My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian Read online

  No way was I taking 20 dogs. I didn’t want to start with more than 16, four more than I’d ever driven at one time. And I might take as few as 14, a fine-sized dog team, easier to feed and care for.

  Swenson once won mushing a small team. That was before huge dog strings became the standard, a trend fueled by the paranoia of big men repeatedly being beaten by tiny women. Besides, top racers were always telling me that the key to assembling a good team was leaving marginal dogs at home. Hell, at Deadline, we had a whole kennel of question marks.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d like to take a small team and get them all to Nome.”

  “No, no, no, O’D. This isn’t a baby-sitting trip,” they said. “This is a race.”

  Worn down by their arguments, I agreed to take 17 dogs, including Daphne, Gnat, and Denali—three dogs in whom I placed absolutely no faith at all.

  Root hadn’t fully recovered from the Klondike. I was also leaving out Beast and Casey. Both lacked the stamina for the marathon ahead. Mowry pushed me to take Casey.

  “Take her as far as Eagle River. Casey’s good for twenty miles.”

  “I’m not taking her. Forget it.” I said, flatly refusing to take so-called disposable dogs. I still wanted to reach Nome without dropping a single dog.

  The veterans thought my goal was idiotic. Dropping problem dogs was, to them, a fundamental piece of racing strategy.

  Watching us loading for the big trip, Cyrus whined, Spook let loose a guttural wail, even old Skidders grew agitated, pacing from side to side on his chain and snapping his teeth. The chorus became raucous as we leaned the bow of my fully-packed sled on the rear of the truck, then slid it into place on top of the dog box. They knew. They always do.

  I rolled into Cyndi’s yard about 3:00 A.M. Jack Studer, a savvy former racer whose advice always hit the mark, had warned me to take extra care staking out the dogs in Wasilla. They would be frisky from confinement and keyed up in the strange surroundings, he said—a combination that spelled trouble.

  Though I took special pains separating the males and other known troublemakers, a dog fight exploded minutes after I went inside Cyndi’s house. It was over before I even got my shoes on to go back out. I wasn’t sure who was involved until I spotted the blood-splattered snow near the Rat. She had puncture wounds on one front paw and foreleg. A quarter-sized flap of skin dangled from Daphne’s right front leg. This from two sweet females that had never so much as growled.

  I felt sick. Rat was supposed to be leading out of Anchorage. Fortunately, a local nurse was staying at Cyndi’s. She cleaned the dogs’ wounds, soaking their injured legs in Epsom salts and applying an antiseptic.

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” the nurse said.

  I didn’t believe her.

  Monday morning I had Dr. James Leach examine the injured pair as he conducted a required prerace veterinary check on the team. The quick actions of the nurse had saved the day, Leach said. The Rat received another shot, and Daphne needed stitches, which set me back an unexpected $144. But the vet assured me that both dogs ought to be ready on Saturday.

  Freezing rain was falling as I reloaded the dogs in the truck. I put the truck in four-wheel drive and crept out onto the Parks Highway. The steering wheel had no effect on the glazed pavement. We slowly drifted across the highway. Another car was approaching. The driver apparently hit his brakes, and the car started spinning.

  My entire team was on board, and all I could do was watch. The other car finally stopped about ten feet short of my bumper. We both smiled nervously and fled. The highway was soon closed by a collision involving several vehicles.

  Get me to the starting line, please!

  A jet carrying my family touched down in Anchorage five days before the race. The visit represented their first family trip since 1985 when my mom had hauled the five of us to a wedding in Minnesota. The group included my brother Coleman, his wife Bonnie, my brother Blaine, my sisters Leigh and Karen, my mom Fanchon, and her sister Margo. Only Karen had visited Alaska before.

  I couldn’t spare any time to play tour guide. The family checked into an Anchorage hotel and drove to Wasilla in a rental van. It was icy, and my mother and aunt barely made it from the driveway into Cyndi’s house without falling.

  “They’re so small!” my sister Leigh said, seeing sled dogs for the first time.

  “This one’s more like I would expect,” Blaine said, pointing to Harley. “THIS IS A DOG! You sure these other scrawny ones will make it?”

