A Hard Case

by Ron Hess

  Another gulp and the coffee cup was empty.

  “Some more coffee?” He asked.

  I wanted another cup, but I shook my head, thinking there might be other times when I might need a taste of “Old Jack” even more.

  “No. Thanks for the offer. Perhaps another time.”

  “Of course, anytime. It’s not easy being the only white man in town and an unknown one. It’ll take time, but I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  I left by the back door wondering if I had just been through a counseling session. It had been a long time since I had been in the presence of someone who seemed to have an aura around his head. Maybe I was imagining it? How much did he know about the untimely death of one John Justus? Would he tell me if he knew? I left these questions in my subconscious as I entered the street again and walked in a calm deliberate manner toward the post office, ignoring the ever-barking dogs. If it wasn’t for “Old Jack,” I wouldn’t sleep at night. It seemed there was always a moose or bear around to cause a cacophony of noisy barking.

  I turned toward the post office, noting with relief the flag was up. It seemed the place would go on conducting its business with or without me. So what was I doing here? After this morning’s telephone conversation the answer was obvious. I was to be a detective, something I didn’t want to be, a despoiler of village life, or something akin to that.

  At the steps in front of the post office I grabbed the handrail and looked up just in time to see the woman with the gold hoop earrings coming out the front door, package in hand. Today must have been a blue day, because that was the color of her turtleneck sweater, a vest with its ornaments, and her pants. The clothes matched her eyes exactly. She looked absolutely stunning. I swallowed hard and paused in mid-step, a peasant regarding his queen.

  “Good morning, Mr. Postmaster!”

  I brought my foot the rest of the way down and stammered a return. If asked to call up what I said, well, I’m afraid my memory was blocked for that few seconds I saw her above me. If she had asked me to slay a dragon—I would have. I would have knelt to kiss her ring and that would have been enough. Was she married or attached? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. There was, I sensed, an inner strength to her and I wanted to know more about that strength.

  I was in love. Call it schoolboy love or whatever name you want to give it, I just knew I wanted her—real bad. She moved up the street a ways before disappearing between a couple of houses, with me watching every step she made. At last, I snapped out of my reverie and realized somebody probably had seen me with my mouth open. It would be grist for the rumor mill, but I didn’t care. If the world ended this day, it would make no difference. I had been to the mountaintop.

  Jean was behind the front counter and if she had noticed my schoolboy adoration, she gave no outward sign. The old man sat at his post by the stove staring into his own distance. Was it the past he saw, or the future? If he saw anything, he wasn’t saying.

  “Everything going okay?” I asked.

  “Yes sir, uh, Leo. Everything is fine.”

  I gave her what I hoped was a dazzling smile and moved on to the rear, to see what Jeanette was up to and found her at the desk. After grabbing a cup of coffee, I sat down beside her and took a sip.

  “This is great coffee, Jeanette.”

  She smiled her thanks.

  “Mr. Justus taught us. He was very particular about his coffee.”

  “Mr. Justus hard to get along with?” I asked, looking her straight in the eye.

  “Sometimes.”

  I nodded to show I had heard and thought, yeah, I bet he was a real, son-of-a-bitch. He probably had been a bad manager somewhere and the Postal Service had sent him here, just to give his employees at his home office a break. The Postal Service rarely fires its managers. Usually, they are transferred elsewhere, with management hoping the errant postmaster would improve at his new station. Just about always, the manager’s problems went with him. Perhaps I ought to ask the Boss about a certain Mr. Justus. Jeanette’s uplifted eyebrows told me it was time to change the subject.

  “Say, who was the woman that picked up a box a short while ago?”

  Was that a look of amusement on Jeanette face or was I imagining things—again?

  “Woman?”

  “Yes, you know, the pretty one with the gold hoop earrings.”

  Was Jeanette trying not to laugh? I could just hear her telling her sister. It would be a big joke how the postmaster had so craftily worked his way around to finding out who that woman was.

