Four Quarters of Light

by Brian Keenan

  Mike soon had us settled in at his home. He was a big man in height and in girth. The walls of his home were draped in bear skins and the hides from musk ox. He brewed his own beer in his cellar and we enjoyed a few glasses as we chatted about our travels and intentions. Mike smiled in admiration as I told him of my travels to date and my last few weeks, when I intended travelling down through the south-west peninsula.

  ‘You’ve seen more of Alaska in a few months than most Alaskans have in their lifetime,’ he commented.

  I nodded, explaining that he wasn’t the first person to have told me that.

  ‘What have you made of it so far?’

  I told him I wasn’t quite sure. It was too big to be quickly summed up. In any case, most Alaskans to whom I had put that question had been stumped for an answer. ‘In a way, it’s a conundrum,’ I said, attempting an answer I knew would be hopelessly inadequate. ‘Sometimes it feels smaller than its actual size. And there are so many layers to it. Sometimes moving between different locations is like moving between unknown worlds. No wonder the writers of Star Trek stole the phrase “the Final Frontier” from Alaska. There’s a lot of worlds out there, and sometimes when I arrive in them I feel just like Captain Kirk, that I have boldly gone where no man has gone before.’ I saw Mike and his wife and Debra looking at me in silence. ‘It’s your home brew that’s doing the talking, Mike,’ I quickly added, trying to lighten the situation.

  ‘In vino veritas,’ Mike said with a laugh, filling my glass.

  ‘Well, the core of the conundrum is that it’s big but it’s small. It’s American but it’s not culturally part of the lower forty-eight. It’s one country yet full of different worlds. There is little consensus about the big issues, yet every Alaskan declares themselves Alaskans to the bone.’ I realized that the beer was having the precise effect on me I had said, so I decided to cut the monologue short. ‘It’s about transcendence. You can lose yourself and you can find yourself in the Big Lonely, and that is the biggest conundrum of all.’ I paused for a moment. ‘And I’m not drinking any more of this rocket fuel, Mike, okay?’ By now everyone was laughing, including me.

  The next day, Mike drove us around the town and the outlying area. It looked more like Connemara than I had first thought. He informed us that some people had reported sighting a polar bear only a few days ago. By all accounts it was a young one. It was unusual to find such creatures in and around Nome in summertime. He hoped the game and wildlife rangers found it before someone with a bellyful of booze decided to make a trophy out of it. In over twenty years as a police officer, Mike assured me that there had been no real serious crime. The community was too small and too long established. Everybody knew everybody else’s business. But there were many funny and sad stories, and some that were not so funny, like finding the bodies of young kids who have committed suicide or have gone off on their snow mobiles without the right gear and no bush savvy. ‘You need to teach survival skills very young here. Bringing home some young kid who has died from exposure after a few days in the bush is very disturbing. You probably know the kid and its family. It is a very unpleasant and upsetting day’s work. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen too often.’ Mike paused for a moment, then stated that it wasn’t so much a police force they needed in Nome as a force of psychiatrists and social workers.

  Then he related another story about his first months on the job. He was in the station house when a call came in from a woman claiming that there were intruders in her home and they were trying to kill her. When she gave her name and address, the rest of the officers were reluctant to go to her assistance. She had made many similar calls before, and as the ‘new kid on the block’ Mike was sent to deal with the situation. The woman lived on her own in a large wooden house about forty-five minutes by car from town and miles from anyone else. Mike had some trouble finding the place but eventually made it. He remembered the woman’s big, staring eyes and her whispering voice. She ushered him in, signalling for him to be quiet. Mike obeyed, and she whispered to him that she could hear ‘them’ talking about her and how they were going to kill her. They wanted her house all to themselves. Mike knew immediately that the woman was insane but went through the house checking all the rooms, looking under beds and into wardrobes to assure her no-one was there. But she insisted she could still hear voices. She pointed to the electric sockets and told Mike to listen. He did, and then, putting on a conspiratorial face, he nodded. Yes, he could hear them. He told her to wait while he went out to his car, from which he returned with a home battery charger. Saying nothing but signalling with his finger for her to stay silent, he went through the house plugging in the charger at every socket and pointing to the needle on the gauge as it reflected the electric charge. After he had ‘sucked the voices’ out of the sockets the lady was greatly impressed. She couldn’t hear them any longer. Mike left with the woman singing his praises and thanking him profusely for saving her life! As he was about to drive off, she suddenly asked what she should do if they returned. ‘Just change your light bulbs, madam,’ Mike informed her, ‘that should take care of things. They don’t like new bright lights.’

