The Middle of Everywhere (8 page)

The dogs must sense they're about to head off on an adventure. Each dog has its own pen, which is basically a simple wooden doghouse. Every pen is enclosed inside its own large wire cage. The cages are about twice the size of the pens. The dogs have left their pens and are pressing their front legs up against the wire. One starts howling, and soon the rest join in. A couple leap into the air as if they can't wait to leave.

Steve laughs. “Okay, kids,” he says, “we're almost ready.”

“Hey, Toto,” Steve says, when he unlatches the cage closest to us. Toto is huge, nothing like the little mutt in
The Wizard
of Oz
. Toto rushes out of his cage, practically mowing Steve down. The dog leans forward so Steve can attach him to the fan hitch, a bunch of giant leather leads designed to hold an entire team of dogs. It's called a fan because the leads fan out from the hitch. The fan hitch keeps the dogs spread out and prevents them from bumping into each other or fighting.

“Here, hang onto these leads for me,” Steve says. “Toto here is the one I told you about. He doesn't like pickup trucks.”

It's hard to imagine Tarksalik ever being well enough to pull a dogsled, but then I remember how Steve said Toto was in pretty bad shape, too, after he got hit by a truck.

Steve lets another sled dog out of its cage. This one's a girl, but she's strong-looking.

Steve shows me how to attach her to the harness. “The Inuit invented the fan harness. If a dog gets tangled in his lead, there's enough room for him to get untangled. And if one dog falls through the ice, the others don't end up in the river too.”

His words make me shiver. It's hard to imagine anyone lasting very long in a river up here, even if they're really good swimmers and have fur coats the way dogs do.

Steve takes my elbow and hurries me past the next pen. “We'll get P'tit Eric last.”

P'tit Eric is the leader of the pack. He's even bigger than the others, and when he jumps against the bars of his cage, the ground vibrates. Steve explains that once P'tit Eric is attached to the harness, there'll be no stopping him or the other dogs. “He's a natural born puller,” Steve says. “The others follow his lead.”

I almost don't recognize Etua when he comes running out of the house. “How come you're not wearing your Spiderman pajamas?” I ask him.

“They're in here,” he says, throwing his backpack onto the toboggan. Spiderman's on the backpack too.

“Ever gone out with a dog team before?” Steve asks me as he fastens another dog to one of the leads. He rubs the dog's muzzle.

“Nope, never. Dad said it could be a bumpy ride.”

“Bumpy, yes,” Steve says. “But that's part of the fun.”

When it's time to let P'tit Eric out of his cage, Steve crouches low to the ground to get a good grip on the scruff of the dog's neck. P'tit Eric's ears prick up, and he sniffs the air. As soon as the other dogs spot him, they let out a chorus of wild howls.
A-ooh, a-ooh! A-ooh, a-ooh
! So much for anybody's plans to sleep in on a Saturday morning!

The sled dogs will probably wake up Tarksalik too. I wonder if she feels bad that Steve's dog team is about to head off into the tundra and she's going to spend the weekend lying on the floor in Dad's apartment. Tarksalik's not a sled dog, but Dad told me she likes to come when he and Steve go winter camping. She's fast enough to keep up with Dad's snowmobile. At least she
used
to be fast enough.

“I'm going to mush,” Steve explains. “You and Etua are gonna sit behind me on the
qamutik
. You keep an eye on Etua, okay? Don't let him fall off.” He pokes Etua in the stomach. “Your
anaana
'll never forgive me if I lose you.”

Steve turns back to me. “I want you to watch what I'm doing too. You might get to do some mushing before this weekend's over.”

“Sounds great,” I say, trying to sound excited. What I'm really thinking is, I hope I'm not going to end up in the river like some human Popsicle.

Steve arranges the dogs so they're fanned out against the snow. There's some barking, but mostly they stay where he positions them. Etua makes a spot for me next to him at the back of the
qamutik
. I try not to think how, four days ago, Tarksalik was lying right where I am now sitting. There's no sign of the blue and black plaid blanket with the blue fringes. I wonder whether Steve and Rhoda were able to wash out the bloodstains.

