The Wild Inside

by Jamey Bradbury

  All right. Let me ask Chris’s mom if I can stay a couple days.

  I watched Homer and Canyon, the only two dogs still at home with me, pace the kitchen while I waited for Scott to come back to the phone. Concentrating on the click of their toenails on the wood floor, counting their steps to keep myself calm. Finally, Scott was in my ear again, telling me Mrs. Lester said he was welcome for as long as we needed, and could she do anything for me?

  No, thanks, I told him. Be good.

  And just like that, I was alone. I would be, till Hatch showed up. All I had to do now was be ready.

  17

  A biting wind kicked up and whistled round the corners of the house. I hunted and checked traps, but with the wind so harsh and no dogs to pull my sled quickly down the trail, I stuck close to home Tuesday and didn’t bother to go out at all Wednesday. I tried to read, but my eyes wandered away from the page, my ears perked for the sound of another person nearby. I kept the radio on for race updates. If Hatch was smart, he was listening to the radio, too. He would know that Dad had dropped back a few spots but still blasted through the Finger Lake checkpoint and on to Rainy Pass. But the next stretch of the race, from Rainy Pass to Rohn, could be treacherous with glare ice. Then there was the Dalzell Gorge, a two-hundred-foot drop followed by a stretch of trail that crisscrosses over a half-froze creek. And if he got through that, he’d have to deal with the Farewell Burn next, all gravel and sandbars. Three hard stretches, three chances for Dad to run into bad luck, scratch the race, and come home early. Hatch couldn’t risk waiting much longer.

  Thursday morning I wore paths in the snow all over the yard walking from the house to the barn to the shed to the dog yard. Anxious and desperate to be in the woods. I went down the trail as far as my first trap, but come back fast as I could, the yard still empty. I took Dad’s shotgun from the cabinet where he kept it, made sure it was loaded with the safety on, and propped it in the corner of the kitchen. I honed my knife.

  That afternoon, Jesse called from the McGrath checkpoint to say he’d heard that Dad had left Nikolai round one a.m. just ahead of the start of a light snow. He was still running near the middle of the pack but he planned on taking his twenty-four-hour layover at McGrath, get some rest, and let the mushers ahead of him break the trail. He’d dropped Fly back in Rohn on account of fatigue, but the rest of the team was running strong.

  What about you? Jesse said. Everything okay?

  If you mean have I had any visitors, the answer’s no, I told him.

  He was quiet a spell. Then, Maybe he won’t come.

  Or maybe Hatch was in the woods right now, watching the house. Or prowling up the trail, a low rumble in his throat as he got closer. I thought it, but didn’t say it.

  The wind kicked up even harder, moaning through the yard. Homer and Canyon, who usually barked themselves silly four or five times a day till we let them out, curled up on the couch and didn’t seem interested in moving any farther than their food bowls. I rolled from room to room like a tumbleweed. Built a fire in the woodstove, then another in the fireplace, just because I didn’t know what else to do. Sat down in front of the fire to sharpen my knife, then got back up after a few minutes to check a sound I thought I’d heard outside.

  Scott called to see if it was okay to come back home. He wouldn’t say it, but he sounded tired of his friend, cranky and out of sorts, ready for his own bed and books and dogs.

  Just give me one more night, I told him and hoped it was all I would need.

  I tried to read.

  I thawed some stew for dinner.

  I whittled some, and thought about what I would do with Scott if Hatch didn’t show up tonight. Let the curls of wood fall to the floor.

  Swept the floor.

  Round eight thirty, I opened the door to let the retired dogs out, and the wind cut through me, fired bits of snow like embers at my cheeks. The dogs whined and hid just inside the mudroom, till I shoved them both toward the door. Just go! I hollered and my voice was lost in the gale.

  I waited with the door closed, fed another log to the woodstove, then opened the door again and whistled. Canyon come sprinting back inside and dropped onto the floor like he’d run the whole Iditarod, but Homer didn’t follow.

  Goddammit, I muttered and pulled on a coat.

