Ice Island (3 page)

“Who gets the steaks?” Tatum asked.

“Anyone without a plate,” Jake said.

She picked up three plates, balancing one on her forearm. “Bandit, you wait here.” Bandit curled up in a corner, head on front paws, watching. She seemed to know something was going on.

Tatum pushed through the swinging doors. Judging by the windburned faces and the stories, everyone in the crowded dining room was either a musher, a race official, or a vet. This was obviously a favorite mushers’ hangout.

“He got sucked into a bad hole near Koyuk,” one guy was saying, drawing circles on the table with his spoon. “Nearly lost his wheel dog.”

“He’s probably still pouring water out of his long johns,” said another.

“It was so warm going through McGrath, the liver started to thaw.” A guy pushed back from the table with a satisfied burp. “Turkey skins stayed solid enough.”

Tatum squeezed between the tables. “Hi, Mom.”

Her mom smiled, rushed over, and took the plates. “I have exciting news,” she said, setting them down to grateful murmurs. “We’re going to Wager.”

“Ain’t she a bit young to gamble?” a guy cracked.

“Not in Nevada, you fool,” her mom said, shushing him. “Santa Ysabel Island.”

“A hundred miles from nowhere,” he said. “And colder than a tail on a brass donkey.”

Tatum had heard of Santa Ysabel, an island in the Bering Sea, closer to Russia than the U.S. mainland. “Remember Maryanne?” her mom went on. “She called this morning and asked if we could fill in at her lodge while she’s on vacation. Jake said he could make do without me for a week.”

“She’s probably going to Hawaii,” the guy said with a laugh.

Tatum’s mom ignored him. “She’d planned to close down, but a reservation came in from the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” her mom said. “Pack your heaviest gear. Maryanne said the wind blows so hard it can be minus forty, even when the sun’s out.”

Tatum didn’t mind moving from place to place during the winter or living out of a duffel. It was sort of like camping indoors. She took a deep breath, knowing it was now or never. “Can I bring a friend?”

Her mom stopped what she was doing and stared at her. Tatum’s only friends lived near Skilak Lodge, where her parents worked April through October.

“Order up!” Jake called from the kitchen.

“Sorry, honey,” her mom said, still looking surprised. “Not this time.”

•  •  •

Nome Airport was a flurry of activity.

Tatum and her mom had tickets for the early flight to Santa Ysabel. But a soupy fog hung thick and low. Who knew when they’d be able to take off? The best estimate, late morning.

Her mom was still mad as a box of bullfrogs. “Tatum, we’ve been through this before,” she’d whispered angrily. “We move around too much right now to have a dog. Things will be different when we have our own lodge.”

She had only given in because they couldn’t get ahold of
Beryl. “I don’t know what we’ll do when we get back from Wager. You know how the manager feels about pets,” she’d said, then sighed. “But we’ll figure something out.”

Tatum had thrown her arms around her. “You’re the best!”

“And Bandit needs regular exercise, even when the weather’s crummy.”

“No problem!”

Her mom had sighed again, long and loud. “You’re so much like your dad.”

Tatum didn’t think that was such a bad thing.

She held Bandit’s leash in a cubbyhole of a gift shop, disappointed to be missing the mushers’ banquet. But Beryl wouldn’t be there either.

No one fussed about a dog at the airport. There were more dogs in the forty-ninth state than people. She killed time, thumbing through a book about local history.

In the 1880s, when maps had been drawn up for this part of Alaska, the mapmaker couldn’t find a reference for the point of land that stretched east of town. He’d scribbled
Name?
on a rough draft, planning to fill it in later. When the map was published, it showed Cape Nome. The name stuck.

“Do you have any books on the Iditarod?” she asked the clerk.

The woman looked up from a newspaper. “Know why the race is 1,049 miles?”

“You bet I do,” Tatum said. “It’s because the race is more than a thousand miles, and Alaska is the forty-ninth state.”

“Most Alaskans don’t know that,” the clerk said, impressed.

“And it always starts the first Saturday in March,” Tatum added.

“Right again.”

The fog lifted around noon, leaving whispers of high clouds against a pale sky. A bush pilot came out, saying they’d be leaving in fifteen minutes. There were two other passengers on the small plane, a man and woman in Native parkas. Tatum loved the wolverine ruff and wondered if the inside fur was beaver.

Tatum’s backpack was crammed with books and her Iditarod videos. Her duffel held everything else. The pilot had taken the bag of dog food. “I’ll stow it with the luggage,” he’d said.

