Yearning In Alaska (A Short Story)

 

 

7,310 words: 32 min.

Sometimes wanting something badly can ruin your chance to get it.

I

Thirty-three-year-old brown-bearded Mark Ryder, sitting in a wooden rocker in his and his same-aged wife Rachel’s log cabin, closed the book he’d been reading, “How to Raise a Happy Baby.” He’d read it twice already and underlined several portions on almost every page. He laid the book on the dinner table that his late father-in-law had hand-hewn, along with two table chairs and two rockers, some fifty years earlier.

His chest tightening, he pushed himself out of the rocker and joined Rachel at the kitchen-area counter. That was the place she went to from time to time, to peer into the woods through the small window topped by a beige, floral, stagecoach valance and to mull things over, especially things that bothered her. The window, he’d told himself many times, was her worry spot.

Their twenty-by-forty-foot cabin was nestled in the treed, snow-clad wilderness thirty miles east of Huslia Village in west-central Alaska, fifty-five miles south of the Arctic Circle. A snowmobile drive from the cabin to Huslia took an hour and a half along a meandering path of mostly rough, uneven terrain. 

Rachel had come out of the storage room, her mouth slack and her boots clumping a bit harder than usual on the worn, squeaking floor planks. She had been noisy in the storage room, dragging something of substance across the floor. The empty spare water barrel?

Her slightly smudged youthful face, auburn hair, and shamrock-green cardigan sweater lit up in the golden light of the low-slung, mid-afternoon November sun that blazed through the nearby, sparkling, snow-jacketed trees. In several more days, claustrophobic darkness would swallow their outside world for weeks to come.

When he followed her gaze out the window, her eyes appeared to be locked on the big round thermometer nailed to a black spruce pruned head-high and towering behind the weathered wood shed. The thermometer’s red needle sprawled across the minus twenty-four-degree mark.

The drawn skin at Rachel’s eyes — the worry lines she sometimes wore at her worry spot — indicated she was wrestling with things other than the temperature. 

“See another bear?” he said. Three weeks earlier, a black bear had encroached, appearing next to the unpainted, faded outhouse. It had ventured too close for comfort. It had hefted its snout a few times, testing for scents, and had given their cabin a slow, seemingly disinterested look-over. It might have been scrounging for a last meal to fatten itself up before heading to its dug-out to settle in for the winter. 

 She looked at him. Her jaw shifted. “You know as well as I do they’re bedded down now.” She turned back to the window. “Crappy news just the same.”

Her edginess permeated the cabin. 

“So what then–are you pregnant? Is that the crappy news?” 

Her mouth twisted into a smirk.

He pulled in air and stared at the thermometer again. On such frigid days as this, the huge difference between the inside and the outside temperatures seldom failed to give him pause. Today the difference was close to eighty degrees. It made him glance at the squat wood stove radiating a wondrous warmth from its spot near the storage room door.

The stove’s warmth would have been even more wondrous if he’d had a baby to rock to sleep every night–and give more love to than the child would ever need. Would a child ever grace his world? More and more it seemed as if not. Was a child with Rachel something he could only long for?

He searched her eyes. “No? What’s with the lower-abdomen issues and feeling lousy for a couple of–”

“Don’t you have them?”

He paused. “Hmm, maybe I do–did–now that you mention it. Yesterday I had a tad of diarrhea. But I’m fine now.”

“Just checked our water. Can see parasites. That’s why I’m sick.”

He stared at her, a chill edging up his spine. “Para–? How?”

“My guess, a dead animal trapped in the water upstream.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

“How many barrels?”

“All of them. All seven.” 

“The animal must have been there for a couple of weeks, then?” His heart pounded. “This means we–”

“We’re out of detox and RJ’s is closed. We need water right now, a barrel full in case a storm hits us overnight and RJ’s can’t open or we can’t get there for a couple of days. We could boil water for drinking, but we also need clean bathing water. Not crazy about washing up while parasites’re trying to get inside me. Let’s do it right and get it over with.”

Her hands appeared to squeeze and resqueeze the counter-top edge. “We’re gonna pump out the half-empty barrel we’re using now, haul it down to the stream, scrub it out with bleach, and check each bucketful as we refill it. And we gotta start right now. Bad thing about it? We’re looking at a hard job in this cold snap and at dusk. Gonna be extra dangerous.”

He pushed off from the counter, scowling. “So happy I let you talk me into moving here. We had a nice home, good jobs–”

She peeled away and marched back into the storage room, Mark on her heels.

