Cold Storage, Alaska

by John Straley

  “We have to go.” Lester and Billy pulled the two brothers out from under the pier. Eight others were running down the beach with two stretchers from the clinic.

  The next morning the snow stopped and the weather cleared; smoke drifted from the site of the bar and curled around town like a wandering cat. Trooper Brown and a crime scene team landed at first light, and the pilot flew Miles and Clive to the hospital in Sitka. Jake, whose injury had been forgotten in all the excitement, had accessed Miles’s pharmacopoeia; he chomped down on painkillers in the privacy of Lester’s home and said nothing. While out-of-town investigators scoured Cold Storage, the white gangster and the Indian artist quietly tended their wounds and stayed away from the police.

  Nix had seen Clive before he’d been flown out unconscious. He hadn’t looked human; his skin was too tight and blood frothed around the edges of his peeling flesh; burned meat, still breathing. She hadn’t watched as they’d carried him away on a stretcher; she stayed in Clive’s house and waited for news.

  She couldn’t read, couldn’t concentrate, and there was no one to call so she found one of Annabelle’s Peggy Lee records and played it over and over on the old portable record player. One by one, the other members of the band came by and someone made scrambled eggs and someone else made toast, but they left it on the stove too long and Nix started to cry.

  Trooper Brown started looking for the stranger who’d purchased gas; he went door to door, asking questions, but he soon lost interest. He’d come to the conclusion that this had been a well-planned drug hit, and the perpetrator was already long gone and frankly, he wasn’t concerned about drug people killing each other. “Saves on court costs,” he’d told one of the lab technicians.

  The real truth was that he didn’t have the patience to wade through statements from the people of Cold Storage. He couldn’t bear to memorialize the wild, almost mythic accounting of events: love triangles and drugs, mysterious boats waiting offshore to offload teams of assassins, Satanic cults, a dangerous dog who was probably responsible for the whole thing.

  Very late in the day, someone discovered Miles’s skiff was missing. Billy informed the trooper and a day later Brown requested that a helicopter fly the inlet, but no trace of the skiff was ever found. By the evening of the second day, troopers had secured the scene and an arson team had arrived to finish the investigation.

  Smoke washed up and down the boardwalk, and all the houses were covered in a film of soot. People flung open their doors, fed the policemen at any time of the day or night, and drank whiskey from the bottle. They ate more sweets than usual, and their clothes carried the smell of fried food. They let their children stay up as late as they wanted, which wasn’t that far from their usual routine, but now they felt good about it. Happy to be alive for one more day. No one had heard if Miles and Clive were going to live.

  Bonnie tried to help. She talked to people at the clinic; sorted out the ones who genuinely needed attention from those who didn’t; sent the former to the temporary EMT flown in from Sitka and listened to the others talk off their nervous energy; gave them simple chores to do: sweeping the already clean floors, sorting through the waiting room magazines, or checking the paper in the fax machine.

  Lester came dressed in his sooty clothes, his hands wrapped in soft strips torn from someone’s thrift store T-shirts, and Bonnie gently said, “You should see somebody about your burns.”

  “I got it covered. Got some stuff from my auntie. It’s just what I need.”

  “All right,” she said, and smiled up at her friend.

  “Anybody heard from the hospital?” he asked.

  “No …” Her voice barely cleared her lungs.

  “Let’s go to his house. I bet Nix is there. Maybe she’s heard something.” Lester’s voice was beginning to crack, and that concerned her.

  “Yes,” she said, and stood up slowly. She let her hand rest on his arm for a moment, and he patted it. The adrenaline of the fire fading away into the soot and smoke, they walked out of the clinic. They walked down the boardwalk, past the café and the library, past the trail to the community hall, past the house with the parakeets in the window; they walked past the house with the tea kettle collection in the front yard and past the burning hole that had once been Mouse Miller’s Love Nest.

  The arson team was in a little shelter they’d made, hooking up flood lamps and kerosene heaters so they could work through the night, photographing and sorting through evidence, trying to piece together the char pattern and the type of accelerant that had been used to feed the fire.

