by Building Fires in the Snow- A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction
Tierney tried to do the calculation. “One of your grandparents was American Indian?”
“Great-grandmother, but I never knew her.”
Trish looked up from her plate. “Is that what inspired you to develop your Indian princess dance routine?” Tierney glanced at the other girl, detecting sarcasm.
“Sort of.” Cleo seemed unaffected by Trish’s tone. “That and the messed-up history of the so-called settling of the West, which is what this book is all about. I swear, it’s truly heartrending: one broken treaty after another and what can only be called cold-blooded massacres. Genocide. They don’t teach this stuff in school.”
Tierney leaned forward in her chair. “What I want to know is, where are all the Eskimos? I thought Alaska was supposed to be full of them.”
“You’ve probably already seen a few,” Cleo said, “without knowing it. It’s not like they dress in sealskins and carry harpoons. Not in this part of the state, anyway. They look just like all the rest of us.”
Before Tierney knew it, she was telling them about Maggie-Magpie and how the two roustabouts had said they “shared” her, how they’d carried her from their car and left her lying on the ground outside the bar. “Me and Robert didn’t know what to do,” Tierney finished. “For some reason, I can’t stop thinking about her. But she wasn’t Eskimo,” she remembered. “She said she was Indian.”
“Do you know where she was from?” Trish asked. Tierney shook her head, feeling a little breathless. “Probably Athabascan,” Trish continued. “I imagine she either woke up and went inside to join them, or they put her back in their car when they were ready to leave. She’s probably fine.”
“I don’t know about that.” Cleo wore a grim expression. “There’s some real unsavory characters coming north these days because of the pipeline. You know that chick who went missing up near Eagle River?” Both Trish and Tierney nodded. “Well, another one’s disappeared. Just a few days ago. They’re saying that both of them are Native girls. I heard this one is a dancer.”
“Where?” Trish asked, her mouth full of food.
“Downtown. Fourth Avenue.” Trish and Cleo exchanged a look that Tierney couldn’t read. Cleo’s clipped tone matched the somewhat angry expression on her face. “I guess this one’s on the petite side, too. They’re saying there could be others.”
“What do you mean?” Trish stared at her.
“There’s at least one missing girl from last winter that nobody’s talking about. I just wonder if that Seattle serial killer isn’t operating up here now.”
“But how could he be in two places at once?” Trisha said. “I thought another girl just went missing down there, too.”
Cleo stood. “I don’t know.” She carried their breakfast things into the kitchen. “It’s freaky, though. That’s for sure.”
Wide-eyed, Tierney flung her gaze from Cleo to Trish and back to Cleo. “What do you mean, serial killer?” she said. “How do you know those girls didn’t choose to disappear? I mean, I just kind of disappeared from Williston, but it was on purpose. How do you even know they’re dead?” Neither Cleo nor Trish said anything, but they glanced at each other in a way that made Tierney feel childish.
When Trish had finished her food, she pulled two round metal washtubs from under the woodstove. “Say, Cleo. After we do the dishes, would it be okay if I took Tierney to the waterfall?” Even though she barely knew her, Tierney could tell Trish was striving for a casual tone.
“Maybe later,” Cleo said, wiping off the counter. “Right now, there’s a lot that needs doing. Come join me in the garden once you get things cleaned up in here.” With that, she pushed through the front door and presumably pulled on her rubber boots; in a minute they heard her descending the steps from the deck.
Trish showed Tierney how to sprinkle powdered soap into one of the washtubs and ladle hot water from the full cauldron that sat atop the woodstove. “We can do them out on the deck,” she said, freeing a dish rack from its nail on the end of the kitchen counter and carrying it and some tea towels outside.
Standing on the ground, the surface of the deck was the perfect height for the job. Tierney thought she wouldn’t mind washing dishes every day if she could do it like this, outside in the fresh air. It was a far cry from the steamy, narrow, windowless room in which she’d sprayed numberless dirty plates and glasses before feeding them into the giant dishwasher at Milly’s.
