For What He Could Become Read online

  FOR WHAT HE

  COULD BECOME

  A NOVEL

  James A. Misko

  Other books by the Author:

  Fiction:

  The Cut of Pride

  All Our Lives

  Non Fiction:

  Creative Financing of Real Estate

  How to Finance any Real Estate any Place any Time How to Finance any Real Estate any Place any Time – Strategies That Work

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The phone book in Alaska lists a lot of Williams. This Bill Williams is not related to any of them. He is completely fictitious. The historical events used in this book, the building of the Alaska Highway, World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, and the first long distance Iditarod Sled Dog Race in 1973 are as true in time and place as I can make them. But the events within them are fiction.

  While the route and several incidents in the WWII section actually occurred and the unit existed in the Army, the activities of the small unit are fiction. The checkpoints on the Iditarod Sled Dog Race are actual but the events and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental; although Wilmarth did win the 1973 race. He is alive and well and lives in Red Dog, Alaska.

  Copyright @ 2004 by James A. Misko

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Northwest Ventures, book sales at 907-562-2520.

  Designed by:

  Endpaper maps courtesy of AT Publishing

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  ISBN 0-9640826-1-6

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Misko, James A. 1932 -

  For What He Could Become.

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to

  Patti, Carrie, Shannon, and Laurie

  “THE IMPORTANT THING IS THIS: TO BE ABLE AT ANY MOMENT TO SACRIFICE WHAT WE ARE FOR WHAT WE COULD BECOME.”

  Charles du Bois

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bill Williams noticed that there was no sound in the woods—no bird calls, no squirrel chirring. He was lying on his stomach in a rivulet of snowmelt coming out of the hills, the cold water seeping into his shirt. Water penetrated his pants, wet his thighs, and made him shiver, but he didn’t move.

  Upwind and 40 yards away on the side of a hill a smallish black bear was feeding in a blueberry patch, and with a bite down and a swing of its head it stripped everything into its mouth. The sound of tearing leaves and brush was close enough for Bill to hear it. He’d smelled the bear for some time, tracking it into the breeze drifting down from the hills, the smell like rotting salmon on the stream banks.

  It was not a big bear. He had seen others that were much bigger in the valley across the river from Arctic Village.

  Lying partway into the trail with the rifle at his shoulder, he had a clear view of the bear’s hindquarters. It had taken him some time to get to that position but it had not been hard work—just slow, tedious, and wet. When he had seen bears running, they went so fast that it hadn’t occurred to him how deliberately they moved when they were feeding. He could wait as he had been taught to wait. If his father were alive he would be proud to see him wait to take the animal with one well-placed shot, no big damage to meat or hide.

  As his Dad had told him so many times, the trick was to sneak up on the bear from down wind. If luck was with the hunter, all he would see was the bear’s hindquarters until the final moment. Done right, it would be a clean kill. Bill would be able to tan the hide and put it beneath his bedclothes to hold out the cold, or give it to Ilene.

  No doubt the bear had been searching the stream banks for salmon and the sunny slopes for ripening berry patches. This diet, he guessed, was what made the bear’s coat shine as if it had been oiled.

  But there was something else going on. It was so quiet he thought for a moment he had gone deaf. He opened his mouth and popped his ears, straining to pick up a sound. He could feel his heart pumping, the rhythmic beat like a drum. Something was wrong.

  The bear stopped chewing and lifted its head. It turned to the right, jabbed its nose in the air and sniffed. Then it lifted a front leg and swung to the left. Muscles bunched, ears twitching, it sensed something and froze. In the next instant the bear whirled around and rose up on its hind legs, jaws open, claws raking the air. The roar sprang from deep in its throat, passing over Bill with a vibration and volume that hurt his ears.

  He gasped. His mind registered the picture the bear offered, but a louder roar from behind him purged any thoughts of taking a shot.

  With the roar he felt the ground vibrate beneath him and turned his head in time to see a huge grizzly fill his field of vision. The bear had to be ten feet and at least 800 pounds, and it didn’t see him or smell him. What it saw and smelled was the black bear, on which it focused with its pig-like eyes.

  In seconds the grizzly moved from behind Bill, stepped on his leg, sprinted down the trail, and with a powerful swing of his foreleg knocked the small bear over. The bawling and roaring of the two animals deafened Bill, who jammed his hands over his ears as panic raised a sour taste in the back of his mouth. He swallowed but it wouldn’t go away. He saw chunks of peat moss flung into the air and a cloud of dust rising. Through it all was the smell—a sour, dead, fish-stinky odor that stuck in his nostrils. Pieces of plants, small rocks, and earth were dropping like rain.

