Juggling Fire (13 page)
And there it is—right by the door all these years later—dry and safe in its plastic bag within a daypack all on its own.
I breathe in the smell of its cardboard cover:
Irish Fairy
Tales
. I hold it in both gloved hands and grin.
The cache sways in a gust. A pole beneath me on the cache floor snaps. I stop breathing until the cache is still.
It’s time to head down. I creep slowly out on all fours, nauseous with adrenaline. The poles are probably all rotten.
I position myself with both legs on separate rungs before I let go of the cache porch, book bag clenched in my teeth. My younger self would be proud. Back on solid ground, I hump in the dry meat and a suitcase of old food.
Only then do I fetch my book.
I read for the rest of the day with feet propped up on a chair beside the cookstove, pouring tea and boiling dry-vegetable-and-jerky soup. When Brooks starts to get restless right before dark, moaning and tearing at his wound, I slip on the hip waders and step into the clearing of my magical kingdom. Then I slide down the bank to the gravel bar and wade into the current, hoping for a fresh fish dinner for him.
Not a chance. Ice is floating in to shore now. It was stupid to let those grayling free. I was counting on there being salt somewhere in our gear.
“Tomorrow I’ll check out the rest of the cache,” I promise Brooks as I pour the last of my soup into this morning’s leftover fish broth. “I’ll shake out every bag of clothes, every sheet and book. There’s got to be salt somewhere.”
The stench of rotting meat blasts into my face. “Yuck. We’re advertising for a bear to visit by boiling fish in here.”
Brooks stretches on the warm floor and falls back asleep.
Then I understand.
It isn’t just the fish I smell. It’s Brooks’s wound. I’ve neglected Brooks’s wound.
My face is buried in the folds of Brooks’s neck, my arms sealed about him. Logs settle in the stove, and a north wind rustles through the spruce boughs. We lie like that for a long, long time. In the end, Brooks staggers to his feet and stands, head bowed, by the cookstove, legs splayed, whimpering.
Water. I pour warm water into the basin and break open a sterile cloth Mom threw in my pack when I wasn’t looking. I rinse the empty salt shaker with boiling water and shake it until any salt crystals clinging to its sides are dissolved. Then I make Brooks lie down on Dad’s old parka and dribble water into the wound. I don’t let him get up even when he tries to nip me when the water washes the pus away.
“Forget it, boy,” I tell him, playing with his ears.
I need more water. Bucket in hand, I walk down to the gravel bar, the cabin behind me, and above me a smudge of lamplight from the plastic windows. The sky is salted with coarse stars, and the northern lights open and close like green and red accordions above the mountain peaks. The temperature is dropping by the minute while the moon rocks between racing clouds. The wall of spruce trees bends and straightens in chorus as the wind soughs through their boughs and hurtles on across the still river. Cakes of ice have formed and are banging down the current. Brooks might die because I came looking for Dad.
I wander farther down the gravel bar to where the creek I followed to get here joins the creek flowing through the main valley. This too has frozen out from the bank. The moon peeks out long enough for me to see what must have been made days ago when the ground was still soft enough to take an imprint.
A line of tracks, like a barefoot human’s, cuts along the gravel bar. By the shore, where ice meets rock, the tracks take several detours out. I can see where the shore ice has broken and the bear has leapt back almost as if he was playing.
Could the bear have followed us here?
I stand on the shelf ice and chop a hole for my bucket. Every few chops I swivel around fast to check behind me. Clouds cover the moon and stars, and the northern lights fade away. The wind is calm now from the mountain passes. Even the slush of moving ice is still.
Only my cabin is still lamp-lit in the black expanse of forest and tundra.
I pick four round stones from my heap and juggle, slowly warming up to my latest trick. Instead of catching the balls, I snatch them from above as they drop. It’s an easy trick for an audience to follow but still fluid and beautiful.
Brooks, I’m so sorry. I haven’t been worried enough about you. I’ve been mourning for a long-gone father while you decayed before my eyes.
Stars blink into place above me. Mourning isn’t the right word anymore. For years I remembered little more than Dad leaving. Now whole scenes are washing up in my memory. I relax and scavenge through them.
