Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier

by Tom Kizzia

  Mama, too, told Elishaba to run away. But Elishaba could not move. She was afraid of what Papa would do if he caught her. And she couldn’t shake the lesson etched in her soul that going down from the mountain was unforgivable. She would never evade God if she went out alone in the world. Her twenty-nine years of working for salvation would be squandered. The laws of the world would surely condemn her, too—for how many times had they all seen truth disappear in humble apologies, exasperated sighs, heartfelt sharing of the Gospels, or red-faced anger—whatever it took to turn black into white? Papa would lie to the faces of their neighbors and the police. He had done it hundreds of times, and boasted about it afterward. They would return Elishaba to his mercy.

  At last she remembered the old hippie commune cabin at the mouth of Chitistone Canyon. The cabin was farther inside the national park, below the Mile High Cliffs. Before long it would be springtime breakup. The frozen glacial rivers would reopen and become impassable. Her father would not be able to track her then. Her body and soul would both be safe.

  Elishaba developed an escape plan. She would run deeper into the wild.

  Moses Hale crosses the waters of McCarthy Creek beneath the white-mountain throne of the Wrangells. (photo credit 16.1)

  ELISHABA’S CHANCE came in the Third Month. The family had run low on gasoline for the generator and Papa had to go to McCarthy. He did not want to let Elishaba out of his sight, but he could not bring her because her brothers might be in town. He commanded his wife to place a hand over her mouth and not move it until he returned. His daughters were to speak only of their work on the woodpile. He rigged a sled with an oil drum and placed Job and Noah on the family’s biggest snowmachine and disappeared down the valley toward town.

  Elishaba announced she was going away. She wouldn’t say where because she knew Papa would find out if she did. Jerusalem listened with concern. Old feelings of rivalry had vanished. She had never really known her sister’s heart. She worried Elishaba might not try hard enough to keep herself alive. Jerusalem insisted on going along.

  Mama rushed to an outbuilding and got the antenna working on the remote phone. Papa had disconnected it weeks ago, but Mama had been using it to keep in secret touch with her sons in Glennallen. She had made sure one of the younger boys removed the bullets from the pistol strapped on Pilgrim’s snowmachine. Now Mama called Joseph from the cabin. Even in the midst of her mutiny, Elishaba felt deceitful speaking into the phone. Her brother urged her to give up her plan, to meet him instead in McCarthy. She agreed to try. But she would have to avoid meeting Papa on the trail.

  They pulled and pulled on one of the Tundras but couldn’t get the snowmachine to start. Hosanna figured out that the spark plug had been removed. They found a replacement and said good-bye. The fan belt broke right away, and Jerusalem postholed back to get the second Tundra. When that one ran out of gas because of a fuel line leak, they switched to a third snowmachine. They turned away from the main trail and hid in the trees under white sheets. They could hear Papa’s snowmachine coming.

  Elishaba could think of no explanation that would stopper his rage if he found them. She concentrated on words from a Psalm: Be still and know that I am God.

  Papa drove on by.

  As the angry whine faded, Elishaba told her sister it was time to put their hand to the plow. She recalled Joshua telling her, “You have to run like the devil’s chasing you.” She had half an hour at best.

  The girls raced down the trail and into McCarthy—there was no one around to see and report them—and across the Kennicott River. They knew it wasn’t safe at the wanigan. Employing another of her father’s tricks, Elishaba drove into an area where people had been busy cutting firewood and circled until her track was mixed illegibly with others. She hid the snowmachine in thick brush and covered it with a sheet. Jerusalem had worked out details for a rendezvous over the phone that morning. But their brothers were missing. Maybe there had been a misunderstanding, she said. The sisters started out the McCarthy Road and climbed into the woods where they could watch for traffic. They hid where there was no snow under the boughs of a spruce tree.

  Their brothers did not show up.

  Before long, they heard Papa’s snowmachine searching the streets of the ghost town, past the lodge and the Hardware Store, across the river and around the wanigan and the few houses on the west side, circling.

