North to Benjamin Page 16

  PADDLEWHEEL

  “SO WHERE EXACTLY IS VICTORIA’S house?” Edgar asked now. They were on the road halfway up the hill. “You must be able to smell it from here.”

  Edgar could see no houses. The road led upward through bush, snow, and rock. But on the right . . . was something. Another, smaller road.

  “Is this the way?” Edgar asked.

  Possibly Benjamin couldn’t hear him. Possibly it was all Benjamin could do to keep his head down and follow the lead of Edgar’s dangerously stiff right hand, his mitted fingers curled so tightly around the dog’s collar. They started down the smaller road—why not? If they were lucky, it would lead to the houses of West Dawson, one of which had to be Victoria’s.

  “Is this the way? Do you remember this road?” Edgar asked.

  Downhill now. Silent except for their ragged breathing. As long as they kept moving, Edgar thought, they would be all right.

  Benjamin whispered, “Just call.” His voice was as brittle as the air seemed to be.

  “I don’t have a phone,” Edgar said. “I don’t have a car. I’m human, but I don’t have those things.”

  “Just call . . . out.”

  “But who is going to understand a word I say?” Edgar replied. “All I can do is—”

  Bark. Bark like a dog.

  “Hey! Hey!” Edgar called. “I’m here with Benjamin. He fell through the ice. We’re freezing. Where’s Victoria’s house? Anybody?”

  As echoey as sound seemed to be out on the frozen river, in the woods now, Edgar’s voice felt swallowed, muffled.

  “My name is Edgar!” he called more loudly. Was he barking, or speaking like a boy? He had no idea. “I’m here with Benjamin, the Benjamin you know. We need help, help!”

  Nothing. This road was leading into woods, that was all. Nothing more.

  “Let me know if you hear me, at least!” Edgar called.

  On other nights they had heard plenty of dogs barking in the distance, and it had sounded like they were all the way across the river in West Dawson—packs of them. Were they all sleeping now? Why could no one hear him?

  The road was leading them through a campground, apparently. There were signs and snowy flat sections where tents might go if it were summer.

  “If we’re going the wrong way . . . ,” Edgar said.

  They would die. Like the man in the story who could not make a fire.

  “Victoria!” Edgar called. The cold air swallowed her name.

  And the road ended . . . nowhere: trees, snow, silence. As Edgar glanced desperately in all directions, Benjamin trembled, his head sagging.

  “I can smell a fire,” Benjamin whispered at last.

  “Where?”

  Benjamin lurched forward onto a path Edgar could not even see. Edgar had to follow, frozen by the hand to the big dog’s collar.

  “Down here. Here,” Benjamin muttered.

  Down here was . . . the river again. The ice-packed shore. Edgar could see no fire anywhere. Just darkness.

  “There are no houses,” Edgar said. “I didn’t see any smoke or—”

  But the dog pulled him along. How had Edgar ever summoned the strength to hoist Benjamin out of the river? Edgar felt as light as driftwood now, tethered to the solid neck of a determined beast.

  “There is a fire,” Benjamin breathed. “Can’t you smell it?”

  Edgar couldn’t smell anything. Maybe his senses were shutting down. The scene around him felt jumbled, the black trees and the white river ice, his footsteps louder than a train’s wheels, his face a frozen mask.

  They were following the river, on something of a footpath. Were the houses along here? There, back in the bush, was a structure, but it looked desolate, empty. Could this be West Dawson?

  Abandoned.

  That’s what the map had said.

  “It’s here. It’s . . .”

  But it wasn’t a fire. Not a real one. On the shore ice lay the remnants of a fire: charred sticks and old, blackened river stones. Cold.

  “Can’t you smell them?” Benjamin said.

  “Who?”

  Faintly Edgar could just get a sense of several . . . kids who had been here sometime, maybe days ago.

  But there was no smoke, no heat, no . . . hope. Benjamin shuddered, still standing, beside Edgar. If only Edgar could release his hand from Benjamin’s collar!

  His eye caught something rising from the darkness of the woods. It looked like . . . immense dinosaur bones, a skeleton of some sort—

  “What’s that?” he exclaimed.

  Benjamin’s head was down. He was sniffing the dead ashes still.

