Names for the dawn, p.1
Names for the Dawn, page 1
Names for the Dawn
C.L. Beaumont
Carnation Books
Names for the Dawn Copyright © 2021 by C.L. Beaumont
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-948272-53-7
ISBN (print): 978-1-948272-54-4
Published 2021 by Carnation Books
CarnationBooks.com
contact@carnationbooks.com
Seattle, WA, USA
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
For anyone who doesn’t recognize their reflection.
And for my parents, who call me their son.
Contents
April 1991
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
April 1992
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
May 1991
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
May 1992
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
May-June 1991
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
May-June 1992
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Late June 1991
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
July 1992
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
July 1991
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
July 1992
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
July-August 1991
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
August 1992
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
September 1991
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
September 1992
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
January 1993
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About C.L. Beaumont
Acknowledgements
Also by C.L. Beaumont
About Carnation Books
April 1991
1
It was like my dad always said, squinting at the endless, golden fields stretching to the horizon: “You catch them Sandhill cranes singing overhead, following the crick up north, then you know it’s spring.”
I’d only seen a single flock since the ice started to crack along the river, their white bellies like clouds, red eyes glowing through the fog, but I wasn’t fooled. And I wasn’t jumping the gun yet, either. I knew those woods and that slice of Alaskan sky more than I knew how to eat, and the cranes wouldn’t lie to me.
I slipped my cabin key in my pocket—the only time all year I ever locked the door—and gave a pat to the weathered log sides in farewell. They’d done right by me, stood firm in the snow and storms for another harsh winter: chattering bones and howling winds tearing at the pine, clawing it to frozen splinters as if in mockery of every nail I’d driven. It had been long hours hauling buckets of snow to melt for water; fixing leaks in the old roof I should have patched up three seasons ago; checking traps on hunting patrols. It had been exactly the same as each of the nine winters that came before it.
And now, without any fanfare, it was over and done with. A pristine blanket of fresh snowfall beckoned me forward, daring me to ruin the white silk with my boot. My snowmobile would take me the twelve miles back into Talkeetna, startling sleeping ptarmigan from their nests, and that was that. Near everything I owned was packed in a canvas bag strapped to the trailing sled, cutting fresh scars into the snow, a pathetic plea to remember me. In a way, it made my snowmobile my only home on earth for the two hour trip, and it gave me a dark thrill—people died in that backcountry, generations of bones buried under the ice, crying out with their last breath for someone to find them.
And there I was: glad to be alone. My last few minutes of solitude for the rest of the summer, with only the cranes watching. No help in sight no matter how loud I screamed. I looked back at my cabin before it disappeared in the black spruce and icy shadows, forlorn now without my winter-long stream of smoke curling from the chimney, or my snowshoes on the front steps; the hide of my latest kill hanging out to dry. Like the land had been humoring me, six months of mirage—
I hit a hidden tree root and lurched sideways, the engine revving in a scream as I fought to regain control. I’d just resigned myself to landing ass-first in the snowdrift when my mobile thudded back to the proper trail on all fours, my belongings still miraculously strapped to the sled, knots holding firm. It was the most unpredictable action I’d seen in weeks, and small as it was, I had to catch my breath. There was also the unmistakable sensation of something out of place at the very top of my thigh, making me quickly reach for the front of my snowpants with glove fattened fingers, readjusting until I was certain everything was secure.
I had to shift my mindset; remind myself that people could see me again, that people could know.
“Know what?” I sometimes asked myself, pretending I could be naive for a moment. Challenging the silence to muster up an answer back: “Ain’t nothing to know, Ranger. Nothing out of the ordinary.” But you couldn’t survive ten winters in the Alaskan backcountry being naive. And if I hadn’t done anything else, at least I’d survived.
I stopped in town for a coffee, more to thaw out my insides than because I wanted to choke down the muddy brew, passing small talk with the woman behind the general store counter who I only ever saw four times a year—once on the first day of the season, once on the last day of the season, and twice during the winter for my main supply runs. She didn’t know my name, and I didn’t know hers.
“Gonna be a good season for ya,” she said.
I nodded over weak coffee steam in a styrofoam cup; prepared to say my first words to another soul in weeks. “Hope so.”
“Talk on the radio’s that you got some big shot wolf counters coming out. They better not fly them tracking planes too low. Scares my dogs.” She was missing her front teeth; I couldn’t remember whether they had been there before.
“Last year it was the caribou,” I said. “Must be working their way up the food chain, huh?”
She didn’t laugh. She told me the same thing she said every year on the first day of April as the door swung behind me: “Say hi to them bears, Ranger!”
