by Sue Henry
“You expecting somebody else?”
“I hope not. I’ll tell you later.”
When they were finally on the Glenn Highway, leaving Anchorage, she leaned back against the seat, took several deep breaths, and seemed to relax a little. But even then, she wouldn’t explain why she had come or what she was afraid of but insisted on waiting till they got home. For most of the hour’s drive she kept up a stream of bright, artificial chatter about the winter they had spent as neighbors. “Remember that time we took your dogs and camped overnight in the snow? That was great, wasn’t it? And all those silver origami birds we made for our Christmas trees out of candy wrappers? Did you ever get another dog as good as Pete? You still have him? Great! I want to see him. Do you remember . . .”
Jessie drove and listened, feeling more than a little overwhelmed and confused.
Reaching home, Jessie made a fresh pot of coffee and puttered in the kitchen for a few minutes, trying to
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let go of the tension that was beginning to give her a headache and allowing her unexpected guest to wander around and become familiar with the cabin.
“Nice place,” Anne commented, returning from the bedroom, where she had put her luggage. She had a bottle of Jessie’s favorite Crabtree & Evelyn freesia body lotion in her hand. “Mind if I use some of this?
I’d forgotten how dry it is up here in the cold—turns my skin to flakes.”
Jessie nodded. “Sure, but there’s some Vaseline Intensive Care that works better, if you want it.”
“Naw, this’ll do fine. You built this cabin yourself?
I’m impressed.” She rubbed lotion into her hands and left the bottle on the desk Jessie used to keep records for her kennel.
“Well, I had a lot of help.”
Jessie frowned. Anne, in constant motion, was beginning to get on her nerves, restlessly moving through the rooms, picking things up, putting them down, examining everything that attracted her attention as if it wasn’t real to her until she laid hands on it.
“I really like your chairs,” she said, running her fingers over the back of one of the mismatched dining chairs Jessie had picked up one by one at yard sales and painted assorted bright colors.
“Thanks, I . . .”
But Anne was already across the room, pressing the buttons on the CD player. Finally she settled on the sofa near the stove and Jessie, relieved, handed her a large, steaming mug and curled up against the pillows on the other end with one of her own.
“Now,” she demanded, “what’s the problem?”
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Anne sipped, took a deep breath and sighed, looked up, cocked a dramatic eyebrow as if deciding where to start, and then words flooded out so fast she stammered.
“Well—you’ve guessed from what I said that I’ve—
ah—left Greg? Right? And you’ve probably figured—
correctly, by the way—that he’s responsible for the ugly way I look—the changes.”
Jessie nodded and waited for Anne to continue her account any way she liked. “Okay. And . . . ?” she said, to prime the pump.
Anne clearly took the okay as acceptance and agreement, for she sat up straighter.
“So—I’m really—ah— terrified that he’ll come after me—that he’ll do what he said—find out where I am and . . .” She hesitated, glancing up through her eye-lashes to watch closely for a reaction, “And hurt, or . . .
kill me.”
She paused, waiting.
Jessie scowled and shook her head at this exaggerated bit of drama. “Greg? Oh, Anne— really? That doesn’t sound like . . .” She looked up to see that her friend was clenching her teeth so tightly that a muscle worked in her jaw below the ear. “You aren’t really serious? ”
“He swore—lots of times—that if I ever left he’d find me no matter where I went.”
“But why?”
It was unbelievable. Dumbfounded and incredulous, Jessie had trouble accepting the idea, particularly since Anne’s presentation seemed overstated. The woman she remembered had not been above spicing up a narrative with a few histrionics. This went beyond exag-
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geration for effect, but there was still something theatrical about it.
“It’s a long, depressing story,” Anne said, shrugging off the question. “Nothing much different than lots of others. But I desperately need your help, Jessie. I’ve got to do something I can’t do alone.”
“What?”
“Go back out to the cabin where we lived that year.
And I need you to go with me—to take me out there.
Will you?”
Not without knowing one hell of a lot more, Jessie thought to herself.
“Why do you need to go?” she questioned.
“To dig up something I left. It’s important.”
“What?”
“Ah . . . money—some money that I . . . buried and couldn’t get back then. Now I’ve got to have it.”
“It’s a long way out there, Anne—a major trip. The ground’s still frozen and there’s deep snow—more new snow, now. We’d have to shovel down, then thaw the dirt before you could dig anything up. It may be almost breakup here, but out there it’ll be at least another month.”
“But we could do that—right? Thaw it, I mean.”
“Well—yeah, we could, but it’d be a lot of work.”
“That’s okay. I’ll do it—all of it—if you’ll just take me.”
Jessie sat staring at her without speaking for a long minute, trying to get her thoughts together.
“Look,” she said finally, getting up from the sofa,
“I’ve got to take care of my mutts. There’s soup and stuff for sandwiches in the kitchen. Why don’t you
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make us some lunch while I do it? Then we’ll talk some more.”