Taking up most of the storage room’s floor space were the empty spare water barrel, which she’d maneuvered to the side, and the seven filled barrels whose tops she’d removed. Lining two walls of the room were old, home-made, wooden shelving units. If shelves could talk, these might have had a lot of complaints to register. Many of them sagged under the weight of such items as large brown bags of flour, sugar, and rice, endless jars of preserved food, canned goods, tools, hammers, nails, and bundles of wire. Rachel had taken to heart the sign her parents had carved out of a wood slab and hung over the storage-room door: “Throw away the following:.”

He pressed his dry, split lips into a grim line. “We usually hear each other out. What’s with the attitude?”

“I promised them I’d move back here, Mark. Told you that on day one. Also told you living off-grid in Alaska is hardscrabble. And this business about you letting me talk you into coming here–you have only yourself to blame. As a relationship expert–“

“Former relationship expert.”

“As a whatever, don’t you think you ought to, you know, know that?”

He regarded her. “Nice thrust. But I have a counterthrust. As an experienced Alaskan, shouldn’t you have thought to check the water just once in all our trips to the stream in the past half month?”

She seemed caught off guard. She squeezed her eyes shut and shoved fingers through her hair. “I screwed up, all right? Touché.”

She drew a breath and expelled it, fluttering an arm as if to put an end to the argument.

He reached and gently turned her face toward him. “You’re only human.” 

“Let’s hope the animal’s washed away by now. But if we still find parasites, we obviously gotta find the critter and remove it, because good water-collecting spots are few and far between. Won’t be easy. This is the first time we’ve had to do this in– We’ve been here, what, twelve months?”

“Thirteen months and eleven days. A month less than our marriage.”

“Is your tone to suggest you think we haven’t been married long enough?” 

“Not long enough to–“

“Take a see.” She shined a flashlight down into the half-empty barrel. 

“Oh, I’ll take your word for it. You’ve been sick. Don’t know why I’m not.”

“Easy. Parasites don’t invade parasites.”

She spun away from him and reached between two shelving units to hit a wall switch. In their attached shed, the small generator, used for operating such things as lights, tools, and small appliances, grumbled to life. From a storage-room corner, she tugged out a wooden box containing their pump and its hoses.

“What I really think, Rach, is that you’d be more careful if we had a child to take care–”

“Y’know, I love you a big bunch, but I’ve met weasels with better marital skills. Which is pretty shocking considering–“

“I’m a relationship expert. Former.”

“Get hold of yourself.” Her face hardened. “I’m feeling so….”

As his eyes slid away from hers, a stinging memory jolted him. He recalled the times he’d been rebuked as a child at various foster homes, where he’d witnessed neglect and sometimes the outright shunning of clinging, red-eyed children, including himself.

He lifted his gaze. “Okay, big sorry. Let’s get it done.”

She clasped her stomach and bent at the waist in obvious pain. 

His arm shot out. “Rach! Are you–”

She guided his hand aside. “’S’okay. But look, you’re gonna have to do this on your own. I’ll go with you. You can just fill the empty spare. Hold us for a few days, until I feel better.”

“Maybe you should stay.”

“Now that’s a real crazy idea. It’s always safer with two, even if one’s under the weather. We’ve always done this as a team. Way I see it, the two of us together are smarter than either one of us alone.”

“Ah! I just realized–I’ve never driven a snowmobile before.”

“No time like now to learn,” she said. “I promise not to throw up on your back if you promise not to make me. Slow and easy will do it.”

“Can’t we just melt a few buckets of snow? Boil enough water to last until–?”

“Takes too much snow. Which is mostly air. You have to heat it gently. Which takes too much time. Boiling enough to get us through the next two or three days would take longer than a trip to the stream and back. Not to mention we’d eat up our firewood faster than a ton of starving termites.” 

“Why can’t we just melt it as we need it?”

She stared at him. Or glared?

Mark scratched at an eyebrow with a fingernail. “Jeez–checkmated at every turn.”

“If you weren’t so inexperienced…weren’t such a greenhorn.”

“Now you’re being weaselly. You knew all this would be new to me. I remember telling you on day one I’m not the outdoorsy type.”

“Other than chopping wood and cooking once in a while, what’ve you done to start getting a handle on things?”

“I thought you wanted to handle it all yourself. That’s the impression I–”

“Wow. Two crazy ideas in what–five minutes? We sure don’t know each other very well.” She gave him a sideways glance and what may have been a half-smile. “We definitely haven’t been married long enough.”

“Are you sure you’re sick?”

She grabbed onto a shelf.

“Rach, you look like you’re going to throw up.”

Her head rolled from side to side. “Nuh-uh. I’ll be fine in a quick bit.” She motioned toward the pump. “Can you do this for me?”