  Edgar took a step back, and the dog lurched with him.

  “Benjamin!”

  The dog’s head had become so heavy. His coat had hardened into spiky black frozen fur. Edgar tried to brush off some of the ice with his free hand.

  “It’s the Paddlewheel Graveyard,” Benjamin said. “For the old riverboats.” He slumped beside the cold remains of the fire that would have saved them, maybe, if it still had been going. Edgar knelt with him.

  Caroline had told him about this place. The remaining structures looked like the bones of old beasts. There was smashed planking and cracked hulls, places where the ice of many winters must have crushed lengths of decking. And there—a huge paddle wheel rising out of the snow. And others behind it.

  “I’m sorry,” Edgar said, patting the big dog’s frozen head. Why hadn’t he woken Caroline? She would’ve known where to go, what to bring. “If I had matches,” Edgar said, “there’s plenty of wood we could burn.”

  “There are worse places,” Benjamin said.

  To die, he meant.

  Both of them were going to die—Benjamin because he was wet and frozen and old and exhausted, and Edgar because he was small and cold and couldn’t release his hand from Benjamin’s collar.

  Probably everybody in the Yukon carries matches, Edgar thought. It would only be sensible. And a knife. He had set out to cross the broken ice of the Yukon River without matches or a knife, just as stupidly as the man in the story had set out on his long journey in the woods all alone except for his dog.

  Edgar had been alone too. Why?

  It was easy to think more clearly now that there was nothing he could do. This was surely much worse than lying in bed in the borrowed house listening to his mother and Ceese. Benjamin had been asleep already; it would not have ruined either of their lives for Edgar to know what mothers and others got up to.

  No. Edgar had dragged them both out here. He had acted worse—even more stupidly wild—than his mother.

  Benjamin became very still, and Edgar gazed at the bones of the paddle wheels. They looked like they’d been thrown up onto the beach by some careless giant who didn’t want to play with them anymore.

  “I’m sorry, Benjamin,” Edgar whispered, stroking the dog’s huge head with his free hand. He stared at the collar bound to his mitten, and slowly, slowly realized the dog’s collar could come off. There was the buckle, knobby under a sheen of ice. He could pull off his left mitt with his teeth and use his still-moving fingers to unbuckle the collar. Just because Benjamin was dying . . .

  But there was peace here. It would be cold, and it would be quiet. Surely he wouldn’t feel the pain of it much longer.

  “Benjamin,” Edgar said. “Are you dying?” Edgar could still feel Benjamin’s breath in some part of his bone-chilled hand.

  “Looks like,” Benjamin whispered, then stayed quiet. Had Benjamin slipped into sleep? Would this be the last he would hear—

  But the dog roused himself. “Never died before,” he said.

  “Did you mean to bring us here?” Edgar asked.

  How cold the silence. Edgar got a sense of it suddenly—how cold and long it would be, to not have Benjamin’s voice for company.

  But—not yet. “We should have taken a car,” Benjamin groaned.

  “Are you in pain?” Edgar said. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for all of this. I didn’t
know this would be so close.”

  He meant the end of everything.

  But Benjamin maybe thought something different. “It is close,” he breathed. “In the car.”

  Was it? Were they just a short walk from Victoria’s house, after all? The man in the story was miles from anyone when he froze. There really was no hope for him. But people did live somewhere on this side of the river. Maybe close to the Paddlewheel Graveyard? Maybe Edgar could free the collar himself and go get help in time for Benjamin, after all? He was a big strong dog. Maybe he wouldn’t die so easily.

  Maybe—maybe Edgar needed to try.

  “Benjamin,” Edgar said. “Do you want me to try to get help? Or—stay here with you?” He didn’t say “while you die.”

  It might be a horrible thing to die alone.

  “Benjamin?”

  “Why don’t you,” Benjamin said, “get the car?”

  Edgar shoved his left hand between his knees and pulled until his mitt came off. His right, even in a mitt, was smarting fiercely, curled around Benjamin’s icy collar. His left felt freshly alive, although it would be just a matter of minutes, Edgar felt—maybe seconds—before it too started to hurt shockingly.

