by Craig Dirkes
“Easy guys,” I said, keeping a steady eye on Diesel while I unhooked Lunchbox from the gangline. Lenny and Kuba stood calmly behind me.
I took Lunchbox by the collar and led him a few feet away, after which Diesel stopped growling. Situation diffused. My blood stopped pumping. I took a deep breath and looked around to see if anybody saw what happened. I felt humiliated, like I’d crashed a car in my own driveway.
My eyes shifted to the front of the team. There, at the front of the gangline, was Biff, gleefully humping Rosebud.
Son of a bitch, I thought.
I couldn’t let go of Lunchbox so I dragged him over near Biff and Rosebud, hoping to pull them apart. Biff was on Rosebud and in jackhammer mode. Holding Lunchbox’s collar with my right hand, I reached my left arm underneath Biff’s neck and yanked on him, but it did no good. I couldn’t get them apart.
“Dalton!” I yelled, hoping he’d hear me from inside the house and come bail me out. “Help!”
No response.
I left the lovers, led Lunchbox to his doghouse, and hooked him to his chain. I hustled to unhook the other dogs and get them back to their houses. By the time I got back to Biff and Rosebud, Biff had dismounted Rosebud, but the two dogs were still attached. He had stretched his back leg over her backside so that they were facing opposite directions, ass to ass.
I grabbed Biff’s collar, but before I could move him, I heard an unfamiliar voice say, “Leave them alone!”
I turned around and saw Nicolai Vawter, the pastor who lived next door, walking toward me and wearing only a bath towel around his waist and mukluk boots up to his knees. We’d waved at each other in passing but had never spoken.
“They’ll be stuck together for a while,” he said. Nicolai was tall for a Native. He had short gray hair, skinny arms, and a sizable spare tire. His gut jiggled with every step he took through the snow. “The male is releasing prostatic fluid.”
What could I say to that? I just nodded.
“Pulling them apart could hurt him,” Nicolai added.
“What?” I ended up shouting, half because I didn’t really understand and half because it didn’t compute that Nicolai was practically naked outside in the cold.
“Prostatic fluid,” he said. “It takes a while to discharge. That’s the issue.”
Biff stood there, facing the tundra, looking like he could go for a cigarette. I nodded, sighed, and searched for something to say to the half-naked pastor in the cold sunshine.
“Aren’t you freezing?” I asked.
“I won’t be for long,” he replied, pointing toward a structure that looked like a miniature log cabin. “I’m about to take a steam bath. You’re welcome to join me — when things are settled out here.”
Dalton emerged on a narrow snow path on Nicolai’s side of our house. The two men waved at each other as Nicolai headed into his steam bath. Dalton strutted up to me, smiling.
“Where were you?” I asked, annoyance clear in my voice.
“Watching from inside, laughing my ass off,” he said.
“Why didn’t you come help?”
“I wanted to see if you could handle the situation,” he replied. “And you did.”
* * *
I stood in front of Nicolai’s steam bath, wearing my snow boots, boxers, and a T-shirt, holding a wadded-up bath towel. I shivered and considered whether I was up for this. I was curious about Eskimo steam baths, but I knew about one local custom that made me nervous: in a steam bath everyone went nude. Young, old, guy, girl, your weird uncle Ned — didn’t matter. If you steamed, you steamed naked. It was part of YK Delta culture. Finn had explained it to me. He said he steamed naked with his grandma all the time, and it wasn’t even weird. I, on the other hand, was reluctant to steam with Nicolai. When it comes to nudity and young males, clergy don’t exactly have the greatest track record.
Every fifth house in Kusko had a steam bath in the backyard. Outside Nicolai’s I stalled, taking a good look at the log structure. It seemed a century old, made from logs that were practically petrified and fused together by old, cracked mud.
Finally I entered a small vestibule big enough for two people to crouch down and disrobe. I stripped off my clothes and dumped them in the corner with my towel. I crawled through a small hinged opening that looked like an overgrown pet door.
The inside of the steam bath was hotter than Death Valley and darker than a Tim Burton movie. I couldn’t see a thing. I didn’t want to feel my way around for fear of accidentally clutching a handful of Nicolai’s balls.
“Where am I at, Nicolai?” I asked, on my hands and knees.
“Shuffle to your right and take a seat.”
I dripped with sweat before I could even sit down. Grit and grime loosened from every pour of my body.
As my eyes adjusted I could see the vague silhouette of Nicolai’s body straight across from me, but I couldn’t see his face. Between us, a wood-burning stove with a pile of stones stacked on top of it kicked out dry waves of heat and a dim bit of light. Next to the stove rested a five-gallon bucket of water and a plastic mug.
Nicolai dipped the mug into the bucket and poured water on the rocks. The water crackled into a blistering cloud of steam that filled the room and my lungs.
“Damn!” I yelped.
“I joined the steam club a few years ago and couldn’t be happier,” the naked man said.
“There’s a club?”
