Detective Paco and Wronwright in, North to Alaska

Wronwright hugged the tree trunk as tightly as if it had been Kim Kardashian and he was saying goodnight after a very promising first date which, with a little aplomb, might be prolonged until breakfast. He spoke in a barely audible whisper. “Do you think it saw us?” I was sitting on a limb, level with his boots, and remembering a wildlife show I had seen recently on television, the import of which, I vaguely recalled, was the foolishness of trying to escape from a grizzly bear by climbing a tree. “No,” I said. “But if it does, I have a feeling that it’s going to get a little close up here. Don’t worry, though; I’m sure the crowd will thin out pretty quickly.” Wronwright gulped; he must have seen the same program.
* * *

Perhaps it would be useful to backtrack and explain how Wronwright and I had found ourselves barking up the wrong tree, sixty miles north of Anchorage just off an old abandoned logging road, praying that the neighborhood grizzly bear had a bad cold and poor vision.

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska, I’m bound to point out) had been indicted on a number of charges involving the felonious theft of pork from the public larder, and as the evidence against him kept mounting, he had skipped, having figured out that, while Justice might be blind, there was certainly nothing wrong with the old girl’s sense of smell. I had gotten some leads that he was still hiding out in his home state, and after a little snooping around, discovered that he had frequently retired to this general area on camping trips; in fact, based on the careful questioning of some of his ex-flacks and a few locals, I was pretty sure that he had sequestered himself somewhere out here off the old logging road, possibly in one of the ramshackle cabins that were previously used by the timber company. My duty as a citizen – and the $25,000 bounty – had convinced me to have a go at collaring him. For that kind of getus, I figured I could afford to bring my occasional partner, Wronwright, along.

We prepared to set out that morning, shortly after Wronwright had returned to the hotel from the nearest convenience store with bottled water, snacks and a full tank of gas. Our wheels were rented – a four-wheel drive Jeep Commander - and as I opened the door on the driver’s side, Wronwright asked if he could drive. “I used to love that old TV show, Wild Kingdom”, Wronwright said, “and I’ve always wanted to drive one of these all-terrain vehicles over rough country.” So, playing Jim Fowler to Wronwright’s Marlin Perkins, I shifted to the passenger side and we took off.

We headed north from Anchorage, and after a couple of wrong turns and some backing and filling, we found the old logging road. Things were going well – except for Wronwright’s habit of singing along with the pop music tunes on the golden-oldies radio station he had found – when the engine began sputtering and the vehicle came to a halt.

There was one significant upside to the jeep conking out: it brought an abrupt end to Wronwright’s indifferent harmonizing with the Temptations on “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”. Aside from that, however, things looked grim. “Oh, that’s just swell”, I muttered. “I haven’t seen anything resembling a service station for the last 20 miles. Well, pop the hood and let’s see if we can find out what’s wrong.”

Wronwright opened the hood, and we stood there looking at the motor; because of our mutual ignorance of automobile engines, we might as well have been two Amazonian headhunters staring at a broken x-ray machine. I did a brief survey of the basics – fluids, battery cables and so forth – and there were no problems with the obvious things. “I don’t get it,” I said. “This jeep looks brand new; it’s not leaking any fluids, I don’t see any broken belts, seems to have plenty of oil. And we started out with a full tank of gas, right?”

Wronwright rolled his eyes toward the sky and squinted, as if he were checking for signs of an early snow storm.

“We did start out with a full tank of gas, didn’t we?”

Uh-oh. His face was taking on the color of a ripe tomato and he was pursing his lips. That could only mean one thing. “Er, actually,” he said, “when I went to the convenience store to stock up on supplies, I think I might have forgotten that one little thing.”

I slammed the hood. “That ‘one little thing’?” I shoved my fedora back, took a cigarette out of the pack in my shirt pocket, and lit up a gasper. I stared at him – hard – but his gaze was now fixed on his hiking boots, while he nonchalantly counted the eyelets. I sighed and decided that we weren’t going to get many miles per gallon of recrimination, so the thing to do was to figure a way out of this scrape.

“Listen. We’ve come a couple of miles up this logging road, and, according to my map, it only runs back into the hills about four, so I expect that Stevens is probably pretty close by. Why not scout ahead and see if we can find some trace of him; maybe even the cabin where he’s holed up? He’s bound to have some kind of transportation, and if we can take him, we can drive him back in his own vehicle.” Wronwright brightened considerably on hearing this plan, so we headed off up the road.

