Alaska Ho! (standard:adventure, 3353 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Sep 07 2007	Views/Reads: 3511/2346	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Back in the early days, Alaska was a land of opportunity and challenge, even though some places were bearly livable.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

no road from Galena to Tanana -- much less no bus!  Six days by dog 
sled if the weather's right." 

Bob pondered this, as he joined Ellen.  "Once Trish is back in school,"
she said, "I'll find some work.  I'm sure they're short of help here." 
Ellen was a professional volunteer.  In Florida, she used to dole out 
coffee and donuts to the homeless for a few hours a week. Sometimes she 
would relieve the switchboard operator at the community hospital. 

First,  they learned that the nearest hospital was upriver at Rampart,
180 miles away. 

By Tuesday, they had walked every street in town and talked with
neighbors.  "Watch the bears," warned one, "they go for the garbage." 

On Wednesday, Bob went to work at the airport.  By Saturday, he had
rounded up a full service crew, filled out all his paperwork, and was 
getting into the good graces of the right people.  Joe Dozier, his 
boss, suggested: 

"Bob, you ought to give a party this weekend." 

When Drennan hesitated,  Dozier reached into his kit bag and took out a
long package.  Handing it to Drennan, he said, 

"This should get things off to a good start." 

At home, Bob left the package on the table as Ellen set the dishes.  A
minute later, Trish was worrying it, fidgeting with the tape, poking 
her finger beneath the seams. 

"This sure smells funny," she remarked, "kinda green."  By now the
package was open.  "Wonder what it tastes like," she said, rubbing a 
small wad of the gummy stuff onto her tongue.  "Yuck! Tastes awful!" 
she gasped, swallowing the rest. Trish did up the package as well as 
she could and went to play in her room. 

Ellen found the package a few minutes later and had it open two seconds
after that.  Was it frozen spinach?  Parsley?  Soup greens?  Cabbage? 
Whatever -- she concluded -- it had to improve the stew. 

She sliced off a few chips and dropped them in.  The venison stew was a
little rich for her liking, but it tasted better after adding some 
spice.  Before dinner was over, Trish got a funny look on her face and 
Ellen began to giggle.  Long after midnight, everyone was still rolling 
around, weak from laughter. 

They had planned on having an open house for afternoon.  While Trish
telephoned the invites, Bob and Ellen made canapes and hors d'oeuvres 
spiced and seasoned with Colombian Gold.  However, most of that two- 
kilogram brick slept in the cupboard, dreaming of its next opportunity 
to season the stew. 

Beyond any doubt, their first social engagement in Tanana was a huge
success.  When Drennan staggered back to work Monday, he ran into Joe 
Dozier and they helped each other up the stairs. 

Ellen and Trish went to her school --  an old brick building, its facade
crazed like a smashed windshield.  Even a small earthquake would bring 
it down.  She foresaw what actually took place a month later ... a 
minor tremor and a pile of rubble.  Luckily, all the children were in 
the yard at the time.  Perhaps they would rebuild a bigger school, so 
they could have separate rooms for each grade. 

"One thing I really miss," Ellen said, "is our water bed." 

One thing they didn't miss -- hot and cold running water.  Theirs was
the only house in town that had both hot and cold.  About a third of 
the residents had no water at all.  When traveling, Bob learned to stay 
inside his car at all times and to carry a big flashlight if he went 
out after dark.  A few streets at the center of Tanana were lit, but 
most of the town was dark. 

Drennan's house actually stood apart, with a few others. Their neighbors
were all local people who worked at the airport.  Perhaps forty people 
worked there, if you count the fire brigade and the graveyard shift.  
The airport was two miles away -- on solid ground.  It was easy enough 
to get there in the early spring, and after the first autumn freeze -- 
but not so easy during winter and summer. The road leading sixteen 
miles down to the river bank was much better in some ways.  The 
engineers had created a foundation made of old landing mats and paved 
with treated soil that behaved a lot like asphalt.  This highway rode 
high above the summer morass.  In winter, a 24-hour snowplow roved its 
length and back every sixty minutes.  But now, in late spring, ships 
were unloading at the river end of the road -- oil drilling gear, 
machinery, big boxes of furniture, a semi-container labeled, "Dog 
Food".Bob waited in the car until a port officer asked if he had 
business there. 

"Yes", he replied, "The office supplies I ordered never arrived." 

He drove back to the airport and took it up with Dozier.  Before long,
they were reminiscing about the party, and had scheduled another one. 

