Dog Driven

by Terry Lynn Johnson

  The trail flattens as we run across a frozen bog, the skis making a soft sound over the snow. The smell of muskeg reaches me. Frozen cattails whip by. Soon we’re back into the balsam trees on the other side. I don’t notice the other team pulled over until we’re beside them. I step on the brake.

  “You good?” I ask. It’s Harvey.

  “Sure,” he answers. He’s sprawled out on his back on top of his sled bag. It looks like a fantastic idea. I’m so tired, I think about resting here too.

  Owooooo, Mustard says. Sumo slams into his tugline, trying to pop the hook. The dogs are still full of jazz. Not a good time for a break.

  “I better go. I’ll see you later,” I say.

  “Yeah, your team is pumped! Go get ’em,” he says.

  Pride warms my belly. My dogs are strong and fast. I’m still shocked we’re in the top five. I’m starting to believe we can actually do this—as long as we can make it through the Cascades.

  For the next hour the trail is better. I relax and enjoy myself out here. We cruise over the punchy snow with a sssshhhh. The best part: The sun is covered, so the light is flat. Moody overcast with a low ceiling. Getting darker, actually. And the wind has picked up, dragging loose snow over the surface with a hiss.

  I still don’t see Guy, but I feel as if we’ve passed almost every other team. Sumo and Damage are both dipping snow, signaling they need a break. They’re either bored or thirsty.

  I call out, “Whoa,” and sink the hook. I hop off the runners and shake out my arms. The dogs roll around, scratching their backs with glee. While they’re busy, I move to my sled bag to get a drink. But when I dig into my bag to find my Thermos, I see a tear in the sled bag along the Velcro closures. Two of the Velcro pieces ripped off and opened the top of the bag, exposing all the contents.

  I curse. Is my Thermos still in there? I root around until my hands find the smooth round container. I pull it out and take a long chug. As I drink, I inspect the tear, bending over to look at it.

  How did this happen? Not to worry, I have bungee cords along the bottom front of the sled. I can close the bag with that. Make sure I don’t lose anything.

  I freeze. A horrible thought occurs to me. I claw through my gear. My fingers search for the metal grommets, the canvas. Where is it? Is it here? Please be here.

  But it’s not here. It’s not anywhere. My legs lose strength and I sit hard in the snow. Somehow, somewhere on the trail, I’ve lost the mailbag.

  Emma’s letter is gone.

  Maybe it’s at the checkpoint. Did I have it when they checked my sled for gear? I don’t even know. Or maybe one of my parents took it out for some reason and forgot it in the truck. Who am I kidding? There’s little chance of that. I have to face the fact that I’ve left it behind on the trail.

  What am I going to do? I wrap my arms around my middle and bend over, trying to breathe. All the mail from Emma’s entire class is gone. Emma’s wish for better awareness of Stargardt disease and more research, gone. The opportunity for media coverage. Gone. Gone. Gone.

  How could I lose all the mail? The poor mailbag that I’ve sworn to protect. What other letters was I carrying that aren’t going to be delivered? Are they going to sit out all winter, perhaps found almost destroyed in the spring? Guilt claws my throat at the thought of all those people who wrote letters that won’t reach their destination because of me.

  But the vital thing that has sucked the breath out of my lungs—our secret pact. I can’t deliver Em’s letter. I’ve failed.

  My own words to Em taunt me: If I don’t deliver your letter, we tell them.

  I’m not ready! My parents can’t know yet.

  And what am I going to say to the officials about the mailbag? What if I don’t tell them? What if I don’t let anyone know until I get across the finish line? My mind spins trying to come up with a new plan.

  What if . . . if I can’t deliver the mail, what if I win the race? I could stay quiet about the mail until the end. And if I win, it would prove that I can do anything. It would show Em that someone with Stargardt disease can do anything.

  Can I win this race? Prove I’m capable even with a sight impairment? If I do win, I’ll be ready to tell my parents. I’ll be ready to get tested and have the truth come out. If I win, my parents won’t be able to make me stop running dogs. They won’t be able to treat me like Emma.

  I bolt straight up. I tie the bungees around the sled bag to close it, full of new resolve. “Okay, guys,” I say to the dogs. “No time to waste.”

