Juggling Fire (9 page)
Then a stump, cut by a swede saw. The wood has yellowed over its scar. There are several stumps, and I can just make out an unbroken horizontal line. Little in nature is so straight. Logs are stacked on each other for walls. From the sod roof, grass and a few fingers of willow reach tentatively for the darkening sky.
Thank god, I think. A safe place to spend the night: a cottage in the forest.
Clumps of willows hide the closed door. Raspberry and rosehip bushes tangle against the log walls. Empty windows trail strips of moldering cloth like prayer flags. I unbolt the door and push hard. It doesn’t budge.
It’s not our main cabin, of course—just some little line cabin that someone once threw up for overnights while traveling. I must have been here when I was little, but I can’t remember, though it seems familiar. The building has sunk crookedly into the permafrost, taking the doorframe with it. No way will it open without the floor inside being dug out.
I crawl in through the window hole and squint into the gloom.
An ax lies flat on a drying rack above a tin cookstove.
“Yes!” I shout to Brooks, who’s waiting outside. I chop at the floorboards until I can swing the door open. Brooks slinks in and collapses, exhausted. Shafts of evening light stream through, revealing a filthy floor littered with squirrel debris: cones, dried mushrooms, tattered cloth.
A white quarter moon floats into a V between peaks and hangs in the branches of a cottonwood. A twig broom stands behind the door. I sweep the floor and the pole bed at the far wall by flashlight. In my pack is a box of candles. I place one on a table and one in an iron candleholder jutting out from between two logs. A box of kindling and another of spruce chunks is by the stove. It’s all familiar, I realize, lighting the fire. I’ve been here before—I must have been really little.
I wait outside while the chimney clears; then I make the bed, keeping the door open, working by the moonlight slanting over the floorboards. Pictures are tacked along the walls, cutouts from magazines. In the dusk I can’t make out what they are. I tuck my tent into one window hole and my tarp into the other to keep in the warmth.
I pry the lid from a tin: smells like black tea. I boil water in my own pot and throw in a pinch of the leaves. Maybe Dad stayed here. Maybe he lived here for a long time while Mom searched the cabin and we stayed with the neighbors. Maybe he was returning to us, and he found this place and hurt himself somehow. In the morning I’ll look for a note. If he had no paper, a message could be carved into a log on the wall.
Brooks has managed to hop to the stove’s side, where he moans and nips at his wound frantically. I get out my spare shirt and dribble it with warm water and my last spoonful of salt. It’s easier when I can’t see the marbled steak of his flank.
Grunting, I heave Brooks onto the bed and lie down, cocooned by the sturdy walls and the glow of flames through the stove’s open draft. Logs settle as they burn, and a breeze plays in the willows snug against the cabin.
I wake once when a wind shoots suddenly from the peaks, rattling the stovepipe, plucking at the river’s surface and slamming on through the night. Then the rhythmic wind and the water lull me back to sleep.
I was very small, and everything was extremely interesting
to me. A pack of wolves had been playing near the little
line cabin, two days’ short walk from our main cabin. Every
morning and afternoon and evening they howled from
all directions, but mostly from the hill where Becky and I
tobogganed.
“That’s it. I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going?” Dad was stirring a five-gallon tin
bucket full of dog scraps and grain. It was suspended from a
tripod over a bonfire in the clearing. He held the wooden paddle
flat in front of him and twirled it once, then twice, like a baton.
Then he bowed.
“I’m getting one, Dad,” I told him, pulling my snow pants
over my boots. “I’m getting a baby wolf.”
Dad followed me down the trail, which was soft and soggy
in the spring sunshine. The wolves had a den nearby. Dad’s
weight made him sink while I barely scratched the snow’s
surface.
“Go home,” I said. “Wolves don’t like grown-ups.”
“Nah,” said Dad, shaking snow on us both from an overhanging
spruce bough. “But they probably like their pups.
They’d be sad if you took one home.”
“They’d still have some left,” I reminded him.
“We’d have Becky if you ran away. But it wouldn’t make us
not sad.”
I leaped at his legs, signaling forgiveness. “Don’t worry,”
I reassured him when he squatted down so I could hop on for a
piggyback. “I won’t run away yet.”