  Lester and Bonnie looked over the edge. A charred storage cabinet sat at the tide line; melted records oozed out of blackened jackets; pool balls lodged like Easter eggs in the rocks; the broken neck of a bass guitar lay tangled in its own strings. Ravens were hopping in and out of the ashes, poking their beaks into soot near the blackened freezer. And even though Lester wasn’t a drinker and was an outsider in his own land, his chest sank between his shoulders for he missed the bar already.

  Ever since he’d been a kid, Lester had hated getting sick to his stomach. He’d choke back the urge to vomit with even the most violent stomach flu; he would gulp air and stand up straight and let the cramps rumble through his body. Now he looked at Bonnie and said nothing.

  She rubbed her hands between his shoulder blades. “They will be okay. You did the right thing,” she said, and reached over, put her arms around him.

  Someone had left a frozen hose, still connected to a faucet, lying in snow that was melting away in the heat radiating from the scorched ground. The hose, thawing, started hissing and leaping like a fish as bits of ice chunked and rumbled down its length; broken cylinders of ice jumped out; clear water washed away; and the old canvas lay flat again.

  Lester looked down at the wreckage of the bar. “I hope so,” he said, and they made their way to Clive’s house.

  The members of the band were all there. Rick sat on a chair by the oil stove and played an acoustic guitar; the others drank beer and ate soda crackers they’d found in the cupboards. Nix lay on the couch, and Billy rubbed her feet; her hands were folded under her face like a sleeping child, her eyes red and her pale skin blotchy from crying; she said nothing and noticed no one in the somber crowd of friends.

  Bonnie went over and kissed her face; Nix started to cry. Earl gave Lester a beer and clumsily hugged him; Lester tried to give the beer to someone else and wished Rick would stop strumming his guitar. The music sounded thin, like hearing a car horn from the top of a skyscraper.

  They perched in their seats as if half expecting to be called away until Earl heard thumping on the porch and went outside. Lester heard his voice: “Oh my Lord.” He was punctuating each word with an extra beat: “Oh … My … Lord.”

  Little Brother walked into the kitchen, past Lester and into the living room, dragging his right hind leg behind him. His brindled hide was smeared black, and his paws left smudges of blood on the floor. He smelled like a fire pit full of burning dog carcasses and looked even uglier than he had before.

  But Nix sat up, let him up on the couch and onto her lap, rubbed her hands over his head and body, kissed his ears and jowls. Little Brother looked into space with his eyes half shut, savoring every caress.

  “Well,” said Nix, “there you are.”

  CLIVE WAS BEING prepared for a charter jet flight to a burn clinic in Seattle and down on the first floor, under the eaves of the emergency entrance, an ambulance sat idling.

  Miles walked down the long hall toward the ICU pushing an IV pole. He should have been in a wheelchair; his chest ached from damaged lungs; his hands and legs were scoured by second degree burns. He turned the corner and stood in a doorway, watched his brother’s chest rise and fall. Even though Clive was unconscious, he had a smile on his face and his breathing was steady and strong. Miles wasn’t certain, but he could feel the promise of its continued rhythm like the coming of spring and summer.

  AND THIS IS HOW THINGS WOR
KED OUT IN THE MONTHS AND YEARS AFTER

  FOLLOWING THE FIRE, the smoke hung in the air for weeks on end. The future lay behind the membrane of each moment and remained hidden as Miles went on living and sitting by his brother’s bed.

  A few months after his return to Cold Storage, Miles put a note on his desk for the woman who was temporarily replacing him at the clinic. “Gone salmon fishing. Will monitor radio for emergencies.” Perfectly acceptable to anyone who’d spent a winter in Cold Storage, but it kind of irritated the young woman since she was earnest about her duties and wanted to do a good job.

  Miles felt old now. He had served his country, he’d served his community, and he was proud. Now he wanted to serve his family. And he wanted to catch a king salmon.

