North to Benjamin Page 6

  It was hard not to smile at him.

  “What’s your favorite thing about our town so far?” Ceese pressed.

  Edgar’s mother was looking, looking, so Edgar had to say something. “Benjamin,” he whispered finally, but he meant Caroline, too.

  Ceese drove them back to their new house. Along the way he explained—since Edgar had asked—that the gouge in the mountain outside of town was called the Moosehide Slide, which had happened, as far as anyone knew, thousands of years ago when tons of rock had suddenly fallen off the face. “Some people think there’s an Indian village—we say ‘First Nations’ now—buried beneath the rock, but that’s just a story,” he said. “And it has nothing to do with mining. Do you see how it looks like a big moosehide stretched out for drying?”

  It did look something like that, although it was hard to really see it clearly as they were driving.

  “ ‘Moosehide’ is also the name of the summer village downriver where the local Hän people, the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in”—Ceese’s lips slipped over the tribal names quickly—“moved to when the gold rushers really started swarming the area. Chief Isaac got on with everyone, even the whites. But the miners were kind of like mosquitoes. What can you do when there are so many of them swarming? Sometimes you just get out of the way and wait for the madness to pass.”

  Ceese kept talking, almost as if he needed to do something to fill in any possible silence. All the time his eyes were memorizing Edgar’s mother, who seemed in turn to be memorizing him right back again. Ceese went from Chief Isaac to the ice bridge without even a pause for breath. He said that the route for the bridge was about a quarter mile upstream this year from where it usually got built because the ice was too thin at the normal crossing point. “It’s been a milder winter. We’ve had a whole spate of those!” he said.

  As he drove, he turned his head constantly to look at Edgar’s mother, and sometimes also at Edgar. A few times a vehicle passed by, but mostly the streets were quiet. He didn’t seem to have to worry about hitting anything.

  “What’s on the other side of the river?” Edgar’s mother asked.

  “The Top of the World Highway. It goes all the way to Alaska,” Ceese said. “You’ll see the tourists coming over in May and June. Closer to home, of course, there’s West Dawson. That’s where the real eccentrics of Dawson live. It’s off the grid, no electricity except what you make yourself.” He paused. “Victoria, who you met last night, lives in West Dawson with her dogs.”

  Edgar’s mother smiled and said that she was sorry she hadn’t talked to Victoria more at the party.

  She was smiling, smiling, and her face was set like porcelain. Victoria, Victoria, who cares about her? she seemed to be saying. Everything was good this morning, the sun was pouring down, nothing could be sour or cruel.

  And Edgar thought about how just a name, Chief Isaac, conjured up someone wise and strong. Someone who knew enough to move down the river to Moosehide—the village, not the slide—when a bad-luck cloud of mosquitoes came swarming.

  At least they had a place to go, he thought.

  Edgar’s mother convinced Ceese to stay, since he had bought them breakfast the day before. She made a mushroom omelette, using powdered cheese that she found in the cupboard and at least half the eggs they had bought. Edgar was in charge of the toast. The butter was hard, so he microwaved it for a few seconds, enough to soften it without melting.

  Ceese talked about the youngest of Victoria’s dogs, Rupert, who’d nearly been lured out of his doghouse to join the wolves pretending to play outside his pen. “I heard something in the night,” Ceese said, “and wandered out, and there they all were, four hungry wolves trying not to lick their chops too loud, and young Rupert sticking his nose out his doghouse door, whining like he really wanted to roll around with them and he couldn’t quite remember why he shouldn’t.”

  His mother laughed; she turned into a field of daisies. Edgar remembered driving past just such a field. He had been in the back of Roger’s car, white sunshine waving in the breeze.

  His mother heaped eggs onto Ceese’s plate. She squeezed his big shoulder when she told him how wonderful he had been yesterday, picking them up on the frozen highway and buying them breakfast and everything.

  “I was the one late to come get you!” Ceese said. “Anyway, that’s the north. The land is hard enough if we aren’t looking out for one another.” His face creased, smiling. Edgar’s mother let her hand linger on the back of his neck.

