Legend of the Ghost Dog
Read Legend of the Ghost Dog Online
Authors: Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
I am old now, and I have lived in this hollow near the creek all my life. When I was a girl this land was clear and open. I could watch the northern lights overhead, rippling and snaking through the night sky. Now Mother Earth is taking this place back to herself, one tree, one bush, one vine at a time. One day she will come for me too, and I will go easily enough. I am tied to this land, but they are not happy ties. When death comes for me, I will gladly go even if there is nothing beyond it, even if I will only sleep, as an old poet said, the sleep of the apples.
My childhood house is gone now, collapsed into nothing but rotting lumber, and I am sad for it â it was a good home, warm and roomy, and it was there that my family built a kennel. It was there that we raised dogs.
They were no ordinary dogs, but the best of the best. Siberian huskies. Work dogs. The same line as the great
Leonhard Seppala's famous animals. They were magnificent creatures still carrying the fierce heart of Siberia within them. They were happiest out on the trail, pulling a sled as if it were nothing more than a child's toy, racing silently over the snow as if they were gliding on top of it.
Seppala had built a kennel in Nome to breed and train his teams, and later my people did too. Puppies came every year, more than any girl could dream of having. Silla and I loved them as we loved each other, and shared them as sisters share even what does not belong to them. And our work was important, for all dogs must grow comfortable with people â they must bond with humans and mingle with them from the moment their eyes open.
Silla and I loved our job of playing with the pups. But we knew they were not pets. Though they were gentle as lambs, they were working dogs. We knew we must never, ever think of them as our own.
Not even Caspian.
We were living a dream, we just didn't know it. The rest of the world was so far from us we thought nothing could reach us on the outskirts of Nome. Certainly not the happenings in a tiny country on the other side of the world called Vietnam. But we were wrong. The war left no one untouched. Eventually all three of our brothers would be
called to serve. But Jim was the first to go, in one of the earliest waves of marines sent off to a place called Da Nang.
A darkness had come in that year, 1965. But Silla and I pretended not to notice. Two of the dogs had litters, and Caspian was one of the pups. He was black from head to tail â a lovely, deep black that almost looked blue in the sunlight. Silla said the color reminded her of a drawing she'd seen of the darkest parts of the Caspian Sea, and that's how he got his name. We both fell in love.
Silla and I played with all the puppies, as Daddy instructed us to, but it was Caspian we went running to see each morning. Caspian knew we loved him better than the others. He was never rolling around and wrestling with the rest of them when we came down â he'd sit to one side, watching the door. He waited for us every day, always sitting there like that even if we came late.
But then that awful day came, and Caspian was never the same.
None of us were.
So there I was, at the very end of the earth.
Well, maybe not the
very
end. Alaska was closer to the top of the planet than I'd ever been, but it wasn't exactly the North Pole. And Nome was more isolated than any place I'd ever lived, but it was still a city.
“This place stinks!” my little brother, Jack, was yelling. “We might as well be on the moon!”
“I'd love to live on the moon,” I told him. “Nice and quiet, plenty of open space, no neighbors, and a great view of the earth. Sounds perfect to me.”
“Yeah,” Jack retorted, jabbing a finger in my direction accusingly. “Because you are a NUT JOB!”
At the age of eight, Jack considered himself an expert in what was crazy and what was not. He made no secret of his belief that I was so far from normal I might as well have come from ⦠well, the moon. And I didn't mind. There
were a lot of things I'd like to be in life. But normal had never been one of them.
“Dad sent me in here to make sure you were getting unpacked,” I said.
Jack grabbed a beat-up-looking suitcase near his feet, unzipped it, and hoisted it in the air. The contents spilled out all over the floor of his new bedroom in our dad's cabin.
“Done,” he said.
“If you say so,” I said, backing out the door.
In my own room, everything was already neatly put away. We were only supposed to be here for two weeks, but I'd brought a good selection of books, and all my warmest hiking clothes. The cabin our dad had rented was just outside of Nome. The view from my window showed an unending sea of wavy hills, with not another house in sight. I thought the place was great. Jack, on the other hand, believed we had been cruelly plopped into the center of a vast and uncivilized wilderness.
Jack and I had a week off for spring break, but we were missing an extra week of school too, since our mother was in Japan handling some corporate merger thing. The four of us couldn't go as a family to Japan and to Nome at the same time, so Jack and I had ended up with Dad, and Mom went to Japan on her own. We'd all be back together in upstate
New York soon. In the meantime, Jack liked the idea of missing an extra week of school and doing his classwork via computer. But that was the only thing he was happy about. He'd been expressing his outrage pretty much nonstop since our arrival the day before. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on him.
