by Byron Lane
“Apply the brake,” Matt yells.
CRUNCH!
Kathi jams her boot down hard onto the metal sliver, and it cracks into the icy ground.
Matt and the handlers finish connecting the twelve huskies to the sled, and the steel beams holding me in place suddenly feel electrified. The sled shimmies, shakes with anticipation, the dogs now going insane, barking, growling, ready.
The handlers step away.
Matt steps back and yells, “Whenever you’re ready.”
I look up, up, up, my head craning back, away from our path ahead, over the treetops, across the blue sky, until I’m looking upside down, seeing Kathi’s face, smiling, fierce, determined, the cold breeze forcing her to squint slightly, the glitter on her eyelashes alive and dancing in the sunlight, as if when she looks out at the world all she sees is a rave, a party. She looks down at me and yells over the barking, “Ready, Cockring?!”
I yell back, “Ready, Mom!”
She laughs, looks down at her boot on the brake. She takes one more glance at Matt. “If I’m thrown off this thing and become unconscious, will you be the one to do mouth-to-mouth?”
Matt grins and nods yes as Kathi smiles and lifts her foot off the brake.
We’re transported. The dogs are instantly silent, at peace, quietly fulfilling their life’s mission, doing their jobs—running. The only sound we can hear now is wind, cold and yet comforting—slightly reminiscent of the ocean back home in California, of being a small part of something big.
We’re racing across the earth, over little mounds of snow, breaking through clumps of ice. We could be on a lake, we could be on a pasture, we could be on another planet altogether, honestly. We have no idea what’s beneath us, or ahead of us, for that matter. We have to trust. Our faith now rests in nature, in twelve furry tour guides ahead of us delivering us wherever they want, connected and at one with us through leather straps and clumsy angles of welded metal.
“It’s perfect!” Kathi yells.
I look over the side of the sled as we race along: All the snow is just a blur, like we’re on miles and miles of white paper, like swaths of blank 8.5-by-11 pages begging to be filled with adventure, art, Kathi Kannon’s writings of love and loss and living. We’re here, penning our own journey on these snowy pages, forging yet another new bond, more miles under our belts, just like the dogs. I touch her feet on either side of me, an act of connection, of affection—the best I can manage in the circumstances.
“You okay?” she asks.
Sitting here, a passenger, an observer on this jaunt of my lifetime—both with these dogs in Yellowknife and with Kathi Kannon, film icon—I’m thinking: Yes, it’s perfect. I give her a thumbs-up. She gives me a thumbs-up in return.
The dogs, our partners in this passage of time to the aurora borealis, race effortlessly into the future with us, past an old shack, alongside fallen and frozen trees, their rot on hold, in suspense and on ice until warmer weather, this season, their sweet reprieve. Our dogs run past a frozen pond, up a little embankment, and around a rusty red tractor, circling back, seeming to mark our halfway spot, signaling our return to Matt and the schedule we so gratefully forgot as our minds melded into the snow and spectacular all around us.
Kathi’s feet wiggle in her boots beside me, and I look up to see what’s going on. She’s taking off her hood, her gloves, her knit cap—stuffing them in her pockets. She’s loosening her scarf, her hair now free and flowing wildly behind and atop her. She leans her whole body forward, her waist touching the so-called safety bar. She closes her eyes, she raises her hands, extends her arms like she’s on a roller coaster.
“Jesus! What are you doing?”
“I want to feel it!”
I look ahead at the whites and the blues and the greens of the earth.
I’m thinking, Fuck it.
I pull my hood back, rip off my gloves and knit cap, and close my eyes. Now Kathi and I are hearing the same sounds of metal on ice, of paws on snow, of panting and delight; we’re both breathing the cold air, the same as the dogs, everyone connected and speeding through shared atoms and quarks and doing exactly what we’re meant to do in this moment: the dogs running, Kathi Kannon being, and me learning to let go.
