North to Benjamin Read online

  What a relief to see her! He remembered the sad and beautiful song, the stillness until his mother had stormed out.

  He didn’t want to bark, so he lifted his camera until Victoria took it off his shoulder.

  “Very nice! Do you need some pictures developed?”

  He looked at her, helpless.

  “You’re not shy around me, are you?” She bent down to look him in the eye. “Caroline has a good time showing you around. She’s full of stories of what you guys get up to with Benjamin.”

  Edgar found a piece of paper on the counter and borrowed a pen. I can’t pay you, he wrote. I have to buy milk and bread and macaroni.

  After she had read the note, she touched his cheek. “Let’s see what you’ve got in here anyway.”

  She found a cord that connected his camera to a large machine, and soon enough the pictures he’d taken showed up on-screen. She was quiet, looking at the angry boy on the plane and Edgar’s mother’s hairdryer peeking out of her exploded luggage, and the shots Edgar had taken on the river and looking up at the Moosehide Slide and other places. When she saw the photos of his mother, and of her things, she said, “You have an eye, Edgar. Pretty quirky, your way of looking at the world.” She was gazing deeply at him. “What are these about?” she asked gently.

  She meant the lipstick, the handbag, the sweater, all the things that smelled of his mother.

  What could he write? What?

  He showed again the note. I can’t pay you. I have to buy milk and bread and macaroni.

  She smiled; she eyed him again; she was figuring it out. Finally she said, “All right. One time. But I don’t own this place—you’re going to owe me. You tell me which ones.”

  It was simple, actually. Victoria was generous. Edgar hadn’t taken all that many photos, but she made copies, and he left them in ordinary places: at the base of telephone poles, near the corners of quiet buildings, by posts and trees and on the side of old structures where countless dogs had already marked. What was one more little bit of news?

  Chief Isaac, of course, people would recognize. This was his land, his people’s hunting and fishing grounds. And Edgar’s mother’s things—maybe no one would notice. Or they wouldn’t care what they were looking at. Forget the eyes a moment—smell goes straight to what a body knows for itself. That was something Edgar was starting to know, being part dog. How much smell would leak from a photo anyway? Maybe nothing.

  He was just feeling his way, feeling. Maybe, if he left enough traces of his mother, if he told her story in these little bits, people would begin to know about her, and it wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t stop herself.

  Someone else would. They would know about her, somehow, from all these little clues, the way the dogs in town know who’s sick and who’s strong and who has to jump like a crazy skurd to pee that high on a community pole.

  A woman in thick boots watched him from the other side of the street, standing in front of the Westminster Hotel, a tired pink building with a sign that said ROMANCE CAPITAL OF THE YUKON. She looked tired herself; a cigarette drooped from her lips. Some friends joined her to smoke in a circle and to watch as Edgar left his photos here and there. When he reached the corner, he looked back and saw that the woman had crossed the street to pick up one of the pictures and peer at it intently.

  Could she smell anything? Did she know? How could this be any way to spread the news, or stop it? And what was the news, anyway?

  A new woman was in town who couldn’t help herself, she was going to blow up lives she hardly even knew.

  Just time to go to the grocery store, and then, as he headed up the hill for a bite of lunch, who was there to meet him but Dr. Gumstul. She was out walking her own dog, a young husky who thrust his nose inside Edgar’s jacket and very much wanted him to drop the bag of groceries he was carrying.

  “Edgar—hello!” Dr. Gumstul said. “How are you feeling? Is your throat any better?”

  It was an odd thing to say. Friendly enough, Edgar supposed. Had she really forgotten that Edgar’s throat wasn’t sore at all? Or was she just giving Edgar a chance to talk, if he could?

  He shook his head in answer to the question and everything else.

  “I’ve heard from that specialist in Whitehorse that I told you about,” Dr. Gumstul said. “She’ll be in town next month, so I’d like to make an appointment. I’ll be in touch with your mother about it, all right?”

