Sucktown, Alaska

by Craig Dirkes

  “What’s Finn like, anyway?”

  “He’s a funny kid,” I said. “One of the coolest dudes I’ve ever met, actually. I saw where he grew up when I was in St. Mary’s for a story. Didn’t look so great. He doesn’t complain about anything, though.”

  “I don’t know what to think of him,” Taylor said. “But, still, it’s cool that you’re friends with Finn. He probably needs a good influence.”

  Am I a good influence? I wondered.

  “And I think you have to love people no matter who they are or what they do,” she said.

  “Really?” I replied. “But, like, didn’t you disown Bristy and Hope after you first caught them smoking weed?”

  Taylor’s face went from a pleasant grin to a slight sneer. “What?”

  “A year or two ago, when you first busted them. Hope said you stopped talking to her and Bristy for a while.”

  “And?” Taylor asked.

  “And, is that unconditional love?”

  “First off, that was a long time ago,” Taylor began, dropping a wad of dough to illustrate her displeasure. “I’m more mature now — mature enough to know that in busting Bristy and Hope this latest time, I’m not going to flat-out disown them because of it.”

  “Didn’t it piss you off that Bristy and Hope had been lying to you?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Taylor said. “But now that the truth is out there, we’ve been able to talk about it. I told them it was sad that they’re basically choosing drugs over our friendship. They said they’re just having fun and I’m being a bitch about nothing. They stated their case, and I stated mine. In the end, I’m just trying to be the bigger person.”

  I broke eye contact with Taylor and started rolling the last glob of cookie dough. I hadn’t meant for the conversation to blow up. I’d just been trying to keep it real.

  “Look, Eddie,” Taylor said in a softer tone, closing the oven door. “I’ve spent most of my life with Bristy and Hope. I’m willing to ride out this storm, even if I have to keep them at arm’s length for a while. I don’t want to lose their friendship forever.”

  I folded my arms and smiled. “Well then, you’re a better person I am.”

  “It’s not that hard,” Taylor said sarcastically.

  I flicked her off and asked, “Is this our first fight?”

  “Yes, my friend,” Taylor said with a grin. “And you lost.”

  CHAPTER 22

  INDEBTED

  Ten months into my tour in Kusko, and Dalton still hadn’t bought a new computer for me to use. I flipped on the boxy relic, knowing I’d have to kill five minutes while it booted up.

  I took off my red coat and slung it over my office chair. The snow on the arms and shoulders of the coat had begun to melt into droplets of water. It was seven a.m. now, and a storm hadn’t stopped dumping since yesterday afternoon. The weather forecast called for whiteout conditions until at least sunrise, which was at around ten in the morning.

  I had the office to myself because Dalton was home in bed with a stomach bug. He said he’d felt fine going to bed, then woke up at two a.m. with it coming out both ends. As I poured water into the coffee percolator on the fax machine table near my desk, I noticed a manila envelope in the mail tray next to my computer. Dalton must have dropped it there after I left the office the night before.

  This qualified as an exciting development. I never got mail. I sat back down at my desk, grabbed the envelope, and studied it. The return address said University of Anchorage. I ripped it open and pulled out two sheets of paper that were stapled together. The top sheet was a letter, printed on University of Anchorage letterhead.

  My eyes bugged out when I started reading. My student loans didn’t cover my first semester, and after a bunch of policy mumbo jumbo, there was this: “Students are ineligible to enroll in additional classes until the tuition fees associated with the failed semester have been paid in full. Successfully completed semesters will not be billed until after graduation.”

  The letter ended with a bullshit apology from a student loans administrator named Ernie Dickmeyer, who wrote that the college didn’t notify me earlier because they couldn’t find me until “Mr. Westbrook alerted us to your whereabouts in Kusko.”

  I flipped the letter over to the second page — a bill for almost four thousand dollars.

  * * *

  Lunchtime loomed, and I still hadn’t finished my story. I was too overwhelmed to think straight. Four thousand dollars, I kept thinking. Four thousand dollars.

