So?
So you spend a lot of time alone in the woods, Jesse said. A lot of people would ask about that. A girl on her own in the woods.
So? I said again.
He turned, his voice come over his shoulder. No telling what you might get up to out there. Then he scuffled away, dissolved as he moved into the shadows between the dog yard and the house.
I had stood still as stone when I’d found my trap triggered but the catch missing, the first night I’d snuck out for a run. I had strained to hear if someone was nearby. No movement in the brush, no fall of snow or crunch underfoot as someone slipped away or come closer to watch as I reset the trap. But I had made other stops that night, other opportunities for someone already roaming the woods to keep themselves hid while I drained the catch I did find.
And how long had Jesse been in our woods before that night? What else had he seen?
Just a few words and he had me fretting the rest of the day. That was how Jesse Goodwin worked, I noticed over the next weeks. I never heard him suggest an idea, not once. He never said the first word, just appeared out of nowhere to quietly go about his work till Dad noticed him. Still he wouldn’t say nothing, waiting for Dad to start asking questions or building on the idea that Jesse’d already had. Then Jesse would nod and agree, make Dad feel like he was the one who’d come up with their next project. Water don’t run a straight course, it winds round trees and boulders, snakes through mountain passes, tumbling downhill to reach its destination. Watching Jesse, I begun to learn sometimes it’s easier to get what you want by taking your time and going round the obstacles, instead of trying to plow right through them.
That’s the way the dog wheel come about. Jesse had took to lingering in the kitchen after dinner most nights, either to play cards with Dad or help Scott with his homework. That night, he hunched over the little notebook he always carried in his pocket, a stub of pencil in his hand as he scribbled, lines going this way and that.
It was Scott who piped up first. He’d pushed his math book aside to watch Jesse draw. That looks like Flash, Scott said.
I was set on ignoring whatever Jesse was doing, but at the mention of Flash I had to look up. He had drew my lead dog exactly right, somehow with just a pencil he’d managed to show the intelligent light in her eyes.
But Flash was only a detail in a larger picture. Jesse had drew something like a giant bicycle wheel without the rim or tire. The hub of it was stuck in the ground and it had six spokes, each one ended in a platform. On top of each platform was a box that looked like our dogs’ houses. The Flash he’d sketched was running, attached to the end of one spoke by a lead.
What’s that? Dad had leaned forward in his chair to get a better look. Some kind of training wheel?
Jesse nodded. There’s a lever over here, a kind of brake. You release that, and the dogs can run in circles till they get tired. When that happens, they can hop up into the box to rest.
Dad raised his eyebrows, drew the book closer to study the picture. That’s pretty clever, he said. Wonder how hard it would be to put something like this together. It’d be a good way to keep the dogs from getting antsy. Although they’ve been pretty calm, lately.
Jesse didn’t respond, but his eyes found mine, the quickest touch. Then he looked back at his own drawing.
My face burned. I got up and run water over our dinner dishes.
Though, that’s a lot of lumber, Dad said.
You could do it with scrap wood, Jesse pointed out. That’s what we used in Whitehorse.
You lived in the Yukon? I asked.
He didn’t bother to turn or look at me. Passed through, he said.
We’ve got lots of wood out back, Scott was saying to Dad.
Just need some nails and about five or six wheels, looks like, Dad said. It was clear he was already calculating the cost. The three of them bent over a fresh piece of paper, heads together, words going back and forth while Jesse’s hand dashed over the page. I watched, thinking about Whitehorse. It was reasonable he would of passed through on his way north. But it was one more place to add to a growing list of places Jesse claimed he’d lived, at least for a spell.
The dog wheel was like a pebble that sent ripples through a pond. After that, it got easier and easier for Jesse to nudge Dad toward any idea. Yes, Jesse could reorganize the pantry. Yes, Jesse could repair the roofs of the doghouses with the asphalt shingles he’d found who knows where. Yes, Jesse could take the truck for a quick errand. Yes, yes, yes. Soon enough nearly everything we owned had his fingerprints on it.
