The Floor of Heaven

by Howard Blum

  But George hadn’t anticipated the complete loneliness of the existence he’d be locked in to. Although in his shepherd’s life he’d known solitude, it was nothing like the prison he now occupied. In California, he’d found solace simply from being in the hill country; invigoration came from spending days in windswept meadows, from nights lying in a field on his back gazing up at the starry Milky Way sprinkled across the heavens. During the long winter months in Alaska, he was besieged. The snow would not stop falling, and the cold would not desist. All George could do was take refuge in his tiny room. Fully dressed, with a cloak of blankets wrapped over his shoulders for additional warmth, he still found it impossible to escape the howling, frosty wind that whooshed into his room each endless night, forcing its ice-cold way into every fiber of his being. Alone and lonely, he brooded.

  It was a well-practiced habit. George had taken refuge in his thoughts during his days and nights while tending to his flock in Modesto, and it had always been a comforting excursion. In his mind, he’d travel to an imagined place where the bonanza he so desperately wanted was within his grasp. He could escape by celebrating the triumph, the fortune of gold, he saw in his mind’s eye.

  The solitary Alaskan winter, however, chilled his dreams. George could not help reminding himself that he’d actually been to the Yukon—only to return empty-handed. A man alone, the reality of his failure became his constant companion. He revisited it. He nurtured it. And in time, the intensity of his expectations subsided. He lost his faith. It had all been folly, he decided. What sort of vanity had it been to think that he’d somehow be the lucky one to strike it rich in the Yukon? Yes, he told himself, he was his father’s son. Only now when George acknowledged this pedigree, it stung like a curse.

  He shared his weary resignation in a letter to Rose: “I have not been doing much as I can get nothing to do.… Some of the men came back from the Yukon reporting good diggings there. But I don’t think I will go back in there again. If I can get good wages here in Juneau I will stay until I can make a grubstake for Becky and me.”

  Becky! During the hard course of the winter, one dream had been broken. Yet when it had shattered, another had taken on new significance and had grown more elaborate, more impassioned. The only escape George could make from the constant grinding loneliness was to envision an existence with Becky. It had been, he wrote to Becky in a beseeching letter, the mistake of his life to have left her behind. Together, he proclaimed with the solemn ardor of a convert to a new faith, they could create a life filled with happiness. He asked her to join him in Juneau in the spring.

  As soon as George mailed the letter, his days took on a purpose. They were no longer empty. He had something to look forward to. He kept busy by plotting out the future, their future, in his mind.

  He waited for her response. When the letter didn’t come, he blamed the mails. Then he worried that Becky was sick. But he entertained no anxieties about her loyalty or her love. It was all he had left, so he refused to doubt it. He clung to Becky; and in this way, she protected him.

  Her letter never came. Finally, it was Rose who answered. Becky, she revealed with a no-nonsense brevity, had found someone else.

  George was devastated. In a single winter he’d lost everything; and he was certain there’d never be anything else for him in his life. Defeated, despairing, he instinctively fled his room after reading his sister’s news. He trudged out to a street covered in high white drifts and held his face up to the gusts of falling snow. It poured down on him in thick, cold waves, and he surrendered to it. George hoped the snow would keep coming and coming, covering him until he was lost forever.

  IN THE end, a poem restored him. It nudged his heart toward a change of mood. On Christmas Eve, surrounded by his loneliness, he recalled an image from the previous summer and he began to write: “But a whispering comes from the tall old spruce / And my soul from the pain is free.” His mind had been yearning, and in its desperation it had found a new destination. He focused on a clear, idyllic picture of the hewn-log trading post in Dyea that looked out on a “tall old spruce” and an inlet of shimmering blue water. The fine, bright beauty of the setting had affected him when he’d first encountered it, and in a burst of sentimental emotion he found himself traveling back to it on Christmas Eve in his poem. Soon his thoughts would often be making the journey to Dyea from his little room. And with each new trip, its perfection grew.