When they were done, and the dishes were arranged to air-dry outside, they joined Cleo in weeding the rows of seedlings that were sprouting in the garden. When Tierney asked about the height of the fence, Cleo explained that moose were capable of clearing anything less than eight feet tall. Cleo gathered up the small piles of spindly weeds and tossed them into the nearby chicken coop, where the birds scrambled to eat them. After that, there was firewood to stack, and kindling to split with an ax and a hatchet. Cleo showed them how she wanted rocks hauled from the bend in the creek to create a wall around the fenced-in chicken coop; she thought it might help to deter the fox or coyote that had recently found its way into the pen. And she wanted more chicken wire wrapped around the base of more birches, which apparently was an effective defense against the tree-felling habits of the local beavers.
Cleo went inside at some point, reappearing at lunchtime with grilled cheddar cheese and tomato sandwiches on homemade bread, a large plate of still-warm peanut butter cookies, and tall glasses of a pink drink with a mint-leaf garnish that she identified as rhubarb juice. She set down the tray of food on the long slab table at the fire pit, near where Trish and Tierney were splitting kindling, and announced she was going back inside to sew.
“By hand?” Tierney asked.
“I have a treadle,” Cleo said simply, turning away, and Tierney had a hazy memory of her mother pedaling her foot on just such a machine way back when.
As they washed their hands beside the creek with the bar of soap that Cleo had presented to them along with a stack of towels, Tierney could feel the beginnings of blisters forming on her palms. “I wonder if Robert got that job,” she said. “I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. Can you believe I don’t even know his last name?”
“And I wonder if I’ll ever see Sir Lancelot again.”
Tierney splashed some water at Trish. “Don’t forget he’s a homo.”
Trish tried to push her into the creek, but Tierney escaped without getting wet.
After they ate, Trish produced a new, tightly rolled joint. “Ta da!” she said with a flourish.
“Not for me,” Tierney said. “I’ll fall asleep.”
“I wish you weren’t so uptight,” Trish complained, striking a match and sucking hard on the joint. “Lighten up and light up!” she quipped, but for once she seemed content to smoke alone.
Glancing toward the house, Tierney raised first her own plate and then the plate that had held the cookies, licking them both clean.
“Hey,” Trish took another long sip from the joint, held it, and exhaled slowly. “It’s ‘later.’ We can go to the waterfall!”
“I don’t think we should. I get the feeling Cleo wants us to get a lot done today. Maybe we could go tomorrow?”
Trish shook her head. “Her bark’s worse than her bite. She pushes, but it’s almost like she expects you to push back.” She extinguished what was left of the joint. “Anyway, it’s not like we’re getting paid. She can’t exactly fire us.” As she’d done yesterday, Trish tucked the roach behind the matches in a matchbook and put it in her sweatshirt pouch. “Come on,” she said, heading into the woods.
Tierney looked at the house indecisively. “Hurry up!” Trish hollered, already almost out of sight. Tierney scrambled after her, telling herself that the outing would provide a break from the chores, that they wouldn’t be gone long, and that in any case, there was no shortage of daylight in which to get work done. If necessary, they could stay up late. Besides, she thought, weaving through the trees, it was high time she sampled the Alaska wilderness.
But the excu
rsion to the waterfall proved to be much more involved than the leisurely walk in the woods that Tierney had pictured; the trail snaked through spruce and birch forest, seldom running straight, and required the precarious crossing of two plunging creeks on fallen logs slippery with moss and rotting bark. By the time half an hour had passed and they still seemed closer to where they had started than to where they were trying to go, Tierney knew they had made a poor choice, but by then she was too worried about getting lost to turn back without Trish—especially after they encountered a startlingly large pile of what Trish matter-of-factly said was bear shit. “Most likely from a grizzly.”
Once she decided it was too late to change course, Tierney gave herself over wholeheartedly to the adventure. They clambered over fallen trees, waded shin-deep through a marshy bog that Trish called “muskeg,” and skittered across the sloping pile of jagged scree that made up the base of the mountain they had to skirt to reach the falls. Tierney had done a fair amount of car camping with her family and had even gone on some overnight hikes, but she’d never done anything like this.
