Thirty Below. Harry Groome

Yukon Territory stretching to the east, British Columbia to the south, and began to urinate on trees, defecate on rocks and rub his sleek body against prominent landmarks to create scent posts that would mark his new territory—his new home.

      He stood in the shade of birch trees, protecting himself from the building heat of the morning sun and surveying the grassy meadow in front of him, his yellow, slyly curved eyes blinking with sleep. Once assured that he was safe, he walked along the fallen birch trunk he was standing on, stepped off it and began to search for a shaded spot to lie down and sleep.

      His bed once selected, he stretched his forepaws in front of him and moved them close together, lowered his front shoulders until his keel-like chest rested on the grass. He let out a low grunt as he stretched his long frame and then turned in a tight circle a number of times and lay down. For a moment he closed his eyes, his tail folding the grass as it swept slowly from side to side, and then he rolled over and pushed his legs stiff above him, the wound on his foreleg a hairless, glossy pink where the torn skin had begun to grow together. He worked his muscular frame against the ground to scratch his black and buff, thickly furred back. With each turn of his body he uttered a guttural grunt of ecstasy and finally raised his head and pointed his throat and muzzle toward the snow-capped mountains in the distance, opened his large jaws and howled one husky, resonating howl. Lonely but determined, he was calling for a companion to help him in the hunt, to couple with him and start their pack. He listened for a far-away answer, but the meadows, streams, forest and mountains were silent, and he curled into a tight ball and went to sleep.

      4

      WEDGED INTO a cramped canvas seat of a de Havilland Beaver, Carrie adjusted a pair of olive drab earphones, careful not to disturb the dark glasses nestled on her tight blonde curls. She stared out the airplane’s window, half-dazed, half-amazed by what she was witnessing. She was being transported to the Alaska bush and beginning the adventure with the man she thought—finally—might just be the man she’d so desperately been looking for.

      As the Beaver’s powerful engine droned on, Carrie looked down at a frozen river that shimmered like a silver ribbon on the blackening valley floor as it wandered beneath jagged mountains that climbed above her, their glaciers turning from white and watery blue to copper as the sun settled behind their peaks. Through her headset she heard Bart’s reassuring voice: “That’s the Chitina River.”

      Once again it was as though he sensed what she was about to ask, and once more Carrie wondered how this relationship would work out—living with a man who always seemed to know what she was thinking—when Bart pointed to the mountains within her view. “Some of those peaks are 16,000 feet high.”

      She said it was beautiful and slipped back into her trance until they passed over a small cluster of buildings and, a moment later, over another. She straightened in her seat and tapped a freshly manicured fingernail against the window, her black down mittens swinging freely from the snaps on her parka sleeves. “Bart, what are those?”

      “That’s the Bremner gold mine right below us. It’s been abandoned for years. The bigger settlements were mining towns. They’re mostly ghost towns now.”

      “People actually lived there?”

      He turned to her and nodded. “Some still do.”

      Carrie shook her head in amazement. He had to be kidding; no one could survive out there no matter how badly they wanted whatever it was they were after—gold or no gold.

      It was with this thought that she finally began to understand what it was she was undertaking, and her conviction that she was doing the right thing with the right man started to surrender to the thought that she might be doing the single dumbest thing of her young life. She shook her head and watched the vast landscape of trees and the frozen, snow-dusted ponds grow larger and larger as the pilot began his approach to the Wrangell Mountain Expeditions’ air strip. The plane began to bounce and rock and her stomach pushed into her throat and she grabbed Bart by the shoulder of his parka and cried, “Sweet Jesus!”

      “It’s okay, Carrie,” he said. “Not to worry, Whitey’s done this thousands of times.”

      The plane rocked and twisted for a few moments more before touching down and skiing to a halt at the end of a snow-covered runway where Whitey switched off the engine. “Just in time, McFee,” he said. “Another fifteen minutes and we’d been zero-zero.”

      “Zero-zero?” Carrie asked.

      “Not enough visibility to land,” Bart said.

      She pulled off her headset and tapped Bart on the shoulder. “But it’s not even four o’clock yet. You said the days were short, but how short?”

      “When the damn darkness sets in, the sun kind of glows from behind the mountains for a few hours, and that’s about it.” He patted the sleeve of her bulky down parka. “Don’t worry. That only goes on for a few months. You’ll love it. You’ll see. Where else can you watch the moon rise while you’re eating breakfast?”

      Carrie stared at Bart, and while she couldn’t believe his response, she also couldn’t believe the beauty of his chiseled profile, his straight nose and strong-looking jaw. Gorgeous, gentle Bart, she thought, and muttered, “Where else?”

      THAT NIGHT, Carrie lay with Bart under layers of thick, brightly striped Hudson Bay blankets in blackness the likes of which she’d never experienced. Before sleep began to overtake her, she listened to the wind roll down the snow-packed runway and past their little cabin. Mixed with the wind’s screaming, she could hear the lectures Hannah had given her before she left La Jolla, starting with the familiar “when are you ever going to learn?” speech that this time began, “You damn near got raped a few weeks ago and now you’re running off to Alaska with a guy you’ve only been dating for two weeks? Get real, Carrie. Get a grip!”

      “But he’s not a stranger anymore, and maybe he never was,” Carrie had insisted. “I feel like I’ve known him all my life. And he’s so gentle and patient. And he cares about what I think and how I feel. And he’s an adventurer. And he’s—”

      “Gorgeous,” Hannah interrupted. “But aren’t they all?” She paused and asked again, for what seemed to Carrie like the hundredth time, “But Alaska, Carrie? Alaska?”

      Carrie argued that the timing was perfect, that she needed a change and Hannah answered that she’d said the same thing the week before. “And the week before that and the week before that.”

      “But this time it’s different, Hannah. I promise. Something tells me Bart’s the man I’ve been waiting for and it’s not just because he’s so gorgeous. He understands me; knows who I am. I feel trapped here. I need a change. I really do. I’m twenty-nine, my biological clock’s ticking, and nothing new ever happens in my life. Nothing. Ever. Please, don’t hate me for this but I’ve got to get out of the rut I’m in and get away from this place for a while.”

      “Okay, okay,” Hannah said, “but running off to Alaska, is that really the best solution to your problems?”

      “There’s only one way to find out,” Carrie answered, hoping she was right. “So, good-bye root canals and lecherous dentists and Saturdays at the mall, and good-bye singles scene.” She patted Hannah’s hand confidently and smiled. “It’s okay. If it doesn’t work out, I can always come home.”

      With that Hannah’s tone softened slightly, but she continued to ask questions as if she had a checklist for Carrie that she was determined to complete. “But have you ever wondered why there are tons of single men up there and so few single women? Why Bart had to run an ad to find someone who’d take him up on his crackpot idea?”

      “Don’t worry—”

      Hannah pointed her finger at her. “Because not many women are as restless as you are; that’s why. Just listen to this again and listen carefully.” Hannah read aloud from the Personals section of the San Diego Union Tribune: ‘Be free again.’ She stopped. “Free, my ass, Carrie. Since when is being