by Jo Storm
“Me, too. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” He handed her the flashlight and she put it in her pocket.
She pulled her sleeping bag out of its stuff sack and lay it out lengthwise, very close to Peter, leaving a small space on the other side between it and the tent wall. Then she crawled to the vestibule and looked at the two packsacks she had wedged there. They took up almost the entire space. She went through the blue one, making sure there was nothing in it but clothing, and took out two pairs of socks and her last pair of mittens.
The snow was piling up against the sled and the side of the tent. Hannah dragged the bag to the end of the sled and wedged it as well as she could up against the tent where the least amount of snow had drifted. The wind plucked at the handles of the packsack, at her hair, at anything that was loose.
She crawled back over to the dogs. Sencha was whining continuously now, her eyes and nose crusted with wind-blown little icicles. Hannah unhooked her from the gangline and the Dal leapt into her arms, trying to crawl into her coat. She grabbed Sencha’s collar firmly and took her into the tent, lifting the side of the sleeping bag so she could crawl in.
She played her flashlight quickly over Peter to make sure the dog wasn’t going to bother him. His eyes were closed and he looked asleep, but she saw glistening tracks down the sides of his face.
She moved the flashlight away quickly, went back to unhook Bogey, and then she brought him into the tent. The big Lab trampled right to the only open spot available, the space between her sleeping bag and the tent wall, and lay down.
Next Hannah unhooked both the sled dogs, rolled up the gangline around her fist, and crawled back with her other hand on Nook’s collar. She had left the vestibule open, and it flapped in the fresh onslaught of the wind, making Rudy nervous. He swung his head from side to side, watching it. Hannah threw the gangline inside, then reached up and pulled the vestibule zipper halfway down. She kept hold of Nook’s collar and began to push the lead husky in.
Nook’s butt hit the ground and she began resisting. She twisted her head away from Hannah, bending her head down to sniff the snow.
Something tugged at Hannah: that kernel of thought she had found at Jonny Swede’s. This time, it wasn’t a placeholder between two things, but it had that same quiet, grounded feeling of waiting. Now, though, it was wrapped around something — a memory.
Nook had twisted her head away and bent it downward. Hannah had seen that move before, from Sencha. I don’t understand this, I am nervous. Nook wasn’t showing rebelliousness, but nervousness.
Hannah loosened her pressure on Nook’s collar, and immediately the husky relaxed. She had to find a way to communicate that being in the vestibule was better than being outside in the blizzard.
The kernel tugged again. Hannah stared at the tent, willing whatever memory it was to come forward, but it didn’t. I am in the middle of a blizzard and I do not have time to wait! she yelled inside her head.
The wind howled, filling itself with snow and throwing it at her. The tent was dark and silent. She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and slowly pushed her breath out in a steady stream. At the end of the breath, she opened her eyes again. The vestibule was the same yellow as the plastic they used to cover the doors of the kennels in the winter. It flapped again in a quick upward motion, like when Nook poked her head out of her kennel in the mornings when someone came outside for the first time.
Kennel.
None of the sled dogs knew obedience commands like sit, stay, come, heel. But they knew gee, haw, line out … and they knew “kennel up” meant to go into the doghouse, whether it was their own, or the beige plastic crate for the vet, or the specially designed dog truck with two rows of dog boxes for transporting them to races.
Was that right? She ran through her thoughts and felt the kernel there.
Yes.
“Nook, kennel,” she said.
Nook nosed forward, then paused.
“Kennel up, Nook, let’s go.” Hannah used the everyday musher voice that said everything was fine.
The husky nosed forward again, looked back, then went into the vestibule. Hannah turned to the remaining sled dog.
“Rudy, kennel up.”
The poor wheel dog looked around in confusion; sled dogs each had their own kennel, or else they slept outside. Now it seemed Nook was in the only kennel there. She could almost see him thinking, Where do I go?