“Okay. But can we go really soon—like today or tomorrow?”
Doesn’t she realize that I have a life with other plans? Jessie wondered. Where does she get off, assuming I sit around waiting to be asked for stuff like this—that I can just drop everything and take off? A working kennel is not easy to leave on a whim.
“Anne,” she snapped impatiently, hopping by the
door with one boot half on. “I have a training schedule that has already been interrupted by two days of rain.
This time before breakup is really busy. I can’t just take off at a moment’s notice, and this doesn’t sound so immediately important or necessary to me.”
“Oh, Jessie. I’m sorry to get in the way. But it is—it really is. Honest. I’ve got to get out there—just got to.
I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.”
So rent a snowmachine, Jessie thought angrily, and leave me alone.
“We’ll talk when I come back,” she told Anne
shortly and went out. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it for a few seconds in relief at having escaped from the woman’s demanding presence. Her own cabin had almost seemed to close in claustropho-bically.
As she went to get water that her dogs didn’t really need this time of day, she tried to assess the situation and decide what to do. The whole thing seemed unreal.
But I’m tired, she reminded herself, and not thinking straight.
Not being very patient or generous either.
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She’s asking—demanding—an awful lot from me.
Is she? If it hadn’t rained for two days—if Oscar’s hadn’t burned last night—if you’d gotten lots of sleep—would you feel this way?
Yes—well, maybe not. But that’s not all of it.
She paused in the process of pouring water into individual aluminum dog pans, considering. Anne clearly wanted her to understand and believe—to be on her side. But something about her old acquaintance’s watch
ful demeanor rang a tiny bell of discomfort and caution in the back of Jessie’s mind. She couldn’t tell if Anne’s obvious desire for acceptance and help would account for it, or if embarrassment and nerves could explain her slightly self-conscious, wheedling tone. She had not seen this woman for ten years—long enough to make a significant change in her outlook and approach—long enough for Jessie to need to become reacquainted with her before making judgments or commitments.
Dammit, she thought. I don’t want to take off on some nutty trip miles from anywhere. I want to get on with training my young guys. If I interrupt their schedule now, I’ll have to do half of it over again, and long overnight runs are not part of the program yet.
Well, give it some more time. Get her to talk some more—listen to her till tomorrow. Then make up your mind.
But I just want to get rid of her, she realized.
Maybe giving in and taking her where she wants to go will be the best and quickest way to get rid of her.
How long would it take—a couple of days, maybe
three?
That’s possible. I guess I can at least think about it, she
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decided. Billy could stay with the dogs—make a couple of training runs a day till I get back, though that would cut what I wanted to do in half and they really need me.
I could even go out this afternoon for at least one run.
She put the buckets away, then went back to the
middle of the yard to spend a minute or two with a few of her dogs. Every day she made sure to take time with each dog, giving it lots of affection, watching it move, assessing its attitude. At least a couple of times a week she checked each of them over physically, alert to any developing problems. Only by being familiar with each one’s normal condition could she detect any changes in their health and well-being.
Pete stood up from a nap and stretched as she
stopped beside him, gave her a doggy grin, and leaned against her leg as she checked his teeth. Mitts and Sunny, housed next to each other, greeted her with wriggles and friendly licks as she knelt to scratch their ears and under their chins. Their tails wagged like metronomes, as if she had been absent a week.
“Good guys. You’re such good dogs. Glad it snowed again, aren’t you? Shall we just hook up a sled and take off—run away from home?”
The idea was tempting, if escapist and impractical.
Jessie’s conscience got the better of her, she sighed, and went back toward the house, hoping Anne had
lunch ready by now and fervently wishing she hadn’t answered the phone the night before.
4
Q
IN HER STOCKING
, J
FEET
ESSIE QUIETLY PACED THE WIDTH
of her cabin, restless and unable to settle into the nap she had intended to take on the sofa. Seemingly exhausted by her travels and relieved to have made her request, Anne had eaten lunch, taken a quick shower, and fallen asleep almost before she could curl up under the colorful quilt on Jessie’s big brass bed. But before she slept, she had filled in some information about the ten years since they had seen each other.
What she had revealed was incomplete and not
pleasant—a one-sided litany of physical and emotional abuse that disturbed and discouraged Jessie as much as Anne seemed reluctant and troubled to be telling it.
According to her, Greg Holman had always beaten her.
“Not when we were first married—when we lived
close to you. Oh, he smacked me once or twice, but only when I asked for it—and I really did, Jessie. You know me—I never could keep my mouth shut. I had it coming. It wasn’t till later that he got really mean.”
She said they had left Alaska about a year after 43
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Jessie moved closer to town that spring—gone to
Boulder, Colorado, where they rented a small house on the edge of town. Greg had found work as a carpenter, but, as Anne told it, he had refused to let her take a job—any job—though she had been offered one as a clerk in a bookstore.
