Sucktown, Alaska

by Craig Dirkes

  I hollered, “Yeah, I’m good!”

  “What?” the pilot yelled.

  “I said, I’M GOOD!”

  “Oh good!” he said. “Don’t fret, nothing to be worried about —”

  He winced and clutched his chest. My eyes bulged out of my head. Quickly, I peered out the window to see how high off the ground we were. Green tundra and round blue ponds scrolled far, far below us.

  I looked back at the pilot. He pointed at me and laughed.

  I frowned. “Not funny!” I shouted.

  The rest of the flight was a turbulent, find-your-happy-place nightmare. The plane bounced up, down, and sideways in the wind, and I almost barfed when we touched down. The runway was like a bumpy stretch of dirt road.

  “Thank you, God,” I mumbled as we finally rolled to a stop.

  I deplaned and waited for the pilot to retrieve my backpack from the aircraft’s storage compartment. I could see the village from the runway. Mammoth foothills, covered equally by thick brush and green tundra, formed a ring around the town in the far east, several miles away. To the west, the Bering Sea. The Unalakleet River flowed between the foothills and the village, wrapping around the east and south sides of the village and emptying into the sea. Clouds hung overhead.

  Several Native families waited next to a red kiosk near the edge of the runway, along with a young guy I assumed to be Casey Cotton, and a middle-aged, red-haired village public safety officer with a crew cut. His uniform was blue, and no gun hung from his belt. Finn had told me VPSOs weren’t allowed to carry firearms.

  I walked up to greet Casey, practically brushing shoulders with the VPSO. He couldn’t have cared less about me.

  “What’s up?” Casey said with a smile, sitting on a nineteen-eighties Honda Big Red three-wheeler. He was pudgy and much shorter than me. He had the biggest head I’d ever seen, a mop-top of curly blond hair, and a long scraggly beard that must have taken a year to grow. He wore a camo jacket and tan overalls, plus insulated, knee-high boots. It was late May, but still chilly at ten in the morning.

  “How long you gonna be here, buddy?” Casey spoke in a high-pitched voice — and so fast I could barely understand him.

  “Five hours until my return flight.”

  “That’s plenty of time. Hop on, buddy.”

  I got on the back of his three-wheeler, and we sped toward town down a wide, bumpy dirt road. The bumps hurt my butt and made me extra anxious to get rid of the package. I tried to take everything in as we approached Unalakleet, population one thousand. I had never visited a Native village before. It looked like a smaller, scruffier version of Sucktown. Most of the homes looked like glorified ice-fishing houses, with rusty heating fuel tanks outside. Jeans and underwear blew on clotheslines. Strips of king salmon hung on wooden drying racks. People on four-wheelers buzzed in every direction. The steeple of a dilapidated church jutted above the center of the village.

  “Is there a store?” I asked as we drove past the town gas pump and onto a narrow ATV trail.

  “On the other side of town,” Casey said. “It doesn’t have much. Whatever food people don’t kill for themselves, they ship in from Anchorage.”

  Soon, shoulder-high shrubs blocked my view of Unalakleet. Casey took us onto a slim dirt trail that snaked around for a mile or two outside the village. Branches spanked at my shins as we sped along. Every time we slowed down to take a turn, clouds of mosquitoes moved in.

  Ten minutes later we arrived at a clearing, on the rocky banks of the North River, an offshoot of the Unalakleet River. The foothills towered in front of us. Casey turned off the three-wheeler and handed me an aerosol can of bug dope. I shut my eyes and sprayed my face.

  “This is my life,” Casey announced with pride, taking in the beautiful scenery. He pointed to my right. “And that, right there, is my home.”

  Thirty yards down river stood a fish-counting tower — two stories of scaffolding overlooking a shallow, narrow stretch of river. Alaska wildlife officials contracted people like Casey to count salmon all summer. He sat in the tower for hours at a time, using a clicker to count every salmon that swam by.

  “Can’t do this job without poking a few one-hitters,” Casey said.

