North to Benjamin Read online

  As soon as Edgar started to read, he felt himself back on the Yukon River with his mother, just yesterday, before Ceese had arrived in his truck, when it had been only the two of them with their new groceries, and the town had disappeared. They might as well have been alone with the ice and the hills and the high, high sky—

  “Edgar!” Ms. Lajoie said suddenly. She was kneeling on the carpet, her face inches from his own. He had not heard her approach at all. At his name he bonked his head on the underside of the table. “What are you doing here?”

  “I forgot how to get to the classroom!” Edgar blurted, forgetting himself. Then he waited, in fear, for her reaction.

  “Why are you barking at me?” she said finally.

  He stared at the page where the man was heading toward his doom, but that would be much later. For now he was just a strong fellow out for a walk in the very, very cold.

  Ms. Lajoie looked at him; she looked at him. He thought the truth at her until finally she blurted, “My God, you really can’t talk! Am I right?”

  Edgar nodded, nodded, a little bit.

  She disappeared, then came back again with paper and a pen and crawled in under the table beside him. “Tell me,” she said. “Write it out.”

  Edgar closed The Collected Short Stories of Jack London and used it to support the paper.

  I don’t know why, but I just started barking. Benjamin is my new dog. Though he is old. He is new to me. I can talk to him and I can smell things like a dog can too.

  She smelled like the last breath of a long walk in cold air, like sharp worry, like she wanted another cup of coffee.

  “Has this happened before?”

  No.

  He thought for a moment.

  But I did know it was going to happen. Or, I knew I was going to be able to speak with Benjamin. As soon as I heard about him, I knew. When we were heading up here. He is sick and old, but he is friendly and good to talk to.

  It was easy now to sit and write to Ms. Lajoie. His pen blurred along.

  I’m sorry for my handwriting. I have never been a good student. I didn’t think when I started talking with Benjamin that I wouldn’t be able to speak like a boy anymore. It might be just a dream.

  Her lips curled into a smile as she read. She was very beautiful. He was lucky that way to have such beautiful teachers. First Ms. Nordstrom, now Ms. Lajoie.

  “Do you feel like you are in a dream right now, Edgar?”

  It felt like he was alone in a cave with someone who meant him kindness, but she also had to get back to her class. Who was looking after them? That bit of worry leaked from her even while she was pretending she had all the time in the world to spend in quiet like this with a new boy who barked.

  I don’t know, he wrote. About the dream.

  She sat still. He wasn’t sure what else to write.

  “We’re going to need to go back to the classroom,” she said finally. “And I’m going to need to talk with your mother. But for now your secret is safe with me, all right?”

  Ms. Nordstrom’s eyes were very blue, but Ms. Lajoie’s were a combination of many colors, of green and brown and blue and maybe gold, too, which would only make sense, since this was a land for gold.

  SKURD

  EDGAR RAN HOME AT LUNCHTIME. Maybe his mother would have lunch ready, maybe it would be macaroni, but mostly he had to get home quickly for Benjamin. Also, he was kind of in love already with Ms. Lajoie, who knew his secret. He hadn’t just written it; he had thought the truth at her. Also, she had not told anyone else. She had continued for the rest of the morning to teach and to hand out exercises. She had even allowed Edgar to sign out The Collected Short Stories of Jack London and to read more of “To Build a Fire” quietly when he was done filling in the missing words and all the number chains on the sheet.

  Maybe lunch would be macaroni?

  He burst through the door. He felt like he didn’t need to be careful, that the world was softer. There was Victoria, that was true, a storm to come, but it had not hit yet, and maybe Edgar had been fooling himself in imagining the worst.

  “Are you talking yet?” his mother called from the kitchen.

  He kicked off his boots and showed her the notebook Ms. Lajoie had given him. I said my throat is raw, he wrote. I need to take Benjamin out.

  “I took him already,” she said. “He just did his thing in the back. I don’t think he likes to walk very far.”

