Others in the crew also found mates among the local Yupik Eskimo and even began to speak the language. The winters started early and lasted long in that part of the world. When the ice began to break up in May, several of the crew asked Captain Shoemaker to stay behind, to which he agreed. One of those men was Isaac Johnson; Puniq was with child.
The following summer, the elders requested that the outsiders build their own huts away from the main village. There were some problems that could best be resolved by having the newcomers and their mates move a short distance away. The new cluster of huts became known as Jabbertown for the odd and varied languages the men spoke.
Charlie Johnson did not know of his heritage or relation to Isaac Johnson of Ireland or much about Captain Shoemaker’s whaling vessel, the Saint George. He did know about Jabbertown, though, and that is exactly where he had hidden his stash of illegal alcohol. He smuggled in two cases of Popov vodka from Dillingham. Charlie endured fourteen hours of rough snow-machining on his Ski-Doo each way to bring back the precious cargo. He did not drink anything on the way back, a challenge he was glad for. It made him push harder to get back!
Charlie was twenty-nine. He was sure he had some white blood but did not know the full extent of his Anglo DNA. His facial features and complexion were northern European. He was an attractive man with a handsome smile. His eyes and lower body hinted of his Yupik heritage. In Charlie’s mind, he was Native first. He was ashamed of his white blood because it marked him as a half-breed: part gussok. Charlie was only about five foot nine, with a medium build and a pretty well-developed upper body from pulling nets in the summer. What frightened people about Charlie was not his size or his strength. Charlie Johnson was wild, unpredictable, and downright scary crazy at times.
Charlie only brought five bottles of alcohol with him into town; the rest he stashed under a beached, derelict, gray wooden skiff near the whalebone remnants of Jabbertown. He slid the remaining twenty-seven bottles of alcohol into two boxes under the wreck’s exposed corner. The rest was covered with snow. It was a good hiding place for now, and he was careful to cover his tracks. He would probably have to move the alcohol if he did not sell it all right away. Once folks found out you had alcohol, they would hound you mercilessly until you were out. If they suspected you had a cache somewhere, people would follow you to the ends of the earth or track you to try and spot where you had hidden the cache. Charlie knew because he had been successful at it himself.
Charlie paid about $180 for the cheap vodka, not counting the gas for his Ski-Doo. Well, technically the gas was stolen or borrowed, and the Ski-Doo was a loaner—without the owner’s technical consent, though his uncle would be happy enough with a jug or two as payment. He would make the money back by selling two bottles; the going rate was $200 a pint depending on availability. It was hard to come by lately. That son of a bitch Chief Snow had been clamping down.
Charlie smiled. He actually liked Chief Snow. Decent guy for a cop. They had some history together and Snow was not half bad for a gussok. At least, Charlie thought he was a gussok. Some people said he was part Native. Who knows and who cares? thought Charlie. He had stashed the jugs of booze, and it was time to slide into town.
He went all the way to Dillingham on the booze run because it was impossible to get caught. Or almost impossible. You had to be a moron to get caught, and Chief Snow caught more than one of the village morons sledding back with a load of booze this winter. It was even riskier coming in with it on a plane or mailing it in. The shit was heavy, which the postal workers and baggage handlers could catch.
Charlie was careful as he came into town on a lesser-used trail with a good view of the village. He did not know that Chief Snow had not been in town, or about the crash-landing or Snow getting swatted by a bear. What he did know was that he was anxious to get drunk and then laid. Johnson had passed within a couple miles of where Chief Snow shot the bear. It was hard work riding the snow machine over rough terrain for that many hours. It was loud and cold. He had been focused on getting back.
Togiak was beginning to get some light as spring approached. It was light about six hours a day now. In the dead of winter, if there was no cloud cover, Togiak got an hour or two of light midday. Winters were very long near the Arctic Circle. It got worse as you went north. Barrow suffered two months of total darkness. At least in Togiak they got some light. It was a little warmer there, too.
