THE SECRET LIFE OF LAIRD BARRON
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REVELATIONS OF THE HUSKY
After the race had ended, and the dogs were recompensed with pats and scratches and bits of dripping red meat, and the awards bestowed, and the media dispersed, the men traveled south, retracing the path that had led them to Nome. Their destination was a place, never spoken of in the company of strangers, but rather whispered in knowing tones from one man to another - men who knew the knife-cruel cold and the acid wind that left them ragged, weakened, and more than ever aware of their humanity. This place was secret; this place was sacred.
The men carried bottles of spirits and stories from the trail, but neither touched their lips along this trek. They journeyed in silence as if on pilgrimage, and along the way if they encountered another traveler inquiring about their destination, the men fixed them with hard eyes, the stares of soldiers who had seen too much and could not release the brutal memories through anything so fragile and insignificant as words. The strangers they met moved on, carrying with them the certainty they had encountered not men, but phantoms - those who had known life but no longer remembered its comforts.
The journey took them one-hundred-and-seventy miles, to the outskirts of a native village, where the superstitious remains of the Malemiut tribe secured shutters and barred doors in preparation of their arrival. Their sanctuary was a temporary shelter, a long house constructed in a matter of days at which they would gather and know that which was to be revealed before evaporating back into the arctic or to the warmer climes of their workaday lives. Upon their departure days later, the structure would be undone and packed away, stored like the fair linen when it was no longer needed to drape the altar.
Divided in two, the long house consisted of a bunkroom and the gathering hall. Inside this hall, there was a long, plank deck that jutted to room’s center and benches lined its length so that all eyes could witness what was to be beheld. On the far end of the space an opening in the partition, like the mouth to the deck’s tongue was draped with a beaded curtain from which wonders would emerge. A support pole ran from the center of the deck to the ceiling; its twin carried the ceiling’s weight in the bunkroom.
Once inside, away from the eyes of the indigenous populace - who disdained fermented spirits - the men began to drink, and they began to talk, their stories spilling over tongues purified by whiskey and rum. They spoke of the trail and the weather; they thanked their respective gods for the few moments of fortune they had received on the otherwise unforgiving tundra.
And on this night, the first night of the pilgrimage, the drink went to the core of the men. Boasts and jibes fermented into aggression, and voices raised and fists followed. Knuckles split lips and buried in stomachs. Men tasted their own blood and the blood of others delivered on swinging fists, but the men knew not hate. Every punch was an affirmation of their strength: they had survived worse; they would survive worse still. Men stumbled and fell and a bench was broken, and a wall nearly so as a great ox of a man threw his attacker against the rapidly fashioned barrier.
The music came on, and it was harsh and simple, like the men who had gathered to listen to it, and the fighting ceased, and a cry rose up, because the music was the green light, the dropped rag, the pistol report - notice to all that the rite was to begin. Soon The Husky would be among them, and all would be revealed.
Men wiped the crimson from their lips and hands. They replaced the benches, lining them up straight and proper on either side of the deck and they sat as the music swelled and then faded, leaving silence in the bitter air of the hall.
A light came on at the curtained end of the deck and the silhouette of a stout man appeared to the collective sighs of the audience. This was He - the reason for their trek.
They called him The Husky, and his life was a collection of mysteries: no facts, simply layer upon layer of rumor and speculation. They said he’d killed a man and smoked his skin for jerky to survive a rough winter, and they said he’d taught his dog team to howl in harmony like a fine chorus, and as for the patch over his eye - the stories were too numerous to count. What could be said without contradiction was that The Husky was an artist.
Another light flickered on behind him, and the aggregation of coarse men looked on entranced, their eyes flitting over the filaments of fur - the kills that covered The Husky head to toe - and they waited… and waited. Breath held. Aching fists clenched.
Then the music returned, louder and harsher…
And bitches it was on! The Husky threw back the beaded curtain and burst into the lantern light, stomping his mink thigh-high boots in heated rhythm to Motley Crue, who expounded the virtues and the vices of the Wild Side. He strutted to the edge of the stage and spun, slipped the jacket to the crook of his elbow to reveal a white, muscled shoulder, and the men shouted as if for blood. The Husky’s tongue shot out and tasted the air, bringing another round of growling thunder, and then he bathed his mustache and beard with that well-rehearsed tongue, sending his audience into breathless petrifaction before he whipped his face away and headed for the pole in the center of the catwalk.
