The Wild Inside
Page 5
I couldn’t go to jail. I couldn’t live my life inside with no woods and no sky and no warmth in my belly.
But more than anything else, I couldn’t do that to Dad. I’d seen how losing Mom had run him down. The weight he’d lost. The gumption, too, there was a light in his eyes that got snuffed out. The only reason he had carried on, I knew, was me and Scott. If I had to go away, too—if Dad learned that I had tried to kill a man—
I couldn’t let that happen. Whatever I needed to do to fix things once and for all, I would do.
I put Tom Hatch’s book back inside the pack. Shoved it under my bed.
Friday morning, I come inside after putting fresh straw in the dogs’ houses and found Dad on the phone.
’Preciate the update, he was saying. I know you can’t give too many details, but if you hear anything else—
He fell quiet a moment. Then said, Thanks again, Helen.
My gut twisted itself into a knot.
Helen? I asked when he hung up. From the clinic?
She called to say our visitor got sent up to Fairbanks for surgery day after I brought him in, he said.
I frowned, not sure if it was good news or bad. Did it mean Tom Hatch was too far away now to bother coming back? Or that he had been patched up and might even now be on his way to us?
She say anything else? I asked.
Dad shook his head. They’ve got all kinds of privacy rules at the clinic, what they can and can’t say. Anyway, I just wanted to know he’s all right.
I fretted the rest of the day, my thoughts so fixed on where Tom Hatch might or might not be that Flash slipped out of my grip when I tried to put her in the dog run for some exercise, she darted across the snow and I had to chase her down. She pounced and bowed, stayed just out of my reach, wanting to play, but I couldn’t enjoy it, I was so out of sorts. By the time I finally got hold of her and put her in the run, my head ached and my belly growled. I knew it was risky, but the minute Dad got in his truck and headed up the road to plow, I sprinted into the woods fast as I could.
I come back calmer, but that calm evaporated the minute I seen Dad. His arms crossed, a storm darkening his face.
You want to explain why you was in the woods? he asked when I got close enough.
There wasn’t no explanation I could give him. Instead I said, You won’t let me train, you won’t let me even walk the dogs. Can’t I at least hunt?
He looked past me, studying the yard and the dogs that was left, the ones that was certain not to get any exercise at all now that the only one of us who had bothered to stay on the back of a sled was grounded. It was punishment for me, all right, but I couldn’t help but think it was a worse punishment for the dogs, who hadn’t even done nothing.
We’ll see, he said.
What about my traps? There’s ones I set but ain’t checked yet.
I’ll take care of them today.
I kicked at a mound of snow, sent a spray of flakes into the air.
Don’t be that way, Dad said. I told you if you got expelled—
He reached out to touch my shoulder. I suppose he meant to apologize even as he give me his good reasons for doing what he done. I seen his hand come at me, though, and I jerked away.
I’m sorry, Trace, Dad said. I did warn you, though.
Mom wouldn’t of done it, I said.
Excuse me?
One or the other, maybe. She probably would of told me I can’t race. But she wouldn’t of kept me from the woods.
His mouth was a straight line, pressed so tight his lips disappeared. His whole face like stone. Except his eyes. They went soft and gleamed in the weak sunlight.
Get inside and get after the laundry, he said. The dogs perked up when they seen him headed their way, wagged their tails and jumped their paws to his chest. Still happy to see him because there’s nothing more loyal than a dog.
Forty houses in the yard, and there was a time we had a dog for every house. Now every other house was empty. Names still over the doors, signs me and Dad and Scott had made for each dog, carving or burning the names into squares of wood. Panda. Junior. Half Pint. Speedy. Slim. The first time Dad give one of our dogs away, traded Slim for half a moose the winter before, I didn’t speak to him for a week even though I understood why he done it. Other dogs got traded for other things. Young, unseasoned dogs who needed good training got sold to other mushers. Four of our retired dogs, he give them to families who could take care of them. Now we only had the two retirees and fourteen racing dogs left, barely enough for a team.
