Ice Dogs

by Terry Lynn Johnson

  “Yeah, it must’ve been a mudslide,” I say. “Anyway, you have to stay on the sled. If you fall off again, I’m not coming back for you.”

  I enjoy the image in my mind of waving goodbye to him as he lies on the trail.

  “Did you see my lift-off?” Chris sweeps his hand in an arc. “Cra-zy. I got serious air.”

  I muffle a snicker then refocus on the sled. It’s about time to start using my head. I pull out my snowshoes from the bag.

  “We should all take turns breaking trail.” I slip my mukluks into the bindings and then shuffle toward the leaders. Bean groans as I rub his ears. “Good boy.”

  He grins at me with his tongue hanging as if he’s having the time of his life.

  Sometimes I wish I could trade places with the dogs. They only have to worry about running and eating. They love fiercely and don’t worry about things they can’t control. And when someone dies, they can sit on top of their house, throw their head back, and howl. Then they can begin a new day.

  I stomp into the fresh snow in front of the lead dogs and they both step on my shoes.

  “You have to ride the brake!” I turn to see Chris clutching the handlebar with a steel grip. His round eyes are studying the wheel dogs.

  “Well, I don’t know how to do this,” he yells.

  “I’m not going as fast as they are. Just don’t let the leaders run me over.” How did I let myself get into this situation? Alone out here with a guy I don’t know anything about. And one who obviously doesn’t know anything about the outdoors.

  I think of last night and how his body had been wrapped around mine and the pit of my belly feels warm. Sarah would flip if she knew. She’s totally into guys, and they’re into her, too. Which makes sense because the Athabascan side of her gene pool gifted her with stunning looks. With her long, silky straight hair that shines like a pelt around her perfect tawny skin that seems to glow from within, and deep brown eyes, she can have any guy she wants. And she’s always going out with someone. As if she doesn’t want to be alone, which is dumb since she has me. And about four thousand brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. I’m so jealous of her big family. I think I first started hanging out with her so I could go over to her house and sit in the middle of all that chaotic noise and energy. Especially when her older brother dropped in with his dog team. Sarah kept teasing me because she thought I had a crush on him. As if. It was the dogs I was interested in.

  But her interests are more southern. As soon as we graduate, she’s gone to California. Her dream. She dresses as if she lives there already, which is another reason guys like her. She is a fun, loud, and wild center of attention, and hard to resist.

  It’s not as if I’ve never gone out with anyone. I grimace thinking of my short and tragic past with Randy Fuller. Maybe I felt sorry for him. Maybe he wore Bart Simpson T-shirts every day because his development was stunted. Back in grade school, he fell asleep at Mark Hamilton’s birthday party, and they super-glued his finger to the inside of his nostril. That kind of humiliation is hard to get past in a small town. So in eighth grade I called myself his girlfriend. I even let him hold my hand in the school hall. I shake my head at the memory. It feels like a lifetime ago, even though it was only last year.

  We’re moving through a stunted black spruce stand. It crowds in thicker and thicker, which tells me it hasn’t been maintained in a long time. Which means we’ve gone seriously wrong with choosing to go this way. No self-respecting trapper would use this trail, so it’s highly unlikely we’ll run into anyone messing around in here.

  Soon, I hardly see a path through the coarse branches. They twist and grab at us as we go by. My hair snags on a branch. Sharp needles rake my cheek. I take another step and my hat gets knocked off.

  I’m bent over holding up a long branch for the dogs to come through, when I hear a droning noise.

  “A helicopter!” I yell to Chris.

  He looks up. Black spruce branches tangle together above our heads with a few little windows of overcast sky between them. The chopper blades beat the cold air with a staccato that echoes in my ears. But when I glimpse it, it is farther away than it sounds. We both jump up and down waving our arms as much as we can within the scrubby bush.

  “HERE!” I scream.

  “HEY!” Chris yells. “We’re right here!”

  Look down, look down, look down, look down. Are they seeing us? My pulse races. Please, see us. We could be home.

  With food.

  Safe.

  The dogs safe. I could stop being responsible for everyone.