  Miles bought a brand-new skiff and motor from a shop in Juneau. The first thing he’d done was read the engine’s repair manual. He took the powerhead apart, down to its largest constituent pieces, for the newer engines seemed to be made of several bricks of electronic gear bolted onto a sleek-looking aluminum block; he used every ounce of his intellect to understand this engine; he invested in the best fuel filters and fuel additives; he gapped the plugs himself and checked the automatic oil injector by inspecting the plugs for dark spots. He was determined not to be bullied.

  He gathered all his new gear together and walked resolutely to the boat, stowed the gear, went through a quick checklist on the engine, and pushed the electric starter button. The engine sputtered and hummed without entreaty.

  He steered his new skiff standing up, holding onto a steering wheel, not like his old skiff where he’d had to sit, reaching back for the tiller arm. A VHF communication radio was mounted on the console, as well as a GPS unit, a depth sounder, and a compass for navigation; he had a separate, small engine that he’d lower once he arrived on the fishing grounds. Miles was better outfitted than he’d ever been on this, his first fishing trip of the new year.

  The engine easily pushed the new skiff over the light chop in front of the town, and as he drove down the inlet, he noticed that for the first time in a long time he didn’t smell smoke in the air. He pushed the throttle forward; his skiff lifted up onto a gliding plane, and the grey-green water turned silver in his wake and this silver matched the curve and color of the mountains mirrored on the surface of the inlet. Something rose up in Miles’s chest. It was as if the speed of the boat pressed against the boundary that confined each moment, and he pushed the throttle forward as if there was a chance he could break through that membrane and into the happiness that must surely lie ahead.

  Miles’s injuries had healed well enough. He still wore protective gloves and his doctors didn’t want him exposing his burns to fish bites, or to gasoline or dirt, or much of anything, but Miles wanted to catch a fish today. All he wanted at this point was to be open to good luck. He would prepare himself for any eventuality and try to be ready for whatever good fortune came. Clive would be weeks more in the burn unit; his good luck would come in smaller and slower increments. With not one feeling of disloyalty to his brother, Miles was ready for some good luck that very day.

  He got to the grounds at the opening of the inlet and set his gear. He put on the brightest herring he could find from the one packet of bait he’d brought along. He threaded the line through the belly and set the hooks perfectly. He attached the leader behind a brand new flasher, snapped the line into the downrigger, and sent the line down to where his depth sounder was showing a ball of feed. His new engine ran perfectly, and he watched his GPS to judge his trolling speed.

  The sun sparkled on the water, the distant horizon gleamed robin’s egg blue, thin clouds blew like banners to the north, and an easy swell lifted the boat in a rhythm that loped along the seas.

  Miles settled into his chair and steered the engine with a foot on the wheel, watched the end of his line.

  “Let us cast off the works of darkness,” said Miles and laughed at himself for remembering the scripture.

  On the end of his downrigger not four feet from where he sat, a raven landed, cocked its head back and forth, watched him carefully.

  “And put on the armor of light,” he added, nodding to the bird.

  “Miles!” said the raven.

  Miles’s feet turned cold, his hands turned cold, and he felt like puking. Had it said his name?

  “Miles!” said the bird again, poking its head back and forth as if to indicate he should come closer.

  He stood up, frightened, startled, and leaned closer to the glittering bird.

  “Yes?”

  The raven fluttered, jumped into the bait cooler, and grabbed the entire packet of herring. It lumbered into the air and flew down the inlet carrying the small cellophane packet, little silver fish spilling out into the sea.

  Miles watched the fat black bird fly to the southern shore, drop the packet on the beach and land on top of it with a kind of open-winged victory jig; he watched it eat the remaining silvery fish; listened to it laugh; began to be angry but then started to laugh, too, at the absurdity of it all. And he cried.

  He cried as if something in his chest had broken. His nose ran, his eyes were blinded, and he cried as if he’d become unfrozen, great heaving sobs so powerful he felt like everything inside was going to spill out of him into the water and into the air.

  When he slowly hiccuped to a stop, he was light-headed. He looked back at the distant beach; the raven was gone. He looked toward Cold Storage; a great cloud of birds circled the town. He thought he saw large, brown, four-legged forms walking on the beach, and he thought he saw two deer walking into the fringe of the beach. And he thought that it might be possible that everyone in the village, maybe everyone in the world, had turned into animals.

