A Yukon Short Story
As you may or may not have noticed from my Facebook photo posts of a double rainbow and big skies, I've spent the summer in the Yukon - mostly in and around Dawson City. The local arts and culture scene in this tiny Canadian town is pretty extraordinary, and this weekend is the annual arts festival, which kicked off today with the announcement of the winners of the Authors on Eighth writing contest - for one poem and one short story, under 2500 words, in the style of Yukon authors Jack London, Robert Service, and Pierre Berton, which addressed the theme "Women of the North."
I wrote this short story two months ago to submit to the contest, and am very excited to say that it won! I am now the slightly stunned owner of a stack of fantastic Yukon books and a gold nugget. But the best thing I will take away from this experience is the pride of having written something outside my comfort zone, in a style that's much more subtle than I usually know how to be, and which hopefully conveys some of the magic of this amazing place.
LUCK AND THE LONG DARK
He would die in the dark.
What remained of his life that night was borrowed from the
moments he’d spent with Old Ch'ák',
sharing lukewarm coffee on the porch of the post office, waiting for only the
thinnest letters to be loaded into oilskin bags. The weathered Hän elder had drawn
maps in the ice to show him the old caves. The storm would come, he said, and
the caves would save Tom’s life.
“Beware the shallow
cave, as there is no shelter there,” Old Ch'ák' had said, “and the deep cave is
home to bear.”
“So how will I know
the right cave?”
The old man’s eyes
disappeared into the crevices of his ancient face with his toothless grin. “You
will know the right cave when you can open your eyes after the long dark, and
find your path home.”
It had been the Yukon
summer that drew Tom – the long days of light and warmth that renewed the land after
the winter dark. He had grown up in the South, gone to school, learned the
mechanics of being a man. But twenty-one years of classrooms did not fill a
man’s soul, and he went north to discover the secrets the books couldn’t teach.
Sheer luck had led
Tom to the post office that first winter. The dark had invaded him, and hunger
finally drove him out into the bitter cold. Old Ch'ák', wrapped in furs, had beckoned
to Tom, and directed him inside the post office. Soon Tom found his own bits of
light on the dogsleds, delivering the mail between Dyea and Dawson, along the
Chilkoot Pass Trail. The light rode with the words in his mailbags that brought
news to loved ones, put fears to rest, and fostered dreams that sent the
strongest, bravest, and most passionate men and women to the North.
But this night, the
long dark of the North had won, fed by the loneliness of the man. Even the dogs
had curled around each for comfort and denied him the warmth of their bodies.
Solitude was his enemy that night, and it was the source of the lifetime of dark
that gnawed on Tom’s soul.
His small fire
sparked, and an ember hit one oilskin bag. It flared like a bright star, and
with it, Tom knew where he might find the light and warmth he craved. He
knocked the ember away and plunged his hand into the bag. Paper edges scraped
his storm-cold fingers as he withdrew a random stack and fanned the letters out
before him.
There were dreams
and hopes and desires within the pages – the kind that could keep the solitude from
consuming him in the dark. The first envelope came open easily. It was a
purchase order by a Mr. Brown for three pair of silk stockings, one bottle of
French perfume, and one yard of pink silk ribbon. It was addressed to a
purveyor of fine ladies’ things in Seattle, and was written on coarse paper
that smelled of cigar smoke and cheap perfume, stamped with the letter A. Tom
knew the place, a cigar store in Paradise Alley, and imagined young Amy pulling
the shade on the store, and charming Mr. Brown into buying fine things for a
girl who was selling far more than cigars.
He replaced the
purchase order into its envelope and tucked the open flap inside. His hand
skimmed over the onionskin and crisp white paper that spoke of business, and
instead found the delicate eggshell-colored paper that whispered with
handwritten correspondence. The glue had stuck well in the middle, but with
care, Tom was able to tease the flap open and reveal the tissue-thin letter
inside.
Dearest Mother,
I hope this letter finds you well, and,
indeed, finds you at all. The mail service from Dawson City can be counted on
to misplace letters like one counts on the frozen winter. Thus, I shall write
as many small letters as my postage allowance will support, in hopes one or two
might actually make it to you.
I know you told me it was foolish for a
twenty-year-old girl to follow a dreamer to the ends of the earth, but to be
honest, Mother, I’m not at all sure that I was following him. Perhaps I used
his request to follow my own dream of adventure and luck.