  Inside the living room, I felt like a contestant on a game show, answering a dozen questions at once. Cyndi’s house was equipped with a woodstove and an oil heater for backup. In my rush to get ready, I’d let the stove cool. The room temperature, probably in the high 50s, felt balmy to me, in my long underwear. Along with all their other questions, my mother, brothers, and sisters kept mentioning the weather. I patiently shared what I knew about Alaska statistics.

  “Hey Brian,” Coleman said finally, “you realize we’re freezing here.”

  My mother seconded that opinion. “If you look around, we’re all still wearing our coats.”

  I got a late start Thursday. Moonshadow Kennel driver Tom Daily and I bumped into each other at a gas station in Anchorage. Both of us were lost, pleading with strangers for directions to the Clarion Hotel, the site of the Iditarod’s mandatory pre-race meeting.

  The streets were slippery. A guy in a small car rammed me. I jumped out, fearing a catastrophe. The dog truck was unscratched, but the car’s grill was smashed. The guy just stood there, staring at the damage.

  “Look,” I said, “this was clearly your fault. You agree, don’t you?”

  He nodded yes.

  “Good, because I don’t have time to mess with cops.”

  I roared off, leaving him standing by the ruined car.

  Twelve mushers, including Daily and me, missed the first roll call. Jim Kershner, who was again serving as race marshal, fined us $500 apiece. Then I found out that fines wouldn’t be collected until and unless I again entered the race in some future year. A reprieve. I put the fine out of my mind. Nothing mattered beyond the starting line on Saturday.

  The Egan Center ballroom was packed. Last-minute withdrawals cut the number of teams to 75. No matter. My early entry had paid off. My name was number 3 5 on the list, meaning that I’d be drawing for position with others in the top half of the field.

  The actual drawing was a tedious affair. Kershner held up a boot filled with buttons marked with starting position numbers. One by one, we mushers reached for a number, then stepped up to the podium in front of a huge Iditarod banner and thanked friends and sponsors. Folks at my table checked off the positions as they were announced.

  I lined up ahead of Terry Adkins and Nels Anderson. The three of us were drawing for the last starting positions in the first half of the draw. Afterward, Kershner would refill the boot with buttons representing starting positions 38-75 for mushers, like Madman, who had signed up after that first day of registration in July, so many months ago.

  As we awaited our turn for position, I bantered with Adkins, a true Iditarod legend.

  When the mushers set out for Nome in the inaugural 1973 race, Redington talked the U.S. Air Force into letting Adkins, a Kentucky-born military veterinarian, serve as Iditarod’s first chief veterinarian. A year later, Adkins returned to Nome mushing his own team to a nineteenth-place finish. Adkins missed the 1975 race, but that was the last time an Iditarod started without the wise-cracking Montanan manning a sled.

  Adkins hadn’t finished higher than twentieth since 1986. This year promised to be different. He was coming off a stunning victory over Butcher in the 500-mile John Beargrease, and there was reason to believe it hadn’t been a fluke.

  Following his retirement from the service a year earlier, Adkins had begun experimenting with a new approach to dog training in San Coulee, Montana. Rejecting conventional theories about the dangers of overtraining, Adkins kept his dogs working
through the summer, dragging a heavy car chassis through the mountains near his home. By the start of the race, each dog in Adkins’s team had over 4,000 miles of conditioning, nearly twice the mileage most mushers considered optimum. The result of his intensive high-aerobic training had been evident at the Beargrease. The Montanan’s team hadn’t been the fastest in the race, but no one else had dared march over 200 miles in a single shot.

  Kershner didn’t have a number 1 button in his boot. That position was traditionally bestowed upon an honorary musher chosen by the Iditarod Trail Committee. That ceremonial spot was reserved this year for the late Dr. Rolland Lombard, a sprint-mushing great. The musher leading the way out of Anchorage—launching the largest field in the nineteen-year history of Redington’s Last Great Race to Nome—that job belonged to the driver of team number 2.

  As we three approached the stage, the number 2 button was still in Kershner’s boot, along with button numbers 13 and 33. No driver in the field was better suited to put that starting advantage to good use than was Terry Adkins, the man standing behind me. Give his marathoners a lead, and they might just hold to Nome. He badly wanted that first spot.

