North to Benjamin Read online

  Victoria reached for her parka off the wall by the door, then started pulling on her boots. “I think you’re hallucinating. But you are here, and we can’t wait. I’ve got to get Des’s truck. I’ll be back in minutes. Understand?”

  He did not understand. “What about Benjamin? You’ve got to look for him! And bring your gun. The wolf was going to eat him!”

  She left without taking anything. Did she even have a gun? She had told Ceese she was going to shoot him.

  Sometimes people say things they don’t really mean.

  Minutes passed. Edgar wondered if he was going to fall asleep again but he felt wide awake now. He wondered who would be driving Ceese’s truck. But clearly Victoria didn’t believe Ceese was going to send anybody. That was why she’d gone herself. Suddenly dogs were barking, and the cabin was filled with light from outside. A vehicle pulled up. Was she back already?

  No, it was Ceese’s truck. Edgar’s mother burst through the door, half-dressed, her coat falling off her. “Oh, my baby, my baby!” she called. She flew at Edgar, crushed him in her arms, began at once to rub his socked hands. Victoria was back again shortly after.

  “Don’t do that! Don’t rub—you’ll damage the flesh!”

  “Oh, my baby. Oh, my baby!” his mother moaned, and kept rubbing.

  “I’m warming him slowly!” Victoria said. She pulled at Edgar’s mother’s arms. For a moment Edgar was sure they were going to start wrestling right there, rip his arm off between them.

  “You’re freezing, you’re freezing. Oh, look at you!” his mother wailed.

  Ceese was standing behind. “Stephanie,” he said, “Victoria’s right. You can’t rub at frostbite—”

  And Caroline was there too, in her parka, her face lined with sleep and worry.

  Edgar’s mother held Edgar’s face between her hands. “Why are you even here?” She was crying the way he had known she would.

  For a time everyone stayed quiet, except for Edgar’s mother’s moans.

  “I’m going to take his temperature again. He’s been hallucinating,” Victoria said finally. Edgar’s mother backed off just far enough to allow Victoria to insert the thermometer into his mouth. Edgar sucked on it while everyone watched. He remembered being watched like that when he was very small—his mother measuring his face with the full probe of her eyes.

  Finally Victoria pulled out the thermometer. “What’s his temperature?” Edgar’s mother exclaimed.

  “He’s warming up,” Victoria said coolly. She put the thermometer away.

  “Warming up to what? What was he before?”

  “He was 96.1 not too long ago. He’s 97.3 now. Not too bad. But I need to warm his core before his extremities so that he doesn’t go into shock. If that’s all right with you.” Victoria’s glare was quiet murder.

  “We need to get him to the hospital!” Edgar’s mother said.

  Victoria turned to Ceese. “I told you not to come. Not to bring her. And why did you bring Caroline?”

  “Let’s not make this about anything else,” Edgar’s mother said quickly. “Let’s just look after Edgar. Thank you for taking him in. I really appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, well,” Victoria said, “that’s what we’re all about here in the north. Taking care of one another.”

  Ceese didn’t seem to know where to look. He straightened to his full height, however, and said, “We shouldn’t wait too long. The Highways Department guys were right behind me. Must be a warm front moving in. They’re getting set to close down the ice bridge. They might not even wait for first light.”

  Victoria’s eyes widened. “I thought we had another week at least!”

  “The ice is already on the move. Edgar, you were lucky to get across,” Ceese said.

  “Well, I’m not ready!” Victoria said to Ceese. “I was going to come stay at your place. Now you’ve gone and screwed that up, haven’t you?”

  Ceese looked nervously at Caroline. Then Victoria hit him in the chest with both palms, sending him back a step. “What the hell were you thinking? Huh? Huh? How are you supposed to keep up with your new thing while I was staying at your place? Huh?”

  “Victoria—”

  Edgar’s mother moved between them. “Please! Let’s focus. Focus! We need to get Edgar across the river now!”

  “What new thing?” Caroline said. “Dad?”