As we hiked along at a fairly brisk pace, the forest began to close in on us. It was largely mature secondary growth consisting of balsam poplars and aspens, with a more or less impenetrable tangle of small saplings growing under the larger trees. Aside from the sounds of occasional birdsong, and the steady clomping of our own feet, there was an almost palpable silence about this wild and beautiful country. Suddenly, the quiet was broken by an incredibly loud snort.

“Gesundheit”, we said to each other, simultaneously.

“I didn’t sneeze,” Wronwright said. “I thought it was you.”

“It wasn’t me.”

We stopped in our tracks and looked at each other, then swiveled our heads around searching out the dark woods. Wronwright’s hand shot out and latched onto my elbow. In a small voice, he said, “Over there!”

Perhaps forty yards ahead, a few feet off of the road, the top of a middling tall pine tree was yawing like the mast of an old sailing ship, anchored in choppy waters. There was not the slightest trace of a breeze. Something that sounded like a scratching noise, accompanied by deep moans of contentment, reached our ears.

Wronwright’s eyes were as big as silver dollars, and his chin almost touched the top button on his shirt. “You don’t suppose that might be a possum, do you?”

I shook my head in the negative, and automatically felt beneath my jacket. Shiny Sal – my faithful Ruger .38 caliber revolver – had provided useful service on many occasions, but if the critter up ahead was what I thought it was, I was afraid the old girl might not be up to the task at hand.

The pine tree, which was obviously being used as a back-scratcher by what could only be a bear, finally resumed its sedentary state; but we could see the bushes and smaller trees rippling with movement – and that movement was heading slowly in our direction.

I spoke to Wronwright out of the side of my mouth, without taking my eyes off of the approaching menace. “Let’s start moving quietly back down the road; the jeep’s about three hundred yards back, and if we don’t attract the bear’s attention, we may just make it. Ready?” No answer. “I said, ’Ready?’”

I kept my right hand inside my jacket, wrapped tightly around the grip of my gun, but reached slowly to the side and behind me with my left to make contact with Wronwright. All I got was a handful of air.

That’s when I heard it: a distant sibilation, like a pocket-knife being poked into a tire on a car parked down at the end of a long block.

“Pssssssst!”

I looked around, but couldn’t see my partner.

“Paco! Up here!”

I glanced up, and there he was, standing on a high limb near the top of a quaking aspen tree; although it was a toss up as to which one was quaking the most. Against my better judgment, I shinnied up after him, bringing us full circle to where this narrative began.
* * *
“Paco, listen. I just had a thought.”

“Well, it’s about time.”

“No, seriously. Bears and dogs are supposed to have evolved from the same animal, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“How about this: if the bear comes sniffing around the tree and spots us, I’ll tear off a limb and throw it. You know: a game of ‘fetch’. I’ll toss it way out there in the bushes somewhere, and while he’s looking for it, we can climb down the tree and skedaddle.”

“That’s it?”, I queried with no little irritation. “That’s your Plan A?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

“I think I want to hear your Plan B.”

From our vantage point in the tree, the underbrush seemed to be writhing. And then we saw him; it was a grizzly bear, all right. His broad, furry back could now be seen clearly as he moved into the shallow ditch by the road.

But we were interrupted in the contemplation of our likely fate by the sound of a car coming down the road from the direction toward which we had been walking. I had a second’s worth of exaltation, and then figured out that if it was Stevens, we would probably be no better off. He wouldn’t want anybody to know he was up here, and if he saw us in our current predicament, I could imagine him stopping, sizing up the situation, and then smearing honey on the trunk of our tree and hollering, “Here, boy!”

Only it wasn’t Stevens. A station wagon of some antiquity came bouncing down the road, slowed down and came to a halt – no doubt in response to Wronwright’s frantic flailing and shouting. The door opened and…she got out.

“Paco, look! Isn’t that…”

“It sure looks like her to me.”

An attractive, middle-aged woman wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, cargo pants and a khaki work shirt walked up to the tree (“our” tree, as I had come to think of it, even on so short an acquaintance).

