Sucktown, Alaska

by Craig Dirkes

  Taylor: “Still Taylor. We’ll all need to talk.”

  “For the record,” Bristy said, “the peeing in my pants thing didn’t actually happen. I just thought it would be something hilarious to send to Hope.”

  I wanted to lecture Bristy and Hope about what real friendship is, but I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Although I hadn’t lied to Taylor as bad as Bristy and Hope had, I wasn’t being forthright with her. I was a weed-selling hypocrite.

  I got so buried in those thoughts I didn’t realize an uncomfortable silence had overtaken the room. Bristy, Hope, and Finn looked around, dazed, like stoned buffoons. Bristy finally said, “So, Eddie, we can keep a secret if you can.”

  “Deal,” I replied. “You don’t know anything about me selling, and I don’t know about you smoking.”

  The girls handed Finn some cash and started to leave. Just before they closed the door behind them, Hope peeked back inside and said, “Okay, boys. Carry on. Finn’s got that look in his eye, like he’s ready to give Eddie the old Memphis blow horn.”

  Those lines weren’t as funny anymore. I pulled my overalls and skivvies back down so Finn could finish the job. After he taped up both packages, I put my clothes back on and looked in the mirror in his bedroom. The packages were discreet enough under my baggie overalls. It would work.

  I headed for home with the stuff taped to my ass cheeks, and I left it in place when I crashed for the night. While it wasn’t exactly comfortable, I could live with it. Nothing was jammed into my crack like on previous trips, and it had been an ordeal getting Finn to help tape the bags for our supposed test. I didn’t want to push my luck before an early flight the next morning.

  * * *

  Finn was running well behind schedule when I knocked on his door the next morning. The disheveled idiot hadn’t showered. He looked and smelled like a big hairy poop. I spent ten minutes in his entryway waiting for him.

  “Hustle!” I said, watching him scramble to throw on his gray button-down work shirt and jeans. His shift at the airport started at seven-thirty. My flight to Russian Mission departed at 7:45. By now it was 7:21.

  We walked outside into the soggy morning air. Finn hopped to the passenger side of the FJ on one leg, trying to get his other shoe on. He stepped in a puddle and splashed mud on the bottoms of his legs.

  We arrived at the airport parking lot at 7:29. Finn opened his door before I came to a complete stop. “Trust me, there won’t be any drama during this deal,” he said. “The guy you’ll be selling to — everyone calls him Bossman — is totally cool.”

  “Good,” I said as Finn trotted off to start work. “See you tonight.”

  “Suck it, nerd!” he said over his shoulder.

  I grabbed my backpack from the back of the FJ and speed walked behind him. I arrived at the ticket counter in ninety seconds flat. While in line, I searched my thoughts and determined I felt less concerned about the legal consequences of getting busted than I did the ramifications of what Taylor might think of me should I get pinched. If I got caught selling weed, I could kiss my chances with her goodbye.

  Before I knew it, Peggy Paniptchuck was staring me in the face. “Are you carrying any explosives, firearms, or illegal drugs?” she asked with a smirk.

  “Other than the one — count ’em, two! — ounces of weed strapped to my ass, no,” I replied.

  “Three would have been funnier,” Peggy said. “Have fun in Russian Mission.”

  * * *

  The bush plane circled above Russian Mission, seventy miles north of Suckfield. Russian Mission was nestled right next to the Yukon, with a lake a couple hundred yards across wrapping around the south side of town. Miles beyond the lake and the Yukon, green mountains covered with pine trees surrounded the village like the stands of a giant outdoor football stadium. The mountains were proper mountains, not the hulking foothills I’d seen in other villages.

  Two other passengers flew with me in the six-passenger plane. One, a Native elder who I doubted spoke a lick of English. The other, a young Asian guy wearing khaki pants and a red short-sleeved oxford. I guessed he was a teacher. The shirt was a tell.

