The Boy in the Snow

by M. J. McGrath

  Pulling her hare-skin bafflers onto her boots for grip, Edie moved cautiously out onto the lake, feeling the surface shiver, checking with each step the movement and solidity of the ice. A few clouds had collected, and began dropping snow in large, open flakes which caught the air currents above the ice. For a moment Edie could see nothing, then as her eyes accustomed to the light, it appeared in her field of vision, a warp, some dark imperfection which resolved itself into an ice-fishing hole and, beside it, the ice saw that had been used to carve the hole out.

  She went over and knelt a few feet from the hole, where the ice would still be stable. The footprints went direct to the edge of the hole but there was nothing leading away. She flipped on her flashlight to get a better look. The cut edge of the ice was clean with no sign of struggle and, oddly, she thought, no splash marks from the lake water. Whoever had gone into that hole hadn’t splashed around to try to save themselves. And they hadn’t got out.

  32

  Chuck and Marsha Hillingberg watched Police Chief Mackenzie detailing the facts surrounding the death of Peter Galloway on the breakfast news in the privacy of their den at home. The body had been found in remote forest in the Chugach wilderness, about thirty miles from where he had escaped. There was no sign of foul play and all the indications were that the man had died of exposure while evading recapture. The corpse had been badly damaged by animals, Mackenzie said, but tests had proved conclusively that this was Galloway’s. As a result of the find, Mackenzie went on, the Anchorage police were now considering the investigations into the deaths of Lucas Littlefish and Jonny Doe closed.

  The anchor signed off on the story and headlined an insert about a rogue bear in Fairbanks. There was a trailer for an update on the Iditarod race, then the news cut to a break. Chuck muted the TV, relishing the feeling of relief settling into the muscles of his face. Marsha yawned and poured herself some more coffee. It seemed that they wouldn’t be following up the Galloway story. The whole business of the Dark Believers would die away, too. They were free and clear.

  The phone rang. It was Andy Foulsham reminding the Hillingbergs to check out the new campaign commercial, which was debuting right after the Iditarod insert. Chuck had already seen the tape a half dozen times, but there was nothing like watching it for the first time broadcast live.

  The Iditarod insert started and Chuck unmuted the TV. Strictly speaking, he guessed, events had overtaken them and they’d wasted their money on Nicols. Now that they’d managed to draw a line under the deaths of the two boys and secured funding for the new TV spots, it didn’t matter to the campaign who won the Iditarod, only that Mayor Hillingberg be there to hand over the championship trophy. Since the organizers had introduced the compulsory eight-hour rest stop 70 miles out of Nome at White Mountain, the timing of the finish had become much more predictable. This, of course, was exactly the intention. A predictable finish time made life much easier for the organizers, the dignitaries and the media. Chuck was planning on flying himself up in his private plane. He wanted to be on camera, cheering at the finish line when Wright came in.

  The Iditarod insert cut to a break. He sat back, preparing to enjoy his performance. Hallstrom’s money had got them some hotshot director out of Seattle who’d made him look amazing: smooth-skinned and vigorous without seeming too youthful, a man absolutely in his prime. He clicked up the volume. The sound of his own voice made him feel calmer, anticipatory. He’d healed what he realized now was a long term sore in the Lodge, diverted a crisis, and was back in command of the news agenda once more. Today was going to be the turning point the campaign needed.

  Then why was he hit with a sudden needling feeling that something, somewhere was wrong?

  He waited for the TV spot to finish, then turned to Marsha.

  ‘Tell me we haven’t forgotten about anything, anyone.’

  His wife swung round and gave him one of her looks. ‘We’ve been through it over and over already.’

  ‘Humour me. Go through it again one more time.’

  She paused, pursed her lips and gave a little sigh of irritation.

  ‘There was only one wild card in this whole thing, and he’s gone.’

  ‘What about the Eskimo?’

  ‘The one who found the first boy? She doesn’t know anything. A couple of days she’ll be back at the North Pole, or wherever the heck she comes from.’