“Hi, guys! Whatcha doin’ up there?”

Wronwright and I descended as fast as we could. I shouted out a warning on the way down. “Watch out, ma’am! There’s a grizzly over there in the trees!”

At that precise moment, the grizzly finally ambled into the road, about fifteen yards behind the station wagon. I fumbled for my gun, and had just cleared it from the shoulder holster when the woman turned, saw the bear, clapped her hands loudly and yelled, “Scat!” The bear lowered his head – looking for all the world as if his feelings had been hurt – then raised it, sniffed the air, and uttered the closest thing to a genuine “harrumph!” I’ve ever heard from man or beast. He turned and trotted off into the woods.

Wronwright and I glanced at each other, then at the woman. Her face broke into a beautiful smile. “That’s just Old Ben. He can get a little frisky from time to time, but usually he just gawks and then moves on. By the way, I’m Sarah Palin.”

We shook hands all around. The introductions out of the way, she asked, “So, what were you fellahs doin’ up the tree?”

I was so embarrassed over the whole affair that it was on the tip of my tongue to say that we were bird watching; but the governor gave the very distinct impression of not being the sort of person who would fall for that line, so I reluctantly told her the truth: that we had seen the grizzly and had scampered up a tree.

“Bad move, guys. That won’t stop a grizzly.”

We were spared any further reflections on our ignorance of woodcraft as our attention was drawn to a muffled sound coming from the governor’s car. What we saw astonished us even more than the encounter with the grizzly bear.

Tied to the bumper, in the manner of a deer carcass being transported home by a successful hunter, was a man, bound and gagged. He was an elderly fellow, but obviously very much alive and surprisingly feisty.

Wronwright found his voice first. “Pardon me, governor, but did you know that there’s a man tied to your bumper?”

Palin waved a dismissive hand in the direction of her car and said, “Oh, yeah. That’s just Ted Stevens. He’s been on the run from the law, but I figured I’d find him up here, and sure enough, he was holed up in the old foreman’s shack up the road a piece. I tied him to the bumper so I could keep an eye on him while I drive.”

Wronwright clapped me on the shoulder. “Whaddaya know, Paco! You were right!”

I explained that we had come in search of Stevens, but, obviously, our timing was just a little off.

“I’m sorry, boys, but, as they say, ‘finders keepers, losers weepers.’ This way, we save the bounty money and the citizens get to keep their $25,000.”

I easily suppressed the urge to shout, “Hurray for the citizenry!” At least it had been an exciting adventure, after a fashion, and we had gotten a chance to meet Sarah Palin in what you might call her natural habitat, so, although I was out of pocket for the trip, the connection might come in handy after the election.

A thought occurred to Wronwright – a useful one, this time. “Say, Governor, can you spare us a few gallons of gas? We ran out on the way up here.”

“Sure thing, guys! I’ve got a full five-gallon container in the back of my car.”

The governor gave us a ride down to our jeep, and we poured the contents of the gasoline container in our tank. Then, with a friendly wave, she was off. We watched her wind her way down the road in a cloud of dust. “You know, Paco,”, Wronwright said in a far-away voice, “I bet we just shook hands with the future Vice President of the United States.”

I lit another cigarette. “Wronwright, I bet we just shook hands with a future President of the United States. Let’s get going.”

I gently pointed Wronwright in the direction of the passenger side, much to his disappointment, when an idea suddenly occurred to me. “Say, Wron, let me pop the hood right quick, and you check to make sure I put the dip stick back in the well all the way.”

Wronwright looked at me quizzically. “I know you put it back all the way. I saw you.”

“Well, just to be on the safe side.” I slid behind the wheel and pulled the hood latch. “And make sure those battery terminals are ok,” I hollered.

After a few moments, Wronwright closed the hood, gave me a “thumbs up” and climbed in the jeep. I started the engine, turned the jeep around and began the long drive back to Anchorage.

Once we were under way, Wronwright cleared his throat and reached for the power button on the radio; but nothing happened. He pushed the button several times, but still, no music.

“Rats!” he said in disgust. “I was hoping to catch the Bee Gees. I really felt like joining in with ‘Stayin’ Alive’. It would have been appropriate, considering all we’ve been through today.”

I smiled sympathetically. It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel that I discovered that some wires on the radio had “accidentally” come loose.