Leader (Angel Paws) Read online

  Leader

  an Angel Paws short story

  Jordan Taylor

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  Copyright © 2013 by Jordan Taylor. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or dogs, living or dead, is coincidental.

  No trees were harmed in the creation or publication of this work.

  Short Stuff Press

  * * *

  In memory of Inigo and Mawson; two honest dogs.

  Leader

  Start with the dogs. End with the dogs. In the middle, pray.

  The words run through Aaron’s mind as he squints against blackness. The team of Alaskan Huskies vanishes ahead, beyond the reach of his headlamp. Collective breaths of thirteen dogs lift in frozen clouds over their backs as they jog, creating an eery, ice-glow through electric light.

  Aaron’s eyes sting, lashes trying to freeze together. His feet feel numb on sled runners inside boots approved for 50-below. He shifts his feet, making sure blood still flows.

  Words bounce through his head like pingpong balls. His father-in-law’s words: Start with the dogs. End with the dogs. In the middle, pray.

  That’s what he has done, hasn’t he? Every morning, every rest, every stop, always the dogs. He can look after himself. They have no one but him.

  Feeding, watering, checking them over—feet, gums, legs, eyes, skin. Are they fit? Energetic? Hydrated? Paws strong and well? No ice? No cuts? Good coloring? No pale mucous membranes or bloodshot eyes?

  Of course, at every checkpoint along the trail, a race veterinarian is also there, yet that does nothing to ease Aaron’s sense of responsibility. These dogs depend on him. They will not stop on their own. They will not look back and say, “Hey, boss, my left shoulder’s feeling stiff. Could I ride on the sled for a few miles?”

  He started the race with sixteen. Down to thirteen now—sending “dropped” dogs out on bush planes at checkpoints. It was okay with Teek, who’d started limping on a foreleg. It was okay with Glacier, who had sore paws. But he would trade any two dogs in the team to get Quest back. He never imagined he would drop Quest.

  Smoke billows and churns above the dogs in an endless line ahead. Darkness closes on each side, reaching after him from behind, engulfing him like water.

  Aaron lifts one numb foot from a runner to shake it vigorously, then the other. He pulls his hands from the handlebar one at a time, clenching and unclenching his fingers inside thin gloves, snow gloves, and a final layer of beaver skin mittens.

  So tired. The dogs run best at night. Good temperatures for them—no chance of overheating. They run almost without sound. Only the frozen, muted click of collar and harness snaps, the patter of dozens of paws, and the slide of sled runners over snow fills the silence like a whispered song.

  He should sing, talk, write a letter in his head, a novel—do something to entertain his mind.

  But … all that smoke: thick, gray, gleaming in his headlamp over the dogs’ backs, puffs and swirls of it. How did all this smoke get on the trail? Why don’t the dogs mind? Bright specs flash and glow around the jogging team. Sparks fly from their paws, dance off their fur, then spin away into darkness.

  Aaron’s heart leaps into his throat. His team is on fire.

  “Stop! Whoa!” Not bothering with the drag or setting his snow hook, Aaron dashes alongside the sled.

  Grayling and Kaltag, his wheel dogs, jump and look around, staring at him. Other dogs down the team look back, slowing until the whole team stops. Aaron drops to his knees beside Kaltag, the first dog he comes to, and grabs him, throwing snow on fur, trying to pat out the flames.

  Kaltag wags his tail and licks Aaron’s face. Beside them, Grayling stares. The next two dogs, Mawson and Keeneye, turn half around in their harnesses to watch. In the headlamp’s glow white ice glistens around their whiskers and muzzles, on their chins and cheeks. Keeneye cocks her head. Mawson wags his tail. Kaltag offers Aaron his paw.

  Aaron stares at them. “Sorry.” He clears his throat. It looked so real. So … fiery.

  Kaltag shoves his paw out more insistently, hitting Aaron’s arm. Aaron catches the paw through his vast beaver mitt and pats Kaltag.

  “Good boy.” He reaches to rub Grayling. “Good dogs. Okay.”

