Dogsong

The dream man is no longer in the joyful village: He is driving his dogs through slashing ice and wind, pushing them on in a fierce storm. Even though the dream dogs are exhausted and the sled is loaded with red meat, the man does not stop to let them rest; instead, he screams and whips the dogs to run on. Russel can feel the terror in the man, and he understands that the man is trying to get home with the red meat, back to the family unit in the tent. He had stayed too long in the village. The storm prevents their advance, blowing his dogs over, and no amount of whipping can keep them going. This part of the dream fades into snow and is replaced by another scene. The woman and two children from an earlier dream are in a tent with a flickering lamp. All three are thin and weak. The children look close to death, and Russel sees in the dream that they have eaten everything, even their leather mittens. The only thing remaining is the skin of the tent, but without a tent there is certain death. A storm rages outside the tent as the three weak humans wait for something, slowly dying of starvation. 

The following dawn Russel comes across the snowmachine, abandoned and cold with nothing on it other than an empty plastic gas can. Small, childlike footprints lead away from the snowmachine, following tracks presumably made by the machine on its outward journey, before it turned around to head back to its origin. Russel urges his team on even though the dogs are tired and have run steadily for two days. He knows a storm is coming and wants to find the person before it hits. The dogs pick up the person’s scent, and despite the strengthening winds and driving snow, they continue to follow it. Eventually the dogs slow down, knowing that they must take shelter, but Russel drives them on, believing in their ability to find the person. The dogs come to a stop, refusing to move on, and Russel thinks that they are spent, unable to move on in the fierce storm. He staggers to the lead dog, intending to bring him around and to make the shelter, when he trips on a person curled up under the snow. Russel thinks the person must be dead, but he sees an arm move. Working fast in the face of strong winds and driving snow, Russel makes a shelter with the skins and his dogs.

The dogs form a “living screen,” curling into tight balls and that get covered with snow to create small igloos that keep them warm. Russel lights the lamp in his shelter and drags the person inside. He pushes the person’s parker hood back and is shocked to see it is a young woman—a “girl-woman.” As Russel tries to rouse her, he realizes that she is pregnant. The girl seems lifeless, but she is still breathing, so Russel keeps trying, putting small amounts of liquid fat into her mouth. Eventually she starts to stir, and Russel know the worst is to come; he knows the pain a person feels when coming back from a frozen state. He warms meat, ready to feed the girl, but his own state of exhaustion overwhelms him, and he slips into a dream-filled semi-sleep. 

The dream picks back up with the man and his team after the storm has cleared. One of the dogs is lost to the cold, so the man keeps it to feed to the other dogs later and starts the run again. The remaining four dogs are tired, but he pushes them, past plentiful game without stopping, running for home. The dream becomes a white light, with the team running through the brightness until Russel sees the space where the dream tent with his family unit was. Now there are just torn leather, flapping tent skins, and “signs of death” (141). Russel reacts with disbelief: “No, Russell thought—out of the dream but still in it in some way he did not understand. No, that cannot be” (141). Only two human bones are left in the tent space. In his dream Russel finds the lamp under a ledge, left by a fox that licked all the fat off it. As he is thinking about the lamp, the dream shifts back to the man struggling to get home with his staggering, failing dogs who ran into the dream-light and disappeared. Now there is only the man, at the ruins of the tent. Russel awakens and knows that the man is him, the dream woman is the girl he found, and the lamp is the dream lamp. His shelter is full of the smell of fear, and Russel knows that the “dream had become his life and his life and the run had become the dream” (144). He looks at the girl, who is sitting up staring at him.

When Russel is old and looks back on this part of his life, he sees that the dream incorporated into his life, folded into his life so much that it no longer mattered what was real and what happened in the dream; they were intertwined.

The girl gains back her strength and tells Russel her story. Her name is Nancy, and she was trying to run away from her settlement because she became pregnant without being married, a terrible sin according to the missionaries. She wanted to die on the tundra, but instinct and fear of death made her turn around. She did not have enough gas to get back, which is why she left the snowmachine and started back on foot. She tells Russel that she has no home and no parents and her baby is due in four months. Russel and Nancy stay in the shelter while the storm passes. He feeds her meat and fat and listens to her talk. Eventually she shyly asks him why he was out there and how he found her. He is about to tell her about Oogruk and the dreams but feels that these stories are meant for songs alone, and the songs are not ready yet. Instead, he tells her he is running north “until I run to the end of where I am going” (148). She doesn’t press him but asks if she can join him running north since she has nothing to go back to. She admits that she doesn’t know about dogs but says she is willing to learn and can help with sewing skins. Russel knows she will die if he leaves her, so she joins him and his team on his journey north.

