No.
He crumpled his own napkin up and tossed it at his plate. You didn’t think maybe I’d want to weigh in on something like this? he asked.
Mom shrugged. She worked with me, not you.
Dad huffed. That’s nice, Hannah, he said and stood up, dropped his plate in the sink. That’s a great attitude. I guess you can take care of everything yourself.
Mom glanced at me then.
Tracy can help, she said.
So that’s how I come to do more than just run dogs down the trail for fun. I always had my eye set on racing. By the time I was ten I was already taking small teams down the trail, my sled behind Dad’s. But after Mom got rid of Masha, I started learning what it really takes to raise a racing dog right, how to train them and how to tell which pups are suited to race and which are destined just to be someone’s pets.
When Fly’s newborn pups was ready to move from the house to the kennel that spring, Mom laid out her tools on the kitchen table then called me over.
Grab one of those dogs, will you? she said.
I handed her a puppy and she held it against her chest and with a needle numbed the place on its foot where the dewclaw was. Switched the needle for a pair of long-handled scissors. Real deft she cut the dewclaw off. There was a little blood but not much.
You clip it off, Mom said, so it doesn’t catch on something when she’s running. Better to remove it now than for it to tear off later. You want to do the next one?
I cradled the next pup, she didn’t even have a name yet but we would call her Flash. She had a sleek gray coat and ears that seemed too big for her head, and even young as she was, she already showed her patient nature. I let her take one of my fingers between her teeth and gnaw.
Does it hurt them? I asked.
A little, Mom said. They say you’re supposed to cut the dewclaw while they’re still puppies not because it hurts less but because they won’t remember the pain.
That so?
She petted the dog in my arms. Shrugged. Some pain stays with you even if you don’t remember it, she said.
Then her hand over mine, this way, hold the scissors like this. Talking me through as I concentrated. After we done all four pups, we stood near the woodstove and watched them yawn and curl round each other, a pile of puppies that would grow into racing dogs.
Mom must of been thinking the same thing. She put her arm round me and said, Just imagine. These could be the dogs on your first team.
She was partly right. My first Junior Iditarod, Flash wasn’t my lead but I put her on the line next to her sister, Zip, and all the training I done with them beforehand, all the runs we went on together, paid off. I didn’t come in first that year but second, on the tail of the reigning champ, a seventeen-year-old guy who turned eighteen three days later, which meant soon as he was done with the Junior, he turned round and done his rookie run of the big Iditarod the following week.
I was all set to do the same. My birthday was March first, and the Junior Iditarod was usually scheduled for the last weekend in February. I would turn eighteen after I run the Junior for the last time, and that would make me eligible for the big race the first weekend of March. It would be hard, two back-to-back races, especially when one of them was more than a thousand miles, and there wasn’t no sense in pushing myself to race the Iditarod sooner than I was ready. But I had dreamed of running the big race my whole life, now it was so close I couldn’t bear to miss this chance. What’s more, it would be the first time me and Dad run the same race at the same time. I imagined him getting into Nome ahead of me, already there waiting as I crossed the finish line. Pride lighting up his face.
Except everything changed once Mom died. It happened in January, and most folks figured Dad wouldn’t race that year. He’d only ever missed one Iditarod, and that was on account of he broke his leg right beforehand and was laid up the rest of that winter. What happened to Mom made the news, partly because Dad had already won the big race twice and people knew who he was. But mostly because Alaska may be a big place but it’s also real small. When something bad happens, it gets in the papers. tragic loss for iditarod champ petrikoff. Soon as that come out, people started speculating. Anytime we went into the village there was someone crass enough to ask him straight out. But far as Dad was concerned, there wasn’t no question.
Come that March, he was on the back of his sled, bib number 57. That year, Dad’s buddy Steve Inga offered to stay behind and look after me and Scott instead of running the volunteer committee like he done ever since he retired from mushing. There wasn’t no Mom holding one of the wheel dogs in place, and when Dad’s team took off he didn’t look back or wave to us. He stared straight ahead and vanished over the hill.