He dropped the end of the pump’s inlet hose into the half-filled barrel and fed the outlet hose through a golf-ball-sized hole in the wall they kept covered with a heavy iron frying pan hanging on a big nail. He switched on the battery-powered pump.  

Outside minutes later, the frigid air attacked Mark’s face like a hundred biting ants. The snow snapped underneath their boots as they entered the shed wearing their two-piece snowsuits, his thigh-length parka slate-gray, hers cream-white–their “cold armor,” as she sometimes called them.

Inside the shed, Mark grasped the seat of the outward-facing, lime-green-and-black, 2011 Arctic Cat snowmobile parked between the generator and the ten-foot-long, home-made wooden box-freight sled. He rocked the Cat from side to side, until, underneath its tracks, the ice popped.

“Surprised you remembered,” Rachel said. Her furry hood framed the oval, blue-eyed, cold-reddened face he’d fallen in love with on the day they met. 

“Try to keep your soul-crushing excoriations to a minimum.” He flashed a teethy, faux smile.

“Same with the 50-dollar words?”

He straddled the machine. “I’ll take it under advisement. With assiduous effort on my part, the probabilities do point toward an achievable reconcil–”

“Forget I said anything.” Standing next to Mark, she tapped the choke. “Set it to full. Give the throttle in the right handlebar a squeeze. Turn the key there to On.”

The Cat’s engine coughed, sputtered, smoothed out.

He released the choke and twirled a finger, his victory sign. “I’ve cranked up a bunch of snow blowers in my day. Not much different.” He gave the throttle a gentle tweak. The machine eased out of the sled around to the porch. 

Rachel had walked alongside him. “Let it idle to warm up. Now pull the sled–”

“On it.” He hurried back for the sled, feeling her eyes on him. After yanking the snow-coated cover off, he pulled the sled by hand to the rear of the snowmobile and attached it. 

He returned to the storage room and put away the pump and hoses. He lowered into the emptied barrel two five-gallon buckets, one inside the other, a gallon bottle of Clorox into the buckets, and a scrubber brush. After wresting on the lid, he spun the barrel on its bottom edge, the items inside clunking and thudding all the way to the sled. He hoisted the barrel into the front of the sled and girded it with rope that he lashed to two thick ring screws in the wood of the sled. It was as secure as he could make it. 

Rachel had slid her wooden “survival box” onto the porch for Mark to load into the sled. It contained, among other items, their helmets, a flashlight, a tinder box, a Bic lighter, kindling wood, zip-lock bags of dried meat and fish strips, bottled water, Mylar blankets, a folded shelter tarp, and a long coiled rope–almost all of the items they’d need if disaster struck.  

With everything packed into the sled, Mark boarded the Cat and Rachel climbed on behind him. Her arms encircled him.

“Hmmm,” he said, “I like this already. Let’s go back in and make a baby.”

The jab to his rib cage was somehow the response he’d expected. He sighed loudly to make sure she heard him.

“I heard that,” she said. Did her voice strike a playful note? “That red button on the right handle bar kills the engine. That’s good to know. The brake’s the lever on the left handle bar. That’s all you need to hear for now.”

“What about how to prevent me from crashing?” He flipped his hood back and slipped on his LED forehead light, which he’d carried in his coat pocket since sunrise. He left it turned off for now. Rachel handed him his black helmet.

In the distance, a wolf’s haunting howl faded in and out. An icy insect crawled up Mark’s spine. 

II

When they arrived at the stream twenty minutes later, the woods’ lower area seemed colder. Wind gusts hurled themselves down the snowmobile trail, smacking their faces and numbing their skin. And it was darker. In the southwest, the sun had dipped farther. They needed to hurry to complete their mission in the relatively safer daylight. Working in the dark, with the possibility of assorted predatory animals drooling and eyeing them from every angle, was not Mark’s idea of how to spend an evening.

He maneuvered the Cat and the sled onto a ledge where the ground leveled out twenty feet above the stream. Both dismounted.

“Good driving.” Rachel steadied herself, a gloved hand on the seat. “Sorry. Don’t have a lot left in my tank. Can’t do this.” She took a breath. “Wanted to.”

“Room for you in the back,” he said, his chin motioning toward the sled’s far end. “Think you’d be comfortable until I finish?”

Grasping the side of the sled, she climbed over and settled in behind her box of survival equipment, her knees pulled up and her arms folded into her lap. Her head lolled back.

Mark’s eyes lingered on her. Was she worse off than she’d let on? What if he fell into the stream while she was in this condition? 

He went to the survival box at her feet and dug around until he found the rope. “Throw up on my arm,” he said, suppressing a smile, “and I’ll drag you into that nice, cozy-warm water.”

She gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Guess that’s a risk I’ll have to take.” Her hand landed on his forearm. “Are you sure you don’t mind doing this by yourself? It’s hard for one person.”

“But see, what I like about it is, if I fall in and die, you’ll have a guilty conscience and forever mourn a terrible loss.”

“Might have a guilty conscience. What I like about it is all that delicious fruit and veggies in the root cellar…they’ll all be mine.” 

“You’re overflowing with the milk of human kindness.”

He bent to her beaming face and kissed her on the her cold, reddish-pink nose. As she pulled her parka in tight around her neck, he took the bright-yellow nylon rope out of the box. Walking parallel to the stream, he carried it coiled around his left forearm for about fifteen feet to a sturdy-looking Sitka spruce.

He stuffed his gloves into a pocket, his hands, exposed to the frigid air, smarting within seconds. Would he ever get used to the bitter cold? He pushed one of the rope’s carabiners through the spruce’s limbs, circled it around the tree, and snapped it onto the rope snug against the bark. Two hard tugs assured him. He took hold of the carabiner at the other end of the rope and let the coil drop off of his arm. The rope unraveling behind him, he moved at an angle down the incline to a spot at the stream directly downslope from Rachel. On his way, the snow had loosened underfoot once, causing his body to lurch and his numbing, slow-acting fingers to drop the rope and retrieve it with all the dexterity of a one-year-old.

The deep, fast-flowing water threaded and braided, gurgling like a laughing baby. Was the stream’s voice teasing him?

His shoulders tightened. The sub-zero water could kill in short order. One careless slip without his rope might have meant he’d never be seen again. 

He wrapped the five or six feet of excess rope around the waist of his parka. He backed away from the stream to create enough slack to let him twist and secure this end’s carabiner to the rope leading from his back to the spruce–no easy task given how slow his fingers were to act. He’d now be able to kneel here and collect water with far less worry. 

Back at the sled and his hands gloved, he removed the barrel’s lid and put it aside in the sled. He lifted out the barrel.

“Be back before you can count all the fingers on your feet.”

She said to his back, “Is that the kind of humor you’d torture a poor, defenseless little child with?”

“I could hear that eye-roll all the way from here. Better be a smile on that pretty face, wifey.”

He dragged the barrel to the stream. After laying it on its side and pulling the contents out onto the snow, he scrubbed down the barrel’s interior with the brush he’d soaked in Clorox. He scooped water with a bucket and rinsed the barrel several times.

The buckets would remain near an opening in the ice just wide enough to haul water out. He returned the barrel, Clorox, and brush to the sled, his feet skidding more than a few times.

Back at the stream and on his knees, he yanked on his rope. Satisfied, he dipped a bucket into the fast current, let it fill, and lugged it out. Aiming his forehead light into the bucket revealed what he wanted to know. He removed a glove, switched his light off, and gave Rachel a thumb’s up.

Either the current had freed the dead animal Rachel figured was the source of parasites and swept it past this point, or another forest critter had snatched it out for a quick, easy meal.

His feet sank deep into the snow as he hauled a forty-pound bucket in each hand to the sled, his slack rope trailing behind him. He lowered the buckets to the ground and took a few hard breaths. Only four more exhausting trips.

“Getting it done fast, Mark. I can carry only one at a ti–“

She cocked an ear. “Shhh. Don’t move.” 

The tall brush at the forest boundary near the snowmobile trail rustled and danced, as if coming alive. Mark froze for a full five seconds. He peeled off his gloves, let them drop behind him. He removed from a coat pocket the .480 Ruger that was always kept, together with a few boxes of ammo, in an eye-level box shelf on the wall near the cabin door.

Bush branches parted, sprinkling patches of snow. A wide expanse of antlers poked through, followed by the rest of the bull moose. A dark, imposing form in the twilight, it cracked undergrowth with each step. The huge animal came to a stop on spindly legs, its long snout pointed in their direction.

“Maybe just wants to drink,” Rachel said, her voice weak.

Mark expelled air, staggered a step as he relaxed.

Rachel said, “It can smell us but can’t see us all that well. Don’t let your guard down. Moose can be dangerous.”

After a full minute, the beast appeared to be satisfied — or scared off. It swung its massive antlers and retreated into the woods.

Mark pocketed his gun and slipped his gloves back on his hands as they throbbed with pain. He removed the barrel’s lid and laid it on the bottom of the sled. After hefting a forty-pound bucket of water up, he rested it on the barrel rim, maintaining his grip on the bucket.

“Had a nice moosestache, from what I saw.”

“Didn’t know you knew the term.”

“Well, I know a couple of things about a couple of things. Pretty sure I told you about my Ph.D. in moose.”

“In embarrassingly corny humor, you mean?”

