by Duane Spurlock
"Wood on the Snow" by Ryerson Johnson (Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine, November 11, 1933), reprinted in The Best Western Stories of Ryerson Johnson [Thorndike, Maine: GK Hall & Co., 1990] edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg).
Burrowing into a story by Ryerson Johnson is usually a comforting experience—"Johnny" was a solid storyteller who could seemingly weave a tale from the smallest incidents, tell it with style in such a way to capture a reader, and wrap it up with a satisfying ending. So it is with "Wood on the Snow."
This story narrates one simple thing: Bill Sloan's trekking north through an Arctic storm from his claim to the Keewatin Exploration Company's base on Desperation Inlet. But from that simple description, Johnson builds a fully satisfying story. Sloan had given much of his firewood and food to a band of starving Indians who had passed through his camp—now he has reached the end of his resources and must tramp to the nearest help, the Keewatin base. Should he make it, he knows the hard-bitten crew there will make him sign over his claim before they provide him help. But surviving the trek is the obstacle he faces during the course of this story, for it is night, the cold is deadly, and he has no wood for a fire. If he succumbs to the cold, Sloan knows his trek and his life will be over.
Johnson tells his story in a way that engages his reader thoroughly, not simply relying on the natural elements — the storm, the cold, the lack of firewood — to create narrative tension, but building Sloan's character and revealing his inner turmoil. He pulls in the reader's sympathy by making Sloan a real person in the course of 12 pages.
In two short paragraphs, Johnson sets up his story and his character's dilemma:
The trouble right now was the gnawing cold. A fellow could stand it while he moved along. There was food—caribou jerky and prunes. Exercise and food would keep blood circulating. Sure thing. But you had to rest once in a while. And when you rested, you needed a fire. Rest without fire in this mercury-congealing weather was a quick ticket to another world.
Yes, you had to have fire. And to have fire, you had to have wood. He didn't have wood, and there wasn't a chance he'd find any wood. There was everything else in these Northwest Territories. But this side of the timber line, very little wood. ( pp.113-114)
Two paragraphs later, in a bit of storytelling genius that demonstrates Johnson's strength in the short form, he widens the narrative horizon from the individual and specific to encompass the entire northwest region:
There was everything here. Five million caribou roaming the frozen plains. Or maybe fifty million—who was here to count them? Gold enough beneath the moss and lichens to pay off the European debt. Silver enough to provide breakfast plates for every one in the Dominion. Coal enough to operate every machine in the British Empire double-shift for a hundred years. Copper enough to pave a red and gleaming road from Montreal to Edmonton. Lead, zinc, iron, platinum—name it. You could find it here. Everything except wood. (pp. 114-115)
Sloan had found gold at his claim. And to keep Keewatin from getting his gold, he had to winter on the claim — which led to his current difficulties, once he shared his resources with the Indians. "Before he had gone very far, the bleak suspicion clawed at his brain that it was more than a gold mine he had given up in the name of charity." (p. 118)
But even as he faces death — for as the story continues, Sloan feels the cold overtaking him — he refuses to give in utterly:
One thing certain—Bill Sloan's carcass would never be found folded stiff and cold in the snow, with the knees and elbows a raw bloody-black from crawling. No, brother! When the time came that he had to crawl, he'd do something else. He hadn't got down on his knees to life.
And he wouldn't get down on his knees to death! (p. 113)
I won't spoil the end of this story for those who haven't yet read it. But Johnson performs his task as a storyteller very nicely, because the entire tale leads up to the last few paragraphs and the resolution of Sloan's narrative. While the premise of "Wood on the Snow" may initially seem to rework Jack London's famous "To Build a Fire," Johnson makes his own story with its own verisimilitude and strengths. His success can be measured in how the reader forgets about London's story while reading Johnson's tale.
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Elsewhere on The Pulp Rack, you can read more about Ryerson Johnson by clicking here.
Posted by ds at January 29, 2007 08:45 AM
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