Ice Island (7 page)

“The last month Dad’s away is always the hardest,” her mom said, sliding into a chair. Bandit sat beside her. She didn’t beg, just rested her head on Mom’s slippers. “We’ll be back at Skilak Lodge before you know it.”

Tatum couldn’t wait. She missed her friends too.

They finished eating without saying much else. By then the sun had hauled itself up from the other side of the world. It looked like a picture-postcard day. Tatum helped clean the kitchen, then got dressed.

Her mom looked up from her coffee when Tatum opened the back door. “Be careful, okay?”

“I will.”

“And don’t forget to drink plenty of water.”

Tatum nodded. It was easy to forget her water bottle when it was so cold outside fish could ice-skate.

The storage shed looked like it had been spun on its side. She climbed over a canoe and tubs of seal oil for lamps. An outboard motor was patched with electrical tape. Fishing nets and floats were tangled with rotting traps. Most were made from branches and roots. Bandit sniffed everything.

Tatum saw the sled her mom had mentioned. She was surprised it had plastic runners. In the early days, mushers made sleds from hardwood, strapping strips together with rawhide. She’d only seen ivory runners in a museum. They were strongest of all.

She dragged the sled outside, scrubbing away years of grime and spiderwebs. She studied it, amazed. It was the same kind of sled her dad had had as a kid. “A lucky sled,” she muttered to herself.

Bandit jumped up, balancing on her hind legs. She pawed the air with her front feet. “You look like a wild stallion,” Tatum said, grinning. “Come on. Let’s make an obstacle course.”

Bandit landed on all fours and trotted in a happy circle.

Empty oil drums seemed logical, though she quickly discovered they were heavier than they looked. She just about busted a gut trying to roll them into place. She stood back, out of breath, and surveyed her work. Not bad for a simple course.

Bandit barked—ears pricked, eyes wide, ready to go.

Tatum decided the sled needed weight. She went back to the shed for logs and a couple of old tackle boxes.

“Bandit, you’re lead dog, wheel dog, swing dog, and every other dog. You’re my one-dog team.” She stepped tentatively on the runners and gripped the handlebar. “Okay, girl. Let’s go!”

Bandit strained against her nylon harness, taking off with a jerk. The runners barely touched the ground. Bandit acted like this was a race—a race she’d run many times.

If Tatum remembered half of what Beryl and her dad had taught her—or half of what she’d read and seen on videos—maybe, just maybe she wouldn’t wind up on her bottom. She leaned to miss the first drum, pretending it was a ditch. The next one was a boulder, followed by a series of sled-busting turns.

The sled is alive
, she thought.
It breathes when it moves
.

“Gee!” she called, hoping that was the command to turn right. She was relieved when Bandit made a wide right turn. Now she remembered that
haw
meant go left.

They rounded another corner and the sled sent snow flying. Tatum held on, smiling from the inside out. She’d never had so much fun. She tried standing with all of her weight on one runner, lost her balance, and stumbled off. She jogged awkwardly, grasping for the bar. Wet snow soaked her pants.

Bandit glanced over her shoulder.
What are you waiting for?

Scrambling onto a moving sled wasn’t easy. “Whoa!” Bandit slowed until Tatum got back on.

The loop on Mendenhall Glacier had been dragged smooth with a bridge timber. It had wide, easy turns. The
ground here had melted and refrozen in hard clumps. It was about as smooth as a washboard.

Don’t be so stiff!
she scolded herself.
Use your knees like shock absorbers
.

“Haw!”

Bandit cut left, missing a drum.

“Atta girl!”

Bandit picked up her pace. The sled bounced over the jagged ground and slammed against a hole. Bandit swung in a tight turn, and the sled tipped on its side, going into a long slide. Fishing lures flew everywhere.

Tatum staggered and fell hard. She rolled to her knees, watching the sled fly over a slick spot. “Bandit!”

She heard the ATV before she saw it.

Dixie Dee corralled Bandit on an abandoned porch and untangled the lines. Then she hooked the sled to her bumper. “I’ll tow it to the lodge,” she hollered back.

Tatum sat freezing in the snow.

So embarrassing!

•  •  •

The next day she fell when the sled skidded on glare ice, then again when Bandit chased a seagull. “At least there aren’t any trees to run into,” she mumbled, refusing to give up.