Groaning through a grin, he tipped the bucket. “Feeling report?”

“Oh, my stomach feels like it’s upside down, but I’ll handle it.”

Mark made the remaining four tiring trips to the stream. The barrel was full. “Would be nice to have running water as opposed to walking water.” After securing the lid to the barrel, he unwound the rope from his waist, letting it drop to the snow as he did so. He pushed the carabiner underneath his parka to fasten it temporarily to his belt. He headed toward the tree to collect the other end of the rope. “Let’s do it, let’s go home.”

When he was halfway to the tree, the bushes in the vicinity of the first disturbance bustled.

Mark whirled and stared at the spot, unable to see anything. “Mr. Moose truly wants a drink.”

A dark shape emerged and thrust up on its hind legs.

“That’s not a…” His hands shaking and not so much from the cold, Mark stripped his gloves off again, tucked them into a pocket, and extracted the pistol from another. He walked at a snail’s pace on the downslope side of Rachel. He stopped once he’d put himself between her and the bear.

His voice was low and croaky: “Big sucker– Hey, thought you said they were all denned up.”

Rachel whispered behind him: “It must have been rousted, by a wolverine, maybe. So he’s ticked. We should never be this close to one. Whatever you do, don’t shoot unless it–“

“Charges. Right. This book-reader knows more things than you can imagine.” He paused, his eyes never wandering off the bear. “Standing straight up. To see us better?”

“–and if it does, then you gotta decide if it’s real or a mock.”

“Oh, that sounds easy with only, what, 40 yards between us?”

“If it’s a fake and you shoot and don’t kill it, the fake will become the real deal real quick.”

“So….”

“So how do you tell the difference?” Rachel said. “Sometimes you can’t until the bear’s real close.”

“You know, there are times I don’t find it easy to love you. This is–“

“Did I mention bears can be hungry when rousted out of hibernation?”

“–one of those times.”

The black bear snuffled and dropped to all fours. It swatted the ground and surrounding vegetation.

Words stuck in Mark’s throat. He coughed. “Bet a lot of them have been killed needless– Oh shit!” 

A short, sharp chuffing. In the dimming dusk, the bear lunged, galloping hard in their direction.

Rachel scampered out of the sled and ducked behind the front of the snowmobile.

Mark steeled himself and aimed the pistol with both hands. Hold it…hold it…. As his finger edged to the trigger, his foot shifted sideways on the unevenness. His cold-enfeebled hands stopped obeying his commands. The gun slipped away and twirled to the snow. 

The bear less than twenty yards away, Mark stomped upslope to entice the bear away from Rachel. His rope caught on the rough corner of the sled, jerking him to a dead stop.  

With no time to free himself, he faced the bear head-on as it raced toward him. His clumsy, numb fingers sought his forehead light and groped for the switch. His fingers feeling nothing, he had to guess where the switch was. On his third effort to turn the light on, the bear and the immediate surroundings exploded in brightness. His finger nudged again. The red strobe light flickered like mad–the light mode he and Rachel had some time ago agreed would be a way to signal trouble to each other.

The animal came to a halt, blinded for a couple of seconds, confusion on its face. 

Mark’s heart hammered as fast as his strobe light flashed, his breaths coming in quick, hard gasps. He spotted his gun a few feet away and stepped sideways to gather it up in his uncooperative hands. Erecting himself, he pointed the weapon at the bear’s head.

But was his unfeeling finger on the trigger? He dared a glance at the gun to assure himself it was. Would it respond?

In the brush, another commotion, this one closer. A young moose rammed its head in on the scene, taking stock of its environment.

The bear heard it, swiveled, and surged toward the moose, its back rippling, its paws kicking up snow. The gangling moose pivoted and vaulted out of sight, the bear hot on its trail.

Rachel blew out pent-up air. “Ha, see? Moose’re good for something besides a source of meat for us–bear deflectors. Bear Begone.” 

Mark pocketed the gun and stood for a long moment, trying to bring his nerves under control. The sweat on his forehead, as well as in his mustache and beard, had crystallized. A knuckle that had regained a smidgen of sensation killed his light. He revisited the spruce and, after briefly puffing air on his hands, unfettered the rope, wrapped it around his arm, and returned it to Rachel’s survival box.

“Great idea, the rope,” she said, leaving her spot in front of the snowmobile. “Didn’t have to worry about you.”

“At least until that bear poked its nose into our business.” His thumb and forefinger measured off half an inch. “Came that close, Rachel, to being a Meal On A Rope.”

He jammed his hands into his gloves. “Getting dark.” He swung a leg over the Cat.

III

After transferring the collected water into the empty spare barrel in the storage room, Mark stoked the embers in the stove and added three split logs from the firewood box.

