November, 1976. It's been 40 below in the Copper Basin for a week. My truck heater barely works. I'm supposed to meet Gordon in Chitina.
November, 1976. It's been 40 below in the Copper Basin for a week. My truck heater barely works. I'm supposed to meet Gordon in Chitina. He's hauling a load of copper and silver ore called calcacite out of McCarthy. We call it "jeweler's grade," and envision using rock saws to cut the ore into thin blue and silver wafers for pendents and ear rings.
Gordon served in the marines at Iwo Jima, and then showed up in McCarthy to work as a caretaker at the Kennicott, the richest copper mine in the world. His wife followed him and they built cabins in McCarthy and Chitina. She ended up bailing out after too much cold and dark. He's been alone for the last 20 years.
"Go into Chitina where the road bends to the left and turn right up the hill. It's the last cabin," Gordon had said.
The thermometer is climbing when I stop in Glenallen for gas. By the time I get to the Edgerton Cutoff, forty miles from Chitina, it's getting dark and snow is falling in big flakes. The flatbed lights carve tunnels through the snow, but one windshield wiper doesn't work and I can't see the right side of the road.
In Chitina, there is a locked single gas pump lit by a 100 watt bulb. I have to guess who has the keys, and end up at a frame building set back in the trees with tar paper on the sides. Gordon's place is another half-mile down the road. The cabin, an old two story affair at the top of a steep drive, faces rocky hills separating the town from the Copper River. No lights are visible, nor any sign that a vehicle has been there. I grab a flashlight and go in, expecting to build a fire. It's warm inside.
I shine the light around and hear a voice. It's Gordon's daughter Kathy, sitting in a chair by the barrel stove next to her boyfriend Mark. We met last summer at Gordon's mining claims.
"What's going on," I ask.
"We ran out of white gas three weeks ago," she says.
I grab a can of fuel from the flatbed, fill a Coleman lantern and light it. In the kitchen, dozens of large empty cans are strewn about the plywood counter.
"Do you have food?"
"We've been living off the ravioli," Mark says.
An empty cardboard box sits on the floor near my feet with "Chef Boyardee" on the side.
"Eating in the dark?"
"We stayed warm," he replies. "There wasn't much you could do but sit in the chair or go to bed."
"Except to watch the UFO," Kathy says. She tells me that a large spacecraft set down one night on a ridge visible from the cabin window. She gestures toward the hills on the other side of Chitina.
"It looked like a giant dragonfly." Her voice pitches higher. "It had wings and a long body with a big head."
"How long did you watch it?"
"It sat on the ridge for nearly an hour. We could see lights inside and creatures moving around."Â She is shouting and gesturing with her hands. I look at Mark, his long hair shades his eyes, but he nods in agreement.
Headlights flash through the window. It's Gordon in his Dodge Power Wagon with a ton of ore.
"Overflows on the road near Strelna," he says. "I need a flashlight. My lights started flickering after plowing through the last one."
I hand him my light. He disappears under the hood of the Power Wagon, finds a frayed wire, and wraps it with black tape. We start unloading fifty pound burlap bags filled with calcacite and lift them up onto the back of the flatbed. After tying down the load, I grab some groceries, and we go inside. Mark and Kathy stay in the shadows, only coming into the light as I hand out food. I don't say anything about the UFO. The next morning, I look at the ridge where the spaceship set down and tell Gordon about the interstellar dragonfly.
He shrugs. He asks if I can drop him off in Copper Center to pick up a car he left during a cold snap, and wants to know if I have jumper cables. We jump in the flatbed and I start backing down the hill. "It's Mark and Kathy's first winter," he says.