Sucktown, Alaska

by Craig Dirkes

  “I need to call Taylor,” I said, staring outside. “Where’s my phone?”

  Finn picked it up from the floor, where apparently it had landed during our scuffle.

  “She’s in your recents, huh?” Finn said. “It’s ringing. Come and get it.”

  I took the phone from Finn and sat back down on the couch. When I looked back at him, red and blue lights flashed in through the window across his face.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  “Oh shit, is right,” he replied, rushing over to peer out the window. “You didn’t get the weed from me, Eddie. Don’t go dragging me into this.”

  I had the phone to my ear, but still couldn’t hear it ringing. I was too hypnotized by the flashing lights. I thought I’d be able to hash everything out with Dalton, just him and me, but now cops were involved.

  “Hello,” I heard Taylor say.

  I was too stunned to talk.

  “Hello?” Taylor asked. “Eddie, is that you? Did you butt-dial —”

  I hung up and said to Finn, “Whatever happens, I might need you to call Taylor again later.”

  * * *

  When I stepped outside, a wash of frigid air scraped at my face. The snowfall had lightened. It was starting to get dark. Dalton stood in his driveway bathed in flashing lights, talking to Sheriff Buzz at the front of a beat-up squad car.

  As I approached I realized Buzz was giving Dalton the third degree.

  “But they’re your motherfuckin’ mutts, Dalton,” I heard him say above the idling of his police cruiser, his mullet curls swaying in the breeze. “There was more marijuana in the sled than a goddamned Cheech and Chong movie. Can you blame me for questioning you?”

  “I’m telling you, Buzz, I had nothing to do with this,” Dalton said.

  “Maybe so,” Buzz said. “We’ll still need to get to the bottom of this shit down at the station.”

  Up close, Dalton looked mortified. Half of him must have been floored by being questioned for something he hadn’t done, the other half stunned by the fact that his dogs had been taken.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked as Buzz stared down Dalton.

  “Eddie!” Dalton said. “I thought you’d taken the dogs out mushing. Then Buzz showed up. He said the VPSO in Napakiak found ten of my dogs abandoned near the village, with a bunch of marijuana in the cinch pack. Two of my dogs are missing. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  I had two choices — fess up or play stupid. If I played stupid, nothing would happen to me in the short term. It might be days before the crime came back to me, giving me enough time to leave Kusko. If I confessed, I’d take it in the ass. It occurred to me that if I was going to play dumb, I should have been acting surprised.

  “What? How could two dogs be missing?” I blurted. “Who would take the dogs?”

  “We don’t know, Eddie,” Dalton replied somberly. “This is crazy.”

  Nicolai Vawter pulled into his driveway and shut off the headlights of his red pickup. He got out and rushed over, wearing a black woolen coat over his Sunday best. Soon he’d be leading his Christmas Eve service. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  Dalton asked Nicolai, “Did you see anybody take my dogs?”

  Nicolai said no, he’d been gone all day.

  “I’ll ask the questions, Dalton,” Buzz chimed in. “No more bullshitting. Let’s get on with this.”

  Buzz turned Dalton around and pushed him toward the back of the squad car. I got out of the way as Buzz opened the car door, shoved Dalton in, and slammed the door shut. All I had to do was shut up and let Buzz drive away. Buzz dropped the car into reverse, and the tires of his police cruiser squeaked through the snow.

  I watched the police car backing up, then looked at Nicolai. I looked back at the police car, then at Nicolai again. Every time I looked at Nicolai, I felt more ashamed.

  The angel on my shoulder couldn’t be muzzled any longer. I ran toward the sheriff’s car and waved my hands in the air.

  “Stop!” I shouted, blinded by headlights.

  Buzz hit the brakes, rolled down his window, and hung his head out. “You got something to say, sport?”

