North to Alaska in the Sixties

lortLtó»urns Ellison North to Alaska! Go north, the rush is on North to AlasL·! Go north, the rush is on! —Johnny Horton We remained all morning in bed. In the afternoon I walked with her to her class. I didn't know what to say so I talked about Ireland. I was off to Alaska, but what I talked about was what we had once planned to do together—go to Ireland and live in a cabin in the "bee-loud glade." We'd spend the days delving into the Celtic past, poking through musty archives in old libraries, reading myths and folk tales, seeking out evidences of the "little people." And we'd visit Yeats' grave, and fish for salmon in the Irish streams and take walks through the heather, and at night I would comb her long hair. And we'd have thick warm quilts and a big wide bed, and pots of tea to drink by a sputtering fire, while outside the banshee winds shrieked, the rains poured down, and the mists moved in from the sea. Weekends we'd go to the village pub and drink with the locals, and on June 16th we'd be off to Dublin to celebrate Bloomsday. And I wanted so badly to believe what I was saying, and that I could still make it all come true. I held her, not wanting to let her go, not wanting to leave her. I kissed her, and told her that I loved her. Her eyes were moist and glistening , but then so were mine, along with everybody else's. The day before, helicopters had tear-gassed the campus and sheriff's deputies had stood on the roof of the student union lobbing canisters on the demonstrators below, and our eyes still burned from the fumes. In downtown Berkeley the police were making mass arrests, hauling protesters off in busloads. Helicopters circled overhead. There were smashed store windows, the sidewalks covered with broken glass, here and there stains of blood. I passed a firstaid station where some scraggly bearded young kid was getting his head bandaged. I stood 129 Ecotone: reimagining place on the corner waiting for the light to change. Two cops seized the guy next to me and dragged him away. Another cop ordered me to keep moving. On University Avenue I took my turn behind the lines of hippies with packs and rolls and taped-together suitcases, waving signs and placards that said: New York and Chicago, Denver, Taos, and Los Angeles. A couple of women carried babies. All of them could have been gypsies or Bedouins, exotic refugees fleeing from a city besieged. The day was sunny and hot, which only made the fumes of tear gas burn more. Early afternoon: a street corner in Blaine, Washington. Wondering how I was going to get past the Canadian customs, I noticed the Volkswagen with California plates parked across the street. Glistening black, glittering with chrome, mammoth ballooning tires. With the driver standing next to it. He wore a black Stetson cowboy hat, black shades, black Levi's, and a black parka with a Laguna Seca patch on the shoulder and an American flag on the breast. He had black sideburns, and a black goatee, and he was just then lighting himself a cigarette. . . . Luis Garcia Mendoza was his name, and he was from Lima, Peru, by way of Monterey, California, and I found this out while we sat in a café drinking coffee, and yes, he, too, was on his way to Alaska. But "these bastards at the customs"—they would not let him through. And he had not slept since leaving Monterey, and he had been driving very hard, and now "these—these sons-of-bitches"—they would not let him through because of insufficient funds, even though his billfold—he shook it at me—bulged with credit cards. Yes, he would take me across the border, but even if we pooled funds—mine being what they were— we'd still be turned back. We went outside and sat on the curb. A cop pulled up in his cruiser, asked to see our IDs, then ordered us off...