The Old Man and the Moose

Pastiche of The Old Man and the Sea. Inspired by old Bush Pilots and my love of Hemingway.

         He was an old man who flew alone in a battered Super Cub with aging tires into the Alaskan wilderness and he had gone three years now without killing a moose worth bringing home. In the first two years a boy had flown with him. The boy’s father had said the old man was snake-bit, unlucky in a way the Bush pilots couldn’t explain, and had ordered the boy to go with the younger, luckier pilots who came back each season with meat and pelts in their planes. The boy loved the old man and was sad to leave him, but he obeyed.
In the small community on the Chena River just outside Fairbanks the bush pilots gathered at the old café near the airstrip in the evenings and talked of the moose and caribou they had seen. Some had killed good bulls. The old man had taken nothing. They offered him coffee and he drank it politely. He was thin and gaunt now, with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck and the brown blotches of the sun and wind on his cheeks and hands. Everything about him was old except his eyes, and they were the same color as the sky over the tundra when it is clear and the wind is down.
One evening clouds brought a damp chill to the old man's little house.
“Tomorrow I will go far north,” the old man told the boy. “Up past the lone peak, where the lakes form moose tracks. Early snow will send big bulls there. I feel it.”
The boy looked at the old man's plane, tied down with rope worn thin as string. “I wish I could go with you, Jack.”
“You fly with the lucky ones now. This time I go alone.”
The old man checked the plane before dawn. He filled the tanks and checked the oil, loaded his .30-06 with a handful of his best cartridges, packed a little bread and coffee, and the old sleeping bag. He taxied onto the empty runway in the gray light and lifted off into the north wind. The plane climbed slowly, the elevators a little sticky, and the engine coughing the way it always did in the cold. Below him the Chena unrolled like a silver ribbon, then the spruce thinned and the tundra opened under the pale sky.
He flew four hours and landed beside two small lakes no one else used. Snow had pushed the grass down flat in the night. The water was black and still. He tied the plane to a dwarf willow and shouldered his pack and rifle and walked towards the hills. The ground was soft and the wind cut cold across his face. His legs ached after the first mile but he did not stop.
At Noon on the first day he saw the moose.
It stood in a small basin ringed by stunted birch, head down, feeding. The antlers were wider than any he had ever seen, palmated like great brown paddles, the points white and sharp as knives. The bull was old too, heavy in the chest, its dark coat scarred from fights long past. The old man's heart beat harder against his ribs. He circled downwind, moving slowly, and grunted like the young bulls he had heard before.
He took the shot at two hundred yards. The bull flinched, then walked away. The old man followed the blood trail up the slope and down into the brush. The trail was thin at first, then wider. He walked all that day and through the night, sleeping little, eating only toast and coffee over a small butane stove. His knees swelled. His hands shook when he tried to light the matches. But he kept on.
On the morning of the second day he found the bull. It had bedded in a thicket. The old man walked up, watching to see if it was dead. The moose rose once, towering, then bellowed and fell. The ground was sticky with blood.
The old man stood over the great body a long time.
“You were a good bull,” he said aloud. “You fought hard.”
He set to work. He skinned the head and caped it carefully, then quartered the meat. The antlers were so heavy he could barely lift them. He wove a sled of branches to drag them on. He made many trips back to the plane, carrying some on his back, the blood soaking through his parka, and dragging some on the sled. Each time the load felt heavier. His shoulders burned. His breath got shorter. When the last light was gone he cached the meat high in a tree and lay down beside the plane, too tired to eat.
In the night he heard them.
Two wolves came first, then a grizzly. The old man sat up with the rifle across his knees. He could not see them clearly in the dark but he heard the wolves snarling and the bear’s heavy breathing and the tearing of meat. He fired into the air. The wolves fled. The bear did not. It kept feeding.
He waited until first light. Now he could see, the bear had untied his rope and dropped the cached meat from the tree. The grizzly was not there. It had left no quarters untouched.
The old man walked to the pile of ruined meat. The wolves had taken what the bear had let them. Only scraps and bone remained. He looked at the waste and felt no anger. He had killed the bull fairly. That was enough. He cut the great antlers free, lashed them across the rear seat of the plane, and tied what little meat he could salvage in the cargo net. The wheels began to sink in the melting snow.

He took off into a headwind that had come up overnight. The engine labored. The plane skidded across the slush and finally lifted, clearing the far trees by feet.
Snow began to fall again.
The old man flew south through the gray curtain, the antlers crowding his shoulder. Ice formed on the struts. The compass swung lazily. He did not look at it. He flew by the shape of the mountains he knew and the silvery ribbons below.
He landed at the community airstrip just before dark. The boy was waiting on the edge of the gravel. Other pilots came out of the old café when they heard the engine. They saw the huge antlers strapped to the plane, the blood dried black on the fuselage. No one spoke for a long time.
“That’s the biggest bull I ever saw,” one pilot said.
The old man climbed down stiffly. His hands would not stop shaking now.
“You killed him alone?” the boy asked.
“Alone,” the old man said. He looked at the boy. “Much of the meat is gone. The bear and the wolves took it. But the head is good. You can have the meat I brought back. It is not much.”
The boy helped him tie the plane. They carried the antlers up to the old man's cabin on the riverbank and hung them on the wall outside where everyone could see.
The snow fell thicker.
The old man sat on the step and drank the coffee the boy brought him. His body hurt in every bone and he felt like the tundra after a hard wind.
“You will fly with me again?” he asked the boy.
“Yes,” the boy said. “I will fly with you. We will go north together.”
The old man nodded. He finished the coffee and went inside. He lay down on the narrow bunk and pulled the blanket over him. He closed his eyes and in the dark he saw the great bull standing in the little basin, head high, the antlers wide against the sky. The bull did not run. He stood there proud and the old man smiled in his sleep.