Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  She was listening to an upbeat CD of tunes from the Broadway Show Fosse when she reached the Yellowhead Pass fifteen miles out of Jasper and crossed from Alberta back into British Columbia. A little “Steam Heat” might be welcome soon, she thought, for the day was less sunny and bright than the one before. A dark bank of clouds rolling in from the west had already covered half the sky. The top of Mount Robson, at 12,972 feet the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, was too obscured in the mist for pictures when she turned off for a look. In a few minutes she had seen what was visible, taken Tank for a short walk, and was back on the road.

  Tête Jaune (“yellow head”) was the name given by French voyageurs to an Iroquois trapper and guide who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the early 1800s. Thus did the Yellowhead Highway receive its name, as did Yellowhead Lake and the town of Tete Jaune Cache farther west, which Jessie cruised past on the long, gently curving road. It was pleasant driving, much of it through forest that had been logged and replanted and valleys that eventually spread out into ranching country. At one point she pulled over to watch a herd of bison grazing next to the highway—a surprise she hadn’t anticipated. Bridges with glimpses of rivers and lakes flashed past, and though the sun disappeared behind the clouds that soon filled the sky, only a few sprinkles of rain fell before she arrived in Prince George, population 76,500.

  It was the first sizable city she had seen since leaving Coeur d’Alene, and it seemed awkward and confining to have to follow a map through streets crowded with traffic and look for signs to guide her to the junction with Highway 97, which came through Prince George from the west coast on its way north. Satisfied with the grocery purchases she had made in Jasper, she hesitated at a shopping center only long enough to fill the gas tank and grab a hamburger and a chocolate shake from a Burger King. Then, as traffic finally thinned at the outskirts of town, she was on her way toward the real start of the Alaska Highway, Dawson Creek. With 250 miles to go until she reached it, the afternoon would be long, but she had no desire to linger in the midst of such blatant civilization. Burger King indeed!

  From Prince George, the landscape flattened into farming country without the attraction of mountain scenery or even much in the way of rivers. It rolled gently away into fields divided by fences or thin lines of brush and trees, with little to break the sameness.

  It started to rain—first a few drops hitting the windshield, then a steady drizzle. Jessie, already driving with her lights on, hunted out the wiper switch and turned it on. The rhythm of the blades sweeping across the window in front of her was slightly hypnotic, and she began to sing in time to the beat—a series of old camp songs from her girlhood, each one reminding her of another. By the time she had shouted, “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmitt,” for the third time, Tank had gone to sleep in spite of the noise and her voice was growing hoarse, so she drifted into silence and thought about Maxie instead, whom she planned to meet farther up the road.

  Her new friend reminded her a little of Dallas Blake, originally from Texas, whom she had met on a trip from Skagway to Seattle a year or two before. Though Maxie was more than ten years younger than Dallas, they had a similar confidence and adventurous spirit.

  As soon as the new cabin is finished, I should invite Dallas to come up for a visit, Jessie thought. And that reminded her that she must tell Vic Prentice that she wanted a ramp built from the yard to the front porch so that Dallas, crippled with arthritis, could move easily in and out in her wheelchair.

  Maybe Maxie would like to come sometime too and park her Jayco next to the dog yard. Jessie had to smile when she thought of short-legged Stretch in the company of her kennel full of Alaskan huskies. What a contrast.

  There was something about Maxie besides her independence that Jessie liked and hadn’t quite been able to identify. It had to do with the live-and let-live way she accepted her surroundings and most of the people in them. Dignity? Tolerance? She seemed to watch everything, then acknowledge or ignore, accept or reject, without relinquishing her own solid sense of self or wasting unnecessary time and energy. She let people answer their own questions and gave little advice, even when asked. Wisdom was a good word, but Jessie thought it would make Maxie laugh. She loved Maxie’s laugh. It was as throaty as her voice, and when something amused her she held back nothing, threw back her head and let it go—a laugh that turned heads, intoxicating and delightful. That wonderful sense of humor was part of what appealed to Jessie. Whatever it was about Maxie, she liked it, and maybe she could figure it out when they had spent more time together. Tonight she would spend pleasantly alone, but tomorrow evening she hoped to park her Winnebago next to the Jayco again, in an RV park in Fort Nelson.

