by Craig Dirkes
The girls laughed, then turned around to leave. I grabbed Taylor’s hand before she could go. She told Bristy and Hope to wait for us up front. I couldn’t believe she still wanted to know me. Perhaps the speech she’d given me about not giving up on Bristy and Hope applied to me too.
“You don’t hate me?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But I’m confused. I want to know which Eddie you are — the one I thought I knew, or the one who did those crazy things.”
“I’m the good Eddie,” I said. “I promise you. What I did was a stupid, heat-of-the-moment mistake.”
“How can I be sure?”
“Because I’m going to prove it to you.”
“Maybe so,” Taylor said, “but regaining my trust will take a lot of time.”
“How long?”
“However long it takes,” she said.
* * *
In the men’s room, faded blue tiles covered the walls, floor to ceiling. The sink dripped water. The towel dispenser showed its empty mouth. When I pulled up to one of two urinals, I saw shoes underneath the stall. I wondered if they belonged to Dalton or Nicolai. I hadn’t seen either of them in the lobby.
I heard the guy zip up and flush as I peed, and after the stall door squeaked open, Judge Warfield and I saw each other in the mirror. He straightened his white oxford shirt at his belt and bellied up to a sink. I’d finished peeing but pretended like I was still going. I didn’t want to talk to the judge. I heard him washing his hands, four feet away. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he wiped his hands on the back of his pants.
“Mr. Ashford,” the judge said, turning toward me.
I stopped pretend peeing, zipped up, and faced him. “Judge Warfield.”
He looked even more imposing up close. Until him, I’d never met a Native guy taller than me.
“Your flimsy soliloquy in there did not sway my judgment. I should have given you a year or more. Anybody else, and I would have.”
I didn’t understand. “Anybody else?”
“Two years ago, my youngest brother was killed. Somebody tied him to a stake and fed him to the bears. My brother was a bootlegger and had his problems. But he didn’t deserve to die. Everybody knows who killed him. I suspect you do too.”
“I do, your honor.”
“I know you helped the sheriff arrest Bronco. Now that Bronco is in custody, new evidence has been gathered that could lead to his being charged with the murder of my brother. In short, Mr. Ashford, we’re even.”
* * *
Hope shifted her Suburban into reverse as we backed out of a jailhouse parking space. I sat with her in front, with Bristy and Taylor in back.
“You smell like ass,” Hope said.
I couldn’t argue. After I’d turned in my orange jumpsuit inside the jailhouse, I had no clean clothes to put on — just the T-shirt and overalls I’d worn for days. It killed me that Taylor was smelling the same odor.
“Where to now?” Hope asked.
“My house, I guess,” I said, shivering because the rear window of Hope’s truck was stuck open. I wore my red hunting coat, but it wasn’t enough to keep me warm. “Hopefully Dalton doesn’t kill me the moment I walk in the door.”
A minute later, we drove past the Patriot office, en route to my place, and I saw Dalton’s blue truck parked outside.
“Hold up,” I told Hope.
She pulled into the space next to Dalton’s truck, and Taylor asked if they should wait.
“Nah, this could take a while,” I said. “I’ll call a cab if I have to. Can someone lend me five bucks?”
When I got out, Taylor got out too and stood close to me.
“I’m taking the front seat,” she said. “It’s freezing back there. Call me later.”
“I will,” I said. “Thanks for today. You’re hot.”
Taylor gave me a five-dollar bill and punched me in the arm.
I entered the Quonset hut as the girls drove away. Big fat Mikey Colosky sat in one of his barber chairs, reading the Patriot, waiting for another customer. He lowered the paper from in front of his face.
“I heard what happened,” he said, chuckling. “I hope you didn’t drop the soap.”
“Shut it, Mikey,” I said.
In the office, Dalton was seated at his desk, clacking away on his computer. He’d taken off his sport coat and loosened the black tie around the neck of his white shirt. I grabbed the chair at my desk and wheeled it across the room to Dalton’s. I sat down.
