Original Manuscript written by Michael R. Delany
Copyright
©
2002 Michael R. Delany
First published 2012 by Michael R. Delany
Title – The Moose Jaw
Author – Mike Delany
All rights reserved by Michael R. Delany
Acknowledgements: I wish to thank my wife Cynthia, my daughter Shannon, son Sean, grandsons Nick and Nino Delany, as well as my many friends and neighbors who read and reread this manuscript and provided helpful criticism and valuable advice throughout its development. I’d also like to thank Jim Hagee, my best friend and longtime hunting companion. He lives in Alaska where he owns a small animal veterinary practice; he is a seasoned bush pilot as well. Those who know him may see a certain resemblance between him and Haywood Jennings, a character in this novel. I should like to make it clear that any resemblance between the two is purely coincidental. But I won’t.
Further, many thanks to Jim’s son, Justin Hagee, who agreed to let me use his gruesome trophy skull on the cover of this book. It is all that remains of a venerable old bull moose he shot while hunting with his father on Beaver Creek in the White Mountains north of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Finally, I wish to recognize Keith Brown whose photograph of Hagee’s moose skull set against an Alaskan winterscape appears on the cover of this novel. Keith is a retired Air Force photographer who now does freelance work out of Eagle River, Alaska. Having captured three wars on film, he finds photographing moose skulls in the frozen wilderness infinitely more peaceful.
Michael Delany
Brookbend
December, 2011
Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. Like most works of fiction, the characters, settings, and events contained herein are fictitious. Moose Jaw Creek does not exist, nor does The Varmitage, the Snow Viper, or the Rainbow Lodge. The murders I have dubbed the Rainbow Lodge murders never happened.
That said, some of the things in this novel are real. Alaska is a real place. Skinny Dick’s is a real roadhouse south of Fairbanks. Wolves and grizzlies are real too, as are yega. Hard Case Calis, fictitious character though he is, explained yega best when he described the spirit world of the far north in one of his journals:
Every tree, rock, river, drop of rain or breath of wind we find in the natural world has a supernatural essence also…a soul, if you will. A tree is a tree, but it is also a spirit or god or demigod. This duality in the nature of all things makes the supernatural a part of – rather than apart from – the natural world we live in. There is no impenetrable barrier that separates the “real world” from the “spirit world”. The wall between the two worlds is one of gossamer, rather than stone…a fragile membrane, full of rents and tears, riddled with portals and passages.
Fergus O’Neill, Hard Case’s friend, and also the main character in this novel, unknowingly discovered one of those passages.
Michael Delany
December, 2011
The Rainbow Lodge murders
, brutal as any in Alaska’s history, were relegated to page three of the Bush Telegraph. That was understandable, of course, considering the editor of that small Fairbanks weekly had more exciting stories to report. There had been a record number of trophy moose killed in the autumn of 1959. The entire front page had been dedicated to black-and-white photographs of proud hunters awkwardly holding their rifles. They stood, or knelt beside bloodied, fallen beasts whose enormous antlers pointed skyward while their tongues lolled in the dirt. Then too, Frances Howard had just become the first female admitted into the ranks of the Alaska State Troopers. As one might expect, this triggered a fusillade of outrage and consternation from the rugged males of America’s last frontier. Nearly all the editorial page had been given over to the airing of their bitter protests. What little space remained was devoted to Alaska’s recently granted statehood, and how federal oversight and regulation would sound the death knell for personal freedoms in the remote north.
With so much stimulating copy available, the killing of two men out in the bush was not likely to generate much interest among the hard-bitten denizens of the Interior. Violent death, in that untamed land, was commonplace. Just to survive men struggled with the elements, with wild beasts and with one another. Some lived – some died. It was expected. It was inevitable. It was not news. So the killings appeared in the “Police Blotter” column, listed among reports of bar brawls, wife beatings, claim jumping and poaching.
Moose Jaw Drainage - Two dead men were found in a burned fishing lodge on Rainbow Creek last Thursday. Trooper Tobias (Pokey) Brewster told this reporter it appeared the men had been murdered and the lodge burned afterward. The bodies were badly charred, but it was evident one of the men had died of multiple stab wounds. The other had been shot. Both victims were mutilated. Names cannot be released until family members have been located and notified.
With so little ink spared for a gruesome double homicide, it is not surprising that two people from Seattle, missing and presumed dead on Moose Jaw Creek, were not mentioned at all. It is also not surprising that the Rainbow Lodge murders were never solved. As to the missing persons – well, that’s another story entirely.
Moose Jaw Creek, Alaska
Summer Solstice – June 2000
It was a magic place – a place of clear water, cool breezes, snowcapped mountains and midnight sun. I stood on the gravel bar and listened to the rush of the creek as I watched Haywood’s old airplane climb slowly into the blue sky, bank south, and head for Fairbanks. It grew smaller, became no more than a speck, then winked out.
I was alone.
When I got back to camp I pulled a bottle of beer from the icy waters of the creek and popped off its cap. I sat on a log, sipped the beer, and contemplated the boxes and river bags stacked on the hard-packed earth around the crumbling stone chimney. It had taken two trips to bring all my gear in from Fairbanks. The plane’s maximum payload was eight hundred and fifty pounds, including fuel and passengers. The boxes and bags contained all the material I would need to survive a summer of self-imposed exile. The intangibles – the courage, determination, and ingenuity I’d need – would have to come from within. But then, that was the whole idea.
