by Sue Henry
“What is it?” Alex coaxed him.
“Well . . . Heard him swearing at Ginny Kline at Skwentna. One of her dogs got loose and got into it with one of his over a bitch in heat. He yelled at her: ‘If you can’t control your damn dogs, you shouldn’t be out here.’”
“Hmm . . . You think it was personal? Or would he have yelled at anybody?”
“Anybody, I think. I don’t know. Could have been anybody’s dog.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
Solomon nodded and went back to his team.
Jessie waited for his comment.
“One more piece for the puzzle, Jess.”
“Just thought you ought to hear it.”
“How long will it take you to get to Kaltag?” he asked.
“Two more days. Why? Are you going up there now?”
“Yeah. Cas wants to make sure the plane is set to ride out the bad weather they’re expecting. We used up a lot of the fuel we were carrying. He doesn’t just fly that plane, he wears it. So what he says goes. Still, I’m not entirely comfortable being two days up the road, so to speak.”
She looked up at him, caught more by the tone of his voice than his words “What? Is there something else? Last night was completely quiet. No problems.”
He frowned. “Maybe that’s what’s bothering me. Too quiet. I slept like a log last night and found myself wandering around in these old buildings like a tourist a little while ago, like I hadn’t a care in the world. Something feels wrong. I don’t want to let down the guard, Jess, or for you to either.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “But from here on this is serious business. We’re getting into it and shutting out everything else, I’m afraid. That’s the way it’s run. You need your concentration.”
She frowned and shivered.
“You really okay?”
“Yeah . . . That moose and Ryan getting hurt shook me more than I thought. It could have been me. I thought about it, off and on, all night and was jumpy as hell at every shadow in the trail. But . . . yeah. I’m fine.”
“Want out?”
“No. But I’m glad to be running with Mike.”
“Just keep in mind that we can be back anywhere between here and Kaltag in a matter of hours. I wish you weren’t out there.”
Her eyes widened.
Damn, he thought. I didn’t mean . . .
Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing.
Easy, Jensen, he told himself. Easy. She’s tired. She’s scared, like everyone else. So are you. Don’t push it.
Carefully, respectfully, he tried. “I’m sorry, Jessie. I didn’t mean I don’t appreciate what you’re doing. Just keep in mind that we’re here. That’s all. Okay?”
Her mouth relaxed, but she didn’t smile.
“Okay,” she said, as Solomon pulled his team around hers, heading for a resting place. “I’ve got to go, Alex.”
“I know. Jessie? Are we fighting?”
Then she smiled. “Hell, no,” she said. “We don’t know each other well enough yet to do a good job of it, and I’ve got a race to win.”
She stepped onto the sled and bent to the snow hook.
“Hey,” he said suddenly.
She straightened and turned back.
“Buy you dinner in Nome?”
“Well . . .” She hesitated a moment “After I get a shower and a lot of sleep, that sounds good. And, if this race goes as well as I want it to, I’ll buy the champagne.”
She pulled the hook and moved away before he could respond.
She had meant what she said about winning and he felt it. She wasn’t running just to finish well anymore. Scared or not, she was racing to win if she could. It frightened him deeply to think that, for whoever was responsible for Smith, Kline, Koptak, and Ryan, it might be a reason to focus on her.
23
Date: Friday through Sunday, March 8–10
Race Day: Seven, eight, and nine
Place: Kaltag, checkpoint
Weather: Wind and blowing snow, clearing on Saturday
Temperature: High –8°F, low –27°F
Time: Friday morning to Sunday afternoon
When Alex looked back at it later, the second half of the race seemed to have gone faster than the first. Perhaps it was partly because the country was flatter, with less contrast than the pass and canyons. The trail ran along a series of low monotonous hills, then along the long, gentle bends of the Yukon River. After a portage, the route followed the coast in a sweeping curve for over two hundred miles around Norton Sound until it reached Nome, crossing the sea ice in two places.