  He switched off the TV. Marsha went to do her morning exercises. He helped himself to more coffee and went through it all again in his own mind, trying to focus on what might be causing his uneasiness. He took out his phone and pressed speed-dial. Maybe Andy could put his mind at rest.

  The comms director’s voice came on. Chuck heard him saying something about positive feedback on Twitter, but his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Andy, is the Schofield announcement out yet?’

  There was a pause while Foulsham shifted gear. ‘At ten.’ He sounded disappointed that his boss didn’t want to chat about feedback on the TV spot.

  ‘Bring it forward.’

  Chuck Hillingberg ended the call. He leaned into the soft upholstery of the sofa, closed his eyes and imagined the editor and sole employee of the Homer Community website arriving at work and scrolling down his emails, selecting the one Foulsham had drafted and sent on to a tame attorney to send and reading the only official acknowledgement of the death of Tommy Schofield, a one-line announcement issued exclusively to a tiny local website of the suicide by drowning of the head of Schofield Developments.

  33

  Edie flashed Patricia Gomez’s ID and asked to see Terri Lightfoot.

  The receptionist at the Green Shoots Clinic peered over at the pile of teen magazines Edie had bought at a mall a block down, saw there was nothing for her among them and waved Edie on through. Something about the meeting with Annalisa up at the Littlefishes’ cabin hadn’t felt right. Annalisa hadn’t met her eye. That was usually a bad sign.

  The girl was sitting in the same chair, only now she was staring at the TV. Edie went right over and sat down beside her.

  ‘You remember me, TaniaLee?’

  TaniaLee’s hands curled and uncurled in her lap but she made no attempt to make eye contact.

  Edie put the pile of magazines down on the table between them. ‘I got these for you.’

  A light came on in the girl’s eyes. She pulled the magazines onto her lap and began flipping through them.

  ‘You recall our conversation from before?’ TaniaLee stared fixedly at the magazine she was holding and shook her head. Her hands were trembling and Edie noticed a certain stiffness in the way she was sitting. They had her on some strong meds.

  ‘TaniaLee, did Mr Schofield ever hurt you?’

  The girl dropped the magazine into her lap. A flash of pain streaked across her face. Edie wondered whether TaniaLee knew the man she called her husband was dead. Most likely they protected you from that kind of stuff when you were as sick as TaniaLee was.

  ‘Fonseca never hurt me,’ she said. Her voice was peeved, shrill. ‘He was my husband.’

  ‘Who did hurt you, TaniaLee?’ On an impulse, she added, ‘Was it Tommy?’

  The girl nodded.

  Edie wondered if it was possible for someone to split a person they knew into two halves, one they liked and the other they didn’t. Maybe that’s what TaniaLee had done. There was the good aspect, the man she called Fonseca and the bad one. They were both parts of the same Tommy Schofield.

  ‘Did Tommy ever do anything to Lucas, TaniaLee?’

  The girl looked up. Her eyes were glazed but Edie could see that something of what she’d just said had gone in.

  ‘He said he wanted Lucas to have a good life. He said Lucas needed a new mom, someone better than me.’

  Edie leaned in to the girl now. She felt how near she was to giving something up.

  ‘Did Tommy say he was going to take Lucas away from you?’

  The girl’s eyes swelled with tears. Mucus baubled from her left nostril. Edi
e glanced about to make sure an orderly wasn’t watching, then reached out for TaniaLee’s arm and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘It’s OK, TaniaLee.’

  The girl turned her face to meet Edie’s eye.

  ‘No,’ she said. She shook her head. ‘It’s not.’ She looked crumpled, infinitely vulnerable. Edie pulled out the piece of hare pelt she carried around to rub her face warm and began to stroke TaniaLee’s temples with the soft fur. The girl kept her eyes closed. Her cheeks flushed slightly and a tentative expression of pleasure appeared on her face. Edie stroked her for a while, until she sensed she was calm again.

  ‘Did Tommy ever let anyone else have sex with you? No one’s gonna be mad at you if he did, it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I guess one guy a few times.’

  ‘Do you remember his name?’

  She shook her head, then said, ‘He had a big nose.’ She opened her eyes and stared at the TV again. Her pupils suddenly went glassy. Edie figured she didn’t have a lot of time left for questions.

