North to Benjamin Read online

  Edgar’s insides twisted even further. He had a hard time meeting her eyes; his fingers became clumsy over the laces of his boots.

  His mother loomed over him, her arms crossed. She had brushed her hair. Edgar must have happened in before she could get herself completely together again. But Ceese’s truck was gone. Edgar imagined his mother lying by herself for a time, dreaming, lost.

  He bit his lip. But still his fingers stayed clumsy.

  “Where were you?” she asked again.

  “I took Benjamin for a walk.” The words were clear in his mind; he used his lips the way he always did to make such words. Nothing at all felt different. Yet even he heard himself say instead, “Woof! Woof!”

  “Don’t you try to be funny with me!” his mother said. She could become angry in a blink. Maybe things had not gone so well with Ceese after all. Sometimes, after she had been with a man, she seemed torn, like a sheet of metal, jagged and coming apart.

  “I wasn’t being funny,” he said.

  But what came out instead, again, was, “Woof! Woof-woof!” He rubbed his mouth with his hand as if that could get his muscles back to working properly.

  “Edgar,” she said dangerously.

  He didn’t try to make another sound. He was twisting inside, heating from his boots on up, but he didn’t want to move. If he stayed very still, sometimes she just went away and he could be himself for a while.

  “I don’t like you just disappearing like that,” she said finally. “Did you walk the dog? Is that what you were doing? For three hours?”

  He nodded his head, kept his eyes large. His tongue was stiff and nervous. He swallowed, and everything tasted strange.

  “You can make yourself a sandwich if you’d like,” she said, turning back to the kitchen. “You must be hungry.”

  When she was all the way in the kitchen, he tried, quite successfully, to make a barking noise.

  “Why are you doing that?” she asked, but in a walking-away tone, as if she didn’t expect an explanation.

  “I don’t know,” he said, but now the sound came out in a doggy sort of whine.

  He took off his boots and put them and his winter coat in the closet. He was hungry, or at least he used to be. But he shut himself in the bathroom and looked at his mouth and throat in the mirror. What is going on?

  “Just talk normal,” he said urgently.

  “Woof-woof, woof-woof-woof!”

  He whispered, barely moving his lips: “You’re acting like it’s a dream.”

  “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

  He shut his eyes, shook his head, bit the inside of his cheek.

  When he opened his eyes, he still looked like himself in the mirror.

  If he had turned into a dog, then he would smell things much more powerfully. (How could he even be having these thoughts? Yet he was!) He sniffed the bar of soap his mother had put out. It was wet. He thought he could smell Ceese, his hands.

  He couldn’t smell any bears from the other side of the hill. But maybe they were sleeping in their caves.

  He didn’t look like he was becoming a dog.

  He let his tongue hang out and he panted for a moment. It did feel oddly nice to do that.

  He sniffed the towel hanging on the door—yes, Ceese, definitely. Through his nose he could almost see the memory of him leaning over the sink washing his hands, then splashing water onto his face.

  “Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk!” he said.

  “Woof-woof, woof-woof-woof!” he heard himself say.

  He left the tap dripping, dripping, so that the pipes wouldn’t freeze. If this was a dream, would he even remember to do that?

  DOCTOR

  WAS HE BECOMING A DOG? Was any of this really happening? All the food they had bought—the peanut butter in the cupboard and milk in the fridge, the bread and butter on the table—still smelled tasty to him. His mother found a dish towel for him to use as a napkin, and she said, “We’re going to have to get you enrolled in the local school.”

  He could understand her perfectly. And didn’t dogs see in different colors? Everything looked exactly the same as before. Edgar chewed his sandwich and drank his milk nervously.

  “You’re going to have to be normal when you go to the school,” his mother said.

  He could smell where Ceese had been sitting, where the two of them had stood close together by the coffeemaker. It was like he could see a shadow of how things had been hours before. When his mother leaned against the table now, he could smell where Ceese had put his hand on her shoulder.

