My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian Read online

  “Like walking through a big pile of cornmeal,” Troyer told himself. He glimpsed Butcher directing a swarm of handlers attired in matching suits. Passing by Redington, Swenson, and other famous drivers preparing for their own approaching departure, Troyer noted similarities to the pits at the Indianapolis 500. He was amused at the thought of his former Yellow Press bowling partner competing against these legends of the sport.

  I didn’t notice any of that. My eyes were fixed straight ahead where I couldn’t see through the crowds blocking the street. But the sea of parkas, cameras, and barking dogs kept parting mere yards ahead of our advance, as ranks of race volunteers screamed for people to clear the way.

  Officials halted us a few doors down from the Iditarod starting-line banner, which was fluttering grandly above the avenue. After a brief pause marking the late Doc Lombard’s honorary departure, my team was waved into the chute. A crew of burly guys grabbed my sled. An announcer boomed out my name, giving a brief biography. I walked up the length of the team, petting each dog and talking to him or her for a second. Cricket’s ears drooped. The commotion had her cowed. But looking at me she shyly wagged her tail.

  “Five,” the voice boomed. “Four. Three. Two …”

  The howls ceased. Noses dipped toward the snow. Tug lines snapped taut as my 17-dog team bent to business, effortlessly yanking our two sleds forward. Loosely fastened booties flew from the paws up front. I briefly scowled, conscious that I faced a booty shortage, but the regret was soon overwhelmed by the thunderous cheers greeting my team.

  Pumping my right fist at the sky, I mushed the dogs down the center of Fourth Avenue, savoring my moment as front-runner on the Iditarod Trail. Butcher, Swenson, Runyan, Buser, and King—all the name mushers were chasing me out of Anchorage today.

  The start was broadcast live across Alaska. Watching at a friend’s house in Two Rivers, Rattles leaped to his feet as the camera zoomed in on a manic dog in the rear of my team.

  “That’s CYRUS! That’s CYRUS! CYRUS!” the Rattler shouted. “He’s going to Nome!”

  Five blocks from the starting line, the trail hung a sharp right turn onto Cordova Street. Rainy and the White Rat guided the team through the curve in a fine tight arc. My sled neatly skidded around the berm piled on the corner. Riding the handler’s sled, my brother Coleman wasn’t so lucky. Slamming into the hard snow wall, his sled flipped over sideways. Coleman understood that I wasn’t going to stop, certainly not as long as we were leading the pack. Fortunately this was the one mushing maneuver my brother had actually practiced.

  The week preceding the race had largely been consumed with official meetings and last-minute chores. The dogs, sitting on their chains in Cyndi’s yard, had energy to burn. My brother Coleman also needed a sled-riding lesson if he was going to man that second sled. Finding a few hours free, I grabbed the chance to take the dogs on a short run. It would be my family’s first chance to see a real dog team in action. Bonnie, who was three months pregnant, asked if she could go along for the ride.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it would be a good idea, Bon.”

  She was disappointed and somewhat offended by my protective attitude. I felt guilty. Her father had made this thing possible. But bringing her along would be asking for trouble. I was taking 14 dogs, leaving behind only Skidders and the two casualties. Too many things could go wrong.

  We didn’t get started until after dark. Coleman was zipped inside heavy Carhartt coveralls, wearing bunny boots and a headlamp for the first time.

  “These dogs are stronger than they look,” Blaine said appreciatively, unloading them from the truck. Until that moment, when he felt his arm being twisted by my squirming bundles of muscle and fur, my younger brother hadn’t been impressed by sled dogs.

  As the moment of departure drew near, Screech and Digger began leaping in place, straining to go. The excitement spread, and my sled bounced and wobbled under the team’s pressure, but we were firmly tied to a pole. I positioned the second sled about ten feet behind mine, attached by a thick poly towrope. Coleman planted himself on the runners.

  Bonnie was feeling apprehensive. The dogs were much wilder than she had imagined. The landscape stretching before her, an icy field giving way to a dark mass of trees, was forbidding. “I would feel a lot safer if we were doing this in daylight,” she said.

  Coleman’s sled trailed slightly at an angle to mine, but I figured it wouldn’t matter.

