He did as I asked, easing out of the car. Trusty followed him out. I reached over and popped open the glove compartment. I could hear Will screaming, “Hurry, Donna, hurry!” which made me think the car was barely hanging on to the side of the drop-off, but still, I moved carefully, mindfully, as I first got my purse from the backseat and then pulled the bag of Will’s medicine out of the glove compartment.
Then I struggled to open my door. I realized that the angle of the car—my door must be facing up—was making it hard. The car slipped a little. I heard the trees creaking from the weight of the car and camper.
I shoved the door as hard as I could, scrambling out as it opened, barely getting my leg out of the way before it slammed shut again. Then I half-crawled, half-ran up the incline to Will and Trusty.
We stared at our car and camper, creaking against the thin stand of pines. Then there was a sharp crack as several of the trees gave way to their weight and our car and camper skittered out of sight, crashing through other brush and small trees. After that, the moan of the wind took over again as the only sound filling the air.
I looked at Will. His eyes were wide and dark, his face pale, his breathing jagged. I knew he was scared about what had just happened, about our situation, but I also knew that he was weak from his illness and the side effects of his medicine.
I clenched the bag of medicine in my hand. At least I’d saved that. I shoved it into my purse, which held the rest of our money in the letter from Mr. Cahill.
Will hugged his deed and atlas to his chest. Trusty stood staring at us.
I guess I had every right, in that moment, to be upset and angry.
But instead, in that cold, terrifying moment after we’d lost our car and camper, I felt a warm peace rise through me. We’d nearly lost our lives—but we hadn’t. We had each other and the few things that were necessary for our survival.
“Come on,” I said. I scrambled up the hillside, sometimes pulling Will to help him over the steepest parts. Trusty crawled up beside us.
Finally, we made it to the top, back to the snow-swept road.
There, a gift awaited us: the fold-down hatch from the back of the camper. It must have bounced open as we went over the side and cracked off in the cold.
Despite everything, I smiled, an idea forming. I knelt down and called to Trusty.
“Go on,” Will said, his teeth chattering. “Go to Donna.”
I pulled the scarf from around my neck, stared into Trusty’s pale blue eyes. Then, slowly, I reached for the dog. For just a second, my terror of the beast came back…but then I let it go, let it sweep away with the wind. Gently, I closed my arms around Trusty’s neck, buried my face in the fur of his scruff, breathed in his deep, musky scent.
“I know you can’t understand me,” I whispered. “But I need to say this. I don’t think Will can walk the rest of the way, and I’m not sure I can carry him. So I need you to help me. Help me help Will.”
Then I gently tied one end of the scarf around Trusty’s body. I tied the other end to a jagged piece of metal sticking out from the broken-off hatch. Will stared at me, then slowly nodded and lay down in the hatch, curling up for warmth against the wind.
I started walking down the road, along the edge against the rising hillside, as far away from the drop-off as possible. Trusty moved forward, beside me, and on the slick road, the lightweight hatch slowly began moving with Trusty’s effort.
Based on how fast we’d been going and how long we’d been driving since leaving Northway, I did a few calculations in my head.
We had four miles to go.
I don’t remember a lot of detail from those four miles. I remember just in snatches—cold, snow, at times helping Trusty pull the makeshift sled, other times pushing it, Trusty howling and howling and howling. I remember spotting a cabin in the distance, wondering if it was a mirage…a truck pulling up to us, Trusty howling some more, then calming…a steady, commanding male voice…coming to a cabin…a calm, soothing female voice…my own voice, trying to explain…getting out of cold clothes into warm ones and a warm bed….
I remember waking up in a haze of warmth, under a thick blanket in a dark room. I remember somehow knowing that we were safe, in the cabin of Ray Martin, a sergeant in the Alaska Territorial Police, just outside of Tok, Alaska—but not knowing how I knew that.
Tok, Alaska!
Somehow, we’d made it the last few miles.
Slowly, stiffly, I got out of the bed, and was struck by the chilliness of the room. I was wearing a thin, too-large nightgown and a pair of socks that weren’t my own. I was confused for just a second, before remembering that our car and everything we’d packed were gone. The nightgown was a loan from Josie, Ray’s wife. Draped over the end of the bed was a robe, which I put on. My and Will’s clothes were folded up neatly on a wooden chair near the door.
