Frozen Stiff Read online

  An explosive crackling and roaring reverberated through the fjord as an ice cliff three hundred fifty feet high calved from Hubbard’s face. The cliff disappeared under its own cloud of spray, then vaulted up into the air seconds later, careened forward, and shoved a giant wall of water at the kayaks. Mother Nature wasn’t about to let them go without a fight.

  The kayaks offered no security, and shore was too far away to reach in time. Explosions of other calving bergs boomed across the fjord as the wall of churning foam and ice bore down on them.

  Cody yelled, “Get ready!” and gripped her paddle as though born with it. She braced herself as the onrush washed over and into her kayak, and she was drenched to the skin one more time.

  She saw Derek’s face—all smiles—just a paddle length away, hollering, “Yee ha!” like a bronco rider. Then he dropped, disappearing in a watery trough. Only a scrap of blue canvas showed as he was swept sideways into a deeper hole: Cody’s kayak plunged headlong into the second hole, then flipped. No time to hold her breath. No time to hold anything.

  Except her paddle.

  Always her paddle.

  In the middle of a split-second roll, ice picks stabbed at her body, which numbed almost immediately. Just as quickly the torrent rolled the kayak all the way over and spit it into the air. It was over that fast. She breathed hard, her chest on fire and numb at the same time. Her head throbbed with the pain of cold. She couldn’t hear a sound. Cody released her death grip on the paddle to touch her ears and be sure they were still there.

  Frantically she searched the swells for Derek. Where was he?

  Then she spotted his kayak, miles away it seemed, but probably only a hundred feet, bucking the whitecaps—upside down.

  Derek was awash in the fjord.

  She paddled like a crazy person, screaming, “Hang on!”, faintly aware of the whap of blades in the distance.

  He’s going to die, she thought. Like the men in Wildman’s expedition. Glaciers demand a human sacrifice. Just like mountains.

  Then she swore loud and clear, mad as anything that she’d forgiven the elements so soon.

  If it hadn’t been for the flash of his orange life vest she wouldn’t have been able to see Derek at all. She paddled wildly, slashing the water in an incredible display of what could be accomplished when someone was scared out of her mind.

  The helicopter buzzed in front of her, hovering over the water, a cigar-shaped float swaying on the end of a rope. Derek swiped at it uselessly. Too much wind, too much water.

  She closed the final yards, grabbing the nape of the orange vest, dragging Derek, coughing and sputtering, over the seat behind her. Except for the hood, which had been torn off, the rain slicker remained intact; but his boots had been stripped away, exposing feet as blue as Hubbard. Looking lifeless, he still managed to crawl all the way in. Then he collapsed nearly unconscious, stone-white fingers gripping the canvas lip. No time to dig out the sleeping bag. No time for anything but to react to what was happening.

  “Hang on!” she shouted over the roar of exploding ice. “That’s an order from your captain!”

  A hint of a smile tinged his pale blue lips, then faded as he sank into unconsciousness.

  Cody’s mind went numb as sleeping bags appeared from nowhere, doubling as blankets, wrapping her and Derek like mummies. Faces. A horde of them crowding around her on the muddy shore, battering her with questions. A mass of jumbled syllables that made no sense. So much noise. She realized how conversation between them had steadily dwindled since they had first left the pickup. Something else had taken over.

  These people were so unbelievably clean. And Derek. A man in a khaki uniform was rushing him off to the helicopter. Trailed by Aunt Jessie. Aunt Jessie?

  Cody accepted a mug of something hot with trembling hands. Coffee. Black. She hated and loved it at the same time. Aunt Jessie? At Hubbard? The coffee warmed both her hands and her insides, finally thawing the numbness in her head. Of course. Flown in from Yakutat, less than an hour away by plane.

  In a shroud of confusion she wondered where they were taking Derek and why she wasn’t going. She must have thought aloud, since bits and pieces filtered in. “Not enough room in the helicopter … Don’t worry, he’s going to be okay … landing pad on the hospital roof … another chopper on the way …” More than anything she wanted to be with her cousin.

  Then an unmistakable cry: “Cody!”

  She wrapped herself tightly with the sleeping bag, spilling hot coffee all over the place, realizing she was seated on the bow of her kayak, having been pulled ashore only moments before by these strangers.

  Cody scanned the muddy airstrip for the voice, searching the faces milling around. Then the faces blurred into the background as her mother, bundled against the icy cold, came into focus, slogging through the heavy mud near a small plane with its propellers still spinning. And Patterson, bent over to shelter Mom from the raw wind. All the way from California.

