Juneau: Wisdom Tree 4 by Nick Earls Page A

taps the picture on its lower border, under Thomas. ‘I think…I think we can say he’s happy here.’ His voice lifts at the end, as if by accident the observation has become a question. He glances at Hope.
    â€˜Yes.’
    I try to speak but nothing comes out. I start to clear my throat, but have to cough to do it properly. ‘Are the other photos from the night like this?’
    â€˜Like this? In some ways yes, in some ways no. There are costumes, but the others are bigger groups or a man and a woman.’ She looks at my father, but he’s still focussed on the image. ‘I can find no other quite like this, two men only.’
    â€˜What a special thing to have,’ he says when he finally looks up. He turns to me. ‘Is there a place for it in your bag? Make sure it doesn’t get bent. Put it in a book or something. My iPad Mini. It’ll fit there, in the case.’
    â€˜And soon after that,’ Hope says, a serious tone back in her voice, ‘I am sorry to say, the story ends. There was an outbreak of typhoid fever early in 1897.’ She opens a folder, leafs through the documents and draws out a single sheet of paper. ‘There were many cases in the hospital. Asignificant number of deaths, processed quickly, buried quickly.’
    She keeps the document—it’s a list—from us as she studies it, holding it up so only she can read it. She finds the section she’s looking for.
    â€˜Here.’ She places it in front of us, pointing to the place. ‘There is an error. This is why it was not on the internet when you looked for it, Ken, in the Alaska Vitals.’
    It is a page from a register of deaths, covering a week in February 1897.
    â€˜This is a church record,’ Hope says, ‘not a government record. The Territory of Alaska started recording deaths in 1913. So the Alaska Vitals for earlier were compiled later, from other sources.’
    Below the name ‘Harper, Stanton L’ is ‘Handler, Thomas C’, both dead from typhoid fever on the same day. Their ages appear as thirty-three and twenty-two, their occupationsas doctor and hospital watchman/labourer. Stanton Harper has Boston as his birthplace, Thomas has a blank. Most of the other names on the page are typhoid deaths, too.
    â€˜Thomas C Handler,’ my father says. ‘Twenty-two.’
    â€˜There is no Thomas Handler in Juneau at that time,’ Hope says.
    The story is over, the search is over. February 1897, twenty-two.
    My father picks up the photo from the ball again and rearranges his glasses on his nose. He looks at it closely, going from one face to the other. ‘He was a good man? Stanton Harper?’
    â€˜He was. I’m sure he was.’ Hope waits, but my father doesn’t speak. ‘Edward’s second letter arrived shortly after. There was a new doctor then. People were leaving Juneau for Dawson City, for the new gold rush. The Klondike. The letter was filed. We don’t know if Thomas diedin the hospital or at the house. Perhaps at the house. For both of them.’
    My father looks up, over his glasses. ‘And where is he buried? Do you have any idea of that?’
    â€˜An idea, yes. Only an idea. Nothing certain. You see this? These entries?’ She points to a narrow column near the right of the page. ‘Place of burial? You see the ditto marks, the ‘do’?’ She says it like the word, ‘do’, not as ‘d, o’. ‘It cost five dollars to dig a grave in those days, and a casket cost twenty. And that was at the best of times. In the typhoid outbreak, there were many bodies needing quick burial and not many people to bury them. And miners dying with nothing but a couple of pans to their names. That is probably the ‘do, do, do’ you see further down the page.’
    The word ‘Evergreen’ appears for one name, and ‘do’ for the five below it.
    â€˜Sometimes it just