  “Oh, right,” I said, unbuckling my overalls.

  I told Casey I needed help with the duct tape. I dropped my overalls and boxers. “Please be gentle.”

  Three strands of tape covered my ass. I yelped when Casey yanked off the first one. It felt like my skin was being stripped away with it.

  After he pulled off the last piece, he plucked out the baggie, walked a few steps forward, and dipped it in the river.

  “Wanna test drive that stuff?” I asked him. I assumed the weed was good, but I was trying to sound like a pro.

  “No, buddy,” he said, shoving the bag into his front coat-pocket. “I don’t need to test Finn’s weed. His stuff’s always the one-hit shit.”

  Casey handed me a wad of cash, and that was that.

  “Okay, buddy. Ready to see something trippy?”

  * * *

  Back on the three-wheeler, we motored down a trail that was even narrower, heading down river from the counting tower. After a short distance, we pulled into a grassy clearing surrounded by more shoulder-high brush. An ancient-looking Native man stood at a beat-up wooden table in front of a rundown shack made of rusty white metal siding. A tattered wooden skiff, filled with fishing nets, rested on the riverbank fifteen yards away.

  Dalton had told me most Native families owned a summer fish camp — a riverfront parcel of land allotted to them by the government for being indigenous Alaskans. The camps I’d seen along the Kuskokwim featured similar shacks for cooking and sleeping.

  On the wooden table rested a monstrous king salmon, probably forty pounds. The man cleaned the fish using a strange-looking knife with a circular blade. He cut the meat into long narrow strips.

  “I’ve never seen a knife like that,” I whispered to Casey as we dismounted the three-wheeler.

  “It’s an ulu knife,” he replied.

  The man used twine to hang a strip of salmon by its tail onto a six-foot-high wooden drying rack. The rack dripped with dozens of bright-red salmon strips.

  “What’s up, buddy?” Casey asked him.

  The man introduced himself as Charles Sampson. He looked quintessentially Native, from his short stature, to his disproportionately large hands, to his bowlegged walk, to his measured, deliberate movements. Being in his presence felt like being back in time. The fact that he wore a weathered-looking caribou leather poncho only added to the sensation.

  “The fish are glowing in the dark,” Charles told me, his words coming out like drips of water. Charles and Native elders like him spoke incredibly slowly — carefully, it seemed to me.

  “That’s what I heard,” I replied. “Can I see?”

  Charles grabbed two strips of salmon from the drying rack and led Casey and me inside his shack. He opened the creaky door to a tiny room with a canvas army cot and a collapsible table with a green portable stove on top.

  Then he kicked away the cot to reveal a plastic trapdoor leading underground. Charles opened the trapdoor and descended a short ladder, waving for me to follow.

  “You pumped for this, buddy?” Casey asked me, leaning over the pit as I stepped down the ladder. I looked up and nodded.

  Soon I stood underground next to Charles, shoulder to shoulder, in a sort of cellar for storing meat. Casey closed the trapdoor above the tiny, dank space.

  Pitch blackness. Charles took my right hand and slowly pulled it toward him. He dropped the two fish strips onto my hand.

  “The fish are glowing in the dark,” he said again.

  I lifted the strips toward my eyes. Sure enough, they glowed. Not enough to light up a room or anything, but there was no mistaking the faint, silvery glimmer.

&nb
sp; * * *

  The next day, I called wildlife officials in Anchorage to talk to a biologist about the glowing fish. The first two biologists I spoke with thought I was crazy. The third did not. He’d heard rumors of glowing fish several years before, researched the topic, and concluded that the phenomenon was the result of a rare phosphorescent bacteria that attaches to the fish in the ocean.

  Charles never did say anything more to me other than “The fish are glowing in the dark,” but that was all the quote I needed for my piece.

  To Dalton’s delight, the story did get picked up statewide. It began like this:

  North River Kings Glowing in Dark

  By Eddie Ashford

  Staff Writer / Delta Patriot

  UNALAKLEET, Alaska — When Charles Sampson says the king salmon he’s been netting near his fish camp on the North River are glowing, he doesn’t mean they’re radiating happiness. He means it literally.