She thought about the history of the Iditarod. In 1925 it had seemed as if a battering snowstorm would blow the Alaskan territory off the planet. Yet word had moved like greased lightning: Eskimo kids in Nome had come in contact
with the highly contagious disease diphtheria, also called black death.

The hospital in Anchorage had the only serum in the territory. How could it be transported to icebound Nome in the shortest possible time? Flying a bush plane in winter was too dangerous. They came up with another plan.

Tatum tried to imagine the brave mushers and their teams of muscled dogs carrying the serum 647 miles in a relay. It had taken five and a half days. The blizzard refused to let up, pushing the windchill factor to a hundred degrees below zero. The serum arrived frozen but still usable. Thankfully, every kid had been saved.

Tatum quivered in her boots.
Sometimes real-life adventures are more unbelievable than stories in books!

After lunch something shifted, her speed or her rhythm. The whooshing sound began to feel like her own breathing. She felt like she was flying. Bandit was her copilot.

On their way back to the lodge Tatum saw Grandfather working on the hull of an old-style
angyapik
boat. He was using an ulu knife to scrape off barnacles. The keel was ivory—around here that meant walrus tusk. It was long and sleek, stable for the choppy Arctic Sea.

Tatum pictured him shoving off in search of bowhead whales, in a gray haze of sea fog.

“Haw!” Bandit turned right.

“Hello, Grandfather. Is Cole around?” Tatum asked, stopping by the upside-down boat.

“Soon the ice will break up,” Grandfather said, staring at the frozen sea where wind whipped up snow tornadoes. “The shiny black heads of seals will appear from nowhere. This
year the whales will come early—I feel it. One bowhead feeds the whole village. We celebrate with games and dances, and eat and eat.”

“Is Cole still at school?” She tried again.

“When he was young he followed me everywhere—learning everything I could teach him. He could not wait until he was old enough to go whale hunting. One spring a boat capsized and people drowned. Now his mother forbids him to go out with us.”

Tatum didn’t know what to say to this. She watched Grandfather stretch a tanned skin over the hull.

“I soak the walrus skin in salt water,” he said. “That is the best way to loosen the hair from the hide. Only then do I stitch the skins together.”

She didn’t ask if he wanted help. Repairing a boat was man’s work.

“Life outside is changing our world. We are losing our culture, losing our roots. How can a living thing grow if its roots are cut? Half of our village is on welfare, and few of us can afford the high-priced food in the store. Many of our men drink too much.”

Tatum knew he didn’t expect an answer.

“Cole is the only young person in our village who uses a
qamiiyek
—I mean, a
sled
to go to school. He knows ATVs scare the seals.

“He will never leave the island, not like the others with their dreams of fast cars and fancy houses. The spirits live inside him. They live inside you too, little
kass’aq.
” He looked up, his dark eyes shining. “Remember that and you will always be safe.”

He nodded with a gentle smile. It was the kind of smile that reaches out. “We are all part of the land,” he said softly.

•  •  •

Later in the afternoon, Tatum gave Bandit a good brushing, then settled on the couch with her notebook. Her mom had given her a choice of three essays:
Global warming—fact or fiction? What would the earth look like if we didn’t recycle? Is sled-dog racing cruel to animals?

Tatum chose the last one. She could write a book about how well mushers treated their dogs. Dog food was flown to checkpoints before the race. Bales of straw were dropped for bedding. Key spots had vets in case dogs needed special attention. These dogs loved to pull. They lived to run.

She smiled at Bandit. “Want to go out again tomorrow?” Bandit licked the air excitedly.

Tatum had just finished writing an outline for her essay when the front door flew open. Cole came in, bareheaded. Not even a parka. Just an old sweatshirt splattered with paint. He set a squat jar on the coffee table. “Pickled gull eggs. They’re sour, like dill pickles.”

She studied the water in the jar. It was a weird green. “Thanks.”

His eyes landed on the picture on the TV.

Tatum closed her notebook. “That’s my dad as a kid. He grew up in Homer.”

Cole dropped into a chair, looking at home in the lodge. “He had sled dogs?”

“Yeah, he ran the Jr. Iditarod a couple of times. Then his
family moved to Oregon,” she said. “He brought us back here a little over two years ago. He’s working in Prudhoe Bay for the winter.”

