Rice Crispe
foot massager
mixnut
2 chip beef
9 eggs
crab toasties
pads
knox gelatin
rinso blue
At the cemetery he tried to console Venise and me, who were in no need of consolation, who had long ago given up trying to know Biruté, trying to earn her respect and affection or at least her attention, and who realized that she had never left that forest near Telšiai, and who could blame her? Dad was having none of our sympathy. He was, he insisted, the most fortunate fellow who ever lived. “Biruté was a great beauty,” he said. “She could have had any man she wanted. She was my sweetheart, my one and only, the light of my life.”
One night not too many years ago, but before Dad’s dissolution was evident, we sat up at my house after slurping down dozens of oysters and several bowls of cheese grits. We were sprawled on the couch with our legs on the coffee table, drinking Irish whiskey and talking. Satchel, my old pal, was asleep in Dad’s lap with a paw over his eyes. For some reason we started talking about phrases you never wanted to hear or read, like when the doctor looks at a mole on your face and says, “I don’t like the looks of that.” We got a pen and an envelope and made a list. I’ve saved it:
•I’ve met someone.
•Family meeting.
•You’d better sit down.
•You have the right to remain silent.
•We have to talk.
•I do.
•I did.
•Greetings.
•Some assembly required.
•Attention passengers on Miami Flight 431.
•Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?
•I wouldn’t lie to you.
•I’ve got your back.
•Would you mind shaving my back?
•I know a guy.
•I have your biopsy results.
•Trust me.
•Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
•Can I be totally honest with you?
•There’s no easy way to say this.
•Would anyone like to share his or her feelings?
•Can I have a word with you in private?
•Can I have a word with you in the shower?
•You’ve been served.
•Do as I say and no one gets hurt.
•I’m not sure how else to say this.
•Because I’m your father.
22
I met Carlos at Great Northern Coffee Roasters, where he had a coupon for a free coffee from his motel. I asked him where he was staying. He said it was better that I didn’t know. I was about to say that didn’t make any sense when he nodded to an empty table in the back and said we should sit there. He took the chair facing the window and the entrance. I picked up our coffees and told him I thought he’d been a dream last night. He looked over my shoulder toward the window. I said he was making me paranoid. It was Monday morning, and he told me he’d already been to seven o’clock Mass at Immaculate Conception. When he took off his cap, I saw that he’d dyed his hair blond—though it looked more tangeriney—and clipped it short. He took out his wallet and showed me his Florida driver’s license. His name was Paul M. Kunkel, and he was an organ donor. I said, “Who’s she?” meaning the woman in the photograph beside the license.
“That’s Mrs. Kunkel. Alberta.”
“Quite a catch.”
He said he wanted to see Vladimir before Vladimir saw him. I said no one’s out for a stroll in this weather. He reminded me that Vladimir was Russian and that ice was in his blood. And then he said that this Carlos O’Brien I spoke of was actually—but not really—scuba diving in Key Largo.
I said, “How do you make your living, Paul?”
“CPA.”
“I could use a new career myself. I used to be an observant guy, or at least I thought I was. But now I seem to miss everything.”
“You could play second base for the Marlins.”
“Dad always said I was too gullible for the job.”
“May his soul rest in peace.”
“When your dad dies, you’re next.”
“My old man, God bless his Irish soul, is ninety-two and claims he’s still banging all the widows at Century Village.”
We raised our mugs and toasted Barney O’Brien, the randy old goat.
