Surviving Bear Island (12 page)

Careful, I thought.

Only about eight feet away, I gripped the base of the spear with both hands and brought it up to ear-level. I took two quick steps, and lunged forward. The porcupine swung its tail in my direction. I felt the spear point connect, and kept driving it forward into its neck.

The porcupine thrashed wildly, wailed like a baby, and ripped the spear from my hands. The spear bounced up and down until I pinned it to the ground with my feet. And through my boot bottoms I could feel the spear shaking, the little animal quivering. It went on for maybe ten or fifteen seconds, the life draining out of it. Then nothing.

I stepped off the spear and grabbed it with both hands. I was pretty sure the porcupine was dead, but I drove the spear forward and down, listening and feeling for movement. One stray swat with that tail and I'd be hurting.

I lifted the spear, heavy with death, with food. Still, I kept it fully extended. I'd seen salmon that I'd pummeled spring back to life.

At the band of alders in front of my bedroom I wove the spear between the branches, suspending the porcupine off the ground.

In the dim light I saw the porcupine's open mouth, like it was still crying out in agony. I cringed and looked away. I felt bad for killing it, but satisfied, too.

It felt different than pulling a fish from the creek—there were thousands
of salmon swimming up this one stream, but there weren't thousands of porcupines running around. I'd only seen this one the whole time. But if I saw another, I'd try to kill it, too.

Things died all the time so other things could live. Animals searched for plants and other animals to eat while they tried not to get eaten.

Death is part of life. Part of the cycle. No one escapes it.

Just last year a bunch of wolves had killed this woman who was jogging down a dirt road outside a remote village. I felt bad for the woman and everyone who knew her and everyone who would miss her and at the same time knew that those wolves were just being wolves, killing to eat, like animals did.

I looked at the porcupine again. So small, and I'd killed it. And that high-pitched sound, like a baby crying when the spear connected. I thought about my own neck, how horrible it'd be to get stabbed with a spear, but I needed to eat, just like the wolves.

I decided to wait until morning to gut it, clean it, cook it and eat it. In the light. In the kitchen.

I added wood to LF and RF and lay down on the life vests. The canker sores in my mouth ached, and my swan bite itched like a hundred mosquitos had nailed me right on that spot, but I was smiling.

In the morning by the fire in my kitchen, I studied the speared porcupine. Couldn't be much different from gutting a fish. Just slit open the belly and pull the insides out.

With my foot I pushed the porcupine off the spear and turned it over, belly upwards. I slit the soft quill-less belly, reached into the opening and pulled out the guts, which felt like a giant handful of jello coated with glue, and smelled like cat food. Gross.

I carried the guts to the bay, tossed them in, then stuck my hands in the water and rubbed them together. I pulled them out and shook them, then did the sniff test. They still smelled like cat-food so I scrubbed them more, this time with gravel.

Back in the kitchen, I tried to cut into the animal but the quills kept getting in the way, poking me.

I'd never heard of anyone eating a porcupine. Do you have to skin it? Too hard to skin with all those quills. Maybe I could just singe those suckers off?

I jabbed the spear through the open belly and into its throat, then rolled the carcass over the fire, letting the flames burn the quills down to tiny nubs. I pulled it from the fire and scraped off the nubs with my knife. And that charred-skin smell sent my stomach dancing.

After the fire burned down, I put some green alder on the coals and set the carcass on the alder. While it cooked, I gathered some firewood and got a drink from the creek.

When it started to turn black, I knocked it off the fire and let it cool until I could pick it up without being burned.

I gnawed on the ribs, ripping meat from the bones and then chewing. The porcupine meat proved to be as tough as fish was tender. Instead of easily falling off the bones like the salmon, it clung to them.

So I chewed and chewed and chewed.

And then I chewed some more.

My jaw got tired. It tightened up. But I kept at it, ripping into the tough-as-leather meat, swallowing mouthful after mouthful.

I picked the ribs and back clean, and then hung the carcass in a tree, saving the legs for later. I glanced at the carcass and thought, “later?” Yeah, it was only one more meal. I could actually work on my shelters and not worry about going hungry, at least for today.

Porcupine by my shelter, its armor all intact.

I was starving so I stabbed it, and it tried to stab me back.

All its quills were quivering, as its life drained from its neck.

I was sad and was happy. I'd eat it, every speck.

My mom could've put my words to music. If I actually got to take guitar lessons I'd give it a try, if I could remember the words. The Salmon Song, the Porcupine Song—if I'd made more I'd already forgotten them.

I piled spruce boughs on my bedroom roof until it was a dark green mound pushing out from the bank. The fog rolled in as I carried rocks up the beach and lined the base where the roof met the ground both inside
and out, and dumped handfuls of beach gravel on top of the rocks to fill in the cracks to keep out the cold.

And I thought about the creek full of salmon. I couldn't turn my back on that. Maybe someone would come poking around back here. I mean, my dad couldn't be the only one who wanted to get into the wilderness. Maybe I wouldn't even have to go to the Sentinels.

TWELVE DAYS
later, and I'd worn a trail between my bedroom and kitchen. And with the help of RF and LF, we'd come up with a name. Fish Camp. It made sense to me because I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the fish. And we all agreed that it sounded nicer than Swan-bite Camp. Yeah, that thing still itched some but it was getting better.