  We’re here to win.

  February 1, 2019

  Attention: Amazon Contracting Department

  Desjardins Delivery, our courier business, is the perfect opportunity for you to expand your services in northern Ontario. We are local, we’ve been in business for four generations, and we are fast. We’re so fast, our dog team has just won a historic courier race, the Great Superior Mail Run (I’m pretty sure this will happen), making our name famous and synonymous with speed. What more could you ask for in a courier? Please consider Desjardins Delivery for your northeastern contract.

  Sincerely, Guy Desjardins

  Chapter 23

  The wind hits us as we follow the trail out of the trees and onto the ice of Old Woman Bay.

  I’m balancing on the runners while trying to crack open my string cheese. The wrapper is frozen, my fingers are frozen, and my ski goggles fog up as I bend over the package. What is this made of, titanium? I can’t even see what I’m doing so I don’t dare use my knife.

  Another gust blasts me just as I rip the package open. My cheese goes flying off to freedom. “Son of a monkey!”

  Where did this wind come from? It blows back Mustard and Twix. They hunker down and dig into it. Twix seems on board now for leading on the ice, so I leave her be. “Good dogs!”

  As we head out into the bay, the wind builds.

  I peer through my goggles and try to differentiate between shadows and snow snakes blowing across the trail. Saga and Haze stumble from the force of the gale, but they put their heads down and charge into it. Their determination makes me love them so much my chest hurts. They’re epic-brave. No matter what’s thrown at them, they don’t think about what they can’t do, just what needs to be done, and then they do it.

  The ice creaks beneath us. Crossing the ice is different here than it is on a small lake. On Lake Superior, the ice cover shifts endlessly. It’s never still. It expands and contracts. It buckles and flexes. I can feel the vibrations through my feet. It’s a weird, scary feeling, but I remind myself that the ice is three feet thick. We’re not going to break through.

  A stray thought hits me like ice water—where exactly on this frozen stretch of lake were the couriers when they fell through? I grit my teeth and plan to bean Guy with that book next time I see him.

  Some of the noises the ice makes are like what you’d hear in a Star Wars movie: pew-pew-pew. But it also lets out long eerie moans. It’s a tough thing to get used to. The dogs don’t seem to mind as much now, though. They only twitch their ears.

  Great angry gusts wallop my anorak. When I raise my arm to wipe off my goggles, my sleeve flaps. Not that I can see the trail markers anyway, but I’m worried. It’s been a very long time since the last marker. I tuck my neck farther down into my scarf and peer around into the white. Are we still on the trail?

  The sled bumps over the hard ridges on the surface of the frozen bay. Some of it is smooth snow, but sometimes we clatter over slabs of ice like broken patio stones. All I see as we race over it is ice and snow and weird sculptures shaped by the wind and random mounds of frozen slush as big as bicycles. Sharply jutting spikes of ice thrust upward. It’s like the moon out here.

  I study Mustard. His ears are forward, and his tail is straight behind him. He’s confident and sure, focused on what’s in front of him. We must still be on the trail.

  Twix is the first to signal there’s something ahead. Then all the dogs’ ears prick up. I peer into the sn
ow with trepidation. What now?

  A shadow comes into focus. I breathe a sigh of relief when I recognize the crazy French boy on the runners. He has a habit of rocking from foot to foot that’s unmistakable.

  My dogs slow down. I brake as I realize that Guy has pulled off the trail in the lee of some kind of ice wall.

  When the ice shifts, sometimes it cracks and gets pulled apart. It makes fissures wide enough that steam from the cold water beneath escapes up into the air. Other times, the cracks are pushed closed. When the two chunks of ice meet, they’ve got nowhere to go but up. They’re shoved into the air with relentless force, creating walls of ice.

  I tuck in next to Guy behind the ice wall. It towers above us, maybe two feet taller than me. It’s at least a foot and a half thick and it’s covered in snow on one side.

  “I’ve got to replace booties. This ice is shredding their feet,” Guy says. We’re out of the worst of the wind here, so I can hear him clearly enough to tell his voice is tight.

