The Loneliest Man in the World (Dines with our Primitivologist in Yukon, 1961)

The Loneliest Man in the World (Dines with our Primitivologist in Yukon, 1961)

Émile Marceau Renarde appeared in the sky at 17:30. The rumbling engine of the tandem ski-plane awoke the huskies outside, who promptly abandoned their sleep for howling. Bain, the lead dog, only stirred from his post-meal slumber when Roy stood up from his armchair. His groan, the cursing under his breath, the cracking of bones, it was all louder than the approaching aircraft. He zipped up his coat and staggered towards the porch, Bain in tow, to watch the plane land.

The silver Auster slid to a stop on the snow, its skis leaving two remarkably shallow trails in its wake. The Frenchman, set off-kilter by his massive collection of luggage, jumped out in one fluid movement. “Roy! Salut! Salut!” he shouted, and began to run, full force. Before Roy could get a good look at his face, Émile had kissed him, once on each stubbled cheek.

“Émile,” Roy stepped back. “Welcome.” He opened the door, and three dogs stampeded past him to jump and lick at the face of the stranger. Roy smiled for a moment, as Emile struggled, trying to shoo the dogs away with his briefcase. Full grain leather, probably more expensive than anything in his small cabin, and utterly useless.

“Attention,” Roy shouted, and the dogs ceased their play at once. “They aren’t used to strangers. Come in.”

Emile grinned furtively as he entered his new home, at least for the month. “Thank you. Bon chien, bon chien.”

The cabin was warm and dark inside, lit only by the softly crackling iron stove and a single yellow lamp. The smell was a warm, woody mixture of musk, dust and dog fur. The walls were lined with trophies from races, old photographs, and a framed picture of the very newspaper article that had brought Émile here.

Charles Roy Lisbon Jr.: Loneliest Man Alive. Anna Torrance. 1962.

“You can set your things down,” Roy grunted. “The dogs won’t piss on them or anything, they’re well trained.”

“Je vous, je vous, bon chiens.” He gave the black husky at his feet two quick pats on the head and placed his briefcase and other bags on the small, central table. “Do you speak French?”

“Comme ci, comme ça. Not since grammar school.”

“No matter,” Émile brushed his hand through his silver hair, streaked with white. “I speak English fantastic. And I come bearing gifts.” He rummaged through bags, mumbling in French as he shuffled through various objects. In the end, he produced a bottle of fine aged wine, filet mignon, and Call of the Wild, signed by Jack London himself.

“For dinner of the body, and dinner of the mind,” he explained, his grey eyes glimmering. It sounded quite smart, he thought. Maybe something to put in the new book.

“I don’t read.” Roy pushed the book away, examined the wine, and took a swig off the top as Emile looked on with horror. “Thanks, good stuff. So, what in the hell kind of business do you have here- paying me for some kind of vacation?”

Émile threw himself onto a rickety chair and spread his arms wide. “I come to learn about life! True life! I have studied about urban living, I have studied about structuralism, materialism, Marxism- I have studied about life but I have yet to live it! I have lived all my life in the city, not once have I caught a fish or shot an animal, and I want to call myself the founding father of primitivology! Bordel de merde! Primitivology! My field, my only child. A return to essence, no governing body, no laws, man without structure! We, in modern societies, we trim hedges to be square, when in truth, the tree is more beautiful, more functional, when left alone. I am writing a book, the premier. I call it Man Without Structure: Primitivology.”

Roy stood, arms crossed. “Well, good luck with that. Last person who stayed here with me left and wrote that horseshit,” he gestured to the newspaper article on the wall. “She locked herself in my outhouse for half her trip, said I was ‘mean’ and ‘coldhearted.’ The ‘authentic life’ was too much for her.” He used air quotes generously, but a wide grin spread across his square face.

“C’est n’importe quoi! Every man- woman, perhaps, too- fancies himself a Thoreau or a Twain, but I shall become better than Thoreau! I will sleep with the wolves and wash myself in the Great Lake, I will become the wild bison and imbibe the forest! I will do anything I must.” Émile gestured with his entire body, his hands clenched as he leaned forward.

“Lake’s frozen,” Roy corrected, amused. “And there’s no bison up here.”

“It’s but a métaphore, my dear!”

“A what?”

“A metaphor, in English! A thing, with something hidden under the surface. It is what I have come here to do. I shall find metaphor underneath the rocks and in the howl of the dog.”

“Oh, I see. Like ice fishing,” Roy smiled and winked.

Émile threw up his arms again, “No, no, no!” Then he paused, thought for a moment, and laughed.

“What?”

He grinned and stood up, throwing his thin arms around Roy’s neck and planting two more kisses on his cheeks. “My dear Roy, you genius! Why yes, yes ice fishing. You are all too perfect, my pragmatist, my simple man untouched by the structure of society and such foolish things as literary devices.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Roy stepped back again, “but I think I’ll cook up this steak. I’m hungry.”

