“You do. You look just like Chloe,” Dad says again, his voice soft, as if he’s seeing this, seeing me, for the very first time.
I’m so overwhelmed, I have to look away, into the snow flurries, and then I notice a dark splotch onshore, just a few feet from the boat. I realize it’s Jane Eyre, which must have slid out of my parka pocket when I fell onto the rowboat. I climb over the gunwale and retrieve my book, holding it up so Dad can see.
“You didn’t burn this,” I say.
“That was your mother’s favorite book.”
“This book? This very copy?”
He nods.
I can no longer control my tears. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
He just shakes his head. But I know why. He thinks that not talking about Mama will make the sadness go away. He’s wrong. You can’t run from it, not even if you go to extreme wilderness. Mama will always be with us, and even if it hurts, I’m glad. I want her memory with me. I slip Jane Eyre back into my pocket.
My voice is strong and clear as I tell him: “I want to go to school. I want friends. The boys need to be safe. We want more to eat than moose and mealy squash.”
“Where are the boys?”
I ignore his question. “We took Zhòh up to a sanctuary for wolves. But a volunteer accidentally left a gate open. He got out. Seth is very upset.”
“Who’s Zhòh?”
“Zhòh is a wolf pup. Seth tamed him.”
I want to tell Dad about the white wolf with glacier-blue eyes. How sanctuary wolves understand trauma, loss, and rediscovering the meaning of home and family. But right now I need to get him out of this boat, this snowstorm. He might be the hardiest man on the planet, but one day, like all of us, he’ll meet his match. I’d like that to be later rather than sooner.
“Come with me,” I say. “We’re having breakfast in town.”
He stands up and his legs wobble, but of course he won’t let me help him out of the boat. Once onshore, he says, “I can find work for a week or two, make enough to pay for our chopper ride back to the cabin.”
“We’re not going back. Not the boys. And not me.”
Dad doesn’t answer. So I stand right in front of him. I can’t stop him from drinking. I probably can’t even stop him from making us all go back up to the cabin. But there’s one thing I can do. I can speak my mind, my true north.
I reach up and take his two whiskery cheeks in my hands. He flinches at my touch, but he doesn’t move away. I wait until he meets my eyes.
“Did you hear me?” I say.
His eyes soften. His mouth trembles. He reaches out a hand and gently touches my cheek, the place where it hit the gunwale. Almost imperceptibly, he nods.
TWENTY-FIVE
WE BARELY ALL fit in the helicopter. Up front Hank the pilot checks his gauges and dials, getting ready for takeoff. Keith and Seth are squeezed in on either side of me and I’m holding their hands. I can feel Seth hyperventilating with excitement, his chest rising and falling. Keith is jiggling his left knee.
The chopper lifts straight off the Fort Yukon landing pad, like a bubble floating in the air, the blades whirling overhead. We rise into the sky, and Hank banks the helicopter so that the aircraft is nearly on its side.
In a matter of minutes, we’ll be back where we started. We’ll drift across the landscape in this giant motorized dragonfly, covering the same territory we hiked and rafted, a journey that took days and tested our courage. It can be undone this easily.
Hank rights the chopper again and we head north. From up here, Yukon Flats is a paisley of shapes, green islands tapering to points where the gray channels of the Yukon River swirl by. Soon Fort Yukon is gone, and even the Yukon River is behind us. I marvel at how small and inconsequential, even lazy and dreamy the rivers and streams appear from so far above. The mountains look cold and jagged, and the trees go on forever.
Keith spots our cabin first. He shouts, “There! I see it! Look!”
We all crane our necks to see out the windows, and Hank flies a wide circle in the sky so we can get a good look.
From above, our cabin seems vulnerable, just a small structure made of logs, its roof covered with moss and ferns. My garden is a tangle. The food cache stands off to the side on its spindly legs. The door to the outhouse hangs open, as if a bear has recently used the privy. Sweet Creek, just a trickle compared to the bigger rivers of Alaska, glistens along its course.