Nicolai chuckled and launched into an explanation of how he’d been referring to the ranks of Kuskoites who’d quit showering altogether and steamed instead. He told me he saved water and felt cleaner than after a shower. Considering the sheet of sweat slicking my skin already, I couldn’t quite imagine feeling clean when it was all over.
Then we were silent — silent and naked and sweating. I wasn’t sure what to say next. I still wasn’t totally used to being talked to and treated like an adult. I’d been doing a pretty good job at projecting confidence when I was interviewing people for the Patriot, but just beneath the surface, I often felt like a moron talking to anybody over age thirty. They knew about things like water bills, mortgages, and politics. The only grownup thing I could talk about was news writing — and maybe hunting. Outside of that, I was knowledgeable only about boobs and music and how poor I was and my FJ, and funny shit from college and high school.
“Cool steam bath.” That was the conversational gold I finally came up with. “I mean, cool like it’s good. You build it?”
“Nope,” Nicolai said, competing with the sound of water fizzling on the rocks. “This thing was built long before my house was. It’s probably been here more than a century. I’ve made some improvements, though.”
After another sweaty lull in our conversation, he said, “How do you like Kusko so far?”
Considering he was a pastor, I didn’t want to lie. My dad took Max and me to church sometimes, and some of the stuff stuck.
“I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it, either. I had it pretty good in Anchorage. But I’m trying to suck it up. I’ve been telling myself that in twenty years, I’ll look back on all of this and smile.”
“That’s the attitude,” Nicolai said, his eyes closed as he spoke.
By now my eyes had adjusted to the low light. I imagined my pupils were as big as hockey pucks.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’ve been in Kusko almost five years. I spent most of my life in the villages.”
“Do you have family in town?”
“Everybody who’s from the YK Delta has family everywhere out here.”
Nicolai explained he was a divorced father of one. He’d moved to Kusko to become pastor of Kusko Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination.
“There are a lot of bad things in the YK Delta,” Nicolai said. “I want to be part of the solution.”
He wasn’t
kidding about the “bad things.” On top of what I’d been reading in the police blotter, I’d learned that rural Alaska had some of the highest rates of violent crime in all of America. An Alaska state trooper told me that nugget when I interviewed him for a story about some dickhead in the village of Aniak who roughed up his five-year-old daughter and sent her to the hospital with bruises everywhere and a broken arm.
Nicolai scooted closer to the fire and reached for a small dish filled with soapy water and a sponge. He grabbed the sponge and began cleaning himself with it.
“Do you know anything about Dalton?” I asked. “I live with the guy, but he never talks about himself. He won’t talk about his past, other than the fact that he’s from here.”
“I know that they used to live in Fairbanks, where Dalton worked for the newspaper. I’m guessing he moved back here after he and his wife split up. That’s all I got.”
“I didn’t know he’d been married,” I replied.
“He was married years ago. But he couldn’t get his wife pregnant and they separated,” the pastor said. “That’s just what I heard, anyway.”
Nicolai dropped the sponge at my feet. I dipped it in the soapy water and started scrubbing my arms and shoulders.
After a moment of silence, I asked, “Why is stuff so messed up out here?”
“Stuff is messed up everywhere.”
“But how could stuff be so messed up?”
“I don’t know, Eddie,” Nicolai said. “What I do know is that people run into problems when they get fooled into thinking that what is wrong is what is right. Then there are other people who do know what is right, but they don’t have the sack to do it. In the end, it all comes back.”
Yes, I was impressed by a pastor who used the word “sack.”
CHAPTER 7
DON’T PRINT THAT
Fifteen minutes until deadline. I had just finished my final story. Only the headline remained. I stared at the computer screen, stumped.
“Hustle, Eddie,” Dalton ordered, putting on his jacket. “I can’t leave until your story is done. What’s the holdup?”
“The headline,” I said.
“What have you got so far?”
“’Mayor shifts from green to brown.’”
Dalton scratched his chin and thought. “Add the word ‘surprise’ at the beginning, with an exclamation point. That’ll make it seem like a bigger deal than it is.”
The night before, I’d stayed at the Kusko City Council meeting until ten o’clock, praying they’d finally address something newsworthy. The only halfway interesting tidbit came when Kusko’s mayor, Marty McCambly, insisted that Kusko City Hall be painted brown instead of green, the color he and the council had previously agreed upon as part of a remodeling project scheduled to begin two months from now, in May.
“Genius,” I said. “That one word will make the story Pulitzer Prize material.”
“Okay then, smart-ass,” Dalton said, standing near the door. “I’m out to help Lon Bokey butcher meat. Send your story to the printer, then get on my computer and start uploading web content.”
Dalton was on his way to help his buddy cut up two caribou he’d shot twenty miles north of Kusko. Although the caribou season was closed to many Alaska residents in our area, an extended season remained open to people who depended on the meat to live.
After Dalton left, I stayed at my desk a few extra minutes to write an email to Taylor. I stared at the email she’d sent the night before, while I was trapped in the city council meeting. Her note mentioned the passing of my mom, which I’d been forced to tell her about when she’d asked about my family.
“Living without a mom must be utter hell,” she wrote. “I’m so sorry, Eddie. No words.”
