Come on, he said and his voice was quiet. What’s wrong?
She rinsed a plate.
You haven’t been yourself, Dad said and the clock over the stove ticked and my pencil scratched against the paper and one of the house dogs whined. Dad’s hand on Mom’s belly, he lowered his voice and said, There isn’t something you need to tell me, is there?
No, she spat. Jesus Christ, Bill, that’s the last thing I need.
He drew close to her. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? he said. Another baby.
Are you offering to carry it this time around? she said.
If it’d get you to say yes.
She sighed. Run the water. The wood popped in the woodstove. Dad kept poking at her with his hands and his words. Stroking her back and squeezing her. Telling her the timing was right and they used to talk about having a million kids when they was younger and if they had a few more they could replace all the youngsters with their own children, put all of us to work as dog handlers. He grinned and chuckled, and I wondered how it was he couldn’t feel the anger building and coming off her like waves of heat.
Finally she pushed him, harder than she must of meant to. He stumbled back a couple steps. Her hands was covered in suds from the water, and she was still holding the knife she’d been washing.
Hannah—
Her hand was steady as she glanced at the knife, but soon as she dropped it, I could see her shoulders shake, her fingers tremble. She darted past Dad and grabbed her coat from the hook in the mudroom.
Where are you going?
Just outside.
Wait, Dad said. I’ll come with you.
No, she said. She stuffed her feet into her boots, jammed a hat onto her head. Let the door slam behind her.
Dad grunted as he sat down at the kitchen table.
I put my pencil down and said, I’m done. Can you check my math so I can go out? Mom said I could if I showed all my work.
He got up again, went to the sink and peered out the window. Walked over to the door and put his hand on the knob, then seemed to change his mind. Back at the table, he didn’t sit down, just chewed on his lip and stared at the spot where Mom had stood a few minutes ago.
Dad?
Just leave it, he said. I want you to stay inside for now. Give your mom some space.
I clomped up the stairs, unhappy at how the evening had turned. But then I went to the window at the end of the hallway and spotted Mom in the yard. She hadn’t got far, just to the head of the driveway where she stood, bundled in her red coat, facing away from the house. Looking at what, I couldn’t say. The trees that shielded our house from the road, or the sliver of moon hooked in the sky above the trees? Or the darkness, the spaces between the trees and the shadows that crept up the snow-blanketed yard, the stretches between each star that held nothing at all.
After a time, Old Su trotted over and stuck her nose in the pocket of Mom’s coat, searching for a treat and coming up empty. Su ventured down the drive, then looked back at Mom. But Mom stayed where she was.
It was long after the hallway creaked with Dad’s footsteps, long after the upstairs toilet flushed and the light switches clicked and my own room sunk under the layers of shadow and settling sounds, that I heard the back door open then close as she finally come back inside.
Day after Steve Inga mentioned the intruder at Jim Lerner’s, we got a good dump of sticky snow, despite the mild temperature. It come down like someone in the sky was emptying buckets of flakes, and by the time it was over, columns of snow stood nearly a foot and a half high on the roofs of the doghouses. Dad attached the plow to the front of his truck and spent that evening and all the next day clearing driveways and side roads, earning a couple hundred dollars.
It was a lucky stroke for me. When his taillights cleared the end of our driveway, I ducked into the kennel and got to work. I hadn’t yet bothered to inspect any of the winter rigs and they all had one thing or another that needed repairing. I tightened bolts and lashings, checked stanchions and runners for cracks, adjusted brake claws, replaced a bridle, which is the rope that attaches to the towline and helps with steering. When my sled was ready, I hauled it close to the door then loaded it with sandbags to weigh it down, since I wouldn’t be taking no gear with me, at least not on my first run. Then I untangled ganglines and tuglines, sorted through harnesses, and stabbed my fingertips with a needle, squinting under the lamp in my bedroom, as I done my best to mend what harnesses needed it.
If Dad noticed gear had got moved round or that someone had loaded a winter rig with sandbags and covered it with a drop cloth, he didn’t say nothing. Next morning, he filled a bucket with kibble then led me back out to the dog yard. The temperature had dropped some, so I convinced him to let me heat up a batch of thin broth. It wasn’t much but at least the dogs would get a few extra calories with their breakfast.
Usually the dogs made a decent racket when they knew it was feeding time, but that morning they was absolutely frenzied. They yapped at us the whole time we made our rounds and only quieted once they had something in their bowls.
My bucket empty, I punched through the snow on my way back to the kennel. A cold snap had settled after the snowfall, sucked all the moisture out of the air, and the ground had gone brittle, crusted over. I broke through with every step till I reached the door, and stopped short.
Dad nearly walked into me. What? he said.
But I didn’t have to answer, he could see for himself what I had already spotted. A footprint. Bigger than mine, with tread new enough to make clear zigzag patterns in the snow.
We was just over here, I said, quiet.
He pressed his own foot into the snow next to the print to show me it was smaller than his own by maybe half an inch.
Inside the kennel, a soft thud like something falling off the workbench and hitting the floor.
We would of seen somebody in there, I said, but soon as the words was out of my mouth I thought of all the places there was to hide in our kennel. Even as we’d filled our buckets someone could of been in one of the stalls near the back, or up in the loft, or behind the empty chest freezer.
Where’s Scott? Dad asked me.
Still in the house, I said.
You go in, too. He put his bucket down. The morning had gone still, none of the dogs barking now.
Don’t, I said.
But he was already inside, the shadows swallowed him as he moved toward the back of the building, and I strained to hear anything other than my own heart pounding. I had stabbed Tom Hatch for a reason. He had come at me, snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking, and if I hadn’t turned round at the right moment, who knows what he might of done? He might of squeezed my neck till my throat closed, or clobbered me with a stone. Did he have a weapon now, a hammer he’d grabbed off the workbench when he’d heard us in the kennel?
I should never of taken the money. I turned and run back to the house. I don’t know if I meant to grab Hatch’s pack or for what purpose, but I stopped when Scott come outside.
What are you doing? he asked.
Shhh, I said.
He come out even though he wasn’t wearing a coat, his feet swallowed up in Dad’s extra pair of boots. I strained to hear any sound from the kennel. Thought about the distance from Fairbanks to here, about how long it might take to heal from a knife wound. I waited for Dad to come out. It should of been me to go inside, not him. Why hadn’t he ever put a lock on the kennel? Anyone could walk in, hide in the dark. I seen Tom Hatch in the doorway of the kennel, his gut bleeding, blood on the snow. Holding a hammer, holding Dad’s axe.