Running Wild

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Seth and I sit on the raft with our arms around our knees. I’m surprised Seth is being so brave. His eyes are soft, that way they get when he is wide-awake dreaming, and he smiles happily.

  I take a turn with the steering pole, keeping us in the center of the stream where the current is strongest, and we make good time. Everything is golden: the few remaining aspen leaves fluttering on the trees, the copper-colored stones in the streambed, and the sunlight on the water. The sun’s warmth feels good, and I have a surge of hope. If we can keep this pace…If the weather stays mild…If we don’t make any wrong turns…If the raft holds together…If the boys mind me…

  Seth’s pack squirms. It also yips.

  “Seth!” I shout. “Open your pack.”

  “No.”

  “Do it.”

  His pale face sets into two lines, his blond brow and his tight pink lips, both straight across his face. He shakes his head.

  I hand Keith the steering pole. He grins, his eyes shining.

  As soon as I loosen the top of Seth’s pack, a black snout pushes through the opening. The pup wiggles out and sits on a plank of the raft. He’s dark silvery-gray except for white legs, a white tip on the end of his tail, and a white mask around his eyes.

  He’s beautiful, but he’s a wolf. A wolf that Seth has smuggled on board our rickety little craft. Seth’s pack is nearly empty without the pup.

  “Where is your sleeping bag?”

  “He’ll keep me warm.”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t bring your sleeping bag.”

  “It didn’t fit.”

  “I’ll share mine,” Keith says.

  “But how did you even catch him?” I have to ask.

  “After you pulled the gate away, he ran off. I thought he was gone for good. But he wasn’t. He came back and waited for me in his den.”

  Of course he did: Seth was feeding him.

  I take the steering pole away from Keith and push us close to shore where the undergrowth is especially thick.

  “He’s a wolf,” I say. “You can’t keep him.”

  Seth wraps his arms around the pup’s neck, burrowing his face in his ruff. “I’ve tamed him. He won’t hurt us. I’m not going without Zhòh.”

  “You’ve named him?”

  “It means ‘wolf’ in Gwich’in.”

  Fort Yukon is home to the Gwichyaa Gwich’in people. Robert Slone-Taylor has a Gwich’in dictionary that translates words into English. Seth delighted in learning some of the words back when we used to visit the Slone-Taylors.

  I hate hurting him, taking away something he loves, but I pry the pup out of Seth’s arms. The wolf nips my hand before I toss him toward shore. He lands in shallow water, scampers up the bank, shakes off his wet hind end, and turns to look at us.

  “He’ll be fine,” I tell Seth, who is crying now. “He knows how to get food.”

  “He doesn’t,” Seth protests. “He’s never been taught.”

  “He doesn’t need to be taught. He’s a wolf.”

  Keith looks sorry for his twin, but he doesn’t oppose me. We watch the pup crouch down, paws stretched out on the ground in front of him, eyes pinned on our raft. Seth sobs. The wolf pup raises his nose in the air and howls. A big knot of tears snarls up in my own chest. The little wolf disappears into the brush beside the creek.

  He’s gone, and we’re on our way again.

  EIGHT

  THICK UNDERGROWTH CROWDS either side of the creek all afternoon and it isn’t until the sky turns violet with dusk that I spy a flat sandy shore backed by a scraggly brown meadow. We beach the raft. While I drive a stake into the sand to tie it up, I send the boys off to collect wood. We need to get a fire going. The temperature is dropping fast, and the boys will have to share one sleeping bag, which means they won’t be able to zip it all the way.

  As I build the fire, darkness closes around our camp. I get a good blaze going and take out the bag of peanuts. The boys eat big handfuls—way too many if the nuts are going to last—while I slice open one of the pumpkins and cut the orange flesh into chunks. I poke the end of a sharpened stick into one chunk and hold it over the fire to roast. The boys clamor for their own roasting sticks and pumpkin chunks.

  “I want meat,” Keith says after he finishes his portion of pumpkin.