She grabbed his collar and backed into the tent, calling, “Kennel up, Rudy, let’s go, kennel,” and slowly he was coaxed into the shelter. Nook had claimed the most protected spot, between the supply pack and the shelf wall, but Rudy didn’t seem to care. He lay down by the vestibule entrance, and after Hannah zipped it down, he curled up with his nose sticking out so that he didn’t miss anything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Hannah woke up sweating and cramped, with her head crammed under a very heavy pillow and her legs jammed up against something soft but unyielding. She tried to lift her head free of the pillow, but couldn’t. Instead, it became heavier, pushing down on her head, suffocating her.
She ducked her head down, sliding it out from underneath the pillow, and tried to sit up, gasping. She had awful vertigo. It was dark, and the air was warm and moist — was she in some sort of low cave? Her head banged on something hard as she sat up, making her yelp with pain and surprise. Then her sleeping bag rustled and Sencha’s brown nose came into view. She had been lying across one of Hannah’s legs, and now that she had moved, the feeling came back painfully. Hannah lay back, trying to bring her knee up to her chest as she rubbed it. The Dalmatian immediately flopped down again, half on top of her, grumbling.
Hannah’s eyes adjusted to the dark, and the vertigo ebbed away, no doubt helped by the pins and needles in her foot and calf. Her mind whirled with thoughts: Tent. Dogs. Peter. Snow. Jeb. Flooded trail. Dog fight. Bus outhouse. Sawdust for dinner.
What she had thought was a pillow was actually snow load; the tent had half collapsed under the weight of it. Bogey had been forced to move and was wedged into a tiny space on the door side of the tent.
Hannah’s rubbing elbow bumped against Peter in his sleeping bag.
“What the …” he said sleepily. “Why is it so hot in here?”
It was hot. There were four dogs and two humans, and they were half-buried in the snow; their tent had become a hot, humid, uncomfortable winter dwelling.
“The dogs,” she said, still grimacing.
“Dogs?” he said, still groggy. She was close enough that she could smell his breath, and it was terrible. Her own was probably just as gross. She turned her head and inched down in the sleeping bag.
The pain in her leg had dulled to an irritating throb, and she pulled out the two pairs of socks she had rescued from the packsack before lugging it outside. “Here,” she said, tossing a pair at Peter. She pulled up her long underwear and pulled off her own socks, checking her feet. She used the tops of the dirty socks to dry them, carefully sponging between her toes to wick away the moisture. She checked them for the telltale white spots that meant frostbite, but they looked fine. There are advantages to having a Dalmatian foot warmer, she thought.
She put the new socks on and turned to Peter. He was awake now, warily watching the dogs.
“It stinks in here,” he said.
“It’s probably you,” she said. “Let’s see your leg.”
He unzipped his sleeping bag and rolled it back, exposing the wounded leg. They had slit his long johns up to his knee so that they didn’t press on the wound, but would still provide some warmth to the back of his leg. She carefully moved the fabric out of the way. The dressing on the wound had a patch of dried blood on it, and some spots here and there. She would have to change the bandage. She rolled off his sock.
Peter looked down, grimacing.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Yes. Stop asking.”
“I have to ask. Does it hurt more, or less than before?”
H
e pulled off his toque and pushed back his tangled hair. It was so greasy now that it stood straight up, flopping over in big mounds at the top.
“About the same. Maybe less — but I need more Tylenol. And I’m starving.”
“Starving is good.”
“I know that, bossy britches,” he said. “That’s why I’m telling you.”
“That isn’t good, though,” she said. Below the wound, his foot was a chalky white. All the blood was pooling near the wound, and not enough was getting down to his foot. She moved down so that his foot was between her knees. She looked up at him.
“This is probably going to hurt.”
He bared his teeth and blew out a short breath through his nose. “Wouldn’t be fun if it didn’t, eh?”
She picked up his foot and began to rub it, using as gentle a motion as she could. Peter shifted and wiped sweat off his face, hissing as the blood began to move into his foot. She knew he must be in real pain since he didn’t even swear, just grunted and hissed as the blood began to circulate and the white skin began to colour.
