It had been more than a year since Dad had got suspended from racing. Before Mom died, I would of bet my life such a thing wouldn’t never happen. But the night she was hit by that truck, it triggered an avalanche. I have read that if you are caught in an avalanche, the best you can do is swim against the snow to try and keep yourself buoyed. We hadn’t swum hard enough, though. We were still struggling to get back to the surface.
Don’t be too long, Dad said over his shoulder. It’s about time to turn in.
He walked through the puddle of light cast by the lamp, then disappeared when he stepped into the darkness. Leaving me on my own in the kennel, surrounded by all our gear, the half dozen sleds at the back of the room, all waiting for someone to stand on their runners. A yard full of empty doghouses. A handful of dogs who didn’t just want to run but needed to.
That need was in me, too. I ached to get on a sled. I felt the trail tugging at me, every acre of land behind the house yearning for me to roam its familiar hills and hollows. Any other evening, I might of stole away for a few more minutes, long enough to satisfy the craving in me.
But underneath that pang was my heart, stuttering, and my skin, prickling. A pair of eyes, a hunched shadow, hidden by the night and waiting. Thoughts of the stranger made my breath stop, and it wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed. I wouldn’t feel settled, I realized, till I knew he wasn’t no longer a threat.
2
I was a lot like you when I was your age, Mom told me.
She sat on the edge of my bed, tried to brush the hair from my face. I ducked away from her hand, still angry.
She sighed.
I might have been even younger than you were when I started running round in the woods, she went on. Chasing my big brothers, stalking animals. I never learned to trap like you have. But I would stay out for hours, come home covered in mud. I was a wild thing.
I studied her through the curtain of my tangled hair. She was clean and pink from a hot shower, wrapped in her fuzzy white robe. The glasses she wore to do close work like sewing perched on her nose. Her fingernails clipped short, her hair wet but combed.
You wasn’t, I said.
She smiled.
Believe it or not.
How come you never go in our woods, then? I asked.
People change, she said. Your grandma and granddad brought us up in the bush. You know where McCarthy is, right? I grew up near there. We had endless woods to roam in. You could be gone for weeks, not see another soul. You could peel away from your brothers, wander off, get lost. Plenty of people did—get lost, I mean. Or in trouble, or hurt. Not everybody negotiates the wilderness as well as you do, Tracy.
You got lost? I asked.
No, I never did. I always knew where I was, even when I was far from home. But there was a boy who—he got lost. People searched for him for days. I even went looking for him.
Did you find him?
You never know who you might run into in the woods, she said instead of answering.
She touched my cheek.
Have you ever come across anyone when you’ve been hunting?
Not all the woods was our property, if you went far enough you’d find yourself on national park land. I knew that much from the geography lessons Mom give me. Summers, especially, I would cross paths with hikers carrying big packs and canisters of bear spray. Usually I would hear them coming and climb a tree, hide till they’d moved along.
I told her as much.
That’s fine, she said. But if you’re ever hunting and you run into someone—come home. Just turn around and run on home.
Besides the hikers, we would get a stranger or two every year, a wanderer who spilled out from the woods into our yard or who was hitchhiking their way to Fairbanks or Anchorage. They come to our door looking for work, and sometimes Dad would tell them, My front walk needs shoveling, or Wouldn’t mind someone raking them leaves away from my barn. Afterward, Mom would wrap up some food for them to take away, and Dad would hand them a bit of cash. I asked once why they didn’t mind sharing even when money was a little tight or we had ate leftover stew three nights in a row. Dad said, Because it’s the right thing to do. Mom added, Because sometimes if you tell someone you don’t have anything for them, they look around at your house and your land, and later they come back and take what you didn’t give them.
I wasn’t so angry no more, I was interested in Mom’s story about growing up wild. I sat up on the bed, my stomach grumbling, and said, What about the lost boy? Did he ever get found?
Tracy, did you hear what I said?
Run home if I see a stranger.
Right.
Because you can’t trust them?
That’s right, Mom said. Don’t stop to talk to them or see if they need help. Even if they’re hurt. Come get me or your dad, and we’ll take care of it. Understand?
I nodded.
Run if I see a stranger, I said. Because they might be dangerous.
Good girl, she said.
The morning after I met the stranger in the woods, I woke with her voice in my ears. I dressed and washed my face with threads of that memory clinging to me. My head was sore where I’d fell against the root that knocked me out the day before, a purple bruise veined with blue, but my hair hid it, and I went ahead and put my hat on for good measure.
In the kitchen, our two retired dogs, Homer and Canyon, lay by the woodstove. Each day, we give one racing dog a turn to be the house dog, today it was Old Susitna. She was the dog who led Dad to both his Iditarod wins, but she was coming up on retirement soon. She got up to greet me, nosed my hand to see if I had treats. I give each dog a good scratch.
Dad stood at the sink, sipping his coffee. He had let me sleep through breakfast, and he’d already took Scott to school and come back again. The eggs and slices of bologna he had fried up that morning was still on the stove, cold. I folded the bologna in half and ate it in two bites.
Dad drained his mug.
Sleep all right?
I shrugged.
Hope so, he said. Going to need plenty of energy to get through that list of chores.
I skimmed the scrap of paper he’d left on the table and seen that he had found plenty to keep me busy and not just away from the dogs but inside the house most of the day. Vacuuming, dusting, mopping the kitchen floor, the only thing on the list that got me out of the house was number one, Clean out the Shed.
It wasn’t the chores I minded. I knew it was a trade, that you have to work for what you get. That seemed fair to me. What wasn’t fair was the nature of that list. It was another punishment, except it was one he snuck up on me. It would be dinnertime before I finished every chore on that list, and then he would tell me to do my schoolwork, and when I finished that, he would remind me I wasn’t to go into the woods, not as long as I was grounded. He thought taking the outdoors from me was the same as taking Scott’s comic books or his old camera from him, but it wasn’t. My stomach clenched and I breathed deep, tried to push a lid down on the panic rising inside me.
Better get started, Dad said.
I followed him outside, meaning to get the shed done first. The sky was low, full of solid clouds, white and heavy. Everything still. Days like that usually smell flat, clean. There is electricity in the air, your skin tingles with it and you know soon snow will blanket everything. Underneath, you can still catch the fuzzy scent of fall, like wet leaves and rotted wood, things decaying and going back to the dirt. It’s an outdoors smell, a seasons-changing smell. A scent that don’t have nothing to do with people.
The day smelled wrong.
I seen him before Dad did. Before the dogs even got wind of him. Just where the trailhead spills into the yard, the stranger come stumbling out of the trees.