  It was not macaroni but cut meat and some more powdered cheese and bread with butter, and slices of apple around the edge of the plate. Edgar gobbled it.

  “How did it all go?” his mother asked. She seemed happy. She seemed almost as beautiful to him as Ms. Lajoie. He wished he could just think the truth at her and have her know. “Write it out for me if you have to,” she said.

  She smelled of sleep still, of having traveled a very long way with all that luggage and worry, and now that they were here, the trap that had snapped shut was for some other mouse, not them.

  I have a new teacher, and she wants to talk with you, he wrote. She understands.

  “What does she understand?” his mother asked. Not in a happy tone. Sometimes she could be jealous; someone else’s happiness could crack her own.

  The barking is not my fault. I’m just a boy who barks.

  He gobbled up the slices of meat, the apple. His mother put her face in her hands. She could not seem to stop looking at him, even through her fingers.

  “Where did you come from?” she asked.

  But she did not expect an answer. Or that he would write, From Toronto. With you.

  So he kept eating.

  There was only an hour for lunch, and now that had become just twenty-one minutes and he still had to brush his teeth. But he ran down the stairs and woke up Benjamin. “I have a new teacher!” he said. “I can think at her and she knows about me. She let me keep the Jack London book. She doesn’t mind if I bark.”

  “Barking is good,” Benjamin said.

  “I’m sorry I left before your walk this morning,” Edgar said. “I’ll come home again right after school.”

  “Don’t bring me to the dog park,” Benjamin said. “It stinks of Brottinger.”

  “Then you show me where,” Edgar said.

  The dog did not know anything about temperatures. Possibly in its brain there was no understanding of a condition of very cold, such as was in the man’s brain. But the animal sensed the danger. Its fear made it question eagerly every movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned about fire, and it wanted fire. Otherwise, it would dig itself into the snow and find shelter from the cold air.

  “Hey, you. Where’s your camera?”

  Edgar looked up. He was sitting with his back to the wall of the school building, in a blob of sunshine, reading during afternoon recess. At first he could not tell who had called after him, but then it became obvious—Jason Crumley was standing opposite him, a water bottle in his hand. The sun was high in the sky behind his face. It was hard to see him clearly.

  Edgar would not, could not speak.

  Suddenly the book was in Crumley’s hands. “What’s this crap?” He read aloud, “The frozen moistness of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost.”

  The sun was so bright behind his face. He just looked like a shadow.

  “This a library book?” Crumley held the pages split open in his hands, like he was going to rip it by its spine.

  Edgar heard himself growling.

  “That supposed to be scary?” Jason Crumley’s bulky jacket was open. He was probably used to hitting people into the boards in hockey games.

  That feeling again, that the hair on the back of Edgar’s neck was standing up. He squatted now, ready to spring, growled harder. Showed his teeth. Maybe that was why Crumley flipped the book back to him and stepped a few paces off.

  Edgar fumbled the catch. The book dropped to the frozen ground. He bent
over to pick it up. He knew Crumley could just charge at him—push him over. Edgar felt a strange, quivering ruggedness inside. If that boy got near, he’d just bite his leg.

  But when Edgar looked up again, Crumley was gone, disappeared to some other part of the playground.

  “I would have bitten him anyway, even if he didn’t take the book,” Benjamin said later. They were on a wooden boardwalk outside a big closed building called Diamond Tooth Gertie’s. Edgar remembered seeing the ad for it at the airport; only, that picture was of women in old frilly dresses kicking up their legs in golden-looking light. This building was drab, deserted. A sign on the door said, GRAND OPENING IN MAY!

  A lot of things were still closed for the season, it looked like.

  “Wouldn’t he just punch me back?” Edgar asked.

  It was, still, a pleasant spot to stop and rest. Benjamin closed his eyes in the sun and didn’t look cold at all in his thick coat.

  “Some of the toughest bites are from small dogs,” Benjamin said. “That’s why he backed off. It’s better when you don’t have to fight.”