Steve steps onto the front of the
qamutik
and yells out something that sounds like “
Oyt!
”

That sound must mean “Go!” because as soon as he says it, the dogs are off! For a couple of seconds, the
qamutik
scrapes against the hard-packed snow, and then—
whoosh!
—we're flying past houses and bushes and the path that leads to the school. Man, can these dogs ever pull! We must be going almost as fast as a car, and we're not burning gasoline and destroying the Earth's ozone layer while we're at it.

Etua cries out, “
Oyt! Oyt!
” too. I just laugh, a deep long laugh that comes from the bottom of my belly and makes me feel more relaxed than I've felt since I came to George River. The cold air isn't hurting my lungs; right now, it just feels good. Energizing. When we reach a bump in the road, our
qamutik
flies way up in the air.

Up we go! A foot at least, maybe more. No wonder Steve used bungee cord to tie down the packs and coolers! All this
qamutik
is missing is seatbelts!

“
Oyt! Oyt!
” Etua and I shout together. It feels good to shout so loud.

The dogs pull even harder.
Whap!
The
qamutik
lands back on the snow, making a crashing sound as it hits the ground. I can feel my butt slap down against the wooden base of the
qamutik
. Something tells me my butt is going to be black and blue by Sunday night.

It would take twenty minutes at least to walk to the edge of town, but the dogs get us there in under five. The wind whips against our cheeks, and Etua's dark eyes are shining. Right now, I'm having too much fun to notice how cold it is.

The houses, which are crowded next to each other in the center of town where Dad and Steve and his family live, become more spread out, and soon there aren't any houses at all. Just snow. Mountains of it. This is what the moon must look like in winter.

When the road comes to an end, we switch to a narrow path. I can see the tracks snowmobiles have left in the snow. Who needs a snowmobile, I think, when you can travel by dogsled?

I can't help feeling disappointed when Steve tugs hard on the harness and the dogs slow to a stop. The wind is picking up; the sky is still completely dark. We've reached the first bend. I hear barking in the distance. P'tit Eric's dark ears prick up again. Some of the other dogs are panting, their purple tongues hanging out of their mouths. Maybe they need a rest, but not P'tit Eric.

Two more dogsled teams—one is Joseph's—are meeting us here.

Joseph's team turns up first. His dogs growl when they get close to Steve's team. P'tit Eric bares his teeth, then Steve's other dogs start growling too. I hope this isn't going to turn into a dogfight. But Joseph takes charge. “Hey,” he says sternly, and all the dogs, even Steve's, settle down, though they are still eyeing each other as if they are not quite sure whether the other team can be trusted.

Joseph nods when he sees me. “Ay, Noah,” he says, “these are a couple of my IPL students.” He turns to the two boys riding on his
qamutik
. “Tom and Roy.” Both boys nod at me. I notice Tom's eyes aren't as dark as the others. Maybe he has
Qallunaaq
blood in him.

Now another dogsled team pulls up next to Joseph's. These dogs are a little smaller than the others and less aggressive. A couple of them try to sniff one of the dogs at the back of Joseph's team. When the dog growls, the smaller ones back off, their tails between their legs. Their musher is a tall Inuit boy with flushed cheeks. “This here is Jakopie,” Joseph says. “He's IPL too. Jakopie has his own small dogsled team. This is their first long trip. That's why Jakopie only has one passenger.” Jakopie's passenger has his back to me. “I think you know Lenny from school.”

Just my luck. I'm going to be spending the weekend with Lenny Etok.

Lenny turns and smirks at me from the back of Jakopie's
qamutik
.

“Lenny's not an IPL student,” I say.

“Neither are you,” Lenny says.

He has a point there.

Etua gets off our
qamutik
. “Dad,” he says, jumping up and down as he speaks, “Can I ride with cousin Roy?”

“It's okay by me—as long as the other guys don't mind switching places.”

Etua and I are the only ones without rifles slung across our chests. Because they're Inuit, or like Steve, married to an Inuk, they have hunting permits.

Tom slides off Joseph's
qamutik
to give Etua his spot. Then Tom comes over to our
qamutik
. “Nice to meet you.” He reaches for my hand. By now, I don't expect a proper shake. “So you come from the south,” Tom says as he sits down next to me.