  Edgar tried to smile in a reassuring way. But really—who knew where they were going to be next month? Everything could come unraveled over a weekend.

  The doctor finally let him go, and he hurried farther up the hill, realizing that lunchtime was pretty well over by now. But his mother would be worried about the groceries if he didn’t bring them right away.

  At the top of Eighth Avenue he looked down the hill to see Dr. Gumstul in the distance holding back her dog, bending down to pick up something, a picture maybe, blowing in the slight breeze.

  COLLAR

  A FEW MINUTES THEN FOR lunch. He gave his mother the change from the groceries. What questions could she ask, when all he could do was bark and she hated reading his explanations? He barely had time to wolf down a peanut butter and banana sandwich before turning around and hurrying back to school.

  No need to mention the doctor, or the pictures, or how beautiful and warm Victoria had been, and kind to him in the photo shop, developing those pictures when he had no money to pay.

  Why did the world not slow down for a boy with so much to think about already because of what had just happened in the last few days, the last hours even? There was Edgar’s mother, of course, and Ceese and Victoria, the band competition and the other competition, and whatever was happening at the bar at night, because something must be happening, knowing his mother, her nature, what she probably went ahead and did.

  And not only that—the bear, and Edgar’s voice, and Jason Crumley and Brottinger and kissing practice with Caroline, and now the whole long story of Chief Isaac and his people, the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in. It was a difficult name that Ms. Lajoie wrote out on the whiteboard because of the new library exhibit, and everyone else seemed to know anyway. This whole band of people who’d been here already when all those savage, desperate gold rushers had arrived by the tens of thousands with their tons of equipment. Shovels and picks and tents, and tinned biscuits, and how they had all hoped to just pick chunks of gold right out of the creeks and rivers where the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in fished already. And the whole place had been a moose swamp before it was a town.

  Gold-rushing mosquitoes.

  All that to think about, and now Edgar’s pictures and Chief Isaac littering the streets because it had just felt like the right thing to do. . . . Edgar wanted an hour or eight or maybe even a few weeks to go away by himself, or perhaps with Benjamin, and think it all through. What it meant. What he thought of this landslide of thinkables he had to deal with.

  (Thinkables. Maybe that was a word.)

  But the world did not stop. Recess happened, and even a sunny corner away from everyone else did not stay quiet. Jason Crumley found a leash someone had left clipped to the school fence—a chewed black nylon cord with a collar dangling on the end—and would not leave it alone. He unclipped it. He whipped it at his friends, other boys around him. He looked around and saw Edgar watching him.

  “Hey! Hey! Hey, dog-boy!”

  Why couldn’t the world shut up for a week, for a moment even?

  Edgar pulled back his cheeks; he stayed still. He imagined himself wearing Chief Isaac’s hat, smoking a pipe, looking right at and yet over the heads of those around him.

  “Hey, dog-boy!” Crumley yelled, and snapped the leash.

  It was not a big schoolyard. It did not take long before the leash was snapping close to Edgar’s feet.

  “Bark for me, dog-boy! I know you can do it. Woof! Woof!”

  How quickly the collar was around Edgar’s neck. He didn’t even get his fingers in the way. And then he had to move.
Crumley jerked him, and his head snapped back.

  “You want to be a dog, let’s treat you like a dog!”

  Edgar was falling now. He tried to brace himself, but he couldn’t breathe and the ground spun hard—

  “Hey! Hey!” someone else called. It sounded like—

  And then there was a lot of yelling and fighting. Edgar couldn’t see much. People were around him, and Caroline was the one who loosened the collar so that he could breathe again. She said, “What are you doing, Edgar! Why’d you let him noose up your neck like that?”

  And there were teachers, too, and it got serious: soon enough they were in the principal’s office, and even Edgar’s mother was there with Ceese, arguing with Jason and his mother. Edgar’s mother wanted Jason out of school for the rest of his life practically, and the principal looked like he wished the law allowed him to beat the boy half to death, but Jason said he’d put the leash on Edgar only because he was acting like a dog anyway, and had threatened to bite him the other day for no good reason at all. And the way he said it—like he was fiddling a tune, like you had to tap your foot—even Edgar started to believe that maybe he deserved a collar around his neck for being so doggish.

