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The Wild Inside

Page 7

by Jamey Bradbury


  Dad stood up and let Grizz jump his front paws to his chest. The dogs all grinned at him, their ears soft. They wanted to run, but they would also just sit there, long as he asked them to, watching their own team dwindle, losing muscle, losing conditioning. Just to please him. That’s how dogs are when they love you.

  I stood there with my mouth dry but my eyeballs burning. The snow was light, tiny flakes that made the air shine but wouldn’t amount to much accumulation. The flakes tumbled straight down out of the sky. No wind when you want wind, when all you want is a gale to come up hard and sweep a wall of snow across the yard, or a flood powerful enough to carry everything away, the house, the bowls, the barn, the dogs. A fire to burn every last sled. Nothing left but an empty space in the trees.

  Trace? Dad’s voice come to me through a sticky fog, my anger thick and gluey, it clogged my throat when I spoke.

  All the way to Tok, I muttered.

  What’s that?

  You’d go all the way to Tok and back to fetch some dogs, but you won’t get on the back of a sled now. You won’t let me train. You don’t even take the dogs on walks. What kind of musher are you supposed to be? We might as well get rid of all our dogs. Give them to someone who’d actually let them work.

  I kicked Panda’s water bowl and sent it sailing the same direction as the food bowl. A coal inside me, smoldering, and the only way to put it out was to run. I considered it, was close to darting into the woods and staying gone the rest of the night, I would come back in the morning satisfied and peaceful. But I would also come back to Dad’s quiet anger and another stretch of indoor chores and no dogs.

  So I took that smoldering coal and carried it across the snow, back to the house. My back hunched against Dad’s voice when he called after me, Tracy, wait. Come on back.

  Inside, I shucked my boots and coat and hat, my insides turbulent and crampish, that feeling like I was too full even though I hadn’t drunk that day. It was my period, I knew I would get it soon. I couldn’t count on it coming each month the way the nurse at school said most girls could. Other times, I would get it twice a month. It was too early to turn in, but I crawled into bed anyway, my clothes still on. I was asleep before I heard Dad come back inside.

  I woke in the middle of the night, my throat dry. Downstairs for a glass of water, I found Dad still on the couch, he’d fell asleep, too, in front of the fire, which was just embers now. His head propped at an odd angle, he would have a crick in his neck when he woke. In the kitchen, I crept past the sleeping dogs and filled a glass at the sink. But before I could even bring it to my mouth, it slipped from my grip. The glass hit the floor like a gunshot.

  Shit, I muttered.

  While I sopped up the water and pinched at the shards of glass, Dad went on snoring. He always slept like he was dead. Out soon as his head hit the pillow and not moving a muscle till the alarm went off at four. The house could burn down round him, and you’d find him when the flames was doused, asleep in the ashes.

  I dropped the bits of glass into the trash, a bright, glittery clatter that wasn’t loud enough. My eyes on Dad.

  All the ruckus had woke Homer and Canyon, along with that night’s house dog, Chug. I glanced at them. Then give a whistle.

  Three dogs barking ain’t as loud as fourteen, but it was a nice commotion, specially inside the house. Upstairs, Scott had probably bolted up in bed, wondering what all the fuss was about. I shushed the dogs, and they laid their heads back down.

  Meanwhile, Dad snored on.

  The last embers was nearly out, but I felt a warmth spread through me. That hot coal still burning inside me, but it had changed. Felt more like hope smoldering in me now than anger. A feeling like that, there’s two options. You can leave it be and it will burn out eventually. Or you can do something with it. Stoke it. Add fuel. Watch the flames grow.

  Take it into the woods, light your way.

  After she got rid of Masha, Mom stopped going to the village. Used to be, if Dad had to run to the store for groceries or supplies, she would go along to help, sometimes we’d make a whole trip out of it and end the day at the roadhouse where they served the steaks and burgers as bloody as you wanted them. More often than not, we would have a good bit to pick up at the post office, and Mom used to like making that stop, she would chat with the postmaster and the other folks who’d come in for their mail and shipments from Anchorage. Light talk is what she called it, conversations that wasn’t about much at all, just pleasantries and gossip about what was going on in the village.