Middle of November, I come into the kennel searching for the dog bootie pattern that I couldn’t find in Mom’s old sewing stuff. Instead of the usual jumble of camping gear and dog supplies and tools on the shelves, I found everything separated and sorted into bins. I dug through the one labeled patterns and plans in neat block letters and found what I was looking for. Outside, Jesse was inspecting scrap wood, picking out the best pieces for his dog wheel. That day’s house dog, Marcey, jogged a stick over to him, he wrestled it free, then hurled it toward the kennel for her to chase. When he seen me, he paused. Then raised his hand, a hesitant little wave.
A softening in me, snow in a patch of sunlight. It happened before I knew it was happening, my thoughts tallying up all he’d done, the neat kennel shelves and the truck he’d got running, the clean dog yard, houses with their new roofs. Just that morning Dad had commented again on how relaxed the dogs seemed, and it was Jesse who covered for me, he piped up and said, I meant to mention, sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, I’ll get up and take a couple for a walk. A few minutes in the fresh air usually makes me tired enough to go back to bed. Maybe it helps soothe the dogs, too.
Dad scratched his beard. Maybe, he said.
Marcey returned her stick to Jesse. I watched him fling it again, then raised my own hand in return.
Midday, I helped Dad split and stack wood. After about an hour of work, he glanced at his watch, dropped his armful of wood on the sled, and said, I was thinking, Trace. Thanksgiving’s not that far off. Might be nice to have some meat on the table.
I dropped my own logs on top of his. You going to order a turkey from the village store? I asked.
He shook his head, pulled the sled toward the woodshed. I followed along behind. Actually, I was thinking a rabbit would be good eating. Mind setting some traps?
I stopped short. You mean I can hunt? I said. Like, in the woods? The ones you’re so keen on me not setting foot in?
The very ones, he said. Not racing’s punishment enough, I reckon. You go on, hunt as you like. Just be careful.
Now?
Sure, I’ll finish up here. Take the day.
Maybe his voice was a little too casual. But I ignored whatever I thought I heard, I was so relieved not to have to sneak round for once.
I took the day, just like he told me. I didn’t manage a hare that morning, but I left three traps along a couple paths I knew. Then I hunted for myself awhile, went out to a slender branch of the river to see if I could find a mink, and took not one but two, though the second one sprayed me a little and I had to scrub myself with handfuls of snow to try and get rid of the stench. After I had my fill, I dressed them both, then rested a spell, laid on the ground and watched the snow fall from the sky. The flakes large and languid, no wind, the day round me silent except for the trickling of the stream over stones. That kind of silence turns you inward so you grow aware of your own breathing, and the thoughts that usually bounce all round inside your head go quiet. I stayed that way a good time, till the light drained away and the early night stained the sky.
When I come back to the yard, both mink skins slung over my shoulder, I was feeling warm inside and content in my head. Till I heard the dogs bark to greet me. When you live with dogs all the time you get to know how they talk. A team of sled dogs speaks together, all their voices blend into one voice, and that’s the voice of the pack. And the voice I heard then was weaker than it had been t
hat morning.
I run to the dog yard and looked past the houses that had been empty for months, searched the faces of the dogs we had left. It took me a minute to register which house was newly empty. Flash’s bowl was turned over, like she had been gone for ages.
Dad’s voice come to me across the snow, flat and nearly toneless. Now, just wait before you start hollering, he said. You know Chuck Wheeler. Young musher, few years older than you? He needed a strong dog with a good head to fill out his team. He saw Flash at last year’s race and liked the look of her, so he asked to lease her for the rest of the season, try her with his own dogs. It’s not permanent. She’ll only be gone till after the Iditarod.
I stood in front of Flash’s house, picked up her bowl.