She massaged his foot for a long time, moving her fingers in small, gentle circles, paying extra attention to his toes. It took a long time for his baby toe to start getting some colour, but eventually it did. When there were no more white patches anywhere that she could see, she was relieved.
“Is it okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, no frostbite.”
“Whew.”
She put his foot down. “I’ll grab the first-aid kit and let the dogs out.”
He nodded, pulling off his other sock, and began to inspect his foot.
Hannah told the dogs to stay, unzipped the tent and the vestibule, and clamoured out.
She squinted as she emerged into the sunlight. The blizzard had passed; the sky was bright blue, with only the pale early morning sun marring it. The sunlight hit the quarry’s sloped sides and flat planes and turned the pit into a giant mirror, bouncing light back and forth across the face of the snowpack so brightly that after a few seconds, even squinting, Hannah saw black spots in front of her eyes. She ducked back into the tent.
“Holy crap, it’s bright out there,” she said.
“Thank God,” said Peter. He had finished changing his socks and was putting his grimy woollen pants on.
“I can barely see.”
He tapped his glasses. “Tinted. Not a problem for me.”
She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him.
“The Inuit make snow goggles from leather,” he said.
“Yeah, let me just pull my trusty polar bear hide out of my pocket, genius,” she said.
“I’m just telling you there are other things you can do, smartass.”
She looked around the tent, surveying their rumpled sleeping bags and stuff sacks, her discarded socks and scarf. She yanked her toque down low, then wrapped the scarf around the top of her head, over her face, and down to her neck, tucking the ends in and leaving just the barest slit for her eyes.
“How’s that?” she asked.
“Good. Now I don’t have to stare at that pimple on your chin anymore.”
She turned and went back out to the vestibule. At the door, she couldn’t resist turning back to the dimness of the tent. “You’ve had a piece of dried snot on your cheek since yesterday morning,” she said, then turned and called the dogs out into the sunlight.
Now that she was no longer blinded by the light and the reflection off the quarry floor, she could see that the blizzard winds had swept most of the snow off the trail they were on, rushing it past the top lip and down into the quarry.
The dogs wandered around while Hannah trudged over to right the sled. They hadn’t had any meat the night before and must be starving. They needed to be fed before anything else, so that the food was digested enough to allow them to pull. It might delay their departure, but they needed to eat.
The sled was almost totally buried, with only the top runner and a hand width of the basket sticking out of the snowdrift. Hannah had to dig for a long time until she could tip the sled back upright. She opened the container of dog food. There were still more than a dozen portions left. She could give the dogs twice, even three times their normal amount and still be okay for a few days. But for now, they just needed enough to keep going. Maybe tonight they would get extra. She pulled out four portions and opened them and distributed them among the dogs, Nook first.
While the dogs ate, she ducked back into the tent and opened the supply pack to get out the first-aid kit.
“About time,” said Peter. He had stuffed the sleeping bags into their stuff sacks. They were getting to be very efficient. On the other hand, besides the sleeping bags and the packsack in the vestibule, there was nothing else to pack but their water bottles.
Hannah wondered where Peter had put the dirty socks. Her scalp itched, and she scratched it through her toque. What she wouldn’t have given for a bath or a shower right now.
Peter had managed to get his pants on and put a sock on his good foot. He sat waiting with the ends of his bandage unwrapped. Hannah opened the first-aid kit and took out the last of the gauze and bandages. Together, they peeled back the old bandage, exposing the skin to the air and making Peter hiss again. This time he was sitting up and could clearly see what was happening.
Hannah pulled away the bandages and placed them to the side. The skin looked angry and swollen, puffy at the bottom where the shearing pin had initially dug in, and again in the middle from when his weight had shifted, driving the pin more deeply into the muscle. Peter leaned over to get a better look, and his foot flexed. Hannah saw the muscle move in the wound and her gut roiled.
“Damn it, that hurts,” he said.