That year, we hovered near the radio, waiting for the trail report. Steve drove us into the village and we got updates from folks at the general store, the post office, ones who had their own racers on the trail. Dad was middle of the pack, not pushing too hard, falling farther behind each day. When I heard that, I knew his head was not in the race.
So I was surprised when a report out of Ophir told that Bill Petrikoff Junior planned to push through to the village of Iditarod. That stretch of trail isn’t traveled much outside of the race, which means no one really knows what its condition will be before the mushers get to it. Sometimes you get to Ophir and it turns out there’s no trail at all, you have to wait for the trail breakers to come along. A newly broke trail is hard to run. It don’t have time to set up, so mushers call a trail like that bottomless, on account of it seems like the surface will never hold, and you’ll sink right through. There was reports of a big snow on its way, and if Dad pushed on and left Ophir ahead of the handful of teams there with him, he’d likely find himself running a bottomless trail.
The rest of what happened is in the papers for anyone to read. Dad took only a two-hour rest in Ophir, where the weather had got worse like predicted. Once the trail breakers had gone through, Dad was the first musher back on a sled. It was a tough slog. He lost the trail twice, had to turn his team round. Then a runner broke, and he had to repair it. By the time he got to Iditarod, he’d been passed by six other teams and he’d dropped two dogs on account of injury, left each one at the nearest checkpoint with the vet on duty.
All this must of been on his mind as he pushed through to Anvik then north to Unalakleet. I don’t say that as an excuse for what happened later. Only that it was a bad race from the start, and losing so much time not to mention two dogs, it weighs on your mind. Days of riding the back of a sled, no sound but the dogs’ breath and the thoughts inside your own head, whiteness all round, you can get hypnotized. Your mind goes white and your thoughts get funny. I have heard myself laughing on the back of a sled for no reason, days into a long run. Or sometimes you cry and don’t even know it.
I imagine that was his state of mind outside of Golovin. The Dispatch News reported what happened next. Bill Petrikoff, winner of two consecutive Iditarods, found his team coming to an unexpected stop. It was on account of Panda. We called her that because of her markings, she had a white face with black patches round her eyes. Panda faltered, then went down. The rigging got tangled when the other dogs dragged the weight of her, till the rest of the team finally stopped, too snarled in their lines to move. Dad, who had tied himself to the back of his sled and was dozing at that point, come to and run up to the front of the team to see what was the matter. Panda was laying on the ground, wheezing, her lips and gums gray. He knew right away it was pneumonia.
All this, I know from the papers and from my own time on the back of a sled, not because he ever told me about that day. He never said a word about it.
I hadn’t yet competed in the big race, so maybe I don’t have no right to say he should of done this or that. But if he had been in his right mind, he would of seen Panda panting heavier, would of seen the mucus she must of been coughing up. He might of noticed how she wasn’t eating when the rest of the dogs bolted their food. Any other race,
he would of put her in the basket, got her to a vet at the next checkpoint, before it was too late.
As it was, there wasn’t nothing he could do. The next checkpoint was fourteen miles up the trail in White Mountain. Too far away for the vet there to do any good. He knelt next to Panda and put his hand on her side as she struggled for air.
Maybe she rolled her eyes up and looked at him. Maybe the other dogs laid down, quiet.
It was a skier who seen what happened next and told it to the papers. Some guy who lived in Golovin, just passing by on his cross-countries. He seen my dad stand up. Watched him walk a few paces. Staggered is what the man told the papers, I thought maybe he was drunk. Dad come to a stop. Then, so quick the motion startled the skier, he grabbed something off the ground, it might of been one of the wooden stakes used to mark the trail, he took it in his hand and turned and raised it above his head and brought it down. The skier said he heard yelps from the dogs. In the news, he said he couldn’t be sure how many dogs Dad hit, or how many times he hit them. But he heard shrieks and howls, and then he seen Dad take Panda’s body off the line, wrap her in his sleeping bag, and put her in the basket.
