Sucktown, Alaska

by Craig Dirkes

  “Thanks for agreeing to this, Betty,” I offered, extending my hand for a shake, with the nug in my palm. She shook back and collected the weed. Her crippled fingers felt like brittle twigs.

  “Just make sure the tank is full when you drop my four-wheeler back here,” she said. “When will that be?”

  “I’ll be back before my return flight leaves at three o’clock.”

  * * *

  During my drive to St. Mary’s, I passed the trail to the city dump. I could smell the garbage all the way from the road. The putrid aroma took me back to the incredible events that had transpired there, reminding me of how deeply I hated Bronco. If anything, the stench gave me even more motivation to do what I was about to do.

  I hit the gas and kept driving, ducking overgrown branches that extended to the center of the bumpy road. Twenty minutes later, I arrived at the edge of a sandy cliff overlooking the St. Mary’s runway. I parked the four-wheeler behind some bushes, stayed seated, and waited for the next plane to arrive.

  Soon, I heard the buzz of a bush plane flying in from the south. Just after it landed, two pickup trucks drove down the long road from St. Mary’s and parked near the plane. Russ got out of one of the trucks. The fat-ass was impossible to miss, even from several hundred yards away.

  I turned on the four-wheeler and drove down the winding dirt road to the runway. I crept along a straightaway next to the runway and kept my eyes fixed on Russ, like a fighter plane on missile lock. He was helping unload boxes from the plane. At the exact moment he turned his head to look in my direction, I snapped my eyes to the road, pretending I didn’t notice he’d spotted me. I kept putzing, casually, like a Sunday drive.

  Good, I thought. Russ saw me.

  * * *

  At Linetta’s house, near the banks of the Andreafsky River, three black bags of stinky trash sagged in a pile outside the front door. Walking ten extra steps to reach the garbage bin at the end of her walkway was too much work for her.

  I knocked, and Linetta answered in all her pitiful glory. She stunk like she hadn’t showered in days. Her oily blond hair was a matted mess. She wore flip-flops, a neon yellow shirt, and black sweatpants stained with crusty white stuff.

  “Come in,” she said.

  I took off my backpack and sunk into Linetta’s couch. A rainbow-colored ashtray rested on top of the wooden coffee table in front of me. Next to the ashtray was an antique photo album with a faded leather cover. “Mind if I look at this?” I asked, attempting to buy time.

  “Go ahead,” Linetta said from the kitchen, waiting for a pot of water to boil. She was making tundra tea — a YK Delta favorite made from tundra shrubs that look like evergreen leaves.

  I opened the album and beheld pages upon pages of photographs taken all over the YK Delta at fish camps, Quyana Fests of yesteryear, family gatherings, drinking parties, berry picking excursions, moose and caribou hunts — all kinds of nostalgic Alaskan scenes. Linetta was about the only white person in all the photos. Judging by how young she looked, the photos must have been shot in the nineties. She was surprisingly beautiful in her youth.

  I noticed familiar faces in the photos. It seemed that Peggy Paniptchuck and Linetta were friends, because both of them appeared in several berry-picking photos. I saw Betty Bennis, too. She was in almost every fish camp photo, cleaning salmon.

  “Are you related to Betty Bennis?” I asked Linetta. “She’s in most of these fish camp photos.”

  “No,” she replied, stirring the pot of water. “But I saw her a lot. Their fish camp was next to ours.”

  I didn’t understand how Linetta could be white and have a fish camp. Only Native families had fish camps. I asked her as much.

  “My ex-husband is Native,” she said.

  Duh, I thought. Linetta is Finn’s aunt. She was married to one of Finn’s uncles.

  Halfway through the photo album, a pint-sized Finn started appearing in lots of the pictures of fish camps and family gatherings. In several photos he wore a kid-sized poncho made of seal skin, over-smiling for the camera as only a toddler can. He wore a similar poncho as a tween. If I’d have flipped the pages fast enough, it would have looked like Finn growing up in time-lapse photography.

  Seeing him as a kid was interesting. He never talked much about his youth or his family.

