You okay? he said and put his arms round me.
I don’t know what happened, I told him, it must of been something they ate.
I gestured at the two dogs in the basket, both of them had got diarrhea by now and my sled bag was sprayed with shit. The vet had already come over and was unclipping Boomer from the rig.
And then Peanut— I said.
He’s in the truck, Dad said. Steve found me when Peanut showed up about half an hour ago. What happened?
I shook my head. I didn’t have to pretend to be upset, standing under the finish arch with two of my dogs being ferried away by vet techs while fourteen other mushers was gathered round the bonfire at Yentna Station by now, chatting about the day’s run and the condition of the trail. My eyes went hot and my throat filled with a stone I couldn’t swallow.
Dad hugged me again. We were worried, Trace. I know Peanut likes to run off, but— His turn to shake his head.
I cleared my throat. Can we just go home? I asked.
It took longer than I’d hoped. The vet checked Marcey and Boomer, then give them both something to make them vomit. She frowned as they horked up half-digested kibble and asked, Any chance they got hold of some chocolate somehow?
Then we packed up camp, I worked so fast I had the tent down and my sled bag cleaned up and stowed in the truck before Dad had finished tying my sled to the top of the dog box. I sat in the cab of the truck watching him talk to Steve Inga and trying to not scream at him to hurry up. Finally, he settled behind the wheel.
You know, the roadhouse is still open, he said. We could drive into the village, get something to eat—
No! I practically shouted the word. I mean, I really just want to go home. If that’s okay.
Sure it is, he said and turned the truck onto the highway.
We was closer than ever to home, closer with every mile we drove, yet it already seemed too late to me. Too much time had passed, wasted on packing and talking and running part of a race I never should of signed up for. I gripped the handle of the passenger side door so hard my whole hand went pale. I could see home before we was anywhere near it, different versions of it. All the windows of the house dark while a shadow emerged from the woods and got closer, closer. Tom Hatch standing over Scott’s bed while Scott slept, Hatch slinking room to room, searching for Jesse’s pack, startling at Helen’s voice asking what he was doing there. Bodies left bloody on the floor by Hatch’s own hand. That same hand pounding at the shed door till it burst open, Jesse shouting as Hatch pounced, finally finding what he’d come north to find.
When we pulled into the drive, I threw open my door and got out of the truck even before it had stopped.
Tracy! I heard Dad holler at me, but I was already running round the back of the house, I threw open the door and tracked snow across the kitchen. Homer and Canyon both sprung to their feet, barking, bringing Scott down the stairs, already in his pajamas, Helen looking up from her book in the den, a shout of surprise dropping out of her. Both of them unmarked, unharmed. Alarmed by an intruder but the intruder was me, there wasn’t no one else.
Where is he? The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Where’s who? Helen asked. She put a hand on my cheek. You’re so flushed. Do you feel all right?
Jesse’s in the shed, Scott told me.
But Jesse wasn’t in the shed, he was at the door, frowning and glancing at Dad. I heard the truck— he said.
I shrugged Helen off, pushed past Jesse and went back outside. Run to the middle of the yard, that panicked-rabbit run. I turned, scanning the perimeter of the woods. Trying to hear the sound of someone approaching over my own panting.
Tracy! Dad was calling after me.
The kennel. I remembered the night we found Jesse’s footprints outside the building, a good place to hide till the middle of the night when no one would expect a visitor. I sprinted across the yard, pushed the door open so hard it slammed against the wall and swung back at me. I held my breath and listened as I crept across the room, listened for someone else breathing, floorboards creaking, anything, as I went stall to stall only to find each one empty.
You want to tell me what’s going on? Dad spoke up from behind me.
Jesse was in the doorway. The two of them staring at me, wanting answers that I couldn’t give.
I— I started, and all at once felt lightheaded. I staggered. Helen, who had followed Dad to the kennel, rushed over to me and put her hand on my forehead again.