Iditarod rule number 42 says if one of your dogs dies, you have to notify a race official right away, then wait at the next checkpoint for someone to suss out what happened. But Dad blew through the checkpoints in White Mountain and Safety, he didn’t stop till he got to the finish line in Nome. Thirty-second place, and a dead dog in his basket.
None of it looked good, specially when the skier come forward with the story of what he thought he seen. After that, you wouldn’t believe how many other people claimed to of been there on the trail, too, you’d of thought the whole village of Golovin was skiing past that day. There was an investigation by the Iditarod committee, it took two weeks and when all was said and done, no one could claim that Dad was at fault for Panda dying. It was the pneumonia that took her, the committee determined. And as for him hitting the dogs, there wasn’t no evidence that any dog was struck.
Still, for breaking rule number 42, Dad got suspended from racing for two years. That decision seemed to satisfy people, mostly the ones who knew my dad’s name but didn’t know the kind of man he is. Folks round here grumbled about the decision, said two years was too long. Them same folks, people like Steve Inga and Wendell Nayokpuk, raised a little money to give to us when Dad’s sponsors started to pull out on account of none of them was keen on having someone who might of beat one of his dogs to death wear their clothes or have their name on his sled bag.
One night after all the ruckus of that year’s race died down, I come home from a spell in the woods to find Dad on his hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the baseboard. There was glass everywhere. Red running down the wall, at first glance I thought it was blood.
Then I seen her handwriting. Mom always spent late summers canning tomatoes from the store and raspberries from the garden, she put jars up for the winter so we’d have good fruits and vegetables even in January. She always wrote the canning date on the lid of each jar in black marker, and if she thought she’d made an especially good batch of something, she’d put a star on the lid, too. The last time Dad sent me into the pantry to fetch one of her jars, I’d seen that there was only a couple left, the jar of applesauce he’d sent me after, and a jar of tomatoes.
Dad sat back from the work of wiping the tomato off the wall, he braced his hands on his knees and heaved a big breath. He hadn’t seen me come in. His back was hunched, like he was steeling himself against a strong wind, and then all the air went out of him. He seemed to shrink. He clutched the edge of the counter, as if to hoist himself from where he knelt, then only stayed there on his knees. His face sagged.
I backed out of the kitchen quiet as I could.
4
Dad’s suspension would be up just in time for me and him to run my first Iditarod together, that wasn’t what was stopping him. Even when he was suspended, it didn’t mean he couldn’t of kept training. But after his disastrous Iditarod, he had barely glanced at the sleds in the kennel.
The name Petrikoff had been left out of the Iditarod for too long. I aimed to fix that. But I had to figure out how to keep training despite Dad telling me I wasn’t to go near our dogs.
Early the next week, I figured out how.
I’d spent the weekend cleaning out the shed and doubting anyone would want to live there. I hauled out the junk we’d stored inside, swept its floors and cleared the cobwebs and mouse nests from its corners. It looked presentable enough, but it was awful small. Tuesday, Dad worked the whole morning building a cot, the two of us squeezed it through the door and made up the mattress. The place was ready to rent. But no one had called about it yet.
That evening, Steve Inga stopped by, brung a big box of fruit and cookies, and a bottle of whiskey. He set everything on the kitchen table then opened the bottle.
What’s all that? Dad asked. He stirred a pot of chili on the stove, more beans than meat, but the room smelled spicy and rich as me and Scott set the table.
Stopped by the post office, Steve said. Auntie of mine down in Florida sent a care package.
And the whiskey?
Dad found two small glasses and Steve poured, filled them to the brim.
Didn’t want to drink it all by my lonesome.
They lifted their glasses and drained them in one swallow. We hadn’t had much alcohol in the house since Mom died, Dad wasn’t much of a drinker past a couple beers, but Mom liked a glass of something each night, and more than just a glass in the months right before she died.
Stay to supper? Dad asked.
Got nowhere else to be.
Steve poured them both a second shot, it went down quick. Scott frowned as he watched them, then busied himself with dumping soda crackers into a bowl to put on the table.
