THE DEATH AND UNGEHEUERLICH AFTERLIFE OF FRANCIS RAWDON WOLFE

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Chapter Two


The reason I was singing was because I was drunk and the reason I was drunk was because I was driving. No, it's different, it's different, I was trying to ignore the danger in driving. Does that logic sound stupid? Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself, I contain multitudes. Walt has my back. So I sang along with the static bleeding from the speakers, I sang, But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plan, does He? And I sang, I ain’t quite the beauty. But I got that part wrong, because what I should have been singing was, I can’t believe in the guns, I can’t believe in the view. So, instead, confused, I drove the old diesel clear off the scraped-ice excuse for a road and whaled into a small black spruce and then into several other black spruce beyond that first tree. These home-made roads they cut on top of the rivers up here in northern Alberta are a joke, and the joke takes me down every time. I’ve driven these frozen rivers before, four years ago when Dermick was convinced that Skarsgard had found something new in the Franklin business. Skarsgard’s little pet theory. Up past Back's Great Fish River, bitter cold weather and then mud and mosquitoes in the thaw. Franklin died around a hundred and eighty years ago, he was an explorer and an idiot, reducing himself and others with him to eating their own shoes, the backbones of deer, and leather. He reminded me of other explorers like Scott, proud, dumb, British. Say those three words aloud, they even sound the same. I didn’t go off of the cut because of the British, though, or because I was drunk, and I didn’t drive into the trees because I started to sing wrong-place lyrics to one of my favourite songs. For quite a few minutes after the truck stopped angeling, throwing the snow, I just propped my chest against the steering wheel, not thinking about anything in particular, least of all those eyes and that broken face for which I had ditched the road and rushed at the little black trees. But it got cold and then it got dark and then it got colder. A small white owl shuffled up the bumper and perched on the hood of the truck. I blinked hello and a fox barked. The door was stuck. I tried the passenger side and fell into deep dry snow. I don’t know how long I lay there.

Well, sweet mother of reason, what happened to you, said a slow dry voice.

Hello, I said. But my mouth didn’t move, the words couldn’t be heard.

You all right?

I thought, Do I look alright?

Stupid question, said the voice. Course you’re not alright. The voice turned critical. Let’s look, then.

A large pair of old blue eyes and a wolverine-furred hood blurred out the morning sky. Must be a tourist, I thought. Tourists always bought into that crap, believed whatever the Inuit told them, garbage even ghosts wouldn’t eat. Like the wolverine’s fur never freezing. There’s one thing everybody learns at the opposite ends of the earth. Everything freezes.

No frostbite, says the old man. Nothing I can see.

I try to speak.

Let’s get you somewhere warm, he says. Anything broken? He looks into my eyes, his eyes are concerned. You can hear me, right? I’m going to try and lift you. He runs his beadwork mittens down my arms, pushes gently at my chest. He says, Your neck feel okay? Blink if your neck is okay.

The rusted cogs above my eyelids move sluggishly in the cold, teeth bite into oxidized teeth, gears lower chains. I blink. Once. Not fast.

I say, Okay.

He smiles, his teeth are yellower than a whale’s and nearly as large. You’re going to be alright, he says. You know that now.

The inside of his truck smells like dogs and cigarettes and Old Spice and the sour blue-cheese bite of whale fat. Dusty burgundy upholstery, a bench seat, and the springs are shot. A grass-skirted Hawaiian dancer shakes her hips in the bright sunlight on the dust-covered dash.

Keeps me warm, he grins. One hundred days, he says. Then it’s white sand, breaded shrimp, and bikinis. You can come with, if you want. Clean you up, first, though.

I fumble the sun visor down, there’s a little rectangular mirror there. Left eye is swollen shut, looks like a dark paw, a greasy animal trying to climb out of my skin. Hairline dark with blood, right cheek split open and old blood like mud down a gutter has dried behind my jaw.

I see what you mean, I say, and collapse into sleep again.

The horizon is different when I wake up. Cleaner, maybe. Larger. More of it. There are no trees watching the dim line between white land and white sky. I realize we are a lot farther north than when I fell asleep. And that we are driving on a river.

Where are we, I ask.

The old man gears up to second. We fishtail and, for a second, I think I am back in the bank. The sun fierce and friendly through the windshield, I am nearly blinded, I look away. My stomach growls. If I don’t have something to eat in a couple of hours I am going to pass out again.

A far-away thing in a field of snow is watching us. A dull figure, there, witless, arms hanging like weights. Snowpants, muddy white dress shirt, rolled up sleeves, dark hair across the forehead and a dark beard. I can’t see the eyes.

Who’s that, I say.

Where?

There, I point. Over there. But there’s nobody there, a white field, nothing else, not even trees. I twist on the seat and look behind. The empty road, looking like the fields of snow except for the banks piled on each side, and patches of marble-grey ice. Listen, I say, There was a man right there, I promise.

Alright, says the old man. He fishes a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. Benson & Hedges, silver, which, in my opinion, is a cigarette mostly smoked by women.

I say, What’s the temperature? I think about those shirtsleeves.

The old man lights up and squints at the radio. Thinking maybe thirty, thirty-three out there, he says. Warming up but still cold enough to freeze your face off. Wind’s picking up, too. Not really sure how you made it back there. You’re not dead, are you? He turns his head and looks at me. Did you die out there? Be honest.