts to go, fluttering sideways half the time but going, then the heat is stronger than the wind is, the bigger pieces finally catch and it’s up. Henrick and Tlingit and Ojeira stand in close, me too, we find or drag pieces of wood to sit on instead of the snow.
I keep looking between the branches and the trunks around us, and into the dark. I look as deep into it as I can, the firelight behind me. But I don’t see anything. Out at the edges there are things that might be shaggy broken pieces of tree or might be wolves. Everything looks like wolves, like everything sounded like wolves before. I stare at them to see if I can get some clue, or catch them moving, but all the dark lumps and clumps seem to be just that. To my surprise I feel myself ease, a little. Which is foolish.
With the fire going I hunch as close I can to it. We all do. Then I look to some thinner branches scattered, some on the ground, some still on the trees, and I get myself up and start gathering up all I can, cutting the ones I have to with my knife and snapping when I can or twisting them when I can’t, some greener than others. I leave the rotten ones, they turn to dust. I get a good number of them and sit down by the fire with the others still getting warm, with my knife, and start shaving a point on one, trimming off the smallest twigs until I have a shaft, with a long point on it. It’s still green, it bends more than I’d hoped, but I think it will work.
The others see what I’m doing and haul themselves up to do the same, scattering out to find branches we can use, except Ojeira, who just sits, and nobody blames him. I hold the point of mine in the fire, turning it until it’s black, pulling it out if it catches and dousing it in the snow or with my hand, or blowing it out. I’m thinking it hardens the point if you char it. Might, anyway. I roll it a last few times in the flame and pull it out and the tip is glowing, smoking wisps and, I imagine, harder now, not as green at least. I give Ojeira the first one I’ve done and start on the next.
The others have come back to the fire by now and sit and fumble their knives with close to useless hands, and start carving and scraping, and we all sit there whittling, and looking around us once in a while in the wind. I want to make as many as I can. They aren’t so heavy, I think I could carry a bundle of them with me, along with the log and a knife, and stand off this pack and almost everybody else who’s ever bothered me.
We fall quiet, still carving. The fire starts to bulk upward, thicker yellow-orange, and I see the wind is dropping, just like that, blowing off somewhere else, leaving us here. The sound of it fades away and it’s strange, the emptiness of the air all of a sudden. I listen again for whatever I thought was the sound of water running, but I can’t hear it. Maybe I never did.
“These going to do anything?” Ojeira asks. I shrug again.
“I don't know,” I say. “Might not matter.”
“What does that mean?” Henrick says.
“Means it might not matter.”
“Why? Because we’re dying anyway?”
“Does it matter to you?” I say. “If a wolf gets you or we freeze?”
“Yeah, it fucking matters. I’ve got a baby girl, I want to go home.”
“OK,” I say. “Of course you do.”
“You fucking have kids?” Henrick says. He’s gotten angry. I don’t say anything. Not for me to say.
“Well I fucking do, and I want to get home,” he says. “You don’t know, you don’t have kids, you don’t know shit.” Tlingit and Bengt and the others stare at Henrick and me.
“I didn’t say I didn’t,” I say. “I have a son. I don’t see him, OK?” Henrick looks at me. He’s still angry.
“And it doesn't matter to you, if we get back? Why don't you let the next wolf eat you?”
I look at him, I nod to show he’s right, and I don’t want to fight. I go back to shaving the point. I shrug.
“Somebody’s got to look after you babies,” I say.
He looks at me sharp, shrugs, finally, still mad. ‘Fine, if you’re trying to get me home, fine, fuck you very much,’ he’s thinking. ‘We don't have to swap baby pictures.’ He goes back to shaving too. We aren’t going to get up and kill each other, so we’re OK. I don’t feel good I upset him. He wants his little girl. I don’t blame him.
We try to let the fire soak into us, stomachs empty, wolves watching us, maybe, sniffing out their next, maybe, who gives a fuck. Fuck them.
“How old?” Tlingit says. He's looking at Henrick. Henrick looks at him, finally.
“She’s two.”
Tlingit nods.
“She cute?”
Henrick laughs, much as somebody can in what he’s in. He nods.
“Yeah, she’s my angel.”
That’s what everybody says about their little girls. But I’ve heard enough guys say that I know it’s true, I see it, looking at him anyway, freezing to death, inch by inch, terrified, thinking of his baby girl. It’s true, she is his angel, I know. He’d die for her.
I look at Henrick.
“She have a good laugh?” I say. “Your girl?”
Henrick smiles. He isn’t angry at me, so much, now.
“She's got a fucking hilarious laugh,” he says. “Your boy?”