I talked at him plenty. To keep him awake on the drive. But it was the nurse who told me he ought to be okay. I stuck around and filled out his paperwork best I could. Had to go through the man’s wallet just to find out his name. Tom Hatch. He ain’t from around here.
So he ain’t dead? My voice cracked.
He lost a lot of blood, Dad said then laughed, it sounded like a bark. He said, You should see the truck, blood everywhere. Trace, you always keep your knife on you, don’t you?
The plate shattered when I dropped it, so many shards against the floor. My heart thundering in my chest.
I didn’t mean to. The words come out choked, my throat like a pinhole. It just happened, I said.
It’s okay. Dad was out of his chair and kneeling on the floor, picking up the bigger chunks of plate. Don’t cut yourself, he said. Get the broom so I can sweep up the rest.
When I handed him the broom, he could see how my hands was shaking. I felt it inside me, too, like an earthquake happening in my guts.
Hey, Dad said. Hey, it’s okay. He pulled me to him and wrapped his arms round me, stroked my back. The tremors inside me slowly went away, and soon all I felt was the solidness of him. I tried to think when was the last time he’d held me like this. Remembered him swinging me off my feet after the first time I run the dogs on my own. His arm a comfort round me after I had to scratch my second Junior Iditarod on account of dropping too many dogs. His hand on my shoulder as we walked to the truck after Mom’s funeral. Always solid, always there, no matter what happened or what I done.
A thousand words behind my lips, like dogs in the starting chute. All of them desperate to tumble out, to make it all plain.
You got your knife on you now? he asked.
I always had it. I drew it from my pocket and offered it to him. I hoped he would keep it, not get rid of it even though I supposed it was proof of some sort. Once Dad told the VSO what I had done, I probably wouldn’t see that knife again.
Dad nodded but didn’t take the knife. He started to sweep up the bits of broken plate.
Good, he said. I know you think of these woods as your backyard. You know them so well, you think nothing bad can happen out there. You forget just anyone could wander through.
He dumped the shards into the trash, leaned the broom against the counter. Put his hat on.
Them chores ought to keep you too busy to do much running round the next few days, but when you go back into the woods, I want you to keep your knife on you. And if you see anything out there, you tell me, hear?
I turned the knife over in my hand. You want me to keep it?
He zipped his coat. You never can tell who’s going to come roaming through the woods, he said. Don’t go looking for trouble. But if you see someone— He shook his head. It’s just better you have a way to protect yourself.
Not minutes before, I’d had so many things to say to him I couldn’t choose one. Now I didn’t have a single word.
What’s wrong, kiddo? he asked. Is it the plate? It’s not a loss. Your mom always hated them plates, anyway. He tried to squeeze my shoulder, but I shied away. Pocketed my knife.
It’s been a rough morning, huh? he said. You get after those chores, maybe we’ll take a walk later. Sound all right?
I didn’t bother answering.
Good girl, he said.
Then he was out the door. I watched him through the window, seen him pause halfway between the house and the dog yard. It was still snowing, lighter now, and the clouds so low the mountains beyond the trees had vanished.
I went on drying the dishes, the whole time aware of the weight of the knife in my pocket. All the relief and worry I had felt before drained away and got replaced by a buzzing inside me, I could hear it growing louder and louder, like a swarm of bees in my head. I stared at the plate in my hand. Used to be, I could tell him anything. Bring him a problem, he would tell me how to solve it. There wasn’t no secrets between us. Then I had one thing I couldn’t tell him. The problem with having one secret is that it turns into two pretty quick. Then three, then so many it seems like anytime you open your mouth you are in danger of spilling everything.
I wiped the last plate dry.
Good girl. That’s what he’d called me.
I threw the plate at the floor.
Long as I followed Mom’s rules, I could stay outside all day if I wanted. I run and wrestled with the dogs, watched chipmunks jump branch to branch and voles make their burrows in the grass. When Scott got big enough, I showed him how to climb the big tree in front of the house. We made swords from switches and chased each other round the yard till Mom hollered us in to dinner. Then I’d eat everything in front of me, seemed like I was always hungry. Dad would say, She’s a growing girl. Except I never seemed to grow much. I was always small for my age, muscular enough and wide across but never very tall. Scott would push his food round and whine about having to eat this or that, and Dad would say, Look at your sister, she doesn’t complain.
Scott stuck his tongue out at me. Mom cut his meat for him, and watched us, silent.
I was seven when I got real serious about trapping and shelter building. Dad showed me how to make a basic snare, how to build a lean-to that would give you enough cover if a storm come up unexpectedly. I dug myself a snow pit round the base of a white spruce behind the kennel, packed the walls real good and laid down branches on the floor of the pit, and when Dad come to see my work, he said, Good job, Trace. Then showed me how to lay more branches over the top of the shelter to keep the heat in.
The more time I spent outdoors, the harder it got to come in. Mom stood at the back stoop and hollered my name over and over, till I finally come out the woods, rubbing my hands against my shirt and leaving smears of blood.
Clean up, she told me but then grabbed my arm before I could walk past her. What’s this?
She dug into my pocket and pulled out the rock I had found near the creek. I had chipped away at it with a second, harder rock to make an edge, I hoped to get it sharp enough to cut through fur and skin since my own teeth could not break through a critter’s tough hide.
Inside, she said. Don’t come back late again.
I held out my hand, but she didn’t give the rock back.
I should of been smarter and stuck by her rules. But when you are creeping toward the first lynx you have ever seen near your property, you move so slowly you don’t seem to be moving at all, it takes nearly half a minute to place your foot completely on the ground so that the weight of it does not snap a twig and send the animal running. A thing like that can’t be done quick. In the end it didn’t matter, I got close enough to smell its breath, musty and spicy and cloying, but then I lost my balance and had to put my hand out, and the sound of me stumbling spooked it. The lynx darted away, and the sun was long past set, and my dinner was cold.
Mom told me I wasn’t to leave the yard for the next three days.
I had learned pretty quick that a couple days without going into the woods put me out of sorts. It wasn’t just my head that suffered, neither. If I went too long without hunting, my belly ached something awful and my muscles went all trembly. I felt weak and woozy while I tried to do the schoolwork Mom put in front of me, the numbers floating on the paper and switching places.
So by the third day, my stomach was like a hollow pit, nothing I ate would fill me up, and I shivered even as I sat close as I could get to the fire in the den. Scott on his belly nearby, coloring in his book.
You want to do this page? he asked.
Leave me alone, I said.
He frowned. You sick?
I didn’t bother answering. He only went outside if we was playing or helping with the dogs, and he’d never caught an animal on his own. He got cold quick when we played together in the snow, even though he was bundled in three layers or more. And he could stay inside for days on end, sounding out the words in his picture books and coloring all afternoon. He never seemed to get sick the way I done. It was hard to believe sometimes we was even related. Except for the way he could annoy me, only a brother could know just how to get on your last nerve, like the way he held out a crayon then and asked, Is this your color? When I didn’t answer, he held out the next one and asked again, teasing, color after color, each one closer to my face, and I thought about warning him, it wasn’t funny and I wasn’t in the mood, and then he held out the green crayon and asked, laughing, Is this your color? and got so close I felt the soft waxy tip poke my cheek.