Ookpik: Chapter 3

February 28, 2005

Chapter 3
(Mammoth Monthly February 2005)

“Tell me about Maria,” said the dog, Barco, to the man, Yankton Rondeau. “Tell me why we are here in this Ski Town.”

Barco, a husky, lay on the rug, in front of the wood stove. His snoot, tapered perfectly from the wide, white expanse of his face, rested on his paws. The fire in the stove crackled and warmed his black and white fur. His French was Québecois: thick and forceful and filled with idiosyncrasies.
Outside, the first big storm of the season—a surprise storm—drove snow sideways against the windows. When the wind blew gusts through the pines the cabin moaned.

On the CD player, Chopin. Fantasy, F Minor, Op. 49. “Such genius,” Yankton Rondeau said in Québecois French.

Barco’s eyes found the eyes of the man and did not let go.

“I want to know about Maria,” insisted Barco. “Sometimes I dream of her and I cry that she is gone. You won’t tell me. I have waited patiently, because I am a dog and I love you more than the sky. Can you tell me? Now? Now that we are so far away from home?”

“I have never been ready to tell that story to you,” the man said. “Until today. Until right now.”

The man rolled his shoulders upward and out, then swiveled his head, left to right. Outside, a whiteout. The wind picked up and Yankton Rondeau shivered in fear. Inside, the scent of the Jeffrey pine fire, coffee and this morning’s breakfast—and the sound of the piano of Chopin.

“Yes, Barco, we are so far from our home,” the man said to the dog. He spoke quietly.

Yankton Rondeau sat on a bench at his sewing machine. It was set near the fire. On the sewing machine, white linen lay over red silk.

On a shelf to the left of the fireplace were books.

“The Labyrinth of Solitude” by Octavio Paz lay sideways, its edges worn and its pages dog-eared. There were several more Mexican authors, in addition to Paz.

“Mexico,” the man whispered and the dog Barco studied him.

There were Québecois authors, too. Linda Aksomitis, Hubert Aquin, a leather-bound copy of a book by Phillipe-Ignace Francois Aubert du Gaspe, the first Québecois novelist. Gerard Bessette, Roch Carrier. Barco saw the man looking for the horizon of consciousness through the books on the bookshelf.

Barco lay with his snoot on his paws. “This fire makes me sleepy,” he said. “Please tell me the story.”

Yankton Rondeau came back from his reverie. He cleared his throat.

“Maria left us one year ago, to the day, on a day like this one,” said the man, and Barco raised his head. The dog’s furred ears—perfect husky ears—formed a silhouette of the mountains against the light of the fire. He pointed them toward the man.

“She wanted to go away from us?” the dog asked. Barco raised himself to a more attentive position. He put his elbows and paws in front of him. He looked into the man’s eyes. On this morning, the man’s eyes were blue, not yet yellow.

“No,” the man said, and he moved his head from side to side. Barco did not know if there was sorrow in his eyes.

Yankton Rondeau examined the fabrics that were in front of him. He touched the silk with his thumb on one side and his forefinger on the other. The silk felt like Maria’s softest, softest skin. He breathed deeply. And the linen, from Mexican flax. Mexico. Her homeland.

“Barco,” said the man. His voice cracked.

“Yah?” the dog replied.

“Some things are very hard to understand.”

“Yah?”

“Maria will not come back, ever. Not the way we remember, exactly. There is a place on the other side of life, and many humans say that when you go there, you never come back. I have sometimes believed this myself.”

Barco cocked his head.

“Dogs do not think like that,” he said. Barco looked into the fire, then back at the man. “Tell me, Monsieur,” the dog said, “s’il vous plait, the story of Maria.”

Yankton Rondeau leaned backward and lifted his arms toward his head. He put one hand on each of his eyes. He clenched his jaw and breathed in, deeply.

“Mon ami,” the man said to the dog. “Humans are not all alike. Maria was very different from most because she could only see the good, never the bad; the evil. She is like you in this regard, very much, and I loved her for it, and this is why you loved her too.”

“D’accord,” said the dog. “She bathed in light.”

“Yes,” Yankton Rondeau said. “Maria bathed in the goodness of man.”

“Humans are all good,” said Barco the dog. “They scratch my ears. They pat my head. They drop little corners of their food to me, when you are not looking.”

Barco stretched his mouth into a wide grin, and panted. “Hey hey hey hey!” he said. To the man, the dog’s heart was not in his words.

Yankton Rondeau smiled at Barco. “Barco, mon ami, you warm mon coeur. But no. Sometimes, evil in humans is masked by apparent good works. Many people are fooled by many of these people. Many humans fool themselves, even. It is to your credit that you and your dogs do not do this.”