She led Bandit through the small hatch door and took a seat behind the pilot, then buckled her dog in. “Bet you’ve flown more than most people.”

Tatum tore off pieces of a bologna sandwich, letting Bandit lick her fingers between bites. She’d known having a dog would be like this. Just like this. “I love you too, girl.”

Her mom sat by herself, settling in with a magazine.

“Put on your headsets, otherwise you won’t be able to hear me,” the pilot said. He bit into a jelly doughnut, then made a cockpit check. “These engines are noisy as skeletons on a tin roof.”

“Here we go,” Tatum said, hugging Bandit’s neck.

They took off, flying west in a wide-open sky. Nome looked small in the endless flat landscape. As soon as they gained altitude, they leveled off, and Nome faded away. It was impossible to know where land left off and the frozen sea began.

Now Tatum understood how a hunter could wander onto a sheet of ice without knowing it and drift out to sea. Trapped, floating away from land. Nothing he could do about it, except wait for a ship or a plane to spot him—and hope one did before his frozen island melted.

The pilot switched on the intercom. “Santa Ysabel Island is about ninety miles long,” he said, talking to them through the headsets. “That makes it the largest island in the Bering Sea.

“The last census put the population of Wager at six hundred and fifty three. That’s fifty-nine people per square mile. My apartment building in Fairbanks has more people in it than that.”

Tatum stared out the window at scattered cakes of ice floating on the water. For a girl raised in Portland, it looked like something you’d see in a movie and wonder if it was real. While her friends were watching reality-TV shows, Tatum had been glued to her dad’s Iditarod videos. She knew more about dog mushing by the time she was ten than her friends would ever know about soccer or baseball.

“The native people are Siberian Yupik, and most of them speak Yupik,” the pilot continued. “It’s one of the two main Eskimo languages in Alaska. The word
yuk
means ‘person,’ and
pik
means ‘real.’ So
Yupik
literally means ‘real people.’ ” He could talk to them, answer questions, and open a new box of jelly doughnuts, all without losing contact with his instruments.

“Santa Ysabel is within spitting distance of Russia,” he went on like a tour guide. “The ice might look solid, but inches below the surface lies thousands of feet of stone-cold
water. Dozens of houses in Wager use a honey bucket for a toilet. Not a tree anywhere on the island for a poor dog to lift his leg.”

Tatum glanced at Bandit, asleep and twitching. Doggy dreams.

She pressed her nose to the glass and could see the coastline of Russia and the Alaskan mainland out the same window, even though Russia was a whole other continent.

“We’re within twenty miles of the International Date Line,” the pilot said. “What you’re looking at is tomorrow!”

Tatum laughed, wishing her dad was with them.
He’d love this!

Her mom had called him from the airport to let him know where they’d be for the next week. Tatum got in a quick “I love you!” before they lost the connection. Telecom had constant problems with their lines on the North Slope.

A light snow began falling, and fog bubbled up from nowhere. The engine roared, working harder to cut through the heavy air. “Tighten those belts,” the pilot said.

A stiff wind slammed the plane.

It dropped, lurching sideways.

Tatum closed her eyes—not praying, exactly, but wishing she was on solid ground. They hit more turbulence. The small plane vibrated. The pilot responded quickly to every jerky movement. He gripped the control wheel with both hands. Seconds passed. Minutes.

“If this doesn’t clear up on our next loop,” he sputtered over the intercom, “we’re heading back to Nome.”

Loop? We’ve been flying in circles?

Tatum craned her neck and studied the dashboard, a puzzle of lights, needles, and numbers.

Just then a hole broke through the marine layer. The plane roared as the nose dipped. Santa Ysabel looked small, an irregular splotch among puffy white clouds. Tatum swallowed hard, trying not to lose her breakfast, and braced herself for a white-knuckle landing.

“Flying is a hard way to make an easy living,” the pilot joked, and they bounced onto the runway against a stiff crosswind.

An Eskimo woman met the plane, looking snug in a skin parka with feathers sewn to its sleeves and tiny beads down the front. She stepped forward, opened a piece of cloth, and held out three polished teeth. “Souvenir?”

Tatum admired the smooth brown surfaces. “Walrus?”

The woman smiled shyly. “Yes, they have been buried for many years. The rich color comes from minerals that grow inside. That is what makes them so strong.”