  The wind whipped across the snow and sent it swirling, it become a thick curtain impossible to see through. I slid my feet forward to feel for the first step on the back stoop, my hand out. In a brief moment when the wind died and the air cleared, I spotted Homer, standing at the end of the driveway.

  Homer! I shouted but the wind snatched my voice away.

  I started toward the driveway, hoping he wouldn’t suddenly decide to bolt. If he did, he was on his own. There wasn’t no searching for him in whiteout conditions.

  Of course I should of known, even before I got to her, which dog it was. Should of known that if I tried to pet her fur my hand would go right through her.

  When I reached Old Su, she looked up at me, barked, then trotted away, down the drive. I blinked and expected she would vanish, or at least be lost in the tumbling snow, but she was still visible, every now and then the snow let up and I would glimpse her, twenty feet away, forty, now nearly to the place where the driveway cut through the trees.

  I run after her.

  I got a break from the wind when I reached the trees, protected for about a quarter of a mile, till I reached the end of the drive and stood on the shoulder of the highway. The wind slicing through my coat.

  Su was there, maybe a dozen yards away, walking south along the side of the road, toward the village. Except she wasn’t alone. Even in the dark, with no light or moon shining down and the snow flying, I could make out Mom’s red coat.

  I followed her. A car trundled by, moving slow, and for a long moment its headlights lit the road. She paused on the shoulder, silhouetted, waited for the car to pass.

  She never did talk much about how she’d hunted when she was a little girl. She’d told me about running wild in the woods, disappearing for hours or even days and coming home with tangled hair, covered in dirt. In blood, too, most likely, though she never mentioned that part. She’d only said she’d been a wild thing. Till she decided to tame herself.

  She took a few more steps, then stopped short. Crouched down. Minutes had passed, or hours, I couldn’t tell. The evening had cinched tight, the snow had nowhere to go, it filled my eyes and blotted out everything but her.

  All the questions I should of asked her but never did. All the ones I did ask, only for her to dodge a straight answer. Why hadn’t I insisted on answers, like how, exactly, she had stopped herself drinking? Or why people and animals was so different, and how she knew. What had happened to the boy who’d got lost in the woods when she was little. Why she wouldn’t go into the woods alone. Where she went when she snuck out at night. I remembered holding those questions back, afraid she would spook and scurry away, shut me out.

  She knelt on the shoulder of the road. This far outside the village, in this weather, in the dark, she didn’t have to hide herself.

  Why the trash bin in her bathroom was so often filled with scraps of tissue soaked red.

  Why she was so often sick, and so quickly well again.

  When I thought of how she died, I used to wonder what she was thinking when the truck hit her. If time had stretched out as she flew through the air, as flakes spun round her, like floating in a sea of snow. And I wondered what she was doing out, middle of the night, walking along the highway’s edge.

  She hunched over the body. You’d find them flattened in the middle of the road or thrown to the shoulder, those that had met their end crossing the highway. Long dead. Long cold.

  I had roamed the woods for days at a time with no catch. I knew what it was like to go without. How you become desperate enough you will take whatever you can get. How you look at your own arms, the cuts you’ve made, dizzy with the loss of blood, and realize you’ve already taken to
o much. All you want is something warm. And if there’s nothing warm, then you will settle for anything that will stop the ache inside you.

  I didn’t know I was crying till a sob wrenched itself from me. I covered my face and wept, aching for her. Aching after her. She was just a few feet from me, close enough for me to ask her anything, but I didn’t have no more questions. I only wanted to tell her to stay. Not to hide.

  But when I took my hands away, she was already gone.

  No moon, no beams of light from cars driving toward me as I turned round and headed for home. Nothing but snow, thick as a wall. The driveway, soft with accumulation. If I hadn’t been blinded by the storm. If my own head hadn’t been filled with longing for her. If my eyes had seen what was in front of me instead of what was inside me, I might of noticed the fresh tire tracks, leading to the house.