  Finn had told me to track down the guy called Bossman, who was leading a construction crew in the village. As the plane descended, I watched out the window as a steamroller was off-loaded from a river barge. Bossman and his guys probably hadn’t started their work yet. Won’t take long to find them in town, I thought.

  Although I’d promised myself that I’d make my final two deals in villages far away from Bronco’s haunts on the western Yukon River, Russian Mission was a bit of a gray area. The place was on the Yukon, but more than one hundred air miles east of St. Mary’s, with five or six villages in between. I would have preferred to make this transaction on the eastern Kuskokwim River, in a Bumfuck, Egypt, village like Red Devil or Sleetmute.

  Skittish as I felt about Russian Mission, I trusted Finn that the deal would be a painless transaction. He said my customer owned an Anchorage-based asphalt company and would be in Russian Mission with his six-man crew for a week paving the village’s new airplane runway. Finn knew one of the crew members, and said they all smoked weed, but that Bossman didn’t have the balls to fly any in for them.

  I felt safe selling to an entire construction crew. In the unlikely event that Bronco came after me again, I’d be safe hanging with Bossman and his guys for the afternoon — strength in numbers.

  The runway story was an easy sell to Dalton. Patriot readers in villages across the YK Delta would want to know how a dinky town like Russian Mission scored funding for such a runway. Almost every other village runway in the region was a dirt strip. During the nearly seven months I’d lived in Kusko, I’d written two stories about bush planes winding up ass-over-teakettle while landing on dirt runways.

  * * *

  The plane touched down on the dirt runway, bouncing up and down so hard I almost kneed myself in the chin, and soon I stood next to the plane with my backpack on my shoulders. The sun was shining, the air brisk and clean. I gazed at the Yukon River and saw half a dozen boats on the water, their occupants netting silvers.

  The runway was practically connected to the city’s main drag. The Russian Mission VPSO waited at the edge of a short dirt road leading to town. He had brown hair and was in his late twenties, and his muscular chest practically popped the buttons off the front of his navy blue uniform.

  The elder and the teacher walked just ahead of me, toward the VPSO. The VPSO stopped the elder and started talking to him jovially in Yup’ik. I’d never met a young white man fluent in Yup’ik. The VPSO and elder chuckled together as the teacher and I passed by. The officer didn’t even look at me when I ambled past. Yet again, I was home free. At home I had twelve hundred bucks in cash under my mattress. After this two-ounce deal, I’d have twice that.

  “You there,” the VPSO said.

  The teacher and I both turned around. The teacher pointed at himself with a confused look on his face.

  “Not you,” the VPSO said. “I’m talking to you there, newspaper boy.”

  Me? What did he want with me? And how did he know I worked at the Patriot?

  My face went redder than a spawned-out sockeye salmon. My ears felt like they were on fire.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, trying to project confidence by making my response sound more like a statement than a question.

  “Come with me,” the VPSO ordered.

  “What is it? I’m here for a story, and I need to get right to work.”

  “Come with me,” he said sternly. “Now.”

  The elder and teacher stood there, staring at me like I was some kind of criminal. I dropped my head and followed the sound of the VPSO’s footsteps on the gravel.

  * * *

  The VPSO’s office building stood at the edge of the village. It looked like a smaller version of a typical bush home — another g
lorified ice fishing house on stilts, made of wafer board weathered gray. Only two other buildings stood closer to the runway — city hall, and a shipping and receiving warehouse.

  “What’s your name?” I asked as we approached the office.

  “Jed.” His massive, V-shaped back looked like that of a professional bodybuilder.

  “Jed what?”

  No answer. He opened the office door and led me inside. The place stunk like mildew and rotting wood. I scanned the room. A third of the space was a holding cell sectioned off by black iron bars. The bars seemed pointless. A motivated prisoner with strong legs could probably kick down one of the walls of the flimsy building and go free.

  Inside the cell was a filthy twin-size mattress — that explained the mildew smell — and a plastic two-liter Coke bottle half-filled with drinking water.