They drank whenever they were thirsty from one or another of the countless cold rivulets that Trish said were snowmelt from the still-frozen patches high above them. Her companion seemed so at home in these surroundings that it inspired Tierney to think that one day she, too, might learn to be equally comfortable in the wild. “I’ve never met a girl like you,” she told Trish admiringly.
Trish turned to her with a grin. “This is the best, isn’t it?”
“Darn right.”
“It’s nice to have some company for a change. I’ve only done this hike by myself, because no one else will ever go with me.”
Trish had made this trip by herself? And more than once? She must be fearless, Tierney decided, watching Trish pull herself up onto a rock ledge. She was beginning to think Trish was the coolest girl she’d ever met. She was like a more grown-up version of Pippi Long-stocking: uninhibited and funny and strong, someone who could care less what others thought of her. The waterfall, when they reached it, was almost anticlimactic. The best part, Tierney thought, was exploring a wild place with someone she was beginning to like. A lot.
By the time they swaggered back into the homestead hours later, they were muddy, sweaty, tired, and full of themselves. The sun had moved behind the mountain, casting Raven Creek valley into shadow. Cleo was weeding in the garden again; she scarcely glanced at the two girls as they apologized sheepishly for their long absence. “It’s not a resort,” she said quietly. “If you want your supper, you’ll have to earn it.” She returned her gardening tools to the shed before retiring into the house.
So Tierney and Trish resumed the work of filling the wheelbarrow with rocks from the creek, taking turns laboriously wheeling the load over uneven ground to the chicken coop and dumping it in a growing pile. They worked together to cut lengths of chicken wire, awkwardly wrapping birch trunks with the springy metal fencing until it grew too dark to see. As they discussed whether or not they should just go to bed without supper, Cleo called out from her doorway, inviting them inside for bowls of creamy salmon chowder, salad, and squares of savory cornbread slathered with butter, the house lit with candles in the absence of electric lights so that Tierney once again felt as if she were inhabiting some kind of fairy tale.
That night, while Trish fired up her roach in their sleeping quarters, Tierney dug out her last fresh T-shirt and only pair of clean underpants from her backpack, and carried them, along with the bar of soap and a bath towel, to a secluded spot beside the creek. Although it was dark and she was completely alone, she still felt shy about undressing, so she quickly peeled off pants and underpants to wash her bottom half as fast as she could in the cold water, dressing again before peeling off her sweatshirt and shirt to wash her upper body.
“I didn’t know where you went,” Trish complained, already shedding her own clothes. “Why didn’t you wait for me?” She sounded hurt.
“Sorry.” Tierney hurriedly reached for her towel, using it to shield her bare chest. Had Trish really missed her, or was she just joking? While Tierney kept her back turned to put on her clean shirt, Trish stripped without a shred of self-consciousness and waded waist deep into the creek, ducking into the water before lathering her entire body at record speed and reimmersing herself to rinse off. “Shit!” She pranced out of the creek yelping, grabbed her towel, and dried herself frenetically, hopping from foot to foot to warm up.
It wasn’t that Tierney thought there was anything wrong with nudity; it was just that she had never learned to feel comfortable with it. She wasn’t even all that relaxed in a bathing suit, although once she got into the water, of course, it no longer mattered. But as she seemed to be with lots of things, Trish was casual about her own nakedness. Tierney watched her towel herself dry, admiring Trish’s long, slim trunk and strong legs. Trish maybe wasn’t glamorous in the conventional Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe sense of voluptuous curves and melon-sized breasts, like Pearl, but Tierney thought she could definitely be considered a beauty.
“Quit staring at me!” Trish said. “Pervert.”
Tierney immediately turned her back, which made Trish laugh.
“Do you have any clean clothes I can borrow?” Trish asked.
Tierney picked up her sneakers. “Sorry, I just put them on.” She sat on the ground to wipe off her feet. “I had big plans for Cleo’s washing machine and dryer.”
“Ha ha.” A moment later, Trish crept up to Tierney silently, tapping her on the shoulder and making her jump.
Tierney swatted her. “You brat.”
“So, I noticed you have a great body,” Trish said, wrapping herself in her towel. “You’re a foxy lady.”