  “Go ahead if you want,” he says. His shoulders are bunched together. I watch as he savagely roots through his sled bag.

  I find a crevice in the ice to wedge my snow hook into and check my dogs’ feet as well. Everyone still has booties except Damage. He holds his feet up impatiently while I bend over him. I have to bring his feet right up in front of my face to inspect each foot. Then I smear goop between his toes before slipping new booties on. I cinch them around his ankles with the Velcro tab. The wind is murder on my bare fingers.

  In the ten minutes or so it takes for Guy to bootie and check his dogs, the wind doubles. As soon as we peek out from behind our ice block, it hits us full force. The air is choked with swirling, sharp snow crystals. It’s a desert-scape of white.

  “You think we should stay here?” Guy asks.

  We peer around the ice to gauge the wind. Is it going to slack off or build? Is it much farther to the shelter of shore?

  This is a bad place to stop. It’s cold and exposed, and the dogs are not relaxed. I’m not thrilled about waiting here much longer.

  “Let’s just go,” I say. “Before the dogs balk. We should keep moving.” I’ve heard enough of Mom’s race stories to know that once momentum is gone, the dogs can sometimes decide they’d rather hunker down. We’d be stuck if that happens. In this tiny patch of calm in the center of a blow.

  Guy nods tersely and calls up his team. They shake off and head out as I watch. Knowing how much I depend on Mustard up there, I can’t understand how Guy can rely on Zesty to go the right way. I can see she’s joyous and driven, but she’s different than a regular leader. How does he trust a blind dog?

  My dogs follow Guy’s team eagerly. Being the chase team takes the pressure off my leaders. To be fair, we should take turns. But I don’t think I should be leading.

  Now that we’ve started out across this bay, we’re committed. The scariest part is that I can’t stop in this wind. If I need to fix a tangle in the dogs or move one of them, I can’t leave the sled. The hook won’t set, and I’m afraid the wind will rip the sled away, pulling all the dogs with it. And if I stop, the dogs are likely to curl up immediately and refuse to start again. I just have to hope they keep moving.

  It isn’t long before the howl of the wind is all I hear. I can’t even make out the rumble of the runners over the ice. I haven’t noticed how much I rely on my hearing these days. But now that it’s gone too, I feel even more vulnerable.

  Twix is so little she gets blown sideways. I can barely see her through the spindrift. The wind picks up the top crust and blows ice pellets into our faces. I fight to see ahead.

  Suddenly, we smash into something. The dogsled slams to a halt, jerking my wheel dogs back. I hear my own shriek as I’m ripped from the runners.

  And I fly off the sled.

  When my mind catches up with what happened, I sit up, searching for my dogs. They’ve gathered around me, trying to get as close as they can. My head throbs. My team is okay. I’m okay. What did I hit?

  My sled is wedged against an ice ledge. There’s a crack across the trail that’s shifted together and made a shelf of ice as high as my shin. I didn’t even see it.

  Guy is abruptly looming over me. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so.” He helps me stand, and I notice he’s secured both our teams, driving the snow hooks into the ice. I must’ve hit my head when I flew off the sled and blacked out for a moment.

  Both of our teams have now curled up against the wind like snowballs. This is a dangerous place to stop. We have got to keep going.

  “How did you miss this thing?” Guy yells. “I swear, sometimes you remind me of Zesty the way you . . .” And then I see him answer his own question. He stares at me hard. “How much can you see?”

  I don’t even argue with the certainty in his expression. He knows.

  I wait for the dread to come, now that someone has guessed my terrible secret after I’ve spent all this time trying to hide it. The emotion washes over me, just not the kind I was expecting. Relief rushes in and threatens to take over my head. I don’t have to pretend anymore.

  I push it back. Not the time to fall apart. We’re in trouble out here.

  “It depends,” I admit. “Right now, not much.”

  Chapter 24

  “Stay close. Follow me.”

  It takes us a while to call up the dogs. But they finally agree to start out again. My lead dogs are now running as close to Guy as they can. Mustard is practically on his boots.

  My whole body tenses and quivers. We have to get out of here. The gale howls into my ears, filling the world. It is relentless, forcing its way into every crevice of my clothing. It blasts my exposed skin raw. I’ve never been so cold. I’m exhausted just trying to stand upright. I don’t even know how the dogs are running.

