Run Cold

by Ed Ifkovic

  I started to say something but he repeated, “You gotta trust me.”

  And immediately I did. Noah had a slick, deft sense of flying, and a cautious regard. He’d inventoried a compass, an ax, signaling devices, matches, sleeping bags—a methodical emergency checklist. A two-way radio. Little comfort, there. The plane slid, bumped, and rose into the air. I said something about the weather because I thought the sky, at breakfast so pale and blue, now was fast becoming a grayish-white, deadened. But Noah simply nodded and pointed out the window. All I saw were white-topped mountains, with a sweep of descending jagged ice, naked valleys, oases of dark trees speckled with the glint of the sun.

  Over the clanging, chugging motor and the whistling wind that seeped into the cockpit, Noah spoke into my ear. “Hard to talk up here. All the noise. Relax. Enjoy.”

  Relax. Enjoy.

  I pulled at the wool blanket he’d tucked around my legs, tucking it in securely. And so, for more than an hour, I found myself staring down at a barren landscape, humped ridges, vast, endless stretches of white and gray, and even black, frozen rivers and streams. No people, no cabins with comforting wisps of smoke from chimneys, no winding trails, not even a harum-scarum rabbit or muskrat venturing out of its warren. I looked to see herds of caribou and even a few menacing grizzlies. I saw nothing but a deep yawning crevasse where, I imagined, planes plummeted and disappeared—for good. Noah had explained, People disappear in Alaska. Well, Doubleday would love this. Edna Ferber disappears in Arctic crevasse in winter blizzard.

  One way to sell my novel…

  “There,” he said finally, and I found myself staring at the Yukon River, a wiggle and spiral of frozen brownish water. He pointed to the narrow Porcupine River with its crystal-clear ice, where it met the Yukon. Noah tracked the plane along its curves for a few minutes, dropping too low for my comfort, and he pointed in the distance until I thought he said it was Yukon Flats. He was grinning. And then, making a whooping sound, reminding me of the Navajos who were his blood brothers, he indicated a settlement of scattered cabins and caches and trails, and yelled, “Fort Yuk.”

  I saw a small village spread out along meandering trails with no signs of life. The squat cabins, even the rambling two-story log buildings, seemed a ghost town. Circling, he pointed. I saw an American flag fluttering over a squat log cabin. And suddenly, as effortlessly as sliding into a warm, sudsy bath, the plane banked from the north, dipped, taxied on a snow-covered airfield, its skis bumping gently, and came to a stop. I turned to look at Noah. He was jumping up and down, back home.

  He apologized. “I’m here…I always feel a…a rush…”

  I grinned but lectured him, “You know, young man, the proper element of man is land. Not air, not water, especially not fire.” I looked toward the bleak, winter-shrouded village. “Though right now I’d relish a fire burning in one of these cabins.”

  He helped me down from the Piper Cub, and I found myself up against two waiting dog-teams, with yelping, frisky huskies, bucking, straining. Two red-faced teenaged boys, their round faces barely seen in huge parkas with massive fur-lined hoods, stood at the head of each team. Noah nodded to the boys. “They were expecting us. Edna, my cousins Henry and Jonah, twin troublemakers.” The boys, hearing Noah’s joke, giggled and one actually stuck out his tongue.

  But, without delay, they fell into a practiced rhythm. The boys unloaded the cargo onto one sled, except for some packages for Noah’s grandfather, while Noah tucked me into a seat and smothered me with blankets and caribou skins. He talked to a man who’d come out of a building, discussing what needed to be done to keep the plane warm and ice-free while we visited. Noah himself assumed the lead of one team of dogs, and feeling very much the pampered medieval maiden—or a doomed character in a gloomy Russian novel by Tolstoy—I found myself gliding over snow, a biting wind in my face. But in seconds the sled stopped at the doorway of a tiny cabin with one small window facing front, a sagging Arctic porch, and a snake of gray smoke rising from the roof, a line of color etched against the bleak white sky.