  “You act strange sometimes, but I’m used to it, and you know I’m only saying this for you, don’t you?” She looked at him as if her thoughts might somehow dig their way into his eyes. And he wondered, Saying what?

  I am your mother, her eyes said.

  “You can’t go around . . . barking, or not saying anything to anyone, or talking about strange things the way you do sometimes and no one understands you,” she said.

  Edgar gulped.

  “You are a strange boy, and that’s why people treat you the way they do sometimes. I know you’re really smart, but you don’t act like it a lot of the time. You act like you don’t understand how people work and what makes them want to like you.”

  Edgar took another bite but didn’t move his eyes.

  “You have to pay attention to people around you. Act as if you are interested in them, even if you aren’t. In the beginning, that’s how you get to know who’s who. Listen, and smile, and say things sometimes that sound just like everyone else. We all like people who fit in.”

  He drank the rest of his milk even though he still had one more piece of bread with peanut butter on it.

  “Like right now. You could say something to me right now to indicate you know exactly what I’m telling you.”

  She stared at him, she stared; he wasn’t going to get away with staying silent.

  “Woof-woof,” he said quietly.

  She slammed her hand down on the table, and everything jumped.

  “That’s exactly what I mean! That wasn’t funny! Edgar!”

  He swallowed and looked away and tried to gurgle something in his throat that sounded human.

  “Talk! God damn you! Talk!”

  He looked around desperately. What could—there was a pencil on the counter by the telephone, and little sheets of paper. He got up quickly and wrote, My throat feels bad.

  When she read the note, he knew she did not believe him. He also could smell Ceese on her neck. He kept himself from sniffing closer, even though the whole story of it was slathered on her.

  “Open up.” She grabbed him by the back of his hair, and he opened his mouth so she could look. “Say ‘ahh.’ ”

  He whimpered, he grumbled, woofed.

  “You’re faking it!” she said, letting him go. “How many times do you do this to me? Pretending to be sick just when we need to fit in and not make trouble?”

  His face was baking. He needed to pee suddenly. He couldn’t tell her, and he couldn’t write it in a note, not the way she was feeling. She might slap him. So he ran to the bathroom again and shut the door quickly, locked it, then stood over the toilet with relief.

  If he were a dog, he would pee outside. He would raise his leg.

  If he were a dog, he would not have been able to write the note.

  He flushed the toilet and washed his hands—all very human actions—and then sat down on the toilet seat and smelled again where Ceese had washed his own hands. It was like a ghost of him was there still, like the story kept playing out even after it was over.

  His mother knocked on the door. “Edgar?” she said.

  A dog would not be able to sit on the toilet like this.

  “Edgar, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just, so much has happened. I’m not surprised you’re upset. Maybe you are sick. Maybe you picked up something on the plane. I can take you to the clinic if you like. It’s just down the hill. I remember Ceese telling us. I need to g
et out anyway.”

  She waited. There was nothing she could do with the door locked. He could smell her in the bathroom, too, and something else, maybe the faint ghosts of the Summerhills. It was like all these things and people were piled on top of one another in this one little room where so much happened and you weren’t supposed to know.

  Dr. Gumstul had large cheeks and a red streak in her hair, as if she had ducked her head yet still run into a paintbrush. The health center was the new building just down the hill from the house, and there had been hardly any wait. Edgar could still feel the cold air from his jacket as he sat in the small examining room.

  Edgar’s mother said, “His throat is sore, he says. He’s been barking like a dog.”

  Dr. Gumstul smiled a little bit. “What kind of dog? A husky? Chihuahua?”

  Edgar couldn’t say. What kind of dog was Benjamin? A Newfoundland. The huge, black, old, smelly, drooly kind.

  The doctor motioned to the examining table that was covered in white paper. “Could you sit here for me, Edgar, and take off your coat and shirt?”

  Edgar loosened himself from his layers, mounted the table slowly.

  “Please open your mouth.” The doctor took a narrow flashlight from her pocket and shone it down his throat. If he really were a dog, he thought, he might try to bite her.

  She touched the sides of his neck with warm fingertips.