  Guy is yelling something, but I can’t hear what. He’s waving his arms and pointing at me.

  My heart pounds. I peer ahead, straining to see if we’re about to crash into another ledge of ice. Mustard and Twix hop into the air at the same time. And then Lizard and Damage do the same. And then Saga and Aspen. Two by two, they all leap like they’re doing the wave at a sports stadium.

  Two things happen simultaneously. I become aware of the steam billowing into the air and I hear the runners slide off the ice. They make a peculiar noise. Water gushes over my boots just as the sled pops back onto a solid surface.

  My knees feel like putty. They barely hold me up. We just went over a crevice in the ice. I couldn’t even see it because of my faulty depth perception. It could easily have been wider, in which case we’d all be at the bottom of Lake Superior right now. I feel woozy and ill with how close that was.

  What would have happened if we were out here on our own? Mustard would’ve been in danger up there without guidance. We all would have.

  What was I thinking, trying to run this race?

  We pass another large slab of ice jutting sideways about neck-high. It’s absolute madness to be out here. We could be blown off the ice and fall into a crevice, hit an ice slab and be guillotined. We have to get to shore and find shelter.

  Ooooooooo! Mustard’s questioning my sanity. He keeps up his talking until it’s all one big scream, getting louder and louder.

  “Yeah, I know, Mustard,” I scream back.

  Other dogs have joined him. Before I know it, my whole team is screaming while they’re running. The dogs are never vocal while they run, only at hookup. Running is always silent. But we’ve never run in wind like this before. They’re scared.

  “You’re okay!” I call to them. “We’ll find shelter once we get to shore. Just keep going.”

  And they do. They keep trying to run in the wind. They might think I’m crazy, but they trust me.

  An odd feeling prickles up my spine. I sense something closing in, like when a ball is coming at you and you don’t see it but you throw your hands up anyway. In the next instant, the shoreline is suddenly beside us. The cliffs tower above, loo
ming. But they don’t shelter us from the wind like I thought they would. Ice pellets are still hurtling through the air around us. The wind shrieks across the bay and smashes into us.

  Everything is a fight. With every step, every action, we push back against the insane gusts that are whipping us to the bone.

  What are we going to do? My dogs are faltering. Twix has lost confidence again. She keeps glancing back for reassurance. I scan around frantically for a place to shelter from this storm. All I see is white. Everything inside me is shouting that we must get out of this wind.

  Now!

  And that’s when it happens. I don’t see it. Guy doesn’t see it. Zesty certainly doesn’t see it. But Mustard does. He veers closer to one of the ice walls clinging to the cliff. And when I strain to peer through the blowing snow, I finally see it too.

  “A cave!” I yell.

  Guy glances back and I wave my arm and point. “A shelter!”

  We head toward it. The dogs instinctively know it’s going to get them out of this wind. I tumble off the sled and lurch toward the opening, my team following behind.

  The massive sheet of ice coating the cliff face is so thick, it’s formed a solid wall. Gigantic frosted fangs hang all the way to the ice of the lake. There’s a natural opening like a gaping mouth where the cliff overhangs and the ice hasn’t covered it. As soon as I get behind the ice wall, the relief from the wind is profound. I almost fall over from the absence of it. I can breathe again.

  I peer around the dim interior. My ears ring in the muffled silence. The cave goes back farther than I can see. It’s completely protected on all sides with walls made of blue ice. They feel like frozen plastic under my bare fingers.

  Unlike the ice formations on the first day, which were created by wind, these were made by water running down the rock. On the far left wall, icicles hang like stalactites so low they almost touch the floor. The rest of the roof is high enough I can stand up.

  The dogs sniff at the ground, which is a mix of rock and ice. I grab the leash from my bag and secure the front end of the gangline and then unclip tuglines so the dogs can relax. Sumo lifts his leg to one of the icicles. When I unclip Saga, she scratches at a frozen pile of pine needles and then promptly throws herself down. She curls into a ball. They all follow suit, falling like dominoes, all of them curling into tight little balls as soon as I unclip them.