In the summer the sun never got tired. It was always light, it seemed. Everyone’s energy picked up, too, and it was common to see kids out playing or riding four-wheelers at midnight in the surreal twilight. Folks worked on their boats at all hours of the night or went off to the hunting camps accessible by skiff or four-wheeler up the coast. You could drive the beach for about twenty miles in a truck. Occasionally a truck would break down. Once in a great while, a vehicle would get swamped by the tide, which rushed in. If you let the air out of your tires down to about ten pounds, you could get through the sand pretty good—one of the tricks the locals had learned.
Snow got into town a couple hours before Johnson. While he worked his way back to Togiak, Chubby, Skinny, and their crew were busy with the Cessna stuck on the lake. They got it running fairly quickly; the fuel pump was the problem. Chubby had thought as much and so brought a new one, along with a spare propeller, which he and Skinny quickly replaced.
On their return to Dillingham, Skinny flew low and spotted a dead brown bear. He radioed Chubby and they both flew over to get a good look. Chubby confirmed it was the same bear that they had buzzed and that later attacked the chief.
Chubby spread word quickly that Snow had shot and killed a grizzly with his pistol. The news beat the chief back to Togiak. When he got off the plane, Bill Tuzzy was there to greet him, flashing his gap-toothed smile as he explained how he got the news over the VHF. Tuzzy was the airline agent for three of the four local air carriers. The only one he did not represent was King Air, which only came three times a week at most. He threw Snow a bone and let him be the agent for King Air.
Being an agent for the local carriers was hard work. Tuzzy worked the phone all the time, talking to people who wanted to book flights to Dillingham and then talking to his counterpart on the other end. Flights were coming and going all the time. Tuzzy kept a little notebook in his pocket to write down the names of those who called. Freight just got tossed on as it came in, so you never knew for sure when your stuff was getting to town. Tuzzy would simply drop off freight at people’s houses.
King Air did much less traffic but received a lucrative mail contract, so that was the basis of their trips to Togiak three times a week. Snow accompanied the plane and hauled the mail back to drop off at the village post office. He had to handle passengers too, but it was not that much work. One fringe benefit: Snow could catch rides to Dillingham for free.
A substantial part of his job as police chief dealt with trying to stem the flow of bootleg alcohol to the village. That meant meeting as many planes as he could to see who was coming and going. He worked with the carriers and made a serious dent in the alcohol coming in. But it was an impossible task. Despite his efforts, a good share of illegal booze still made it through. There were just too many planes and boxes of freight constantly coming and going.
Tuzzy was six feet tall and skinny. His face was ruddy from working in the frigid air, loading and off-loading the twenty to thirty planes that came and left in a typical week. Tuzzy was an interesting man. His house was a conglomeration of plywood, metal Conex containers and the fuselage of a DC-4 that had crashed on approach to Togiak years ago. It was too expensive to fly the plane out for repair, so Tuzzy salvaged the remains. He dragged it into town and attached it to his house. Tuzzy was a self-taught carpenter—forever learning, it seemed. Nothing went to waste in this part of the bush.
Tuzzy came to the bush years ago to work a construction job for a few months. He was still there trying to get rich twenty years later. Chief Snow was of the opinion that Tuzzy was no long
er suited to the real world. That happened to people. Tuzzy was now permanently half a bubble off level, but he was decent folk and the hardest worker in Togiak. He also knew everyone and everything that came and went. Snow knew that Tuzzy knew everyone who was bringing in alcohol and that Tuzzy would never snitch. Tuzzy had determined long ago that ignorance, or at least a tight lip, was key to his survival.
Chief Snow gingerly stepped down the skinny, swaying gangway of the Piper Cherokee. He was the only passenger; the rest was freight and mail. He was sore and glad he had gotten some painkillers from Doc Perez. Tuzzy clapped Snow on the back and the chief winced.
“That brown bar you shot died, Chief! You got a license for shooting bar? Haw haw!”
“I was lucky to get away. That was a mean one. Knocked me around like a garbage can. The bear shoulda had the license to hunt me,” the chief smiled. “I wasn’t even sure I hit it.”
Something in his gut told him that Kinka of the Little People had told him the truth about the bear.
