Till I come upon words that was familiar, but not because Kleinhaus had wrote them.
At age eight, I was taken in by my grandparents, longtime residents of rural Maine, retired teachers who had adopted mushing not as a sport but as a way of life. The dogs were transportation. They were farmhands. Employees, guards, companions. Occasionally, audience: my grandfather had taught English literature, and was the only musher, I reckon, who would recite Shakespeare while riding the back of his sled.
Jesse, laughing shyly as he brushed snow from his knees. The two of us handling the dogs together, me close enough I could make out the spray of freckles on his cheeks.
I turned the pages of the Kleinhaus book, barely reading, only needing to remember now. After Kleinhaus’s grandparents died, he set out across the country. Spent some time in Montana, he’d worked on a cattle ranch before heading farther west. Later, he’d got a job on a commercial fishing boat in Ketchikan.
Everything Jesse had told us about his life, I could find in them pages. Every breath in him a lie.
I thought when I found the pack with the Kleinhaus book buried under bundles of cash that it belonged to the man I’d stabbed, a stranger who had stumbled into our yard spilling blood and desperate for help. A man who would come back, I had been certain, because if he’d bothered carrying that much money into the woods, odds was he needed it. Tom Hatch never did pay us a visit, but the owner of the pack had come back after all.
I got up, rolled my sleeping bag, patted my pocket and found my knife where it always was. I had left the pack I’d thought belonged to Tom Hatch under my bed. I’d used most of the money for race fees. If Jesse found his bag in my absence, what would he do when he seen most of his money was missing? And that was assuming money was all he wanted. Before he showed up asking to trade his labor for a home in our shed, he’d watched us. From the kennel, from the edge of the trees, from the brush near the traps he’d stole from, he’d observed and waited, biding his time—for what? You don’t spy on a family for weeks if all you really need to do is knock on a door and ask if anyone’s seen a red backpack you lost in the woods.
My limbs grew warmer the faster I went. I pushed through brush and bare-limbed trees, waded through places where the snow had built up in drifts. Before, I’d pushed every thought of Jesse out of my head, but now he was all I could think of. Dad trusted him, but he didn’t have all the information. I seen Jesse stealing up the stairs at night, so familiar with the house by now that he knew to avoid the step that always groaned underfoot. Understanding from the nights he’d seen me sneak out that Dad would sleep through anything. Maybe he would only search silently, then disappear and leave Dad to wonder where he’d got off to. Or maybe he wouldn’t risk leaving anyone behind who could report him missing or describe him to the VSO.
I picked up speed. If I kept up a brisk run all the next day, I could be back home sometime the following night. Just like Dad, I didn’t have all the information I needed. But I intended to get it.
The yard, full of moonlight as I come off the trail. Everything still and silent, no smoke curling from the chimney, no light in the kitchen window. I had been gone four whole days by my count, long enough that Dad had probably suspected this wasn’t just me blowing off steam, that maybe I meant to stay gone this time. His truck was in the drive, he was inside, sleeping, or maybe he couldn’t sleep for worrying. He would be awful mad. Time being, though, I had another problem.
The problem roused himself when the dogs woke and barked a greeting to me. I cut across the yard like a blade on ice. I heard the shed door open and close before I seen him come round the corner of the small building.
Tracy?
The distance between us halved, quartered.
Jesus Christ. Your dad’s going to—
I only hit him once. My fist against his mouth, his lips crushed against his teeth, his jaw hard under my hand, the next day my knuckles would be bruised.
He stumbled back, his hand over his mouth. Fuck. When he took his hand away, his mouth was red.
I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to me. My lips on his. He shoved at me, but I had been right, I was stronger than he was. I licked at him, swallowed. His hands on me, pushing, scratching, struggling, till I let him go. The taste of him inside me.
The truth of him inside me.
9
A clear, daytime sky. A bird cutting its way across the cloudless blue. A red building, a mound of hay. The warmth of sun on my skin, grass tickling the backs of my legs. The rake, abandoned from my chores, propped against the wall nearby.
Then the weight of another body on mine, a hand in my hair. His breath in my face.
Stop. Stop it—
The words come out strangled, I am crushed under him. His hands grabbing.
Tracy.
I push at him, it’s Jesse’s voice I hear but the shape I see belongs to Tom Hatch.
Stop it, I holler and stumble over my own feet, fall to the ground. It’s Jesse standing over me, not Hatch. Jesse who holds a hand out to me, concern and surprise on his face. His lip still bleeding.
Are you okay? he asked.
Panic and confusion, and me unable to tell if it was my own or if it belonged to him. Invisible fingers tugging at my clothes, a sun that hadn’t yet rose touching the parts of me usually hidden. The sight of the rake, caught from the corner of my eye.
I spat on the ground, wiped at my mouth. But it was too late. A piece of Jesse inside me, and I couldn’t get rid of it. He still held his hand out. I ignored it and got to my feet on my own. I couldn’t look at him without feeling what he’d felt.
I’m sorry, I managed. My legs wobbly as I turned from him.
Where were you? he asked. Wait, Tracy—
His hand on my arm. I wrenched myself away, but he followed, his voice more concerned than angry. I couldn’t bear to look at him, look with him anymore, so I searched inside myself for the thing that would make him stop.
I heard Hatch’s voice, felt his breath in my ear. Heard him speak a name that didn’t make no sense, that made perfect sense at the same time. The way Jesse’s body felt for the brief second I let myself understand him.
Just wait, Jesse said again.
I spun round and shoved him away. Leave me alone, Jessica, I said.
He let go, all the color gone from his face. I had noticed early on how he never grew even a shadow of a beard, but it hadn’t meant nothing to me before. In the moonlight now that face was soft. Girlish.
The house was dark. At first I could only see the hunched figure at the table with Jesse’s eyes, and it stood, taller and broader than me, it come toward me, and the fear that rose up in me then was my own because it wasn’t Hatch, it was Dad, a look on his face I never seen before.
Where the hell have you been?
I couldn’t catch my breath. I’m sorry wheezed out of me again, but I was still on the grass, under the sun, under Hatch. My clothes on the ground, and the feeling of wearing Jesse’s thoughts. His body—her body?—struggling. Eyeballing the rake only an arm’s length away.