North to Benjamin Page 15

  (How many times had he come upon her passed out on a sofa?)

  Just one more time. Please.

  But the sleeper on the sofa was Caroline, tucked under a comfy blanket. Everyone else was gone.

  Was that true?

  Where was Ceese?

  But it did not mean . . .

  It did not mean Edgar should creep down the stairs to his mother’s room. (He stood still, picturing himself placing one foot after the other, descending the carpeted steps.)

  It did not mean he should stand in front of her closed door listening for their sounds, smelling what he would smell.

  It did not mean—

  Footfalls from his mother’s room, coming up the stairs—heavy! A door shutting softly, care being taken.

  The flush of the toilet. Edgar could almost feel how lightly the hand pressed on the handle. Then the door opening, those heavy feet returning down the stairs.

  Voices. Whispers. If he stopped breathing, he could hear:

  “I have to go.”

  “Do you?” Her drinking voice, so soft . . .

  “Where’s my—”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t think I—”

  “Can’t you?”

  Large bodies on the bed.

  “Stephanie, I—”

  “Shhh.”

  “I really—”

  “Oh, shhh!”

  And then breathing. And the rest.

  DARKNESS

  THEY WERE HALFWAY DOWN THE hill into town, the darkness swallowing them, before Benjamin asked where they were going.

  “West Dawson,” Edgar said, his breath clouding the way before him. The road was especially slippery. It had thawed somewhat in the highest sun of the day, and refrozen slickly now in the cold night. Edgar’s boots were not leather, had no fur, did not embrace his calves warmly. The soles barely had treads; he felt like he was walking with a flimsy strip of rubber between him and the cold earth.

  (The man in the story, the one who fell through the ice and froze before he could make a fire, had far warmer clothes than Edgar now wore. But Edgar wasn’t going to fall through any ice.)

  “Why are we going to West Dawson?” Benjamin wheezed. Back at the house he had been deeply asleep. Edgar had needed to shake him, to pinch his ears, before he woke up.

  “That’s where Victoria lives.”

  The hill was not so steep, or so long. Soon enough the road flattened out. The houses all were still, dark, either empty or simply bedrooms for sleeping bodies.

  “I like Victoria,” Benjamin panted. “Haven’t seen her for a while.”

  “Then you know how to get to her house?” Edgar said. His boots squeaked on the frozen road. He felt sure that in a moment his body would warm up the way he had warmed on the walk that afternoon. Maybe he could catch another glimpse of something that would flash through him—the moonlight on the ice, the shadows cloaking the trees—and he would warm through to the roots of his hair. It was dark, but he had his camera with him, the strap around his shoulders. The camera bumped against him with the jolting of his steps.

  He was shivering; his teeth felt chilled.

  “West Dawson is across the river,” Edgar said. Not abandoned at all.

  “I haven’t been across the river in a long time,” Benjamin said. “Where’s the car?”

  “We’re walking!” Just at that moment Edgar stubbed his toe on a chunk of ice and stumbled. The shock reminded him of how frigid he felt in his shoulders and arms.

  They walked along the flat of the town. The moon looked cold too, wrapped in foil.

  “Is it far across the river?” Edgar asked. “Can we see West Dawson?”

  Across the river was black hills, purple sky. No lights whatsoever. But West Dawson had no electricity.

  “Do you know Rupert?” Edgar asked. Victoria’s dog.

  “Rupert is just a puppy,” Benjamin said. He was walking slowly. Had Edgar dragged him too far already that afternoon?

  Well, Edgar couldn’t stay in the borrowed house with Ceese and his mother. So he would have to get to West Dawson with Benjamin.

  And he couldn’t wake Caroline. There would’ve been too much to explain.

  Why wasn’t Edgar warming up? There was no wind. The air was still, but cold too, like something that did not want him walking through it.

  In West Dawson there would be Victoria’s fire, which Benjamin loved. Edgar could say hello to Rupert and ask him about the wolves.

  The tips of the hairs on Benjamin’s muzzle were frosted white. Edgar felt his eyes tear up. When he blinked, they stayed shut for a moment, almost frozen.