She went on to write happier things, such as the improved odds of her being named valedictorian. “The other guy in the mix is a clumsy wimp who can’t run a 5K in less than thirty minutes,” she wrote. “If he can’t by May, he won’t get an A in his gym class. That’ll give me the edge in GPA.”
Taylor’s assumption was correct: living without a mom was hell.
My mom’s name was Rose, and she died of cancer when I was twelve. Talking about her death was virtually impossible before I became a teenager. I was too young to handle my emotions. One time, I coldcocked a kid for taking my pencil without asking. Other times, I woke up crying in the middle of the night… which still happened now and then.
I still feel extra terrible for my dad. He always busted his ass for our family, managing a car wash by day and working three evening bartending shifts per week at the Zimmerman VFW. After my mom died, he had to pick up two more bar shifts to make up for my mom’s part-time income at the local hair salon, called Zimm Trim. He was always too busy to give me the attention I needed while I was grieving; I had to cook most of my meals myself. Although he spent time with Max and me every chance he could, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the bills didn’t get paid, we’d lose our house.
I started typing what must have been my tenth email to Taylor in six weeks. I was sick of writing to her. I wanted to see her face.
I responded with this:
Taylor,
Thanks for saying that. It’s been a while since my mom died, and some days it sucks just as huge as the day we lost her. But life goes on, I guess.
Cool about valedictorian. If that other dude starts running the 5K fast enough, I’d be happy take out his knees for you. Just let me know.
On a different note, my fingers are cramping. Writing emails to you on top of writing stories all day is too much. Wanna just hang out sometime?
Eddie
* * *
The next day Dalton was running an hour late to our weekly editorial meeting. Normally it took him two hours to do the paper route. Now it was almost eleven o’clock.
I sat at my desk, farting around online. I had already checked my personal email account four times, hoping Taylor had responded with a yes to my invitation.
Then the door from Mikey Colosky’s barber shop burst open. Dalton stood in the door frame, tapping his right foot on the floor, looking irritated. He held a bundle of newspapers under his arm and pulled out a copy. He walked a few steps closer and tossed the newspaper onto my desk.
“Page five,” he said. “Bottom story.”
I spread the paper onto my desk and flipped to page five. The story opened like this:
Surprise! Mayor Shits from Green to Brown
By Eddie Ashford
Staff Writer / Delta Patriot
KUSKO, Alaska — Mayor Marty McCambly shocked Kusko City Council members Monday by demanding that Kusko City Hall be painted brown. In a February meeting, McCambly and council members agreed the building would be painted green as part of a remodeling project scheduled for this spring.
Dalton glowered at me as I read the story all the way through and scanned it a second time. I couldn’t find any errors.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. “Is ‘shocked’ too strong of a word? I thought it might be, but I had to spice things up somehow. If that’s the issue, then that’s on you — you read the story and cleared it.”
Dalton frowned. “I cleared the story before it had a headline.”
“Yeah, and then I wrote the exact headline you told me,” I said, pointing at it.
“Read the headline out loud,” Dalton said.
I cleared my throat. “Surprise! Mayor shits — ”
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“NO!” I blurted, wincing like I’d just watched a train hit a school bus.
In a way, my blunder was just as big of a train wreck. Not only did the headline say “shit,” it included the color brown. On top of that, readers who liked to eat kale or were familiar with changing baby diapers would get an added chuckle over the color green.
“This is not happenin
g,” I said, mortified.
“Yep, it’s happening,” Dalton said, still hovering over me. “I’ve had a lot of explaining to do around town this morning. That’s what’s taken me so long to get back here.”
“Does Mayor McCambly know?”
“He’s the first person I talked to. He laughed. You’re lucky he has a sense of humor.”
I sighed long and loud. “Now what?”
“You don’t ever do that again, that’s what,” Dalton said. “You’ll read all your stories and headlines backward, three times, before they get to me; you’d be amazed at how many typos you’ll find reading backward.”
“Shouldn’t the proofers at the printer have caught it?”
“Yes,” Dalton said. “I’ll call them later today. I need to know every last hole in my net.”
I started freaking, worrying I’d be fired. What would happen then? Would Dalton be off the hook paying the return shipping for my truck? How would I afford a plane ticket back to Anchorage? Where would I live in Kusko?
Dalton walked to the utility closet, opened the door, and flipped on the space heater. The daytime low was supposed to flirt with ten below, abnormally cold for early March.
While he did that, I dug into my coat pocket for my phone and sent R.J. this text: “My room still open?”
He responded: “Always. But why? Bush life getting to you already? Is your pussy aching?”
Me: “No. I’m fine. Just checking. Drink one for me tonight.”
Him: “Word.”
Dalton sat down at his desk and flipped through his Rolodex, visibly agitated by two pages that were stuck together.
I wanted assurance that I was safe, that mistakes happen. “Please tell me this isn’t the worst mistake one of your reporters has made. Is it?”
“It’s up there,” Dalton said. “Years ago, a girl wrote a story about a literacy program at Kusko Elementary and misspelled ‘literacy’ in the headline.”