Snowhook

by Jo Storm

  “Jackass!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Jackass,” Hannah muttered again to herself as she struggled to turn the dogs around. They were pointing in the opposite direction to where Peter was heading.

  “Hey, give me some help!” she called, but he continued to ignore her and disappeared into the blowing snow, his snowshoes leaving wide, spongy-looking prints.

  It took some doing, but she got everyone turned, including the heavy sled. Nook and Rudy were used to being hauled around, so they moved without any trouble, but Bogey was like a lump, looking at her with his sad eyes and not understanding what she wanted until she basically lifted him — one side, then the other — into position. Sencha, who had a ticklish belly, jumped sideways out of the reach of Hannah’s hands every time she went to move her. Hannah spent more time untangling the line than actually getting the Dalmatian into position. The sled itself was half on its side after taking that sharp corner, and it was heavy with the packs, making it, too, almost impossible to move. She gritted her teeth and heaved and pulled, and finally the ragged line was pointing the other way.

  Her watch said 11:00 a.m., but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like a year had passed since she had slipped out the door, since she had decided not to hook up Sencha, since she had boiled the snow to make her breakfast and felt so proud of herself.

  None of it mattered, anyway. None of those feelings or memories mattered right now, because Peter was leading them and he had disappeared down the trail. She needed to catch up.

  “Huphuphup,” she called, and the sled started out.

  She caught up with him more quickly than she thought she would. Peter had stopped in place on the trail and was staring off to one side, into the trees, at … nothing that she could see.

  He heard the sled coming up behind and moved off the trail, stepping onto the unbroken part of the snow and almost falling over as only half of one snowshoe broke through the ice that lay underneath. His arms windmilled for a moment and he swore again, but got his balance back.

  “Stay away,” he said loudly.

  “What were you looking at?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Peter. He looked angry as he brushed the snow off his shoulders where it lay heavy and melting, leaving a darker trail of wet cloth in a ribbon down the front of him.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  He scowled at her. “A place,” he said.

  “Well, does it have a phone?”

  “No.” He peered at her, edging toward the back of the sled but staying on the unbroken snow, far from the gangline. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked.

  Hannah hesitated. She told him that her mother’s insulin vials had all been broken, although she didn’t say that she was the one who had broken them. She also didn’t tell him that she’d snuck on the sled without telling anyone. Standing in front of him, she felt suddenly that her story sounded lame, just blah blah blah insulin, and I need a phone. She wanted to make it sound more … interesting to listen to, but she was so tired, and her gut was on fire now, twisting and banging at her insides one minute, a dead weight the next. Her headache had never left either, and she was getting cold from the all-over sweat that had dried and the hole in her pant leg, and her eyes were itchy from the dried tears that sat in the corners of her eyes. She had never been so uncomfortable in her life.

  Her story seemed to do nothing but make Peter madder. He moved his head from side to side and then up and down the same way Scott did whenever he was saying bad things, right before Hannah’s dad would gesture toward her and Kelli and say, “Scotty boy, the girls are in earshot.” And his eyes got narrow, like he was questioning her. She felt herself flash hotly at the thought that he might not believe her.

  He probably thinks I did everything wrong, thought Hannah, because he’s sixteen and he thinks he’s all that.

  Then Hannah was distracted by movement, as all four dogs suddenly swung their heads to look back up the trail behind them, noses twitching. Even Sencha lifted her head and opened her mouth so she could get more scent through her mouth.

  Faintly, through the snow, they could hear something, a muffled grunting that Hannah realized was someone shouting.

  “Is that Jeb?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” said Peter. “She may have come back out to keep an eye on us. Or maybe it’s over and she’s looking for me.”

  Then there was a short, sharp sound that was muffled but had enough force to tear through the empty air between the snow and prick against their eardrums. A gunshot.

  All the dogs were spooked — Nook and Rudy shivered in place, Bogey sat upright, suddenly tense, and Sencha, unused to loud noises, skittered sideways, whining — and they all looked back at Hannah.

