81 Days Below Zero

by Brian Murphy

  After another bend—and another disappointment of seeing nothing but more wilderness—Crane decided to look for a place to set up camp. His tent needed a rope spine to hold it up. There was no choice but to spend the night among the trees and hope the winds were kind.

  There were still a few hours of daylight. Crane took the rifle and scanned the grove. Here was some welcome luck. There was a plump ptarmigan foraging in the open. Crane steadied the rifle and used his training: aim, exhale slowly, pull the trigger. It was a direct hit. He cleaned the bird and then left his pack and started walking up the riverbank with his rifle ready. Where there was one ptarmigan, there were often more.

  Around the next bend, Crane stopped dead.

  Parallel rows of spruce branches were arranged on the frozen river. Circling them was a path of packed snow. It had to be from a toboggan or something dragged in the snow. Nothing natural could have made this. It wasn’t fresh, though. Snowfall and blown drifts had filled some of the tracks. But this was definitely recent and could have only one meaning: the markings for a landing strip used by bush pilots.

  It was growing too dark to investigate further. Crane headed back to camp and excitedly plucked and gutted the ptarmigan, running a stick through its center as a cooking skewer. It browned quickly over the fire. Crane feasted, eating everything, including the brittle bird bones. He tallied up the time since the crash. Counting the day they left, that’s eleven in December. Plus thirty-one in January. That’s forty-two. February was a leap year, so that’s twenty-nine. That brings it to seventy-one. He knew it was into March, but was no longer certain of the date. Let’s say it’s March 9. That’s about right. So what’s that?

  Eighty days.

  At first light, Crane left his pack leaning against a tree. He wanted to travel as light as possible. During the previous night, he had moments of insecurity that the spruce-edged landing strip was some kind of hallucination or another source of false hope like Berail’s cabin.

  Crane went around the river bend. There it was, the same as the day before.

  Crane stepped on the trail of packed snow. It was firm and easy walking. The track dipped away from the river. Then, in a long loop, it headed back toward the ice. Crane followed for two hours. The track never seemed to falter or weaken. Oddly, though, he didn’t notice other footprints. He guessed it was from a dogsled, which would cover up most of the paw marks as it dragged over the snow. Fresh snow would do the rest. He thought about his own crude sledge. How long would its traces stay on the river until snow and wind covered over any sign that he had passed that way? They were already gone, most likely.

  The track took a sharp turn toward the riverbank, slipping between some large rocks.

  On the other side was a cabin. From this distance, it looked not too much different from the others. Don’t get your hopes up, Crane told himself. But, if nothing else, he was out of the weather and could stay here for a while. Crane hurried across the frozen river.

  He saw animal tracks. Wolves? Be careful, he thought.

  Then came barking. Unmistakably, gloriously, a dog’s barking.

  Sixteen

  March 10, 1944

  Ames’s Cabin

  Crane couldn’t make sense of it at first.

  The dog was barking, but he also saw movement in the trees. That definitely was something else. It was too big to be a person. Cautiously, Crane crossed over the riverbank. He stumbled on some rocks under the snow. He took a few steps closer. Then he relaxed. Crane was staring at a clothesline with some cloth diapers and a red-and-white checkered tablecloth waving in the breeze.

  “Ho!” he yelled. “Anyone there?”

  For the first time in eighty-one days, someone answered.

  The cabin door opened. A man looked back at Crane. He was dressed somewhere between trapper and dandy: old-style riding breeches that flared out above the knee and decorated with six stripes around the ankles, a wide leather belt, dark wool shirt, and heavy socks. A hand-rolled cigarette smoldered in his right hand.

  Crane was having trouble taking it all in. Finally, he blurted, “I’m Lieutenant Crane of the United States Army Air Forces. I’ve had a little trouble. . . . I, um, I. Boy, am I glad to see you.”

  “Air Forces?” said the man. “You crash?”

  “Yes. I mean, my ship went down a while ago.”

  “Near here? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “No, no. I’ve been walking. You see, I, well, I’ve been walking for a while. The plane went down December 21. A B-24. What . . . what day is today?”