Our spoons were making scraping sounds against the bottoms of our empty bowls when Steve asked Dad, You hear about Jim Lerner?
Dad shook his head.
Had a trespasser up his way, couple days back.
Somebody break in?
Didn’t have to. You know Jim, he never locks his back door. Some guy wandered right in. Jim and his wife was down to the village, they come back, find this fella asleep on the floor. Passed out right in front of the fireplace.
No shit?
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.
A guy? I said. Like your age, you mean?
Naw, Steve said. Younger. Jim said he looked maybe sixteen. Ragged little guy. Spooked when Jim got home, took off and disappeared into the woods.
A runaway, you reckon? Dad said.
Suppose so.
I frowned at my empty bowl. From Steve’s description, Jim Lerner’s intruder didn’t sound like Tom Hatch. Still, I wondered how long it took someone to heal from a gut wound, and how much longer it might take to hitchhike or drive down from Fairbanks. Whether the ragged stranger who’d fell asleep in front of Jim’s fireplace was headed north or south.
I offered to clean up after dinner, so Dad let Steve pour him another shot of whiskey and the two of them talked a good spell, while Scott disappeared to his room, probably fixing to read the rest of the evening away.
When Steve eventually left, Dad waved him down the driveway, then staggered a little on his way to the kennel. I stepped outside like a swimmer treading slow into a cold lake, followed him across the yard. He didn’t say nothing when I picked up a bucket of kibble and trailed behind him.
Sled dogs need more food than regular dogs, they burn off so much energy. Over the summer, when we only done short, easy runs, their diet was lighter, but if I intended on getting serious about training now that there was snow on the ground, I would have to figure something out. We didn’t have nothing left in the kennel freezer, no salmon to add to the kibble because Dad hadn’t gone to fish camp that year, and no moose trimmings because he hadn’t managed to hunt. I could bring back some of what I trapped, but not if Dad was serious about me staying awa
y from the woods.
We worked up and down the rows, him moving a little slower than usual. I paused in front of the house with Panda’s name over the door. Her food bowl was still there, froze to the ground. I kicked it free, and it flew across the snow.
Dad knelt down in front of Grizzly and took the dog’s face in his hands. Old Grizz, he said and his voice come out syrupy, like each word was stuck to the next. Grizz’s mom was one of my first racing dogs, he went on. Got her from a guy over near Tok.
This was a story I had heard before, sitting in front of a fire, the dogs paddling their feet in their sleep. We never told ghost stories or sung songs when we was on the trail together. Instead, Dad told me stories about building his team, the first races he ever run, how he come to be one of the best mushers in the state. Early days, when him and Mom was just starting out, and everything was an adventure.
Your granddad left me seven dogs when he died, dogs he’d raced himself, said Dad. But the first three dogs that were just mine, the first three I built my team on, they was Grizzly’s mom, you remember Bear. And one called Suka, and a real pretty mutt named Spruce. I drove all the way to Tok to get the dogs from another musher who decided to pack it in and move to Arizona.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. Watched the woods. Snow starting to fall.
Dad stroked Grizzly’s fur. I went by myself to get the dogs, he said. A good seven hours one way. You almost never drive on your own, so you don’t know the pleasure of a long, empty road, just you and your thoughts. It’s not the same as running the dogs, but your mind goes peaceful in sort of a similar way. It was late summer, almost fall. I come back under a wide blue sky that went purple, then black, and then the stars come out one by one, and a full round moon that made it seem almost like daylight again. I stopped, pulled over to the side of the road for a break, and everything was quiet. No other cars on the road. Night birds calling out to one another and bugs chirring off in the dark. I stood there in the moonlight. Then just as I was thinking I ought to hit the road again, I hear one long, lone howl. It come rolling over the hills to me. And the dogs in the back of my truck, first one, then the others, they answered back. All three of them, wailing. Like they knew they come from the wild, that those voices in the distance belonged to their brothers.
The Wild Inside Page 6