Ice Dogs

by Terry Lynn Johnson

  Just because we’re out here doesn’t mean we should be dirty and unkempt. Another of Dad’s proverbs. He made sure we were as clean and presentable out here as we were at home. “You can tell a good bushman from how comfortable he keeps himself. Or herself,” he’d say with a wink.

  We’d wash up right from the river, or heat the water and I’d hold the compass mirror up so Dad could shave. If there wasn’t any water, we’d use snow. I love the way my skin feels after a fresh snow bath. I grin imagining it, but then the familiar ache rushes through me so fast, I gasp. How could I have known that soon, he’d be gone, and all that grace would disappear from the earth?

  “Dad,” I whisper. “Could use a little help.”

  14

  Tuesday

  AFTER A BREAKFAST OF MORE BIRCH twig tea that only makes me hungrier, I fill our water bottles with the rest of the tea for later.

  The dogs look at me expectantly. They grab my heart and squeeze. My eyes burn from the shame of getting them into this situation.

  “I’m sorry, girl,” I say softly to Dorset. “I don’t have anything for you this morning.”

  Her foxlike face is tipped in frost, and she hasn’t even uncurled from her bed. She’s trying to conserve her heat. The jacket isn’t enough if she’s not eating. How much longer could they hold on?

  When we head down the trail again, Chris and I each ride on a runner. I feel sluggish. Normally my stance is secure and solid on the back of the sled, whether I’m riding one runner or two. Now I feel unbalanced on weak legs. I spent too long jogging in place trying to warm up, and I’m light-headed. My insides are hollow. A shiver of fear mixes with my shaking from the cold.

  I think back to when I decided to go on this trip. It seems like weeks ago now. Stupid, stupid. I glower at Chris out of the corner of my eye. It occurs to me that if I’d crossed to the trail at a different spot, I may have missed him altogether. The anger helps cover the guilt so I follow that thought.

  Idiot guys from Toronto think they can ride a snowmobile along a trail and not know where they’re going or what they should wear so they don’t get hypothermia and put someone else’s life in danger, then pretend they actually know where they are—

  I catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye and look up. Several ravens are circling low over a stand of white spruce ahead and my breath catches. Their glossy black feathers shine in the sun, making them radiant in flight.

  “Look!” I raise a hand, shielding my eyes. “Ravens!” Hope flutters in my belly.

  “Yeah. So?”

  Now I hear their cackling calls. Just past that granite outcrop. The trail runs along the side of the rock. I stop the team and a raven sitting in the lower spruce branches takes off, cawing loudly.

  “So just stay here with the dogs.” I grab the snowshoes and jump off the trail. I scramble and claw my way up the hill, not even caring if I get sweaty or my clothes get damp. My heart pounds. The loose snow pills on the surface behind me. It rolls and skitters down the top crust. When I crest the ridge, I look down into a clearing and let out a huge breath.

  The clearing looks like a war was waged here. Trampled snow stretches from the rock to the tree line, as if the site had been cleared for a party. Scrubby willows are bent down, young poplar snapped off. Blood and hair litter the scene.

  But the best thing about it is the moose.

  A freshly killed moose, mostly eaten, lies on its side in the snow. Even from here I can tell that the front shoulder is almost untouched beneath it, and the head is still intact.

  I raise my arms in the air and whoop. Thank you, Dad! Thank you, wolves.

  “What? What do you see? Is it a road?”

  I turn and smile down at Chris. “How do you feel about McMoose for breakfast?”

  Dawning comprehension flashes across his face and he grins back, giving me two thumbs-up.

  For the next few hours, we work together. Chris is learning how to start a fire and stake out the dogs. I use my hatchet to hack, shave, and saw off pieces of meat from the shoulder and the neck. I pick away at the carcass just like one of those ravens, or a turkey vulture. Little nips, pulls, tears.

  The dogs get most of it, chunks of about two pounds each. When I give it to them, I cannot describe the joy it brings me. My whole body vibrates with emotion. I fight back tears.

