“You made it.”
Trixie turned to find the vet who'd been on the bush plane with her from Anchorage. “Go figure.”
“Well, I guess I'll see you outside. I hear there's a nasty case of frostbite out there with my name on it.” He zipped up his coat and waved as he walked out the door.
Trixie was starving, but not enough to want to eat something that might have beaver in it. She gravitated toward the oil stove at
the corner of the room and held her hands out in front of it. It was no
warmer than Willie's skin had been.
“You all set?”
As if her thoughts had conjured him, Willie was suddenly standing next to her. “For what?”
“This.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Piece of cake.” He smirked and started to walk away. “Hey. Where are you going?”
“Home. This is my village.”
Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to Trixie that she was going to be by herself again. As a teenager, she was always part of a greater whole - a family, a class, a peer group - and there was always someone sticking a nose in her business. How many times had she stormed off after a fight with her mother, yelling that she just wanted to be left alone?
Be careful what you wish for, Trixie thought. After a single day spent on her own, here she was getting all upset about losing the company of a total stranger.
She tried to wipe all the emotion off her face, so that it reflected back at Willie the same indifference he was showing her. Then she remembered she was still wearing a coat that belonged to someone he knew, and she struggled to unfasten it.
Willie pushed her hands away from the zipper. “Keep it,” he said. “I'll come back for it later.”
She followed him out of the school building, feeling the cold rake the hair from her scalp. Willie headed toward a cluster of small houses that seemed two-dimensional, sketched in shades of smoky brown and gray. His hands were dug deep into his pockets, and he spun around so that he wouldn't have to bear the bite of the wind. “Willie,” Trixie called out, and although he didn't look up, he stopped walking. “Thanks.”
He ducked his head deeper, an acknowledgment, then kept moving backward toward the village. It was exactly how Trixie felt: If she was getting anywhere on this journey, it was still the wrong way. She watched Willie, pretending she could see him even when she couldn't, until she was distracted by the sound of barking near the river.
The JV they'd seen when they pulled up in their snow-go was still on the ice, watching over the same dog team, which panted in small frosty bites of punctuation. He grinned when he saw Trixie and passed her the clipboard. “Are you my relief? It's brutal out here. Hey, listen, Finn Hanlon's up taking a leak while the vet finishes checking out the team.”
“What do I have to do?” Trixie said, but the boy was already halfway up the hill, making a beeline for the warmth of the school. Trixie looked around, nervous. The vet was too busy to pay attention to her, but there were a few native kids kicking a Sprite can, and their parents, who hopped from foot to foot to ward off the cold and talked about who would win the race this year.
The lead dog looked tired. Trixie couldn't blame the poor thing; she'd traveled the same route on the back of a snow machine and it
had nearly killed her; what would it be like to do that barefoot and naked? Taking a glance at the vet - he could keep an eye out, just in case that last musher came in, couldn't he? - she walked away from the team to a set of plywood lockers. Rummaging inside one, she grabbed a handful of kibble and walked back to the husky. She held out her palm, and the dog's tongue, rough and warm, rasped against her skin to devour the treat.
“Jesus,” a voice yelled. “You trying to get me disqualified?” Staring down at her was a musher wearing a bib with the number 12 on it. She glanced at her clipboard: FINN HANLON.
“You're feeding my dogs!”
“S-sorry,” Trixie stammered. “I thought . . .” Ignoring her, Hanlon turned to the vet. “What's the verdict?”
“He's going to be fine, but not if you race him.” The vet stood up, wiped his hands on his coat.
The musher knelt beside the dog and rubbed him between the ears, then unhooked his traces. “I'm dropping him,” he said, handing the neck line to Trixie. She held it and watched Hanlon reconfigure the tug line of the dog that had been Juno's partner, so that the sled would pull straight. “Sign me out,” he ordered, and he stepped on the runners of his sled, holding on to the handle bow. “All right,” he called, and the team loped north along the river, gaining speed, as the spectators on the bank cheered. The vet packed up his bag. “Let's get Juno comfortable,” he said, and Trixie nodded, holding the neck line like a leash as she started to walk the dog toward the school building.
“Very funny,” the vet said.
She turned around to find him in front of a stake hammered into the grass along the edge of the river. “But it's so cold out here ...”
“You noticed? Tie him up, and I'll get the straw.” Trixie clipped the dog's neck line onto the stake. The vet returned, carrying a slice of hay in his arms. “You'd be surprised how cozy this is,” he said, and Trixie thought of the night she'd spent with Willie.
A current suddenly energized the small tangle of spectators, and they began to point to the spot on the horizon where the river became a vanishing point. Trixie gripped the clipboard with her mittened hands and looked at the pinprick in the distance.
“It's Edmonds!” a Yup'ik boy cried. “He made it!” The vet stood up. “I'll go tell Carl,” he said, and he left Trixie to fend for herself.
The musher was wearing a white parka that came down to his knees and the number 06 on his bib. “Whoa,” he called out, and his malamutes slowed to a stop, panting. The swing dog - the one closest to the sled - curled up like a fiddlehead on the ice and closed her eyes.
The children spilled over the riverbank, tugging at the musher's coat. “Alex Edmonds! Alex Edmonds!” they shouted. “Do you remember me from last year?”
Edmonds brushed them off. “I have to scratch,” he said to Trixie. “Um. Okay,” she answered, and she wondered why he thought he had to make an itch common knowledge. But Edmonds took the clipboard out of her hands and drew a line through his name. He handed it back and pulled the sleeping bag off the basket of the sled, revealing an old Yup'ik man who reeked of alcohol and who was shaking even as he snored. “I found him on the trail. He must have passed out during the storm. I gave him mouth to mouth last night to get him breathing again, but the weather was too bad to get him back to the medical center in Bethel. This was the closest checkpoint ... can someone help me get him inside?” Before Trixie could run up to the school, she saw Carl and the other volunteers hurrying down to the river. “Holy cow,” Carl said, staring at the drunk. “You probably saved his life.”
“Whatever that's worth,” Edmonds replied. Trixie watched the other volunteers drag the old man out of the dogsled and carry him up to the school. The bystanders whispered and clucked to each other, snippets of conversation in Yup'ik and English that Trixie caught: Edmonds used to be an EMT... Kingurauten Joseph ought to pay for this. . . damn shame. One Yup'ik woman with owl eyeglasses and a tiny bow of a mouth came up to Trixie. She leaned over the clipboard and pointed to the line splitting Edmonds's name. “I had ten bucks riding on him to win,” she complained. With all the dog teams accounted for, the onlookers dispersed, heading into the village where Willie had gone. Trixie wondered if he was related to any of those little kids who'd been cheering for Edmonds. She wondered what he'd done when he got home. Drunk orange juice out of the container, like she might have? Taken a shower? Lay down on his bed, thinking of her?
Just as suddenly as all the activity had arrived, there was nobody on the bank of the river. Trixie looked north, but she couldn't see Finn Hanlon and his team anymore. She looked south, but she couldn't tell where she and Willie had come from. The sun had