Free The Trap by John Smelcer Page A

Land of the Midnight Sun.
    And it was.
    Johnny made a pot of coffee and read a chapter from his history book and took notes. But every ten minutes or so, he got up and looked at the thermometer. After four or five times, it was clear that the temperature was dropping, only a couple of degrees now, but given several hours it would be perhaps ten or more lower.
    It was already close to thirty below.
    Had he a telephone, he would have called someone to express his concern for his grandfather. But lacking one, he would have to drive his snowmobile to the village if he wanted to talk.
    Johnny put on his heavy winter parka, his white bunny boots—as a generation of soldiers had called the fat white boots—and then his gloves and hat. When he was completely bundled, he went outside to start his snowmobile. But no matter how many times or how hard he pulled on the engine’s rope, it would not start. The cold was stronger than his pull, stronger even than his will.
    At such temperatures, crankcase oil solidifies and does not pour at all. At sixty below, antifreeze and oil can freeze solid. In the old days, when airplanes were first used in the bush, a pilot would land on a frozen river or a lake or a field, and while the engine oil was still warm, drain the plane’s crankcase of oil into a five-gallon tin, which was carried inside and placed near a woodstove. The next morning, the pilot would go outside, brush snow from the wings, check the skis and cables for ice, and pour the warm oil back into the engine. The airplane would start on the first or second try, and moments later the little craft would bounce down the river and take off, flying low above the trees before vanishing in the low sun.
    Although airplanes opened the vast expanses of the far north to commerce and trade, it was a rough beginning. Having no knowledge of the science of flight or machinery, many Indians in the early days walked right into spinning propellers and were beheaded.
    Johnny went inside to fetch his bucket of kerosene-soaked sawdust and brought out a folded plastic tarp, which he set up over the machine using two sawhorses and a couple logs from the woodpile. Then he started little fires under the tarp, one on each side and close enough to the machine so that the tarp would hold the heat, but not so close that the plastic of the yellow snowmobile or the blue tarp would melt or ignite. He stayed outside for nearly an hour, crouched beneath the tarp to stay warm and to watch the fire. When the flames got too high, he rolled the logs around with a stick.
    Close to noon, after the fires had died, he removed the tarp, pumped the primer twice, and pulled the rope’s black handle. The engine started on the first pull, sputtered for a few seconds, and then died. He pulled again and again, and finally it started and idled without his working the choke or the throttle.
    While the snowmobile was warming, he filled the tank with gas and went inside to wait. He made himself a moose-meat-and-cheese sandwich, cleaned a few dishes, and stoked the stove with a few split logs.
    When he looked at the thermometer again, it was thirty-five below.
    Johnny drank his last cup of coffee and then drove over to his grandmother’s cabin. The ride over was so cold that he had to hunker down below the cracked and duct-taped plastic windshield to keep his cheeks from freezing, so cold that the moisture on his eyes tried to freeze solid, so that, when he blinked, his eyelashes froze together.
    When he arrived in the village, little else was moving. All the chimneys poured out smoke, which, because of the cold, settled in the village instead of rising into the clear sky. Even the sled dogs did not come out from inside their little doghouses. They lay curled on straw beds with tails wrapped tightly across their noses, dreaming dog dreams of summer and salmon strips drying on racks in the sun.
    From outside his grandparents’ cabin, he could see that his