  “She must have found the bullets,” said Peter. For the first time, his wide grey eyes looked scared. Not angry or annoyed, but scared. The nakedness of his reaction shocked Hannah. “We hid them,” he continued, still looking back up the trail toward the cabin. “We hid them … but she must have found them.”

  The two teenagers stood there, unable to move in the teeming snow — their footprints were already disappearing under it.

  Hannah stood locked in place, a small part of her brain still trying to figure out how the sound of the gunshot had travelled through all the snow. Kelli would have appreciated working that out, she thought. Another part of her recognized that she was in shock.

  “We have to go, we have to go,” said Peter finally.

  “Okay, all right,” Hannah said. “Get in.” She motioned to the basket. It would be tight, but he could lie on top of the bags, and it would only be until they reached … wherever it was that Peter was aiming them toward.

  “No,” he said. He took a step back.

  Behind them, the shouts grew louder, sliding through the snowflakes more urgently. Jeb had found their trail despite the heavy snow. The hair on Hannah’s neck stood up again. She waited for the tinny sound of the gun, wondered if getting shot felt very painful, wondered how long it would take to die.

  “Let me drive,” Peter said.

  Hannah thought about how Peter stayed well away from the sled and never looked directly at any of the dogs, and she suddenly realized something: he was afraid of dogs.

  “They don’t listen to people who are afraid of dogs,” she snapped, angry that he hadn’t just admitted to it. “Get in the basket, Peter. Just get in.”

  The shouting behind them became more distinct; they could make out words in Jeb’s not-there tone of voice. Hannah shivered. Nook whined and began to line out.

  “Get in the basket or I’m leaving without you!”

  Peter got in the basket with an awkward lurch, his snowshoes hanging off one side. Hannah didn’t care. She called to the dogs — the words were barely out of her mouth when they all began to pull. She had grasped the handlebars, anticipating having to push the sled to start because of the extra weight, but the four dogs were powerful; even Sencha was straining against the gangline. The sled shot forward. Hannah took a few stumbling steps, then ran almost at full tilt to catch up. When she jumped on the runners the sled didn’t even creak, despite her lopsided balancing act. The dogs pulled strongly and smoothly. The force of the lurching sled bowed Peter’s legs, which were trailing his heavy snowshoes, and he struggled to get them off his feet as they raced away.

  The sled was much more weighted down now, so Hannah could feel every creak and groan of the frame. Under her feet, every clump of hardened snow, every chunk of broken ice snatched at the underside of the frame or lurched it sideways or upward, making the hide webbing stretch and groan.

  The dogs ran and ran. The trail, hidden under a heavy canopy of trees, did not have nearly as much debris on it as Hannah’s driveway or the road to the cabin had. These trees had not been weakened by years of wind or pollution, so they stood tall and strong. What fallen trees there were, the dogs skirted around.

  Peter finally got his snowshoes off and leaned ov
er the side, looking back. This caused the sled to skid on one runner, making it harder to pull. Hannah yelled at him to sit in the middle of the basket, and Peter slumped back down.

  At first, Hannah was so tense that she didn’t even dare look behind them, but eventually the stiff feeling in her neck ebbed away, and she started to see the trail in front of her as more than just an escape route. Nook slowed without prompting to a pace a little faster than a jog, and the four dogs loped along, their legs scissoring in economical motions that cut through the snowy cloth of the trail. They were entering a part of the forest where there were more deciduous trees than coniferous ones — maple and cherry and poplar, the thin poplar trunks looking like impossibly tall stalks of grey grass in the distance. To the left and right, the ground was smooth and ran into little hollows and hillocks, free of the big marshmallow bumps of boulders that jutted out around her family’s cabin.