“Drilling?”

She nodded. “And construction.”

“My father was on the first pipeline crew,” Cole said. “Now he and my mother work in a fish-canning plant in Ketchikan. At night Mom makes booties for my dogs. She says each stitch brings us closer together.”

He picked paint off his fingers, talking about his brothers and sisters. “They left the island after high school to find work. They promised to come back, and who knows, Johnny might. He loves it here … loves to hunt. A good hunter can still make a decent living.

“Next time I’ll bring pickled moose stomach,” he said, getting up and stretching. “It’s sweeter.”

Tatum made a face.

“Gotcha!” He paused at the door, as if he’d forgotten something. “I saw you out there with your dog. My team could use some competition before Kotzebue.” He shrugged. “Just a short run—twenty or thirty miles. No one around here is interested.”

Tatum forced herself to breathe. Was he serious?

“Thought I’d go out in the morning before school,” he said, opening the door. “If you’re up for it?”

Tatum and her mom were flying back to Nome the day after tomorrow. It was now or never.

Tatum blabbed through a dinner of chunky potato soup. “Cole’s training for a race in Kotzebue, a hundred-mile sprint,” she said. “There’s a roadhouse at the halfway point, where they have a ten-hour layover. But there isn’t a road to get there, so race officials have to be flown in. A ham radio operator too.”

“He’s flying his dogs to the mainland?” Her mom mopped her bowl with a chunk of homemade bread. “That must cost a ton of kibble.”

“Pilots don’t charge him.”

Tatum didn’t stop talking about the race until the dishes were washed and dried. “Mom?”

Her mom turned, raising an eyebrow. “Sorry, honey, the answer is no.”

Tatum felt the blood drain from her veins. “But you can’t say no until I ask the question.”

Sometimes her mom measured her words, one teaspoon
at a time. Now she bit her lip, frowning. “Does it have to do with dogs?”

“Just a training run,” Tatum said, ready for an argument. “It’ll push his team to go faster. We’ll be side by side the whole time.”

Mom’s frown deepened.

Tatum sucked in enough air to fill a wind sock. “We won’t even leave the village—just race back and forth on the main drag.”

A lie.

A small one.

It nagged at her like a pebble in her sock.

Her mom slouched at the kitchen table. She picked up a towel, twisting it. “Let’s try to get through to Dad,” she finally said. “And see what he says.”

•  •  •

They never got through to the North Slope. But Mom gave in. “We both know what Dad would say.” She said that while rubbing Bandit’s head so hard Tatum thought her dog would get a bald spot. This was really hard for her.

Tatum found Cole’s phone number in Maryanne’s address book. He told her to pack like it was a real race. “Extra socks, and a headlamp, if you have one,” he said. “And a big plastic mug.”

Tatum unloaded her duffel, spreading everything on the bed: heat packets, matches, two pairs of wool socks, a fleece-lined face mask, goggles, a hair scrunchie, and extra
batteries for her headlamp. She talked to Bandit the whole time, although she was really talking to herself, afraid she’d forget something.

Trail mix made a high-powered snack: nuts for protein, M&M’s for energy, and pretzels just because. She wrapped a loaf of French bread in heavy foil, then found a small package of carrots in the freezer.

Most everything fit in her backpack. Dog food and Bandit’s bowl went inside a garbage bag. It would all go in her sled. Except Bandit’s carrots; they’d be in her pocket.

Tatum set the alarm on her watch for 6:15 a.m. When it went off, she dressed quickly, not bothering to time it, and fixed a breakfast burrito. Bandit nosed food around her bowl until it was almost gone.

“Excited, girl?”

Mom staggered into the living room, yawning in a flannel robe and bunny slippers with floppy ears. “Better bootie up before going out,” she said, half-asleep.

Tatum tossed four booties to her. “Thanks, Mom.”

Her mom squatted down and scratched behind Bandit’s ears. Bandit gave her face a sloppy lick-bath. “I forget, does the strap go in front or back?”

“In back. But not too tight.”

Tatum decided to put the harness on inside too.

“And honey?”

Tatum kissed her mom on the cheek. “I love you too.”

Her mom leaned against the doorjamb, watching them head into the cold, dark morning. “Don’t make me regret this!” she called after them.

“I won’t! I promise!”