Ookpik: Chapter 1

March 14, 2005

By Buck Meadows
(Mammoth Monthly December 2004)

Yankton Rondeau and the dog Barco arrived in the Ski Town on a Monday morning near the end of October. They were from northern Québec. They arrived in their covered pickup truck after driving across the Nevada high country for most of the previous night.

They had stopped for a time.

“We will have a catnap,” Yankton Rondeau said to the dog.

“I hate that expression,” Barco said. “Hey hey hey hey!” he laughed.

Yankton Rondeau slept on an air mattress in the back of the pickup, on a flat spot he made on top of their cargo. Barco slept in the cab on the passenger seat, but liked to have the window between the front and back of the truck open. He liked to talk to Yankton Rondeau.

“The scent of this sage,” the dog Barco said in his Québecois accent, “lays like a blanket over us.”

Barco looked in the mirror and licked his chops.

Barco was a Siberian Husky. His head was slightly rounded on top and tapered from the widest point to the eyes. His muzzle was of medium length and width, tapering gradually to his nose, which was neither pointed nor square.

“I am handsome, no?” he gruffed.

“Hah,” said Yankton Rondeau.

Yankton Rondeau swiveled his ears outward. He hunched his shoulders, up and outward, then closed his eyes. He placed his right arm over his eyes. He breathed deeply and fell backward into his boots.

“Tell me about Maria,” the dog said to the man.

“Maria is gone,” Yankton Rondeau said to the dog. “Try to forget about Maria for now.”

Barco crinkled his forehead and cocked his head. “What does ‘gone’ mean?” the dog Barco said. “Do all Marias become gone?”

“Go to sleep, Barco,” Yankton Rondeau said. “We get up early and we’ll beat the storm. Go to sleep.”

In the truck bed, Barco and Yankton Rondeau carried alpine skis, powder skis, telemark skis, crampons and snowshoes. In addition, they carried backcountry packs and two duffel bags of outdoor clothing. In a large and carefully padded crate, Yankton Rondeau carried a Singer Quatrum XL-6000 sewing machine, a Singer Ultralock serger, a case of threads and fabric samples.

In a separate box, he packed the works of Octavio Paz and a volume on the fabrics of Central America. In addition, he carried a case of CDs that included the complete works of Claude Debussy and a wide sampling of the works of Frédéric Chopin.

In a moment, he was asleep. He dreamed crazy dreams but his nightmares of Maria had stopped.

Yankton Rondeau was born on New Year’s Day, 1962, in Yankton, South Dakota, three weeks before he was expected. He was the first baby born in Yankton that year. His parents named him after the town. After two weeks of rest for his mother, his parents continued their trip home to Québec. He never went back to Yankton.

“Lucky,” he said of his birth, “and I remember it as funny.”

When the day broke over Nevada, Yankton Rondeau and the dog Barco got going again. There was wind in advance of the storm. Yankton Rondeau hoped the velocity of the wind would not increase for the rest of the trip. He feared wind, although he never told anyone, not even Barco. On the CD player, Yankton Rondeau played a favorite Chopin Polonaise, the Opus 40, No. 1, in A Major.

Barco put his head out of the window at the moment that Yankton Rondeau drove the pickup truck through the Ski Town limits. On the truck’s clock, it was 8 o’clock. There were spaceship clouds in the Eastern Sierra sky.

On the side of the road there was a sign that said it was forbidden to park on the Ski Town’s streets between the beginning of November and the end of April.

“Hah!” said Yankton Rondeau to the dog. “I wonder what else in this ski town is forbidden.”

Ahead and to either side, the mountains of the Sierra crest formed a wall of granite. “Look, Barco,” said the man to the dog. “The mountain crest here, it is a granite curtain,

no? Even from town you can see that.”

The man reached across the cab of the truck and patted the dog Barco’s head. The man gave him a scratch behind an ear.

Yankton Rondeau swiveled his head right, then left.

“I cannot see sign of the storm yet, though,” he said to the dog. “We have timed it perfectly.”

And then Yankton Rondeau flinched.

His right shoulder lurched forward, then back. A fraction of a second later, the same thing happened to his left shoulder.

“Merde!” he whistled through his teeth, using the Québecois expletive.
As they came into town in the pickup truck, all of the animals on either side of the road stopped what they were doing and watched carefully.