That day, Drennan saw three fist-fights at the airport.  He watched each
one to the end, usually when one had a more bloody face than the other. 
 None of the workers were part of his crew, so he stayed out of it.  
Later, he asked several men why the fist-fights broke out.  They 
laughed at him and invited him for a drink.  He refused the first three 
rounds, but then they leaned on him to stand a round and he did.  When 
the whiskey was delivered, several men pinned him down, squeezed open 
his jaws and poured it down his throat.  Half of it, anyway. 

Bob recovered, gagging, full of murder.  He leaped to his feet, grabbed
the nearest of his antagonists and pummeled his belly until the man 
slumped against a wall.  Nobody stopped him.  There was no blood.  
Nobody tried to pull a fast one on Bob for a few months after that. 

At home, among the neighbors, Ellen and Trish were settling in.  The
first sunny school-out day, some families held an ice-cream social.  It 
always seemed a little cool for ice cream because the surrounding 
mountain ridges had many glaciers.  When the wind blew, you could feel 
its cold bite.  Trish and Ellen gorged themselves on the most 
delectable concoctions: pineapple-raspberry ice, Eskimo Spumoni: creme 
pecan, creme lemon-lime, and creme peach bud, with pieces of crushed 
peach buds right to the core.  All of the ice creams and ices were from 
glacial run-off. 

Bob came home to find Trish and Ellen draped over furniture, with pools
of vomit here and there on the bare wood floor.  He panicked and began 
ringing every emergency number in the phone book. Finally he got an 
answer. 

"My wife is very ill" he shouted. " So is my daughter.  We've got to get
to a hospital right away." 

"One 'copter comin' up." said a laconic voice and hung up.  Three
minutes later, he heard helicopter wings beating over the house, 
looking for a hard spot amid the muddy puddles -- little lakes that 
were beginning to form in the spring thaw. Efficiently, the crew 
examined the women, pumped a little fluid out of each one's stomach, 
loaded them on stretchers, then into the 'copter and off.  Bob just 
managed to swing aboard as it lifted. 

The hospital at Rampart was clean, efficient, not particularly large.
Ellen and Trish got the royal treatment, while Bob was going out of his 
mind.  Each cup of coffee made him realize how helpless he was against 
the threats of this new universe.  No matter what the salary, it wasn't 
worth defending yourself in a job where some whiskey-crazed 
half-bread-and-butter asshole could knife you in the back and walk 
away.  He slept on a wood bench in the hallway.  Everything was so 
quiet, he was willing to swear that there were no doctors or other 
patients. 

Late the next day, he was able to see his wife and daughter.  They were
too weak to talk, but he could read their eyes.  "They will be better 
in three days," said the doctor, with a Spanish accent.  He had a 
toothbrush mustache, only it was brown.  There was something about his 
ears that bothered Bob a great deal. "They picked up a bacterium," he 
said, "that grows on glaciers and concentrates in the runoff.  Makes 
you very sick.  Your wife ate some of the glacier, I'm sure." 

Over the next three days, Bob found a hotel and came to know something
about Rampart -- in-between visits to Ellen and Trish.  On Friday, they 
checked out and went back to Tanana by plane.  When Bob saw the 
hospital bill, and the air transport bills, he was sick to his stomach. 
 True, they were covered by his health insurance policy, but if for 
some reason it became invalid, they would cost him half-a-year's 
salary. 

By Sunday, Ellen was back on her feet, but Trish seemed to be fading:
she wouldn't eat -- just wanted to lay and sleep.  A phone call brought 
the local physician, who recognized Dengue Fever at once. 

"Must've picked it up in the hospital," he announced laconically,
"happens all the time."  He left samples from his arsenal of pills and 
said, "Get twenty-five more of all these pills, if you can find 'em.  
The samples I left will keep her going up for a couple of days."  Bob 
spent the next 48 hours phoning all over Alaska to locate the pills.    
In the end, Trish recovered, now a very subdued young lady without much 
animus. 

That's when all the other illnesses took hold, until Ellen and Trish had
to flee for their lives.  Ellen never felt well enough to search for 
volunteer work. Taking care of Trish was the best she could do. 

When the bear began scratching, Trish (who slept in the living room)
moved her bed away from that spot, but the scratching pursued her.  Her 
screams brought Bob and her mom running from the kitchen. When all 
three were exhausted from trying to find a corner of the house where 
the scratching couldn't pursue them, Bob said: "Look, the floor is 
strong enough.  Let's ignore whatever it is and go to sleep."  Right 
then, the bear shattered several boards and a massive paw came up 
within reach of their feet, right under their eyes. 