  My heart pounds, then deflates when the helicopter continues on its way.

  “If we can’t see them, they can’t see us.” The disappointment is so bitter, I almost choke trying to swallow the lump.

  “NO! No, no, no, no.” Chris covers his head with his arms, then savagely kicks at the snow and falls to his knees.

  “They were so close,” he rages. He pounds his fists into the snow. “Why didn’t we just stay in the open field? They would’ve seen us then!”

  I feel a quick pain as if I’ve been jabbed in the stomach. He’s probably right.

  Since we left the swamp, we’ve followed the narrow trappers’ trails that are overgrown and hidden. No one will see our tracks from the air. Even our tracks from this morning will probably just look like a pack of wolves had been there.

  We’ve gone so far now we can’t turn back even if we wanted to. I highly doubt I’d be able to find the trail. We can only keep going. But how far? We could be out here for days before we cross a road. I imagine all the wide green space on the topo map. What if we are going the wrong way?

  An icy dread runs through me. We could all die out here running straight through to nowhere. If I could just study my map one more time.

  “If we had a map, then we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

  “If we had a GPS, then we’d be home eating cheeseburgers,” Chris barks back. I can see the fire in his eyes from here. “Or if we had snowmobiles, instead of these stupid dogs!”

  I suck in my breath as if he’s slapped me. I’m about to scream back, but then his expression reveals the fear he’s been hiding.

  Chris quickly rubs his face with both hands. A silent moment stretches between us. The only sounds are the constant wind moaning through the tree branches and the dogs grunting with contentment as they scratch their backs in the snow.

  Chris clasps his hands behind his neck. “Forget it,” he says with a much softer voice. He hauls himself to his feet, brushing the snow off his jeans. “I’m just mad.”

  I’m mad, too. At myself, at him, at this whole situation. But I can’t help myself as I point to his jeans. “Try not to roll around in the snow with those. The woollies underneath will only do so much to keep you warm.”

  He gapes at me, then snorts, adjusting his scarf and shaking his head with a bemused expression.

  I bend to hug Bean. His hot tongue brings me back to center, and after a moment I feel ready to stand.

  “Okay. Anyway. Let’s keep going out of this nasty spot at least. We’ll find the main trails soon. No point sitting here crying.”

  “Hope we find a Tim Horton’s soon, too,” Chris says.

  13

  THE COLD, DARK PART OF EVENING arrived suddenly. Like entering the haunted house my town sets up at Halloween. Your eyes struggle to adjust from the daylight to the oppressive darkness of the interior, strain to see the scary things before they jump out at you.

  But I didn’t have to see the scary things to know they were here. Scary things like dehydration. Starvation. Hypothermia. Scary like the skin on Bean’s shoulders sticking up for a second when I pinch it—the first sign of dehydration. Scary like sleeping another night in the sled bag with Chris.

  “Whoa,” Chris says in my ear. His arms are around me in the nest of the bag and we both hear the loud complaining of his stomach. I actually feel it on my back. “It’s rebelling after that tea.”

  Without food
, our bodies are having a harder time staying warm. And tonight is much colder than last night. It’s hard to guess how cold because I haven’t eaten so I’m feeling it more than usual. Even the furnace that is Chris’s body is barely radiating the BTUs it did last night.

  Go hungry—get cold.

  I thought about making a proper lean-to shelter to reflect back the heat of the fire, but that seemed like so much work. All of our energy should be used to move forward and get ourselves out to a road. We couldn’t afford to waste any time or effort making a shelter when we already had one. I shiver again and feel Chris’s arms tighten.

  We’ve set camp near another slough. Plenty of water, but the dogs didn’t drink enough for the energy they are putting out. And they’re used to baited water. I still don’t recognize the land or the slough, but I’m guessing, since we haven’t come to a road or main trail, that we’ve somehow gotten turned around far north of where I wanted to be. Without a map, my compass doesn’t tell us much. I don’t need a compass to show where west is when I have the sun.

  Calculations buzz in my head. If we’ve been out here two days, possibly traveling twenty miles a day with this deep snow and slow speed, we definitely should have crossed Cook’s road by now. Maybe we’re running parallel to it.

