The Final Frontiersman

by James Campbell

  Twenty minutes later, we’re near the kill site. I tie off the canoe and Heimo pumps five slugs into the shotgun. Watching him, I realize something’s up. When he calls me over, I know he means business.

  “There could be a grizzly feeding on that moose, and he’ll defend it till death,” he says. “You take the shotgun, and I’ll take my forty-four. Be ready to shoot. If you hear a ‘woof, woof’ and the crashing of brush, you know he’s coming. You won’t have much time. Whatever happens, don’t freeze. Freeze and we’re fucked.”

  The moose meat is about 150 yards in. We walk side-by-side, five feet apart, with our guns ready. My heart is beating like a stock car engine. “Don’t freeze,” I say to myself. “Whatever you do, don’t freeze.”

  Thirty yards away, I can see the moose. I look at Heimo and he holds up his hand—wait here. He takes another five steps, stands up on his tiptoes. “It’s okay,” he says, turning. “No bear in sight.” For the first time I understand how a man could wet himself from utter relief.

  Now we have to lug out the moose, load it in the canoe, paddle to whatever gravel bar Rick has found, and then carry it to the plane. I jump right in. “I’ll take a quarter,” I tell Heimo. Each quarter is a hundred pounds of deadweight, and once I wrestle one to my shoulders, I realize that a lifetime of weightlifting has done little to prepare me for this experience. I stumble through the brush and tussocks and am winded by the time I reach the canoe. Heimo’s right behind me. “This ain’t nothin’,” he says. “Before I got the canoe, I had to carry them all the way back to the cabin. Sometimes it took me two days to get the whole moose out.”

  By the time we’ve loaded Rick’s plane, it’s 2:00 P.M. Rick leaves Heimo with the nose, the brisket, the tongue, the head, and the horns, and we still have to line the canoe back up to the cabin. Rick will fly to Fairbanks, hang the meat, and fly back out the following morning to pick up Heimo and take him to Fort Yukon. Then he’ll fly back to get me.

  When we reach the cabin, it is late afternoon. Edna and Krin are outside, sitting around a fire. They are both glued to the flower book that I gave Edna as a present. When Heimo and I walk into the cabin yard, struggling under the weight of the meat, they don’t even acknowledge us. We hang it next to the meat from Heimo’s moose and cover it all with large blue and green plastic tarps. Clouds have moved in, and Heimo is worried about rain. If rain gets to the meat, it’ll spoil faster.

  Heimo goes to the cabin and comes out with a hand-crank meat grinder. “Edna’s promised to make moose tacos tonight,” he says. Edna finally looks up from her book. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” she taunts him.

  “Come on,” Heimo pleads with her. “Rick brought out some vegetables. We better use them before they go bad. We’ll have tacos tonight and moose nose and tongue.”

  “We’ll see,” Edna replies, and returns her attention to the flower book. She flips through a few pages and then gets up and walks to the cabin. “Okay,” she says. “I guess we’re having moose nose and tongue and tacos, too.”

  “Yippee,” Heimo hollers.

  Two hours later, Edna steps outside the cabin door. “Dinnertime.”

  I load up my plate with tacos and a piece of the twenty-inch moose tongue, which Edna has cut into five large slabs. I slice off a small bite of the tongue and plop it into my mouth.

  “What do you think?” Edna asks.

  “Tastes like a fine cut of steak,” I answer.

  “Hold on,” Heimo says. “That’s a low blow, comparing moose tongue to beef. Keep that up and all you’ll get is nose.”

  Edna and Krin laugh at the joke. I had moose nose as an appetizer. Made up largely of fat and cartilage, moose nose is definitely an acquired taste, and when Heimo asked if I wanted a second helping, I promptly declined.

  Tonight is my final night in the Arctic, and Heimo and I are at the river, fetching water. The afternoon’s clouds have disappeared, replaced by shimmering plumes of green smoke and throbbing bright red bands— the northern lights—which tease the sky with intimations of the coming winter.