Kathi reaches down and squeezes my shoulder; I reach up and touch her hand. Both of us icy to the touch and yet warm and safe, one with nature, all of us—dogs, trees, sunshine—together.
We fly past saplings and weathered fence posts, dead leaves and fallen branches, whipping along like the tick, tick, tick of a clock, our countdown to this being over, to this ending with real life. Kathi’s hand leaves my shoulder.
The dogs continue our whirl back to the starting point, with Matt coming into view, the handlers ready to corral the pups.
“I don’t want to stop,” Kathi says.
“Me, either,” I say fondly, the dogs still clipping at full pace.
“No, I mean, I don’t want to stop,” Kathi says.
“Um, Kathi,” I warn, the kennel rapidly coming more and more into view, Matt waving his hands: Slow down, slow down.
“Why does it have to be over?” Kathi asks.
Matt is growing frantic, looking around, crouching like a football player in formation, bending over as if ready to make a quick maneuver out of our path if it comes to that. His handlers are pulling other dogs to the side.
“Kathi, please!” I yell.
Kathi places her boot on the brake and, after a couple seconds, pushes down. Ice cracks and crunches under us and the dogs take their cue from the friction, finally starting to slow us down, down, down.
The two in the lead ease forward to Matt and his now-outstretched hands, which they nuzzle into lovingly, gratefully, quietly—no more barking; they’re content for now. They had their fun; time to rest and recharge until the next tourists come running, come paying. They’ll go off to their cages, until their work calls again, and I relate. I feel a little bad for the dogs. They seem to enjoy it so much; do they know they’re trapped? I start to feel a little bad for myself; I wonder: Am I trapped? Am I just pulling Kathi’s sled?
Matt turns to us. “What happened?”
Kathi shrugs. “Sorry. Just couldn’t figure out the brake.”
I look behind us and see where the brake dragged us to this moment, the stretch of earth sliced open as if with a scalpel.
Matt says, “How was it?”
“Fucking freezing,” Kathi says, rebundling herself.
“That was fun,” I say, putting my scarf back on, my knit cap, then turning to Kathi. “Do we still need to see the aurora or does this count?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kathi says, then, turning to Matt, “I’ll pay you a million dollars for a cup of hot chocolate.”
* * *
As night begins to fall, we meet outside of our hotel with Josef, allegedly the best aurora tour guide in this little town. Kathi found him via a flyer on a bulletin board in our hotel lobby. He also comes with a strong recommendation from the hotel. He’s about the same size and stature as Kathi but drives a giant SUV outfitted with fancy wheels that make it ride high and make passengers like us—and even him—grovel and moan as we hoist ourselves up and inside. The windows are tinted and it’s hard to see anything outside, not that there’s much to see until our magic moment.
“We gotta get way outta town to see the lights,” Josef says. “I got a great place. Nice and private.”
“Sounds like the perfect place for a murder,” Kathi says as Josef locks the doors.
Josef is silent in an unsettling way. Kathi looks at me and cringes.
I lean my head back and turn to look out the window at the wilderness as we start to drive. I see a slight reflection of myself in the window—it looks like the trees outside are smacking me in the face. I also see Kathi’s reflection. She’s getting more and more bouncy, more and more excited, looking from her window to mine, to the windshield and the view ahead, not wanting to miss anything.
I turn
to Kathi. “I’m proud of you,” I say.
She faces me. “For being an internationally famous actoooor?”
“For Orion. I’m glad you did that. I know it’s not easy.”
“Please don’t let me die,” she says. “From now on, I’m an A all the time.”
“Great,” I say.
“Or at least a B-minus sometimes—”
“Wrong answer!”
Kathi smiles, putting her hand on mine, safe, touching a friend, as she looks back out at the world. I stare at her a moment, happy, and I look out of my window again, too. Both of us seeing different universes, both of us on the same route.
Josef turns onto a gravel road. Now, with nightfall, the only thing visible out here is whatever his headlights happen to scan. Out of his windshield, through the tips of the treetops, I can barely see a green haze.