By the time dinner was served, only half of the steak was left. Émile had watched, silently horrified, as Roy cut off sizable chunks of meat for each dog inside the cabin, and horrified once again when he saw the well-done meat on a cracked plate. Roy poured wine into two plastic cups and sat on his easy chair (there was only one wooden chair at the table). “Le dîner est servi!”

Émile nodded, looking at his plate and bent fork. He poked at the meat and grimaced at the wine. He shooed a husky away from his lap. The dogs outside began to howl in the dark.

“What do they howl for, Roy? Do they sing to the moon, longing for the wild, wolfish life of those before them?”

“They can smell the steak.”

“Yes, yes… they hunger.”

The two men sat, listening to the dogs, the howl of the wind, and the crackling of the fire. They ate and drank without exchanging another word.

Finally, Émile decided. “I shall sleep with the dogs tonight. Outside, under the same stars our ancestors hunted and struggled beneath.”

Roy nodded. “I think my ancestors would want me to sleep in my bed. But suit yourself. Your outfit looks warm enough for the antarctic.” Émile was wearing outdoorsman’s clothing of the utmost quality, from his down jacket lined with fox fur to his merino wool underclothes.

“Certainly, I selected the finest clothing! I shall see you in the morning. Please, do not let me in if I ask.”

“Good luck. I’ll wake you up early tomorrow morning- if you want to be Thoreau, you’ll do some hard working.”

“Certainly!” Émile grabbed his sleeping bag and a journal and left the warm embrace of the cabin.

The stars were out. He allowed a dog to lick his face and petted its soft fur. Émile, primitivologist, philosophe, modern Thoreau, poet of the wildmen.

But the cold doesn't care much for poetry.

He was on the floor inside within twenty minutes, wrapped in two dog blankets with his hands held up to the warmth of the furnace. On the gas stove, Roy had started a kettle for tea.

Roy woke the bundled Frenchman at 04:30: the same time he got up every morning to begin his daily tasks. “Bonjour! Time to start your first day.”

Émile groaned. He hardly slept last night. The dogs woke him every hour or so with their investigative pawing and sniffing. He began to protest about how it wasn’t even light out yet, and how he needed his coffee.

“I don’t think Thoreau would be complaining about getting up early. Come on, let’s let the dogs out, they need a piss.” Émile straightened immediately and followed Roy and the dogs outside.

“Alright, here’s the scooper, you clean up. I’m going to chop the firewood.” Roy handed him two wooden-handled metal tools.

“Clean what?” Émile examined the two items.

“Their shit, what do you think?”

Émile went pale. He had more questions, but Roy had already walked away, axe over one broad shoulder.

Holding the scoop like an épée, Émile ventured towards the dogs, tethered next to their small wooden dens. The 20 or so dogs began their yipping and barking to the beat of Roy’s rhythmic chopping, wiggling with excitement at the new visitor.

“Shoo, shoo, down! Down! Attention!” Émile shouted, remembering Roy’s command.

But they continued their roughhousing nonetheless as he attempted to clean.

“In every steaming pile, a mark of the beast- or no, perhaps, a little piece of man’s essence, a foul reminder of man’s core; a creature like the rest…” Émile wrinkled his nose at the smell as he scooped. “Man is but dog, he fools himself with plumbing and calls himself civilized, but no! He creates waste just like the lowly mongrel, he too-”

A dog jumped, sending the faeces flying and toppling him over. A brown smear appeared on his down jacket. “Putain!” he shouted.

Émile had recorded three learnings in his journal by nightfall:

In Canada, ‘coffee’ refers to a black, soil-flavored drink

Dogs do not care how expensive your clothing is

A frozen outhouse is not a metaphor; it is a trap

Morning came too early once again. Émile awoke to Roy and Bain’s faces, bright and ready for the next working day.

“Your first sled training,” Roy skipped the bonjour and morning niceties. “Get ready.”

As they walked through the snow, harnesses and tethers in hand it was Roy’s turn to talk endlessly.

“You have to keep them trained all year round. That’s one of the ways my team’s different from the others- I have a real connection with the dogs. Most of the other racers leave their dogs at some kennel for the off season while they relax in Florida or something- they don’t train them the same. But me and my dogs, we’re family, we spend all year together and I keep their strength and endurance up that way.”

Émile nodded. “I see, you are bonded with them. You can communicate as one whole unit- the boundary between you and nature, you and animalkind- it is not there, but it is for the others. And that is why they do not win.”

“Hey, you’re right about something for once. Let’s see if you’ve got the same instinct for harnessing the dogs up.”

He did not.

A dog named Cut had peed on his hand while he attempted to fasten the harness around his midsection, and he had pinched the skin of his forefinger in the clip while trying to harness another. But eventually, most of the 10 or so dogs were correctly tethered to the sled, Bain in the lead. Roy could have done it twice as fast on his own.

