Juneau: Wisdom Tree 4 Read Free Page B

Her eyebrows are painted on, cocked and ready toshow surprise. ‘How special for you both. An ancestor in Juneau.’
    My father wants to say something, but stiffens up. He makes himself return her smile and forces a small nod.
    â€˜We’re here to find out what we can,’ I tell her. ‘About his time here.’
    Thomas Chandler was sick. Physically ill, and mentally. He needed money. That’s all we know. I am here, as much as anything else, to guide my father through the news of a horrible death, or through nothing, more nothing. Through gazing up from Juneau, or from the five-star luxury of a suite high on the departing Radiance , at the resolute mountains this side of the channel, wondering if Thomas’ bones are there, or were there, separated from his story, his name, his people.
    I have a range of worst endings in my head. My father might have more in his. Whatevercomes our way today, it falls to me to be standing nearby as we ease our way out of the Gastineau Channel this evening. Rowan would have left him to it, I think, but I could imagine our father, hands on the cold rail, staring at the clouds settling on the mountains before turning for inside and dinner, a vast brightly lit dining room, a table of seven high-spirited strangers, an eighth chair waiting for him. I can’t let his journey end like that.
    â€˜So, can I interest you in any, uh…’ the man behind the counter says, indicating the ceiling-high stacks of merchandise with his hand.
    The woman cruiser, I now see, is holding an oven mitt, with a spoon in a plastic case pressed into it. My father has never bought this kind of stuff, anywhere. He has never even bought a T-shirt for himself, never worn any he’s been given, other than to mow the lawn. He wears a collared shirt every day.
    â€˜Whose was the red dog?’ he says. He pulls the edge of a T-shirt towards himself and arranges the front of it to highlight the logo. ‘It’s a Scottish terrier, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes, yes, it is,’ the man says, leaning forward to look. From his counter, the image of the terrier must be stamped on his retinas about a thousand times. ‘I think it was a previous owner, maybe in the seventies. It was always the Red Dog, but I think that dog was theirs, that particular one. He was always hanging around the bar. Sixties and seventies. There are folk who remember him.’
    My father nods. It’s an instinctive response to a pause. He seems to be studying the T-shirt.
    â€˜We have a meeting at the museum,’ I tell the man, and perhaps the cruisers. ‘You open at eleven for lunch, right?’ My hand is on my father’s arm, just touching his jacket sleeve, gone before he looks down.
    â€˜Yes,’ he says, before the man at the counter can answer. He pulls the zip of his jacket up another few inches. ‘Yes, we should keep moving.’
    â€˜Wear Eskimo Parkas—Hold Guns!!’ the sign at Alaskan Old Time Photos reads.
    Before I can say anything, the promise of the pictures in the window, sepia-toned and old-timey as can be, has my father stepping into a break in the traffic to cross the road so that he can study them more closely.
    He stops midway—the shop’s purpose is unmissable by then—and looks lost for a moment before pointing vaguely along the street and saying, ‘I think we’ll need to be on this side eventually. For the Russian church.’
    Brand Alaska gets a good workout in the photos, with past cruisers costumed in groupsand camping it up in style—busty madams, waitresses flashing their suspenders, moustachioed villains with black oversized six-shooters. Eskimo parkas feature in only two, families doing their best Nanook of the North with harpoons, old rifles and stiffly taxidermied huskies against tundra backdrops. They’re all grim-faced—it’s the Chandler family portrait of 1890, transplanted. The bordello shots offer