by Kelly Link
Jill swiped her hands through the air; Brent watched them. He laughed.
“She says blame Sass, her lead dog.” He looked back at his daughter. “User error, I’d say.”
Jill’s hands danced.
“My fault?” Brent said.
She went on. When Jill finally rested her fingers on the table, Leslie noticed calluses and cuts, dirt lodged beneath her nails. Brent kept chewing. Jill pointed at him, then at Leslie. She did it again, this time nodding her head, opening her eyes wide.
Finally, he swallowed: “Says it’s my fault for not letting her take my team.”
Jill looked at Leslie, nodded her head once. Leslie tried to smile at her. Jill was unmoved. We will not be friends, that look said. She sliced her hands through the air again and this time Brent put his fork down. When she finished, they stared at each other for a long time.
“I’m not telling her that,” Brent said.
Jill stood up from the table, flipped her father off, walked through the dark house, and slammed a door.
Another week passed. More letters. She told Dennis that even when temperatures dropped below zero the dogs had only hay to keep them warm. They slept with their tails over their noses. When they woke, they ran laps around their houses for something to do, perfect little racetracks of packed snow. The swivel at the end of each of their chains clinked against the post, and the yard sounded like a chorus of finger tambourines. Come for a visit. Soon. Before I leave for Alaska.
She was making her morning rounds when Brent returned from the mailbox with an envelope. The handwriting she would have known even without the name in the corner, and she took it inside where she held it to the light and peered at the small piece of paper inside. No bigger than a Post-it note. She ripped a neat strip from the edge of the envelope, turned it upside down, dumped the note onto her tiny wooden table. It was written on the paper Dennis kept on the edge of his desk—the one with a picture of a pipe in the bottom right hand corner. He hated the paper, but his mother had bought it for him when he turned thirty and gave up chewing tobacco for a pipe; and although Leslie had tried to get him to throw it away a dozen times, he said he felt too guilty. Instead, he used it for trivial matters. Grocery lists. To-do lists. Killing spiders.
She unfolded the paper. Stop. Stop writing to—
Leslie didn’t read the rest. She tucked the note back inside the envelope, found a clean sheet of paper, and sat down with a pen.
Dennis,
Stewpot has a fissure; Mars, a swollen ankle. Scooby’s dewclaw is inflamed because I put his bootie on wrong. It started just as an irritation, but I ignored it, and now Scooby might be done for the season. Come visit next Saturday. It’s lonely here.
Love,
Leslie
They had been here before, the two of them. The first time she broke up with him—the first warm day of spring two years ago, she remembered, the ground soaked with melted snow—he delivered a pile of soil to her backyard because she once said she wanted a garden. Each day after that, he left her packages of tiny seeds—corn, squash, carrots, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, banana peppers, red peppers, bell peppers—until finally, weeks later, on the day he brought her pumpkin seeds, she called him and said Fine, okay, stop with the seeds. Six months later, when he ended it, it was her turn to lure him back, and she did it with ripe tomatoes, crookneck squash, overflowing bags of green beans, and bundles of basil. When he wouldn’t open his door, she left the vegetables on his doorstep, adding to the rotting pile on her way to the bank, until one morning she showed up, doorstep clear of the rot, to find a note: Come in, it said.
She got laid off from her job a week later and was pregnant just a month after that. He thought maybe they could do it. Maybe that child—and marriage, he said—was exactly what they needed. But the money, she’d insisted. He was only part-time at the warehouse. And besides, she’d already made the appointment. He said nothing more and showed up at the clinic where they held hands the way they had when they started dating. Leslie tried to ignore how sad he was in the weeks after, and she tried to hide her immediate relief, but once a week they yelled about it until she boarded the bus for New Hampshire. She hadn’t expected to miss him.
With this new letter in hand, she walked to the end of the driveway, the dogs calling after her, and shoved it into the mailbox.
She was scrubbing the harnesses in the warming shed. Brent came in to stack the large green bags of food. The water in the bucket had cooled, and Leslie had to steel herself before she plunged each harness. The blisters on her hand were threatening to burst. Later she would poke each one with a needle and watch the skin sink back into itself.
