A day after informing me that he was coming down to get Rhonda, Heimo calls me again. “It’s all been very emotional,” he says, whispering, his voice barely audible. “I called Rhonda last night to tell her that I was coming to get her. She’s at Lisa’s [Heimo’s sister] now. She was really bawling, and I could hear Lisa in the background crying, too. Lisa’s going to have a good-bye party for her, so she can see her friends one last time.” Heimo pauses. I wait, thinking that he’s dropped the phone. Then he blurts it out. “We’re leaving the … bush.” He tries to say it as matter-of-factly as possible, but he can barely get out the last word.
I catch my breath. “Leaving?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Edna and I talked it over. There’s no other way. We’re going to rent a cabin in Central or Fairbanks. We’re leaning toward Central. There’s a school there. But nothing’s for sure now. We may end up in Fairbanks. I don’t know how we’ll do it moneywise; it’s going to be hard. We’ll keep the cabin in Fort Yukon, but I don’t want the kids going to school there—too many problems. I’ll be flying back and forth between the cabin and town, if I can swing it. I’ll spend three or four weeks on the river and two weeks in town. Then, after Krin graduates and goes to college, Edna and I will move back out. That’s the plan, at least for now.” By the time Heimo finishes telling me, his mood has improved, as if by uttering the words “We’re leaving,” he is one step closer to accepting the reality of his decision, however painful it may be.
“Are you okay with it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess. I don’t like it, but it’s the only way. The girls need to know how much I love them, that I’m willing to do anything for them, even if that means leaving the bush. This is my dream, not theirs.”
* * *
A month later I meet Heimo in Fairbanks. He has come to town to sell his fur, buy supplies, and call Appleton East High School to find out if there’s any way Rhonda can get credit for her fall term. Despite the problems she had, she got good grades. “It would be a shame for her to lose that,” Heimo says. He has four days in which to do all this, and then he has to be back at the cabin for Edna’s forty-ninth birthday.
It is 9:30 A.M. Dawn is on the way. The waning moon is silhouetted against a pale blue sky, which is now tinged with neon oranges and combustible reds.
“Remember last year out at the cabin?” Heimo asks. “How we waited for the sun? This year the sky was clear, no clouds. We saw it on January thirteenth for almost two hours. Now the sun’s out for more than three hours. We’re already gaining seven minutes a day. By March or so, it’ll be ten minutes a day.”
I haven’t talked with Heimo since he called me to announce that he and the rest of the family were leaving the bush, but he is his old self again, smiling, animated, full of stories, flying around Fairbanks in his used Ford Escort, which he bought three years ago for running errands when he came to town. The car smells faintly of fur, and Heimo is apologetic. On the car’s back bumper, he’s plastered a sticker he’s particularly proud of: “Wear Wolf—Eat Moose!” “This is how I am when I come to town,” he says, cutting in front of a Chevy Suburban, seemingly daring it to hit us. “My mind races. I don’t slow down till I get back out to the cabin. I’ve been in town now twice in the last month, once to get Rhonda and now. I don’t mind coming to town once in a while, but that’s way too much.”
“How is Rhonda?” I ask, as he turns a corner and momentarily spins out and then fishtails on the icy street.
“She’s good,” he says, unalarmed. “She seems happy to be home, though she says she likes Wisconsin better than Alaska. She spends lots of time writing in her journal. She says she has to get her feelings out. Krin has finally managed to forgive her for ‘blowing’ it and ruining her chances of ever going down there, too.” We both laugh at this, since Krin is known to carry a grudge longer than most. “Krinny still has her nose in books all the time. She just finished The Hobbit and now she’s on the second Lord of the Rings book.”
Heimo hands me a sealed envelope. “A letter,” he says. “Rhonda never got to say good-bye. She made me promise I wouldn’t read it, but I think I already know what’s in it. She’s glad to be home, but I think being at the cabin is harder than ever for her now that she’s seen Wisconsin. She liked the lifestyle and she misses her friends. Coming back was kind of a rude awakening for her. Did I tell you about the snowmachine breaking down?”
By the time I answer, Heimo has already begun the story.
