I finished the detective novel I was reading, turned off the Kindle, and went looking for something new to read, something different. I wanted nothing political because I’d just read three non-fiction political books (or, as non-fiction as political books can be) in a row and I was sick of reading about politics. That subject has been on the news and on my mind too much lately, what with all the questionable machinations in Congress over the health care bill.
I rejected a dozen or more books before I spotted Two Old Women by Velma Wallis. The only things I knew about it were that it was a best seller in
Brought to life by Willis' stark prose, this Athabaskan Indian legend tells of a nomadic tribe of Gwich'in living north of the Yukon River in eastern
I’ve had this book for at least a decade, unread. I stuff as much split birch as I can into the woodstove, turn down the damper, and climb the stairs to my bedroom where I slip between the red flannel sheets and make myself comfortable. At the back of the book is a short bio of the author, a Gwich’in Indian who has lived in
The chief meets with his council and the decision is made. No one has the courage to object, not even Ch’idzigyaak’s daughter and grandson. The chief orders that a tent of caribou hides be prepared for the elders. The daughter leaves her mother with a roll of babiche (strips of moose hide), and the grandson surreptitiously hides his bone hatchet, taking care that no one but the two old women see this. The women sit in their hide tent before a small fire, stunned and angry at their betrayal.
Making the e-mail circuits for the past few months is a cartoon about Obamacare. It shows four senior citizens set adrift on an ice floe, with the caption about what will happen to seniors if Obamacare passes, with its rumored health rationing. How funny you think it is depends on your age.
The next day, the women decide that if they are going to die, they are going to die trying. They take some of the babiche to fashion rabbit snares, and catch one. They use the grandson’s hidden hatchet to cut birch saplings and then weave more babiche through them to create snowshoes.
With Social Security enacted in the 1930s and Medicare in the 1960s, most of us who are now eligible and becoming eligible planned our retirement around those programs. Our secondary insurance plans took Medicare into consideration for when we turn 65.
The women decide to travel to a place they remember that had plentiful fish, and they set out. Each morning it takes them longer and longer to get up as their bodies object to their exertions and the constant foraging for food. Still angry at being abandoned, the women struggle with their emotions while the fierce cold saps what little energy they have.
More than a year has passed while Congress fights and re-fights the health care bills. Sweetheart deals, back room arm-twisting, special considerations and promises, and outright pork guarantees have soured much of the American public on the whole process. Now, the U.S. House of Representatives might attempt to “deem” the bill passed by simply voting on and passing a number of amendments, rather than voting on the bill itself, apparently in an effort to preserve deniability for Democrats facing elections later this year.
A year later, the tribe returns to the place where they left the two elders. There is no evidence of them dying there. The chief is tormented by his decision to abandon the women, and sends a tracker to find them. What happens next is a moving tale of courage and redemption.
As I wait to find out what will happen to Medicare if this health care legislation becomes law, I think about my primary care doctor, the one whose group practice has “opted out” of the Medicare plan. In addition to the $4500 a year I pay in insurance premiums, I must pay my doctor for office visits and exams. I cannot submit this to Medicare or to my secondary insurance provider. He is at an age that he might choose to retire if the new legislation affects doctors adversely. I dread trying to find another primary care physician because most near me are refusing Medicare patients.
Perhaps things will become more known this weekend, before the president leaves on an overseas trip. Perhaps elected men and women will have the courage to vote their consciences. Perhaps they will find a way to provide medical coverage to the uninsured without bankrupting the country. Perhaps there is an answer other than setting our seniors adrift on an ice floe--or abandoning them in a caribou hide shelter to fend for themselves .
Sunbathing in March, Alaskan style.
When the phone call came in the middle of the afternoon, I felt no cause for alarm. Until the caller identified herself, that is. Then my heart free-fell into that dark and foreboding place reserved for calls that come in the middle of the night. I wanted to hang up before she said anything else. But, there was a sliver of hope.
I’d spent many hours the previous few days working on words and photos related to my up-coming fiftieth high school class reunion, Maybe Barbara was calling to say she’d read the story on my blog. Maybe she was calling to tell me she’d be at the reunion and was looking forward to seeing me again. Maybe she was re-connecting because we hadn’t had an opportunity to talk in many, many decades. Maybe she wasn’t calling about her older sister Alexis, the one who had
been much on my mind the past couple weeks.
I tried to stall, to keep Barbara’s words from being spoken and thus lading them with truth, but she had a message to deliver and it didn’t have anything to do with the reunion. Her sister, my high school pal and long-time friend, had died the day before from complications after surgery.
It was exactly like Yogi Berra’s much-quoted malapropism: It was déjà vu all over again. A couple weeks before another high school classmate e-mailed to tell me that his ex, my good friend Sharon, had died. Sharon and I had been in sporadic touch by e-mail, nothing like our closeness in high school, but comforting, nonetheless.
But Alexis? Oh, my. Alexis and I had bonds of Super Glue.
***
Jim was the older brother I never had. I had a younger brother named Jim also, but Jim N. should have been my older brother. He acted like I always thought one would.
Alexis loved him. So did I. But rather than two teenaged girls figuratively clawing each other’s eyes out for the love of Jim N., we became best friends. I loved him as an older brother and a good friend. For his part, he was my protector. When we skated on the frozen pond behind my house, younger brother Jim liked to slip up behind me and slap me on the butt with his rubber skate guards.
