North to Benjamin Page 3

  “Because I can help out,” he said. “This is the north. We’re different here.”

  Different how? He didn’t say.

  “Thank you,” she said again. “If you hear of any positions opening, please let me know. But we’re fine for now.”

  By “positions” she meant jobs, and by “jobs” she meant waitressing or bartending, Edgar knew, even though she had said she would never do either job again. But things had changed.

  “I’ll ask around,” Ceese said, and his eyes stayed on hers, as if he wanted her to believe that he would.

  ALONE

  AT LAST THEY WERE ALONE in the strangers’ house. Edgar went to what would be his bedroom, which was small, in the back, but which, when he stood on the bed, had a fine view of the rest of the town out the rear window. Through his camera lens he saw clusters of low wooden buildings, many of them with snow-covered roofs, and a grid of streets, and in the distance black-and-white hills, where the black was fir trees and the white was snow. The sunlight was different here. He couldn’t think of how exactly, except that everything seemed clearer than in Toronto. Certainly you could see more than on a big city street, with all those tall buildings and the cars rushing past. And the snow was so white here, not gray and black slush. Slowly, slowly a pickup truck made its way along one of the main roads, and Edgar realized it was Ceese’s, the only moving vehicle in the whole town.

  Was Caroline with him? Where were they going? Maybe to see Victoria in West Dawson, wherever that was. Somewhere without electricity.

  Ceese’s vehicle moved almost out of his frame. Edgar clicked, then kept looking through his lens. In front of the black-and-white hills in the distance, he realized, that wide white stretch was frozen river. Then . . . the truck itself was on the river ice, winding across. Could people just drive anywhere here? Why didn’t the truck fall through? As he zoomed closer, he realized it was a road of sorts, a road on the ice. Edgar watched until Ceese’s truck reached the other side and climbed a hill, out of view.

  The rest of the house was on two levels. The kitchen and the dining room were together, also at the back of the building, with a picture window that let in a lot of light, and down below, on the second level (down the hill, Edgar realized—the house had been built on a slope) was the biggest room, the master bedroom, where his mother had dumped her bags. It was the newest room too, done over recently. The bed made the ones in the hotel in Whitehorse seem small. “Would you look at this?” his mother kept saying, wearing her little-girl face, like a princess just woken up.

  As beautiful as the house was, it was sure slow heating up. Edgar kept his jacket on as he went from room to room. The television in his mother’s bedroom covered almost an entire wall. There were photographs too, of mountains and bighorn sheep and sunsets and someone in a kayak beside a killer whale half out of the water looking like your best friend, and shelves and shelves of books everywhere, and sofas to sit on. Even though the place had been empty for a month or so, everything seemed clean.

  Was it really theirs?

  It felt too quiet; it looked way too neat for any place of theirs. And when, when could he have Benjamin? Was Caroline just trying to keep the dog all for herself until the two months were over?

  “We’re going to have to keep this place in perfect condition,” his mother said in her exhausted voice she had been hiding from Ceese and Caroline.

  “Benjamin should stay in my room,” Edgar said. He knew enough not to press, not to ask his mother for any more information that she did not have. Instead he mentioned that they should go to the grocery store, and she replied that they would, a little later. She just needed to lie down for a bit. Before she closed the door to her miraculous new bedroom, she hugged him in her strong arms for too long, until he had to let out a breath and she released him.

  “Someday you’ll just hug me back,” she said.

  Edgar looked at his toes. Two of them, on his right foot, were peeking through holes in his sock.

  “It might be when I’m eighty, but I’m willing to wait!” She smiled again, and Edgar wondered if she would be able to sleep here. She had stopped sleeping in Toronto; that was part of why they had needed to come so far.

  He wandered back up to the kitchen, found a pen and a small pad of paper by the telephone, and then started a list of what groceries they might need. Maybe for dinner tonight they would have macaroni and cheese, and make a large batch that would do for the next night too. They could buy sausage to put in it, and if his mother insisted on broccoli, then that, too. But he wouldn’t mention it. He wrote down oatmeal and fruit and eggs and butter and bread and milk, all nutritious but not expensive. Without Roger—and without Ceese—they did not have a vehicle, so they would be carrying whatever groceries they bought back up the hill. It wasn’t a big hill if you were riding in a car, but Edgar knew it would be harder on foot.

