by Seth Kantner
But Stevie ended up getting us laughing, pointing down, pointing out the impossible diameter of one of Melt’s old frozen turds. Stevie—and me—we should have cried, but we were too young that night to remember how.
Beside Dawna’s car, I lit a match and checked the ground for dog shit. I slid under the bell housing. It was black with grease. I yanked wires off the neutral safety switch, bit insulation, twisted strands, then stood outside letting time wander away, wondering what the hell was I doing, wandering around this city like a loose dog swallowing crap?
Orange clouds hung overhead. Either Nancy Reagan had gotten at the nuke button or it was city night, not giving the sky any sleep. My mouth was as furry as it was an hour after eating lentils. A strip of the paniqtuq out of Dawna’s refrigerator would taste good. Refrigerators made me think of summer, up north, my teenage years, eating fish and igamaaqłuk porcupine because nothing would keep for long in the siġḷuaq.
I slugged the white Chevette. “Daw-na!” I slugged again. Lumpy does what he feels, loses fingers and goes to jail if that’s the price. “Nothing works! Nothing is working! People are messed up!” My hand didn’t bleed. I was disappointed and hunched over it until the canvas of my jeans grew icy. My damaged feet were numb. I trudged up the stairs to beg a ride to my bicycle. The bedroom door was closed. Everywhere my eyes settled I took them away and thought of the feel of fingers on a gun stock, of shooting, smashing, shattering. Quietly, I washed the dishes, then examined Dawna’s photos, hidden, pinned inside cupboard doors. They were of people and buildings, a dog crossing in front of cars, a woman running on a neon-night street. Black and white; the contrasts were harsh, the faces hard-partying. Who could say if they were art? I believed them, and didn’t know much else to say that about, so maybe they were. Bubbles tinked in a 7UP can on the TV. I finished it and lay the can in the trash, wanting to swallow all sign of traveling this way.
Outside, the middle of the night was damp, tingly in my nose. Gunshots would roll away hollowly. It felt wrong, having so far to go and without a gun. The doors to Dave’s Mustang were locked. Spare light glinted off the chrome. Fresh snow lay on the roof, downy and perfect for snow ice cream. Iris would be out with a spatula gathering a bucketful.
A light came on upstairs.
In the Chevette, the twisted key glinted in the ignition. I sat for a moment, breathing in and out my rage at all the humans with their wasted warmth, and love locked out of reach; examining my desire to drive engines, and wanting honesty; wondering, was that something Abe had invented to amuse himself? Maybe I only wanted honesty and kindness to be precious because they were things I’d wasted time learning—like bear tracks and algebra.
The engine heaved over, spun, and fired!
The car bucked out onto the street. The wheels spun on snow. The throttle stuck. The engine made a continuous growl, a growl that said worn-out timing gears. Soft white street blurred under the hood. Twin tracks stretched behind. In the mirrors, the Mustang’s headlights swung onto the road. The wheel stiffened. I fought it. The car plowed through crew-cut bushes guarding a stranger’s lawn. Dogs barked. I hunched behind the hood and lifted it a few inches. The hinges squeaked. Dave’s Mustang rocketed past.
“Man, did you ever not learn to follow tracks!” Elated, I held a match under the auto choke. I pictured grabbing up a rifle, chambering a round. I had been quick at moving shots. When the rabid fox angled across the ice toward my team, rasping, out of its mind, I swung and dropped it, neck-shot. Don’t shoot rabid animals in the head; the brain is needed to verify the virus. My teeth grated as the taillights shrank out of range.
NORTHERN LIGHTS BOULEVARD led to ocean, gleaming, moonlit, windy gray. The engine revved and idled rough. I got out. Walked to the edge of the overlook. The breeze was chilly. I’d biked here. Tonight I wanted to find the other edge of the city, the north edge, where houses stopped and land started. Ice pans drifted in the current. Open water, we called it at home. More dangerous than bears. Out in the inlet, water slapped ice. Thickets of birch lined the shore, growing close, straight and pale, like patches of giant moose hair. Behind were the lights of the airport.