  ‘How did you work that one out?’ I asked him.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he answered. ‘It was the first thing that came into my head.’

  ‘And what became of the woman?’

  ‘We didn’t really have many more calls from her. As I recall, she died a few years later. She was found in her house with all the lights on and enough boxes of new bulbs to light up Nome at Christmas time.’

  We both laughed, and I conceded to myself that Nome was as I had imagined – a place full of stories.

  Later that day we ascertained that it might be several days before we could get a small plane to fly us to the Serpentine hot springs, and we would have to overnight there. But that was impossible. It would throw my whole schedule completely out, and I had been away from Audrey and the kids for long enough. We decided to leave the next day, which was earlier than we had planned, as there was little point in remaining.

  While heading back to the town, we passed a small semiderelict cottage.

  ‘That’s Wyatt Earp’s old home,’ Mike informed us. I knew from some background reading that the famous frontier marshal had amassed a fortune in Nome in just a few years and had headed back to the States. I was surprised the cottage was in such a state and wondered why. ‘Image isn’t everything,’ Mike replied, ‘and a lot of folk up here don’t look too kindly on Mr Earp. The truth is, he arrived here in 1898, a bald, bespectacled, paunchy man in his fifties. Well past his prime. He was mean, tight-fisted and malicious, and his wife was as ugly in looks as he was in personality. He built the Dextor Saloon in town and he sucked the life’s blood out of the twenty thousand miners and their families who shivered and died in tents trying to scrape a few ounces of gold off the beach. He bailed out after two years with an absolute fortune. If Nome was ever a seedy, ruthless and ugly place to be in, it was because of professional conmen like Wyatt Earp and many like him.’

  ‘Well, I guess that puts paid to Wyatt Earp’s romantic reputation,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mike. ‘And good riddance to all sewer-rats!’

  Front Street had been the heart and business centre of Nome since the gold rush. Apart from tacky neon lights naming the bars, it still had the feel of a street that grew up on the drunken dreams of gold-hungry men and is still hanging on long after they and their dreams have died. There are no longer forty-four saloons; there’s only a handful left. Only two were open when I arrived. There were some shops and a hotel too, but there was little activity, except in the Board of Trade Saloon where half a dozen Eskimo men were hanging about, shifty and obvious. I tried not to look into their eyes as I passed, for I knew there was nothing in them. These men are pathetic shadows, but still I tried to say a cheering ‘Hi guys’ as I passed. It was a hollow attempt at offering them some sense of identity. They returned my greeting with morose politeness and I went into their bar
. Was I trying to show them that I hadn’t dismissed them, or was I too embarrassed by my own fear and pity for these washed-up wrecks of men?

  Inside, the bar was seedy and depressing, as I knew it would be. About a dozen or so men and women were sprawled around the room in various stages of intoxication. They were all Eskimo. I was the lone white man and they eyed me with a mix of contempt and curiosity. I ordered a beer in a loud voice from the Eskimo woman behind the bar. It was a dead giveaway about my anxiety. Their eyes stayed on me as I drank. I felt like an exotic butterfly skewered in a display case. A poster behind the bar declared it ‘The Sin Capital of Nome’. I smiled, pretending to be real casual.

  A man was sitting at a table with two women a few feet from me. ‘Hey, man, you looking for some sin?’