  The dogs gnaw rib bones that I’ve managed to crack off while I wait for the meat scraps and bone chips to boil. This will give them some nice meaty broth to drink.

  “It’s really too bad I can’t get at the nutrition inside the skull,” I say to Chris as I slice. “It’s way too big to try to boil in a dish. And to sever it, I would need something better than my hatchet.”

  “Mmm. Brraaiins.” Chris pats his stomach. He breaks a dead spruce branch and places it on the fire. It flares up.

  I cube the rest of the meat for us and throw the pieces into the other dog dish with boiling water. Chris stares at it with eyes so full of yearning, I forgive him for his earlier comments on my “cruel” lifestyle of eating animals that we’ve hunted. Just where did he think the meat came from all wrapped up in the grocery stores? Maybe he’ll understand once he’s lived here a little longer.

  The moose had been a bull, an old bull by the looks of his worn teeth. The boiled meat is rubbery and tough to chew.

  I’ve never tasted anything so delicious.

  I scald my lips on the broth in my eagerness. When the food goes down, I can almost feel the warmth and energy seeping into my arms and legs.

  “Mmm, oh, nomph, this is so good!” Chris closes his eyes while he takes a turn at slurping from the bowl. He fishes out another chunk and chews. When I take the bowl back, we look at each other over this shared victory and grin with shiny lips.

  We eat all that we can salvage. I can’t break off any more of the larger bones to bring with us, and all the edible parts are gone. It’s not enough, but a definite improvement from before. I decide to let the dogs rest a little.

  “If you like moose meat, you’ll love the feasts at the community center. Especially the Christmas one.” I sit back on top of the sun-warmed sled bag and let out a big sigh. Chris drapes his tall body against a rock and nods.

  “Hard to imagine eating with a whole community. But sounds cool.” He tilts his face toward the sun.

  “We have feasts all the time, but the Christmas one is always special. When I was little, my parents would wrap me up in the dogsled and we’d all go. I was in charge of holding Dad’s guitar. I remember coming ’round the last corner on the trail and seeing all the red and green lights they put on the tree in front of the hall. We’d stake the team outside and then walk through the front doors into a wall of heat and baking smells. Mrs. Charlie’s moose-meat pie, Mr. Wicker’s moose-ball stew, roast moose, sweet and sour moose, and for dessert there’d be chocolate mousse. That’s where I first tasted jungle berry juice. I thought it was the best thing ever. I pleaded with my mom to put it in my lunch, but she didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “ ‘I can’t find jungle berry juice anywhere. I don’t know what it is,’ she had said. So I had to do my own investigating. Turns out, it was just milk with strawberry syrup. But I still like it.”

  “Hey, I’ve had that! It’s good!”

  “I know, right? Anyway, there was another tree decorated with lights inside, too. All the kids would get gifts from Santa and we’d play games. Then Dad would unwrap his guitar and play songs that everyone could sing along with. My favorite was ‘Cat Came Back.’ I’d sing the chorus the loudest. But, now that I think about it, that song is sort of evil with what the poor cat goes through. I just liked it ’cause I was cheering for him.

  “Then, at the end of the party, we’d go back outside to the team and it was always freezing cold compared to the heat of the hall. When the dogs took us down the trail, and we’d go past the reach of the lights, it was like traveling into another world. So quiet and dark and adventurous. But I could never stay
awake for the ride home. I always woke up the next day in my bed.”

  I’m astonished at myself for talking so much. Chris watches me with a thoughtful expression. His eyes, squinting against the sun, seem lit up. The ends of his brown hair dance in the breeze, the curls sticking out from the bottom of the scarf he now regularly wears as a hat.

  I clear my throat, a little embarrassed. “The dogs have rested. We should get moving.”

  A slow grin spreads across his face as he continues to watch me with that peculiar look. Then he pushes off from his rock and adjusts his scarf. “I was just getting comfortable here.”

  I start breaking trail with snowshoes even though the trail is already broken with all the animal tracks running along it.

  “What are all these tracks from?” Chris asks.

  “The trail system makes handy routes for wildlife out here. The trails get animals out of the deep snow and thick brush. So they also make good hunting corridors.”