Down the deserted road, I gunned, full throttle, the car shuddering like an Apollo reentry vehicle in the movies. I was driving! Driving—how was it so straightforward and logical? It must be the drivers, the places they drove, and their irreverence when they arrived that remained incomprehensible.
Before dawn I backtracked away from jet lights in the sky, toward the mountains, carefully switching lanes, watching for police, waiting for traffic lights to be green and then some. I thought about wrecking her car, plunging it into willows, or sinking it in saltwater. But the pollution, the waste of resources, the meanness—I decided to repair it. I steered in behind January’s truck. The engine died, dieseled, and shook the car. My feet tingled. The streetlights had dimmed, everything gone flat and dull. The door creaked open. Cool air poured in. My head lowered against the wheel, breathing shallow.
“Are you all right?”
The girl stood on the slushy gravel, inhaling a Marlboro Light. “Are you going to be sick?” She was from the trailer next to January’s. Her long hair was damp. Her shirtsleeves too long. Her eyes wide set and friendly.
“Can I have a puff?”
She turned the butt deftly. “There’s more inside. I could get you one?”
I took it from her fingers. “I’m more addicted to sharing than nicotine.”
She pressed her sleeves against her palms and shivered. “Mom has a freight run to Bethel tonight. She flies for Markair Express. Rainy Pass is IFR. You want to come in?”
The trailer was cluttered with rubber boots at the door. Inside, calculus books splayed on a blue corduroy couch; cassette tapes were abandoned on the carpet. Something rubbery and tentacled was thawing in the stainless steel sink. Stevie Nicks’s voice skated softly out of a bedroom. A circle of plywood lay across a green plastic garbage barrel for a table, heaped. The Can’t-Grows sniffed and growled at my ankles. She locked the door.
I went to the creature in the sink. Looked in its frosty eye. Its eight arms draped across plates and cups with oily tea left in them, and halfway to the floor. “Okay to touch him? It’s an octopus?”
“I hope you’re not disgusted. Dad caught it last summer at Naknek. I decided I better cook it before it gets freezer burn. You probably don’t believe me, but the meat’s excellent.”
“I believe you very much.” Something behind my eyes turned orange as a map of Asia. “W-what’s freezer burn?”
“You know, dried stale old flavor. I’m going to cut it up and simmer it in salt water. Apparently it’s good pickled, too.” She ran water and handed over a glass. Her hands were smooth, her fingernails all different lengths and coated with something glossy. “I’m Cheryl.” She pulled up her sleeves.
“My name is, uh, Clayton.”
We sat on opposite ends of the couch. A yawn poured in and out of me, then another. I concentrated on trying to remember my name. She talked freely—UAA, biology, calculus, speech, parking permits. She was naluaġmiu, blond, captivating eyes; how could this person be talking casually to me? Was this really happening? What would be the right things to say? Suddenly I wished Stevie were here, with his Band-Aided glasses and big grin. Together maybe we could impress her with something—stories of drunken behavior, shooting, and big sheefish that tasted excellent? Her lips moved. I liked watching the fringes of them form words. My brain tried to follow but pitched into a stupor. Jerry and Iris playing Chinese checkers with .22 bullets in a yellow plastic Remington cartridge box, the lamp flickering, beaver tail and feet simmering in the cannibal pot.
“—dental hygienist.” Her hand patted my knee. “What do you think, Clayton? Don’t say ‘Stick your hands in spit all day?’”
“I’d hold them.” I stood up, blinking in dismay.
“I’m unsure what I want to do, in college, I mean.”
I caught myself, about to blurt, Y
ou’re normal and divine, and cook octopus, what do you mean you don’t know what you want to do? “I—January’s going to get me up in about fifteen minutes to look at the roof. Somehow I have to get my bike at Dimond Mall. I’d better go.” I stood at the sink, rubbing my eyes.
Her lips quirked to one side. “Your uncle owes the IRS fourteen thousand. That’s what Mom told me.”
“Is she coming home soon, your mom?”
“She goes to her boyfriend’s.”
“Your mom has a boyfriend?”
