Читать книгу Thirty Below - Harry Groome - Страница 7

WEDGED INTO a cramped canvas seat of a de Havilland Beaver, Carrie adjusted a pair of olive drab earphones, careful not to disturb the dark glasses nestled on her tight blonde curls. She stared out the airplane’s window, half-dazed, half-amazed by what she was witnessing. She was being transported to the Alaska bush and beginning the adventure with the man she thought—finally—might just be the man she’d so desperately been looking for.

As the Beaver’s powerful engine droned on, Carrie looked down at a frozen river that shimmered like a silver ribbon on the blackening valley floor as it wandered beneath jagged mountains that climbed above her, their glaciers turning from white and watery blue to copper as the sun settled behind their peaks. Through her headset she heard Bart’s reassuring voice: “That’s the Chitina River.”

Once again it was as though he sensed what she was about to ask, and once more Carrie wondered how this relationship would work out—living with a man who always seemed to know what she was thinking—when Bart pointed to the mountains within her view. “Some of those peaks are 16,000 feet high.”

She said it was beautiful and slipped back into her trance until they passed over a small cluster of buildings and, a moment later, over another. She straightened in her seat and tapped a freshly manicured fingernail against the window, her black down mittens swinging freely from the snaps on her parka sleeves. “Bart, what are those?”

“That’s the Bremner gold mine right below us. It’s been abandoned for years. The bigger settlements were mining towns. They’re mostly ghost towns now.”

“People actually lived there?”

He turned to her and nodded. “Some still do.”

Carrie shook her head in amazement. He had to be kidding; no one could survive out there no matter how badly they wanted whatever it was they were after—gold or no gold.

It was with this thought that she finally began to understand what it was she was undertaking, and her conviction that she was doing the right thing with the right man started to surrender to the thought that she might be doing the single dumbest thing of her young life. She shook her head and watched the vast landscape of trees and the frozen, snow-dusted ponds grow larger and larger as the pilot began his approach to the Wrangell Mountain Expeditions’ air strip. The plane began to bounce and rock and her stomach pushed into her throat and she grabbed Bart by the shoulder of his parka and cried, “Sweet Jesus!”

“It’s okay, Carrie,” he said. “Not to worry, Whitey’s done this thousands of times.”

The plane rocked and twisted for a few moments more before touching down and skiing to a halt at the end of a snow-covered runway where Whitey switched off the engine. “Just in time, McFee,” he said. “Another fifteen minutes and we’d been zero-zero.”

“Zero-zero?” Carrie asked.

“Not enough visibility to land,” Bart said.

She pulled off her headset and tapped Bart on the shoulder. “But it’s not even four o’clock yet. You said the days were short, but how short?”

“When the damn darkness sets in, the sun kind of glows from behind the mountains for a few hours, and that’s about it.” He patted the sleeve of her bulky down parka. “Don’t worry. That only goes on for a few months. You’ll love it. You’ll see. Where else can you watch the moon rise while you’re eating breakfast?”

Carrie stared at Bart, and while she couldn’t believe his response, she also couldn’t believe the beauty of his chiseled profile, his straight nose and strong-looking jaw. Gorgeous, gentle Bart, she thought, and muttered, “Where else?”

THAT NIGHT, Carrie lay with Bart under layers of thick, brightly striped Hudson Bay blankets in blackness the likes of which she’d never experienced. Before sleep began to overtake her, she listened to the wind roll down the snow-packed runway and past their little cabin. Mixed with the wind’s screaming, she could hear the lectures Hannah had given her before she left La Jolla, starting with the familiar “when are you ever going to learn?” speech that this time began, “You damn near got raped a few weeks ago and now you’re running off to Alaska with a guy you’ve only been dating for two weeks? Get real, Carrie. Get a grip!”

“But he’s not a stranger anymore, and maybe he never was,” Carrie had insisted. “I feel like I’ve known him all my life. And he’s so gentle and patient. And he cares about what I think and how I feel. And he’s an adventurer. And he’s—”

“Gorgeous,” Hannah interrupted. “But aren’t they all?” She paused and asked again, for what seemed to Carrie like the hundredth time, “But Alaska, Carrie? Alaska?”

