Alaska (163 page)

Stubbornly the Eskimo boy replied: 'We'll do it the Eskimo way.'

'What will you do in Barrow?' she asked almost contentiously, and two years later, when she was a married woman floating around on an ice island five hundred miles north of Barrow, in the heart of the Arctic Ocean, she would remember each word of his amazing answer: 'Because the world is going to be interested in the Arctic Ocean, got to be Russia, Canada, America. And I want to be here at the center.'

'What an amazing answer, Ivan. Where did you develop 997

such an insight?' and he said: 'You look at a map,' and she thought, with tears coming to her eyes: Dear, wonderful boy! But without the education you despise, you'll never make it.

IN LATE MAY, WHEN THE CHUKCHI SEA REMAINED Frozen far out from shore, but with the snow beginning to vanish from the tundra, fearful news crept north from the lonely hut where the parents of Amy Ekseavik lived. A hunter came in to Desolation with a gruesome report: 'The old man got hold of some bad rotgut, got blind drunk, tried to murder his wife because she yelled at him, failed, jammed the rifle into the back of his mouth and blew his head off.'

Afanasi and Jeb Keeler organized a rescue party and found Amy's mother slightly wounded; a relative from farther south had come to take charge, and both women insisted that Amy leave school to assume responsibility for the hut. When Kendra heard this preposterous suggestion, she exploded: 'This girl will not leave my classroom. I forbid it.' Afanasi explained that if Amy was needed at home, which she obviously was, she would have to go there, that Eskimo custom demanded this, but Kendra cried: 'This child is brilliant.

She can accomplish anything. I've written to the people at the University of Washington and they've shown great interest. Might even enroll her at age sixteen if she's as bright as I claim.' Her voice broke into a wail: 'Mr. Afanasi! Don't sentence Amy to a life of darkness!' Her plea was futile. Amy was needed at home and that took precedence over any other consideration.

On the day this wonderfully gifted child was to go home, Kendra walked with her for two miles across the bitter tundra where no tree sprouted and only the tiniest flowers bloomed. When they parted she embraced the girl, held her to her bosom, and fought to keep back her tears: 'Amy, you know that you have a remarkable mind. You've seen in school that you have special gifts. Look, I tell you the truth. You're way ahead of where I was at your age. You can accomplish anything. For God's sake, read the books I've given you. Do something with your life. Do something.'

'What?' the girl asked listlessly, and Kendra answered: 'We never know, Amy. But if we treasure our life, something turns up. Look at me, Amy. How in hell did I wind up in Desolation? Where will you wind up? Who knows? But keep moving. Oh, Amy ...'

There were a thousand relevant things she wanted to tell this girl in their last moments together, but all she could do was lean down and kiss the round brown face, an act which Amy accepted without emotion.

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The next two weeks were bitter cold, more like midwinter than spring, and Kendra was as desolate in spirit as the storm-blown landscape, for she saw that regardless of how ably she and Kasm Hooker managed their school and encouraged their students, the harsh realities of Eskimo life established the limits of what could be accomplished, and one night she invited Afanasi and Keeler to her apartment in the Teacherage to discuss these matters with her and Hooker.

She began by posing a problem which depressed her: 'Mr. Afanasi, why are you the only Eskimo in Desolation with a world outlook . . . no, even an Alaskan outlook?'

'I had a good grandfather who taught me what to do, a father and uncle who taught me what not to do.'

'How can Kasm and I produce young people with the outlook and the capacities you have?'

'It happens by accident, I think. With Amy Ekseavik, you'd have had a chance. With Jonathan Borodin . . . well, you know, he should be exactly like me. Able to handle himself in the white man's world, a pillar in his Eskimo village. But somehow we missed, and now all he commands is a snowmobile.'

'He tells me he may want to become a shamanin the ancient pattern, but a constructive one.'

Afanasi heard this news with great interest: 'Now, that's not a crazy idea, not at all. I've thought for some time that perhaps with the pressures of modern life, television, snowmobiles, clatter, that there might be a place for the revival of shamanism as my grandfather knew it.' He rose and walked about the apartment, picked at some food, then sat down close to Kendra: 'A hundred years ago, when Healy and his Bear

came here with Sheldon Jackson, the shamans they met were a disreputable lot. Jackson's reports gave the system a bad name, but the shamans my grandfather worked with were a much different sort.' He rose and stalked the room again, concluding: 'Maybe that Borodin boy, you know he has unlimited talent, you saw that in school, Kasm. I'm going to talk with him.'