  The coffee was brewing. The whole kitchen smelled of good food. Ceese’s eyes followed Edgar’s mother from stove to fridge to table to the garbage can, where she scraped the eggshells and orange peelings.

  “How’s the sausage?” she asked. The meat was gray, tough, not pork or beef, which they ate in Toronto, but something different. Elk?

  “I’ve got some moose meat sausages in my freezer I’ll bring over next time,” Ceese said. “Some of the store pickings by now are pretty slim.”

  “I could use some slimming myself,” Edgar’s mother said. She was in her blue jeans and didn’t even have a sweater on. She seemed to be hot, doing all the cooking.

  “You look perfect to me,” Ceese said, taking a big bite of the omelette. He couldn’t pull his eyes from her.

  Edgar’s mother turned back to the frying pan and tried to hide her smile.

  Edgar thought: He has a lady friend. Victoria.

  We have met her!

  His mother knew and Ceese knew, and yet the sausages were sizzling, the eggs were fluffy on the plate.

  She couldn’t keep from touching him on the shoulder whenever she passed by.

  “I have such a good feeling about this place,” she said dreamily when she sat down at last to have her coffee. Her fingers twitched on the cup. She probably needed to go outside and have a smoke, but she would wait. She didn’t want Ceese to see her lighting up.

  Edgar ate his eggs and watched them both.

  He thought: She never goes long without a Roger.

  And: When she finds him, she gets him. One way or the other.

  Edgar scraped his plate and said, “Is Caroline home?”

  His mother and Ceese did not even hear, they were so locked on each other.

  And the air . . . the air started to lock up too. What was it? Edgar’s jaw felt cruel and his lungs stiffened, his throat dried. It wasn’t fair, any of it. Words shrank, he had to move. The world burned now, all of it unbearably from inside his own skin. He had to move, he had to go. They didn’t notice him disappearing at all.

  DOG

  THEY WERE THE FIRE, CEESE and Edgar’s mother. Once they started, look out! They could take a whole house down in just a few hours. Edgar had watched just such a fire in the Toronto neighborhood where they had lived before Roger, how a half dozen screaming trucks had arrived at once and sprayed water into the burning building but there was nothing anyone could do. The flames took hold, the stench rose, smoke poured out of every window.

  Ceese and his mother, his mother and Ceese—what should he do? Breathe first, breathe. Get his own jaw back. He could tell Caroline and Victoria. They might be able to unhypnotize Ceese, if that was possible. Before something happened . . .

  Sometimes people could be hypnotized, or they fell into a sort of dream even when they were wide awake. Especially Edgar’s mother, especially about men. As she was right now. Edgar pulled on his boots and coat, plunged out the door. She would know, and yet somehow she wouldn’t. Later on she would sort of wake up from the dream, which was not really a dream, and she would say to herself, “Where’s Edgar?” Or even: “What was I thinking? Why did I do that?” And there would be a moment of panic, as happens sometimes in a dream, too.

  Eighth Avenue sat in shadows, the road icy. Still, he didn’t have to walk far. He knocked on Caroline’s door and waited, blowing his breath out hard in clouds. How could it be so cold outside and on-fire beneath his skin?

  But no one came to the door. Was it a school day for Ca
roline? Edgar and his mother had been supposed to check out school for him after groceries and breakfast. Edgar was in no hurry for that plan anyway, and now his mother was hypnotized. What day was it, anyway? They’d been on the run for more than a week; he’d lost track. And he thought: Of course Victoria is not here either. She lives in West Dawson. Probably Ceese had been driving back from there this morning when he’d stopped on the ice road to pick up Edgar and his mother.

  If Caroline was in school, then maybe she wouldn’t mind if Edgar looked in on Benjamin. Edgar was supposed to be taking care of him, after all. So Edgar tramped in the snow down the hill to the back of the house, where the lower bedroom was. The window was grimy from winter, but Edgar thought he could see Benjamin’s big black form on the rug between the bed and the wall. The back door opened easily.