  Sometimes I think maybe she never did get hit by that truck. I went to her funeral so I know full well she is nothing but a pile of ashes that Dad scattered in the raised beds where she used to plant her garden. But sometimes I let myself believe she tricked us all, that whoever those ashes was, they wasn’t my mother. That my real mother had planned all along to take to the woods that night. She didn’t head for the highway like usual but down the trail, till she come to a clearing in the brush and boulders and snow, where she could see the rolling land and the mountains, and she let herself be pulled onward, into the wild. She descended then climbed, and every step took her farther from her old life. Closer to what she always knew she was. What she knew she’d always be. What she’d told me time and again I could run away from the moment I chose to, the moment I had a good enough reason, when all along she’d known what I know now, that you can’t run from the wild inside of you.

  Taillights stopped me at the bend in the drive. Two red eyes that flickered in the dark, in the blowing snow, before they went out completely and I heard a car door open and close. I slipped and nearly fell as my feet found a new direction, away from the house and toward the kennel. I’d missed him on the road, the same snow that now hid me from him had blocked his headlights, or I’d been too distracted by ghosts to notice them. And now he was on my doorstep, or working his way round the corner of the house, searching for the shed. Quiet, grateful for the wail of the wind to mask his approach.

  I reached the kennel and pulled the door closed behind me and the constant noise fell away, the whine of the wind muffled by the walls, and for a moment I felt like I’d gone deaf. I could hear my own heart, thudding hard in my chest.

  I needed to move, but I was stuck. Pulled in so many directions at once, I couldn’t move at all. My mind like a moth inside a clutched fist. It’s contrary, the way some critters will go still when a predator is nearby, instead of running or hiding or fighting back. But I understood it now, the way every possibility can seem like a mistake, so you end up not making any decision at all.

  I shook my head, like to clear it. That wasn’t me. I had the advantage, Hatch thought I was inside the house. I could come from behind, ambush him before he even knew what happened. But Dad’s gun was propped in the corner of the kitchen where I’d left it. My eyes darted round the barn. Dad’s workbench, with the big saw. Dozens of harnesses hung from nails. Axes, hammers, even the wrenches and screwdrivers in Dad’s toolbox, the whole kennel full of tools that could be used as weapons but none of them a sure thing. I was strong, I had pinned Jesse when I felt half dead, and now, after several days of hunting and drinking, I was better than well. But I was still a girl. Stronger than most, but I wasn’t sure I could kill a grown man if it come down to a hand-to-hand fight. I needed distance to kill Hatch, and certainty. I needed the shotgun.

  The wind died all at once, a lull in the storm. I held still, my ears aching from listening so hard. Quiet outside. He could be inside the house by now, or in the shed. Anywhere.

  I waited for a surge in the wind then opened the kennel door. A gale caught it, nearly wrenched the door from my hand. I gripped hard and pressed my whole body against it to get it shut. Then stood with the wind wrapping itself round me, bits of ice and snow biting at my face. I turned. Let instinct and memory lead me in the direction of the house, invisible in the flying snow. Everything invisible.

  I cleared my head and felt my senses sharpen. Tried to think of Tom Hatch as a creature I was hunting. To feel him out there, wherever he was. Just another animal.

  A dog started to bark. Homer.

  I inched forward, skirting the dog yard, I thought. I couldn’t see the light of the lamp or feel whether the ground under my feet was ice or snow. Couldn’t tell if Hatch was across the yard or inches away. I put my hands out, certain I would bump into him, I flinched at the thought of it. The wind shifted, pushed at me like a palm, urging me forward. Something inside me give way and I broke into a run, hoping I was headed the right direction. Moving blind through the snow. Closer to the house, to the gun. Fast as I could, till I run directly into Hatch.

  His hands grabbed me, his fingers round my arm, his other hand clutched my coat. I think he shouted. His voice taken by the wind. I tried to pull loose, but he held fast, fingers digging into my arm. He towered over me, so tall his face seemed miles above me, too far away to make out in the dark and the storm. His body pressed against mine, same as when he’d took Jesse behind the barn.

  My free hand in my pocket, fumbling.

  His hands searching. The palm of his glove, sudden and rough against my cheek. His hot breath on my skin.