I felt a wildness rise inside me. An urge to run far as I could, till my head emptied out and my skin stopped buzzing and I could focus long enough to set a snare and wait for a critter to come along, and then I could leave myself completely for a time, my eyes and ears not my own, they would belong to a marten or a squirrel. Leave behind thoughts of Hatch, of Dad’s anger at me, of racing, even. It wouldn’t do for me to go a week without hunting. But even if I tried to explain that to Dad, I couldn’t make him understand. I would have to find another way.
What I had told Dad was true, there come a point when Mom didn’t just let me stay outdoors all day, but give me the run of the woods. I could stay gone overnight, even, and she never said nothing long as I told her when to expect me back.
But that only started when I was ten. Before that, Mom couldn’t seem to make up her mind, sometimes she shooed me outside and didn’t bother to tell me, Come in before dark, or remind me to clean my hands before dinner. Sometimes it seemed like she couldn’t wait to be rid of me, and when I did come home I would spot her and Scott, snuggled together in the hammock we set up in the yard summers, or building a snowman in the winter. The two of them laughing. When I got near, Scott would go on giggling and packing snow onto the man they’d made. But Mom was like water on the coldest day of the year, you could toss a cup of it into the air and it would freeze before it hit the ground. She seen me, and become brittle.
Other times, for no reason I could fathom, she would forbid me to leave the house. You have schoolwork, she would tell me, but no matter how many worksheets I done or science experiments I finished, I never got to the part of the day where the work was over and I could run off into the trees. At first I would bargain with her, if I made my bed and done all my homeschool and any chore she chose to give me, could I just go out long enough to check my traps? When that didn’t work, I tried to sneak out, waited till she was gone from the room then run for the door, only to find her somehow on the other side of it, like she had read my mind. She could be even faster and quieter than me when she wanted. Homework, she would say and point me back to the kitchen table where my schoolbooks was.
Then I pitched a fit. Threw my pencil across the room, kicked over my chair. Lunged at her when she drew near and clawed her arms till the blood come.
Upstairs, she said in her quietest voice, the one that meant I was in the most trouble.
Once, we went more than a week that way. The two of us at odds and her only making it worse the longer she kept me away from the woods. I grew surly, then sick, my stomach hollow and cold. At night, I dreamed of running through the trees on all fours and sinking my sharp teeth into the skin of whatever I caught. In the morning I woke exhausted and pale, and hungrier than ever.
The year before, Dad had took on some help. Winning the Yukon Quest for the first time, plus a handful of shorter races, he’d started to make a name for himself, and though he hadn’t yet won the Iditarod, he’d done respectable, finished in the top ten two out of the last three years. He’d got a couple sponsors who paid for some of his gear, and the number of our dogs was growing. So when a young guy named Aaron come round saying he was looking to apprentice someplace, Dad let him train our puppy team in exchange for doing odd jobs and helping care for the seasoned dogs.
There was others, too, the ones Dad called the youngsters, two guys and a girl who helped train the dogs and prep gear and food bags for races. The girl and one of the guys was both b
ack in Alaska after going to school in the lower forty-eight, and the other guy was fresh out of high school. All three of them was interested in mushing or taking care of animals, and they worked hard for Dad.
It was my tenth day stuck indoors when Mom sent me to the woodshed to fetch some logs for the fireplace. I piled wood onto the sled and listened to the scurrying of the mice who had made their homes in the small spaces between the logs. My mouth watering. My arms sore with the effort of lifting and stacking. I hoisted one last log, turned to drop it on the sled, and there was our old barn cat, purring and rubbing against the back of my legs. I tripped over it as I turned, my arms round the log, and fell so fast I didn’t have time to catch myself. I dropped like a sack of kibble, my head smacked the edge of the sled.
I was up again in a flash. The cat hadn’t startled, only leaped out of the way when I fell, still within reach. Even sick, I was faster than the cat, it was warm in my arms and still purring when I put my hand round its head.