  “To get to Victoria’s house,” Benjamin said, “someone drives you in the car. It’s warm till you open the door to go out.”

  “We have no car. We’re going to walk.”

  They were walking. Through the quiet town, past the ghostly wooden buildings. Lola’s bar, shut up and still. Someone else must have been on shift earlier tonight. Why not Edgar’s mother? None of this would’ve happened. Ceese would not have stayed.

  Past the big yellow building with the ballroom inside, where Edgar had heard Victoria sing her song, with Ceese on drums and Edgar’s mother quietly fuming.

  A few more blocks, then they crossed Front Street and climbed the rise to the edge of the river.

  “Why don’t you get a car and drive us there?” Benjamin panted.

  “West Dawson is just on the other side. Isn’t it?” Edgar said.

  They had walked much farther that afternoon. But it was colder now. Edgar’s face felt chilled into a squint. And the other side of the river, which didn’t look all that far away, was in darkness—hills and trees, not a town, not anything that showed up.

  “The car would get us there without freezing our paws,” Benjamin said.

  Down the side of the bank. The trail appeared immediately. The ice roadway was to the left, a detour. Why not just head straight across? The snow and ice were lumpy, but they would support Edgar’s weight. “We’ll save time,” Edgar said.

  He had not brought a leash. He had taken it for granted that Benjamin would accompany him, that the dog would want as much as Edgar did to get out of the house, to do something. But Benjamin stayed up on top of the bank, sniffing, while Edgar looked up at him from below.

  “We’ll warm up if we keep moving,” Edgar said.

  “We’ll warm up if you get the car,” Benjamin called down.

  “I don’t have a car. I can’t drive. I’m just a kid. I’ve never done it!”

  “Then let’s go back inside and forget all this until Ceese drives us.”

  “But Ceese is with my mother now. He isn’t with Victoria anymore!”

  Benjamin looked away, upriver. Probably he couldn’t really understand what humans did, the problems they made for themselves.

  “It ruins everything!” Edgar called up to him. “My mother won’t keep him. She never does. But Victoria will explode, or she’ll cry till she’s sick. I don’t know.” He had seen his mother do these things and more, when men were concerned.

  Benjamin sniffed, sniffed, as if he couldn’t quite fathom it.

  “It’s what people do,” Edgar said. “It feels like everything is coming apart.”

  “Why do we need to be there when it does?” Benjamin asked.

  It was a fair question. Benjamin turned away.

  “Victoria might stop my mother,” Edgar said. “She could talk to Ceese and wake him up. She could—”

  Benjamin disappeared behind the slope. Probably he was shambling back toward his warm blanket at the borrowed house where Ceese and Edgar’s mother were doing what they were doing.

  “If you don’t come with me, I won’t know where I’m going. I might fall through the ice!” Edgar said, although he didn’t think he would. The open stretch was down a ways.

  Silence. Then he thought he heard the huff of Benjamin’s breath getting farther away.

  Enough! Edgar didn’t need Benjamin. The old d
og would just slow him anyway. Edgar headed straight across. It was face-smacking cold, but if he saw open stretches, the black water, he’d just walk around. It wasn’t far, really. And Victoria’s house had to be somewhere in the woods beyond.

  He had to get to Victoria because she understood about the pictures and about him, and because of something he had heard in her voice when she had sung her song. She had her own black water, her own open stretches where the world ran so cold, it could swallow her up. One wrong step—it wouldn’t take much. That was what her song had been about, beneath the surface. It was one thing for Edgar to fall in love with Ms. Lajoie and others. That was like breathing. It took no effort. But old people like Victoria, like Ceese and Edgar’s mother—when they fell in love, it was like that man in the story falling through the ice and floundering around, telling himself what to do but not being able to save his fingers from the cold.

  Edgar fell in love all the time. He had a sense of it. Ms. Nordstrom, Ms. Lajoie, Caroline, Victoria. The light on the hills this afternoon—just looking. That too was a sort of falling in love.

