Sympathy Notes
Gloria Whelan
I first noticed the tent in early fall, about the time Mrs. Murchis received a note from the family of Henry Fonda acknowledging her letter of condolence. A fog from Cook Inlet had rolled over Anchorage. As it met the cold pavement, the mist turned to ice, forcing morning traffic to a crawl and leaving plenty of time to look around. The tent was orange and dome-shaped, a second sun pushing up through the pine trees. It was like the one Wade and I had given our son, Jay, for his 18th birthday. I thought without much hope Jay had come to take me home. I did not believe I could get through another Alaskan winter, and even if I could, when it ended Larry and I might not be together. He was tired of my punishing him for the cold and darkness, which he hardly noticed and which was not his fault.
The tent was in a small park I pass on my way to the library where I work. Although I told myself it could be anyone's son, that thousands of people come to Alaska eager for the wilderness or the lack of civilization, I looked expectantly each day for some sign of the occupant. The end of the second week I saw a figure piling wood beside the tent. It was not Jay.
The library is in the small village where Larry and I live. The village, more outpost than suburb, is in the foothills of the Talkeetna Mountains about 20 minutes beyond Anchorage. We have a lot of timber hippies living here in shacks left behind by prospectors. They are like beautiful horses with their long manes and skittish ways, nibbling on grains. They come into the library and take out books on drying food and midwifery. There are fundamentalists here, too, who keep an eye on our bookshelves for salacious literature. Their children,
