by Craig Dirkes
“What?” I asked. “Are you telling me Bronco will be there?”
“It’s possible,” Finn said. “He could drive there.”
Finn said St. Mary’s and Mountain Village were among the few villages in the YK Delta connected by road.
I wasn’t too worried. I’d be at a festival with crowds of people all around. Even if Bronco found me, he probably couldn’t do shit there.
* * *
Independence Day came.
“Are you carrying any explosives, firearms, or illegal drugs?” Peggy Paniptchuck asked me at the airport ticket counter.
“Other than the M-80s I’ve got shoved down my pants, no.”
Bada boom, bada bing. I was in Mountain Village.
Beyond my photo assignment, I’d also be making a delivery. Finn hooked me up with one of his former coworkers. He said to look for a small hut in the middle of the festival.
I’d been lucky to catch a flight to Quyana Fest because people from all over the YK Delta were headed to the event. Yute Express and two other airlines had to run extra bush planes to and from Kusko all day and all night. Apparently, Quyana Fest was a big deal.
I landed at four o’clock, deplaned, and looked around. Eighty degrees, no wind, and virtually no clouds. God bless America. Dalton had told me eighty-degree highs didn’t happen often in Alaska, except where he used to live, in Fairbanks, where even ninety degrees wasn’t out of the question.
More green, hulking foothills everywhere. A proper mountain, capped with snow, stood alone in the far north. To the west, the Yukon River again. The Yukon looked wider and sufficiently mightier than the mighty Mississippi, where I used to fish for smallmouth bass back in Minnesota.
I could see Mountain Village from the runway, which stretched out atop a bluff about a mile from town. No Mountain Village VPSO met the plane at the airport, probably because he had his hands full patrolling the festival. I boarded a yellow shuttle bus parked next to the landing strip. The inside of the bus was buns to nuts; two bush planes had landed right before mine. Half of the thirty people packed inside the bus were children abuzz with giggles, excited for Quyana Fest. The bus dropped us off at the edge of the festival, held along a three-block village street near the banks of the Yukon.
My first assessment: Quyana Fest actually looked awesome. I stood at the top of a slope that allowed me to see the entire festival at once. Hundreds of people scurried between the games, attractions, and food tables. Salmon smells filled the air. Quyana Fest was like a Native version of my favorite place when I was a kid — the Minnesota State Fair. It had all the same stuff, but with an Eskimo twist. Instead of food booths with deep-fried cheese curds, corn dogs, and bacon-on-a-stick, this place had food tables with moose jerky, smoked sockeye strips, and Eskimo ice cream — a mixture of caribou fat, tundra berries, and sugar.
While the state fair’s midway had the human catapult ride, Quyana Fest had the Eskimo blanket toss. I watched as thirty people young and old grabbed hold of what looked like a parachute made of caribou hides stitched together. They launched a teen boy on the blanket high into the air.
I pulled my camera and new lens out of my backpack and photographed the blanket toss. I stood back forty feet to get the whole scene into frame. The lens took some getting used to, but eventually I got “the shot”: an exhilarated high school boy, twenty feet in the air, pretending to touch the sun, with a crowd of people cheering beneath him.
A blanket of shade spread over the festival as a renegade cloud temporarily blocked the sun. The loss of light meant I had to adjust the camera’s shutter speed. I raised the camera for a test shot, zeroing in on three young Native guys sitting on a knoll beyond the temporary fence behind the blanket toss.
Before I could review the test shot on the camera’s digital display, I heard someone call my name. In front of me, through a cluster of festivalgoers, emerged Bristy and Hope. Both wore tie-dye kuspuks and carried bags of Native jewelry they’d purchased.
“What’s up, girls?” I asked, trying to seem happy.
“Hi, Eddie!” they said simultaneously.
“That’s quite a camera lens,” Hope said.
“I’m shooting a photo essay,” I replied, wanting to seem preoccupied.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I closed my eyes, knowing who stood behind me. “Hi, Taylor,” I groaned without turning around.
“Hi,” Taylor said cheerfully. She circled around me and joined Bristy and Hope. She wore a blue kuspuk with a floral print. She looked painfully adorable.
I took a deep breath and talked like nothing was wrong.
“So, ladies, how was graduation? Feel good to be done with school?”
“Totally!” Bristy said. “I started crying during the graduation ceremony. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was finally done with school after being there for twelve years… or thirteen years, if you count kindergarten. That’s, like, more than a decade. I swear, a decade seems like more than a hundred years. When I started kindergarten, I was only —”
Hope interrupted. “Shut up, Bristy. You’re so annoying.”
Taylor chuckled. The sun glared on her from behind, creating a halo effect around her silky blond hair. She looked like an angel — an angel with a slightly wayward eye. As great as she looked, seeing her again was torture.
“Congrats on being named valedictorian,” I told her. Five weeks earlier I had written a news brief about her accomplishment. I didn’t have to interview her for the brief, which was a relief at the time, and somehow I hadn’t seen her around Sucktown. But here she was in Mountain Village.
“Thanks!” she said, beaming. I didn’t like that she beamed. I wanted her to be unhappy to see me, like she regretted not hooking up when she had the chance. I wanted some sign of that regret, not the same super-sunny, let’s-be-friends Taylor.