“I was wondering if I could have Saturday off,” Leslie said. She moved the harness from the wash bucket to the rinse bucket, where the water was slightly warmer.
Brent hauled two loads of food from the wheelbarrow to the corner twice before he spoke. “Going somewhere?”
“Someone’s coming to visit,” she said. “Just for the day. My fiancé.” The word had slipped out, but Leslie found comfort in it. It was familiar and full of hope. She let it hang there. It had been true, almost.
Brent removed the ladder from the hooks at the far end of the shed and set it up in front of the stack he’d made. He climbed, holding on with one hand, balancing a bag on his shoulder with the other. He reached the top, flung the bag onto the stack, and waited there for a moment to catch his breath. Leslie saw him look at her left hand. She pushed it deep into the water.
“Do your morning chores. Then you can have the rest of the day.” He didn’t look at her when he said it.
On Friday morning while Jill watched her do the chores, Leslie couldn’t help but feel the girl was collecting evidence of her insufficiency. After all the shit had been collected and the dogs each fed, Jill went from doghouse to doghouse, peering into the doors, talking to the dogs with her hands. She coaxed Sass out with treats and inspected her paws, pulled the skin back at the dog’s cheek and scraped at her teeth. She rubbed the dog’s chest, ran her hands down each leg, scanned the underside of the tail and inside the ears. Satisfied that Leslie hadn’t ruined her lead dog, Jill tipped her head back and made her mouth into a tight circle, blowing puffs of hot air. Sass did the same, howling along to Jill’s silent call.
That afternoon, Jill walked the perimeter of the property with a small white book. She stopped in front of a trunk, placed her hand against the bark, flipped pages, looked up, walked around the tree, flipped more pages. On and on, all afternoon. When Jill waved Leslie over, Leslie didn’t move, certain Jill’s gesture had not been for her. Jill waved again, this time with more urgency. Leslie went.
She wasn’t sure what to do around the girl, where to put her hands, how to stop her vocal instinct.
Jill pointed to the tree. The bark was white and scarred with black lines, as if it had been lashed with a burning whip. She turned to the section near the end of her tree guide. She put her finger on the bottom of the page. Quaking aspen. Scientific name: Tremuloides. Jill put her hand into her coat and pulled out a pen and a small notebook, flipped until she found a blank page, scribbled something, and handed the notebook to Leslie, covering her mouth with her hand.
Like hemorrhoids.
Leslie rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her.
Jill pointed to the woods and then back at the book. She swept her arms through the air and pointed again.
Leslie shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. Jill tried again, pointing from the book to the woods and to the book again. She stared hard at Leslie, waiting.
“Okay,” Leslie said. “Show me.”
Jill smiled, tucked her book in her coat. They walked together across the field, beyond the doghouses and the food shed. The morning wind had settled, but clouds were coming in from the south. Two crows were fighting in the pines. Somewhere a woodpecker was pounding on a
tree trunk. Just before they entered the woods, Leslie heard a door slam, its echo holding for a moment in the valley before lifting into the gray sky. She turned. Jill followed Leslie’s eyes. They watched Brent get into the truck holding an armful of yellow ribbons and fake sunflowers and disappear down the driveway.
Jill was scribbling something in her notebook. She handed it to Leslie. Let’s run his team. Out to the aspen.
Leslie shook her head. She pointed toward the driveway.
Jill wrote again: Changes all the ribbons at the crash sites! Gone all day.
When Leslie pointed to the dogs, Jill wrote, I’ll help.
When Leslie pointed to the sky, Jill wrote, Tonight. No weather till tonight!
Finally, Leslie took the pad and pen and wrote her own message: I’ll get fired.
Jill took the pen from her hand, scribbled something and handed it back. He likes you. Jill took it again and drew three heavy lines beneath the word likes and pushed it back into Leslie’s hands. Then Jill gave her a look like she was stupid. She pointed to the word she’d underlined and opened her eyes wide.