I stepped out of the bedroom and into the parlor and took in the scene before me. Will was curled up in a chair in front of the fireplace, napping, Trusty on the floor by his chair. Closer to the fire was another dog, also a husky.
Sergeant Martin and his wife sat at a small table, quietly sharing a meal. The aroma of the food—some kind of stew—was intoxicating. My stomach rumbled.
Mrs. Martin looked up and smiled. “Good evening, Donna!”
I realized I must have slept the night before, after Sergeant Martin found us, and through the whole day. A little flush of shame crept over my face. I’d never slept that long before, never left Will unattended that long. I looked at him, a lurch of worry replacing my hunger pangs.
“Will is fine,” she said. “He’s had dinner. And his medicine.”
I looked back at her. She smiled. “Last night, you told us about his condition and the dosage of medicines that he needs. It was one of the first things you told me when Ray brought you both here.”
Thin, filmy memory washed over me. What else had I told them? Or had Will told them? I wasn’t sure. But suddenly, I felt weary again, and in the next second, washed over by not only the physical warmth in the cabin but by a calm, steady knowledge that we were all right here, and that whatever came next would be all right, too.
Mrs. Martin stood up. “Come to the table. I’ll get you a bowl of stew. Venison. I hope that’s all right.”
Sergeant Martin looked up from his bowl and touched her hand. “Let me get it—”
But she gently, playfully swatted his hand away. “You worry too much. I’m fine to walk two steps from the table to the stove!”
She turned toward the stove, and I studied the profile of her large belly. She was going to have their baby any day now.
“Venison stew sounds wonderful,” I said, and walked over to the table. By the time I sat down, Mrs. Martin had placed a steaming bowl of stew before me. I breathed in the heavenly scent, and then I started eating, lost in the wild, rich taste of the meat and savory broth, which I sopped up with a chunk of tender bread. Without asking, Sergeant Martin refilled my bowl, and I devoured that, too.
I finally looked up from my meal, feeling a little embarrassed at how much and how quickly I’d eaten, but I’d never been hungrier in my life, or felt so nourished in appeasing my hunger. “That was good,” I said.
Mrs. Martin smiled. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Last night you were too exhausted to eat.”
Sergeant Martin gave me a long, penetrating look. “When I found you, you were carrying your brother piggyback.”
I frowned. “What happened to our sled?”
“You were muttering something about that. But I didn’t see a sled.”
“It was from the back of our camper, the pull-down hatch in the back, which broke off when our car and camper went off the road. I made a sled out of the hatch and my scarf, and Trusty pulled Will for a while.”
Sergeant Martin lifted his eyebrows. “Clever. But I didn’t see a sled. Where did your car and camper go off the road?”
“A few miles outside of Northway.”
He studied me
for a long moment. Finally he said, “Do you have any idea how lucky the two of you are?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. And then, “No.”
“I got a call from Molly Donovan in Whitehorse to watch out for you. And your father placed a call to the deed office in Tok, to watch for you. He’d learned from a friend of yours, who I guess was with you part of the way on this crazy journey of yours, that you were headed here.”
Sergeant Martin didn’t seem like Sergeant Striker from the show—all hearty and adventurous and ready to face a challenge in the Alaskan wild, no matter how dangerous. Sergeant Martin was a much more practical man. “Your father was beside himself with worry about you, as he should have been. You could have been attacked by wild animals. Probably the only thing that kept them at bay was your dog, who was howling more fiercely than our Skipper ever has, even when he’s seen bear or wolf. You could have wandered off the road, into wilderness. You could have—”
Mrs. Martin stood, put a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Ray! But they didn’t. They made it here.”
“Lucky,” Sergeant Martin grumbled. “Foolish—and lucky.”
I looked at him. Lucky? Will was dying. We’d made this trek to fulfill his last wish. “I don’t remember everything I told you,” I said. “My brother—”
Mrs. Martin moved her hand from her husband to me, patting me gently on the back. “You told us, sweetheart.”