One moment I’m sleeping, the next listening, fully alert.
Wolves are calling from beyond the river. They sing to each other like chanting monks and break off one at a time. I disentangle myself from Brooks and sit up in the dark.
A lone wolf cries from the other side of the cabin. Brooks is lying on my bag, growling deep in his throat.
I swing off the bed and crack the door. Cold blasts in; I rub my bare feet against each other. Moments ago I was safely asleep.
Becky said that each wolf in a pack howls at a different pitch to make it sound as if there are more than there really are. She also said that wolves can hear at a much higher range than humans and stake their territory for absent members of the pack by scent marking as well as howling.
Eyes shining, a pack of wolves stands in the moonlit forest, spread out in a straight line. They’re so close I can see their fur is wet from wading across to me. Only my head sticks from behind the door. They pace forward, holding my stare, tails level with their spines. I open my mouth to yell “GET!” but it comes out soft, like a breath.
They splash away across the river and mill about on the far bank like they’re waiting for a signal to proceed. A few sit on their haunches like dogs. One stretches his front legs and yawns.
“Now you can get,” I call across. From behind me comes the howl of the lone wolf. The northern lights are a smudge of green dancing above the horizon. The sky is enormous.
I’m surrounded.
“Enough,” I shout, mustering a firm voice. “Wolves don’t attack people. GET OUT OF HERE!”
Anything can happen in here. Dad could stroll up the bank or I could hear shots popping in time to the northern lights and follow them tomorrow to a dugout with Dad’s stovepipe jutting from a bank. The tide of his disappearance will wash away from my life, and nothing will be smashed where it’s flowed.
Heads slightly lowered, the wolves twist around and slide back into the willows, outlines broken by branches moving as they retreat.
Slowly, the twigs stop trembling and shine, motionless once more in the moonlight. My heart is banging against my chest.
I slam the door and climb into bed. Brooks washes my face and I shove him away and listen for the lone wolf, the lookout, arm slung for comfort over Brooks’s chest.
The sun’s already high across the mountains beyond the far bank when I wake next. In that first moment before I can really remember where I am, before my eyes slip open and meet Brooks’s, I’m happy. I slip on my boots and blow the fire’s coals into life.
Brooks dangles his head over the edge of the pole bed and barks. “No problem,” I say. “You just had to ask.”
I lift him down and he walks, stiff-legged, out the open door. He puts his paw on the ground but with no weight on it.
Outside, there’s no sign of any life. I grin and duck back in: four walls, unpeeled roof poles, stove, table and two shelves, all made from poles. The wolf pack that surrounded me feels like a dream in the hot sunshine. An enamel cup and a frying pan hang above the table. Magazine cutouts of beautiful women in one-piece bathing suits line the walls; their hair is curled and tucked neatly behind their ears.
The shelf beside the stove holds several tins: tea, flour and a bitter white powder I guess is baking powder.
I lift each picture off its nail and check the underside for notes. Those pictures were there all my life; some longago trapper who built the cabin tacked them into place and we left them up. Becky and I thought they were beautiful mothers because their breasts were so huge.
There’s no sign of Dad.
Outside, the river curves merrily around bends, forest lining its banks. On the rises above, caribou move single file up a draw. I mix the flour and baking powder with fresh water and fry the cake in butter on the stove. Brooks stretches by the heat. No salt. I’ve used the small amount I carried to bathe his cut.
In a moment my mood shifts.
There is no salt left. Brooks’s wound is sealing shut. I can only hope there’s no infection, no poison inside. I juggle while the bannock fries, trying to forget the emptiness here: a regular and then a reverse cascade, then a new trick running the balls behind one knee.
The bannock smells delicious. I break off a crunchy bit and pop it in my mouth, dunked in the spluttering butter.
It tastes moldy.
I spit on the ground outside. Maybe the tea last night was moldy too, and I was too tired to tell. Maybe I’ll be throwing up for days. I clutch my stomach, but it just feels hollowed out, as usual.
I can’t hear any approaching animal with the river so close. I poke around outside for a while, searching for a cache. Maybe there’s some food that hasn’t absorbed any moisture.