“I am very confused,” Barco said. Barco snorted. “Excuse moi,” he said to the man.

Yankton Rondeau reached out to the dog and stroked the side of his head lightly with his forefinger, from just below the dog’s ear to the dog’s jaw. Barco smiled.

The man continued. “When Maria died—when she became gone, her soul went out in the world, looking for a place to live again.”

The dog leaned his head to the right, then to the left. “I do not understand this, either, Monsieur. What is a soul?” Barco’s eyes begged the man to explain. “My heart feels as if there is an arrow in it. My heart is in pain.”

“A soul,” said the man, “is the accumulation of knowledge of the world. It is also the total sense of the world. Barco, this is hard to understand. Listen to me. Écoutez bien. Each of us contributes to this knowledge as we live our lives. When we become gone, our souls look for living bodies to pass this knowledge on—someone else—and so the knowledge accumulates. It is how all of us, humans and dogs and bears and everyone, become wise.”

“I do not think bears are wise,” said the dog. Barco. He gruffed a low laugh at his joke.

Yankton Rondeau looked at the bookshelf and saw the volume written by Paz, lying on its side. He arose from his seat at the sewing machine and walked toward the books. He put the book upright into the bookshelf, then walked back to the seat by his sewing machine and sat down.

“Do I have a soul?” Barco asked.

“Yes,” said Yankton Rondeau. The man curled his toes inside boots, and he felt the talons dig into the footbeds.

“In you, Barco,” said the man, “are the souls of all the other huskies who have ever lived.”

Barco looked into Yankton Rondeau’s eyes. Briefly, the man’s eyes turned yellow. The pupils were large and deeply black. A third eyelid swiped over each eye. Then his eyes were not yellow any more.

“Hey hey hey hey!” Barco said, and the dog smiled the smile of a dog, and the man smiled back.

“How did Maria become gone?” the dog asked.

“She was outside, near our cabin,” the man said to Barco. “Remember our beautiful cabin in Québec?”

Barco saw tears in the eyes of Yankton Rondeau.

“I remember the smells of the cabin most of all, Monsieur,” the dog said, his Québecois French heavy and thick. The dog licked his leather lips. He cocked his ears. “I remember my food bowl most of all. And Maria. I remember that she smelled so beautiful that there is no other smell like it: like leaves in autumn.”

“She was outside, and she lost her way,” the man said. With his thumb and forefinger, he squeezed the tears from the corner of his eyes. “And so she yelled, to get our attention.”

“I remember this!” said the dog.

The man rose from his seat at the sewing machine and lay on the floor near Barco. He looked into Barco’s dog eyes. Yankton Rondeau’s shoulders rolled up and outward, then back again. He put his arm around the dog’s shoulders.

“I love you, Barco,” said the man.

The dog grinned a wide grin.

“Hey hey hey hey,” the dog whispered to the man. “I will do anything for you, Monsieur.”

“Then you should know, mon ami, that it was because of me—and me alone—that Maria became gone.”

Barco drew back his shoulders. His wide grin disappeared. He lifted one corner of his mouth in puzzlement. Barco became intent.

The cabin objected as wind whooshed through the trees and over the snow. Falling snow hissed against the windows.

The man sat upright, then got to his knees. He reached for another piece of firewood. He opened the door of the wood stove and placed the wood on top of the embers. The wood burst into flame and he shut the door of the stove. He turned around and sat cross-legged in front of the stove.

“Barco, do you remember that day?”

“I remember the scents and the sights,” said the dog. “And I remember you leaving the cabin and telling me to stay. And that you’d come home with a surprise. Hey hey hey hey!

“It was the first day I saw you become the Ookpik—the owl. I still don’t know how you do that, Monsieur.”

“I dropped her,” said Yankton Rondeau, nodding, to the dog.

His words fell like a red fir in the forest.

“Eh? Monsieur?”

“She was lost and she yelled for us, and I found her in a tree well.”

Outside, the wind blew snow against the cabin.

“What is a tree well?” asked the dog. When he spoke, Barco now heard his own voice as if it were in slow motion.

“It’s the space between a tree and deep snow,” said the man. “They are deep. If you fall into one, sometimes they are hard to get out of. Especially if you have on snowshoes or skis. Or, Heaven help you—Mon Dieu—a snowboard.”

Barco moved his haunches slightly and breathed outward through his snoot. He looked into the man’s eyes.

“Did Maria fall into a tree well?” asked the dog.

“Oui,” said Yankton Rondeau, “and she was hurt. She was hurt very badly.”

The man uncrossed his legs then crossed them back again, the other way. He leaned forward, reached over to the dog and scratched the dog behind an ear. Then he smoothed the fur on top of the dog’s head, and stroked backward.

The wood in the stove popped and crackled as flame overtook it.