  “Is the house Finn grew up in nearby?” I asked, perusing more pages.

  Linetta didn’t say anything. She shuffled to the couch and sat next to me. She opened the coffee table drawer and pulled out a moose antler pipe and the cellophane baggie of weed I’d sold her earlier in the summer. She used her index finger to scrape out what little shake was left in the bag and sprinkled it into the pipe. Then she snatched a lighter from her pocket and sparked the thing up.

  She exhaled the biggest hit I’d ever seen. The smoke poured out as if she had a bonfire in her lungs.

  “You’re in it,” she said.

  “What?” I asked, astonished. “Finn grew up in this house?”

  I surveyed the shithole interior. The rotting linoleum floorboards slanted downhill like a funhouse. All the windows were cracked, with mosquito-filled spiderwebs between the panes of glass. Duct tape plugged chinks in the walls. Back in Minnesota, the place would have been condemned.

  I wanted to ask Linetta a million questions. But the questions would have to wait.

  THUMP! I flinched at the thundering coming from the front door. THUMP!

  “Not again!” Linetta cried.

  She stayed seated while I got up to answer. I knew this was coming. But I was way more scared than I thought I’d be. I walked to the door as calmly as possible, grasped the doorknob, and took a deep breath. I knew who was on the other side.

  I opened up, and looked into the eyes of Bronco. The two goons stood on either sides of him.

  Bronco’s face was curled into a snarl.

  “Listen, Bronco,” I said. “Before you —”

  The bigger goon popped me in the kisser, and I hit the floor tasting blood before I realized what was happening. Linetta screamed as Bronco and the goons stormed inside and shut the door behind them. I floundered on the floor. My lower lip throbbed like it’d been stung by a swarm of wasps. I wiped my mouth and blood stained the back of my hand.

  “You’re not getting away this time, you little gussuk fuck,” Bronco sneered, circling above me. “You actually thought you’d sell weed in my village again? Like I wouldn’t know you came in from Mountain Village?”

  Bronco kicked me in the gut, knowing I was powerless to retaliate with the two goons backing him. The three of them kept circling me, waiting for me to answer.

  “Yes and no,” I groaned.

  “What do you mean, yes and no?” Bronco asked, kicking me in the gut when he said “no” to drive home his question, knocking the wind out of me. His leather boot felt like it’d driven through my stomach and out my backside.

  “I mean,” I said, coughing and gasping, “that I meant to sell weed here, but I also meant to tell you about it.”

  I held up my hands, rose to my knees, and asked for a chance to talk. The snarl on his face didn’t change, but he held back and waited for me to get my breath and go on. I laid out my story: I was going to sell to Linetta and give him a cut, and I came from Mountain Village on a four-wheeler because I knew Russ would be all over me if I got off the plane in St. Mary’s.

  He just snarled and stared at me. I’d reached a pivotal moment. If Bronco didn’t buy what I was saying, he and the goons could wind up thrashing me beyond repair. Worse yet, I could become bear bait. The silvers had quit running, effectively ending the year’s salmon run. If some of the younger bears hadn’t gotten their fill, they’d be looking to fatten up however else they could before winter.

  “Or,” Bronco scoffed, “we could pound your ass now, take your money again, and call it a deal.”

 
“Just think a second,” I said. “I could earn you a lot of side cash with no work and no risk for you.”

  I rose all the way to my feet. “I’m telling you, Bronco — there’s room for us to coexist.”

  Bronco stroked the goatee on his chin. He must have been contemplating what was more important to him — money, or punishing me for the many ways I’d humiliated him.

  The goons sat down on the couch, on each side of Linetta. She looked dumbfounded, like I was charming a poisonous snake.

  “What’s the cut?” Bronco asked.

  “Thirty percent.”

  Bronco motioned for the goons to stand up and prepare for Round Two.

  “Okay, okay — forty percent,” I conceded.

  The goons sat back down, and it seemed like Bronco was actually buying it. And why not? For all he knew, I was a career dealer with no plans to leave Suckwood. He’d seen firsthand the weed I was selling and had no reason to believe I wasn’t legit.

