—enough anything. Hours in the day. Time to help you with the million little things you need to compete. I can’t do it all on my own.
I stared at that splatter of snow still on his coat.
I’m not happy about this, he said. I don’t want to do half the shit I end up doing. He shook his head. You’ll understand when you’re older.
His voice as tired as I suddenly felt, and I wanted to tell him that I did understand, as a matter of fact. I understood what it was like to worry and be scared all the time and do a thing not because I wanted to but because I didn’t have no other choice.
But I couldn’t say that. So instead I spat words I didn’t mean at him.
You don’t even want me to race. You don’t care if anyone in this family acts like a musher. You barely look at the dogs, much less run them.
He finally brushed the snow away and glared at me like he was supposed to. You don’t want to have this conversation, he said.
Why not?
You interested in ever running the dogs again? Spending even half an hour in the woods?
I shut my mouth.
Go inside. Now.
For once I done as he said. I kicked at a mound of snow then stomped up the back stoop, aware the whole time how babyish I was acting, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I slammed the door behind me and threw my hat to the corner of the mudroom then clomped upstairs, aiming to toss myself on the bed and fume.
But Scott was crouched in front of my bookshelves, half my guides and adventure stories and both copies of the Kleinhaus book, mine and Tom Hatch’s, on the floor. I scanned the room, certain he’d found the pack under my bed and drug that out, too, but there was only books, piles of them, some of them open, tossed all over, pages dog-eared.
Scott looked up. He was already trying to explain when I hurtled at him. I shoved him, hard, all the anger I felt at Dad pointed straight at him. His head smacked the corner of the bookshelves.
Goddammit, I said and meant I was sorry, but it come out angry.
Asshole, Scott said, rubbing his head. His hand come away bloody.
I didn’t think. Just grabbed his head, my hand over the spot where the skin had broke. A cut on the head or face will bleed a surprising amount. You’re okay, I mumbled, half to reassure him and half to distract myself from the urge I felt.
He shoved me away, though, then elbowed past me to run from the room.
I fell back against the shelves and sat there. His blood on my hand. I stared at it a good while, trying to convince myself I ought to wipe it off on my jeans, or go to the bathroom and wash. Reminding myself of the promise I’d made Mom.
And then I licked the blood away.
My head filled with pictures like flashes of lightning. They come with a flood of feeling and lit up in my mind then faded just as quick. Desire and heat and hardness rose up in me when I spotted the back of a particular girl’s head in my classroom, embarrassment and excitement twisted together as she looked over her shoulder at me. A flutter of joy as I remembered the smell of Mom baking cookies, and the ache that followed that memory. A strange mix of curiosity and fear and want that pierced me whenever Dad come into the room with my sister following, the two of them connected in a way I couldn’t quite understand. And lastly an odd sort of sadness when I spotted a sparrow on the sill outside my bedroom window, how it seen its own reflection in the glass and seemed to call to itself, over and over.
I shook my head, as if I could shake Scott out of my thoughts. The strange, funny, sad things that was running through his mind the moment I drunk even a little from him. At least, that was my guess on why I got what I got. There wasn’t no rhyme or reason to it, other than maybe I seen and heard exactly what was on a person’s mind, up at the top of their thoughts, or way down deep, when I got a taste.
I pushed myself up, Scott’s experience and emotion coursing through me. My own intentions was a blur as I stuffed whatever my hands touched into my pack, water bottle, knife, the Kleinhaus book, a sweater, a hat, my flint and steel. I was down the stairs, out the door, and into the woods before I knew it. My decision made without me even deciding.
I sprinted past the lake, past the river, then cut away from the trail to make my own route through the spruce and alder. The snow deeper here where dogs’ feet and sled runners hadn’t tamped down a path, but I had no trouble making my way through the snow. I felt strong and fast. Free. Even freer, the farther I got away from home. I would go back, I knew, eventually, after a handful of days, time enough to clear my head and let my anger ebb. But what if I didn’t? What if I just kept going north, never looking back? Things would be easier if I could be on my own, no one to keep secrets from, nothing to hide. No need to protect others from the wildness I felt inside, from the urge to give in to everything Mom had warned me against.
It was the first time, maybe, I realized I could live a life different from the one Mom had chose. Instead of hunting and running and climbing trees and living in the wild, she had somehow found Dad, and they had made a life together, me and Scott, the house, the dogs, a civilized existence. A pent-up one, too. Toward the end, she barely left her room, much less the house, the place a kind of prison she’d picked out for herself, seemed to me. If that’s what giving up drinking got you, I didn’t never want it.
8
Just as quick as she started going into the woods with me, she stopped. If we all went for a walk as a family, she come along like usual, her hand in Dad’s as they strolled. But if I asked her to hunt with me, she found some excuse for keeping close to home. She needed to weed the garden in the summer or put up the canning in the fall, in the winter she was busy knitting, or just sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket, her feet in thick socks and slippers.
If she went outdoors on her own, it was only to stand at the foot of the driveway in the middle of the night. Sometimes I watched from the upstairs window till she finally turned round and come inside. Other times, I stood so long I got tired and finally crawled into bed, leaving her still standing, with Su at her side.
The months before she died, she barely went out at all. Till the day I stood outside her room, just the door between us, afraid to open it. She wasn’t like Dad, you couldn’t know just by listening if she was asleep. Outside, snow was falling in soft, wet flakes. The day warm enough the flakes melted soon as they touched your skin, a walk in the woods would mean you’d come home soaked and shivering unless you found something to warm you up. I wanted to go out. But the voices that floated up through the floorboards under my feet held me where I was.
Downstairs in the den, Dad paced and listened to Helen, the nurse who come out from the village clinic. Mom had give in after a week of arguing, she’d kept telling him she’d be fine and he kept insisting she ought to go to the clinic, till Dad finally pestered Helen into making a house call.
Finally I pushed the door open. I hadn’t seen Mom in what felt like days. Her blankets, four or five of them, piled on top of her, only her pale face showing, her mouth like a gash.
Tracy. Come sit.
I perched on the edge of the bed, afraid my weight would break her. She pushed herself to sit with her back against the headboard. The effort made her breathe hard and I smelled the sourness of her breath.
Come here, silly, she said. I’m not made of glass.
I snuggled against her, her arm round me.
You’re so warm, she said.
I been outside.
Today?
I shook my head. Yesterday. Last night. Before the snow started.
She looked out the window. It’s really coming down.