I asked, “What are you guys doing now that high school is over?”
“Those two clowns don’t know yet,” Taylor said. “I’m officially going to be a teacher, like my parents, but I’m taking online classes so I can stay in Kusko.”
“Great,” I said. “Well, I need to get back to shooting photos. Nice seeing you three. Enjoy the rest of the festival.”
“See you later,” Hope said as she walked away, tugging Bristy along. Hope turned back to me and added, “I’m taking Bristy to meet a boy she saw. She wants to pull him into the weeds and give him the old Bangkok waffle iron.”
Taylor laughed. She glanced at me and told her friends, “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
Great. She wanted to talk.
Taylor moved nearer to me, stepping so close that the tips of our shoes touched. I felt her breath on my chin.
“What, Taylor?”
She peered into my eyes, scowling. I looked at the bridge of her nose, not knowing which eye to lock on to.
“The problem, Eddie, is that I can’t let myself like you. You’re moving back to Anchorage in less than six months. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then why did you apologize for leading me on?”
“That’s what I wanted to explain, but you blew me off,” she said. “I wanted to keep hanging out with you. You’re a cool guy, Eddie. Us not hanging out would be a waste of something good.”
Hearing her say all of that felt bloody good. She had never not liked me.
I took a step back. “So, where does that leave us?”
“We keep doing what we were doing before — emailing, texting, hanging out sometimes. We’ll see. Think you can handle that?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Before walking away, she smiled and said, “There’s only one condition: the next time I see you, don’t be wearing those overalls — they look ridiculous.”
I stared at Taylor’s dreamy backside until the crowd absorbed her.
* * *
The littl
e hut Finn mentioned stood smack-dab in the middle of the festival, next to a table where an old couple sold mukluks made of beaver fur. The structure was made completely of gray sealskin. Above the entrance, a wooden sign read “Shaman Fortune-Teller.” I peeled back a flap of sealskin and tiptoed in.
A candle burned on a table, illuminating the face of an elderly Native lady. She wore a headdress made of caribou antlers and long brown feathers.
“Sit. Down,” she said in a slow, drawn-out voice.
I plunked down on the folding chair across the table from her. The pulsing candlelight flickered on her wrinkled face and wacky headdress, freaking me out more than it probably should have. Maybe the cellophane up my butt had torn and leaked THC into my system?
“Your. Hand,” she said, reaching for me to show her my palm.
I did that, too. Her scaly, deformed fingers twisted in directions as random as tree branches, presumably from the wear and tear of seventy-some years spent sewing clothes, cleaning fish, and picking berries.
She pulled my right hand toward the candle to see it better. She flipped my hand over several times to inspect both sides, slowly dragging her index finger across my skin in small circles, whispering words I didn’t understand.
Suddenly, she gasped and looked at me in horror, like my hand had just foretold the apocalypse was nigh.
“What?” I shouted. “What’s wrong?”
“You need to cut your fingernails,” she said, grinning devilishly.
What was it with old ladies giving me shit all the time? But I might have known something like this was coming, considering what Finn had told me about the lady. Her name was Betty Bennis, and they used to work together at the airport in Kusko. She’d retired and moved back to Mountain Village, her childhood home, and she started this fortune-telling gimmick at Quyana Fest for some extra cash.
“Not funny,” I said.
“All right, gussuk — let’s see it,” she said in a normal voice. Apparently, the Native elder voice was an act too.
I dropped my overalls and stripped off the duct tape myself. While I did that, Betty flicked a lighter and burned a fistful of sage.
“That’s aggressive,” I told her, knowing she was going to light up on the spot and use the sage to mask the marijuana stink, despite there being a few hundred people just outside the door.
And that’s exactly what she did. She slit open the package I gave her, rolled a joint, and sparked it up right then and there. Not only was I was impressed with how fast she rolled it, I was dazzled that she could even roll one in the first place, considering how crippled her hands looked.
“Thank you for bringing this to me. I’m not a dirty old pothead,” she said, inhaling a second hit. “I need this for my hands. It helps with the pain and the inflammation.”
“You’re welcome, but it’s not free.”
“Of course,” she replied. “I have to go to my house for your money. I don’t live far.”
Once Betty had stepped out, I killed time by looking at all the photos I’d shot. Outside I’d been having a hard time seeing the photos on the camera’s digital display, but I could see them perfectly in the darkness of the hut.
I scrolled through shots of cute kids with berry stains on their mouths, venders cleaning salmon at food booths, and the blanket toss. All the photos were money — especially the blanket toss pic with the dude grabbing at the sky. It was front-page material.
I fast-forwarded to my test shot of the three guys sitting on a knoll. I wanted to make sure my camera settings were accurate and that the lens wouldn’t blur from camera shake at so long a distance. I looked at the camera’s digital display and pressed the zoom button to zero in on the guys’ faces.
Then I almost shit myself. The guy in the middle was Bronco. He stared right at the camera, with eyes like he was counting the seconds until he could slit my throat. Either it was a coincidence, or Bronco had perched himself on that knoll on purpose, like a hawk on a telephone poll, surveying a field for prey.