  He asked, “How do I know you won’t make deals under the table and keep my cut?”

  “Because the moment you find out otherwise, I know it’s my ass,” I responded, stroking his ego. “I don’t want to mess with you, Bronco. I know what you’re capable of.”

  Bronco smirked and asked, “How will you get me my money?”

  “We can keep hashing out details, but this probably isn’t the best place,” I told him, pointing at Linetta.

  “Good point,” he said.

  I picked up my backpack as Bronco and the goons walked out the door. Linetta asked from the couch, “But where’s my weed?”

  “I’ll come back later,” I said.

  Outside, the brisk late-morning air gave me a shiver as I trailed Bronco and his cronies on a dirt road next to the Andreafsky River. They headed toward three shitty little houses — shacks, really — clustered at the end of the gravel street. I assumed one of the houses was Bronco’s. After we’d walked a while, I glanced back at Linetta’s house. Sheriff Buzz peeked his head around from the back of her house and gave me a quick thumbs-up.

  * * *

  Inside Bronco’s house, the last of the three shacks, he gestured for me to sit down on a new-looking red recliner. He and the goons pulled up chairs at the kitchen table, like they needed to confer before they’d bring me into the conversation.

  The place consisted of a single open room with synthetic wooden walls, like an RV from the eighties, only the bathroom didn’t even have walls. A shower and a toilet stood in one corner, surrounded by a pink polka-dot curtain. Although I was sure the pink curtain came with the house, I very much wanted to call Bronco a fruity-ass for it. But small as it was, the place looked surprisingly livable. The kitchen appliances in one corner and living room set in another might’ve been new, too. Bronco clearly had some money coming in.

  “Let’s have a drink,” the smaller goon said in a high-pitched voice that matched his stature.

  Finally, I’d gotten to hear one of the goons speak. I’d wondered if they were mutes.

  Bronco got up from the table, walked to the center of the room, and peeled back a musk ox rug in the middle of the living room floor. He lifted away some floorboards and pulled out a jug of home brew from a pit brimming with dozens of other containers of the stuff — one-gallon milk jugs, two-liter pop bottles, and other disposable cartons. All were filled with a red-orange liquid, which was a fermented mixture of juice, sugar, and yeast that had a lot of fans in the YK Delta. I also spotted a few one-liter glass bottles of proper vodka.

  Bronco walked back into the kitchen, swiped four glasses from his cupboard, and started pouring.

  I’d never been so nervous. I checked the kitchen and side windows, circumspect, looking for any sign of Sheriff Buzz. He’d better be out there, I thought.

  I cleared my throat. “If we’re going to do this deal, I need to know that all your VPSOs are on the level.”

  “What do you mean?” Bronco asked.

  I told him to call Russ over — I wanted to hear it from Russ’s own mouth that he wouldn’t bust me again. If I heard it from him, I wouldn’t worry about selling in St. Mary’s, or Russian Mission, or wherever else Bronco was hooked up.

  “You’re lucky you got past Jed in Russian Mission,” Bronco said while dialing Russ.

  I knew it, I thought.

  Bronco, the goons, and I stared at the floor, counting the seconds until Russ showed up, sipping our drinks. The home brew tasted like a warm mixture of orange soda, cherry juice, and regurgitated vodka.

  A few minutes later, big fat Russ labored into the house and pointed at me.

  “It’s been an hour since I told you he was in town,” he said. “Why hasn’t his ass been kicked?”

  “Shit’s cool,” Bronco assured him. “Sit your ass down and listen.”

  Bronco filled him in and waited for Russ to weigh in on the plan.

  “Okay,” Russ said, his ass oozing off the sides of the kitchen chair. “I won’t bust this fool again. But I better get a cut.”

  Bronco grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and set it down three feet across from me. I sat up straight. “Now, Eddie,” he said, sitting down, stroking his scruffy little goatee. “About those details.”

  I crossed my fingers, praying that all the pieces of my plan were in place. With Russ and Bronco and the goons in the same room with all that alcohol, everything hinged on these next moments. I was scared shitless.

