by Jo Storm
“What are y’all doing out here?” he asked.
“She has to get to Timmins,” said Peter. “Her mom’s sick.”
“And he has to get home,” said Hannah. “His aunt needs him. But he fell on a plow, so he needs to see a doctor first.”
Peter nodded and pulled back his tattered wool pants to expose the long white bandage spotted with blood. “It’ll need stitches, I’m pretty sure.”
“Looks like it,” said the man, crouching next to the fire, but on the other side from them, not too close. He pushed back his hood and removed his goggles. His face was lined the way faces are when they spend a lot of time outside: deep creases around the eyes and the skin under his chin hanging slightly away from his neck. His expression was focused and unsmiling, though Hannah thought that wasn’t its natural state. It looked like a face that smiled more than it was serious.
“Is that why you’re out here?” continued the man. “To get help?”
“Yes,” said Hannah.
“How long have you been going?”
She calculated quickly — Jeb’s, the shortcut and Jonny Swede’s, the quarry and the storm. “This is our fourth night,” she said. She pointed down the shore the way he had come. “That’s the way, right? To Timmins?”
“Yep, that’ll take you to Timmins.”
“How far is it?” asked Peter. He leaned forward, balancing his bowl on his good leg.
“Not far. Maybe twenty minutes by snowmobile. More on that, I’d imagine,” he said, gesturing to the dog sled.
Peter looked at Hannah, and his eyes were glowing. “We’re almost there! My other aunt lives in town. Aunt Peggy. She has a car.”
The man looked at them, his eyes widening. “Peggy Purcell? You’re Scott’s boy?”
“Yes. I’m Peter.”
The man nodded. “Your aunt, eh? Jenny, is it? She’s the veteran.”
“How did you know?” asked Hannah.
“It’s a small town,” he replied. “And who are you?”
“Hannah. Ha-neul Williams.”
The man whistled. “Scott and George’s kids. Your mom’s sick?”
“Yes, she needs insulin.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” said the man immediately. “By Jesus, kids, you’ve been outside all this time? You need something warm in ya, I’m betting. Are you hungry?”
Hannah and Peter laughed together this time. “Nope,” said Peter. “Want some stew?” He held out his bowl.
The man looked at Peter, who was still laughing and coughing, and then at Hannah.
“And what’s your name?”
“Me? Oh shoot, I’m Darren. Hubbard. Darren Hubbard.”
Hannah glanced over the dogs. At his movement, they had turned and now sat watching him. None of them had a hard stare that said you don’t belong — danger! Now and then, one of them would lift their nose to quest for scents, but their postures were relaxed. Nook met her eyes and then looked back to the edge of the light, where the trail continued. This man was no threat, and she was not interested in him or his machine. She wanted to run.
Hannah turned to Peter. “Do you know Mr. Hubbard?”
“No, but I’ve heard of him. You’re a mechanic, right?” he asked the man.
The man shook his head slightly. “Small engines, lawnmowers and stuff. I’m retired. I work at Len’s, down by the cop shop.”
“I think we’d better go with Mr. Hubbard,” she said to Peter. “You need dry clothes, and a hospital.”
Peter nodded.
She turned back to the man. “We’ll go with you,” she said. She inclined her head to indicate the team and the sled. “And the dogs, too.”
He reached up and took off a glove and scratched the side of his head, looking at her with an odd expression.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen going on forty,” he said. She remembered that her father had said that about her, too. But Mr. Hubbard hadn’t said it the same way her father had; he said it like it was something to be proud of.
Hannah helped Mr. Hubbard to gather Peter up and put him on the back of the snowmobile. Peter swayed on the seat, grinning and still holding his empty bowl. She took it gently from him.
“I’m going to be a doctor,” he said to Mr. Hubbard, grabbing his arm to keep balanced on the long, plastic-
covered seat of the snowmobile. He had his arm slung around Hannah, as well, and she felt him squeeze her shoulders. His face was flushed, but not with embarrassment; she could feel waves of heat coming off him, and his eyes were unusually bright. It wasn’t just the reflecting firelight.
“He has a fever,” she said to the man.
Mr. Hubbard looked at him, took his glove off, and felt Peter’s head. “Poor kid.” He got Peter settled with the emergency blanket around him and a heavy wool one over that, leaning him against the small seat post at the back of the snowmobile. Then, by the light of the dying fire, he helped Hannah take down the tent and pack it into the basket with their other gear.