He and Rhonda were checking traps downriver, seven miles south of the lower cabin, when the snowmachine broke down. Heimo struggled to start it, but there was no spark, and it didn’t take him long to realize that he and Rhonda would have to abandon the machine, walk to the lower cabin, overnight there, and then cover the remaining distance the following day. It was 20 below and 2:00 P.M. when they set out. An hour into the hike, Heimo knew they’d have to split up. The wind had drifted over the trail, slowing them down. “At this speed,” Heimo told Rhonda, “we won’t make the cabin until early evening. We’ll be tired and sweaty and the cabin won’t be much good because it will be as cold inside as it is outside. I’ll go on ahead,” he told her. “I’ll break trail, and as soon as I reach the cabin, I’ll build a fire.”
Heimo hustled and made the cabin by 5:00 P.M and immediately started a fire in the woodstove. Then he went to the river and brought back a bucket of water. When Rhonda arrived in the dark two hours later, she was tired, cold, hungry, and dehydrated. The cabin hadn’t even begun to heat up, so she sat as close to the woodstove as she could without singeing her clothes and drank cup after cup of river water. She threw up most of the water, but she knew her body needed fluids, so she kept drinking. Heimo searched the fifty-five-gallon drums that were outside the cabin and found two foam sleeping pads and five sheets. He was hoping to find some extra blankets, but the sheets would have to do. Rhonda was still chilled, so Heimo prepared two of the four packets of Mountain House freeze-dried food that he kept in his backpack for emergencies, and they ate, back-to-back, wrapped in the sheets. Rhonda was warmer now, but she had trouble holding the food down, and decided to save most of her share for the following morning.
At the upper cabin, Edna was worried. What’s happened? Are they okay? Overflow, she thought, and then she couldn’t get the idea out of her head—they’d gotten caught in overflow. She tried not to panic. It was 20 below, but at least Rhonda wasn’t alone; she was with Heimo. Whatever the problem, Heimo would know what to do.
Heimo and Rhonda huddled together and slept as best they could. They woke early the next morning, but didn’t linger. Heimo heated water for the freeze-dried food. They ate and were on the trail by 8:00 A.M . The plan was for Heimo to walk ahead. He’d reach the cabin and then he’d get the Polaris and drive back and pick up Rhonda. Fortunately, the wind hadn’t drifted this section of the trail. It was still hard-packed, and the walking was easy.
Heimo was five miles north of the lower cabin when he heard the sound of a snowmachine. Edna had come to look for them. When Edna saw him walking alone, her heart sank. She stopped the snowmachine and watched, fighting off the dread she felt. “Heimo,” she cried. Heimo ran to her. “No,” he said, trying to calm her. “Rhonda’s okay. Everything’s okay.” Then he hugged Edna and explained what had happened. He was sweating and he knew that he couldn’t stop for long. “Go get Rhonda,” he said. “Take her home and then send Krin to get me.”
“Quite a homecoming for Rhonda, wasn’t it?” he says, sliding through a yellow traffic light at the corner of University and Airport Way. “I felt bad for her, but that’s life out here. You learn to accept stuff like that. It happens and you can’t do jack shit to change it. Her first week back, her and I were checking a line. We had to go east across the tundra. The wind had wiped out my trail. I couldn’t even find it. Rhonda had to walk in front of the snowmachine and make a trail so I wouldn’t get stuck. We switched, but the machine was too heavy for her to handle. She wa
s crying and carrying on, saying she hated it out here. I felt for her. In bed that night I was thinking about it, and I felt cruel for keeping the girls out here for so long. After that I was convinced that moving to town was the right thing. Rhonda will never want to live like this; I know that now. She says that when she leaves home she’ll come back for a visit. But that’s it! Once I guess I hoped that she or Krin might live out here after we are gone. But I don’t kid myself about that anymore.”
Heimo drops me off at the hotel where I’ve rented a room for us. Since Heimo stays with friends when he comes to town, he seems excited about staying in the hotel. “It says they have a pool, a spa, and an exercise room,” he says, stopping in front of the lobby. “I’m going to do a hard workout later today and then soak in the whirlpool.” I shut the car door and Heimo rushes off.