Our campfire was spitting head-high flames into a sky heavy
with stars. Dad chucked on another log and shoved a stump
at me.
“Have a seat,” he laughed. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Huddled close to the flames, I peeled a willow with my knife
and threaded on a chunk of caribou meat. “Want some?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll get some boughs.”
It was just Dad and me breaking trail, sleeping in the snow
with a tarp as a backdrop for the campfire. That night we slept
on spruce boughs topped with caribou hides and down sleeping
bags. I didn’t take off my parka until the bag was thoroughly
warmed up. Every so often Dad threw spruce on the fire from a
pile he’d stacked within reach. I didn’t tell him, but I was making
up a story about the stars. Certain stars were friendly, and they
were about to have a celebration—maybe Christmas—with
other constellations. It was kind of pathetic, but stars were like
my toys; they had personalities and I couldn’t wait to see them
come out.
“Asleep, Rachel?”
“Maybe.”
“Cold?”
“Course not.”
Who could be cold when they’re winter camping with their
dad? Even if they were shaking with misery, who would SAY it?
“You sound cold.”
I sat up in my sleeping bag, tuque pulled down almost to
my eyes. I pointed at the campfire. Around its heat, bare earth
was emerging: moss, leaf litter, wizened flower stalks.
“It’s growing summer,” I said.
“We’ll take some moss with us,” said Dad, placing a couple
of split chunks on the flames.
“What for?”
“It’s an antibiotic. People used it for treating wounds. And
it’s hard to gather once there’s snow.”
“Once me and Becky made pussy willows,” I said, mittened
hands behind my head so I could enjoy the view.
There was a pause, long enough that I knew Dad was trying
to tell me to get to sleep. Or, at least, that he’d like to himself.
“How?” he mumbled.
“In the fire-pit last Christmas. We burned a fire there so hot
that the willows we had in the pile thought it was spring.”
This was the most remarkable bit of information I knew.
Becky and I fooled willows into believing it was spring.
Dad, however, grunted and disappeared inside his bag.
The next thing I knew, the stars were fainter and a pot of
hot water was hissing on coals raked to one side. Dad was cross-legged
by the flames, rummaging in the sled bag for tea. The
too-loud crackling of the sled bag told me the temperature had
dropped in the night.
“Do you like fairy tales?” I asked him.
“Love them,” said Dad. “Can’t tell you why, but I always
have.”
I shake my head as I slosh the water in the bucket.
Moss is a natural antibiotic. How could I have forgotten?
Surely the starlight’s bright enough to search for some right now. I grab the ax to chop a frozen slab, thick on the side of a rotting stump.
Brooks’s tail thumps, brushing the floorboards, when I shoulder in with clumps of moss and ice. His head barely lifts from the floor, but his eyes follow my every move.
The past wasn’t sad at all; it was pretty damn happy. I wash his wound until it is white around its edge, with no pus.
I don’t know how to use the moss. If I get it wrong, there’s a good chance Brooks will die.
First I boil a handful in a small amount of water with the lid on to keep in the active medicinal parts. After it has cooled, I pour the moss and broth over the wound like a seaweed soup and bind it with a shirt. While the wound is steeping, I prop up my feet and read fairy tales to Brooks: “The Snow Queen” is his favorite, I decide, because he chooses, when Kay’s splinter of ice dissolves, to actually lumber to his feet and whine at the door. Either that or he has to go pee.
I keep close watch through the window all the time Brooks is outside to make sure the bear’s not around. I pretend a prince is camping a few miles from here. Tomorrow I’ll be chopping wood and I’ll stop, amazed, with the ax behind my head, and slowly lower it when the prince comes into view.
The bear must have been up for one last stroll before hibernating. Would he still be wandering around in this cold?
Steam rises from downriver. Mist fingers the bank and flows across the clearing.
When Brooks whimpers to be let in, I place thawed and moistened moss over the cut and tie another bandage around it. The bandage is an old T-shirt of Dad’s that was lying around. There’s nothing sterile left but it’s not touching the wound anyway.
