Mornings, I would wake confused by the silent house. I squeezed my eyes closed and listened for her in the kitchen, the gurgle of the coffeemaker, the sizzle of bacon as she cooked breakfast. But there was only a quiet so complete I could hear every part of my own body, all the sounds you can normally ignore. The thud of your heart. The wet rush of your breath. The sound of your eyelids the moment they open for the first time after sleeping, the gentlest pop followed by the rustle of your eyelashes parting. My stomach cramped, and a warmth spread under me.
I got up, cringing at the thought that I had wet the bed. Pushed back my covers and seen the blood, a little puddle of it soaking the sheet. Smears of it staining my thighs. I put my hand between my legs and my fingers come away slick and hot, coated in red.
I didn’t yet know what a period was, that it was natural and not so different from when one of our dogs went into heat. I wouldn’t find out till later that most girls get it earlier than I done, sixteen is awful late. Since that day, I have wondered why Mom never told me what to expect.
I run to her room, called out, Mom! but the word fell to the floor without her there to catch it. Blood trickling down my leg. My own blood. Coursing out of me the way it had drained from all the animals I’d ever killed.
Voices outside, Dad and Scott in the dog yard. I couldn’t let them see.
I barely remembered to put on clothes before I run out the back door, barefoot, into the snow. Sprinting across the yard and into the trees before anyone could see. When I was too out of breath to keep running, I walked, stumbled away from the trail, no direction in my mind but away. My head filled with a howling wind. Finally, legs wobbly and lungs aching, I come to a big tree with a hollow in it. I sat inside and wrapped my arms round myself. I never was one to get cold easy but that day I shivered so hard my teeth rattled.
My pants was stiff and red. I could smell myself, bright and metallic, and I wondered how long it would take to bleed to death. I could drain a smallish animal in just a few minutes. The woods was full of them, not just living animals I hadn’t yet caught but the ghosts of all the ones I had killed, hundreds, maybe thousands. Then there was the blood I had took from other people. I remembered sinking my teeth into Scott’s hand, remembered playing blood brothers with him when he was older. The taste of the boy from kindergarten who had got too close. The look on Aaron’s face when he seen what I done to our old cat, the burnt, electric flavor fear give his blood. Even as I regretted each one, I felt a craving in me.
I knew then I couldn’t go back home. I thought of our old dog, Denali, who died when I was about eight, he crawled under the back stoop and we found him a day later. Dad had said critters do that sometimes. Feel death coming and hide themselves away to greet it.
I climbed out from the hollow of the tree, still shivering, and started to walk.
I stumbled through the night, checked the traps I come across but every one was empty. I dug into my pocket, but my knife wasn’t there. I pushed snow aside, burrowed down to the cold ground like Mom had showed me, places where I knew good things grew, and I ate wilted greens and shriveled berries, as much as I could find. Still my belly ached and rumbled.
Come the next evening, I sat near a slender branch of the river and considered the stains on me. All the red. All the ways it come to me. The first critter I ever caught, I hadn’t wondered what to do with it. Drinking was natural to me and it didn’t occur to me till later that it might not be the same for other people. By the time I understood that Mom was the same as me, I come to think of drinking the way I thought of how you touch yourself in private. You know you must not be the only one to do it, but you understand it’s not something to talk about. It’s the nature of the thing to be hidden.
Mom had give me plenty of advice. She’d give me her rules. But she wasn’t here no more. I had to go back to figuring things out for myself. To taking what I could get, whatever way it come to me.
My fingers was numb. They fumbled with the button on my jeans.
After that, I wasn’t hungry no more.
It’s different when you take your own blood. Less satisfying. And you don’t learn from yourself the way you learn from an animal or another person. Instead, you see and feel and hear your own life as a sort of echo, images and sounds double up on you, like placing one transparent picture over another.
I laid down, my mind fuzzy and filled with muddy memories that reshaped themselves into dreams as I drifted off. I dreamed my dogs beside me, keeping me warm. Dreamed bears and wolves and moose all running through the woods. I dreamed Mom. She was a little girl, barefoot, leaves in her hair. Running past me, sleek and swift as the caribou and foxes she run alongside. She turned her head and seen me, put her fingers to her lips, like a kiss. Or a secret. Smiled at me and waved. Come on, come on! I wanted to get up and follow her. I couldn’t feel my feet. It took all my strength just to lift my head and watch her sprint away.
When Dad come round, I thought I dreamed him, too. Then I was flying, bundled in something warm that smelled of old campfires. Dad’s voice behind me, he kept saying, Stay with me, kiddo, stay awake. So I did. I watched the dogs in front of me, Marcey and Hazel, Boomer and Grizz. Old Su on the lead. My dogs, running me home.
When we got home Dad pulled me out of the sled, carried me inside. My feet was white, hard like stones to the touch, and numb. He run water in the tub, then held me as I sat on the edge, wincing as the lukewarm water washed over my feet, full of needles. Slowly, slowly, he let the water warm. I bit my lip, my feet numb and on fire at the same time. I gripped the tub. I know it hurts, it’ll be over soon, Dad said. We stayed there forever, me exhausted and clinging to him while he poured more water into the tub, more, his voice the same as the water, pouring over me, telling me he knew, it wouldn’t be much longer, it will be okay, I’m here, I’m here.
Seemed like hours before he finally emptied the tub and dried my feet, then he found me some thick, warm socks and said it was all right now, he didn’t think we needed to go to the clinic.
He wet a towel and drew the blanket away. I flinched.
Tracy, let me see, he said. You’re covered in blood. Where are you hurt?
The stains on my pants had crusted and browned, they looked more like old mud than blood. But I was still bleeding, I could feel it coursing out of me. My feet throbbed but I stood anyway, unbuttoned my jeans.
Oh—no, no. Stop. He stood, too. I didn’t realize.
He handed me the towel. I’ll let you clean yourself up, he muttered.
Then he left me on my own. Closed the door behind him. I done as he said, scrubbed myself clean. The blood kept on coming, though, it would for two days more. Eventually I learned what it was, and that it would come back. Gradually, specially when the woods was quiet and I found my traps empty, I come to see it as a gift instead of a curse.
Another night. Still no catch, the woods seemed empty of critters. My fire dead, my eyes dry with wakefulness. I watched the sky grow mottled with clouds that blotted out the stars, then finally give up trying to sleep. I dug through my pack and found the Kleinhaus book. I seen I had got the two copies mixed up, had left mine at home and brought Tom Hatch’s copy with me by accident.
Still, it was a comfort to read the familiar voice. Them first lines, setting the scene for adventure. Like most of my bad ideas, it started with desire. I flipped the pages, skipped the boring part before Kleinhaus come to Alaska, like I usually done. Come to the part where Kleinhaus falls through thin ice and panics, only to realize he can put his feet on the ground, the water’s only up to his chest. The time he gets attacked by a bear in early spring, so afraid to stop playing dead even after the bear has moseyed away, he ends up falling asleep. I thumbed back and forth through the book, reading snippets here and there, growing involved enough in the story again that I went back to the beginning to read the bits I usually skipped. I even forgot about the rumbling in my belly.