by Deb Vanasse
“Powerful,” Josh said. The smell of the charging bear and the hot look in its eyes as it tumbled toward him that October day remained vivid in his memory.
“Someday you’ll understand, little brother,” Nathan said.
Checking on Nathan remained a daily occurrence. Josh hoped that didn’t mean that his dad was rethinking the decision to leave. Often when they stopped by Harry’s cabin, Nathan was gone.
“Where do you suppose he goes?” their father wondered aloud one day.
Josh shrugged. “At least he’s out. Like you always say, fresh air’s good for a person.”
“True,” his father conceded. “But I can’t figure what purpose he’d have, out there wandering around.”
“Getting water or wood maybe, or just enjoying nature. He likes that,” Josh said.
Even Josh had to admit Willow Creek grew more beautiful as February slid into March. The sun brought some warmth to the air, and it reflected off the snow with an almost blinding brightness. Gone were the pale shades of midwinter, replaced by a sky of penetrating blue that framed the towering Alaska Range in the distance.
Josh had begun tracking the calendar, making invisible X’s in his mind, counting down the days until the Donaldsons would return with the word that would make their plans final. Twenty-eight shrank quickly to twenty and then to ten.
He attacked his correspondence lessons with new vigor, sometimes working late into the night by lantern light. He wanted to be up with the rest of the class when he entered high school.
High school. What would it be like? The last time he’d been in school, in seventh grade, high school seemed a foreign world. Soon, if all went well, it would be the stuff of his everyday existence. Even algebra wasn’t going to keep him from enjoying it.
He pictured himself in a red-and-white school jacket, like the ones the boys had been wearing in the restaurant that day long ago. In a year or two, maybe he’d have a tiny gold hockey player pinned to a letter. And maybe a girl would look up at him with admiration, as he’d seen the girls look at the boys in the restaurant.
When the countdown finally reached two, Josh spent a long day outside, pulling his traps and snares. The season was nearly over anyhow. Animals would be mating soon, and the furs would turn scraggly and rough. As he sprung each trap and lifted it from its carefully concealed spot, he brushed snow and branches back to cover the area where the trap had sat. Over and over, he erased the tiny marks he’d made in the vast wilderness.
His pack grew heavier with the weight of the metal, and eventually he had to leave it in the sled. He pulled in two mink, a marten, and a fox as well.
That evening he brought the lantern onto the porch and sliced down the belly of each of the stiff animals, peeling the skin carefully back from each one. Stripped of their fur, the carcasses were gruesome red things, lifeless eyes staring out from glistening flesh.
Josh looked away from the spot where he’d left the carcasses spread on a sheet of newspaper and turned his attention to pulling each skin over a stretcher. He remembered what he’d learned somewhere, that Native Americans used to thank the animals for giving themselves up to humans. The whispered words formed in his mind. Thank you, mink. Thank you, marten. Thank you, fox.
He pulled the last skin carefully over the stretcher and shook his head. Talking to dead animals wasn’t the kind of behavior that would make him a popular guy at Wasilla High. Still, he was grateful for the furs. The money they’d get from selling them would buy a week’s worth of groceries, to get him and his father started with their new life.
Josh brought the stretchers in one at a time, propping each beside the other along the wall near the door. He brought the lantern in last of all. Added to the glow of the second lantern, next to where his father sat paging through a magazine, its light made the cabin nearly as bright as a city house would be.
His father looked up from the magazine and studied the fruits of Josh’s labor. “Some nice pelts there,” he said.
Josh smiled. “With the ones you brought in yesterday, we should have enough money to get started in Wasilla.”
“I suppose we will,” his father said, but worry clouded his eyes. He rubbed at his forehead a moment. Josh sank into the overstuffed chair beside the sofa.
“Dad, it’s going to work out. Nathan will be fine.”
His father looked up at him. “I guess he will be. He needs his space. And there’s nothing much I can do for him here. Just check up on him once in a while. I just don’t ever want to lose touch with him again.”
“I know, Dad,” Josh said quietly.
“But what about us?”
The question took Josh by surprise. “Us?”
“It won’t be the same in town. I’ll be working. You’ll be in school. We’ll each have our own lives.”
How could he tell his father that his own life was precisely what he’d been longing for? His own life, filled with school and cars and friends. His own life, with movies to see and games to play. His own life.
Josh shifted where he sat. “We’ll be coming back to Willow Creek on weekends. Some weekends, anyhow.”
His father shook his head. “Not the same. The world, as the great poet said, will be too much with us.”
It was the first time Josh had heard his father quote poetry. He wasn’t quite sure what he meant. Silence settled around them, except for the crackling of the wood in the stove. A heavy weariness came over Josh. Another day had come to an end. He looked at the calendar and made an invisible X in his mind.
Josh awoke the next morning with the same thought he had savored when he’d fallen asleep. One more day. He started to push the sheet and blankets from his body, then pulled them up again as he felt the chill of the air. His father must have forgotten to stoke the fire.
Tomorrow he would wake and bundle the bed coverings to take to Wasilla. He looked around the loft. There would be little else to pack. The clothes in the corner all needed washing. A Laundromat would have to be one of their first stops.