  But all that stopped soon as Masha was gone. Before long, Mom stopped training other people’s dogs, too. She give all her attention to Dad’s team, not that he couldn’t use the help. By then we had more dogs than ever, about forty in all, give or take a new litter of pups or one or two dogs close to retirement.

  That didn’t stop Mom from telling Dad she didn’t think we needed to keep the youngsters on.

  She was scrubbing the dinner dishes. I sat at the table, scrambling to finish that day’s schoolwork. She’d promised that if I got it done I could spend the night in the woods, long as I took a tent with me. I preferred to make my own shelter or sleep under the sky if the weather was good but I’d take the tent if it would get me out of the house.

  What she actually said to Dad was, Why the hell do we need so many people around all the time?

  They work for us, Dad said. They’re here because I pay them to be.

  You pay them to eat our food?

  Hannah, that was just tonight. They worked late, so I told them they could join us—

  Without a heads-up, Mom said. Thanks a lot for that, by the way.

  Dad got up from where he sat filling out papers to enter that year’s Yukon Quest. He went to the sink and stood behind her, slipped his arms round her waist. She was small enough, the top of her head fit right under his chin. He kissed the place where her hair was parted. She elbowed him away.

  Come on, he said and his voice was quiet. What’s wrong?

  She rinsed a plate.

  You haven’t been yourself, Dad said and the clock over the stove ticked and my pencil scratched against the paper and one of the house dogs whined. Dad’s hand on Mom’s belly, he lowered his voice and said, There isn’t something you need to tell me, is there?

  No, she spat. Jesus Christ, Bill, that’s the last thing I need.

  He drew close to her. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? he said. Another baby.

  Are you offering to carry it this time around? she said.

  If it’d get you to say yes.

  She sighed. Run the water. The wood popped in the woodstove. Dad kept poking at her with his hands and his words. Stroking her back and squeezing her. Telling her the timing was right and they used to talk about having a million kids when they was younger and if they had a few more they could replace all the youngsters with their own children, put all of us to work as dog handlers. He grinned and chuckled, and I wondered how it was he couldn’t feel the anger building and coming off her like waves of heat.

  Finally she pushed him, harder than she must of meant to. He stumbled back a couple steps. Her hands was covered in suds from the water, and she was still holding the knife she’d been washing.

  Hannah—

  Her hand was steady as she glanced at the knife, but soon as she dropped it, I could see her shoulders shake, her fingers tremble. She darted past Dad and grabbed her coat from the hook in the mudroom.

  Where are you going?

  Just outside.

  Wait, Dad said. I’ll come with you.

  No, she said. She stuffed her feet into her boots, jammed a hat onto her head. Let the door slam behind her.

  Dad grunted as he sat down at the kitchen table.

  I put my pencil down and said, I’m done. Can you check my math so I can go out? Mom said I could if I showed all my work.

  He got up again, went to the sink and peered out the window. Walked over to the door and put his hand on the knob, then
seemed to change his mind. Back at the table, he didn’t sit down, just chewed on his lip and stared at the spot where Mom had stood a few minutes ago.

  Dad?

  Just leave it, he said. I want you to stay inside for now. Give your mom some space.

  I clomped up the stairs, unhappy at how the evening had turned. But then I went to the window at the end of the hallway and spotted Mom in the yard. She hadn’t got far, just to the head of the driveway where she stood, bundled in her red coat, facing away from the house. Looking at what, I couldn’t say. The trees that shielded our house from the road, or the sliver of moon hooked in the sky above the trees? Or the darkness, the spaces between the trees and the shadows that crept up the snow-blanketed yard, the stretches between each star that held nothing at all.

  After a time, Old Su trotted over and stuck her nose in the pocket of Mom’s coat, searching for a treat and coming up empty. Su ventured down the drive, then looked back at Mom. But Mom stayed where she was.

