She thought I didn’t know, Dad said.
It made you mad. Her going off like that.
Not mad, he said. Well, maybe a little. Worried, mostly.
I thought of him rolling over in his bed, her side cold. Of him staying up, waiting for her to come back. Wondering if she wouldn’t. When she did, when she eased the back door closed behind her and crept up the stairs, did he want to holler at her the way he done when I run away? It never occurred to me before that the reason he was so scared then was because he’d gone through the same thing with her.
That’s not to say I like Helen better than your mom, he told me. Or that Helen’s supposed to be some kind of replacement. I still love your mom. I still miss her. You understand, kiddo?
I nodded then realized he couldn’t see me. But my throat was thick and my tongue stuck, the whole of me heavy with worry. I hadn’t never taken anything from Dad, not a drop, but at that moment, I knew him. Felt him in my bones. Wrapped in my sleeping bag, I was also hunched over the kitchen table, my eyes burning with sleeplessness, my head snapping up at every sound the house made. My whole self weighted down with dread and fear. I should of said then how sorry I was. How I never meant to do that to him.
Instead, I rolled over, curled myself round the feeling like a small boulder I would carry with me.
Heard Dad say to me, Night, Trace.
The race didn’t start till ten, but I woke early, made a fire right away and started the dogs’ breakfast. Dad woke while I fed the dogs, and he rustled up breakfast for us humans. We ate in silence, watching the stars fade. Another clear, crisp morning, about fifteen degrees. Good day for a run.
The Junior starting line ain’t near as chaotic as the Iditarod start. For one thing, there’s fewer mushers, just fifteen of us that year compared to the fifty or sixty mushers that usually run the big race. Still, fifteen mushers with as many as ten dogs each, plus the parents and handlers and volunteers and spectators, it makes for a decent crowd.
I shut it all out as best I could. Focused on my dogs as I bootied them, then took hold of their harnesses and led them one by one to the gangline. The Junior requires at least seven dogs to start the race, you could have as many as ten on a team, and it was a good idea to bring the maximum in case you had to drop a couple dogs over the course of the run. But in just a week I was going to be running most of the same dogs in the big race, and I wanted as many fresh dogs as I could get for the Iditarod. So I’d brung a team of only seven to the Junior. Chug and Boomer in the wheel position, and just ahead of them, Grizz and Marcey as my swing dogs. I had learned over the last couple weeks that Stella and Zip run well together, so I’d paired them right behind Peanut on the lead.
My belly give a little tug as I settled my team, I thought of Flash and hoped the musher Dad had loaned her to understood that she was a natural leader. Then I pushed thoughts of her aside and concentrated on my own lead. I give Peanut a good pet and a talking-to.
Dad finished rechecking my basket, making sure the sled bag was secure.
A crackle cut through the air, I winced as the sound system squealed. Then the announcer asked the first couple teams to head toward the chute and the starting line.
Reckon we ought to get over there, Dad said.
Volunteer handlers was already heading our way. They grabbed hold of the dogs’ harnesses and behind us another volunteer hooked a snow machine to my sled, it would do the job of a tag sled, which is meant to slow the dogs down and keep them in place till the starting line countdown reaches zero. The announcer’s voice introduced bib number one, a racer from Bozeman, Montana, and my team jerked forward, closer to the start, as the first countdown begun.
Dad had hold of Chug at the wheel position, and I thought of Mom, all the years she had stood in that same spot as Dad waited out the seconds before the start of another race. He looked back at me and his face nearly cracked with how big his smile was. I couldn’t help but smile back. I briefly wished Scott was there, and Jesse. I pictured the two of them helping to handle the team, or standing close to the start and cheering, the way they most likely would the day of the big race. Warmth rushed all through me, and if I had felt even a little nervous that morning, all the nerves went out of me. My head went as calm as if I had just spent the last few hours running through our woods at home. I breathed deep and stepped onto my runners. Held on to my handlebar. My dogs yipped and danced and tried to wriggle free from their handlers.
The sound system crackled again. The announcer told us, bib number two is rookie Quentin Trefon, from Bethel.
I barely heard the countdown. My team surged forward, and we was at the start.
Bib number three is veteran musher Tracy Petrikoff, running her third Junior Iditarod.
Dad winked at me.
I winked back, then focused. A small crowd just beyond the starting line, a blur of faces smiling and chatting, a few hands fluttering as folks waved. I spotted Wendell Nayokpuk from the village general store, and somewhere Steve Inga was organizing the day’s volunteers.
Ten, the announcer started the countdown.
The sun had rose above the trees and the light bounced off the snow and made my eyes water. I wiped at them with one gloved hand.
Nine, eight.
Took my hand away, and there he was.
Seven, six.
At the far end of the crowd, standing off by himself. The scars on his face red and angry against skin that hadn’t lately seen enough sun.
Five, four.
All sound fell away except the beating of my own heart in my ears, it grew slower and louder and replaced the announcer’s countdown as I stared past Dad and into the face of Tom Hatch.
Three.
Dad, grinning. Hatch, turning away for a moment, then turning back. His eyes found me, and he raised his hands and started to clap.
Two.
The sled strained under the power of seven dogs eager to pull. My whole weight on the brake. A river of sweat underneath my coat and damp at the edge of my wool hat. Hatch’s eyes on me. Pinning me to the runners where I stood. My whole body frozen, my heart a panicked bird inside a cage.
One.
Go.
We lurched forward. I hadn’t stepped off the brake, but still the dogs surged, struggling, and I remembered how to use my legs again, I lifted my foot, and we sailed past Dad, he reached out to touch my shoulder. Proud of you, Trace, his voice come to me from the top of a canyon as I fell, the dogs went forward but I was going down, tumbling down past the sea of faces at the starting line, till I come to Tom Hatch. I plummeted past him, our eyes locked, and he smiled at me.
Good luck, musher!
Then we was on the trail. I looked back over my shoulder. The next team already at the line, and the crowd had swallowed Dad, I couldn’t find him. But Tom Hatch was there. Still waving.
15
I turned, and his hand struck me. I staggered but there was nowhere to go, his hands was already clutching me, the only thing to do was to find my knife.
This time, he didn’t throw me aside. I stepped forward and suddenly found myself on the ground behind the barn, Hatch’s warm breath in my face. Stop, Tom. Stop it. I glimpsed the rake out the corner of my eye.
Then I come back to the yard, myself again. My belly full.
The sun shone and sent shadows dripping across the snow. I gripped my sled’s handlebar, but I was barely on my runners. I was in the woods, behind the barn, Hatch coming toward me, toward Jesse, again and again. I was a hare, a marten, chewing at its own leg, pulling at the noose round its own neck and only managing to make it tighter. I turned, Hatch reached out. I seen the rake. The knife in my hand. The hunger that rose up in me, the instinct to protect myself, they was one huge tidal wave that swept me toward him. Then it slammed down.