Through the window we saw January open his aluminum door, spit, glance around, and step out. The sky was brightening, the eaves dripping. He rubbed his lower back, walked behind his truck, peered in the window of Dawna’s white Chevette, and spat again.
Cheryl murmured, “You ever wonder where he gets all that spit?”
I glanced at her. She returned my gaze, a teasing look in her blue-green eyes. Then we were laughing. We bent down, out of sight behind the counter.
“He’s not my uncle. He bounty hunted, with that ski plane my dad gave him. Sometimes he sent boxes of used clothes. Do you have any ideas, how I could make him that much money?”
“Get on at Prudhoe. Or fly to Dutch, get out on a winter crabber. That’s what my dad does.” She straightened up and ran new cold water over the octopus. I watched, admiring the uninhibited way she moved. She turned and shook drops of water off her fingers. “Gotta be tough for that. And brave. It’s very dangerous.” She forced pans and dishes out of the way and rinsed two mugs.
“I’m not scared of things out away from people. Want me to wash your dishes?”
“Any time! I’m going to boil water, make us a strong cup of Ass-am Fag-fopi.”
It had been a long day, a longer night, way too much inside my head again. “A cup of what?” I said, resigned to being ignorant.
She rifled a cupboard, held up a tiny metallic green bag. “Ass-am Fag-fopi, that’s what Dad calls his favorite blend of Upton tea. Assam tea. The initials F-T-G-F-O-P-I stand for things in tea-fanatic lingo. Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe something-or-other.”
“Oh. Tea art?” I carefully stacked dishes aside. “Or is it tea mechanics?”
“You’re funny.”
“I’m trying to be normal.”
“Really?” she said. “Why?”
“Isn’t that what people do?”
SEVENTEEN
UNDER THE PLANE, new grass and fireweed shoots grew up around the skis. The chain locked in a figure eight around the prop was heavy, and spare links had been left heaped on the ground, killing a patch of earth’s chances for summer. In the bright sky, planes droned, and on the water of Lake Hood floatplanes taxied, taking off and landing every few minutes—Anchorage sportsmen seeking “sport” or “game” or whatever it was they did on their piston-driven forays out to the wilderness. January had said this was the busiest floatplane base in the world, and that seemed plausible. The padlock was square and the sign read GROUNDED BY FEDERAL SEIZURE. He might have been making payments, but not fast enough.
Lance poked at the key slot with a filed-down feeler gauge, counting the infinitesimal bump of each lock pin.
“I’m unsure what I’m doing,” I admitted, and heard Cheryl’s words resonate in my head. We laughed for some reason—Lance and I. He was my friend. I hadn’t had to drink soap. I’d never had a friend you could say anything to, and that felt much stranger than drinking poison.
“Six pins!” he murmured in admiration. “Your tax dollars at work.” He dropped the feeler gauge into his toolbox, stepped down off the ski and untangled a Stanley hacksaw. “Now that’s a key!” he quipped in an Australian accent. A string of cars whooshed past on Spenard. “You’re not sure what you’re doing? What, with Cheryl? And you really wish I’d just go out with her instead?” He grinned. His hair was messy, black horns sticking up. It was May and his arms rippled with tanned muscles. He was short and slim and looked much younger than forty-two.
“We’re not ‘going out.’ She wants to be friends.”
“Bummer.” He sat on his toolbox. He twisted his head until his neck made a soft pop. He pulled a grass stalk, chewed it, and stared across the water. “You better plink-plank along to fourteen grand, homes. Compound interest and entropy never sleep.”
“Entropy? Is that the force that keeps some people from getting around to emptying their slop bucket in the morning?”
He laughed, a loud laugh that ripped free like a raven’s caw, irresistible; two men with fishing poles and hip boots, waiting on a pilot loading a plane with a king salmon stenciled on the fuselage, turned and grinned. More than most things in Anchorage, I wanted to learn to laugh like Lance.
A floatplane took off, the flat-pitched prop deafening. A second plane flew overhead. I glanced up warily, still not quite used to the fact that planes weren’t going to poop from overhead like gulls. “I think I’m using January’s plane for target practice.”
