Alaska (167 page)

She looked accusingly at the Hookers: 'Even you wrote letters to help him. Nobody stepped forward to help her.'

1020

'You were magnificent with her, Kendra,' Mrs. Hooker said. 'Kasm told me.'

'It seems so unfair. So awful . . . socially and morally.”

Kasm lit a pipe, tapped its stem against his teeth, and said: 'Kendra, if you allow school tragedies to affect you so deeply, maybe you ought to consider leaving teaching.

I mean it.'

'Don't you take them seriously?'

'Seriously? Yes. Tragically? No. Do I allow them to strike at my inner life? I do not.' Before Kendra could protest this inhumanity, he sat beside her, and while his wife brought a fresh cup of chocolate he took one of her hands in his and said: 'From high school on, I have never been in a school or teaching position but what some kid hasn't done himself or herself in, or died in some terrible accident.'

'What did you do?'

'Bury them, comfort the parents, and get on with the job. Because such things cannot be prevented. They can only be adjusted to.'

'I refuse to adjust to such unfairness.'

'Then, Kendra, what my husband says makes sense. If you allow your students' lives to affect you so deeply, maybe you ought to quit teaching. If you stay on, it'll destroy you.'

Kendra reacted to this sage advice, culled from years of school experience, with a renewed attack of shivering so vigorous that Mrs. Hooker sat down and took her other hand: 'How old are you, Kendra?'

'Twenty-eight.'

'It's very important that you get married. Afanasi told me that his young lawyer, that Keeler fellow, thinks highly of you. And I see the dog man at the north end of the village moseying around. Take one of them while you have the chance. You stay in Alaska as an old-maid schoolteacher worrying about every Eskimo disaster, you'll break your heart.'

But Kendra seemed not to hear her: 'It all seems so unfair to the young Eskimos.'

'Everything is unfair to young people. Years ago when I taught in Colorado it was fast cars and marijuana.'

'And a very important point,' Mrs. Hooker said. 'Eskimos don't like it when good-hearted teachers like you show too much interest in their family troubles. They actually resent it. Death is something that happens, always has, and they don't want you or me snooping around and weeping in public.'

1021

Together the Hookers-returned Kendra to her room, and in the morning Mrs. Hooker brought her more hot chocolate.

IN MARCH ALL ATTENTION IN DESOLATION WAS Centered on Vladimir Afanasi's high-powered shortwave radio, which brought hourly reports from Anchorage on the progress of the Iditarod. In favorable weather, for a change, the sixty-seven teams sped out of Anchorage on a course which this year covered eleven hundred and forty-three miles, with twenty-seven optional stops indicated at which teams could have food, dogs' and drivers', delivered by air. Rick had bought huge amounts of dried salmon for his dogs and Kendra had baked a big batch of rich, chewy high-energy brownies, filled with her pecans, for him. He also favored dried prunes, with pits he could suck on when the flesh was gone. At a designated spot, each team was obliged to rest dogs and drivers for an entire twenty-four hours, and here veterinarians inspected the animals. In recent years two women had won the race the second, in the astonishing time of eleven days and fifteen hours and at the camps there was much speculation as to whether a man could reclaim the trophy and the first-prize money of fifty thousand.

Rick, one of the twenty-six novices trying their luck this time, knew he had no chance of winning against the canny experts who had raced many times since the competition started in 1973, but he did confide to Kendra that he hoped 'to finish with a ”single-digit-fifteen,”'

that was, within the first nine in not over fifteen days.

During the first week of the race everything seemed to happen. Moose, driven southward by blizzards, strayed onto the marked course, became irritated by the dogs, and leaped among them, thrashing out with their hoofs and killing half a dozen dogs, whose drivers then dropped from the race. A bitterly cold storm blowing straight down from the north, an unusual direction, encouraged seven other mushers to quit, and this same storm prevented nearly a dozen airplanes from delivering dried salmon to supply stations along the route. Thus deprived of fuel, as it were, some competitors were forced to quit the race. At Ruby a Nome musher won two thousand dollars for being in the lead at the halfway mark, but Rick noticed that by now, eighteen racers with teams as good as his had dropped out.