  The house was as quiet as a tomb, as quiet as what he imagined a tomb might be: dead, gray air; not even a clock ticking. He pulled out a glossy book of photographs from one of the shelves, being careful to mark its spot so that he could replace it perfectly when he was finished. The photographs were in black and white, and they were all about the Klondike, which meant the river that met another, bigger river, the Yukon. The Klondike was also what Ceese and Caroline had been talking about in the truck and over breakfast, what all those prospectors had come for: gold by the sackful. But these pictures showed no gold at all, just desperate-looking men in ragged clothes—most with shaggy beards—climbing slopes, posing in front of wooden shacks, crowding the very streets that now were so empty. There was a picture of a dredge, as big as an office building, looking stuck in a creek. And here were men with husky dogs, and here was a woman wrapped in fur, looking hard into the camera, and here was an impossibly long line of men stretching all the way up a mountainside and disappearing beyond the top of the picture.

  The Chilkoot Pass, according to the caption. Where Caroline and her mother had walked.

  Edgar saw only a few children in the book—a curly haired girl with a doll in a fancy dress; a boy with a tiny rifle, looking at his muddy shoes.

  He was feeling sleepy himself. He lay on his new bed with his eyes open. If he dozed now, he knew, his mother might go out and buy groceries without him, and he would be left here alone in the tomb.

  She might head for the grocery store but end up in one of the bars, and who knew when she might come home? She might get work and have to serve drinks right away, and he wouldn’t know until the next morning, or if she came home and fell asleep before the sun rose, she might not tell him about the job until she woke up in the afternoon.

  He went downstairs again and stood in front of her closed door, listening to the soft fall of her breathing.

  Maybe she would sleep just fine here.

  He sat against the wall near the door and felt his head nodding, so he allowed himself a short nap, knowing that she could not leave without waking him up.

  It was starting to get dark when he awoke, and he felt cold and sore slumped against the wall. His mother’s door was still closed. In the small bathroom beside the kitchen he splashed some water onto his face and hair, and used the towel that was hanging there, and shut the tap, which had been dripping, probably a long time.

  He walked back to the fridge. A map that was taped there looked old and green, with a lot of wavy brown lines, and some white spaces and blue lines where the rivers were. There was the Klondike winding down from the right, and meeting the bigger Yukon, where Dawson was. West Dawson, across the Yukon, was “abandoned,” according to the map, and so were other places: Fort Reliance, Forty Mile, Boundary, Moosehide. How could Victoria live in an abandoned place? Some of the creeks had interesting names: Bonanza, Bear, Deadwood, Shovel. Some of the white spaces were labeled tailings, and Edgar thought of the humpy mounds along the highway.

  What the dredge had left behind.

  Was this an old, old map? Edgar suddenly wondered. Could some places that
had been abandoned before now have people in them again?

  (Any place we have lived, he thought, we never go back to again. That was starting to mean a lot of abandoned places by now.)

  Suddenly his mother was standing in the kitchen, her hair long and everywhere, her face tired.

  “It’s cold in here!” she said. “Is the heat even on?”

  Edgar went to feel the radiators—which were warm—and his mother opened the fridge door and swore. “We forgot to do the shopping!” she said. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  Edgar said, “The radiator is on.”

  “Then why is it still so freaking cold?” She slammed the door, but the fridge did not move even one bit.

  “Maybe we could go to a restaurant,” he said in a little voice, his disappearing voice.

  But she did hear him. “Do you think we can constantly afford restaurants?” Her hands went to her hair. Then she stubbed her toe accidentally on one of the kitchen stools.

  “It’s okay, I’m not that hungry,” he said.

  “No, it’s not okay. We have no freaking food!”

  She was saying “freaking” instead of something else, and so he knew she was not completely angry. She was trying to be fair.

  A little bit fair.

  “It’s good that you slept, anyway,” he said.

