Running Wild

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Amelia puts her arm through mine and squeezes. “New York,” she whispers. “You’ll see the Statue of Liberty.”

  New York has been like a mirage, a dreamy floating picture of friends, books, pizza, and playgrounds pulling me forward. But it’s no longer imaginary. I’m going there. To the real place, not the mirage. There will be whole herds of kids. Soaring buildings instead of mountains. Whooshing traffic instead of wind. People as thick as mosquitoes in July. I may be resilient, but I might not know how to talk to city girls. I’ll be so far behind in school, I’ll be the dumbest one in the class. In the Johnsons’ bathroom mirror, I saw how raw I look, like some kind of prehistoric girl, with my ragged hair and a crooked tooth.

  Suddenly I miss our cabin, the stream, the birches and spruces, the blue daytime sky and starry nighttime sky. Was it only a few days ago that I crouched behind those bushes on the banks of the Yukon River and watched Dad row by?

  As Amelia and I join the group, a tall man with a handlebar mustache steps down from the plane and introduces himself as Hank the pilot. He starts loading our luggage onto the plane. I’m still fighting tears.

  Stanley’s phone trills.

  “At this hour?” Constance says.

  Stanley retrieves the phone from his pocket. “Huh. That’s strange. It’s Charlotte.”

  “Charlotte?” Seth asks.

  “Hey, Charlotte. What’s up?” Stanley listens for a long time. “I see. Uh, no. Not yet, anyway.” After another listen, he says, “Can I call you back later this morning? Okay, good. Talk soon.” He clicks off his phone.

  “What?” Seth demands.

  Stanley claps his hands. “Okay, kids, let’s get you on that plane.”

  Seth yanks his arm. “Why did Charlotte call? Is Zhòh okay?”

  “Yeah,” Zachary says. “Why did she call before dawn?”

  “It’s dawn now,” Stanley says, and waves an arm at the sky, midnight blue instead of black, the stars no longer visible. An icy cloud cover is sweeping in from the north.

  Keith steps up to Stanley, his chest practically touching the man’s stomach, and says, “It’s not right to conceal information.”

  “Keith,” Aunt Frances says.

  “No, no, he’s right,” Stanley says, rubbing his jaw. He steps around Keith and puts a hand on top of Seth’s head. “Son, a volunteer accidentally left a gate open. Zhòh got out last night.”

  “You said he’d be safe!” Seth yells, and bursts into tears.

  “I’m so sorry. But I bet they’ll find him.”

  “Find a wolf? Doubtful,” Keith says.

  “Listen,” Stanley says. “Charlotte called right away this morning because she thinks Zhòh might come back to Fort Yukon. Animals always circle back around to home.”

  “This isn’t his home!” Seth sobs.

  “No, but it’s the last place he was with you,” Stanley says.

  Seth stamps the hard tarmac. “You said he didn’t have the skills to make it on his own! He’s only a pup!”

  “Seth. Please stop.” Aunt Frances crouches next to him. “We’ll call the Johnsons as soon as we get to New York, and I bet Zhòh will have been found by then, safe and sound, back with Charlotte. We need to get on the plane now.”

  Keith points a finger at Stanley. “You said he’d be safe at the sanctuary.”

  I imagine Zhòh running wild through miles of forest, drinking from streams, afraid, alone. Dad, too, is wild, alone, maybe even afraid.

  Hank ducks out the open door of the plane and stands on the top step. He raises a hand and says, “Time to go, folks!”

  The decision hits me like a gust of Arctic wind.

  “We’re not going,” I say.

  Aunt Frances looks shocked.

  “I can’t leave Dad. He’s not well.”

  “Willa,” Constance says, “we’re going to try to enroll him in a substance abuse program in Fairbanks.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Aunt Frances. “You flew all the way out here for us.”

  “You don’t have to take care of your little brothers anymore,” she says. “And certainly not your father. I’ve got it from here.”

  I shake my head.

  “Look,” Aunt Frances says, “I know you’re scared. But a girl who can ward off grizzly bears—”

  “We call them brown bears,” Amelia corrects.