In any case, Jim is well and working at
the surveyor’s office until he can stake his own claim and we can be married. I
have taken lodgings with a woman named Claire, whose husband spends his summers
in the goldfields, and his winters in Seattle with his mistress. She doesn’t
seem to mind this arrangement though, as it has given her the freedom and means
to pursue her own artistry. She paints the most beautiful landscapes of the
Dawson summers, and my walks with her in search of inspiration have led me to
my own.
I’ve met a Hän healer who has consented to teach me
her native medicines. We forage for yarrow and borage, and harvest the meadows
of fireweed and wild rose. I’ve learned to make a salve to ward off the
mosquitos that torment the miners, and one to heal burns. I can make soap, and
have mastered poultices that draw out infection. This kind of botanical study
has become my passion, Mother, and plant-gathering with my mentor reminds me of
my childhood summers with you.
Thank you for giving me the love of
wild things. The small bundles of herbs and flowers that hang in the corners of
my little room now sustain me through the long dark winter.
All
my love,
Helene
Tom studied the
careful handwriting that filled each transparent page, as if he could find the
sound of her voice, or the color of her eyes hidden in the paper. He could
picture bunches of flowers hanging from strings in the corners of her room, and
his imagination added glimmers of light among the botanical treasures. This
woman had done something he had not thought to do. She had gathered and
protected the bounty of the northern summer, and allowed the scent of the
midnight sun to linger long after the light was gone.
He searched the
packet of letters for more eggshell paper addressed to Mrs. Anna Ponninghaus of
Pennsylvania, and found another envelope near the bottom of the stack, written
in the same fine hand.
This, too, he opened with care.
Dearest Mother,
The Hän people of the North are quite
remarkable really. My native mentor has only a few words of English, learned
from her long-dead son-in-law, to speak to the grandson she no longer knows. I
have even less of her language, and yet our communication is seamless as she
teaches me her recipes and techniques for the medicinal plants we harvested
this summer.
The Hän are very strict with their rules about hunting and foraging, and they never strip an area bare of its bounty. I’m afraid the Dawsonites are less careful with the land and game, and within a few years, will deplete the forests of all the things which sustain us. Chief Isaac, who leads the tribes here, has moved his people about two miles out of town, so they are less susceptible to the corruption of the settlers. I long to visit that place, but have not dared to ask Ama, as my mentor calls herself, to take me there.
The Hän are very strict with their rules about hunting and foraging, and they never strip an area bare of its bounty. I’m afraid the Dawsonites are less careful with the land and game, and within a few years, will deplete the forests of all the things which sustain us. Chief Isaac, who leads the tribes here, has moved his people about two miles out of town, so they are less susceptible to the corruption of the settlers. I long to visit that place, but have not dared to ask Ama, as my mentor calls herself, to take me there.
Claire worries that my friendship with
Ama will affect my desirability to my intended husband. I’ve told her Jim cares
not for my friends, nor do I have interest in any man who would hold my
friendship with such a beautiful soul against me. I’ve seen enough men choose Hän wives to know that a capable woman is
worth much in this place where the long dark of winter can kill as easily as a
knife or a gun, but with much greater pain.
Jim looks tired and ill, as though the
drink and smoke have already taken their toll. We have only been here a few
months, yet I fear he will not survive winters here. Although we do not share
accommodations, of course, being as yet, unmarried, he seems to care more for
drink than for the company of one who would choose books and conversation to
stave off the dark and cold. Music would also keep the winter outside where it
belongs, but he does not sing, and I have yet to meet any man who does – at
least not for others to hear.
Thirty thousand people lived in Dawson
this summer, and I saw more of life in this town than I’ve ever seen in
Philadelphia. There’s a spirit that anything is possible when the light shines
all day and night, and it’s evident in the artists that have followed the
commerce to this northern outpost. I am reminded that a civilization is defined
by its art, as a measure of the quality of life to be found for its
inhabitants. And even now, in winter, it is the artists and the singers and the
writers who may have the best survival tools of all.
I wish you could experience this place,
Mother. It is wonderful and terrible, and peaceful, and the hardest life I’ve
ever lived. And yet, I cannot imagine living any place else.
All
my love,
Helene
Tom held this letter
to his nose and tried to catch a lingering scent of her. There, the echo of
spruce sap, with a hint of something floral. It smelled as he imagined her hair
would, washed in a shampoo she made herself from the herbs that grew in the
hills around Dawson.
