Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (60 page)

There is something to be said for simpler days when a person might escape the world by just driving away. When payphones were high tech and cell phones only a ridiculous dream.

With a CD of piano legend George Winston filling the truck, I headed north.

Next stop: Eagle, Alaska.

39
 

Eagle Mission and Serving God

T
here was no turning back now. The email had been sent. I found a measure of peace—growing a backbone felt kind of nice. In my considerable experience, nobody had ever sent anyone in the governor's office an email that began with a line like “I'm not getting the point of all of this back and forth, and I'm tired of it.”

People didn't tell Sarah Palin they were tired of her behavior. Least of all someone like me, a disciple who'd seldom, if ever, had the temerity to say no to any of her whims. While I reckoned it would take a nanosecond for Meg to shoot the message to Sarah and Todd, I took solace in knowing that no matter what Sarah's reaction, I wouldn't hear about it for over a week. With that assurance, I couldn't wait to arrive in Eagle.

Throughout the drive, I noted the sun arching high and bright. The luminous pink flowers of the fireweed that define the interior of Alaska during the middle of summer had turned to white fluff held upright by dusky purplish stems. Towering blue and black spruce trees stood like sentinels pointing to a sky so rich in blue that I knew this
was
God's country.

Through the clear air, I guessed the visibility at about fifty miles. To pass the time, I sang, prayed, and asked,
What's next
? With a political future unlikely, what would I do? Inspired, I recalled Colossians 3:23: “Whatsoever ye do work heartily, as unto the Lord, and
not unto men.” What really counts, this verse instructs, is the labor one does when nobody's watching. It isn't work to impress people or to make oneself look busy, it's what you do on behalf of God for no other reason than it is right. My own mom worked harder than anyone I knew and set a high ethical bar for me from day one. Unlike my work for Sarah—albeit stressful with massive hours of personal sacrifice thrown in—I had
not
toiled unto the Lord, not since early in her campaign when Sarah's values and motives felt pure. I had done terrible things to people: for one thing, I had assassinated the character of others. While cowardly hiding behind a cloak of fictitious email addresses and fake blog names, I turned off my conscience and perfected the disturbing art of politically twisting the knife when it was in someone's back by planting savage rumors that were juicy enough to spread like an Interior Alaskan wildfire. Heck, I even helped plot to find a young, attractive woman to embarrass a susceptible sitting law-maker. The “dirty” list of confessions was audibly spoken in my truck that day.

Now, with my window rolled down a crack, the air across my face felt like the winds of change. Racing at seventy miles per hour toward
working heartily, unto the Lord
, I felt as though my mom's biblical advice was exactly what my life needed.

My route took me to a wide stretch of open flats by the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet, up to the Mat-Su Valley, past Wasilla, through Palmer, and down where the road is blasted from the side of the mountains. Through Sutton and Chickaloon, with peaks on every side, life as usual seemed to fade into the scenery. The Matanuska River peeped through the trees on my right every now and then, tumbling over boulders, shimmering in the sun, and my thoughts turned to the Yukon, the river of my destination.

A drive across Alaska, with its clear air and astounding sights, can be therapeutic. We have caribou, brown bear, Roosevelt elk, pika, chickadee, bald eagle, moose, and lynx. Overhead, hawks ride currents looking for rodents or rabbit to prey on. Add to that mountains so high the snow never melts and rivers full of trout, grayling, and chinook or coho salmon.

A family of porcupine chugged their way across the road; I slowed
and veered past. I had neglected my own family for four years, and that was something I intended to repair and make right. Of all my regrets, missing family was tops. I'd even managed to lose my wedding ring during the craziness of the gubernatorial campaign. After nearly losing a finger on a piece of luggage while working for a small commuter airline years ago, I habitually took the wedding band off during physical labor. One day, packing up signs and flyers, it went missing. I spent the better part of an hour searching, but to no avail. The replacement we purchased felt as if the gold were plastic and painted to look real. The loss struck me as symbolic of the Palin years, with unfulfilled dreams and lost opportunity.

In those moments, with cool air drying my eyes, I vowed that when I returned from Eagle, things would change. No more Sarah, no crazy circle of faux crises or outrageous overreaction.

God, family, friends
. One, two, and three in priority.

As for this mini-adventure to Eagle? I wasn't sure what to expect. What does one say to those who have lost everything to a merciless wall of water raging down the Yukon toward the Bering Sea? The river they loved, that fed them, that flowed past town every day, had turned on them in an unfathomable rage.