  I notice the tall spruce lining this section of trail and wonder if we’ll see any marten, with their cute little round ears and sweet faces. I’d like to show Chris a marten just to see the look on his face.

  Our travel is painfully slow. At this rate, from all the time spent making fires, boiling water, cleaning moose, not to mention moving through deep snow, we should make it out by spring.

  15

  THE DOGS SEEM HAPPIER. I FEEL their enthusiasm behind me as I plod along. I’m very careful not to work up a sweat and get damp, so I stop often.

  There has been little wind since the storm. The trees are still. It’s so peaceful out here when it’s quiet like this. I could almost forget we’re lost and starving. With the sun out, I imagine how wonderful it will be in a few weeks. Dad always played a game every year waiting for spring. “You can hear it breaking the back of winter,” he’d say.

  When I was young, I took this literally, and tried listening for some kind of spine-snapping noises. Once, we heard the creek ice let go with a loud crack that echoed across the valley, and I was convinced that was winter’s back.

  The dogs pant behind me, and the snow makes little shushes as I shuffle in my snowshoes. Around us, the arched limbs of alder and birch take turns losing their snow loads with a soft whoomp. They spring upward, free of their burdens.

  “So do all mushers run six dogs in a team?” Chris asks behind me.

  “No, no. That’s just how many I brought along for this trip. I have sixteen. It all depends on what you’re doing, how much weight you have in the sled, how far you’re going, what the trail conditions are like.”

  I keep moving in front of the team, but turn my head so Chris can hear me. “The main thing is not to have too many and be overpowered. That’s dangerous for everyone.”

  “Huh. I guess you don’t need many dogs to pull you.”

  I glance back with a mock offended expression.

  He doesn’t know how true his words are. Two years ago, I had too many dogs on a run. Of course, I had waited till Dad wasn’t around, then hooked up a ten-dog team. That was a wild ride. I thought I was so cool running that long string of dogs all by myself. Fun—until we got to the road where I couldn’t sink the snow hook. Instead of going straight across the road and onto the trail, Beetle, the little tramp, had veered into a ditch to get to the village dog that was walking loose near the trees.

  We crashed, or, more to the point, I crashed, and watched my whole team take off down the road without me, dragging the broken sled. I had limped up the driveway of the nearest house, which turned out to be Noel Chambers’s place, and he proceeded to tell the whole school what a complete noob I was, and worse, that I was a bad musher. And his dad had to take me on his snowmobile about a mile to the next homestead just in time to watch Beetle tie with the male dog and a fight erupt in the team. Mr. Chambers helped me break up the fight while I pretended not to notice the two dogs caught in a canine version of wanton lust, which was pretty hard since Beetle was squealing like a vixen. I usually run smaller teams now since I don’t need to repeat that kind of drama.

  “The dogs are always looking at you, you know?” Chris says. “Like they’re connected to you. It’s cool.”

  My face flushes immediately and I bite back a smile. It surprises me that he’d notice something like that.

  “The dogs are reading me for how they’re supposed to react to something. It’s important to stay calm so they don’t freak out. They look at my face, but also my posture, how I’m holding myself, the tone of my voice—all of it.” As I explain, I straighten my shoulders back a bit more and dart a glance to Chris. For the first time, I wonder if he’s trying to read me as well.

  “You think they’re looking at me, too?”

  “Yes, that’s how they communicate.”

  “Must make you tired,” Chris says, “trying to stay calm for the dogs all the time.”

  We don’t speak for a few paces as I keep the rhythm of my steps in the snow.

  Chris breaks the silence. “You want me to take a turn up front?”

  I glance around, surprised to realize I’ve been trudging along for quite a distance. We won’t make this kind of time with Chris in lead I bet.

  “Have you ever been on snowsh—”

  The dogs’ screams interrupt me. “Yes, Bean, we’re going.”

  I turn to start moving again just as I hear a different kind of scream—high-pitched and distinctly girly. It’s Chris.

  “Look out!”