  “I don’t see any signs of inflammation,” she murmured.

  Her stethoscope was cold on his chest.

  “Could you cough, please? Edgar?”

  “Woof! Woof!”

  Edgar’s mother crossed the room toward him, then turned away, as if she could barely contain herself. “Edgar!” she hissed.

  “It’s fine,” Dr. Gumstul said. She tapped his back with her fingers while listening to the stethoscope.

  Edgar’s mother glared at him with her arms crossed. The doctor stared into his ears, then took his temperature.

  “Is your throat actually sore, Edgar?” the doctor asked.

  She smelled of oranges, of a long walk in the snow, of something musty in her car.

  Edgar shook his head slightly.

  “Tell her!” his mother blurted. “Tell her, in words, what you’re feeling!”

  Edgar stared at his boots.

  Dr. Gumstul asked Edgar’s mother if she would mind if she had a private word just with Edgar. Edgar didn’t know if his mother would leave—she seemed to be holding a pot of boiling water. “Fine,” she said, after a moment. But she motioned to the doctor to join her. Dr. Gumstul told Edgar to put his shirt back on. Then they closed the door, yet Edgar could still hear them out in the hallway. Maybe it was his doggy ears, or just the way his mother’s voice carried.

  “I didn’t take much care when I was pregnant,” she said. “It’s my fault. I was young and stupid. He’s supersmart, but he really isn’t entirely right in the head.”

  “In what way?” the doctor asked.

  “He’s in his own world. God knows what he’s thinking most of the time. But I just love him no matter what.”

  “I’m sure you do. Has he had any sort of diagnosis?”

  “He’s been tested—oh, he’s been tested!” Edgar’s mother replied. “Everybody’s so impressed. But he thinks and thinks, and a lot of the time nothing actually comes out. I think the diagnosis you’re looking for is that he’s just plain weird.”

  If Dr. Gumstul replied, Edgar didn’t hear it. In a moment she knocked on the door and returned to Edgar’s side. She bent down to look Edgar in the eye. “What are you feeling, Edgar?”

  Edgar shrugged his shoulders.

  “I understand you’ve just arrived in Dawson. Have you been this far north before?”

  Edgar opened his mouth, then closed it. He could hear actual words in his mind, but inside all he could feel was barking noises.

  “Are you anxious about starting school here?”

  The doctor’s teeth were big, all of them, and very white. But not thoughtful at all.

  “Maybe you left a lot of friends back home?” She smiled. Edgar smelled mayonnaise.

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Edgar? Did something happen to you back in Toronto?”

  The doctor had dark flecks in her light brown eyes.

  “Has anybody hurt you, Edgar?”

  The room smelled strongly of chemicals but also of traces of people, too many to count, who had all been here, maybe sitting exactly like Edgar was now.

  Edgar wasn’t sure his lips could form regular words. How to make them?

  How could he forget from one moment to the next?

  “Edgar, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Edgar nodded. It was something to know about adults: they will insist and insist, but eventually they go away and leave you alone.

  “There are people you could talk to, people who can help,” Dr. Gumstul said. “I’d be happy to make an appointment for you. I know someone who is excellent with children. Would you like to meet her? Would that be a good idea? She comes up here from Whitehorse once every two months.”

  They wanted you to agree—most adults did—and then they would leave you alone.

  “Edgar?” the doctor said.

  On the walk back up the hill, Edgar’s mother said, into cigarette smoke that choked his nose, “Could you just please, please, Edgar, just be normal while we’re here? I have such a good feeling about this place. It’s really important for me right now to have a sense of safety, of belonging, to start again fresh and be with people”—puff, puff—“who are loving and open and don’t judge me and put me in some little box I don’t fit into. I hate that! I won’t put up with it anymore. So I’m not going to. And I need you to just be quiet, normal, ordinary, adorable”—puff, puff—“Edgar while we’re here. All right? Can I count on you, Edgar?”

  Edgar said, “Is Ceese the new Roger?”

