A hundred of them.

I don’t really care where they came from, only that they might be food.

Meow.

“You try one.”

Meow.

“Sometimes I wish you were a guinea pig.”

Meow.

“Black is not the color of death.”

“Okay,” I say. “We’ll go at the same time.”

I give him one.

Meow.

“Why do I have to eat more than one?”

Meow.

“Fine, I’ll eat twenty so we can die together.”

I grab a handful, then take a deep breath.

“One . . . two . . . three.”

I toss them back.

They are sweet and earthy. Unlike any berry I’d ever tasted. Which doesn’t answer whether or not they are poisonous.

Lassie and I stare at each other, waiting for the other to grab at their throat and begin frothing at the mouth.

A minute later, we deem the berries safe. It’s amazing what a few calories can do for a glucose-starved brain. My eyes slowly begin to refocus.

Now that my brain is once again firing on a few cylinders, the big question arises: where did the berries come from?

I push myself up.

The sun has stolen the darkness from the sky, and I walk to the top of the sandbar and to the edge of the thick grass.

Here lies the answer.

Literally.

Curled in a ball, lying in the soft grass, is a small boy.

A little Eskimo.

::::

He wears a yellow T-shirt and I can see the back half of the polar bear and the first two rings of the Olympics logo. For all I know he is an Indian and not an Eskimo, though I wasn’t clear on the distinction, and since we were in Alaska, I preferred to think of him as a little Eskimo boy.

I tiptoe back to where Lassie sits on the sandbar and report, “There is a little boy asleep in the grass. He’s wearing a T-shirt from the Indian-Eskimo Olympics, so I’m guessing he was swept into the river in Fairbanks.”

Meow.

“They compete in a bunch of weird contests. It was supposed to start the day after the earthquake.”

Meow.

“Yeah, I think he did. I mean, who else would have left the berries for us?”

Meow.

“I am not gonna check his pockets for more.” I start back up the bank. “Wait here, I’m gonna go see if I can wake him up.”

I look at my watch.

Forty-one minutes left in my day.

I ease my way into the tall grass. I half expect the kid to be gone. He is still there, his hands tucked between his knees, curled into a tight ball. I gingerly close the distance between us by half. On closer examination, he has light brown skin framed by near-black hair. He wears the aforementioned yellow T-shirt, white shorts, white socks pulled up to his mid-calf, and red sneakers. I put his age at five, though I have nothing scientific to back this up.