Chapter 8
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Radioville Island, AK
The warm, smoky embrace of bourbon slid down Joe’s throat, a burned banana taste lingering, a liquid fire clearing the fog in his head. Settling into his worn chair, he savored the burn.
Hair of the dog.
He opened a new, blank journal, turned to the first page, and wrote out the outgoing messages from the previous day, best he could recall.
He would send as many as he could, hoping to make everything seem normal to the mining company folks back in Sitka.
No one could know he’d lost the logbook, and he figured he could remember most of the messages—close enough, at least.
He started with the personal stuff. Watkins wanted to wish his son back in Illinois a happy birthday.
Josh? John? What was the kid’s name? Easy enough to cover.
“J WATKINS HAPPY BD LOVE DAD STOP” Even though Morse code had included punctuation since the late 1800s, Joe continued to use STOP instead of periods, as he’d been trained in the Signal Corps.
Nettle Jones had caught a barn-door halibut right off the dock at the mine. He was bragging to the folks back home. He’d given Joe a nice fillet, but Joe had lost it when the rowboat flipped.
Boris Petrov had asked Joe to send a wildly exaggerated story about the brown bear that had broken into the bunkhouse.
Joe toned it down a little closer to the truth.
“BEAR brOKE INTO OUR SLEEPER THE OTHER NIGHT BUT I CHASED HIM OFF STOP” Boris was the only man Joe could think of who wasn’t sending money home to his family.
His kids couldn’t survive eating fancy made-up yarns about Boris braving the wilderness like some Alaskan Davy Crockett.
Mal Burnside wanted his oldest son to come to Alaska Territory to join him working in the mine.
They had been back and forth about it for months.
The kid didn’t want to come and was clearly needed back home to take care of his mom and younger siblings struggling through the Depression.
Joe decided to pull it back a bit. “UNDERSTAND IF YOU CANT MAKE IT OUT HERE STOP MIGHTY GRATEFUL FOR ALL YOU DO BACK HOME AS MAN OF THE HOUSE STOP”
It took another inch of the cheap bourbon to get through the rest of the personal messages he could remember from the miners and managers.
He’d saved one that was problematic.
Charles Herbert had given Joe a message to relay to his mother in Texas.
Chuck was wiring money back home each month for his mother’s medical expenses.
Last week, he’d been badly injured by a rockfall.
He was in the infirmary and wasn’t expected to be able to work for a couple of months, so even his meager mining pay was cut off.
The message Chuck had dictated was something like “Apologies, got myself in a fix, won’t be able to send cash for a spell.
Check with the church, maybe they can lend a hand. ”
Joe made an entry in his coded journal to wire funds from his own account to Chuck’s mother, pretending they came from Chuck.
He changed the outgoing message to read “GOT MYSELF A SCRATCH STOP NOTHING SERIOUS STOP THE COMPANY THREW IN A LITTLE EXTRA SO AM SHOOTING OVER TWO MONTHS WORTH ALL IN ONE GO STOP HOPE YOU ARE FEELING BETTER STOP”
When Joe was in the Army Signal Corps in the war, a radio just like the one in front of him was his weapon, a tool he could wield to call in artillery, raining down death on unwitting young men cowering in muddy trenches on the other side.
Now, it felt like Joe and his radio could redeem themselves in some small part.
He moved on to business. For the yield report, he copied some verbiage from last quarter’s journal. The only thing he was unclear on was the actual numbers, but he had a plan to cover that issue. For now, he just made up some numbers close to those he’d sent in the old report.
He took another sip of whiskey, rolling it around his tongue as he finished writing out the messages longhand in his new book, then pulled his code key over and started tapping them out in Morse code.
He got the “ACK” from the other end, indicating that the operator acknowledged they’d copied all the messages.
Joe closed the notebook and retuned the receiver.
He had a little while before replies would start coming in, and he wanted to see if he could pick up any long-range skip audio.
The speaker crackled to life with a static hiss.
He moved the tuner very slowly across the dial, pausing anytime the sound changed.
A blip of music. Violins. Joe’s fingers froze, and then he edged very slowly backward on the tuning. Pretty soon, he had a Strauss waltz coming through plain as day.
Amazing.
He leaned back and sipped his drink, listening to more music—Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Ethel Merman—waiting for the station to identify itself.
“This is KOA, Rocky Mountain Broadcasting Station of the General Electric Company, transmitting from Denver, Colorado, on 850 kilohertz.”
