A piece of a longer piece of fiction I'm working on, based on some true stuff.
Lost
Dogs of Alaska
In the morning I leave the shed and
sneak into the main house for coffee, being careful not to wake the old man. I
pour a big cup and take it down by the river to sit a spell. The sun is up,
orange and beaming over the huge swirling river like a signal calling urgently.
This is where to get the best view of the gray mountains rising up on the other
side of the village. I’m still too concerned about my dogs disappearing to
enjoy myself. In a day, after getting more supplies, it’ll be time to head out
again. I have to.
I take the last gulp and shake the cup upside down once to get the drops
out. Then I carry it back to the house, thinking. I can’t give up on them, even
though Maria is home waiting for me, missing me. I’ve been gone a long time,
but still she waits. They being dogs doesn’t matter. I’d search the same for a
human friend. Well, maybe more for a dog friend, especially these dogs. They’re
very dear to me.
I wipe my boots, tap lightly on the door, and slip back inside. The old
man is awake in the kitchen fumbling around making breakfast. He’s cursing at
the microwave. He sees me and brings it down a notch. “Coffee time,” he says to
my raised empty cup.
“Already had some, but I’ll take another sir,” I say, if you can spare
it.
“You got it,” he says. He holds out the pot and refills my cup. He talks
while preparing breakfast. “I never had all these gadgets before,” he says. “We
lived in the bush and didn’t need any of this crap,” waving his hand in sort of
contempt at the various utensils and appliances. “We had a simple life, a good
life.”
“Would of liked that,” I say.
“I did like it. I miss it.” He opens the refrigerator to get butter.
“Are you going out looking for your dogs again?”
“Yes sir, probably leave tomorrow, buy some food today. I got to find
them.” He looks at me.
“You want bacon and eggs?”
“That would be great, thank you.” He holds up an affirming hand while
turning back to the stove.
“It’s a damn good thing what you’re doing, looking for them. Most people
would of not even bothered, but you, you’re loyal to your dogs.” He flips the
eggs.
“Well sir, they’ve been loyal to me. I can’t let them down by not
searching for them, by not finding them. I got to find them. They’re probably
scared wondering what happened to me, petrified actually.”
“That’s likely. You should keep looking. Stay here whenever you’re in
town.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
He gives me a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and a hunk of salmon
his son caught that he plops down on my plate. “Weather’ll be turning cold
soon. That’d be hard on dogs like yours,” he says. “Not much fur.”
“They’re big Airedales,” I say, “the old school hunting version. They
got some fur, but not like a husky. They might starve first.”
“They might, or wolves could get them, but dogs got a way a surviving.
They can handle some really difficult times, stuff that’d surely kill a man.”
“It’s been a week already. Were your dogs ever starving and cold?” I
say.
“Don’t have any more but when I was a young man like you I used them to
hunt and trap. That’s how we survived. There weren’t any jobs, just living off
the land, long before this place was a village, and long before goddamn snow
machines. Once me and my partner were out two months and got low on food. We
didn’t have enough to keep the dogs going. They were in real sorry shape the
poor things.”
I sit, waiting
for more of his story. He says, “If the dogs got too weak we wouldn’t of been
able to get back. It was too far. My wife and kids were waiting for me. They
needed me, depended on me.”
“What did you do
to keep from starving?” I say.
“Well, we had to
stop and hunt,” he says bluntly. “There was no other choice. It was forty
below, hard to sneak up on a moose in that kind of cold. But we got lucky and
came across one, though, far across a valley. We didn’t think we could get
close enough for a shot. He was so far away.” He pauses. “You want more eggs?”
“Sure, I never
turn down food.” He gets up and scoops some out of the pan on the stove and
onto my plate. “Thank you.”
“Yep.”
“What did you
do?” I say.
“Oh yeah, well,
my partner, my brother, who was older’n me and calling the shots told me to go
around the valley and come up the ridge from the other side. We had no other
choice, so that’s what I did, hiked around to the head of that creek. Well
hell, it took me four and a half hours, but I made it. When I came up to look
the moose was still there, hunkered down in the snow. I raised my rifle right
then and fired before he spooked. Well, we got the moose, and fed the dogs, and
here I am to tell about it. I’m eighty now. That was a different time back
then. If I was young I’d come with you, help you find your dogs.”
Well, I’d accept
the help,” I say.
After eating I
start washing my dish. “Just leave that there, I’ll get it,” he says. I set it
on the counter next to the sink along with a bunch of others.
“Thank you for
breakfast. It’s the best food I’ve had in a long time. I didn’t realize how
much I missed it after eating lentils and oats for so long.”
“Well, you’re
welcome young man. It’s great how you’re looking for adventure. Life goes so fast
and then you realize you didn’t use it enough and realize your body doesn’t
work as good as it used to and never will again. You would think that when you
got old you’d be more accepting of death, but you’re not. You’re even more
scared of it than when you were twenty.”
“Jeeze, really? I
didn’t know that.”
“That’s a sad
fact, a twist on the expected,” he says. I get up to stretch before leaving,
pulling my arms behind my back.
“I’ll be heading
down to the store now. I can’t stop worrying. I want to leave now but my legs
are so sore,” I say.
“You need to rest
a day or two. A trip like that, the body might not feel it until awhile,” he
says. “Sometimes it takes a couple days before it catches up with you.”
“I know, but I
got to be going in the morning. I got to find those dogs. I can’t afford to
wait around.”
“Maybe they back
tracked,” he says. He pours some soap in the sink and runs the water.
“What do you
mean?”
“Maybe they got
on your trail going the way you came like they thought that was the way you
were going.”
“I thought a
that. I’ll head back to the Coleen if I don’t find them up on Crow Mountain.”
“Maybe they
joined a wolf pack.” I raised my eyebrows.
“What, does that
happen?”
“Not likely. More
likely wolves would kill them, unless it was a lone wolf. Sometimes a lone wolf
needs a friend, and sometimes on rare occasions they try to befriend dogs, or
even a young solitary bear. I seen one come in hanging around the dogs who was
tied to stakes, wagging his tale and acting all friendly, few years back.”
“Huh, that’s
something.”
“Sure is, you
never know what goes on out there in the bush. It’s a better world than we’ve
made. Most of us can’t even begin to understand it.”
“I raised my
dogs from pups, drove down to California and picked them out myself. We just
hiked across the Brooks Range together. Damn, I should have been watching them
better, but it was our very last day, up in these mountains right here. I
figured it was a done deal making it here. I let my guard down, just once,
after all those weeks. Then they got on a moose scent and took off. I figured
they’d be right back. I waited a long time, but couldn’t stay without any food.
I was a walking skeleton from our trek. After two days I had to leave.” He
wipes his hands on a dish towel and walks me to the door.
“How long you
going to look for them?” I ponder the question for a few seconds.
“A year,” I say.
“I’ll give it a year. That’s what I’m going to do if I have to.”
“No kidding.
That’s some real conviction,” he says.
“Yes sir. My mind
is made up. I’ll spend one year searching my heart out for those dogs.” He
looks at me.
“You know, I
think you would. I think you will really do that. Being in the wilds got a way
of making a man do the right thing. Without it we’re always doing the wrong
thing, always wrecking things. Best of luck to you.” He shakes my hand.
Then he opens the
door, stands aside, and I step out, prepared to search for my dogs in the
rolling hills and untrammeled wilderness.