“The muscle is cut.”
“Looks like it. Flexing hurts a lot.” He examined the wound. “Should we let it air out a bit?”
“I don’t know.”
He lifted his eyebrows, making his glasses bob up. “Is it possible?”
“Shut up,” she said, but she was starting to understand that Peter’s way of talking was different than hers, and that he was teasing her because he was worried. He wasn’t trying to make her angry, so she’d said shut up without any heat, the same way she would have said it to Kelli, like she knew that he never would shut up, but still.
She used parts of the old bandage to wipe up what she could, then applied antibacterial ointment from the first-aid kit. Peter wiped his hands with snow and then helped to spread ointment over the wound, biting his tongue or gasping whenever he hit a tender spot. Hannah bound it up with the last of their bandages.
“Can we pull the sock over it today?” she asked.
“I guess we can try. It’s starting to itch already,” he said. “Driving me crazy.”
They rolled the sock up carefully, letting the elastic hold the bandages close against his skin.
She watched him roll his long johns back down, and his pant leg, and then she handed him an energy bar.
“I have one,” he said, patting his pocket.
“I know. I found these yesterday. Two extra.”
“Sweet,” he said, tearing it open and eating it in three bites.
“Wait here and I’ll bring the sled,” she said.
“Knock it off, Hannah, I’m feeling better this morning. I can help.”
She gestured to her steel and plastic snowshoes. “You don’t have any snowshoes.”
She turned away from his frustrated face and went out to pull the sled over to the tent opening.
“Get the other bag,” he said, pulling the battered emergency blanket from his pocket. “I’ll put this stuff in. Do we need water?”
She shook her bottle. “I have more than half a bottle.”
“Me, too.”
“We’ll wait, then,” she said. She wanted to get going while the sun was out and it wasn’t snowing for once.
“I can do the tent while you do the dogs,” said Peter.
“Make sure it’s all packed up
tight. It’s tough to get it all into the bag.”
“It won’t matter, anyway,” he responded. “We only have to get past the lake now, and it’s really close. Timmins is right after that.”
She pointed up to the top of the quarry. “And we almost fell over that yesterday because we got trapped in a blizzard. Who knows what could happen.”
“Fine,” he snapped, then nodded more firmly. “Yeah. Okay, I got it.”
He handed her the rolled-up gangline, then tossed the rest of the gear out of the tent and began to take it down, limping heavily and coughing every now and then.
Hannah attached the gangline to the sled bridle and hooked up the dogs before setting the snowhook to keep them secure. All the dogs had slept in their harnesses, and she went over them carefully, checking Rudy’s paw and reapplying salve to Sencha’s belly. Nook’s harness sore had healed, but as Hannah ran her palms over the husky’s flanks, she could again feel the old girl trembling. Hannah knelt in front of the husky, pulling her ruff around until they were eye to eye. Nook kept trying to look down or around, anywhere but at Hannah, and each time she looked up the white slope of the quarry trail to where it disappeared over the lip, her trembling increased. But her nose was cold, her feet were fine, and when Hannah parted her thick fur to check her skin, it was a nice healthy pink, not wet or splotchy. Nook is probably just happy to get out of the confines of the tent, thought Hannah.
She patted the lead dog’s sides and stood up. Peter had the tent down and was stuffing the poles into the bag, being careful not to ram them in, in case they ripped the still-wet tent walls.
“You’ll have to dry this tent when you can,” he said.
Hannah barely heard him; she was looking at the empty space where the tent had been. At one end was the imprint of the sled where she had dug it out, then a small, empty space, then the quarry wall.
“Where’s the bag?” she asked.
“Which bag?”
“The blue packsack with all the clothing in it. Gloves. Batteries. The flashlight. The radio. The ground sheet for the tent.” She stumbled, not wearing snowshoes, over the open ground to the place where she had wedged it, scurrying her hands through the small mounds of snow to see if it had been buried. But it was gone, blown away by the nighttime winds.