Barco pulled his head back into the cab of the pickup.

“It even smells like a ski town,” Barco said to Yankton Rondeau. The dog’s Québecois accent was thick.

“You sound like you have had too much to drink,” said Yankton Rondeau. The man laughed. He reached across the cab and ruffled the fur on the dog’s head.

Barco snorted, shook his head rapidly back and forth and stuck his head back out the window.

Barco had black markings on his face and ears. Otherwise he was white. He was 21 inches tall, 52 pounds. He had a perpetual expression that was keen, friendly, interested and mischievous. His tail had the appearance of a round brush.

Yankton Rondeau hooted a laugh.

“What’s a ski town smell like?” he said to Barco. Yankton Rondeau, like Barco, spoke English with a heavy Québecois accent.

Barco did not listen to Yankton Rondeau. Instead, he pointed his ears straight ahead. His ears were of medium size, triangular in shape, close fitting and set high on the head. They were thick, well furred, slightly arched at the back, with rounded tips pointing straight up.

“What do you hear?” the man asked the dog.

“Everything!” laughed the dog.

Barco’s head snapped back and forth in irregular rhythms as objects and scents cascaded in front of his eyes, ears and nose. Barco concentrated, piling the images, sounds and scents into his sensory repertoire.

Flower garden. Sage. Rabbitbrush. Trash bin. Horse. Squirrels. Coffee. Trash bin. Human building. Trash bin. Coffee. Dump station. Dog. Perfume. Gas station. Pumice. Trash bin. McDonalds. Another dog. Coffee. Asphalt. Bear. Bacon. Wood smoke. Human human human human. Truck exhaust. Trash bin. Dog. Human. Human.

“Hey hey hey hey!” yelled Barco out the window.

Barco grinned and looked back into the cab toward Yankton Rondeau. Yankton Rondeau wiggled his eyebrows at the dog.

Yankton Rondeau stretched his toes and let the talons protrude from his toes. He felt them digging into the footbeds of his boots, then he pulled the talons back. He ruffled his shoulders forward, then drew them back.

“Coffee!” said Barco.

“Where?” Yankton Rondeau asked.

“Close,” said Barco. “They roast their own beans.” Barco moved his nose to get a better scent. “Very close,” he said.

Yankton Rondeau pulled into the parking lot in front of the coffee place. A sign on the window said this place roasted its own beans.

“Like Québec!” Barco said.

“Not like Québec,” Yankton Rondeau corrected the dog. “This is where good things can happen.”

Barco cocked his head to one side.

“In Québec,” Yankton Rondeau said, “only bad.”

Yankton Rondeau knew that Barco did not understand.

“Laisse faire,” Yankton Rondeau said in Québecois to the dog Barco.

Both of them clambered from the cab of the pickup. Barco leaped through the window and landed deftly on the pavement. Barco was quick and light on his feet, free and graceful in action. He carried no extra weight. When he walked or trotted alongside Yankton Rondeau, his gait was smooth by comparison, and seemingly effortless. Barco’s body proportions and form reflected a balance of power, speed and endurance.

Yankton Rondeau ducked out of the cab and headed for the door. Barco followed closely, heeling on Yankton Rondeau’s left. There were tables and chairs in front of the café, in the sun. The morning shadows were long, typical for the season. The tables were filled with young people. By the sound of the conversations—a hum of point and counterpoint—Yankton Rondeau figured everyone knew each other.

There were two dogs outside the café. Neither was leashed. Both of them grew still and quiet as Barco and Yankton Rondeau passed.

One of the dogs was yellow. One was of many colors. The yellow dog was female and looked the worse for wear.

“Elle a l’air de la chien à Jacques c’matin,” Barco said in Québecois as they entered the café. The yellow dog lifted its eyebrows and cocked its head to one side. Barco hunched his back and gruffed a low laugh at his vulgar joke.
“Barco,” warned Yankton Rondeau, then strode toward the counter.

Across the cafe, Juanita Clarita clutched her stomach, gasped and struggled to catch her breath when the stranger named Yankton Rondeau and the dog Barco entered the café. She tried to take her eyes from them, but discovered that she could not. She squinted against the brightness of the pair.