Tomorrow I’ll boil up a bunch of our childhood shirts.
“Come on, Brooks,” I coax my hound. “Let’s get to bed.” I need to be right there if he gets any worse, so he won’t feel abandoned. I load the barrel stove for the first time for night burning: round chunks that will smolder through the darkness. I’ve never used a chain saw before, I realize, though I watched Mom and Dad countless times. Unless I can figure it out, I’ll be swede-sawing my wood while I’m here. That’s how I’ll be spending my days, cutting into tree trunks, limbing branches, heaving logs onto my shoulder and staggering home with them.
I bend with my knees and grab Brooks. It takes all my strength to carry him to the bed and lift him up, moss and bandages still tied in place. “Night, pup,” I say, kissing his floppy ears and hopping into bed myself. “See you in the morning.”
In the morning Brooks is still warm. I touch his fur before I dare open my eyes. He staggers outside to pee and stands, head down, outside the door without even lifting his hind leg until I let him back in to sleep. Fear tears at me, churning my stomach and scrambling my thoughts.
Snow has fallen steadily throughout the night onto the frozen ground. I blink outside in the brightness. I have to search the trails for Dad now before they’re covered. Today.
First I wash Brooks with the moss-water again and tie up the steeping wound with a boiled bandage. There’s nothing else I can do for him. I leave him curled, head under tail, on a bag by the loaded stove. Strange how having my dog fills the cabin even when I’m outside. Without him, there’d be no one to return for, no one to take care of or share my days with.
Before I leave I check the cache again, this time laying two long poles at right angles to the porch poles to take the pressure off the rotten wood. I stay prone with the fresh poles directly under my stomach.
I check each container thoroughly, finding flour, oats, oil, beans, brown sugar, a sack of ancient baking supplies, some breast-shaped containers of Real Lemon to ward off scurvy.
But still no salt. I don’t think about that; the moss has to work. And we should be fine for food. There’s even a half-full can of cocoa. Tonight I’ll bake a cake. Nah, chocolate makes dogs sick. I’ll make lemon spice cake with brown sugar and coconut icing broiled on top. Brooks could do with the extra energy.
I throw it all down the ladder and leave it sitting in the snow to deal with when I return.
That was a mistake.
Nah, it was nothing short of stupid.
Trouble is, I haven’t really thought through how I will search for him. How do you look for a man who’s been missing for so many years?
I walk downriver, letting my mind wander, the river bearing its slush to my right, spruce and cottonwood forest to my left. Beyond both, white mountains climb to a pale clear sky. The sun rises halfheartedly and throws no heat anymore. My feet know this trail still. Dad’s blazes are on tree trunks every couple of minutes but animals have kept the trail open since we left: moose, wolves and foxes, probably even caribou and sheep, crossing the valley in the summer for a mineral lick.
I walk for miles, over a frozen slough and farther into the trees and through a tangle of willow crossed with rabbit tracks. I walk past the cutoff to the beaver pond and see no fresh blazes, no smoke or hidden cabins: no clues.
On the way back I head down the trail to the beaver pond. The fire should be still smoldering. Brooks will be toasty beside it, and besides, he needs the sleep.
I sat on a pile of spruce boughs that Dad had chopped and I’d
piled for warmth. Beside me, Dad was cross-legged, leaning
against a trunk. I fidgeted with twigs and pebbles, making up
stories. I was bored but I would have cut out my heart before
I’d mention it. Becky was off for a day with Mom and the dogs
somewhere, and I was home alone with Dad. Course, home
alone with Dad meant hardly being home. We were spending
the evening beaver hunting.
It was spring and the pond was open and the caribou were
wandering and the wolves were frisking about in the still-dark
nights. We heard them at night from all directions. Maybe they
met up with packs that had broken off from theirs, Dad said.
Like getting the whole family together for a spring reunion.
Thing is, nobody knows much about how wolves behave
in the wild.
The snow was good for snowballs finally. It packed
together, wet from the sun melting it during the day. At
nights, of course, the land froze tight and the snow grew a
brittle surface layer of ice.