  “December 21! You sure about that? Today is March 10.”

  “That’s what I thought. No mistake. I’ve been walking. Well, I found a cabin and stayed for a while. I, ah, I, I . . . I apologize. I just haven’t spoken with anyone in a long time.”

  The man slipped on some low-cut boots and walked out onto the packed snow. He draped his arm around Crane’s shoulders, leading him back to the cabin.

  “Okay. It’s all right. We gotta get you inside. What did you say your name was again?”

  “Leon Crane, first lieutenant. I’m from Philadelphia. Originally, I mean. I’m out of Ladd Field.”

  “Well, you’re not close to either,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Albert Ames.”

  They crossed into the cabin. Ames pulled the door shut with its oversized brass knob. The first thing Crane noticed was the smell of coffee. A Native woman, whom Crane correctly figured to be Ames’s wife, stood to the side, holding a baby. She was quiet and did not come directly to greet him. The cabin was warmed by a big wood-fed stove that made wheezing sounds when it was going full blast. It was warm enough that the woman wore only a cotton dress and slippers. There were two other children, a girl and a boy, who ducked behind their mother at the sight of Crane and his tattered and stained flight suit.

  “This is Nina,” Ames said, introducing the woman.

  “Nina,” Ames continued, looking over at his wife, “we better fix some food for our guest. You hungry, Lieutenant?”

  “I ate some pancakes this morning. I shot a ptarmigan last night. But I could definitely eat more. If you don’t mind, I’d really love some coffee.”

  “Sure thing,” said Ames, putting the cup down in front of Crane while Nina stoked the fire in the stove. The two kids crept closer. Crane learned the girl’s name was Molly. Her brother, whose name was Daniel Lee Ames, was simply called Big Boy. The infant, Albert Norman, was Little Boy.

  “December 21 you say,” Ames said, holding out his hands as if trying to weigh the distance between then and now. “That’s a long time. Now, tell us again. How the hell did you get here?”

  “First,” Crane said, “I have to find out where I am. What river is this?”

  “My friend, you are really lost. This is the Charley,” he said. “You’re about a mile south of the Yukon River.”

  “The Charley. I thought that might be right. I wasn’t sure, but that’s what made most sense. So that means Woodchopper is off to the west, right?” Crane asked, remembering the map from Berail’s cabin.

  “That’s right. Now, tell us, where exactly did your plane go down? And why do you care about Woodchopper?”

  Crane began the story, letting it unfold slowly and in full from the beginning: how they reported their last position heading out from Big Delta, bailing from the B-24, burning his father’s letter, finding Berail’s cabin.

  “Phil Berail!” Ames cut in. “Hell, I know Phil. Everyone knows him. He lives over in Woodchopper. I see why you were asking. You’re a very, very lucky man, Lieutenant. Phil’s was the last cache on the river. If you missed that, I don’t think you’d be sitting here with me now.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the last’?”

  “I mean, the last one. There are no more. Berail was the last one to keep up a full store of supplies down the Charley. I don’t th
ink he’s been down there in years, though.”

  “This is his rifle,” said Crane. “These are his mittens. This guy saved my life.”

  “Well, then, you’ll have to thank him in person when we get you to Woodchopper. Here, look at this.”

  Ames pulled out a large and detailed map of Alaska. It was mounted on plywood. Ames traced his finger along the Charley River, beginning from where he guessed was the crash site. It was more than ninety-five miles as the river flowed.

  “That’s impressive,” said Ames. “You said you were from Philadelphia?”

  Over a lunch of moose steaks, they traded stories.

  Crane’s world of urban buzz and streetcars seemed marvelously exotic to Nina Henry Ames, a member of an Athabascan clan who was born in Fort Yukon. Her older relatives were so bound to traditional ways that they found no need to learn more than broken English. Crane talked about the winters in Boston, which now seemed child’s play. Albert Ames joked that now there were two rivers of the same name in his life: the Charles in Boston and the Charley here.