  Jed motioned for me to sit down near his desk on an overturned five-gallon bucket. His desk was made of scrap wood. On it rested a police radio, an old yellow computer, and paperwork. He sat down on a paint-chipped, taupe-colored folding chair.

  “Sorry, Jed, but that was a long flight and I haven’t shat since yesterday,” I said, a desperation move. “Mind if I hit the can before we talk?”

  He thought for a second. “Go ahead.”

  He let me walk halfway to the door before saying, “But before you go, I’ll need that marijuana.”

  Busted. This cannot be happening, I thought. How could he know? What’s he going to do to me?

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I’m talking about the weed you’re trying to smuggle into my village. Where is it?”

  “It’s nowhere, because I don’t have any.”

  “Bullshit,” he replied. “Where is it?”

  “I’ll tell you again — nowhere, because I’ve got nothing.”

  Defeat loomed. If I was going down, I would go down swinging.

  “I’ve had enough of this, Jed,” I said. “Remember, I’m a newspaper reporter. I think I see a ‘VPSO harassment’ story with your name written all over it.”

  He wasn’t deterred. He grabbed my backpack off the floor and rifled through it, dumping out a pile of Spam, pilot crackers, socks, underwear, toiletries, winter boots, and other supplies. Nada.

  “Are we done?” I asked.

  “Not even close,” Jed said. “Stand up straight and hold your arms out.”

  I shut my eyes. The beginning of the end, I thought.

  He patted my arms, sides, chest, and back. I heard him kneel down, after which he passed over the insides and fronts of my legs. He began patting the backs of my legs, starting at my ankles and moving up to my knees and thighs. In the split-second before he reached my ass, a call came in on his radio. He stopped patting to listen to the chatter.

  “Ten twenty-nine near Holy Cross. Suspicious boater on Innoko River.”

  Jed shook his head. “That doesn’t concern me,” he muttered.

  He continued patting, taking a swipe over my crotch. Then I heard him stand up.

  I opened my eyes. Jed sighed. He kicked the bucket I’d been sitting on, and it went sailing across the room.

  Dude forgot to check my ass. The police call sidetracked him.

  I felt epic relief. The tension in my body dissolved faster than snowflakes on a stove top.

  To sell my innocence even more, I started unbuckling my overalls. “Ready for a body cavity search?” I asked smugly.

  “Fuck you,” Jed said, fuming.

  The momentum had swung. For all he knew, I really was clean.

  I finally had a moment to think. Bronco is responsible for this. But how?

  The only explanation I could muster stemmed from what Finn had originally told me about Bronco — he knows everybody and has connections. Clearly, Bronco’s tentacles extended to more villages than I’d given him credit for. Russ wasn’t the only VPSO Bronco had under his spell — Jed was under the same twisted trance.

  But how did Bronco know I’d be in Russian Mission? Did somebody at Kusko Airport tip him off? Or did Bronco put out an APB to all the crooked VPSOs he knew? If so, how many crooked VPSOs were there, and in which villages?

  I wanted answers.

  “About that newspaper story,” I began, instructing him to please sit down. I remained standing. “I like the headline ‘VPSO Searches, then Seizes Harassment Charge.’”

  “Fuck you,” Jed repeated. “What is it that you want?”

  I told him I wanted to know if Bronco was behind this, and Jed said he didn’t know anybody by that name.

  “Well then,” I said, “you can expect to be famous across the YK Delta in the very near future.”

  “Write the story — I don’t care,” Jed shot back. “I know everybody out here and I have a stellar reputation. I’m a gussuk who knows how to speak Yup’ik. You’re a cidiot from Anchorage. It’ll be your word against mine. Nobody will believe you.”

  He had a point. But I wasn’t going to concede, especially considering I had no designs on writing the story in the first place. I had nothing to lose.

  “Don’t care. I’m writing the story anyway,” I said. “Last chance now — did Bronco put you up to this?”

  Jed revealed a faint smile. “I don’t know anybody named Bronco.”

  Bullshit. The asshole knew.