He fingered tears in the fabric of the airplane, patched with weathered duct tape. “Maintenance not Thompson’s strong suit, huh?”
“Strong suit?”
“His cup of tea?”
“He doesn’t drink tea.”
He laughed again.
I sat on my heels. “My jobs, making money?—that’s all me pretending. Money is everyone’s connective tissue. It’s their measure of success, isn’t it?”
“What do you call success up north?”
“Hunting. Fat meat. And dead wolves. And winning at basketball, of course.”
He leaned forward. “So that’s better?”
“Shuck. I sure don’t know how to feel that way about money! Like I said, I’m using January’s plane for practice.”
“Man, Scroat, you’re way too serious. I need coffee for this conversation.” He slapped dust off his jeans, walked to his truck, and shoved his toolbox behind the seat. He came back. “You don’t want money? You just want money so people who like money will like you?” He shouted laughter. “Sprout some balls!”
We climbed in and bounced onto Spenard Road. Stray wires hung like roots out of a cutbank from behind the dashboard. An electrical short in the cassette player flickered the green lights in time to the beat. The sun was warm. The pavement dry. On the other side of the glass, the city was busy with a Saturday.
At the coffee shop we traded positions and he coached me into a parallel parking slot. Inside, he ordered cappuccino and I hot water—silver tea, Abe called it. Something for nothing. Chlorine flavored the water. Nothing for everything? He sprawled at a table. “So, the Igloo Gigoloo wants to be one of the sheep.” He talked singsongy, encompassing the coffee shop with the sweep of his arm. “‘Baaa! Is the herd going that way? Swallow inoculant? Breed? Baaa!’” Lance’s laughs ripped out, bouncing against the ceiling corners. Customers glanced our way. I felt safe, and cool, canopied in his presence. Alone, I’d have been twitching, nervous and shamed, certain he and his friends were laughing at me. Laughter in Takunak, when I was present, had been that way.
I lowered my chin to my overlapped fingers, lowered my voice, trying to encourage his lower. “When we used to see a traveler coming, we’d run down on the ice. ‘Hi,’ we’d say, ‘Com’on up. We’ve got bread! Crazy Joe brought yeast, and we had flour. We’ve got bread. We can make snow ice cream. You can stay as long as you want.’
“What I’m saying, Lance . . . it’s confusing here. I’m trying to learn stuff without getting mean. Like my friend’s dad where I grew up, this guy Melt Wolfglove. He’s scary. Sometimes I even think about killing people. Well, there’s so many of them”—I dropped my voice further—“environmentally, too, that seems the only conscientious career.”
“Do it.” He shrugged and sipped. “Melt Wolfglove? That’s a name! ‘Howdy. Name’s Melt. Melt Wolfglove. I done come for the little lady.’”
“I said I’m trying to learn stuff without getting mean.” I told him about Melt and the piles of clothes frozen to the walls, Dawna and t
he Wonder Woman poster, Nippy’s rotten teeth and bumpy eyes, Newt’s wrist, Enuk’s wolves and his face and his leather pouch . . .
“So, what have you learned here? I know you don’t know squat about mechanicing.”
“A couple things about tea. Engines. People’s the thing. I keep getting more confused.”
Lance swung his gaze. Suddenly it was wide-eyed, hard and blue, surprisingly intimidating coming out of his small features. “You might as well accept it, this ‘stuff’ can’t be learned. It doesn’t make enough sense. You have to be fed it!”
People were glancing over.
“How do you tell which ones are sheep?”
“You don’t. You figure out who you are. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
“Who are you then?”
“I’m—” For the first time I saw him, crouching behind his shield of words. He raised an eyebrow, shrugged mockingly. “Welcome. I’m Replicant five-seven-four, your guide here on the Plastic Planet. I’m one million units of toll-free explanation. My human cover is that I was raised white trash in Seward, attended college at Evergreen, lost the brown-eyed love of my life to a Neanderthal fireman; I live alone, read books I can’t comprehend, have expensive tools and a cheap Chevy. Enough? Who are you?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Actually, I think that is something you do know.” He tilted his head and I thought I saw what was next.