Sergeant Martin shook his head. “I understand why you two came here. But I’m sorry. Getting to that land is too hard, too dangerous. Even if I wanted to take you, I can’t leave my wife to go on such a trek. Your father has already made arrangements for the two of you to fly by bush plane to Fairbanks, and from Fairbanks to Seattle, and take a bus back to Ohio—”
“What? Wait! Have you told Will this?”
Sergeant Martin finally looked away from me. Then he nodded.
I looked over at Will, curled up in the chair, and suddenly knew that he wasn’t resting peacefully and deeply, as I had been. He was curled up in defeat.
I looked back at Sergeant Martin. My voice grew thick and shaky. “We have to see that one square inch of his land before we go back. We have to. He’s dying and this is his last wish, his dream, and I’d rather die myself trying to get him there, than”—suddenly, tears streamed down my face—“than to come this far and disappoint him, and—”
Sergeant Martin shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
My mind raced. Surely there was someone, somewhere in or near Tok who could help us….
“Sol Capputo!” I exclaimed.
Sergeant Martin and his wife suddenly stared at me as if I’d gone mad.
“Back in Whitehorse, Molly Donovan said that once we got here, if we needed help, we should find Sol Capputo. Maybe he knows someone who could get us out to that land—”
“Why, he could get you there himself!” Mrs. Martin said, excitement growing in her voice. “He was a miner and still is a tracker…and didn’t he help that man who came here from the cereal company go see the land before he bought it?”
“Yes, Josie, but he’s also half-crazy! I’ve had to throw him in lockup—”
“Ray!” Mrs. Martin snapped.
I thought I saw just a bit of amusement around the corners of his mouth.
She smiled at him. “They’ve come this far,” she said softly. “Let Sol take them the rest of the way.”
Chapter 30
The next morning, November 5, 1953, Will, Trusty, and I set out with Mr. Capputo in his old, jittery blue truck. The windows didn’t go up all the way, which helped with breathing in spite of eau de Capputo. I thought he might have last bathed to celebrate the end of World War II.
At the deed office, we learned that all the deeds to the square inches were numbered consecutively. Will’s was lot number 13,532,181, so we’d have to start in the northwest corner of the land, walk east about 7,993 inches, and then south 1,862 inches. The man at the deed office told us that there are 63,360 inches in a mile, so once we got to that northwest corner, we’d walk east about a tenth of a mile, and then a little ways south.
My heart fell. There was no way, I realized, that we could be sure of finding Will’s exact inch. And Will was smart. He had to know that, too, yet there he stood in the deed office, clutching his framed deed, grinning ear to ear.
And Mr. Capputo was going right along, making a production out of double-checking that he had the surveyor’s map, and a compass, and even a measuring tape.
From there, we drove down to the Tok River, and set out in an open flat-bottomed boat that Mr. Capputo called a skiff. Huge pads of ice whisked by on the swiftly flowing river. The wind cut into our cheeks and eyes. I was glad we had on all of our warm clothes, plus fur hats that Mrs. Martin had insisted we wear.
“Don’t fall in,” Mr. Capputo said cheerfully. “You won’t last more than two minutes.”
Will laughed…then scoffed when I insisted on holding him close to me.
Finally, Mr. Capputo got us across the river to a rocky shore, hopping out in his thick leather boots and chaps to tether the boat to a huge spruce. Water splashed into the bottom of the boat and froze. Then Will and Trusty and I got out of the boat.
It took a few hours, but finally…finally…we were all standing by what Mr. Capputo proclaimed to be Will’s one square inch of Alaska. Will dropped to his knees and stared down at the tiny patch of frozen earth, covered in pine needles.
“This is it?” he asked—but not with even a hint of disappointment at that measly little dot of land, on which nothing grew, not even a whisker of grass.
“Yes, sir!” said Mr. Capputo heartily, as if it were truly possible to find the exact square inch.
It was close enough for Will. “It is. It’s…mine.” His voice quivered. Somehow, though, it sounded strong, shot through with conviction, awe, and wonder, as he claimed aloud his one square inch, seeing only it, blind to all the nearby square inches that were just as barren as his.
