Juneau: Wisdom Tree 4 (2 page)

‘Puppies.' Hannah claps her gloved hands together.

‘As long as we also get the ride,' Sam says, still looking down at his feet.

He's eleven, she's seven—they are two different species of creature and Lauren and I hadn't planned for that.

Sam is not here for Alaska, not for an Alaska that limits the adventure excursions to people sixteen and over. He is on the trip for the five days at Anaheim, starting on Wednesday. He has already decided that they will be five solid days of being thrown around the rougher Disneyland rides—he's seen the YouTube videos of the Matterhorn and Space Mountain—with
his best friend Charlie, who he misses terribly without ever being able to say it. Charlie lives in LA, at least until early next year. His sister, who is twelve, is trying to break into movies. Their father is back in Australia, presumably pumping cash across the Pacific to finance his daughter's dream.

Charlie and Sam skype every week or two, in a boy-to-boy code of half-sentences and nonverbal sounds that seems to fill some gaps without fully satisfying either of them. It will be good to see them running wild at Disneyland.

‘I wish I could have Charlie's life,' is now Sam's go-to comeback whenever he is pulled into line, or life forces anything dreary on him. Charlie does school remotely, presumably from a carriage on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland, while between movie premieres. He once saw Vin Diesel buying milk and sent Sam the photo to prove it. It's a selfie, with a
well-muscled T-shirted back and tanned scalp visible behind his shoulder, in the distance. It could be any guy under fifty who's shaved his head and put in the gym time.

Meanwhile, forty minutes from home, Johnny Depp is filming at the Gold Coast, a place awash with theme park rides, but that's all boring. Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz have been sighted taking their kids around Movieworld.

‘So, I think it's over there that our minibus will pick the three of us up.' Lauren points towards the Mount Roberts Tramway base, a dark red building with a white upper level jutting like a prow and sending cable car lines threading up and over the hill across the road. She checks the tickets in her hand. ‘J9.'

There's a turnaround area for buses, with signs designating the pick-up points for particular excursions—Mendenhall Glacier,
chopper flights, glacier hikes, the huskies. It's on the other side of the tramway base, which obscures all but three of the bus bays, but I saw the website over Lauren's shoulder a month ago. There were a dozen options, maybe more.

My father breaks from his stare at the buildings and looks at his watch. It's eight-fifty.

‘Should have made it nine o'clock,' he says. ‘Or half past.'

It's the city museum that I think he's been searching for among the buildings. We both know where it is on the map. It's a Sunday, the one day of the week the museum is closed during May to September, but my father has lined up a volunteer called Hope to meet him there at ten.

‘Maybe ten worked better for her,' I tell him. ‘Maybe she's got church.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Well, who knows what we might see on the way there?' It's how I would treat Sam if
his patience was flagging, urging him forward, keeping it good.

My father points across the street, to the buildings opposite. ‘There was a mudslide in the thirties, so everything along here is post that.' Most of them are timber and look older, but perhaps that's by design. He drops his arm and sticks his fingers in a pocket, hooking the thumb out over the edge. ‘But, yes, who knows? There might be something on the way. The Russian church. Things like that.' He nods to himself.

‘We're due back at twelve,' Lauren says. ‘So, how about we meet over at the minibus place then and have some lunch?' She points past the tramway base again. ‘You two might see somewhere nice on your travels.'

She smiles. It's more of a smirk. It's only for me. She knows the itinerary my father's put together, an old church, a cemetery, an office or an archive room inside a closed museum.

‘I want sushi,' Sam says to the puddle, which is now smeared across the concrete, jagged as a cartoon explosion. ‘See if you can find somewhere with sushi. I haven't had sushi for weeks.'

‘We had sushi in Vancouver.' Hannah isn't even trying to pick a fight. She's just stating a fact. ‘Tuesday. No, Wednesday.'

‘Just that one time. You can do it, Han. Sushi's good.'

‘And we agreed there could be sushi once in Alaska,' Lauren says, ‘so maybe this is it. And if there's sushi, there's likely to be noodles. And, if not, gyoza. Everybody wins. Now, huskies.' She turns to my father and says, ‘Good luck, Ken,' in a businesslike tone. She knows well enough to make no more of his mission than that, even if he's crossed the world for it.