Eight months have passed since I found Dad sleeping in the rowboat. In that time the rivers froze solid, darkness descended for months, and blizzards raged across the tundra and through the mountains. Aunt Frances, the boys, and I spent the winter in Fort Yukon, living in a snug cabin belonging to Gwendolyn, a woman who sits on the Tribal Council with Stanley. She has a guest lectureship at the University of Oregon, and is super-happy to have us take care of her cabin while she’s gone. Stanley says it’s a win-win situation: we have a place to stay, and Gwendolyn’s cabin is cared for.
Aunt Frances had to sublet her apartment in New York and take a leave of absence from her job to stay here and take care of us. She claims that she is moving back to New York just as soon as Dad gets out of rehab and is back on his feet. Constance winks at me, though, when Aunt Frances talks about how much she misses the city because by all appearances she’s quite happy here. The people of Fort Yukon helped us so much in the beginning—bringing us casseroles and dry meat, as well as school clothes for me and the boys—that Aunt Frances wanted to give back to the community, so she started volunteering at the health clinic. When an administrative job opened up there, she got it. She likes to complain about how little it pays, compared to her job in New York, but she also likes to talk about how much cheaper it is living here, so it works out.
I loved every minute of school, even though I still have a lot of catching up to do. Keith, on the other hand, struggled with the shock of so many new people and challenges. He picked fights with other boys and mouthed off at teachers. We don’t know what we’re going to do with him.
Seth is the big surprise. He still can’t read very well, but he starred in the school’s spring musical. He sang three solos. The audience gave him a standing ovation.
The very best part? Gwendolyn’s cabin has two bedrooms. Aunt Frances gets one. Keith and Seth sleep in the main room. And…drumroll, please…I get the other bedroom. A whole room to myself with a door that shuts. Hank built me a bookshelf and now, alongside Jane Eyre, there are lots of other books.
Oh, and about Jane Eyre. Constance ordered Amelia her own copy from a bookstore in Fairbanks. Over the winter, during long evenings in front of the wood-burning stove, Amelia and I read it out loud together. She loves the story as much as I do.
Eventually, as spring arrived, the sun rose again. The days got longer and longer. The ice on the river thawed. And now summer has returned. The rivers run fat with snowmelt. The fireweed is shooting up in the meadows and soon their hot-pink buds will burst into bloom. The ptarmigans’ feathers and the snowshoe hares’ fur have turned from white to brown. The bears have emerged from their dens and are foraging for ground squirrels and roots. School is out, and June has arrived with its velvety-blue skies. Today is the solstice.
Visiting the cabin was my idea. I want to get it ready for Dad. All the adults tell me that Dad isn’t my responsibility. They say I only have to look after myself now. Aunt Frances is in charge of the twins, and Dad has to make his own decisions. He hasn’t been making great ones. He’s in Fairbanks, enrolled in a treatment program. Everyone says that making that decision, agreeing to get treatment, is half the battle. I say he stopped drinking before, so he ought to be able to do it again. Still, his recovery hasn’t been super-successful. He keeps falling off the wagon, which means he keeps drinking. The Johnsons have warned me: Sobriety is difficult. Lots of alcoholics never achieve it. That may be true, but I can still hope.
> Meanwhile, I have a plan. The cabin is Dad’s dream. It might be his true north, even if it isn’t mine. I know he’ll want to come back someday. Couldn’t he stay here for a while? Without the bottles? He did it for so many years. Dad says that people are animals, and Stanley says that all animals circle back to home.
“Ready?” Hank asks from the cockpit. “Here we go.”
Amelia, who is sitting up front with Hank, turns to grin at me. I know she’s grinning at the sound of Hank’s voice. It always makes us laugh because it’s so low and rumbly, like a motorcycle engine. Everything about him makes us laugh, especially his handlebar mustache. Just saying those two words, handlebar mustache, can get us hysterical.
Hank lands the helicopter gently on the hill above our cabin, in the exact spot where Dad shot his rifle straight up into the twilight and shouted at the sky. He shuts off the engine and we wait for the rotor blades to slow and stop. Keith insists on figuring out how to open the hatch himself, so that takes another couple of minutes, but soon we’re all jumping out into the tall grasses. Aunt Frances, who rode in the farthest-back seat of the chopper, hurries away in a crouch position, even though the blades are no longer spinning, looking back as if the helicopter is an alien monster.