  Edgar could fall and bend, he could be in love with all of it yet still make porridge in the morning. But old people—

  The ice and snow were harder to navigate than Edgar had expected. Sometimes his boots broke through and he had to adjust, find his balance. He didn’t break through all the way to water—that seemed impossible, given the thickness of the ice chunks already thrown up by the shifting river—but through the crust into softer parts. The trail would’ve had better footing, but it led out of the way—back to the ice road, quite a distance upriver from where he was now. If he just kept straight—

  He got closer and closer to the darkness of open water.

  I must be tired, he thought. I know the black is water, but I keep walking toward it anyway. As if—

  As if he couldn’t make his mind believe there could be any open water at all on a cold, cold night like this.

  Edgar fought against the bad footing. He slid, broke the crust, righted himself. It was quicker this way to get across.

  “I am telling myself a story,” he said, not very loudly, but it was a quiet night. This was Dawson. Maybe the whole town could have heard him if everyone hadn’t been sleeping. (Or pretending to sleep.)

  It was an odd feeling, almost fighting with himself, knowing and not knowing. Benjamin had stayed on the shore, had headed back to his warm blanket. Benajmin wasn’t telling himself a story about searching for Victoria when in fact he was walking, stumbling, picking his way straight toward the blackness of open water, and why?

  How else was Edgar going to understand the way his mother lived her life?

  His mother would not think of Victoria, so Edgar had to. If that was a story, it was a good one, a true one.

  True enough.

  “Hey! Hey! Boy!” Benjamin called from somewhere behind him. Edgar turned. It was hard to see a black dog, even a big one, on a black night. “Come back here! Get away from the edge! Stupid humans!”

  Edgar smiled. He wasn’t even close to the edge, but it was nice to know that Benjamin hadn’t really abandoned him.

  “I’m all right. I’m going to go around,” Edgar said calmly. He knew what he was doing. Didn’t he?

  “Get back here! Don’t make me come get you!”

  It was an interesting feeling, to be turning to look at the big black dog, and yet after a time not really moving his feet. People spin in movies all the time, Edgar thought. Now somehow, on the ice, without even moving, he was . . .

  . . . moving.

  “Stay where you are! I’ll come get you!” Finally Edgar could see Benjamin. He was shambling like the bear, scrambling over the lumps of ice and snow as if there were something to hurry about.

  “I’m not going to—”

  But something was happening. The ice itself was moving, or at least the part Edgar was standing on. It spun slowly and shifted along beside other chunks of ice not moving at all. Edgar couldn’t see the water—not close to him—but he was heading along anyway. Benjamin now was behind him slightly, still a distance off, adjusting—

  “I didn’t mean to!” Edgar called.

  The ice and snow beneath his feet were as solid as ever. But now the river was pulling him along.

  Not seriously. The chunk of ice Edgar stood upon was very large, and where was there to go? The stretch of black water didn’t last long before Edgar’s patch of ice bumped against another huge one in slow motion. Edgar took a step forward and three steps back, but kept his balance. His camera clunked against him. Chunks of ice on the edge of the sheet broke off and piled up on the other section, the one they had hit. Edgar could see all around him now many more broken blocks of ice pushed up by these sorts of collisions. The black stretch of water was fairly short. Most of this section of the river was frozen still. It was just an unexpected ride.

  Lucky. Like the encounter with the bear.

  He hadn’t really meant to get anywhere near the edge.

  “It’s all right!” he called. “Benjamin—I’m fine!” Edgar scanned the darkness, the edge of white against black, for his friend. He skipped back off the movable ice and stood once more on a solid patch. “I’m over here!” he called.

  No movement. No return call.

  “Benjamin! Benjamin!”

  Edgar headed back along the line of last sighting. Benjamin had been gaining on him. He ought to be just about here.

  Back, back. Picking his way. Edgar looked for tracks. Probably Chief Isaac, of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, was a good tracker and would have been able to see exactly—

  “Benjamin!”