He rolled up on one elbow and looked into the wooden crate filled with the few possessions that had traveled with them as he and his father had moved from state to state. He reached inside, sifting through the items with one hand. Funny how when you didn’t own much, each possession seemed more valuable.
Nathan had proclaimed it would be just the opposite—living in the wilderness would make material possessions seem meaningless. Only the struggle for survival would matter. Perhaps it had worked that way for Nathan, but not for Josh.
His fingers passed over the wood-framed photo, the hockey programs, the puck. They came to rest on a spiral notebook, its paper cover tattered and worn. With a yank, Josh pulled it to the top of the crate. He lay back and held the open notebook overhead, flipping through pages of words and pictures.
It was like turning pages of his past. His father had bought the notebook years ago at a convenience store, to give his restless son something to do as they drove farther and farther west. Josh saw his own childish renderings of cars and trucks they had passed along the way. He’d drawn mountains when they reached the Rockies and ocean waves when they reached Puget Sound.
The drawings, though still not artful, looked at least less childish by the middle of the notebook, when their journeys took them north to Alaska on the Al–Can Highway. His subjects became more animate: a beaver that had waddled across the gravel road, a grouse that had flown up and nearly hit their windshield.
There were words on the last few pages of the notebook. He’d written them when they’d first come to Willow Creek, out of boredom, with the idea of keeping a journal. There was even one attempt at a poem. But his entries were for the most part all too plain and typical. “Hauled water. Washed clothes. Lots of work. Bugs are horrible. Bites everywhere.”
Josh shut the notebook and slid it back inside the crate. He sat up and felt the goose bumps spread across his chest. It was cold.
He pulled on a full set of long johns and a pair o
f wool socks before donning his jeans and flannel shirt. He’d be needing money for clothes. Most likely they weren’t wearing flannel at Wasilla High. He’d check it out, see what was in style, then get an after-school job somewhere. His father would have enough to worry about, just putting food on the table.
Josh climbed down the ladder. It was even colder downstairs, except for a ring of warmth around the stove. He stood next to his father there.
“Forget to stoke it, Dad?”
His father shook his head. “Look at the thermometer. Bitter cold out.”
Josh went to the window, where frost was already beginning to form on the lower panes. “Thirty below.” His heart sank as he said the words. Starting the truck would be a problem unless the cold spell proved short-lived.
He rubbed his hands together.
“Put extra wood on when I got up,” his father said. “Should get back up to tolerable in here before long.”
Josh was still pondering the truck. If they had electricity, they could plug in the oil pan heater as they used to do in Anchorage. If they had electricity.
“Got to go after Nathan. Unless he’s got a real warm place, he’d better stay the night here, not head for wherever he goes when the Donaldsons come. Not fit for man or beast out.”
Josh barely acknowledged his father. He’d heard of people starting a little fire under a vehicle to warm it up. And the Donaldsons—surely they’d have jumper cables.
It was late in the day by the time they got things put away at their cabin. They packed dishes, pots, and pans in one box, leaving a few for Nathan. In another box, they stacked some canned goods, but his father wanted to leave most of the food for his older son. Josh was careful not to mention that Nathan probably wouldn’t eat it. The last thing Josh needed now was for his dad to start worrying and change his mind.
His father stuffed a few favorite books in the bottom of his duffel bag. “Read those magazines three times each, at least,” he said, nodding toward the stack they left near the sofa.
“Good thing we took care of the traps while it was warmer. Thirty below in March.” His father shook his head.
The time came to go after Nathan. They decided to try to start the snow machine. It had to be coaxed with starting fluid and a lot of priming, but eventually it came to life. They hitched the sled behind and braced against the cold as they sped toward Harry’s place.
“I’m leaving it running,” Josh’s father said over the idle of the engine. “Only take a minute to get Nathan.”
Josh waited, straddling the seat, thumb on the throttle to rev the engine when it started to fade. His fingertips began to sting. Hurry up, he urged silently.
But when his father returned, it was without Nathan. Josh got up and stood close, so he could hear his father’s explanation.
His father’s words were brief and grim. “He’s gone.”
13
“Gone? But where would he go in this cold?” Josh hit the kill switch as he spoke and found himself yelling the words.
His father took a deep breath. “It’s like him to take a risk, to see if he could survive in these extreme conditions.”
Josh stomped his feet to bring warmth to his toes. “Maybe he just went out for a while, to get water or something.”
“Could be.” His father’s eyes spanned the woods. “Mighty cold for an errand.”
“We can go looking,” Josh suggested, ignoring the sting of cold on his face. “While it’s still light out.”
His father looked at the ground. “Tracks everywhere. No telling which way he went.”
Josh studied the ground. It hadn’t snowed in weeks, and Nathan had made many trips down to the creek and into the woods, from the looks of the tracks. There was no way of knowing which had been made most recently.
“We won’t find him standing here.” Josh pulled the rope to start the engine. “I’ll drive, and you look,” he suggested.
