valleys, crossing glacial rivers and mountains, following ancient routes stamped into the tundra by their ancestors. It was such an intricate history—this connection of hunter and hunted—that a clan was even named after the great herd: Udzisyu, pronounced you-jee-shoo, after the word for caribou.
Moreover, the old man knew that no one drove this dangerous road in winter. He hadn’t planned on taking it when he had set out in the morning. But when he passed the road, it looked clear enough, so he turned around and decided to take a little side trip. Neither had he planned to drive so far down the road. But the white hills and valleys were so beautiful and inviting that he kept driving further and further. Several times on the drive down the untracked road his wife had voiced her concern, saying that they should turn back, that they had gone far enough.
“Don’t worry,” he had told her. “The road is fine.”
And then, the unseen snowdrift snared the car.
Nelly tapped on her window, smiled, and waved at her grandfather, who smiled and returned a wave. While he went back to moving snow, the little girl went back to work on her picture, shading the cloudless sky a deep blue.
After a few minutes, Bassili jumped into the car, flung his gloves off and held his hands over the defroster vent.
“Damn, it’s cold out there!”
When his hands warmed, the old man pressed the clutch, shifted the gear into reverse, and tried to break free of the drift’s grip. Though he could hear the tires whine as they spun freely, the car didn’t move. He tried to rock the car, shifting quickly from first to reverse, but the high-centered car didn’t budge. His wife looked on in anticipation, the way someone with a bet on a game eagerly awaits the outcome of a last minute effort to win. When the car didn’t break free, her look of anticipation turned to worry.
“Try it again,” she said.
But after a nearly a dozen attempts, Bassili knew he’d have to try to pull snow out from beneath the car, not just from around it or from behind it. By now the sun was down and darkness was swallowing the white-pillowed hills. Stars twinkled in the darkening sky that Nelly had colored blue. The old man looked at the gas gauge. This time the needle was a little lower, leaning toward empty. He wondered how much longer the engine could idle before the little red light flashed. He put his gloves on again, zipped his too-thin jacket as far as it would go, and stepped outside.
The terrible cold bit at him through his jacket and gloves, tried to bite off the tips of his ears. He lay on his belly, using an arm to reach beneath the car and pull out armfuls of snow. But he could only reach under a little ways, and the impact of the car hitting the drift had compacted the snow into hardness. He dug on one side for about ten minutes, and then he did the same thing on the other side. While he labored on his belly, his legs and ears freezing, his family waited inside the warm car, the children busying themselves with coloring or playing games.
“When are we going home?” Nelly asked her grandmother, growing tired of drawing and coloring.
“Soon, Little Bear.”
“I’m hungry, Grandma,” complained the older brother. “When are we going someplace to eat?”
“Soon as you grandaddy get us out of the snow,” replied their grandmother in her imperfect English, without turning to look at her grandchildren.
“It’s hot in here,” said Jimmy, rolling down his window almost halfway.
The old woman looked out her side window. Nothing moved on the land. No tracks broke through the perfect blanket of snow. Nothing living hunkered in this long valley, not even ravens. Nothing could live in this stark desolation, now one of the coldest and darkest places on earth. She remembered the story the preacher had told of how God feared the darkness so much that he made light and the light was good and warming. Even in the stories of the People, Raven brought the sun, and the sun illuminated the darkness, and for the first time, the People were unafraid. Now, outside the warm car, the cold and darkness was deep and lasting.
The old woman spoke to herself softly so as not to be heard by the children.
“Who are you talking to, Grandma?” Nelly asked a minute later, hearing her grandmother’s mumbling.
The old woman stopped whispering, looked at her granddaughter through the rearview mirror.
“No one, dear. I was just praying. Color me a pretty picture.”
“It’s too dark. I can’t see.”
The old woman reached up and turned on the dome light.
“There,” she said. “Now make me a happy picture. You too, Jimmy.”
“I’m hungry,” the boy complained. He was always hungry.
“You always hungry, just like you daddy when he was your age. You must have two hollow legs,” said the grandmother, trying to make the children laugh. “Draw me a picture of something nice to eat.”
“I’ll make a picture of my birthday cake and a pizza,” said the cheerful boy. His sixth birthday party had been only a week earlier.
“And I’ll draw a picture of an ice-cream cone with three scoops: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry,” said Nelly, enthusiastically turning to a blank page and digging out the necessary crayons from the box.
Suddenly the car door opened and Bassili stiffly sat down in the driver’s seat, closing the door afterward. He took off his wet gloves, turned the defroster fan knob to high, and plunged his freezing hands into the blasting heat.
While her husband warmed, his wife searched his face, looking for news of what he did not say.
“Did you get it?” she asked finally. “Can we get out?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe. Hard to say,” he said, turning his hands in the heat and occasionally rubbing them together. “We’ll find out in a minute.”
The old man looked down at the gauge. The needle almost touched the E. He wondered if there was enough gas to make it twenty miles. When he looked up again, his eyes caught his wife’s stare. In the instant, he knew that she understood their predicament as fully as he did. Now, every minute they sat in the warm, idling car would mean one more mile they might have to walk in the freezing darkness.
Their continued warmth came at a dangerous price.
When his hands were warmed, Bassili gently pulled the gear shifter into reverse, pushed slightly on the gas pedal, hoping the tires might not spin, might grab the road. Instead, the tires turned freely, grabbing only air or ice. He pushed harder on the gas, listened to the whining engine. The spinning wheels polished the ice even smoother. He shifted into first. The same thing. The car was as unmovable as winter itself.
Bassili grabbed his wife’s dry gloves from her lap.
“I’ll get out and push,” he said. “You come over here and drive. Try not to spin the wheels too fast.”
The old man stepped out and his wife slid over into the driver’s seat, careful of the shifter in between the seats. Bassili fought his way through the waist-deep snow to the front of the car, bent over, put both hands firmly against the bumper and pushed when his wife put the car into reverse. Despite his efforts, the car did not move. Undeterred,