My belly was warm and satisfied by the time I looked up to see Aaron. He seemed stuck to the spot where he stood. Till our eyes locked and he dropped the bucket he was carrying and backed away, then turned, walked fast toward the kennel, faster with every step.
I understood then what it was about the movement of small things that had made our cat crazy, sent it jumping across the kennel with its claws out. With no thought in my head I pounced after Aaron, energy like I hadn’t felt in days surging through my muscles, even when he broke into a sprint it was no effort for me to catch up, and when I grabbed the back of his shirt and he tried to pull away, I held fast. His eyes wide when I put my hands on him. His hands pushing as I bit into his skin.
The tires of his car spun in the snow before he managed to peel out of the driveway. Dad was off on a run, but Mom had come outside, she must of spotted Aaron from the house, seen him running to the car, his hand pressed against his neck. Here and there, between where I stood and the tracks Aaron’s tires had left, the snow speckled red.
Mom didn’t say nothing. Only gripped my arm and pulled me toward the house. I could of twisted away, easy, and run off, but I thought better. She was trembling all over but her hand was steady, her fingers dug into my arm till she pushed me into my room and closed the door behind me.
When I tried the door, it only opened a crack, something was tied round the knob and stretched across the hallway.
I went to my bed. Stared at the ceiling. Warm all over and heavy with sleep, not like the exhaustion I’d felt all the time I was stuck indoors but the way the cat felt after it had ate its fill and licked its paws and found a patch of sunlight to curl up in. I understood now how clever the cat had been at cornering the mice in the woodshed, what a good hunter it was, and a small part of me regretted snapping its neck.
I felt Aaron inside me, too, but he was different from the cat. I had the cat’s whole life in me, everything it had learned and experienced. From Aaron, I only had a spike of fear and confusion and disgust that had drove through him when he seen what I done to the cat. And under that, a faint, warm glow as he, as I, thought of the beer I would grab at the roadhouse once my day’s work was done. The last thing that must of been on his mind before I bit him.
Downstairs, Mom took the phone from its cradle, then replaced it. Picked it up again, and her voice floated up to me through the floorboards, not the words but the tone, pitched low but urgent. After she hung up, the house was quiet till Scott woke from his nap. Their voices moved together to the kitchen, and then I heard water running and bowls and spoons clattering, and soon the scent of something sweet baking. I fell asleep to the sound of their conversation, muffled by the walls and floors between us.
I think I woke sometime that night, but I may have dreamed Mom sitting on the edge of my bed, a shape in the darkness. Her arms wrapped round a pillow as she studied me.
My head was fuzzy from a sleep so deep it seemed to grab at me with sticky fingers and pull me down even as I tried to lift my head. Mom? I managed to say, my voice come out rusty.
She got up. Go back to sleep, she said.
Next morning, she was waiting for me in the kitchen. My schoolbooks missing but my pack on the table, waiting for me.
There’s a water bottle, Mom said before I could ask. Her voice flat and calm as she went on, Matches, even though I know you can start a fire without them. Gloves and an extra sweater. I know you think you won’t need any of it, but you might, so take it. And this.
She opened her hand and offered me a pocketknife. It was heavier than it looked, not the cheap kind you give to a kid for a first knife but a real tool with a paper-thin edge to its blade. It was the prettiest thing I ever seen and I wanted badly to pocket it. But I was afraid to take it, afraid to go out the door with the pack and the knife. Afraid that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to come back.
Mom mustn’t of slept all night, judging by the circles under her eyes. There was lines round her mouth and wrinkles between her brows that I hadn’t noticed before, and although her own hand was steady the rest of her seemed delicate, breakable as glass. She couldn’t really tell me what to do, I understood for the first time. I was stronger than her, and faster, specially when I had got my fill of what I needed.
I planted my feet and stood firm.