  It was long after the hallway creaked with Dad’s footsteps, long after the upstairs toilet flushed and the light switches clicked and my own room sunk under the layers of shadow and settling sounds, that I heard the back door open then close as she finally come back inside.

  Day after Steve Inga mentioned the intruder at Jim Lerner’s, we got a good dump of sticky snow, despite the mild temperature. It come down like someone in the sky was emptying buckets of flakes, and by the time it was over, columns of snow stood nearly a foot and a half high on the roofs of the doghouses. Dad attached the plow to the front of his truck and spent that evening and all the next day clearing driveways and side roads, earning a couple hundred dollars.

  It was a lucky stroke for me. When his taillights cleared the end of our driveway, I ducked into the kennel and got to work. I hadn’t yet bothered to inspect any of the winter rigs and they all had one thing or another that needed repairing. I tightened bolts and lashings, checked stanchions and runners for cracks, adjusted brake claws, replaced a bridle, which is the rope that attaches to the towline and helps with steering. When my sled was ready, I hauled it close to the door then loaded it with sandbags to weigh it down, since I wouldn’t be taking no gear with me, at least not on my first run. Then I untangled ganglines and tuglines, sorted through harnesses, and stabbed my fingertips with a needle, squinting under the lamp in my bedroom, as I done my best to mend what harnesses needed it.

  If Dad noticed gear had got moved round or that someone had loaded a winter rig with sandbags and covered it with a drop cloth, he didn’t say nothing. Next morning, he filled a bucket with kibble then led me back out to the dog yard. The temperature had dropped some, so I convinced him to let me heat up a batch of thin broth. It wasn’t much but at least the dogs would get a few extra calories with their breakfast.

  Usually the dogs made a decent racket when they knew it was feeding time, but that morning they was absolutely frenzied. They yapped at us the whole time we made our rounds and only quieted once they had something in their bowls.

  My bucket empty, I punched through the snow on my way back to the kennel. A cold snap had settled after the snowfall, sucked all the moisture out of the air, and the ground had gone brittle, crusted over. I broke through with every step till I reached the door, and stopped short.

  Dad nearly walked into me. What? he said.

  But I didn’t have to answer, he could see for himself what I had already spotted. A footprint. Bigger than mine, with tread new enough to make clear zigzag patterns in the snow.

  We was just over here, I said, quiet.

  He pressed his own foot into the snow next to the print to show me it was smaller than his own by maybe half an inch.

  Inside the kennel, a soft thud like something falling off the workbench and hitting the floor.

  We would of seen somebody in there, I said, but soon as the words was out of my mouth I thought of all the places there was to hide in our kennel. Even as we’d filled our buckets someone could of been in one of the stalls near the back, or up in the loft, or behind the empty chest freezer.

  Where’s Scott? Dad asked me.

  Still in the house, I said.

  You go in, too. He put his bucket down. The morning had gone still, none of the dogs barking now.

  Don’t, I said.

  But he was already inside, the shadows swallowed him as he moved toward the back of the building, and I strained to hear anything other than my own heart pounding. I had stabbed Tom Hatch for a reason. He had come at me, snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking, and if I hadn’t turned round at the right moment, who knows what he might of done? He might of squeezed my neck till my throat closed, or clobbered me with a stone. Did he have a weapon now, a hammer he’d grabbed off the workbench when he’d heard us in the kennel?

  I should never of taken the money. I turned and run back to the house. I don’t know if I meant to grab Hatch’s pack or for what purpose, but I stopped when Scott come outside.

  What are you doing? he asked.

  Shhh, I said.

  He come out even though he wasn’t wearing a coat, his feet swallowed up in Dad’s extra pair of boots. I strained to hear any sound from the kennel. Thought about the distance from Fairbanks to here, about how long it might take to heal from a knife wound. I waited for Dad to come out. It should of been me to go inside, not him. Why hadn’t he ever put a lock on the kennel? Anyone could walk in, hide in the dark. I seen Tom Hatch in the doorway of the kennel, his gut bleeding, blood on the snow. Holding a hammer, holding Dad’s axe.