Jim N. would chase down the miscreant and dump him in a snow bank. Many times he intercepted attacks until little Jim finally quit the forays when Big Jim was skating with us.
Big Jim was two grades ahead of me in high school. After he got his driver’s license, he became the proud owner of a sturdy dark green Willys utility vehicle. This was a no nonsense vehicle, something like a Jeep on steroids, made for tough conditions. Rather than rear seats, there were benches along either side, and that meant we could pile in a bunch of our friends. No one had even heard of seat belts back then.
For a couple years before Jim graduated Anchorage High and went north to the
Alexis was very, very intelligent and Jim was the perfect foil for her. When Alexis was incisive, Jim was kind and congenial. When Alexis was prodding, Jim was diplomatic. When the circumstances were appropriate, Jim carefully dissected all her arguments. Alexis never quit trying, and though we all ran around as a group, they eventually paired off in an informal relationship. She even tried to teach an embarrassed, shy Jim to dance.
Another with me and my "big brother" on another train trip.
Jim graduated in 1958, Alexis in 1959. She went off to
The summer of 1961 rolled on. I covered at least three murder trials and a plethora of lesser crimes. One beautiful summer day in late August, I returned from the courts to the newsroom prepared to pound out the day’s court news on the ancient Underwood typewriter that sat on my desk. Stuck in the typewriter carriage was a note from my editor, and a short wire service teletype. The note read: Do you know this guy?
I read the teletype. I read it several times, trying by force of will to change the words I was reading. Jim, the promising young man who should have been my older brother, was killed in a car accident while driving from
I plopped down in my chair. My school yearbook for 1958 was lying open on my desk, an empty spot on one page where my editor had sliced Jim’s photograph from the page. The police reporter was working on the story. It was the headline for that day’s edition of the paper. He used my yearbook for information on the many honors Jim had earned while in high school.
A few days later, I looked up to see Jim’s mother standing at the half rail that divided the newsroom from the public access area. Huge dark circles under eyes told me the depths of her grief. I went over to talk with her, and tears spilled down her face. I listened to her for a long time as she fought a losing battle to speak coherently, fighting back my own inclination to cry with her. I wanted to put my arms around her, share her grief, but knew I’d lose control if I did. I could feel my editor’s eyes on my back at I stood at the rail for almost a half hour.
***
A few years ago, I reconnected with Alexis, and as they say about true friends, we picked up right where we’d left off though it had been decades since we’d seen each other. I went to visit her at her home in south
I am sure she had a fulfilling life with her husband, and he doted on her. She was thrilled when her daughter graduated law school and began to prep for the bar exams, and hoped her son would soon follow. Along with her sister Barbara, I know they are grieving and will continue to do so for a long time to come.
When I replaced the phone in the cradle after talking with Barbara, I reminisced about our teen years, hanging around together, sharing laughs and cherry Cokes. And Jim. I thought a lot about Jim, and first loves, and how some are lost too soon.
Now Alexis is on a new journey and I wonder if maybe, just maybe, she’ll run into that handsome, promising young man who should have been, and was, my older brother.
Alexis trying to teach a shy and embarrassed Jim to dance.
Water bottle at hand,
remote for the satellite dish,
control board fan turned on, and I start walking. I used to spend an hour on it, but since hurting my ankle in Mexico, I've been taking it easy. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.
or watch the chickadees on the feeder on the front deck.
In the opposite corner of the living room is my napping nest. Yesterday it was calling to me, but I stayed on the treadmill. The bear hide is real, the poor critter shot by a neighbor's visitor. It was lying on its back on a snowslide area, throwing a marmot up in the air when it was shot.
Maybe if she’d been back home in
Maybe if she’d been in
But she was jogging after work in a small village on the
No need to worry about bears, even though bears are prevalent in this area. It’s winter. Too early for bears to be out of hibernation. And probably no one told her about the pack of animals venturing too close to the village, apparently unafraid. But even if she’d heard, things like that only happened in cheap novels, didn’t they?
We’ll never know what happened as she jogged along the snow-packed road. Did she know they were coming? Or did a hundred and fifty pounds of fury and sharp teeth crash into her back and knock her to the ground? Slam the breath right out of her? We know she realized what was happening because she fought back. But there were too many and they were too cunning and too strong. They were following instincts gone horribly awry. They dragged her off the road into some brush and did what hungry wild animals do.
The snowmachiners came by less than an hour later, saw blood on the snow, one person’s footprints, furrowed drag marks leading into the brush. They followed and found her.
This afternoon, the Alaska State Medical examiner told us what we all suspected. Wolves had attacked and killed someone in
Today, as State Troopers fly to
Most of the time we live in relative harmony with the wild animals and consider ourselves lucky to see them in their natural habitats. But they are just what we call them—wild animals. Their ways are not ours, their ethos not ours, their instincts not ours. Sometimes, as in this case, when wild animals following their instincts cross paths with a human in the wrong place at the wrong time, horrible tragedies can occur.
Just minutes before I heard the definitive cause of her death on the radio, I had been reading sympathy cards in a grocery store in Seward. One in particular caught my attention, and I was thinking about the message as I pulled out of the parking lot and crossed the highway to head north.
The card, expressions from Hallmark, is a pale, pale green. On the front is a gray and white graphic of a pearl in a half shell. The message reads: Seashells remind us that every passing life leaves something beautiful behind.
(With condolences to the parents, family, friends, co-workers, and students of Candace Berner. I never knew her but I, along with all