  To Crane, the lives of the Ames clan were equally extraordinary. They had been trapping and fishing along the Charley and other rivers since the early 1930s in a lifestyle not that much removed from that of Nina’s forebears. But, for Albert, it was a matter of choice. He decided to head into the wilderness after some globe-trotting. Ames, in fact, had seen much more of the world than Crane. Albert left South Dakota as a footloose teenager just after World War I. He bounced around the East Coast for a while, stopping in Atlantic City to see his aunt. He cavorted along the boardwalk and gawked at the extravagances of the seaside hotels such as the Traymore, whose bathroom taps included the option of heated ocean water. Ames later found a place on a freighter bound for China. On the return journey across the Pacific, he stepped off the gangplank onto the Alaskan territory.

  Ames outfitted himself with a backpack and some sturdy shoes and, for reasons only he knew, started to walk into the interior. The Alaska Railroad was not yet finished all the way to Fairbanks, but it could have carried him off the coast. Instead, Ames ended up hoofing it to Fairbanks. In those days, traveling by foot did not seem entirely outlandish. Ames often made better time than the automobiles trying to traverse the wilderness on dirt roads and through hinterlands where mechanics were much more familiar with airplanes than cars. Ames liked to tell his real-life tortoise-and-hare stories about how he repeatedly pushed the same rattletrap car out of ruts and mud holes as he walked north.

  In Fairbanks he landed a job as a “horse packer,” hauling goods up to Circle on the Yukon River. On one of the runs, he met the young and pretty Nina. They built their magnum opus, the cabin on the Charley, in 1941, using nice spruce logs with square notching that stacked together tightly. The seams were filled with hard-packed moss. The peaked roof was insulated with sod. The flooring was sturdy boards, and a trap door led to a well-stocked root cellar. All in all, it was bigger and more solid than Berail’s outpost.

  By now, Ames and Nina were experienced trappers, setting lines along the Charley and deeper into the hills for fox and marten and, when luck was shining, mink and ermine. These were reasonably good times in the fur trade. The war had boosted demand for fur to line winter gear for troops. But, at the same time, the government set a price ceiling as part of the wartime economic measures. The maximum price for mink, fox, and other pelts could not exceed the highest paid for comparable goods in March 1942. Nevertheless, a silver fox pelt could fetch up to forty dollars, about 30 percent higher than 1938. Some spin doctors in the fur industry went so far as to claim that furs were a morale booster in the war effort. They lifted “the spirits of our womanhood to meet the sorrows” of tough times, one furrier claimed. In the summer, the Ames family operated a fish wheel, a floating rig that spins like a Ferris wheel from the current and scoops up spawning salmon.

  Crane was right about the branch-lined strip on the frozen Charley. It was a winter runway for the occasional supply plane operated by Wien Alaska, which was the gold standard of bush-plane operations at the time. The airline was an ambitious family-run affair. Its founder, Noel Wien, flew into Fairbanks in 1924 in an open-cockpit biplane. He later had his first cabin aircraft, a single-engine Fokker F.III, shipped in pieces from Europe. Ames’s other connection to the outside world was his team of up to twenty sled dogs.

  Suddenly, Crane asked, “You have a mirror?”

  “Was waiting for you to ask,” laughed Ames. “I’m guessing you haven’t seen yourself in a while.”

  “Not a good look since the crash.”

  Nina pointed the way to a mirror in the back of the cabin. She giggled.

  “Well,” said Crane. “I see what you mean.”

  He ran his fingers through his two-inch beard and matted hair, pulling out a few twigs and spruce needles in the process. Crane thought he looked like a Hollywood version of a sourdough, the local term for an Alaskan who has seen it all and decided to stay. The name is believed to come from the bread fixings carried by many of the gold rush prospectors.

  “I must say, Lieutenant,” said Ames, walking up behind him, “you look pretty good otherwise. I’m not certain I would have fared so well out there with just the supplies you had. And I’m used to this kind of winter.”

  “Luck,” Crane shrugged.

  “Damn good luck,” said Ames.

  Nina got out her scissors after lunch was cleared away. She planned to give Crane a haircut.