  “A girl who can ward off brown bears, navigate Alaskan rivers, and build snow forts will be able to handle New York. Trust me.”

  I shake my head again. She’s right. I tackled all that. But I only did it so I could save my family. The job’s not done.

  “I’m not going, either,” Seth announces. “I won’t leave Zhòh.”

  Aunt Frances looks out at the gathering storm and wraps her scarf more tightly around her throat. She’s desperate to get on that plane. Raising her voice, she says, “Enough. Hop on board. Now.”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Frances. But we’re not going.”

  Keith drapes an arm around Seth’s neck in solidarity. I stand behind both of them.

  The rising sun bursts through an opening in the clouds. Copper light slices through the blue cold, lustering the ice on the lake.

  “Hey!” the pilot shouts from the door of the plane. “Last call. Weather coming in. We have to shove off.” He disappears inside the cockpit. The plane’s engine roars to life.

  “Okay,” Stanley says. “Frances, you go on. We can keep the kids for a few days. We’ll talk when you get to New York and make a plan. We’ll figure it out.”

  Aunt Frances glances at the frozen lake, the orange wind sock now billowing at a ninety-degree angle, and shudders.

  She holds me by the shoulders and asks, “Are you sure?”

  When I nod yes, Stanley says, “You kids go back to the van. I’ll get your luggage.”

  I wait to watch Aunt Frances climb the plane steps. She looks so weary, as if that short flight of stairs is a mountain pass. Then I herd my brothers away from the plane. Constance, Amelia, and the Johnson boys follow us, and we all pile into the van. A minute later, Stanley arrives with our luggage, which he dumps back onto our laps.

  Seth starts humming. Constance coughs. Stanley turns the key in the ignition four times before the van starts.

  Amelia cries out, “Hey! Look!” She laughs her big loud laugh.

  At first I think she means the tiny snowflakes dancing in the freshening wind. But then I see the dark shape approaching and realize it’s Aunt Frances’s long black parka. A second later, she opens the van door, shoves her suitcase under my legs, and gets in.

  “What say I treat everyone to breakfast,” Aunt Frances says. “There is a café in this town, right?”

  “Waffles!” Zachary hollers from the front seat.

  “I want a cinnamon roll!” Carl says.

  “Cheesy scrambled eggs!” Eddie chimes in.

  Aunt Frances looks at me. “What?”

  “You got on the plane. I thought you were leaving,” I whisper. My hand clamps down on her shoulder, as if to hold her in place.

  “I had to tell that tall pilot we weren’t coming. I also tried to negotiate getting our money for the flight back.”

  “You’re a brave woman,” Constance says with a smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Did that work?” Stanley asks. “The negotiating part?”

  “Well.” Aunt Frances smiles. “Hank seems like a good fellow. I can’t say we came to an agreement this morning. But we started a dialogue.”

  “What’s a dialogue?” Carl asks.

  “Talking,” Zachary says.

  “But what about your flights from Fairbanks to New York?” Stanley sounds alarmed.

  “The only kind available on short notice were the expensive refundable ones,” Aunt Frances says. “So we’re covered.” />
  “I’m sorry, Aunt Frances,” I say.

  She smiles at me. “It’s not your fault. Moving on to plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?” Seth asks.

  “The next plan,” Amelia explains. “After plan A.”

  Aunt Frances’s voice shakes a little as she says, “I’ll call my boss and ask for a couple more days off.”

  “Flexibility is always good,” Constance says.

  “Especially where kids are involved,” Stanley adds.

  “If you say so,” Aunt Frances says, heaving another giant sigh. “I’m starving. I’m going to go with the cheesy scrambled eggs and a cinnamon roll.”

  “I don’t have a plan B,” I say quietly to Aunt Frances.

  “Neither do I,” she says, and gives me a hug. “Yet.”

  The snow is coming down more thickly now. The light is a frigid silver. As we drive away from the airstrip, I look over my shoulder and see our small plane, a winged smudge of gray through the falling snow, soaring into the sky.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “THERE REALLY ISN’T time for breakfast at the café,” Constance says as the van bounces down the road toward town. “The kids will be late for school.”