“Is that it?” I ask.
Kathi grabs my arm, throws herself onto the middle console, and looks up.
“Holy fuck!” she yells. She lifts her iPhone and tries to capture the moment forever, snapping picture after picture.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Josef says. “You’re gonna get a clear view for pictures in just a sec.”
Kathi takes another picture then sits back. Perhaps she’s living in the moment here, too, just like I was on the dogsled, present, not caught up in her past or future but living in the now and capturing the great northern lights as they are to her in this second, in this second, in this second, in this SUV. Therapista says we only have this moment, and everything outside of that is past and future and a lie, unprovable, an illusion. But every human sometimes suffers the same sick doubt: What if the right now doesn’t get better? And so we are all Kathi Kannon, grabbing our phones and snapping our pictures and sending those texts and emails as we try to expand our reach and prove we meant something to the world. If Kathi Kannon has no future, no past, she is rightfully only what’s caught in her phone—the faint image of the aurora, through the lens of her camera, through Josef’s windshield. And if I have no future, no past, I am only what’s happening now, sitting beside Kathi, watching her delight.
Josef hits the brakes and Kathi flies forward.
“Dick!” she yells.
“Sorry,” he says.
Kathi leans back in her seat.
Josef gets out of the vehicle first, and as his open-door light dims and turns off, I turn to Kathi Kannon, film icon, and I ask, “Are you ready?”
“Now or never,” she says.
I open my door and get out of the SUV, and Kathi shuffles over to my side, to follow me.
Followers following followers following followers.
I hold her hand, help her out, and we both check our balance on the slippery ground beneath us.
“Frozen lake,” Josef says. “In the daytime you can look down and see fish looking up at you.”
“Gross,” I say.
“Cockring, be nice!” Kathi admonishes.
“What? You called him a dick a minute ago.”
“That was a compliment—”
“There it is,” Josef interrupts, pointing.
Kathi and I turn, and over the roof of his SUV we can see them, the lights, her lights. We see greens and purples and pinks slicing across the sky like they were painted there just a few fresh moments ago, a spill of neon and vibrancy.
Kathi takes several steps around Josef, the treetops retreating the farther onto the lake she gets.
I worry for a moment whether it’s safe, if she could fall through. I look over at Josef, who’s done this a million times before, and he recognizes the worry on my face, and he puts his hands out to signal, It’s okay, it’s okay. I turn back to Kathi, who has her face, her eyes, locked on the sky, with its sweeping flow of colors. She pulls off her hood, she tugs off her knit cap, she loosens her scarf. I’m thinking, She wants to feel this, too.
She turns and looks at me. We smile at each other and I move carefully to meet her. We look up, and here we are, in this moment, the only one that matters. We hold hands. We stare at the great northern lights together.
“Old timers say it looks like a brushfire in the spirit world,” Kathi says. “I like to think it’s more like they’re on some really great acid in heaven.”
There’s a strange thing about the northern lights. In person, they don’t exactly look like they do in photos. Those dreaded screen savers will have you believe the lights are always crystal clear and sharp, making a smooth zigzag across the sky in green and yellow and blue and purple. But in real life, it’s different. It’s a little more like a haze or a fog. You need the right perspective—through a camera, usually—for it to make sense, for it to fit into the image we’re fed in National Geographic, on the screen saver of my old computer back at my news job.
“What color are you, Cockring?” Kathi asks, her eyes singularly focused on the sky.
“I’ll be pink,” I say.
“And I’ll be green,” she says.
Green. Appropriate and perfect. That’s the dominant color up there, the lead dog, the main show. The smears of electric neon green make this sight a force—without the green, we have just a few luminescent hues in the dark, unconnected and unbridled.
And Kathi Kannon is the green. She is the engine in my life and many others—her fans, Miss Gracie, Roy. She is the smear of light that connects so many of us. She is the Shine. These mysterious lights, with their various viewpoints, are not unlike human beings, so many different colors and shades of living, all demanding perspective and focus to understand the difference between fog and show, between a movie priestess and a complex woman, what a father is supposed to be versus what a father is, what a life could be versus the life I’m living, the life she’s living.