Émile sat in the front of the sled, holding his notebook and pen. Roy stood in the back and shouted “Hike!”

The sled picked up speed like a bullet as they raced down a snowy prominence. “Hold on, froggie,” Roy said quietly before shouting another command. “Haw!” And the dogs veered to the left.

Émile wrote in giant, looping letters as the sled drove over rocks and bumps. “What is haw?” He shouted over the sound of dogs panting and wooden skis crunching in snow.

“Left.”

“Aha! You communicate with the dogs and they understand your language so precisely, something as conceptual and human as left from right!”

“Sure do.”

“Roy, I feel the wind of life in my hair! I have never before been alive! This is the most fantastic moment-” A small bump in the snow sent the small man, his notebook, and his pen flying.

Roy continued for a moment, rolled his eyes, and commanded the dogs to stop and turn back. Émile was crawling on the snow, interrogating a dead bush on the whereabouts of his notebook and pen. Bain sniffed the top of his greying head. “Pschtt!” He exclaimed.

Roy got off the sled. He located the pen and notebook with ease, brushed snow and dirt off the cover, and handed it to Émile. “You’ve got a lot to learn this month, buddy. Get back on, let’s finish this run.”

“My body is broken and my spirit is crushed, I have lived but in living I have experienced death as well,” Émile decided.

Roy laughed.

On that final Monday morning, Roy was silently mourning and searing a trout- the first Émile had caught on his own- for breakfast.

It wasn’t until the fourth week that Émile had become a somewhat natural presence in Roy’s little life. He had learned to chop wood and did a fair job of it- with supervision, of course. His shiny boots had grown dull, scuffed by work, and a shadow of a beard had appeared on his pointy, small chin. The dogs no longer reacted to his presence- they accepted him as a regular character, albeit one that was rather easy to work up and fun to paw at.

They had coffee together every morning after work, around 07:00. Roy would miss that expression of bitter distaste on the Frenchman’s face. He never did get used to black coffee.

“Our final morning together,” Émile sighed, contemplative. He leafed through the pages in his journal, filled with poetic musings, observations, and facts. The premise of his book, Man Without Structure: Primitivology was coming along quite nicely, though he had changed the title. Essence of Man. Roy certainly lived a structured life, and he could already imagine the critics tearing into the title.

“I’ve been counting down the days, believe me.”

“I know you joke, you always joke my dear friend! I will write often and with love,” Émile assured, looking down at his mug filled with hot, smoky coffee.

Roy allowed himself to frown, his eyes welling with tears. His back was turned to the Frenchman as he stooped over the stove. “I’ll write back, might take a while though, living all the way out here.”

“I shall visit as well! And I will bring steak, for us and for the dogs. My new book will be a bestseller, I can already tell. I can bring the finest of goods.” Émile held up his fork as he made his declaration.

“Send me a copy of your book too, if you can.”

“I certainly will! But you said, you do not read?”

“Didn’t used to. I read that book you gave me. Think I might read more, you know, for company.” Roy admitted.

“Ah! You enjoyed it, no?”

“It was fine,” he dismissed. “Fish is done.”

They ate. Émile was immensely proud of his catch- a small trout, more bones than meat- but he still shared it with the dogs beneath the table, just like Roy did.

The plane arrived late in the morning. Roy helped Émile pack his things while they laughed and remembered stories from their month together.

At last, Émile boarded the plane and tipped his hat to Roy. “Thank you, sincerely.”

“No problem. Safe travels.”

Roy watched as the plane disappeared on the horizon. He patted Bain on the head. “Goodbye, damn froggie. See ya later.”

Two winters passed. It was 1963 and Émile stood in front of a lecture hall. Bright eyed, young Harvard students watched intently as he cleared his throat at the podium. Some of them hugged dog-eared english translations of his book, The Essence of Man: Primitivology. Others looked unamused by the bearded, wild-eyed Frenchman in his down jacket.

“It is the 20th night, I am alone in the dark. I bring the dogs inside, for the cold had become too much even for the arctic acquainted husky. The night sky is empty and endless, and for the first time, I realize that the stars are stars.”

He paused. A cough, a sniffle in the audience.

“It was there, page 162, where I questioned the utility of metaphor and symbolic abstraction as a whole. Why not accept a star as a star, pain as pain, snow as snow? Is it not more beautiful, more real to view the world as it is?”

“I went looking for a man without structure, a man in the natural state. But I found something different; a man with a natural rhythm, stronger than that imposed by bureaucracy or government, like the beating of the heart or the pull of each breath. His name is Roy Lisbon. He is a veteran of the second world war who brews the worst coffee in the world and feeds his dogs better than he feeds himself. He is quiet and in his silence he says more than I could in a book of a thousand pages. I will remember him forever, and so shall you.”

Quiet applause as Émile closed his book.

As he stepped down from the podium, and slipped away, signing books and talking to eager students, his thoughts drifted northward, miles away, where dog and master rise at dawn.