Something Of A Kind

by Wheeler, Miranda

  Along the edge, the wind picked up, tousling the hair around her face, pulling currents in the loose fabric at her back. Tucking a lock behind her ear as it whipped her eyes, Aly noted that she wasn’t the only one assaulted at the shore. Rather than sharing her feelings of apprehension, Noah smiled into the gust, squinting against the current. He left a hand outstretched, palm curved to bear the front of the air like it extended from a vehicle’s open window. Amused, she allowed herself to fall into his step, shielded by his frame.

  Taking a path parting the trees, he jumped the bars of a street’s dead end, offering a hand as she followed. Sprinting through a private yard filled with old tires and forgotten toys, they crossed into the lot of an apartment building. Waterlogged mulch was strewn over the curbs, clinging to her shoes when she passed. Weeds curled through broad cracks in the asphalt. Smashed windows were covered with duct tape and trash bags. Aly doubted the area was maintained, nonetheless populated.

  As she put the black top behind her, she wondered if he’d forgotten his way to the tunnels. Noah moved with purpose, eyes locked on each destination. Still, it seemed erratic to her, as though the shortcut was more of a meandering. It became a game – guessing where his next twist in the maze was. Rather than taking the sandy path behind the building’s dumpsters, they moved through the trees. She shadowed as he followed a stream of runoff and scattered boulders, over a rundown train bridge, rounding walls of rock, cutting across unmarked hiking trails.

  Every once in a while Noah pointed out a seemingly characterless object and identified it as a personal landmark or a destination for local teens, reciting stories that roused laughter and quirking smiles. His childhood soaked the ground. Every leaf had seen his journey. Noah was home. She found herself hushed, for a moment wishing it were hers, too.

  When he fell silent, she imagined herself as a child – scrawny, pale, and precocious, with dark ringlets braided down her back, uncovering his adventures on the tracks, owning the small town friendships like a birthright.

  What she had with the kids back home was flimsy, shifting year to year. She had never had the relationship that didn’t dissipate when the pain was too great to share, not outside of the family she was raised with. The odd-couple bonds between Noah and his friends were tangible, strong. Still quiet, Aly focused on his breathing, listening for the howls from the night on the ATVs.

  Something made those boys run for the hills.

  “So,” he said finally, “how’d you score your dad’s keys?” “He’s out of town for work.” Her fingers shifted to prod her back pocket for reassurance. She added, “I met the living room for the first time this morning over coffee. Apparently, we have Syfy in common.”

  A burst of laughter erupted from his chest. “Who would’ve thought?”

  She smiled, pleased with herself. “It’s really that ironic?” “If you knew my dad and his obsession with your dad and his obsession, then yes.” He joked. “Unless you meant it the sense of cliché.”

  She blinked, trying not to be impressed. Recovering, she dramatically swept a hand across her forehead, joking, “So Doctor Freak drives someone else insane too? Phew! I thought I was the only one.”

  He smirked. “There is nothing that does not irritate or disappoint my dad, including yours. No offense.”

  “Except for you?” “Especially me.” Noah sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I probably won't live up to expectation. And I certainly won't grow my hair that long. Did you notice? It’s ridiculous."

  She laughed through a sad smile, knowing the ache of shortcoming. “If it’s any consolation, I get that. My father acts like I carry the Tvirus. I still have no idea what he does.”

  “But hey, it’s definitely not bigfoot right?”

  “I wouldn’t know. You probably know more than I do. I don’t think my mom knew him, either.What’s to know?” She shrugged. “What I mean, though, is I understand. I don’t see much of a point in trying to please the unappeasable. Life’s too short.”

  “Jerks are too jerky,” he agreed, amused. The line dropped it like an old lyric, the repetition of familiar advice. As they converged with another footpath, he nudged the piece of metal hammered to the ground. “We’re almost there.”

  Someone’s been here a while. Everything had fallen against the elements, destroyed and mudsoaked. She made out discarded cigarettes, greeting cards, old clothes, and cardboard signs – the only intelligible ones holding something along the lines of, ‘wish you were here’ or ‘anything helps, God bless’. Even a few washcloth hand puppets were integrated with the rubble. She couldn’t decide whether to call it a landfill or a graveyard, inevitably electing for the latter.