A raven drops suddenly from a cottonwood and circles the cabin. Dad and I used to talk to ravens, but I’ve never noticed them properly since he left: enormous, black, shiny ventriloquists. He loved ravens, and wherever he stayed, a few would eventually land, knowing he was good for some leftovers.
I throw the remaining bannock under the tree for the raven. He lands on a branch and makes pinging noises like a knuckle rapping a crystal glass.
Brooks dutifully barks.
Ravens hang out in Becky’s dog yard every day. They land just out of reach of the chained huskies and strut around while the dogs yowl and strain. When the dogs finally back away from the end of their chains, the ravens hop in and scoop up any leftover tidbits of frozen dog food they can find. Wild ravens live about twenty-five years. Parrots of the North, Becky calls them. A pair of them lived for decades in the Tower of London, able to talk because their tongues had been split.
“Big price for the ravens,” I remember Dad saying.
The raven hops down from his perch and toddles toward us, feathers puffed.
How many years would a raven remember?
Could this bird be so friendly because he’s been around Dad lately?
He snatches the bannock from the ground where I’ve tossed it and tears off a corner.
I hope it doesn’t make him sick.
“Where’s my father?” I whisper. Ravens are magnificent. This one is halfway up to my knees. If they weren’t so common, people would be awed by them. I’ve seen them scare off eagles that were lunching from a salmon on a gravel bar near town. The ravens yanked at the eagles’ tail feathers.
Wind funnels through the valley all day, smelling of snow. I spread the contents of my pack in front of the south wall in the sunshine, blocked from the gusts. I count how many meals I have left. There’s no butter, cheese, chocolate or nuts, only dry food. Not enough to get us to the cabin. I sure haven’t eaten much, but I’ve chucked a lot to Brooks. He’ll have to limp faster and farther when really he should rest.
I think about staying in the line cabin until Brooks has healed up.
But I can’t.
There’s not enough food. And Mom wouldn’t know where I was. There’d be a search party out for me this time. I can’t do that to her.
Somehow the silence seems stronger where there was once someone living. All my life I’ve wanted to come back to our cabin. The wind blows and blows, and I can’t feel any warmth from the sun even in the shelter of the old cabin.
I’ve never thought beyond searching for Dad. I’ve never considered what my life will be like when I know what happened to him. What will I make of my life? It’s always been one howl of panic echoing through the years: He said he’d return. Every morning since he left, I’ve woken, probing my memory like an abscessed tooth until I get busy just to distract myself from the pain.
Brooks snatches, growling, at his flank. His wound is still festering. Wolves must die of such infections all the time.
“Daddy,” I whisper, just to hear a voice. “I learned how to juggle.”
The sick part is that I can hear him answer after all these years. His breath brushes against my ears. His grin grows crooked before my eyes.
“What for?” asks my dad.
I stumble into my pack and start out again while the sun slides down toward another mountaintop. There’s no trail anymore; we’ve walked beyond it. Sometimes I follow game trails along the river. Always, they end in a tangle of fallen brush. At least there’ll be leftover food at our old cabin, and salt to soak Brooks’s cut. At least there’ll be a warm, clean spot for him to sleep beside the stove.
I watch for blazes on the trees. There are always trees now. The tundra is windswept and beautiful and vast behind us. The gusts have blown from the north. Snow clouds sail across the sky.
I’m on my way again, Brooks limping by my side.
As we descend through the forest, the walking becomes slower as the undergrowth thickens, and at times white spruce trees laden with boughs lie crashed across our path.
Brooks can plod for a few hours at a time but I always need to lift him over obstacles. When I hold him in my arms against my chest, I feel a surge of tenderness.
I see no bear scat or tracks, but once I notice a rotting log that has been clawed apart by something massive. I can’t tell how long ago it happened. Brooks’s wound crusts and is torn open by a jutting branch so that blood bubbles and beads along its length.
In the late afternoon I stretch out on some moss and sleep, my pack as my pillow. Brooks curls up, sheltered in the crook of my arm. When I wake, there is fresh blood like berry stains on the earth. I turn him gently in the slanting sunshine and notice pus seething beneath the surface.