My stomach dropped.
What?
The school called while you were gone. You got yourself expelled. I told you—
No.
Excuse me?
No, I said. This is bullshit. I’m the one who’s been training, up till you told me I had to stop. I’m the one who cares for the dogs most of the time. This is the last year I’m eligible for the Junior. The first year I’m eligible for the Iditarod!
He shook his head. You’re not going to be racing this year, Trace. Even if you was still in school, we can’t afford the entry fees.
The sun throwing shadows of the trees across our yard, long columns of dark soaking into the brown grass. Our dogs had started wondering what we was up to. They sat on their haunches and cocked their heads at us. A couple nosed their bowls. I imagined Dad out there, his hands gentle on each one, checking their paws or massaging their legs after a long run. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d got on a sled.
The thought made me grit my teeth and clench my fists, made me want to hit something. I felt the way I’d felt the day I broke Beth’s nose, rage building inside me like a fire rolling through a forest, consuming every tree and blade of grass.
The madder I got, the quieter Dad seemed. He give a sigh like he was deflating.
Your mom was better at this, he said.
Better at what?
This, he said. Doing what’s good for you. Knowing what you need. It was easier when you were little. You just wanted to be outside all the time, following me around.
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t true. Mom was good at lots of stuff, and there was a time we would spend hours together, just talking. But there was plenty of things she didn’t tell me. Sometimes she would be on the edge of something, like standing on the bank of a creek, deciding whether or not to cross. Instead of putting her foot in the water, she would turn round, walk away from whatever it was she wanted to say to me.
But I didn’t say anything. It was rare for Dad to bring Mom up, rarer still for us to talk about how she used to be, or what she would of done. I half-expected her to wander outside right then, poke her head out the front door and ask, You two telling secrets out here? I caught myself actually waiting for her. It feels dumb to say how disappointed I was when I didn’t see her. Like just talking about her could conjure her up.
That’s still what I want, I told Dad. Just to be outside. To race.
You’re not the only one doing something you don’t want to.
He was so quiet, it seemed mean to shout at him. But I couldn’t help myself.
You could do what you want! Instead of wasting time fixing other people’s shit, building stupid tables and shelves to sell—
How do you think I pay for food, Tracy? How do you think I keep the lights on?
You’re a musher! My voice hit him almost like a fist. It hurt me to see him hurt, but I couldn’t stop. Part of me didn’t even care. You’re supposed to be a musher! That’s your job! I’m the only one who raced at all last year—
His face dropped. I did stop then.
He cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was calm.
I’ve said my piece, Tracy. I’d appreciate it if you’d go on inside now. You can get dinner ready tonight, too.
It was worse than if he had yelled back. A chill rolled through the yard. He give me a wide berth as he headed to the dog yard. Soon as they seen him, the dogs hopped to their feet, barking because they knew it was suppertime.
I watched till he disappeared into the kennel, then punched the truck. My knuckles come away scraped and hurting but I punched it again. Then I launched into a run, I blew past the house, across the circle of our yard. To the woods. The cool, solid ground under my feet. Dad would be steaming when I come back. But I had to do something.
There is satisfaction in running fast. When you run you are going one place but you are also leaving another place behind. A feeling comes over you like a blanket. It wraps itself round your mind and quiets your thoughts so you can stop listening to the voices in your head and focus on the rustle of brush or the chattering of a squirrel in the treetops. I run as fast as I can for as long as I can. My mind travels somewhere else, and I become only breath and bone and muscle. The feeling is serene and focused, powerful and energized, all at the same time.
This is how I shake off anger and worry like a dog shakes water off her coat. This is how I empty myself out to fill myself up again.
After a while, I veered off the trail and plunged deeper into the woods. All the leaves whispering in the wind. Fall is brief in Alaska, like Peter Kleinhaus wrote, the leaves browning and turning and tumbling to the ground in the space of one day. But it is a good time to put out traps or go hunting. There’s places you can find where moose have rubbed the trunk of a tree raw with their antlers and if you put your hand there the wood is soft as a cheek.
I felt how soft it was and asked my mother, What about a moose?
Even after she was gone, I would find her in the woods sometimes. Barely there, a cobweb I could put my hand through. I could conjure up the memory of her voice, thin as a scrim of ice on a puddle.
A moose is too big, she said. What would you do with it?
I shrugged. But the thought of taking something big as a grown moose made my insides flutter.
You shouldn’t ever take more than you need.
When she was alive, she had showed me a place where voles made little runways through the grass, with their droppings here and there and tracks all round, you know them by the two middle toes that point forward and the two smaller toes on either side. There was a time when we would walk into the woods, hand in hand, till she let me go and told me monkshead or fiddlehead or cloudberries, and I would run up the trail and find what she’d asked for, and then she would explain which one is good to eat and which one will make you sick or even die.
