Dogsong Read Free Page A

flick the light of the sun off their breasts. Snowbirds. So this man was named Ulgavik and he had a song to make the birds dance. When he sang it one way they would fly that way and when he wanted them to change he would sing itanother way and they would take the light and go the new way.
    â€œIt was a thing of beauty.”
    But Russel was fixed on the earlier comment.
    â€œWhat did you mean about being gone for the long time?”
    â€œThis man Ulgavik knew dogs. He knew birds, but he knew dogs, too, so that when he got old and his eyes went to milk it did not matter. He would run his team blind and knew the dogs so well that what the dogs saw came back up through the sled and he saw that, too. The dogs were his eyes. Maybe if Ulgavik were alive he would tell you how to know dogs and birds.”
    Russel closed his eyes and thought of Ulgavik running blind out across the sea ice, blind into the white—but such a thing couldn’t be.
    â€œWhat we need is some muktuk,” Oogruk said. “I haven’t had any for a long time. Do you know where there is some muktuk?”
    â€œNo. Everybody is out of it.” Russel thought of the delicate little squares of whale blubber that had been fermented all summer in rancid seal oil. They had a nutty, sweetstink taste. But the village had not taken a whale that year, which was considered very bad luck. Russel thought it was because of the snowmachines, because they scared theseals and whales away by sending their ugly noise down through the ice. But he didn’t say what he thought. “There will be no whales until the ice is gone and then I don’t think they will come.”
    Oogruk was quiet for a time. Then he sighed. “Because of the machines.”
    Russel started. “Is that what you think?”
    â€œNo. That is what you think. I think they will not come because we are wrong now and don’t deserve them and they know that. We don’t have the songs anymore and they don’t hear us singing and so they know we don’t deserve muktuk. Of course I could be wrong and it could be the machines.”
    â€œHow did you know I felt that way about the snowmachines?”
    Again the flame sputtered and again Oogruk trimmed it to bring the light up and Russel only then realized with a start that if Oogruk was blind, truly blind, he could not see the flame sputter.
    â€œIt is the way one thinks,” Oogruk said. “I know the way you think and so I know what you feel about the machines and the whales.”
    â€œHow can you tell when the lamp goes down if you can’t see?” Russel blurted.
    â€œQuestions. Questions. Did you come here to ask questions or did you come here to find the way it was?”
    And Russel knew he was right. In truth he had not known why he came to Oogruk’shouse, just that he had to come, that something had been bothering him. Just as his father had known that something had been bothering him, and that Jesus probably wouldn’t be able to help him, even though he helped Russel’s father quit drinking.
    But Oogruk was right. That’s why he had come. There was something wrong with the way things were now, something wrong with him. He wanted to be more, somehow, but when he looked ahead he didn’t see more, he saw only less.
    Oogruk wiped his face with his hands and smoothed the shine of the oil and sweat. He turned to face Russel and his voice grew serious. “Some of my memory is like my eyes, dead and gone. That is the way of age. And so some of the things I should tell you I can’t, because they are gone. Just gone. Like melted ice in the spring. I held them as long as I could but many of them are gone now.”
    â€œThat is all right. Tell me what you can and that will be enough.”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t know if it will be enough for what you have to do. But it is all I have. Still, one is hungry.”
    Russel thought of the food cache outside.