  With every extra minute that passed, I’d be working that much later. My two stories had to be finished that day because I’d be taking the following day off work to spend Thanksgiving with Taylor and her folks. Instead of turkey and cranberry sauce, Taylor’s dad was supposed to cook a white-fronted goose, while she and her mom prepared a jam-like spread made of tundra berries they’d picked earlier in the fall. I’d been excited for my first Thanksgiving in the YK Delta — and with Taylor, to boot — but that all went away. Four thousand dollars, I thought again and again.

  For another hour I did my best to pound out the first story, but it was hard. As I read my notes from the last city council meeting, I thought of my new debt anywhere the notes included a number. One chicken-scratch line read: “Three hundred arrests in 2010,” but what I read was, “Four thousand arrests in 4000.”

  Eventually, at almost two p.m., I finished the story. It opened like this:

  Drug, Alcohol Busts Increase 50 Percent

  By Eddie Ashford

  Staff Writer / Delta Patriot

  KUSKO, Alaska — Local police say they’ve arrested 50 percent more people for drugs and alcohol in 2010.

  Sheriff Buzz Berger, speaking at the Kusko City Council’s Nov. 25 meeting, reported that the number of suspects cuffed for bootlegging or drug possession has eclipsed 300 arrests in 2010, up from about 200 arrests during the same 11-month period in 2009.

  “I’m sick of this (redacted),” Berger said to Kusko mayor Marty McCambly, before unleashing an elaborate tirade of profanity that led several audience members with children to cover their kids’ ears. “I have a (redacted) message for all the (redacted) drug dealers and bootleggers out there: you can (redacted) run, but you can’t (redacted) hide.”

  My next story was a sports wrap-up about three high school basketball games — one girls’ game, two boys’ games — that had been played the night before in village schools in Chevak, Shageluk, and Aniak. After every game, coaches would email the Patriot the box scores and a few quotes from themselves and any key players. Sometimes they’d even send photos, which I liked because photos filled pages and required me to write less.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to start working on that sports story. Stress had been building all day, and I was too frustrated to concentrate anymore. I’ll come in early tomorrow and work on Thanksgiving after all, I thought.

  I burst outside the office, into the four-p.m.-twilight cold, all pissed off. Next to the FJ, I slipped on some ice hidden under a foot of snow and fell onto my back. I would have knocked my head on the ground had the snow not cushioned my fall. I got up and brushed snow off my jeans and coat, even more pissed off.

  I got inside the FJ. It was so frigid outside that the truck’s engine wouldn’t turn over. It only whimpered. I pounded the steering wheel. “START, DAMMIT!”

  With a groan, the engine finally started. I backed out and peeled away to Finn’s house, in desperate need of somebody — anybody — willing to hear me vent.

  I rolled into my driveway, next to Dalton’s blue truck. I looked to my right and saw lights on inside Finn’s house. I stomped over to his place and opened the front door. “You here, Finn?”

  He hollered to come in. I knelt in the entryway to take my shoes off.

  “Four fucking grand,” I said, untying the laces of my leather boots.

 
“What?” Finn said from the kitchen. I heard water running.

  “I just found out I can’t reenroll in college until I pay four thousand dollars,” I said, hanging my coat on a wall hook near the door. “I was literally one week away from choosing my classes before the next semester starts in January. Now this.”

  “Dude, that’s a disaster,” Finn said sincerely as I sat down on the couch.

  Finn stood in front of the kitchen sink, scouring burn stains off the bottom of an iron cooking pot. He wore baggy blue jeans and a red T-shirt that read “Alaska Grown.” The text overlapped a cartoonish bushel of green marijuana leaves.

  Before I could bitch more, I paused to admire the cleanliness of Finn’s house. It was almost too clean. Fresh vacuum tracks streaked across the living room carpet. Every inch of the gray linoleum kitchen floor sparkled, and the shaggy red rug underneath the kitchen table looked almost as good as new. The place smelled like an operating room.