He nods and says something muffled that's probably, ‘Thanks.' His gaze has been on the
ground during the sushi conversation. He looks up, towards downtown Juneau. ‘Right.'

At the end of the car park is a row of buildings with the profile of a streetscape on a Wild West movie set—high second storeys, facades made of long timber boards—but two of the three shops are selling jewellery and the other bamboo apparel, sheets and towels. If old Alaska was ever there, it is not there now. My father is already looking past them, leading the way to South Franklin Street.

‘And good luck to you, too,' Lauren says to me, touching my arm, the smirk back, just a flicker of it.

Thomas Chandler is my father's mission, not mine.

‘Be a good wingman,' she told me earlier when it was just the two of us. And that's my mission, wherever it leads over the next few hours.

I take a step towards Hannah, whose arms reach up for a hug. It's a reflex in her.

‘You too,' I tell Sam, who goes with it out of practice.

Hannah moves in for a hug from my father and he takes it, stiff as a fence. He is old enough and worn enough to be legitimately stiff now but he hugged the same way when he was supple. Any hug is a shock for him at first until he overrides that impulse. I know it is because it's the same for me with everyone but my children, who have never worked out that I come from such unhugging stock.

In the 1980s, my parents took us to a studio for a family portrait. From a distance, the picture my mother later chose to put on the wall had the appearance of a family portrait from the opening or closing credits of the TV show
Family Ties
. We were not a numerical match—from memory the Keatons had one more girl—but we had
the look covered. Amiable proximity, hands on each other. My father had his hands on Jenny and Rowan's shoulders but, if you look closer, you can tell that his grin is fixed on his face, and his hands start to look wrong, like someone operating levers or a magician sliding two cups around on a tablecloth. The photographer made him put his hands there. We were an 1890s family at heart, and would have done well at keeping still in our own spaces.

We make our way along South Franklin Street which seems to be one store after another selling diamonds or tanzanite. Our cruise ship was the second to dock this morning, and on both sides the pavement is already taken up by clumps of comfortably built sixty-somethings mooching along in leisure suits with bumbags like my father's and cameras around their necks. Meanwhile, inside the shops, the precious-stone merchants—thin men mostly, in dark pinstripe
suits—polish their countertops or straighten their trays or stare at the opposite wall. The moochers are gazing up at the rooflines or along at the shopfronts, or manoeuvring each other into photos. Alaska, Alaska—here it is, here we are.

A mobility scooter hums past us at low revs, its driver in a military cap denoting long-ago service. He has a white goatee, trimmed a little closer than Colonel Sanders, and sunglasses on a cord around his neck.

Gift shops appear, advertising Russian dolls, soapstone carvings, ulu knives. At Klassique Jewelers the promotions are all cruise ship specials—whale-tail pendants, tanzanite earrings, a free hundred-carat uncut gemstone (one per family).

My father stops and says, ‘That's ten jewellers already. Were you expecting that?'

Do I have an honest answer? Juneau was a blank to me before now, a word, a small shape in the fog of ancient family history.

‘No. I had no idea jewellery was such a thing here.'

No one is buying. Not in Klassique or anywhere. My father is stalled, looking sour-faced into the brightness beyond the shade cast by the shop's awning.

‘Do you know how much Hope's actually found?' I can imagine a neighbourhood of jewellers ending in a meeting that gives him nothing—the story of a mudslide that took all before it into the channel, and some stock black-and-white pictures of other people from around that time that set the scene but do no more than that. We have come a long way. He is invested in this, even if it's not his style to admit to being invested in anything.

‘It won't all be like this,' he says.

His jacket collar is bent, half turned up. His jacket is open now, his pants' belt riding high above his waist. There is a spot just below his ribs where it seems to sit naturally. His bumbag is at an angle, not knowing whether to follow the belt high. The jacket was a birthday present from Sam and Hannah, with this trip in mind. He has worn it every day since we entered Alaskan waters, standing on the deck in the bracing breeze, peering out at the mountains, still as a birdwatcher.

