14
In the days before the Junior, I vibrated with nervous energy. I had packed and shipped my drop bags full of food and extra gear for the big race, attended the Iditarod rookies’ meeting, argued with Dad over the things he suggested I ought to pack that I thought I wouldn’t need. I had worked my team hard but smart over the last few weeks and now it was time for them to rest, we only went on the shortest, slowest runs in the last week before the Junior.
I had run the Junior twice before, it was familiar, and so with the big race still a week away I tried to focus on what was right in front of me. Seventy-five miles one way from Knik Lake to Yentna Station for a mandatory ten-hour layover, then back the way I come for a total of one hundred fifty miles. Four days after I finished, I would celebrate my eighteenth birthday. That’s when I would let myself start worrying about the Iditarod, I decided.
Day before the Junior start, the weather was clear and cool, twenty degrees. Over the course of January and February it had finally started to seem like real winter. We’d got a couple decent snowfalls, but now the snow had settled, the trail I’d been running was nicely packed. Everything set for a perfect race.
I spent the morning double-checking my sled bag and the gear I meant to take. The dogs could tell something was going on, they barked and jumped and play-bowed as I walked up and down the rows greeting them and handing out treats.
Jesse found me in the kennel afterward. Nervous? he asked.
Not about this one, I told him. But next week— I shook my head. I don’t know what’s in store.
But Bill’s told you all about the race, Jesse pointed out.
Yeah. He also told me no two mushers ever run the same race.
He frowned. What does that mean?
I think it means I’m fucked.
Surprise made his face completely naked for a second. I understood that he usually hid himself from most folks because he had to, but in that moment I realized he was choosing what to reveal even when he was with me. Long as I couldn’t drink. Over the course of a few weeks he had told me about himself, narrated his own life like it was a series of adventures, funny stories full of interesting characters that glossed over the shadows I’d seen in the brief tastes I’d got from him. His time on a commercial fishing boat down in Ketchikan turned out to be true, also the month he’d spent working in a seafood plant in Homer. He told me about growing up on a dairy farm and tagging along after his father, pestering after him to learn how to milk a cow or replace the spark plugs on the tractor. How he’d hoped one day he would inherit his dad’s land so he could keep the farm going. He might of, too, he didn’t have no brothers or sisters.
But once he started living the way he was meant to live, things changed. He didn’t have to explain to me how he’d knew words like girl and she and her didn’t fit him, no matter what other people said, or why giving himself a buzz cut at thirteen felt so good. You’ll look ridiculous in your Easter dress, his mother had said, and I felt the sting of her words, all the lightness and joy gone out of him when he seen the disappointment on her face.
I had learned more about him than I ever thought I could without his blood, it was enough to make me feel like I knew nearly everything.
His surprise at what I’d said wore off and he laughed. When he stopped, he was himself again. The self he wanted me to see.
Trace! my dad hollered from outside. You ’bout ready to go?
I’d said I wasn’t nervous, but my belly done a flip. I grimaced.
Jesse glanced out the kennel door, then stepped closer, give me a quick kiss. Good luck, Tracy Sue.
He hung back as I made my way across the yard, and when he come out to help load the dogs into the truck, I noticed he’d left by the kennel’s back door so it would seem like maybe he come from the training wheel or the woods.
Once we’d loaded the dogs and tied the sled to the roof, we was off. Dad steered us down the drive and I watched out the side-view mirror, Scott and Helen and Jesse waving to us. They would come down to Anchorage for the Iditarod ceremonial start but I had told them I would be less keyed up if it was just me and Dad at the Junior start. They waved and waved, till we rounded the corner in the drive and they fell out of sight.
We rolled into Wasilla for the final vet check, and then that evening we went to the mushers’ meeting, a roomful of kids and their families, there was fifteen of us signed up for the race. I recognized a couple faces from previous Juniors. There was pizza, then a talk from Dr. Jayne about proper care for dogs on the trail. There was older, seasoned mushers who spoke on speed and sled care and the right clothes to wear. Then, finally, the bib draw. Since I had got signed up for the race late, I didn’t get to draw at all, just got the bib that was left when every other racer had gone. I got number 3, and that meant I would be the third racer to leave from the start.
Lucky number three, Dad said to me later that night, after the meeting. We’d made camp and got the dogs bedded down, then rustled up dinner and sat by the fire with cups of hot cocoa from the thermos. Talked about the kinds of things you talk about when it’s dark all round, the fire crackling and your dogs sighing in their sleep. The sort of stuff you don’t remember later except to recall the feeling of it, and the sound, two low voices in the glow of the fire.
After we turned in, when the fire was embers and the two of us warm in our sleeping bags, that’s the conversation I remember.
His voice come to me out of the dark.
Trace?
Yeah.
About Helen. He paused. I didn’t go looking for someone who—what I mean is, I don’t want you to think— He fell quiet again.
I don’t, I told him after a while.
Don’t what?
I sighed and stared up into the night. No wind or even a breeze that night. Not a cloud over us, the sky empty except for all the stars shining down, each one pinned to its lonely spot. I had spent more than a dozen nights at Jesse’s side over the course of two months, had met him out on the trail, him coming and me going, us timing it so we’d find each other in the woods. More than once I’d woke up forgetting he was next to me, I’d freeze, heart pounding, hand already groping for my knife, till I realized it was him, and he was only there because I’d said he could be. Just as often, though, I woke to the warmth of him beside me and found myself nestling closer, the way our dogs would curl round each other in their sleep.
All critters like warmth. And if you spend years waking up to a warm body next to your own, seemed to me when that spot went cold, you’d long for a way to make it warm again.
I don’t think you meant to find someone to take Mom’s place, I said.
One of the dogs huffed in its sleep. Another stood, circled on its bed, then laid down again.
I like Helen, I told Dad.
Me too, he said. I could hear the smile in his voice.
How come? I asked.
He shifted in his sleeping bag. She’s got a way about her, he said. Makes you feel at ease. And she’s open. Always interested in trying new things, always willing to be up front about what she’s thinking. I like that.
Is it the same way you felt with Mom? I asked.
He cleared his throat. Your mom was a lot of things. But she wasn’t exactly open. Specially the months before she died. She got quiet. Secretive. Used to be, we was always pretty honest with each other, but it got so I knew she was keeping something from me. You know she used to go walking at night? Not just the one time, but almost every night, for a while.
I remembered standing in the hallway. Watching her bundled in her coat at the mouth of the driveway. Old Su nearby.