Barco sighed and waited, hungry for more of the tale.

“I saw her as I flew through the forest as Ookpik—the owl,” the man said. “It was very windy and snowy. Like it is today. It is hard to fly in gusty wind. And there was snow.”

“Just exactly like today,” the dog said.

“I tried to pull her out of the tree well but it was hard to grip the collar of her jacket,” said Yankton Rondeau.

Rondeau moved closer to the dog. The dog could see that there were more tears in the corners of the man’s eyes.

“Barco,” the man said.

Barco waited.

“I pulled her from the tree well but I was not strong enough against the wind. I flew upward with her into the trees but I did not know. That was the happiest moment of my life. It was as if we were married in that moment, in our flight through the trees and the falling snow. Snow was in the boughs of the trees. I was never so happy. She opened her eyes and looked into mine, and she, too, was never so happy. We were flying.”

Barco waited by the fire. The man did not speak for a long time. Crackle. Pop.

“And then the wind hit me.” Yankton Rondeau’s voice cracked like the wood in the fire.

“And I dropped Maria, who fell to the ground.”

Barco put his snoot on his paws.

“I have never seen you weep,” he said to the man.

The man reached his hand toward his face. Using his thumb and forefinger, he again wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

“When she fell,” the man said, “I saw her soul begin its journey.”

A pause as Barco thought about this.

“You saw this?” Barco said.

“Yes.”

“And did you follow this soul on its journey?”

“Yes,” said the man.

“And where did it lead you, Monsieur?”

“It led us here, mon vieux,” said the man. “Her soul is here, in this Ski Town. And we have seen Maria, alive in the body of Juanita Clarita.”

Another pause.

“And I love her,” said the man.

Outside, wind blew against the cabin and the cabin groaned.

Barco pawed at Yankton Rondeau’s thigh.

“Then I will love her, too,” the dog Barco said.

“It will not be so easy,” said Yankton Rondeau. “I think we will have to fight for her. It is not your fight. And she will not know, exactly, what is happening. Like Maria, she is blind to the world’s darkness. She lives in the light.”

The man and the dog lay by the fire. They listened to the wind, and to the cabin, creaking. They heard the Chopin and their hearts melted together. Yankton Rondeau fell into a dream that he had arrived home. The dog closed its eyes and began to snore lightly.

Knock knock knock.

Both the man and the dog jumped at the same moment.

“Holy Jesus Mother of God,” said the dog, using Québecois expletives.

“Whaa?” said the man, climbing to his feet. “Mon Dieu,” he said as he stumbled toward the door. “Who would be out in this snow and this wind?” he said to the dog.

Both the dog and the man raced to see who it was.

The man opened the door. In front of him, two figures: the unmistakable outline, even against the driving snow, of Juanita Clarita. One hundred pounds, tops. A Greek figure. A goddess.

The man felt arrows in his heart.

Next to her he saw the unmistakable figure of a large bison, with a huge head, a copper face and hair that twisted like vines.

“Come in, come in,” said the man.

“Hey hey hey hey!” yelled the dog, now fully attentive.

Juanita Clarita and the bison, Deion von Rondt, stepped in from the snow.

“We are here,” announced Juanita Clarita, “because we need your help.”

“A man is missing,” said the bison. “His name is Hans Errmann. He is the chief of the Ski Patrol.”

The bison did not tell Yankton Rondeau what Yankton Rondeau already knew about Hans Errmann and Juanita Clarita. The bison put his hoofhands on his hips and planted his hooves on the floor, wide apart.

“You are an Ookpik,” the bison challenged Yankton Rondeau. “The Northern Owl. The Terror of the North.”

“Hey hey hey hey,” yelled the dog. Barco wagged his tail and sniffed the two guests.

And now time stopped. To Yankton Rondeau, it was as if the dog were frozen in mid-movement. The bison stopped, its mouth open, about to speak. Chopin held, in mid-note. Outside, the storm stopped.

Silence.

And now it was Yankton Rondeau and Juanita Clarita. Alone.

The man tried to speak but could not.

“You are the Tundra Ghost,” she said to him. She spoke slowly. She smiled fondly and with warmth at the man from Québec.

“Thank you for your gift. The blouse. It makes my heart sing.” She paused. “Are you in this Ski Town for me?”

Yankton Rondeau found his voice.

“I am here,” the man said to the woman, “because I had no choice.”

She saw that his eyes were yellow, and that a third eyelid swiped past his jet-black pupils. She saw the man swivel his head slightly and bunch his shoulders up and outward. She saw his ears turn toward her.

“I love you,” the man whispered to Juanita Clarita, in French.

“I love you,” said Juanita Clarita to Yankton Rondeau, in Spanish.

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