  I shoved my stuff into my backpack and left.

  * * *

  I tracked Bossman and his crew to the only restaurant in town — if you could even call it a restaurant. The greasy spoon was located inside the living room of a larger village home. The joint’s name, The Muddy Rudder, was spray-painted black on a hunk of wafer board propped up against the house, near the front doorstep.

  I opened the creaky screen door and walked in. Four four-person tables filled the room. Along the far wall, a short old Native woman wearing a blue kuspuk washed dishes in the sink, next to a black gas range.

  The construction crew ate scrambled eggs and bacon at two of the tables, which they’d pulled together. My contact sat at the corner of the table with his back to me, wearing dirty jeans and a sleeveless softball T-shirt with BOSSMAN printed above the number 29.

  “Anyone got a match?” the crew member next to him asked, an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  “Yeah, I got a match — my dick to your arm,” Bossman said.

  Everyone laughed, including me. Bossman heard me chuckle behind him and turned around.

  “You must be Eddie,” he said.

  I nodded and made some lame small talk before ducking into the bathroom to strip away the weed packages from my ass. After that, Bossman and I did our business underneath the breakfast table.

  I spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon with Bossman and his crew, shooting photos of them doing prep work on the runway and interviewing them about the logistics involved with hauling in heavy equipment and tons of asphalt to a remote Alaskan village. Starting the next day, nobody in town would be able to get into or out of Russian Mission via airplane for a week. If an emergency came up, folks would have to call in a chopper from Suckington or catch an airplane by boating to the village of Marshall, one hundred river miles west.

  I never did find the person I needed to talk to about the funding for the runway and the politics involved — the Russian Mission mayor, Vern Cheney, who skipped town to net silvers at his fish camp. I’d have to call him after I got back to Suck Francisco.

  At two o’clock I heard what sounded like a giant lawn mower in the sky. I jogged over to Bossman. “That’s my ride home,” I told him, pointing to a bush plane circling above.

  He shut off his jackhammer, flipped up his protective goggles, and shook my hand. “Thanks for the hookup,” he said.

  Just after takeoff, I peered back down at Bossman and his crew working on the edges of the runway. I could hardly believe a
businessman and seemingly decent guy would want to buy pot for his crew. Alaska is a different world, I thought.

  CHAPTER 17

  SEEING MORE OF TAYLOR

  After eating my fifty-third moose stew supper in seven months, I rifled through the two metal file cabinets that were my clothes dressers, trying to decide which shirt to wear. I narrowed it down to either a green button-down chamois shirt or a plaid red flannel. I owned only one nice pair of pants — pleated khakis — so wearing those went without saying.

  I carried both shirts to the bathroom to look at my reflection in the mirror. Dalton sat on the couch digesting and watching TV. “Big date tonight?” he asked, a fat after-dinner chewsky wedged in his craw.

  “Something like that,” I said from inside the bathroom, fastening the buttons on the red flannel. I looked better in that shirt than the green one. Case closed.

  I sat down on the boot bench in the entryway, laced up my casual leather shoes, and opened the front door. “Later, Dalton.”

  I fired up the FJ and backed out of the driveway. Dust whipped everywhere, like a dirty blizzard blowing through town. Across the street, Peggy Paniptchuck was power washing away the layer of brown soot and dust that coated the west side of her house. That was a summertime routine out here, like mowing the grass back home. On the way to Taylor’s house I dodged neighborhood kids on bikes. The kids didn’t care about the wind and the dust, just like Peggy didn’t care. They were used to it.

  * * *

  “Come in!” I heard Taylor’s dad shout from inside. I felt nervous to meet Taylor’s parents. My chances with her were already slim enough. If her folks disliked me, there was no chance I’d have a shot at her before I left Suckdale. I let myself in and stood in the empty foyer, wondering where Taylor was and what I should say or shouldn’t say to her mom and dad.

  “Shoes off, please,” I heard her dad say. His deep voice was more gravelly than the dirt roads I’d just driven.