  As I walked toward Buzz, I remembered when my dad told me how he wondered all through his twenties whether or not he was a man, as if there were some specific incident that needed to happen in order for that status to become official. In the wisdom of his thirties, he came to realize that he gradually became a man sometime in his late twenties, when he began making a concerted effort to do the right thing and take responsibility for his actions. My life was playing out differently than my father’s. I had to become a man right this second, at nineteen.

  “Dalton didn’t do it, Buzz. I did.” I spoke to him through the open window. I didn’t lean over. I didn’t want to see Dalton’s face. “That was my weed. I got his dogs killed. I’m responsible.”

  CHAPTER 26

  SILENT NIGHT

  I had always envisioned jail cells as being cold and dank. But this one, inside the Kusko Sheriff’s Department, was blazing hot. Underneath my cot, a heating vent kicked out warm air nonstop. My throat felt itchy and dry, like I was being gagged with cotton balls. Only an inch of water occupied the plastic milk jug at my side. I needed to ration it for the long night ahead.

  I stripped down to my boxer briefs, lay on my bare back, and stared up at the fifteen-foot-high ceiling. The cot, slippery from my sweat, was a torn-up mat suspended two feet off the ground by an iron frame.

  The concrete blocks of the ten-by-ten cell were painted mint green. In the corner opposite my cot rested a stainless-steel latrine that looked like an airplane toilet. On the wall above the commode, somebody had etched, “Don’t look here, the joke is in your hands.”

  The last time I saw a clock it was eleven p.m., and Buzz was sweating me out in the visitation room just outside my cell. He’d brought the thunder for over an hour, demanding to know where I got the weed and why two of Dalton’s dogs were missing. I didn’t budge. I straight-up told Buzz I wasn’t going to give up that information.

  I thought Buzz would have taken it easier on me since we had some history together, but he didn’t. He was a total dick. “You know that by not talking, you’re going to be even more fucked than you already are, right, sport?” he roared, two inches from my face, pelting me with spit droplets.

  “Yes,” I said, emotionless.

  All I gave him were one-word answers, or no answers at all. If I would have told Buzz anything about the shooter or otherwise, there was a chance he could trace things back to Finn.

  I refused to compromise Finn. I would take this on the chin for him.

  I didn’t even want a lawyer. I’d already confessed to everything and was content with telling a judge the weed was mine, that I was to blame for the dogs, that that’s all he needed to know. I’d take full responsibility for this. That’s what men do.

  Granted, taking responsibility would suck. I recalled when Dalton and I drove by the Western Alaska Correctional Facility, located two blocks down the road, the day I moved to Kusko. He said the place was filled with three hundred of the YK Delta’s worst assholes. Now I was one of the assholes. Surely I was headed to the big house.

  The fact it was Christmas intensified my misery. A year ago, I was sipping virgin eggnog with R.J. and our Chateau Eagle River host parents, eating spiral-cut honey ham with all the fixings, sitting at a long dinner table with a centerpiece of bright red poinsettias. Two years ago, I was at home — ah, home — with my dad and Max, eating Swedish meatballs, opening presents, reminiscing about my mom.

  Taylor wasn’t an easy pill to swallow, either. She must have been worried about me, unsure of why I didn’t show up at her house, maybe angry at me. I couldn’t imagine what our next — and likely final — conversation would be like.

  I shut my eyes, wanting the world to go away. In my
mind I saw red and white dots pulsating gently to the sound of my fingers tapping my stomach. My fingers went still as the dots gave way to rainbow-colored blobs swirling around, slowly, like lava.

  * * *

  Somebody thump, thump, thumped on my cell door, and I opened my eyes.

  “Ashford! Get your ass up!”

  My throat was so dry I couldn’t speak. I chugged the last bit of water in my jug. “Coming,” I replied, putting on my T-shirt and overalls.

  Buzz opened the door as I finished fastening the second strap over my shoulder. “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Just past eight o’clock.”

  “Geez, Buzz — is your shift ever going to end?”

  “Shut your face, sport,” he said, not going for my attempt at friendly small talk. “Someone’s here to see you. You’ve got five minutes.”