  Elishaba and Jerusalem waited under the tree for five days, eating cold cheese and raisins, with temperatures dropping to twenty below at night. They had sleeping bags but no tent, and they did not dare build a fire.

  As she waited, Elishaba worried about the brothers and sisters she’d left behind. She couldn’t keep from worrying about her father’s health as well. He always said he depended on her to keep his medicines straight. Would he die because she had left? She knew that if she saw him, she would crumple at once and go back. More than ever before, she felt like a wild thing scared of humans. Jerusalem, meanwhile, couldn’t stop talking about going to see the Buckinghams. Elishaba finally snapped at her sister and said she would never go live with them, because that would prove to their father that she had left in rebellion.

  They decided to sneak down to the wanigan in the dark to use the phone. The icy trail was crunchy so they took off their boots and crept to the gypsy trailer in their sock feet. There was no sign of their father’s snowmachine out front, but they knew he was tricky so they kept quiet and looked around back in the trees. Sure enough, he had hidden his vehicle there. He was inside. Wide-eyed, they tiptoed back down the trail to the road, put on their boots, and ran back to their hiding place. They said they felt like David sneaking out of the cave past a sleeping King Saul.

  The next day they entered another cabin and phoned Glennallen. It turned out there had been confusion over the rendezvous point: There were two national park information kiosks. Their brothers drove straight to McCarthy and gathered them in.

  When Mama told them on the phone that Papa was taking a bath with fifteen-year-old Hosanna, Joseph drove back to McCarthy and snowmachined up to the homestead and took her away, too.

  THE PHONE calls from Glennallen were gravely troubling to Jim and Martha Buckingham. It was a delicate thing to challenge the authority of a father. The Bible said children were supposed to submit, and outsiders to defer. But there was an exception in Matthew if a parent is leading a child away from God: He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

  They told the Hale children they could come to Palmer for a visit. During the drive, the siblings agreed to say nothing about the worst things that had happened. They still feared the intervention of state child welfare and the ruin of their family. It seemed possible Papa would come around now, faced with the ultimate defections. As they approached the Lazy Mountain cabin, Elishaba panicked. She felt a lowly fraud around the Buckingham girls. But everyone was lined up on the porch as the van approached, and when the girls rushed forward to gather Elishaba with hugs she had a shocking revelation: She did not have to look over her shoulder and worry about her father’s reaction.

  Elishaba’s face was still badly bruised. The Buckinghams told her she could stay when the others returned to Glennallen. After two days, she asked them to adopt her. She said she felt like an orphan. They smiled and said she could stay as long as she needed but reminded her she was twenty-nine years old. Still she would not tell them what her father had done. The Buckinghams’ worry about overstepping was now matched by an opposite worry: Were the seven younger children still up McCarthy Creek in danger? Would the Buckinghams be responsible before God and man for not doing even more?

  After a month, Jerusalem and Hosanna arrived in Palmer to join their sister. The three sisters lived at Lazy Mountain through the summer. They cooked and worked in the garden and shared the clothes of their hosts’ five daughters, while Jim and Martha Buckingham worked to win their trust. It was slow going. When Martha Buckingham sat down with Elishaba to describe the ways of a true marria
ge, Pilgrim’s daughter wept quietly.

  The older Pilgrim boys were in McCarthy for the summer, running the horse ride business and the Kennicott shuttle. Pilgrim traveled between the homestead and his doctors in Anchorage and took care to avoid his sons.

  The Buckinghams did not want to see the boys, either. Jim Buckingham told them to stay away. He was concerned about having his daughters in the presence of these untethered sons of an abusive father, rough, longhaired, bearded, smelling of woodsmoke. But gradually the Buckinghams softened. The boys were sheep without a shepherd. Yielding to what he called “the gentle press of God,” Jim Buckingham rented a plane in July 2005, flew to McCarthy, and handed the boys a letter outlining the strict rules by which he would be willing to take them in. They could not read the letter. Buckingham read it aloud. The boys agreed to keep their distance from his daughters and made plans to move to Palmer when the fall hunting season was done.