My Ford was parked exactly where I’d left it last fall. After an hour spent shoveling off snow and warming the engine, my bags were slung in the back, the windows were rolled down, and I was speeding north up Highway 3 in a private reunion. The Alaska Range cradled me high on my left, and snow-covered plains surged to infinity on my right; only stark, lonely trees brave enough to pierce the blinding white. Ten years of driving that stretch of highway, and I could’ve named every last snowdrift and twig. I tapped my thumb to a song I didn’t think had been on the radio since I was a kid.
When I reached McKinley Park, the little village surrounding Denali’s official entrance, I started glancing to the left, praying to catch my first glimpse of the mountain through the fog, as if I didn’t know it was nearly impossible to get a clear view of Denali in the beginning of April. But I’d checked that first drive north ten Aprils ago, and so I checked again. Kept checking as I drove through the abandoned Park Entrance, found a plowed spot to park, and jumped down to the crunch of Denali gravel under my boots. Protocol said I should greet the handful of year-round Rangers—see how winter patrols went, find out if there were any new Law Enforcement Rangers posted out at Toklat for me to take under my wing.
But tradition had me zip straight past the offices to the sled dog kennels; climb over the metal gate and pull off my gloves with my teeth. At my whistle, twenty furry heads popped up in unison, and the crisp air filled with a chorus of barks and happy yips. It was the sound of summertime, of life and energy, melting the last bits of ice from my bones.
I made my way down the noisy row, getting a good lick on the hand from each pup. Then I came to the end, the last little wooden hut, and I knelt.
“Lugnut,” I whispered.
The old, grey malamute crept out of his hut on shaky legs, cloudy blue eyes blinking in the sunshine, then he whined and smashed his face to my chest, covering me with the scent of him: evergreen needles and straw-covered snow.
Reunited. My heart beat against his own with all the words I wanted to say: I’m back, old man. I’m here. You know I’ll always come back for you.
He’d been assigned to me my first ever season in Denali, back when I was stationed near the main Visitor Center. And even though I was only required to walk him twice a week, every morning I found myself showing up at dawn, leash in hand. Even five years later, once I got promoted out to Toklat as head of West-side Enforcement, I’d still driven three hours east every other weekend just to see him.
I held him now, inhaling his old fur. Ten years on, and I sometimes caught myself thinking that Denali could burn to the ground, and I wouldn’t feel a pang of sadness as long as Lugnut was with me. Those long walks along the Park Road as the sun rose, keeping an eye out so we wouldn’t startle a moose; I’d tell him about places I’d been, people I once knew. People who might think I’d passed on. And he’d wag his tail.
“Thought I’d find you here,” said a voice behind me—the voice I looke
I turned to face Gina, and she nodded over her shoulder. “Saw your truck in the lot,” she said casually, somehow encapsulating everything you should say to a friend gone half a year. I gave Lugnut one last pat, then stood with cracking joints. Gina fell into my outstretched arms without missing a beat.
“Missed you, kid,” I said into her hair.
“Really? Still kid?”
“That’s right—you’re big shit now, aren’t you?” I flicked the new badge stitched onto her sleeve. “Youngest head of kennels Denali’s ever seen. You going for Chief next?”
She gave me a look, and I allowed myself a grin. It seemed incomprehensible, standing there with Gina among the evergreens, Lugnut at my feet, that I would ever wish to slip back into my cabin come fall. How I could ever think that silence and cold survival were better than this. And yet, I knew better: I wasn’t about to start doubting myself now. And I knew that come September, I’d be breaking speed laws in my truck to get back to Talkeetna.
“Winter treat you alright?” I asked Gina.
She perched on the fence. “Just fine. Finished a training run out to the trapper cabin in Unit 13 last week. Near zero visibility for a couple days, but they stayed on course.”
“Who led?”
“Peppers. I wanted Slush to try but she kept missing my calls. Had to move her back in main line after two days. She went on a dramatic hunger strike for ten hours before she caved.”
“Poor Slush,” I said, quietly appreciating how easy it was to talk to Gina after months of silence, not even letters over the winter. Ever since Gina Vargas had shown up in Denali five years before, her student-intern uniform ironed and the sled dogs’ names already memorized, it had been that way between us. She’d taken one look at me sitting alone at the first staff campfire of the year and never let me sit alone again. All that, even though I was fifteen years older than her with a reputation of only saying ten words all season. It was one of the mysteries of life I’d never solve, and never hoped to.
Gina didn’t ask about my winter; I would’ve given her an answer she’d memorized by now: “Good. Did some hunting. Read a lot. Chopped firewood for next winter. Didn’t talk much. Didn’t sleep.”