A woman carried a coffee and a plastic take-out box of salad to a table and sat. She took off her jacket and loosened her scarf. She took the plastic lid off the box, opened her foil packet of salad dressing, and squeezed it over the salad. Lucinda Williams was singing about a sweet old world over the sound system. The woman resnapped the lid to the box and began to shake the box. And she kept shaking it for a minute, at least, and I was seized with a terrible urge to rush across the room and snatch the goddamn box away from her and maybe dump the salad in her lap. I hate annoying and ridiculous rituals like this and like the smokers who slap the new pack of cigarettes against the heel of their hand a couple of dozen times, thinking they’re somehow packing the tobacco so it burns slower. Finally, she stopped. She folded her hands, closed her eyes, and prayed over the food. And then she ate, stabbing her food and then masticating it so slowly and deliberately that I knew she was counting her chews. And then a large, contented breath before the next bite. Carlos bought two more coffees to go, and we bundled up and went. We were driving to North Pole to buy me a weapon. I insisted I didn’t want one and wouldn’t fire one. If I was seriously in danger, then I should leave. “That won’t stop them,” he said. “Get the gun; it’ll make me feel better.”
Carlos had rented himself a burly black GMC Yukon, built like a mobile brick shithouse, and he was still having trouble keeping it steady against a perilous crosswind. The stark beauty of the landscape east of Fairbanks contrasted sharply with the agonizing ugliness of the indigenous architecture. Each structure we passed stood as hideous and bleak as its distant neighbor. It hurt to look at the warehouses and homes and imagine the lives going on behind those walls. I’m sure I was seeing the barren and hostile world through the gloomy lens of my father’s death, but even that did not explain the despair I felt. I understood I was subtropically biased, but still, I wanted to carry these huddled and hermetic folks away and set them on a beach in Florida, under a coconut palm, with drinks in hand. Resurrection!
I asked Carlos where the name Paul Kunkel came from. He told me that Paul was a guy he shot dead in an armed robbery when he was a rookie. Carlos got himself a commendation and a promotion. “So he’s always been kind of a lucky charm.” We passed what may once have been a home or a restaurant or an auto parts store with a mansard roof. Half the front was brick, half wooden siding with peeling red paint. All the windows were boarded with plywood—an emblem of some failed dream.
I said, “How old was Paul Kunkel?”
“Sixteen. Seventeen.”
“You couldn’t just wing him?”
“He’d just killed the convenience store clerk, a single mom with two kids.”
“Jesus.”
“You aim for the center of mass, not a wing. That’s your first lesson in marksmanship.”
In North Pole there were, not surprisingly, streets named St. Nicholas, Kris Kringle, and Santa Claus. There were Donner, Blitzen, and Mistletoe Drives. A sign at the town limits welcomed us to a place where the spirit of Christmas lives year-round. We drove by Santa’s house and by the largest Santa in the world. We stopped for a bracer at the Refinery Lounge because nothing goes together like drinking and shooting, unless it’s drinking and driving. Carlos kept the car locked but running while we went inside and ordered Irish coffees. The bartender, Tiffany, told Carlos he looked familiar. He said, “I’d remember you,” and stuck out his hand. “Paul Kunkel.”
She said, “You don’t look like a Paul.” She told us we should stop by on Friday for karaoke. Carlos said, “Maybe you and I could sing a duet.” She said it was hard getting a
sitter on Friday nights. Her boy Connor was six.
We said goodbye and left. We drove a mile or so and turned off on a single-lane gravel road, which we followed for a quarter of a mile to a modular home that doubled as a gun shop, Alaska Under Arms. It was, Carlos said, a family-owned business, meaning no sales tax. Carlos suggested a Taurus PT 738, .38-caliber, and who was I to argue? Made in Miami! He also bought two hundred rounds of Remington bullets, earplugs, and a belt-ride holster. The owner, Jed Broadbent, who smelled like he’d last bathed in tepid curdled milk, took out a tube of K-Y from his shirt pocket and smeared the jelly over his face. He swore by the product as a skin moisturizer and offered us the tube to try. In the car, Carlos handed me the gun and a box of bullets. “You’re a big boy now, Coyote.”
“Don’t I need a license to carry this?”
Carlos smiled and told me to read the instruction manual. I told him I didn’t read instructions. It was a serious character flaw. He insisted. I opened the manual, said I wouldn’t be caring for or maintaining the gun, so I could skip those pages, as well as those about disassembly and reassembly. I read him this line: The product is not intended for use by criminals. He told me to read the operating instructions, and I did: removing the magazine, inserting bullets into the cartridges, inserting a cartridge into the chamber.
