The van again zoomed by. Minutes later, I saw my old landlord perched on a berm overlooking the trail. Worry creased his brow.
“Bri, you need a porta potty?” he shouted. “I got one at home.”
“Thanks,” I said, realizing I couldn’t begin to explain, “but I’m fine, really I’m fine.”
Tom Daily realized his sponsors were disappointed. They wanted to see more fire in their musher, more dedication toward winning the Iditarod his first time out. As if that were as simple as tying on a new pair of sneakers. They might be generous with their money, but these folks had no idea what this sport entailed. None. Tom’s current objective was to escape town without any more disasters.
The musher arranged with race officials to drop four dogs from his team at Wasilla. Those he left behind weren’t injured. Driving 20 dogs was just too crazy; after careening down that creek, Daily wanted absolute control. But that hope was crushed before Tom even made it past the restart banners. One of his shoe-company volunteers had meticulously fastened each dog’s neckline to a thin tag clip, instead of to their sturdy collar rings. The weak clips held so long as handlers were there restraining the dogs. As soon as they let go, necklines began popping loose.
The force exerted by a working sled dog is primarily channeled into the team’s gang line through a tug line, which is clipped to the rear of the dog’s harness. Those tugs were properly connected, so Daily’s dogs were still pulling, and his sled was launched forward. The neck lines served to hold the dogs in neat formation. Without them, the team fanned out like a riotous mob.
Tom wondered what new bad thing would happen next.
The first time his lead dog collapsed Bill Peele was thunderstruck. The kindly musher from North Carolina assumed that poor Charlie was stricken with a heart attack, or something else catastrophic. Peele was relieved to detect a strong pulse.
Charlie’s eyes popped open. He sprung to his feet. Ready to go.
Peele, 56, didn’t know what to make of it. The lanky, bushy-bearded rookie had no illusions about being a mushing expert. But this didn’t fit with anything he’d learned since coming to Alaska in December to lease a dog team from Redington. Proven Iditarod dogs like Charlie, a trained leader, didn’t crumble in a heap without good reason.
Knik was less than about ten miles away. Peele would have the dog thoroughly checked out when he arrived. He pulled the hook free and resumed his march. The team had hardly moved before the dog went down again. Peele cursed his foolishness. Charlie was dead for sure. He should have loaded that dog! Yet Charlie’s pulse still felt strong. His chest was heaving regularly. Sure enough, the dog quickly regained his feet. Peele was thankful, of course, but the darn dog’s behavior was mystifying.
When Charlie dropped for the third time in barely a hundred yards, Peele became suspicious. This time the musher didn’t stop right away. Instead he watched as the team dragged its prone member through the soft snow. Funny thing. The musher sensed that ole Charlie was watching him.
Stopping the team, Peele knelt over Charlie until the dog finally looked him in the eye. It was as if Peele could read the thoughts underneath that furry brow: “Well, dummy, you best leave me here, cause I ain’t going to Nome again.”
Peele loaded Charlie in his sled. He told himself he was imagining things. A sled dog couldn’t be this devious.
It was Mardi Gras time in Knik. Inside the bar, Hobo Jim’s foot-stomping and slashing guitar work had the crowd in a frenzy. The windows were so steamed from perspiration you couldn’t see through them. Outside, the view of the race was blocked by the mobs of spectators, friends, and handlers swarming each incoming team.
Big Sandy tracked down Kelly and Davis and told them about the party out on the lake. She gave them directions and asked them to guide the team over.
“No way,” Kelly told the other handler after Sandy had left. “Our job is to GET BRIAN OUT OF HERE.”
As my team entered Knik, Rainy bravely trotted through the tunnel of parkas. Digger and Spook flinched at the human tumult, but continued forward, ears low. Somehow I picked Marcie’s face out of the crowd. She chased us to the checkpoint and gave me a hug.
“The dogs look good, Brian. Really good.”
I had a million things to say. But Knik offered no refuge. The race was ON.
“Can’t stop here. Can’t stop here,” an Iditarod volunteer shouted, determined to keep me from parking next to my truck. Kelly ran the guy off, then stuffed a Burger King cheeseburger in my pocket. He and the pit crew were cranked.
While Kelly and Davis unhitched the second sled, Nancy snacked my dogs. I placed on new booties, by myself this time. Cyndi was standing by with the thermos I had asked her to fill.
“Hot Tang,” she said, “just what you ordered.”
Kelly pulled Troyer aside. “Look, we can’t let him stop for this barbecue thing.”
Half a dozen teams had passed mine on Lake Lucille, two more caught us along Knik Road. Countless others were streaming in and out of Knik. I fussed with my sled. Did I need anything else from the dog truck? An important question, since I wouldn’t see it again until my return home.
“You’re ready. Get out of here!” Kelly said as Dee Dee Jonrowe, a top driver, parked her team adjacent to us.
Stepping on the runners, I reached for the hook. Troyer climbed aboard one side of my sled; Kelly took position on the other. Jim and Nancy ran ahead of the dogs, leading Rainy and Rat through the crowd.
Sandy intercepted the team as we approached the open part of the lake.
“This way,” she said, grabbing the leaders to steer the team over toward the bonfire.
“What? What?” I said, having completely forgotten the party, where my family and dozens of friends were waiting. Kelly rushed to the front of the team.
“Forget it. Brian’s not stopping. This is a race!”
We left Sandy on the lake, looking disappointed.
My dogs were pulling like an engine in fine tune. I shook hands with Troyer and Kelly, and they jumped off. I was looking backward, waving good-bye to my friends, when the team balled up in a tangle. Both handlers saw it and came running. Another team slipped by as I lined out my dogs. Kelly was waiting on the sled when I trudged back. I slapped him on the shoulder, then turned to the dogs.
“All right,” I shouted. The dogs chased the team ahead.
I leaned into the turn rounding the old Knik Museum. When I looked up, there it was, waiting for me: a curving fence rising toward a gap in the trees — the Iditarod Trail.
Dandy should be here. Mushing out of Anchorage, the absence of his trusted leader cast the only shadow touching Jon Terhune’s trail. His Kenai-conditioned dogs breezed through the warm passage to Eagle River, climbing a notch to forty-fifth position.
Watching other mushers streaming through Knik and racing off into the darkness, Terhune’s girlfriend, Dawn, brooded about the unknown dangers ahead. She couldn’t quit thinking about the money, time, and energy being squandered on this mad perversion of a sport. She thought about Terhune’s refusal to return to work the day before, as his company had demanded. Ten years with Unocal and her boyfriend had thrown it away — for what? By the time Terhune arrived at Knik Lake, Dawn was seething.
“You’re crazy,” she told Terhune. “And Joe Redington should be put in jail for starting long-distance mushing.”
It was a familiar argument. Terhune didn’t need a rerun. Certainly not there in the middle of Knik Lake. But he let her rage. He was going to Nome, regardless. And he really had no adequate response to Dawn’s main question: “Why do you do it?” Terhune figured the only answer to that was spiritual. You either saw that or you never would.
“How can you do this for a hobby?”
“It’s NOT a hobby,” Jon snapped.
The musher kept his cool. This was Dawn’s scene, and he let her play it out. Three hours slipped away in a