You’ve got a fever, she told me then put her arm round me. Is this why you came home early? she asked Dad, then said, Come on, let’s go back to the house and get you into bed.
I let her usher me outside, confused and tired. A sort of terrified calm rushed through me, the resignation a critter feels in its last moments, when it sees your knife, feels your hand round its neck, and some part of it understands everything will be over soon.
When we got to the shed, Jesse peeled away from the group. I went after him, seized by an idea.
I seen the man from the fair, I told him.
Jesse’s face as confused as Dad’s.
The man who won the strength game, I tried again.
Understanding lit his eyes.
What’s she talking about? Dad asked.
Jesse shook his head.
But when I let Dad and Helen lead me to the house, I glanced back at him. Mouth pressed into a frown. He’d got my message.
Upstairs, Helen took my temperature then give me a couple pills from the medicine cabinet. I tried to insist that I needed to help take the dogs out of the dog box but I didn’t try very hard, truth was I could barely string words together I was so exhausted from the day and the panic and the strange disappointment of coming home to find everything and everyone just as I had left them. Dad would take care of the dogs, Helen assured me. What I needed now was sleep. So that’s what I got.
I didn’t wake till noon the next day. The house quiet, no sound but the radio someone had left on. I stayed in bed, watching snow fall past my window, long enough to hear that the Junior had wrapped up just before eleven that morning, a seventeen-year-old musher from Big Lake had come in first, second went to the rookie from Bozeman, and a girl from Nome had placed third. I expected to burn a little at that news, and was surprised to find I didn’t care.
I finally crawled out of bed close to one. My face still flushed when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t feel hot except to the touch, my palms was clammy. Before I’d left for the Junior, I had took two squirrels, it should of been enough to get me through a few days before I needed to find something else warm. I felt sick, but it didn’t feel like the same kind of sick that come when I hadn’t drunk. I splashed water on my face and brushed my teeth, then went outside to find the truck gone.
I knocked on Jesse’s door, then pushed it open when there wasn’t no answer. He was gone, too, his bed made and a book he’d borrowed open and facedown on his small table. The woodstove dead but still warm to the touch.
I went back outside into snow that come down thicker now, big palm-sized flakes wafting from the sky. The yard eerie with quiet.
Now, I thought. A silent message from me to Tom Hatch. Come right now, when it’s just me and you.
The thought threatened to send me into a panic again. Even though I knew he was close, he had the upper hand. But I had tricks. Tools. Years and lives I had drunk in, everything the animals I’d killed had taught me. Hatch didn’t have none of that. I breathed deep. Slowed my thundering heart.
I waded through new, shin-deep snow to the trailhead. The nearest trap was only about a mile down the trail and with any luck I would find a catch.
The day muffled with mounds of snow, it clung to the trunks of trees and blotted out the sky. But there was a grinding in my head, like metal chewing on metal, a sort of screaming that made it hard to think. I tried to clear my mind of Hatch’s face. Smiling as he raised his hand and waved. Good luck, musher! The look of recognition in his ey
es the day he landed in our yard. His brows knitted together, his face too close to see in detail, as he pressed himself onto Jesse.
I tried to be Jesse. Went looking inside myself for what I knew of Hatch, the kind of man he was. Methodical. Handy. Patient, till he wasn’t. He had courted Jesse in his way, but then something had gone wrong, his patience had run out and something else had took over, landing the two of them behind the barn. Later, they had come north, Jesse first and Hatch after him. I could piece that much together. Then I walked into the story with my knife in my hand and my mind washed away with a tide of blood.