Still in her coat, Rachel sat in her rocker near the stove hugging herself.

“Tomorrow morning I want to go see the doc. Still feeling like I’ve had better days. Want her to check me out. And I want her to tell you I don’t have a baby growing inside me.” Was that a smile or a smirk she gave him? In the dimly lit cabin, he couldn’t be sure.

“Can’t I pretend just a little longer?”

“We’ll leave at eight.”

“I’ll prepare your bathwater. While you’re at the doc’s, why don’t I grab some supplies across the street–unless you want me to be with….”

Her lowered head swayed from side to side.

IV

IN the smothering blackness, Rachel’s deep, gentle breathing told Mark she was facing him when he extricated himself from their warm cocoon of blankets earlier than usual. He groped for  his light hanging on the wall, adjusted it to the center of his forehead, and set it to dim.

After getting dressed, he stirred the glowing charcoals in the stove and fed the swelling flames more wood. He stared at them, listening to the snaps and pops that always evoked memories of his scratchy old 78 RPM records. There was something mesmerizing–maybe even a little magical–about a beautiful, dancing, brilliant-white-and-orange fire that you created and tended to with your own hands, rather than one you threw a switch to get and never saw.

He went outside to cleave firewood, the first time ever before dawn. The snow in the oval of his brightened light blinded him for a couple of seconds. The savage cold, worsened by a breeze, clamped over his face like a mask of needles. The thermometer said minus twenty-five. He pushed his scarf up over the bridge of his nose, already paining, and huddled inside his parka. For the love of a wonderful woman, a price was being paid, but he knew he’d never hesitate to pay it, not in a thousand years.

He inhaled involuntarily, his lungs burning. There was only one thing missing in his life.

The firewood returned to his thoughts. Extra logs weren’t needed for another two or three days, but at this time of the year a blizzard could sweep over them like a swirling, ghostly white monster and rage for nearly a week, imprisoning them in their cabin. Freezing to death was not an option.

Onto his six-foot-long hand-pulled sled, he piled his chopping block, axe, and ten logs that earlier in the week he’d sawed to roughly 18-inch lengths. He dragged the load over the snow past a barrier of willow brush and trees, several of which had fallen and formed a lattice that he’d learned could provide a nesting site for rabbits and grouse. He stopped at a spot some 70 yards downbreeze from the cabin. After shaking out his arms and legs, he got to work. The explosive splintering of hard-frozen logs shattered the quiet like pistol shots.

An hour and three sled loads later, another three days’ supply of firewood had been stacked in the woodshed–a decent start that he’d finish tomorrow morning. He sucked in air that knifed his nostrils and throat. Time to rummage around in the root cellar and rustle up breakfast.

V

Rachel holding on behind him, Mark weaved the snow mobile and the sled past gleaming-white trees lining the snowmobile path toward town. Drooping limbs raked them, dousing them with coruscating snow. Each time, Rachel squealed and laughed into Mark’s back.

In Huslia, a village of barely more than one-hundred homes sprawling along a bend in the icing-over Koyukuk River, Mark drew up at the one-story health clinic on Moonlight Street. The clinic, built in 1960, looked its age and in need of its own health care. 

Directly across the snow-covered, rutted road stood RJ’s Hardware & General Store, a squat white building with a large front window that displayed, in a haphazard fashion, a variety of products ranging from parkas and canned and packaged food to chainsaws and doorknobs. 

Mark remained seated on the Cat as he watched Rachel walk up the clinic’s ramp to the gray, scuffed porch.

“Sure you don’t want me to come in with you?”

She turned at the waist and fixed him with a sternness that he interpreted as “I’m doing this alone.” “Just a little off’s all. Not totally helpless.” 

Standing up, he yelled at the snowmobile, “Heeyah!” and u-turned over the jarring road, almost losing control. He halted at RJ’s door.

Rachel turned and faced her husband, her hand shielding her narrowed eyes against the morning sun peeking over a snow-draped mountain.

“Hey! Just because you did a good job coming in, don’t get cocky! We don’t need both of us out of commission. And Mark?” She extended her arm and pointed. “It’s not a horse.” 

He deboarded, placed his helmet on the seat, and flapped a piece of paper at her. “Got a list. Maybe 30 minutes?”

Her thumb flipped vertical. She blew him a quick kiss and entered the clinic. 

The store didn’t seem to be well organized. Mark’s shopping might take longer than a half hour.

Near the window and behind the counter stood Jim, the store manager, a tall, white-haired Athabascan man in his early sixties. Wearing a beige leather vest sporting a colorful tent above each of the two buffalo charging at each other, he studied the computer screen next to the cash register. He peered over the top of his glasses.