Carrie argued that the timing was perfect, that she needed a change and Hannah answered that she’d said the same thing the week before. “And the week before that and the week before that.”

“But this time it’s different, Hannah. I promise. Something tells me Bart’s the man I’ve been waiting for and it’s not just because he’s so gorgeous. He understands me; knows who I am. I feel trapped here. I need a change. I really do. I’m twenty-nine, my biological clock’s ticking, and nothing new ever happens in my life. Nothing. Ever. Please, don’t hate me for this but I’ve got to get out of the rut I’m in and get away from this place for a while.”

“Okay, okay,” Hannah said, “but running off to Alaska, is that really the best solution to your problems?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Carrie answered, hoping she was right. “So, good-bye root canals and lecherous dentists and Saturdays at the mall, and good-bye singles scene.” She patted Hannah’s hand confidently and smiled. “It’s okay. If it doesn’t work out, I can always come home.”

With that Hannah’s tone softened slightly, but she continued to ask questions as if she had a checklist for Carrie that she was determined to complete. “But have you ever wondered why there are tons of single men up there and so few single women? Why Bart had to run an ad to find someone who’d take him up on his crackpot idea?”

“Don’t worry—”

Hannah pointed her finger at her. “Because not many women are as restless as you are; that’s why. Just listen to this again and listen carefully.” Hannah read aloud from the Personals section of the San Diego Union Tribune: ‘Be free again.’ She stopped. “Free, my ass, Carrie. Since when is being locked in a log cabin all winter free? And you think you’re trapped here?” She shook her head. ‘White male, 36, college educated, seeks female companion to live back to basics lifestyle in Alaska bush country. Commune with nature. Breathe clean air. Discard financial worries, urban pressures and southern California traffic. Live off the grid. McFeeB@aol.com...’ Hannah paused. “What a crock of shit!”

“I don’t think so,” Carrie said.

“Are you kidding? Do you know what they say about the guys in Alaska?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “The odds are good, but the goods are odd. The goods are odd, Carrie, and that goes for your gorgeous adventurer.”

“Hannah, for once in my life I know what I’m doing,” Carrie argued. “Besides, things will never change unless I make them change.”

But now, lying in the darkness, the wind shaking the walls of the small cabin, Carrie could see Hannah making her points, each time touching a finger on her left hand with the index finger of her right.

“First, he’s already been divorced. Second, he’s ten years older than you. Third, he’s unemployed.”

“Wrong,” Carrie said. “Double wrong. He’s only seven years older and, besides, everyone’s unemployed in the wilderness. Unemployed is what they do.”

Hannah closed her eyes and shook her head. “Fourth—and the real topper I might add—he’s built a log cabin a million miles from nowhere and you’re going to keep him company for an entire winter?”

“But, Hannah, we’ll read and snow shoe and listen to the wolves and gaze at the stars. Bart says up there the stars look so close you feel you can reach up and touch them.”

“That’s all you’ll do? All winter? I don’t think you get what ‘living off the grid’ means.” She started with her pinkie finger again. “It means there’s no running water—no hot showers—and no flush toilet.”

And another finger. “And no electricity. That’s living off the grid.”

Hannah paused. “Carrie, there’s not even a phone, for God’s sake. That could pose a real problem for you and what will you do if one of you gets sick, or Bart gets eaten by a bear or something?”

Carrie told her that was all part of the adventure, of “living on the edge,” as Bart had put it, but now she felt her heart beating rapidly and found it hard to breathe and asked herself why she hadn’t listened to Hannah; why she hadn’t stayed home.

Once again she wondered why Bart had wanted her to go with him. It certainly wasn’t for her survival skills. Was it because she was the only woman desperate enough to say she would? She reached for him to wake him, to tell him that she’d changed her mind, that she’d made a terrible—typical, Carrie Ritter—mistake. She hesitated, her hand hovering above Bart’s shoulder, and then lowered it and placed it over her heavily beating heart. She took a deep breath to quiet herself. She owed it to herself to do this. To get out of her rut, to prove that she could do things on her own, that she was more than people think and better, too. That she can get it right.

