I did go into the woods then. No dogs, just me and my knife. The traps I found triggered still had their catch. As I field-dressed a couple of minks I wondered how long Jesse Goodwin had wandered our woods before he showed up in the yard. At least a few days, I reckoned. I wiped the blade of my knife clean.
I made it back home in time for dinner, like Dad had asked. Found him stirring a pot of leftover beans while I knocked the snow off my boots in the mudroom.
Any luck? he asked.
Got you a couple furs, I told him.
He set the table with spoons and bowls, then bustled over to the oven and took out a loaf of warm bread. Whistling.
I washed my hands at the sink. Through the window I could see Jesse Goodwin making himself at home in our shed. He’d left the door open and lit the woodstove and the little oil lamp, and his shadow danced over the walls as he moved about.
So I guess he’s staying, I said. Even though he can’t pay rent.
The whistling stopped. He’s a real good worker, Dad said. You should’ve seen what a quick job he made of cleaning the dog yard. He’s good with mechanics, too. Thinks he can figure out whatever’s making that noise in the truck. And you heard him say he worked down in Ketchikan? He was on a boat. He’ll be a real hand come summer if I can get out to fish camp with Steve. Probably clean salmon in half the time I can.
He smiled at me. That’s something you won’t even do, Trace.
He was right. I do not see the point in fish at all, they are cold and slimy and you don’t get no satisfaction from them, the most they are good for, far as I’m concerned, is mixing with kibble and a little rice to feed your dogs.
Dad was back at the counter, slicing the bread. Whistling again. His sleeves rolled up, his arms and face chapped from working outdoors in the cold. There was still circles under his eyes and he needed to put on about ten pounds to look like his old self. But he sailed across the room, back over to the pot, then to the table. It should of made me glad to see him so clearly happy. I shouldn’t of begrudged him a little joy. But he didn’t know what I knew.
Supper’s about ready, he said. Can you run out and let Jesse know?
It wasn’t that he asked me. He was always asking me to do all kinds of things, and half the time it wasn’t asking but telling. It was the way the question fell out of his mouth, casual like. Like the way you say, Would you hand me that hammer? or Don’t forget to do your homework. The kinds of sentences that come out with barely any thought, you’ve said them so many times before. He said Jesse’s name, and it come out like it tasted familiar to him.
I hung the towel I’d used to dry my hands. What’d he say? I asked.
What’d who say? Dad said.
When you told him Gerald Vetch died about a year before Mom did, I said. What’d Jesse have to say then?
Dad turned the burner off. When he frowned, you could see the circles under his eyes, darker than ever.
Go on upstairs and get your brother, he said.
He went out to get Jesse himself.
7
Between the time Mom come on that first hunt with me and when she stopped leaving the house altogether, there was a long spell when we would run together down the trail, me at her heels, till the day I finally caught up with her, run alongside her, then pulled ahead. I thought she let me, that the next time we run, she would outpace me again. But after that, she never beat me. I always left her behind.
I would hunt or check traps while she only watched. Sometimes I would ask her for advice. But she was only interested in teaching me about plants and roots, or sometimes we would pick out a set of tracks and follow them far as we could.
When I drunk, I drunk alone.
She was full of information about what to forage, and the woods filled with her voice when we walked together. But she skirted round the things I really wanted to know. We dug into the snow to unearth greens, clover and lamb’s-quarters and rose hips, wilted but still edible. Our fingers touching as she explained what was good to eat and what was poison. When what I wanted her to explain was how she’d managed to stop hunting. Or what made her take her first drink. How she knew people was different from animals, had she bit the boy she’d told me about, the one that had got lost when she was a girl? We huddled close over the hole, shoulder to shoulder, and she spoke in her easy, patient way. Every question I wanted to ask would be an interruption. Her face would cloud over and her mouth would close, and the day would be finished, whether we’d spent an afternoon or only an hour together.
We brushed the snow from our knees when we stood. I put my foot down in her footprints as we walked, tucked my questions away to be asked some other time.
By the first week of November, Jesse Goodwin had got the old truck running, the one that had been up on blocks since before Mom died. He sat in the cab one evening after dinner, put the key in the ignition, and the engine complained for a handful of seconds then finally turned over. The sound traveled across the yard, up the shoveled path to the back stoop, which didn’t sag no more, through the back door, oiled so the hinges didn’t whine every time you come in or out. Into the mudroom, all the coats hanging on a new rack instead of a row of raw nails pounded into the wall. Into the kitchen, sink empty and that night’s dishes drying, past the laundry room, no more piles of dirty clothes that waited weeks to get clean. Up the stairs and down the hall to my room, where I sharpened my knife and readied myself for a day in the woods.
It’s funny how quick you can get used to something long as it’s consistent, even if it don’t sit well with you. In just a handful of days, really, I had got used to finding Jesse knocking snow off his boots in the mudroom. Jesse warming his hands over the burn barrel. Jesse in the kennel, Jesse at the kitchen table.
Or he’d be holed up in the shed. What time he spent not working or taking his meals with us he spent there, a sliver of him visible through the gap in the curtain, sitting at the small table he’d built from wood scraps, writing in his notebook, or laid on top of the quilt on his cot, turning the pages of some novel he’d borrowed from our shelves.
Tracy, come away from there, Dad said. Give the man some privacy.
I done just that. I steered clear of him best I could, and when the two of us ended up doing the same chore, both of us feeding the dogs or shoveling snow, I give him a wide berth. But I kept my eyes on him. Dad might of trusted Jesse. I knew better.
Jesse glanced up, caught me watching him. I lowered my gaze quick, but not before I seen him give a small, shy smile.
Early November, Dad picked up a job in the village. He spent a couple days a week at the clinic mopping floors and being the handyman. It was just part-time is what he said, and temporary, he only wanted to get ahead on some bills, and now that he had a hand at home, he could take on steady work.
Being a musher is work enough, I wanted to tell him. Except he seemed to of forgot all about that.
I hadn’t. Dad took to staying up later than normal after Jesse first arrived, or else he would turn in and I would creep down the stairs an hour or so later only to find the lamp lit in Jesse’s shed. I couldn’t know how deeply Jesse slept or whether the dogs would wake him with their excitement when they seen the sled, but I could wait and see. Once Dad took the job at the clinic, he started turning in early again, and I took that as my chance.
I drug the sled out of the kennel round midnight to the dogs’ barks and howls. Glanced at the dark shed, certain that Jesse would pop his head out and ask what was all the ruckus. Then probably remark to Dad the next morning how odd it was I run at night instead of the day. I darted back inside the kennel, come out again with handfuls of snacks, and soon every dog was too busy gnawing at little chunks of frozen rabbit or squirrel to bother yapping and waking Jesse up. I felt more at ease, even though I kept one eye on the shed as I got four dogs on the line.