“You’re looking fit as a caribou calf, Mark Ryder.”

“Bet you say that to everybody.”

“No no no. Not everybody’s named Mark Ryder in Huslia.” Jim’s grin, revealing dull-white teeth, said he relished his little quip. “Saw Rachel go in the clinic.”

“Intestinal problems. She saw parasites in our water, though they haven’t bothered me.”

“Hmm. Back in the day, we ate raw garlic, pumpkin seeds, pomegranates, beets, and carrots. All helped, when we could get ’em.” His index fingers pecked the keyboard. “Well, I’m sure the Doc will fix her up real good–unless she’s like her folks and too damned stubborn to take meds.” The keys clacked again. “Give me a wolf howl if I can find you something.”

List in hand, Mark meandered about the store carrying the wire handbasket he’d picked up just inside the door. He placed into it lip balm, washing detergent, toothpaste, hand soap, AA batteries, and a few other items, including the detox he’d added to his list this morning.

“No pocket warmers, Jim?” A sudden dizziness weakened his legs. Cold hands had almost cost him and Rachel’s lives. 

“Every time I get a batch in, just a handful of locals snatch ’em all up that day. Thinking about instituting a limit.”

Mark paused in the children’s clothing section. As his fingers traced over a “Daddy’s Little Peanut” romper-and-ruffle outfit for infant girls, a sharp lump cut into his throat. 

Behind him, Jim said, “Excuse my nosiness but are you two expecting?”

Mark snorted. “Beginning to think kids are not in my future.” He turned his back on the clothes and moved on to the canned goods in groceries.

“Sorry to hear that. If I recall, Rachel’s parents didn’t want kids, either. Lucky for you they didn’t get their wish. You got the best wife in Alaska. Best-looking, too, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Was he trying to cheer Mark up?

Jim gazed at the screen. “Me, I got four kids and six grands. Let me tell you–pure Heaven.”

Apparently not.

Or did he want to inspire Mark to try harder to persuade Rachel?

“My fifteenth sense tells me you really want a child and she really doesn’t. I wouldn’t be pushing her, Mark. Ease off if you are. Give it time. Be as patient as my ancestors waiting for me to join them.” 

Ten minutes later, Mark set his filled basket on the counter. 

“Mark!” The muffled shout pivoted him toward the window. Rachel, on the clinic’s porch, was waving him over.

He faced Jim, who was already nodding. “Can you set all these aside?” He forced a smile. “And, uh, thanks for the advice.” Even relationship coaches sometimes needed advice on relationships.

He thought it over crossing the road, his eyes misting. What if Jim were right? Pressuring her might make her dig her heels in. Considering his former profession, he should have understood that.

“Fool,” he said under his breath.

But the heart wants what the heart wants, and not pressuring her also might mean no child ever.  

“She wants to tell you something,” Rachel said.

“You’re pregnant and been lying to me?” Did his grin and stab at irritating humor distract her from noticing his watery eyes?

A curt head shake. “Your Ph.D.–in being silly.”

On the porch with her, he asked, “Why does she need to talk to me? Does she want me to make sure you take your meds because you’re stubborn as a Billy goat?”

She goosed him in the ribs through his thick downy parka until he entered the clinic. The faint smell of cleaning agents and unknown medicines greeted him.

There was no receptionist. Dr. Angela Hightower, a thin woman around Jim’s age whom everyone called Angie, was the clinic’s only employee. She sat at her desk in a swivel chair, inserting a manila folder into a drawer. Her gray-streaked hair in a pony-tail, she wore blue-jeans and a green-and-white plaid shirt. She looked more like an off-gridder than a doctor.

On the wall behind her head were the usual certificates and maybe a dozen framed photographs of varying sizes — all of which Mark gave only sweeping attention to. 

He hung his parka next to Rachel’s on a caribou-antler wall plaque between the door and the window. His body shivered but the heat radiating from the large propane-gas stove in the corner on the other side of the window soon drove out the chill.

Four feet in front of Angie’s desk, he settled into an armless, black, padded chair that must have been bought to discourage long stays. Rachel sat next to him in an identical chair just inches away.

After he and Angie exchanged brief pleasantries, she leaned back, her hands flapping on the armrests. “So. No, Mark, she’s not expecting.” A tiny smile played at the corners of her lips as her gaze shifted to Rachel. “And she’s not ill. No giardiasis, beaver fever.” 

Mark’s eyes bounced off Angie to his wife. “What? How can she say that? You’ve been–“

 “I think,” Angie said, rising from her chair, “she wants to have a chat with you. I’m going for coffee. Be back in about twenty. Expect the two of you’ll be gone by then.”

