At the End of the World by Lawrence Millman

Author:Lawrence Millman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2017-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

30

As I would soon be going home, I offered the old woman several large bills for all the help she had given me. Pushing the bills away, she told me that memories, whether good or bad, have nothing to do with money.

I gave Simeonie my pocket knife. “I must pay for it,” he told me. No! I exclaimed. “There are two things that a person must pay for—a knife and a dog,” he said, “or the knife will be lost, and the dog will die.”

Simeonie’s payment to me: a pair of warm mittens that he’d made from a dehaired walrus skin.

I checked my emails a final time. I felt warm walking to the school but cold sitting in front of a computer. That’s because muscle activity is our body’s most important source of heat, and if you’re butt-stapled to a screen, you barely move, and your temperature goes down, down, down.…

“We’re having an anthrax scare,” a friend emailed me, “so make sure you don’t bring any spores back from Hudson Bay.”

Our nervous systems reputedly receive an endorphin reward cue (the adrenaline surge that so pleased my Cyberian friend) every time we receive an email, but I did not receive a reward cue, endorphin or otherwise, upon being told not to bring back spores from Hudson Bay.

Nor did I receive any sort of reward from my lady friend’s email informing me that her mother had just been diagnosed with severe arthritis and was now on several types of medication.

I said good-bye to all the elders who had been my informants, no, “informant” is an ugly word that suggests giving privileged information to the police, so I said good-bye to the elders who had become my friends.

I slipped an envelope with cash in it under the old woman’s door. I did not identify myself as the source of that cash, but only wrote the word nakurmiik, which means “thanks,” on the envelope.

One last exchange of words with Jacky: “That attack on New York—you will soon find out that it was a movie,” he told me. “But I heard the fires are still burning in New York,” I said. “That’s what they want you to think, those movie people,” he replied.

Taliriktuk could always be counted upon to inject a note of humor into any conversation I had with him, but in saying good-bye to me he now gave me a silent, wordless hug.

At last I decided to say good-bye to Peter Sala.

As I was walking toward Peter’s current residence, the cold air gave me goose bumps, an attempt by my body to raise a protective hair cover that it no longer possesses.

The previous time I visited Peter, he was covered by Cladonia lichens. He was still covered by Cladonia lichens, but now those lichens were covered with several inches of snow.

At the base of Peter’s simple white cross was a plaque with these words: “Peter Sala Born Feb 1900 died Jan 26, 1988. Rest in Peace.” On the grave was a wind-damaged wreath of artificial flowers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.