Anyhow, Dad went on. I made this deal before Jesse come along, back when I wasn’t working. It’ll help pay down some of them bills—
I chucked the bowl away from the dog yard, hard as I could. That’s all you give a damn about, is money, I said.
Don’t give me that, Dad said. You’re not the one who has to worry about providing for this family.
I thought that’s why you got your stupid job.
He glared. That job is what’s paying— He bit his sentence in half, swallowed the rest. Then said, This was all decided a good while ago. I couldn’t go back on the agreement.
She was my lead dog, I said. How am I supposed to train without my lead?
You’re not supposed to be training at all.
I’m not supposed to be in the woods, neither, till it’s convenient for you, I snapped. I threw the mink hides to the ground at his feet.
He shook his head. Just go inside, Tracy.
He was already turning away. I scooped up a handful of snow and flung it the way I’d flung the minks. The snowball flew through the air and hit him, exploded across his coat.
If we was only horsing round, he would of laughed and threw one back at me. Instead, he looked down at the snow stuck to the side of his coat. I hated how foolish he looked, small and stupid, and I wished he would brush the snow away.
Don’t you think I’d let you race if I could? he said, quiet. But there ain’t enough—
He lifted his hands.
—enough anything. Hours in the day. Time to help you with the million little things you need to compete. I can’t do it all on my own.
I stared at that splatter of snow still on his coat.
I’m not happy about this, he said. I don’t want to do half the shit I end up doing. He shook his head. You’ll understand when you’re older.
His voice as tired as I suddenly felt, and I wanted to tell him that I did understand, as a matter of fact. I understood what it was like to worry and be scared all the time and do a thing not because I wanted to but because I didn’t have no other choice.
But I couldn’t say that. So instead I spat words I didn’t mean at him.
You don’t even want me to race. You don’t care if anyone in this family acts like a musher. You barely look at the dogs, much less run them.
He finally brushed the snow away and glared at me like he was supposed to. You don’t want to have this conversation, he said.
Why not?
You interested in ever running the dogs again? Spending even half an hour in the woods?
I shut my mouth.
Go inside. Now.
For once I done as he said. I kicked at a mound of snow then stomped up the back stoop, aware the whole time how babyish I was acting, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I slammed the door behind me and threw my hat to the corner of the mudroom then clomped upstairs, aiming to toss myself on the bed and fume.
But Scott was crouched in front of my bookshelves, half my guides and adventure stories and both copies of the Kleinhaus book, mine and Tom Hatch’s, on the floor. I scanned the room, certain he’d found the pack under my bed and drug that out, too, but there was only books, piles of them, some of them open, tossed all over, pages dog-eared.
Scott looked up. He was already trying to explain when I hurtled at him. I shoved him, hard, all the anger I felt at Dad pointed straight at him. His head smacked the corner of the bookshelves.
Goddammit, I said and meant I was sorry, but it come out angry.
Asshole, Scott said, rubbing his head. His hand come away bloody.
I didn’t think. Just grabbed his head, my hand over the spot where the skin had broke. A cut on the head or face will bleed a surprising amount. You’re okay, I mumbled, half to reassure him and half to distract myself from the urge I felt.
He shoved me away, though, then elbowed past me to run from the room.
I fell back against the shelves and sat there. His blood on my hand. I stared at it a good while, trying to convince myself I ought to wipe it off on my jeans, or go to the bathroom and wash. Reminding myself of the promise I’d made Mom.
And then I licked the blood away.
My head filled with pictures like flashes of lightning. They come with a flood of feeling and lit up in my mind then faded just as quick. Desire and heat and hardness rose up in me when I spotted the back of a particular girl’s head in my classroom, embarrassment and excitement twisted together as she looked over her shoulder at me. A flutter of joy as I remembered the smell of Mom baking cookies, and the ache that followed that memory. A strange mix of curiosity and fear and want that pierced me whenever Dad come into the room with my sister following, the two of them connected in a way I couldn’t quite understand. And lastly an odd sort of sadness when I spotted a sparrow on the sill outside my bedroom window, how it seen its own reflection in the glass and seemed to call to itself, over and over.