  I glanced down at the old black couch upon which I’d situated myself. Somehow, Finn had cleaned all the drool stains and dried pizza sauce off of it.

  “What’d you do, rent an upholstery cleaner?” I asked.

  “Nah, bro,” Finn said, ferociously scrubbing a thick burn mark. “I cleaned the couch with some spray stuff and a brush. Looks good, huh?”

  “Yeah, looks good,” I said.

  He kept working at the sink, so I shifted back to my situation. “Dalton said he can fly me and my truck out around Christmas, but once I get back to Anchorage, I don’t know what I’m supposed — ”

  I stopped talking when I noticed a popcorn bowl full of weed resting in the middle of Finn’s kitchen table. I got up from the couch to take a closer look. The bowl practically overflowed with weed, like soda pop poured too fast.

  “Geez, Finn,” I said. “How much is in there?”

  “Just under six ounces.”

  I didn’t understand — Finn had stopped selling weed about two months ago. Not to mention, why did he need so much? Back when I used to sell, he rarely held more than an ounce. Sure, there were times when he possessed two ounces — one for me, one for him. But he never held my ounce for more than a day or two before I took it off his hands.

  “Why so much?” I asked.

  Finn stopped scrubbing and stepped next to me at the kitchen table. He picked up the popcorn bowl and tossed the buds up and down like they were actual popcorn. “Because I lost my job.”

  “Shit. When?”

  “A few days ago,” he said, setting the bowl back down. “I showed up late again. A power surge goofed up my alarm. Total bullshit. I haven’t touched weed, or anything, in almost a month.”

  Finn said he had no choice but to sell full time until he found another job. I understood his dilemma. I’d be freaked, too, about so much uncertainty hanging over my head. In Kusko, they weren’t exactly handing out jobs on street corners.

  “Is that why you’re cleaning house? Because you don’t have anything better to do?”

  “Yep,” Finn said, sitting down at the table. “Makes me feel slightly better about myself, like at least I’m not a total fucking loser.”

  “Call me crazy,” I said, “but maybe you wouldn’t feel like such a loser if you, I don’t know, put on a different shirt?”

  I didn’t mean to kick Finn while he was down. It was just a lame joke, but he took it personally.

  “Whatever, Eddie. If I wanted your opinion, I’d have asked for it.”

  “Don’t get pissed, Finn. I’m just messing with you.”

  He pulled the bowl of weed closer to himself, grabbed a nug the size of a strawberry, and studied it. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  I thought for a moment, then replied, “Maybe you should come to Anchorage with me.”

  I blurted it out without thinking, but once I’d said it, I saw that it made sense. There were plenty of jobs in Anchorage, or he could join me in college. He could sleep on the couch at Chateau Eagle River as long as he needed while he figured things out.

  “I don’t know,” Finn said.

  “You should, dude. Get out of here for a while. Do something different. You can always come back.”

  I took the bowl of weed between us and shoved it aside. I slid my hand across the table to grab him by the wrist. I wanted him to know I was serious.

  He chuckled. “Sorry, bro. This isn’t a good time for me to stroke you off.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Okay?” Finn said, stretching his arm across the table. “You’re freaking me out, Eddie.”

  I clutched Finn’s arm. “I know you grew up in that rundown house Linetta lives in. Between that house, and the fact that you never talk about your family, I’m pretty sure you grew up with some shitty stuff.”

  Finn stared down at the table, and I squeezed his wrist tightly. He looked up.

  “Come to Anchorage,” I said. “Start something new. Why not?”

  “Maybe,” he said, looking away. “We’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 23

  CRIME OF OPPORTUNITY

  I woke up just before six a.m. on Christmas Eve and couldn’t get back to sleep. I sprawled across the bed and stared at the ceiling, listening to Dalton snore through the wall. But Dalton’s log sawing wasn’t what had woken me. During the past two weeks, I’d been wide awake anytime I opened my eyes after five a.m., regardless of whether Dalton snored. I was too excited to sleep.