Everything that Finn and I feared could happen in Mountain Village seemed to be happening. Finn had told me that a twenty-mile gravel trail linked the village to St. Mary’s and the trip took about forty minutes to travel by truck or four-wheeler. I was guessing Bronco must have driven it to look for me. With how big of an event Quyana Fest was, he probably suspected I’d be there, especially if Linetta had told him about me and my job at the newspaper.
I had to get out of town. Immediately.
* * *
Betty took her sweet time getting my money. But it gave me extra time to size up the situation.
I looked at the photo of Bronco again and figured that the two guys next to him were bigger than him, but not quite as big as me. Still, I had no chance against the three of them.
I considered some options. Maybe I could try hiding out somewhere on the festival grounds, but that seemed hopeless. There weren’t many dark corners in the land of the midnight sun. Maybe I could search the crowd for the Mountain Village VPSO and ask for help, but that could mean exposing myself to a lot of questions. Maybe I could ask for help from Betty Bennis, but I didn’t want to get her involved, considering I’d already witnessed how scary Bronco could be to old ladies, a la Linetta Wassily.
Just then, Betty peeled back a sealskin flap and walked back in. “Here’s your money,” she said, handing me the cash. I shoved it in my overalls, down into my jock.
As she sat back down, I peeked my head outside the tent to survey the crowd for Bronco and his goons. Nothing. All I saw were families walking by, drenched in golden sunlight that would be shining strong for hours to come.
Betty settled into her chair. “Everything okay?” she asked.
Apparently I was giving off a scared-shitless vibe, but I pulled my head back inside and said, “Everything’s fine.”
“Then you won’t mind leaving now? I’d like to see some more customers.”
Damn. I didn’t want to leave the little hut. I wanted to hide in there for as long as I could. But what choice did I have?
The moment I walked out, my prayers were answered. Russ, the fat VPSO from St. Mary’s, stood nearby at the salmon-strip stand. Eating.
“Russ!” I hollered.
He turned around. “Long time no see,” he said, his voice muffled by what looked like an entire school of dried salmon in his mouth. A glob of Eskimo ice cream smudged the front of his blue VPSO uniform.
“I’m in a jam,” I said. “I don’t know anybody here who can help.”
“I know,” he said.
I wasn’t expecting that. “You know? What do you mean?”
“The bush planes,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I just got back from the runway, and there’s a bunch of people waiting for flights. That’s what you’re talking about, right?”
No idea what to say, I just stared at him.
“Word is that half of them won’t make it out tonight,” he continued.
Poop stains. If I told him the real reason I was in a jam, he’d start asking questions about why Bronco was after me and he would probably know I was up to something shady.
“Right,” I replied. “The planes are full. That’s my problem. I gotta get back to the paper. What am I supposed to do?”
“You’ll come with me, that’s what,” Russ said. “Another flight or two will leave St. Mary’s tonight. We can make it there in time if we get on the road now.”
* * *
The rumbling of the engine of Russ’s little red truck sounded like freedom. Even if Bronco knew where I was now, he couldn’t touch me. I was with law enforcement. We drove out of Mountain Village, past the airplane runway, and toward the gravel road that would carry us to St. Mary’s.
Funny thing, I didn’t see anyone waiting for a plane. “I thought you said there were lots of people at the strip,” I said.
�
�Not sure what’s up,” Russ said. “They probably gave up.”
The gravel road was narrow and looked like a big leafy tunnel, with tall tangled brush growing at the edges of the shoulder. Stretches of the road were wider than others, but mainly, there was barely enough room for two vehicles to pass by one another. The radio played old-school country music while Russ dodged potholes and ate moose jerky. He didn’t say much, and that was fine with me. I had enough on my mind.
It was obvious then that the whole selling weed thing wasn’t such a good idea. It’d been a desperate move, and now my life was becoming even worse than before. Everything sucked. Maybe Nicolai was right — in the end, it really does come back.
On the bright side, I told myself, there were only two more deliveries to go until I’d have my three grand and I had almost two whole months to execute them. I could basically cherry-pick those last transactions and take all the time I needed to make sure they were foolproof. If something didn’t feel right, I could wait for a safer opportunity. I could play it relatively safe and still be back to Anchorage by fall.
Whatever I did, I’d be steering clear of any village on the western half of the Yukon River, because who knew where Bronco might pop up again. Seeing Bronco again — or the image of him on my camera, anyway — put fear in me.
I wondered what Russ knew about Bronco. He had to know at least something, considering they lived in the same village. I wanted to know more about the little lunatic who might or might not be after me.
“Before I came to St. Mary’s last time, my friend in Kusko told me about some dude there who fed a guy to the bears,” I said to Russ. “Could that be true?”
“First I’ve heard of it,” he said, biting off another hunk of moose jerky.
You suck at crime fighting, I thought, but instead I said, “I heard the guy’s name was Buck or Buster or something.”
Russ perked up. “You mean Bronco.”
“Yeah, Bronco. You know him?”
Russ straightened the rearview mirror, looked into it, and grinned. “Yeah, I know him, and you’re about to meet him too.”