“And rare too,” Tatum’s mom said. “Can you come by Fireweed Lodge later? After we’ve settled in?”

The woman nodded and shuffled off in her mukluks.

An off-road ATV pulled up. Tatum had never seen a four-seater before. It looked more like a topless jeep.

“I’m Dixie Dee and this is your taxi. We don’t have cars here. No traffic jams. No road rage.” Dixie Dee was short, with beautiful skin the color of toasted almonds. Her carved
ivory earrings danced while she strapped down the duffel bags.

“Same time tomorrow?” she hollered to the pilot.

He was loading crates stamped
ALASKAN KING CRABS
into the plane’s belly. “God willing and the sea don’t rise!” he shot back.

“He doesn’t just fly that plane,” Dixie Dee said, settling behind the wheel. “He wears it.”

Tatum and her mom squeezed in. Bandit sat on the floor, resting her head in Tatum’s lap. Her mom couldn’t resist petting Bandit. Tatum watched the couple from the plane walk down the road. She wondered why no one had picked them up. Maybe they lived nearby.

The ATV bounced over ruts, passing city hall, a fire station, a grocery store, and the post office. The village had a single crossroad—on one corner stood a church, on the other a rescue mission. That was about it.

Cinder-block houses were staggered in uneven rows. Snowmobiles were parked out front. Rusty engine parts littered yards. Some houses were boarded up. Dirty snow grew high on roofs.

Dixie Dee eased up on the throttle, pointing at a giant tangle of driftwood. “That’s the community center—the roof is walrus skin. Don’t make ’em like that anymore,” she said. “Bingo, movies, dances, choir practice. And meetings, meetings, meetings.”

They swerved around an oil barrel and braked in front of a double-wide trailer with a peeling sign:
FIREWEED LODGE
. “Door’s unlocked,” Dixie Dee said. “I would’ve filled in for
Maryanne myself, but I’m up to my britches with my own work. School’s down the road.”

Since moving to Alaska two years ago, Tatum’s family hadn’t stayed in one place long enough for her to go to school. Homeschooling made more sense. “Mom was a teacher back in Oregon,” Tatum said. “So my school travels with me.”

“Besides, we’re only here a week,” her mom added.

Dixie Dee nodded. “Maryanne’s sunning herself on some beach.” She let out a throaty laugh. “I came to Wager to help my sister with a new baby. That was thirty-five years ago. Drop by the community center later. I’ll buy you a cup of hot cocoa.”

“Thanks,” her mom said. “And thanks for the lift.”

Dixie Dee took off, slushy snow spraying up from the ATV’s fat tires.

Tatum and her mom carried their duffels up the steps. They pushed through the door into a tiny living room. Braided rugs patched a linoleum floor. The linoleum was worn through to dark, moldy plywood in places. Shelves made from crates held books and disaster-movie videos:
The Towering Inferno
,
Titanic
, and others.

Tatum unloaded her Iditarod videos.

Bandit sniffed the baseboard, her tail wagging.

Her mom stared at Bandit as if she couldn’t figure out where she’d come from. “No leg lifting in here,” she said.

“Mom, she’s a girl.”

“That was a joke, honey.”

If Mom was upset about Bandit, she’d gotten over it with the help of Bandit constantly smiling her doggy smile. Tatum’s dad would love her even more.

Bandit’s nails caught on the peeling linoleum. “She’ll suffocate in here,” Tatum said, adjusting the thermostat.

She unpacked the picture of her dad and set it on the TV. He looked about Tatum’s age—thirteen—posing by his sled with his lead dog, Big Red. “Dad would like this place.”

“I miss him too,” her mom said. “Let’s call him after dinner.”

“Great!”

They went from one small room to the next. Extra bedding was stuffed in closets. Boxes of Cheerios and Pop-Tarts crowded the kitchen counter. An oilcloth with pictures of fishing lures covered a small table. Tatum set the garbage bag with the stuff Beryl had given her in the corner.

“Maryanne reserved two rooms for the pair from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so we have our choice of the other six,” her mom said.

Tatum shot her a questioning look.

“This is the slow time of year,” her mom said. “Apparently it’s packed all summer with bird-watchers from the Lower Forty-eight.”

Tatum chose a room at the end of the hall. A needlepoint pillow was stitched with the saying
DREAM BIG—DARE TO FAIL
. The room felt cooler than the others. Better for Bandit. Tatum closed the heating vent and cracked the window. Bandit jumped onto the bed, sniffing the cool air.