As rivers go, the Yukon may be the most underestimated in the Western Hemisphere. Everyone knows the Amazon. Then there's the mighty Mississippi. The Hudson is seen by hundreds of thousands of people every day. And, of course, the Colorado River, whose work of millennia is today's Grand Canyon. But the Yukon (Gwich'in for “Great River”) flows in virtual isolation, with only four bridges crossing its length of two thousand miles. Massive by any standard, but largely forgotten by the rest of the nation, we Alaskans are happy to keep it to ourselves.

The village and city of Eagle sit just outside a sweeping bend in that river. Every winter the water freezes. Every spring it thaws, with breaking ice an annual event. But this year, a combination of unusually thick river ice, heavy snowfall, and early record-high spring temperatures created the perfect conditions for disaster. As the warming ice
cracked with sounds like war cannons, the river raged, creating colossal ice dams. And the 227,000 cubic feet of water that flows down the Yukon every second cascaded over riverbanks like a massive waterfall gone berserk. A tragedy that put my problems in proper perspective.

For the last hundred miles of my pilgrimage, I listened to a mix CD I'd put together. When a tune from 3 Doors Down began playing, the lyrics captivated me. The song spoke to me in a way I'll never forget. It began: “I guess I just got lost being someone else / I'll never find my heart behind someone else.”

“Yes! That's me!” I said like a crazy man, shouting inside a speeding car.

As one is prone to do when driving alone on a long stretch of highway, I further cranked down the windows, turned up the volume, and stepped on the gas. Once the music ended, I said, “Frank, it's time to get back to being who you are, not some political hack.” And I played 3 Doors Down again and sang at the top of my lungs.

Second time through, another line from the song about wanting to take back the time that was given away hit home. If only I
could
take back time, I'd send a message to the younger me—the one driving to campaign headquarters back in 2005—this is what I'd tell him:

But that Frank was gone. The only thing currently under my control was the steering wheel of this truck and the decisions I'd make going forward. I couldn't erase those times when I'd given in to misguided allegiance. All I could do was to pledge,
Never again
.

The remaining hour or two flew by, and Eagle beckoned. “God,” I prayed, “provide me the means to help.” Adding a more selfish request, I added, “Please let nobody know my past. May I be nothing more than a nameless face, trying to help a troubled community.” My
desire was to leave behind all the things I had participated in the past four years.

“Lord, let me be simply anonymous.”

With darkness rolling in, a series of narrow switchbacks lay ahead. I had to hug the steep wall of crumbly shale to avoid the sheer vertical drop on the other—
Welcome
, I thought,
to rural Alaska
. When I had initially asked for directions to Eagle, someone said, “If you end up in the river, you've gone too far.” Prior to taking a wet plunge, I spied outlines of buildings and base camp for volunteers.

After parking and stretching legs, I introduced myself to staff.

“Hey. Name's Frank,” I said to a man behind the door of the first of several motor homes I came to. “I'm looking for Keith Mallard.” Keith and Allen were to be my roommates. Despite all three of us representing Rabbit Creek Community Church, I knew almost nothing about either Keith or Allen. “We're assigned to bunk together. Any idea where I can find him?”

I discovered the check-in man was formally a state trooper from Kentucky. More interestingly, he informed me that one of my roomies, Keith Mallard, was also a trooper. But not from Kentucky. For the next week, I'd be bunking with an Alaskan state trooper.

Did Keith know about Trooper Wooten? Troopergate? Frank Bailey's idiotic call trying to get Wooten canned?

You betcha
.

Sometimes God answers prayers, sometimes He doesn't. When I prayed for anonymous status, that was apparently one of His no-can-dos. Thank God, I believed God knows best.

Meanwhile, the Kentuckian was scribbling onto a rough map. “You're here. I think Mallard's here.” He pointed to the location of a camper across the yard.

Unsteady footwork took me toward more than I bargained for when I signed up for this mission work. After I took a deep breath and knocked, the door opened.

“Hey, Frank! I had a feeling it was going to be you.” If there was an ounce of doubt about remaining anonymous, his smile laid that
to rest. As we shook hands, the man's face displayed no outward animosity. Maybe my taking time to travel up to Eagle and help out was enough. Maybe, unlike me and Team Palin, he understood that “working heartily as unto the Lord” was a good enough recommendation to put preconceived notions on hold.

“Here's the plan,” he said. “We're just three guys and we go where needed. We'll check with the volunteer coordinator in the morning for assignment. Simple.”

“Sounds good. So, you're a trooper?”

“Captain,” he answered.

I nodded. For an hour we spoke of family, the work schedule, and weather. He knew who I was, and I knew he knew, yet we never spoke of it. Once the light went out and I lay in my bunk, I wondered: if the shoe were on the other foot, what would I do?