  “Gold hoop earrings?”

  “Yes! The lady with gold hoop earrings!”

  While Jeanette’s eyes widened at my outburst, Jean yelled from the front.

  “It was Helen!”

  “Helen?” I asked in a softer voice.

  Jeanette nodded, as if now it made sense to her.

  “Oh, yes, Helen Ermoff.” She said, her face reflecting nothing.

  I took another sip of coffee and wished I were elsewhere. A quick look in Jeanette’s direction showed her serenely staring at a box on the table. I sighed and got up, wandered about the room, poking at this and that, trying to look professional. When the idea of being professional stirred in my brain, I turned to thinking again about Justus. How could such a supposedly hard-nosed professional person who wanted flowers painted on his honey bucket commit suicide? Frustration with the system and the people around him? I gave up thinking about him and trying to put on an air of normality. I spoke.

  “Think it’ll rain today?”

  Jeanette gave me the only answer she could.

  Chapter 5

  I awoke groggy, with a mean headache. Simply put, I drank too much last night. Not because I had to, but because I was so bored. At least in Anchorage there were things to do. A person could go to a bar, or the movies, or heaven forbid, walk the malls in search of that special someone. My social life wasn’t what you call good. Opening up to someone was not my cup of tea. The kind of people I met in bars had their own problems. Add Alaska to a person’s problems and well, it was a near catastrophe. It was the long hours of darkness in winter that could do a person in. Some people had it in them to fight it and some didn’t.

  I rose up on my elbows and squinted up toward the window. It figured. The sun was shining, bright and cheerful. Hell. I decided I might as well get up even if it was the weekend and no work to speak of. Oh, there was paperwork, but I believed paperwork could wait until the day it was due. I turned over on my back and stared at the lime-colored ceiling. No squares or curly-cues there to count. I sighed and listened to my stomach rumble. Was it hunger, or was it registering its protest about last night’s drinking?

  Okay, Bronski. Time for action. I bravely sat up and swung my feet to the floor. Well, hell, it was going to be all right. The anticipated dizzy feeling mostly stayed away. Time for the big test, that of trying to walk. I stood, keeping myself positioned so I could fall back on the bed if need be. Glory be. I made it. It was gonna be an okay day.

  * * *

  I walked toward the city dock in reasonably good spirits. I had eaten a hearty breakfast down at the village store, done my laundry at the laundry room and emptied my personal honey bucket at the village dumping spot. The morning had gone okay. True, there was a little staring at me by the other patrons in the restaurant, but that was to be expected. I was the new man in town, and not just any man. I was the postmaster, the man who held a lot of power. It was, “Don’t mess with the postmaster, or you won’t get your mail.” A great spot to be in, if a person went for those kinds of control. Personally, I did not go for that stuff, because I knew from experience, what went around usually came around to haunt you. And I had enough “haunts.”

  Stepping on to the dock I looked down toward the end and saw a lone figure with a pole in hand. Now that was something I hadn’t done in years, held a pole in my hand and waited for a fish to take my bait. It seemed I never had the time. As I drew near, I said a healthy, “Good afternoon!”r />
  The figure stirred and turned partway. It was the old man from the post office lobby. He nodded and went back to his task at hand.

  “Great day, isn’t it?” I said, with what I would call restrained enthusiasm.

  Another nod.

  “Catching anything?”

  A slight shake of the head was all I got in return.

  Not to be deterred, I walked over and sat down beside him. I resolved not to say another word. It stood to reason this old man was one person I had to get on good terms with, otherwise I was not going to get very far in my effort to do the boss’s bidding of melding into the community.

  So I sat and watched the ripples in the water. An hour went by with my eyes closed and I relaxed, letting the sun’s brightness pour into me. It was quiet and peaceful here by the river’s edge. The village dogs were even being on their best behavior, with only a bark now and then to remind everyone they were indeed on duty. At last, lest I get too comfortable and fall into the river, I stirred myself, thinking it was time to get up and move on.