  He stands, shaking. So real. And it happened before. From the second day he was out, sleepless almost round-the-clock since two days before the race started, he has been seeing things. These hallucinations range from shadowy apparitions chasing his team to sparks and fire.

  He glances up the line, headlamp picking out the long team of huskies until they vanish into glowing eyes and reflective strips on their harnesses. Not one is on fire.

  The dogs shift, turning, some trying to approach him. Leader might swing all the way around and trot back for a look.

  “Okay!” Aaron calls through silence. “Let’s go. Hike, Leader! Hike, Chinook!”

  The team swings into line. Aaron snatches the sled as it moves past, stepping onto runners.

  “Good dogs! Let’s go!”

  This won’t do. He has to keep his mind active, his feet moving. Terah advised singing on the trail. Aaron wracks his brain but cannot remember a single song. Not even a radio jingle.

  What else?

  He recites every book title he can think of: “The Speed Mushing Manual: How to Train Racing Sled Dogs, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Gone with the Wind … uh … Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers, Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled, The Great Gatsby, and … and.…”

  He trails off, unable to think of another book. It doesn’t seem possible. He’s read many books. And knows about even more. Yet … that seems to be all at the moment.

  So late. Dark. He closes his eyes.

  No, that won’t do either. He hasn’t the faintest idea how far they are from the next checkpoint. Soon. Just … stay awake until then. And away from fires.

  No songs, no more books, nothing. His father-in-law’s words: Dogs. Dogs. Pray. The Lord’s Prayer pops into his head. Perhaps he can turn that into a song.

  “Our Father who art in heaven,” Aaron calls in a loud baritone.

  Kaltag looks around at him. Grayling only twitches his ears.

  “Is it ‘who’ art in heaven, or ‘which’ art in heaven?” He starts over, sticking with “who”. At the end, he begins again. And again.

  The silent team jogs on. Snow-shrouded wilderness slides past like a slow river.

  Far ahead, Aaron spots the faintest flicker and glow of electric lights: checkpoint. He whoops and yells, breaking off mid-verse, encouraging the dogs on.

  “Good girl, River! Let’s go! Come on Kaltag, come on Grayling! Let’s go, Mawson! Good dog, Chinook!”

  Almost as an afterthought, he remembers Leader. Oh, yes—Leader. With Quest—the best lead dog Aaron has ever known—gone, Aaron is stuck with Leader. Whether he likes it or not. Whether Leader is ready for this or not.

  “Good boy, Leader, hike!”

  ~ ~ ~

  He was born in the middle of their bed. Terah closed Quest in the whelping pen the day before, but Quest became more and more restless until she sat against the gate, howling: calling for Terah. Sitting with the expecting mother in the pen had not helped. Quest, usually so self-contained, climbed into Terah’s lap, then attempted to move up to her shoulders. Terah released her from the pen.

  Quest streaked past yelping dogs in the dog yard—a mix of fences and tie-outs—to the cabin door. Aaron, who had come to the door to check on his wife and her favorite lead dog in the whelping pen
, stepped aside as Quest dashed through the kitchen, then leapt onto their bed. Not a moment too soon.

  Terah ran after her, boots crunching the last snow of spring as sunset cast a fuchsia glow across her flushed face. She gripped Aaron’s arm, looking past him to Quest at the opposite end of the cabin, licking and whimpering as if talking to herself.

  Aaron sipped his coffee. “So … where are we sleeping tonight?”

  Quality, not quantity, was the philosophy of the Fairfield kennel, which Terah’s father started almost 50 years before. Averting his eyes from blood and stepping outside for a deep breath as Terah hurried forward, Aaron felt grateful they had only one new litter every two or three years.

  John and Ruth Fairfield had finally retired, moving south to town, over an hour away in best summer driving conditions. Now the kennel, the land, the racing, the responsibility, were Terah’s and Aaron’s.

  Aaron grew up in Anchorage, knowing the Fairfields only as distant family friends. He enjoyed the outdoors and trekking to remote places where no engines roared and no electricity hummed. But he also appreciated coming home to indoor plumbing and power outlets.