“I guess I do. I'm just not used to thinking of Montreal as south of anyplace. In Montreal, south usually means Florida or maybe Mexico.”

Tom grins. “Just about the whole world is south of George River,” he says.

Joseph's glasses are fogged over from the cold. He wipes at them with his mitts, then reaches into his pocket for what turns out to be a battery-operated gps. “Let's review our route,” he says to Steve.

Soon we're off again. Our team is up front; Jakopie's is in the middle, followed by Joseph's. When I turn to look behind me, all I can make out is a blur of dogs—ears and muzzles and legs and torsos and tails—all flying over the snow.

I tug on my ski tuque so it'll cover more of my forehead. I'm the only one who isn't wearing a
nassak
. Still, my tuque has got to be warmer than their
nassak
s, which don't even cover the bottoms of their ears. Maybe people up here are just more used to the cold.

I wiggle my toes inside the boots Dad lent me. They're a touch big, but I wore an extra pair of socks to make up for it. Despite the cold, my toes are still moving. I figure that's a good sign.

There's a thin, pale-blue band of sky over the river now. There's snow everywhere else, with a few scraggly bushes here and there. Not the best place to live on planet Earth if you happen to be a bush.

From my spot on the
qamutik
, all I can see now of Steve's dogs are their rumps and hind legs. As they run, they leave a trail of watery, blackish brown droppings on the snow behind them.

“What's tha—?” I start to ask Tom, but I stop in midsentence. Those droppings are shit. Dog shit. All that pulling must make the dogs crap. Talk about gross! I think back to the Kuujjuaq Airport, where they were selling postcards with pictures of dog teams. Only in those postcards dogs weren't crapping all over the snow!

Tom must've figured out what I was about to ask, because he cracks up. “It's part of life, man,” he says, his eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiles.

Part of life. Wasn't that what Geraldine said about the avalanche?

“Hey, you guys,” Steve shouts from the front of the
qamutik
, without turning around to look at us. “We're coming to a bit of a hill.”

“That means we're gonna have to jump off and run with the dogs,” Tom explains.

“Jump off? Run with the dogs?” I look up ahead; to me, that “bit of a hill” looks more like a small mountain. A very steep small mountain.

But there's no one to answer my questions. Tom has jumped off the
qamutik
and he's already running to catch up with the dogs. I can hear him up ahead, panting.

So I jump too. Only by then, we've started climbing the hill and somehow, instead of landing in a pile of snow, I crash face-first into a snowbank. And because I didn't expect that to happen, I end up losing my footing and falling backward, landing in a bed of powder snow. Man, is it cold!

Dad's boots weigh me down, and when I try to pull myself up, one of the boots comes loose. Even two layers of thermal socks aren't helping to protect me from the cold now. “Crap!” I call out, dancing on one foot as I reach into the snow for the missing boot. Now the snow is getting inside my mitts too. Man, this sucks! And where the hell did that boot get to? It's got to be here somewhere.

Jakopie's dog team pushes past me. A couple of dogs turn their heads when they spot me in the snowbank. It's a bad feeling when you think dogs are laughing at you.

I feel even worse a couple of seconds later, when Lenny sees me in the snowdrift. By then, I've found the missing boot and am trying to get it back on without losing my balance and getting my foot even wetter.

With the dogs, I only had the feeling they were laughing at me. With Lenny, I'm sure he is.

He's running alongside Jakopie's dogs as if it's the most natural thing in the world. “Can't keep up with Inuit dogs?” he calls out as he passes me.

ELEVEN

“W
e're stopping for lunch,” Steve shouts. “It's time for a rest.”

A rest sounds good to me. Jogging in the city is nothing compared to running in heavy too-big boots alongside a dogsled team, and the powder snow only makes it tougher. Not to mention two of the four thermal socks I'm wearing are still soaking wet. Wet and cold is a bad combination. A very bad combination.

Luckily, we're on a flat stretch, so Tom and I are sitting again. I hope he can't tell I'm still trying to catch my breath.

I can feel Tom watching me. “Can I ask you something?” he finally asks.

“Sure, ask away.”

Tom hesitates for a moment. “Did you ever have a Big Mac?”