North to Benjamin Read online

  It was a silly thought. Edgar knew it, but it was hard not to get carried away by the feeling of the music.

  Did Edgar even want a father? Did he need one? He’d never had one, not even (as far as he knew) at the very beginning when he’d been too young to remember anyway.

  Victoria joined the band for the next song. She hadn’t changed at all but took the stage in her rubber boots. Whenever Edgar saw his mother perform, she always wore an extra shine, in her dress or hair, her jewelry. But Victoria looked shiny somehow even in her old clothes. Her voice glowed, and she seemed to be singing directly for Edgar even though her eyes covered all of the room.

  “Someday this town will be my home.

  Someday your love will be my own.

  Someday.”

  It was hard, too, to keep from watching certain eyes—Ceese’s as he knocked out the slow beat for her, and Victoria’s as she sang, and Edgar’s mother’s as she stood on the other side of the room from where Edgar was sitting. She was leaning against the far wall, looking, looking.

  At Ceese. Who stared at Victoria. Who met eyes with everyone else, it seemed, even Edgar, sitting almost invisibly in the shadows.

  “Someday I’ll walk with you.

  Someday I’ll know your heart is true.

  Someday.”

  It was a slow song, but Victoria’s voice filled the room. It made everyone sway even in their seats, and soon people were holding each other, dancing. Sometimes Edgar’s mother danced by herself to the radio, and sometimes she pulled Edgar into shuffling along with her. Although, with many songs Edgar wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing. If he had been sitting close to his mother now, she probably would have dragged him up to dance with her. . . .

  Or maybe not.

  His mother was staring hard at Victoria. She had one hand in her back pocket and one hand on her beer, and she wasn’t even tapping her foot.

  She looked like she couldn’t wait for the song to be over.

  She looked like she wanted to get up to sing herself.

  When the song was over, when Victoria put the microphone back into its holder, Ceese kissed her onstage in front of everyone, and Edgar’s mother dropped her beer bottle. It bounced on the wooden floor and didn’t even break. Then she crossed to where Edgar was sitting and told him it was bedtime already, time to go, he had school tomorrow.

  “You’re going to have to get up by yourself because I’ll be working late,” she said. “Have you got your alarm clock?”

  It was a strange question to ask him in the old ballroom while the next band was setting up. She knew he had a fold-up one that he kept in his small knapsack, the outside pocket, so that he wouldn’t lose it.

  She also knew he didn’t have his real voice, his boy voice, and so couldn’t answer her at the moment.

  “Come on. Let’s go!” she said, and pulled him out of his chair far more roughly than if she had wanted him to dance.

  One time on the radio, in the apartment before Roger’s, the one that shook when the subway trains rumbled underneath them, Edgar had listened to a program about colors. What he remembered was that colors don’t exist. That is, the white is not in the snowbank, the dark is not in the tree, the flush of his mother’s face as they climbed the hill back home in the dying light was not really there. Those colors came out only in the mind of whoever was looking at them. It was a trick of the brain, as if a painter lived inside everyone’s head and colored things according to how the person was seeing.

  How was his mother seeing at the moment?

  She had her head down. She was leaning into the hill. Maybe what she could glimpse of the night sky was blacker than what he could see.

  Did she see any stars at all? Probably Victoria’s voice darkened all those stars, shut them out completely.

  If Edgar had had his voice, he probably would have said something like, “You knew there was a Victoria. He told us even before we met her.”

  Which was true. But maybe words don’t exist either until they go through someone’s brain. If they don’t go through properly, they might mean nothing.

  Edgar wasn’t falling in love with Ceese. So he had heard the words clearly. From the start he had had a good idea what they might mean.

  What might they mean?

  Edgar felt the trouble coming on like a hard twist of rope inside him. His mother wouldn’t give up now. She usually got a man she wanted. How did this work? Edgar had seen it, seen it before. . . .

  Because Victoria had sung a beautiful song, Edgar’s mother was more in love with Ceese than ever. She would not become tired like other people and look for someone else.

