Kunak’s face lit up. “Ah, cann-i-bals! Fuck, you’re a piece of work, Aviak. Pretending like you’re some real voodoo gitchy mama shay-woman . . . as if!” Kunak started to do the one thing he shouldn’t have done. He started to laugh.

Aviak thrust her pencil at him as if it were a knife. Kunak bounced his head back from the pointed stick. He managed to stand on his creaking knees. He grabbed her wrist and twisted the sagging skin enough to make her feel a rope burn sensation.

“Ouch, you fucker!” Aviak dove at him headfirst. For an Inuk woman who was only a hundred pounds in total, she managed to generate a real force. Kunak fell back against the trunk of the nearest pine tree after hearing the empty thud of her head hitting his stomach.

“Well, you useless little cunt! You’ve got some fight in ya, don’t you!” Kunak grabbed Aviak by her shoulders and smashed her lips onto his. He held her there until he felt the fight from inside of her start to leave. He pulled her face back a few inches from his own and said, “Now, my nuliaq, that’s no way to treat your man.”

“And that’s no way to treat your wife, mister! Calling me the c-word! Fuck you!” Aviak tried to wrestle her way out of Kunak’s strong arms. She wiggled right and jiggled left, wiggled left and jiggled right. She was trapped and she knew it. She stopped. She sighed. She let go of all the air inside her lungs.

“I just can’t,” Aviak said. “I just can’t fight anymore.” She laid her head on Kunak’s shoulder and asked, “Do you think you could love me?”

Kunak cleared his throat, “How do you mean that? You know, how do you mean ‘love?’”

Aviak moved her face in front of his. “I mean totally. Like how I am right now. I’m a drunk. I take all kinds of drugs and get strung out. I never know what time it is. I never know what day it is. I never know where I’m going to sleep at night. I sell my art and if that doesn’t work . . . I sell me. Just so you know, all those guys whose cocks I suck or fuck, they don’t mean one thing to me. Can you love that? Can you love someone like me? Could you?” Her eyes danced. Kunak knew she had said all this before to someone else. She was rehearsed. In her own awkward way, Aviak was poised.

He looked at her greasy, stringy hair and her brown teeth. Her breath smelled like a dumpster. The rest of her smelled worse. He laughed again.

Aviak snapped. She looked over Kunak’s strong shoulder and nodded at the shadow that was hovering there. Ubluriaq nodded back.

A little way off to the side, Grandpa Chevy stood in the shade of one of the tall pines. He saw Ubluriaq closing in on Kunak. Chevy shook his head hard.