If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name Part 11

As Jan is leaving, J.J.'s little dog, Phoebe, jumps into the priest's car. Jan reaches in the back seat, but Phoebe jumps into the front seat. You tell Jan you can get the dog, and say, "Stay," firmly. Phoebe leaps away from your hands. Then you say, "Good girl, come here," gently, and the d.a.m.n dog does the same thing. Each time you think you have her, she escapes over or under the seat. You open the doors and both you and Jan reach for the dog from opposite sides. She jumps off your shoulders up onto the back of the seat. You dive toward her and she flies to the ledge below the rear window. Jan takes her soft briefcase and pins Phoebe like a bee against the gla.s.s while you grip the dog's back leg and softly tug her out. Jan quips, "All creatures great and small, the good Lord made them all" and says she'll see you Sunday morning.

It's two-thirty. The kids will be home from school in an hour.

This, finally, is how you make the perfect egg salad sandwich: boil two eggs, rinse them in cold water, and peel them. Add some half-and-half, a pinch of salt, and ground pepper. Mash it all up with a fork and spread it on toasted sourdough bread. (Buy it from the bakery; it's better than you can make, and you've spent way too much time on this sandwich already.) Lay on lettuce leaves, then a thick slice of tomato. Spread some mayonnaise on the other piece of toast and place it on top. Cut it diagonally; put it on a china plate, next to a cloth napkin and a cup of hot tea. Take a deep breath and say a little private grace.

DULY NOTED

On Sunday a group of volunteers cleaned up the Mount Riley trail, cutting fallen trees that were blocking the route, adding plank bridges, and filling in eroded areas of the popular hiking path. Dan Egolf says they carried spruce timbers all the way up to the meadow near the summit and plan to rebuild the boardwalk through the swamp there. "We need to do a better job of protecting the fragile alpine muskeg," he said, adding that hikers should "please stay on the trail and use the new bridges."

Members of the American Bald Eagle Foundation enjoyed halibut fish and chips from the Bamboo Room Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Foundation director Dan Hart says the catered event at the natural history museum will be held annually. Teenage trapper Stuart DeWitt was recognized for his donations of specimens for the wildlife display, especially a rare fox with half its winter (white) coat and half its summer (brown) one.

An account has been set up at the First National Bank of Anchorage to help defray medical expenses for store owner Dave Shackford, who is recovering from injuries received in a goat-hunting accident. Dave is back home after an extended stay in Anchorage. His wife, Dot, said that although he still suffers double vision as a result of his fall, he's happy to have visitors.

Alaska Division of Fish and Wildlife Trooper Ike Lorentz received the Southeast Trooper of the Year award from the Department of Public Safety. Ike, a twenty-two-year law enforcement veteran, said the award was a surprise. He noted that his presence here helps keep a lid on poaching and other wildlife-related crimes in the Chilkat Valley. Ike said he's also proud of his involvement in hunter and wildlife safety programs.

Leaning into the Light

I AM NOT A HUNTER. I am not a big gun person either. But on the first anniversary of the sinking of the Becca Dawn I agreed to let Don, Chip, and their friend Craig take ten-year-old Christian on his first deer hunt. Chip had a lot of work to do before they left, so I ended up at Craig's house helping Christian find the right gun for the task. The guns in Craig's cabinet are jammed in every which way, some spilling out onto the floor, like the books in my bookcases. Craig helped Christian try several. One rifle had even been his mother's. When I asked if she had used it much, Craig said that she'd taught him everything he knows.

Craig is witty and handsome, in a rogue kind of way, with gray hair and blue eyes. He's a sportfishing guide. "Why work when you can fish?" he says. Over dinner one night he told us he'd joined the navy right out of Haines High School. Craig is not a follow-orders-and-salute kind of guy. "Was the other choice jail?" Chip asked. "Heck no," Craig said. "I was already in jail." He may have been telling the truth.