  Benjamin’s collar was made of thick, stiff leather, now frozen solid. Edgar gripped the buckle as tightly as he could. Ceese, with his huge hands, would have worked the strap free in a moment, Edgar thought. Roger, too. But Edgar’s fingers slipped off feebly. He made a fist and hit the buckle three, four times. Bits of ice came off, but the buckle strap wouldn’t budge. Finally he bit at it, but that was pitiful. Surely his mouth would freeze to the buckle.

  He was weak, weak, all the way through. “When was the last time you had your collar off?” he moaned.

  Benjamin shifted onto his side. “Never,” he snorted.

  “Well, you have to get up!” Edgar snapped.

  Benjamin was old. Maybe he couldn’t move anymore.

  But maybe he could. “Come on! Come on!” Edgar said. He shoved his left hand back into his mitt. The collar wasn’t budging, he couldn’t free himself. So Benjamin would have to rise again and come with him.

  “I think the car is this way!” Edgar said suddenly.

  “Bring it here,” Benjamin muttered. “Make it warm.”

  “We can’t. There’s no road. We have to walk to it,” Edgar said.

  “You go.”

  “I can’t! I can’t!” Edgar pulled hard but only slightly lifted the giant dog’s neck and head.

  Benjamin groaned, then farted.

  “You’re not dead yet!” Edgar said. “And neither am I!”

  “You go. Just let me—”

  “If you can fart, you can stand up!” Edgar said. For a moment he felt hot through much of his body. From his knees he jerked upward with both hands.

  Benjamin groaned, whirled, and bit harmlessly at Edgar’s jacketed arm. Edgar shifted his balance and stood, dragging Benjamin halfway up.

  “Let’s go back and get the car!” Edgar said.

  Up, up, unsteadily Benjamin stood. He looked sadly at the bones of the paddle wheels, as if he wanted to just stay here with them.

  “You can fart all you want in the car,” Edgar said.

  They started back along the shore. It was still dark, but there was a path to follow. It would return them to the road, and the road would lead to West Dawson. To people. To heat.

  It had to.

  “Did you call someone . . . ,” Benjamin huffed, “to bring the car?”

  “I did. I did!” Edgar felt almost giddy with the lie. “They’re waiting right now. Just along here.”

  Benjamin did not pick up the pace, but he did not slow either. Edgar thought: We can’t be dead if we’re moving.

  “I wish you had called earlier,” Benjamin said. He kept his head low. Edgar pulled but not too hard.

  “I wish I’d just stayed in bed!” Edgar said.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Benjamin puffed.

  They were moving, they were moving. It was farther than Edgar remembered, but here was the trail at last, in from the shore. And here . . . was where it joined the campsite road.

  Where no one was camping.

  “We can sleep in the car,” Edgar said. The more he talked about the car, the more it seemed there would be a vehicle of some sort, waiting somewhere. Ceese’s truck maybe. Edgar’s mother might have recognized by now that Edgar was gone. She would have sent Ceese out, and he would track them to this very spot. He would have matches, and a knife, and warm blankets. And his truck would be warm. Edgar remembered how Ceese had stopped on the highway to pick up Edgar and his mother walking in from the airport. He had helped Edgar’s mother first. A gentleman. Now if Edgar and Benjamin just kept walking . . .

  But Benjamin was shaking, wheezing.

  “Don’t say a thing,” Benjamin whispered, “to the wolf.”

  Edgar looked around quickly. “What wolf?”

  “Don’t even let him know . . . you know he’s here.”

  Dark trees, gray snow, shadows everywhere. No wolves that Edgar could see. Benjamin picked up his pace.

  Edgar couldn’t see anything else moving. There was no car; maybe there was no wolf, either.

  The campsite road, which was just a trail really, turned uphill. They were heading back toward the main road.

  “We will be out of your way soon!” Benjamin called out to something in the shadows.

  “You are not, not, not in my way,” said the wolf. Edgar couldn’t see him yet, but his voice was tall somehow, as tough as an old tree.

  “We’re just out walking. We’ll be home soon,” Benjamin called back.

  “Neither of you looks well,” said the wolf.

  (Edgar thought he could see him now, out of the corner of his eye, a large glimmer of gray slipping along, a threatening shadow.)

  “Oh, we are fine,” Benjamin said, in a big voice that sounded hollow.

