The Sitka Experiment

Chapter One

                                                                                         Part 1

                    The sun had set hours ago and all that could be seen in the night where the bright stars that shone in the sky like little burning torches and the light shining out of the windows of the small cottage that stood a little over four miles outside of town. It was a small house made up of only one floor and six rooms. On the outside, the house looked like a run-down ranch. With white siding the paint was defiantly warn and chipped from the harsh winters. Old man William got so sick of having to repaint the house every spring that he stopped repainting it six years back when his oldest moved to New England for school and could no longer help him with the dogs and housework. He was devastated when his son left for school telling him all on the same day that he was leaving and did not want to take over the family business like every son before him. William still had hope for his youngest son Paul who was only thirteen, but he knew he loved the dogs just as much as he did. Once you stepped through the wood door, you stood in the family room. It was a small room that did not consist of much. A small couch sat in front of the fire. The family would sit her on cold nights and warm themselves by the blazing fire. The warmth from the flickering ambers would spread up their toes before heating the rest of there bodies.

                There was no tv in the space, they had tried once with a dish, but the reception was spotty and not worth the money Old Man William would tell his family. A few steps past the couch was the house's kitchen. It was the one room in the house that was modernized. The countertops were made out of a grey granite that resembled the color of the soot that remained when the fire had dwindled away. The large stainless-steel fridge that had two doors and a freezer on the bottom stood all the way to the right of the counter. A few feet to the left was a deep farmer sink that could fit all the disses from a large family meal. A few feet to the left of the sink was the stove that William bought for his wife three years back. To the right of the kitchen were three small bedrooms and the only bathroom of the house. There was nothing special or identifying about the rooms. They almost looked identical. Most of there money went back to the dogs. It was expensive to breed and take care of a few hundred dogs. Outside the front of the house was a farmer's porch that had a pair of rocking chairs placed upon it.

            Old man Williams sat in one of those rocking chairs on this cold night smoking his pipe and watching the stars. He used to come out here with Davie his middle son and star gaze. That was until he moved into town when he married Liliya a few years ago. He knew how lucky his son was Liliya was a great wife and even better mother. She came from a great family who only did good things for the community. That did not mean he did not miss having him around. It was a cold night in January but not near as cold as it would get in the coming days. The negative ten degrees where enough to burn his throat every time he took a breath in and stung his eyes as if someone was stabbing him with tiny little needles with the slightest breeze. He would not dare smoke in the house, his precious Mary hated the smell of tobacco and had unsuccessfully tried to get him to drop the habit for over twenty years. She would always scrunch up her nose and demand that he smelled like someone burned a bag of dog shit. His smoking habit seemed to be the only thing they ever disagreed on.

William pulled his eyes from the stars to look over to the large barn and fenced in area that housed all his dogs. A few of them played out in the four inches of freshly fallen snow that covered all the land as far as the eye could see. The rest of them slept in the barn where they had better protection from the cold. Old man Williams great, great, great grandfather moved the family out here when the town got fed up with listening to there dogs bark all day and howl all night. At this current time, William had over two hundred sled dogs. When his family first started breeding dogs for mushing, they were strictly Alaskan, but over time his family begun breeding in other dogs, mostly for speed. Now his dogs came in multiple sizes, and colors. The one thing they had in common where they were strong, breed for not only speed but endurance as well, and could stand the below-freezing temperatures they would have to ignore in the harsh winter weather they would mush in. He was the top breeder in all the world after all.