The conversation never took place, because three days later, in a swale that still contained deep snow, Jonathan Borodin, nineteen years old, got his rifle, his SnowGo-7

and five gallons of spare gas and headed far inland to get himself a couple of caribou, which his grandfather sorely wanted as the best food an Eskimo could eat. Dragging a cargo sled behind him to haul the meat, he rode speedily in an easterly direction toward where lakes and wandering rivers abounded, and in an area which he had often visited before, he shot two big caribou, slaughtered them on the spot, loaded 999

the abundance of fresh meat on the sled and the horns on the back of his snowmobile.

On the way home he met with two disasters: a tremendous storm thundered in from the south, bringing new snow and whipping about the remnants trapped in the swale. When the blizzard struck, he was momentarily frightened, for the hunters of Desolation stood in awe of any storm coming at them from the south. If it were to continue at its present rate, he could be in trouble, but he felt sure that when it abated he could pick his way westward to Desolation. He never considered abandoning the sled he was dragging and speeding homeward as fast as possible: When I shoot me a caribou I bring it home.

But as he descended a moderate slope, with the bitter wind from the sea driving hard against his face, he realized that the remainder of his journey, some thirty-five miles, was going to be rough going: No worry. I have loads of gas. Then as he climbed the western side of the slope his motor began to cough, and at the very crest, where the wind was fiercest, it stopped entirely.

Again he had no immediate fear, for on his varied trips he had mastered the intricacies of his machine, and he assumed that he could repair it now. He could not. Some new defect, far more serious than before, had disabled his SnowGo, and with the gale whipping about him, he failed in one attempt after another to identify and repair whatever had stalled his engine. As the grayness of late afternoon fused into a whiteout, he realized that he was in peril of freezing.

Only his grandfather was aware that Jonathan did not return that night, and he felt sure that the boy had taken refuge behind some hillock, but when noon came and there was still no sign of Jonathan, the old man began to worry. But he did not alert anyone, because his mode of life kept him apart from others, so a second night passed with the boy still missing.

Early next morning the old man, trembling with fear, reported to the makeshift office from which Afanasi conducted his business, and there he delivered the appalling news: 'Jonathan, he went out, two days ago, caribou. He not come back.'

Afanasi leaped into action, and telephoned Harry Rostkowsky at the airfield in Barrow to fly south and east of Desolation toward the lakes to see if he could spot a missing SnowGo with a boy camped nearby. The area to be searched was due south of Barrow, and Rosty radioed the airfield three times to report that he had found nothing, and Barrow reported this by phone to Afanasi, but on a later pass Rosty saw the stalled machine and an inert body huddled beside it: 1001

'Rostkowsky calling Barrow. Inform Afanasi Desolation SnowGo located atop ridge due east. Body nearby probably frozen.'

A party of four men and two snowmobiles was organized immediately, with Afanasi riding pillion on one, a highly regarded Eskimo tracker on the other. Rostkowsky, aloft in his Cessna, spotted them leaving town and signaled the direction they should take, and after nearly two hours, for they traveled slowly and cautiously, they came upon Jonathan Borodin's new SnowGo, his five gallons of spare gas, his two butchered caribou and his frozen corpse.

WHEN KENDRA SPOTTED THE MOURNFUL CORTEGE Approaching the village from the east she knew what to expect, for everyone in Desolation had been alerted to the probability of tragedy, but forewarning did not make the death of this excellent young man any easier to take, and she ran to where the corpse lay, still in huddled, frozen posture.

'Oh my God!' she cried. 'What a terrible waste!' And that was the threnody that sounded throughout Desolation Point.

It was not until the school term ended that Kendra felt the full impact of the tragedies that had darkened the spring months when hope should have been so resurgent, and for two weeks she idled about the lonely school, filing her grocery order for the coming year and purchasing some two thousand dollars' worth of unnecessary specialties to be used for entertaining her students and their parents. But then Afanasi, who seemed to look after everyone in his village, came to her with an order: 'It's time to get you out of here. Go to Fairbanks or Juneau or Seattle. We have funds for teachers'

travel, and here's a ticket to Anchorage with an extension for wherever within reason you want to go. Utah to see your folks? That would be okay.'