  When Ruth and her then teenage daughter spent a few nights with his family while visiting Anchorage, Aaron saw Terah for the first time since they were both in grade school. At first, he was startled when Mrs. Fairfield invited him to stay with her family.

  “We can’t pay you much, Aaron. But we’ve got a guest cabin and we can teach you everything you could ever want to know about dogsled racing. We always need extra help getting ready for the winter season.”

  It wasn’t until later that Aaron realized his open-mouthed, glassy-eyed staring at Terah while she told him about her dogs and racing, had made Mrs. Fairfield believe he was fascinated by sled dogs. He was, in a way. It was always something he’d been interested in. He loved seeing races, loved dogs, had never missed the start of an Iditarod in Anchorage.

  A lot of years had passed since that sunny afternoon in his childhood home with Mrs. Fairfield and Terah and his own mother eagerly encouraging him to try it. (“What an opportunity. Thank you for offering, Ruth.”) A whole lot of years. College for both—Aaron in Anchorage, Terah long-distance. The wedding. Her parents retiring and the newlyweds settling in the remote cabin. Remote, but not primitive.

  They already had running water and electricity when Aaron first visited. Now, he’d made sure of other improvements: Internet, propane, a relatively luxurious indoor bathroom with a full shower and bath. He converted the guest cabin into a studio for Terah. A sculptor, she found a market with shops catering to tourists in the coastal towns far south of them. His own work engineering came and went. During the summer, he often had to stay gone all week with a commute over four hours roundtrip. The kennel was down to under 30 dogs then, but Aaron still didn’t like leaving her alone out there.

  Winters were the best. In seasons between puppies, when the dogs were fit and hyper with snow-joy, Terah and Aaron could harness every dog in the kennel to two sleds and spend as many days and nights on the trail as they wished, no mouths to feed at home, the bills paid for now.

  Aaron first started with sprint races, though theirs were not sprinting dogs. They were distance dogs. He worked up to mid-distance events. The dogs loved them, hysterical with excitement at the start, happy and ready to push on at the finish. By his third two-day race, Aaron came in second place, much to his own surprise. He’d never thought of winning races. That was Terah’s department. Modest prize money did help offset kennel expenses.

  When Quest arrived, Terah told Aaron she would be one in a million. As an adolescent Quest had a noble bearing and poise which even Aaron noticed. A pretty little creature, cream and white, weighing little over 40 pounds, she moved like a phantom through the snow, bright blue eyes always watching the trail ahead.

  By the time she was four years old and had her first litter on their bed, Quest had won nine races for Terah. With the infrequent puppies in the kennel and the importance of staying in racing trim for Quest, it would also be her only litter. The four dark, wet blobs fighting for their first meal, looked just the same to Aaron. By the next morning, Terah could tell one from the other and had picked out distinguishing characteristics.

  “See how the one female always wakes up first? And this one’s small but he still gets around faster than his two brothers?”

  The honest answer was, “No.” Even when she pointed these charming details out, Aaron could not tell the difference. But he nodded and asked if they could have their bed back. They’d slept on the floor in sleeping bags after the birth.

  Terah moved Quest—top quilt from their bed included—out to the whelping pen that day. Aaron cleaned and fed jubilant kennel dogs while Terah did several loads of laundry and cleaned the cabin, interrupted frequently to sit with Quest.

  Aaron let Mawson, the pups’ sire, out of the run he shared with two neutered males. He bounced around Aaron like a yoyo, then dashed off to the whelping pen, which every dog had been most interested in since Quest occupied it.

  Mawson, a long-legged team dog, was tricolored, powerful, and an all-around racer. He excelled at both sprint and distance and was what mushers called an “honest” dog—he never slacked in the harness, never failed to do his best. Terah used him as ambassador when she did talks on sled dogs for schools or libraries in southern Alaska. If he found a group of children to pet him, he would lie on the floor for an hour while she talked.