  I walked outside my cell and sat at a black metal table in the center of the visitation area. Five doors surrounded me — four to holding cells like mine, one to an intake room. Through a thick bulletproof window in the door to the intake room I saw the blurry, distorted image of Nicolai waiting to enter.

  Buzz opened the door and let him in. Nicolai still wore the navy blue suit and Christmas tie he’d been wearing last night. I wondered about the sermon he’d given. At the end of it, he and the congregation must have prayed for the lost, imbecilic souls of people like me.

  Nicolai sat down across from me as Buzz made his way out. “Don’t make any physical contact,” Buzz warned. “I’ll be watching on the monitor.”

  Nicolai glared at me from beneath raised, worry-filled eyebrows.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said cheerily, trying to break the ice.

  He didn’t respond. I could tell what Nicolai was thinking: I’d crossed the threshold of making one bad decision that led to my doing something monumentally stupid.

  “Nicolai, I know everything you’re about to tell me, so don’t bother. I know what I did was wrong. It’s the biggest mistake of my life. I’ll learn from it and move forward.”

  “I think what you did was terrible,” he said.

  “Is that what this is going to be? Come visit Eddie in jail so you can make me feel shittier than I already feel?”

  I’d never sworn in front of Nicolai before. It almost felt good, considering I had no comeback to anything he was about to say.

  “That’s right, Mr. Pastor. I said ‘shit.’ I also know how to say twat waffle and chode yodeler.”

  He wasn’t amused. “Stop acting like a child.”

  “Then start treating me like an adult. Like I told you a second ago — I know. Whatever you were going to say, I already know. What I need right now is some positivity. That’s supposed to be your forte.”

  Nicolai sighed in frustration. “Can I finish?”

  “Fine,” I replied. “Finish.”

  “What you did was terrible,” he said. “But in the end you did the right thing, and I’m proud to know you.”

  “Oh,” I said dumbly.

  “You proved who you are when you took ownership of the problem you created. You had the mettle to fess up to what appears to be a fairly messy crime,” he said. “Your friend, Finn, could learn something from you. With any luck, he’ll come to understand that turning his life around won’t happen without making difficult decisions.”

  I’d never realized Nicolai knew anything about Finn. I’d never seen the two of them talk.

  “What do you know about Finn?” I asked.

  “I see a lot of cabs pull in and out of his driveway.” Nicolai looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “I understand the reason for the coming and going.”

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  I told Nicolai that, actually, Finn had been making progress the last few months, that he was probably already a better person than me.

  “Not to mention,” I continued, “we’re probably not friends anymore. Without getting into the details, let’s just say that I totally screwed him. I hope he forgives me.”

  Nicolai perked up. “From your mistake, I believe Finn can learn a valuable lesson in forgiveness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Buzz opened the intake door. “Time’s up!”

  Nicolai and I looked at Buzz. Over his shoulder, I saw Finn waiting to come inside.

  “But what did you mean about a lesson in forgiveness?” I asked.

  Buzz blurted, “I said, time’s up!”

  Nicolai rose to his feet. “We’ll talk later. I have things to tell you.”

  Nicolai and Finn brushed shoulders in the doorway but didn’t acknowledge each other.

  Finn sat down across from me but didn’t look me in the eye. He wore a black sweatshirt and the same blue jeans as last night. I couldn’t read his mood.

  “I called Taylor for you,” he said.

  “What did you say to her?” I asked, wondering if I should be relieved or panicked.

  According to Finn, he’d told Taylor I was safe but in some trouble, and when she hounded him for details, he kept his mouth shut.

  “Then she got pissed and hung up,” Finn said.

  At least Taylor knew I was safe. For the first time in twenty-four hours, I felt happy about something.

  “I called your dad, too,” Finn said, proud to have gone above and beyond.

  “Nice, dude,” I said, relieved that at least my dad understood why I hadn’t called him on Christmas Eve. “But what’d you say?”