“Phew,” she says. “That was terrifying.”
“No way!” Keith, of course, disagrees. “I can’t wait to go back up.”
Seth starts running down the hill and I realize he’s headed for Zhòh’s old den. He knows perfectly well Zhòh will not be found in the den of his puppyhood. But that’s Seth for you: Aunt Frances says he lives in a world of magical thinking.
As Amelia helps Hank take our lunch baskets out of the cages on the side of the helicopter, I turn and look at the cabin, down by the creek at the bottom of the hill. I can’t believe I’m back. It’s true that I’m here to ready the cabin for Dad, but it is also true that I need to see it for myself. This was the geography of my life for five years. We left so quickly. I never said goodbye.
“Oh, boy!” Amelia shouts. She leaves the lunch baskets with Aunt Frances and Hank and starts running down the hill. “Come on. Show me everything.”
I follow slowly, taking big gulps of the tangy Arctic air, running my hands through the green grasses, and loving the bright mix of yellow buttercups, magenta shooting stars, and blue forget-me-nots. June is the month of vibrant, fecund growth in Alaska. The sun shines all day and night, the earth is saturated with the snowmelt, and all living things just go crazy. I remember how happy I’ve been every summer to see all the color, the blossoms of optimism.
At the bottom of the hill, I join Amelia, who’s standing at the edge of my garden plot, hands on her hips, studying the profusion of growth. Without me here to tend it this spring, my garden is now just an overgrown riot of volunteers. Pumpkin vines sprawl every which way. Dark green kale leaves, oversized and bug-eaten, flap in the breeze. Amelia picks up a long, fat zucchini and swings it like a bat. “Strike one!”
Amelia can always make me laugh. I pick another zucchini and brandish it like a sword. Amelia grabs it from me and stuffs both squashes in her pack. Maybe we’ll make zucchini bread when we get back to Fort Yukon.
Amelia hops up the porch steps and gestures at the door. “Open it!”
Opening that door feels like opening Pandora’s box. I have no idea what memories will come flying out. I look around to see what everyone else is doing. Keith stands by the stream, tossing rocks into the water. He still won’t let anyone cut his hair. He wears it tied back with a leather thong. Seth walks slowly down the hill toward his twin. I’m guessing that he’s sad about having found Zhòh’s den in a shambles. Winter would have collapsed whatever cozy nook the mama wolf built many months ago. Aunt Frances and Hank are standing on the hillside, watching.
I climb onto the porch and stop next to Amelia. She holds up her right pinkie and I link my right pinkie with hers. As we squeeze our fingers together, she grins her wide-open crazy grin, and our ritual gives me courage. I take hold of the wooden handle, worn smooth from five years of use, and pull the door open.
“Yowzer!” Amelia calls out, crowding in behind me.
A crusty bowl sits on the kitchen table, surrounded by rodent turds. Two mice skedaddle across the floor, diving into holes in the floorboards. I walk over to the woodstove and place my hand on top. Of course it’s stone cold. Dad’s Carhartt overalls and his blue-plaid-flannel shirt are wadded on his cot, as if he just recently scrambled out of his clothes. A whiskey-soaked stench permeates everything—the crumpled clothes, the canvas of the cots, even the wooden floor. My sneakers crunch on the broken glass covering the floorboards. I pick up the bottle’s label, still stuck to a big shard of glass.
Holding the label, I imagine that day in October when Dad came home from hunting and found us gone. He must have been so angry. Or frustrated. Or maybe even heartbroken. I imagine him reaching up to open the high cupboard. The stale smell and whiskey-soaked cabin tell me that he probably didn’t drink much. Instead he hurled the bottle with all his might. The explosion against the cast-iron woodstove, the whiskey splashing everywhere, the glass chiming as it shattered.
I take this as evidence that at least he wants to smash the bottles, that some part of him does want to stop drinking.
I shake out Dad’s Carhartts and fold his shirt, imagining how he must have put on his long underwear, fleece pants and sweater, the down parka, everything he’d need for the long journey. He took off after us as quickly as I’d expected he would. He chose us over that bottle. At least at first.