  Fart, fart from Benjamin’s backside, but a gentle wind took the rot away.

  “Did you get in some hard fights yourself?” Edgar asked. He was remembering the way Benjamin had rolled over in front of Brottinger at the dog park. He didn’t want to bring it up in case Benjamin was embarrassed.

  “Worst was against a yellow dog came shooting out of a trailer. Some dogs hate you just for being big. Brottinger is like that too, hates anyone stands taller than him. Bite your neck just to do it. I swatted the yellow skurd back and back again, but he wouldn’t stop coming. Kept trying to chew my tail. I couldn’t round fast enough to unclench him.”

  “What’s a skurd?” Edgar asked. What was it about this spot where Benjamin had brought him? It was as if the air, the ground, the place itself were trying to make you feel better just for being there.

  “A skurd, a skurd,” Benjamin said. “Someone you want to cuff around. Tries to steal your food when he should never eat before you.”

  Edgar closed his eyes and thought for a moment of the ladies in the old costumes kicking up their legs. That would not be Ms. Lajoie, although she was beautiful.

  It felt like all the warmth of those ladies, and the golden light in the picture, was somehow on this very spot where he and Benjamin were resting.

  “A skurd too,” Benjamin continued, “smells sick so tries to bite you into forgetting. Runs out of the trailer first sniff of a new place. Jumps trying to pee high on a pole. A skurd.”

  Some ravens flew by; someone parked a truck and walked off toward other buildings. The post office? A bar?

  There’s a lot of skurdishness, Edgar thought, in people too. Pretending, trying to impress. Roger could be like that with his gifts. Even the camera, the way he had handed it over. I am not losing you and your mother. Acting somehow, pleading. Like the women in the poster at the airport too? Legs and ruffles and all those smiles. To get you to come in through the drab doors, when just outside, this very spot was pleasant and fresh, perfect for sitting.

  “I suppose maybe I used to be a dog,” Edgar said. Benjamin nodded, nodded. No one would bother them here. Not with so much still closed.

  “It is noble to be one of us,” Benjamin said, then settled his head on his paws for a rest.

  COMPETITION

  “IT’S A GARAGE BAND COMPETITION,” Edgar’s mother said. “I’m not on shift till later in the evening. We’ll just go for a little bit. It’ll be fun.”

  Her hair was glistening. She was checking herself in the bathroom mirror, putting on her makeup.

  Edgar wrote on his pad, Are you singing?

  She glanced down from doing something with her eyelids. “I wish you would just go back to talking,” she said.

  But she got angry when he barked, and probably his voice was still not working. He held up the page a little higher.

  “No, of course not. We only just got here. I’m not in anybody’s band.”

  A little later they walked down the hill. It was a cold evening, the air calm. The hills seemed content, if that was a way to think about it. The hills held themselves against the frozen water, and the town lay still, and a few lights burned as the sky slowly darkened. It was not a big town; that much was clear, the more they walked places. They might change their routes on the grid of streets, but almost everywhere, still, was down the hill from the new house.

  “I guess there are a few good musicians in town,” his mother said. “Some people have said so. It’s one of the great things about working in a bar. People open up, you know? We won’t stay long,” she said again. “And you’ll see, I’m not going to drink much. All that’s over for me. This is a brand-new life for both of us. You are enjoying some of it so far, Edgar, aren’t you?”

  She looked down at him as they walked along. When he didn’t speak, she said, “Oh, for God’s sake!” and picked up the pace.

  His father was a musician, that much he knew. His mother had told Edgar that his father had been in Toronto just for one stretch of shows, and she had not seen or contacted him again. He wasn’t famous himself, but he played with famous people. Bass guitar. “At least he’s not a drummer!” she had said more than once.

  And she was a singer, or she sang sometimes. Not lately. Roger hadn’t liked her performing. He’d get jealous, all those men listening and looking. Edgar liked singing too, but now all he could do was bark! Or maybe howl, too. He hadn’t really tried.

  Next time with Benjamin, he thought. They could howl some together.