She come round the table, brought the pack to me. Be back by dinner, she said.
I wasn’t about to ask questions. I shouldered the pack and stumbled out the door, my knees watery with relief, though I did listen for her to turn the lock behind me. She didn’t. And when I come home that evening, just as she was setting the last plate on the table and Dad was cleaning up after being gone on the trail, she only reminded me to wash my hands and keep my new knife somewhere out of Scott’s reach.
Did you drink? she asked in a low voice when I come back to the table.
It was a shock to hear her ask so plain, and with Dad and Scott just a room away. What I done in the woods wasn’t something we had ever talked about in so many words.
I nodded, but she seemed to be waiting on something, so I said, I caught two squirrels, plus a little beaver out near the river. I brung the fur back.
Good, she said.
After that, I had the run of the woods. I felt full and warm all the time, more patient with Scott, tolerant when Mom or Dad give me a chore I didn’t like.
Mom was different, too. Though she still wouldn’t go into the woods on her own, she spent more time outdoors. She was also more patient, specially with me. If I come home late or forgot one of the rules, long as it wasn’t the Fourth Rule, she only chided me, there was no more sending me to my room or keeping me indoors for days at a time.
That spring, Mom started training other folks’ dogs again. It was something she done before I come along, there was old pictures of her taking a pack of new pups on walks or fitting them with harnesses. Early on, she’d helped Dad teach his racing dogs the basics, and she turned out to be so good at it other people come to her to train their dogs, and not just racing dogs, neither. Soon our yard was overrun with all kinds of dogs, every single one learned to sit or heel or play dead at just a word from Mom.
She got busy fast. Soon enough, Dad suggested they take on another hand.
I don’t need some kid tagging along while I work, Mom argued.
It doesn’t have to be another youngster, Dad said. We’re doing okay enough, we can pay someone a real wage, not just a few bucks and the benefit of experience. Someone who knows what they’re doing.
They went back and forth on the subject at least a week till Mom finally give in. But I’m the one who has to work with whoever it is, she told Dad. So I’m going to find the right person.
Mom probably met with two dozen folks before she found Masha. She wasn’t the sort I expected Mom to choose, she was hardworking enough but she was also chatty, what you call bubbly, she never seemed to have a bad day and greeted every frustration with a smile on her face. Her disposition made her specially good with problem dogs. M
aybe that’s why Mom picked her.
Either way, Mom and Masha got real close over a brief time. Soon enough, Masha wasn’t just helping with the dogs but Mom would invite her to stay for dinner, or the two of them would bake together or weed the garden beds. Masha always chatting away, and Mom always smiling and laughing. Something about her seemed to rub off on Mom, and even after Masha left for the day, Mom would still float round the house, cheerful and even silly.
Then, quick as switching off a light, something changed. That winter, Masha flew back to her home on account of her dad dying, and when she come back more than a month later, you could tell she felt real bad. Still, she wanted to get back to normal, is what she said. She was quieter than before, still friendly enough but not so fast to laugh or make a joke.
It was understandable, someone close to you dies, you feel bad. But the change in Masha seemed to trigger something in Mom. At first, she just got quiet, too, and you could imagine she was only trying to make things easier for Masha, not pry into her personal affairs or expect her to act like nothing had happened. But Mom started to grow out of sorts, she would snap at Masha or find excuses not to work so close with her. Even after Masha went home for the day, Mom would still be surly, barking at me and Scott, getting angry at Dad over small things. Or else she would disappear for the evening, close herself in her bedroom and not come out.
Then one morning over breakfast Dad asked her if she could spare Masha because he needed an extra hand to help with drop bags, and Mom wiped her mouth with a napkin then said, She won’t be here. I let her go.
Dad dropped his fork. What do you mean?
I mean I let her go. I told her we couldn’t use her and that she needed to find work somewhere else.
Told her— Dad stared at her. Wasn’t she doing a good job?
She was fine, Mom said.
So she done something to make you mad?