  The way Jason defended himself in the principal’s office made everyone lose their voice for a moment. They’d been like a big arguing choir, all singing at once, but after the fiddler was through, it was quiet and everyone turned to Edgar to see was he really doggish or not?

  Jason said, “He can’t even speak. All he does is bark!”

  So they were all looking at where Edgar was sitting. His throat was tight anyway. He felt like the collar had left a big red band around his neck.

  “Sweetie, just say a few words,” Edgar’s mother said in a frightened way. He knew she didn’t actually believe he could.

  They were all looking at him, even Ms. Lajoie, who was lovely in a different scarf today, a blue one, and who had yelled at Jason because she knew already he could be a bully. She said what did it matter if the boy was barking?

  But with Edgar’s mother there, who could hear her?

  His mother said, her voice trembling, “Just tell us, Edgar, how the collar got around your neck. How he put it there.”

  There was no way to disappear with all those eyes burning at him.

  Edgar said, “Woof! Woof-woof, woof-woof!”

  He was thinking, When I try to speak human, I sound to everyone like I am barking, so I’ll bark and—

  It just sounded like barking.

  In a few minutes Edgar’s mother was pulling him home by the scruff of his jacket.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. For all the trouble I’m causing, Edgar wrote in his notebook and passed it over to his mother. They were sitting at the kitchen table. She had opened a bottle of beer and was drinking it in front of him in the middle of the day.

  “I just don’t understand,” she said. “I needed you to be normal at least for a few days. This is, like, my last chance, don’t you see? I don’t want to screw this up!”

  The beer smelled like poison to him, like the cardboard bed on the subway grating that he wasn’t supposed to look at when they passed by.

  “You know? You know? I’ve had a lot of bad luck in my life. A person can take so much of it, and then she can’t. I just needed you to be able to go to school and blend in and be quiet. Like you do. What’s different here? Is it the dog? Is it Benjamin? Is he too much to take care of?”

  Why are you making Ceese the new Roger? Edgar wrote, and passed the notebook to her.

  “What? What?” She picked up her beer as if she might club him with it, so he winced. He couldn’t help himself. “Oh, don’t be such a baby! There is no new Roger! Where did you come from, saying things like that? Is that why you’re barking?”

  She could not stay seated. She got up almost like the angry bear and paced in front of the kitchen window.

  I do not know why I am barking, he wrote.

  She shoved the bottle into the sink. He thought it would break, but instead it tipped over and stinky beer oozed down the drain.

  “The bigger question is—Edgar, honestly, you know I love you, but—where the hell did you come from? How are you even my child? I don’t know half of what you’re saying to me, and I’m not talking about when you’re barking. Is Ceese the new Roger? What do you mean by that?”

  Edgar made his eyes large.

  “You’re my kid. You’re too young. I can’t be talking to you about these kinds of—”

  I smelled you both, he wrote.

  Her jaw worked up and down several times, but nothing came out. Finally: “So what, now you’re like my dog who smells every scrap of private business that goes on in my life? There are limits, Edgar! You’re not supposed to know about any of this stuff. Be a kid! Go to school, play baseball, just be normal!”

  She paced. She thrust her hands into her hair. Her eyes were red with tears about to spill.

  Edgar wrote: There is still snow. It’s too cold for baseball.

  She slapped the counter. “You’re joking about this?”

  Benjamin came up the stairs, slowly, to see what was going on. He sniffed, sniffed at Edgar and his mother.

  “What’s he smelling? What’s he smelling?” Edgar’s mother said. “Well, I didn’t even finish one beer. How’s that? Promise me you’re not ganging up on me.”