  The more she stared, the more organic the scene felt. It was beautiful in a crumbling way. Her gaze traveled ahead of her, far along the tracks as they stretched on only to curl into the wooded mountains.

  “They’re been some really hard times out here,” she observed. Noah nodded. “Yeah. It’s always been hard for locals. The town hasn’t been… well, flourishing, since World War II, back when everyone worked in this big factory that mass-produced and handpacked cans filled with protein. Mostly fish, I guess. Ashland’s pretty new compared to most of the area. Or in general.”

  Aly felt her jaw slack and closed it, nibbling her lip as though it would lock in place. “What do you mean?” “These tracks are older than this town. A lot of the land here is blown out of rock, so there’s not much history for this area. There are a lot of natives that migrated from other little tribes, but that was a few generations ago. Therearen’t any pure groups, not ancient or anything. We’re not even considered a reservation, though some people call it that anyway. The families are old, but we don’t do powwows or potlatches or anything like that. Some people do, but because of where they’re from genetically. It’s why it’s so hard to narrow down the legends, because most of them were adopted and distorted from other people.” His voice trailed off, racing past her distant stare, melting into the horizon. As he spoke, he went somewhere else – wherever his stories came from. Realizing he returned from the silence to wait for a response, she nodded dumbly.

  Where do the words go? “I mean, Ashland is pretty westernized, but it’s not like we have no tradition at all. We still have elders, even though they’re practically self-appointed. We have music, dance troupes, art. And of course, legends.”

  “Like the bigfoot thing?” “Yeah. There’s plenty about that – most call him Hairy Man because of some old newspaper article. There are tribes that call it Omah or Gigit. You’d say bigfoot or sasquatch.”

  “Actually, we’ve got other words for it too. There are myths where I come from, too. Kingsley is a city, but it’s a city in the middle of nowhere. The Adirondacks are infamous for it. My grandfather used to say they lived in abandoned watch towers.”

  “It seems like the Hairy Man is stalking you, then.” He grinned, squinting to the sky. “They say the stars do too.” “I get that. It’s like when you’re a child, and you expect your car to pass the sun, but it’s a tease, the size of your thumb, just dipping behind trees.”

  “I did that too,” Noah laughed, raising his hand and closing one eye to cover the beam in the sky. “Have you heard of the sun thieves?”

  She shook her head. “It’s one theory, I suppose. The sto ry of where the stars come from. There was once a man who was terribly wise. Going into his village, he spoke about the worth of all people. He said, ‘the Sun is made of gold and the Moon of silver’, because equality by nature is meant to unchallenged, never influenced by men. A group of thieves fled to the woods, where they climbed the highest tree on the mountain, and ran along the rays of light through the sky, to the Sun.”

  “That’s one way to go about it,” she noted, filling the lapse in his words. “When the Sun saw them,” he continued, “she grabbed the thieves, crushing them in her hand. She kissed the earth, and scattered them across the sky with a breath of light. She warmed the earth in the center, cre
ating the stars. Supposedly, when people die, theSun makes more stars.”

  He spoke quickly to conclude as they rounded another wall of rock, slowing to a stop as the tunnel came into view. She had expected a sort of overpass, but the hole was narrow, carved out of the mountain. He paused, stretching an arm to prevent her from going forward. Whistling inside, he listened for a response. Hearing only an echo, he ducked in to press against the walls, nudging wooden beams. Sighing, he warned, “We should be careful. It’s pretty old.”

  Some sections had crumbled away, erosion taking the stone where rot had taken wood platforms. She assumed Noah’s hesitation to go further inside was related to the structural instability. From the fallen rocks scattered across the ground, it was a rational concern.

  Every visible inch of the original wall was covered, some pieces extending far beyond what the sunlight illuminated. The uneven surface of the stone hadn’t inhibited the artists and vandals. Paint filled the nooks and crannies in the same way the Japanese aggrandize cracks with gold. In the fresher pieces, it bubbled like only leaving a spray-can focused on a single section too long could.