  “Ready?”

  “You got it,” Coleman said.

  I yanked the anchor rope. The dogs surged forward, whipping both sleds across the hard-packed crusty snow.

  Coleman’s sled slammed into the anchor pole, and he lost his footing on the runners. Remembering what I had said about never letting go of a dogsled, he hung on for all he was worth. The dogs dragged him, facedown, into the darkness.

  My eyes stayed glued on the dogs, alert for hints of a tangle developing in those first crazed minutes. Coleman’s sled remained upright, and I didn’t realize he was down until we had traveled about a quarter of a mile. When I finally stopped the team, Coleman staggered to his feet. He was weary and winded, his hair was gray from sprayed snow, but otherwise he was fine. He’d been shielded from harm by the heavy coveralls.

  “That was a rush!” he said, chuckling as he dusted himself off. “You dragged my ass a long way.”

  Coleman strapped the headlamp back on his hat before we continued, but the light slipped free. He was too nervous to let go of the sled and reach for it, so the headlamp dangled, still lit, from the end of its power cord.

  As they stood and watched, Bonnie and Blaine couldn’t see much beyond the two lights steadily moving across the open field. The lamp in front moved smoothly away, floating several feet above the dark line of dogs. But the trailing headlamp, the one Bonnie knew was strapped to Coleman’s forehead, continued bouncing on what had to be the hard, icy ground. Bonnie was horrified by that awful dancing light; she pictured her husband’s head being battered to a pulp. Blaine bellowed with laughter.

  After the lights were swallowed by a line of trees, Bonnie was nearly overcome with dread and grief. Coleman had only recently gotten over pneumonia. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, Bonnie knew that her husband was still weak. What kind of insanity had brought her here, to Alaska, to this dismal edge of known creation, to watch him dragged to his death? Bonnie hugged her stomach, swollen with the pregnancy. To think that she had wanted that dogsled ride. She felt tears coming as she imagined having to explain Coleman’s death to Sarah and Devin, the children they left at home. She and Blaine drove back to Cyndi’s. The waiting was just too awful to bear.

  Coleman and I took the dogs on a ten-mile loop. After the rough start, Coleman remained tense for several miles, expecting the sled to flip again. Nothing bad happened, and he finally relaxed, leaning into the corners and having fun. Riding a sled was like getting your sea legs, he concluded.

  Coleman put on a show for the crowds lining Anchorage’s Cordova Street. He was dragged, facedown, for about a hundred yards, then righted the sled with a twist and pulled himself aboard the runners. He was riding the brake with one knee when he noticed a pedestrian running alongside.

  “I’ve got your hat! I’ve got your hat!” cried the sprinter. The man had snatched the hat from the snow and dashed after us. He had chased the team three blocks before Coleman heard his cries. With his sled righted, we were pulling away. The man made a last desperate throw with the hat. It fell short.

  Unbeknownst to us, Daily News photographer Fran Durner caught the incident with a telephoto lens. Safely ensconced in his hotel bed the morning after the start, Coleman was awakened by Bonnie’s shrieks. Somebody had slipped a copy of the paper under the door. The back page was illustrated with a six-inch-square color photo. It showed me shouting at my brother as he belly-surfed through downtown Anchorage.

  That first morning I didn’t expect my two-minute, lead would hold up long. Team number 3 was driven by
Brian Stafford, who had dusted us in the Klondike.

  “We got company,” Coleman shouted, as Stafford’s dogs began closing in on us. We held him off for a few more blocks. But he was coming on strong as the trail shifted to a bike path and continued on into the woods.

  A short tunnel gave me the edge. Rainy and Rat sailed through it. Stafford’s leaders threw on the brakes. I pulled away as he sorted out a tangle. Fifteen minutes past the starting line, the lead in Redington’s Last Great Race remained mine. All mine.

  Minutes later, Barve’s team appeared from behind. I had to hand it to the veteran. We were approaching the exact spot he described at the banquet.

  “Stop your team. Now,” he cried, pulling alongside.

  I braked. The Iditarod had a new leader. But, it had been fun while it lasted.