  In the process, a plan took hold. He’d no money to speak of, certainly not enough to grubstake another journey over the Chilkoot and into the Yukon, even if he were of a mind to take up prospecting again. But if he pitched his tent near old Healy’s place in Dyea, he could live off the land—deer and fish were plentiful—and maybe he’d find work as a guide or a packer. At least, he’d be out of the stifling confines of Juneau and in the open air.

  As soon as the snow on Front Street began melting into a muddy slush and the promise of spring could be felt in the warming sun on the beach as he dug for clams, George found an Aleut willing to take him up to Dyea in his canoe. He pitched his tent not more than a stone’s throw from the trading post, and he waited with a fair amount of apprehension about how old Healy would take to his presence.

  George had heard all the stories: how when J. J. Healy had been the sheriff in Chouteau County, Montana, he’d a tendency to hang whomever he arrested without fussing too much over the severity of the infraction. How Healy’d held off a band of wild prairie Indians by waving his lit cigar over a keg of gunpowder and threatening to blow ’em all, himself included, to kingdom come if they didn’t ride off. How he’d shot his way out of at least a couple of dozen other tight scrapes as he loped through Mexico, the West, and Canada. And George had seen enough of J.J. to appreciate that while his hair had turned white, he still was a crusty old bird, his back as ramrod straight as a marine’s on the Sitka parade grounds, and his stare as unforgiving as a drill sergeant’s. Yet, oddly, Healy never said a word to George about his pitching a tent where the merchant couldn’t miss seeing it each day when he sat on his porch. Perhaps Healy’d become resigned; in the course of his far-flung travels he might well’ve come to learn that a man couldn’t outrun civilization. Or maybe Healy enjoyed the prospect of company. In fact, to George’s considerable surprise, whenever he had occasion to purchase tea or tobacco at the trading post, Healy was downright pleasant, even friendly.

  That was how it happened that on a rainy May afternoon George was in the post chewing the fat with Healy when two Indian trappers carrying a bundle of furs entered. As a rule, Healy didn’t have much truck with Indians; he’d spent too many years of his rambling life avoiding getting scalped ever to feel comfortable around ’em. Besides, most of the braves who came to the post were Chilkoots hoping to buy molasses and lemon extract for mixing up some hoochinoo, an alcoholic brew that had a genuine kick to it. Last thing you want to deal with, Healy had once told George after he’d ordered some Chinooks—like most white men up north, he used the word dismissively for all Indians—out of his store, was a drunk red man. So Charlie was bewildered when Healy gave these two Indians a friendly greeting.

  To George’s further astonishment, he introduced the two braves as politely as if they were guests arriving for tea. The big one was a broad-shouldered, hawk-nosed man, and with a frank, unnerving curiosity, he fixed two eyes as black as lumps of coal on George. Healy called him Skookum Jim. Skookum, George knew, was the Chinook word for “strong,” and with just a glance George decided the name was appropriate. The Indian looked to be as tall as a spruce and just as sturdy. Still, Healy felt obliged to explain how Jim had earned his nickname: “He can carry a 150 pound sack ’cross the Chilkoot as if it were a feather.” The other Indian, George figured, might’ve been made up from what little was left after the Indian gods had finished putting Jim together. He was a skinny runt of a fellow with a weaselly look. Healy said he was Jim’s nephew and called him Tagish Charley.

  George had met a few Tagish Indians when he�
�d been up in the Yukon lake country last summer. They were mighty good hunters and fishermen, and George was inclined to respect people who led that kind of self-sufficient life. In his experience, the Stick country (as the interior was known) Tagish were not as fierce or, for that matter, as arrogant as the coastal Tlingits he’d met in Sitka and Juneau.

  Tlingits, of course, were warriors; George gave ’em that. Back at the turn of the century, they’d fought hand to hand against the Russians, and until the Russians had brought in artillery, they’d had them on the run. Even today George felt that a lot of the young braves were still looking for a fight. That was, after all, one of the reasons the War Department had dispatched him and his company of marines up to Sitka; the thinking was that a show of force was needed to keep the Tlingits in line.