  “The fish are glowing in the dark,” the Native elder said.

  CHAPTER 13

  ACCIDENTAL ENEMY

  Finn and I scurried up and down the west bank of the Kuskokwim, dip netting for smelt. It was a hot summer night in Suckingham — seventy-plus degrees under a sun that was shining brightly at 10:45.

  We fished near Taylor’s neighborhood, close to where Joey Bragg had gone wakeboarding. I could see the roof of Taylor’s house from the metal culvert I stood on. I kept turning around to look, blindly dipping my net into the water.

  Clearly, Finn knew what I was thinking. “Have you talked to her?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, my eyes glued to her house. “It’s a miracle I haven’t seen her around town. I hope it stays that way.”

  I turned my attention back to the river. Next to me, Finn lowered his net into the water and pulled out a dozen smelt. He dumped the little fish into a five-gallon bucket.

  Finn had had the idea to take me fishing for smelt — oversized minnows that arrive by the zillions for several days in late May or early June. He’d explained that people in villages up and down the Kuskokwim would grab a dip net — like a normal hand-held fish net, but with an eight-foot handle — and stand by the river to scoop them up. That’s all there was to it. I was just glad to have something to do.

  “So, what’s the plan for my delivery tomorrow?” I asked Finn, studying the fish flopping in his bucket. We’d netted enough of them that I couldn’t see the bottom of the bucket anymore.

  “Just like before,” Finn said, dropping his net back into the water. “Marijuana up your ass and cross your fingers at security.”

  Nearly three weeks had passed since my first delivery, and now Finn had arranged for one in his home village of St. Mary’s, about a hundred miles north on the Yukon River. But unlike my delivery in Unalakleet, this time I wouldn’t be lucky enough to have a customer and news story wrapped into one. I didn’t have any story at all and would have to come up with one when I got there. This was a gamble. If I didn’t return with a story that was good enough to justify a village trip, Dalton would ask questions.

  That scared me, along with something else: the police blotter. If I got busted, my name would appear in the Patriot not as a byline, but in that dubious real estate. People never read any of the stories without first flipping to the police blotter to see who’d been busted and for what. It was the best-read part of the paper, according to Dalton. And after a few months in town, I understood why everyone in the YK Delta was deathly afraid of seeing their name printed there. It was all about public shaming.

  “Wanna head out?” I asked. “It’s getting late.”

  “Cool,” Finn said. “This weekend we’ll fry these little guys in beer batter, guts and all.”

  Finn reached into his bucket, grabbed a smelt by the back of its head, and looked it square in the face. “Suck it, little nerd,” he said.

  * * *

  I didn’t feel nearly as nervous at the airport this time around. I stood in line at the ticket counter confidently as Peggy Paniptchuck registered the four people in front of me.

  My only discomfort came from the package of weed Finn had lodged up my butt a half hour earlier. After he taped me up, a sharp kink in the package poked at my sphincter. It felt like I was getting stabbed in the bunghole, repeatedly, with a dull knife. But having Finn strip off the duct tape to reset the package would have hurt more, so I dealt with it.

  “Are you carrying any explosives, firearms, or illegal drugs?” Peggy Paniptchuck asked me.

  “Other than the flask of moonshine I’ve got shoved down my pants, no,” I replied.

  “Nice try, Eddie. Enjoy St. Mary’s today. Are you going to write about the kids on the four-wheeler?”

  Hello, panic. Nice to see you again.

  I had no clue what the four-wheeler story was. If I replied no, Peggy would ask what other story I was covering, and I wouldn’t have an answer. But if I said yes, she might ask questions about the four-wheeler story as if I knew the details. One lame response, and she could get suspicious. My only choice was to say yes. Own this, I thought.

  “Yep, the four-wheeler story,” I said. “Crazy stuff.”

