Hunger Maddened Malamutes

A man sits alone at a kitchen table. A bottle of Molson 50 in front of him. He takes a big drink and bangs it down. Laurence Golden always thinks about The Death of Jim Loney when he’s drinking alone. He thinks about suicide and he almost always comes back to the rope.

He can see the beam above his head without looking and shrugs slightly but uncontrollably.

“Shut up, shut the fuck up.”

He takes a deep final drink like a man coming up for air after a too deep dive. He puts the empty bottle on the table with two others. “Three dead soldiers”.

Uncle Frank’s voice echoes round . Laurence smiles to himself. Uncle Frank was the most beloved man he had ever known. He was a rascal and rounder and a raconteur. He had two ex-wives and three girlfriends comforting one another at his funeral.

But what did Laurence have. Not one girlfriend who would “cross the street to piss on him if he was on fire.” What the hell did that even mean? If someone was on fire, pissing on them would just make it worse for that person.

“He was licking his lips like a bulldog eating shit off a hot plate”.

Laurence picks up a beat up copy of Songs of the Sourdough by Robert Service, the brown paper cover is brittle from decades in wood heated air. He opens up the book and it falls as it almost always does to The Parson’s Son.

The story of a true believer whom bitter northern cold and lust for gold drained away all the faith bestowed by blood and book. One whose only value in the end is food for his starving huskies.

He reads the poem again and confirms again his view that Service wrote as journalist - poet. Not a word on the page was false.

He first read the book in grade 5 and was terrified of the images. He began having dreams of living this hell on earth where “the men who do not fit in” come to sell their souls for gold. A world of men slowly freezing to death in starvation, alcoholic madness and an insatiable hunger. Where men loathe Heaven "based on the Parsons I've seen."

He asked Uncle Frank if had ever heard of a man being eaten by his dogs.Uncle had run the Trappers Festival since he was a teen and had checked his trapline with his best three long after men half his age were using snow machines. He knew dogs. He knew dog stories.

Never, not once, he said. It was unnatural. The animals would run. Free of their burden of loyalty. Though some dogs could not break the bond of servitude and would be found dead beside their master. He had heard that story.

But Uncle Frank knew the kind of men that Laurence read about in the book. He told Laurence when he had a few too many OV's about the kind of men that had come to the community to build the big project. The kinds of things that went on among the kind of men with “Nowheres to go and nothings to lose”. Uncle Frank knew the violence that was inflicted and the twisted legacy that was left behind.

Laurence recalled Little Stevie Williams. He had to be flown out. He had been raped anally. The police reported that the boy had been using the outdoor toilets and had been attacked by a dog.

A dog.

Laurence intoned in his deepest voice like he had done years ago to scare the girls when they would be walking across the bridge at night.

“The wire went out and the cold crept in and his blue lips ceased to moan 

and the hunger-maddened malamutes had torn him flesh to bone.”

***

It was the coldest day of a bitter winter. The wind howled angrily from the north and Ryan was scared. His brother was reading poetry from Robert Service. Laurence found the book in the Anglican Church’s White Elephant Sale and he would read the darkest passages with growing passion as the longest winter dragged on.

Men are going insane and freezing to death and being eaten by dogs. Men fear heaven and believe they are living in hell. Women are whores and Indian girls are being pimped for bottles of whiskey. The single solitary goal of the bush and the winter was to kill human beings and steal their souls.

It was a terrifying fate. The wind roared outside his bedroom window and he could feel the pounding of the million billion hooves pulling the roof skyward. The ceiling moaned and shifted as the house strained to hold together.

In Church, Father preached about when the missionaries had come to this country and the land was covered with hairy cloven hoofed beasts that filled the prairies like a pestilent flock. He said it was the power of Christ that cleansed this land of that filth. He said this land was hell on earth and Jesus was saving us one at a time.

And the million billion hooves pounded down from the sky and tore at the roof, ripping up shingles and tossing them into the blackened sky.

He woke up crying out. All was bright white. He whimpered and kicked his quilt off. He heard soft warm footsteps and then Grandpa’s voice.

“You OK?” the old man asked kindly.

“Mmmhmm”, Ryan replied.

He could smell his way into the good world. Grandma’s bannock and white fish soup wafting with a hint of pepper and onions. It was afternoon. He had fallen asleep after school. He couldn’t sleep at Hyboard, the housing for Hydro employees that looked like an exclusive Winnipeg suburb compared to the black tentest fibreboard homes on the reserve side.

He would go to his grandparents after school each day and fall asleep on their daybed in the back room. He couldn’t stand the sound of the turbines at the generating station humming all night long. He had seen the famous movie clips of Charlie Chaplin being eaten and digested by a giant machine. He began recurring dreams of giant cogs pressing down and gobbling him up from his legs and his thighs and his stomach and his chest and he would wake up gasping for air and covered in sweat.

Grandpa Francis took young Ryan by the hand and they walked into the front room and to the picture window looking out onto the snow crusted yard and down to the frozen river. The wind continued to howl. Ryan could feel the cold's unrelenting grasp through the window and into his blood and bones. He hated that feeling of cold-death taking hold. Death is cold.

Grandpa squeezed his shoulder and pointed to the cedar trees near the house. Ryan squinted. There was nothing to see, everything was covered in snow. He moved his weight from one foot to the other and then back again and again.

There it was.

A flash in a puff of white powder. He could see an imprint where the flakes settled and it was momentarily distinct from its frozen brethren. Just above it - a hint of black. His eyes focused.

The next white puff was clear to him as a cloud on a blue horizon. He strained to see. He knew it was there. He could feel his Grandpa behind him trying to help along. And there it was. Black mask and hood and a black kerchief upon her neck.

He caught his breath. Just slightly.

Grandpa said, “If the Creator can take care of the smallest bird, he can take care of you.”

And the chickadee fluffed its wings.

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