  People were gathered on the flat at the big old yellow building. Edgar’s mother knew exactly where she was going because it was close to Lola’s, the bar where she worked. It was also close to a shop that caught Edgar’s eye: Peabody’s Photo Parlour. The town had a photo store! But it looked closed up. Still, he stared at the old-fashioned sign. Then his mother was climbing stairs without him, so he hurried to catch up. Inside, another set of stairs led to a large old ballroom—that’s what his mother called it—full of chairs now, with the playing area for the bands up front: some microphones and speakers, bright lights, drums and stools.

  In a moment his mother held a beer in her hand and was talking loudly to a bright-eyed woman in a cowboy hat who laughed at whatever his mother said.

  Edgar spied Caroline sitting near the front with some boy. Was it possible? It looked like Jason Crumley. Was he everywhere, making Edgar’s stomach tight? At least Caroline was talking to someone else, a girl beside Crumley. And now here came Ceese walking toward Edgar’s mother with a beer in his hand, but he wasn’t alone. Victoria was with him. In this light it was clear she was younger than Edgar’s mother, and taller. She was wearing rubber boots and an old shirt, and the air around her was very calm even in all the noise of dozens of conversations in the old wooden room getting ready for the show.

  Victoria. She saw Edgar and waved to him, her face lit.

  Then his mother was turning, her face lit too, to see Ceese. She embraced him too closely; she was ready for everything to be happy tonight. Then she noticed Victoria, and there was a quick and clumsy untangling, and a bit of beer spilled—just on the floor—and apologies and nervous laughter before his mother clasped Victoria’s hand and her face shone, bright and hard.

  Edgar was looking, not breathing.

  “Are you Edgar?” someone said then. It was the red-haired woman in the cowboy hat, now suddenly beside him. He was standing apart, with people milling all around him. Probably he stuck out. “Stephanie has told me so much about you. I’m Lola!” she said.

  Lola. Who owned the bar. Where his mother worked. “How are you enjoying Dawson so far?”

  Edgar nodded. It was too loud to speak, wasn’t it?

  “We really love having your mother,” Lola said. “She’s a big hit already. Is she going to sing tonight?”

  Edgar shook his head.

  “How about you? Do you have the family pipes? I’m sure we cou
ld fit you in somewhere!”

  Edgar shook his head again. Probably Lola could see his eyes widen in alarm. A seat opened up beside Caroline where the other girl used to be. Did he want to sit so close to Jason Crumley? Edgar started toward the front anyway. He hoped Lola wouldn’t think him rude, just walking off. But then the girl came back and Edgar took a seat against the wall, looking sideways at the stage area.

  He drew in his cheeks. He willed himself invisible in the shadows, out of the way.

  His father. His father. What did he know of his father? His father had a leather case, the sort of thing a man might wear on a belt. It was straight on top and curved on the bottom and probably was made for holding a compass or something like that. Maybe Edgar’s grandfather had owned it first, and he’d been the sort of man who worked in the woods and needed a compass. A woodsman? Who gave his son his brass compass or whatever it was, and now that instrument was gone. Only the leather case remained. Edgar’s mother used it for holding her smaller earrings, which could get tangled together like fishing lures.

  That was what Edgar could think about his father as he sat with his back to the wall watching the bands.

  His father was not a drummer.

  But Ceese was. He sat behind the lead singer, a man in a blue shirt with red suspenders that framed a large belly, and who grasped the microphone with both hands and sang with his eyes closed about a river, how everybody was alone in one. Edgar didn’t think that he had heard the song before—he didn’t know most songs—but it seemed like a good one. Ceese bounced in his seat and hit the metal discs sometimes—the cymbals—and smiled at the other players, a young man with a guitar and a girl with a fiddle.

  Ceese looked like he could be both a father and a musician, and for the space of the song, Edgar imagined himself at home carefully taking out his mother’s earrings and the like and then handing the leather case to Ceese and scanning his face to see if he recognized it.