  The majority of the mural was a forest of trees. They were inverted, not unlike the cedars in Alaska’s Glacier Gardens advertised in every gas station from Juneau to Ashland. Roots sprayed from the top like weeping branches, disheveled. The top was cropped to one side, as though half the trunk gave way before the other. Several bears lay in submission at their feet while whales were tossed across the tops. It wasn’t clear whether they were victims to the bird with a frowning star wedged in its beak or the brown mass in the center, its looming features like monkey fused with a man. Arms stretched to the sky while knees curled to its chest, its head coned, its lips round in a howl.

  Aly pointed, afraid to touch the dirty paint, as though it would streak away. “This is the sasquatch?”

  He nodded, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Head of the food chain – or so I’m told.”

  “Really,” she murmured, head cocked to the side. “It seems like whoever made this was pretty freaked.”

  “Wouldn’t you be? They’re supposed to be big enough to rip trees out of the ground and flip them straight upside down.”

  “Bigfoot did this?” Aly gasped, fingers hovering over the swirls that textured the bark.

  “I think the artist did,” he teased.

  Forcing a smile, she met his eyes before turning back to the wall. She hadn’t expected to see concern.

  “Unless Hairy Man’s artistically inclined,” she ribbed, hoping he’d loosen up. “Do you think there’s anything to it?” His brow furrowed. “Honestly? No. I don’t think you should look into it so much, either. The people around here… they get caught up in themselves, especially stories. If you ask me, they take it way too seriously.”

  “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful,” she said suddenly. The locals clearly spent laborious amount of time on the belief– even the younger generation was up to date.

  I’m an idiot. It didn’t even occur to me that I’m being offensive.

  “Aly, that is so not what I meant. At all.”

  Aly winced. Great. Now asking if I was being ignorant made me ignorant. Can this topic just disappear?

  “I just meant that you shouldn’t let anyone scare you,” he continued. “You don’t have to be afraid of anything.” She raise d her brow, surprised. “I’m not afraid,” Aly admitted, staring at her shoes. Sliding her gaze to meet his, she whispered, “I feel very safe with you.”

  Noah smiled. “Good, because I’d protect you.”

  CHAPTER 8 | NOAH Noah had elected to take the long way back to town. Under the assumption the tunnels would take longer, he hadn’t factored in the light debris dropping from the ceiling when his foot caught in a pothole. His arm still throbbed from slamming into a shifty beam. It was a relief to leave– the place had felt eerie since Charlie Reeves nearly lost his hand to a bear that had been scoping out the manmade cave.

  He and Rona Carr were running around drunk in the dark, but still. The end of the road led out into the main row of houses, which connected with his street in a fork. Uncharacteristically barren of patrons, they were permitted inside to purchase coffee from the bar. It was hooked in the corner of the street, trees filling in the area around it. The rest of the road was blank – its buildings shifted with the seasons, built up or down with tarps and tents in the rainy seasons, the portables dragged to the edge of the curb in the winter.

  When Noah was young, they would clear it in the early summer for a flea market. He couldn’t put a date on when it stopped, but like everything else, the lack of money circulating crushed it. People working in shacks moved throughout the lawns, struggling to support meager income. Locals went into a frenzy right before July, the concept of travelers feeding a starving income – and often families – too much to bear.

  Upon seeing Noah and Aly, a few people made a point of staring, others wedging behind their makeshift displays. “Boy!” Nathaniel hollered, the old man a long time partner with the Locklear businesses, Lee particularly. The two bickered incessantly despite being nearly a decade apart in age. The senior produce a lot of the foods for the town, working directly with the fisheries and what remained of novelty shops. He often filled Yazzie’s To-Go freezer, which had become a surprising flood of revenue for his parents. Noah couldn’t tell if there was a debt to be settled or a complaint to pass on to the elder.

  Aly nodded as Noah glanced at her. He assumed it meant she wouldn’t be offended if he mingled. Recalling the last time he had spoken with the man, Noah shuddered. Though aloof but friendly, Nathaniel was clearly suffering from dementia. His memory was quick as a whip most days, but the guy got nasty fast. Noah had greeted the man, “Hey, Nate! What’s up?” It launched lectures skewing from the inappropriateness of nicknames to bad parenting to people’s fading respect for each other.