  Beginner’s luck had run its course. Seconds later, rounding an easy turn into the woods, Gnat dodged the wrong way around a tree. His thin neckline snapped, as it’s designed to, but that didn’t arrest the accident in motion. A 17-dog team doesn’t stop without major persuasion. “Whooa!” I shouted, braking as hard as I could. The team rolled on, yanking Gnat backward by his tug line. He slammed into the tree and spun back around its trunk, yelping horribly.

  Damn wolves with collars, that’s what the ranchers in Colorado called Tom Daily’s sled dogs. Real dogs wouldn’t raise the unholy howls that were heard coming from the hippie’s place. The simmering resentment was getting to the easygoing, long-haired musher. Tom and Fidaa, his Saudi Arabian-born bride, were itching to move to Alaska, where Tom dreamed of mushing the Iditarod. But where were they ever going to get the money?

  The snow was on the way out. Daily figured his season was over, when a four-member group booked rides. The party included the owners of Track ’N Trail, a sport-shoe company. Daily had his hands full, keeping his dogs in line while answering their usual questions. The Iditarod came up, of course. Daily admitted that competing in the great Alaskan race was his personal goal. He described how he had once spent a few months helping at Redington’s huge kennel in Knik. It was nothing he hadn’t told tourists a thousand times before. He almost hated talking about it. The dream felt tainted by such small talk. Daily didn’t take it seriously when the clients mentioned that they might be interested in sponsoring him.

  “It costs a lot of money,” he snorted. “Thirty thousand or so. You don’t even want to think about it.”

  Two days later, the shoe-company owners called Tom and offered him full Iditarod sponsorship for two years. It was like winning the lo tery, only he hadn’t even bought a ticket. It was karma. Fate. The gods were speaking through his dogs. Packing their lives aboard a truck, the Dailys moved to Alaska.

  As Iditarod’s opening day for registration approached, Tom began to panic. He and his wife were penniless. They were living in a cloud of mosquitos, surrounded by hungry dogs, and they hadn’t seen a dime of that promised money. Tom wondered, Have I been faked out? Was this whole thing some kind of rich man’s joke? Full of doubts, Tom went into town and called the sponsors collect. He described his preparations for the race and demanded a check to cover the $1,249 entry fee. The check arrived on schedule, followed by others. Daily’s sponsorship was real. Moonshadow Kennel’s driver was bound for Nome.

  Hectic months later, the musher and his wife were entertaining Tom’s shoe-company sponsors in Anchorage. It was the last thing they wanted to be doing the night before the race. The couple hadn’t slept in two days. The packing wasn’t finished. But the sponsors suddenly turned up in Anchorage, eager to see their musher start the race—made possible by Track ’N Trail’s money. What choice did Daily and his wife have? The meal dragged on for hours. Fidaa’s self-control was strained to the limit. After dinner, she and Tom pulled an all-nighter finishing preparations for the race.

  Daily had drawn position number 20. His pit crew was weak beyond his wife and Big Larry, a bouncer from The Bush Company, a local topless joint. The rest were inexperienced helpers from the shoe company.

  “Oh no,” Fidaa cried, watching one of their volunteers fumbling with a dog harness, “we have to train the handlers.”

  Kershner’s inspection added to the stress: the handle on Daily’s axe was shorter than the 22-inch standard specified in the race rules. The race marshal could have forced the team to wait until a legal substitute was found. Instead he ruled that Tom could leave Anchorage on time, but the team wouldn’t be allowed to continue past the first checkpoint until Tom’s gear met Iditarod standards. The crisis appeared resolved when friends in Eagle River promised to meet the team there with the necessary replacement.

  “Still ahead of Butcher and Swenson!” I shouted, playing to the trailside gallery lining the first miles of city streets, parks, and power-line trails. A lot of people knew who I was from the publicity surrounding my going out first. Others relied on the photos and starting positions of each musher that had been published in the Anchorage Times that morning. True fans used the photo spread as a program to greet us by name.

  I had to change my script after Swenson joined Joe Runyan, John Barron, Garnie, and a half-dozen other top mushers streaking ahead of us. I yelled to Coleman not to worry. “Those guys are contenders.” Nome wasn’t the only goal for those top drivers. A series of prizes awaited the first musher into half a dozen of the checkpoints ahead, starting with a new pickup parked in Skwentna, 100 miles up the trail. Those guys were out of my class completely.