  “There’s time if we hurry,” Stanley says. “It takes the boys about two and a half minutes to finish off a plate of food.”

  “Who’s going to open the store?”

  “I’ll open it a little late.”

  As Stanley and Constance quietly argue, Aunt Frances looks out the window and I hear her moan softly. “How long does the snow last?” she asks.

  “At least six months,” Zachary answers. “Usually longer.”

  She moans again, this time loudly.

  “Here,” Amelia says, and hands me Jane Eyre.

  “But I gave it to you.”

  “I know. I’m not giving it back, not for keeps. But maybe you need it now.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The pages are so worn they’re like tissue. The cover is hanging by a few shreds. Obviously you’ve read it a million times.”

  I slide the book into my parka pocket, keeping one palm against its cover. If I’ve learned anything from Jane Eyre, it’s that nothing is ever completely lost. You just keep looking. You just keep surviving your losses. You figure out the next steps.

  When Stanley parks in front of the café, we all get out. The boys are so noisy, no one hears me at first. I raise my voice and repeat, “I’m skipping breakfast. I’m going to see Dad.”

  “There’s plenty of time for that later,” Stanley says.

  “I have to go now.”

  “But it’s snowing,” Aunt Frances says.

  Constance laughs and puts an arm around Aunt Frances. “I think Willa can handle snow.”

  “But how do you even know where he is?” Amelia asks.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” I say.

  The three adults exchange looks. Stanley scowls. Aunt Frances shakes her head.

  “Half an hour,” Constance says, putting a hand on Stanley’s forearm when he opens his mouth to object. “Can we agree to that? You’ll be back here at the café in half an hour?”

  “I’m going, too,” Keith says.

  “Me too,” Seth says.

  Stanley puts an arm around each of them. “Seriously? You want to hike through more snow and wind and cold instead of sit in a cozy spot eating a hot breakfast?”

  They follow him right inside, trailed by Constance and Amelia, who looks over her shoulder at me and smiles encouragingly.

  As Aunt Frances steps toward me, I straighten my spine, thinking she’s going to argue against my going to find Dad. Instead she says, “I’m proud of you, Willa. You’ve grown up so fast, and I sure like the person you’ve grown up to be.”

  I want so badly to follow her through those doors, order a plate of bacon and eggs, pretend I’m part of the Johnson family, snuggle up next to Aunt Frances. But I still have the last, the hardest part of my journey to finish. I nod, turn, and walk away.

  I head for the river, which is wide and braided through this region with many channels, islands, and mudflats. In other words, a million places a man could tie up a rowboat. At water’s edge, I look in both directions. The snow is whiting up the landscape. The temperature has plummeted, so the flakes are dry and powdery. The entire river is crusted over with ice this morning. Freeze-up. Today. Right now.

  A couple hundred yards upriver, I see the dark shape of a rowboat, the pointed bow and flat stern. I hurry along the bank, slipping and falling as I go, but when I get close, I see that this rowboat is painted a deep green. It’s not ours. I pull my fleece cap down tighter over my ears, and continue stumbling along the bank, hearing his voice in my mind, saying, “No bed more comfortable than the bottom of a boat a man built with his own hands,” and, “The sky is the best kind of roof.”

  When I spot our boat, sobs leap into my throat. I scramble as fast as I can in the dry snow and crunchy soil toward the small handmade wooden craft. Its hull is completely iced in, the river frozen around it. A lump, wrapped in a snow-covered sleeping bag, lies motionless in the bottom of the rowboat, his head under one bench and his knees bent under the other. He’s curled up on his side and definitely does not look comfortable.

  “Dad!”

  The lump doesn’t move.

  I hurl myself from shore to the boat, but stumble and fall. My face hits the edge of the gunwale and sharp pain radiates from my cheekbone. I gingerly touch the skin and my fingers come away dry. No blood. But the pain gives my resolve a razor’s edge, and I climb into the boat next to the body. I pull back the sleeping bag and see Dad’s shock of black hair.