  “Hello! Hello, it’s Edgar!” he called. There, his throat was back. Benjamin made a snuffling, getting-up noise, then came around to sniff at Edgar. His leash was hanging on the wall by the door—red, chewed, easy to reach—so Edgar clipped it onto the dog’s thick collar just to be safe and led Benjamin into the backyard, which got a bit of sunshine, anyway. “How are you today?” Edgar patted Benjamin’s shaggy head. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

  Edgar only noticed that his heart had been hammering when it started to slow on its own.

  I like Ceese, Edgar thought. But he already has a Victoria.

  It was easier for Benjamin to walk a little farther down the hill to the lane behind the house than to try climbing the icy slope back up to Eighth Avenue. They followed the lane a short distance in behind the new borrowed house. In the kitchen window Edgar’s mother and Ceese were at the table, still talking. Ceese was saying something, probably telling a story, his hand resting not far from Edgar’s mother’s elbow.

  It was happening. Edgar knew the signs, the inside sickening started to come back. He would have to tell Victoria or Caroline, whoever he saw first.

  But what could they do, except start to feel terrible themselves? Edgar’s mother was a storm on a big lake. When she knew where she wanted to go . . . And when it all came out, there would be tears then, and shouting, and a lot of drinking, fists punching walls (now that, Roger could do), and angry phone calls, and probably another uprooting, Edgar and his mother packing their bags in the middle of the night. Where do you go when you’re practically at the North Pole anyway? Where would they go?

  Edgar and Benjamin reached a cross street that had been sanded, so Benjamin was able to climb despite the ice, as long as they went slowly. Edgar let him sniff, his floppy red tongue hanging out like a loose smile. They took the trail into the woods. It was the same path they had been on the night before, but it looked completely different in the daylight. Benjamin stopped to sniff something else interesting in the snow.

  “Have Ceese and Victoria been together a long time?” Edgar asked. He couldn’t stop thinking about everything that was going to go wrong.

  Benjamin sniffed, sniffed.

  “My mother is going to break them up. She wants him for herself,” Edgar said. “I don’t know why she acts this way.”

  Benjamin raised his head. “Soon this whole hillside will stink of bears. It’s the melt. Makes everyone crazy.”

  Edgar said, “I like Victoria. She and Caroline are going to be very sad soon.”

  Benjamin huffed. “No bears yet, though. They still lie cold, round about now.”

  “Should I tell someone?” Edgar asked. Benjamin was so old, he might know what to do.

  Benjamin snuffed and snorted. “No bears yet,” he said again.

  “But what about my mother and Ceese?” Edgar said.

  From Benjamin’s lips a line of drool slowly stretched to the snow. “Humans,” he muttered.

  They started walking again along the trail, climbing still. Edgar could feel himself twisting inside, like a wet sheet someone is winding in their hands. Why would his mother choose a Roger, or a Ceese, and take him, as she could, and then grow tired like she always did?

  The trail turned. They were still climbing, but now they were on the side of the slope. The town was below them. Edgar could see houses and streets through the bare trees.

  They climbed, climbed, and then Benjamin wanted to rest. He stood and panted beside a bench in the woods. Edgar wiped the snow off and sat down.

  “Did Caroline take you out this morning?” Edgar asked.

  “They all left.” Benjamin seemed to be drooling from everywhere, from his black lips, his runny nose, teary eyes. And he was moving so stiffly, he seemed to be in pain.

  “Does it hurt?” Edgar asked.

  Benjamin laid his huge shaggy head on Edgar’s lap so that Edgar could snuggle and pet him with his mitts.

  “I’m supposed to be taking care of you from now on,” Edgar said. “At least helping, while I’m here.”

  “You are here,” Benjamin said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  The sun rose a little higher; in a moment the bench felt beautifully warm. The snow wasn’t melting, but it didn’t feel cold, either. Benjamin sniffed in the pockets of Edgar’s jacket. “The girl brings treats,” he said after a time.

  “I’ll try to remember!” Edgar said.

  Benjamin sniffed and sniffed, smeared his drool down the side of Edgar’s jacket.

  “How far does the trail go?” Edgar asked. It looked like there were some interesting twists.

  But Benjamin turned around and started to pull Edgar back down the hill, toward home.