We pulled off the highway and parked in the lot of a derelict filling station. We walked out into a field of snow. Carlos pointed ahead about twenty yards to a fence post, took out his service revolver, and fired. He hit the post on his second shot. He loaded the magazine into “your gun,” two words I thought I’d never hear in relation to me. I took off my mittens and put in my earplugs. Carlos had me make a gun with my index finger and thumb and fitted the Taurus into the web below my thumb and told me to grip it firmly. He adjusted my stance, feet shoulder-width apart, left foot forward, told me to straighten my elbow. I lined up the rear site with the front with the fence post and then focused on the front site. He told me to consider wind and adrenaline. “Think of someone you’d like to dispose of.”
I saw Cam’s drug dealer, even though I didn’t know what he or she looked like. I saw him as a physician in a white smock. I squeezed the trigger, followed through, hit the snow about thirty feet beyond the fence post. Carlos told me to breathe in and fire on exhale. Another wide shot. He told me to set up, get ready, and to close my eyes before firing. Closer. He said we’d stay till I hit the target three times in a row. It took under an hour. Maybe I’m a natural. Back in the big rig, Carlos told me not to put my hands near my mouth. Gunfire residue can be toxic. And then he said, “Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.” I thought about Dad and how he would soon be just ashes in a cardboard box in the hold of a plane on his way to Florida. An undertaker standing behind me once in line at the Melancholy post office told me that fat people burn faster than thin people. I took out my phone to check for messages. It wasn’t responding. The cold, I figured. Wouldn’t turn on. Carlos wondered if Vladimir was tracking me through the phone. I said, “The Russian mob has tech support?”
Carlos didn’t think I was funny. He took the phone, lowered his window, and tossed the phone to a snowdrift.
“Carlos, what the hell?”
He bought me a prepaid throwaway phone when we got back to Fairbanks. He told me to lie low, and he’d be in touch. I went to the suite and packed Dad’s clothes in our two large suitcases. I’d drop them off at Goodwill, or better yet, give them to Clement. I thought about my cell phone playing “Coyote” out there in a snowdrift and my voice telling the caller I couldn’t come to the phone right now. I went to the lobby and asked Gayla if any new guests had checked in. No one. Good. I thanked her for all she’d done.
Carlos called to tell me he’d spotted Vladimir downtown near Great Northern Coffee Roasters. He told me to grab two glasses of brandy and come out to the car; he was parked by the front entrance. I did. He told me that Vladimir had been on foot, so Carlos had parked and followed him. But he lost Vladimir when Vladimir went into a hardware store and never came out. Not out the front, at any rate. Vladimir was wearing a red down jacket and matching ski pants and yellow boots. He was hard to miss. Carlos told me to be vigilant inside the lodge and stay put. Stay away from windows, keep the lights dim. I told him I was leaving. I can’t live like this. He said there were no seats on any flights out until Friday. He’d checked. I didn’t believe it, so we got online. I said we should drive to Nome. He told me you can’t drive to Nome and to keep the pistol holstered at all times. My sweater would cover it. I borrowed the computer a moment and checked my e-mail. Patience said that Bay was worried about me, so I wrote to Bay that it was okay. Dad’s death was merciful, really; he’d been in pain and hadn’t been himself. But thanks for your concern. What I didn’t know then, of course, was that Bay was not worried about my handling the loss of my dad. He was worried that my life was in danger, and he had already boarded a flight from Miami to Fairbanks, dropped out of a poker tournament at the Silver Palace to do it, but then got a game going on the plane with his seatmate in first class, a marketing director for some dot-com, and Bay wound up winning a little more than the price of this ticket before he changed planes in Seattle.
Carlos said we could watch the lights for a bit and then catch something to eat at this restaurant he stumbled on that featured authentic Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Italian, and American cuisine. He told me to meet him at six at the amphitheater.