He eyed the dogsled, the gangline straight with the dogs sitting or lying quietly, ready to go. Sencha’s white and brown flanks stood out starkly against the thick gradient fur of the huskies. He craned his neck a little to take in Bogey’s square haunches, his dark-brown fur almost lost in the darkness. “Wow. Two stringers?” He meant the house dogs; stringers were bad dogs, dogs that didn’t like to work, didn’t know what to do.
“They’re not stringers,” she said. “They’re a team. They’re good.”
“Okay,” he said, scratching his neck again. “Well, I’ll take you and Peter to my place so we can get to the hospital, and then I’ll come back for them, okay?”
Hannah gathered up the few things that were still out and placed them in the packsack in the basket of the sled. She zipped the pack shut and tied it down firmly.
“No,” she said, pulling on her gloves. “You go ahead. We’ll follow.”
He nodded hesitantly with that same strange expression in his face that she suddenly realized was respect and moved off to his own sled, starting it up with the press of a button. The sound was hollow and odd after so many days of hearing only runners and dogs and herself and Peter.
She dug the snowhook out and called the dogs up, and they stood. She ran her eye over each of them and saw that everyone was calm — no shoulders shifting uncomfortably, no paws being favoured. It didn’t matter that it was nighttime or that they had run all day. Every ear was up and canted forward, ready; they were eager to work again. She waved to the man, who had turned to watch her, making sure she was with him. He raised a hand and turned back to the lakeside trail, thumbing the throttle of the snowmobile and pulling away, leaving the smell of gasoline and oil.
He went slowly, but he didn’t need to; she knew they would keep up. They would follow the freshly groomed trail and the winking red tail light back around the lake to warmth and strangers with no trouble. She was strong, and her team was strong: they could keep up with anything.
EPILOGUE
As promised, Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard drove Hannah and Peter into Timmins that same night. They took Peter to the hospital emergency room. He still had a fever, and his wound was ugly, but Hannah had done a good job keeping it clean.
Driving past the local coffee shop, Mr. Hubbard saw the dull green Forces trucks. He drove over and inquired, and personnel directed him to the right spot, and Hannah and her dad were reunited. Mr. Hubbard told her father the story of how he had found Hannah and Peter — but he was careful to make it sound as though they had everything under control, perhaps to save her from getting in trouble.
She watched her father’s face change and change again as he heard about the ice and the lake and Bogey, about the dog food feast and the fire and Peter’s injury. He hugged her hard, and went in search of Scott, to tell him his son was at the nearby hospital, as well as to find an officer, to let them know about Jeb.
Mr. Hubbard offered to lend them a snow
machine to get home, for the back roads had still not been cleared, and would not be cleared for days or weeks still. The crews would start in town, repairing downed lines and removing trees, before moving on to the outer areas. He had a wood sledge with high sides as well, and they put the four dogs into it.
The cabin looked the way it always had, squat and dark on the north side, the outhouse, the tarped-over snowmobile, the verandah neatly shovelled. They came down the driveway slowly, and the door opened. Kelli stepped onto the porch, then Hannah’s mom, and then everything was okay and Hannah felt the breath she had been holding since they had seen the cabin let go. She was suddenly so tired she could barely stand.
Hannah got off the sled, unzipped her jacket, and handed over the box that held the new vials of insulin before apologizing. She had to hitch her snow pants up with one hand when she got off. Her mother, too, had lost weight, and for the first time that Hannah had ever seen, Mina began crying.
Hannah found that everyone listened to what she had to say more carefully, now; her parents and Scott, even Jeb. She had earned their respect, and she tried to keep it; she was more careful when she spoke, and she let silence speak as well, the way Peter had at night by the fire.
In the end, Hannah and her team had mushed almost one hundred kilometres in four days, forty of them through unbroken snow almost two feet deep. She knew because the next summer, Hannah and her mom retraced her journey, this time on an ATV, all in one day.
And every winter, for many years after, Hannah raced dogsleds, at first with Sencha and Bogey, and later with other dogs. She did short races and long ones, and the snow swirled behind her as she slipped over it, and she named it skirting snow. She won some races, but mostly she just loved being outside again, in the cold, feeling winter, returning to one thing, and then the next — and to find the kernel. She understood now that it was a skill, this kernel, and that was why she raced, to keep the skill in use … she owed herself that.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
You need a large pack to make a book, and like Hannah, I also have no stringers: Sharon and Heather (the superhero group), Robin, Craig and Zoe (the Aussie group), Hazard, Keats, Chelsey, Jenn Lowe (mush on, lady), Maggie, Reason, Tammy, Journey, and Karma. Thank you one and all. And to EJB, who was my Nook the whole way through — you’re my favourite.
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DUNDURN
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