Dalton still wouldn’t look at me. He spoke while staring at his computer screen. “I wanted your head, Eddie.”
“Sorry doesn’t do my feelings justice,” I said.
“You’re damned lucky Nicolai talked me down.” Dalton finally shifted his eyes to me. “We spoke until sunrise after Buzz arrested you. Nicolai wouldn’t shut up about God this, and forgiveness that. The whiskey I was sipping got me emotional. Normally, I wouldn’t have been so sympathetic.”
Then we went back to not making eye contact. For as good as I felt about getting my life back, I couldn’t show my relief — out of respect for the hurt Dalton felt about Joanie and Lunchbox. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about that, either. The image of Joanie’s tail sticking above the snow would probably haunt me the rest of my life.
Dalton shuffled in his chair and asked if I got the weed from Finn.
“Finn doesn’t smoke anymore,” I said, a bit of truth that made my response sound like less of a lie. After all I’d been through, I felt guilty telling another lie. But my vow to protect Finn still stood.
Dalton shifted gears and asked if Joanie and Lunchbox suffered. I told him they died protecting me. In a roundabout way, that was the truth. They and the rest of the dogs ran as fast as they possibly could have when we were trying to outrun the shooter.
“They were excellent dogs,” Dalton said, gulping back a lump in his throat. “But you realize, Eddie, that there’s no happy ending for me in this. Replacing Joanie and Lunchbox will cost me two or three grand and hundreds of training hours.”
Plus, he didn’t know if Boris could ever run again. The dog’s leg got shot. Replacing him at swing could cost another five hundred and more training hours.
I said, “I know that’s a lot of money and time, Dalton. But I’m going to make it up to you. Give me a couple weeks.”
Dalton looked at me like I was high on weed. “A couple weeks? What can you possibly accomplish in a couple weeks?”
“Trust me,” I said.
CHAPTER 29
GOODBYE, MY LOVE
Finn wore black athletic pants and a white sleeveless T-shirt. In an hour we’d be playing an evening game of pickup basketball at Kusko Rec Center. Finn grabbed my blanket and pillow from his couch, bunched them up, and set them on the floor. He sat on the couch and flipped on the TV while I was stationed at the kitchen table sipping the only beverage we could afford — water. I’d been trying to explain to him how much I sucked at basketball.
“Just plant yourself under the boards and rebound,” Finn said. “You’ll be a few inches taller than everybody else.”
Finn went into his bedroom and came out carrying a hideous pair of red high-tops and orange short-shorts that looked straight out of the seventies. He set the things on the table.
“I’m supposed to wear this?” I asked. “Are we going to a costume party?”
Finn laughed and returned to the couch. He held one additional item of clothing — the red Alaska Grown T-shirt.
“See this?” he asked, balling up the shirt. He chucked it across the room into the garbage bin by the kitchen sink. He raised his arms above his head like he’d just drilled a three-pointer.
“And it’s good,” I said.
I’d been staying with Finn ever since my court date. There was no reason for Dalton and me to spend any more t
ime together than at work; our relationship had been altered. But I’d still been feeding Dalton’s dogs and cleaning their shit in the yard. It was the least I could do.
I couldn’t believe I still had a job, but then again, considering how difficult it was for Dalton to find reporters willing to work in Kusko, I wasn’t totally shocked. Thank you, Kusko. If I’d gotten my boss’s dogs killed anywhere else on Earth, I’d have been unemployed.
Finn pointed his remote at the TV and flipped channels. “How’s your dad?” he asked.
“Still pissed,” I said, then swigged the last of my water. “All he ever says is, ‘Figure it out.’”
I knew my dad would have much more to say the next time we talked, but he wouldn’t be able to argue with the decision I was about to make. I was doing what needed to be done. I was figuring it out.
The clock above Finn’s sink read five o’clock. “I have to go,” I said. “I’ll put on those stupid clothes when I get back.”
After I’d put on my boots, jacket, and mittens, Finn said, “If the guy tries lowballing you, tell him to suck it, nerd.”
