Thanksgiving Day was like a door to another world that opened when Dad give me Stella and Scott lied about loaning me enough money to enter the Iditarod. On the other side of the door, there wasn’t no secrets, no sneaking out at night to train. There was only a scant few hours of daylight and too much to do between the hour I woke and the hour I fell into bed, tired but happy.
For the first time since Mom insisted we didn’t need youngsters round to help with our dogs, the yard was full of movement and life. I darted from house to kennel to sled, between doghouses, strategies and plans in my head, my hands never empty. I sorted through gear with Helen by my side, she wrote down what we had and how much of it, made shopping lists and packing lists. I stirred great pots of green fish and beef broth and rice then ladled it into bags Scott held open for me and we filled the chest freezer with them, at the race checkpoints I would thaw each bag and dump its contents over the dogs’ kibble, thousands of calories that they would burn on the trail. I pricked my fingers mending booties till Helen brung me a thimble from her personal sewing kit. When Steve Inga wasn’t busy heading up the Iditarod volunteer committee, he come out and give Jesse a hand with the dog wheel, the two of them hammering in companionable silence while Dad helped me ready a sled for a three-day run with a six-dog team. While we worked, he talked about his own experience on the trail. I’d heard most of his stories before, but now I listened with new ears, picking out bits of advice that might help me. I had run the Junior twice before and knew what to expect, but when it come to the big race, only thing I had to go on was what I’d read and what Dad shared.
One morning, middle of December, I come outside to find the dogs already on the line, pulling Dad round the perimeter of the yard. Haw! he hollered, one syllable striking the soft morning. I stood for a minute and watched, Dad standing on the runners of his winter rig, five dogs galloping, legs pumping, tongues wagging, ears laid back. They swung round, swallowed by the early dark, nothing but the sound of their paws digging at the snow. Then their eyes shining green in the moonlight as they circled back, disembodied till they drew closer and the shape of them formed, snouts, shoulders, ears, legs, like a hand drawing and filling them in the closer they got. Dad behind them all, bareheaded, the wind ruffling his hair. Red-cheeked and grinning.
Snow’s awful soft, he said once he’d worked the team to a stop in front of the kennel. We need a good, hard freeze.
Another foot of snow wouldn’t hurt, neither, I said.
He nodded. Steve says it’s worse west of here. They’re having a real warm spell out around Kaltag, Unalakleet.
Rough racing conditions, I said.
He grinned. Getting anxious?
No more than you’d expect, I said.
That day, Steve brung us two more dogs borrowed from a musher he knew who was taking the year off. For the Junior, I needed a team of seven dogs, minimum, and I could have as many as ten. For the big race, the maximum number of dogs I could have was sixteen, and I wanted all the dogs I could get on the line. It ain’t uncommon to drop more than one dog over the course of a race, they get injured or exhausted, or they just decide they’re done running. I needed to finish the race with at least five dogs on the line and my odds was better the more dogs I took with me. With Stella and the borrowed dogs, my Iditarod team was up to fifteen, not counting Su.
I couldn’t count her. Though we never did officially retire her, it was clear her racing days was over. She had got thin over the last month or so, I had stopped putting her on the line during my night runs, and she didn’t jump to her feet soon as she seen you head for the door like she used to. We stopped making her take turns as the house dog, she got to stay inside whenever she wanted, and before long you couldn’t walk past the woodstove in the kitchen without nearly tripping over her. She only seemed to get up when she wanted water or food, or when we all turned in for the evening. At night, she followed me up the stairs, slow but steady. I had to help her up onto my bed.
I managed my schoolwork in between prepping for the race and found time to help out with what chores I could, too, it was the least I could do considering how hard Dad was working to make the race happen for me. I felt light, relieved there was no more bad blood between me and Dad, no more suspicion of Jesse filling my head. I looked at the yard with Jesse’s eyes and tried to notice the little things he had a knack for noticing, then I done what needed doing. Salted the stoop and the walk when they iced up. Darned a pile of socks. Dried dishes while Helen washed. Sometimes I would find myself at Jesse’s side, the two of us cleaning the dog yard together or cooking parts of the same dinner. All through December, we drifted together and apart, the way you see a flock of birds split, wind through the sky, then come back together to form what looks like a solid thing. We orbited the yard alone only to discover each other behind the woodshed, a mile down the trail, in a dark stall inside the kennel.
Every time we brushed elbows, I longed to pepper him with questions. About his relationship with Hatch, about why Hatch had followed him north. But other things, too. About the dreams that sometimes woke me with a cold sweat and a vague memory of running to exhaustion. About the scent of flowers that clung to his mother’s clothes, he breathed it in as he stood between the soft, damp fabrics hanging from the clothesline behind his house. About this quivery feeling inside me, a pair of wings that fluttered to life when he caught me looking. About the closed-off part at the center of him, where he was hiding the rest of it, things he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about. I wanted to pry him open and find answers to every question I had.