Rachel took his hand after Angie left. She worked her jaw. “I’ve been a very deceitful person.” 

“I don’t under–“

“I wanted you to learn more on your own, how to handle things as if I wasn’t here, or in case I really did get sick. I needed to know we’d be all right if everything was completely in your hands.”

A hotness spread across his cheeks. “So no parasites? What if I’d peeked inside the barrel?”

“Was pretty sure you wouldn’t. You trust me.”

“Should I? That’s a funny thing to say now.” He slid his hand out of hers. “You could’ve just said, ‘Hey, take over for a while.'”

“Figured you’d think I was being unfair because of your inexperience. I also worried you might’ve been less into it, less responsible, as long as you knew I could back you up.”

“That makes me think you don’t trust me.” He turned his head away from her, sneering, then back. “Do you realize you exposed us to the unnecessary risk of being mauled by a goddamned bear, for God’s sake? You said they were all in hiber–“

“The chance a bear would be roaming around while we were there was slimmer than a hair on your head. Heard stories, but never saw it happen before.”

He gave her a glance, then looked at the floor. “I don’t know, Rachel. I feel played and betrayed. Does Huslia have a lawyer? Or are two-hundred and seventy-five people not enough to–?”

“Wanna take a swing at me instead?” She presented her chin to him. 

Her eyebrows gathered in. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry. But the stakes were high. I had to be sure. Didn’t feel like I knew you well enough. Needed to see how quickly you’d get up to speed, how you’d do all on your own, dependent on no one.”

She took his hand again and squeezed. “And you performed like a champ. Loved how I didn’t have to remind you to take advantage of the time this morning to build up the wood pile. And I especially loved it when you moved the logs away. I was actually able to get back to sleep.”

She hiked her shoulders. “And other things, like the rope to keep yourself from falling in. I’m ticked at myself for never having thought of that. But what got me the most was how you dealt with that bear. Turning on your light! Wow. That’s another thing I’m not sure would’ve popped up in my brain. You’re very resourceful. And you think on your feet fast as lightning.”

She drew in a breath. “So I really apologize for everything, especially for having to be mean to you to be convincing.” She leaned against his shoulder. “You remember when I gave you a stern look and told you ‘Parasites don’t invade parasites’?” She laughed. “Had to show you my backside quick before I cracked up.” 

She rubbed the back of his hand. “And yes, I extra-special apologize about the bear. But in a way I’m glad it all happened. I now know a side of you I didn’t know before. A good side. You’re a very responsible, caring person. One thing’s for sure–I can’t call you a greenhorn anymore.”

His eyes met hers. He allowed himself a smile. “Thank you for all the kind words.”

“You deserve–” 

“Ha,” he said, “it just dawned on me how at the stream you all of a sudden had the energy to jump out of the sled like you did and hide behind the snowmobile. I have to hand it to you–you pulled off an act worthy of an Oscar. Really had me convinced you were sick.”

His mind drifted to the supplies he’d laid out in RJ’s. “By the way, Best Actress of the Year, I imagine we have plenty of detox at home?”

She nodded, trying to stifle a giggle. 

“Right in front of my eyes, I’m guessing. Blinded by my faith in you.” He laid his free hand on top of hers. “Rach, I had a talk with Jim. He gave me some good– Hold it, you said a couple of minutes ago the stakes were high. What exactly do you mean by that?”

“How about Ethan?”

“What? Who’s Eth–“

“Or Sarah.”

“Did Angie somehow miss your mad-moose disease?”

Her little smile had an air of mischief as her eyes traced over his face, his neatly trimmed beard. “Didn’t come here today for a check-up. Future check-ups. She put me on a schedule if we start–” 

“Wait. So you’re saying what I think you’re saying.” 

She got to her feet and stood in front of him. Her smile cracked into a wide grin.

“Glad you’re reading that book. You’re gonna be a great daddy and be able to help me more than I ever imagined.”

When he rose, her arms embraced him. “You’re my True North, Mark Ryder. Let’s go grab our stuff and skedaddle home–to make a baby!”

“Boy or a girl?”

“Yes!”

He hugged her, hard, lifting her off the floor.

“And you know what?” she said as he lowered her. “I can’t wait to hear you tell our little hatchling, ‘Count all the fingers on your little feet.'” She couldn’t restrain her laugh. 

Grabbing her parka off the coat rack, she glanced out the window at RJ’s. “You had a chat with Jim, you said?”

“Hm? Oh. Just small talk.” He followed her out the door toward RJ’s and squinted up at the big Alaskan sky. He smiled. “He told me how happy his kids and grandkids make him. I believe him.” 

______________________________

Images: alaskaphotographics.com