  “Wait a minute,” said Ames. “We need photos.”

  He dug out the old box camera. “Nina,” he said, “we should take a photo outside. Can you do it?”

  She nodded. Crane and Ames posed side by side in the snow. Crane squinted a bit. His parka was half zipped over his flight suit, which in places was held together by crude stitches and rope. Ames stood to Crane’s left. Ames had a cigarette in his right hand and had the other in the pocket of his Alaskan jodhpurs.

  “A few more with just the lieutenant,” Ames urged.

  Crane took off his parka for several more shots. His smile was somewhere between relief and bewilderment.

  Back in the cabin, Nina went to work. Tufts of his heavy, dark hair dropped onto the blue oilcloth covering the table. Nina trimmed the sides closely, but left more of Crane’s curls on top. Molly and Big Boy stared at the grimy stranger.

  Ames gave Crane a pair of overalls and a razor. Nina carried a basin of warm water over to the mirror. For a half hour, Crane worked on his beard, first with the scissors and then razor. He was about to shave off his mustache when Ames held up his hand.

  “Wait. You look too damn healthy,” he joked. “No one will believe you. Keep the mustache.”

  Crane did.

  “Say,” asked Crane. “You have a radio?”

  “Sure do. But just a shortwave receiver. Not one to call out.”

  “Well, can’t ask for too much,” Crane smiled. “What’s happening with the war? Last I heard, back in December, the Brits were bombing the hell out of Germany.”

  Ames tuned in the shortwave radio. The war headlines included a report from Anzio and how the Allies were holding up to German shelling. A Coast Guard petty officer third class, J. J. McAndrews, wrote in his diary that day: “Boy, Anzio has really been bombed to hell. We loaded up with troops who have been fighting since the beachhead had been established and are now going back to Naples for a few days rest.”

  Crane felt a bit down. He had imagined—in the times when he allowed himself to imagine his rescue—the war would have turned even more in the Allies’ favor. It was looking good. But Crane liked to fantasize that he would come out of the wilderness and the end would be near.

  “Where’s the nearest radio to call Ladd Field?” Crane asked. “My parents probably think I’m dead. Guess everyone else probably does, too.”

  “No doubt. No doubt,” said Ames. “The nearest radio . . . W
ell, that would be on a plane. We can get you over to Woodchopper, but not right away. Best rest up for a couple of days. We got two planes coming into Woodchopper soon. Well, I mean hopefully soon. You really never know.”

  One was a mail plane, which was already late because of the weather and the thousands of other glitches that can happen in the Alaskan winter. The other plane scheduled was for a pregnant woman who was heading to a hospital in Fairbanks.

  All the next day, Crane watched Ames prepare for the trip. It was strange for Crane to be idle. He was a bystander, drinking endless cups of coffee. He tried to hide his impatience, but they all sensed it.

  “Soon,” Ames repeated, looking up from the dogsled as he made some repairs. “Soon, Lieutenant.”

  The temperature was close to minus twenty. There was a trace of new snow, which gave everything a fresh sheen. Crane came out to help Ames load the dogsled. He noticed Ames was moving smartly in snowshoes with those same infuriating traditional ties that baffled Crane.

  “Easy,” Ames chuckled.

  In thirty seconds, Ames showed Crane the trick: wedge in your toe around one loop and wrap the longest bind behind your heel and tie it shoelace fashion.

  “That’s it?” Crane clucked. “If I had figured that out, I could have made the trip in one-third the time.”

  “Either way,” said Ames, “you made it.”

  Seventeen

  March 13, 1944

  Woodchopper

  Reaching Woodchopper took two days. At times, the dog team couldn’t carry both men. Crane followed behind on Ames’s snowshoes, amazed at the speed he could make. The night was spent with one of Ames’s trapper friends, who broke out some dried fish for the unexpected guests. Crane took some bites and then ducked out for another run to the outdoor privy. His stomach was in knots. No doubt it was from the rich moose steaks and gallons of coffee. In more than eighty days on the Charley River, this was the first time Crane was marginally sick. He imagined how devastating any illness would have been out there.