What happened then Heimo will never forget. He had hold of Millie and he saw Coleen float by. He saw his daughter float by, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t let go of Millie. So Heimo dragged Millie to shallow water. He swam out and pulled Edna and the canoe out of the deep water, too. Then he ran to the bank and raced down-river. “Coleen!” He was screaming it now. “Coleen!” He would see her and then he would dive in and rescue her, and everything would be okay.
Heimo ran a quarter of a mile downriver and then he ran back. Maybe Coleen was stranded on a gravel bar. If so, there was still time to save her. When he reached Edna and Millie, he realized he needed to help them. He was shivering from the cold, and he knew that if they didn’t get warm, they’d both be severely hypothermic. Now he went into autopilot. He helped them both up the bank and then he gathered kindling and an armful of deadwood. He arranged it and then he tried to strike a waterproof match. Only he couldn’t; his hands were shaking. “Goddamnit.” He tried again and again. When the match finally lit, the fire went up in a blaze, and Heimo ran back downriver, looking for a trace, Coleen’s pink boot, anything that might help him find her. Then he ran upriver again. As he neared the fire, he began to grasp the truth. Coleen was gone.
At the fire, Edna was hugging herself, rocking back and forth, and crying hysterically, “mama, mama. I want my mama.” Heimo knew they would have to make it to the other side of the river, that it was important to get Edna and Millie under caribou skins. The fire had not been enough; Edna and Millie were shaking uncontrollably. Heimo carried Edna to the canoe and set her in it and then he got Millie. He searched for a large log to use as a paddle and pole. Then he sat down in back of the canoe and pushed it off into the current, but the river immediately tugged at them. Heimo battled against it, and when they reached a spot where the water was shallow enough, he jumped out. He held on to the canoe and slowly shuffled his feet along the river’s rocky bottom until he was at the bow. Then he grabbed the bow rope, pulled the canoe onto a small sandbar, and carried Edna and then Millie up the bank. It was then that he lost it. In his rage, he punched trees and heaved huge rocks into the river. Minutes later, spent, he yelled Coleen’s name one last time.
Back at the tent camp, he covered Edna and Millie in caribou skins and then tripped the new emergency locator transmitter. Then he went to the gravel bar and scratched out SOS with his foot. That evening, the Civil Air Patrol out of Fort Yukon was looking for them. CAP had been notified by Alaska’s Rescue Coordination Center (RCC), where all ELT messages are sent. Heimo, Edna, and Millie were all out on the gravel bar now. Heimo had built a fire to keep them warm and to enable the pilot to find them easily. The only problem was the ELT signal was coming from the tent camp where Heimo had set it off. When the plane came, the pilot searched among the trees and never bothered to look in the direction of the gravel bar. Heimo ran down the gravel bar. He waved his arms wildly and shouted at the top of his lungs. “We’re down here, you stupid son of a bitch. We’re down here. God, please let him see us.” Then he saw the pilot pull up and circle around in the direction of Fort Yukon. Until the pilot gave up his search, Heimo believed that maybe—somehow—Coleen might still be alive. When the pilot turned for Fort Yukon, his last glimmer of hope faded. He had failed to save his daughter.
Later that evening, a friend of the Korths, a pilot for Arctic Circle Air, heard that the RCC was still getting hits from the Coleen River, hours after the pilot had given up his search. He took matters into his own hands and borrowed a company plane and flew out to the river. He found Heimo, Edna, and Millie still on the gravel bar and noticed that someone was missing, so he air-dropped a message—“If it’s an emergency and you need a helicopter, wave your arms.” When Heimo waved, he tipped his wings to acknowledge that he understood and airdropped another message—“I’m going to get help.” He knew there was a helicopter based out of Arctic Village, where the University of Alaska was doing archeological work, so he radioed them and had them send out the helicopter. Five hours after their friend discovered them on the gravel bar, Heimo, Edna, and Millie were in Arctic Village, where news of their tragedy quickly spread among the villagers. Late that night, with the sun just beginning to fade, they arrived in Fort Yukon, where they were met by a group of friends. The following day, Heimo went out in a helicopter with two Alaska State Troopers and flew up and down the river much of the afternoon, but never found a sign of Coleen.