Nearly five months, Hatch had stuck round after Dad took him to the clinic. He’d spent at least some of that time in Fairbanks, recovering from his wound. Time he must of spent puzzling out where Jesse might of gone. Then what? Had he come back to the village, started hanging round the roadhouse and the post office, chatting about nothing to folks till it wouldn’t seem odd when he asked about the family whose yard he’d collapsed in? He’d discovered enough to show up at the Junior. And if he knew anything about my family, he knew who Dad was and probably figured that odds was Iditarod champ Bill Petrikoff Junior would be in Anchorage come the first Saturday of March, along with his kids, gearing up to run the big race. Leaving his property empty. If anyone stayed behind to keep an eye on things, it would probably be that young man Petrikoff had took on, the one who didn’t say much and lived in the shed out back.
My trap was empty, so I hid myself in some brush and waited, the thoughts in my head churning and grinding against each other so loud I felt certain every animal in the woods would hear and stay away. But after a spell, a fox come slinking out of the trees. About ten feet from the creek, he stopped short. Sniffed the ground, then circled round a spot in the snow that didn’t look no different from any other spot. I held my breath. His ears, each one big as a plate, facing forward. He stopped, lowered his head. Waited. Then launched into the air and come arcing down, face-first into the snow, his hind legs and tail the only parts visible till he resurfaced with a mouse between his teeth.
I should of took that fox. I was hungry and cold and feverish and if I went much longer without some kind of warmth I would get even sicker. But I sat and watched it hold the mouse between its jaws and crunch down on its body, and its reddish-orange coat made me think of Mom’s coat, the only bright thing against the whiteness as she stood at the mouth of the driveway. Till she turned back, come inside the house. Never passing the house to go into the woods the way I would of done.
When the fox slinked off, I stood, too, pocketed my knife, and headed home, my stomach aching worse than ever but my mind certain.
16
Sometimes I would catch Mom watching me. I would look up from sewing booties for our dogs’ feet or chipping frozen piss from their houses, and there she would be, hands shoved in the pockets of her coat, her eyes on me. A strange expression on her face, or no expression at all. When Dad was irritated with her he would call her temperamental, fickle, words that sent her into a rage but only meant you couldn’t predict what mood she might be in.
Sit with me, she would say other times and I would perch on the edge of the couch near her till she put an arm round me and pulled me close. I don’t bite, she whispered in my ear. I had come into the den more times than I could count to find her and Scott cuddled up in the same spot, reading together or her teaching him how to use her complicated-looking camera. There was always something between them, I understood, invisible strings that kept them close, while if anything tied me to Mom, it was only her understanding that I was different from Scott, that my needs was different. That’s what I thought for a long time.
Tell me about your day, she said when I still smelled like snow and wet wool after hours in the woods. So I described the windless afternoon and the trees furred in hoarfrost, how the brief sun that day had found diamonds in the snow, they glittered loud as a song in the soundless wood.
She stroked my hair while I talked. You’re so warm, she whispered.
Her moods would last days, weeks sometimes. She would grow paler than normal and stay in bed long past morning, and Dad would ask if she was feeling all right. Then, one night, I would wake to find her gone, her red coat floating in the dark while I gazed on her from the window that overlooked the driveway.
I only had a few days before the Iditarod ceremonial start, but a few days was more than I needed. The trick is to go just long enough, and not too long. By the next day, my stomach yawned and snapped like a fish on a bank gasping for water. By afternoon, it clutched like a fist, and that evening as the whole family sat round the dinner table, Dad complimenting Jesse on how tender and juicy the burgers was, the meat stuck to the roof of my mouth, dry as sawdust. When I finally got it down, my belly lurched and I got up from the table and run to the toilet.
When I didn’t come back out, Dad knocked on the bathroom door and said, Trace? You okay in there?
The taste of vomit was thick on my tongue. I flushed, then leaned against the sink and splashed water on my face, drank from my own cupped palm. Seen in the mirror what Dad would see when I opened the door.
Jesus Christ, kiddo, he said and put his hand on my forehead.
I don’t got a fever, I told him.
You look like death on toast.
Thanks, I said and give him a weak smile.
No going off in the woods tomorrow, okay? he said. I think you need a day in bed.
I’m okay, I said. I need to check my traps.