But Will, I knew, did not see hopelessness or barrenness. He saw a little bit of land that was his, and he stared at it with such fierce intensity, like finding this one square inch, and claiming it for his own, was enough for him. Enough for a lifetime.
I blinked hard. Swore at myself—I won’t cry.
Won’t think about how I taunted him about his desire to claim that one square inch.
How I crumpled his diorama.
I blinked again, looked away, but then felt Will’s intense blue eyes on me, pulling me to him as they always did. I saw the bright spots of fever in his face. I knew that the day’s trip had exhausted him, that he was burning up from the inside out. There would be no miracle. All the miracles the universe had for us had been spent on getting us here, to this one spot.
Will’s eyes grasped mine just as firmly as they’d grasped the land. “Is it mine just on the surface,” he asked, “or all the way down to the core?”
I managed to speak around the enormity of it all, to answer, “You own it, all the way down to the core.”
Just like, I thought, Will had a bit of me, all the way to my core, and always would.
He pulled off his glove, and I started to tell him, no, no, put it back on, but then he reached in his pocket and pulled out the little sandwich flag, the one I’d gotten so long ago, it seemed—an eon ago—from Jimmy.
“But—I thought—it was in the diorama—”
Will shook his head and grinned. “I took it out for good luck, right after we found out about Mama. Kept it in my pocket, like a rabbit’s foot. Same pocket where I have the carving of Trusty from Mr. Litchfield.”
Then he looked at Mr. Capputo, who seemed to understand perfectly. He opened his rucksack and pulled out an ice pick and mallet.
Then Will nodded.
Right in the middle of his square inch of land, Mr. Capputo drove a hole.
And in that hole, Will planted his little flag.
Claiming his land.
Claimi
ng a miracle—his one square inch of Alaska.
Epilogue
October 26, 1967
Waiting on the kitchenette table is a letter addressed to me, postmarked from Tok, Alaska. It bears a stamp commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the Alaska Purchase. I run my thumb over it, smiling at how Will would be able to tell me and anyone who would listen the details of that 1867 purchase. And then I swallow, blink hard. I would be glad, so glad, to listen.
In the bedroom of our tiny New York apartment, I hear Adam moving about, getting ready for dinner out with me and a few friends, some from his law practice, some from my office. I’m home late from work and need to hurry to get ready.
But I sit down and carefully open the letter. I know I’ll only think about it during dinner if I don’t read it. It’s another newsy missive from Josie Martin. All these years, she’s sent me updates, letting me know sad tidings (Mr. Capputo’s death a few years before, not long after Trusty died of old age), and, more often, happy ones, usually news about her and Ray’s oldest son, William—yes, named for Will—and their three younger children, and about fun things like their big celebration when Alaska finally became a state, as Will always trusted it would, in 1959. This letter is about Josie’s new job as a teacher, about William’s big win in an ice-fishing contest.
I set aside the letter, go to our tiny refrigerator, and pull out a bottle of white wine. I pour two glasses, start to carry them back to the bedroom, but the beautiful design of that stamp—a totem etched on a brown background—catches my eye again. I sit back down at the table, admiring and studying that stamp.
I’m thirty-one, a ’58 graduate of Parsons School of Design, working for designer Mollie Parnis at Parnis-Livingston and making plans to launch my own line of purses. Adam is the love of my life. Eventually, I know, we’ll marry and make beautiful babies, but in the meantime, we’re content to be together, sharing our hopes and dreams, exploring passion without inhibition.
And yet, there’s one way in which I’ve not opened up to him. All I’ve told him about Will is that he was obsessed with Alaska. That he died when he was eleven, on April 3, 1954, four months before I left Groverton for good to attend Parsons School of Design. He knows my full life story since I arrived at Parsons, but nothing else from before. Adam is curious to know more, and I know I’m not being fair, holding back like this, especially when I know his childhood stories so well that I can laugh at the inside jokes he and his parents and siblings, whom I love, make about their history together. But Adam never asks, never presses, not even when these letters arrive, just leaves them on the table for me, trusting that when I’m ready, I’ll tell him the full story. It’s one of the many things I love about him.
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