Swift, methodical, careful, Jill harnessed four dogs in the time it took Leslie to hitch one. With the towline anchored to the barn, all nine dogs lunged forward and leapt off the ground. Jill climbed onto the runners and Leslie sat in the cargo bag, tucked between the dog treats, snow hook, and blankets. When Jill released the towline from the barn wall, the dogs sprinted forward, leaving the forty-eight others howling behind.
They headed west past her cabin and the warming shed, out beyond the aspen they had studied together, hugging the base of the mountains. The dogs kicked up snow as they ran, and Leslie shielded her eyes as best she could. But she wanted to watch them, the way the wheel dogs lunged forward and the swing dogs guided the team around the corners. They’d given up their howls for heavy panting, the occasional grunt. They worked. They did their job.
Once through the valley, they entered a stand of maples, oaks, and spruce. The bare limbs towered above them and the forest became a shadow of itself, dark despite the daylight, and the entire world—the snow, the trees, the bits of sky above, even the backs of the dogs—blurred together into a mass of gray. Jill guided the dogs and the sled through the trees, along a trail that had been traveled before but covered by recent snow. It wasn’t until they were deep into the woods that Leslie saw the forest open up on hundreds of thin white aspen.
Leslie felt the sled slow, and just before they came to a stop, Jill dropped the snow hook, the two steel prongs sinking deep into the ground. Stewpot and Mars, the workhorses in the wheel, looked back. Bandit plopped down in the fresh snow. Minnow peed.
Jill pulled her book out of her jacket and waved for Leslie to follow her. Beneath the trees, Jill opened the book and pushed it into Leslie’s hand. She learned that a stand of aspen grew up to twenty acres of roots before sprouting an entire family of trunks, that every tree in a clone of aspen was genetically identical. She learned that birch bark peeled and blistered in the sun, but that aspen never lost its skin.
Leslie heard the dogs behind them getting restless. A sneeze, a whimper, Bandit and Mars pawing each other in play. But Inca’s head was lowered, and the fur on her back raised. Leslie followed the dog’s gaze.
Beyond the aspen, a patch of brown. Too big to be a coyote, too dark to be a deer. Whatever it was disappeared behind the spruce trees, and rather than seeing the thing—bear? human?—Leslie could only trace the movement of the figure by the changing light through the trees.
The rest of the dogs, as though on Inca’s cue, directed their attention to whatever was out there. Jill, still standing out by the aspen, hadn’t noticed. Leslie watched until the figure emerged from behind the tall brush and into the edge of the opening.
Leslie tapped Jill on the shoulder, pointed. Jill dropped her book and ran for the team. The moose stared at the group for a long time, and the dogs pulled hard against their line. The snow hook didn’t budge. When the dogs broke out in growls and barks, the moose took two steps forward. Jill swung her arms at the dogs in a silent command: Stay. The moose moved forward again, hooves disappearing into the fresh snow with each step. On the back of the sled, Jill pulled hard at the brake. All nine dogs lunged. The snow hook came loose. The dogs gave chase. The moose charged.
Jill tried to slow the team by tipping the sled. Leslie ran to help her, but it was already too late. The moose stomped its way through the dogs, tangling its legs in the gangline. A sharp, collective yelp went up from the pack. The moose rose up and took aim at the sled. Its front legs crashed down on the runners and Jill and Leslie fell to the ground. Leslie screamed at the dogs to stop, but nothing she said worked. Jill reached for the snow hook. When the moose stood up on its back legs again, an entire team of dogs biting at its backside, Jill swung the snow hook wildly, catching the loose skin under the animal’s chin. The moose threw back its antlers, let out a guttural growl, and ran. It dragged the dogs and the sled behind it, until finally the towline caught on the trunk of an aspen, and the prongs ripped clean from the moose’s chin. The animal slipped deeper into the woods, leaving a heavy trail of blood.
Leslie scanned her own body. She expected to be injured, but she wasn’t. She hurried over to Jill, who pushed herself up onto her elbow and held her side. Leslie gently pushed her down so she lay flat on her back and ran for blankets in the sled. When Leslie returned, Jill pointed at the dogs.