  I’d scraped the inner bark from a birch and tried eating it. Dad told me once it could be used as emergency food because it’s starchy. But I guess I was thinking of potatoes when I heard starch. It was nothing like potatoes. Sort of like eating sawdust, and it was so bitter, it made my eyes water.

  But I boiled some white birch twigs in a dog dish for us, and that had been okay. Slightly sweet. And nice to have something warm inside my stomach. The fact that I had just been joking the night before about eating yellow birch twigs hadn’t escaped me. I never thought we’d be out here so long.

  I had eyed the beaver house on the bend in the slough and sorely wished that I’d brought snares. With snares, we could trap beaver. Or rabbits—though the meat wouldn’t be as rich. I could have set the snares overnight, and perhaps gone to sleep with the knowledge we’d be fed in the morning. That the dogs would be fed.

  I did not bring snares, however. And I’m certain the gnawing guilt and worry are going to keep me awake most of the night. I try to imagine what Dad would do, but that makes me feel worse because I know Dad would have brought snares. Besides the tea, what else can we eat out here? And we must eat. No fuel in the furnace, no life.

  “Every time I close my eyes I see a stuffed crust pizza with ham and pineapple.” Chris’s voice breaks through the dark.

  “Pineapple on pizza? That’s not right.”

  Chris chuckles. “What’s the first thing you’re gonna eat, Secret? When we get back.”

  I don’t want to say out loud my first thought—that we might not get back at all. So I play along. “Um. Maybe spaghetti with thick moose-meat sauce and mushrooms.”

  “Oh, that’s boring.”

  “Well, how about some of those Christmas oranges? Juicy and sweet, with no pits. And the pajamas peeled off them.”

  “Pajamas?”

  “You know, the white stuff under the skin. That’s got to go.”

  “Too healthy. I’m going to eat a couple of Big Macs, then a chocolate shake. Then a whole pan of brownies . . . maybe topped with some raw cookie dough. Oh, and blueberry pancakes! I make those a lot at home. With gobs of syrup and strawberry sauce. And bacon, fried crispy. Some scrambled eggs and cheese—cooked so they’re not runny. I can’t stand runny eggs.” Chris’s voice strains at the edge of a whisper in his excitement about food. What is it about the dark that makes people whisper?

  “Actually,” Chris says, “I wouldn’t even mind if they were runny.”

  Chris’s appetite is not satisfied until he’s described every meal he’s ever cooked, eaten, or thought about eating.

  “You know, you’re going to be disappointed in Spruce River. The only place to eat is the coffee shop and I wouldn’t recommend it. You have to drive over an hour to get to McDonald’s, even.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll just cook more. I like to cook.”

  “Why did you guys move anyway? What does your dad do?”

  Chris pauses for a moment and we lie still, the silence hanging between us in the darkness. “He didn’t come with us. They split a few years ago.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. Mom got transferred at her insurance firm. She must’ve really screwed up at work.”

  “How can your mom work here? Wouldn’t she need like a green card or something?”

  “She’s originally from Boston, but moved to Canada before I was born. She met my dad in Toronto.”

  “Is he still in Toronto then?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be going back to visit.”

  “When do you—” An eerie howl interrupts me. It bursts out from the north, behind where the dogs are staked out. And it sounds close.

  “What—?” Chris gasps in my ear. An answering howl rises up again. With many voices.

  “Wolves,” I tell him.

  “I know it’s wolves,” Chris hisses. “I’ve heard them on TV. But it’s so different when they’re live. Actually right there in the dark.”

  Chris shuffles and his knee jabs me in the ribs. “Whoa, my arm hairs are standing up! Man that’s spooky. They sound like they’re right in camp.”

  The dogs rustle nervously outside so I push aside the flap on the sled bag and sit up. Freezing air attacks me. Once I’m out of the dimness of the canvas bag, I see the cloudless night sky lighting our campsite with the glow from the stars and half a moon. The hairs in my nostrils stiffen as I inhale.