Russel runs his dogs, with Nancy snugly tucked into the sled. He is proud of his dogs and can tell that Nancy is impressed with his team. They run for 10 days, stopping at night to make camp, eat, chat a little, and sleep. They run past food, not stopping to replenish their dwindling supplies. They keep pushing for two days after running out of food but now see no game. The dogs grow weak, and Russel is reminded of Oogruk’s warning about the dogs. He warned Russel that the dogs will keep running to their death if you ask them to so you must look after them and not let them go too far. Nancy starts to grow weak, too, and Russel fears for them all—the dogs, Nancy and her baby, and himself. He decides to leave Nancy in the tent and go hunting alone with the dogs. He is haunted by the dream but has no choice, so he goes out to hunt. Russel finds no game or even tracks, and he spirals into fear and panic. All he thinks about is Nancy dying, the dogs dying, and himself dying. He tries to call upon knowledge from Oogruk, but nothing comes. He finds nothing on the second or third day either, and finally the dogs have no more strength to pull and stop. Russel remembers Oogruk telling him that “dogs will run if you make them think they want to run” (155), so he pushes them on. Russel pushes the dogs like a madman, whipping their back in a way he knows is wrong, but cannot stop. He is losing his mind when finally, when he is feeling completely defeated, he sees the tracks of a great polar bear. Polar bears have been hunted to extinction, or so Russel thought, so initially he does not believe his eyes. The dogs catch the scent, which gives them a second wind, and despite Russel’s fear and doubt they come around a corner and see the bear. The bear is huge and quickly kills the first dog who goes to bite it.

The bear turns to attack Russel, but Russel senses the same sadness in the bear that he felt from the mammoth in his dream. Replaying the dream, Russel takes the killing lance and steps back, allowing his dogs to distract the bear while he sets the lance. Russel no longer feels fear—he feels calm and has become the man in his dreams, while the bear has become the mammoth. The bear impales himself on the lance, as in the dream, and as he is falling the bear hits Russel with his paw and knocks him out. Russel regains consciousness and finds himself under the dead bear’s shoulder, his dogs feasting on the bear’s side. He thanks the bear with genuine gratitude and quickly gets to work collecting as much meat and fat as he can load into the sled for Nancy. The dogs eat their fill and reluctantly leave the remaining, huge carcass to pull the laden sled back to Nancy. Russel sees the lean-to shelter when he is half a mile away but sees no steam rising from it.

The lamp is out, and Russel finds Nancy lying cold and unconscious inside. He lights the lamp, and Nancy’s eyes flicker. She smiles at Russel and whispers that she did not think he was coming back. Even though Nancy is alive, she is weak, and her health deteriorates. She knows the baby is coming and that something is wrong. Nancy asks Russel to go, to leave her alone, but Russel will not leave her again and instead asks how he can help. Nancy struggles throughout the night, writhing in pain trying to deliver the baby. Russel, exhausted from his hunt, tries to help but does not know how. Eventually the baby is born, but it is lifeless. Nancy screams for Russel to take the baby’s body away.

Russel takes the baby outside and places it on a hill. He feels “[a] tearing sadness” (166). For the first time on this journey, Russel wishes he had stayed in his village. Russel cares for Nancy over the next five days, feeding her warm meat and comforting her, but her health fails. Russel knows that Nancy needs to see a doctor, so he explains to her that they can load up with meat from the bear and run north. He tells her that they should be close to the northern coast, where there are villages where she can get help. Nancy says nothing but nods in understanding. They pack up the camp, and Russel runs the four remaining dogs to the bear carcass. Nancy is impressed: “With a spear you did this?” (169). Russel feels proud but replies, “A man does not kill a bear alone. The dogs helped” (169). They run north for six days, only stopping to feed the dogs and take brief naps. The dogs stay strong and loyal, and Russel “drove them with his mind, drove them to the edge of the land, drove them until he felt the land start to tip down and then he smelled it, finally saw the sea ice out ahead” (170). They have made it, and although Nancy is now very weak, she glows with happiness and smiles at Russel, who swells with pride. Her smile “went into Russel” (170), and they drive down into the coastal village.