  The black bear, forced on its back, was raking the grizzly with its claws and teeth while being pushed and pounded into the small stream. The grizzly had it by the throat and was shaking it like a dog shakes a rabbit. In seconds the battle was over, the grizzly looking down at the still form between its front legs, its nose sniffing for any remaining life. Suddenly everything was still. Bill took his hands from his ears as the peat dust settled on the ground and water bubbled around the lifeless form partially blocking its flow.

  The pain in Bill’s leg had not yet started—the leg was numb. Whether it was cut or broken he didn’t know. But he was able to stand on it, and clutching the rifle in his right hand he half ran, half hobbled down the trail he had come up from the river.

  Funny feeling—like running on a wooden leg.

  He burst through an alder patch, where low-lying limbs reached for his feet, Devil’s-club thorns pierced his pants and st
uck in his thighs. He made no attempt to dodge them but wished he’d cut them down on his way up the trail.

  The back of his neck began to itch. He imagined the bear coming on behind him faster than he could run and his heart thudded in his chest. He wanted to look back but knew he could not.

  Everything he knew about bears screamed at him to climb a tree, but his feet and legs moved unattached to his mind and even as he told himself to climb, he couldn’t make himself do it. He would have to stop to climb a tree, and if the bear was close, it would get him before he got high enough to be out of its reach.

  His balance was threatened by his feet wind-milling out of control while a picture formed in his mind of him falling on his face, heart pounding, chest heaving, the bear standing over him. Miraculously his feet missed every root, every hole.

  As he cleared the brush line, the bank of the river was in front of him. He dropped the rifle, planted one foot in the sand, and launched himself into the river, legs churning, arms thrashing, head back, gulping air as he crashed through the surface, kicking hard under water.

  Underneath, water bubbled past his ears. He held his breath and swam against the current the water tearing at his clothes, pulling him downstream, slowing him down. The trapped air exploded from his lungs like a breaching whale when he broke the surface with his eyes clamped shut.

  He had no idea how far he was from the bank. He gulped air and was ready to dive again when the sound of laughter drifted over the water. He tried to stand, tripped and fell, then was tumbled downstream by the current until his feet brushed across a shallow place and he stood up and shook the hair from his eyes. A quick glance at the bank showed the bear had stayed on his side of the river.

  Herb Chulpach and his uncle Charlie stood on the bank, laughing. They pointed at the bear pacing back and forth upstream from the trail, sniffing the rifle. It turned and disappeared into the brush. Bill took a huge breath, then waded to the opposite bank and sat down, his head in his hands.

  Herb and Charlie came over to him. They didn’t speak but glanced at each other. The skin around Herb’s mouth puckered up and then relaxed, and it looked to Bill like he was laughing inside. Bill didn’t look at Charlie.

  “Fast bear,” Charlie said.

  Herb snickered. The old man looked straight ahead as if he were plotting where the bear would come out next.

  “Were you teaching the bear to dance?” Charlie asked. Bill sighed.

  “I was hunting the bear.” He wrung out his shirt.

  “Hunting.” Charlie nodded. “Pack on the ground. Gun on the ground. Feet in the air.”

  Herb pursed his lips. Both hands clasped around one knee, he rocked back and forth, a smile on his face.

  “Just as I was getting ready to shoot the black bear, this grizzly made a fight with it. On its way, it stepped on my leg.”

  Charlie nodded, the smile fixed on his face. “Were they both male bears?”

  “I didn’t examine their privates.” Bill held the shirt up and shook it.

  “Maybe you got in the middle of their house and that old bear figured you were trespassing.” Charlie snorted little bursts of air out of his hairy nostrils while Herb continued to rock back and forth. What a pair.

  “Did it occur to you that I could have been killed?”

  They just looked at each other. He took off his boot and rolled up his pants to look at the place where the bear had stepped on him. The claw imprints were red in the center, blue-black in between, with blood trickling out of each imprint. Charlie put his hand on the pants and pressed them down so he could see better. He looked at the muscle that was beginning to swell, touched the claw marks with his fingers.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “To be between two bears and get some bad meat on your leg and a cut or two. You’re dumb—but lucky.”

  Herb rolled up on his feet in that squat he always used on wet ground and appraised Bill’s leg. Head tilted back, eyes squinting, making small sounds with his mouth. At last done with the examination, he looked Bill in the eye, nodded his head several times, and sat back down on the bank.

  The wet socks clung to Bill’s feet and he had to work to get the boots back on, his leg pulsing and pounding now that the numbness was wearing off. He lifted the leg a few times. No serious pain. Past injuries had taught him that the real pain would come tonight or tomorrow, maybe not for two days.

  His rifle and pack were on the other bank. He thought about what Herb would tell Ilene and Verda at dinner tonight, about his father and Carl and the way they had killed bear. And then he said “To hell with it,” got up and sloshed back into the river, picking the shallow spots to walk over, swimming the deeper channel to the far bank.