Instead, I thought of Jesse’s stillness. The way he waited, patient, till someone else give voice to the idea he’d already devised, so that they felt as if they come up with it on their own. I could be patient, too.
I planted myself next to him as he greased the hub of the dog wheel and sent the whole contraption turning for the first time. Helped him lay out the gangline for his own trip down the trail with a team of two. Watched his fingers, deft and grease covered, as he changed the oil and spark plugs in Dad’s truck. Hand me that torque wrench? he asked.
I dug it out of the toolbox and give it to him. He smiled as he worked.
Something funny? I asked.
Just— He stopped, grunted as he tightened a spark plug. Then said, You remind me of me.
You when? Doing what? How? I bit off every question before it could hit the air. Waited.
I used to watch Tom work, he said after a spell. The first time I ever met him, I followed him out to the pasture and watched him mend a fence. He didn’t bother with gloves, and his hands were rough. He had these thick fingers with hair on the knuckles, but they were almost delicate, the way he used them. Like a surgeon’s.
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath till my head went swimmy.
He asked me for a pair of pliers, Jesse went on. I knew my dad had hired him but I hadn’t met him yet, till he found me behind the barn, reading. He called over to me, Hey, guy.
A thrill shot up my backbone, the thrill he’d felt at Hatch taking him for what he was.
He didn’t know about you? I asked.
Jesse’s brow furrowed and his tongue poked out between his teeth as he worked the wrench. I leaned over the guts of the truck, watching, wishing I hadn’t said nothing.
But then he answered, He found out soon enough. My parents had invited someone for dinner that night, that’s all I knew. So Tom shows up and my dad introduces me as his daughter, and that’s that.
He wiped his hands on a rag. Grime still under his fingernails, it would be there till he showered, long after the rest of us had turned in. Some questions I had answered myself, like why he waited till there was no chance someone might walk in on him in the bathroom, or why he had said no thanks when Dad invited him to camp out with the rest of us once, not long after Helen come round. Dad chalked it up to Jesse liking his privacy. He liked it, all right. It was too hard keeping things hid in close company.
Tom didn’t
bat an eye, he said. Just shook my hand. Said, Pleased to meet you. After that, I was sort of obsessed with him. That whole summer, I barely left his side. Pitched in with his work, let him take me fishing. He taught me how to shoot a gun. How to fix cars. My parents thought I finally had a boyfriend. I guess I did.
I swallowed my question, but Jesse answered it anyway.
I asked Tom once why he didn’t mind me, even though everyone else seemed to. He had this philosophy, that everyone has male and female sides to themselves, sometimes a little more of one, a little less of the other. Sometimes the two sides are balanced. So if that’s the case, he said, no one should be surprised if the balance gets reversed in some folks. That someone might get a soul that says one thing and flesh that says another.
Jesse looked at me. That’s how he talked sometimes. Like a country poet.
You didn’t start out scared of him, I said. You was friends.
He nodded.
More than friends, I said.
He sighed heavy. Kept his eyes on his work.
So what happened?
He shook his head, and I figured he’d come up against some wall inside himself, something he wasn’t ready to climb over, wasn’t ready to tell me. But then he said, It went bad between us. Tom started wanted something I couldn’t give him.
Hatch’s breath in my ear. His hands, tearing at my clothes.
So he took it, I said.
Jesse glanced at me. Didn’t say nothing.
Then what?
I left, he said. I came here to start a new life. I didn’t expect the old one to follow me.
Seems like you’re skipping an awful lot, I said.
He lifted a shoulder, shook his head, and I understood he was done. But what he give me was nearly good as a drink. I could use his words like a map, follow them to the hidden places I couldn’t locate before. Like foraging in the woods, I lifted a rock and there he was, imagining what it might be like to be Tom Hatch, inhabit a body like his. I looked behind a tree and found him holding the Kleinhaus book out to Hatch. I thought you might like this one, since you mentioned wanting to see Alaska.
Su come outside for a change, walked stiffly to where I stood alone at the head of the driveway. In the same spot where I’d seen Mom so many times, when she was alive, and after that. A fierce longing come over me. I always wished she was still round, but now it wasn’t because I had questions about hunting or drinking. I wanted to ask her if this was what it was like when she first met Dad. If it was right to want someone so much, you would peel their skin off if you could, open their skull, just to get closer. Had she ever got to know anyone as well as I was getting to know Jesse? It didn’t seem possible that she might of ever drunk from Dad, but she wasn’t there to ask, neither. It was too late. I had waited too long. No matter how old you get, your parents always get there first, and there’s a comfort in that. Like an unfamiliar path through the woods where there’s footprints already showing you someone has gone on ahead. Till the day you come to the place where the footprints stop.
There wasn’t no longer a need to stay up till the slimmest hours of night, waiting on Dad’s snores to carry down the hall so I could sneak out and run the dogs. Most nights in fact I slept like the dead, I could imagine my own snores quaking the whole house. But one night just before Christmas I found myself staring at the dark ceiling over my bed. A craving in me. I got up finally, went downstairs and stood in front of the open fridge, then wandered to the sink instead. I drank from the tap, though I didn’t feel particularly thirsty. When I raised my head, I couldn’t pretend anymore I didn’t know what I wanted. The shed, visible through the frosted window over the sink. Jesse’s light on.