  He went to one of the lower cupboards and filled a glass with water for her. A few years ago, when he was little, and was quite hungry, she showed him how drinking water—which was free, usually—filled you up and made you forget.

  He wasn’t sure she would take the glass, but she did; she drank the water eagerly. Then she put the glass down and squeezed her temples with her fingers.

  “We can try to find something open. I don’t know what, in this tin-pot town. But here we are.” She said it as if she hadn’t dragged them all the way up here, north of North, saying all along how much better it was going to be.

  Edgar poured his own glass of water and drank it down. What was a tin-pot town?

  This kitchen had pots hanging from the ceiling, but they were made of copper, and they gleamed like new.

  CASSEROLE

  EDGAR STOOD BY THE DOOR in his jacket with his boots on and his hat and mitts, in the low light, waiting. His mother was in the bathroom getting ready, probably fighting with her hair or something. If he leaned forward on his toes, then rocked backward, he wasn’t so hungry and he warmed up a bit.

  They were going to buy groceries, if they could find some, if any stores were open. But then the doorbell rang, a large, jarring sound that startled him. He opened the door and saw Ceese again, standing with his jean jacket still open and no mitts on, just like when they had met him. Only this time he was carrying something, a casserole dish.

  Edgar’s mother arrived then, still fussing with her hair. Possibly she had lost her comb in it. “What have you done?” she said to Ceese, her eyes wide. “You shouldn’t have!” But she took the casserole anyway. She lifted the lid, sniffed, and made warm noises.

  “Victoria had it on hand. She wondered if you might like it. It’s moose chili, from the fall hunt. You can eat it now or stick it in the fridge. And I forgot to tell you something about the bathrooms.” Ceese then explained that it was important to keep a trickle of water running in the sink and bathtub on the main floor, and they shouldn’t be using the downstairs bathroom, since those pipes had been drained for the season.

  “Edgar, could you go check the bathroom?” his mother said then. “I think I turned everything off.” Edgar didn’t say that he, too, had turned off the faucet. But it was easy enough to get things dripping again.

  When he returned, Ceese and his mother were still talking in front of the open door. Edgar could feel the house getting even colder, but the two kept talking, his mother now especially, she was so thankful about dinner. She went on about Toronto, how frenetic life had been there. She used the word three times, “frenetic,” and Edgar thought it sounded like “frantic,” so maybe that was what his mother meant. She had been frantic sometimes, her face red and fearful, her eyes especially lost. Maybe that was what “frenetic” meant: the way she became just before running away.

  Finally his mother asked Ceese if he would come inside, and Ceese said he would love to, but he was hosting a house party tonight, in just a little while, actually, and would Stephanie and Edgar like to come? He said it was very informal, just families getting together and some musicians playing. Edgar’s mother said she loved music, which was true, she did, so it was settled. Then Ceese gave Edgar’s mother a huge hug on the drawbridge in the darkness of the evening and said, “You’re going to fit right in here!” And when he took a step backward, Edgar wondered if he was going to fall off the drawbridge, but he didn’t. He turned gracefully and walked back to his own house just down the street.

  Edgar’s mother stood in the doorway, glowing dangerously.

  “Do you think she’s beautiful?” Edgar asked.

  “Who?”

  “Victoria! She was the one who made dinner!”

  She gave him her puzzled look then, as if she had no idea what he was really talking about. She found the switch for the light by the front door and turned it on. It was snowing just a bit, and the darkening sky seemed to vibrate silently with its own blackness. Or, not really blackness, a sort of gray that made Edgar think there were miles and miles of snow in the sky above them, waiting to come down.

  They didn’t wait to reheat the moose chili, which was a little warm still anyway. They sat at the kitchen table and wolfed it down, maybe the way a wolf would eat a moose it has hunted. It was hard to say what was different about the meat, but it was delicious. Edgar imagined being a wolf fighting against a huge moose. Then he remembered that wolves run in packs. He wouldn’t have to hunt a moose all by himself.

  “This is so good,” his mother murmured.