  Thinking of all the places Maxie had traveled and planned to visit in the future, Jessie found herself a little envious. Most of her life had been spent growing up in Minnesota and later in Alaska. All her time at the kennel was pretty much focused on raising and training sled dogs for the races she entered. It would be fun to see new places, meet people who weren’t mushers for a change. It was something to think about.

  Where would she like to go, if she could go? Pictures of the desert country of the southwestern United States had always appealed to her, seeming very similar with its spare lines and vast distances to the west coast of Alaska in winter, Nome for instance. Both whispered in her mind of purple sunset shadows and treeless landscape. The extreme difference in temperatures might be part of the attraction. It was interesting that icy beaches on the edge of the Bering Sea could look so much like immense, barren reaches of desert—one locked in ice, one seared by the sun. For a few minutes she longed to spend time in Arizona or New Mexico. Was she limiting her life too much? Was her focus too narrow? There was a whole world out there that she had never experienced—tempting.

  At almost six o’clock Jessie reached Dawson Creek. She had seen the marker that designated Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway on earlier trips, and rather than drive to see it again, especially in the rain, she turned toward the campground she had chosen for the night, another seventeen miles up the road. She had pictures she could look at of the distinctive white 0 marker with flags flying, taken where it stood in the center of town, 1,523 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska, where a similar monument marked the terminus of the highway.

  The Alaska Highway had been built in eight months and twelve days, from March 9 to October 25, 1942. When Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese in December 1941, Alaska had been considered at substantial risk for invasion. Forging an agreement between the United States and Canada, President Roosevelt authorized the U.S. Army to begin construction on a highway from Edmonton, Alberta, to Fairbanks, Alaska, along a route determined by the existing airfields of a Northwest Staging Route that was used to ferry war planes from Montana to Alaska, then on to Russia as part of the Russian-American Lend Lease Program. In a massive undertaking of men and machines, working from both ends with several construction camps in between, thousands of military and civilian workers lived in tents and scraped frozen ground at below-zero temperatures, endured the torments of black flies and mosquitoes during the summer months, and felled millions of trees to hack a passable road over the Rockies, across wild rivers, through muskeg and swamp. When the Japanese did invade the Aleutians, the project gained urgency. On September 25 the road crews finally met each other at Contact Creek, and it was almost immediately possible to drive from one end of the highway to the other, though the trip remained treacherous and sometimes deadly. It was not for the faint of heart—a difficult passage indeed.

  The dangerous reputation of the Alaska Highway had long outlived its actual conditions, for its complete length was now paved, and except for work that was always being done in one place or other to repair, improve, or widen sections, it was a safe and satisfying if lengthy adventure. Passing through some of the world’s most awesome scenery and last wilderness, it had been named an International Historical Engineering Landmark. Most of it had been straightened, so it was shorter, w
hich created some discrepancy between actual and historical mile markers, and bridges had been replaced. In fact very little of the original highway existed or could be driven.

  Though there were campgrounds in Dawson Creek where she could have stayed, Jessie had no desire for a windy in-town RV park without trees and with other people parked so close she would be able to hear them talking. She also knew that she was heading for one of the places she had put on her wish list for this trip.

  The rain had, if not stopped, at least hesitated by the time she reached the turnoff she was looking for, and she was delighted to discover that the access road on which she was soon traveling, mostly gravel but with some pavement left, was part of the original highway. It wound downhill a short distance into a steep gorge, then suddenly she was driving onto the sweeping curve of a bridge eighty-seven feet above the Kiskatinaw River’s rocky banks.