  I reached in the boot and fingered the three buttons, finally settling on one of them. I flashed my choice to Kershner, who rolled his eyes. Then I stepped up to the microphone.

  “As most of you know, I’m a reporter. Well, I’m going to be able to write about WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO LEAD THE IDITAROD!”

  A hush fell over the room, then slowly gave way to hoots and giggles. I held up the number 2 button and waved it around for all to see. Deadline Dog Farm’s team would lead the charge out of Anchorage.

  Each musher would take along a handler as far as Eagle River, loaded in the sled bag or trailing behind on a second sled. It was a safety measure. Countless things could go wrong driving a dog team through the crowds and traffic of Alaska’s largest city. Kershner gave mushers the option of taking that extra rider as far as Knik Lake, where the Iditarod Trail left the road system for good. My brother Coleman had agreed to ride along on the first 20 miles, with Eric Troyer from the News-Miner filling in afterward.

  Listening to me onstage, it dawned on my brother that thousands of people would be watching us. Coleman was not at all thrilled with that idea. He hadn’t admitted it to anyone, but his shoulders and knees still ached from our test run earlier in the week. His wife, Bonnie, was also frightened. She pictured her husband being dragged to his death in front of cheering crowds of bloodthirsty Alaskans.

  A parade of well-wishers came over to our table. Fellow rookie Laird Barron, still waiting for his chance to draw, slapped me on the shoulder. Marcie and Kevin were giddy with excitement, babbling about sled-packing tips and dog-feeding strategies. Lavon Barve, who had drawn the fourth starting position, brought me down to reality.

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” said Barve, a perennial contender. “But I’m gonna pass you, probably about four miles out. Here’s how I want you to handle your team….”

  When I got the chance, I split for the pay phones downstairs. Mowry wasn’t in a position to help me with the start. The sportswriter and Nora were off in Canada covering the Quest, which was already underway. Before he left, Tim had talked to his old trail partner, Peter Kelly, about helping me at the start. I called the Iditarod veteran from the banquet hall to confirm that he would be available.

  “Peter,” I said, “you’re not going to believe it. We’re going to have to have our shit together—I’m going out first.”

  “Far out,” Kelly said.

  Mowry refused to believe the news at first, but then he became excited. Going out first virtually guaranteed our team would beat the mob to Skwentna, the Coach reasoned, providing me with a tremendous advantage.

  CHAPTER 3

  Leader of the Pack

  I’d snatched barely two hours of rest before Peter Kelly and his friends showed up at Cyndi’s on race day. Kelly was impressed that I got any sleep at all. It was 4 A.M., but I didn’t feel tired. The Day was here.

  I took advantage of the hour-long drive to interrogate Kelly about the trail. He listened to me ramble for a while, then passed me a cup of coffee laced with a strong shot of Kahlua.

  “You need to settle down, man.”

  We arrived at Iditarod’s staging area about 5:30 A.M. One of the 225 volunteers assisting with the start checked off my name and directed us to the front of the parking lot. After a wait of about 20 minutes, we were waved through a corridor of downtown streets to Fourth Avenue. Parking spots were assigned in reverse starting order, providing handlers with an easy exit route. Our space was located at the far end of the closed avenue, four and a half blocks from the starting line. “A long, long, long way,” decided Nancy Marti, as she surveyed the scene. Nancy dreaded the moment when she and my other handlers would begin shepherding the team toward the distant countdown area.

  Kelly noticed that the stars were exceptionally bright. It was crisp and cool in the predawn hours, a good morning to be mushing. He removed dogs from the truck, one at a time, and fastened Iditarod’s team ID tags on their collars, a ritual that brought back memories of his own grand departures. In his two Iditarod starts, Kelly had relied on cues from the mushers nearby. He watched to see if they thought snow conditions warranted booties. The movements of teams ahead of his signaled it was time to harness the dogs.

  Today was different. “Everybody is keying off us,” Peter realized with a shudder.

  We positioned the sled and uncoiled the team’s gang line. The length needed for 17 dogs was staggering. Each pair of dogs extended the line another 8 feet in front of my sled. The leaders, Rainy and Rat, would be almost 80 feet ahead of me. Turns were going to be real interesting.