  Mom and Patterson pushed quickly through the crowd and pulled Cody into a hug, crying and soothing her. “Are you okay?” And, over and over again, “We love you!”

  She tried to talk, to answer, to say, “I love you too,” but they hushed her, told her to save her strength, and hugged her even tighter. She mumbled, “I lost my cap. No Fear.” Then she heard Patterson laugh. How she loved his laugh! She’d missed him so much. She clung to them both, never wanting to let go.

  She closed her eyes and remembered all of it from the moment they’d sneaked off with the old pickup to battling the icebergs, but mostly the early morning by the fire when Mary Jane had told her the story about the expedition on Denali. Cody touched her shells, making sure the necklace was still intact. It was.

  Suddenly she knew he was there too. When she looked over her mother’s shoulder she wasn’t surprised to see her father. Huddled in a parka, the hood framing his moist eyes. Looking lost and scared and sad all at once. Something inside her said, Go to him. Tell him it’s okay.

  Comfort him, at least. That’s what a caring person would do.

  She wanted to, tried to move even, but couldn’t.

  Without looking at him she knew he was coming toward her. She sensed him moving slowly, as if he were treading on black ice. She felt him touch her braid, stroke her hair the way he used to. Turn to him. You can let him hug you. Give him a break, Cody! It’s been three years!

  They hugged in silence as ice tumbled into the water and spray erupted hundreds of feet in the air. Gulls swooped down to feed on brine shrimp swirling on the surface. A cloud drifted from the sun’s path long enough to bring shadows to life, illuminating brilliant shades of blue.

  Still no one spoke.

  All too soon the familiar sound of rotary blades buzzed over the glacier, overpowering both the sound of cracking ice and her thoughts.

  Dad released her from the hug.

  Cody stepped off the bow with Patterson’s help. “No Fear?” he said. “You didn’t lose it, Cody.”

  Mom held her close as she tried to stand; Dad gathered the sleeping bag so that it wouldn’t drag in the mud.

  It didn’t seem right that Derek wasn’t here with her. Then with one last look at Hubbard she smiled a farewell, feeling sad in a way she didn’t fully understand. She embraced the icy wind stinging her cheeks and took her first step in the mud soup toward the waiting helicopter.

  Author’s Note

  In the summer of 1994, I joined a kayaking expedition in Russell Fjord Wilderness Area, at the northern tip of Southeast Alaska. The goal of our journey was to paddle the length of the fjord, reaching the largest tidewater glacier in North America: Hubbard Glacier.

  The long daylight hours of Alaska’s summer coaxed us mile after mile down the windswept saltwater passage, cloaked in a constant drizzle. Evenings I huddled in my tent under the spell of the fjord’s geological and social history, devouring every bit of printed matter carried by our guides.

  In the spring of 1986 one of Hubbard’s tributa
ry glaciers began surging as much as 130 feet a day. The action spurred Hubbard into a rapid state of advancement, pushing a plug of mud and rock against the opposite shore. The mouth of the fjord was closed off, creating the world’s largest glacier-formed lake.

  The idea for Frozen Stiff came at two in the morning when I was awakened by water seeping into my tent. I jokingly remarked, “Maybe Hubbard has surged again and Disenchantment Bay is blocked off. Maybe the water in the fjord is rising the way it did in 1986.” Back then, an eighty-foot layer of fresh water, an accumulation of rain, glacial melt, and rivers, floated atop the salt water. Fish, seals, and porpoises were trapped inside the newly formed lake.

  I was quickly assured by our guide that our rising water was caused by the high tide. But my mind was already spinning with what if’s. What if two kids had been kayaking in the fjord when Hubbard surged? What if they’d lost most of their food and supplies on the swelling water? What if no one knew they were there?

  The dilapidated fishing hut in Frozen Stiff can still be seen in Russell Fjord, surrounded by native wildflowers and stately conifers. But the ice dam blocking Disenchantment Bay burst four months after it formed, sending more than 3.5 million cubic feet of outflow per second gushing from the fjord. The force was thirty-five times the flow of Niagara Falls, pouring out at thirty-five miles an hour.

  Unlike Cody and Derek in the story, our group managed to complete the journey without flipping our kayaks. And while we did suffer from soggy clothes and swarms of mosquitoes, we never ran out of food. Nor did we encounter any mysterious strangers.