Without a second thought, Ellen grabbed a broom and began to beat the
paw.  Before she could smash the paw twice, the broomstick flew out of 
her hands and was crushed into toothpicks. Even as the bear 
methodically began to enlarge the hole, grunting and snuffling 
underneath the living room, Bob began throwing loaves of bread, 
raisins, fish and ham down the hole.  The bear chipped away at the 
edges, and the hole grew larger.  Finally, in desperation, Ellen 
grabbed the kerosene lamp and crashed it down on the paw, which flared 
up like a torch accompanied by a hoarse bass howl that rattled the 
rafters.  From the window, they could see the bear with its flaming paw 
zig-zagging over the permafrost muck and felt sure it would not return. 
 When they turned around, the sofa and bed were also blazing.  It took 
gallons of cold and hot water to quench the flames.  For several days, 
sleep was hard to come by. 

In the interim, Bob fought for his life another time,  when he and Trish
took a muddy walk, in the direction of the glaciers.  A mile or so out 
of town, he saw three men following in their tracks.  As they drew 
closer, Bob saw that one was a mechanic from the airport -- the one who 
poured liquor down his throat.  Trish was running out of breath, so he 
picked her up in his arms and began to trek cross-country at right 
angles to the trail, hoping to circumvent the men.  But they spread 
out, and when Bob came back to the road, one was standing in his path. 

Bob walked toward him, still carrying the little girl.  The man reached
out and, with surprising strength, plucked Trish from his arms and 
threw her in a muddy snowbank.  Again, Bob went into a blind rage, 
lowered his head into a battering ram, hit the man in the chest and 
began beating his belly, kicking him in the groin at every step, 
butting his head against the man's neck to dislocate a vertebrate. 
Trish was crying in terror.  Finally, Bob hacked at the man's 
shoulders, paralyzing his arms, drove a stinging kick behind each knee 
to bring him down, and chopped at his head with the horny edge of his 
hand.  When the man lay senseless in the mud, the other two ran off.  
Cuddling a terrified Trish, he stumbled back to the house.  That next 
day, Ellen and Trish caught the Anchorage flight and left, 
empty-handed. 

Six months after he started in Tanana, Drennan came to work and found
two men from the Federal Aviation Authority in his office. 

"You sure seem to be happy here, Drennan," said one.  "They tell me
you're pretty good.  Set an example for the men." 

Bob smelled something fishy right away.  "I wouldn't exactly say that,"
he replied, "The work is certainly suitable -- can't argue that -- but 
there are some strange goings on here..." he described the fights, the 
drugs, the liquor, the illnesses, the bear, the fire, the environment 
....  They didn't seem impressed. 

Instead, they reminded him of his work contract obligations: he must
remain two years, with one 2-week vacation and if he leaves earlier, 
all health benefits are rescinded, retroactively -- and his house must 
be sold before he could leave: Bob would be responsible for any loss in 
property value.  He thought of the burnt living room with its hole in 
the floor, the size of that hospital bill, all the other expenses . . . 
and realized he could never exercise the choice of leaving because he 
he couldn't afford to! 

A week later Bob changed his mind and left. 

"You look like a good party man," said his boss, "Which side are you
on?" 

"I didn't know there were any sides.  Which sides are you talking
about?" 

"Pretty clever, Drennan, but it won't wash.  First you beat the shit out
of good old Harry, then you mop up the glacier with Elmer.  You're a 
dangerous man -- and we want you on our side.  So you'll join the 
union, right?" 

Bob started to nod, then realized what would happen.  If he was "on
their side," they would use him against top management.  If he remained 
loyal to his job, they would pounce on him, beat him up, and leave him 
half-dead or dying.  He just couldn't fight them all off.  On the other 
hand, if he joined them, he would be fired on the spot. 

"Just a minute," said Drennan, starting to dial his lawyer in Florida.
"Wait in the other room.  I'll give you my decision in a minute." 

In the hour-long phone call, Drennan told the whole story.  "Get out,"
said the lawyer.  Quit.  If you can't work because you feel your life 
is in danger from drugs, from beatings, from intimidation, from bears, 
from anything  -- get out.  Leave.  Do you need cash? 

Drennan joined his boss.  "Drive me to the airport" he commanded.  "I'm
on your side.  Talked to my lawyer.  He says we need help.  He's 
meeting me in Denver.  Tomorrow.  I can just catch the flight out.  
Drennan's hands were empty.  He was abandoning every possession he had 
left. 

They arrived at the flight runway in the nick of time.  The plane was
taxiing out  but stopped to take him on.  He stood on top of the jeep 
and they lifted him in. 

As the sodden earth dropped away beneath him, Drennan realized that
Trish had never seen a caribou or a seal -- just a mean ol' bear. 

*    *    *    *    *    * 

Seattle, January 1990 

All rights reserved 

Gerald X. Diamond


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