  He opened the rifle bolt, removed the cartridge, and blew down the barrel, dislodging the dirt jammed in it. He allowed himself a quick glance at the bear’s tracks on the bank, then limped upriver where he could wade across and head for home. He was hungry and his leg hurt. The three-day bear hunt had lasted three hours.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Your dad should have stayed around longer,” Charlie said. “He should have taught you better about bears. I’m not a good hunter—but your dad, he knew everything about ‘em.”

  He swirled a stick of dried salmon in oil and fed it, dripping, into his near-toothless mouth.

  “Problem was,” Carl said, “you didn’t get in position and shoot fast enough. A quick shot would of killed the black and scared off the griz.”

  Bill took another piece of dried salmon, dipped it in the oil, and popped it in his mouth.

  “Well, Dad didn’t stay around,” he said. “He shot himself, if you recall.” The salmon was tough.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Charlie said.

  “I’d of had the black bear if that griz hadn’t been tracking it too.”

  “I’d of gotten him,” Carl said. “I’d be tanning that hide in the shed right now.”

  Charlie nodded.

  There was a cramp in Bill’s chest. It tightened, making his breathing come hard. Suddenly he wanted to breathe air that wasn’t tainted with sweat and dried meat and fish oil. And Carl.

  “Dad’s been dead eight years and all I’ve heard since then is how good he was and how good you are. You’d think nobody else could hunt or drive dogs or any other damn thing but you, and you learned all of it from Dad. Well, he taught me some stuff too.”

  Carl said, “You don’t seem to have learned it very well.”

  Charlie frowned at the brothers and twisted his hands together.

  Carl stood up. “See you later.”

  “Where you going?” Bill asked.

  “I think Ilene’s expecting me. And I want to hear what Herb told the girls about the bear hunt. Or should I call it a bear stalk?”

  “Call it anything you want.”

  “You want me to tell Ilene anything?”

  Bill lunged at Carl, who was expecting it and wrapped his arms around his chest as Bill hit him in a flying tackle. Bill pulled loose and swung his fist in a roundhouse right that just missed Carl’s face. As his body followed the momentum of the swing, Carl stepped in close and drove his fist into Bill’s stomach. He crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath.

  Charlie was watching the action as if it were a pingpong match. Carl stood with legs spread, fists tight, waiting to see if there would be more.

  “You can’t have my girl,” Bill spat out. “You got everything else. You can’t have her!”

  “Some got it and some don’t, little brother.”

  And he was gone.

  Charlie leaned back in his chair. Bill got up off the floor and stood with one hand on the table.

  “Uncle Charlie…I’ve been thinking to go to the Yukon and get me a job on that highway they’re building up to Alaska. Is it okay with you I go? I’ve got to get out of here. It’s not like you need me here.”

  Charlie pondered a minute. “That’s a long ways—first to Venetie—that’s ninety miles. How you
plan to get that far?”

  “I can walk. Carl did it—I can do it.”

  Charlie shook his head. He thought about Isaac and Chris Katongan and what they looked like when the searchers found them near Century Creek. “Too hard. I know several people didn’t make it. You don’t know what it’s like to…”

  “I’m not a kid anymore Uncle Charlie. Carl’s not the only one who can do things. You have to let me try—I know I can do it.”

  “What would your Dad say if I lost you?” Charlie got up, walked to the window and leaned on the counter looking out. He wore a scowl visible even in the dim light. His eyes clouding, he remembered his youth. He would have walked it at seventeen—he was sure of it. Now here was Bill, just a kid, wanting to follow that trail out of the village to Fort Yukon and a life away from us. For the last eight years he had been father and mother to the boys, treating their wounds, hearing their adventures, seeing them grow, knowing they were learning what it took to be a man in this world. The mother, dead for so long now, but the father—recent enough that he could still see his face.

  “There’s a trail. I’ll be there in two days—three at the…”

  “You can’t hunt bear! How can go all that way by yourself?”

  Bill looked down.

  Charlie watched him, but did not speak. The muscles in his jaw flexed. He turned to look out the window. A truck started up somewhere in the village, the distant sounds penetrating the cabin walls, nearby a dog barked. Bill heard himself swallow.

  “What do you know of these things?” Charlie said. “You’re just a kid. Carl had been trapping with your dad—he knew hard times. He went when your dad was alive. If he got in trouble your dad could have helped him. I can’t do that. Carl’s a natural athlete—strong, capable. He could go now where your dad couldn’t go.” Charlie shook his finger at Bill. “You can’t compare yourself to Carl.” He turned his head slowly and stared at the floor.