  In a moment it was going to be hard to breathe, they would not be able to continue. She was his mother—that did mean something—but his fingers were aching and he could hear his heart in his eardrums. She was looking at him so hard, he had to focus on the pad before him.

  Ceese has his Victoria. That’s all that is wrong with him. Otherwise he would be fine as the new Roger.

  He had written it but was afraid to show her. He couldn’t move his hand away, until finally she said, “Oh, for God’s sake!” and ripped the pad from him.

  She looked, she looked. She seemed about to hit him over the head with the pad. Instead she leaned close to him, she gripped him by the shoulders too hard for it to be a hug. “Look at me, look at me,” she whispered harshly until he had to show her his eyes. “There is no new Roger. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t. He didn’t understand her at all.

  Finally she let him go. She hurried to her room. The bang of the door rattled the cups in the cupboard in the kitchen, where Edgar still sat. It jangled his spine through the chair.

  LIGHT

  SILENCE, SILENCE. LATE IN THE afternoon they walked across the highway—which was still empty of cars—out where the two rivers met. Then they descended the steep bank and headed along what looked like a snowmobile trail, although there were traces of ski tracks and footprints as well. Benjamin was slow but uncomplaining, and Edgar dawdled behind his mother to take photographs from a safe distance. The snow was firm underfoot, shiny, although there were deep cracks sometimes in the ice. The light shone off humps in the river, as if waves had been frozen in place. Is that how it happened, the river had frozen in a moment? Like his mother now, frozen because of what he had said on a pad of paper.

  Maybe not. The river was unfreezing now, even as they were walking, although everywhere around them the ice still seemed thick. Stretches of water had opened in places, near the shore and over there where an island poked itself between the two rivers.

  Ice, snow, hills, river. Trees, rock, sky, sun. Edgar could feel himself a tiny spot in the silent collision of what?

  It wasn’t just his mother’s anger. It was like the whole world piling mountains against him.

  Benjamin said, “Haven’t been out here in a long time.”

  They were on the main river now, the Yukon, heading away from town. Dawson was gone, practically, a blur of colors under the Moosehide Slide.

  Edgar had frozen the words inside her. And all he could do was bark. What he’d written had been too true to be helpful.

  Even mosquitoes would have to be quiet in the winter, Edgar thought.

  They were headin
g toward a bend, but it was so far away, Edgar didn’t think they would reach it. It was like the morning of their arrival, when they had started off walking from the airport.

  He took a picture of the speck of his mother walking away from him in the distance. Hills, sky, trees, snow, ice, all enormous around her.

  Benjamin said, “Soon now, all this will break up. A whole different river then.”

  “Different how?” Edgar asked.

  “Nobody walking on a river this wild.”

  Edgar’s mother was sitting by the shore in the shadows, smoking, her legs crossed. Edgar could smell the cigarette long before he could see the expression in her eyes—distant, like she was looking across an ocean at something no one else could see. When Edgar and Benjamin got to her, she said, “Now, if I was a good mother, I would have brought a picnic, a thermos with hot chocolate. And if I was a Girl Guide, I’d make a little fire, and you could roast marshmallows and feed some to the dog, and then later, when you’re all grown up and speaking at my funeral to the three other people who show up, you’d say, ‘She wasn’t such a bad mother. Sometimes we did fun things, and she thought of other people sometimes.’ ”

  The cigarette smoke smelled foul from such close range even though they were outside. There was no wind, and Edgar felt hot still from the long walk.

  “Sometimes you ask me about your father, but, you know, it’s your grandfather I should be telling you about. He’s the one who warped me. It’s his fault.” She sucked in, sucked in, then blew out enormously and stubbed out the cigarette.

  “I know. It’s disgusting,” she said. “I can tell by the expression on your face. This is my very last one.” She pulled the package from her coat pocket. “I’d leave the rest here, but I don’t want to be accused of littering. You already think I’m an adulterer or something.”

  Benjamin was standing patiently. Possibly he did not lie down so that he could avoid having to get up again. Had they brought him too far?