  “This is going to be my twenty-eighth year in the bush,” Heimo says, watching the sky. Then he bends, dips the bucket in the river, and pulls it out. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hauled water since I came to Alaska.” Realizing he’s forgotten to put on the lid, he sets the bucket down in the gravel. “Hauling water,” he says. “It’s not a concept a lot of people would understand anymore, is it? The other day Krin asked me why we had to live way out here, why we couldn’t live like other people, if she’d ever have friends. That nearly broke my heart. Sometimes I wonder if Edna and me have done the right thing. Not that long ago, many lived like this. Now it’s down to Rhonda and Krin. Maybe when they’re thirty, they’ll look back and realize that they lived a way of life that doesn’t exist anymore, and they’ll be thankful. I sure hope so. I’ve set up separate bank accounts for them in Fairbanks, college funds. There’s not a lot of money in there, but I’d like them to be able to go to college and make their own decisions about life. Even if they wanted to live like this, though, I don’t think it would be possible. As far as I can see it, this way of life is done. The Democrats want to outlaw guns and trapping and the Republicans want the minerals and the oil and want to build roads even to the most remote parts of the state. Don Young is now the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, and Ted Stevens is back in charge of the Senate Appropriations Committee, so you know they’re going to make sure that Alaska gets a good share of the federal funds.” Heimo kicks at the gravel.

  “Did you ever think of leaving after Coleen died?” I ask him.

  “Why would we ever do that?” is his answer.

  “Some of your friends thought you might leave and never come back because, well, because it was too hard to live with the memories.”

  Heimo stares at the ground and shuffles his feet and then he raises his head and gazes off into the distance. He doesn’t speak. Instead he brushes his teeth with his tongue. Then he exhales deeply, and I can see his breath rise from his mouth and dissipate in the air.

  “We could never leave this place,” he says, finally, looking off in the direction of the Stranglewoman Mountains. “Coleen is everywhere.”

  Back at the cabin, Edna is paging through her flower book, and Krin is finishing up the dishes. She has her headphones on and is dancing, swinging her arms, kicking her feet, and twirling in circles. I sit down on a bucket, and Heimo sits next to Edna and wraps his arms around her. “I sure am glad I have this woman,” he says, and nuzzles her neck. Krin was not aware that I was in the cabin. She catches a glimpse of me and stops her dancing, though I can still hear the song’s melody leaking from her headphones.

  Edna digs into her pocket and hands me some #2 picture wire. “In case your plane goes down tomorrow,” she says. “With this you can snare bunnies and stay alive, so you can get home to your wife and girls.” Then she reaches behind her and brings out a pair of tiny Eskimo slippers that she’s made for the youngest of my two girls, who will be six weeks old when I return home.

  “Fox fur,” she says, running her fingers over the auburn and gray fur at the top of the slippers. “For Rachel.”

  “Thank you,” I say simply, knowing that Edna will be embarrassed if I make too much of a fuss over them.

  Then I excuse myself for the evening. I bend to get out the door and replace the blanket over the opening. The northern lights have disappeared, but stars flood the land in a soft gray light.

  I walk back to the Arctic oven, eager to put some wood in the stove and crawl into my sleeping bag. In the distance, though, I hear what I think is the howling of wolves. I stop, hold my breath, listen again, and the sound is gone.

  CHAPTER 13

  A Way of Life

  Driving down Appleton’s College Avenue, it is as I remember the street best—lit up for the Christmas season, tinsel laced across the avenue, and lights climbing the street lamps. Between Walnut and State Streets, I pass what use
d to be Sarge’s Bar and is now an upscale martini lounge. I think of Heimo there, before he left for Alaska, when the crowd was of a very different sort, and he was trying to drown boredom in booze, all the while dreaming of a life that would one day transport him far from the five-day-a-week drunks and the dead-end existence that were laid out before him as straight as a section line road.

  In an odd twist of fate, Rhonda has called Appleton home for the last four months. The place where Heimo felt that he was squandering his life is the same place where Rhonda dreams of making something of hers. Tonight her sophomore choir group from Appleton East High School is performing at the Lawrence University Chapel. Rhonda has been excited about the concert since September, calling me every other week to remind me to put down the date on my calendar. I’ve promised not to miss it.