  Nothing. And then—movement, there, in the blackest part of the night. Benjamin was lying down but holding his head up, raising his paw. He must’ve been exhausted. After all the walking he’d done lately.

  Edgar hurried toward him. “It’s okay. We’ll rest here and then—”

  But Benjamin wasn’t lying down. He was stuck. His head and shoulders were above the ice; his front paws were hanging on while the rest of him was splashing below.

  Edgar felt sick all at once, curdled inside. His body went sour and weak at a stroke. “Hold on! Benjamin!” The first step he took was crazy. He’d guessed badly where the ice and snow below him might be, and he fell over hard, whacked his elbow and his chin. He lay there groaning, trying to get his body back.

  “Don’t sink! Don’t die!” he called.

  He was sick on the ice. The pot roast and cobbler dinner came out of him, his body knowing before he did, somehow, that this was all his fault. If he hadn’t insisted on walking straight out—

  “I’m coming!” Edgar called.

  He groaned and rolled. His camera caught on the ice, and he threw it off him as if it were trying to pull him under. “Benjamin, Benjamin!”

  Edgar regained his feet dizzily. He wasn’t seeing well. He was the man in the story fumbling so badly.

  But he wasn’t far from Benjamin, whose head—calm, true, not panicking—still stuck out in the darkness.

  “I’m coming!” Edgar squeaked, in hardly his voice at all—his jaws felt screwed shut. He stumbled again. My fault! All of this!

  “Just leave me,” Benjamin said. “You’re not going to—”

  What? Edgar was already there. He pitched forward onto the slushy ice (how could anything be thawing in this cold, cold?) and grabbed Benjamin behind the shoulders.

  “You’re not strong enough. Just—”

  Edgar pulled. Benjamin slipped, nearly went under, but his great paws scratched the edge of the ice, barely holding himself up.

  “Save yourself!” Benjamin barked.

  Edgar’s mitted fingers plunged into the water and found Benjamin’s collar. He pulled and pulled. He wasn’t strong enough to lift a beast like Benjamin, but he could pull a bit. . . .

  Edgar rolled back, still hanging on. He was small, but sometimes even a meager pull at the right time can shift the balance. Benjamin grasped stronger ice
at last. He struggled free and stood for a moment, stunned and immobile, fully on the ice again, then shook himself and his freezing fur until his fur stood out, instantly stiffened in the cold air, and Edgar too was covered in a fine sheen of ice.

  “I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!” Edgar said.

  But there wasn’t time to be sorry now. If they stood there any longer—

  “This way!” Edgar said, and pulled on Benjamin’s collar just to get him moving. Where? Around the black water. It wasn’t far. Over the chunks and the blocks of semisolid crashed ice to the darkness where West Dawson must be. “Just run! Just run!”

  They scrambled, slipped, got up. It wasn’t far. It wasn’t—

  “Run! Run!” Edgar panted again. It felt like his hand was frozen to Benjamin’s collar. If the dog went under again, Edgar didn’t think he could let go. They would sink together. It would be better that way. (How awful that had been, to look back in the dark and see no Benjamin.)

  “Just run! Run!”

  They shambled together. It all became a blur, a slosh of ice chunks and snow and scrambling with a vague sense that the shore ought to be there. It should be—

  It was! The ice road, there it was, this end of it running parallel to the shore.

  They were running now to warm up, to drive their blood to parts of their bodies that the cold was ready to claim. Edgar’s hand felt welded to Benjamin’s collar. They ran together as if this were some sort of strange community competition. (Not a three-legged race. Edgar had been in one of those at school back in Toronto. But instead a boy-and-dog race.) They had to—

  —make it along the ice road, and climb the hill that was the far bank—

  “Where is it?” Edgar asked, gasping. He really wasn’t a good runner.

  Neither was Benjamin. They both trembled in the cold and dark up on the bank by the ice road.

  “How do you get to West Dawson from here?” Edgar croaked.

  You take a car. Benjamin didn’t even have to say it. The thought barged through Edgar’s mind. You take a car and continue climbing the hill along the road that circled into darkness somewhere beyond what Edgar could see.