  ‘Have they told you why you’re sick?’

  ‘Uh huh. Because of the baby.’

  Edie recalled her cousin. It had taken a year to get a diagnosis of post-natal psychosis. For the first few months her family assumed she was suffering from pitoq, polar madness, brought on by four months of perpetual dark, but when spring came and the sun rose again and she did not get any better, they said the pitoq had sent her spirit to the bottom of the ocean where it became tangled up in seaweed and they chanted songs to Sedna, the sea spirit, so that she would send walruses down to the seabed to eat the weed. They made her a snow house and her mother moved into it with her. By the time the diagnosis came she was already on her way to getting better, but the qalunaat doctor insisted on treating her. He gave her drugs which made her tremble and forget her name. She was unwell for a long time after that.

  ‘TaniaLee, this is just between us, you understand? Just between us. Was it Tommy who told you to say the Old Believers had taken your son?’

  The girl’s face crumpled again.

  ‘Fonseca told me. He said I had to say that so they wouldn’t put me in prison.’

  ‘Did Fonseca tell you you’d go to prison?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Edie sat back, momentarily floored. A sense of thwarted rage shot through her. She wished for an instant that Schofield were alive and in front of her, just to give her the pleasure of killing him. A nurse walked by, smiled a query, and Edie retrieved the part of herself that was able to give a reassuring smile in response.

  After the nurse had gone, TaniaLee said, ‘And Annalisa.’

  For an instant, Edie thought she’d misheard, but when she played what TaniaLee had said in her mind again, she knew she hadn’t. She leaned towards the girl and took her hand. It was by turns limp and shaking, like something newly dead.

  ‘Your mother said you’d go to prison?’

  A nod.

  ‘Listen, your baby died, TaniaLee. Lucas died. It’s a terrible thing but it’s no one’s fault.’

  TaniaLee sucked on her teeth and shook her head. ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘No, TaniaLee, cot death isn’t anyone’s fault.’ Edie thought of the desperation of a sick girl breaking free from the unit and wandering the streets of Anchorage, and felt a swell of admiration for the girl’s toughness, a stab of pain at her vulnerability. Then other, less bearable thoughts came into her head and she had to fight hard to push them away.

  ‘Why do you think Annalisa said that?’

  From the corner of her eye Edie saw a nurse approaching, with a look on her face that meant business. She was about to be asked to leave. There were only a few seconds left to uncover the truth.

  ‘Why, TaniaLee, why did your mother say you were going to prison?’ She tried to catch the girl’s eye but TaniaLee was evasive. She began to jig compulsively up and down. The nurse was nearly upon them now. Edie had one more shot. She desperately tried to put herself in the mind of the sick girl. A thought came to her, a terrible, wrenching thought but she knew she had to give voice to it.

  ‘Did you do something to stop Tommy finding Lucas another mom? Did you, TaniaLee?’

  The girl looked up briefly and noticed the nurse coming towards her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said blankly. ‘I wanted to stop him having another mom so I put a pillow over him. I put a pillow over Lucas so no other mom or dad would want him.’ Her fingers began working in her lap again. ‘So his spirit would always stay with me.’

  The nurse reached them and stood expectantly.

  Edie flashed her a look.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘I was just leaving.’

  She stood up. Without warning, TaniaLee whirled round and grabbed her sleeve. Her face was wild, distress piled high in the creases in her brow, the corners of her mouth trembling. When she spoke it was almost in a scream.

  ‘Only I can’t find him. I can’t find my little boy,’ she said.

  Edie looked at the girl’s face, the soft, unblemished skin and felt something rise up out of her belly. Reaching down and gently squeezing TaniaLee’s hands, she said, ‘It wasn’t your fault, TaniaLee. Don’t ever think any of it was your fault.’

  Back at the studio, Derek was pacing the floor, anxiously waiting for her. He’d packed a few of her things into a bag and left it by the front door.

  ‘I can see from your face you found something. Tell me on the plane up to Nome,’ he said. ‘Can Bonehead stay with Stacey again? If not, Aileen said she’d have someone pick him up. We gotta go.’