Someone—or something—had just punched her in the stomach, but no one actually had come close to her. Strange. Loco.

“Crazy Monday,” she said to herself, breathing heavily now, startled and not quite in pain.

Juanita Clarita had coffee here almost every day before she went to work. Her green government jacket was embroidered. It said “Juanita” on the top line. Underneath, “Wildlife Biologist.”

Across the café table and with his back turned toward her, Hans Errmann, large and with a face as red as his Ski Patrol vest, laughed loudly with a friend, who was seated at the table next to theirs. Hans Errrman’s hair cascaded from his head in waves. His eyes were blue, showing justice.
He did not notice when Juanita doubled over slightly and gasped.

“Oof!” she exhaled. “Wow!”

Juanita Clarita was small, barely five feet and 100 pounds. Her family was partly Zapotec. Her family was from Oaxaca City, and although she herself never lived in Mexico, she visited often. She was just 11 weeks back from Guelaguetza, the great July festival. Guelaguetza is the Zapotec word for “offering.” She loved Guelaguetza almost as much as she loved the Oaxaca Day of the Dead.
Errmann said he was too busy living to try to understand the Day of the Dead, even though she tried to explain it to him many times. He said he did not have time to understand Guelaguetza, either.

Juanita’s hair was long, straight and black. Her eyes were dark brown. Almost black. She wore a white blouse in the Oaxacan tradition—cotton, pleated and with splashes of brilliant color at the open neck and in the cuffs.

When she cried, her tears were new snow in the morning sun.
All the men in the Ski Town said Juanita Clarita was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. They also said she was the best skier in town, too—except for Errmann and the here-again-gone-again Deion Von Rondt.

Juanita could not take her eyes from the two strangers. She thought that the man was extraordinarily … something. Certainly she thought he was handsome. She struggled to regain her breath.

The stranger’s hair was sandy, thick and swept back. His jaw was set. He was slender. His shoulders were straight and his posture was perfect, making him appear taller than he really was. His eyebrows were blond. He wore a charcoal gray linen shirt. His backbone contained the wind and the air, the river and the sky.

“It is beautiful,” she gasped, looking at his shirt.

She could not recognize the cut but it was vaguely Central American. His trousers—wool—draped perfectly from his waist.

When he ordered his coffee he smiled at the woman behind the counter. Juanita saw that his teeth were white and straight.

Yankton Rondeau took his cup of coffee from the counter and surveyed the room. He swiveled his head left, then right, and then he looked straight at Juanita Clarita. She noticed that he moved his head, but not his eyes.

Their eyes met, held on, then let go. Juanita Clarita saw that his eyes were yellow. She blinked, unbelieving. The pupils in his eyes were large and jet black. Juanita Clarita thought that this could not be so.

Loco.

Yankton Rondeau blinked and once again Juanita gasped. A third eyelid swiped his eyes, like a wiper blade, on a diagonal. She opened her mouth and doubled over.

Again she felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Not hard this time. Even so, she lost her breath. The stranger turned his back and walked across the room. The dog, a smart-walking—diffident, she thought—Siberian Husky followed him.

Errmann’s friend noticed that something was wrong with Juanita. He stopped listening to Errmann.

“Hans,” he said, making a gesture toward Juanita.

Across the room, the stranger sat at a round, wooden table. The dog was in front of the table. He circled twice and lay on the floor, his snoot on his paws. The dog closed his eyes.

Errmann stopped talking. He turned and saw that Juanita Clarita was in distress.

“What’s going on?” Hans Errmann blustered. His eyes narrowed.

“You OK or what?”

Juanita crossed her arms across her chest and tried to breathe deeply, but still she was short of breath.
“I …I don’t know,” she said. “Suddenly … I’m … not … feeling … so … great.”

Errmann reached for her hand and held it. He placed his two long fingers across her wrist and felt for a pulse.
“GodDAMN!” he said and put her hand down. “Your heart is racing like you wouldn’t believe. We gotta get you outta here.”

Hans reached for his cell phone and at the same time, pushed back his chair with a great clatter. All conversation in the café stopped as the people watched Errmann and Juanita Clarita.

Yankton Rondeau sipped his coffee. He smiled, imperceptibly. Barco closed his eyes and prepared for a snooze.
Errmann, commanding the attention of everyone in the room except for the dog Barco, reached for Juanita.