Tierney stared at her, her pulse beginning to race. She remembered how she had awoken to find Trish spooning her. She recalled last night’s back rub, the goodnight kiss on the back of her head. Was it possible that Trish was as drawn to her as she was drawn to Trish? Was all that talk about sex last night supposed to be a buildup to something else, and had Tierney disappointed Trish by failing to reciprocate her displays of affection?
“Your breasts are much bigger than mine,” Trish continued. “Sexier.” She leaned a hand on Tierney’s shoulder for balance as she brushed off the soles of her feet to step barefooted into her sneakers.
Tierney knew this was the moment to tell Trish that she was attracted to her, too, that in fact she was pretty smitten. She felt herself tremble, heart pounding, as she cleared her throat to speak.
“You should seriously think about dancing at the Majestic,” Trish continued. “The money’s really good. Better than cannery work or waitressing or the only other jobs that are available to girls.” She glanced at Tierney. “Don’t look like that. It’s not so bad.” A moment later, she added, “Too bad Lance isn’t here tonight, with me all nice and clean. I would definitely show him a good time.” Trish laughed, tousling Tierney’s hair.
Even though it was too dark for Trish to see her cheeks burning, Tierney ducked her head. Thank God she hadn’t said anything! Her heart continued to hammer, but now it was for a different reason. She couldn’t believe she had come so close to declaring her feelings for Trish. What could she possibly have been thinking? Tierney quickly reviewed what she had said, reassured that, no, she had given nothing away. She would make sure to eradicate these feelings until no trace of them remained. No one must ever suspect how close Tierney had come to falling for another girl.
4.
The next morning, the crowing rooster again woke Tierney, and also as before, Trish slept right through the bird’s ruckus. Tierney slipped carefully from beneath Trish’s arm and studied the other girl’s face, which seemed even prettier when she was asleep. She shivered to think how close she had come to ruining everything last night. Despite her relief, however, she felt as heavy hearted as if someone close to her had died.
Her neck and shoulders tightened when she stood; the muscles in her legs and ar
ms protested movement. She would have been happy to stay in bed, but knew they owed Cleo a full day of work after yesterday’s ill-timed, albeit outstanding, trek to the waterfall.
When she knocked softly and pushed open the front door, Cleo was rolling pastry on the kitchen counter, three pie tins at the ready to receive their bottom layers of crust. “Good morning. Where’s your partner in crime?”
“We’re really sorry about yesterday. We want to make it up to you today.”
“I can tell you’re a good worker.” Cleo never paused in her pastry-rolling activity. “And Trish can be, too, but sometimes I don’t much care for her attitude.” She asked Tierney to crank the handle of the cast-iron grain mill that was clamped to the edge of the counter and already filled with brownish wheat berries. Tierney discovered that she had to use both hands for the task; it took longer than she would have expected to grind two cups of flour.
“Did you see the rhubarb plants at the far end of the garden?” Cleo asked when she had finished. Tierney nodded. “Pull me off about ten cups’ worth of stalks.” Cleo handed her a paring knife. “Put the leaves in the compost bin next to the chicken house.”
When Tierney returned with the leafless rhubarb stems, she was glad to smell more bacon sizzling on the stovetop. She chopped the rhubarb into half-inch pieces at Cleo’s instruction, putting them into a large stainless steel bowl. Cleo meanwhile had mixed up a batch of pancakes with the freshly ground flour and was already flipping the first flapjacks in the skillet. They sat down to eat without discussion, Tierney spreading her pancakes with plenty of butter before drizzling them with what Cleo said was homemade birch syrup, which was denser than maple syrup and tasted, Tierney decided, of Alaska. She asked for seconds of everything and drank two cups of what Cleo said was her own blend of peppermint, rose-hip, and spruce-tip tea.
“You are the best cook I ever met,” Tierney said.
“Thank you. How’d you like the waterfall?”
It took Tierney a moment to realize it wasn’t a trick question. “Amazing. The hike there was really fun.” She remembered Trish flinging her arms up in triumph when they finally reached the falls. Magnificent Trish. She lowered her head for a minute then raised it with an effort, forcing a smile. “I love it here!” she blurted.