  “You want to fish?”

  I jerked awake and nodded my head, no need to push things by talking out-loud.

  “I think you are ready.”

  Well, now I had to talk.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Yes, you have to be . . .” he struggled with the words, “Ready. Otherwise fish won’t bite.”

  “I see,” I answered. “Well, that makes sense.”

  Emboldened, I went on. “Have you caught any fish today?”

  “No, perhaps I’m not ready or perhaps fish not ready; too soon to say.”

  He remained poker-faced. I couldn’t tell if he was telling a joke or being sincere. I let my mouth turn upwards at the corners, just in case. While I wondered about the joke idea, he picked up a spare rod and baited the hook with some salmon eggs.

  “What are we fishing for?” I asked.

  “Trout. You know how to cast?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew the basic rudiments.

  “Here, take the rod.”

  He handed me the rod, and I made a decent cast out onto the river. With the cast made, I sat down beside him to wait. We sat for a while. Occasionally he would light his pipe and smoke a few puffs, letting the smoke drift my way. Smoke always comes toward me. I don’t like it, but I accept it. The old man removed his pipe from between clenched teeth.

  “You did a good thing the other day,” he said.

  I coughed, wiped at my watering eyes and said, “What good thing?”

  “You didn’t let Mary show her breasts to you.”

  “Like I told her, it’s not polite to show your breasts to strangers.”

  He nodded and tapped his pipe on the dock. “She has pretty breasts. They are part of her and she proud of them. They are real.”

  “Are you saying I should have let her show me her breasts?”

  “No, you did what you thought was right. For you it was right thing, maybe for me it would be wrong thing.”

  Oh boy, a lesson in philosophy, I thought.

  “Have you looked at them?”

  “Yes. When she was three years. They were real, then, too,” he said with a smile.

  “Better check your pole,” he added.

  I did, but it was straight as an arrow.

  “What do you mean . . . ?” I started to say, when wham! —The trout hit. By the way it hit, I knew it was a big one. For the next few minutes I forgot all about my worldly troubles as I battled the fish. In a way, I hated to take him, and told the old man so.

  “But it would not be real. You asked for him. He give himself to you, now you must take him.”

  I understood then that I had no choice. The old man was right. I might be living in a play-world, but the trout sure as hell wasn’t. So I continued the battle. Eventually, I brought him in close and the old man scooped him up with a net.

  “Nice fish,” he said. “Twelve pounds.”

  “You want him?” I asked.

  “No. He is your fish. You must eat him.”

  I nodded and sighed. I hated cleaning fish. Before I could say anything more, the old man had whipped out his knife, gutted it, then filleted it before throwing the head and bones into the river.

  “Hey, Mr. Postmaster, you want to buy a fine spear point.”

  I looked up from where I squatted to see the same kid who had offered me an artifact a couple of days before. My first inclination was to say “no,” as I had the first time, but this time I decided to have a look.

  “Let’s see what you have.”

  The kid was right. I’m no expert, but the spear point did look to be a fine piece of work. While I looked it over, the old man began talking in Yupik and I could tell he wasn’t very happy. But I could tell by the kid’s facial expression he wasn’t backing down either. He was going to sell it, come hell or high water.

  “How much?” I asked.

  The kid looked at the old man. “Twenty dollars.”

  I dug out my wallet. “Sold.”

  The old man turned to me. “What he gets is not real.”

  “Well, maybe this twenty dollar bill isn’t real, but what it represents is real.”

  The old man shook his head and repeated, “What he gets is not real. His mother . . .”

  “His mother?” I asked.

  His dark blue eyes regarded me. “She needs money, for drugs.”

  All I could do was shake my head and watch as the kid took my twenty-dollar bill and ran back up the dock toward the village. The old man had by this time settled back down with his pole.

  “Take your fish.” He muttered.

  “But . . .” I started to say.

  “Take your fish!”