  Ceese said, “We’ll talk about it later—”

  Caroline glared. “Dad! Do you mean you and Edgar’s mom—”

  “I can’t believe you brought your lover and your daughter!” Victoria said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Well, you could’ve called an ambulance,” Ceese snapped back.

  Victoria’s jaw dropped open. Even Edgar’s mother turned on him. “Don’t say stupid things! Let’s just get in the truck. Hurry!” She reached for Edgar’s coat, which was on the floor, and started trying to fit his arms back into the sleeves.

  “I’m just saying—there is an ambulance,” Ceese muttered.

  “Yes!” Victoria cried. “Because why would I expect that my boyfriend would be able to drop everything and get here without some terrible inconvenience?” She turned to Edgar’s mother. “Don’t force him!”

  Edgar’s mother seemed confused for a moment. She knelt down to deal with Edgar’s boots, which did not seem to want to fit back on his feet.

  Victoria stood over her. “You know what? You know what? You and Ceese just take my truck, all right? Drive fast, there’s no heater. Edgar and I will meet you in Emerg. I don’t think we should travel together. Under the circumstances. Do you understand?”

  Edgar’s mother stood. The two women were now almost nose to nose. “I am not leaving my boy here!”

  “Well, you sure as hell don’t know what you’re doing with hypothermia, and Edgar, for whatever reason, walked all the way here on his own. Ceese—” She did not turn away from Edgar’s mother. “If we have to travel together right now, nobody might make it alive! You know what I’m saying, Ceese.”

  She was holding out the keys, holding them out.

  “Hang on a minute! You don’t have to come to the hospital!” Edgar’s mother said to Victoria. “We’re done here!”

  Gently Ceese went to Edgar’s mother. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he murmured. “Stephanie—”

  “I’m not going to leave my kid!” Edgar’s mother insisted.

  Ceese said quietly, “You’re not leaving him. They’ll be right behind us.”

  “I just have to pack a bag,” Victoria said. “Edgar trusts me. Don’t you, Edgar?”

  All eyes were on him now. He had never seen anyone stand up to his mother quite like this before.

  “I’ll go with Victoria,” he said. It was just a few words, but they were his words to his mother, not the barking of some dog. He felt himself flush through. His mother could barely look at him. But she knew. She knew.

  This was not really his fault at all.

  “Go!” Victoria said to Ceese. “Tell the guys at the ice bridge to hold it open just a bit longer. Go!”

  They were gone in a second. The door slammed shut. Caroline was left standing in the corner, her face a little shaky. “I’m with you two,” she said in a small but steely voice.

  RIVERBOAT

  VICTORIA BEGAN MOVING RAPIDLY—SHOVING clothes into a large duffel bag, calling someone on the phone at the same time, then rushing to the fridge to suddenly look at the state of her food, then coming back to the duffel and phoning someone else.

  She was trying to arrange somewhere to stay in town, now that Ceese had betrayed her with Edgar’s mother.

  “We normally get a couple of days’ notice when the bridge is closing,” Victoria said to him. “I’m normally not running around like this!”

  She wasn’t running so much as lurching from one thing to the next. Her phone whistled. It was Ceese. “Where are you? They really are shutting down in just a few minutes.”

  “We are almost in the goddamn truck. Don’
t call again!” Victoria turned on Edgar. “Let’s get your boots on.”

  It was getting light now. Edgar had been up much of the night. His body was warming. His hand was crinkling now from inside, tingling sharply. It hurt to move his fingers, but he could do it. The phone whistled again for Victoria. “Give me the keys!” Caroline said. “I’ll start the truck!” Victoria threw them to her, and Caroline ran out the door.

  Just to see, Edgar used his mouth to pull the sock off his right hand. His mitt came with it. The skin was red, red, but his fingers were more or less working. But oh, how they stung!

  The other hand-sock came off easily.

  He wouldn’t rub, wouldn’t rub the raw skin.

  “Janey,” Victoria said into her phone, “the bridge is closing soon. I have to run, but could you tell Des he could start looking after my dogs today? I was on my way over when all hell broke loose. Don’t ask!”

  Janey said something in return. She didn’t have a huge voice like Ceese, so Edgar couldn’t hear. When Victoria hung up, she hoisted the duffel onto her shoulders. “Let’s go, let’s go!” Finally she noticed. “Your fingers!”