  He reached for his radio to call someone, to hear the comfort of a human voice, but just then the tip of his fishing rod jerked down and line screamed off the reel. Twenty yards behind the skiff, a massive salmon rose from the water, shaking itself against the hooks set deeply into its jaw.

  OF COURSE THE world changed, and the past both was and remains a hallucination that intrudes into our day-to-day life. Buildings fall and rise again, elections are won and lost, armies parade into the field and then find their way home. In Cold Storage, Alaska, stories came into currency concerning the whereabouts—or even the existence of—the person who had shot Jake in the leg and burned down the bar. The safe money said it was the man with the limp who had flown into town that same afternoon. There were some who speculated that Ed had torched the bar in revenge for Clive sleeping with Nix, although this rumor never gained much purchase; for one thing Ed both denied it and had an alibi, and for another he didn’t fit the gossip machine’s requirements for an arsonist. Ed was too pale a personality to be a firebug.

  Of course the man with the limp had disappeared, and most people speculated that he had taken the skiff on the outside coast in a snow squall, dumped it over, and died in the frigid waters. This story had a ring of poetic justice to it, but early that next spring a doctor from Juneau opened up his fishing cabin on the coast and found that it had been broken into sometime during the winter; all of his emergency food was gone, and Miles’s old cranky skiff was hauled up into the trees near the beach fringe where it appeared someone had put a bullet through the engine’s power head. The doctor also reported that the kayak he kept stored at the cabin was missing.

  Jake finally went in to the hospital in Sitka for surgery on his leg. Each day when he woke up he thought it would be the day a police officer with a warrant from Seattle would come take him into custody, but it didn’t happen. Miss Peel called from her rented house in Arizona. She was sounding a little sheepish and did not tell Jake how she got the hospital’s number or knew how he was there but asked if Jake had gotten the news about the IPO that the kid in Seattle and a couple of his friends had gone ahead and held. He had never taken Jake off the corporate papers and now, instead of owning stock in a company that never produced anything, he owned fifteen million dollars’ wort
h of stock in a company that never really produced anything. Miss Peel giggled when she told him this, and all Jake could do was shake his head and wonder at the strangeness of it all.

  Miss Peel had stood up to the DA in Seattle, had gotten out of the grand jury proceedings without perjuring herself or snitching off Jake. As a result, the grand jury “no true billed” the proposed indictment against him, so that there would be no federal charges coming. When she asked so sweetly for the numbers to take care of the IPO account transfer money, of course Jake gave it to her, and when Jake asked if she had heard anything from Oscar, she answered in a very sing-song voice that she had and that he was safe and sound after his trip to Cold Storage this winter and that in fact he was renting a house right there in Sitka. This was the moment that Jake Shoemaker realized that he was not an independent business man but just the beard for Miss Peel’s own business dealings. He had been working for her unwittingly all along.

  He put down the phone, shivered once, then smiled broadly.

  It was in this atmosphere of the miraculous that Lester wheeled Jake out of the hospital and into a cab for the airport where they picked up their tickets and flew to Seattle to meet the glorious Miss Peel and start discussing how to liquidate all of Jake’s business holdings.

  After he got his money together, Jake gave Miss Peel five hundred thousand dollars in cash and three quarters of all of his investment assets, and he moved to California. He and Lester spent a month at the ranch in the Santa Barbara hills where they finished the final draft of their script, and Jake made appointments to pitch the project to several studios. Jake never spoke to the police about Oscar, figuring that at best they were even and at worst, it would piss Oscar off; even so, Jake kept a nine millimeter under the seat of his car and in the drawer beside his bed in case Oscar ever wanted to come by for another chat.

  Jake’s injuries from his season in Alaska continued to nag him for the rest of his life. He would never throw a ball overhand and would always have a hard time swimming the crawl, which hurt his vanity more than having to carry a silver-tipped cane wherever he went. The cane became his trademark, made a nice stylish statement, but not being able to swim in the ranch’s marble-lined infinity pool out on the bluff made him feel old.