  An endless time before a shape formed itself in the doorway, and I had to blink my watery eyes clear before I seen it was Dad. He closed the door, crossed the yard. Shook his head. There’s no one here, he said.

  But there was. Maybe not in the kennel. Maybe still as far away as Fairbanks. But he was with us, anyhow. I carried him with me the same way I carried Mom, he wouldn’t let go. Not long as I still had his money hid under my bed.

  Day after we found the footprints outside the kennel, we got a second big snowfall. Dad come home after plowing the next evening and dropped into a chair at the table. Didn’t bother to shuck his boots or take off his coat. He’d been gone since early that morning, and the night before I never did hear him come home, it must of been long after I was asleep.

  That’s the last of it, he said finally. For now.

  He wiped a hand over his face. His eyes baggy. The plowing was decent enough money, he couldn’t turn it down. But I suspected that if he was going to miss out on a good night’s sleep, he would of preferred to spend those hours on the back of a sled instead of in the seat of his truck.

  What’s this? I gestured at a loaf of bread he’d brung in with him, wrapped in plastic and unsliced.

  Helen Graham made it, he said. She thought you kids might enjoy it. Nice of her.

  I dropped the bread. Helen, at the clinic? You went there?

  Cleared the parking lot.

  Then you went in.

  He peeled off his hat. Bent to untie his boots and grunted. Hand me that bottle behind the toaster, would you?

  He meant the whiskey Steve had brung over, still half full. I fetched it, along with a glass, and set it before him. He was already exhausted, and a shot or two of whiskey would guarantee sleep that wasn’t just deep but bottomless. I felt about six different ways at once. It would be a trial, breaking trail after two big snows. But it would be worth it, just to be on a sled and outside.

  But the bread on the counter nagged at me.

  So you talked to Helen?

  He drained the glass, poured another.

  How’s—I mean, she hear anything?

  I didn’t know how to ask what I wanted to ask.

  Dad drained his second glass. Mr. Hatch, you mean? he said. He shook his head. She hasn’t heard anything since they sent him to Fairbanks. I reckon he got patched up then headed south.

  South? My mouth went dry. Why south?

  Dad shrugged. What his driver’s lic
ense said—Oklahoma, I think it was. Or Kansas. One of them middle states.

  He yawned then, and stretched, while I tried to imagine myself a grown man, someone far from home and injured, and missing a few thousand dollars. Would I still have enough on me to find a car I could drive after I left the hospital in Fairbanks? And if I did, would I use that money to stay in Alaska just long enough to find the pack I’d dropped in the woods?

  Or maybe, instead, with no money and only one thing on my mind, I would hitchhike as far south as I could get, then start walking. And maybe if the weather got cold enough, I would find an unlocked door and a woodstove, and grow so warm after shivering in the biting wind, I’d fall asleep till the owner come home. Jim Lerner’s description of his intruder didn’t sound like Tom Hatch, but Jim probably hadn’t memorized every detail about his visitor or snapped a picture. He might of got the age wrong, the shape of the man. Jim’s place was north of ours. Not so far away it would take more than a day or two to walk the distance between.

  Which led me to the footprints outside the kennel. There’s where my thoughts got tangled up. If Hatch had spent the night in our kennel, he was gone now, he’d chose to dive back into the woods to search for his pack instead of knocking on our door to share with Dad exactly how he come to arrive in our yard with a stab wound that nearly killed him. Which meant maybe I was safe. Except when Hatch didn’t find the pack where he’d left it, there was a chance he would come to the house after all. Or maybe he would give up, go back to where he come from. Or maybe he would call the VSO because he was the victim of not one crime but two.

  Or maybe he was already back in Oklahoma or Kansas, safe at home in his own bed. There was too many maybes for me to sort.

  Dad hoisted himself up then, yawned again. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m for bed.

 

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