* * *
Outside Finn’s house I walked into the darkness as a heavy snow fell. I started the FJ and grabbed the ice scraper resting on the front seat, then hopped back out and began shaving ice off the windshield and side windows. The two little side windows in the far back were difficult to scrape because the glass was curved, wrapping around the sides and back of the vehicle. The scraper made contact only in half-inch swaths.
I heard somebody else scraping and spotted Nicolai, two houses over, shearing ice from the windows of his red truck. Dalton’s vehicle was gone, providing an unobstructed view of Nicolai’s driveway.
I hadn’t talked to Nicolai since he’d visited me in jail. Twice I tried knocking on his door, but he hadn’t been around, so I shuffled through the snow with my scraper in hand. I used it to clean off the big back window of his truck while he continued working on the side windows. He wore a heavy tan hunting coat and bushy red earmuffs that looked like fox fur.
“Thanks for the help, Eddie,” he said.
“No, thank you,” I replied. I finished scraping and met Nicolai by the driver’s side door. “You saved me.”
He dropped his scraper to his side and used his other hand to wipe snow from his eyebrows. “In what way?” he asked.
“You talked Dalton down,” I said. “I should be behind bars right now. My life would have been ruined.”
“Glad to help,” Nicolai said. “I know what it’s like to need forgiveness.”
* * *
I honked the FJ’s horn in front of a three-door ambulance garage at Kusko Regional Hospital. The door on the far right of the detached brick building opened. A young doctor named Chase moved one of the ambulances outside, into the snowfall, and I drove the FJ into the open garage stall.
I got out of the FJ as Chase, a Native guy in his early thirties, walked back into the garage and pressed a button on the wall to close the door. He wore a green down parka over blue scrubs. He was lean and clean-shaven, with short dark hair. “What’s up, Eddie?” he asked, taking off his coat.
I didn’t say anything. I felt like part of me was about to die.
Chase grabbed a spray hose attached to a spigot coming out of the wall near the passenger door of the FJ. He twisted the spigot open and filled a bucket with soapy water. He tossed me a sponge and began spraying the worst of the ice and dirt off the truck.
“When’s the last time you washed this?” he asked, aiming the beam of water at clumps of frozen mud stuck inside the wheel wells.
“Last spring, but I only rinsed it,” I said, grabbing the bucket of soapy water. “It’s been killing me that Kusko doesn’t even have a car wash.”
“No problem,” the doctor said. “We’ll have this baby cleaned up in no time.”
For ten minutes I used the sponge and soapy water to scrub the areas Chase hit with water. After I finished, he gave the truck a final rinse.
Then I led Chase around the truck for a body inspection. He had taken the FJ for a test drive over the weekend but had yet to see it clean. I pointed to the passenger-door scratch the FJ had sustained when it first arrived in Kusko. “This should be the only blemish,” I said.
Chase handed me a cashier’s check in the amount of seven thousand dollars, a painfully low amount, considering the FJ could have fetched north of ten thousand had I sold it on the mainland. Between paying off Finn, Dalton, and my college bill, I was still thousands in the hole, but the FJ made a sizeable dent.
Chase and I stepped back to take in the entirety of the FJ, in all its shiny red beastliness. He gawked at the truck like it was a big rack of boobies. He was practically drooling.
“Damn,” Chase said. “I’ve always wanted one of these sweet things.”
At least she’d be going to a good home.
CHAPTER 30
SEEING IT THROUGH
I propped myself on the edge of Finn’s couch on a Saturday afternoon and glanced out the living room window. Outside bright sun beat down on the tundra, which was beginning to look like rocky road ice cream again as winter began to fade.
Finn had taken the spot to my right, and in front of us, bellied up to the coffee table, Taylor sat cross-legged on the floor. She wore baggy jeans and a green University of Anchorage sweatshirt.
