He nodded. Steve says it’s worse west of here. They’re having a real warm spell out around Kaltag, Unalakleet.
Rough racing conditions, I said.
He grinned. Getting anxious?
No more than you’d expect, I said.
That day, Steve brung us two more dogs borrowed from a musher he knew who was taking the year off. For the Junior, I needed a team of seven dogs, minimum, and I could have as many as ten. For the big race, the maximum number of dogs I could have was sixteen, and I wanted all the dogs I could get on the line. It ain’t uncommon to drop more than one dog over the course of a race, they get injured or exhausted, or they just decide they’re done running. I needed to finish the race with at least five dogs on the line and my odds was better the more dogs I took with me. With Stella and the borrowed dogs, my Iditarod team was up to fifteen, not counting Su.
I couldn’t count her. Though we never did officially retire her, it was clear her racing days was over. She had got thin over the last month or so, I had stopped putting her on the line during my night runs, and she didn’t jump to her feet soon as she seen you head for the door like she used to. We stopped making her take turns as the house dog, she got to stay inside whenever she wanted, and before long you couldn’t walk past the woodstove in the kitchen without nearly tripping over her. She only seemed to get up when she wanted water or food, or when we all turned in for the evening. At night, she followed me up the stairs, slow but steady. I had to help her up onto my bed.
I managed my schoolwork in between prepping for the race and found time to help out with what chores I could, too, it was the least I could do considering how hard Dad was working to make the race happen for me. I felt light, relieved there was no more bad blood between me and Dad, no more suspicion of Jesse filling my head. I looked at the yard with Jesse’s eyes and tried to notice the little things he had a knack for noticing, then I done what needed doing. Salted the stoop and the walk when they iced up. Darned a pile of socks. Dried dishes while Helen washed. Sometimes I would find myself at Jesse’s side, the two of us cleaning the dog yard together or cooking parts of the same dinner. All through December, we drifted together and apart, the way you see a flock of birds split, wind through the sky, then come back together to form what looks like a solid thing. We orbited the yard alone only to discover each other behind the woodshed, a mile down the trail, in a dark stall inside the kennel.
Every time we brushed elbows, I longed to pepper him with questions. About his relationship with Hatch, about why Hatch had followed him north. But other things, too. About the dreams that sometimes woke me with a cold sweat and a vague memory of running to exhaustion. About the scent of flowers that clung to his mother’s clothes, he breathed it in as he stood between the soft, damp fabrics hanging from the clothesline behind his house. About this quivery feeling inside me, a pair of wings that fluttered to life when he caught me looking. About the closed-off part at the center of him, where he was hiding the rest of it, things he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about. I wanted to pry him open and find answers to every question I had.
Instead, I thought of Jesse’s stillness. The way he waited, patient, till someone else give voice to the idea he’d already devised, so that they felt as if they come up with it on their own. I could be patient, too.
I planted myself next to him as he greased the hub of the dog wheel and sent the whole contraption turning for the first time. Helped him lay out the gangline for his own trip down the trail with a team of two. Watched his fingers, deft and grease covered, as he changed the oil and spark plugs in Dad’s truck. Hand me that torque wrench? he asked.
I dug it out of the toolbox and give it to him. He smiled as he worked.
Something funny? I asked.
Just— He stopped, grunted as he tightened a spark plug. Then said, You remind me of me.
You when? Doing what? How? I bit off every question before it could hit the air. Waited.
I used to watch Tom work, he said after a spell. The first time I ever met him, I followed him out to the pasture and watched him mend a fence. He didn’t bother with gloves, and his hands were rough. He had these thick fingers with hair on the knuckles, but they were almost delicate, the way he used them. Like a surgeon’s.
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath till my head went swimmy.
He asked me for a pair of pliers, Jesse went on. I knew my dad had hired him but I hadn’t met him yet, till he found me behind the barn, reading. He called over to me, Hey, guy.
A thrill shot up my backbone, the thrill he’d felt at Hatch taking him for what he was.
He didn’t know about you? I asked.
Jesse’s brow furrowed and his tongue poked out between his teeth as he worked the wrench. I leaned over the guts of the truck, watching, wishing I hadn’t said nothing.
But then he answered, He found out soon enough. My parents had invited someone for dinner that night, that’s all I knew. So Tom shows up and my dad introduces me as his daughter, and that’s that.
He wiped his hands on a rag. Grime still under his fingernails, it would be there till he showered, long after the rest of us had turned in. Some questions I had answered myself, like why he waited till there was no chance someone might walk in on him in the bathroom, or why he had said no thanks when Dad invited him to camp out with the rest of us once, not long after Helen come round. Dad chalked it up to Jesse liking his privacy. He liked it, all right. It was too hard keeping things hid in close company.
Tom didn’t bat an eye, he said. Just shook my hand. Said, Pleased to meet you. After that, I was sort of obsessed with him. That whole summer, I barely left his side. Pitched in with his work, let him take me fishing. He taught me how to shoot a gun. How to fix cars. My parents thought I finally had a boyfriend. I guess I did.
I swallowed my question, but Jesse answered it anyway.
I asked Tom once why he didn’t mind me, even though everyone else seemed to. He had this philosophy, that everyone has male and female sides to themselves, sometimes a little more of one, a little less of the other. Sometimes the two sides are balanced. So if that’s the case, he said, no one should be surprised if the balance gets reversed in some folks. That someone might get a soul that says one thing and flesh that says another.
Jesse looked at me. That’s how he talked sometimes. Like a country poet.
You didn’t start out scared of him, I said. You was friends.
He nodded.
More than friends, I said.
He sighed heavy. Kept his eyes on his work.
So what happened?
He shook his head, and I figured he’d come up against some wall inside himself, something he wasn’t ready to climb over, wasn’t ready to tell me. But then he said, It went bad between us. Tom started wanted something I couldn’t give him.
Hatch’s breath in my ear. His hands, tearing at my clothes.
So he took it, I said.
Jesse glanced at me. Didn’t say nothing.
Then what?
I left, he said. I came here to start a new life. I didn’t expect the old one to follow me.
Seems like you’re skipping an awful lot, I said.
He lifted a shoulder, shook his head, and I understood he was done. But what he give me was nearly good as a drink. I could use his words like a map, follow them to the hidden places I couldn’t locate before. Like foraging in the woods, I lifted a rock and there he was, imagining what it might be like to be Tom Hatch, inhabit a body like his. I looked behind a tree and found him holding the Kleinhaus book out to Hatch. I thought you might like this one, since you mentioned wanting to see Alaska.