Up in Desolation, Afanasi, Hooker and Kendra maintained a twenty-four-hour watch on the shortwave, Vladimir monitoring it during school hours, the teachers riding herd at night, and they picked up enough fragments of news to 1022

know that Rick was still among the active competitors, but where exactly in the standings he stood, they could not determine. Then, on the thirteenth day, as Kendra was teaching algebra to her students, a man in the village who had his own radio burst into her classroom with exciting news: 'When they left Unalakleet, Venn was in third place!'

Shortly after, Afanasi ran to the school with confirmation: 'My God, no beginner has a right to be in third spot,' but Kendra said: 'Polar may be the best lead dog in the whole race,' and with Mr. Hooker's ardent approval, they dismissed school for the day and accompanied Kasm and Vladimir to the shortwave, where they heard in snatches the account of one of the most dramatic incidents in any Iditarod.

Afanasi explained the situation to Kendra: 'You mustn't think of this as an Olympic race with all the runners bunched. In the Iditarod they're scattered out. The Nome man in the lead is ahead by almost half a day. No one will catch him. The sixteenth man may be a day and a half behind. And the last man? Maybe a whole week.”Hooker interrupted: 'But this time it does seem as if the group behind the leader is bunched,'

and he was correct.

A woman who had never before placed higher than fourteenth was, surprisingly, in second place, but as she sped her dogs onto the ice of Norton Sound, a moose testing the shoreline nearby panicked, darted in among the dogs, struggled free, and kicked the woman in the stomach and about the legs, wounding her seriously. Rick, well to the south in third place and already safe on the icy stretch leading to the finish at Nome, saw this happening as he came up, and whereas five other racers who also saw it hurried on to claim their spots among the coveted first nine, Rick turned aside, urged Polar to maximum speed, and arrived in time to fend off the enraged moose and place the battered woman on her sled.

With two of her dogs killed, there was no Way she could continue as a competitor, but she insisted that she could limp into Nome under her own power, so she thanked Rick for stopping to help, hugged him, and urged him: 'Be on your way. You're still in this thing.' But he simply could not leave her with the dead dogs still in harness and herself needing attention, so he left the race for about two hours, unharnessed the dead dogs, tended her wounds, and sent her on toward Nome.

He never made up the time lost by this gallant gesture, and as the other racers sped past, he realized that he had lost any chance at third position and probably his place within the first nine. Actually, he finished thirteenth, but when he came 1023

to the finish line he was greeted with cheers, the woman having told a reporter stationed along the way what had happened. One drunk came out of his Nome bar to make the most pertinent observation: 'I never thought I'd see the day when I'd cheer for any son-of-a-bitch associated with Ross & Raglan, but this one knew what for,' and Rick's noble performance became the toast of the town that night.

The winner, a tough veteran from Kotzebue, had finished in fourteen days, nine hours, three minutes and twenty-three seconds, but the race could not be declared over till a week later, when the forty-sixth musher stumbled in to win the honored red lantern, symbolic of the light that used to shine from the caboose of railroad trains to prove that the last boxcar had passed. A college boy from the University of Iowa, he had taken twenty-one days and eighteen hours for this grueling race, and he was almost as proud of his red lantern as the winner was of his fifty grand.

WHEN RICK RETURNED TO DESOLATION WITH POLAR AND the twelve other dogs, he was a hero, and many villagers crowded out to Kensington Kennels to pay tribute to the team that had conducted itself so ably and with such honor in the Iditarod. His gallantry had been the subject of articles in the Seattle and New York newspapers, and his picture appeared in

Time

magazine above the caption 'Winning Isn't Everything.' This spate of publicity brought a long letter from his grandfather, Malcolm Venn, chairman of the board of Ross &

Raglan in Seattle. It was the first Rick had heard from his grandfather in more than two years.

He showed the letter to Kendra when she lingered that first evening after the others were gone. She liked the manly phrasing, the obvious pride the older man took in his maverick grandson:

When you went north I told you to mimic your great-grandfather. Don't be afraid to try anything, and if you start, finish in style. We followed your progress in the odds and ends of news we got on local television and cheered your prospect of a fifth or even possibly a third, but we were far more proud of your thirteen.