  I fit a hand under the bench and over his mouth. A whisper of warmth, breath. I reach under the sleeping bag and place my open palm on his chest. Yes, it’s rising and falling. Dad might be the hardiest man on the planet. He can sleep outside the night of freeze-up, wrapped in only one sleeping bag, and survive.

  I gasp for air, the shock of both cold and worry making breathing difficult as I get off my knees and sit on the stern-end bench of the boat. Shifting my weight causes the hull to crunch through the crust of ice. I squint out at the wide frozen river. The falling snow swirls and drifts across the mudflats. I look at my father, a man who hurt Keith, who burned my journal, who won’t listen to anyone but his own inner voice, a voice that is becoming more impractical by the day. It’s time for him to hear my voice.

  I scoot forward and shake his shoulder hard. He moans. I shake him harder still, and he opens his eyes. Looks at me. Blinks a few times. He slides his head out from under the prow-end bench and sits up.

  “Willa. I knew you’d change your mind. Where’re your brothers?” Dad speaks quietly, but his rage pulses as bright as the Arctic light. It draws me, that rage, like magnetic north. The pull is so basic, so deep I feel a tingle in my feet, a kind of impulse pulling me back to him. To the rage, to the wilderness of everything I’ve lost.

  I hoist myself back up onto the stern bench. We stare at each other.

  Why haven’t I seen it before? His rage is just sadness pushed to the point of explosion. He keeps pitting his strength against that sadness—dropping his family into the heart of a wilderness, building a cabin out of trees, hunting and butchering game, testing our ability to stay warm enough winter after winter, rowing solo down the Yukon River—as if one day he can conquer it.

  It was Dad who taught me the difference between magnetic north and true north. Earth has fluid iron in its core. This molten iron exerts a strong magnetic pull, pointing to a place on the planet called magnetic north. This place moves, depending on that boiling iron core. Sometimes it’s in the ocean. Sometimes it’s on Greenland. True north, on the other hand, is where the lines of longitude meet in the Arctic. True north is a constant.

  Dad’s rage is magnetic no
rth, and it draws me fiercely, confuses me, spins me until I’m dizzy. But there is a place inside me that is steely, unflinching. This is true north. It doesn’t move. It knows—I know—what is true.

  I stand up. The boat’s hull crunches in the river’s icy skin again. “No, Dad. I didn’t change my mind. We’re not going back to the cabin.”

  The rage blossoms in his eyes again. I think he might hit me. But instead of exploding, he implodes. His whole body slumps. He pulls the snowy sleeping bag up around his shoulders.

  “How come you get to have friends?” I ask.

  “Friends?”

  “The ones you’ve been drinking with. Here in town.”

  “Those aren’t friends.”

  His quick answer surprises me, gives me hope, and keeps me quiet for a few beats.

  “You look exactly like Chloe,” he says.

  “What?” I whisper. Aunt Frances told me the same thing. I want to hear it over and over again.

  Dad glares at the horizon. He’s trying to muster his anger. I need to reach him before it comes back to blind him.

  “You listen to me now,” I say.

  He startles, like he’s seen a ghost, and I suddenly remember that this is a phrase Mama used to use. I start talking and I don’t stop for a very long time. I tell him about our whole journey, including the brown bear and the snow shelter and the ptarmigan meal and the hunters. I tell him that we didn’t get on the plane this morning, even though I haven’t a clue about how we’re going to live this winter, but that Aunt Frances is here and she’s going to help us figure it out. I even tell him about getting my period and how Amelia explained everything to me. The only part I don’t tell him is how we hid in the riverside bushes and watched him row by. I keep that tender memory, the picture of him looking for us, tucked away for safekeeping.

  I say, “You taught us how to find food and shelter in the meanest of circumstances. These lessons saved our lives.”

  He looks like he wants to speak, but I have to keep going or I might not be able to get out all I have to say. I hold up a hand to silence him.

  “But there’s more to survival than food and shelter,” I say.