It was snowing lightly on the dock the next morning when I kissed Chip good-bye and hugged Christian, who ducked out of my arms. It will take them all day to cruise down Lynn Ca.n.a.l and across Icy Strait to Elfin Cove and Don's lodge, where they'll hunt. I try not to worry, but between the winter boat ride and the hunt, there seem to be so many possibilities for disaster-and that's not even counting the date. Don says Olen's death is not an anniversary to be marked, but everyone is thinking about it, and I have a feeling the hunt was scheduled for that reason. It was the guys' way to be with their friend when he would need them, without coming right out and saying so.

I was relieved a few days later when Chip finally called to report that everything was fine. Then he put Christian on the phone. He told me he'd shot his first deer. I could hear him smiling. I knew just how he looked. Christian said he hadn't killed it with the first shot, so he'd had to shoot it again, up close. "You would have cried, Mom," he said. I hoped Christian had had a moment's pause before taking the life. At the same time, I was glad that he was hunting with Chip, Don, and Craig, and happy for him that he'd shot his own deer. I want my son to hunt for the same reason I encouraged my daughters to deckhand on a fishing boat. I want my children to really be part of this place.

It was dark and raining at the harbor when they returned a week later. Christian spit off the dock. I asked Craig if he'd taught him that. "No way," Craig said. "I taught him to do it like this," and he made an awful sound in his throat and spit a gucky glob in a high arc into the water. Christian copied him and they laughed.

The tide was out and it was hard pushing the loaded carts up the ramp. I offered to help Christian, but he said he could do it himself. Chip gave me a proud "that's my boy" look and I knew the hunt had been successful. In a week, it seemed, Christian had grown years. Craig and Chip heaved five Sitka black-tailed deer into the back of the truck, holding them by the legs and swinging them with a "one, two, and three." The carca.s.ses hung in our garage until the hunters came back a week later to skin and butcher them. I couldn't bear to watch, so I left with my dog, Carl, for a trail run in the woods.

When I got home, they had a pile of legs, ribs, and dark red meat two feet high on the butcher-papered kitchen table. Craig and Chip trimmed roasts and back straps at the counter, tossing sinewy sc.r.a.ps in a bucket for a trapper to use as bait. Christian wrapped the meat in plastic and then white butcher paper and labeled each package for the freezer.

Don stood at the stove in one of my ap.r.o.ns, frying up the tenderest medallions of venison, with hash browns and eggs. The whole house smelled of meat, raw and cooked. Walking in from the clear outdoors made me dizzy. Craig was already eating, with both elbows on the table. He chewed slowly and groaned, "Man that's good." Before I could take off my wind jacket, Don handed me a big greasy plate, saying, "Isn't this great?"

I wasn't sure I could eat in full view of the dead deer-or what was left of them. I would have preferred a private meal, just Chip and me and perhaps a gla.s.s of wine or two. But I didn't want to let down Christian and, especially, Don. In the year since Olen's death, his boyish face has aged. There were new lines around his eyes, and a kind of wisdom just behind them. The steak was so tender I cut it with a fork. It really was good, and I said so. The men laughed. Christian smiled at me, then looked down, just like Chip does when he's pleased. Don got the camera and asked me to take a picture of him and Christian in front of the meaty table.

Focusing the lens on Don and Christian, my heart tilted toward them. I hoped the hunt had helped take Don's mind off last November's tragedy. At the same time, though, being with a little boy, and teaching him about life, death, and the great wide world, has got to remind him of other times spent on those wet beaches and mossy hills when his own sons were young. The picture I was taking reminded me so much of the photos on display at Olen's memorial service that I had to shut my eyes. I realized that this same scene has been repeated over and over again since our ancestors scratched images of a bison hunt on the walls of a cave. Maybe killing animals is as fundamentally human as telling stories or breaking bread and sipping wine. Maybe it's as instinctual as conceiving children.

CHRISTIAN IS THE REASON Chip took up hunting. Our son was spending more time with his friend Wayne, who's called Wayner (it's a family thing, his uncle is Jimmer), than with us and we missed him. Since their mother left them, Wayner, his brother, Daniel, and their dad have maintained an all-male household. Christian loves hanging out over there. They take him hunting for ducks, grouse, and even squirrels. So Chip taught himself how to hunt with books from the library, videos, and hours at the shooting range. He likes to hunt now more than he used to enjoy hiking or rock climbing. I think it is because he has a purpose. Hunting is not play, although it's not work either. The November deer hunt has now become an annual event.