  My four-year-old daughter, Aidan, and I arrive at the chapel late. The concert is already in progress. Most of the seats are taken, so we sit in the back. Aidan immediately scans the stage for Rhonda. I spot her sitting in one of the front rows, off to the right. Her group is not singing yet. As if sensing us, she turns. I wave to her and pull Aidan onto my lap so that she, too, can see. Rhonda waves for nearly half a minute before Aidan finally notices her. Then Aidan waves excitedly, as if she’s spotted a celebrity. The truth is that in her eyes Rhonda is something of a celebrity. She regards Rhonda with the awe that a young girl might feel for an older sister. Rhonda indulges her, calling her at least once a week. The phone conversations make Aidan feel important, grown up, but they are not entirely one-sided. For Rhonda, they serve a purpose, too. Their weekly talks make up for a lack of connection with her own family, helping to dispel the loneliness. Both of them say “I love you” before hanging up.

  We listen to four choirs before Rhonda’s group finally takes the stage. Thinner than when I saw her last, she looks quite beautiful in her white and black gown with her hair pulled back. She smiles at one of her friends—that amiable, sideways grin of hers—as they align themselves on the risers. Then the choir director nods, lifts her baton, and the song begins.

  Rhonda’s group performs several songs and then the other choirs ascend the stage to join hers for a farewell medley. When the concert is over, Rhonda comes to the back of the chapel. Aidan runs to her, and Rhonda sweeps her up into her arms and introduces Aidan to two of her girlfriends. Then she walks over to me.

  “You look lovely,” I tell her. She shrugs like a typical high-school student. “Thanks for the invitation,” I continue. “We really enjoyed the singing.”

  Rhonda pulls the corner of her choir gown up to her waist and checks a lime-green beeper attached to her belt. Then she returns her attention to me. “My uncle doesn’t want me anymore,” she says. “I blew it. He says he can’t trust me.” Rhonda tells me the story, holding Aidan as she talks. She had skipped school, calling in sick. Though she was already grounded, she was caught by her uncle later that day riding in her boyfriend’s car. Her boyfriend is nineteen and that was already a sore spot between them. For her uncle, it was the last straw. There’d been too many deceptions, too many broken promises.

  Though I knew that there were problems, this sudden revelation catches me by surprise.

  “What’s going to happen?” I ask her. “What are you going to do?” Again, she shrugs her shoulders. By now, her friends want to go. Cake and refreshments are being served, and one of the girls mentions that she is hungry. Rhonda puts Aidan down. “I love you,” she says, ignoring my question. “I love you, too,” Aidan replies.

  Then Rhonda pulls back the sleeve of her gown and shows me her gold bracelet. “It’s gonna kill him,” she says.

  “Who’s that?” I ask.

  “My boyfriend,” she replies. “He gave me this bracelet, and he doesn’t know yet that anything is wrong. If I have to leave, it’s going to be hard on him. We’re close. He really cares about me, you know. He’s been a complete gentleman. He opens and closes my car door for me. Isn’t it pretty?” she says, pulling the bracelet from her wrist and placing it in the palm of her hand delicately, as if it were a robin’s egg that had fallen from its nest.

  “It is,” I say, admiring it. “He must think a lot of you.”

  “I guess,” she says, returning it to her wrist. “Anyway, I gotta go.” She gives me a hug and then hugs Aidan again. Aidan waves to her as she walks away. “Daddy, am I going to get to see Rhonda again?” she asks.

  As Rhonda walks down the aisle, chatting with her friends, with one hand still wrapped around the thick gold bracelet, I remember Roger Kaye’s story. Rhonda was three, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. To this day he remains struck by that image—a child who hadn’t seen another person outside of her father and mother in six months.

  I have my own indelible image of Rhonda—30.30 in hand, trudging across the tundra toward Rundown Mountain and her trapline, braving the cold ache of the north wind, which had whipped the tundra into small, giddy whirlwinds of powder-dry snow. We were walking in the direction of the setting moon, which was large and lopsided, and the hardened snow popped under our snowshoes. To the southeast, the sun had barely clambered above the horizon, washing the land in a lean and faded light. Rhonda stopped to adjust her backpack. “Okay?” she asked, turning toward me. I nodded. Her face had been windburned a bright red, but she turned and continued on, leaning into the wind.