  Edgar moved them magically. She said, “Put the socks back on them, and let’s go!”

  Just as he was running out the door, Edgar noticed three photos on the walls, all of hulking black ravens, looking on. And here was another one of a big black bear just raising his head, like the bear Edgar had walked to so stupidly just a few nights ago.

  I’m sorry, Benjamin! he thought for the thousandth time.

  Then the dogs exploded into such barking, they sounded like a load of gravel being dumped from a big truck.

  “Oh, my lovelies!” Victoria called to them—a crowd of dogs running and yelping in the large, penned-off yard. “I’m sorry I’m going to leave without saying good-bye. But Des knows where the food is—”

  They seemed to know what she was saying, and it only made them more anxious and excited.

  (What were they saying? It just sounded like barking to Edgar. Maybe—maybe he had dreamed all of it, the dog-talking part especially.)

  “Edgar!” Victoria called. “Come on!” She was heading to Ceese’s truck, which was running. Edgar spied Caroline’s face peering over the dashboard.

  Maybe none of it had happened—the speaking drought, the long conversations with Benjamin.

  “Edgar!” The truck engine revved.

  “Edgar!”

  He ran toward the truck. The dogs were barking, barking. They didn’t want Victoria to go! Edgar called out, “Which one is Rupert?”

  “Edgar, come on!” Victoria left the truck and ran to him. “We have to—”

  That one there, the small brown one with the talkative eyes, that one must have been Rupert. He was telling Edgar, over and over, what had happened to Benjamin—or at least that was the sense that Edgar got, although he couldn’t understand the actual words.

  “I need to find Benjamin!” Edgar said.

  Victoria grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him over to the passenger side of the truck, lifted him in, and then slammed the door. Caroline had switched into the backseat. When Victoria got behind the wheel, Edgar held up his right hand and forced the fingers to open and close while he tried to keep his face calm.

  “I think I’m okay,” he said.

  “That’s great. But if I don’t get you to the hospital, your mother will kill me!” Victoria threw the truck into reverse, and Edgar pitched forward in his seat. “Do up your seat belt!”

  It was hard to turn and buckle while the truck bounced along the frozen lane between the trees.

  “I need to find Benjamin,” Edgar said again.

  “Where is he?” Caroline said. “Where did you leave him?”

  “We had an accident on the river, but I pulled him out,” Edgar said. “He was freezing. We went to the Paddlewheel Graveyard, and then we got past the wolves and found Victoria’s house.”

  “Wolves!”

  “We can’t look for him right now,” Victoria said grimly. She seemed tough on the inside. But maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe anyone would be upset at Ceese and at Edgar’s mother, and even at Edgar for showing up in the dark, trailing such dreadful news.

  “But where is he now?” Caroline pressed.

  “I thought he was with me,” Edgar said in a little voice.

  The truck bounced along a narrow, rocky road through the woods and then out onto a larger road, much more open. They turned and headed down a curve. Soon, there in the distance was the river, still mostly frozen, with large stretches of white, white snow and ice lined with black stretches—open water.

  Had he and Benjamin really made their way across all that in the night?

  A long line of trucks and cars was stopped at the point where the road met the ice bridge. Victoria crept up behind the last idling car.

  “All right,” she said, pushing her hair back off her forehead. “I think they’ll let us across. They’ll just stagger the vehicles to not stress the ice.”

  The town of Dawson sat, silent and still, on the other side while cars and trucks, well-spaced, navigated the snaking S-curve of the ice bridge.

  Probably right where they were idling now was the very spot on the road where the wolf had sat sentinel, guarding passage to Victoria’s house. For there was the smaller road heading down to the empty campsite, on the way to the Paddlewheel Graveyard.

  “I think I know where Benjamin is,” Edgar said.

  Victoria hit a button on her door, and the truck locked shut around them.

  “It’s not far down that road,” Edgar said, pointing.

  “We have no time. I’m sorry.” Victoria kept her eyes forward. Was she always this hard? She hadn’t been the night of the band competition, when she’d sung that beautiful song, or in the photo shop, when she’d made all those prints for him.

