Owing to the approaching storm, a scheduled basketball game with another village had been canceled. Concern was also growing about Daily, who had left Shaktoolik the night before. Villagers were talking about sending out a rescue party when Tom was finally sighted in the distance, late Thursday afternoon.
I was talking to an AP reporter on the pay phone when Tom walked in. I collared him, Herrman, and a few other mushers who happened past and put them on the phone for interviews. It was part of my campaign to make sure the Iditarod headquarters didn’t forget us.
“You should see O’Donoghue,” Daily told the reporter. “Skin’s falling off his face. He looks hideous.”
I was a little nicked, that’s all. Coming across the ice, wind had leaked between my goggles and the face masks and burned a line across my cheeks and nose. The shower had left the branding raw and bloody. It looked worse than it felt, but I was embarrassed by the way people kept gasping.
Later, Daily trudged up to the laundromat with a load of his own. Cooley was already there and had beat him to the bathroom. Tom shrugged and put his clothes in the washer. Long minutes passed. Cooley remained busy in the bathroom stall. Finally, Daily couldn’t wait any longer. He knocked. There was no response. Yanking open the door, he found Doc sitting on the toilet, sound asleep.
Back in the checkpoint, I cooked my spaghetti feast in a dog pan. Other mushers laughed as they saw what I was doing.
“You’re not going to eat all that yourself, are you?”
“Watch me.”
We were shell-shocked. Twenty days on the trail, and Nome was another 170 miles yet. But no one was complaining tonight. Half a dozen mushers agreed to accompany me to the school in the morning. Don Mormile was in rare form, mumbling songs and waltzing across the floor with a broom.
“We’re going to be here until spring,” someone cried.
“You already are,” another musher shot back.
It was indeed March 21, the spring equinox. The concept seemed ludicrous.
A television, tuned to the state’s rural satellite network, was blaring in the kitchen area. A news program was on. No one paid much mind until the Iditarod update started. “Snowmachiners are out searching for musher Tom Daily,” the announcer said, looking grave. “The rookie, traveling in last place, has been missing since Wednesday and is feared lost in a storm….”
Inside the checkpoint, all eyes turned to Daily, who was also watching the broadcast, munching a handful of caramel-coated Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
“Gee. And I didn’t even know I was lost,” Tom said, beaming. “Should I be worried?”
By morning, the sky had cleared. Below the village, the next section of trail stretched before us, flagged by tiny markers streaming bright orange tape. Other mushers scrambled to depart. I had an appointment to keep at the school. Let them go. I figured I could catch the slower teams without difficulty.
Looking at the bright faces of the school’s older students, I was glad I had kept my promise. Life is so cloistered for kids in Alaska’s small villages. Personal contact with outsiders can have a big impact. I’d learned that traveling to small villages as a reporter. It was even more true for a visiting Iditarod musher, a role that bridged our two worlds.
Sepp Herrman was the only musher left when I returned to the checkpoint. He was sweeping it out. The small contribution made him feel a little less ashamed of the Iditarod trash blowing through the streets outside. It may have been piled neatly when the front teams passed through Koyuk, but ten days of wind had spread the mess the length of the street.
Leaving Sepp working the broom, I crossed the street to my team. The males, now rested, were enraptured by Raven’s alluring scent. Cyrus was a hopeless case. The young male was on his feet, straining toward Raven rigid as a pointer, barking and barking. The other dogs stretched and sniffed each other as I moved through the team checking their feet. Their paws looked remarkably good, even those that had been sporting cuts a few days before. Coastal snow was kinder to sled-dog feet.
A sudden snarl spun me around. Harley had Chad on the ground, with his big jaws clamped around Golden Dog’s neck. You could hardly call it a fight. Chad, limp, was on his back in complete submission.
Herrman had come over to look at my team. He understood the situation instantly. “You have a bitch in heat. Yes?” the German said. “The males fight for the lady’s love.”
No blood was spilled. I shifted Harley to the rear of the team and tried to shelter Raven among the females up front. The lesbian promptly spun around and tried to mount her.
Herrman remained behind in Koyuk, but caught me within the hour. We shared a snack in another crude shelter cabin, then he left me behind.
Out of habit, I grabbed teetering markers whenever I could, firmly replanting them for the teams following behind. Did that for an hour or two, before a startling thought stopped me in midmotion. I was again mushing the last team on the Iditarod Trail. Chuckling, I slipped the marker into my sled bag. With Nome a mere 100 miles away, I had room for a souvenir alongside that damn Lantern.
If it weren’t for the rooftop-high drifts and the spider web of snowmachine tracks, Elim, population 220, could have been a small suburban community anywhere in the United States. The streets were laid out in a grid with matching modular houses arranged in neat rows, the legacy of a federal housing project. Within those homes, however, resided a traditional Eskimo community, which had taken root here around the turn of the century, tending the local reindeer herd.
Daily was staying with a family that had only recently moved into their new government house. There was no curtain on the new shower, but the musher wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity for a soak. He cranked the hot water valve and nearly leaped out, scalded by the first truly hot water to touch his skin in weeks.
A feast was waiting at the family’s dinner table: moose, caribou, and fresh buttery cinnamon rolls. Afterward, Daily’s hosts sat down around their television to watch an hourlong Iditarod special.
“If you folks don’t mind, I think I’ll take a nap,” Tom said.
He’d been asleep for about an hour when a conversation on the family’s CB radio roused him. In a voice that creaked with age, a village elder delivered a warning.
“Don’t let those mushers leave,” the man said. “They’ll be lost on McKinley.”
The argument continued over the CB, with what seemed like half the village chiming in. A young-sounding local musher declared that he would personally lead the Iditarod teams across Little McKinley, a treacherous hill overlooking Golovin Bay. Listening from his bunk, Daily thought that we probably ought to do what the old guy said.
My host was a young teacher. Sue and her boyfriend, Marty, shared a house in the center of the village. Outside, children, sporting furry parkas, flocked around, spreading out straw for my dogs.
As I requested, Sue awakened me after a two-hour nap. “Is there anything I can get you?” she asked.
Three more checkpoints lay between me and Nome. White Mountain was the only place I planned to stop. My thermos was already filled with hot Gatorade. I had the teacher place a few spoonfuls of instant coffee in a sandwich baggie. It was a secret weapon for the final push. I was ready to start racing again.
Sue’s boyfriend Marty led me out of Elim on his snowmachine at about 11:30 P.M. It was dead calm and dark. Snow was falling in wet, feathery clumps. About a mile out of town, I saw a headlamp behind me. The team closed in on us depressingly fast. It was Plettner. Exchanging a few words, she took off like a rocket.
Snow was coming down hard as my team climbed Little McKinley. Rainy and Harley weren’t the least bit bothered. I was running blind myself. There were hardly any markers. I was thankful for the tracks of the other teams. It was hard to miss the groove, six to eight inches deep, which they had kindly left behind.