I did slip away when I had the chance. I couldn’t stay gone from the woods, even if I couldn’t tell Dad why. When I heard the table saw whirr to life or when Dad backed down the driveway with the plow fixed to the front of his truck, headed off to clear someone’s road, I dropped my shovel or my broom and dove into the woods. Checked the traps closest to home or followed the freshest set of tracks I could find. I run a mile or two down the trail, then turned round and come home before Dad got back. In this way, I kept my belly from aching and my mind calm.
Sometimes, I got as far as the clearing where Tom Hatch had come upon me. By now the handprint he’d left on the tree was faded, you wouldn’t of noticed it unless you knew to look for it. I placed my hand over it then pulled away, quick, as if it burned me.
Back home, the stranger’s pack still hid under my bed. I hated to think of it, waiting on him to come back to find it. I shouldn’t of brung it home in the first place. Instead of returning it to the woods, though, I drug it out most nights. Counted the money, there was almost four thousand dollars. Enough to pay for the Junior and the big race itself.
I inspected his other belongings. The tarp, a twist of jerky, a handful of uncooked rice in a bag, a tin coffee mug. I reached past it all and unearthed the book.
Like me, the stranger had folded the corners of his favorite pages and underlined whole paragraphs. But unlike me, he seemed particularly interested in details I’d barely paid attention to whenever I reread the book. I stayed in Seattle long enough to earn the money I needed to continue north, becoming an expert at cleaning fish in the meantime. It wasn’t the kind of writing you could learn anything from, I usually skimmed them parts so I could get to the hunting and trapping and hiking bits faster. I didn’t even remember Kleinhaus had stopped in Seattle for a spell.
Inside the book, the pages was covered with words, not just Kleinhaus’s familiar words but Tom Hatch’s handwritten notes.
If I do nothing else before I die, I will see the northern lights.
black bear = tall ears, short claws, no shoulder hump. brown bear = short round ears, long light-colored claws, shoulder hump.
Most effective snare?
“Small mistakes are magnified in the wild.”
to do—1. learn about trapping 2. get map 3. best way to sharpen knife?
It had been a good few months since I’d reread Kleinhaus, and that feeling sprung up in me again, the feeling like looking at someone else and seeing your own self reflected. Except it wasn’t Kleinhaus’s words that spoke to me this time. Tom Hatch’s handwriting was tiny, and he’d crammed his own words into every space. What I’d read so far all had to do with learning something new or reminding himself of a fact. I didn’t write in my books, I liked the margins to be clean. But I had done the same kind of learning, specially at first, drinking in the words of my guidebooks and memorizing the parts of a Paiute deadfall or the shape of a lynx’s tracks.
I read some of what Hatch had wrote, then closed the book, shoved it back inside the pack. But minutes later, I found myself reading again. Nodding when he come across good information about trapping or way finding. Wishing I could set him right when he got something wrong. Then shaking my head and throwing the book into the pack again. This stranger, Tom Hatch, wasn’t someone I could let myself be soft about.
I couldn’t go to jail. I couldn’t live my life inside with no woods and no sky and no warmth in my belly.
But more than anything else, I couldn’t do that to Dad. I’d seen how losing Mom had run him down. The weight he’d lost. The gumption, too, there was a light in his eyes that got snuffed out. The only reason he had carried on, I knew, was me and Scott. If I had to go away, too—if Dad learned that I had tried to kill a man—
I couldn’t let that happen. Whatever I needed to do to fix things once and for all, I would do.
I put Tom Hatch’s book back inside the pack. Shoved it under my bed.
Friday morning, I come inside after putting fresh straw in the dogs’ houses and found Dad on the phone.
’Preciate the update, he was saying. I know you can’t give too many details, but if you hear anything else—
He fell quiet a moment. Then said, Thanks again, Helen.
My gut twisted itself into a knot.
Helen? I asked when he hung up. From the clinic?
She called to say our visitor got sent up to Fairbanks for surgery day after I brought him in, he said.
I frowned, not sure if it was good news or bad. Did it mean Tom Hatch was too far away now to bother coming back? Or that he had been patched up and might even now be on his way to us?
She say anything else? I asked.
Dad shook his head. They’ve got all kinds of privacy rules at the clinic, what they can and can’t say. Anyway, I just wanted to know he’s all right.
I fretted the rest of the day, my thoughts so fixed on where Tom Hatch might or might not be that Flash slipped out of my grip when I tried to put her in the dog run for some exercise, she darted across the snow and I had to chase her down. She pounced and bowed, stayed just out of my reach, wanting to play, but I couldn’t enjoy it, I was so out of sorts. By the time I finally got hold of her and put her in the run, my head ached and my belly growled. I knew it was risky, but the minute Dad got in his truck and headed up the road to plow, I sprinted into the woods fast as I could.
I come back calmer, but that calm evaporated the minute I seen Dad. His arms crossed, a storm darkening his face.
You want to explain why you was in the woods? he asked when I got close enough.
There wasn’t no explanation I could give him. Instead I said, You won’t let me train, you won’t let me even walk the dogs. Can’t I at least hunt?
He looked past me, studying the yard and the dogs that was left, the ones that was certain not to get any exercise at all now that the only one of us who had bothered to stay on the back of a sled was grounded. It was punishment for me, all right, but I couldn’t help but think it was a worse punishment for the dogs, who hadn’t even done nothing.
We’ll see, he said.
What about my traps? There’s ones I set but ain’t checked yet.
I’ll take care of them today.
I kicked at a mound of snow, sent a spray of flakes into the air.
Don’t be that way, Dad said. I told you if you got expelled—
He reached out to touch my shoulder. I suppose he meant to apologize even as he give me his good reasons for doing what he done. I seen his hand come at me, though, and I jerked away.
I’m sorry, Trace, Dad said. I did warn you, though.
Mom wouldn’t of done it, I said.
Excuse me?
One or the other, maybe. She probably would of told me I can’t race. But she wouldn’t of kept me from the woods.
His mouth was a straight line, pressed so tight his lips disappeared. His whole face like stone. Except his eyes. They went soft and gleamed in the weak sunlight.
Get inside and get after the laundry, he said. The dogs perked up when they seen him headed their way, wagged their tails and jumped their paws to his chest. Still happy to see him because there’s nothing more loyal than a dog.
Forty houses in the yard, and there was a time we had a dog for every house. Now every other house was empty. Names still over the doors, signs me and Dad and Scott had made for each dog, carving or burning the names into squares of wood. Panda. Junior. Half Pint. Speedy. Slim. The first time Dad give one of our dogs away, traded Slim for half a moose the winter before, I didn’t speak to him for a week even though I understood why he done it. Other dogs got traded for other things. Young, unseasoned dogs who needed good training got sold to other mushers. Four of our retired dogs, he give them to families who could take care of them. Now we only had the two retirees and fourteen racing dogs left, barely enough for a team.