  Because the countdown had officially begun. I’d be out of Kusko, for good, in five more days. Dalton had purchased my airplane ticket and scheduled my truck to be shipped. My old bed was waiting for me at Chateau Eagle River. Soon I could start picking away at my big college bill working a job in Anchorage, or back in Minnesota — I still didn’t know.

  All I really knew was that I’d survived. In Kusko. For one year. Halle-friggin’-lujah.

  Every morning in December, I’d been lying awake and imagining everything I’d do after I landed in Anchorage. First, I’d eat everything on the menu at the first decent restaurant I saw. Then I’d pop inside the nearest ice cream shop for a quadruple-scoop waffle cone. Then I’d go back to the Chateau and take the longest and hottest shower of my life, splashing and frolicking like an overjoyed sea otter, never worrying about running out of water. Then I’d gear up for the welcome-home throw-down R.J. was sure to organize. One night of partying wouldn’t hurt.

  When I got out of bed to brew a pot of coffee, I walked to the kitchen with a spring in my step. I checked my phone while the coffee brewed. Taylor had texted me the night before, after I’d fallen asleep.

  Taylor: “Hey! X-mas Eve festivities start at 5. What time are you coming over?”

  I tapped out a reply saying that I’d have to work late and wouldn’t get there until six. I finished with: “See you then. You’re hot.”

  I would miss Taylor, and not because of her big bombs, long legs, and snare-drum behind. She’d become a pretty good friend. Granted, I’d still want to cast haymakers at the first ball washer to land her as a girlfriend after I left Kusko. But such is life.

  Dalton opened his bedroom door and staggered to the bathroom to take a leak, wearing a T-shirt and boxer briefs. He sniffed the air and caught a whiff of the coffee. “You brew some for me?”

  “Got you covered,” I said.

  I poured myself a cup, sat on the couch, and flipped on the morning TV news. Dalton eventually made his way into the kitchen, explaining he’d be gone all day to help his buddy build four new doghouses.

  We had finished the week’s edition of the Patriot a day early because Dalton wanted to free up his Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but I still needed to write two stories to help Dalton get ahead for the following week, when I’d be back in Anchorage. I’d planned one about how villagers in Upper Kalskag were without water because the town’s well had jammed with ice.


  “I’ll look for another story in the police blotter,” I told Dalton.

  “Get to the courthouse early — they close at noon today,” he replied. “Thanks for playing hard until the whistle blows. I’ll already be busy enough after you leave next week. I still haven’t come close to finding your replacement.”

  “Have you interviewed anybody?”

  Dalton sighed and explained that in the past two months, he’d received only three applications. Two of the people accepted other jobs, and the other person never got back to him.

  I felt bad for Dalton. I wondered how much longer until he threw up his hands and sold the Patriot. After seven years, the paper still only treaded water.

  Dalton opened the fridge, pulled out a one-liter carton of cream, and poured some in his coffee. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay in Kusko?” he asked.

  Effing positive, I thought.

  “Pretty sure,” I said. “I’m ready to get back to civilization.”

  “But what about that big college bill you can’t pay? You could stay here another six months, work it off, and reenroll this summer. I’ll give you a raise.”

  “Thanks, but no can do.”

  Dalton walked back into his room to get dressed. A few minutes later, he flipped on the outside floodlights and went out to feed the dogs before he left. The sun wouldn’t be rising until ten thirty.

  For another half hour, I drank coffee and watched TV in my pajamas. I spent most of the time thinking about Finn. He was still on the fence about moving with me to Anchorage. His biggest barrier was the lease on his crappy house, which wouldn’t expire for another couple months. In the five weeks since he’d been fired, he still hadn’t found a job. A legal job, anyway.

  I turned off the TV, got up, got dressed, and poured coffee into a thermos to take with me to Finn’s house. I thought it would be cool to stop by and brainstorm ideas about how he could get to Anchorage after his lease expired. I bundled up for the short walk. It was seven forty-five a.m., and stars shined in the sky. The temperature couldn’t have been above zero.