  “What, you mean he’s down there?” Caroline said. “In the campground? I could run and get him.”

  “You’re going nowhere. Neither of you. This is not a negotiation.”

  “But Benjamin is—”

  “No!”

  They waited, waited. A truck and then a car were allowed out onto the ice. The sun was rising, bright in the blue sky, and more vehicles lined up behind them. A bearded man in a dirty jacket knocked on Victoria’s window. It seemed they knew each other.

  “Are they going to strand us here, do you think?” the man said.

  “I think we’re okay. They’re just being extra cautious,” Victoria said.

  The man gazed at Edgar. “Who’s the boy?”

  “Don’t ask,” Victoria said.

  Waiting, more waiting. Edgar noticed workmen dressed in orange out on the ice, talking things over.

  Victoria’s phone buzzed. She peered at the screen, then touched some buttons.

  “Your mother is worried,” she said coldly.

  “I’m sorry,” Edgar said.

  “Well, don’t be. It’s not your fault what adults do. Or do to you.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, then shut the engine off.

  “It’s not all your mom’s fault either,” Caroline said. “She’s not the only one. My dad never learns. Why do you think my mom is in Whitehorse? Why do you think I’m here, with you guys? I mean, my dad is great, except when he’s not.” She looked more than a little angry, ready to burst out of her skin.

  “I could’ve stayed in bed,” Edgar said. “Benjamin knew better but still came after me. I should’ve been the one to fall through.” Edgar told them more about the ice and the water, and nearly freezing, and losing his camera.

  “That’s a shame,” Victoria said. “It was a beautiful instrument. But you made the right choice. A camera can be replaced. Your life—”

  “Benjamin brought me to the Paddlewheel Graveyard because he smelled fire,” Edgar said. “That’s where he wanted to go. I think it’s his favorite spot.”

  “It’s just down there.” Caroline pointed along the campsite road.

>   “I know,” Edgar answered.

  A few more cars were allowed to go onto the ice, slowly, slowly. Victoria restarted the engine and let the truck advance slightly down the hill. She seemed to be thinking, thinking.

  “Nobody ever came after me before,” Edgar said. “Nobody ever looked out for me.”

  “Your mother did,” Victoria said.

  Edgar looked at her. Yes, he supposed, she had come after him just now. She had tried to look after him in her way.

  “I hate her guts at the moment,” Victoria said, “but, you know, she is your mother.”

  “Yes,” Edgar allowed.

  “I mean, I really hate her. She saw a vulnerability, and she went for it. Ceese is a blockhead for falling the way he did. I guess I saw it happening, and I didn’t want to see. And I guess it’s some kind of blessing I found out now. I mean, we’re not married. Caroline, you know—I still love you.”

  “And we all still love Benjamin!” Caroline said. “He might just be lying in the cold. You know it’s not very far—”

  Victoria shook her head; she swore to herself. Then, to Edgar, “Show me your hands again!”

  Edgar pulled off the warm socks, and Victoria felt his fingers gently.

  “The feeling is coming back?”

  Edgar pretended he was playing a piano. Victoria looked at him, and then back at Caroline. “Oh crap!” She turned the wheel and steered them out of line and down the narrow lane on the other side of the road.

  Victoria drove them to the end of the campsite road and then they got out. It really wasn’t very far in the truck, in the daylight. It looked like a completely different place. Edgar knew the trail to the river, though, and walked ahead, Caroline right beside him. It wasn’t so cold now. If the snow had been fresh, instead of old and frozen hard in the shadows, he would’ve been able to see his own footprints, and Benjamin’s prints, going back and forth. But now he couldn’t even smell the trail he and Benjamin must’ve left.

  He was a boy again, just so.

  At the river he ran toward the black spot in the distance. The smudge onshore grew and grew as he got closer. Caroline was running too, her arms pumping. “Benjamin!” she yelled. But Benjamin . . . Benjamin was not going to get up. He was lying by the old fire, the bits of charcoaled logs that had been so cold and disappointing in the night.