Jesse can check them for you.
But—
Do as I say. He put his arms round me and rested his cheek on the top of my head. I closed my eyes and let my whole weight sink into him.
Go on, now, he said. Rest up. You don’t want to miss your big race.
No, sir.
His eyes on me as I climbed the stairs. For that moment, I changed my mind. I didn’t want to listen to my own stomach gnaw at my insides. I wanted to push past him and run to the woods, drink the first critter I found. Then put my dogs on the line and run, because I had a race to train for. I wanted to slide into the yard after a hundred miles and be greeted by Dad’s smile, the way he always raised one hand, not a wave but like saying, Here I am, always waiting on you to come back. Over the last couple months, he’d worked just as hard as I done to get me ready for my first Iditarod and even though I knew he’d understand if I dropped out on account of being sick, I also knew that if I didn’t race, at least a part of him would be disappointed.
Trudging up the stairs, I glanced down at the kitchen and seen Scott and Jesse, both of them watching me head to bed at seven o’clock. My eyes found Jesse’s. Concern on his face, concern for me. When I got to the second floor, I heard him ask Dad, Everything okay?
No, I thought. But it would be. I would make sure it was.
The next day, I didn’t get out of bed till Helen come round. She took one look at me and become the nurse she was, took my temperature and shooed me back into bed, piled blankets on me and give me something to rub into my skin, something else to swallow with water. When I heard her tell Dad she thought he ought to take me into town, I pushed my blankets back and hauled myself to the bathroom, my knife in my hand. Made the smallest cut in the crook of my arm. Watched myself in the mirror after, as the color come back to my cheeks, the dullness gone from my eyes. Rolled my sleeve down, over the cut I’d made.
When I opened the door I found Helen about to knock.
I was just going to check on you, she said. You aren’t nauseated, are you? Dizzy?
Matter of fact, I’m feeling pretty good, I told her.
You do look better.
She put a hand against my cheek. I knew she was only feeling for fever, but my stomach dropped when she touched my face. Her hand so unlike Dad’s, which was broad and calloused. Unlike Jesse’s, which roamed over me, urgent, as generous as his touch was, it was always wanting something, too. Helen touched my cheek, and I thought of all the times Mom had done the same.<
br />
I’m okay, I said.
I know you’re probably itching to get on a sled, Helen said. But please do me a favor and don’t go outside today. Give yourself a day to mend.
I nodded. Can I give you a hand in the kitchen?
She smiled. Of course you can. It’s nice of you to offer.
I sat at the table and watched more than I helped, Helen give me vegetables to chop for a salad while she readied dinner. She moved like a bird about the room, lighting in one spot then sailing across the room to fetch something from the pantry. When Dad come in from feeding the dogs, the two of them beamed like kids to see each other. A surge of warmth come over me, though no one had thought to stoke the fire in the woodstove that evening. When Helen left after dinner, I waved as she pulled her Jeep out of the drive, sad to see her go, though her being round made things more troublesome for me.
One sip of my own blood wasn’t much, and by the next morning I felt woozy and looked pale enough to play up how sick I was. When I didn’t get out of bed round my usual time, Dad come in to check on me.
How you feeling, Tracy Sue? He pushed my sweaty hair out of my face. Seems like you were getting better, and now this.
I’m fine, I said. I’ll be on the back of a sled tomorrow morning.
He sighed. Looked round my room, the soft glow of the lamp in the corner, the bookshelves he’d made me, filled mostly with books he’d either suggested or give me when I wanted to learn something new, the rocking chair he’d built Mom when she was pregnant with me. She’d used it when Scott come along, too, then it got moved to the den somewhere along the line, but after she died I drug it up to my room. Sometimes I would sit in it, rock back and forth, and think of her with a baby in her arms. How she must of worried over me, over Scott. Sometimes I think if I hadn’t, she’d told me, you might not be like you are. How loud I must of cried to make her decide to do what she done.
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