'Right now I do not care to see them,' she said firmly, but she accepted the tickets, one to Anchorage, one open, and as she flew south with minimum baggage, for her home was now Desolation Point and she was loath to leave it, she looked at herself coldly, as if she had a mirror before her face: I'm twenty-six, I've never been close to marriage, and that article by the woman researcher in Denver made it so clear that with every passing year after twenty-three, an educated woman has less and less chance of ever getting married, but I want to live in Alaska, I love the frontier, I thrill to the challenge of the arctic . . . Oh God, I'm so mixed up.

But of one thing she was certain, and this pertained to the nature of life itself, and as the engines of the jet droned on 1000

she continued talking to herself as if she were the subject of an analysis by an outside observer: I love people. Amy Ekseavik is part of my life. Jonathan Borodinoh God, why didn't I talk to him more? And I do not want to live alone. I cannot face the endless years. The arctic night, I have no problems with it, for it passes, but loneliness of the spirit never passes.

Very slowly and with a recognized confusion she took from the mock-leather portfolio in which she carried her school papers a torn sheet on which was written an address in Anchorage, and at the airport she hurried to a cab, as if she feared she might change her mind, and thrust the paper in the driver's hand: 'Can you find this?'

and he replied: 'I'd be fired if I couldn't. Biggest apartment house in town,' and although she was fully aware that she was doing a most dangerous thing, she took the elevator to the fifth floor, knocked on the door, and expected to see Jeb Keeler waiting for her when the door opened. He was, and as she embraced him she whispered: 'Without someone to love, I was lost in a blinding snowstorm,' and he said he understood.

Later that night as they lay together, she confided: 'Amy and Jonathan, they tore at my heart. We come to a place to teach, and the children teach us,' and Jeb said: 'It's the same with lawyers. We learn much more than we help others.'

She stayed with him for five days, and near the end of their time together she said: 'Afanasi suspected that I might be coming to see you. I think that's why he gave me the ticket to Anchorage. He says you're a man to be trusted. I asked him if he gave every lawyer that recommendation, and he laughed: ”Not Poley Markham. I love him but I sure don't trust him,”' and Jeb said: 'He's wrong there. Poley's different, but I've found him to be completely honest. Never touches a dime that isn't his!'

The conversation then turned to talk of their future, and she said that perhaps at the end of the next school year, if Jeb still wanted to specialize in Alaskan law, particularly north of the Circle, they should consider marriage, with the understanding that Kendra wanted to continue teaching at Desolation, or perhaps move into Barrow.

Jeb assured her that with his and Poley's leverage they could get her one of the jobs in Barrow, and she said, as she kissed him goodbye: 'Let's think about that.

A good teacher with all that expensive equipment ought to be able to turn out some terrific Eskimos.'

At the airport, as she waited for her northbound plane, she watched idly the arrival of a Japan Air Lines plane from Tokyo as it discharged those passengers who would be stopping over in Anchorage, and saw five athletic-looking Japan-1002

ese three men and two young womenwho were also going to have a very deep but much different interest in Alaska.

THEY CALLED HIM SENSEI.

EVERY JAPANESE ADDICTED TO mountain climbing, and they were legion, called him Takabuki-sensei, an honorific which could be translated as something like Revered-and-Beloved-Professor Takabuki. At forty-one his official position was professor of moral philosophy at Waseda University in Tokyo, but arrangements had been made with both the university authorities and the Japanese government for him to be absent on expeditions as often as the funding and a balanced, dependable climbing party could be arranged.

Japan's premier mountaineer, this small, wiry, normally clean-shaven man was familiar to newspaper and magazine readers from his photographs as a heavily bearded figure standing at the windblown, snowy apex of some great mountain. Because Japan lay relatively close to the great mountains of Asia, he had as a young apprentice climbed both Nanga Parbat and K-2, and in later years had led two assaults on Everest, one aborted at 27,000 feet by the death of two members, the other successful when he and two of his team stood on top of the world at 29,028 feet above sea level. The latter had been a classic performance without even one minor accident.