  “First,” Bronco began, “how will you get me my money?”

  I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have any weed on me to sell to Linetta, either. I’d never had any in the first place, other than the little bit I’d given Betty. Seconds from now, Bronco would discover I was full of crap.

  Here goes nothing, I thought.

  “Now!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  Bronco and the others looked at one another.

  “NOW!” I screamed even louder, jolting up off the recliner and dashing toward the door. “NOW, BUZZ! NOW!”

  Sheriff Buzz burst through the door with a chrome-plated tactical shotgun at his hip. He shouted his two favorite words in the English language: “Freeze, motherfuckers!”

  Buzz swung his shotgun to and fro, stomping his feet up and down like a psyched-up linebacker anticipating the snap. He had a barbaric smile and crazy eyes. He stalked toward the men, continuing an entrance so outrageously overdramatic he must have practiced it in front of a mirror. Awesome.

  “Eat the floor, shitheads!” Buzz ordered with his finger on the trigger, hoping somebody would make just one false move. All four guys fell to the ground. Buzz took a few steps backward to where I was standing by the door. “Hold this,” he said, handing me his shotgun. “If one of them sons a fucks moves, shoot off his penis.”

  I could tell Buzz meant to say something more badass than penis, but I let it go. I didn’t want to spoil his moment.

  Bronco lay in the center of the room. Buzz hustled to him and cuffed his hands behind his back.

  “Hey, Bronco,” I said, looking down on him, with the shotgun pointed at Russ and the goons in the kitchen. “You know what this is about, right?”

  Bronco looked up at me from the ground and gave me the stink eye.

  “This is about those pink curtains of yours. They’re so pussy, it’s illegal.”

  Buzz belly laughed. It was his kind of joke.

  He had laughed just as hard at the bowling alley three days earlier when I’d pitched him my plan for the bust. I’d asked him a simple question: if I could get Bronco, his goons, and Russ in the same room with all of Bronco’s alcohol, could we pull off a sting? I hadn’t needed to ask twice. He was so housed off whiskey Cokes he practically wanted to fly to St. Mary’s right then and there. He didn’t ask how I could make the situation happen because, quite frankly, he didn’t want to know. All he cared about was taking down
Bronco by whatever means possible.

  That’s all I cared about too. Because Bronco had to go. If Taylor changed her mind about me and I stayed in Kusko at least a little longer to be with her, I couldn’t have Bronco hanging around. He’d come after me again. And considering the smile Taylor had given me in her steam bath, I was sure her mind was changing.

  Buzz had just finished cuffing Russ when I noticed the time. I had a long drive back to Mountain Village and a plane to catch. “Buzz, you got this under control?”

  “Bet your sweet titties,” he said, his perma-grin still going strong. “Nice work, sport.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE STIFF ARM

  After the flight from Mountain Village to Suckford, I walked off the plane feeling ten feet tall. I was more exhilarated than if I’d bungee jumped off a cliff with a boobie in one hand, and in the other hand a rifle with which I was shooting a trophy bull moose. I felt unstoppable. Empowered. Euphoric.

  I couldn’t believe that I’d actually pulled it off. I, Eddie Ashford, had taken down a notorious bootlegger in bush Alaska. Me. Nothing could ever be more badass than that. I wanted a statue made of myself, with my face like I was all Hell yeah!

  I sauntered through the airport lobby and saw Peggy Paniptchuck typing at her desk. “Peggy!” I said, happier than a ray of sunshine. “You’re beautiful!”

  “Thanks?” she replied.

  I kept walking, out the door and to the parking lot, thinking outstanding thoughts. Half of me wanted to write a big fat news story about every detail of the bust because it was just that awesome.

  Easy there, Big Eddie, I thought. Hold your horses now.

  Writing such a story would be counterproductive. The story would be so sweet that every Alaska media outlet would want to cover their own version of it, and in doing so, would want to interview me. They’d ask lots of questions I wouldn’t want to answer. Namely, How was it you knew Bronco?