Christian and Chip have also been hunting closer to home for mountain goats. Chip watches the goats all summer with his spotting scope from the sunroom window, studying their habits and browsing patterns on the mountains across the way. In the winter, he brings binoculars when skating on Chilkoot Lake and scouts the ridges above it for goats. His first goat hunt was with our friends Roger and Steve and Roger's son Payson and Christian. They came back two days later with a muddy billy goat that they had dragged whole down a mountain. They skinned and quartered the animal in our garage. I did some inquiring among hunter's wives-even though the guys swore it would be great, I don't always trust their judgment-and was told that goat meat was either inedible or so tough you couldn't digest it. One woman said I could can it like salmon, in pint jars in the pressure cooker, and that would make it soft enough to chew, "if you can stand the smell." She also said that if I sniffed the carca.s.s I'd get a hint of the odor. I went out to where the men were cutting up the meat and took a whiff. It smelled like steak. I sniffed again, thinking there must be a mistake, but it still smelled fine, and the deep maroon meat was virtually fat free.

I asked Chip to cut me off two rump roasts and I put them in a pail and carried them to the kitchen. I rinsed them off and dredged them in flour and salt and pepper, then browned them in a cast-iron pot with onions, poured a whole bottle of good red wine over them, chopped up garlic, tossed in a handful of rosemary from the greenhouse, and put the lid on and let it simmer all day. I invited the hunters and their families over for dinner, making a vat of mashed potatoes, as well as steamed carrots, popovers, and a big salad just in case the goat meat lived up to its awful reputation. It didn't. It was so good that not one bit was left over. Since then, goat has become my favorite "company" meal.

The only problem with goats is that I can't look at them, cook them, or eat them without remembering Sam. Though that may be a good thing. Sam Donajkowski was a friend of ours when we first came to Haines. About our age, he was young and active like we were. Sam worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game at Chilkat Lake. He ran marathons and he and Chip raced each other in the annual triathlon. Sam usually beat Chip. Sam married his sweetheart, Mary, one year in May, and died goat hunting the following September. He slipped and fell down a scree slope as he was retrieving the goat he had shot. It was a stormy day, and shortly after he fell, a mudslide buried his body.

Knowing what had happened to Sam was part of the reason I went mountain goat hunting for the first time. Chip was planning on going alone in a fast, hard one-day hunt up above Chilkoot Lake. He didn't want to be held back by someone who wasn't in good enough shape to climb a mountain and pack down a heavy load with him. Right after he explained all this to me, we both realized that I could do it. Chip said it would be fun to hunt together. And I agreed, because it would be safer if Chip had a partner.

I've also been worried that lately we've turned into Wilma and Fred Flintstone. Chip has become a hunter while I've been waiting in the kitchen for him to bring home supper. Even though I love cooking game, I'm not wild about this new pattern in our marriage. I'd never thought I'd become a stereotypical middle-aged homemaker while he was out in the woods all day with the boys. So I was thrilled when Chip asked me to hunt with him. I wasn't as sure about the killing part. I have never seen anything die except a fish or a baby chick. I don't know how to shoot a gun. This would be not just my first goat hunt. It would be my first hunt-ever. There is a running joke at our house that my chickens will die of old age and be buried in the backyard before I'll ever chop off one of their lovely heads.

I'm pretty sure that Chip also wanted to show me something that he thought I should know about him, and about hunting-something big that neither he nor Christian was able to articulate.

We left at five-thirty the next clear morning. The navy blue sky was all stars. The night before, our neighbors Steve and Linnus had promised to check on the kids and stay with them in case we didn't get back on time. I'd half-joked that Linnus shouldn't call the Coast Guard until we'd been gone three days. A Coast Guard helicopter had tried to rescue Sam from the gully he had fallen in. It was raining hard on that late September day. Avalanches of mud had threatened to block the Haines Highway. The saturated hillside was too unstable for the mountain search-and-rescue crew to risk it on foot. While the helicopter hovered over Sam, the earth shrugged and he was covered by a ton of rocks and mud. His hunting partner told us later that he believed Sam was already dead by then, that the fall had killed him.

