This’ll do just fine, the visitor said in his deliberate way. I’m not inclined to be in town.
Dad leaned on the handle of his axe and looked the visitor up and down. You got anyone to vouch for you?
I’m not from around here. But I worked for a guy down in Ketchikan this summer. I could give you his number.
Dad waved a hand. No worries, he said. Anyway, like the ad says, rent’s two hundred a month.
Up at the house, Old Su nosed open the back door and come down the stairs, moseyed over. Went up to the stranger and give him a sniff, then put her snout right in his pocket.
Su, come here, I said.
The visitor glanced at me, then pushed Su away, gentle. The thing is, he said, I was hoping we could make a trade.
A trade, Dad said.
I’m a hard worker, the visitor said. And it looks like you could use someone.
Dad raised an eyebrow. We’re doing fine. Don’t need help. What I need is someone who can pay rent.
But one glance round the yard told you what anyone with eyeballs could see, that even with me doing my chores every day, there was plenty more still needed doing. The back stoop of the house sagged at one end and the yard was littered with half-finished projects and broken-down snow machines and unrepaired sleds. The dog yard had never looked so empty. I felt my cheeks flush.
The visitor nodded. Then said, You’re a musher, that much is clear. No disrespect, sir, but if you were really fine, you’d be on a sled right now and I’d be standing here talking to myself.
Dad was quiet. Stood with his hands in his pockets. Then cleared his throat. You ever worked with dogs before?
Sure.
Where was this?
Montana.
Dad raised his eyebrows. You know Gerald Vetch?
Oh, sure.
That right? Dad scratched his beard. That meant he was rolling a thought over in his head. Gerald and me come out of the chute back-to-back the first year I won the Iditarod. We ran neck and neck the whole way through the Quest once. Every time one of us stopped, there the other one was. Real good guy. How’s he doing these days?
Real good, the visitor said.
Dad gazed at the dog yard, still stroking his beard.
Dad? I spoke up.
But he was lost in his own thoughts. I often wished I could know what was going on in his head, but never more than right at that moment. I felt desperate to know if he was recalling how Tom Hatch had lurched into our yard just weeks before, or if he was reminding himself of what he’d told me, that you never knew who might come roaming through the woods. Or showing up on our doorstep.
Why don’t we do this, Dad finally said. You stick around this afternoon, give me a hand. Then we’ll see about the long term. How’s that sound?
Fair enough, the stranger said.
Dad put out his hand. Well, what do I call you?
Jesse Goodwin.
Goodwin’s hand was as small as the rest of him. He give Dad a shake, but when he went to pull away, Dad held on.
You don’t mind me asking, how old are you, son?
For the second time, Goodwin’s eyes fell on me. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Seventeen, he said.
All right, Dad said and let go. Let me show you the kennel.
Ain’t you going to help me unload the kibble? I called after him.
He looked back over his shoulder. Leave it, he said. Do me a favor, take an armload of wood inside. Then you can do as you please, long as you’re home for dinner.
The two of them cut through the dog yard. Goodwin put out a hand as he walked, let the dogs sniff his fingers. Dad was talking, gesturing, and Goodwin nodded. He was what you call slight, he looked like a strong wind might blow him away. In that way, we was not alike. But as he fell into step with my dad, watching him from behind I could almost imagine I was watching myself.
Old Su trotted away from me and caught up to him, her nose in his pocket again.
I frowned. Back when Mom trained dogs, she would reward them with treats tossed from a supply in the pockets of her coat. After the dogs she was training had spent enough time with her, they got into the habit of greeting her by sticking their noses in her pocket, searching for the treats they knew was there. It had been ages since Old Su had been trained. She was near retirement, almost as old as Homer and Canyon. And she was smart enough to know only Mom ever carried treats in her pockets. Me and Scott and Dad, we just fetched them from the big bin in the kennel. There hadn’t been no treats to speak of for a good while, neither.
The last several days begun to connect themselves like dots in a puzzle book. The ruckus we’d heard in the kennel linked up to the footprints outside, to the trap I’d come upon, missing its kill but surrounded by the same set of prints. Prints that belonged to a foot only a little larger than mine. It was possible Tom Hatch was a big man with dainty feet, I hadn’t took particular note of his shoes the day I stabbed him. But it was more likely that small feet belonged to a small person. A person who’d maybe spent too long in the woods, who was desperate enough to steal the catch from someone else’s trap. A person who didn’t mind breaking into a kennel or using treats to bribe the dogs to be quiet when he done so. A person who would walk right into someone else’s home, fall asleep in front of the warm fire. Jim Lerner wasn’t a musher, but he had two big malamutes, and I would of bet all the money in Tom Hatch’s pack that whatever treats Jim kept on hand had gone missing that same day.
Tom Hatch wasn’t haunting our woods and searching for the pack he’d left behind. He was up in Fairbanks, in a hospital bed. Or maybe on a train or an airplane, on his way back to Kansas or Oklahoma, resigned to the thought of losing a little money and a book he loved. The stranger I’d been worried about was exactly that, a stranger. Some kid barely older than me, a runaway. Or a person who come up to Alaska like Kleinhaus, thinking he could make a go of it in the wilderness till a harsh enough spell of weather taught him otherwise.
A sound tumbled out of me, like a cough. Not loud enough to make Dad turn round before he stepped inside the kennel. His voice faint, then muffled when he shut the door and went on giving Jesse Goodwin the lay of our land. Which I suspected Goodwin was plenty familiar with.
I headed back toward the woodshed, glancing over my shoulder as I walked. I couldn’t tell Dad my suspicions without telling him about my trap, and that meant explaining what I was doing out in the middle of the night, staring at a set of footprints, when I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the woods, much less on a dogsled.
In the woods, when you set a snare near a critter’s den, it could be hours before that critter come back, and even then it might catch your scent and approach careful, long minutes of watching your prey turn its ears and sniff the air. In those moments, you want to lunge, grab at the animal before it decides to turn tail and run. But that is the wrong move. If you can be patient, keep your eyes open and wait for your prey to come near, you can catch it before it even knows you was watching it.
I could be patient.
I collected an armful of wood and stacked it inside, next to the woodstove in the kitchen. Stood up, and my head went fuzzy. I stumbled back and dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, lightheaded, my hands shaking. Bent double, my head on my knees, till it passed. Canyon walked over and sniffed at me, his tail wagging. Dog breath in my face, his cold nose on my cheek till I lifted my head and petted him. I was hungry, but relieved, too. The days I’d spent worrying over Tom Hatch had took a toll. I might have to worry over Jesse Goodwin, but he was here in plain sight, where I could keep an eye on him, no longer sneaking round in our woods, invisible to me.