Back in the suite, I packed all my stuff into a carry-on, just to be ready. I put the loaded gun on the kitchen counter, made myself a martini, and thought how preposterous my situation was. I went down to the lobby without the gun. I felt ridiculous with it on and concealed. Gayla was on the couch, reading a self-help book. She held the cover up for me to see—something about silencing your inner critic. She said, “I’m always trying to become a better person.”
“Having any success?”
“Clement thinks I hung the moon, but I know better.” She confessed that she had hundreds of self-help books, all in their bedroom, floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “If you want to borrow—”
“How long have you had this … this fondness for self-help?”
“Ever since I can remember.” She told me about her When Am I Going to Be Happy? books, her Achieving Your Full Potential books, the How to Please Your Partner books, the books on healing the heart, on wealth, on dysfunction and codependency, on queen bees and wannabees, and one called The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life.
“Do you ever read fiction?”
“I know I should, shouldn’t I?”
“I didn’t mean that as a criticism.”
She told me she would like to master her communication skills. When I told her that she was engaging and lucid, she told me that it’s possible for a person to be too outgoing. And then she scolded herself for not asking about how I was handling my terrible loss.
“I’m sad, but relieved. You don’t think that’s callous of me, do you?”
“It’s the most natural thing in the world.” She got up and poked the fire, set a log on the grate. She told me that when her father died suddenly, she was twelve, and she was knocked for a loop, let me tell you. Her mom took to her bed and to the bottle and so the care of her three younger sisters was then Gayla’s responsibility. She sat and wiped her hands on her jeans. “I grew up fast and resentful.”
Her dad had been at work walking across a field when a sinkhole opened and swallowed him. All that remained on the surface was his silver hard hat, which the company gave the family along with its thanks and a plaque.
“Your mom still alive?”
“She lives with my baby sister Twyla.”
“The other sisters?”
“Kayla and Layla live in the house we grew up in. We don’t speak.” Gayla bit her lip. “They have no use for me.”
“I’m so sorry, but it’s their loss.”
“People never forgive you for the good you
do them.” Gayla shut her eyes and seemed to be talking to herself or praying. She opened her eyes and smiled. She said she’d just counted her blessings and realized what a fortunate person she was. She told me she and Clement wouldn’t be back till very late. They were going out for a romantic dinner at Levelle’s Bistro and then to his and hers massages as recommended by one of her relationship-rescue workbooks. And since I was the only midweek guest, I’d have the run of the place. What fun!
If Vladimir had been spying on me, he would be expecting to see a man in a green jacket and black pants. So I unpacked Dad’s brown jacket and his orange cap. I covered my head and face with a balaclava, holstered the gun, felt like a fool, put on the jacket, zipped it up, put on the cap, pulled up the hood, tied it under my chin, and then thought to check my e-mail before leaving. An e-mail from Bay marked urgent and for your eyes only!!! I took off the hood, the cap, and the balaclava and opened his attached file. This was what had happened. On the day Dad and I left for Alaska, Bay was off to the poker tables at the Silver Palace and was dressing as a sports fanatic, the kind of guy who plays fantasy football and is used to losing money, expects to, and does his wardrobe shopping at Sports Authority. He wore a silky black Heat jersey, matching baggy basketball shorts, and black high tops. He put on a gold chain with a crucifix. Something he’d touch on occasion at the table when he wanted the others to think he was holding pocket rockets. He opened his watch drawer and pulled out the clunky sports watch he’d retrieved from Kevin Shanks and buckled it on. He pressed a couple of the seven or so buttons on the side of the face and a red light blinked on and off. He pressed the button and the light blinked again and went out. Bay got online and looked up the make and model of the watch and learned that it was a very expensive audio/video recorder as well as a rather ordinary timepiece. He bought a duplicate from a spy store online so he’d have the necessary cables and software and had it shipped overnight. He sent the attachment from the business center at SeaTac Airport, but I didn’t know that yet, and didn’t know, either, that he had been planning to wait till he arrived to show me and then changed his mind.
No Regrets, Coyote Page 23