But I was also itching to go out and explore those hills.
“What do you say, Henry â are you up for a walk?”
My beagle was asleep at the foot of my bed. He opened his eyes at the sound of my voice and gave me a weary look, heaving a big sigh at the word
walk
. Henry's world revolved around three things: food, affection, and sleep. But once he got outside, he loved to roam as much as I did.
I made a quick trip down the hall to let my dad know I was heading out.
My father was in the tiny third room that was doubling as his bedroom and office. He was typing on his laptop when I walked in, his shaggy black and gray hair standing every which way on his head. He looked up and smiled over the top of his reading glasses when I came in. I made a mental note that he was looking a bit on the thin side â when he started writing a new book, he often forgot to eat. I'd get some kind of stew going for dinner, preferably full of sausage and vegetables. Mom had given me a longer-than-usual lecture
on the phone, about how I was the one who had to take care of Dad and Jack, because they'd never do it themselves.
“How's it going, Sweet Tee?” my dad asked.
Everybody called me Tee, because I hated my full name, which is Anita. My father used variations from Sweet Tee to Hot Tee to Iced Tee, depending on my mood. Or his.
“I'm good,” I said. “The prisoner in cell block J may be plotting some kind of rebellion, though.”
“I consider myself warned,” my father said. “I was afraid Jack wouldn't like it here. I just didn't feel like I had a choice â I can't write this book without being here to research and interview people, really live it for a while. And the firm made it pretty clear they needed your mom to be in Japan. You know. It was either Alaska, Japan, or sticking you with your grandparents.”
“Believe me, you made the right choice,” I said. “Jack will live. And I love it already. I was going to take Henry out for a walk, if that's okay.”
“Great idea,” Dad replied. “Just don't go too far. The realtor said it's easy to get turned around out there. If you get lost, you can't exactly pull over and ask for directions.”
“I'll be careful,” I promised. “Don't worry. And I'll be back in time to get something going for dinner.”
My father smacked his head with his hand.
“I almost forgot! Joe â the guy who's going to be my research assistant â is stopping by tonight to introduce himself. I thought maybe we should ask him to stay for dinner.”
“No problem,” I said. “I'll make enough for four.”
“Five,” my father corrected. “He's going to have his daughter along with him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay, five then. Will she eat stew, do you think? Do you know how old she is?”
“No idea,” he said. “I think he said she's in seventh grade, whatever that means.”
My father was a real space cadet sometimes. I tried not to take it personally.
“Well, I'm in seventh grade,” I reminded him patiently. “And I'm twelve. So she's probably around my age.”
He looked really surprised for a moment, like I'd just solved the riddle of the Sphinx or something.
“Huh. I thought she'd be younger. Well good, you'll have somebody to hang out with then,” he said.
Then he started typing again, which meant he was pretty much lost to the rest of the world for the next hour â or four.
I headed back to my room for my hiking boots and coat. I wasn't happy to hear that my dad's assistant would be
bringing his daughter. Unlike Jack, I didn't want to have someone to hang out with. I was kind of picky about my friends. I was into reading and hiking the way so many girls in my grade seemed to be into clothes and celeb gossip. I had been looking forward to some quiet time in Alaska. And the last thing I wanted to do was make small talk over dinner with some bubblehead.
But I didn't have to worry about that right now. Henry perked up when he saw me lacing my boots. I layered up in a few T-shirts, then zipped myself into my thick Patagonia jacket â guaranteed to stay toasty even in Antarctica â though I was glad I wasn't going to have the chance to test that theory. Alaska in April was plenty cold enough.
“Okay, buddy, let's go!” I said to Henry, dangling his leash in the air.
Henry hopped off my bed and took his time indulging in a slow stretch, his front paws pressed into the floor and his butt extending skyward in a picture-perfect downward-facing dog. He yawned and shook himself, then sat in front of me expectantly, his huge velvety ears framing his face. Henry didn't fetch, had a weakness for digging through garbage cans, and was useless as a watchdog, but my beagle was hands down one of the most adorable-looking animals ever to grace the planet. I knelt down and hugged him,
enjoying the little blast of beagle breath he sent my way as he snuffled my face, then clipped the leash to his collar.
Once we were through the front door, Henry stopped to sniff the air. There was open space in every direction, and hills and woods off in the distance. The sky seemed so vast it almost made me dizzy to look up at it. I was in completely unknown territory. Which way should I go?
Henry started pulling me to the left. I saw what his nose had already located â a worn path, leading up a series of small hills. Taking a deep breath of brisk fresh air, I followed Henry's lead.
Day one in Alaska. Off into the unknown.