  Without understanding what he meant by the word “real” and knowing I had evidently done the wrong thing, I gathered the fish up and slowly walked back up the dock. My audience and lesson in native philosophy was over.

  From time to time, I would look back to see the old man still sitting there, waiting on that fish. Hard-nosed old fart. Trying to tell me what’s real, and what’s not real. No doubt, if the conversation had gone on, he would have said we’re just a speck of dust on a beer can. I entered the rear of the post office, laid my fish on a cutting board and proceeded to whack it into meal sized chunks, which I then put into the freezer compartment of the refrigerator.

  I checked my watch—five o’clock. Time for an evening cocktail before dinner, so I poured a good two fingers into a glass and sat down to study the lime-green walls. Something sharp pressing against me in my pants pocket reminded me of the spear point, so I drew it out to examine it more carefully. It looked like any other old arrowhead and I began to regret buying the thing. I realized I had bought it mostly because the old man was against the idea. I would have made more points by not buying it. But then again, if I hadn’t bought it, I might become known as a righteous sort of guy and therefore not privy to what was going on in the village. Life was indeed complicated and the thought Jimmy’s mother was an addict bothered me. If what the old man said was true, then I was probably helping her to get stoned.

  My stomach growled and I laid the spear point down. Time to think what I would do for dinner. I hate eating alone and so I eat out a lot, even if I don’t have a dinner partner, just to be near people and to listen as they interact with one another. Sometimes it’s better than the movies. I finished off my before dinner drink and decided to hold off having another until I got back from the restaurant. A quick look in the mirror to make sure I looked decent and off I went, looking for excitement or whatever else there was in this place.

  This evening was different from other evenings. There were people all over the place coming and going. I surmised it had something to do with the priest’s being there for a special occasion. In fact, I wondered if there would be an open table at the restaurant. To my surprise, there was one empty table and so I made a bee-line for it. The other three tables were full of laughing, talking peo
ple who mostly ignored me out of politeness or at least that was the name I put on it. The food served at the restaurant was basic, and maybe that was a kind word. But it was good, if you liked hamburger kind of things. Like meatloaf. I’ve always been partial to meatloaf. It was my mother’s favorite dish.

  “Are you ready to order, sir?”

  Caught off guard I looked up to see a teenage girl standing there. It was Martha, Jimmy’s sister. She was not one of your giggly valley-type girls, no siree, this was all business looking down on me and I knew she probably wouldn’t laugh at one of my jokes.

  “How’s your hamburger?” I asked, trying for a joke anyway.

  She looked around, maybe a little impatient with the question and me. Seeing there was no other way she decided to play it straight with the white man.

  “It’s good. What kind do you want? Moose or caribou?”

  I stopped my feeble attempt at making a joke and ordered an opened-faced moose sandwich with potatoes and gravy all around. That and a Coke would fill me up. She left to fill my order, and I was left with a Coke in my hand. I gazed around the room. One table had emptied and much to my delight, not ten feet away, sat the good-looking woman with the earrings. She was dressed in the village’s normal wear of Levi’s and a blue sweatshirt, which matched the blue of her eyes. It was those eyes that were smiling at me. I felt an idiotic grin form. This usually happens when a beautiful woman chooses to favor me with a look. Sometimes, I am embarrassed by it, but not this night. I felt flattered and she knew it.

  Well, there was no doubt about it, I was in love. Had been, ever since that first encounter on the post office steps. Now, here she was, giving what looked to me to be something akin to come-hither looks. I looked away to break the spell. Something told me I wasn’t the first to fall under her spell, but when love hits and a rational man turns into a fool, he really doesn’t care. After taking a deep breath to relax, I noticed the conversation in the room had quieted somewhat. The laughter had become quiet subdued talk. I turned my head to face the front door, trying to decide if I wanted to go on with this pre-courtship dance. The rational part of me said not to, after all I was only going to be here a month, right? But, the other part said that was precisely why I should. Call it a shipboard romance and let it go at that.