He wrapped a gloved hand around the glossy metal and spun himself playfully, his jacket of chinchilla sweeping the floor, and then as he picked up speed it pulled into the air like a cape. He kicked high and grasped his ankle, holding his foot skyward, and again the tongue. Flashed. Tasted. Vanished. He released his leg and performed a dizzying pirouette. Then the jacket fell from his shoulders, and he threw it to the crowd where blood was spilled over its acquisition. Soon his elk-skin hot pants with their Velcro tear-away seams followed the jacket into the throng, leaving The Husky clad in nothing but boots and gloves and a sheath made from the pelt of an arctic fox. This he removed with his teeth.
For that was the source, the font, the spring of his moniker. The Husky could bend curiously, placing his face in the region of his manhood, and with his tongue he could perform feats generally reserved for the pullers of his sled. And when the pelt of the arctic fox hit the stage, the Husky remained bent, head swaying from side to side in time with the thunder-song and the stomping of the pilgrims who had gathered to pay him respect.
But this was merely a tease, a tantalization. The Husky righted himself, gloved hands already in place to cover his secrets. Gingerly. Petulantly. He twirled around and skipped to the pole, launching himself halfway up its length and using his thrust to carry him around its circumference.
And it was then he came to know the nature of his fate, for during the brawl that had preceded the Husky’s performance, the cord running from the generator to the heating unit in the pole had been knocked free. And like a moistened tongue, that which had been moistened by a tongue adhered to the cruel, icy metal and ripped away as momentum carried the Husky through the completion of his spin.
The legend died then, and The Husky was no more. All that was expected came to naught and the men slept restlessly that night, their bunks no longer welcoming but rather hard as stone as they struggled to find sleep with so much agony in their minds.
And that is the truth. And that is the all. That is the story of what transpired with our intrepid hero The Husky - known to some as Barron - in the Tool Lick Shack outside of Shaktoolik, Alaska.
Delivered with humor and affection,
Lee Thomas
For more tales from THE SECRET LIFE OF LAIRD BARRON, please visit John Langan’s Journal, where a running list of anecdotes from this mysterious life will be revealed.
http://jplangan.livejournal.com/
REVELATIONS OF THE HUSKY
After the race had ended, and the dogs were recompensed with pats and scratches and bits of dripping red meat, and the awards bestowed, and the media dispersed, the men traveled south, retracing the path that had led them to Nome. Their destination was a place, never spoken of in the company of strangers, but rather whispered in knowing tones from one man to another - men who knew the knife-cruel cold and the acid wind that left them ragged, weakened, and more than ever aware of their humanity. This place was secret; this place was sacred.
The men carried bottles of spirits and stories from the trail, but neither touched their lips along this trek. They journeyed in silence as if on pilgrimage, and along the way if they encountered another traveler inquiring about their destination, the men fixed them with hard eyes, the stares of soldiers who had seen too much and could not release the brutal memories through anything so fragile and insignificant as words. The strangers they met moved on, carrying with them the certainty they had encountered not men, but phantoms - those who had known life but no longer remembered its comforts.
The journey took them one-hundred-and-seventy miles, to the outskirts of a native village, where the superstitious remains of the Malemiut tribe secured shutters and barred doors in preparation of their arrival. Their sanctuary was a temporary shelter, a long house constructed in a matter of days at which they would gather and know that which was to be revealed before evaporating back into the arctic or to the warmer climes of their workaday lives. Upon their departure days later, the structure would be undone and packed away, stored like the fair linen when it was no longer needed to drape the altar.
Divided in two, the long house consisted of a bunkroom and the gathering hall. Inside this hall, there was a long, plank deck that jutted to room’s center and benches lined its length so that all eyes could witness what was to be beheld. On the far end of the space an opening in the partition, like the mouth to the deck’s tongue was draped with a beaded curtain from which wonders would emerge. A support pole ran from the center of the deck to the ceiling; its twin carried the ceiling’s weight in the bunkroom.
Once inside, away from the eyes of the indigenous populace - who disdained fermented spirits - the men began to drink, and they began to talk, their stories spilling over tongues purified by whiskey and rum. They spoke of the trail and the weather; they thanked their respective gods for the few moments of fortune they had received on the otherwise unforgiving tundra.
