Half-Ton of Trouble: An old Juneau crime, hidden treasure, and contemporary greed leads to half-ton of trouble

By James Kohn

Old man Denton's life is plagued by a secret. He is victim of his momentary crime of greed committed during Juneau's mining heydays. As his mind unravels in illness he longs for absolution for his youthful crime. After a lifetime of sorrow and regret, the greed of his past sparks the hopes and dreams of a disillusioned Juneau tourist merchant and an Islamic radical. As they seek Denton's hidden treasure their ambitions blind them to strong forces seeking justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publication Consultants
• Release date: Oct 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781594332562

James Kohn

Jim moved to Juneau, Alaska with his wife in 1984 working as a registered nurse and health care administrator until he retired in 2003.  He specialized in care of the elderly. For ten years (1993-2003) he was the director of the Alaska Pioneers' Home program. The stories of his elderly patients, some who had grown up in early Juneau during the first part of the 20th century, fascinated him. He entertained his friends by retelling the stories of these pioneers and was often encouraged to write the stories down. Half -Ton of Trouble weaves some of the stories from old Juneau pioneers with the contrasting times of present Juneau where Jim and his wife continue to make their home.

Book preview

Twenty

Chapter One

Old man Denton couldn’t live on his own anymore. Past ninety, he was too old, shuffled along unsteadily and hallucinated due to Parkinson’s disease. His dog, Star, was a great companion, but couldn’t help much with the chores. Home-visit caregivers worried that he’d fall on his swaybacked steps that rotted down to the beach from Lena Loop road. They were slippery in winter covered with snow and ice and slippery the rest of the year in the rain. Even on the few occasions Juneau had a dry day, black mold greased each step. Caregivers most worried about Denton’s hallucinations. He was always asking them if they could see the other people in the room when the room was bare. He never debated the visions, just said he could see them and they couldn’t. Oh, well, just the Parkinson’s kicking-up. He thought maybe he needed more medication or maybe less.

Denton had lived for a long time at his cabin on Lena road. He built the first log section as a young man. He carried stones from the beach for the foundation and fireplace, and cut trees on the land for the walls. Later, he added to the original one-room and lived with his wife in happy years raising their daughter, Jennie. Granddaughter Kelly lived her teenage years with ‘gramps and gran.’ Now he had been years alone after his Stella died. Stella loved the place. She grew lupine and wild iris, Sitka roses and columbine, dwarf fireweed and forget-me-nots plus any other wild plant she found. A palate of colors rooted in rock-walled planters illuminated the rough log house.

Boaters in Lena Cove pointed to the seaside garden painted between the spruce and hemlock. Neighbors envied the display, but didn’t have the time to move rocks and haul in soil for their own gardens, so they were satisfied to stroll the beach and point out Stella’s garden to their summer-time guests. But left untended the dozen years since Stella’s death, the old beds were a quagmire of quick growing alders that shaded the setting sun as it sank to the north-west into Favorite Channel.

Jennie had long ago moved south to Seattle with her daughter, and no husband. Her poor health forced her to send Kelly to her grandparents during her high school years. Jennie’s bad kidneys kept her tied to a dialysis machine so Denton didn’t see much of her since he had given up plane rides and long Alaska ferry trips down the inside passage. Jennie telephoned, but Denton hated talking on the phone and couldn’t hear well enough to keep up a conversation. Granddaughter, Kelly, loved her grandpa Denton and loved Juneau. She was just so busy traveling the world on archeological digs that Denton received more postcards from unknown places than personal visits. Denton knew she’d drop everything and come in a crisis, but Denton didn’t have crises—he was just slowly degenerating.

Not much was the same for Denton anymore. When the Parkinson disease didn’t get in the way, he did have his memories. When he had hallucinations he often felt that he viewed his memories. Men he had worked with at the AJ mine stood right in front of him although he knew they had been dead for years. His old hunting partners and fishing friends, dead and buried, visited him in full color. He couldn’t conjure them up at will and really didn’t try. He’d just look up and they’d just be there. Some part of him knew they weren’t real, but sometimes he couldn’t quite tell. Funny what the mind can do, he’d think, when it starts going haywire.