  At the Mother Lode, Pilgrim was struggling to reorder his world. He tried to be nice. He let Hosanna go off to visit her sisters, and was shocked when Joseph called to say she wasn’t coming back. You can’t steal my daughter, Papa said. But it was a different Joseph talking back to him. If you want her, Joseph replied, call the state troopers. He was hoping to scare his father. You could go to jail for what you did with Elishaba, he said. Papa said it wasn’t so, because she was eighteen before anything happened. That was the legal age. Papa did not repent, but neither did he call the troopers to claim Hosanna.

  He launched a campaign that summer to win over Job, Noah, and Abraham, his three adolescent sons, showing new generosity, taking them fishing, and buying used four-wheelers for them to ride around. There would be no more beatings, he said, thanks to the grace of God. Rose interpreted this to mean that if the beatings resumed, it would be God’s fault. She prayed her husband had finally changed.

  In quiet moments, Pilgrim was restless and depressed and talked of moving on. Where else could he go, after the end of the road in Alaska? Maybe back to New Mexico. He started making plans.

  Then one late-summer afternoon the children were tossing rocks into a bucket, and little Jonathan, now two, threw a rock that hit Lamb. He ran over to hug her and apologize but Papa grabbed the thong and started flailing at him. The child writhed in the dirt, and it became one of those times when Papa wouldn’t stop. He pushed away Psalms and Bethlehem as they grabbed at him. Mama came running from the laundry and pulled her husband away by his shirt.

  Country Rose told her husband he had to go. Pilgrim said he was leaving anyway, that it was time to fly out for a hernia operation. When the plane came to get him, Rose pulled aside the pilot, Gary Green, and said, whatever you do, don’t bring him back up here.

  A FEW weeks later, on Labor Day weekend, Neil Darish was sitting in his van by the footbridge, windows down, waiting as guests unloaded their car across the river. He was lost in thought, listening to music, thinking about his breakup with Doug Miller that summer and his promise to buy out his partner’s share in the lodge within six months. Suddenly there was a thump on the passenger door and one of the longhaired little Pilgrim boys was panting and looking in the van window frantically.

  “My papa’s after me,” he cried. “Have you seen Israel?”

  At the sound of an approaching four-wheeler, the boy ran on toward town.

  A moment later, Papa Pilgrim was at the window on Darish’s side. He, too, asked about Israel.

  “He’s disobeyed me, and he’s telling lies,” Pilgrim said. He hesitated, and it seemed to Darish, especially thinking back later, that Pilgrim waited to see if the lodge owner had a question for him—that he was calculating how much Darish might already know.

  “He’s going to say evil things about me to the troopers,” Pilgrim added.

  Seeing no sign of his son, he got back on his four-wheeler and headed on toward McCarthy.

  Darish sat there, thinking: As an Objectivist follower of Ayn Rand, I am supposed to be cool and rational. I hope I haven’t been romanticizing this family.

  PAPA HAD come back from Anchorage earlier that day. He had Noah and Job with him.

  Israel had come down to McCarthy from hunting camp at the same time to meet a client. He called the homestead, and Mama told him how Papa had beaten Jonathan half to death. She said she had told Papa not to come back, but he had taken Noah and Job. She told Israel to get the boys away from their father and send them home to safety.

  Israel found Noah first and hid him in the woods. He was shoeing a horse near the wanigan when he saw Papa coming with Job. Israel was now eighteen and tall and was considered the strongest and toughest of the sons. He was the one Papa always beat the worst, but Israel had never fought back.

  Now he stood up with the hammer. Papa demanded Noah, and they started shoving each other. Israel said, If you hit me I’ll call the police. Papa kicked the horse, and Israel pushed his father to the ground. It was the first time one of his sons had laid a hand on him! Papa got up and grabbed Israel and punched him twice. Israel ran away to the footbridge and dialed a number on the pay phone before Papa caught up on his four-wheeler, grabbed the phone away, and pushed Israel down. Call the troopers, Papa said. They’ll tell you I’m right. You can’t keep my son from me.

