He was still troubled by the conversation he had had with his mother, feeling guilty for leaving her behind, though it was her fervent wish. He needed time alone, so when he returned to the Blackfoot reservation compound, he said his greetings, caught up on a bit of news, then padded along the creek bank to his tiny camp to spend the night. At dawn, he left his abode to trace the riverbank upstream for several miles.
When the sun reached zenith, White Elk climbed out on a turtleback stone slab projecting into the turbulent stream. It had long been a favorite spot. The rock had absorbed the sun’s rays all morning and was warm to the touch. In a crotch in the stone, worn smooth by eons of stream wear, the man leaned back as if on a couch and let his body mold itself into the warm geology. He pulled a corn johnnycake and dry venison jerky from his jacket pocket and nibbled at the food absent-mindedly. He stopped chewing for a few moments as a modest earth tremor skipped through the rocks.
The earth quieted down. Eased into his rock furnishing, White Elk was quite comfortable. Too comfortable. Basking in the sun, his dark clothes soaking in the soothing heat of the strengthening spring rays, he fell asleep. The loud background babble of the rushing stream kept all distractions at bay. White Elk gave in to the luxury of sleep out in the open.
An ermine scurried up onto the rocks to find a sleeping being. Curious yet cautious, the creature nosed in close to sniff the scent of the human. More interesting was the smell of the jerky that White Elk had held in his hands an hour earlier. The ermine approached White Elk’s relaxed right hand, sniffing in earnest, rising on its haunches, eyeing the surroundings thoroughly, and sniffing some more. The little mammal crept within inches of White Elk’s fingers. The scent of dry meat was irresistible.
A volley of deafening thunderclaps boomed through the uplands and drowned out the Otatso. White Elk flinched in fright out of his slumber and into an upright position. He scanned the wooded stream banks wildly. The little furbearing visitor vanished. The explosive noise bounced off the great square form of Chief Mountain and echoed across the valley.
White Elk gawked at the mountain towering above him. “Old Chief, what was that? You can see all from where you are.”
A second cannonade crashed through the terrain. White Elk slapped his hands to his ears. Again the noise echoed from the heights. The elder looked to the crystalline ceiling of sky. There was not a cloud about to loose thunder. The creek chatter returned; everything appeared fine, normal. White Elk struggled to his feet and surveyed the country in every direction. Through the soles of his old boots, a shimmer of movement climbed up his legs. The earth was rumbling quietly again.
The face of White Elk’s mother materialized before his eyes. The image startled him. He could hear the words she had spoken to him at the nursing home. They echoed in the confines of his skull. He shook the voice away.
The sense of unease was suffocating. The sky was roaring and the country was shaking. Why was that? He knew Glacier County lands to be steadfast, unchanging, the country to be filled with grand silence, not thunderous noise in perfectly clear weather. He decided that things were not at all as they should be and that he must return to the community three miles downstream.
Thirty minutes south of his napping rock, following the ancient trail, White Elk stepped to the threshold of a dry stone grotto, once carved into smooth and sweeping arabesque formations by the stream. The Otatso had cut a new course in the deep past and had left the grotto with a meager source of water. A flash of light in the heavens ahead brought him to a halt at the edge of the natural stonework. A large jet aircraft, silent in its approach, was falling from the sky at an acute angle. White Elk realized at once the plane was a commercial airliner in distress.
The jet passed directly overhead. White Elk rotated in place and watched the craft disappear over the horizon, silent as an owl on the wing. It was visible for just a few seconds but was an awful thing to behold. The old man stood his ground for several minutes listening, thinking he might hear the sound of a crash, but the prairie wind carried nothing to him in its passing.
White Elk resumed his march south, shaken by the sight of the crippled jetliner. It was a cruel vision, he thought. Maybe what he had just witnessed was not real. Maybe Napiw was playing tricks with his mind.
Snaking through the cool shelter of rock overhangs, boulders and kettle-hole pools of the grotto, White Elk moved quickly when the sound of increasing winds in the forest rigging stopped him a second time. He listened. The atmosphere sounded of dank, heavy air exhaling in a rush from the lungs of a gigantic creature. There were other sounds in the mix, noises like drumming sleet and sparks popping from a hearth fire.
The daylight receded suddenly, as if a curtain had been drawn across the firmament. The blue above was swept aside by the color of smoke from damp firewood. Sonic tones in the air escalated quickly, as a freight train rumbling on its approach. With the crescendo of noise came a plasma front of rolling hot air. The cool, refreshing dampness in the confines of the stone grotto evaporated instantly. Broiling desert temperatures stabbed down into the low spaces.
White Elk fell to his knees on the slick stone when loud rifle reports from the forest ricocheted through the rock strata. He could not see them, but he could hear trees snapping and falling, not a few, but hundreds. In the next moment, darkness overwhelmed the grotto as whole trees rammed down to the horizontal and covered over the stone vault overhead. White Elk shielded his head with his hands and arms and yelled out in terror. A tornado of noise roared amongst the stone. The forest shrieked in mortal agony.
The maelstrom swept away to the north as quickly as it had arrived. Gray dust and choking gases replaced the sweet mossy smell of the grotto. The intense desert heat slackened but the coolness of the early hours did not return. The sky overhead lightened enough to bring dusky tones.
Slowly, White Elk brought his arms down from his head. Above him was a ceiling of tree trunks and downed canopy. Quickly he marched downstream out of the stone enclave and emerged shaken onto a game board of giant pickup sticks. Every tree had been leveled. The landscape had changed utterly, assuming a leaden hue. The little path beneath his boots had disappeared. In the valley was a minefield of tree trunks and branches coated with bitter dust. The sound of the Otatso, running on his left somewhere beneath the destruction, was the only reassuring element in the chaos.
On a clear trail, White Elk could reach the village in under an hour. Now, he thought, just reaching his cabin might take until nightfall. He would have to fight his way over every tree in the valley. It would be, he calculated, a great labor.
To get over the first tree, he swung a leg up to belt height, jimmied up onto the trunk, sat and pulled his other leg up and over, then dropped to the other side. Where he could, he stood and jumped to the next log. Sometimes he ducked under a tree. All the timber was lying down in the same direction, each trunk parallel to the next. From a standing position atop a blowdown, the forest appeared almost orderly, as if arrayed like a gigantic log pile at a sawmill.
Sweat soaked into White Elk’s clothing as he struggled in the forest. The going was tedious. He was not a young man any longer and the work was taxing. He needed long drafts of air to fuel his labors, but the trees and the atmosphere were filled with ultra fine dust and the air was noxious with acrid gases. The toxic cocktail caught in his throat and made him cough in fitful spasms.
White Elk lost track of time. The sun had disappeared with the forest fall. Everywhere everything was an ashen monotone, and the elder could sense that the single dead color was deepening, waning. Night would be upon him soon. He tried doubling his efforts but was exhausted. He had no reserves. He needed to find the cabin and soon.