  It’s like a contest—a hockey game, or a big fight, he thought. When she loses, it is only for a little while.

  BEAR

  LATER, WHEN EDGAR TOOK BENJAMIN for a last walk before bed, he smelled bear. “Let’s go have a look at him,” Edgar said, but Benjamin held back, pretending he hadn’t heard. “I’ve never seen a bear before,” Edgar said. (The twisting rope was still inside him. He wanted to stretch it somehow, get free.)

  “If he fills your nose already, why do you have to see him?” Benjamin replied.

  Yes, why go chase a bear? A bear was scary. A bear was thrilling. Ceese was big and beautiful, a bit like a bear—for Edgar’s mother, anyway. Why would his mother chase a bear who belonged with Victoria? His mother couldn’t help herself. She liked the danger, the thrill of becoming close. So Edgar would chase a bear too. A real bear. So that he could understand what his mother was going to do—whatever it was—to steal Ceese from Victoria.

  “We’ll just get a little closer,” Edgar said, pulling. The bear smelled stronger down the hill, toward the hospital, which was quiet and dark in parts, except for the entrance and some other lights.

  Benjamin moved slightly with each tug, then settled to smell something interesting—someone’s locked-up garbage, a rock peeking out of the ice, something else that used to be a fence post.

  “Come on! Come on! It’s too cold to wait around!” Edgar said. How was he ever to know? To feel like his mother, to understand how she wanted and what she craved?

  Downhill. Edgar wasn’t strong, but he could hurry, he could be urgent, he could annoy Benjamin into following him.

  “It’s all right. Leave the bear to make a little mess at night,” Benjamin said. His tongue was hanging out and he was smiling like—what was the word Roger often used? A half-wit. But a clever one.

  “I just want to see the bear,” Edgar pleaded. They were all the way north in Dawson, living up against the bush. When else was he going to get his chance? His mother might decide at any moment to pack up again and go who knows where next.

  And—what would happen after his mother wrestled Ceese from Victoria?

  What would happen after they saw the bear?

  They angled past the hospital to a darker space, a backyard of some sort in a town almost without backyards. But this was a large space with a snowy pathway leading across it—where the bear’s paw prints stood out in the moonlight. Benjamin pulled back at the leash and stopped Edgar short.

  “Close enough,” the dog breathed.

  “But I don’t see him!”

  How could he not? The bear smelled of a whole winter of stored-up farts, of a warm fridge rotting with food after the power has been turned off.

  Of steel traps waiting to close, of hard teeth.

  But Edgar couldn’t see anything. The back of a big old building was now huddled in shadows. Gray clouds gripped a gloomy night sky.

  Benjamin farted, and for a moment it was hard to tell the bear stench from Benjamin’s gas.

  If Edgar closed his eyes, if he put everything into the scent in the night air, into what his skin could feel in the crystal cold surrounding them . . .

  There he was, Mr. Bear! Rooting in the bushes to their left, not far.

  “Stay here,” Benjamin growled softly.

  Rooting in the bushes. What was in there?

  �
��I hate the smell of him,” Benjamin muttered.

  The bear stopped rustling. Everyone stayed still, silently sniffing.

  “Just makes trouble wherever he goes,” Benjamin grumbled. “Why stand here breathing his filth?”

  “In case it helps,” Edgar whispered.

  It was hard to tell how big the bear was, whether he was brown or black, how mean he might be. Benjamin wouldn’t move a foot closer, so they stayed sniffing, listening.

  “Only thing with trouble is staying clear,” Benjamin said.

  So Edgar dropped the leash and stepped closer. It was what his mother would do—what she did all the time. And Edgar was from her, so how was he to understand anything if he didn’t take a step, or three, or ten, toward the black or brown stench in the shadows glaring at him?

  “Hello, Mr. Bear,” Edgar said.

  The bear rumbled. Edgar could feel that in the ground, in his toes. But he kept walking closer.