“You heard about the wolf project?” she asked instead.
“Lady at the store mentioned it when I left Talkeetna. Population counts?”
“Some team coming from London, apparently—best in the world, is what Dan and all them in Head Office said.”
“London? I’d think the only wolves there would be in the zoo. Don’t we have our own guys on that?”
Gina shrugged. “I don’t think they were joking when they said ‘best in the world.’ Some Mr. Morgan’s leading the team. Bringing along a tracking expert that made Dan blink actual tears out of his eyes when he heard.”
“I would’ve paid to see that. Who the hell is it?”
“They all just kept saying ‘him’. My grandma gets less emotional talking about the Virgin Mary.” Gina hopped down from the rail and put her hands on her hips, lowering her voice to do an impression of Dan—our Head of Interpretation at the time. “Best in the world! And our lucky asses get him for a full season! If he can’t track these wolves, God himself couldn’t do it, I say!”
I scratched Lugnut’s ears in goodbye, then followed Gina back to the offices. “Only been two hours and I already miss my cabin.”
The wooden buildings peeked through snow-covered poplars, and she leaned her shoulder against me. “I missed you, too, Will.”
2
And then we were back on the icy gravel, five quick days of orientation later, gathered in the usual sendoff circle. The trucks were packed with enough gear to last the whole summer for the fifteen of us who’d live full-time out West.
Terry, the head of West-side Interpretation, ran his fingers through his beard before looking to the sky and giving his customary bird call. It echoed in a long shrill across the valley to the cloud-capped peaks. “Right, folks,” he said. “This is it. Speak now or forever hold your peace if you wanna stay East!”
It was the same joke he made every year, and only three new Rangers and the student intern laughed. My mind was elsewhere—back in the kennels where I’d said goodbye to Lugnut that morning, lying down beside him in the patchy snow until Gina whistled a warning that the West-side Rangers were gearing up to leave. He hadn’t cried as I walked away, but lay down the way he’d been trained, resigned to my leaving. It was always in those final moments, my last footsteps out of the kennel, when I would doubt myself; wonder if I should have taken Gina’s advice years ago and applied to move back East, live closer to Fairbanks and civilization, take Lugnut on his daily walks. It was like I’d built up a horrible immunity to guilt: Denali could burn, and I’d only want Lugnut to stay with me. But with Denali in its full glory, I willingly left him three hours away, his kennel growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
I took advantage of the cluster of bodies to subtly check my gun in its holster, curving my palm around the smooth leather. It was the first day I was officially carrying it for the season, and my body felt at ease with the extra weight on my hip. My uniform wasn’t quite as crisp and new anymore as the forest green wool on the younger Rangers around me—it was always a bit too big when I first came back after months eating winter rations. I told myself every summer that I would stay lean and muscled like that, but inevitably, I always grew thicker until my uniform was snug. Until a coworker would joke by August that I’d been spending too many hours sitting on truck patrols.
My gun, though, remained sleek. I’d never had to fire it on the job—not once. And I never intended to. The thought of a bullet slicing Denali’s air felt like fantasy, something straight out of a cartoon. But still, I jolted awake in the night to dreams of shotgun blasts. The fierce crack splitting the night, shattering the barn door to bits, echoing in my ears as I stumbled down the empty highway towards the faint lights of town—
“As you’ve all heard by now,” Terry was saying. “We got some important guests this summer. Our research team all the way from fancy shmancy London’ll be following up on our own team’s wolf collar data. They’ll tell us what the hell to do about our soaring population counts. Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!”
“Terry, that’s Ireland,” someone called.
Terry gestured to four strangers. A quiet gasp of awe and excitement made its way through the crowd. I couldn’t make out the newcomers’ faces through the sea of campaign hat brims, but I figured I’d meet them soon enough. And between me out on my patrols and them scanning up in their plane, I’d be surprised if we even crossed paths more than a handful of times all summer. Researchers came and went. Their findings were published in journals I’d never read. It had never mattered to me.
“Mr. Morgan and his team will be flying the Super Cub to get visual counts on the packs,” Terry went on. “We want to make them feel at home in the park, so don’t be shy. Now, as for road safety, keep in mind the following . . .”
I caught Denali’s summit drifting into focus through thick clouds. Her sides gleamed in the searing sun, making my eyes water. I thought of the first time I ever saw her, the way she’d risen up over the dashboard of my truck like an oil painting smeared across the cornsilk sky. I’d been so young, younger than only ten years ago, it seemed, literally leaving everything behind in the rearview mirror, and she had broken free from the sea of gray fog to guide me home. Fanciful, I knew. It was only a mountain. But she had been there.