  But it came out, “Woof! Woof-woof-woof!”

  “Edgar!” His mother threw away her cigarette and put her gloved hands to her head like she was in a cartoon.

  He couldn’t help himself. The words just spilled out: “He has a Victoria already. You’ve met her, even!”

  Or, more exactly: “Woof-woof! Woof-woof-woof-woof-woof-woof!”

  She might hit him if he continued—he knew it, and yet part of him wanted to make her explode, just blow up right there in the street in front of everybody.

  Everybody?

  The street was empty. He was alone with his mother, as always. So he clamped his jaw. He walked the rest of the way up the hill, making himself as small and as quiet as he possibly could.

  BROTTINGER

  CAROLINE BROUGHT BENJAMIN OVER LATER in the day. She was carrying his leash balled up in her hand while Benjamin walked free, even along the slippery boards of the drawbridge. Edgar spied them coming and opened the door.

  “Smells like dinner,” Benjamin said. The house was still filled with food smells, from the omelette breakfast to last night’s casserole. And Edgar remembered he had been in Dawson for only a day. It already felt like it had been much longer.

  Caroline was pulling a wagon behind her with a large bag of dry dog food, several cans of meat for dogs, and an old shaggy blanket that smelled thoroughly of Benjamin.

  “The Summerhills promised, so here’s Benjamin,” Caroline said. “Maybe we could share or something?”

  Edgar nodded. She didn’t seem to be sad about joint custody. Maybe she was used to making accommodations.

  “Do you want to take him for a walk now?” Caroline asked. “I’ll show you the dog park.”

  Edgar’s mother was back in her bedroom getting ready for her first evening of work at Lola’s. Edgar thought about leaving her a note but decided she would see the wagonload of Benjamin’s supplies in the front hall and would know what he was doing.

  He pulled on his coat and boots as quickly and quietly as he could.

  “I’m trying to do this stupid project with your very fav
orite person, Jason Crumley,” Caroline said when they were walking along Eighth Avenue, heading vaguely in the direction of the big gouge in the mountainside. The slide—Moosehide. “Do you do a lot of group projects in school in Toronto? Because I hate them. The history of the Internet. Like—who cares? Just as long as it works!”

  Benjamin was walking better. He seemed to enjoy listening to Caroline. He stopped at one snow-covered pee rock, which Edgar found himself sniffing, too. It was hard to tell how many dogs had marked it—eighteen? Twenty? A whole furry mess of them, males and females, old ones, puppies, harsh, happy, jealous, cold. And one huge one. Edgar could feel he was almost a wolf just from his scent, much stronger than everyone else’s.

  “Brottinger,” Benjamin muttered. “You’ll want to stay clear of him!”

  Edgar could almost picture the harsh yellow teeth, the enormous haunches, the sharp grin.

  “What are you doing?” Caroline said.

  Edgar straightened up. It made a difference to bend closer to the news. (It was like reading the news, he thought—sniffing a good pee rock with Benjamin.)

  He was sure he would be able to speak normally around her. “You can tell a lot just from sniffing,” he said, perfectly.

  Benjamin started forward again.

  “Why are you barking at me?” Caroline asked.

  Edgar’s heart plummeted. Really? He couldn’t even talk to Caroline anymore? But the words had sounded fine to him!

  What, what, what is happening?

  “Bark all you want around Benjamin. I don’t care,” Caroline said. “But I sure don’t speak dog!”

  Edgar felt queasy. This strangeness would take thinking, it would take time to figure out.

  How was he ever going to tell her about her father and his mother?

  The big dog, the scary one, Brottinger, was all along Eighth Avenue, and then down the hill, everywhere—at least his scent was. It was like burned coffee, or something scalded in the pan.

  “The thing I really hate about Jason Crumley,” Caroline said, “is that he thinks he’s so smart. He’s been the smartest kid in the class since grade one, so he thinks he knows everything. And he’s got a slap shot. Who cares? When he shoots the puck, the goalie gets out of the way. Hockey’s over anyway, why is he still talking about it?”