  I had no idea what to expect from Noah’s grandfather, but, romantic that I was, I thought he’d be like Clint Bullock, a leathery man dressed in patched buckskin and moose-hide Indian moccasin, with a gnarled face—though handsome like his grandson. I was wrong. Yes, the man who greeted me was ancient, probably in his late eighties, maybe older, but tall and slender, with a clean-shaven and unblemished face, with long white hair worn straight down his shoulders. I looked to see Noah in the man, but little, save the height and deep coloration, suggested kinship. With his high cheekbones, fierce black eyes, and bushy white eyebrows under a high forehead, he had an intense, albeit bemused, look about him—a cracker-barrel intellect in a country store. Oddly, greeting me with a half-bow and an extended hand, speaking in clipped but labored English, he reminded me of an ancient professor, decades-long emeritus, because he wore a tattered cardigan sweater on which I read: W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N, in blue letters, the “W” nearly disappeared. He wore creased brown gabardine slacks. He looked ready to deliver a lecture.

  I settled in, sitting by the hot rumbling Yukon oil-drum stove, a pulsating machine whose makeshift opening was fed log after log. The cabin was steamy, and, glancing out the small window, I saw sudden wisps of light snow flash up against the cabin. A howl of wind. A dog barked. I shivered.

  Comfortable, I watched the curious and touching dynamic of Noah and the old man, who’d introduced himself formally as Nathan Elijah West. Noah gave his grandfather a hug and clung to his forearm, a warm and necessary gesture. For a moment they chatted in Gwich’in, and I was fascinated with the shift in Noah’s voice: melodic, yet startlingly abrupt and staccato, high-pitched, a wonderful counterpoint against the old man’s raspy, guttural voice. The old man raised his hand. “We are rude to Miss Ferber, who is the author of Show Boat.”

  The line struck me as comical, and, glancing at my quizzical face, he said, “I lived in Seattle for ten years, off and on, working in the timber forests. One summer I saw Show Boat at a little theater…in Tacoma, I think.” He smiled, and I saw missing teeth. “I can still hum some of the music.”

  “So can I,” I laughed. “Noah, can you hum a few bars?”

  Sheepishly, he answered: “I have to confess, Edna, I’ve never read one of your books.” A sloppy grin. “Yet.”

  “That’s probably why we’re still friends.”

  I looked around the cabin. There was a tall gas lamp switched on, though now and then it fizzled, a small wind-up gramophone with a stack of 78-rpm records nearby (I remembered Noah telling me that his grandfather listened to Paul Whiteman and big band music), a short-wave radio, an oilcloth-covered wooden table, one recliner, and a wool-braided rug on the pole-wood floor. A fifty-gallon water barrel rested up against a kitchen area. A kerosene lantern was hanging from the ceiling. A rack of caribou anthers hung by the door. The smell of old grease, burnt wood, oil. Pungent brewed tea, not unpleasant. Rustic, yet warm. A colorful red-and-white checkered gingham curtain on the window, a little lopsided, but neat; one of Noah’s “Go Native” posters; a series of unframed photographs tacked to the wall, black-and-white snapshots of a man in front of a fish wheel, a man standing over a fallen grizzly, a man holding a huge salmon—I thought guiltily of the photo of Noah I’d stolen from Hank’s office—one of white men, rifles slung over shoulders, one foot triumphantly placed on a big-antlered caribou.

  The old man saw me looking. “Pictures from when I was a young man.”

  He served tea that calmed me, brewed from the needles of the Hudson Bay plant, a faint hint of turpentine, and I munched on some soda biscuits laced with cranberries. Chewy as hardtack.

  The old man looked at Noah and sighed. “And we have to talk of your troubles, Noah. Bring me up to date on this dreadful mistake.” He looked at me. “There is a phone at the post office I use, we all use.” He nodded at me. “When my Noah calls, he te
lls me that you are helping him.” He nodded, approvingly.

  I said quickly, “I’m not really helping, I’m afraid, but I know Noah will be vindicated. It’s a stupid matter.”

  The old man closed his eyes for a second, snapped them open. “It’s not a stupid matter from somebody’s point of view. Someone planned this evil.”

  Noah recounted his visit to the police, the support of the local Athabascan Tribal Council, even Paul—I learned that Paul had phoned the night before, quietly—but I waited to see if Noah had told his grandfather of Hank’s betrayal. Hank, I knew, the old visitor to Fort Yukon, had long been the hunter-friend of Nathan Elijah West.

  “And Hank Petrievich,” the old man said finally. “Is his heart still hard?”

  Noah nodded.