She listened to Bart’s steady breathing mix with the sound of the wind rushing down the runway, the wind-sounds making her feel as if she was in the middle of some godforsaken river of snow, and she drew another breath, interlocked her fingers and squeezed her palms together hard, and let air out quietly through her mouth.

She thought, I’ll show Hannah.

The wind’s screaming seemed to grow louder and more desperate.

And, I’ll show Bart, too.

She filled her lungs again and exhaled slowly and promised she would. She laid her hands across her chest and smiled for, if worst came to worst, she could always give it up and go home.

A LITTLE BEFORE first light, Carrie followed Whitey as he carried her bulging duffle bag across the runway and nestled it in the sled that looked like a large toboggan to Carrie. Six huskies—all, Bart had said, rejects from the camp’s kennels—were already harnessed to the sled and were curled in the snow to protect their faces and feet. As Carrie approached, one raised its head to look at her, its pale blue eyes squinting to protect them from the swirling snow.

“You’re good to go, Miss Ritter,” Whitey said. “McFee and I stocked the camp well this summer. You’ll need to collect some meat along the way, but you should be fine until the spring.”

Bart smiled. “Another walk in the park.”

Whitey laughed. “Another winter, McFee. Another cold, dark winter. You take care.”

The two men embraced and slapped each other on the backs of their large down parkas. Whitey turned to Carrie who forced a smile and shifted her weight from one boot to the other and crossed her arms against her chest to keep warm. “You okay?” he asked.

“It’s freezing,” she said.

“A little below,” Bart said.

She felt a slight twinge of panic. “If it’s this cold now and it’s only October, what’s the weather like in January?”

“It gets down into the twenties and thirties,” Bart said.

“But it’s that now,” Carrie said.

“Twenty or thirty below zero,” Bart said.

Whitey chuckled as he fumbled for his cigarettes. “It was almost that cold yesterday up at Chandalar Lake.” He looked at Carrie, her face clouding over at the thought of thirty-below-zero temperatures, and turned to Bart. “I could fly you in the Beaver, if that would work better for you.”

“We’ll be fine,” Bart said.

Whitey nodded toward Carrie. “You’re sure?”

Carrie wanted to hear more about flying into camp, but Bart interrupted her thought. “I’m sure,” he said. “Winter is the essence of life in the wilderness and I want Carrie to experience it all.”

Whitey took a long drag on his cigarette. “She’ll do that,” he said. “That’s for damn sure,” and put out his hand to her.

Carrie shook his hand. “This is it?” she asked. She wasn’t prepared for the suddenness of the goodbyes, for such a sudden start to her adventure.

“It’s all she wrote,” Whitey said. “Enjoy the Riviera.”

Oh, my God! It gets to be thirty below zero and it’s dark all day long and they joke about it? She slumped in the narrow sled, zipped her parka under her chin and arranged a pile of caribou skins over and around her to protect her from the wind that lifted snow in small, icy clouds around her.

“Ready?” Bart asked.

Again she thought she had something to prove and, again thought she could always come home. She cleared her throat and whispered, “Ready.”

Bart walked the line of sleeping dogs and prodded each with the toe of his boot and clucked, “Up you gup. Up you gup.” All six stood and shook the snow from their thick fur. The two closest to the sled reared on their hindquarters and snarled at each other before settling down. Bart adjusted the headlamp he’d strapped over his wool cap, stepped on the sled’s foot boards, gripped the handle bar with both hands and yelled, “Hike up!”

The dogs barked wildly and strained against the towline. Slowly the sled picked up speed. The swirling snow blinded Carrie, her sinuses bruised by the cold, and she realized that all those things that she imagined only happened in books or on TV or in the movies—whiteouts and avalanches and gangrene and people freezing to death—could happen to her. She slipped on her dark glasses and settled deeper in the sled and knotted her scarf across her nose and mouth and tried to curl up, the way the huskies did, to keep warm. Two days of this? she thought. I’ll never make it. Six months of this? What have I gotten myself into?