  The dried venison needs to last, but I want to keep their spirits up, so I dig into the food bag and give them each a small piece, ignoring the ache in my own belly. As they eat, I spread out one of the tarps and cover it with the two sleeping bags. I was going to ask Seth to get the other tarp out of his pack so I could rig a shelter, but it’s too dark and I’m too tired. The sky is full of stars, so there probably won’t be any rain or snow tonight. As the boys nestle into the one sleeping bag, I hang the food bag from a tree branch to protect it from wildlife, before snuggling into my own.

  “Okay,” I say, “time for your first city lesson.”

  “Maybe we should go back,” Seth says.

  “Do you remember crosswalks?” I ask, trying to sound cheerful.

  Keith says, “Duh.” But his voice wavers. I’m guessing he doesn’t really remember.

  “So people drive cars on streets,” I tell them.

  “I know,” Keith says. “Dad says cars are bad.”

  “It’s true that they can be dangerous because they go really fast. So to get across the streets, there are lights. They tell you when you can go.”

  “Green means go! Red means stop!” Seth calls out.

  “Exactly.”

  “We know this,” Keith says.

  “Okay. What about money? How many quarters in a dollar?”

  Their silence tells me they have no idea. We spend a few minutes on quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. I dig the bills out of my pocket and hold them up in the firelight so they can see Andrew Jackson’s picture on the twenty-dollar bill and Abraham Lincoln’s face on the five-dollar bill. I make up story problems—if a book costs five dollars and twenty cents, and you give the merchant a ten-dollar bill, how much change will you get back?—and we have fun making imaginary change. Soon they fall asleep.

  I can’t sleep though. In the quiet of the night, I’m afraid about the blood. Every time we pulled to shore today, I hid behind a bush or tree and changed the gauze patch. I try to distract myself by listing everything I can remember about Aunt Frances. When she visited, she and Mama would sit up late, laughing hard. In the morning I’d ask what they’d been laughing about and Mama would say, “Oh, just old stories. It’s like that with sisters.” I told Mama that I wanted a sister, but she said our family was already the perfect size. I must have looked disappointed because she added, “Best friends are as good as sisters. When you’re bigger, you’ll have a best friend.”

  I sit up, drape the sleeping bag over my shoulders, and fish my new notebook, pencil, and headlamp out of my pack. Describing all my experiences and feelings to someone, even if that someone is just myself, always helps.

  I write until a coal in the firebed pops so loudly I jump. Did something scurry at the edge of the firelight? I shine the light of my headlamp into the darkness. Nothing.

  I hear a snoof.

  Maybe I should have brought the rifle.

  A blur of fur leaps into our camp. I scream for my brothers to wake up. Too late. The animal lands on top of their sleeping bag. It shoves its nose at Seth’s neck.

  Zhòh.

  The boys yelp like pups themselves and sit up fast, knocking heads in the process. Seth shouts his joy at seeing his wolf pup. Keith smiles, too.

  It takes me a few moments to recover. Then I think: something is very wrong when a wolf ambush spells relief.

  “How did he get here?” I demand to know.

  “He ran along the bank all day,” Seth says.

  “You could see him skittering in and out of the
brush,” Keith adds.

  How did I miss that?

  Seth kicks out of the sleeping bag and reaches into the front pocket of his jeans. He pulls out his share of the dried venison. I’d also missed seeing him stow that away. He feeds the meat to Zhòh.

  “Don’t do that!” I shout.

  “Too late,” Keith says.

  “You can’t feed a wolf.”

  “He just did.”

  Not only has Seth given some of our precious meat to a wolf, his pocket now smells of venison. He’s bear bait.

  The wolf pup sits behind the boys and eyes me. When I stand and clap my hands at him, he shoots back into the darkness of the tangled undergrowth.

  “He’ll be cold,” Seth protests.

  “He’s a wolf,” I say for about the tenth time.

  “A baby wolf.”

  “Go to sleep,” I say.

  The boys are too tired to disobey. Seth gets back in the sleeping bag with Keith and they curl up in the way I imagine only twins will do, and fall right back to sleep.