Amelia finds the homemade broom and begins sweeping up the mouse turds and glass. I pick up the foul soup bowl, carry it out the door and down to the creek. How familiar it feels to crouch at the water’s edge with a dirty dish. I fill the bowl with water and set it on the pebbled beach to soak.
Aunt Frances is spreading out blankets in the meadow. Hank lopes down the hill—his legs are so long and skinny he looks like a moose when he walks—carrying the baskets of fried chicken, cornbread, strawberries, and lamb’s-quarters salad. The boys foraged for the lamb’s-quarters, an edible wild leafy green, this morning, and Amelia made the dressing. Keith and Seth both run over to get a place on the lunch blanket. Keith reaches for the first piece of chicken.
As Amelia and I settle on the blanket, too, she leans toward me and whispers, “Handlebar mustache.”
I glance at Hank and see that his mustache is full of cornbread crumbs.
We crack up.
“What?” Hank says in his deep motorcycle-engine voice. “Are you girls laughing at me again?”
He’ll do anything to get us going. Walk on his hands. Hold the newspaper upside down and pretend he’s reading it. Drink gravy with a straw. Now he starts threading wildflowers into his hair and making goofy faces at us.
Aunt Frances rolls her eyes and pretends that she’s just tolerating Hank. But here’s the truth. And it’s a shocker. Ready?
Aunt Frances is dating the dude.
“In spite of myself,” she likes to say, right in front of him.
“It’s the Arctic air,” Hanks replies. “Makes people do crazy things.”
“Apparently,” Aunt Frances agrees. “Whoever knew I could survive blizzards, wolves, and eternal darkness. That’s all bad enough. But a six-foot-five-inch-tall mountain man? I must have gone clean off my rocker.”
They go back and forth like this all the time, completely pleased with themselves. It’s so embarrassing.
Sometimes I get upset when Aunt Frances talks about returning to New York. But Amelia says that all you have to do is watch how melty she gets around Hank. Constance agrees. “Frances isn’t going anywhere,” she assures me. “That man turns her inside out.”
Whatever that means.
Last month I asked Aunt Frances point-blank if she was in love with Hank. She looked at me for a long time before answering. She
didn’t want to admit it. “Hank is the real deal,” she finally said. “Genuine. You don’t find that often.”
Amelia and I think he’s a big dork. But he sure is nice to us. And as long as Aunt Frances is all gaga, she might stay in Fort Yukon. We’ll have to find another place to live when Gwendolyn returns from her guest lectureship at the University of Oregon, but Constance says finding a place to live in Fort Yukon is easy compared to finding one in New York.
Seth taps my knee and I think he wants me to pass him the container of chicken, so I do.
“No,” he says in a whisper.
“The strawberries?” I ask.
“Willa.” The urgency in his whisper alarms me.
I start to gather him to me, thinking maybe he feels sick, or just needs a hug to help with the intensity of being back here at the cabin, but he wriggles out of my grasp and points. I follow his finger, which directs my gaze upstream.
I see Sweet Creek’s sparkly water. The dark trees on either side. The slice of blue sky between the corridor of evergreen canopies. Beyond, the mountains in the golden solstice light. I turn back to Seth to ask what it is he wants me to see. But the look on his face silences me. He’s staring so intently, as if his life depends on what he’s seen, and so I look again.
This time I see something stir in the shadows beside the creek.
A moment later a large wolf steps into a patch of sunshine.
He’s full-grown already, still a dark silver with white legs and a white mask. He’s seen us and his black eyes go shiny, alert with recognition. He wags his tail, the white tip flicking back and forth. He stops twenty yards away and sits on his haunches.
Zhòh has circled back around to home.
Tears run down Seth’s face. He whispers, “Come here, boy.”
For a moment I think Zhòh’s going to run right over to us, maybe leap into Seth’s arms, but after standing and stretching the wolf seems to remember that he’s wild now. He gives us one last long obsidian gaze before hoisting his tail as if to say, See you later. Zhòh turns and trots back upstream, into the heart of the wilderness.
Running Wild Page 12