When I get to the room, I open Rhonda’s letter.
“I think I liked it better in Appleton,” she writes, “because I didn’t have to crawl into a stupid sleeping bag every night, go outside to go to the bathroom, carry water, put wood on the stove, heat water for dishes, 4 a bath. It gets old after a while. Wisconsin was different. I would like to live in a small city instead of in the middle of nowhere because it’s easier in many ways. It’s nice to call a friend and hang out, watch TV, do something fun. Out here you just have moose and caribou, and wolf, wolverine and fox tracks.” “And snowmachine breakdowns,” I say out loud.
“I liked school,” she continues. “No, that is an understatement. I loved school. I loved having friends. We’ve never had friends before. And I loved the freedom. At home it’s always compromise and cooperation. That’s part of living in the bush and living in a small cabin.” Then the letter turns reflective. “I couldn’t make it because I made some really bad choices,” she writes. “I loved the freedom, but I couldn’t handle it. It was exciting but it scared me, too, and I chose to do things, stupid things.” What those “stupid things” were, she doesn’t say, but it isn’t hard to read between the lines. The temptations were there, and like a lot of other high school kids, she found them hard to resist.
The letter continues: “I joined the choir because I love singing. It was fun rehearsing and even more fun performing. I want to be a performer when I grow up. Ever since I was 7 years old I wanted to sing and act. After our Christmas program, I decided that I loved the stage. Though I screwed up, my time there was so worth it.”
* * *
Heimo and I have just finished dinner. On the way back to the hotel, we stop in at Fred Meyer, Fairbanks’s superstore, and Heimo buys a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate sorbet. “I eat one of these almost every night when I come to town,” he says. “Three things I look forward to when I come in—soda, a hot shower, and sorbet. Only 480 calories and no fat, so it’s easy on my arteries.
“Look at all these people,” Heimo continues. “That’s town. People everywhere. Don’t get me wrong; I like people. After six years alone, you realize how important people are. It’s nice for a while, seeing folks that you know and visiting. And it’s easier. Living like we do is hard work, both mentally and physically. Sometimes I get tired and think it might be nice to give up trapping, maybe even live in town. But then I come to Fairbanks and see the reality of it, how most people live their lives, and I can’t wait to get back to the cabin and start checking my lines again. I like town, but being in the woods, you might say that I find it …”
We’re standing in the checkout line, and he pauses, considering his words. “You might say I find it healing.”
When we get back to the hotel, Heimo sits at the edge of his bed. “Did I tell you I was at Richard and Shannon Hayden’s today.” The Haydens once lived year-round on the Sheenjek River, seventy miles southwest of the Korths by air. They raised all five of their kids in the bush, but now they live in Fairbanks for much of the year. “Shannon went to fish something out of the back room and then she comes and gives me this picture. It turned out to be a picture of Edna and Coleen.” Heimo is silent for a moment. “Edna was holding Coleen in her arms, smiling from ear to ear. Coleen was a little girl, and Edna looked so young and happy. That was almost twenty years ago, but I remember it so clear. Just like that, I started crying. I had to turn my head. When I turned back I saw that Shannon had tears in her eyes, too. When Shannon saw that I was crying, she apologized for upsetting me. ‘Apologize,’ I said to her, wiping my eyes. ‘I love it. Edna’s going to love it, too.’ ”
It is Heimo’s last night in Fairbanks. Tomorrow he will drive to Central, spend the night, and fly home with his friend Gene Hume. He’s eager to get back out to the cabin. He has lots of fur to work on. Skinning, fleshing, stretching, drying, he rarely gets a break in winter. He starts as soon as supper ends, and he doesn’t stop until Edna turns on Trapline Chatter. Heimo’s plan for the rest of the year is to move the whole family to the lower cabin on April 1 and finish out the trapping season there, where the beaver and muskrats are plentiful. Then, in late May, he will go to Fort Yukon, to watch over the cabin, and Edna and the girls will go to Fairbanks or Central, find a place to rent. But before any of that happens, he has to bring Rhonda and Krin into Fairbanks so that they can take their state benchmark exams. The trip is scheduled for early March, and the girls are excited about coming to town. They’ll sleep in and take hot showers every morning, and after their tests, they’ll spend a day or two mall-walking. Heimo is less than excited—too many flights and too much of town. He worries about their money holding out, too. Edna isn’t looking forward to it either. She’ll be alone for almost a week. As much as she loves the cabin, she hates being alone. When the girls and Heimo are home, the cabin is full of activity. Heimo jokes, teases, instructs, irritates, and pontificates. The girls laugh, fight, dance, sing, and rap. Though Edna can’t stand the rapping, it’s better than silence. It’s the silence that scares her, particularly at the upper cabin. It is said that a mother never recovers from the death of a child. Though Coleen has been gone now for almost twenty years, June 3 still haunts Edna. It is a memory she is able to hold at a safe distance when daily life is swirling around her. But when she’s alone, she has too much time to think, and the images of that day replay themselves involuntarily. Especially at night.