“They say you got mauled up some, Chief. That little brownie was going to eat you for an hors-devours. Haw. I guess he died of lead poisoning!”
News was scarce out here, and it traveled fast whether good or bad. Chief Snow might have to endure a little celebrity for a while, which he did not look forward to. He really liked Tuzzy, though, and favored him with a few details of the crash and the ordeal with the bear. Tuzzy listened attentively. He knew he was getting valuable horse’s-mouth information. Such information was like hard currency—even better than that—out here on the edge of the world; just being the bearer of news could bring a certain measure of notoriety. He cautiously asked a question, not wanting to push the chief, who only ever grudgingly shared information. The only reason the chief was sharing was because the bear attack only involved him. He’d never discuss a case.
Tuzzy quickly unloaded the freight and bypass mail as Snow sat in the cab of the truck. Tuzzy gave him a ride to town, but the Chief was done talking about the ordeal. Instead he asked Tuzzy about what was going on. Tuzzy was happy and jabbered about some trivial things as he negotiated the truck over the two snow-packed miles into Togiak. He did not give up information easily either.
Togiak’s name meant a “place for sending” in Yupik because Togiak was a hub for sending supplies to the even smaller villages deeper into the bush. Togiak was a traditional Yupik village where most people hunted and fished for subsistence. A kind of hybrid Yupik language was spoken, but there was no written language until around 1950 when missionaries helped the people develop one.
The village had a population of about 900 and sat on the western edge of Bristol Bay. The region was renowned for its fishing, in particular the summer salmon runs, some of the largest in the world. But people also fished herring in the spring or simply gathered herring eggs and kelp by hand when the tide was out. Herring eggs, or “spawn on kelp,” was something of a local delicacy.
Snow liked salmon, which was plentiful in the summer. The herring eggs or spawn were eaten raw. In an interesting cultural blend, many people put soy sauce on them. Snow had eaten plenty herring eggs at gatherings but really could take it or leave it. The roe simply tasted like salt water.
The village stretched north to south on the beach but was being gradually threatened by the tides. Around 1975, the townspeople moved the infrastructure of the village several miles to save it from the encroaching sea. Most of the town was still by the water, but eventually, as the buildings got old and worn out, the townspeople would build in the new site.
Snow watched the cemetery roll by. It was surrounded by a whalebone fence that arched as high as ten feet in an impressive array of fossils. On the right was the “Million Dollar Hill,” as the locals called the great gravel pile. It overlooked “Hepatitis Lake” where all the “honey buckets” got dumped. One good thing about year-round cold weather was that it froze all the waste, limiting the smell.
They snaked through the village, which paralleled the beach, some houses mere feet from the seawall. Some 900 people or so lived there, and all but a few were Native Alaskans. Most of the houses lacked paint and were as gray and dingy as an old dishrag. Those that had paint were brightly colored. Oddly, many were partially painted, as if whoever was doing the job went inside for something or got tired and never came back. More likely, they simply ran out of paint and there was no more to be had in the village. A couple houses painted a variety of colors gave evidence to that theory.
They drove by the police station. The small building had banana-yellow metal siding and doubled as the fire station, housing the one ancient fire truck. Snow decided against stopping; he was drained. If there was an emergency, everyone knew to find him at the Round House.
The house was an old 30,000-gallon water tank about thirty feet in diameter. It had been painted red some years ago but was now as gray as the sky above. Snow thanked Tuzzy and slid out of the truck onto the frozen ground. Tuzzy just barely came to a stop to let Snow out and was gone. Tuzzy was a busy man with freight to unload.
The Round House was owned by the village of Togiak, and Chief Snow lived upstairs, where there was a kitchen, bedroom and bath. Downstairs housed a laundry room right inside the entry, a couple more bedrooms, and a bathroom. The village used the spare rooms to house itinerant or traveling nurses, dentists, or basically anyone who came into the village to work as a traveler. In fact, a physician’s assistant, or PA, had recently been staying there. Most of the time Snow had the place to himself, but the house was public property, and the main door was never locked.