'I don't get letters like that from my parents,' she said without self-pity, and as she looked at him the certificate proving he had finished thirteenth in the Iditarod hanging just behind him on the wall she saw him in a much clearer light than ever before: she admired the way he handled his dogs, 1024

with love and sternness, instilling in them a fierce and loyal drive to compete; she enjoyed his irreverent humor; and she appreciated the portrait she gleaned from his grandfather's letter of a family that was closely bound together in a longstanding tradition of mutual respect; and above all, she saw him as a stronger, more consolidated man than Jeb Keeler, and something of her thoughts must have shone in her eyes, for as she was about to leave the shack to return to the Teacherage, he reached out for her and said quietly: 'Don't you think it's time you stayed here?' and she whispered: 'Yes,' for she had found a man she could love.

Back in her own quarters the next afternoon, Kendra did what an honorable person would feel compelled to do: she wrote a frank letter to Jeb Keeler in Anchorage, thanking him for his valued friendship and explaining that she had fallen in love with another man: 'It looks as if any chance of our getting married has vanished, and I'm terribly sorry. On your next visit to Desolation let's talk about it, for I yearn to keep you as a friend.'

When she had sealed the envelope she said aloud, with the confidence that many young women have voiced in such circumstances: 'Well, that takes care of that.'

JUST ABOUT THIS TIME, IN WASHINGTON, D.C., THINGS

were occurring that-would eventually disrupt the lives of quite a few people in the village, the most dramatically affected being Kendra. The sequence of events began when the United States government awoke belatedly to the fact that Soviet Russia, Canada and even Norway were leaping ahead in the acquisition of knowledge about the arctic. In a somewhat frantic effort to catch up, a prestigious committee on arctic affairs had been appointed by the President, and it had assembled a consortium of American universities to sponsor and supervise a concentrated research attack on not only how to survive in arctic conditions but also how to utilize the arctic in either peace or war. Once the decision was made and the funds provided, this assembly of very bright men and women concluded that one of the first steps they ought to take was the furtherance of studies begun years ago on T-3, the floating ice island.

As soon as that was agreed upon, the scholars in charge began to look about for arctic hands who'd had practical experience on T-3, and this threw them right into the lap of Vladimir Afanasi, who, as a young Eskimo with a university education, had been in charge of maintenance and operations on T-3 for three years.

The telephone call came from the President's scientific 1025

adviser in the White House: 'This Vladimir Afanasi? The one who served on T-Three?

... How old are you now, Mr. Afanasi? . . . Can you still operate in real cold weather?

. . . Would you be prepared to reactivate T-Three? . . . Right now? .. . Of course, I know that T-Three itself has long since vanished but its successor . . . maybe we'll call it T-Seven. I think that's next in line. . . . You would be prepared?

. . . That's very good news, Mr. Afanasi. You cannot imagine how highly you've been praised by the men associated with this project. ... By the way, you are an American citizen?'

'Is this top secret or anything?'

'Mr. Afanasi! Would I be using an open phone line if it were? We know what the Soviets are doing, they know what we're doing or about to do. Welcome aboard. You'll be hearing from us.'

Three days later a committee of three leading arctic specialists one from Dartmouth, one from Michigan, one from the University in Fairbanks met in Desolation with Afanasi, and for three hammering days they worked on the reactivation of a research station on what they called T-7. Maps of the arctic were spread everywhere. Old manifests of material required on T-3 were updated, formal agreements were drafted, and at the conclusion of the meetings Afanasi, by far the oldest man present, said: 'I want the right to hire my own assistant.'

'If he's qualified. If he can be cleared for security.'

'He's both. Very knowledgeable in arctic matters. Graduate of Stanford with a fine record. And available, that's important.'

'Is he in these parts?'

'He's at the edge of town. I'll take you to meet him.' So the four men drove out to the Kensington Kennels, where they were greeted by the agitated yapping of thirteen handsome dogs, whom they stopped momentarily to admire.

They found Rick Venn stretched out on his bed reading one of the great books about Antarctica, Apsley CherryGarrard's The Worst Journey in the World, and the fact that a man of Venn's age knew this classic endeared him in the hearts of the three scholars. 'You informed on Scott's tragedy?' the man from Dartmouth asked, and Rick said: 'Only the usual. Amundsen's accounts, some of the recent studies.'