rivers, sea ice, and God-knows-what-else I’d find on the trail to Nome.
I told Brown that I would let him know by July 1, the day Iditarod began accepting entries. If I decided to go forward, the $1,249 entry fee would come out of my own pocket, representing my personal commitment to raise any additional capital needed. Brown and I shook on it.
Riding back down the Kennedy Center escalator, I scanned the faces of people ascending toward the cafeteria. For all they knew about the Iditarod, I was headed for Mars.
I wouldn’t say that I’m superstitious. But I firmly believe in lucky streaks. Likewise, I believe that there are times when the odds are against you. Entering the final days of training, the omens took a disturbing turn, starting with my car.
My sporty VW Scirocco had never been much of a cold-weather car. I wasn’t surprised the morning the engine failed to turn over. It was 3 5 below, and I had already noticed that the wire to the oil-pan heat pad was beginning to fray. I had meant to fix it.
Living in interior Alaska, you take vehicular setbacks in stride. They are just one more front in nature’s eternal siege. I dug a trench under the engine and placed a small Hibachi charcoal stove in the snow, maybe a foot in front of the bumper. While I was waiting for the flames to give way to steady coals — so I could slide the hibachi under the engine — I draped a green military blanket over the Scirocco’s hood to help retain the heat. And I hooked a charger to the battery.
Warming an engine this way generally takes an hour. I was chopping meat, no more than a few yards away, when a breeze hastened the heating process. The flames lit the blanket. Then the fire spread from the Volkswagen’s plastic grill to the insides of my oily engine. I didn’t even hear a crackle until flames were licking around the edges of the wheel wells and grill.
“Tim, Tim, get up,” I yelled, dashing inside for our fire extinguisher. “My car’s on fire!”
Mowry slowly rolled over and sleepily glanced out his window. A thick column of black smoke was rising from my car.
“You aren’t kidding,” he said.
I popped the burning hood and pried it open with a shovel. With the inrush of air, a ball of flame leapt up six feet from the engine compartment. I pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and squeezed the trigger. It spewed froth for a second, then fizzled.
Mowry came running out of the house in his long under wear and bunny boots. We were staring at the fire, paralyzed by the spectacle, when an unfamiliar truck rushed up the driveway. Two men jumped out, each clutching small fire extinguishers. “Saw the smoke.”
The men took aim at the flames, as I had minutes before, and with the same feeble result: foam dribbled out the end of their nozzles, then gurgled to a stop. Retardant gas doesn’t work in extreme cold.
Mowry grabbed the shovel and began heaving snow on the engine. A cloud of steam replaced the smoke. So much for technology. The fire was out, leaving a charred carcass in our driveway.
We took 20 dogs out, splitting them between us. The destination was Angel Creek Lodge, a 75-mile round- trip. Call it the final exam.
The temperature was about 25 below as the Mowth and I set out. Trotting past Rattles’s place, the mountains ahead glowed with the setting sun’s red flare. We met Kathy Swenson, who was returning from Angel Creek. Swenson’s team turned around on her, ready to follow us. She straightened them out with an angry shout.
“Swenson definitely has leader problems,” Mowry said.
The Mowth’s comment wasn’t aimed at Kathy Swenson; he was referring to the rumors about her husband, the master himself, four-time Iditarod champion Rick Swenson. According to Rattles, who seldom did anything but gossip — unless he was ranting about the Feds — Swennie was having a rough year. He and Kathy weren’t getting along. His training was being hampered by the snow clogging Two River’s trail system, and Rick was said to be feeling pressure from IAMS Company, his main dog food sponsor. If that wasn’t enough, Swenson’s lead dogs were supposedly lousy, a rumor that I could tell Mowry now took as confirmed.
The Mowth and I had first met Rick Swenson in 1987 in Nome when a TV crew was interviewing him near the Burl Arch marking the Iditarod’s finish line. Swenson had recently crossed in second place. It was obvious that we also wanted to talk to him, and when the camera stopped rolling, Swenson turned to us and said, “What the hell are you waiting for? I haven’t got all day.”
At the post-race banquet that year, people shifted uncomfortably as Swenson went on with his odd rambling remarks. “I’ve got a long way to get back to the top,” he concluded. This from a musher whose second-place finish was worth $30,000. The check was no consolation for Iditarod’s former top dog, then swallowing his second straight loss to Susan Butcher.
The Iditarod’s new queen was more gracious. “In the end,” Susan said, “friendship wins out over competition.”
Calling Swenson for interviews, I could count on a rash of abuse. “Why didn’t you call me in September? I’m in training now.” Posteruption, he could be charming. One time when my car broke down during an assignment, Swenson dropped what he was doing to give me a lift.
“You know, Butcher would never do this,” he said, becoming friendlier.
Butcher’s ascendancy certainly preoccupied him. Back when she was first getting started, Rick Swenson owned the sport, coming within a second of winning five Iditarod victories before anyone else had even won the race twice. For a while, he held the speed records in most of Alaska’s big mid-distance races. But Swenson hadn’t won anything since 1982. Andy, Swenson’s famous leader in all four victories, was sleeping away his retirement years on a couch in Swenson’s workshop.
Swenson wasn’t the only musher with a Susan Butcher complex. Joe Runyan’s victory in 1989 had cracked Butcher’s aura of invulnerability, but she hadn’t exactly crumbled, since she finished a close second. A year later she won again, claiming her fourth Iditarod in five years. Susan remained the musher everyone feared. It was her dogs we chased in our dreams.
The press was billing the upcoming race as a showdown. It made for good copy, but no one I knew gave Swenson any real chance. Not without good leaders.
But there was a reason Kathy’s team acted flaky. Nearing the lodge we came across a group of snowmachiners salvaging a dead moose. Kathy had shot and killed the moose, after it had barreled into her team, kicking her dogs.
“It was a small moose, and I didn’t want to kill it,” she told me later. “But I didn’t have any choice.” She had gutted the animal, as the law requires, then arranged for some folks at Angel Creek to come out and butcher it.
The dead moose cast an ominous presence over our final miles. Mowry and I were relieved when we made it to Angel Creek, where the lodge owner stomped outside to greet us. “You damn mushers,” Steve Verbanac said. “You let your dogs piss on that wood pile, and it stinks up the place when we burn it.”
After reparking the teams a safe distance from the firewood, we mixed hot meals for the dogs using hot water from the lodge. Most of the dogs settled down, licking their paws. Cyrus continued to pace, whining and looking bewildered at this unnecessary stop. The pup hadn’t learned what it meant to be tired.
Cyrus and the other dogs with us at Angel Creek represented every possible candidate for my Iditarod team. We were watching to see who pulled the whole way, who goofed off, who had fun, and who was faltering.
“When we feed them tomorrow, you want to watch for any sign of injury and see who looks stiff,” the Coach said, watching the dogs lapping up their dinner.
Inside the bar, Steve’s wife, Annette, was retelling the story of Kathy Swenson’s epic battle with the moose. Annette had always liked Kathy.
“She doesn’t put on airs like Mr. Champion Rick Swenson.”
We stayed at Angel Creek for four hours, eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer. Our gloves, mitts, and face masks dangled from the rafters, drying above the lodge’s big barrel stove. The Mowth and I toasted each other as Steve bitched about damn mushers and their smelly gear.
By the time we repacked the sleds, the lodge thermometer read 15 below. Practically tropical. The wind was also rising, causing loose straps on my sled bag to flap.
This time we loaded bullets in the rifle. Packing the gun, the Coach left first, again running Chad in single