And on this night, the first night of the pilgrimage, the drink went to the core of the men. Boasts and jibes fermented into aggression, and voices raised and fists followed. Knuckles split lips and buried in stomachs. Men tasted their own blood and the blood of others delivered on swinging fists, but the men knew not hate. Every punch was an affirmation of their strength: they had survived worse; they would survive worse still. Men stumbled and fell and a bench was broken, and a wall nearly so as a great ox of a man threw his attacker against the rapidly fashioned barrier.
The music came on, and it was harsh and simple, like the men who had gathered to listen to it, and the fighting ceased, and a cry rose up, because the music was the green light, the dropped rag, the pistol report - notice to all that the rite was to begin. Soon The Husky would be among them, and all would be revealed.
Men wiped the crimson from their lips and hands. They replaced the benches, lining them up straight and proper on either side of the deck and they sat as the music swelled and then faded, leaving silence in the bitter air of the hall.
A light came on at the curtained end of the deck and the silhouette of a stout man appeared to the collective sighs of the audience. This was He - the reason for their trek.
They called him The Husky, and his life was a collection of mysteries: no facts, simply layer upon layer of rumor and speculation. They said he’d killed a man and smoked his skin for jerky to survive a rough winter, and they said he’d taught his dog team to howl in harmony like a fine chorus, and as for the patch over his eye - the stories were too numerous to count. What could be said without contradiction was that The Husky was an artist.
Another light flickered on behind him, and the aggregation of coarse men looked on entranced, their eyes flitting over the filaments of fur - the kills that covered The Husky head to toe - and they waited… and waited. Breath held. Aching fists clenched.
Then the music returned, louder and harsher…
And bitches it was on! The Husky threw back the beaded curtain and burst into the lantern light, stomping his mink thigh-high boots in heated rhythm to Motley Crue, who expounded the virtues and the vices of the Wild Side. He strutted to the edge of the stage and spun, slipped the jacket to the crook of his elbow to reveal a white, muscled shoulder, and the men shouted as if for blood. The Husky’s tongue shot out and tasted the air, bringing another round of growling thunder, and then he bathed his mustache and beard with that well-rehearsed tongue, sending his audience into breathless petrifaction before he whipped his face away and headed for the pole in the center of the catwalk.
He wrapped a gloved hand around the glossy metal and spun himself playfully, his jacket of chinchilla sweeping the floor, and then as he picked up speed it pulled into the air like a cape. He kicked high and grasped his ankle, holding his foot skyward, and again the tongue. Flashed. Tasted. Vanished. He released his leg and performed a dizzying pirouette. Then the jacket fell from his shoulders, and he threw it to the crowd where blood was spilled over its acquisition. Soon his elk-skin hot pants with their Velcro tear-away seams followed the jacket into the throng, leaving The Husky clad in nothing but boots and gloves and a sheath made from the pelt of an arctic fox. This he removed with his teeth.
For that was the source, the font, the spring of his moniker. The Husky could bend curiously, placing his face in the region of his manhood, and with his tongue he could perform feats generally reserved for the pullers of his sled. And when the pelt of the arctic fox hit the stage, the Husky remained bent, head swaying from side to side in time with the thunder-song and the stomping of the pilgrims who had gathered to pay him respect.
But this was merely a tease, a tantalization. The Husky righted himself, gloved hands already in place to cover his secrets. Gingerly. Petulantly. He twirled around and skipped to the pole, launching himself halfway up its length and using his thrust to carry him around its circumference.
And it was then he came to know the nature of his fate, for during the brawl that had preceded the Husky’s performance, the cord running from the generator to the heating unit in the pole had been knocked free. And like a moistened tongue, that which had been moistened by a tongue adhered to the cruel, icy metal and ripped away as momentum carried the Husky through the completion of his spin.
The legend died then, and The Husky was no more. All that was expected came to naught and the men slept restlessly that night, their bunks no longer welcoming but rather hard as stone as they struggled to find sleep with so much agony in their minds.
And that is the truth. And that is the all. That is the story of what transpired with our intrepid hero The Husky - known to some as Barron - in the Tool Lick Shack outside of Shaktoolik, Alaska.
Delivered with humor and affection,
Lee Thomas
For more tales from THE SECRET LIFE OF LAIRD BARRON, please visit John Langan’s Journal, where a running list of anecdotes from this mysterious life will be revealed.
http://jplangan.livejournal.com/