  A few minutes later, Zhòh creeps toward the warmth of the fire, his belly dragging, as if he can keep me from seeing him if he stays low. There’s no point in shooing him again. Seth has fed him meat. A wolf will risk anything for meat.

  Zhòh stretches out next to my brothers, his nose on his front paws, the firelight brightening his silver coat and white-fur mask. He heaves a big sigh and closes one eye. The other eye he keeps trained on me.

  In the morning I’ll have to banish him again, and I’ll hate doing it, I really will. Seth probably wants a friend as badly as I do. At least the boys have each other.

  I think again of how Mama and Aunt Frances laughed together. What Mama said about sisters. About best friends. I try to imagine what that would be like.

  I remember playing kickball on the playground, shouting and running and laughing with packs of other kids. It was so much fun. I remember Sarah, who had red hair, lots of freckles, and a loud laugh. Felicia was a quiet girl with toasty skin and serious brown eyes. She waved her hand high in the air when the teacher asked a question. Corey liked to dance. She wore deep-purple or lime-green leggings with long T-shirts. The T-shirts had messages on them, like So Many Books, So Little Time or Girl Power. If I’d stayed in Seattle, would Sarah or Felicia or Corey be my best friend?

  I pick up my journal and pencil again. I can write about sitting up all night by the campfire, trying to protect my brothers. About how I wish the northern lights would come out. About how I understand why Seth loves Zhòh and yet we can’t keep him. About Keith’s stubborn pride. I want to describe Mama and explain Dad. All these things I can tell my journal. But it’s just two pieces of cardboard sandwiching a sheaf of paper. It can’t actually listen. It doesn’t have its own stories.

  If I had a best friend, we’d talk and talk. I’d tell her everything. She’d listen. Also, she’d tell me everything, and I’d listen.

  NINE

  I WAKE DEEP inside my sleeping bag, hugging my journal and watching the first dim light of the day turn the blacks to grays. Our camp is covered with a thin layer of snow. The coals of our fire are stone cold. Beyond our small meadow is a stand of Sitka spruce, the dusky needles frosted white.

  “Keith! Seth!” My brothers sit side by side on a log, a good twenty yards away, their backs to me. “What are you doing?”

  All my muscles are stiff and sore as I make my way over to them. They turn, their cheeks stuffed with dried meat, their jaws working it down as fast as they can. Zhòh is gnawing his own piece of venison.

  “This food has to last all the way to Fort Yukon!” I try to yank the food bag away from Keith. But he won’t let go.

  “We’re hungry,” Keith says, and keeps chewing.

  Seth stands and walks across the small meadow to the crust of ice that lines the stream’s edge. He gets down on all fours, uses his fist to punch through a place in the ice, and drinks as if he were a wolf himself.

  Both sleeping bags are frosted. Now the knees of Seth’s jeans are also wet.

  The cold seeps through my parka, up under the cuffs of my pants, tingles my face. Dad could get back to the cabin by nightfall. When he finds us gone, he’ll set out after us. We don’t have time for a fire. Meat in their stomachs will keep the boys warmer. It’ll give them energy.

  “Pack up,” I say. “We’re leaving in five minutes.”

  As Seth walks back from the stream, drips of water on his chin, he stops to whistle for Zhòh.

  “The wolf stays here,” I say. “He’s not coming with us.”

  I snatch the two sleeping bags and throw them on the raft, leaving them loose, hoping the sun will come out and dry them as we float, despite some splashing. As I walk back up the bank to get the tarp, Zhòh begins yipping, as if he’s understood my words and wants to protest. But the pup isn’t looking at us. He sits facing the forest of Sitka spruce, his behind on the ground, his front legs straight, and his nose in the air. He yips and yips.

  Seth calls him again, but Zhòh launches into a run, straight toward the evergreens, barking as viciously as if he were a full-grown wolf. Back and forth, back and forth, he runs in front of the trees, growling, woofing, baying. We all stare into the darkness of the forest, trying to see what he sees or hears.