  “But you are stepping, stepping, stepping . . . lamely,” said the wolf.

  Benjamin hurried, then stumbled. Edgar had to pull hard just to keep them both upright.

  “Why don’t you rest?” said the wolf. “Lie down. Let the boy go home. You and I can chat while you gather your strength.”

  “I’m stuck to his collar!” Edgar blurted. “I can’t let go! And if he stops now, he won’t get up again!”

  Benjamin butted Edgar’s thigh.

  “He’s not the smartest boy in the world, is he?” said the wolf.

  “I have a knife!” Edgar called back. “I’ll cut you open if you come for us!”

  They were so close to the main road. If only—

  “No need for knives, knives, knives,” said the wolf. “Just leave your friend with me. I wouldn’t hurt a little boy walking home.”

  They’d made it! Edgar and Benjamin broke through the tree cover of the campsite trail and stood in the openness of the main road. Edgar was surprised to see how deserted it was. He’d almost convinced himself that Ceese would be there with his truck, carrying a rifle perhaps.

  Caroline had a rifle, Edgar remembered now. She had mentioned it. And she had told him about the Paddlewheel Graveyard, and she certainly knew where Victoria lived. If she had come with him tonight—

  The road to West Dawson angled upward still, and curved, disappearing into darkness. Behind them was the river, the broken ice. They couldn’t chance another crossing.

  But the wolf was sitting above them in the middle of the lane that headed to wherever Victoria’s house might be.

  “I don’t see your knife,” the wolf said.

  He had gray, thick fur, and looked even bigger than Benjamin, and a lot stronger, as if he could bound over and knock them both down before Edgar could even draw out an imaginary knife anyway.

  “We’re on the road!” Edgar said. “I could call now, and a hundred dogs would come to our rescue!”

  The wolf did not look away. It was as if the ground rumbled when he talked. “They are safe in their little huts on a cold
night. Not many dogs, dogs, dogs come out here, no matter who is calling.”

  They could not run. Edgar felt it was beyond him. He and Benjamin stayed staring at the wolf while the ice of the river, somewhere behind them and down the road, pushed and groaned.

  “Where’s the car?” Benjamin whispered.

  “It’s coming,” Edgar whispered back. “Maybe. But maybe not soon.”

  Benjamin snorted. He seemed to inflate himself. “You know the way to Rupert’s house,” he called to the wolf.

  “Rupert!” the wolf said. “Rupert, Rupert, Rupert—the puppy dog?”

  “You bring us to Rupert’s house,” Benjamin said, “and I will lie down for you and offer my neck. Wherever you like. Your favorite feasting place.”

  The wolf didn’t move. He seemed perfectly relaxed, yet coiled, too, somehow, as if he might snap them both without a thought.

  “I am very fond of Rupert.” The wolf licked his lips. Then he brought his paw to his muzzle, as if cleaning something, and finally returned to his sentinel pose.

  It was cold, cold on Edgar’s face now. But the danger seemed to warm other parts of his body. Maybe Benjamin too was thawing a bit in reaction to the wolf.

  They waited, waited. Finally Benjamin said, “Make up your mind now, or this will be a hard fight, and you have to kill both of us. I might bite your face off before you get to my throat. That would not be a bad way for me to go.”

  The wolf licked his paws, as if he hadn’t heard.

  Suddenly Benjamin shouted out, “All you friends, we need you now, I’m here with the boy Edgar! Wolf! Wolf!”

  His voice filled the darkness, echoed off the hills and across the river and back. But the silence that returned was even deeper than before.

  “Dogs, dogs, dogs,” the wolf said. “They really don’t want to get their paws cold.”

  Benjamin tilted his head suddenly. Edgar wasn’t sure what he heard, or smelled, or saw. But something else was not right.

  More slick gray movement in the shadows. Edgar glimpsed something, then another thing. He smelled a number of other bodies.

  Other wolves.

  “My offer is this,” Benjamin called again. “See us to Rupert’s house. Keep the boy safe. I will meet you when and where you like, be your feast. I won’t turn a tooth against you. If you make us fight, with all your clan, the boy will die and you will all be hunted and shot cold before two days are done. You know this to be true!”