  “Get back here!” Benjamin snorted. “What—”

  The bear got bigger the closer Edgar came. Was the bear Ceese, or his mother?

  Or just a bear?

  Edgar could see the rounded shoulders now. He could smell the bear so ready to pounce.

  Those claws.

  “Boy!” Benjamin said.

  It was easy to get this far, but then Edgar’s body was shaking; he could feel how close the bear was to running him over.

  “Get back! Get back! Filthy fang crot!” Benjamin yelled, not at Edgar but at the bear. Then the black dog was past Edgar—moving faster than Edgar imagined possible—and barking right in front of the startled bear.

  “Back! Back! Back!” Benjamin barked.

  The bear yawned. For a moment Edgar could feel how close he was to raking his big paw across Benjamin’s old face. But instead the bear shrugged, angled around, and snorted for the first several steps away. Then Edgar felt Benjamin’s massive jaws on his coattail, and he was being dragged off.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Benjamin snorted. “He bites through cans. What kind of treat you think your guts would be to him?”

  “Yes,” Edgar said, stumbling away.

  “You could’ve been a smear on snow,” Benjamin snarled.

  Edgar’s heart was boiling. Maybe that was what his mother craved—leaning so close, smelling her own life nearly ripped open.

  “You saved me,” Edgar said finally as they were hurrying back up the hill.

  “This time,” Benjamin grumbled, like any one of those men—the Rogers, the Ceeses—hurrying so hard to save his mother from herself.

  “You are very brave,” Edgar said to Benjamin later that night. Edgar was lying awake in the dark, looking up at the strange ceiling, and Benjamin’s form lay slumbering on his sleeping mat nearby.

  Edgar didn’t mind the big dog’s smell anymore; he was getting used to it.

  “You could have just let me keep walking. What do you think the bear would have done? He didn’t seem so nasty. I wasn’t going to hurt him.”

  Benjamin muttered something. He might’ve been dreaming.

  “Or maybe,” Edgar said, “I’ve already forgotten how scared I was. Have you met him before? Do you know that bear?”

  Benjamin startled up for a second. Edgar could hear his jaws widening in a yawn. Finally Benjamin said, “The family’s been in these parts long as me. Can’t say I like bears.”

  “You were such a coward around Brottinger,” Edgar said. “You rolled around and pretended to be so weak. Then with the bear—”

  Benjamin burped. Edgar heard the dog’s big tongue licking something. He leaned over and saw Benjamin twisted around, getting at his own abdomen. Finally Benjamin settled back down. Edgar closed his eyes and became himself again walking toward the bear. It wasn’t cold, he wasn’t afraid, the bear was not paying attention to him.

  Edgar could stand there. He saw the bear much better in this version but could barely smell him. It was an odd thing to be in two different times at once. Odd, and yet we do it all the time, he thought. We walk toward the bear, and then later, when the bear is long gone, we walk toward him again and again.

  The bear was Ceese. Ceese was large and strong. He looked friendly enough but probably could bite through cans if he had to. What did Ceese think he was doing, falling in love with Edgar’s mother when he already had Victoria? Anybody would be in love with Victoria, the way she sang and wore those rubber boots.

  What was happening right now at Lola’s, where Edgar’s mother was working the late shift? Was there music, was she singing, was Ceese there maybe with Victoria, having a drink after the garage band competition? Had Victoria’s band won?

  Was everyone just going to pretend they weren’t standing next to a disaster?

  CHANGE

  IN THE MORNING, QUIET. HIS mother’s door was closed; the world seemed cool and calm. Edgar made the oatmeal, dressed himself, woke Benjamin and took him out on the back trail, the one behind Robert Service’s cabin. Already the trail seemed familiar, as if Edgar had been walking it for years. On the bench not far along, where there was an opening in the trees and the town lay below them, quiet, just waking up, Edgar looked at the wide expanse of frozen river and the dark, dramatic hills behind. He’d brought his camera this time. He snapped a shot of the town.

  “Everything looks peaceful,” he said.

