My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [87]
My brain may have been foggy from fatigue, but the storm seemed to sweep us into a different surreal dimension. It wasn’t cold or frightening, just weird. Snow drifts reached out and engulfed our convoy like an advancing giant amoeba. Dogs and mushers were transformed into strange statues. Cyrus, still on his feet, whined and jerked on the gang line. My powerhouse pup didn’t like the sea of snow rising around him. Daily hugged one of his dogs, and the two melded together. I slapped myself and rubbed my eyes, but the fantasy world remained.
Then, for the fourth time in the race, I dumped my sled and climbed inside.
Barry Lee slept on his decision to scratch. In the morning, he again prayed while attending the Sunday service at Grayling’s Arctic Mission, but nothing was added to that “go home” message.
Lee’s remaining doubts were resolved by a telephone conversation with Niggemyer in Nome.
“Barry,” the race manager said, “there’s a lot of guys getting belt buckles this year who are missing pieces of themselves. I can’t help you back there.”
Lee signed the damn papers and began dealing with the logistics of flying his dog team home from a Yukon River village. And what about that gear he’d abandoned on the river? The cooker alone was worth an easy $100. Lee, awash in the personal and financial ruins of his dream, couldn’t afford to throw away anything valuable.
The musher tracked down Rich Runyan, who was recuperating before tackling the Yukon again. Coming out of Anvik, the wind had blown so hard, the radio operator had crouched down on the big snowmachine and barreled up the frozen river with his eyes closed. Closed! It was crazy, but he couldn’t see where he was going anyway.
The sky was, for the moment, clear. Runyan felt sorry for Barry and agreed to help him with a salvage mission. The men disconnected the sled loaded with radio equipment and hooked Lee’s empty dogsled to the snowmachine. Riding double, they buzzed out of the village.
The river cache was easy to find. From half a mile or more away, Lee could see two men digging his castoffs out of the drifts. It was the trapper and Bob the bicyclist. Their snowmachine had run out of gas returning down the Yukon. After walking nearly ten miles, the pair had found Lee’s tracks, followed by odd pieces of wind-blown gear. They were in the process of searching the drifts for a sled and, possibly, a body.
Trading misadventures, the four Yukon survivors had a good laugh at each other’s expense. Runyan’s snowmachine could only carry one passenger at a time. Leaving Lee to repack the dogsled, Runyan ferried the trapper back to the village.
Bob was in no mood to wait. Vowing to hoof it to Grayling, he strapped on Lee’s old snowshoes. Barry warned him about the screwy bindings, but Bob the bicyclist—showing the same spirit that had got him this far—wouldn’t listen. The musher smiled as he watched Bob stumble several hundred sweaty yards before finally admitting defeat. The two waited together on the river for Runyan’s return.
“All right, who’s got my headlamp?” Terhune demanded, scanning the mushers slowly stirring in Kaltag’s mushers’ quarters.
No one paid him much attention. Most of us were bleary-eyed, struggling to collect our thoughts and gear following painfully short naps in the bunks upstairs.
I was depressed by the news that Barry Lee had scratched in Grayling. It was an ugly day. We hardly finished cooking dog food before the Kaltag checker, operating on orders from Iditarod, had advised us to leave using a tone appropriate for a sheriff delivering an eviction notice. Daily had called him on it, chiding the villager for being “a lackey for race headquarters.” After traveling 18 hours in storm conditions, few of us were in the mood to be rushed. Cooley had bought us the nap time, telling Iditarod headquarters that, in his opinion as a race veterinarian, an afternoon of rest was essential for the dogs.
My first priority was to arrange for Denali’s departure. Entrusting the ungrateful mutt to the checker, I took