  Israel ran across the footbridge and past Neil Darish in his truck. Job chased after him, pursued by Papa on the four-wheeler. Israel ran into Rick Kenyon’s church and locked the door. His lip was bleeding. In the basement of the church was a phone. Whenever Papa got mad at someone these days, he called the troopers. In spite of everything, Israel couldn’t bring himself to call the police against his own father. Instead, standing in the church and shaking, he dialed the one person who might be able to help.

  Jim Buckingham was putting shingles on his porch roof when he got the call. Israel recounted the fight in a trembling voice. He had not turned his cheek. What should he do now? The phone was silent for a long minute, as Buckingham stood on the roof of his porch and prayed for wisdom. Then he told Israel to call the troopers. Tell them about the fight, and tell them everything else, Buckingham instructed. You need to do that to protect your family.

  Two troopers in a patrol car were soon headed out the McCarthy Road. They met Robert Hale near the Gilahina River trestle. He was already on his way back to Anchorage with Job and Noah. The troopers took statements from everyone. It was just another small domestic matter. Israel had told them over the phone about the fight near the footbridge, but that was all. He still couldn’t talk about the rest.

  The troopers reported that Robert Hale was calm and didn’t appear excited. He told them Israel had been trying to hide his brother and had pushed his father to the ground. He had always been an aggressive boy, Robert Hale said. He felt a certain responsibility as a father and was forced to strike Israel in the face, to show him what could happen if he didn’t quit being so violent. He had asked Israel’s forgiveness and told his son he needed to have a forgiving heart, just as Hale himself had forgiven Israel many times for his aggressions.

  Papa Pilgrim was allowed to go on his way.

  But Elishaba had heard enough. She had listened as Mr. Buckingham talked on the phone to her brother hiding in the McCarthy-Kennicott Community Church. He had told Israel to protect his family. Something unlocked inside her. She saw what she had to do.

  The ruins of Kennecott Copper’s mill town and the moraine-strewn ice of the Kennicott Glacier (photo credit 17.1)

  IT WAS like flying into the heavenly kingdom. The young assistant district attorney from Palmer had never seen anything like it. The helicopter, dwarfed by the glaciers and peaks, flew swiftly toward the ice spilling off the face of Mount Blackburn. The closer they got and the higher they flew, the bigger the mountain looked, and they never seemed to arrive—the whiteness just kept expanding, like the face of God. Richard Payne felt himself lifted momentarily from his grim mission.

  The Alaska State Trooper pilot had steered up the glacier to avoid flying over the buildings of McC
arthy. They didn’t know if Robert Hale might be in town. At this point, only days after the Buckinghams alerted the authorities over what they’d been told by Elishaba, they were still trying to keep their investigation quiet. Veering from the white mountain at last, they left the glacier and flew above the red tinder ruins of the Kennecott mines. The pilot circled, purely a grace note. Payne gazed into his own family’s past.

  The prosecutor’s father had been a Kennecott man in Utah. His grandfather and great-grandfather, too—three generations of copper miners descended from original Mormon pioneer families. Payne had seen old photographs of the Bingham Canyon mill outside Salt Lake City where his ancestors worked. They were timber buildings like the ones below, erected with profits from this very mountain. The Utah buildings were gone now, of course, the canyon buried in waste rock from the deepest open pit mine in the world—a hole visible from outer space, as the local chamber of commerce liked to point out. Payne grew up expecting to work for Kennecott Copper like everyone else. When he was a teenager, though, world prices plunged, the pit shut down for a while, and in the turmoil of unemployment and divorce that followed Payne found a job in the law office of a second cousin. He wound up pursuing a university scholarship.

  He was now thirty-five years old. He had lived in Alaska for nine years. He had married here and started a family, but had never before made his way out to Kennecott’s birthplace. Now that he was here, he was thinking he should get out to the real Alaska more often. The sharp crags above the mines reminded him of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, but beyond these were altogether different summits of celestial winter, taller than anything in the lower forty-eight. The helicopter swept up the slope above the mining camp, climbing past reds and yellows of autumn tundra to a serrated ridge. As the far side of the mountain fell away, Payne could imagine his pioneer ancestors looking down on Zion for the first time.