  I drew my knife out, windmilled my other arm from his grip. Unfolded the blade. I understood without thinking hard that the blade wasn’t long enough to slice through all his layers and still pierce the skin.

  Tracy? The voice faint in the wind.

  No! I heard Jesse say, his voice ringing out inside me.

  My knife the only bright thing in the white and the black. It gleamed as I slashed, a straight line across his neck that opened like a mouth.

  Tracy, said Helen.

  She didn’t fall. Her arms dropped, then she raised one hand, put it to her neck. For a second I seen her clear, and she seen me. Then the wind rose again and the snow hid her from me, so the memory I have of her looking down at her own palm, studying the blood that run out of her, I know I must of only imagined that. I had sliced a hundred necks, drained the life out of countless animals by knowing exactly where to cut. It is a fast way to kill, only a matter of seconds, the blood stops going to the brain and the animal is quickly gone. No time for Helen to gape at me, a question in her eyes.

  But plenty of time for me to understand what I done.

  I folded in half and let loose a stream of vomit, it splattered against my boots and the snow on the ground went yellow with it. My insides heaved, everything solid in me coming loose and the earth rising up, the ground itself rolling and cracking and opening under me and swallowing me. I wished it would.

  She was only a shape on the ground. Her eyes filling with snow. A black puddle growing under her.

  I tell myself what I done next, I done on account of I owed her something. After taking her life, I meant to carry her with me, like a burden.

  I knelt next to the shape of Helen. Crouched over her.

  Drank.

  18

  I find myself in a cool, dark barn, my fingers round the udder of a cow, and my pop’s hand over mine, his breath tickling my ear as he tells me, Giver her a squeeze, the milk’ll come slow at first, there she goes— The musty, pleasant smell of the barn and the solid flank of the cow and the milk hits the bucket with a metallic hiss and Pop lets go, he don’t smile easy but now he grins and a joy wells up in me so intense I nearly topple over.

  The sun setting over fields of hay behind my family’s house and lighting everything orange and yellow and the queer longing it fills me with, unexplainable and palpable.

  My brothers and sisters, shouting from other rooms, fighting or laughing, the stench of my oldest brother’s room, dank and sharp, like dirty socks and sweat and something I can
’t quite place. The hothouse heat cut by a cooling breeze, the five of us lined up on the screened-in porch and trying to sleep but waking each other with pinches and fart sounds and giggles till Ma pokes her head out and tells us, Settle down, her voice dressed up in its stern outfit but still amused underneath.

  The quiver in my belly when the boy with black hair brushes past me in the hallway at school. The heaviness of my private parts, a dampness, when I think about him, touching myself.

  A thunderstorm raising the hair on my neck, the feeling of my ma’s arms round me.

  Other things, everything. A fish flopping on a grassy bank, pride and regret at the shot that killed my first deer, the warm tang of beer on my tongue, my whole self buzzing with coffee, bleary eyed, the words in my nursing books fuzzing together. My own hand stopping a man’s blood, pressed against his chest, and the mothball smell of the closet I hide myself in, giving into a minute of crying the first time a patient dies on my watch.

  I cry, too, overwhelmed, at my first sight of Alaska, the mountains here grander than anything I’ve seen back home.

  And I make the bed I’ve slept in, a bed that isn’t mine but where I have come to feel at home. Voices float up through the floorboards, children who don’t belong to me but who I care about, have grown to love, the boy who is generous and kind and easy, and the girl who is wary but quick, who wears her longing for her mother on her sleeve. And then he steps into the room and my pulse quickens and I could stay here, in this room, be part of this family, forever, if they see fit to let me.

  Days and months and years of love and hate and want and boredom and fear and contentment. A lifetime in one drink. The last drink, her last heartbeat. Her lifetime coursing through me, no longer coursing through her, as all round us the snow swept the land and howled like a wounded dog.

  19

  In the morning, I woke to the sound of a dog whimpering. I sat up, my whole body sore down to the bones, and snow cascaded off of me. Homer rose, too, licked my face, he had curled himself next to me in the night.