  Finn said he couldn’t help but leak some — but not all — of the details of my predicament.

  “I said you were in jail,” Finn said. “When your dad asked why, I said you’d have to tell him. I told him not to worry, that you weren’t hurt.”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “Your dad gave me a message for you. He said, ‘Figure it out.’”

  I nodded.

  “Your brother had a message for you too,” Finn added.

  “Yeah? What’d Max say?”

  “He said, ‘Dumbass.’”

  Finn laughed, but it was halfhearted.

  This is Christmas, I thought. Christmas behind bars, being visited by my Sucktown friends — a pastor and a pothead. Maybe he was an ex-pothead now. I was relieved to have visitors on Christmas and grateful people still cared about me. I didn’t want to think about all the trouble ahead.

  “I appreciate your visit,” I told Finn.

  “No worries,” he said. “But I haven’t forgiven you yet. How am I supposed to pay rent?”

  Excellent question. I told him I didn’t know, that I’d try to figure out a way to repay him.

  “What I do know,” I said, “is that whatever happens, you still need to stop selling weed. After dealing all summer, I have a clearer picture of where that life will get you.”

  Finn laughed again, this time sounding resentful. “A moral lesson from you? Look at you, Eddie. You’re in jail for — wait for it — selling weed. You’re the dumbass, not me. Not to mention, I’m done selling the stuff once I find a job, or move to Anchorage, or whatever the hell happens.”

  I couldn’t argue. Finn sat back in his chair with his arms folded. But I asked him what would happen if he didn’t find a job, or if he got a job but was fired again.

  “Maybe I’ll sell again, maybe I won’t,” he replied. “I’ll do what I have to do. At least I’m not smoking anymore.”

  “I hope it stays that way,” I said, “because you were on your way to becoming your parents.”

  Finn’s face darkened, and he glared at me.

  “You don’t know shit about my parents,” he said.

  Buzz opened the door. “Time’s up, girls!”

  Buzz led Finn to the door to the intake room. As Finn walked through, he raised the backs of his hands to the sides of his head and flashed me the double-fing
er without turning around.

  Just before the door closed behind him, I heard him say, “Suck it, nerd.”

  CHAPTER 27

  TOUGH CALL

  A rubber band, perhaps dropped and forgotten by a previous occupant, ended up on the floor of my jail cell, and I was happy to spot it in the corner. The entertainment value it provided was significant. For hours I lay on my cot pointing the band at the same mint-green cement block across the room, seeing how many times in a row I could hit it. The record stood at forty-one.

  The heat finally got turned down inside my cell, thank God. My situation still bordered on the unbearable. Outside of the rubber band, I had nothing to do. No book to read. No harmonica to play the blues. I napped, snapped the rubber band, and thought.

  I suspected it must have been getting close to lunchtime, but I remained spread out on my cot and contemplated everything in my life that had led to me landing in jail. I launched the rubber band. That made thirty-eight.

  Between my botched weed delivery and being locked up, I felt like my life had been in shambles for ages. In reality, it’d been less than three days.

  Earlier in the morning, on this second full day of jail, I’d finally gotten answers about what my future could hold. Buzz said I might be able to go before a judge on Monday, depending on how many other cases were on the court docket. That list could be long, Buzz added, because a lot of people got hammered on Christmas and caused trouble.

  Forty-one, I thought as the rubber band smacked the concrete block, dead center.

  I retrieved the band, lay back down, and cocked the band, anxious to break my personal best. I rested the band on the tip of my pointer finger and pulled it back, and the band snapped, zipped toward my face, and hit me just below the eye.

  Then I wrapped the broken band around my finger, off and on, off and on. Back to having nothing to do. I rested my head on the cot and stared above. By now I had memorized every crack and blemish on the ceiling.

  I couldn’t even handle moving to Alaska and going to college, I thought. What made me think I could handle Kusko?