Dogsong Read Free

everything, and nobody knows the songs anymore. There were songs for dogs, for good dogs or bad dogs, and songs to make them work or track bear. There were songs for all of everything. I used to know a song that would make the deer come to me so that I could kill it. And I knew a man who could sing a song for whales and make them come to his harpoon.”
    The flame guttered in the lamp and Russel saw Oogruk use a small ivory tool to brush the burned moss away to clean the flame. A new-yellow filled the room, cut through the smoke, then paled down as the twisted moss burned on the end.
    Russel shifted and stuck his legs out straight in front of him—Eskimo fashion—and relaxed. He leaned back against the wall. There were things he wanted to ask but he did not know what they were. Part of his mind was turning over, but another part was full of a strange patience and so he waited. Sometimes it was better to wait.
    â€œMebbe you could bring in those eyes and put some snow in the pot and we’ll warm them up. Cold eyes are bad to eat.”
    Russel got up and went outside. The wind was stronger now, bringing cold off the ice, but he didn’t wear a coat and liked the tightness the cold caused when it worked inside his light shirt. He used his belt knife to pop the caribou eyes out of the two skulls—they levered out with surprising difficulty—and stopped by the door to take down the pan hanging on the wall and fill it with snow.
    He put the eyes on top and took the pan and snow inside and handed them to Oogruk, who held the pan over the lamp.
    â€œOne misses women,” the old man said. “I had some good wives but they are gone.Two died back before the white men came, died bearing children, and the last one just left. She went up to the mining town to a party and didn’t come back. One misses women.”
    Russel said nothing. He was seated again, leaning against the wall, and as with dogs he knew nothing of women. The girls smiled at him with round faces and merry eyes but he was not ready for women yet and so knew nothing of them.
    â€œThey cooked and sewed for me. Eyes and meat taste better when cooked by women. That’s the truth.”
    Russel had never eaten eyes. He knew the fluid in them would be too salty. He smiled. “Were there songs for the women, too?” He wanted Oogruk to talk of the songs again.
    Oogruk grinned, the teeth worn down to the gums, the hair hanging down past his cheeks. As the memory grew so did the grin until finally, after a couple of minutes, he laughed openly. “They always shined in the snow houses, shined with fat and oil. It was a thing to be young then—it was everything to be young then. It wasn’t that there were songs for women,” he said, coming back to the subject, “it’s that the women were the songs.”
    Russel reached over. The pot was tipping in Oogruk’s hand and the melted snowwas about to spill into the lamp and douse the flame.
    Oogruk stuck a finger in the water and found it to be warm. He reached into the pan and took out an eye and popped it in his mouth, using his gums to crush it and swallow the juice noisily.
    â€œHave one.” He held the pan out. “They are good.”
    â€œI brought them for you. Besides, I ate before I left our house. I had meat.”
    Oogruk nodded and slowly, one by one, ate the other three eyes, smacking his lips with the joy of it. When he was done he slapped his stomach. “They are good. Later, when you are gone for the long time, you will wish you had eaten of them.”
    Russel almost missed it. Then it hit him. “What do you mean, ‘gone for the long time’?”
    But Oogruk was again in his memories. “I saw a thing once that was hard to understand. We were talking of songs and this man lived when I was young and he was very old and he had a song for the small birds. They would fly in flocks that moved this way and that and would