  “Sonia’s death has twisted a good man into nonsense. Grief can push folks into madness.” He smiled at Noah. “Trust me. Hank will someday apologize to you.”

  Noah said sharply, “And maybe I won’t want to accept Hank’s apology.” His eyes flashed, angry.

  “Of course you will. You’re not built for holding grudges.”

  Noah looked ready to say something, but his grandfather stood up. “We can talk of this later, you and I. Edna Ferber is here for a short afternoon. I’m making food for us. You take her around the village and show her the beauty of Fort Yukon.” He looked at me. “Fort Yukon was settled in 1847 by the Hudson’s Bay Trading Post, and it has a long history. Back then we Indians were nomadic, and we just came here with our fur pelts. Now, with five hundred souls, it’s home to the Dené—Qwich’in Athabascans—and white traders and missionaries and teachers. Noah, show Edna Ferber your boyhood home.”

  It was, of course, too frigid for a long walk, but I savored the meandering on the old trails, with Noah carrying a stick to fend off pesky dogs. The cabins with the faded chalky logs, some nearly covered in snowdrifts, were desolate, but every one had a trail of dark smoke escaping roofs, some of which, I noticed, were made from flattened oil drums. We strolled by high-pole caches, storage for smoked salmon, the caribou meat—safe from the menacing wolf packs. The grizzlies.

  The main road, he said, was called First Avenue. I smiled. It seemed just an ice-packed, gravel-imbedded dirt road. Noah pointed out the Alaskan Native Service School—“where I went as a boy,” he said. The BIA school. “Two schools,” Noah said snidely. “One for Indians, and the Territorial for the whites. They taught us moccasin-sewing and how to build a birdhouse. The white kids read Dickens. Some of my teachers refused to drink from the same cup as the Indian kids. If I spoke Qwich’in, I got my knuckles rapped with a switch.”

  We strolled past the Show House, where he’d watched John Wayne and Tom Mix westerns, whites killing Indians.

  “Summers, when I returned home from boarding school, I learned to smoke Lucky Strikes between features.” He sighed. “Nowadays, the young kids just chew tobacco and spit.”

  After barely an hour, I was getting chilled. I was too old for this. Noah noticed, tucked his arm under mine, pulled my scarf tighter around my neck, and led me back.

  The cabin smelled of roasted meat. We sat at the small table, and the old man served more tea, a wild celery and carrot soup, and a crispy rabbit. It was leisurely, an abundant meal, which surprised me. I expected some pale string beans from cans, powdered potatoes, a slab of prickly meat. Instead, a feast. I savored it all. At the end, sitting with coffee that tasted like the hearty chicory blend I recalled from my days scooting around Oklahoma, I ate a creamy confection of crushed blueberries and low-bush cranberries on cream-slathered pilot crackers. Incredibly sweet, almost cloying, the berries melted in my mouth, the frozen berries thawing out in the warm milk, releasing their fragrance. I licked my fingers.

  “I like this restaurant,” I said.

  I noticed Noah glancing out the window, and I could hear a growing roar, a rumbling. A sudden banging against the eaves, a swirl of snow covered the window, and I jumped.

  “A snow squall,” Noah told me. He went to the window. “Maybe a white day”—sky and ground and air all white, a landscape of no shadow. “A bottle of milk, we say.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we can’t fly out this afternoon. We have to sleep in.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Edna. I didn’t expect this…”

  But the old man grunted. “The ancient shamans are smiling on me, a blessing, truly. I have my grandson and Edna Ferber into the night.”

  I was not so joyous. I thought of my cozy Nordale room, the sizzling aroma of bacon and sourdough pancakes in the morning. Wind slapped the boards, and I jumped again. Strangely, looking out the window, standing next to Noah, I thought of the old Athabascan woman’s legend of the lazy boy and dead caribou: an icebound village. I’m trapped here, I told myself. Snowbound. Icebound. Bound.

  As night fell and the wind roared, we sat before the fire. I was surprised that I could relax. After all, for once I had no choice but to sit there. I liked to will my moments, to make the world conform to my demands. I liked my schedule followed, exact and rigid. Now, helpless in this Arctic room, a millions miles from Earth—God, if Kitty Carlyle Hart could see me now!—I closed my eyes and drifted.