Snap: “Look at us, friends!”
Kathi is beaming, her chest collapsing a little as if a lifetime of wanting is finally fulfilled. She looks over at me, shakes her head with a sort of disbelief in her eyes.
I smile. “How are you?” I ask.
She says, “Not bored.”
She looks back up. She steps forward. She inhales the moment.
She says, “I want to be this forever.”
Hey, Siri, I’m thinking of Kathi and happiness and adventure and health and long lives together.
I say, “I want to be this forever, too.”
Part Three
PEQUOD
19
I’m leaving Reid.
Sweaty and handsome, he sits across from me at our post-workout breakfast spot, Simple Things, famous for ultra-healthy dishes served with slices of pie.
“I’m going to miss you,” I say. Reid nods, I know.
Kathi and I are leaving soon to go on a gay cruise. She’s the secret special guest, capitalizing on her iconic status with the gay community. This insane excursion pays well, of course—gays with their economic clout. She’s getting tens of thousands of dollars to perform a show, talking about her life and maybe answering questions. Reid and I are having our final bite together before Kathi and I set sail.
“I got you something,” Reid says. He reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and pulls out a small gift, wrapped in mini-golf-themed wrapping paper with a little blue bow.
“I can’t marry you! It’s too soon!” I say playfully, taking the beautifully presented gift and wondering what’s going on. Reid smiles at my genuine surprise. I’m usually the gift giver; I’m usually the thoughtful one in the room. How strange it feels to have the tables turned, with so many tables seemingly turning—delightfully—these days.
I open the gift carefully, untying the bow and letting it fall to the floor. Plucking the tape from the folded sides. Pulling the paper apart to reveal what’s inside. There, in my hands, is a toy, the toy, the one I was not allowed to play with all those years ago. It’s her, the action figure of Priestess Talara, with her white gown and laser gun and eerily familiar face. I stare into her eyes. I’m thinking, Hello, friend.
“I thought it would be
nice,” Reid says, “for you to finally have it, to finally have her back. I mean, this isn’t the actual one your dad took from you. I got this one on eBay.”
I look from Priestess Talara, from young Kathi Kannon, to Reid, and I realize my mouth is hanging open. This little heroine, the so-called danger my father tried to protect me from all those years ago, the plastic toy that I longed for all my childhood, now seeming fragile, smaller than I remember, resting lifeless in the palm of my hand, accessible, whole. Here in my grasp, she looks so contained and manageable and feels like a part of me, an extension of my life, and as my eyes water and my mind races, my heart is full for both Priestess Talara of my childhood and Kathi Kannon of my every day.
I look at Reid. I say, “Thank you.”
I say, “I love it.”
I say, “I love you.”
* * *
“We have to leave in fifteen minutes,” I remind Kathi, again. Me, travel-nervous as usual, sweating as I double-check her antique trunk suitcases. Scarves, Christmas lights, inflatable life jackets—check, check, check.
Hey, Siri, I hope we survive Orlando.
Kathi is pacing, weary and unsure, Roy by her side as always.
“Cockring, did you call me last night and warn me about going on this gay cruise? That it’s going to be dangerous? Not to go? And then I said I had to go anyway because I want the money and relevance?”
“No, that didn’t happen,” I say. “Are you okay? What are you talking about?”
She says, “Nothing.”
Pardon us at LAX!
Make way at ORD!
We arrive just in time to pose for a picture with Roy under a sign for an antidepressant, which says: HAPPINESS IS A JOURNEY THAT STARTS WHEN YOU’RE A BABY.
“Asinine,” Kathi says.
We haul ourselves and her luggage onto the boat. I’ve got her bag, I’ve got Roy’s bag, I’ve got my bag. All that, this trip, it’s all starting to feel very heavy.