Wow, Denver, Colorado, had to be, what, 3,000 miles?
Radio waves could bounce off the ionosphere and come down hundreds or thousands of miles away, in what radio men called “skip.” This was the farthest broadcast Joe had ever picked up in Radioville.
He slid back over to his code key and tapped out a message:
Program Received Here Clear as a Bell Stop Enjoyed Dance Numbers and Special Features Stop Keep It Up Stop
He added his location and identifier and keyed the instructions telling the Sitka station to forward the message via Western Union.
That must have prompted the operator on the other end to start sending the new batch of incoming messages.
He grabbed a piece of scrap paper and a pen, and sent the ready acknowledge message back.
Joe translated Morse code for about half an hour, copying the incomings onto the scrap paper. He liked to review and occasionally edit them before he wrote them out formally in his official journal.
Most of the information was operational, for the managers at the mines—status of equipment orders, lists of provisions that would be delivered on the next supply boat.
The personal messages came next. Many were simple greetings and pleasantries from faraway family members doing their best to survive the Great Depression, trying to maintain some modicum of contact with men working at the mines.
Sometimes, Joe softened the bad news. Things were tough working up here, and families back home had no idea what the men were enduring for their sakes.
Even the Alaska Territory had felt the impact of the Depression, with market prices for salmon and copper dropping to historic lows and crunching the economy.
Gold, on the other hand, had fared well—making the mines a beacon of hope for desperate family members back home.
As usual, several messages asked for money to be wired to cover unexpected expenses.
He was sure he’d soon have replies from the miners who were able, wiring funds back home to them.
One message caught his attention—from Sam Worlson’s brother, Dave: “ESTHER PACKED UP AND LEFT STOP SAYS SHE AINT COMIN BACK STOP RECKON SHE RUN OFF WITH THAT FELLA FROM THE ARMY STOP”
Joe drained the rest of his bottle and considered his options.
He decided to wait on that one for now. He figured he could stall, and she’d probably come running back in a few days on her own anyway.
Sam would be none the wiser. Plus, Joe needed Sam Worlson, particularly now with the book being lost. He didn’t want Sam getting any ideas about running back to Oklahoma chasing after his wife.
Joe wrote in the journal, “Sam Worlson, brother Dave sends his regards. Plenty of tornadoes kickin up dust in Oklahoma lately. Prayin we ain’t blown away fore you get back.
” Joe knew that spring was tornado season in Oklahoma and figured that would be convincing enough to pass as small talk from Sam’s brother.
When the last of the personal messages came in, Joe went back to the blank spot he had left and wrote in, “Please confirm and re-send weekly yield numbers.” He could show that note to the mine administrator, get the same numbers they had told him the other day, and send those to Sitka as a correction. Lost book problem—solved.
Or one of them solved, at least. The way he figured it, the other missing journal—the coded one—would be much trickier. He’d need to ruminate on that for a while.
Joe stumbled to the door and heaved his empty bottle toward the shore, waiting an extra second or two for the satisfying crash as the glass shattered on the rocks by the beach.
He went to his cabinet and took out a fresh fifth.
He was on the last row. Time to put in a new order for the next supply boat.
Didn’t want to be stuck borrowing from the miners again.
Powering down the radio and shutting off the generator, Joe grabbed a pen and paper and moved to the table. The thought of Sam’s wife leaving him was a painful parallel to Joe’s own situation. He began to compose a letter.
Dearest Melinda,
Still working the radio here in this far-off outpost in Alaska Territory. Radio waves hummin like distant artillery, and I’m earning a few bucks. Hoping these words find you and our boy in good spirits.
Life’s a hard march, and I trust this money’s reaching you in good stead.
A man’s gotta shoulder his duty, and I reckon you understand why I had to pull stakes.
Didn’t wanna turn into the kind of fella my old man was, but I kept glimpsin his ghost in my own reflection. Needed to put miles between us.
Missing you something fierce, Melinda. Thoughts of you and the kid keep me company every day. Don’t blame you none for the lack of letters; reckon the post ain’t always reliable. Still clinging to hope that time might bring change, make things right.
I’m pulling every oar I got to provide for you both. Will keep at it as long as I got breath in my lungs. Maybe down the line, we can find a kindness between us again. Would sure love to meet my boy.
Ain’t even got his name yet.
Your Joe