  The house was still empty. Edgar really should have just hung up Benjamin’s leash and left. The dog could return to sleep. But Ceese was not here, so probably he was still with Edgar’s mother, and Edgar didn’t want to walk in on—he didn’t even want to think about—what might be happening.

  Benjamin pointed to where his dog biscuits were, so Edgar got them from the cupboard. Then when the dog settled down again in his bedroom, Edgar stroked his head and neck and shoulders, and Edgar thought about his old teacher Ms. Nordstrom in her red turtleneck that she wore some days in the winter. She had been on the rowing team in college, and her shoulders looked rounded, strong. Like something you wanted to touch. Sometimes when she was busy at the front with the whiteboard or even if she was just talking, her underarms became dark with the sweat of the moment, and some of the children tittered, but not so loudly that she might hear. Edgar liked the darkness, just as he liked the shape of her shoulders and the way that she moved, like her whole body was pulling in one direction.

  Was that a way to love someone? he wondered. To think about shoulders and sweat stains and how a body moved from the desk to the bookshelves? Was it the same as sitting quietly and stroking the fur of an old, smelly dog who purred and grumbled in his sleep, and whose leg shot out sometimes, as if he were chasing a rabbit? Was that how his mother and Ceese were loving each other right now, even if they were just sitting at the kitchen table still, having coffee?

  Ms. Nordstrom was engaged; she wore a ring on her left hand. She was going to marry an airline pilot and travel to the rain forest and the desert and the mountains. The last time Edgar saw her, when he had told her he was moving to the Yukon, she had been excited. “Your eyes are going to stretch wide, wide!” she’d said.

  He didn’t say, “But you will not be there.”

  He didn’t say, “But now I won’t be able to look at you.”

  He remembered now more clearly. They had been in a hurry to get to the airport, but he had insisted he wanted to say good-bye to Ms. Nordstrom. His mother had waited in the noisy school lobby, and he and Ms. Nordstrom had stood in the hallway outside the classroom. He could make it all happen again in his head but without the noise. Ms. Nordstrom wasn’t wearing her red turtleneck; her shoulders were hidden beneath a ski sweater. Just for a moment when he had waved to her from outside her open door, her eyes had grown large. He had been away for a few days. That wasn’t so unusual, yet she’d seemed to recognize that something was happening.
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br />   When she came out, he explained to her briefly, and then it became normal and she was able to say, “Your eyes are going to stretch wide, wide!”

  Was that her way of loving him?

  The classroom had been empty. Everybody must have been at gym class with Mr. Weiskopf, whose whistle shrieked and who was often angry. Ms. Nordstrom would’ve made an excellent phys ed teacher, but she also needed time to prepare for other classes. That must have been what she was doing at her desk when he stood outside the door and waved.

  Benjamin startled awake, and Edgar said, “You would have liked Ms. Nordstrom.”

  “Who?” Benjamin woofed.

  “My old teacher. She let me sit at the back and read whatever I wanted, and then during recess we would talk about it.”

  Benjamin sniffed Edgar’s hand, farted, got up for a moment and turned around and around tumultuously, then settled back down. “Never went to school,” he said.

  “I guess I’m going to have to go,” Edgar said, even though it was fine right there. A stretch of light was just beginning to curl through the window and rest on Benjamin’s silky black tail.

  (Was this his own sort of dream, then? Edgar wondered. As soon as he thought again of what his mother and Ceese were probably doing, of the hardness and shock that would certainly follow, then Ms. Nordstrom disappeared, his throat retightened, a coldness took over his skin.)

  Edgar moved reluctantly toward the new not-theirs house. A glint of hope—Ceese’s truck, which had been parked outside, was gone. The sun had shifted to higher in the sky, but it felt dull on Edgar’s face. He had an odd moment pausing in front of the door, as if he might need to knock. The house still felt strange to him. Was there any air at all? But he walked in and began to take off his jacket.

  “Where have you been?” His mother sounded worried. Her shirt was untucked; she had a small smear of lipstick near the corner of her mouth, and so he knew.

  Already it had happened!