  I thought to myself how the whole moment could have been a scene in a very poor B movie. I didn’t bother to look at him because I knew he would see the apprehension in my eyes, and I answered with a bullshit remark straight out of the B movie I was making in my head: ‘No thanks. I’ve done enough sinning in my life, don’t need any more.’

  The remark must have impressed another customer standing at the bar who laughed openly and said, ‘Ain’t we all, brother, and ain’t that why we’re all here!’

  I finished my beer and ordered another one. I immediately regretted it. I knew that their curiosity was becoming greater than their contempt. I thought to myself, ‘Soon, one of them will want to start a conversation in the hope that I will buy him a drink. I have to find a way to get out of here without making my panic apparent.’

  I noticed some ivory carving lined up on the shelf behind the bar.

  ‘Those for sale?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, but not here,’ the barmaid answered. ‘You gotta talk with him back there in the shop.’ She pointed into an archway that led from behind the bar into the shop next door. Then she placed her body in the archway and called out for Jim, gesturing with her hand for me to come behind the bar and go through the arch. I complied, and took my drink with me in case one of them drank it while I was away, forcing me to complain or quietly buy another. Whichever I chose, they would have me tighter in their grasp.

  The shop was a tiny room about eight feet by ten. There was a small showcase counter with an empty revolving chair. The walls were shelved and lined with various pieces of ivory carvings and scrimshaw work. Jim appeared from behind a curtain that led into another room. He was in his fifties and wore a red plaid shirt and cheap denim work trousers. His hair was yellow and grey, and his fingers had black nicotine marks on them.

  I pointed out a few pieces and asked their price. He told me, but when I didn’t offer to buy he suggested that ‘everything was negotiable’. I told him there was a large piece behind the bar that interested me. ‘Okay, show me,’ he said, and pointed me back through the arch.

  I pointed to a long piece of what I thought was ivory with an animal head carved at each end. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  Before he could answer, one of the customers shouted out ‘An Eskimo dildo!’ in a voice full of derision and laughter. Jim suggested that perhaps the man himself should buy it. The sarcasm was softly delivered, but everyone else in the bar was enjoying it, even the man himself. While the customers were guffawing at him he nodded his head in the direction of the shop. As I passed him to enter the arch, he said, ‘A man should never do business in a bar, even if he owns it.’

  He seated himself in his chair and explained that the carving I had asked about was the penis bone of a walrus and the heads at either end were carved from the tusk. He made me a good price for this item and I asked if this too was negotiable. He thought for a moment, then explained that the same item in a native crafts shop in Anchorage would cost me five times what he was charging.

  I smiled. ‘I’m not in Anchorage, Jim, and I’m not a gullible tourist either.’

  Jim nodded his head. ‘Okay, I can see that, so we can talk about it. What are you doing in Nome anyway?’

  I explained that I was researching a book and that maybe he could tell me some stories that may be of use to me. I suggested that he might even get a mention if they were any good and the price for the walrus bone was right. Jim smiled, then said that henceforth he intended to change his advice about not doing business in a bar. ‘From now on I will be saying never do business in your own bar with a talkative Irishman.’

  I let another remark pass and asked him about himself. He was from Arkansas originally and had been in Alaska about thirtythree years. He was a painter by trade and had come to Nome on a painting contract with the military. There was a lot of work around and he made a lot of money at one thing and another when there weren’t so many rules and regulations. The latter phrase suggested that the ‘one thing and another’ might well have been illegal or at least dubious. He eventually bought the bar and established his ivory trade business. He also ran a bingo hall business for the Eskimos above the saloon. He made a point of telling me he fed the Eskimos for free when they came to his bingo hall.