‘What is this about?' Lauren's said to me more than once on the subject of Thomas. ‘It's a hundred and twenty years ago. If he wants to connect with family, he could go to the kids' soccer
once
. Why is your father so obsessed with this guy?'

He is because he is. He is because older people, some older people, find a loose thread
in the tapestry and want to leave with it, and themselves, woven in tight.

Jenny views it as our father's mad hobby. Rowan doesn't think about it.

Families are either full-disclosure or don't-ask-don't-tell, and it's not related to whether there is much to talk about or anything to hide. Lauren comes from one side of that divide, I come from the other. We are ambassadors from two different but willing nations, working diligently on our open border and hoping it will be invisible to future generations.

Our family's Alaskan story mattered less to my father when he was well, or at least it seemed less urgent. It was no more than backstory when my mother was alive. Our family could have its loose end then.

He stops at an alleyway leading off to the right between two buildings. It's so narrow anyone could touch both walls. Ten metres in,
it hits a flight of steps, maybe thirty of them, leading up to another flat stretch and then more steps. Three storeys up the next street runs parallel to Franklin, and behind it are trees and the slope of Mount Roberts. It is easy to imagine a mudslide here, or a knife fight.

We stick to Franklin and the well-rounded tourists layering against the breeze, which has turned cooler. Maybe Hannah wasn't out of line with the gloves.

My father stops to scan the Red Dog Saloon for obvious signs of fakery and then says, ‘I've read about this place. Something about it.'

From the outside, its upper level is as red as it should be. Its lower level is clad with vertical split logs, but there's no suggestion they're integral to the frame. The bar itself is closed until eleven, but a door on Franklin is open.

My father takes a step in and stops so suddenly I stumble into him, my hands swinging to his
sides to steady us both. His body twitches and he shuffles forward, reaching for the wall to keep his balance. His hand lands between two rows of T-shirts. He takes a full stride and stands against the shirts, straightening the front of his jacket and checking his bumbag.

The room is crammed with merchandise—shirts with slogans, tote bags, teaspoons, key chains, bottle openers, oven mitts, all of them Red Dog-branded. Behind the counter, a man in his fifties—broad and balding in an old-fashioned way, no head shave for him—is going through his set piece for a cruising couple.

‘Of course, that was the second Red Dog Saloon that they moved in 1988,' he tells them. ‘From next to the Alaskan Hotel, on the other side of the road. Reassembled it here piece by piece. First one was on this side, two blocks up.' He points to his left. As his hand drops back to the counter he notices us and says, ‘Hi folks,
come on in. We're just talkin' 'bout the history of this place. We got Wyatt Earp's pistol here.' He indicates the door behind him. Presumably it's a way to the bar. ‘He checked it in 1900 and never claimed it. He was on his way to Nome. Made a lot of money there from a business quite like this one. That's where the rush was then.'

‘Nineteen hundred,' my father says, his voice sounding scratchy, Australian. He clears his throat. ‘When did this place first open?'

The cruisers turn around. Her hair is from the salon in
Steel Magnolias
, styled hard on the ship this morning, probably her own work. They're in matching navy
Radiance of the Seas
tracksuits, with pins to indicate a vast number of nights afloat with the Royal Caribbean line.

‘I believe that was 1898,' the man behind the counter says, with a tone that suggests personal pride, either at being able to recall the fact or that it makes the Red Dog a sincere participant
in Juneau's early days, albeit twice moved and once rebuilt.

‘I had an ancestor who was here,' my father tells him, looking at the man's chest and then at his hands on the countertop. He clips the zip ends of his jacket together and pulls the zip up a few inches. ‘He got here a few years before that. 1893, we think. Or ninety-four.'

He stops and looks the man in the eye, as if bracing for him to blurt out the story of Thomas Chandler there and then. My father has said it in Juneau now, this secret.

‘Well,' the man says, his voice still stage-loud. ‘The story goes that the Red Dog was a tent on the beach before they put up the building. Don't know if that takes us back to ninety-three, but…' He shrugs. ‘Close, I'd say.'