But she never had to tell me how, in the mornings, squirrels begin to move about and look for food, and this movement is like a signal, soon after they stir, other animals start moving through the woods, too. In the evening a squirrel will return to its tree and if you know which one it calls home you can fashion a funnel, like so, use a log or some debris that you lay on the path the squirrel will take, and at the end of that funnel there will be a snare which you have made and set about two or three inches off the ground. Then you hide yourself in the brush and make your breathing shallow. You watch till you see movement in the leaves on the ground nearby. The squirrel will stop and sit on its haunches, its black eyes searching, and this is when you must be most still. Then it darts into the funnel and when it comes out the other end, it is caught.
Its body is still warm. This is how you want it.
There’s two ways to really know another creature’s mind, and neither of them involves talking, which is just a distraction. One way to know a person is to live and work with them side by side. You are quiet as you each go about your chores and get to know how the other one moves, how his body shifts and changes, how a thought flickers over his face and tells you more than words could. That’s how it was with me and Dad, before. We would get out a sled and lay the rigging on the snow and choose a team of dogs to put on the gangline, all without ever exchanging a word.
The other way of knowing is a kind of watching and listening that happens deep in your head. It’s as close as you can be to another animal. You empty your own self out and there’s room for something else, you drink it in, and then you know.
I used my knife on the squirrel. There is a place in the neck you can cut and let the blood drain out so the body will go limp in your hands.
After, I come back to myself. What I found was the same burning anger I’d tried to shed by running into the woods in the first place. I thought of Dad, walking toward the kennel, his back thin under his coat, his shoulders slumped. The calm, disappointed way he’d spoke to me. A tiredness rose over me, strong as the anger. My mother had warned me time and again about staying in control of myself,
but days like this one, it took too much effort. My muscles thrummed under my skin, my legs eager to take me back to the trail, deeper into the woods, where there was plenty other critters to hunt.
I turned, then staggered as something barreled into me, a shoulder hitting me in the face, stars exploding across my vision. I blinked them away. Pushed at the man the shoulder was attached to, a big bear of a guy, barrel-chested and grizzled with days-old stubble, tall as a tree and blotting out the rest of the woods. He lunged after me, his full weight bearing down on me. I caught him, tried to shove him away. Dug into my pocket for my knife. His fingers gripped, pulled my hair, his voice rasping, Wait— Then my knife in my hand.
I flew sideways, airborne for a brief second. Stars again, this time they was followed by a black wall that separated me from the woods and the man and the shout that echoed through the trees.
When I come to, my head ached something fierce, my temple tender where it had met the knob of a gnarled root sticking out of the ground. It was full dark, moonlight leaking onto the ground between tree limbs overhead. Still, I have always had better sight at night than in the harsh light of day, and I could make out where the stranger’s feet had trampled the grass leading from the trail to this clearing. I could also see the broken stalks of devil’s club where he must of pushed his way out of the clearing, on his way to who knows where after he knocked me out.
My heart yammered like a riled squirrel, all the hairs on my neck prickled, and I held my breath, listening for him, certain he was only yards away, wearing the inky evening like a cloak. I hadn’t set traps in this part of the woods, but I felt I had stumbled into one of my own snares, tied to one spot while I waited for the stranger to show himself. After a long spell where every birdcall and twig snap sent me jumping out of my skin, I finally stood up. The trees danced in a circle round me, I put my hand out to touch one and they all stopped, the dizzy spell passed. I spotted my knife on the ground, stained with dried blood. I must of dropped it when the stranger pushed me aside. Hadn’t I cleaned it before I put it in my pocket, after I drained the squirrel? It wasn’t like me to put my knife away dirty, doing so would dull the blade. Unless I’d used it a second time. I folded the blade and stuck it in my pocket. There wasn’t nothing to do now but go on home.
The light was on in the kennel when I got back, so I walked between the rows of doghouses and put my hand out for Peanut and Hazel to lick. Stopped to give Flash a good scratch on the belly. The rest of them, just fourteen racers left, pawed at me and wagged their tails as I passed.
Dad stood at his table saw in the workshop end of the kennel, he was making a shelf for a lady in the village who’d offered to pay him. He was likely mad. I was risking making him madder by rummaging round on the shelves where we kept our gear and paying him no mind. But the truth was, his anger and our fight was the least of my worries. I still felt jumpy, certain any second a figure would come barreling at me out of nowhere. I kept thinking I should of heard the stranger sneaking up on me, but the squirrel I’d caught had warmed me and filled my thoughts, and the part of myself that should of been alert was preoccupied with the fight I’d had with Dad.
The shelves was a tangle of lines and harnesses, sleeping bags and tents, canisters of heating fuel, extra tent stakes, an old bag of dry food for the barn cat we used to have. I found what I wanted, a whetstone. I put a bit of oil on it then sat on a stool near the door and took out my knife, rubbed the blade clean on my pantleg, drew it down the stone. It made a scraping sound I could feel more than hear.
When the saw died, Dad said, Did you go deaf earlier, or are you trying to piss me off?
My hands went still. My knuckles was scraped and raw from hitting the truck.
I had to check my traps, I said.
I had laid them here and there in our woods, most near enough our property I could get to them on foot. Some of what I caught was too small to bring home, but some made for good eating, and the rest had fur Dad could sell or trade in the village.
Any luck? he asked over his shoulder.