  My family soon turned up, as did Eric Troyer, News-Miner managing editor Dan Joling, and a growing swarm of friends and spectators. Rigging chains around the truck, we brought the dogs out for good. I posted the volunteers at strategic places, ready to intervene if fights broke out. “Your basic midmanagement job,” Joling said.

  At 8 A.M., with 62 minutes to go, the sun was high and bright. Crowds were building along the barricades. A crew of veterinarians examined the dogs, but found nothing amiss. Jim Kershner was next. The race marshal inspected my sled for required gear, including a bundle of U.S. mail to be delivered in Nome, a tribute to the mail carriers who served Alaska by dog team as late as the 1940s. Finding my snowshoes, booties, axe, sleeping bag, and the mail packet were in order, Kershner wished me luck.

  With 45 minutes to go, we harnessed the dogs, rechaining them outside the truck. Aunt Margo was stalking me with a videocam and a newspaper map. Where should she stand to get the best pictures?

  “I haven’t got a clue,” I snapped. “I’m just following the damn arrows.”

  News photographers and video crews shadowed my movements. This rookie’s lucky draw couldn’t have been scripted better.

  “I’ll be leading the Last Great Race, and not many people can say that,” I said over and over.

  Another reporter asked how long I expected to stay out in front of the pack.

  “For three or four blocks.”

  Thirty minutes to go. My handlers began assembling the team. I directed the placement of each dog, working from a chart scrawled on a legal pad. From front to back, the lineup called for Rat and Rainy in lead; followed by Cricket and Raven; Screech and Daphne; Chad and Scar; Denali and Pig; Spook and Digger; Bo, Skidders, and Harley; with Cyrus and Gnat in wheel. Bo, our kennel scrapper, got a solo spot to ensure that the Iditarod’s live telecast didn’t begin with blood spilled in the snow.

  Twenty minutes left. Handlers and several Iditarod volunteers assumed positions along the gang line. Troyer knelt in front, calming the leaders. Digger madly shoveled snow with his front paws. Spook uttered his keening wail. Other dogs whined anxiously or jerked on the gang line.

  Joling was assigned to the ballerinas, Raven and Cricket. “Approximately ninety pounds of y
elping fury,” he called the pair.

  I left Cyrus chained to the truck until the very last second, a slight that drove him insane with worry. He whined. He stood on his hind legs pawing the air. Other dogs were going someplace. Why not him? Why not him?

  I remembered the day Rattles had brought over the young black-and-white dog for a tryout.

  “This is Cyrus. He’s a Rum dog, a Rummm dog,” said Rattles, chanting the phrase like a mantra.

  We had been hearing tales of the late great Rum for months. Rum was merely the leader immortalized, according to Rattles, in the Quest’s official sled-dog logo. His bloodline was marked by distinctive barrel-chested dogs with pointy snouts.

  Barely two years old, Cyrus was Rum’s grandson. Like his proud owner, the pup was painfully loud. The dog whined day and night and whooped for joy when Rattles’s pickup entered our driveway. At 50 pounds, the big lunk was prone to knocking food pans out of my hands and chewing anything within reach.

  “Jesus, Rattles, has that dog even been harness-broken?” Mowry said after wrestling Cyrus into the team for the first time.

  “He’s a Rum dog,” Rattles replied, as if no other answer was needed.

  Mowry tested the dog during the week I was away on the Klondike.

  The Coach began cautiously, taking Cyrus on a 15-mile run. The young dog was hardly panting when he returned. So Mowry ventured to try him on 30-milers, several days in a row, then 3 5, then 50 miles.

  “I can’t tire that dog out,” the Coach said when I got back, for once truly impressed.

  Today I had a special slot reserved for Cyrus. He’d be leaving town paired with Gnat in wheel position, which locked them down directly in front of the sled. Rattles’s pup was too wild to trust anyplace else, and I wanted Gnat where I could keep him under close watch.

  It was time.

  Coleman stood ready on the back sled. “Let’s go!” I shouted, pulling the rope. Feeling give in the gang line, the dogs plunged ahead. Clawing and straining they dragged the sleds and handlers forward. My handlers skidded and struggled to keep their footing in the mushy snow, which had been trucked in to Anchorage and dumped on the barren street for the occasion.