I made sure Chip and I packed overnight gear. If the weather turned, or we got into any kind of trouble, we would be able to camp on the mountain. We drank coffee and ate eggs and toast before loading up the truck and driving ten miles to the end of Lutak Road. As we stumbled through the dark, unfamiliar woods, I asked Chip how he knew where to go. "Easy," he said. "Just keep heading up." It wasn't so easy. I tripped and fell through two big spruce trees that had blown down in last winter's winds and hung there by my armpits, with my headlamp shining toward the sky and my pack hooked on a broken branch.

Half-stuck in the hole, I didn't yell for help. I pulled myself out and caught up to Chip. I was determined to be a good partner. Two hours later we were above the tree line, creeping silently and paying close attention to everything we heard, saw, and smelled. We knew there were goats one slope over; Chip had seen them earlier in the week. But getting to them would be dangerous, and if we did shoot one near the cliffs, it might fall out of reach. I reminded Chip about Sam. He whispered that I was being too cautious, but we did climb a ridge in the other direction. It was about fifteen degrees colder on the mountain than it was down in the woods; also, when you hunt you don't move quickly enough to get warm. Hunting is slow and thoughtful, with a lot of sitting very still. We stopped to put on warmer clothes and eat an energy bar. That's when we saw the lone billy goat walking down a rocky trail toward us. He picked his way to within about four hundred yards before Chip left me to crawl around close enough to shoot him.

I sat perfectly still, using a rock to prop up my binoculars. The billy goat looked at me and I looked at him. He was white and fluffy, with a funny long face and black b.u.t.ton eyes. The fur on his legs looked like pantaloons. In such a rugged place, this fancy fellow looked as odd as I would have right then in a wedding dress. I liked him. I could have saved his life by waving my arms. I could have whistled and spooked him without Chip ever knowing what had happened. I could have, but I didn't. Instead, I sat perfectly still, holding my breath, as the billy goat kept walking.

When the shot finally cracked across the cliff, it didn't startle me. I knew it was coming. What I was completely unprepared for was the violent death. The goat stumbled from the impact of the bullet, slumped, and started to fall on his knees, then leapt forward right off his perch, bouncing off the rocks three times before slamming dead onto a ledge, blood staining his white outfit. I looked away and exhaled. Chip was running toward the goat, calling for me to get the packs. It looked close, but with one pack on my back and another in my hands, it took a while to get there. I chose to go through a cl.u.s.ter of small trees rather than across the loose scree. My legs were shaking. The trees were dwarfed by wind and alt.i.tude, and their roots were wrapped around big boulders. I kept falling down between them. I was having a hard time with the unfamiliar terrain, both outside and in. Chip had killed a goat, and it was horrible. Yet I was proud of him. I had wanted him to get the goat, and he had. A branch whacked me in the chest, knocking the wind out of me, and I cursed and sat down, trying not to cry. This was not any fun at all. It had been a huge mistake. I wanted to go home.

Then I heard Chip calling my name and I yelled back; we did that for a few minutes until he found me in the bushes. He helped me up, took his pack, and asked why I'd chosen the hardest route. I mumbled something about being a little distracted. He was so happy, he didn't notice my distress. I didn't tell him. He wanted to know if I'd seen him shoot the goat; he said he couldn't believe that the goat hadn't seen him and had kept walking in his direction; he said it was big, maybe even trophy size. Then he said something I'd heard Don say before, about how the fun part was over once the animal was down: "Now is when the work begins."

When we reached the goat, it was on an ice-covered ledge about a foot wide above an old avalanche chute. We needed to move it, or we could slip and fall trying to cut it up. Chip grabbed the back legs and pulled, but the goat was too heavy. I pulled, too, and between us we dragged it to firmer ground. I watched as Chip cut the hide off. It peeled away smooth and dry, like a paper label off a jar. Without the fur covering, goat legs look almost human, with their muscled thighs and calves. Chip said I didn't have to help him if I was uncomfortable. I walked a few yards away and sat down and thought about it while taking in the view only angels and mountain goats usually get to see. I owed it to Chip to finish what we'd started. I thought, I am just as much of a hunter now as if I'd pulled that trigger myself, and this is what hunters do.

