The Plains of Abraham

Chapter 9

The snow arrived and buried the forest under a blanket of white down. The landscape turned into a pallid, undulating sea. The lake was a sheet of silver, barren of life and soul and any hint of topography.

The sides of our camp not bounded by lake were walled off with pines, cedars, and firs, their branches laden with snow. Snow drifted down through openings in the canopy, where wind from the lake pushed it here and there to form drifts. We dug trenches through the drifts to make walkways to our shelter. Snow piling up against the hut walls provided insulation from biting gusts.

We were thus compelled to suffer from the smoke of our fire. It bunched up at the roof, attempted half-heartedly to escape through a narrow opening, and stung our eyes on its lazy way out. But the smoke was better than the cold, which strove interminably to penetrate the hut, and when we went outside, got its revenge and worked its way through layers of clothing, through skin and bone.

We'd stomp back inside to recover in the heat of the fire, only to roast by the same fire while turning in our sleep; alternatively presenting our stomachs and our backs, like pigs on a spit, to even the burn.

Malcolm made us both a pair of snowshoes. They were simple flat contraptions resembling the rackets used for certain ball games. He twisted flexible branches into oval frames and lashed their ends together. Then he latticed the frames by cross-stitching thin strips of hide.

The shoes were remarkably effective. You had to lift your foot straight up before taking a step, else you would drag snow as you walked. And you still couldn't move as fast as the animals. But at least you could move. And the animals had less to guffaw about.

We tested the shoes together during an early morning hunt, hiking into the woods, circling, figuring somewhere between us and the lake was an unsuspecting meal. We split far enough apart that no four-legged creature of average agility could get around us with ease, yet not so far apart that any well educated one would venture to escape between us. Our hunting technique was all about matching wits with creatures endowed with significantly smaller cranial capacities. And to my complete surprise, it worked.

We maneuvered toward the lake, making as much noise as we cared to. I had the gun; any potential dinner would have to dart in front of me. Although Malcolm had no gun, the dinner didn't know.

He moved ahead, approaching the lake faster than me. A rabbit, unable or unwilling to venture onto lake ice, crossed in front of me to avoid Malcolm. Had it known Malcolm was unarmed it could have scampered carefree over his toes, even stopping to pee on his leg.

Today's dinner was solid alabaster, a genuine bunny rabbit. I didn't feel sorry for him, since in the absence of snow he would have been gray. Our deception just turned out to be craftier than his.

There was something funny about his eyes. It took me a minute before I realized he was blind. I'd seen cave fish that had what looked like sores instead of eyes, and the resemblance was strong; these were translucent, almost like they were covered with gauze. He couldn't have differentiated between much more than light and dark, maybe the shadow of a predator. I also noticed that his ears were somewhat larger than normal; they'd clearly evolved to compensate. He hadn't seen us coming. But he'd heard us.

His disability didn't affect his flavor. As he seared over the fire, Malcolm thanked God for the gift of food. He also thanked God for the snowshoes that had enabled the hunt. I couldn't help remembering that Malcolm had made the shoes all by himself, but then I remembered too he had used materials created at divine whimsy. So I kept my mouth shut, except to gnaw on tasty bunny meat.