From the map, he knew that the mushers continued west through Shageluk to Anvik, where they took to the river highway for almost a hundred and fifty miles, passing Grayling and Eagle Island, before coming to Kaltag. Flying straight to Kaltag from Iditarod, he saw only hill after rolling hill, although Caswell drifted a little west to give them a look at the mighty, mile-wide Yukon.
The inactivity of waiting in Kaltag for the two days it took for the first sled-dog racers to arrive left Jensen frustrated and tense.
The storm swept in, stranding the race leaders for almost half a day at Eagle Island. It broke in the early morning hours, only to hover ominously, threatening to close in again.
From radio information, they followed the race, now well over halfway to the finish line. When the weather allowed, Holman’s Iditarod air force kept track of the teams’ locations. Two-thirds of the route would be complete in Kaltag: only three hundred and sixty miles left.
Two groups of leaders developed, running within hours of each other. Harvey, Schuller, Murray, and Martinson formed the first group, leapfrogging each other up the trail. Ellis had dropped back to the second group, several of his dogs suffering from diarrhea and dehydration. He joined Cranshaw, Solomon, Arnold, and Banks, who had caught up in Anvik. The next closest mushers were at least six hours behind. Not immediately threatening.
Everyone was pushing hard and watching closely for advantages. No one stayed long in any checkpoint, pausing only to care for their dogs and get just enough sleep to keep them going. Sleep could be had when the race was over. The mushers were averaging a couple of hours’ rest a day.
A few racers still drove teams of at least fifteen dogs. Some were down as low as nine or ten. To start the race a musher must have at least seven and no more than twenty dogs. He must have at least five on the tow line at all times, including at the legal finish. Dogs may not be added to a team after the start.
There comes a point in the race toward the finish when a carefully considered decision must be made on the number of dogs to keep in a team. More dogs mean a stronger and, usually, a faster team. But the more animals a musher has to maintain, feed, and care for, the more time is required at each stop. Fifteen dogs have sixty feet that may need booties replaced and wounds tended.
This late in the race, everything must be decided and performed in a foggy-minded state of physical and mental fatigue. It is understandable that no one has ever won the race in the first year of running it. Strategy is everything, but unpredictable luck can be taken advantage of, if a musher is in top form and ready for it.
The Yukon River’s very size precludes the sharp snakelike loops of smaller rivers, the volume of its water bending it into wider, more gradual curves. High on one of the bluffs framing one of these curves stands the village of Kaltag, facing east, swept by the winds that follow the river down from the Arctic mountain ranges to the northeast. Weathered log buildings stand near the bluff, with more modern frame houses farther away. Usually one of these, home to a bush pilot and his family, serves as the race checkpoint.
In a state of anticipation, the 250 villagers wait for the Iditarod racers to come through each year. Reporters and photographers begin to arrive soon after the checkpoint officials and equipment are flo
wn in. There is always someone looking down the river hopefully, even though updates from the radio indicate it will be hours before the race reaches them.
Like a winter festival, the Iditarod is a reason for celebration in each community through which it passes, particularly those isolated in the great alone of Alaska’s interior. Cut off by the cold and darkness of winter, cabin fever sets in among the residents in late February and early March, as the days begin to grow longer and the wait for spring seems endless. “Freezing in the dark builds character,” says one Alaskan proverb. But often it encourages depression, claustrophobia, and boredom, which are alleviated by the excitement of the race.
Children spend most of the twelve hours of daylight sliding down steep riverbanks on everything from sleds to plastic garbage bags, always watching for a musher to appear. When the first sled is sighted the shout of “Dog team! Dog team!” rings out, bringing everyone to the bank to watch and cheer it into Kaltag. For the next week the celebration goes on, reviving the spirits of winter-weary villagers. When the last musher has come and gone, they know spring cannot be far behind.