  The men talked animatedly, then softly, and at times seemingly aggressively, other times with a mellowness that lulled, like a child’s song. I listened to the rhapsodic words.

  “In the old days we had shamans,” the old man said to me. “They told us how to live. They told us what was wrong.” He smiled. “I was told and believed that they could bring the dead back to life. The American military were afraid of our priests, and of superstitions, and they cut their hair off, shaved them, covered them with red paint to humiliate them. Missionaries told us they were Satan.”

  “Have you passed down your stories to Noah?”

  He nodded.

  “I remember, Grandfather.” Noah sounded like a little boy.

  I looked around the tight, heat-flushed room, Noah leaning into his grandfather, the old man’s elbow grazing the side of his grandson.

  “It’s the way you view the world,” the old man went on. “Everything is a cycle, Edna Ferber. A goose feather tossed into the Yukon becomes a new bird. A crow’s feather in a boy’s hair makes him have swift feet.”

  At one point, sipping a last cup of tea, I asked about his family. The old man talked about marrying young. “I was sixteen, she was thirteen.” When his young wife died, his sister helped raise the children, including Noah’s father. The grandmother, Noah added, of the two twin boys who’d met our plane. “Silly boys,” the old man grumbled, “though they work like packhorses.” He mentioned Noah’s father and mother, and Noah stiffened.

  “Was Noah’s father as handsome as his son?” A stupid remark. Noah frowned.

  The old man nodded. “The girls followed him around the village, even out to the traplines on the Flats. Sitting in the mission church on Sundays, they giggled behind his back. He married the daughter of the chief, in fact, a beauty, who sadly died in childbirth. Little Maria was left with her younger brother, Noah.”

  “And Noah’s father, a sad story, this one.” His eye still on Noah. “Noah’s father was a good hunting guide for white folks, but they taught him how to drink. One icy afternoon, drunk, he hitched up his dogs, wouldn’t listen to reason, headed to the traplines, and he took out the dogs. He never returned.”

  “Oh, my God.” I was stunned. I looked at Noah. He had his head down.

  Noah got up and tended to the fire, his back to us.

  A long silence in the room.

  The old man watched Noah’s back, then cleared his throat. “The end of one chapter of our lives.”

  I decided to bring up Hank Petrievich. “Your family is tied in closely with the Petrievich clan.”

  “Going decades back, generations. To the turn of the century. The end of last century, in fac
t. Hank’s father and cousins came here, had a hunting lodge, hunted caribou and seal and moose. Good people. Clint Bullock—you know Clint. Wonderful Clint. A heart of gold, that man. After his gold-seeking days ended, he was a guide. I spent winters with them out on the Flats. Mostly we didn’t stay in Fort Yukon. Only summers. They ate at this table. You know, it was Hank who got Noah to go to school in Massachusetts. The white boys’ school.”

  “I know.”

  Noah, his voice edgy, said, “I’ve already told her that story.”

  The old man kept talking. “Our families were close. Not white man and Indian. But real friends.” He looked at Noah. “The ties not of blood but of goodness.”

  “So you know Tessa Strange?”

  He laughed out loud. “Ah, fat Tessa. A pistol, that girl. She was a young girl, not so fat then, but maybe plump. But with a Bible in her hand. She was a missionary at the Episcopal Mission over to Venetie, forty-five miles away from here. On the Chandalar River, the Gquchyaa Gwich’in. But she’d come here, first with the Featherwells, an old Episcopalian Mission teacher and his wife. With other missionaries. Tessa, Tessa. Lord, a crazy woman she was.”

  “A crazy missionary?”

  “Is there any other kind?” He laughed. “I resisted all efforts to become a Christian, though other Gwich’in did. She was a zealot, but she liked to sing and dance and carry on. A drinker, though it was forbidden. They ran the mission there, and we used to laugh at her husband, Lionel Strange.”

  “Why?”

  “He was a small man, the size of a small boy, runt of the litter, maybe, with a big round head, who talked in memorized lines from the Bible, and he followed her around like a puppy dog, though he had a roving eye for the ladies. That drove Tessa nuts. Everyone made fun of him. He had this strange accent—he was born, I believe, in Kansas. I guess Tessa had been sent there by her parents—to calm her down—and she fell in with him. He came to Alaska with Tessa, his bride, up to Venetie.”