  They topped a small hill, and below them, she could see more of the same kind of landscape. She noticed bits of yellow plastic at the bottoms of many of the maple trees: plastic-covered tin buckets hanging from spigots driven into the trees. They had entered a sugar bush, where the owner was collecting tree sap, which would be boiled down into maple syrup.

  “Stop!” said Peter.

  “What? Are we here?” Hannah looked around but saw nothing, just the trail stretching out, the green arms of far-off conifers and the thinner fingers of the birch and maple and poplar trees skinned in ice.

  “Just stop!”

  Finally, they did. Rudy and Nook immediately lay down, their tongues lolling. Bogey also lay down, but with his hind feet splayed out behind him like a frog as he tried to get as much of his belly as possible onto the cool snow. Sencha remained standing, small whines escaping her mouth more from habit than anything, Hannah thought.

  Peter had scrambled out of the basket as soon as they halted, not looking at her, and he moved off the path again. The snow was changing fast, no longer small, light flakes, but thick, heavy blobs with a cold, stinging wetness to them. It pelted them, the trees, the dogs. Peter was staring off into the trees again — looking at what, Hannah had no idea.

  “I think it’s going to storm again,” she said. “Are we close?”

  “No,” said Peter. He kept on staring around at the trees. Bogey began to whine, a surprisingly tinny sound coming from such a big, husky-looking dog.

  “Well, what are we supposed to do?” she snapped.

  “I don’t know!” shouted Peter. He bent his head and turned away from her even more. His shoulders twitched under his big heavy parka and Hannah thought, Now he’s crying, too!

  “We went the wrong way,” he said finally. His voice was phlegmy and low. “I … there’s a big sugar shack I go to when she … when she goes off like that. But you turned the wrong way, okay? I didn’t realize you turned the wrong way.”

  “Well, do you know where we are?”

  “No,” he said. “Not really.”

  “What? What do you mean, not really? Come on!”

  Peter made an arc with one gloved hand back toward the way they came. “I’m only allowed to ATV those trails, not this one.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s some older guys … this is the trail to Timmins. Some of the bush guys aren’t very nice. They don’t know me, not without my dad.”

  “Is everyone up here crazy?” she asked.

  “Shut up!”

  Hannah looked ahead on the trail. It was starting to become hazy in the distance as the warm air of the half snow hit the cold air above the snowpack.

  “How far away is it?”

  “How far away is what?” he asked, as though talking to her was the worst thing he could be doing with his time.

  She rolled her eyes. “Timmins.”

  He glared at her. “I don’t know. Farther than you can handle, anyway.”

  “How far?”

  “Too far to go with stupid dogs, that’s for sure.”

  “Jerk!”

  “Just shut up,” he said again.

  “Well, stop being a complete jerk!” she snapped back. Her voice rose into the snow but was smothered almost immediately, making her even more annoyed.

  Peter carefully pulled his mitt off and gave her the middle finger.

  They yelled at each other then for a long time, calling each other names and throwing things — mostly snow. Once Peter stepped toward her with his palms out, like he was going to shove her again, but she stepped forward, too, and he went back to calling her names. He called her a coward and other, worse things that only made her madder, and she threw words back at him until they were standing face to face just yelling swear words at each other, swear words that didn’t even make sense.

  Hannah had no idea how long they had been doing this (or how much longer they would have continued) when the sky suddenly lit up a shocking, blinding white, and there was an ear-splitting boom: thunder.

  They both jumped, startled. It was as though Hannah had been looking through a telescope at nothing but Peter’s angry eyes, but now she was seeing his stupid thick glasses and his stupid grey eyes and his stupid flat face with pimples all over his neck. The world popped back into focus and she felt the snow — no, it was freezing rain now — sliding down her neck and into her collar, wetting her hair. They could keep hating each other later; they had bigger problems right now.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They had to get out of the rain, Hannah knew. If the same weather cycle carried on — she realized with surprise that a part of her had been tracking it — that meant it would rain, and then it would get cold again. Very cold. And everything would freeze.