  I see the outlines of all six dogs nestled in a row beside us, but I shine my headlight at them to make sure they’re okay. Their eyes glow back at me. I point the light into the gloom around us, half expecting to see many more shining eyes, but there is nothing. The howling ends abruptly and once again it’s dead quiet except for the cracking trees.

  The embers from the fire are comforting. I wish I could toss more wood on from here, but I’m already shivering again. I scoot back into the bag, shutting off the light, and close the top flap.

  “That’s the wild letting us know it isn’t sleeping.”

  “Huh?”

  “We have to be aware of things all the time. Respect it. Maybe the wolves are just passing through,” I say loudly. “We should make noise to let them know we’re here.”

  Chris bursts into singing at the top of his voice. “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why, she swallowed the fly . . . ”

  I endure another few minutes of Chris’s campfire songs before he winds down. The dogs have settled now, too. As if the singing comforted them. The thought warms my insides.

  “I used to sing all the time when I was younger,” Chris says. “My buddy Cam and I even talked about starting a band. I play guitar, he plays drums. I used to go to his apartment sometimes on the weekends and we’d play video games and practice for our future stardom as musicians.”

  Chris shifts slightly to his right, which means I have to shift, too. We both uncurl then curl like two dragonflies in a hard wind.

  “He had the tallest bunk beds I’ve ever slept in. The top bunk was his older brother’s, but he moved out. So when I stayed over, that’s where I slept. I’m not cool with heights, but I never told him that. Just climbed up to the top of those beds.

  “Then one night I woke from a bad dream. I jumped up and the ceiling fan got me in the head. I still have the scar.”

  Chris grabs my hand in the dark and guides it to his forehead. I touch a small, thin bump along his hairline that I hadn’t noticed before. I feel along the ridges for a moment longer than I need to, and suddenly drop my hand.

  “Yeah, nice scar.”

  I briefly think of telling him about the time I took three dogs with my bike. I had wanted to try Bean in lead. But for some crazy reason, I decided it’d be even more fun with Drift
and Gazoo. The first three minutes were the wildest of my life. We tore out of the yard while I perched on the bike with a death grip and wide eyes. The rest of the time I spent on my face dragging along the dirt road. By the time I got them back to the house, my coveralls were ripped to shreds, and I was covered in mud and blood. I still have the scars running down the left side of my belly. Heat creeps up my neck as I think of showing that to Chris.

  “I’ve got one here.” I surprise myself by sticking my hand in Chris’s to show him my index finger. His warm fingers run over mine as he searches for my scar.

  “When I was young, I was feeding peanuts to a squirrel in our backyard. I guess he thought my finger was a peanut because he grabbed it, then his mouth got stuck or something ’cause he just hung on while I flung my hand around.”

  “And that’s why I prefer the indoors.” Chris touches the jagged bump beside my nail.

  “I was screaming and crying and the thing finally flew off. He was probably mentally scarred for life.”

  “You’re worried about the squirrel? That’s rich. He probably gave you rabies or something. Did you get checked?”

  “No, no. I don’t have rabies, I’m just a carrier. Whatever you do, don’t touch me or you’ll get it.”

  The hunger and stress must be taking a toll on my good judgment for me to enjoy bantering like this with Chris in the dark. Actually, it’s because it’s dark that I’m doing it. In the morning, I’ll probably feel embarrassed to look at him. I flip back and forth, berating myself and secretly grinning until restless sleep finally claims me.

  My eyes open again before daylight, not knowing what woke me. I listen intently but don’t hear any more wolves. Then Chris murmurs in his sleep. “Hide . . . come on . . . the wolf . . . run!”

  I lie still, trying to ignore the cramps in my belly. After a few seconds of silence, I let out my breath. Chris is quiet again, breathing slow and heavy. I listen to the rhythm of it, pondering the mystery of him. Of how I behave when I’m with him.

  I have a bad taste in my mouth from not brushing for two days. I put my hand in front of my face and breathe into it to check my breath. I’ll chew the end of a slender green sapling when we get up and brush the scum from my teeth. And maybe wash with warm water. It will help me feel better. Yes. Today, we’re going to find a road.