Snow stood outside and had a smoke as he looked out over Togiak Bay. Off to his left a mile or so was the mouth of the Togiak River. Everything was frozen for now. He thought for about the thousandth time that they could have been more imaginative when they named things around here.
On the other side of the Round House was a small creek named Two Sisters in memory of twin sisters who drowned in the creek in 1971. Imaginative, thought Snow, though kind of morbid.
Snow entered his circular, formerly aquatic abode. He was surprised to find Stanley Beans, Frank N Beans’s brother, in the laundry room entrance. Stanley did not turn around; he was busy putting clothing into the dryer. The tall, mentally handicapped man named Smally was also in attendance. He seemed to just pop up here and there, usually someplace he thought he might get coffee or smoke.
“Coffee! Smoke!” Smally directed at Snow, holding out the greasy glass pint jar he drank coffee from.
“No coffee, Smally,” said the chief as he fished out a couple smokes and handed them over. Smally went outside without a word, eager to smoke.
“Hey, Stanley. Washing my laundry?”
“Eee! My laundry, Chief.”
“You can do your laundry here, Stanley. Just appreciate if you let me know first so I don’t accidentally shoot you.”
Snow could not be too peeved at Stanley, even though he was sneaking in to do his laundry. Many folks did not have washing machines or dryers. A lot of people didn’t even have flush toilets in their houses. “Honey bucket” was the euphemism for the device people used to do their private business. It came from the refrain “Honey, take out the bucket.”
Stanley Beans was mostly skin and bones. He wore very thick lens in black-framed glasses, which tended to make him appear bug-eyed. He had a couple front teeth missing, but that did not deter him from showing them all the time; he was always either smiling or grimacing. It was often hard to tell which. Stanley was a likable fellow like his older brother, Frank, but with a better vocabulary. He was only about five foot five. His face was gaunt. His high cheekbones stood out in the dark-brown, pocked skin of his face.
Stanley often served as Snow’s jail guard when he had a prisoner. It was certainly not a full-time job, but Stanley was around enough to bond with the chief. They often ate lunch together or shared stories, and the chief had offered Stanley the use of his washer and dryer.
Snow entered the main house and slowly c
limbed the metal spiral staircase to the second floor. He looked around his home. The main room was nearly a perfect circle, the only flaw in the arc a small bedroom set off of one wall. It was a huge, spacious room with a million angles. The ceiling peaked in the middle, a good fourteen feet above his head, where the original wood used to build the water tank was visible.
Off to the left was the kitchen and in the center the TV, which picked up the one available channel. On the entire wall facing the water was a series of windows that rose eight feet from the floor, making for a panoramic view of the beach. A door opened onto a small, rickety deck. The deck was not good for much other than going out for a smoke.
Snow was struck by a wave of melancholy. Maybe it was the sudden mortality check caused by the plane and the grizzly. He thought about the woman, the nurse Lilly. She seemed to be in his head all the time now. She caused him to realize how lonely he was. Such feelings were usually under tight wraps. He went to bed thinking of her.
CHAPTER 5
THE JOB
Chief Snow showed up at the office around ten. It had been almost three weeks since the plane crash, his tussle with the grizzly, and the encounter—real or imagined—with Kinka of the Little People.
Despite his angst, the chief felt some relief because it looked like “break up” had finally arrived. “Spring break up,” or just “break up,” was a term Alaska adopted from the oil industry. It was when spring finally hit and the frost came out of the ground, making the gravel roads soft and muddy. Coupled with the runoff from the snow melt, the roads could get downright impassable.
In Togiak the roads were a real mess—deep, life-threatening ruts, and potholes filled with water runoff. People had been rumored to disappear in some of the bigger ones. We need to get the grader working to smooth things out, thought Snow. The chief looked around the office and headed for the beat-up coffee maker to start a pot. “Police station and fire hall” was a pretty generous way of describing the small building. There was a big open room with a refrigerator, coffeepot and such adjacent to the small office the chief used as his own. Past the office were a couple small jail cells and a hallway to the bathroom, which was complete with a flush toilet hooked to a tank that had to be pumped out when full. It was a luxury to have a flush toilet of any kind.
Bush Blues Page 5