A gleeful Henry roused Isaac out of bed early. “Wake up, wake up, to do the work of the Creator!”
To please Isaac, they were not taking the dogs with them this year. For a change, the sleds laden with supplies would be pulled by three red snowmobiles, the third snowmobile lugging a sled with sufficient fuel for the journey there and home again.
Given reasonable weather conditions, Henry was usually five days out, a day in camp, five days back. This enabled him to be home a couple of days before the first seder, in good time to search his pre-fab for any trace of Bedikat Chametz, leavened bread, and to observe the mitzvah of Tzedakah, distributing money among the poor. But this year, as Nialie watched Henry start out with Johnny and Isaac, she doubted that she would ever see her husband again in this world. So she was hardly surprised when Henry failed to turn up in time for the first seder and she did what he would have expected. She went through the house, covering all the mirrors with towels, and then took to a low stool, holding her head in her hands, rocking to and fro, keening.
Henry’s party was five days overdue when Moses, gone to collect his mail at The Caboose, read in the Gazette:
GURSKY HEIRS
MISSING
IN ARCTIC
The story noted that Henry, a Hassidic Jew, the eccentric son of Solomon Gursky, had been rooted in the Arctic for years, married to a native woman. It was illustrated by a photograph of the ship with three masts locked in the ice. A vessel, the reporter wrote, that the locals called Crazy Henry’s Ark, its estimated cost three million dollars.
Moses threw things into a suitcase, drove to Dorval airport, the other side of Montreal, and caught the first flight to Edmonton. He had to wait three maddening hours before he could make a connection to Yellowknife, where he immediately set out for the Canadian Armed Forces search-and-rescue headquarters, volunteering to serve as a spotter. The search master, adding his name to the list, told him that two long-range Hercules transports had already been crisscrossing the area of the highest probability for three days, flying a mile apart at a height of 1,000 feet. The area of the highest probability was calculated to be 350 miles long and 250 miles wide. In the event of a siting, para-rescuers were standing by equipped with a long-range Labrador helicopter, prepared to take off immediately. The good news was that Henry’s party had certainly reached their destination, remained in camp for a day, and then started back with sufficient food and fuel to get them home. A land search was also underway, Eskimos fanning out over Henry’s most likely route home.
The next morning a whiteout grounded the search planes and Moses passed most of the day in The Trapline with Sean Riley.
“He should have taken his dogs,” Riley said, “not those goddamn snowmobiles. You can’t eat snowmobiles.”
“What are their chances, Sean?”
“They’re crossing some damn unforgiving country, but if Henry’s okay, they’re okay. If not, not. Henry knows the terrain, but Isaac’s no damn good and Johnny’s a druggie. If Henry’s out of it, those kids could head off any which way, providing the snowmobiles haven’t broken down.”
“All three of them?”
“Bloody unlikely I know, but there’s been an accident for sure. Somebody overturned or went over a cliff or into a crevice or how the hell do I know what, and maybe they’ve set up camp and they’re waiting to be rescued.”
“Didn’t they take flares with them?”
“If I had to guess I’d say they lost the sled with the flares and what we got to hope is that it wasn’t also the one with the food and the fuel. Look, Moses, they’re good for ten days out there, maybe two weeks, before we have to worry.”
Another two days passed before the search planes were able to take off again, this time flying at five hundred feet only a half-mile apart. Moses, like the rest of the volunteers, was only capable of logging ten minutes at a stretch as a spotter, harnessed into the open loading hatch at the rear of the Hercules, squinting at the ice and snow skidding past in temperatures that ran to forty below.
They flew out day after day, weather permitting. Then, on the twenty-third day, the camp was sited, a solitary figure scrambling out of a tent to wave frantically. The Hercules swooped low, dropping a survival pack, and the para-rescuers started out in their helicopter. Security was thick at Yellowknife airport, but Sean Riley managed to have a word with the helicopter pilot shortly after he landed, and then he hurried off to The Trapline to meet with Moses. “Henry’s dead. A broken neck. Johnny starved to death. They’ve brought in Isaac and they’ve got him in the hospital now. The RCMP are guarding his room.”
“Why?”
“They lost the sled with the food. Isaac survived by slicing chunks out of Henry’s thighs,” Riley said, ordering double Scotches for both of them.
“What about Johnny?”
“He refused to nosh on the great-grandson of Tulugaq, but what did he know? Little prick was just a savage. Are you going to be sick?”
“No.”
“Look here, Moses, Henry was already dead. You might have done the same. Certainly I would have.”
Moses ordered another round.
“Isaac swears he didn’t dig in until the tenth day out there,” Riley said, “but the helicopter crew told the RCMP they found little bags filled with cubes of meat hanging from his tent. If Isaac had waited ten days, like he said, Henry’s body would have been harder than a frozen log. Splinters is what he would have got, not boeuf bourgignon. Something else. Bizarre, if it’s true.”
‘‘Let’s have it.”
“Isaac says he was attacked by ravens one morning. Maybe he was delirious or he dreamt it.”
Rumours of cannibalism were all over town. Reporters, attracted by the Gursky name, flew in from Toronto, London, and New York. Convening in The Trapline, they concocted a verse to commemorate the event:
Moses decided not to stay on for THE CORONER’S COURT INQUIRY INTO THE MATTER TOUCHING UPON THE DEATHS OF:
HENRY GURSKY, and
JOHNNY POOTOOGOOK.
However, he was still in Yellowknife the morning they released Isaac from the hospital, flanked by lawyers. “My client,” one of them said, “is still suffering from bereavement overload and has nothing to say to the press at this point in time.”
Five
Considering the nature of Isaac’s sin, there were lengthy deliberations before the yeshiva agreed to take him back, and then only on sufferance.
“How could you do such a thing?” one rebbe asked.