The hallucinations often reminded him of a story long forgotten. He loved to tell his stories when he could remember them. The visiting care-givers didn’t have much time to listen. They busied themselves with housekeeping tasks, and Denton’s storytelling couldn’t compete with the whining of the vacuum.

Stooping over the stove with both hands fluttering a bit like Alder leaves, he slopped boiling water from the kettle over a tea bag into his cup. He’d have to let it sit a bit to cool so he’d avoid burning himself. The shakes made everything difficult. He couldn’t even tie his shoes anymore. Thank God for slip-on, he thought. Bent over, he padded into the living room feeling weak and hoping the tea would help after it cooled. Moving slowly, he glanced at the old picture of himself on the side-board and got a good look at the young, fair-haired, muscled miner. He winced. Incredible, he reflected, to have ended-up an old man—and so fast.

As he entered the darkening living room, he sensed they were there before he saw them. Just as in life, Tommy and John in their grimy overalls and mud-caked boots stood in his living room. Geez, you guys have been dead for years. There was no response and they shimmered away. But Star got her back up growling toward the fireplace, apparently at the apparitions. Could Star see these visions? Who knew? Denton figured they were projections from a disintegrating brain—his brain. So there wasn’t anything for that black collie mutt to see. He reached down to pat Star with a shaking arthritic hand—blue veins popping-up like ropes under his white flesh due to the effort. Star turned her head and licked his hand wagging her tail with caution rather than pleasure. Maybe Star heard a squirrel in the chimney. Denton didn’t hear anything. All he saw now was the rock-face of the fireplace, a tidy stack of firewood and a heavy brick holding down a stack of newspapers. It’s okay Star, he said.

But it got Denton to thinking about his years with Tommy and John at the AJ Mine. After high school Tommy, John, Garth and Denton signed up at the AJ as muckers, shoveling rock that spilled out of the ore cars when they were being filled. He could feel the muscle strain through all those years. They shoveled rock fast enough to send forty ore cars out about every twenty minutes.

The chute opened above the ten-ton car spilling rock and filling the air with grime. He could still taste the grit and feel the dirty sweat trickling into his eyes. He could remember his filthy overalls clinging and saturated. Hot sweat scalded his feet in rubber boots. He could hear the metal screech of the chute door sliding open creating a noise of cascading rock the ears could no longer hear. The calcium carbide lamp on his metal hat cut through the rock dust that appeared to be thick smoke. Shoveling the spilled rock into the cars built the guys strong or wore them out early. It was wet, dirty, sweaty work. It was dangerous work, especially for young, high-spirited fools like Garth.

Garth was taller, heavier and stronger than any of the other three. He had a beard when he was fourteen. He could move more rock than any two of them. He was full of himself and careless in the mine. Denton remembered that time so long ago when the Alaska Mine Workers Local No. 1 was formed back in 1934, about a year after the four friends signed on. Garth and the rest of them backed the union’s demand for a six-day work week. But Garth laughed at the union when it demanded safety devices and first aid kits. He said he was big enough to take care of himself, and if the ‘little ladies’ he had to work with couldn’t take care of themselves, too bad. Denton frowned at the memory.

Garth’s dream was to quit mining and make a fortune fishing. Denton winced at that buried thought and reached for his tea that was now cold. Startled as Star jumped up, barked and headed for the door, Denton spilled some cold tea on his tartan wool shirt. Visitors, Denton thought. Star heard footsteps coming down the ancient steps from the road.

The woman at the door introduced herself as the social worker from the Pioneers’ Home. Denton was on the waiting list to enter the Juneau Pioneers’ Home. He had decided that living alone in his condition wasn’t really possible anymore. He hated to leave his house full of memories after all these years, but it was time to move on, a little like planning your own funeral, saying good-by to the world you loved.