“Please, Hans,” she said. “Just let me sit for a minute. I’m OK.”

“You sure?”

“Please. Just for a moment.”

Everyone looked toward Juanita, sitting, and Errmann, standing. Errmann wore black denim jeans. He wore a leather belt with his own name cut into the back. His shoulders seemed to stretch across the room. He sparkled.

Juanita tried to look for the stranger and his dog. Slowly, as the people began to understand that there was no crisis, they resumed their conversations.

Yankton Rondeau tipped his head very slightly and swiveled one ear. He could hear every conversation in the café. He also could hear every conversation outside the café.

He never told anyone how he could do this.

Two women:

“That is the most beautiful Siberian Husky I have ever seen.”

“That’s the most beautiful Siberian I’ve ever seen!”

The two women laughed. One of them said, “The shirt he is wearing is beautiful. It looks handmade.” The other woman said, “I was admiring the pants, myself.”

Yankton Rondeau swiveled his head in another direction. He overheard two men.

“I wonder if Errmann’s going to count that as another rescue. Probably. Betcha this’ll be in the paper as ‘Another Amazing Errmann Rescue.’”

The man’s companion said nothing.

“Do you suppose Errmann, actually, like, keeps track of his rescues? I heard that he did. I heard it from a girl years ago. Not Juanita. It was even before Juanita left Deion to go with Errmann.”

Companion: “I never understood that.”

“Well, from almost any perspective, Errmann’s a stud. Von Rondt’s just frigging crazy.”

Yankton Rondeau took another sip of his coffee. He nudged Barco with the front of his boot, just under Barco’s flank. Barco opened his eyes and looked upwards.

“We going, yeah?” Barco said to Yankton Rondeau. Yankton Rondeau nodded yes.

Across the room, the Mexican-Indian girl with the lovely blouse appeared to have regained her breath. Yankton Rondeau hesitated slightly, then approached her.

She was hunched forward across the café table, talking to Errmann, trying to assure him she was all right. Errmann’s back was to Yankton Rondeau.

“Pardon,” Yankton said in French. He switched to English. “I saw that you were perhaps not feeling well?”

Juanita Clarita looked up and stared at him. This time she felt just a slight twinge in her gut, not the full-on punch. She looked for his yellow eyes but they were not yellow now. Yankton Rondeau blinked, but the third eyelid did not appear.

“She’s feeling fine now, pal,” Errmann said, turning around. Errmann’s eyes had protection in them. He surveyed Yankton up and down.

“Thank you for asking,” Juanita said.

Once more, she found she could not take her eyes off the man. She caught her breath.

“De rien,” said Yankton Rondeau. He waved his hand and smiled without smiling. He walked through the door and toward the truck.

When they arrived outside, Yankton opened the door to the cab and Barco jumped inside.

“This is going to be a good town for us, Barco,” Yankton Rondeau said.

“Yeah,” said Barco. “She is beautiful, like Maria. And I can tell I can tell I can tell that this is a dog town. Heh heh heh. Lots of dogs. Did you see all the dogs? Hey hey hey hey!”

“Not just that,” said Yankton Rondeau. He lowered his voice, as if to give a secret.

“I can hear music here.”

“Chopin?” said Barco.

“You know what I mean,” Yankton said. And then he smiled.

For the first time that day, it was a wide smile. A great smile.

Over the crest, the sun disappeared behind a cloudbank.

Barco sniffed the air.

“There is weather on the way in, Monsieur,” he said to Yankton Rondeau. “I smell snow. And judging by that man in the red vest—his name is Errmann, no?—I smell trouble, mon ami.”

“Time to get unpacked,” Yankton said to the dog Barco.

They arrived at the cabin moments later. For a town with such big mountains, and for a town with such a big ski area, this was really a small town. There were only three main streets. And while there was a center to the town, there was no real center. There was no downtown.

Barco found the cabin immediately and Yankton Rondeau began to unpack the truck as Barco investigated the neighborhood with his nose. He pointed his nose into the wind. He walked up and down the road in front of the cabin.

