Ilatsiak - 74 - Return to Fish River

After the death of old Agayuq the following winter, David and his family decided to re-visit Qayaq’s former home. It had been several years snce they’d seen her relatives and she wanted the children to meet them and visit her homeland. They took a different route, crossing easily over to the Boothia Peninsula and then headed southwards to the Fish River.
It was a happy time, traveling in the spring was easy and they were lucky to come across a small herd of caribou not once, but several times enroute. Joining up with Qayaq’s relatives proved more difficult, but eventually they found them and settled in for the summer. David happily went fishing and caribou hunting with Qayaq’s uncles and their friends. Life was good.
They remained in the area that winter and as spring arrived Qayak was anxious to visit her famil’s old fishing weir further up the river from their winter camp. David and Uyaraluk his hunting partner and their families decided to move together, but suddenly Uyaraluk decided not to move just yet. So within a few days, David, Qayaq and their two boys were out of their aging snow-house and back into caribou skin tents several miles up the river.
The tent was erected in its usual place beside the fishing weir that Qayaq’s family had come to so many times over the years they had been together. It sat on one of the few patches of bare ground, the rest still cloaked with the winter’s snow. The river rushed past, swollen with new melt water, the snow banks gradually melting back to the shorelines. As they approached, no one could be seen. David and Kudluk, coming in from a walk over the surrounding hills, realised that Qajaq must be inside. They bent over, pulled aside the door flap and entered the darkness.
She sat at the very back of the tent surrounded by the smoky darkness without even her lamp lit for light. As his eyes made the adjustment to the low light, David could see she had been crying, even though it had now been two days. The same pain spread across his chest tightening his lungs making it hard to breathe. Still, he said nothing. Kudluk simply sat on the left side of the sleeping area normally reserved for strangers and visitors. He too had no words to say to his mother. He picked up one of the thick char and began to carve it into steaks about two inches thick. David looked at the metal knife-blade and turned away. Reaching under the pile of articles behind where he sat, he felt for and then pulled out a stiffened piece of sealskin already darkened from being used many times as a cutting surface. His movements brought him again face to face with Qajaq. Even in the dim light he could see the puffness of her face. Her eyes and nose were reddish from being wiped so many times. He turned and reached for one of the raw fish steaks, then offered it to her. She just wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t hungry.
He bent the O-shaped portion backwards on itself so the gleaming pink flesh turned outwards. He began to slowly peel it away from the silvery skin with his teeth. It was still cold, moist, fresh from the weir. Kudluk ate as well, first turning the fish slice inside-out and then with his fingers inserted into the loop of flesh, he began eating, slurping silently in his corner. His thoughts seemed so far away. Still no one spoke. It was too soon to acknowledge what had happened. Words would come later if they would come at all. Now it was time to be together and collectively heal, bathed in the closeness of each other’s company. For them life would continue. It had to. To survive was everything in this land.
As each man finished licking the flesh and fat off each piece of fish, they would turn the skin back right-side-out and discard them into a sort of rounded metal container. David had never learned to eat the skins and he watch Kudluk discard them as well. “Odd,” he thought to himself, “He is so much more like me. He is the oldest son now, but he is so much more like me than his lost brother.”