Not this time, I told him because tanning a squirrel hide is more trouble than it is worth, and anyhow, I had dropped the squirrel when the stranger come at me.
I flipped the knife to work its other side. The saw whirred again, Dad run another board through the blade. When he finished cutting, he switched the machine off. Wiped his hands on the front of his shirt, bits of sawdust fell to the floor. He sighed and paused in the doorway of the kennel. The automatic lamp Dad had rigged in the dog yard cast a circle of light that made the rest of the yard seem even darker. The dogs was all settled for the evening, most of them curled nose to tail, some of them paddling their feet in their sleep, dreaming of running.
It had been more than a year since Dad had got suspended from racing. Before Mom died, I would of bet my life such a thing wouldn’t never happen. But the night she was hit by that truck, it triggered an avalanche. I have read that if you are caught in an avalanche, the best you can do is swim against the snow to try and keep yourself buoyed. We hadn’t swum hard enough, though. We were still struggling to get back to the surface.
Don’t be too long, Dad said over his shoulder. It’s about time to turn in.
He walked through the puddle of light cast by the lamp, then disappeared when he stepped into the darkness. Leaving me on my own in the kennel, surrounded by all our gear, the half dozen sleds at the back of the room, all waiting for someone to stand on their runners. A yard full of empty doghouses. A handful of dogs who didn’t just want to run but needed to.
That need was in me, too. I ached to get on a sled. I felt the trail tugging at me, every acre of land behind the house yearning for me to roam its familiar hills and hollows. Any other evening, I might of stole away for a few more minutes, long enough to satisfy the craving in me.
But underneath that pang was my heart, stuttering, and my skin, prickling. A pair of eyes, a hunched shadow, hidden by the night and waiting. Thoughts of the stranger made my breath stop, and it wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed. I wouldn’t feel settled, I realized, till I knew he wasn’t no longer a threat.
2
I was a lot like you when I was your age, Mom told me.
She sat on the edge of my bed, tried to brush the hair from my face. I ducked away from her hand, still angry.
She sighed.
I might have been even younger than you were when I started running round in the woods, she went on. Chasing my big brothers, stalking animals. I never learned to trap like you have. But I would stay out for hours, come home covered in mud. I was a wild thing.
I studied her through the curtain of my tangled hair. She was clean and pink from a hot shower, wrapped in her fuzzy white robe. The glasses she wore to do close work like sewing perched on her nose. Her fingernails clipped short, her hair wet but combed.
You wasn’t, I said.
She smiled.
Believe it or not.
How come you never go in our woods, then? I asked.
People change, she said. Your grandma and granddad brought us up in the bush. You know where McCarthy is, right? I grew up near there. We had endless woods to roam in. You could be gone for weeks, not see another soul. You could peel away from your brothers, wander off, get lost. Plenty of people did—get lost, I mean. Or in trouble, or hurt. Not everybody negotiates the wilderness as well as you do, Tracy.
You got lost? I asked.
No, I never did. I always knew where I was, even when I was far from home. But there was a boy who—he got lost. People searched for him for days. I even went looking for him.
Did you find him?
You never know who you might run into in the woods, she said instead of answering.
She touched my cheek.
Have you ever come across anyone when you’ve been hunting?
Not all the woods was our property, if you went far enough you’d find yourself on national park land. I knew that much from the geography lessons Mom give me. Summers, especia
lly, I would cross paths with hikers carrying big packs and canisters of bear spray. Usually I would hear them coming and climb a tree, hide till they’d moved along.
I told her as much.
That’s fine, she said. But if you’re ever hunting and you run into someone—come home. Just turn around and run on home.
Besides the hikers, we would get a stranger or two every year, a wanderer who spilled out from the woods into our yard or who was hitchhiking their way to Fairbanks or Anchorage. They come to our door looking for work, and sometimes Dad would tell them, My front walk needs shoveling, or Wouldn’t mind someone raking them leaves away from my barn. Afterward, Mom would wrap up some food for them to take away, and Dad would hand them a bit of cash. I asked once why they didn’t mind sharing even when money was a little tight or we had ate leftover stew three nights in a row. Dad said, Because it’s the right thing to do. Mom added, Because sometimes if you tell someone you don’t have anything for them, they look around at your house and your land, and later they come back and take what you didn’t give them.
I wasn’t so angry no more, I was interested in Mom’s story about growing up wild. I sat up on the bed, my stomach grumbling, and said, What about the lost boy? Did he ever get found?
Tracy, did you hear what I said?
Run home if I see a stranger.
Right.
Because you can’t trust them?
That’s right, Mom said. Don’t stop to talk to them or see if they need help. Even if they’re hurt. Come get me or your dad, and we’ll take care of it. Understand?
I nodded.
Run if I see a stranger, I said. Because they might be dangerous.
Good girl, she said.
The morning after I met the stranger in the woods, I woke with her voice in my ears. I dressed and washed my face with threads of that memory clinging to me. My head was sore where I’d fell against the root that knocked me out the day before, a purple bruise veined with blue, but my hair hid it, and I went ahead and put my hat on for good measure.
The Wild Inside Page 2