  Then I see it. A huge cow moose is coming around the corner of the trail directly at us. She stops at the noise of the dogs, swivels her ears, blows snot out her nose, and stares at us. She’s standing in the middle of the trail about three team-lengths away. Fifteen hundred pounds of unpredictable animal with razor-sharp hooves.

  Blood hammers down my arms leaving my elbows feeling as if they aren’t part of my body. All moisture leaves my mouth. My legs feel rooted to the trail and for an awful second, all I see is black. She won’t give up the trail. With her long, narrow legs, she’ll sink in the new snow. Behind me, the dogs shove into my legs and I snap out of my panic.

  “Git!” I scream. I wave my hands above my head to look bigger. “Go on! GET OFF THE TRAIL!” My heart pounds. This can’t be happening.

  The moose sways a little on the trail as if indecisive. I yell louder and stomp my feet. She looks behind her. Seems to think about it. Then she puts her head down and charges toward us.

  I let out a scream, but she keeps steaming toward us like a train on a track. She’s charging at a gallop, and it’s as if I’m watching her in slow motion. Time has slowed down to a crawl. I see frost blowing from her nose like a steam engine. The trail shakes from her thundering hooves. She’s so big. I can even smell her. Pungent. Horsey.

  “Look OUT!” I hear again behind me.

  I don’t think—just bend down and yank off a snowshoe. When I stand, she is less than ten paces from us. Bearing down. The dogs have gone quiet. My pulse roars in my ears. I fling the snowshoe as hard as I can. It flies through the air like a Frisbee. It hits her square in the face. The thwack sound is surprisingly loud in the cold air. She stops short. Her large brown eyes study us.

  “Augh!” I scream, waving my arms.

  And then she wheels around and charges back down the trail.

  My knees buckle and I fall in the snow. The dogs break into a frenzy of barking in their desire to chase. Blue leaps over me with eagerness. I reach up from where I’m sitting and grab the gangline, digging my feet into the trail. I notice I’ve been holding my breath and I let it out in a whoosh. My heart hammers in my throat. I take off my other snowshoe with a shaking hand.

  “Holy crap, holy crap.” Chris is losing it behind the sled. He runs toward me, leaving the sled unattended.

  The dogs explode forward, with me hanging on to the gangline. Suddenly, I’m yanked between the dogs, my arms stretched above my head, my hip dragging on the trail.

  “Set the hook! The snow hook!” I grip the
gangline with damp gloves, dig into the snow with my knees to slow us, and feel Gazoo’s feet tramping me as he runs. The dogs are powerhouses when they want to be. The strength of a dog team can pull cars out of ditches. They can haul loads of firewood or pelts down narrow, twisting trails. A dog team on a mission can be like a runaway plow truck.

  I glimpse Chris as he grabs for the sled.

  And misses.

  “Run!” I yell as snow fills my mouth. I roll on the trail feeling as if I’m speeding along in a dune buggy—only without the buggy. My internal organs are being rearranged by the pounding.

  My hands slide down the gangline. I’m losing my grip. I frantically try to pull myself up. With my outstretched arms covering my ears, the sound of my own rapid breathing is all I hear. When I lift my head to see where we’re going, I get a face full of snow and my grip slips farther. If I lose the team they’ll keep running right toward that moose. They will not come back for us, won’t stop because I’ve fallen off. They’re trained to run straight down a trail. I can’t let go.

  The team pounds down the trail. I can hardly breathe with the snow clogging my nose, filling my mouth. My hands slip further.

  Don’t let go.

  I’m dragging between endless legs, feet clawing up the trail, digging into my body. My fingers are frozen into hooks. I can’t grab. Can’t see. How far have we come? Where is the moose? We must be almost on her by now.

  Don’t let go.

  I dig my knees in to slow us, but it just makes my grip slip another few inches. The sled bounces behind me. My feet kick it.

  Don’t let go!

  I have to do something. Panic floods to the surface as if I’m drowning in it. Drowning in white, frozen desperation. I can’t hold on much longer. My guts must be spread out behind us. I can’t feel anything below my neck.