  It was a different story to be passed by driver number 15. Kraft General Foods employee Larry Munoz, who crept by us during a tangle, riding a sled decorated with a huge Oscar Mayer wiener. I wasn’t going to take that without a fight. I got my dogs loping, and we caught and passed the damn Hot Dog Man. Alas, my team again balled up and Munoz slipped by.

  Big Larry lost his grip on Tom’s sled as it moved toward the starting line. The other handlers were flung aside, leaving Daily powerless to slow his surging dogs. Fidaa sprinted after her husband’s team on the snowy avenue. Like Tom, she was decked out in new Northern Outfitters gear. The bright parka looked sharp, but it was too warm for the day. By the end of the first block, Fidaa was drenched in sweat. Daily was using a single sled. Fidaa was still running when the announcer called her husband’s name. He couldn’t start without a handler and she barely made it, jumping into the sled bag as the countdown ended.

  The excitement of the city gradually faded. With their sled gliding through the woods, the long hours of preparation caught up with the musher and his wife.

  “Tom,” Fidaa said, “I’m falling asleep.”

  “Yeah, I am too.”

  The Dailys exchanged foolish grins.

  Back in the city, Madman and dozens of other mushers were still fussing with their teams, awaiting their turn in the starting chute. Noon was approaching before the last musher, Mowry’s old trail companion Malcolm Vance, heard his countdown.

  Miles ahead, Tom and Fidaa were sleeping soundly while their 20-dog team trotted on, navigating the forest without any guidance. The Dailys didn’t awaken until their sled flipped and went crashing through a trail barrier. Tom sleepily righted the sled, and his frisky dogs resumed their march on a hiking trail that followed Ship Creek up into the mountains. Daily had flickerings of doubt as the trail split from the creek bed and began climbing a high canyon. He had gone a long way without seeing a marker. These curves were dangerously sharp for long strings of dogs. But this had to be right.

  The trail dead-ended at a tall fence. Daily’s leaders, some 80 feet ahead, turned and ran alongside the fence, halting finally on a cliff overlooking Ship Creek. Tom now found himself in an awful fix. It was a treacherous place to turn any dog team, let alone a full Iditarod string. Fidaa couldn’t offer much help. Not from her position inside the sled. Topping it off, Tom’s damn suspenders were screwing up, dropping those high-tech pants down around his knees, and this was no place to make adjustments.

  Barry Lee had just 13 dogs—one of the smallest teams in the f
ield—but most were proven Iditarod finishers. He had Louie, an old lead dog from Dewey Halverson’s third-place 1987 team; Onion, from Bill Hall, whose wife Pat Danly was also running the race; Mutt, from Dave Allen; and a young leader named Chiko from Mitch Brazen. Of course, Barry Lee also had dogs from his older brother’s kennel.

  Former race marshal Bobby Lee was working in the chute with a microphone, interviewing racers for the live TV broadcast being fed to stations across Alaska. Musher number 46 got the standard questions. Then Bobby switched off the mike.

  “You made it. You made it,” he said, hugging his younger brother.

  Listening to the countdown, Barry Lee reveled in the moment. His eyes were puffy and red from three weeks of sleep deprivation. His smile was huge. Others were chasing prizes in the days ahead. Lee was already savoring the achievement of his lifelong dream.

  The musher gave the signal. His dogs bent to work, cutting a slow but steady pace past the crowds still lining Fourth Avenue. Only a few blocks passed before Lee’s weariness made concentrating difficult. He was thankful that he didn’t have to worry about getting lost. The route followed trails familiar from a childhood spent near the Tudor dog track in Anchorage. He could handle this on automatic pilot.

  “Yea Barry! Go Barry!” Lee reveled in the cheers, but how did all the fans lining the route know his first name? Was there a radio announcer on every corner telling them who was coming by? He was chagrinned when he finally noticed the newspapers in people’s hands. The musher sporting number 46 on his chest had cheered on others for years using that same information. It unnerved him how long that information took to process. Fatigue was affecting his thinking. Lee knew he ought to keep that in mind.