Bandit—poor Bandit—gave Leslie a pitiful look as she unwrapped the tugline that had knotted around his neck. Minnow held up her back left paw, and when Leslie looked at it, she saw a slice down the center pad. She found a bootie in the sled pocket, wiped the snow from between the dog’s pads, and secured the strap around the leg.
She untangled the rest of the dogs, checked their paws and ears and ribs and legs. At the center of the pile of animals was Inca, still on the ground. Leslie knelt next to her, put her hand to the dog’s chest—warm, but barely moving. She put her ear up to the dog’s face and heard a long, low rattling. At the end of each breath, a groan.
By the time Leslie lifted Inca and Jill onto the front of the sled and got the pack reharnessed, the line of moose blood had frozen and turned black. Slowly, the team pulled their group back the way they came—through the aspen grove, back along the base of the mountain—and Leslie watched Jill stroke Inca’s ears.
Brent propped Jill up on her bed, pressed his hands to her shoulder blades, her stomach, her ribs.
“Three ribs, at least,” Brent said. He didn’t suggest a hospital and when Jill twisted her fingers through the air and dropped her eyes, Brent watched but went outside without responding.
Jill reached for the pen and paper next to her bed. He won’t speak to me.
Leslie took the notebook. It wasn’t your fault.
User error, Jill wrote.
I should have said no. I shouldn’t have helped you.
I wanted him to fire you. I wanted to go.
Leslie took the notebook. You’re thirteen.
He’ll take you to Alaska instead.
I don’t want to go.
This was a lie. All she wanted was to go anywhere except across the field to the cabin she knew was dark and cold, where she would fall asleep alone on a cot in a sleeping bag that kept her alive but never warm.
Jill took the notebook. What did it sound like?
The moose?
No. Inca, dying.
Nothing, Leslie wrote. She died immediately.
Will you talk to him for me?
He’ll get over it. They’re just dogs.
You don’t know him very well.
Jill pointed to her pillow, and when Leslie tried to fix it for her, Jill shook her head vigorously back and forth. Leslie tried to shift it again, but Jill squinted her eyes, pushed herself up on her elbow, and fixed the pillow herself.
Leslie left
her there and went out to check on Minnow. She pulled the vial from the breast pocket of her jacket, poured the salve into the palm of her hand, and massaged the dog’s paw. Minnow she could touch without hurting.
Brent was in the warming shed when Leslie went in to make dinner for the dogs. It wasn’t until she’d filled the water bucket in the sink that she saw Inca stretched across the ground, her legs straight and stiffened, perfectly still, her head propped on a blanket, as though she were asleep.
“She’s sorry,” Leslie said. “So am I.”
“We’ll have to get Sass ready. She’ll take Inca’s place.” He rubbed the fur on Inca’s neck.
“You have to talk to her. She feels terrible.”
He ran his hands down Inca’s legs, cupped her front paws, and tucked them into the black trash bag he’d placed at her feet. “We’ve got a month, which, for a dog like Sass, is plenty of time. She’ll do fine.” He tucked Inca’s back legs into the bag, then her tail.
“I can get her harnessed up tomorrow,” Leslie said.
“No,” he said. “Do the morning chores. Then take the afternoon off like I promised.” He pushed the bag up under her stiffened legs until he got it up to her neck. He ran his hand over Inca’s face, gave each ear a scratch. “For your boyfriend.”
“I’ll help you bury her.”
“Ground is frozen.”
“What then?”
“The dump. They’ll let me put her in the incinerator.”
He pulled the bag over the dog’s face, tied a knot, and hefted it into his arms. He walked to the door, the veins on his arms bulging beneath the black bag.
“Fiancé,” she said.
Brent turned around. “What?”
“Not my boyfriend. My fiancé.”
“Right.”
Leslie watched him walk toward the truck and could see his lips moving. She knew he was whispering to Inca. The yard was silent, the rest of the dogs tucked in their houses, a few snouts resting at the opening of their green boxes, sniffing at the air behind the