The old monastic orders believed that men must retreat from the madness of the secular world and live a life of solitude, meditation and physical labor in order to find spiritual contentment. I agreed. I had come here to be alone. I wanted to work with my hands, sweat real sweat and seek that Holy Grail, inner peace. I was a builder; I had to build something. So, here I was on Moose Jaw Creek, deep in the Alaska bush. I had come to build a cabin, reflect on the past and decide what to do with the rest of my life.
When the beer was gone I lit my pipe and sat a while longer. There was no hurry. I settled in, puffed gently on the pipe, and let my eyes drink in the beauty around me as my ears took in the soft sounds of the water and the wind, and my soul basked in the silence. I was finally, truly and gladly – here. I was finally, truly and completely alone. I’d build my cabin on this very spot, and its solid structure, and this wild creek, and the Alaska bush would be my present and my future.
***
I had returned from England in early June
, one of the first casualties of the dot.com crash. Losing both job and wife in the same day had taken its toll. ConSort, the British engineering firm for which I worked gave me the sack six months before the end of my contract, and Sylvia, my wife of twenty-five years, gave me notice of a different kind. She revealed that she had been having an affair with Gaspard, my trusted French friend, and she would not be returning to America with me. I needed some time alone to regroup, sort through the emotional wreckage, and see what could be salvaged. Outrage, anger and resentment simmered in me just below the surface. And, although I hated to admit it, wounded pride and self-pity pecked at my psyche like crows on a carcass.
I spent one week at Morning Rock, my home in the Colorado Rockies. It’s an old stone-and-timber lodge situated on a few acres of evergreens along Bear Creek. I loved the peace and serenity of the place, but every room held reminders of Sylvia and the life we had shared. Then too, my Uncle Jack, a retired Bell Labs genius who had volunteered to house sit for us while we were in Europe had put down roots in our absence. He was writing a book on the best North America trout streams and Colorado was the perfect base camp for him. He had been both father and mother to me since my folks were killed in a car wreck when I was twelve years old. I needed time alone, but I didn’t have the heart to ask him to leave. When he informed me that he’d given my son Casey permission to cohabit the guest cabin with two female “friends” from college, I knew I’d need a change of venue if I was to exorcize my demons.
I owned a small piece of property in Alaska. It was deep in the bush on Moose Jaw Creek, and accessible only by airplane or boat. I’d purchased it, sight-unseen, with last year’s bonus money. It was time I had a look at it. At the end of the week I called Haywood and told him I was headed north.
Haywood Jennings is, and has been for many years, my best friend. He had moved to Alaska several years ago after a rather tempestuous divorce. He’s a first-rate veterinary surgeon and has a small-animal practice in Fairbanks. Each September I would fly up, and we’d spend two weeks in the bush, hunting moose and caribou. We’d been very successful on our trips down the Moose Jaw, and it had been Haywood who alerted me to the property I’d purchased. He was clearly surprised to hear my voice but sounded pleased, nevertheless.
“Gustopher!” he shouted.
I laughed. Only Haywood could come up with a name like Gustopher. My name is Gus, Fergus actually, but only my estranged wife, Sylvia, insists on calling me that. To everyone else I’m just Gus.
“Hello, Haywood,” I said. It had been six months since we’d talked. It made me feel better just to hear his voice.
“I’ll be damned,” he boomed. “Didn’t expect to hear from you till moose season. You still in England?”
“No,” I told him. “I’m at Morning Rock . Came back last week.”
“They run you out of Europe?” he joked.
“Something like that. I’ll tell you over a drink. It’s a long story. It will take some telling. Can you put me up for while?”
“Sure,” he said. Then, after a brief pause, he added, “If Sylvia’s coming along you can have my room. Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with the single bed in the guest room.”
This, of course, was his oblique way of asking if there was trouble in the O’Neill household. He was not one to pry, but he didn’t often need to. He picked up on subtleties and was insightful enough to understand their significance.
“Guest room will be fine,” I told him.
There was another pause while he picked up on that particular subtlety. Sylvia and I never took separate vacations, so it didn’t take Haywood long to grasp that all was not well in our marriage. His voice sobered a little.
“Right then,” he said. “When do you get into Anchorage? I’ll fly down and fetch you.”
“Save your fuel. I get in Monday night, but I have to stop at the title company and pick up the papers for the Moose Jaw property Tuesday morning. I’ll rent a car and drive up to Fairbanks that afternoon. I’ll be at your place by late evening.”
“Nonsense!” Haywood didn’t just say things – he announced, pronounced, exclaimed, proclaimed, boomed, and bellowed. “No point you driving when I need to get in some flying time anyway. F.A.A. requires me to do one more take-off-and-landing to stay passenger legal, so I may as well collect you while I’m about it. You should be able to get all your business done Tuesday morning. Meet me at Calvin’s Hangar at noon.” It was no use arguing with Haywood, so I agreed and we rung off.