He offered the social worker tea saying she could fix a cup for them both as he poured his cold tea in the kitchen sink. She made the tea observing the clean and tidy kitchen while he made slow movements back to his chair in the living room. Star was used to visitors and begged a cookie from the social worker. Denton told her to put the cookie on Star’s nose. Star flipped the cookie in the air and caught it as it descended—her favorite trick. He’d have to bring Star with him to the Pioneers’ Home, Denton told the social worker. Would that be allowed? The social worker said he could if a private room was available and Star didn’t cause other residents any problems. He’d wait for a private room, he said. He couldn’t give up Star.

He asked the social worker to write a letter for him to his grand daughter asking her to help him make the move and clear up his estate. His will left everything including the log house to Kelly. He’d keep the house until he died hoping to visit now and again. Kelly was on an archeological dig somewhere in the mid-East. He had her address. Syria, he thought. His hands were so shaky; he needed the social worker to write the letter.

He gave her Kelly’s address and began to dictate:

Dearest Kelly,

Gramps is hoping you can get free to help me move into the Pioneers’ Home. It’s time I made a change. It’s time I told you everything about the half-ton secret that I know you think is just a story made-up by a crazy old man. There isn’t much time as I am falling apart and am plagued with visions of the past. Maybe I am crazy now, but I need to tell you everything and let you decide. I never told you the whole story, but what I told you over the years is true all the same. They will let me take Star to the Pioneers’ Home. Everything else is yours.

Gramps.

Chapter Two

The three of them grabbed a corner table at the Triangle Bar. Alex ordered three Alaska stouts, not that horse-piss Pale Amber that won the Juneau brewery all the awards.

Now look, Alex said to Ron and Dave as he unconsciously reached in his shirt pocket for a smoke, next week, before I have to get the shop ready for the tourists, we’re going on an adventure, guys. So make sure you got the time off and get your campin’ gear together.

Before Ron or Dave could respond, Dottie, delivering their beers, leaned over Alex and in a voice dried from years of booze and cigarettes rasped, You light that thing, Alex, and I call the police.

Oh, crap, Alex said in a whimpering voice, I frickin’ forgot that the greenies and bran-muffin-girls took smokin’ out of the bars for my health. The only damn place you can smoke anymore is in the woods.

Alex, Ron giggled, a lot of your tourists complained about the smoke in the bars. The city assembly couldn’t tick off the tourists. Without the tourists where would your T-shirt and billikin shop be?

Yeah, well, the tourists come to see the Last Frontier and the assembly falls all over itself to make Juneau some kind of Victorian bed and breakfast and Franklin Street Carney show.

Hey, Alex, Dave chortled spitting some beer, your shop is a part of that Carney show.

Yeah, said Alex, "if the cruise ship companies have their way, I’ll be out of business like most of the locals. Those big corporations go out of their way to make sure their sparklie stores profit while local businesses are libeled.

Hey, just free enterprise, isn’t it Alex? How are they gonna put you out of business? Dave said.

I’m gettin’ to that. Did you know that every cruise ship passenger gets a list of shops considered ‘reputable’ in town from those crusise ship creeps? The handout says that the cruise line can’t recommend stores not listed. Of course the locals’ shops aren’t listed. All the stores on the list are either owned by the cruise ships or outsiders in bed with them. The cruise line gets a kick-back from the non-owned stores from every purchase their passengers make in return for the advertisin’. Why do you think they ask you what ship you’re on, and then enter it into the computer when they make a sale? Everyone else gets blackballed.

Alex downed the last of his first beer in a gulp, belched and continued, The tourists pass by the local shops like we were the crooks: modern-day Soapy Smith con-artists. That’s why I just sell junk—mostly T-shirts and billikins—no high-end native crafts or jewelry like my dad did.

Alex waived to Dottie for another beer continuing his diatribe, "The cruise lines have their passengers convinced the locals are crooks, so all the big business goes to Diamonds r Us or whatever. Those shops move with the cruises: Alaska in the summer and the Caribbean in the winter. Like I said, they’re in bed with each other."

We get it you don’t like ‘em, said Ron as he turned in his chair looking for Dottie. She was getting another full tray of drinks from Zeke