“He’s a friendly man,” says Timofei Osipovich, rising. The older man and the boy both rise with him. “He wants to help us. I’ll come back in a little while. I’ll settle the rest down before we leave.”
“Timofei Osipovich!” Ovchinnikov calls.
Timofei Osipovich pokes his head out of the tent. “Stand fast, men,” he says quietly.
“What’s happening out there?” I cry.
I can’t see, but it’s certain something’s going on. The koliuzhi outside the tent have raised their voices.
“Do the best you can. Try somehow to get them out of the camp without fighting.” Timofei Osipovich and the koliuzhi sit down again and begin to talk once more. Timofei Osipovich has a lot to say now. The toyon squints and listens thoughtfully.
In the middle of their discussion, a rock flies across the tent opening. Another follows, coming from the opposite direction. “They’re throwing stones!” I cry. I don’t know who’s responsible. I can’t see.
Timofei Osipovich leans toward the opening in the tent and shouts. “Control yourselves! Don’t retaliate!” He assumes it’s the koliuzhi throwing the rocks.
Then, a gun fires. The birds shriek.
Timofei Osipovich rushes from the tent. He catches his foot on one of the cords. “Damn,” he cries, extracting his foot. The tent shivers violently. It might collapse. The fabric springs back and forth. But the tent stays up.
The toyon leaps over my folded legs. I lean back, believing he’ll fall on me. The boy follows seconds later. They leave behind a cloud of spinning white feathers as they fly out of the tent.
There’s another gun shot.
I duck and cover my head with my hands. Maria shrieks, throws herself down, and curls up on the sand. Outside, there’s shouting. Thuds. Grunts. Screams. I snake to the narrow opening and when I muster enough courage, I raise my head.
Timofei Osipovich staggers backward, then twists toward our tent. The shaft of a spear vibrates in his chest. He’s been struck.
Hardy prikashchik—he grabs the shaft and with a grunt, he pulls out the spear. With his free hand, he raises his pistol and turns to the big tent where all our supplies lie. A man with a mouth contorted in rage has a spear in one hand and a rock in the other. He throws the rock at Timofei Osipovich. It strikes him in the head. The blow spins him around so he’s again facing the tent. A stream of blood trickles down his forehead and into his eyes.
The toyon’s empty-handed. What happened to his spear? He streaks around, runs from man to man, shouts and tears at their arms, urging them to leave.
The apprentice Kotelnikov strikes him across the back with his musket. Something cracks. The toyon screams.
Where’s my husband? I can’t see him. I need to find him, but I can’t leave the tent. I can barely breathe.
Timofei Osipovich trips and falls across a huge log. He doesn’t move. He lies there like some hideous mat on a tiny table.
The man who threw the rock at him is on the ground. I can’t tell if he’s alive or not.
Zhuchka barks wildly. I can’t see her.
I must find Nikolai Isaakovich. I rise to my knees. As soon as I do, another gun fires. And another, and another, and another. I throw myself away from the opening and down onto the sand beside Maria. I press my body against hers. I hug my knees to my chest. I hear a wail. It’s me and it’s not me.
Outside, there’s the sound of running feet. They pound the sand and shake the earth. I feel it rumble up into my body. It’s moving away from the tent, in the direction of the forest. Finally, it ceases.
Quiet descends like a bank of fog and smothers everything.
I wait. And wait.
I hear a groan. Somebody sobs. Is it one of us? Is it the koliuzhi?
I look at Maria, but her face is turned away, and she’s still as an old rock.
I leave her side and tentatively approach the tent’s opening. Slowly I push my head through the narrow vee.
It’s over. The battle is over. The only people outside are us.
I immediately find Nikolai Isaakovich. He’s face down on the sand. There’s a spear in his back.
I run from the tent and fall to my knees before him. Zhuchka butts up against my side and whines. I shove her away.
Dear God. My husband is dead. I’m a widow, and I’m not even twenty years old.
I look up, weeping, and there’s Timofei Osipovich, bloodied but alive, standing over us. “Don’t worry. He’s fine. Aren’t you?”
“Get that thing out of me, would you?” my husband mutters.
Timofei Osipovich grasps the shaft and pulls. My husband groans. The spear easily slides from near his shoulder blade. There’s a wide rent in his greatcoat, but it seems the thick wool prevented the spear from penetrating too deeply.
“Kolya?” I cry. “Are you all right?”
He rolls over. Blood coats half his face.
“Oh. Oh.” The sight of so much blood tangles my tongue for a moment. Finally, I find my words. “My darling, what happened to you?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry.” With difficulty, he pushes himself up to a sitting position.
“I thought you were dead.” I clasp his arms, but he grimaces, and I let go. “Oh, Kolya.” I blot at the blood with my apron, with the hem of my dress. It instantly blooms across the absorbent fabric, painting big red petals. “Does it hurt?”
The American, John Williams, holds his head and groans. There’s blood oozing down his ear. Yakov limps toward us. “Commander?” he says. “Are you badly injured?”
Kotelnikov has blood drying beneath his nose. He swipes his pudgy hand across it and cries, “They’re filth! Scum!”
Maria crawls out of the tent. She looks around the beach in disbelief. It’s strewn with the spoils of our battle: spears and rocks, cloaks of cedar, and the woven hats. Many of the crew have been injured.
“What happened out here?” cries Timofei Osipovich. He looks at the men one by one. “Can’t I leave you alone for a minute?”
We’re bloodied and beaten, but not seriously. None of us is dead. However, the koliuzhi haven’t been so lucky. Two koliuzhi bodies lie on the beach.
“They carried away another one of theirs when they ran,” says Yakov. “He couldn’t walk.”
One of the dead men is the one who threw the rock at Timofei Osipovich—somebody, perhaps even Timofei Osipovich himself, shot him. The other body belongs to the boy with the blunt, horn-shaped object who accompanied the toyon into our tent and stared at my silver cross. The blunt object is still attached to its cord, still wrapped around his neck.
I’ve seen dead bodies before, at wakes and funerals. As an enlightened young woman, I never allowed them to disturb me. I know the body is a shell. It holds life—and then it doesn’t—and when the life is gone, that’s it. There is no eternal life. That’s the nature of mortality. It’s the biological ebb and flow of a person’s life.
But I’ve never seen a body like this boy’s. Fluffy white feathers still cling to his face. His eyes are open and vacant and there’s a piece of down caught in his eyelashes. His hat is gone. His hands lie limp, open and empty at his sides, the fingers slightly curled. With all the life gone from him, he’s diminished. He looks like a little boy.
However, it’s the red-rimmed cavity in his chest, the size of a dinner plate, bigger than his head, all out of proportion to his tiny body that I can’t comprehend. I see it one minute. The next I don’t, and I wonder why he doesn’t roll over, as my husband just did, sit up, and say, “It’s nothing,” rise to his feet and head home. How despairing his mother and father will be when he doesn’t come back this afternoon.