  A shadow, a big shifting mass. Breath, thousand-pound huffs. She steps out from the stand of Sitka spruce, lumbers into our meadow. A brown bear.

  At this close range, even with a bear’s bad eyesight, she sees us. And with her excellent sense of smell, everything from the food bag Keith is still carrying to the venison on our hands—and on the inside of Seth’s pocket—lets her know we’re here.

  Not good. But we’ve encountered many brown bears—called grizzlies in the Lower Forty-Eight—and I know what to do. I scan the surroundings for cubs. Brown bears are most ferocious when they have little ones. She appears to be alone.

  As we start to back up, she stands. Her front legs lift off the ground and her enormous head raises to a height of at least seven feet. Her front paws hang in front of her chest. Each paw sports five claws, as long and sharp as hunting knives.

  My heart pounds so hard it feels like it might beat right through the wall of my chest. Zhòh continues yipping and charging. One swipe of the bear’s paw and the wolf pup would fly to his death. At least Zhòh keeps the bear distracted.

  Until the bear’s dim eyes pin on Keith and the food bag.

  My fear turns inside out. I find, deep within myself, a deadly calm.

  “Drop the food bag,” I say to Keith. “Grab your packs, both of you, and back up slowly. Get on the raft. Now.”

  Zhòh crouches his front end down to the ground, raises his behind in the air, and snarls.

  “Zhòh!” Seth cries, and starts for the pup.

  “Leave him.”

  Zhòh spins around and barks his own warning at Seth.

  The bear drops down to all fours and walks toward us. Her huge head swings from side to side as her nose sniffs the air.

  We’re at the waterline when Zhòh makes his move. He lunges at the bear and nips her paw, then shoots away before the bear even knows what happened. It works. The bear looks away from us and peers in the direction of the wolf pup.

  It’s a risk I shouldn’t take, but not having food is almost as bad a threat as a bear attack. I run and make a dive for the food bag. The bear rises up on her hind feet again, towering over our camp, not twenty yards away from me. I snatch the bag before doing the thing I know I’m not supposed to do: turn my back and run. The boys, who’ve boarded the raft, clap their hands and shout at the tops of their voices to draw the bear’s attention away from me. I yank out the stake and leap on board.

  We push off with the steering pole, but the water in this stretch of the stream is lazy and we move slowly. Bears are good swimmers. If she decides we’re worth the e
ffort, she could easily overtake our raft. I dig in and push as hard as I can. Onshore, the wolf pup zips back and forth, frantic as a mosquito, yapping and yapping, doing everything in his power to distract.

  “Look!” Seth shouts. “She has a cub.”

  Sure enough, a small brown bear splashes into the stream, coming from the bank opposite our camp. Our raft is right between the sow and the cub.

  “It’s so cute,” Seth cries out. “Look at its soft muzzle.”

  The sow vaults into the stream. She displaces gallons of water, splashing so hard that drops hit my face. Her gigantic pink tongue flops out of her mouth between two rows of huge yellow teeth. The thick muscles in her flanks ripple with the effort of moving through the water. She’s so close, I can almost smell her breath.

  “Seth. Keith. Help.”

  Both boys find places to put their hands on the steering pole, and we heave the raft forward. The sow stands up in the middle of the stream and roars at us. She lifts a paw and swipes at the air.

  Fear makes my vision wonky, like I’m looking through a kaleidoscope, but I keep pushing, keep sinking the steering pole into the streambed and shoving with all my might.

  “Harder,” Keith yells.

  Seth calls out to the bear, “We won’t hurt your cub!” I want to scream at him that bears don’t speak English.

  “Heave,” Keith growls.

  The raft finally swirls into a stronger midstream current. The distance between us and the two bears grows longer and longer. They wade out of the stream together and stand on the meadow where we camped, watching us float away.

  “Bye!” Seth shouts.

  “See what I mean?” Keith says. “He talks to bears. Just think what he’ll do in New York.”

  The mama bear snorts, turns, and galumphs back into the spruce forest, her cub chasing behind. I leave the pole in Keith’s hands and collapse on the raft, allowing myself one sob.