Cold Storage, Alaska

by John Straley

  Lester enjoyed Hollywood but came home by early summer saying that, while he liked the restaurants, he couldn’t take the traffic. He came back just in time to help with the rebuilding that had started on the site of the old bar.

  Clive spent months living near the burn center in Seattle. The troopers made noise about charging him with something, but Miss Peel’s lawyers helped dissuade them. And sitting on a bench outside of a courtroom in Seattle one uncomfortable day, Clive came up with a new plan for the Love Nest.

  Nix’s parents flew to Cold Storage, presumably to bring their daughter home, but ended up staying the spring and summer. Once they arrived, Nix began going by her given name, and after that she was called Maya by newcomers to the village. Miles went back and forth with the names, but Bonnie always called her Nix.

  Nix’s parents gave her the money they’d saved against the day she’d want a formal wedding. That money combined with the fire insurance Clive had purchased became the working capital for the new building. Nix, Bonnie, and Miles all became partners in Clive’s property. They built a new business: a bakery, a coffee shop, a bar with a dance floor, and up on the hillside a fifty-seat theater that had a small stage, a twenty by thirty screen, and a real sloping floor with theater seats. The new place was called “Little Brother’s,” and the ugly dog presided over every aspect of its financing and construction. The older citizens worried and fussed that it spelled the end of the town and the final acceptance of decadent urban life, but this was to be expected. Once the joint opened, people defended it or complained, but gradually it worked its way into the story of a town that kept bumping along from one tragedy to the next.

  Clive oversaw the project like a family patriarch. His skin was too painful for him to move quickly, too prone to infection to get dirty. He sat with a broad brimmed hat, drinking lemonade and gin with Weasel as others swung hammers. On the first day of framing up the walls, he hung a sign on the center beam. It was hand painted on rough plywood and read:

  How can I curse whom God has not cursed?

  How can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced?

  For from the top of the crags I see him,

  From the hills I behold him;

  Behold a people dwelling alone,

  And not counting itself among the nations.

  The framers didn’t know why it was there, but they didn’t mind. They liked the parts about the mountains.

  BONNIE TOOK TO the construction with a vigor people had not seen in Cold Storage since the long-dead founders cribbed together the first storefront. She loved shoveling debris and setting pilings in that blackened spot on the boardwalk; she loved the wild country that came in and out of focus from the building site. When she wore her tool belt and worked framing in a wall, she knew exactly where she was and what she was doing. She loved measuring and making a clean cut; she loved setting up the wall and feeling the future of that interior space; and she loved to look through the studs to see the wind lifting snow off the mountains. Fashioning a new building on the site of the fire felt as good as saving lives.

  It took three years for the partnership to complete the project, but the inaugural party was well worth any wait, for the first event was the premiere of Circling the Wagons. The movie became the hot center of gossip in the film industry for years to come, particularly because of its controversial ending.

  Robbie Robertson had done the music, and he was there. Sherman Alexie was listed as a producer, and he came to the party. Harvey Keitel, even though he wasn’t in the cast, had been invited, and everyone expected him to come solely on the strength of Weasel’s five-page invitation. On the weekend of the party, Weasel met almost every plane that came to the dock and smiled at everyone who wandered up the boardwalk, but he finally had to make do with Gary Farmer, who was the star of the film, and Clint Eastwood, who was the executive producer along with Miss Peel. Jake had an associate producer and screenwriter credit and a berth on Eastwood’s yacht. Clint had sailed his own boat from over the horizon to the docks of Cold Storage, Alaska, and had impressed the locals by helping his crew tie off the docking lines while keeping a cold beer in his pocket.

  Members of the international press stayed in the newly refurbished cold storage bunkhouse. Mrs. Cera served smoked black cod collars at the pre-screening reception, and that season, smoked black cod started turning up in many of the more expensive restaurants in Los Angeles. Blind Donkey played at the post-screening party, and Robbie Robertson came on stage and did a set that ended in a terrific version of “Love Is the Answer, But What Was the Question?” Weasel became so drunk that he missed the set; he complained about it for years to come.

  Jake appeared wearing a Spanish designer’s suit that looked like it was made from a kind of weather balloon, but he was laughing, joking, calling everyone by their first names, and generally acting more local than any of the locals.

  Lester wore his regular work clothes, held his own open house for his friends and family back at the studio, and refused to take a back seat at any of the proceedings. He’d been getting out more in the last few years, had spent time in Hoonah with his aunties and nephews, had fished with them, and gathered herring eggs in Sitka to take to them in spring. He was no longer a student of other people.

  At the opening of his movie, Lester strolled through the crowd like the host of the evening. He kept mixing up the seating so that his friends and family could be together, and he would not be shunted to one side. He teased Jake every chance he got but let his collaborator enjoy the Hollywood spotlight and later admitted that he’d enjoyed the evening more than he’d expected. For several seasons, his jewelry became one of the required accessories for both men and women in Hollywood, but Lester never wrote another film script.

  Bonnie, Miles, and Nix served the food and, together with Clive, tended the bar. Ed and Tina watched Miles and Bonnie’s little girl, who was almost the same age as their son. Ed would come to the party and then go back and stay with the kids, while Tina came and listened to the music and to the celebrities. Neither of them watched the movie. They were afraid to spoil their hopes for it, but later when they were alone together, they watched it in the new little theater; they laughed and clapped until their hands were sore.

  While the party raged on, Miles continued to serve food. As he came out of the kitchen with a plate of black cod, he watched his brother Clive gingerly holding an LP between the palms of his hands, a smile dazzling out from his broken face. He’d been turned inside out by the fire and spoke very little now; but he still had the soul of a great liar, a trickster, which reassured Miles. Clive turned toward him and the brothers looked at each other for perhaps one beat longer than usual, and in that one second acknowledged all of their good luck. And then Miles turned and quietly offered a black cod collar to Mr. Alexie, who was joking with Lester and Chris Eyre, the director; he smiled at all of them and offered the fish all around.

  Clive motioned to the door, and the big dog hobbled into the room and with a surprising show of strength jumped up onto the bar. Clive cleared his throat, and the guests settled down. He thanked Lester and thanked Jake, who he called the “Angel of Cold Storage, Alaska,” then he thanked all the assembled luminaries. He paused and turned to Little Brother and asked him to say a few words. The crowd tittered, expecting a parlor trick. A pretty woman in a silk skirt and dull gold jewelry laughed aloud and asked for another drink. None of the locals smiled but leaned forward. As some people shuffled their feet and waited for something to break the tension, Clive just looked at the battered dog, expectant—and, as always, patient.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Cold Storage, Alaska was the first book in the Cold Storage series. That it is the second one to be published (after The Big Both Ways) is an accident. Cold Storage was written as a tribute to one of my favorite genres: the screwball comedy. I’m drawn to comedy because it reminds me that all chaos does not resolve in tragedy, but sometimes chaos produces delightful connection. I also believe this i
s what both the Bible and Dharma teach as a possibility. I have long recognized that I am an oddball in the crime writing world in that I do not recognize revenge as the lifeblood of a great plot. Instead, after almost thirty years as a criminal investigator as well as a writer, I still believe that love and compassion are what move through the hearts of all characters.

  I am deeply indebted to a wonderful reader, Sophie Rosen, from Abbotsford, British Columbia, who gave me intelligent feedback and insight into this story early on. Also to my editor, Juliet Grames, from New York, New York, who showed courage and patience by taking me back into the fold. My heartfelt appreciation and thanks go to both women.