“Bull-riding,” Heimo says, sitting at the edge of his bed, remote control in hand. “I love bull-riding. Those guys are nuts.” He watches three riders get tossed from their bulls, then he pulls off the lid from a pint of chocolate sorbet. We watch two more riders, and then he flips through the channels. Suddenly he turns off the television. “I miss Edna,” he blurts. “Did I tell you we’re trapping together again?”
In early January, Edna and Heimo were upriver setting traps for beaver. Edna set one side of the beaver house and Heimo set the other. When he finished, he waited for her at the snowmachine. Edna came back and she was smiling from ear to ear. “I love this,” she said. “I love today, just you and me out on the trapline.” She gave Heimo a hug. “Town’s gonna be hard. I’m gonna be lonely without you, and I’m gonna miss it out here, too. You gotta promise me we’ll come out here in July, though, for a month before the girls start school to shoot caribou and make drymeat. The girls and me will pick berries, and we’ll make lots of jam. And we gotta remember to bring back a few gallons of Coleen River water when we go back to town. I hate town water.”
Heimo finishes his pint of Häagen-Dazs and licks the back of the spoon. “You know, when Edna and me go back out in three years, we’re going to live out of a tent and really cover country,” Heimo says, sounding as if he is still an eighteen-year-old dreamer. “Whoever you talk to, just make sure you let ’em know that we’re going back out. You gotta promise me that. It’s what me and Edna love. We’re going to die out there.”
Though I believe Heimo when he says that he and Edna have every intention of going back, I can’t shake the feeling that this is it, that it’s over. The irony of the situation is that of all the things that might have forced him out of the bush, of all the
things he’s feared, it is love that has brought an end—if only temporarily—to his twenty-eight years in the Alaskan wilderness. But the truth is that in coming out of the bush, Heimo will be more representative of the modern Alaskan experience. People no longer come into the country—that era is gone—and the few who are there rarely stay. They leave with their memories, never to return. For most of them, the memories are enough. Heimo and Edna, however, may be the exception. Their good friends say not to doubt their resolve.
“Supper,” Edna calls out.
Outside Heimo shuffles his feet, cleaning the snow from his boots, and ducks in through the door.
“Moose pockets!” he exclaims.
Edna wraps her arms around herself and shivers. “No dinner for you unless you put the blanket over the door. Hurry up; it’s cold out there.”
“Thirty-three below,” Heimo answers. “I just did the weather.” He sticks a log in the stove and shuts the door. The damper squeaks in the stovepipe when he adjusts it.
Krin puts down her pencil, folds and tucks a sketch into her diary. Then she grabs a mirror and fluffs up her hair. Rhonda has been listening and rhyming softly to a Nas CD. She clicks off the player. Heimo mixes a glass of powdered milk for himself, and Edna dishes out four plates of moose pockets and smothers them in gravy.
Twenty minutes later, dinner is finished. “Don’t forget to do the dishes,” Heimo says to the girls, putting on his parka. “Mom and me are gonna take a walk.”
Before they are even out the door, Rhonda puts a cassette into the boom box and turns up the volume. Krin is already dancing.
The Final Frontiersman Page 34