Chip looked relieved as he handed me rubber gloves to pull on over my wool ones, and a sharp knife. We dragged a hindquarter farther away from the icy ledge to a safer place. Slicing steaming meat off bones is hard on body and soul. But not as difficult as I thought it would be. I dug around in the warm muscle tissue until I could find a bone, then gripped it with one hand and cut the flesh off it with the other.

At first I tried not to get blood on my good hiking clothes, but the steep slope and the slick meat made that impossible. I slipped as I carried a hunk of shoulder roast to the game bag and ended up clutching it tightly against my chest to keep us both from falling. It sounds corny, but just as I had an obligation to help Chip, I also felt that I owed it to the billy goat's soul not to drop that meat. I held on as if my life depended on it. Chip and I worked for three hours in near silence, filling muslin game bags with the meat and then dropping them in our plastic bag-lined backpacks. After Chip helped me shoulder mine and I steadied his pack so he could lift it, I wondered if we'd make it down the mountain before nightfall. It was difficult balancing the load on the steep, trailless terrain. Between us, we had about 130 pounds of meat. The hide was in a duffel bag with a rope tied to it that we tossed down ahead of us or dragged behind.

My thighs twitched from the strain and the fear of falling. I could see now how easily Sam had slipped to his death. Sometimes I refused to look down, especially when we traversed a gully, holding on to the alder branches and rappelling like rock climbers with our backs to the inlet below. The last hour through the forest at the bottom was the longest, with the worry of darkness and my knees aching from going downhill so long with such a heavy load. I watched Chip sway a bit in front of me and heard him curse as he slipped, climbing over a log.

When we reached the truck, we were both punchy. We had been gone ten and a half hours. We lay down on the tailgate to make it easier to slide out of our packs. Chip reached for my hand and held it. Chip's hunt was successful, and I had helped make it so.

Later, when I called my father and told him about our hunt he said, "What did that goat ever do to you?"

Barry Lopez explains this conundrum best in Arctic Dreams when he struggles to reconcile his feelings after witnessing the "blood," "horror," and "darkness" of a walrus hunt with his Alaskan Native friends. "There are simply no answers," Lopez wrote, "to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."

We killed the goat, and we will eat it gratefully. Any hunter will tell you it's better to take responsibility for your own food than to leave that task to others. The hamburger you buy in the grocery store, he'll remind you, was killed by someone; you just don't know who, where, or how. That meat loaf was once part of a tail-swishing sloe-eyed steer. Hunters will tell you all this over a big family dinner the same way pastors will tell newlyweds, in front of all their friends and relatives, to be "fruitful and multiply." The truth is, Chip hunts because he likes it. Being with him right after I'd seen him kill something felt a lot like the morning after a wild night of lovemaking, when it's hard to believe that the Chip and Heather having breakfast with the kids and going over the spelling-test words one more time with J.J. are the same people who romped under, and sometimes on top of, the covers the night before.

AS WE WERE about to head home from our hunt, one of the residents of the small settlement at the head of Lutak Inlet stopped his pickup truck to talk with us. Frank had given Chip permission to cut through his property and was curious to see how the day had gone. I listened as Chip told our hunting story, never describing the actual death. The killing part was reduced to "While Heather waited I crawled around and got a good shot." Chip doesn't talk about the naked part of our marriage, and when I do, he blushes. Maybe it's the same thing. Frank is a hunter, too, so he could see it all in his mind's eye. Maybe the reason he was looking at me differently was because he knew that now I could see those images, too.

I watched Chip show Frank the pictures I had taken on the digital camera of him and the dead goat. Then Chip looked down and smiled, and I remembered the picture I'd taken of Christian and Don after that first deer hunt. My husband and son are so much alike. They have the same quiet ways, the same smile, and the same pink flush on their cheeks, although right then Chip's was buried in grime. Talking to Frank, he was trying not to smile.