Leaving the River

July 5, 2019 (continued)

Packing our gear from water travel back to land takes a couple of hours. We want a shower, clean clothes, and a meal. Terry has nothing to wear while his clothes are being washed. It’s my job to wash the clothes. The machines are outside our room, it should be easy. But I don’t have enough loonies, the coin version of their dollar named after the loon on the coin.

The young woman at the desk, Lexie, is cheerful and conversational. She wears a blouse with a satiny sheen. The buttons are small and covered in the same fabric. It’s dressy especially for the 80 degree heat. I wanted to get five loonies and charge it to our incidentals. Lexie says, “Sure. No worries. I think I can do that.” She asks a coworker who says, “What do you think?”

A supervisor overheard and says no, no, no. I notice the super is wearing the same blouse and realize it’s a period costume representing the gold rush, that 2 year period of Dawson’s fame and existence over a hundred years ago. It’s the same in most of the gold rush towns. They cling to this period of greed and debacle.

Lexie sends me a few doors down to the bank. The young teller, Iris, starts into a story of her trips with her father to Whitehorse to buy supplies. Her sisters go too. It takes them seven hours one way. Her dad must drive slowly because of his medical condition. She loves to shop in Whitehorse it’s cheaper and there are so many choices. “It’s my father’s heart. The medical condition.”

“Where do you shop?” She asks me. “Lots of people here use Amazon.” She is piling and repiling the five coins. She sets them down like a dealer would. People are lining up behind me. She asks where I’m from. I tell her. She says she’s very sorry but now she’ll need to see my I.D.

Terry is wearing a towel in wait for me, and I haven’t even started the washer.

Two hours later, we head out for a late lunch/early dinner.

The room and the world up here has turned too hot and light for 10:00 pm, so we leave our bed for a walk. Teenagers hang out on the corners provoking adults by their very being. Drinkers spill into the streets to smoke. Cigarette smoke masks the smelling of the forest fires as the butts smolder in the dirt streets. Every third word is fuck in all of its forms: noun, verb, present, past, pluperfect, gerund and the hyphenated mother form.

We walk with disappointment because our rental car was picked up by the delinquent renters. The rental agent had no backbone and capitulated and let the other renter take the car. I’ve had a dream for years of traveling the Dempster to the arctic oceans. Now we’re stuck inside of Dawson with the Dempster blues again.

I’m glad to say good night to the streets of Dawson.