  The plates were very white with a blue pattern around the edge. Edgar washed the moose chili down with big gulps of water and decided he would rather be the moose, be bigger than everything and independent, and if that meant fighting off wolves, then that’s what his antlers would be for. Ceese was more like a moose than a wolf, he thought—big and brash and okay all on his own.

  Except Ceese wasn’t on his own. He had Victoria, who cooked like this and probably reminded him of things like telling Edgar and his mother to keep the water drip-drip-dripping.

  (Victoria must be beautiful, Edgar thought. She must be kind and good to talk to, like Caroline.)

  “I told you this was going to work out,” his mother said. “I told you people would be friendly here.”

  She had said that, it was true. But she had said many other things too: that Roger was driving her crazy; that she would never, ever work as a waitress or bartender again; that she would not drink again either. By “drink” she had meant alcohol, which was what everyone drank in restaurants and at parties. Even in Dawson?

  They would find out.

  “I hope I’ll get to meet Benjamin at the party,” Edgar said.

  “There will be lots of people at the party,” Edgar’s mother said in the distracted way that she had sometimes, apparently forgetting again that Benjamin was a dog.

  PARTY

  BEFORE THEY COULD GO TO the party, Edgar’s mother insisted on cleaning up, which she did—to the last drop of dishwater, and Edgar had to dry everything and put it all away exactly where they had found it, in every right cupboard and drawer and slot. Then his mother took forever unpacking and going through her clothes, the way she did when she was serious, when it was not just a party at all that she was going to but something else.

  She was getting ready in case she met the next Roger, whoever he was going to be.

  Not Ceese, not Ceese, not Ceese, Edgar thought. He was a nice enough man, but he already had a Victoria, and there could be a great deal of trouble if his mother forgot that, or didn’t take care.

  Finally his mother was ready. She was wearing old clothes, but they d
idn’t look old. Her blue jeans fit tight to her body, and she wore a soft black silk shirt that wouldn’t be any warmer than a T-shirt, and a red scarf that disappeared into her shirt, and her hair swooped back, and she had done her face so that everyone would look at her, the men especially.

  Probably there would be men at the party.

  “What?” she said when she saw his expression. “Have I got something on my teeth?” She rubbed her front teeth with her fingers, then disappeared into the bathroom again to have a look.

  Her teeth were perfect.

  “We’ll just stay for a little bit to meet the neighbors,” she said.

  “And I can meet Benjamin,” Edgar said.

  It was a shame they had to put on their winter jackets. Edgar had taken his off when he was drying the dishes, since the house had begun to warm up, and his mother looked ordinary again when she wrapped herself in her old coat. But she would not stay ordinary for long, and he doubted this was going to be a short visit either. They had come so far, and his mother especially had slept through the afternoon.

  They stepped out of the new house and leaned into the darkness and the cold. His mother said to him, “Thank you, Edgar, for being my calm little man.”

  They kept walking.

  “I know how much you do for me,” she said. “You have to believe me that I’m trying to provide a stable environment for you.”

  It wasn’t far to Caroline’s house.

  “I know there’s a lot of normal stuff I can’t give you, but at least every day is interesting,” she said.

  Edgar knew he was supposed to say something, or even to give her a hug and be all mushy. “I just want to meet Benjamin!” he almost blurted. But that might be the wrong thing. She might think he liked a dog he’d never met better than a mother he knew too well. So he just kept walking, as if he hadn’t heard.

  At the door: a chaos of boots, so many that Edgar and his mother could hardly walk in without treading on someone’s footwear. Edgar pulled his off, then stepped into a cold puddle of slush, soaking his left foot, before he got clear into the crowded living room, where everyone was squished on sofas and chairs, holding drinks, talking at once. Where were Benjamin and Caroline? Edgar saw only people, adults, most of them wearing blue jeans and sweaters. Ceese pulled Edgar and his mother inside and began to introduce them to too many people to keep track of: a tall, tall man named William; another thick man named Zack, with a twisted bush of a beard; a woman with her hair in a scarf whose name was either Zoey or Chloe; a quiet man with a curved nose who looked at Edgar too long before tilting his beer at him and nodding his head. Ross?