Though Alex was restless he passed the time talking to the locals about the race and dog mushing. The villagers were proud that, until he died in 198l, Edgar Kalland, one of the last survivors of the 1925 serum relay to Nome, lived in Kaltag, managing the store and post office.
The original race to Nome was no sporting event, but a deadly serious race with death. Diphtheria was diagnosed in town late in January of that year, and the Nome doctor, knowing that the local Eskimo inhabitants had no immunity to the disease, never having been exposed, feared an epidemic. Sufficient serum was located in Anchorage, but airplanes were a new concept to Alaska, and the weather was too cold to fly without risking the only such medicine in the state. It was decided to transport it overland by dogsled.
The serum was taken by train to Nenana, and twenty freight teams and drivers were organized to run it over the trail to Nome. The temperature fell to fifty below, and the serum was wrapped and insulated carefully to protect it against freezing and breakage on the rough trail. In a remarkable 127½ hours, the serum run was made. Although the serum arrived frozen, it was still viable enough to stop the epidemic.
Alex asked the checker, Mick Lord, a former racer, about the changes in sleds since the serum run.
“Most mushers used to use the traditional basket sleds built of hardwood and tied together with strips of rawhide, or babiche. Not a bit of metal on them. Now they have plastic runners and rubber tread where the driver stands, to keep him from slipping. The brakes and snow hooks are a little different now too, but the biggest change is the toboggan body. A piece of heavy plastic runs under the whole sled, attached to the runners and protecting the basket. It slides easier, especially in deep snow, but it makes the sled a little stiffer than the old, flexible ones. Lots use them, but a few still race with the old kind. Depends on the musher. One Eskimo guy still uses carved ivory toggles on his sled bag.”
Saturday night, Alex slept poorly. Bad dreams woke him twice. Finally, unable to get back to sleep, he dressed and left the tent to pace the riverbank.
Puffing morosely on his pipe, he walked about half a mile before turning back. A sense that something was about to happen pervaded his thoughts. He felt helpless and stranded. Snow fell, drifting on a light wind, making it impossible to see the frozen river. The curtain of isolation was broken only by a faint light or two that seemed farther away than they were.
There had been no incident since the moose attack, but that didn’t quiet his suspicion that they were far from finished with whoever was threatening mushers. Bits of information turned over and over in the roiling stew of facts in his head. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be able to figure out who was responsible for it all, but a solution to the puzzle wouldn’t rise to the surface where he could skim it off, see it singular and whole. It was a feeling that came at a certain point in almost every challenging case, familiar but annoying.
In the partial shelter of a storage shed, he stopped and sat down on a pile of snow-covered lumber. He was cold and considered going back to his bed, but he repacked his pipe and thought about Jessie instead, thoughts he knew he had been avoiding.
Elbows on knees, he puffed smoke into the dark, thinking over his attraction and confusion.
Wanting her physically was easy. It was the emotional part that gave him the shakes. He no longer found comfort in the false intimacy of casual one-night stands. They left him feeling hollow. You could talk yourself into just about anything, but emotionally you were never fooled. Mornings after were haunted by an emotional hangover for which there was no quick hair-of-the-dog chaser. Avoidance was better than the embarrassment of forgetting a name.
Jessie made him aware of an emptiness inside himself. Under the obvious competence and good humor was the confidence of a woman who knew herself attractive, but didn’t trade on it. Who was openly warm and sharing, but not indiscriminate. She clearly knew the value of commitment to what she chose to do.
He wanted to know what mattered to her, what she thought funny, sad, trivial . . . and yet didn’t want it. He felt pressured by his own pleasure in her.
Am I feeling guilty because of Sally? he wondered, but it didn’t ring true. It had been over eight years, after all.
He thought about those years and how he had lived them, not allowing anyone to get too close. His life was quiet. Now, suddenly, because of Jessie Arnold, it felt crowded and noisy. I don’t want anyone else’s problems, he thought. I want it quiet and calm, controlled and . . . lonely?
