Free Heart So Hungry by Randall Silvis

circles, completely out of his senses, until his feet were so frozen he could walk no farther. That’s the story he’s telling now. Though in the letter to his sister, the one he wrote from Labrador, he said something different. He said then that when he felt the search was hopeless, he gave up and turned toward Grand Lake. Does it surprise you that his story has changed?”
    “I suppose it does,” George said. “Who’s he telling this new story to—the newspapers?”
    “He has put it into a book. The book I commissioned him to write. But it is filled with exaggerations and untruths, George. You would be ashamed of some of the things he says, I’m sure. That is why we must write an
honest
account of what took place up there. You will help me, won’t you?”
    He said what he always said. “I’ll do the best I can.”
    She smiled and reached for his hand again. “And we must be careful to tell no one about our plans. If word gets out that you are staying in town, the newspapers will surely be after you for an interview. It is important that you refuse to speak with them. Will you agree?”
    It seemed a small thing to George to keep his mouth shut on the matter, the least of her requests. He would not be comfortable telling a lie but he was used to being stingy with his words. The best course of action, he decided, was to write down the story just as quickly as he could, then get back to Missanabie before the local folk, especially Mr. Wallace, even knew he had been in town.
    Mina and George met several times over the next two weeks, always in the privacy of Dr. Sawyer’s home. Early on it was decided that George’s narrative should focus on the final days of the expedition. “Those are the important days,” Mina told him. By which George understood her to mean the days when Wallace’s behaviour was in question.
    George resolved to be scrupulously honest in what he wrote, putting down the events exactly as he remembered them. And apparently that was what Mina expected of him, for each time she reviewed his progress she praised his memory and his eye for detail. She never told him what to write nor suggested he employ a different word or phrase than the one he had chosen. She did sometimes show him the proper spelling for a word, or suggest where to place a comma or the even more mysterious dash or semicolon. And he was eager for the assistance. He had no wish to appear illiterate.
    She was especially touched by those entries that spoke of Laddie’s affection for George. “Mr. Hubbard tells me he will get a room for me in New York. He again that night asked me to stay with him a couple of months in Congers before I go home to Missanabie, and also to pay him a visit real often, and also that he would never go out doing any travelling without me.”
    Tears sprang to her eyes and her breath grew short when she read of the men’s hardship, and how, on October 11, they found some old caribou bones. “The bones were full of maggots, and when it boiled for some time the maggots would boil out. It just looked like it had been a little rice in it. We drunk it up, maggots and all. It was pretty high, but found it good. Nothing was too bad for us to eat.”
    The following day, a “fine day,” brought no relief from their hunger. “We ate one of Mr. Hubbard’s old moccasins, made out of caribou skin, that he made himself. We boiled it in the frying pan, till it got kind of soft, and we shared it in three parts.”
    But most affecting of all was George’s passage for October 16, the day salvation came so close to hand. The three men had trudged to a stream where, weeks earlier, they had caught several fish. Now the stream was dry. But then, as if by miracle, a caribou came walking toward them.
    We all fell flat on the ground, but he was on the lee side of us and soon found out we were there. He stood—behind some little trees and had his head up looking towards where we were, and all of a sudden he was gone, and we