  Words carefully chosen, he made sure to reach the hearing range of increasing deafness before speaking. “Hello. What can I do for you?”

  The man raised his brow, bottom lip dropping. Blinking, he held out his hand to Aly. “Good and fine. The little one, your sister there, what’s ‘er name? Ah, never-mind, ‘ere. You give to ‘er, will you?”

  Noah frowned, staring at the handmade dream catcher he placed in Aly’s hands. The navy twine was tightly wrapped around a faux- velvet ring, black and white beading leading to feathers from the beach. “Did Sarah pay for this?”

  “My grandson likes ‘er. His gran promised little Kenny she’d make itup for ‘er. The wife does what she wants.” He shrugged, quavering with the effort.

  Noah grinned, eyes crinkling with amusement. “Kennedy likes Sarah?” The boy had been part-time help for years. A year older than his sister, Kennedy never complained about absent paychecks and usually poured them into his own family, filling in the brief shifts Noah took off. The kid was gangly, taller than Owen but a third the mass, with crazy hair Sarah insisted modeled some kid from One Direction.

  With his eyes rolling over Aly as though he was noticing her for the first time, Nathaniel made a garbling sound, something akin to a muffled cackle. She beamed politely as he nodded towards her, his stare retracting to draw his mouth to his arm in order to stifle a coughingfit. He muttered, “Aye, you ain’t got no room to talk, boy. Your sister, she’s better off.”

  Noah stiffened.

  These people are such bigmouths. “Kennedy’s a good person,” Noah snapped, as if the man wasn’t insulting Aly like she wasn’t standing right there. “If he plays his cards right, they’ll both be just fine.”

  “Peculiar fella, your papa is,” Nathaniel continued, sliding a shelf into place. He glanced at Aly, scrutiny traveling along her silhouette. “You ain’t so strange. City folk, no doubt, but…”

  “Thanks,” she murmured, fingering a feather of the dream catcher. “Yeah, yeah,” Nathaniel muttered, waving to announce his departure. He moved slowly, with a hunch and a limp, his stout frame seeming
more lean with strain. He kept a dazed smile on his blank face, a blinding contrast to the terrain of wrinkles and shadows.

  If only the rest of him wasn’t so hostile. “We’re all strange.” Noah’s hand gently cupped her elbow. He steered her away from Nathaniel’s quaking back, towards a shack in the next lot. With a nod he greeted his mother’s friend, frail old man with a harsh face and heavy burden. Osh shuttered with each breath, his hands quivering as he rearranged the goods on the front trays.

  Without a word, Noah traded a five dollar bill for a waxen paper bag. Pinching the corner, he shook the contents into his palm. The leather necklace was artfully wrapped around a riversmoothed stone painted in unnatural blues as an abstract killer whale. He peeled the tag from the end and closed it in her pale hand. With her lips parted in surprise, she turned it over between her fingers, a soft blush on her cheeks. Aly smiled, forcing her gaze from the piece. She attempted to give it back, shuffling Sarah’s gift into another hand. He waved off her protests.

  With his coffee cooled enough to avoid burns, he took a sip, explaining, “No, no, no. It supports the community. We struggle here, starving artists and all. It’s nice to acknowledge a craft. Osh’s wife actually makes these herself.”

  He pointed to the yard behind the stand as they passed, gazing wistfully. The man continued to work, carrying colorful trays to the display. A wiry woman in a floral windbreaker bunched up to her elbows sat cross-legged on a blanket over the lawn. Assorted piles of beads, yarns, and stones piled over feathers like paperweights formed a circle around her. She moved efficiently, though wincing with arthritis as she kneaded her materials.

  “She told me about the snakes. When I was a kid, I got so excited for their displays. I was always alone when I came down here though, so I was waiting until my parents started paying me. Eventually she just tucked one in my coat pocket and told me to scram before her husband got back.” He laughed, tracing the ink of his wrist.