snow on the tops of our cabins had piled up. Maybe a foot. Jeryl would have to get the ladder soon and give them a good dusting. Piled snow can break wooden roofs over time. Funny thing about snow. You pick it up in your gloved hand and it feels like a handful of flour, easily blown away in the wind, but pile it on, let it sit for a while, and it’ll bend the strongest wood. Snow can save you and sustain you, crush you and kill you. Snow is a fickle bastard.
Like always, Jeryl saw me coming. Don’t know if he looked for me, heard me, or had some sort of sixth sense, but whenever I returned from hunting or checking the traps, if he wasn’t with me or out hunting himself, he’d step out of his cabin and watch me come in, help me bring in the kill, or just ask me about the hunt.
When I slushed my way through the snow toward him, he had a scowl on his face. Even his mustache seemed to frown. Jeryl—unlike the rest of the males in our little settlement, who may, for all we knew, have been the last men on earth—shaved his chin baby smooth. But he left his mustache long and well groomed. Of the limited supplies we were allowed to bring with us from Alaska, Jeryl had deemed his razor a nonnegotiable necessity. He used the fats from our kills—deer, elk, moose, rabbit, fox—to shave with. The habit gave him a ganky smell, but you got used to it. It became part of who he was.
Jeryl’s black coat stood out against the shining silver snow. He studied my swollen face. “Let’s put some meat on that.”
I didn’t say anything, just followed him out back. As we passed my mom’s place—which was as much my place, but I still considered it hers—I kept glancing at the door, waiting for it to burst open. I could imagine her look of horror when she saw my face. I was twenty-three, but Mom was still Mom and, in a lot of ways, still treated me like a child. There’s a reason kids are supposed to leave their parents. Maybe it was time I built my own cabin. Or, better yet, ventured out on my own into the frozen white world.
“Best stay away from her for now,” Jeryl said as if he’d read my thoughts.
We knocked our boots on his front door to get the snow off. I left the sled outside and set my bow down next to the door. We stepped into his cabin. Jeryl went to his strongbox of frozen meat and returned with a big slab of elk—at least, I think it was the elk he’d gotten a week back—and slapped it against my face.
“Ow,” I said, more annoyed than hurt.
“Keep it pressed tight.”
“Where’s Ramsey?”
“Fishing.”
Jeryl reached for his rifle—a Marlin lever action that he was never too far away from—and set it on his table. Then he grabbed his cleaning kit. Whenever he was troubled or needed to have a serious conversation, Jeryl cleaned his gun.
“So?” he said. Which meant Tell me what happened.
“Conrad stole my kill. Trapped a buck down in the ravine and he snipped my wire.”
Jeryl took the small bristled brush and stabbed it into his rifle. The smell of the cleaning fluid—I had no idea how he still had some left; maybe he made his own—blended with the scent of old spruce beams, filling the cabin with a heady, heavy aroma.
“And?”
“And? What do you mean and? Isn’t that enough? He’s a thieving bastard.”
He eyed me. Both he and his mustache disapproving. “And what happened next?”
“I told him the animal was mine, tried to make him give it back.”
“And he didn’t.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway.
“And he didn’t.”
The meat was freezing my entire face and melding into my cheek. I pulled it off. It was heavy in my hands. Solid protein and fat. If it thawed, we’d have to eat it that night.
Jeryl looked up. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Talk to him? We gotta kill him! He’s been nothing but trouble since he moved in. First he steals my kill, next he’ll steal our meat right out from under us. Who knows, maybe he’ll kill us in our sleep. He’s gotta go.” I didn’t like raising my voice to Jeryl. Maybe because he always seemed so calm, or maybe because, for better or worse, he tried his best to fill in for my dad. He failed, but at least he tried.
Jeryl turned his gun over, examining his work. “You know how many people are left in this world?”
The chamber clicked shut. A sad wind rattled through the cabin.
“No,” I said.
He nodded. “Me neither,” he said, as if that proved his point.
Uncle Jeryl was the least superstitious man in the world. Sure, he believed in God, but in the most normal way possible. Went to church on Sunday—back when there was a church to go to—prayed before each meal, and did his best to do things right.
He never went in for luck, energy, speaking in tongues, or spiritual warfare. He called that “hippie stuff.” He had his gun, his Bible, and his razor, and he was happy. His best friend in the whole world was Ramsey’s dad, John-Henry. They’d both worked construction, had been friends since they were kids, and had done nearly everything together. Hunting, fishing, chess, school.
When John-Henry died in the flu epidemic, Jeryl took Ramsey in, no questions asked. He was John-Henry’s son, nothing more to say. Jeryl never showed any signs of grief. He just moved on with life. Things needed to be done.
Somewhere around the fourth spring out in the Yukon, he, Ken, and I spotted a grizzly just west of Conrad’s place. It had this strange silver marking on its back and was the biggest bear I’d ever seen. Were grizzlies supposed to be that freaking huge? Anyway, Jeryl caught us completely off guard when he lowered his gun, a strange look coming over his face. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s John-Henry.”
Ken and I looked at Jeryl, wondering if he was making a joke. He didn’t tend to make jokes.
“What do you mean?” Ken asked.
“I mean exactly what I said. That’s John-Henry right there.” He smiled, which was incredibly rare, and shook his head. “Old rascal.”
We looked from the bear, who was digging something up in the snow, to Jeryl, who was now eyeing the bear through the scope on his rifle.
“Jeryl,” Ken said. “You don’t mean that the bear there is John-Henry, do you? John-Henry, your friend? The one who’s been dead for years?”
“I know he’s dead, son. You think I don’t? I also know John-Henry when I see him, and I tell you what: that bear is John-Henry.”
Jeryl took aim.
“Wait,” I said. “If that’s John-Henry, why’re you going to kill him?” I wasn’t really concerned for the bear or John-Henry. I was mostly confused and a little bit scared that our uncle had lost it.
Jeryl lowered the rifle. “Got to let him go. You think he wants to be a grizzly?” He asked the question