  They could go back to Jeb’s. She thought about that for a while, felt the weight of it in her mind, the longing for it all to be simple and easy: a fire going in the cabin and Jeb okay again, Jeb calling the right people and then going to get Kelli and their mom, and finally everyone together and warm and fed.

  Peter walked over to the side of the trail, and Hannah came and stood next to him. He pointed toward the forest.

  “Okay. I think there’s a hut a ways over there,” he said. “Well, it’s more a lean-to. It’s small, but there’s stuff in it.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Matches, a sleeping bag. We could stay there. Maybe. Sometimes she’s okay again right away.”

  “But not all the time?”

  “No,” he said after a pause. “Sometimes it’s hard for her for a while.”

  Hannah looked across at the snow that by now was almost up to the bottoms of the sap pails. In the summer, the spigots were at the level of her waist, which meant the snow was at least three feet deep.

  “We can’t take the sled on that,” she said, remembering how much effort it had taken to get across the yard when her mom had fallen.

  “We’ll go on snowshoes.”

  “What about the dogs?”

  He didn’t even look at them. “Leave them.”

  “I’m not leaving them!” she said.

  “Well, let them go, then. They’ll find someplace. They’ll go back to Jeb’s or something.”

  Hannah imagined Bogey trying to do anything without a human being around and almost laughed. Bogey had three priorities: get wet, chase balls, and lick the hands and faces of humans. If she took him off the gangline, he would just hover and get in the way.

  “They won’t leave.” Even if she could drive them off, did she want them going back to Jeb’s?

  “Well, they can’t come with us. It might not even be big enough to fit us.” Peter paused and looked at her, wiping the rain off the front of his glasses. “They’re just stupid dogs, Hannah.”

  “They got you away from Jeb, didn’t they?” she replied, and Peter’s hands clenched as he turned away.

  Hannah tried to think more, but the rain was starting to get into her collar, and it was getting her down. She put her hood up, which immediately made her wet face and neck steam.

  “I’m going to Timmins,�
�� she said. “I’ll take the trails.”

  “Anyway,” continued Peter, as if he hadn’t been a jerk the entire time they’d been together, “you don’t have the stuff we’d need to go all the way to Timmins.”

  Hannah felt herself puff up. “Like what?”

  “Matches, tinder, a knife, an axe, a sleeping bag —”

  “Got ’em,” she interrupted. She pointed at the sled. “I’ve got all that.”

  “Food?”

  “Yes,” she said. Food was a little more of a problem, since it was mostly boil-in-a-bag stuff that didn’t seem to fully stave off hunger. Even as she thought this, she felt her stomach roar back to life, even around the stomach ache she still had. She’d probably end up getting in trouble for using up all the food, too.

  “You have a tent? And two sleeping bags?” said Peter. His voice was still mean. He wants me to be wrong, she thought.

  “There’s a tent,” she said.

  “A winter tent?”

  “Duh,” she said, pointing at their surroundings.

  “But no sleeping bag for me?”

  “I wasn’t planning on your crazy freaking aunt waving a gun at us!”

  Peter grabbed Hannah’s jacket, yanking her close and making her hood fall half over her face so that she could see only the bottom part of his face, his mouth with short, even teeth as he said, “Stop … saying … that word … Hannah.” It was almost the same voice that he had used on Jeb in the clearing, as though she needed calming down, or as though he were saying it to calm himself.

  She shoved him away from her and he stumbled, but stayed upright.

  “We should go to the hut or just turn around and go back to Jeb’s,” Peter said.

  “I’m not going back there,” Hannah replied. “You don’t know how long the storm or Jeb’s … thing will last. I need to get to Timmins for my mom’s insulin.”

  “It’s faster to just go back,” he argued.

  “But how do we know Jeb will be okay?” said Hannah. “If she’s not, we’ll have to turn around again.”

  “I could at least get the snowmobile,” he said, but even he didn’t sound like he wanted to do that.