“Fifteen for two,” Finn said. He advanced his green peg on Taylor’s cribbage board, which was made of caribou antler and occupied the center of the table. Taylor and I had taught Finn to play cribbage only a few weeks earlier, and he was already getting good.
“Last card for one,” I said, laying down a king of clubs. “Whose crib is it again?”
“Mine,” Taylor said. She and Finn were neck and neck. I lagged fifteen spaces behind.
We threw down our four-card hands. I had a three and two fives to go with my king, enough for six lousy points. Finn and Taylor both had double runs, but Taylor’s run also included two sevens and an eight, good for four extra points. She pegged out.
Taylor pretend sneezed. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said. “I’m sick of winning.”
“Suck it, Sifsof,” Finn replied. He altered his favorite insult only for her because the alliteration sounded funny. I was happy the two of them got along so well. I had always suspected they would.
Finn stood up and said he didn’t have time for another game because he needed to get ready for work. Nicolai had hooked Finn up with Willies Jr. and Sr., the construction business owners I’d volunteered with in Napakiak. They hired him full time. It was grunt work, but the job paid better than Finn’s former gig at the airport — and even my job at the Patriot — and he was learning a viable trade.
Taylor shuffled the cards as Finn walked into his bedroom. “What should we do now?” she asked me.
I got up from the couch, walked closer to the window, and looked outside. I could see Dalton’s shed and half of the back dog yard. “Did you wear boots over here?” I asked.
Taylor said yes, her mukluks.
“If Finn lends you a warm coat and snow pants,” I said, “would you want to go mushing? We still haven’t done that together.”
If anything, Dalton trusted me with his dogs more than ever before. He knew I’d rather die than screw anything up again.
Taylor smiled. “Totally.”
Finn emerged from his bedroom wearing tan overalls and a tool belt wrapped around his waist. His screwdrivers and wrenches clanked around as he walked to the entryway to put on his leather boots. “I’m helping out on a remodeling project at the hospital,” he said. “Be home around midnight. Let’s hunt tomorrow morning.”
Lately, Finn and I had been hunting rabbit and ptarmigan two or three times a week, and we took turns checking his beaver snares beneath the ice on the Kuskokwim, which needed to be done every other day. The meat we got ou
rselves saved us each about a hundred bucks a month in grocery bills.
* * *
Taylor rode in front, wearing Finn’s green wool hunting coat, clutching the sides of the sled as we bumped along in quiet solitude. The temperature must have been close to forty degrees. Every so often, the sled skated across patches of slush on the four-foot-wide snow trail. In a few weeks, the trail would be gone.
Boris, running at swing, trotted along like his old self again. His former running partner, Aggie, had taken Joanie’s spot at lead. Aggie was like a backup quarterback — decent at the job, but not a long-term solution. She was a temporary fix until Dalton could get his new lead dog trained in, which he said could take more than a year. I forked over almost two grand in FJ proceeds for the dog, a tan-colored, six-month-old pup named Spud.
By now we must have been five miles out of town. Taylor and I had barely spoken, and when we did, we half whispered. Mushing out there that day was so epically peaceful, talking out loud would have been like hurling a brick into a placid lake at sunset. On one stretch of smooth trail, we glided right past a small flock of ptarmigan, and the birds didn’t even fly away.
Taylor pointed to her left. “There,” she said quietly.
Far off, maybe a mile away, little black specs appeared all along the blue horizon. Some of the specs were stationary, some moved slowly, and a few seemed to run and stop in bursts.
It was the Mulchatna herd of caribou. I had written about the herd, but I had never seen it. I jammed my foot on the brake. “Whoa!” I called.
After the dogs stopped, Taylor got out of the sled and handed me the rope and ice hook she’d been holding on her lap. She took my spot on the sled and pressed the brake while I walked ten feet behind her and stomped the ice hook into a snowless patch of tundra. I joined her back by the sled, placed my right hand above my eyebrows to block the sun’s glare, and gazed into the distance.
“How many are there?” I asked.
“Hundreds,” Taylor said. “Maybe thousands.”