into a slough and lost the trail of the conversation when the team piled up on the leftovers of the calf moose. Backbone, hair, hooves, and the head with the nose and eyes chewed down, all scattered in a red circle. Fine wolf trails and deep moose trenches mapped out the battle.
The dogs bit at the frozen blood and woody stomach contents. Abe bent, careful not to let go of the sled handlebar. He touched a clean wolf paw print. “Soft,” he mused. “Been back to finish her up.”
The dogs raced west, up a narrow slough. “Abe,” I whispered, “should we maybe not shoot that ma moose? She’s had enough bad luck. Didn’t you want to shoot a barren cow, to be fatter?”
I wanted to get out of the overhanging willows before she charged. The snow was soft and deep. Anyone knew moose were more dangerous than bears. Especially on a dog team. As a child, I had been petrified during the night with fear of a moose dropping in our ground-level skylight. The thrashing black hooves would crack our skulls. The wind would sift the igloo full of snow. Shrews would tunnel under our skin and hollow us out, and when travelers found our bodies we’d be weightless as dried seagulls. Abe nourished the nightmare, shrugging, conveying the impression that, sure, given time, my prophecy was bound to come true. Abe was that way. Realistic, he called it.
He ran behind the runners, dodging willows that tried to slap his eyes. He panted over my hood. “Might be the only moose in fifty miles that doesn’t care either way.”
I knew I could argue with him, and he’d leave the animal. He’d welcome the discussion—and the chance not to kill. I shut my stiff lips. Willows whipped past. Abe climbed on the runners and rode. He cleared his throat and whistled encouragements to the dogs. I squinted in frustration, thinking, Now I’m definitely not going to get to shoot.
“My parents split up after the war,” Abe said. “People didn’t do that back then. That-a-girl, Farmer. Haw. Haw over. I was thirteen then.”
In the sled I stared at my mukluks. Shocked—not that his parents divorced, but that he was telling me. His past was always as distant as the cities.
“I came home from school one day, in trouble with Sister Abigail for saying I trusted animals more than people. Dad’s flannel shirts were all gone from the floor and the backs of chairs. I knew without those shirts, he was gone. He went off hunting fame or fortune, I guess.” Abe sounded like he was telling himself the story, too. I stayed silent, pretending indifference. Those seemed to be the manners I’d been taught; I just couldn’t remember learning them.
“Even in Barrow, I usually drew animals instead of shooting them. I would’ve liked to be a hero. Of course I wanted to be one. It just felt . . . phony. Wearing the clothes. Strutting and flexing. Shooting some poor creature. It just wasn’t me.”
Had he told Iris this yesterday? Probably not; she didn’t have my mouth that had always wanted to know how to be someone else.
“I propped the Super Cub for my dad, the day he crashed. Kind of a heroic thing to do?”
Willows slapped my face and the crook of his arm. Snow sifted down my neck.
“The engine sounded funny. I could have said something but Dad would have hollered to stand clear. Guess life’s like shooting a caribou, huh? You want a fat one, but if you end up with a skinny one, you don’t waste it.”
“People leave a skinny caribou, Abe. Or feed it to the dogs and shoot a sledload more.”
“You kids!”
We plowed out of the willows, onto a lake. I saw her across the ice; she stood on long graceful legs, huge black shoulders. The backs of her ankles were pale yellow; along her flank stretched a white gash in the hair. Figment hollered and lunged, cheering the other dogs on. The moose cantered into low brush. The brake ripped furrows in the snow. The sled slid across the ice.
“Stand on the snow hook!”
I jumped out with the hook. It bit into the packed snow. I held it down with knees and palms. The moose waded in deep snow, disappearing into the willows. Abe raised the gun and shot. The moose went down, and WHOMP—the bullet hit sounded like an air-dropped box of nails. Fresh meat! I forgot my frozen cheeks. But not that I wanted to be the one to shoot. Abe wasn’t going to change. He didn’t believe it made any difference which hunter pulled the trigger. Since he was already an expert, of course he always shot.
A FEW YARDS FROM THE DOGS, I stood beside the steaming gut pile. Under the snow, the lake was solid six feet down, and I pictured lethargic pike and whitefish squeezed in the dark silence between mud and ice, waiting with cold-blooded thoughts for winter to go away. I felt strong withstanding the cold.
Up close the moose was alarmingly big. Abe and I loaded the huge hindquarters and butt on the basket sled. He hurried off to break willows, the springy sticks shattering like glass in the cold.
“Making stick towers to scare the ravens?”
“Get dry wood. I’ll start a fire.”
I discovered with dismay that one of us was staying with the remaining meat. Abe stepped away from the newborn fire and cut snow to clean his bloody knife.
I pretended to break the ice off my eyelashes. I peered about nervously. A couple of the dogs whined and tugged at the anchored sled, their feet and noses freezing, their hearts anxious to run toward home and dinner. The rest had curled up, conserving warmth. I longed to go, tented between the companionship of my father behind on the runners and the huskies panting faithful in front.
“I’ll try to make it back ’fore too late.” Abe planted the .30-06 stock-first in the snow. He stepped carefully, keeping his moosehide-bottom mukluks out of the circle of blood around the kill. “At home I’ll have to lash on the gee-pole. And my skis.” The gee-pole tied onto the front of the sled and Abe skied behind the wheel dogs—in front of the sled—and used the pole to steer when the load was heavy or the trail deep. I hefted the gun. The weight was powerful. The cold steel seared my bloody fingers and I knelt and thawed them in the pool of blood coagulated in the moose’s chest. I wiped my hands on the coarse fur, slid my mittens on.
Suddenly all the dogs held their breath. Nine pairs of ears swiveled north. Abe and I turned. Across the distance floated shivers of sound: wolves howling. Abe straightened up bareheaded. His hair, aged gray with frost, slapped me with a glimpse of the future. We scanned the horizons. Finally, he took off his mittens and cinched the sled rope. Abe hated loose loads the way he hated whiny kids. “Nice to hear the wolves,” he murmured. “Country’s poor without them. Cutuk, it means there’s other animals around.”
I shifted, uncomfortable with him using my name. Abe had heard and seen hundreds of wolves over the years since he’d been a teenager in Barrow. He didn’t shoot them; why did he care so much to see more?
Plato raised her muzzle and poured a perfect howl into the frozen sky. The other dogs joined in a cacophony of yips and howls that swelled out over the tundra. “Shudup!” Abe growled. He whipped the billowy gut pile with a willow. It made a hollow crack. We’d empty the rumen and take it and the fat intestines home for dog food, second load. We’d leave the lungs, windpipe, stomach contents, and some blood that the dogs didn’t gnaw off the snow. The team sat, rolling their eyes apologetically.
“Don’t hurry,” I mumbled, casual. I glanced down at the gun. Already loneliness was settling like outer space pushing down the sky. The arctic twilight would fade and Abe would be under the stars before he slid into our dog yard.
He threw a caribou skin to me to lie on. Handed over dried meat and a chunk of pemmican with currants, dried cranberries, and caribou fat. “You don’t need to shoot any wolves. You hear? We still have a piece of a wolf skin in the cache.” His face twitched with sudden guilt for leaving. I opened my mouth to encourage the feeling, but he’d stridden back to the runners.
“Okay! Getup there! Hike!” Away they went, the sled heavy and the dogs heaving with their hips out to the sides and their tails stiff with effort. In minutes they had disappeared to a black dot on