“He was afraid I’d tell somebody that he was hitting me,” she had told Jessie. “He refused to have a
phone—afraid I’d use it to report him. He watched—
wanted to know where I was all the time. We only had the truck and he always took it with him to work. He got more and more suspicious—like jealous of everyone: neighbors—though there weren’t more than a
few—the checker at the grocery store; the guy who read the electric meter, for God’s sake. And he yelled at me. I never knew when he was going to hit me.
“We moved three times in those years—each time
farther away from town. I worked really hard to be good, to do what he wanted, but he kept beating me up.
I tried my best to do things right, to be whatever he wanted, but he blamed me for everything—and he
imagined a lot. I never knew what would set him off next. It was like living in a shooting gallery—if I cooked the wrong thing, if anything wasn’t clean or where he wanted it or put away right. Whatever I said—
or didn’t say—it was bad. He put me in the hospital twice—broke my nose and fractured this cheekbone.”
She laid a finger on the right side of her face and Jessie understood the asymmetry and the crooked smile.
“But you saw people in the hospital. Why didn’t you tell someone—get away from him?”
“—I didn’t want them to know either—you know?
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He promised we’d work it out—said it was our private business. He also said it was my fault, and if I told anyone he’d make me sorry. I was afraid of him, Jessie.
Besides, it wasn’t all his fault. If I’d been able to do things right—keep him happy—he wouldn’t have hurt me, would he? He was always all torn up about hitting me—after. I felt like nothing—hated myself for making him mad. Why are men such children?”
Like the release of swift water when the key log in a jam is pulled, Anne’s account of injury and hospitals, years of lies, constant fear, and finally escape and flight had poured out, accompanied by a flood of tears and caustic condemnation of both Greg and herself that had astonished and alarmed Jessie.
Now she restlessly walked the floor, trying to decide what to think—and to do. Pausing at the window that faced the dog yard, she looked out at the inviting snow.
She still wanted to harness up a team and take off into the wilds, leaving behind all the confusion and trouble she seemed to have walked abruptly into. Frowning and biting her lip, she resented being forced to deal with the uninvited trouble and stress, still waffling about making the trip into the wilderness with Anne.
But then she’ll be gone—wherever—and I can get on with training, Jessie told herself.
She would have liked to talk to Greg Holman, hear his side of the story, for her memories of him did not fit the pictures Anne had painted. When Jessie had moved into the nearby borrowed cabin for that single winter, the Holmans had still acted like newlyweds—
touching each other in passing, glancing affectionately, deferring endearingly to each other.
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Greg Holman, a large bull of a man, had seemed an unusual dichotomy of efficient strength and a quiet sort of innocence; he was one of those people whose
smooth skin never seems to age and gives them a child-like, ingenuous quality that suggests limited intelli-gence and prompts more-brawn-than-brain assumptions.
A hardworking man, more comfortable outdoors than in, he had impressed Jessie as handy with his hands, capable of making or fixing almost anything. She had assumed he was completely, guilelessly in love with his spouse, and would not have suspected he was a wife beater.
Behind his stillness, however, she had slowly come to recognize a shrewd and discerning astuteness—a keen mind that saw much, missed li
ttle. He had old eyes in that calm, youthful face. There was nothing lacking in his thinking, nothing inarticulate when he had something to say. Questioned, he had spoken
briefly of his upbringing as an only child in a remote location where he had learned wilderness craft through years of experience. His home schooling had ended at fourteen when his mother had died, but she had evidently succeeded in creating in him an eclectic love of reading. His self-education sometimes took off in unexpected directions—archaeology, electronics, the English Romantic poets, hydrology and the art of dousing, meteorology.
As a couple, the Holmans had demonstrated the attraction of opposites: He was disinclined to small talk and what he considered unnecessary expenditures of energy; she tumbled, burbling, through life like a stream in spring thaw. Jessie had felt an amused con-
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nection with his quiet appreciation of Anne’s cheerful, sometimes theatrical verbalizations. But there had been a dark side, too, she recalled—remembering
things that might help reconcile the contradictions now bothering her.
Holman’s temper, though infrequent, had not flamed and died, but often smoldered and threatened to flare up long after others had forgotten what ignited it. He had nurtured, and sometimes exaggerated, grudges. He expounded on the crass stupidity of city dwellers and politicians that he insisted were maliciously intent upon restricting the traditionally free Alaskan lifestyle and turning the state into some law-infested supermar-ket. Jessie recollected coffee cups rattling as he pounded his angry frustration on the tabletop. She had avoided similar subjects thereafter.
He had had no patience for procrastination, and
halfhearted efforts offended him. To him, there was no excuse for not doing a thing as soon and as well as possible the first time. “Your life may depend on it,” she remembered his saying, and she agreed. More than once in a long-distance race she had been relieved that good preparation had kept her from trouble, even disaster, and had thought of Greg. But hadn’t there been something obsessive about his pursuit of perfection and insistence on action without delay? Could he actually have pounded more than a tabletop with his ham-like fist?
There had been no obvious hint of the problems