  He was pulling her by the hand now, trying to chivvy her along. She shook him off angrily.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You have to promise not to go crazy.’ His voice was firm, a little defensive. He held his hands out, palms upwards like stop signs. ‘They called in from the checkpoint at Koyuk. Sammy’s had an accident. And this time it’s for real.’

  34

  It was already getting dark when the Piper Super Cub bumped onto the landing strip outside Koyuk and Edie Kiglatuk walked down the steps. Behind her, looking rather ashen, came Derek Palliser.

  Two stewards picked them up and drove them on snowmobiles to the school building, which served as the checkpoint. Inside, competitors and stewards and pilots sat on makeshift tables either warming themselves with soup and hot coffee or catching a quick nap before getting back to the trail. They found Sammy sitting on a hay bale in his indoor gear a way off from the throng, turning something over in his hand.

  He hadn’t looked this desolate since his son Joe died nine months ago. Seeing him like that, so alone, made Edie wonder for just a second why she’d left him. But you couldn’t stay with someone out of pity, and you couldn’t stay if staying meant staying drunk. He was bent over now, elbows on his thighs, sucking air in through his teeth and shaking his head. There were scratches on his face, a swelling starting up on his forehead which would probably become a mighty bruise and maybe a black eye later on, but worst was his expression. No whipped dog ever looked so dejected.

  She went over, put her arm around him and gave him a hug.

  ‘You OK? A doctor see you?’

  ‘I got a mild concussion and a few bruises is all. Doc said it’s nothing to worry about.’ His hand went to the egg on his forehead. ‘I was more worried for the dogs.’

  Edie said, ‘You want to tell us what happened?’

  ‘Just a freak accident, I guess, but, aw, nothing like this has ever happened before.’ Sammy looked up, his face screwed into a ball of frustration.

  The team had just crested a low but steep-sided bluff a few kilometres outside Koyuk and were about to head down a steep slope ending in a sharp turn through the trees. The dogs were energized having made it up the hill and as they came over the top Sammy lowered the drag mat to give the sled some torque and slow it a little, send a message to the dogs to control their pace.

  ‘But they’d been growing a little crazy in the last co
uple of days. Maybe the feed mix was too rich or maybe they were missing Bonehead or maybe they knew they were kinda on the home stretch. Unpredictable anyways. I don’t know why, but at least half a dozen of the team paced up, forcing the others to increase their speed, then the whole team got themselves into a kind of feedback loop. They were hurtlin’ down the slope like the devil was on their tails.’

  ‘At that point, it was just chaos. I got dogs cartwheeling over one another, getting all tangled up in harness, panicking and the ones who could were pulling even harder.’

  By the time the sled had come to a halt at the bottom of the slope, four of the dogs were seriously injured and five more had bruises, minor rib cracks or concussion. With only six dogs remaining, Sammy had no choice but to bow out.

  ‘You had to have the veterinarian euthanize any?’

  Sammy took a breath. ‘Uh nuh. Vet’s done what needed to be done. They’ll heal. They’re with a family in the village, they’re looking after ’em. We’ll fly ’em out to Anchorage tomorrow, get them looked after in the Pen till we’re ready to send them back to Autisaq.’

  He held up an object in his hand, a U-bend of toughened aluminum tubing fitted with titanium spikes that had split and failed to hold. ‘Cause of all the trouble’s right here.’ Turning the thing around, trying to understand just what it was that made the brake bar crack like that. Edie patted his shoulder and he pulled her hand down and kissed it, sat with the palm set against his face for a moment. She couldn’t see his face now but she could feel the damp collecting on her hand. In the whole of their six years together, she’d never known him to cry. In the years after, it had only happened once, after Joe died. She got the impression that last night’s accident had somehow bled into their earlier calamity, that he was feeling the kind of pain he hadn’t felt since that dreadful time last year.

  He wiped his hand over his eyes. ‘I’m finished,’ he said. ‘The rules say I have to keep with the same dogs, can’t substitute in any fresh ones, and I only got six left that even can walk, let alone run along in harness.’