earned $9,000 for the fifth-place finish, which equaled his all-time best.
In the morning, Nayokpuk awoke with a tingling in his left arm.
“I just hate to think our race had anything to do with it,” said Redington, pacing the floor of the Nome checkpoint as his friend was being flown to a hospital in Anchorage. “But Herbie, he was pushing pretty hard.”
Nayokpuk was hospitalized with a mild stroke. He recovered, but his Iditarod days were over. Thus ended the racing career of the Shishmaref Cannonball.
As for Redington, he never topped that 1988 run.
“In my mind,” Swenson said, years later. “There’s no question Joe would have won that race if he had a trail out of Cripple. It’s a damn shame.”
As I pulled within sight of the road, I heard honking and whistling. People were cheering. The reception awaiting us grew wilder by the mile. A procession of snowmachines fell in on either side of us. Cars and trucks paced the team on the nearby road. People were clapping and waving from every drift.
A man leapt out of the back of a pickup truck. Clambering down a snow berm, he tossed me a can of beer. “This Bud’s for you,” he shouted. “We knew you were going to make it.”
“Never any doubt,” I said.
The dogs responded to the attention like pros. With nary a flinch or misstep, Rainy and Harley kept the team rolling across the frozen beach and through the crowds perched on the hard drifts at the edge of town. I was proud watching the team climbing the last berm onto Front Street. Once on the road, Rainy and Harley eagerly chased a police car, which lead us to the arch, lights flashing all the way.
A crowd of a hundred people, maybe more, was waiting at the finish line. The bodies parted before Rainy and Harley, who led the team right up the middle. Leo Rasmussen stood at the end of the tunnel, a microphone in one hand and a clipboard in the other. The lesbian passed by him and ran straight under the twin burls. Jamming the hook down, I ran up and slapped the overhead arch.
The time was 2:55. My name boomed through the loudspeakers. Rasmussen was saying something about my setting a new record: first musher to ever start first and finish last. Flashes popped. Familiar faces shouted things I couldn’t quite make out. Rasmussen inspected the sled, checking off one sleeping bag, hand axe, and a pair of snowshoes. He collected the packet containing our commemorative mail delivery, via dog team, from Anchorage. Then Leo presented the clipboard. I scrawled my name in the line reserved for the sixtieth musher to Nome. Next to the signature was my team’s total elapsed time on the trail: 22 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, 55 seconds.
Leo was holding an old kerosene lamp, which had been burning since the race started March 2. “Go ahead,” he said, “blow it out.”
Nome’s checker then handed me a shiny red lantern topped with a brass dog. Cheers resounded on Front Street as I hoisted it above my head.
It was official: the Iditarod was over.
Epilogue
It was payback time. From the instant I touched the arch, I began falling apart. The sun’s glint on the snowy street seemed overly bright. Surrounding voices merged into a locker-room din. I felt that hot glow of staying awake all night, utterly drained, yet too excited to slow down.
On cruise control, I used the Nome Nugget’s phone to file a story with Joling. We were wrapping it up when a woman from the Nome Kennel Club barged into the office and passed me a note.
“Brian,” it read, “your dogs are at the lot. They were unharnessed, tied, bedded down — and your food is on your sled — at the end of your chain line. You need to go feed them and check them. Welcome to Nome.”
From her look, I could tell she took me for an uncaring bastard, a person who’d drive poor dogs 1,000 miles and cast them aside.
“The dogs just had a hot meal in Safety,” I said cupping the phone. “I doubt they’re even hungry.”
The woman’s face softened. Maybe I wasn’t quite the monster.
“I’ve seen the club’s operation here in Nome,” I added. “I trust you folks put the team in a good spot. Give me a minute, and I’ll be down to check them out.”
The dogs were lounging on straw in a cargo yard on the edge of town. My team’s picket line was flanked by dozens more. The chains were strung between tall containers, which provided shelter from the wind. On rubbery legs, I took my cooker pan and fetched hot water from the checkpoint. As the food soaked, I gave each dog a special rubdown.
“We made it, guys,” I said, gathering the pans after feeding. “Take tomorrow off.”
Listening to the banquet speeches, I felt feverish — the product of windburn and cold beer. Bill Jack, seated across from me, eagerly rehashed his own dramatic finish. The Nome rookie had placed a respectable twentieth, after leapfrogging past 30 teams in the coastal storms.
“Admit it,” Jack said, “you planned to finish last and win that Red Lantern.”
“No. No. No,” I said, wearily. “You’ve got it all wrong. I did everything I could to dodge that bullet for seven hundred miles.”
With great solemnity, Leo, the old Nome checker, presented each of us with an Iditarod patch, an official finisher’s belt buckle, and a check for $1,000, which was given to every musher to complete the race that year. I’d counted on that money to get us home.
After formally accepting the Red Lantern from Leo, I briefly talked about the setbacks that had sealed my fate. Daily caught the frustration in my voice as I described the mutiny at the dump, but even he, our convoy’s sensitive soul, laughed so hard tears dripped from his chin.
* * *
Decked out like a banker in suit, vest, and tie, Swennie took a front-row House gallery seat in Alaska’s state capitol. An excited buzz spread through the chamber. Lawmakers swiveled in their chairs to get a look at the master musher in the flesh.
At last, the anticipated moment arrived. The representative whose district included Two Rivers rose and read into the record a citation celebrating my neighbor’s come-from-behind victory and his reaffirmed status as Iditarod’s all-time champion.
After the hurrahs subsided, Swenson said a few polite words. The champ was in good form on this, Rick Swenson Day.
I was seated at the press bench immediately in front of the gallery. Swennie stuck around after the citation, wearing a thoughtful expression as he watched his government at work. After a while he leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder.
“You sit through this bullshit all day long?” whispered the champ.
Later a reception was held for Swenson at the governor’s mansion. With Gov. Wally Hickel out of town, it seemed natural to find Iditarod’s all-time champion playing lord of the big white house. Amused by our first and last combo, others in attendance put Swenson and me together for a picture. I gave someone my camera to get a shot, but my flash batteries were dead. The misfire summed up my life.
The champ was being chummy. “I wouldn’t know myself — because I’ve never been there,” he said, “but I’ve always heard it’s tough on you guys in the back. How long did it take you?”
“Over twenty-two days, nearly twice as long as you.”
“Well then, you’ll have twice as much to write about, won’t you?”
The snow had melted, even in Fairbanks, by the time the lawmakers and I headed home. Howls sounded as soon as I pulled into the Deadline Dog Farm’s driveway. Out in the lot, the dogs greeted me like a lost brother. Licks all around.
The reception demonstrated, once and for all, that I hadn’t lost anything important. I wanted to mush the Iditarod Trail, and I had. I dreamed of starting first, and that had come true. The rest? Well …