  She knew from reading that this was the only original timber bridge on the Alaska Highway that was still in use, and that it had been completed in June of 1943. A 531-foot-long structure of creosoted British Columbia fir that had been shipped in from the coast, it curved a full 90 degrees and was superelevated, or banked, with the outside of the curve higher than the inside—distinctive enough to have made the Guinness Book of Records.

  Turning the Winnebago around on the far side, she stopped and got out to take a look but decided to wait till morning to use her camera, hoping that the overcast would clear and give her better light for pictures. Driving back across the wooden planks of the bridge, she turned down into the Kiskatinaw Provincial Park and found a space among perhaps two dozen in which to park her rig—surrounded by spruce and poplars, with the river only a few steps away. Stepping outside she could hear the soft sounds of running water and birds in the trees—a terrific break from wheels on pavement.

  Taking Tank with her on his leash, she hurried to have another look at the bridge from below before it started to rain again. Finding a path from the campground road to the river, she walked along its bank, clambering over rocks, until she stood looking up at the huge wooden structure between her and the sky. In the half-light it seemed higher than it had from above. The dark heavy timbers crisscrossing each other were bolted together at each intersection, forming the triangles that were its secret strength. Curving from one side of the gorge to the other, it loomed overhead in an ominous crescent against the gray clouds still heavy with rain. Jessie hoped again that a clear morning would give her a different impression of this original piece of the highway, for in the gathering darkness it seemed to lean menacingly toward her.

  On her way back along the campground road she was surprised to meet the same green Suburban she had seen in the Dutch Creek campground. Once again it was proceeding slowly and she could see that the driver in his western hat was looking carefully at each camping space, including hers. This time he turned his head away from her as he passed, so she didn’t get a look at his face, but swinging around to look after the vehicle she saw that it had a Wyoming license plate. Coincidence? Probably. Still, it made her wonder.

  By the time the light was completely gone, she had eaten dinner, cleared up the galley, and settled happily at the table with her evening cup of tea and a book about the highway that she had saved for just such an evening. It was raining again, creating a quiet liquid drumming on the roof, though the gorge was a shield against all but a light breeze. She could have been completely alone, for the other campers were all inside their shelters, RVs, or tents, and the only audible evidence of their presence was the infrequent sound of feet passing on trips to the restrooms that lay a few spaces toward the bridge on the loop of campground road.

  Tank did not settle so easily but wandered back and forth for a few minutes, sniffing at everything and listening intently to every unfamiliar noise, including the gas-operated furnace, which Jessie had turned on low as the motor home grew chilly. He needs a good run, she thought, but gave him the bone from the morning’s grocery store trip instead. Soon the only things to be heard were his teeth crunching his treat, the rain on the roof overhead, and a page turning now and then.

  The camping space just across the road had been empty, but Jessie was soon distracted from her reading by the sound of someone walking around there on the gravel, making just enough noise in setting up camp to attract her attention. Curious, she peered out the front window of the Winnebago between the curtains she had drawn for the night but could see no vehicle, just the silhouette of a bicycle with saddlebags. An attached trailer reflected small points of light from the flashlight of its owner as he worked hurriedly to put up a small tent.

  What a pain, she thought, to have no real retreat from the rain and have everything you carried damp for days if it continued. Glad to be inside where it was warm and dry, she went back to her book, only to be startled in a few minutes by a knock on the door.

  11

  CRAIG SEVERSON WAS SOAKED TO THE SKIN, COLD, AND thoroughly tired of riding in the rain by the time he let his loaded bicycle and trailer coast down the access road from the highway to the Kiskatinaw Provincial Park and found an empty space in which to set up his one-man tent, eat yet another cold sandwich, and crawl into his sleeping bag for the night. Maybe starting off to travel the Alaska Highway this early in the year hadn’t been such a good idea after all. If it didn’t stop pouring water over him soon, by the time he reached Fort Nelson to meet up with his cycling partner, he would be ready to pack it in and go home to Prince George, preferably not on two wheels.