  Only when Rhonda has disappeared with her friends does Aidan agree that it is time for us to go. Later that evening I stop in at my parents’ house before driving home. “Should we take her?” my dad asks me. “She needs to stay and get an education,” my mother chimes in.

  “I’d love for her to be able to stay, too,” I say, “but it’s too much of a responsibility for you.”

  “We could do it,” my mother says. “We’re not that old.”

  “That may be,” I say. “But it wouldn’t be easy.”

  Ultimately the decision is made for us. On the afternoon of Thursday, December 26, Heimo calls me from Fairbanks. He makes small talk at first. It has been warm and the rivers froze up late, but the trapping season has been good. He’s caught nine wolverine, seventy-eight marten, one lynx, one otter, three mink, and five wolves. Then he pauses, and I can hear him breathe in deeply. “Rhonda’s coming home,” he says quietly. “She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m flying down to get her on Saturday. Edna and I made the decision that she should come back and that I should go and get her.” Heimo’s voice trembles. “She’s really let us down.”

  The plans have been made. Rhonda is leaving Appleton just two weeks short of completing her fall semester. The comparisons to Heimo are inevitable. Heimo left high school prematurely, only two months before graduating. But this is where the comparisons end. Heimo left Wisconsin to pursue a dream. Rhonda, on the other hand, will return to Alaska reluctantly, regretfully maybe, having failed to realize hers. Failure, though, is perhaps too strong a word.

  Rhonda’s situation was an almost untenable one. Not only was she cut off from her parents and Krin—connected by satellite phone for five minutes once or twice a month—and the emotional balance that a family can provide, she was also trying to adjust to a new place and a very different culture. She was so intent on fitting in that she forgot her personal style; she forgot who she was. She wanted to act and dress like the kids and the stars—Lauryn Hill, Lil’ Kim—she admired. At school, the students were split into cliques. There were the preps, the punks, the geeks, and the hip-hop crowd. It was the hip-hop crowd where Rhonda found her niche. Half Eskimo in a largely white high school, Rhonda felt more comfortable with this multicultural group of African-Americans, Hispanics, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, and white kids, too. She wore baggy pants, tight shirts, braids in her hair. The hip-hop crowd was more inclusive than the other groups, but the lines were well drawn.

  People liked Rhonda. She was friendly, but tough, too, no-nonsense, and kids were drawn to her. Teachers were, too. “The teachers loved her,” Joe Lamers, a guidance counselor a
t Appleton East says. “They weren’t surprised to see her go—she confided in some of them about the problems she was having—but they were saddened by it. One teacher told me that if she didn’t have four of her own kids at home, she would have opened her house to Rhonda. It was a real tribute to Rhonda, I think. I can’t imagine the changes she had to go through coming from where she did.”

  Joe Lamers was one of the few who knew much about how Rhonda had grown up. When others asked her where she was from, she simply said “Alaska,” never bothering to mention the bush or the Coleen River or the Old Crow. You could dress street, but the key was always to look like you came from money, and you couldn’t be the daughter of a hunter-trapper and live in a one-room cabin and claim that you came from money.

  Rhonda was trying on a new identity, and the details of her former life didn’t fit the picture. Besides, how could she have made them understand? These were suburban kids. Most of them had never hauled water or ice, split wood, studied by kerosene latern, checked a trapline, skinned a marten and tacked the pelt to a stretching board, gutted and butchered a caribou, much less bathed in a tin washbasin, using water heated on a woodstove.

  Rhonda was also carrying a huge psychological burden. All of Heimo’s hopes for the future, hers, and the family’s, too, depended on whether or not she suceeded. She had the power to legitimize the choices he’d made in life. If it worked out with Rhonda, he could remain in the bush and still see to it that his girls got a proper education. He could straddle two worlds. No one could accuse him of not doing right by his children. If she succeeded, Krin would probably come out, too. If Rhonda failed, the deal was off.

  It was all too much for her: the freedom—it was the first time in her life that she was away from home for more than a few days, and she couldn’t help herself. Sometimes, after talking with her on the phone, when she would confess her indiscretions, it struck me that she was trying to sabotage her experience, trying to force her father’s hand, test his love. Daddy says he wants to die in the bush, but would he leave the place and life he loves for me?