Four days later, a service was held in Coleen’s honor at the Assembly of God Church. Much of Fort Yukon was there. Heimo and Edna were numb. But when the service ended and Heimo turned to thank everyone for coming, he stared into the crowd of people and for the first time he cried.
CHAPTER 10
Summer
I arrive in Fort Yukon in mid-July 2002, and Krin is in the yard playing with her husky puppy, Firth. But I hardly recognize her. She has cut her hair as short as mine and spiked it with what appears to be an entire bottle of gel. “Pretty haircut, Krin,” I say, startling her. “How’s your summer been?” She glowers at me and manages a gruff “Thanks,” but ignores my question. “Where’s your mom?” I ask. She points to the cabin without saying a word.
I shuffle my feet, knock on the screen door, and walk in. Edna is working inside, surrounded by stray clothes and boxes. “A yard sale?” I say, joking. Edna wipes her forehead with her arm. “No,” she laughs. “Just packing for the Coleen. I’m tired of doing this every year.”
The cabin is a mess, but I get some sense of its layout—one large room, perhaps thirty feet by twenty feet, with a small kitchen, an eating area with a table, a living room with two chairs, a coffee table, a television, VCR, computer, stereo, and three sleeping areas, dilineated by sheets hanging from the ceiling to the floor.
Seated in one of the chairs is a leprachaun of a man with whitish gray hair and sparkling blue eyes. Despite the heat—at the airport they’d told me the temperature was in the low 80s—he wears a flannel shirt and a jeans jacket, which he’s buttoned to the top.
“This is Fred Thomas,” Edna says.
Fred smiles, but doesn’t get up, so I walk over and extend my hand. Travel anywhere in Alaska’s Interior and people know the name Fred Thomas. He’s one of the last of the old-time trappers. Fred was born in Fort Yukon in 1919, the son of a white man from Wisconsin and a Gwich’in woman. He started running a trapline at the age of six and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
I offer to help Edna pack. “Sit,” she says, shaking her head. Then she goes to the refrigerator and pours both Fred and me a glass of orange juice.
Heimo has warned me that Fred, like many Natives, could be shy around strangers, so I sit down across from him and don’t say a word. Unexpectedly, he speaks first. “So you’re the cheechako from Wisconsin?” he says, his eyes gleaming.
“I suppose so,” I answer. “Probably greener than the guys who came up in the seventies.”
This inspires him, and he forgets his shyness. “They were a funny bunch,” he says. “And ugly, too, especially Heimo.” He belly-laughs and looks in the direction of Edna, who is smiling at him.
“Fred and Heimo are always joking,” Edna says, since Heimo isn’t here to defend himself. He left for the river early yesterday to prepare the cabin for Rhonda and me, arriving first, then for Edna and Krin, who are scheduled to fly in a few days later. He has to set up the outdoor kitchen and the tent, in which he and Edna sleep during the summer because it’s cooler than the cabin. He also has to cut the grass in the cabin yard to discourage the mosquitoes, and remove all eighty-four of the roof poles that we peeled in spring and stored in the cabin over summer.
“Those guys had to learn fast, and they had to forget everything they knew when they got here,” Fred says, as if he’s still amazed that most of them survived. “Two or three of the fellas prit-near starved. One of them ate voles to stay alive. A couple of ’em shot themselves. It’s a hard life.”
I venture a question. “Why do you do it,
then?”
“Well,” he answers, “it wasn’t a choice. You gotta remember; it’s the only life people like me ever knew. There was no other way. But that was then. There’s general assistance now, enough money for the people here not to have to trap anymore. But me, I’ll keep trapping. You might say I’m just used to it.”
Krin charges in and the screen door creaks and then slams shut with a sharp crack. She grabs a mirror and holds it in front of her face, oblivious to us, or perhaps in spite of us. She puts on eyeliner, lipstick, and then rubs another gob of gel in her hair. She is a thirteen-year-old girl who, once fond of snowball fights and climbing trees, now has become transformed into a young woman. When her hair is sufficiently spiky, she bounds out the door.