Barco sniffed the breeze, surveying the scene. He walked up and down. Asphalt. Bear. Human. Sprinkler. Aspen trees. Pumice dust. Dog. Bear. Mountain lion. Sprinkler. Human. Human. Raccoon. Ground squirrel. Raven. Jay. Marten. Ringtail. Coyote.

Barco crossed the street. He lifted his leg and peed. Ten steps later he lifted his leg again and peed.

“Pee-mail!” he shouted to Yankton Rondeau from across the street, and he laughed at his joke. He sniffed the bushes, looking for others’ pee-mail.

Yankton Rondeau threw several pairs of skis across his shoulder and walked them in to the cabin. He did the same with the gear and the clothes.

For the sewing machines, he used a small furniture dolly. He put the crates on the dolly, then walked them, carefully, to the building.

The sky spit bits of snow.

“Tonight,” Yankton Rondeau said to the sky, “I will make Juanita Clarita a lovely blouse.”

By the time Yankton Rondeau unloaded the truck the clouds had moved all the way in and the temperature had begun to fall.

Barco bounded in from across the street and waggled into the cabin.

“There will be big snow within an hour,” Barco said.

Yankton Rondeau looked Barco in the eyes.

“I cannot begin to think how I could have gotten here without you, mon ami,” Yankton Rondeau said to the dog. “Hah!”

Outside, the snow began to fall more heavily. It came down straight, in large flakes.

“A beautiful snow,” he said to the dog.

Yankton Rondeau rolled his shoulders and moved his head from side to side.

“I think I will look around the town.”

Barco cocked his head.

“Hey hey hey hey!” Barco yelled, laughing.

Yankton Rondeau closed his eyes and concentrated.

“Everything is faster here, and very clear,” he said. Yankton Rondeau filled his chest with air.

“We are going to like it here, I think,” he said to the dog.

Yankton Rondeau removed his shoes, socks and his shirt. He unbuckled his belt, unsnapped his pants and stepped out of them.

His right shoulder burst upwards, then his left. Barco looked at his arm and saw that it was now a wing, covered in white feathers. The feathers were serrated.

“You will fly silently tonight, Monsieur,” the dog said to the man.

Yankton Rondeau swiveled his head from right to left. Barco stood at the door, grinning and panting.

“Hey hey hey hey,” yelled the dog Barco.

Yankton Rondeau’s talons gripped the wooden decking of the cabin.

“I will not be long,” he said to Barco. “The wind will come up very strong tonight.”

Five blocks away, Juanita Clarita jumped from the cab of Errmann’s truck.

“I’ll see you later?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Errmann said.

Errmann’s voice sounded like music through the snow.

“If I get here, I get here. Don’t count on me tonight, Babe.”

Juanita Clarita smiled, but with pursed lips.

“OK,” she said. “See you. Maybe ski tomorrow morning?”

Errmann laughed with his mouth open. His laugh was a symphony.

He shook his head, “No.”

“I’m thinking that there won’t be too much snow tonight.”

Juanita closed the truck door, turned away from the truck and began to walk up the driveway. She saw Errmann’s truck disappear. The snow came down hard. The wind, picking up, whistled in the Jeffrey pines.

Suddenly she felt as if someone had hit her in the stomach again, just as she had felt that morning. She sank to her knees.

Across the driveway, where the forest began, she saw the stranger’s eyes—yellow, with large, black pupils. His eyelids swiped his eyes on a diagonal.

She shook her head and squinted through the snow, heaving and out of breath.

Standing on a low stump, almost out of her sight but not quite, sat a pure white owl. It had a rounded head, yellow eyes and black bill. Its feet were heavily feathered. It looked to Juanita to be about two feet tall.

“A Tundra Ghost,” she whistled out loud. “The White Terror of the North.”

She could not understand what a Snowy Owl was doing here. It is the bird of the Great North, she knew. The official bird of, which province? Québec? It was never seen anywhere near the Ski Town. Some people of the North, she knew, called it Ookpik.

“Good evening, cherie,” the bird growled through the snow to Juanita Clarita. The bird spoke English with a French-Canadian accent. The bird swiveled its head from side to side.

Juanita put her hands on the ground and groaned. She tried to crawl toward the bird. She tried to talk to the bird but she could not catch her breath.

With a downstroke of its wings and two quick upstrokes, the owl disappeared into the snow and the woods.

Quickly.

Silently.

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