Belka, Why Don't You Bark - By Hideo Furukawa Page 0,22

had far too many worthy opponents. There was no guarantee that she would emerge supreme. But her master wanted that, he wanted it so badly…He wanted her to be recognized as a winner in a short- to mid-distance race, and then, if possible, to make a dazzling debut in the world of long-distance racing. Consumed with ambition, Ice’s master searched for just the right race. And he found it. In the snowy Minnesota highlands, where dog sledding was just catching on as a winter sport. Just below the border with Canada.

Who would ever take a real team that far?

No one.

No one but me.

So he rented a truck and drove his twelve dogs down.

In January, Ice and her team attempted the three-hundred-mile Minnesota Dog Sled Marathon. The dogs were in mint physical condition and they encountered no particular difficulties along the way, but still they came in second, losing by fifteen minutes. Ice and the other dogs expected their master to shower them with praise, since second place was still awfully good, but he was clearly disappointed; his shoulders drooped. They got no medal, no prize money—he couldn’t even cover the cost of transporting the dogs. He had screwed up. He was overcome by despair. And then, two days later, he was over it. He had met the woman he was destined for. She was twenty-eight years old and single and lived eighteen miles south of Minneapolis. She didn’t have any dogs. She had, instead, twenty cats that lived with her in a house on land inherited from an aunt. They exchanged glances, for no particular reason, and they realized in a flash that they had been in love in some previous life, and that was that. They got married. The musher moved in with her, bringing his twelve sled dogs, and he put down big, thick roots in Minnesota. He didn’t care about racing anymore. Winning, losing. So what? Love was all that mattered. Medals and prize money? Pshaw—all you need is love. No more of this dog sledding shit for him.

Early in February 1953, Ice and her eleven teammates settled in the low-lying plains of Minnesota, reduced to the status of pets. They were in America now, the home front of the Korean War, in an age when the mood of the country was tense from red-baiting. Everyone was watching I Love Lucy on TV—such a riot. Everything went slow and easy here in the lazy, lukewarm heartland. Totally different from life up in Far North Alaska. Down here in the south.

It got stressful.

There were no ice floes. No vast expanses of snow. You couldn’t run. Not only couldn’t you run, you were ordered not to run. WHAT’S GOING ON HERE? Ice wondered. WHERE THE HELL ARE WE? One member of the team, overcome by the same feelings, fell sick, grew progressively weaker. The depression spread. Still the sled dogs remained obedient to the musher. Except he was no longer a musher. Their master had abandoned his sled, he was no musher. He was their owner, plain and simple. And he knew this, and he felt a little bad. The former musher thought he knew what had made his dogs so disconsolate—it was because he no longer had them pull the sled. But, hey, love wins out in the end! The new wife trumps the dogs. When four dogs finally died, the former musher actually found himself thinking dogs could be kind of a pain.

The sled dogs were no longer loved. But Ice and the other seven loved their master.

The cats were worst of all. Time and again, the twenty housecats attacked the chained-up dogs. There was a malamute with a shredded ear, a husky who had lost an eye. Retaliation was impossible. Because their master’s wife was cat crazy. She was the problem. Their master was still the leader of their pack, of course. Ice, as lead dog, was number two. But now their master made it clear he wanted them to obey his wife. So where did that leave Ice? Number three? And what about the cats, basking in the wife’s affection? Just you try and touch us, they seemed to be saying, leering at the dogs. You’ll catch it from the master’s wife.

So in this world, the dogs…were they all the way at the bottom?

Unwilling to accept this, two more dogs died. Fell sick and died.

A year passed. In winter, a sparkling white blanket of snow allowed the survivors to feel a modicum of their former