  “Really crazy,” she said as she went through the motions of checking my ID. “Are you going to interview both of them?”

  I set my bullshitting thrusts to supersonic.

  “I have one of the people lined up for an interview, but I’m still working on the other one.” I glanced at my watch. “Shouldn’t be hard to track the other person down in so small a village. Even if I only get that one person to talk, it will still be a good enough story.”

  She nodded.

  “I just can’t believe it actually happened,” I said without really knowing why. The bullshitting was out of my control now. “I’ve been thinking about it nonstop. This will probably be one of the most interesting stories I’ve ever covered.”

  Peggy handed me the boarding pass, but before I could walk away, she cocked her head and asked, “How did you hear about it?”

  “Same way you did.” That was the only response I could come up with, and it seemed like a decent one.

  “From Tommy Wegscheider?” she said. “How do you two know each other?”

  “How do we know each other?” I said, wondering, Who the hell is Tommy Wegscheider?

  Peggy only nodded and gave me a quizzical look.

  “I just meant, you know, through the grapevine,” I said.

  “Oh, gotcha.” She smiled. “Good deal then, Eddie. Can’t wait to read the story.”

  Yeah, I thought. And I can’t wait to find out what it’s even about.

  * * *

  The landing strip at St. Mary’s was nowhere near town. I got out of the plane, looked in all directions, but still couldn’t see anything. More of the same formidable foothills I’d seen in Unalakleet blocked my view of anything to the north and east. To the south and west flowed the mighty Yukon River. Beyond the river, beautiful green tundra and boggy sloughs stretched to infinity. Hundreds of flying ducks dotted the sweeping expanse of blue sky.

  The pilot collected my backpack from the plane’s storage compartment and handed it to me. I’d been the flight’s only passenger.

  “How am I supposed to get to St. Mary’s?” I asked.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to a foothill east of us. A trail of dust rose above the hill, like smoke from the top of a train we couldn’t see. “The St. Mary’s VPSO is almost here.”

  A moment later, a little red pickup truck appeared from around a bend, kicking up more dust. The vehicle pulled up just as the pilot climbed back into his plane. I walked up next to the driver’s side door. The VPSO rolled down his window. He had black hair and bordered on morbidly obese. Curly chest hair sprouted out the top of his blue uniform shirt, which was missing a button.

  “Morning,” he said, his gut pressing against the bottom of the steering
wheel. “Just you on that flight?”

  “Yep,” I said. “I’m from the Patriot. I’m here about the four-wheeler story.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Thank God he knows what it is, I thought. The VPSO looked me up and down, and I tightened my cheeks around my illegal payload.

  “You probably need a ride,” he said.

  “I do,” I said, hoisting my backpack into the bed of his truck. “Appreciate the help.”

  His name was Russ — a white guy in his early twenties. He was so fat he couldn’t fasten the seat belt around his bloated stomach. I had never seen a VPSO that out of shape. Most VPSOs were trim because of all the naturally lean foods villagers ate, salmon in particular. But this guy looked like he’d swallowed a beluga.

  “Anything newsworthy happening out here, aside from the four-wheeler thing?” I asked him, playing the reporter, as we motored along. “Bust anybody lately?”

  “Yeah, I usually cuff a bootlegger every week or two,” Russ said, shifting the truck into third gear.

  “What about drugs?”

  “Not in a while.” He glanced at me and added, “But I always know when somebody in town has weed.”

  Sure you do, Sherlock, I thought, scratching my ass, trying to reset the kink. I assured myself that even if he did bust somebody with my stuff, I’d be long gone by then.

  St. Mary’s was probably a mile from the airport as the crow flies, but two miles on land because the dirt road had to skirt the base of a big foothill. When the village came into view, I couldn’t help thinking the place looked like it didn’t belong where it was. The cluster of homes and buildings stood on the steep face of a foothill overlooking the confluence of the Yukon and Andreafsky rivers. The way the houses perched on that hillside made me wonder about the wisdom of whoever first chose to live there.