Fred continues. “There was a cycle back then, not anymore really. People used to come into town in June with their entire winter catch and go back out in fall time.” In the fall of 1919, when Fred was only ten months old, his father and mother lined up to their cabin on the Black River, a trip that took them thirty days.
“Fall time?” I ask, knowing that traveling the rivers so close to freeze-up was risky.
“Yeah,” Fred says. “Fall time—late July, early August,” and then I realize that in the Interior, Mother Nature determines the seasons. By the time the autumnal equinox rolls around, people are sometimes a week or two into winter.
“That’s the way it worked,” Fred explains, slurring now because of a toothache that’s started to bother him again. “Goddamn tooth,” he fumes, gritting his teeth. “I’d better be heading home.”
Fred gets up, and I stand to say good-bye. I tower over him by almost a foot. Looking at him, it is hard for me to imagine him carrying an eighty-pound moose quarter out of the woods, but legend has it that he and his brother Albert were two of the toughest guys in the bush, strong despite their size and virtually impervious to cold. They’d cover their lines at 50 below, when one mistake meant the difference between life and death.
Fred says good-bye to Edna and me, walks out the door, and shuts it softly. A minute later the phone rings. Outside I hear someone shriek and then the sound of stampeding feet. I go to the door to see what all the commotion is about. Next thing I know, Krin and Rhonda are wrestling to see who will answer the phone. Rhonda grabs Krin around the waist and pulls her back and dashes in. She flops down in a chair— the epitome of a teenager—and talks with a friend on the phone. I try not to listen. “Soda” and “AC” are the only two words I hear.
When Rhonda hangs up, she jumps to her feet. “Hey, welcome to Fort Yukon,” she says. “Wanna walk to AC?” Krin is waiting at the door.
“If he goes, I’m staying,” she blurts out.
“Guess Krin’s out of luck,” I say. “Maybe I’ll bring a Mountain Dew back for her.”
“I’ll get my own,” she says, snubbing me.
Outside the Alaska Commercial Company store—AC, for short— where Rhonda has worked as a checkout girl for the last seven weeks, a bunch of kids are hanging around on their bikes. One of them, a thin boy, wears a Michael Jordan jersey that hangs just above his knees. A young girl sits on the handlebars of his bike. His boom box is turned up to full volume.
“White America,” Rhonda says. “Eminem.”
Though I’m not sure what I’d expected, I’m surprised when we walk inside the AC. It’s a thoroughly modern store with two levels. On the first floor, the store sells an assortment of items: tools, household cleaners, meat, frozen food, even fruits and vegetables, which come with astounding price tags. Grapes are $10.99 per pound. Downstairs, the AC sells clothes, rugs, toys, sewing supplies, furniture, and, Rhonda says excitedly, “Sunglasses!” We each buy a pop and then we go downstairs, where Rhonda tries on a variety of glasses, modeling them for me. The money she made over the summer is burning a hole in her pocket. For $12, she buys the funkiest pair on the rack. Satisfied with her purchase, she asks, “Hey, you want a tour of Fort Yukon?”
Our first stop is the large new Gwich’in Tribal Office building where Rhonda introduces me to a number of people. “When are you going out to the cabin?” one of the women asks Rhonda. “Oh, tomorrow, I guess,” Rhonda replies gloomily. “I’ll stop in again to say good-bye.”
Every year, Rhonda tells me, it gets harder and harder to leave Fort Yukon and return to the cabin. “It’s fun here,” Rhonda says. “We have friends. We can shoot pool at night, buy Slurpees, go to the AC, watch movies on the VCR. There’s just more to do.” Leaving the building, Rhonda says, “Even though I’m half Eskimo, I feel more Gwich’in than Eskimo because we’ve been coming here all my life.”
We double back along the gravel road in the direction of the town’s radio station. Though Fort Yukon is a twenty-first-century town, in some ways, it still has the look and feel of a Hudson’s Bay fur outpost— log houses, privies out back, dirt and gravel roads.
At the post office, Rhonda tells me to wait while she checks for their mail. Four-wheelers fly by spitting up so much dust that I grab my bandana and hold it over my mouth and nose. “Nothing,” Rhonda says, running out the door. “But don’t tell Krin I just did that. She’ll get mad. She loves to check the mail. She rides up here every day on her bike.”