  As he was talking, a young Eskimo man in his late twenties came in. I browsed around the room while Jim and he did business. The young man had brought along some small ivory carvings of musk ox. Jim studied them, then asked how much he wanted. The young man named his price and Jim agreed without question or negotiation. He went into the back room to get some money. While he was away I admired the proportion and detail of the work, which the young Eskimo told me he had done himself. He had only been carving for a year, which I found hard to believe, given the craftsmanship of the work. Then Jim came back in and handed over the money. The young man thanked him politely and left.

  ‘Nice work for such an amateur,’ I observed.

  ‘Yes, he’s good, but they all are. There’s something about these people. They’ve just got to see something once, even for a few minutes, and they have it. They can reproduce it to scale perfection.’ Jim was obviously impressed by the intuitive artistry of the Eskimo. ‘You noticed, I paid him exactly what he asked for. I always do. They don’t try to cheat me and I don’t cheat them.’

  I looked at the wad of money in his hand. I believed what he told me but his honesty seemed to be paying off, for him at least. I was sure that Jim had been involved in all sorts of dubious activities over the years, but I liked him. I was equally sure that he had hundreds of stories to tell, but when I pushed him on the subject he side-stepped. ‘Sometimes telling stories can get you into trouble in this town,’ he said. I was baffled as to what he meant, but before I could ask he waved me through the curtain into his back room.

  ‘There are some things I won’t sell,’ he continued. ‘This piece is a special favourite of mine.’ He lifted up a beautiful scrimshawed ivory box, which slid open like a matchbox. He explained that it had been made by an old one-legged carver who was probably the best of his generation. Jim had bought many pieces from him over the years, but this piece the old man had made for himself. ‘You see,’ Jim added, ‘all this old man ever wanted was a woman like himself. But a one-legged man is no good to any Eskimo woman. He can’t work, can’t drive a dog team, can’t hunt or fish. He never found his woman. So he did for himself what he did better than anyone else. He made for himself his perfect woman. Look.’

  I looked as Jim slid open the box. Inside, lying on a silk bed, was a small carving of a naked woman. The ivory was obviously prehistoric. It was the same soft brown and red colour as the samples John Reese had shown me. The tiny face was as beautifully ethnic as my lovely Lena, but the reclining figure had only one leg.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, thinking that the story and the carving formed an exquisite symmetry. ‘How did you come to buy it if he made it for himself?’

  Jim closed the box and wrapped it in a square of black velvet. ‘He came in to me one day and gave it to me. He had shown it to me before and refused to sell it when I offered him good money. But that day he just gave it to me and refused any money for it. He
said that I had looked after him for many years when no-one else was too interested in him. He hoped she would comfort me the way she had him. The next time I saw him was a few weeks later in a coffin in the undertaker’s. He had just gone off and died quietly. There were only a handful of people at the funeral. But at least me and his wife were there to say goodbye.’

  ‘Are you married, Jim?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not any more, least ways.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll think over some of these things and get back to you before I leave tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll know where to find me,’ he called after me as I walked out the door.

  I walked up the street reminding myself that even Satan was born an angel and that Jim West, proprietor of the Sin Capital of Nome, was truly the Eskimo Godfather.

  Soul Bears

  Back in Fairbanks, two days in advance of schedule, it was like coming home except that Audrey and the boys wouldn’t be there. I had contacted them and asked Audrey to drive the Pequod up from Anchorage to meet us. I couldn’t wait, but was glad all the same of the day and a half’s breathing space.

  After I had deposited my belongings in my cabin in the woods, Debra suggested I should come out to her home. She only lived a few miles away and would pick me up. I was glad of the invitation. Being alone in this borrowed cabin I had come to think of as my own didn’t seem so attractive. I knew there were unfinished things that twenty-four hours alone in my cabin would not resolve, and I knew that Debra’s invitation carried with it an understanding of that. We had talked much during our time together but there were still lots of empty spaces. There were several questions I felt the need of answers for, but I didn’t have the right formulation of words to ask them. Sometimes words get in the way. They put more trees into the wilderness when you are trying to see your way through. I had sensed that Debra intuitively knew what was running around in my head.