The fire was dying,
and Tom shifted the bag off his legs to tend it. His toes had begun to numb
with the cold of the storm outside the cave. He was out of the wind, which
could peel the flesh it froze off a body like an orange rind, but still the
cave was thick with frigid air, as though trapped deep under the ice of the
Klondike River.
He tested his voice
in the brittleness and hummed a piece of a harvesting song his Hän grandmother had sung
to him when he was very small. Music belonged to the part of him he hid behind
the fair skin and light eyes of his trapper father, and it was the first thing
he’d lost when his father had sent Tom south.
They were long dead;
father, mother, sister. A winter storm had killed his family while he learned
his life from books, warm and safe in a classroom. He, alone, was left to face
the long dark, and to choose. Because succumbing was as much a choice as
surviving was.
Tom was so tired,
and the storm had grown angry outside the cave, toppling the trees whose roots
hadn’t grown deep enough. Tom’s eyes began to close with the certainty that
this storm knew him. It wanted his life as payment for daring to think he could
return to the land of his mother’s people, where his own roots had never grown
deep enough, to seek light in the bitter cold and the long dark.
Tom fished through
the oilskin mail bag for another stack of letters. He pushed the band off with
trembling fingers and searched for the tissue-thin paper addressed in her hand.
There was one, at the bottom of the pile. He tore at the envelope, aware that
the cold had already staked its claim on at least one thumb.
Dear Mrs. Brown,
Tom stopped reading
and stared at the envelope, wondering at the address to a Mrs. Millicent Brown
in Portland, Oregon. He scanned to the end of the short letter, and yes, there
was her signature. He continued reading.
It is with regret I am writing to
inform you that I shall no longer be able to anticipate becoming your
daughter-in-law, as Jim has found fit to end our engagement. He has taken up
smoking, you see, and the long hours he spends in a cigar shop in Paradise
Alley have left no room in his life for the kind of wife I expect to be.
I enjoyed our brief acquaintance, Mrs.
Brown, and I wish you good health and a long life with which to enjoy it.
With
Warmest Regards,
Helene
Ponninghaus
Hours, or perhaps days later, light crept into the cave,
and Tom crawled on aching legs to bathe his hands and face in it. The storm had
passed, and the barest winter daylight had commenced. It was enough, he
thought. Enough light to deliver her letters. And then enough to guide him home.
The rocking chair was empty on the post office porch the
day Tom returned to Dawson with oilskin bags full of the news of the world
beyond the Yukon. He waited while the postmaster sorted the new mail, glancing
outside every few minutes, hoping to see the shuffling, fur-wrapped figure of Old
Ch'ák' lower himself into his usual
place.
“You’ll have to go
to Moosehide to find him,” the postmaster said. And Tom knew he would go to his mother’s village to
thank Old
Ch'ák'.
But first he would
find her.
“I’ll deliver any
letters you have for Helene Ponninghaus,” Tom said, as casually as a man with
knotted nerves could speak.
The postmaster
grunted. “Save them a trip in the snow, I suppose. Here, take Mrs. Mulroy’s
letters, too. And you might as well drop these off for Mrs. Collins. I hear the
cold’s been in her bones something fierce this winter.”
Tom brought Mrs.
Collins her mail, and built up her fire, and put the kettle on to boil. Next
door lived Mrs. Claire Mulroy with her tenant, Miss Helene Ponninghaus. His
heart pounded so hard he feared it would leap from his chest and into her
hands. He doubted she’d care to hold his beating heart, so he forced himself to
breathe.
And knock.
“Miss Ponninghaus?”
He asked, when the door opened and a young woman regarded him steadily.
“Yes?” Her voice was
throaty and held the echo of recent laughter, and her eyes were startling
green. The scent of dried flowers danced around her like sunlight through a
forest of trees.
“I have your mail.”
Tom held the letters out, but was loathe to release them yet. Fortunately, she
didn’t take them.
“Are you with the
post office?” She asked.
He nodded, and she
stepped back. Behind her, hanging bundles of flowers painted shadow patterns on
the walls. “Will you come in for a cup of tea while I finish a letter to my
mother?”
Tom’s heart settled back into his chest, and the warmth of
her smile spread through him and filled the dark places with light.