Farther down the road, we reach the Fort Yukon radio station, Gwaandak Radio, KZPA, 900 AM. During the summers of 1994 and 1995, Heimo worked as a disc jockey here, subjecting the town of Fort Yukon and much of the bush to a music flashback: Fleetwood Mac, Moody Blues, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Miller, Sly and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, and anomalously, Enya. Although dead air was forbidden, Heimo never quite mastered the silence-filling DJ banter. Nor was he willing to serve up the diet of country tunes that so many people expected from KZPA. Nevertheless, inside there’s a plaque that bears his name.
At the Fort Yukon High School, a multimillion-dollar building with state-of-the-art facilities—new computers, Internet access, video hookups—Rhonda shows me where vandals recently smashed twenty-seven windows. “That happens a lot,” she says.
Next on the tour is the town drug dealer’s house, the local moon-shiner’s place, and the Arctic Circle Baptist Church, where all the women are ordered to wear dresses, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Interior Campus—Yukon Flats.
“Do you want to see the Episcopal Church?” Rhonda asks. “It’s pretty cool.”
Rhonda is right. The Episcopal Church is a quaint red log building with white trim, Fort Yukon’s oldest church. After Alaska was purchased from Russia, it was divided among the various denominations of missionaries. The Episcopalians got much of the Interior.
Inside, many of the pews have plaques dedicated to the memory of former Fort Yukon residents: Florida Yasuda, Old Alexander, Charlotte Englishshoe. Some of them date back to the early 1900s. The baptismal font honors the memory of Hudson Stuck, otherwise known as the dogsledding bishop, the first archdeacon of Alaska, and author of Ten Thousand Miles With a Dog Sled. In the back room, we discover Gwich’in hymnals, collecting dust, because few people in town still speak the language.
After visiting the church, we make our way over to the Hudson’s Bay Cemetery, where a large monument reads:
In memory of the People of the Hudson’s Bay Company who died at or near Fort Yukon between the years 1840 and 1870, many of them being pioneers and discoverers and explorers of various portions of the Yukon and Alaska. Erected by the Hudson’s Bay Company 1923.
I walk around the cemetery, glancing at the headstones, trying to imagine how it must have been to live in Alaska’s Interior in the 1800s. A poem I discovered in a collection at the university library in Fairbanks, by Belle Herbert of Chalkyitsik, Alaska, describes what it was like for the Native families, many of whom were living lifestyles that had changed little in thousands of years:
Ah, grandchild, times were very hard and people worked hard.
Grandchild, we survived on the food they hunted and shot.
If we stayed in one place, there wouldn’t be any food.
“C
ome on,” Rhonda shouts to me. “There’re too many mosquitoes. We gotta keep moving. Let’s go down to the river.” For the first time I look at my legs—I am wearing “greenie” hiking shorts, perhaps the only man in Fort Yukon who’s not dressed in jeans—and they’re covered with mosquitoes, which are rising out of the uncut grass in small, dark clouds. I haven’t seen so many mosquitoes since my wife, Elizabeth, my brother, Jeff, and I hiked through the jungles of Papua New Guinea. At least there’s no malaria or dengue fever or Japanese encephalitis here, I console myself.
We return to the cabin, completing a large circle, passing a number of small log cabins along the way. On a shed I see a sign that reads “Native Power” in bold black letters. I know how Heimo would respond to the sign. “Guy’s on a culture kick,” he’d say, believing that those Natives who live the traditional life—trapping, hunting, fishing—have little need to proclaim it. A guy like Fred Thomas, for instance. A few houses down, six dogs snarl at us from a cabin yard.
“Thank God, they’re all chained,” I say to Rhonda.
“They better be if the guy wants to keep his dogs,” she says. “If people see an unchained dog, they shoot it. The dump is full of dog carcasses.”
Back at the cabin, Edna is transplanting some of her flowers and an apple and chokecherry tree to take out to the Coleen, and Krin is riding her bike while Firth chases her and yaps. Firth is still young and unsteady on her legs, so she spends more time tumbling and rolling than she does chasing.
The Final Frontiersman Page 26
