Sucktown, Alaska

by Craig Dirkes

  I wanted one. Finn and I could eat off it for months. I was sure we had enough scratch to go halfsies on a used chest freezer, because Finn was earning good money now, and I was making headway on my debts. Splitting rent with Finn, it turned out, was slightly cheaper than it had been to keep the FJ going.

  “Do you think they’ll still be around tomorrow?” I asked, peering at the caribou, as even more of them materialized. The line of animals seemed like it might stretch back to Anchorage.

  “Who knows,” Taylor replied, standing three feet away. “Tomorrow they could be a hundred miles away. Or two miles. It’s anyone’s guess.”

  Taylor shuffled her feet. I could tell she was looking right at me, but I pretended not to notice, kept looking at the caribou. I used the sleeve of my red coat to wipe a drip from my nose.

  Taylor cleared her throat and asked, “Will you still be around tomorrow?”

  I thought for a moment, and then I faced her. She looked beautiful standing there on the vacant tundra, like a flower floating in outer space. A breeze blew strands of her blond hair onto her face, but she didn’t push them away.

  “I’ll be here,” I said. “I’ll be here for however long it takes.”

  Taylor didn’t blink. Behind her, several dogs barked impatiently. She didn’t acknowledge them.

  Then she raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Good,” she said. “I met this cute guy, but I don’t have the guts to ask him out. Maybe you could talk to him for me.”

  I took off my mitten and started to flick her off, but she swatted my hand before I could finish the job.

  THE END

  Q&A WITH CRAIG DIRKES

  Immense, wild, and in some ways unknowable, Alaska seems a fitting setting for a coming-of-age novel, especially one like Craig Dirkes has written. In his debut, Craig tells the story of a crucial period in the lives of his eighteen-year-old narrator and the handful of friends he makes while living in a desolate region of the state. Throughout their work on this book, Craig and his Switch Press editor, Nick Healy, often talked about Alaska and how it felt like a character as much as a setting in this story.

  Here, they discuss Sucktown, Alaska and the real places and events that inspired it.

  NICK: You spent several years in Alaska and lived in a town similar to the fictional Kusko. What drew you there?

  CRAIG: I had just graduated from college and was determined to spend the rest of my twenties traveling the world. Alaska, I decided, would be a more exciting launching pad than my home state of Minnesota. In Alaska I could have an adventurous life while I saved for all those airplane tickets. I wound up spending close to two years bartending in Anchorage and almost three years working at newspapers in rural towns across Alaska. Later on, I did make those trips to Asia and Africa. But rural Alaska, I came to realize, was as exotic as anywhere on Earth.

  NICK: Eddie Ashford, your story’s narrator, and his friend Finn Wassily are young men living on their own and free to do what they want. Are they ready for it?

  CRAIG: Well, I wasn’t ready. Just like it is for Eddie, my first time being alone in the world came when I moved to Alaska. During my first couple years there I made loads of bad choices. My irresponsibility peaked when, dressed as Jack Daniels, I spent Halloween night locked up in a rural Alaska jail (long story). After that I shaped up quite a bit, much like Eddie and Finn attempt to do. The hope is that you don’t make a choice that’s so bad it negatively affects the rest of your life or someone else’s. This book explores what can happen when people do make those kinds of choices.

  NICK: Your story doesn’t fall into the expected man-versus-nature mold of an Alaska novel. How did you choose to tell this story?

  CRAIG: In a way, the story chose me. Several key story elements in this book happened to me in real life. Although I never sold marijuana, I did work at a bush newspaper, while living with my boss, who was also a musher. Getting stranded because of my truck happened, too. An Anchorage-based newspaper company I worked for agreed to fly my truck to and from a town called Dillingham, but when it came time for me to leave there fifteen months later, the company refused to fly it back. I would have been stuck there for months had my coworkers not banded together and advocated for me. The more I thought about all of these unusual life events, combined with all of the remarkable things I’d seen and experienced while living in rural Alaska, the more I thought they could be intertwined in a compelling and unexpected story.

  NICK: Eddie gets himself into some very specific trouble of his own making, but there’s something universal in the push and pull between his best and worst impulses. How does he represent the experience of coming of age?

  CRAIG: We all have a little voice inside our heads telling us the right thing to do, and the younger we are, the harder that voice is to listen to. Through the bad moves Eddie makes and the good people he meets, he eventually figures out something about dealing with those conflicting voices.

  NICK: Before Eddie leaves Anchorage, someone warns him that Kusko is located in “unromantic” Alaska, the part without towering mountains, rushing rivers, grizzlies snapping at leaping fish, and so on. Is there nothing romantic on the tundra?

  CRAIG: The delta and bush towns like Kusko do have magic. I wouldn’t have lived in rural Alaska for so long if they didn’t. But it’s easy to understand why some people wouldn’t see it that way. Living in a small and isolated community isn’t for everybody. Most people can’t live without comfortable houses, nice cars, and twenty-four-hour restaurants. Eddie is in that camp when he arrives in Kusko. Gradually, he begins to see what others in rural Alaska already know — creature comforts don’t always equate to happiness. The Alaskan lifestyle, in its truest form, does.

  NICK: Why are Alaska and the YK Delta still on your mind?

  CRAIG: They will always be on my mind. Once you’ve lived in Alaska, the place becomes a part of you, and it never stops calling you back. As much as I want to live there again, I probably never will. But that’s where this book comes in. In a weird way, I thought that if I could write a book set in Alaska, I’d become part of the state forever, even after I die.

  Craig Dirkes is a public relations writer and professional photographer. He began his career as a journalist in rural Alaska, and currently he lives in Minnesota with his wife and three young children.

  Sucktown, Alaska is published by Switch Press

  A Capstone Imprint

  1710 Roe Crest Drive

  North Mankato, Minnesota 56003

  www.mycapstone.com

  Copyright © 2017 Craig Dirkes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dirkes, Craig, author.

  Title: Sucktown, Alaska / by Craig Dirkes.

  Description: North Mankato, Minnesota : Switch Press, a Capstone imprint, [2017]

  Summary: When he is kicked out of his first year of college in Anchorage, eighteen-year-old Eddie Ashford promises the university officials to work for one year at the newspaper in Kusko, Alaska, which is a small, depressing town in back-of-beyond, where it requires either a plane or a dog-sled to get around for most of the time—but staying straight is a challenge, especially when he gets caught up in the local marijuana trade.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016046406| ISBN 9781630790554 (paper over board) | ISBN 9781630790561 (eBook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Reporters and reporting—Alaska—Juvenile fiction. |Newspapers—Juvenile fiction. | Marijuana—Juvenile fiction. |Interpersonal relations—Juvenile fiction. | Alaska—Juvenile fiction. |CYAC: Reporters and reporting—Fiction. | Newspapers—Fiction. |Marijuana—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations�
��Fiction. | Alaska—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.D59 Su 2017 | DDC 813.6 [Fic] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046406

  Book design: Brann Garvey

  Photo credits:

  Robert Dillon, image 1

  Robert Dillon, image 2

  Craig Dirkes, image