  Aaron always felt Mawson was a bit of a knucklehead and felt surprised he’d been chosen to pair with Terah’s precious Quest. Mawson wasn’t even a lead dog. But Mawson had his own qualities which Terah said complemented Quest’s: “It’s not about great leaders. It’s about great dogs.”

  Mawson had been in all nine of Quest’s winning races as well.

  When Aaron opened his kennel gate and invited Mawson to meet his family, the husky bounded to the pen and pressed his nose to the wire. Lying inside the warm box on her quilt and straw with Terah rubbing her chin, Quest looked up. Silently, she drew back her lips to show Mawson her teeth.

  Though the pups were not visible to him, hidden inside the box and against their mother, Mawson lashed his tail and sniffed up and down. He licked his whiskers, then arched his neck, taking a step back, and vomited beside the fence.

  Terah beamed. “Look at that. He’s such a good dad.”

  “If you say so.” Aaron grabbed the shovel leaning against the fence.

  “He’s offering to feed them,” Terah said. “That’s how wolves feed pups when they’re being weaned. He’s telling her he’s willing to feed his family.”

  “So this is the canine equivalent of assuring her he’ll bring home a paycheck now that they have a baby?”

  “Something like that.” Terah chuckled.

  By the time the puppies were six weeks old and moving about the pen on their own, Aaron still thought they looked the same. All four matched their dark father with cream and white markings. Only one had the blue eyes of his mother and another had complete heterochromia with a solid brown and a solid blue eye. This bi-eyed dog was the one who took after his father most in personality—excessively friendly and always passive to both people and dogs.

  Aaron could not have been more surprised when Terah named the puppies.

  “Leader? That one? With the different eyes who’s always getting plowed by his brothers and sister?”

  “It suits him.” Terah stood inside the pen with her clipboard of kennel records as she watched the pups. “He notices things the others miss. He pays attention when they’re napping. He was the first to notice ravens and storm clouds. That’s a lot of thinking when you’re seven inches tall and have just met the world.”

  It wasn’t until the first snow had fallen and Leader was six months old that Aaron began to see what Terah noticed from the start:

  While the rest of the puppies played with a beef bone, Leader sat against the southwest corner of the pen, his back to the wire fence. H
is black ears were pinned against his skull, nose lifted as if sniffing into the wind, though the autumn day was still and unseasonably warm. Soon, Leader stood. He trotted to his plywood box, climbing in among straw to vanish from Aaron’s sight.

  Half an hour later, an arctic blast that seemed to have swept straight from the top of the world crashed on them from the northwest, bringing a 24-hour blizzard.

  A week later, with roads passible, despite plenty of good snow for training the dogs, Aaron was repairing sleds when he spotted Leader break off play to bound on top of his dog box. Ears pricked, tail up and waving, he gazed south, down the road.

  Aaron paused, looking toward the road, but heard and saw nothing. He had returned to work when Leader threw back his head and howled.

  The rest of the kennel joined, though halfheartedly, soon falling silent to get back to their naps. Only dawn and dusk were the team’s prime howl times.

  Close to twenty minutes later several other dogs became interested in gazing down the road, watching the same spot Leader had remained fixed on all that time. Quest and Keeneye barked. The rest of the kennel exclaimed with yips and woofs. Then Aaron heard the engine.

  Terah’s parents pulled up in their Jeep, sending every dog into jumping, barking, spinning delight.

  Aaron gazed across the dog yard to Leader, now trotting back and forth along his fence, waving his tail with the others. Not barking, Aaron noticed, but he could have sworn that dog grinned at him.

  Aaron had previously seen these knowing behaviors in dogs, but not a dog like Leader. He was just a puppy. Besides, he fit none of the other wise dog traits: bullied by his siblings, edged out at mealtimes, humble, silly, the class clown. To get attention from older dogs he carried around water bowls or rubber toys, even resorting to chasing his tail when these prizes failed to draw admiration.

  Late in the winter, when Terah began training him with Quest and another experienced leader, Siberia, Aaron couldn’t help laughing at Leader’s first attempts at double lead.