Christmas Tree Island

Christmas Tree Island

       By Douglastrodome Reimer

Duties skedaddle

Back in the saddle

Riding the fictional range

A plane drifted east over the lake and left a wake behind so white in the blue you’d think the dome of heaven had fallen in. Jonathan stood still for a moment looking up at it and then resumed his trek across the frozen surface toward Christmas Tree Island. His trail would take him past Highpoint, Limmel Island, Trout Narrows, Gooseneck Island and Scotch Rapids, and then through a long winding passage into the Big Northwest Bay. At the end of this bay, still some eight miles distance, lay Christmas Tree Island and the cabin of the mysterious man who had called him on his battery telephone late the previous evening.

       “Iss dis, ah, ah, iss diss Mr. Ofalbecken?” a throaty voice had asked when he’d answered. The ringing had startled him. The phone never rang. He kept it working for emergencies. He kept it working for the entertainment of the thing. If he felt like it he could dial someone. This made life fuller. It brought society or culture or urbanity into his otherwise wilderness world.

       He paused. “Yes. Who is this?” He did not know what to say to anyone over the phone anymore. He never had. He had never known what to say to anyone over the phone. He had got his wife to answer. Actually, he had left the answering up to her because she liked to answer it and already ran from wherever she was to get it. If she was ironing in the basement, she would begin to run up the stairs. If she was in the back yard gardening, or lounging, she would begin to run at the first sound of the ringing. That suited him fine.

       He was following the long north shore of High Point with its great visual barrier of red pine, crowning the mile long granite arch with a forest of towering conifers as fine as diamond tiepins and as matched in height as hair in a brush cut. A moose track came suddenly out of the trees and crossed the lake before him. It headed toward a southern  promontory where he had seldom been himself. Maybe that would be a good place to go hunting, he thought to himself. He was always on the look out for a new place to try for game. Winter supplies went quickly. A man living off the land had to make sure of three things well in advance of winter--lots of black tea, lots of sugar, and meat in the tree cairn.

       He thought the line had gone dead. “Hello?” he had said, and then the man had answered. The man seemed no more accustomed to the telephone than he was. A dog barked and the line crackled. Where was his voice coming from, he had wondered.

       “Can you come over right avay?” the voice said. What the heck! he thought. What does he mean, come over? Is he near here? Maybe he has the wrong number.

       “Where?” he had said. At first there had been no response. The man must have thought he would know where. From the long silence that followed, he concluded that this was a wrong number. He waited, looking about him for a piece of firewood to add to the stove. He put in a slab of birch and the door screeched and ground.

       “Christmas Tree Island,” the voice said and then the line went dead. The man had hung up or it had quit working. He had held the receiver in his hand for quite some time before he realized that he was doing so. He approached Limmel Island. From this distance, about half a mile away, it stood low to the horizon and had little shelter on it if he would ever need to take cover there. But he had done so once before. Once, when he’d come back from a hunt near Longjohn Rapids, a storm had driven him onto it and there, in the moment of danger, he had discovered a den, a bear’s den, beneath a ledge. He’d crawled in and lain down next to the hibernating animal, happy to be kept so fortunately alive. He kept on. Eventually, he found himself in the Big Northwest Bay and the temperature hovering near forty below, snow starting to swirl around him. He knew that he must make it across this notorious open stretch quickly. He would not want to be caught here in a strong wind.

       He went as quickly as he could on snowshoes. Christmas Tree Island finally loomed up ahead like a bear in the mist. He approached. He rounded its western tip. Wind blew at him and chilled him through and through. He felt suddenly tired and very cold. He would not have been able to go much longer. The cabin, he knew, lay just ahead. With his last energy he got to the shore below it, called out to warn the dogs and the man inside, and climbed unsteadily up the embankment. He stood by the door and knocked. No answer. No dogs barking. He hit the door with his fist. No one. He felt a surge of panic. What if . . ., he wondered, but then a figure materialized from the woods to his left and stood a distance away looking at him as if unbelieving.

       “Tank you!” the voice said. “Tank you for comink so qvickly! My vife iss dead. She died last night. The new baby iss livink, but she needs food and milk. We must try to get some from Sioux Narrows!”

       I stood there, and then sat down on the porch. He approached and took my hand. “Thank you!” he said again.