I shook my head, as if I could shake Scott out of my thoughts. The strange, funny, sad things that was running through his mind the moment I drunk even a little from him. At least, that was my guess on why I got what I got. There wasn’t no rhyme or reason to it, other than maybe I seen and heard exactly what was on a person’s mind, up at the top of their thoughts, or way down deep, when I got a taste.
I pushed myself up, Scott’s experience and emotion coursing through me. My own intentions was a blur as I stuffed whatever my hands touched into my pack, water bottle, knife, the Kleinhaus book, a sweater, a hat, my flint and steel. I was down the stairs, out the door, and into the woods before I knew it. My decision made without me even deciding.
I sprinted past the lake, past the river, then cut away from the trail to make my own route through the spruce and alder. The snow deeper here where dogs’ feet and sled runners hadn’t tamped down a path, but I had no trouble making my way through the snow. I felt strong and fast. Free. Even freer, the farther I got away from home. I would go back, I knew, eventually, after a handful of days, time enough to clear my head and let my anger ebb. But what if I didn’t? What if I just kept going north, never looking back? Things would be easier if I could be on my own, no one to keep secrets from, nothing to hide. No need to protect others from the wildness I felt inside, from the urge to give in to everything Mom had warned me against.
It was the first time, maybe, I realized I could live a life different from the one Mom had chose. Instead of hunting and running and climbing trees and living in the wild, she had somehow found Dad, and they had made a life together, me and Scott, the house, the dogs, a civilized existence. A pent-up one, too. Toward the end, she barely left her room, much less the house, the place a kind of prison she’d picked out for herself, seemed to me. If that’s what giving up drinking got you, I didn’t never want it.
8
Just as quick as she started going into the woods with me, she stopped. If we all went for a walk as a family, she come along like usual, her hand in Dad’s as they strolled. But if I asked her to hunt with me, she found some excuse for keeping close to home. She needed to weed the garden in the summer or put up the canning in the fall, in the winter she was busy knitting, or just sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket, her feet in thick socks and slippers.
If she went out
doors on her own, it was only to stand at the foot of the driveway in the middle of the night. Sometimes I watched from the upstairs window till she finally turned round and come inside. Other times, I stood so long I got tired and finally crawled into bed, leaving her still standing, with Su at her side.
The months before she died, she barely went out at all. Till the day I stood outside her room, just the door between us, afraid to open it. She wasn’t like Dad, you couldn’t know just by listening if she was asleep. Outside, snow was falling in soft, wet flakes. The day warm enough the flakes melted soon as they touched your skin, a walk in the woods would mean you’d come home soaked and shivering unless you found something to warm you up. I wanted to go out. But the voices that floated up through the floorboards under my feet held me where I was.
Downstairs in the den, Dad paced and listened to Helen, the nurse who come out from the village clinic. Mom had give in after a week of arguing, she’d kept telling him she’d be fine and he kept insisting she ought to go to the clinic, till Dad finally pestered Helen into making a house call.
Finally I pushed the door open. I hadn’t seen Mom in what felt like days. Her blankets, four or five of them, piled on top of her, only her pale face showing, her mouth like a gash.
Tracy. Come sit.
I perched on the edge of the bed, afraid my weight would break her. She pushed herself to sit with her back against the headboard. The effort made her breathe hard and I smelled the sourness of her breath.
Come here, silly, she said. I’m not made of glass.
I snuggled against her, her arm round me.
You’re so warm, she said.
I been outside.
Today?
I shook my head. Yesterday. Last night. Before the snow started.
She looked out the window. It’s really coming down.
Her hand on me so cold. What’s wrong? I asked her.
I’m sick, she told me. But I’m fine. I’ll be fine.
Then how come Helen is here?
For your dad’s peace of mind.
The Wild Inside Page 11