Snowhook by Jo Storm

“Peter, I need to get insulin for my mom!” Hannah was rapidly calculating in her head. Most of the driving out here was on back roads or secondary highways. An hour by car was probably about nine hours by dogsled. That was two more nights.

“Maybe Jonny Swede has some,” said Peter.

“Insulin? Only diabetics use insulin.” She tried to use her own obviously, idiot tone.

Peter shrugged and Hannah glared at him, raging at his careless nonchalance. He didn’t even seem to care how sick her mom could get without insulin.

“Does he have a satellite phone?” she asked.

Peter laughed. “He doesn’t even have a fridge. He keeps all his stuff in a cold cellar. He dragged this old bus up there to make an outhouse, too. This great big long yellow bus with a shitter in the driver’s seat.”

“Wow. Gross.”

Peter shrugged again. Sometimes it felt like he wrapped himself around this northern place like a blanket, protecting it. Even if he thought it was gross that Jonny Swede didn’t have a fridge and used a bus for a toilet, he would never say.

“Then why would we go there?”

“He has a snowmobile. He knows my dad.”

“Your dad is in Quebec.”

“He’ll come back when they figure out what’s happening here. Plus Jeb probably called in to her case worker.”

“Case worker?”

“Yeah, the guy from the Forces who talks to her when she’s like this. She always thinks he’s her superior officer when she’s gone like that,” he said, putting a finger to his temple. He poured some of the boiled water into the stew pot, swirled it around, then dumped it out on the trail.

“Who cares who Jeb calls?” said Hannah, annoyed at Peter for making it all about him. As usual.

“Well, if she calls her case worker, he usually calls my other aunt in Temagami, and then she’ll come out herself or get in touch with townspeople here and have one of them come out to check on Jeb. Friends of my dad, sometimes. Sometimes a guy from the Legion.”

“No one can get to her. The roads are all closed.” Peter scowled at her. “You go to Jonny Swede’s, then,” she continued. “I’m going to Timmins.” She looked over at Sencha, who had emerged from the tent and was stretching.

“Well, you can’t use the snowmobile, ’cause I am. I’m taking Jonny back to Jeb’s. He knows how to take care of her.”

“But I need to get to Timmins. We can stop by Jeb’s on the way back, after my place.”

“We’ll see what Jonny says,” said Peter.

“Okay.”

Peter nodded as though he had expected her to agree — or he didn’t care. He covered the fire, put the camping things back into the packsack, and placed it in the sled basket while Hannah broke the tent down. They both folded up the ground sheet that the tent had sat on.

“Do they call him Jonny Swede because he’s Swedish?” she asked, packing the ground sheet in the supply bag while Peter poured water from the pot into both of their water bottles.

“No, because he’s from Norway,” said Peter, rolling his eyes. He handed her a full bottle. “Here. Drink.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After they’d each finished their bottle of water, Peter refilled them again. He packed away the cooking things while Hannah looked over the dogs and hooked up Sencha’s harness.

The sky hovered over the tops of the trees like it was somehow closer than usu

al, and that feeling was made even worse by the snow that fell and fell and fell. Hannah made an effort to take her mind off the falling snow, lest its constant downward motion creep into her brain, bringing her down, too. Instead, she tried to see it as a good thing: without the snow, the day would have been very dark.

The dogs were a mess. She let Bogey off the gangline to relieve himself. He immediately raced to a nearby tree and watered it for a long time, then busied himself sniffing out the best toilet. Both Nook and Rudy had been trained to relieve themselves while still on the gangline; if they were running, they simply pooped as they ran, and they’d wait for a stop to move off the trail as much as the gangline would allow before urinating where they stood.

But the house dogs were not like that. Bogey, especially, was very picky about his toilet business. No one could watch, and he couldn’t do it near anyone else, either. But she could let Bogey off without having to worry about him running away — something she couldn’t do with the sled dogs. They had never learned sit, heel, or come, because they had never needed to. Just like Sencha had never had to learn gee and haw, the right and left of dogsledding.