His father climbed on behind him and they took off. Josh drove slowly, giving his father time to scan the edges of the trail, turning whenever his father tapped him on the shoulder and pointed.
The churning mix of irritation and disappointment Josh felt inside left little room for the concern he knew he should feel for his brother. How could Nathan do this, when they were just on the verge of being free of this place? Why did his stupid moves always have to wreak havoc in their lives? If he had to take yet another risk to prove something to himself, couldn’t he have waited a day or two, until after they were gone?
When they reached the meadow, his father yelled at him to stop. Josh shut down the machine and stood beside his father. They stared across the flat stretch of snow toward the mountains, tinged pink with the fading sunset. In the dim light, it was hard to tell where tracks, old or new, cut through the open space.
The stinging in Josh’s fingers turned to a dull ache. He shook his wrists, forcing the blood to move faster.
“He’s probably safe and warm in some old shack only he knows about, back in toward the mountains,” Josh said. “A place where he’s gone those other times the Donaldsons came.”
His father scanned the horizon. “No smoke. Have to have a fire going in this cold.”
“Maybe it just went out. He can start another. People camp in winter, after all. He’ll come in if he gets too cold.”
His father shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. Told him we’d be leaving, long as Harry gave his OK. Why go out now?”
Josh had long ago given up trying to make sense of Nathan. “Maybe he didn’t understand that we meant to leave right away. Or maybe he just wanted to do whatever he does, wherever he goes, one more time. Before he starts over at our place.”
His father shifted, stomping at the frozen ground.
“Maybe he’s back by now,” Josh suggested.
He watched his father scan the perimeter of the darkening meadow. “Maybe he is. Let’s go.” His father’s voice was small and distant.
But the darkened windows of Harry’s cabin gave them little cause for hope. When they pushed open the door, they found the air had grown frosty.
“Let’s get a fire going,” Josh suggested. “If—when—he comes back, he’ll be cold.”
He piled logs over the cold ashes, and his father lit a blaze. They stood beside the stove, warming their hands and toes.
“You don’t suppose he could be at our place? Maybe our paths crossed,” Josh’s father suggested.
“Could be,” Josh said.
After stoking the fire with more logs, they headed back to their cabin. But even before they reached it, Josh could see that no lanterns were lit, and only a wisp of smoke trailed from the chimney.
The quiet pressed in around them. They picked at bits of leftover stew and biscuits, warmed on the stove. After supper, Josh’s father paced in front of the window, stopping every so often to stare at the thermometer, which still hung without wavering at the thirty-below mark.
Josh put a hand on his father’s shoulder. His father, who usually held his shoulders solid and square, now let them slump as if in defeat.
“Dad, Nathan is tough. He’s a survivor.”
His father nodded. “All those years without a father. I guess they made him tough.”
Josh turned away. There was something in his father’s pain that stabbed deep within, something he couldn’t put a name on. The only thought that came was an unspoken question. Would his father ever care this much about him?
“If only we had some idea of where to look.” There was a quiver in his father’s voice.
Josh swallowed hard. Perhaps he should have said it earlier. “Shannon.”
“Shannon?”
“I think she knows where Nathan stays.”
“But how could she?”
“I don’t know for sure. But she sort of let on that she followed him one time. Sounded like she maybe talked to him even.” Josh felt the last of his energy drain with the words. It was as much as admitting that he hadn’t much tried to trac
k Nathan, back in the beginning when his father had wanted him to search.
But if his father felt betrayed, his face didn’t show it. Instead, he grasped at the thin line of hope Josh had thrown him. “Shannon. Well, then, we’ll be able to ask her tomorrow. We’ll go over first thing in the morning and wait for them.”
“And Nathan could be back by morning.” It was completely possible. Nathan would tire of tangling with the arctic air and retreat to the cabin. As long as he didn’t know they’d been looking for him, his pride would be intact.
But in the morning Nathan was still gone. They headed for Harry’s cabin first thing and found it as empty as it had been the night before. Josh stoked the fire and put on a pot of coffee. Then they waited.
The waiting seemed interminable. Josh felt the weariness of a night of fitful sleep, and worse, of his hopes hanging in the balance. Judging by his father’s haggard look, he hadn’t slept at all.
The only bright spot was the mercury, which crept up to twenty below. It was hardly a heat wave, but the extra ten degrees might make a difference in Nathan’s struggle for survival. And it would make looking for him more tolerable, especially if Shannon could help them focus their search.
Josh hoped she really did know something. He knew he could be putting too much stock in her vague reassurances about his brother.
At the rumble of the truck, Josh and his father jumped to their feet. They waited on the steps, cold seeping through their flannel shirts, as the Donaldsons climbed out.
“Good morning to you,” Frank said cheerfully. The worried looks on their faces must have betrayed them, for he quickly added, “I hope everything’s all right.”
“Actually, we’re concerned about Nathan. It’s been real cold, and he’s nowhere to be found.”
Frank helped Pete down from the truck, and Shannon crawled out behind him.
“We thought your girl might be able to give us some idea of where to find him,” Josh’s father continued.
Shannon shot a look at Josh.