  Still, the Tlingits and the Tagish got on fine with each other; it was pretty common for them to marry up. At the same time, both tribes seemed to have it in for the Chilkoots, which George could understand. A Chilkoot clan had a camp near Dyea and they were always poking around his tent; once he’d had to stand out front with his rifle cocked to show ’em he meant business. Not that he was too worried about the Chilkoots going on the warpath. They were making too much money packing white men over the pass to want to chase them away. They were smart, all right. Like all the tribes, the Chilkoots couldn’t be bothered to waste their days looking for gold. Indians just didn’t see how a hunk of rock could be worth anything. But more than most of the tribes, the Chilkoots had the savvy to realize that they didn’t need to take a gamble and waste their days looking for gold. There was a guaranteed bonanza to be made off all the white men foolish enough to believe they’d strike it rich. He recalled the strident way the Chinook packers had bargained with him last spring, and, although he’d wound up getting a fair price, the heated give-and-take left a sour taste in his mouth. So all in all, George reckoned it made some sense that if old Healy was going to smoke the peace pipe with some tribe, it’d be the Tagish.

  George watched as Healy sorted through the furs the two Indians had to offer, separating them into piles of marten, fox, muskrat, and beaver. Next Healy carefully inspected every pelt, running his fingers through each one to gauge the thickness of the fur and holding every skin up to the light to see if it was diseased. When he was satisfied, the bargaining began. It was in Chinook, but George had no trouble understanding. And by the time the give-and-take was concluded, both sides felt they had done well. Healy gave Skookum Jim $125; Tagish Charley received $100, and the only reason for the difference, as far as George could guess, was that Healy felt he could get away with paying less to Charley, but not to big Jim.

  Once they put the money in their pockets, though, the mood of the two Indians turned somber. They stood facing Healy awkwardly, as if wanting to say something but unable to find the words. Finally, Jim spoke.

  We were thinking about spending the summer working as packers, the big Indian began. Lot of money in taking prospectors over the Chilkoot.

  Healy nodded. George noticed that Healy’s demeanor had suddenly changed, too. He seemed wary.

  The two Indians weren’t helping things along. They just stood there as if they had forgotten how to speak. Once again, it was Jim who at last spoke up.

  The Chilkoots, he said, spitting the name out with an unmistakable venom. We set up camp, he went on, the Chilkoots will try to run us off. There’s just two of us, he added rather helplessly, but there’s a whole clan of Chilkoots in these parts.

  Don’t seem like a fair fight, does it, Carmack? Healy asked. Now that he knew what’d been on the two Indians’ minds, he was no longer on guard. In fact, their predicament set his temper boiling.

  Can’t say it does, George agreed.

  The odds so rankled the old Indian fighter’s sense of justice that Healy made an impetuous suggestion. Why don’t you two make camp with Carmack right by my post? Those Chinooks give you any trouble, Carmack and me’ll help you set things right.

  So it was settled. Jim and Charley found a bit of level ground facing the inlet, and before long George had helped them erect a spruce-bough lean-to. Now when Healy sat on his porch he’d grumble that he might as well be in Denver, Dyea was getting so crowded. But George didn’t mind at all. After last winter’s crushing isolation, with only his disappointments to keep him company, it was a real pleasure to be able to sit around a fire at night making conversation, even if it was mostly in Chinook.

  No less a blessing, George was soon busy, working and making money. When a group of prospectors came around looking to hire the two Indians to help carry their supplies to Lake Lindeman, Jim, without even speaking to George about it, announced that there were three men in this outfit. So George became the only white man to work as a packer going over the Chilkoot.