  In three days of peddling he had worked hard for mileage on narrow roads with many hills, crossed the Rockies at Pine Pass on the second day, and camped twice, the last time at East Pine Provincial Park near Chetwynd. But most of the trip had been done in some amount of rain, and even when it wasn’t raining it had been so overcast and damp that nothing ever quite dried out. His sleeping bag was only slightly clammy, wrapped carefully in plastic, but he did not relish the idea of getting back into it. Rain—he hated rain. And worst of all, today there had been a head wind that drove it constantly into his face. His back ached and he could feel the tension in his neck, shoulders, and arms from leaning forward, trying to keep from being blinded by the water but forced to raise his head enough to see where he was going.

  Waterproof rain gear kept sweat in as effectively as it kept rain out, and clothing worn under it while riding was soon soaked. Instead he wore partially waterproof shells without the slicker and let them get wet. Usually peddling kept him warm enough as long as he kept moving. He kept clean clothes in large plastic bags, zipped tight to keep them dry, but he had now worn everything but a single cotton T-shirt. Should have stopped in Dawson Creek, he thought regretfully, but hadn’t wanted to take the time to find a laundromat, then wait for his few clothes to wash and dry. Stripping off his skintight poly-shirt, he hurriedly pulled on the dry T-shirt and a rain slicker over it.

  Dragging the tent, wet from last night, from the trailer, he began to work with cold hands to set it up. Everything was heavier when wet and the tent was no different. It stuck together as he opened it and sagged slightly on its supports when he finally had it secured. Into it he tossed a self-inflating air mattress and the sleeping bag. Slightly damp or not, it was all he had and would be warmer than nothing, if not particularly comfortable.

  Weighing in one hand the sandwich he had made and put into a plastic bag at noon, a can of vegetable soup in the other, he considered the difficulties of heating soup on his Whisperlight stove in the confines of the tent. He longed for something hot to help warm him up and wished he had heated it and filled his metal thermos at lunchtime. But getting out the stove, putting it together, pumping to pressurize, then lighting it was suddenly more than his tired mind and body would accept.

  In the space just across the road from him was a motor home with its coach lights still on. Though the curtains were drawn and the blinds closed, he had seen a woman looking out in his direction a few minutes earlier. Closing the trailer cover and s
addlebags, he took the soup and sandwich, reticence overcome by the idea of something hot to eat, and walked quickly across the road to knock on the door before he could change his mind.

  Jessie, startled from her reading by the knock, got up to answer it, Tank by her side. Turning on the exterior light and peering out, she saw the cyclist from across the road and opened the door to see what he wanted. He was wearing a yellow slicker and was tall enough so that, though he stood below her on the ground, he didn’t have to look up very far to meet her questioning assessment. With his can of soup and sandwich, he reminded her of a small boy with an empty bowl out of some Dickensian orphanage.

  “Hi,” she said and couldn’t help smiling.

  He was shivering slightly without the exertion of peddling to keep him warm. “I was just wondering if I could beg the use of your stove long enough to heat this soup and some water to wash in. I know it’s an imposition, but—”

  He looked harmless enough and clearly in need of warmth of some kind. Jessie made a quick decision and interrupted. “Why not? Come on in.” She moved back to give him room to come up the two steps, closing the door behind him.

  “Hey, I really appreciate this.” He set the can of soup on the table and held out a cold wet hand. “I’m Craig Severson.”

  Jessie introduced herself and Tank, wiped her damp hand on her jeans, and picked up the soup. “I’ll have this hot in a minute or two.”

  “I can do it. Just loan me a can opener and a pan.”

  “Already got it covered. There’s hot water, soap, and a towel in the bathroom. Go ahead and wash. You’ll feel better—and warmer.”

  “Thanks,” he sighed gratefully, stripped off the rain slicker, and went to do as instructed.

  When he returned, combing his wet hair back with his fingers, scrubbed face glowing, Jessie had already poured the steaming vegetable soup into a bowl on the table, set a hot cup of tea next to it, and was in the process of making a toasted cheese sandwich. Some of the grapes from the Jasper market and an apple lay close by in a bowl.