He come to the door soon as I knocked, as if we had agreed on meeting. Can’t sleep? he asked.
The fire in the woodstove sent our shadows flickering up the walls. I stepped inside, closed the door. Touched his sleeve. He didn’t say nothing and neither did I. My tongue would of fumbled over words, but my fingers was deft. They went searching for him, unbuttoning one shirt to find another underneath. Layer upon layer. He pulled the last shirt over his head, under that was the sort of bandage you use on a sprain, wrapped tight round him. Unwound, his breasts was small but obvious.
I stopped. Is this okay? I asked.
He didn’t say nothing, but put his mouth on mine.
After, he said, Come here, and there wasn’t no place to go but the cot where he usually slept alone. It was small, but it fit the two of us fine.
The room filled with the sound of our breathing. He was an undiscovered trail in the woods. A familiar landscape made strange, a mountain new to me, and I shook with my own eagerness to explore him. The paleness of him, all the parts of him that didn’t see the sun. His lips, parting, his eyes, closing. His skin, softer than I expected. His breath, his tongue, the shape and weight of him. I lapped him up without drinking.
Till I come to the place where he was like me and tasted blood, coppery and familiar.
And there was the sweat of the day still on me, my own appreciation for the scent, a manly scent radiating from my own skin, my satisfaction with how the training wheel was turning out, my hunger for this girl, my hesitation round her. A jumble of Jesse that come to me all at once. And then out of the jumble, one clear moment.
There was a sweet scent in the air, something sugary and hot, the sun sending tendrils of sweat down my back, and the glow of the day not from the lowering sun but from how I felt, Tom at my side, his hand holding mine. Shouts and laughter up and down the thoroughfare, Wouldn’t you like to win your girl a prize, one dollar, three chances, everyone walks away a winner, you there, you look like a strong man, step on over. We stop so Tom can swing a hammer, a bell rings, and he tells me to pick out a prize. I look past the stuffed bunnies and bears to the only object worth anything, a burl-handled pocketknife. There’s a chorus of screams from one of the rides, and my stomach drops and soars at the same time as Tom leans over me, we kiss—
Don’t, Jesse said and pushed me away.
I licked my lips. I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t know—
Me either, he mumbled. I wasn’t really keeping track. He tugged his jeans on then settled on the cot again. His face was pink. Did you— he started, then stopped. Did you get anything? he asked.
So I told him what I’d seen and heard, a fair of some sort, and him and Tom Hatch. The barkers and their silly games, the stuffed animals staring at him with their glassy eyes after Tom won at Test Your Own Strength.
That’s it? he said.
I shrugged. It’s all a rush, I told him. It comes quick, sort of washes over me like a current, then drains off. I didn’t add that now I could go looking for it whenever I wanted. That it, that part of him, was part of me. I guess this was before things went bad between you and Hatch? I said instead.
He frowned. Seemed to turn something over in his head. You don’t control what you get, he said, not like a question but like a conclusion he come to.
No, I said. I told you, whatever you’re thinking on—
It doesn’t seem fair.
What do you mean?
That first time, you got one taste of my blood, and you found out the one thing I needed to hide. What if there are other things I want to keep to myself? Personal things? You can tell me whatever you like about yourself, and I would never know what’s true and what’s not. But you can know anything you want about me.
It don’t work that way, I said. You could just—don’t think about what you don’t want me to know.
He give me a look.
Anyhow, I wouldn’t lie to you, I told him.
But his pack was still under my bed. The money mostly gone thanks to the race fees, it wouldn’t do any good to tell him about it now.
You still get to choose, Jesse said.
Okay, I told him.
Okay?
I won’t come here for that. Not if you don’t want me to. I still want to come, if that’s okay. But just because I li
ke being here. With you.
I felt the tension go out of his muscles, his whole body relaxed. I slipped an arm round him and rested my head on his chest. His heart sped up, then slowed. The blood coursed through his veins carrying all the bits that made him up, his whole history. All of it concealed just beneath the skin. Close enough to taste.
Thank you, he said.
There wasn’t no reason to leave after that. Dad had stayed in the village that night, at Helen’s, and both of them had an early shift at the clinic. I didn’t expect neither of them home till the next afternoon. By the time the fire was dead, Jesse was asleep, one arm thrown over me. The air round us grew chilly and I burrowed under the blankets next to his warmth. Never closer to anyone, and not just because of the way we’d wove ourselves together, skin to skin, limbs wound round each other till he felt like a coat I could wear. My belly almost sloshing, it felt so full. I knew it wasn’t the blood but what I’d got from it that filled me up.
Okay, I’d said, quick as you please. Like it was easy not to want to know him. I studied his face, soft in the dark. I wouldn’t take what he wasn’t willing to give. But I hoped he wouldn’t hide himself from me just because he could.
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