  The morning of their first job, George was full of dread. He remembered his one climb over the trail, and how he’d wound up crawling on his hands and knees like a dazed and wounded animal. That morning’s ascent proved to be no less of a battle. But whenever it felt as if he were about to stumble, Jim would somehow understand and he’d be there to steady George with one of his big hands. In this fashion, George was able to make it to the summit on his own two legs.

  As the summer passed and there were more trips up the trail, George grew stronger and cannier. He learned how to balance his pack while scampering over slick rocks, how to keep his footing in a soup of melting snow. It was beyond his powers to handle the climb with the ease that Jim and even Charley (who, after all, was no more than a runt) demonstrated, but George grew pleased with himself. He felt he could do a packer’s job. And for once he was able to save some money; the going rate was $10 per hundred pounds that summer. There was also another benefit from all the busy summer’s labor: He’d been too occupied to let his mind wander to thoughts of Becky. As the weeks passed, George came to realize that he couldn’t even remember the color of her eyes or the sound of her voice, let alone why he’d made such a fuss. Now if her name happened to stray into his thoughts, he’d dismiss it with a quick laugh, and chide himself for having been such a foolish, lovesick boy. She, too, had become part of a buried past.

  SEVENTEEN

  ut come the tail end of August, when the wind blew down from the mountains with a sharper, icy slap and the lakes turned dark under the looming afternoon sky, the careful world George had constructed fell apart. Jim announced that with winter nearing, Charley and he’d be returning to their village in the lake country. They planned to buy some supplies from Healy, and then tomorrow they’d head back over the pass.

  Sensible as Jim’s plan was, George had never considered their return to the Tagish village as even a possibility. It’d never occurred to him that the two Indians would be leaving Dyea. He didn’t know what to say. All at once he felt as if he were suffering from a mortal wound, and in a way he was. He knew he couldn’t bear to spend another Alaskan winter on his own. For a moment, he wished he’d died on his way up the Chilkoot. That would’ve been easier, and a lot less painful than what he knew was in store for him.

  Why don’t you come with us? Jim suddenly asked. “Hiyu skookum illahee. Hiyu clean, all same sky,” he urged.

  “Indian country strong, plenty clean like the sky,” George agreed.

  And with those words it was settled.

  IN THE course of the long journey to the Tagish village, George began to fret about his decision. He didn’t speak Tagish, and it’d been hard enough to learn Chinook. He worried that he’d be unable to talk to anyone and that this would make things not much different than being holed up on his own in a room in Juneau. Only now, he’d be smack in the middle of a bunch of wild Indians who’d probably be thinking about how to make off with the sizable sum of money he’d been able to save and had tucked into his rucksack. All the way over the pass and then as the trio canoed down the swift streams that linked Lake Lindeman to Lake Bennett, new concerns took shape in his mind each day. He began to realize that he didn’t know what to e
xpect. By the time the three men approached the village, paddling north into the ice-still waters of Nares Lake, George had come around to thinking he’d made a mistake.

  On the way up this short, narrow channel, his misgivings spreading like the ripples created by each firm stroke of their paddles dipping into the water, George heard what sounded like cannon fire. It was off in the distance, and he was reminded of the fusillade that’d been shot off on parade days in Sitka.

  For a crazy moment all he could think of was that the U.S. Marines had decided to attack Canada. After all, the precise boundaries between American Alaska and the Dominion of Canada were, it was well known, a matter of dispute. Canada had requested a jointly financed survey, but the United States had rejected the plan; the folks in Washington didn’t see any reason to spend money to establish boundary lines for such a remote and sparsely settled wilderness. As it was, it was generally agreed that the summit of the Chilkoot Trail was the demarcation between the United States’ Alaska Territory and the Canadian Yukon. But George suspected that it wouldn’t be long before this vague line, based on a loose interpretation of the 1825 treaty between Russia and Britain defining the borders of their colonial possessions, would become the subject of a diplomatic shouting match. Perhaps, he imagined, tempers between the Canadians and the Americans had gotten so riled that the marines had now been called in.