If you don’t feel, you don’t hurt, but you don’t laugh much either, or give, or get. He felt as if he had been living in the center of a great silence. Even with all the people he met, places he went, and things he did, he had isolated himself. At times, he felt if he went very carefully, quietly, without speaking or making a sound, no one would know he was there.
He put his head in his hands. He felt raw and disturbed. I haven’t given much to anyone in years, he thought. I don’t think I know how anymore.
Caswell came around the end of the shed to find him, having followed his footprints from the tent. He took in the dejected shape of elbows and knees on the angular pile of lumber.
Alex didn’t realize he was there until Cas laid a companionable hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Middle of the night bejeebers got you?” he asked, sitting down and hunching his parka hood closer to his ears.
“Yeah, I guess,” Jensen replied, relighting his pipe. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“The case?”
“Can’t come up with any real answers. I feel like we’re wallowing around.”
“Maybe we just don’t have enough information yet.”
“I don’t want to get it from another dead musher,” Alex said bitterly.
“Nope. That all?”
Alex exhaled a long stream of smoke, staring into the falling snow. “No, Cas. That’s not all.”
“Jessie Arnold?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Yeah, you know. I been watching. She scares the hell out of you, Alex. Why?”
More smoke, no answer.
“She’s pretty. She’s bright and tough and talented. She likes you. That gets you, doesn’t it?”
A deep breath. “Maybe. That and all that goes with it.”
Caswell was quiet for a long time, thinking. He pulled a knee up and clasped his mittened hands around it. Then he talked to himself, looking toward the invisible river.
“You know, I’ve never been sorry I found Linda. She’s my best friend, and I don’t have to prove anything to her. She makes sure what happens outside gets put in perspective at home. She’s funny and wise and I never know what she’ll say next. Things without her would be black and white. She puts the color in my life.”
He paused and turned t
o meet Jensen’s watchful eyes.
“Color’s not a bad thing in your life, Alex. Might not hurt to try it.”
Standing up, he brushed the snow from the seat of his pants.
“Now, let’s find some coffee, or go back to bed. We’re gonna freeze our cojones out here.”
The next day Jensen found himself, with the rest, looking down the empty river more often. Caswell played cribbage with the radio operator, and Becker used the time to catch up on his sleep. Alex walked up and down the bank, puffing on his pipe.
About two o’clock in the afternoon, a plane landed on the ice below the bluff and Matt Holman crawled out. Moving like an old man, he climbed up and stopped beside Alex, red-eyed and grizzled with a three-day beard.
“Hi,” he said. “Got a place where a guy could catch some z’s?”
“What happened to you?” Jensen asked.
“Not sure I wanna think about it,” Holman responded with a tired grin. “Kind of silly now.
“After the leaders took off for Eagle Island, I got a feeling something was gonna happen to somebody out there. So I flew to Grayling and got on a snow machine. Thought I’d buzz up and catch a hop from Eagle Island. Halfway up it socked in and I spent five hours going the last twenty-five miles.
“Blew so bad I couldn’t see where the ice stopped and the banks started, so I bumped into them a few times, which kept me on the river. Scared to death I’d miss the turnoff and go till I ran out of gas and froze, but I made it. Dragged myself into the checkpoint and collapsed. Just got to sleep when the weather cleared and support flew in to pick me up. So, here I am.”
“And nothing happened?” Jensen asked.
“Nothing, except I frostbit my nose. Everyone’s okay so far and really pouring it on. Won’t be in until late tonight. All I want now is some more sleep and food. Anything going on here?”
“Not so you could tell. Hot cribbage game between Caswell and the ham operator. Which mushers were in Eagle Island?”
Holman grinned as he turned away from Jensen and started for the checkpoint. “She’s okay,” he tossed back over his shoulder, “Said to tell you so.” Without looking back, he continued. “Sort of glad you have a vested interest in this, Jensen. Means you’re doing your best work. Kick me out if I’m still asleep when they come in.”