After the porcupine, I'd started keeping track of the days. I don't even know why. I guess I just wanted to know, so every day I scratched a line on my spear with my knife. I counted backwards and figured it'd been about eleven days between the accident and the porcupine, so I put eleven more marks on the spear. Twenty-three total. Since the raincoat, I hadn't received any more signs that my dad was close by, even though I was always looking, always hoping.

I didn't know what else to do besides live at Fish Camp. You'd think I'd go crazy from loneliness, but I had almost no time to be lonely, except at night. And usually I was so tired I just drifted in and out of sleep, making sure to keep RF and LF going. Some nights I'd wake up in a sweat, reliving the accident. Then I'd really build up the fires and lay there in the light, the weight of my mistake pressing down on me.

Sometimes I'd think about Heather and whether she was really moving back to Fairbanks. Would I ever get back to see her? And if I did make it back but my dad didn't, would I get to stay in Fairbanks, or would I have to go live with my uncle who I barely knew?

And I'd think about my mom and that bike ride, and I'd go back and forth on whether it was my fault. And even if it wasn't my fault, I still felt bad about how things would've been different if I'd gone on the ride. How
we would've still been a family instead of two people barely speaking to each other living in the same house.

Most nights I woke up thirsty but didn't want to walk to the creek in the dark.

I'd tacked up one of the silver emergency blankets on the dirt wall. It reflected both warmth and light from RF and LF.

I'd cut a piece of nylon from the shredded end of my dad's raincoat and wrapped it around the rope on my gaff. That kept the fishing line from cutting through it.

And yesterday I learned by accident that I could dry fish. A bear had come into my camp. I had three fish on the fire, almost done. The bear came toward me, attracted by the fish smell, and then retreated as I waved my spear and shouted. This went on for a long time, until I started throwing rocks. No one ever told me to throw rocks at a bear. It was always “play dead, yell or speak softly, back away slowly, or hold your ground or make yourself look big.” All these contradictions. But after I pegged the small bear a couple of times it drew back, then disappeared.

When I turned to the fire, the bottom sides of the fish were so burned they were crispy around the tail and had started to dry out. I wasn't sure how long dried, burned fish would keep, but knew it was my ticket out.

The salmon in the stream were thinning out. Fewer fish in the school each day. And Fish Camp would be useless without the salmon. I was at the very back of a big bay on the exposed side of Bear Island, a place I remembered Dad saying that people stayed away from. Too far and too expensive. And now it was fall, no one was gonna be paddling out here. In the back of my mind I still hoped someone would show up, but I couldn't count on it.

But deciding to strike out from Fish Camp was still a mixed bag. I'd grown used to sleeping in the same place between the warmth and protection of LF and RF. And the fish had made the difference between life and death. I was thinner than I'd ever been, but I think I'd stopped losing weight since I'd been eating two or three salmon every day.

I'd staked out my territory and was living in it. I'd chased that bear off. And I'd found Dad's raincoat here. And Fish Camp was closer to where the accident happened. Closer to where I'd last seen my dad.

Still, I knew that my chance of survival depended on my leaving. I
could slowly starve to death in my comfortable camp, or I could continue my journey to the Sentinels, where I hoped to spot a boat or run into some hunters. And, it'd be where my dad would go. Maybe the waves carried him across the mouth of Hidden Bay and he'd searched for me for a while and then headed to the Sentinels. It was possible. By water, the mouth of Hidden Bay and the site of the accident weren't that far apart. And if anyone could survive some extended time in the water, it was my dad. But even if one or both of us made it to the Sentinels that didn't ensure anything.

If only someone had known that we were going to Bear Island, to the Sentinels, or if Dad hadn't hid the truck in Whittier. Then getting rescued wouldn't feel like such a long shot.

I HAD
the dead fish by the tail, and was about to slit the belly when I saw the alders waving. I dropped the fish next to the other four I'd gaffed, and stood up.

“Dad,” I yelled. “Dad?”

Just across the creek, a black bear emerged from the forest.

I thought about tossing a fish across the creek as a peace offering, but I needed these fish. All of them.

The bear stood on its hind legs, wagged its head back and forth. My knife, with its four-inch blade, felt tiny in my hand.

My body was shaking. This bear was twice as big as the one I'd chased out of my camp.

Don't run, don't run, don't run, I told myself.

I bent, picked up my gaff, and held it over my head.

The bear took another few steps toward me.

I wished I were in camp. In my territory.

“Hey bear! Hey bear! Hey bear!”

The bear dropped from its hind legs and came forward again, like I was calling it over.

I sucked in a breath. Maybe I should just shut up. Or pick up a rock and throw it. I wished there was fire between me and that bear instead of water.

Now it stood at the edge of the channel. Like thirty feet away. The tan spots standing out on either side of its snout. And its head was tilted, the way Billy's dog would tilt hers when I whistled.

I still had the gaff raised. If it came after me, I'd do what I could. Take a swing at it. Try to drive it away. Use my knife if it was on top of me.

Then the bear lay down, kicked all four legs up and moved side to side, scratching its back on the rocks. Then it rolled to one side, rose on four legs and disappeared upstream without looking back.

Luck, just luck. I knew I couldn't be lucky forever.