  “When the ice breaks, you’ll see the real river,” Benjamin said.

  “Isn’t it the real river now?”

  “It’s real quiet.”

  Could Edgar speak normally today? Had his voice been returned to him? It was so hard to tell. When he talked to Benjamin, he sounded just like himself, not a dog at all, and Benjamin’s barking, his woofs and grunts and whines and howls, all sounded like perfectly intelligible dog.

  “Benjamin,” Edgar said, “could you bark for me, really loud?”

  “Why?” Benjamin sniffed.

  “I want to hear it. Really loud.”

  When Benjamin gave it his full throat, when his whole body thundered, Edgar had to cover his ears. The snow shook, and the echo came back like a responding choir. “Edgar wants you to know it’s me, Benjamin! Benjamin!” came the roar.

  So Edgar pulled himself up and bellowed out—as much as it could be called a bellow—“And I am Edgar, Benjamin’s friend. He saved me last night from the bear!”

  Bear, bear, bear, came the echo.

  It sounded like him completely.

  When they got back to the house, Edgar’s mother was still sleeping. There was no sign of anything that might or might not have happened in the night. Often Edgar didn’t know when things were going to change drastically, when Roger was suddenly a danger, a man to flee, when they needed to quickly find a car, a train, or sleep on someone’s floor. He paid attention but he didn’t always know.

  The days were changing noticeably, even since they had arrived. Though still early, it was brilliantly sunny now. The snow underfoot felt both solid and soft. There was still time before school started, but directly after the walk with Benjamin, Edgar left the house anyway. Depending on what had happened, his mother could be so sharp, a jagged edge that could cut blindly even after her coffee.

  Heading down the hill, he turned left not right, away from the school but toward the highway and the dike, the river and the hills and the sun.

  Would he be all right with his camera at school? He took shot after shot of the stretch of frozen white, the plunging slopes, and there, for the first time, a sliver of open water on the smaller river, the Klondike. It looked bluish-black in this light, and fast-flowing. Could things change so fast, just overnight?

  Yes. Yes they could.

  Ms. Lajoie was in a red-and-blue sweater today and had a soft scarf around her neck. She let Edgar keep his camera in her desk, and she seemed happy still to let him read quietly. He was not going to test his voice again, not today. It seemed he was probably still a dog, or doglike. When he read some more of “To Build a Fire,” it was hard not to think most
ly about the dog whose master was being so foolish:

  The dog was sorry to leave and looked toward the fire. This man did not know cold. Possibly none of his ancestors had known cold, real cold. But the dog knew and all of its family knew. And it knew that it was not good to walk outside in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie in a hole in the snow and to wait for this awful cold to stop. There was no real bond between the dog and the man. The one was the slave of the other. The dog made no effort to indicate its fears to the man. It was not concerned with the well-being of the man. It was for its own sake that it looked toward the fire. But the man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound of the whip in his voice. So the dog started walking close to the man’s heels and followed him along the trail.

  Edgar was not his mother’s slave—at least he did not feel he was—but possibly, like the dog, he was trapped in a way in the life his mother was making for them. And he felt she was heading for disaster, just as the man walking away from the fire was sure to break through the frozen ice even though he was so confident. Later, when the worst had happened and the man was trying again desperately to light a fire:

  After a time, he began to notice some feeling in his beaten fingers. The feeling grew stronger until it became very painful, but the man welcomed the pain. He pulled the mitten from his right hand and grasped the tree bark from his pocket. The bare fingers were quickly numb again. Next, he brought out his pack of matches. But the awful cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate one match from the others, the whole pack fell in the snow. He tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither touch nor hold.

  Typically Edgar’s mother did know when she had blundered . . . but only afterward, when everyone else knew too. She knew about her drinking and how bad she was with money. She knew everything that was wrong, and a lot of other things that weren’t wrong. . . . She knew it all, as much as she believed in the moment that a Roger or a Ceese was going to change her life and everything would be so much better for herself and for Edgar.