by T. C. Boyle
The Cessna dipped and trembled. The blast of the engine was like a bombardment that never ended. It was cold to the point of death. Walter gazed out on emptiness until exhaustion began to catch up with him. Half-dozing, he focused on the disconcerting little notice taped to the grimy plastic glovebox: THIS AIRCRAFT FOR SALE, it read in shaky upper-case letters, $10,500, TALK TO RAY. Talk to Ray, he thought, and then he was asleep.
He woke with a jolt as they set down in Fort Yukon, where the case of beer was deplaning. Ray grinned like a deviate and shouted something Walter didn’t catch as they taxied up to a grim-looking little shack to refuel; the oil man got out to stretch his legs, though it was something like twenty-seven below with a good wind, and Walter nodded off again. From Fort Yukon it was up over the Brooks Range and into darkness. The oil man got off at a place called Deadhorse, where, he assured Walter, there was enough oil to float Saudi Arabia out to sea. And then it was Ray and Walter, hurtling through endless night, on the way to Barrow, three hundred and thirty miles above the Arctic Circle, the northernmost city in America, the end of the line.
When the lights of Barrow came into view across the blank page of the tundra, Ray turned to Walter and shouted something. “What?” Walter shouted back, distracted by uncertainty, his stomach sinking and the nausea rising in his throat—Here? he was thinking, my father lives here?
“Your foot,” Ray shouted. “I saw you having some trouble there when we were boarding back at Fairbanks. Lost one of your pegs, huh?”
Lost one of his pegs. Walter gazed out on the approaching lights and saw the image of his father, and all at once the roar of the plane became the roar of that ghostly flotilla of choppers in the doomed Sleepy Hollow night. Lost one of his pegs. And how.
“No,” Walter hollered, snatching at the handgrip as a gust rocked the plane, “lost both of ’em.”
Ray shouted something into the teeth of the wind as Walter trudged across the fractured skating rink of the airstrip. Walter couldn’t hear him, couldn’t even tell from the tone whether the man with whom he’d just risked his life in a rickety, worn-out, 10,500-dollar for-sale aircraft was blessing him, warning him or mocking him. “Good luck,” “Look out!” and “So long, sucker,” all sound pretty much the same when the temperature is down around forty below, the wind is tearing in off the frozen ocean with nothing to stop it for god knows how many thousand miles and you’ve got the drawstrings of the fur-lined hood of your parka tightened to the point of asphyxiation. Without turning around, Walter raised an arm in acknowledgment. And promptly fell face first on the jagged ice. When he pushed himself up, Ray was gone.
Ahead lay the six frozen blocks of wooden shacks that comprised the metropolis of Barrow, population three thousand, nine-tenths of whom, Ray had told him, were Eskimos. Eskimos who hated honkies. Who spat on them, pissed on them, cut them to pieces with the glittering sharp knives of their hooded eyes. Walter tottered forward, toward the lights, his suitcase throwing him off balance, the ragged uneven knobs of ice punching at his feet like the bumpers of a giant pinball machine. He’d never been so cold in his life, not even swimming in Van Wart Creek in October or jogging off to Philosophy 451 at the state university, where it sometimes got down to twenty below. No Exit, he thought. The Sickness Unto Death. Barrow. They’d got it all wrong, he thought, some cartographer’s mistake. Barren was more like it. He kept going, fell twice more, and began to regret his Jack London jokes. This was serious business.
Five minutes later he was staggering up the main drag—the only drag—of Barrow, last home and refuge of Truman Van Brunt. Or so he hoped. If the airstrip was deserted, the street was pretty lively, considering the temperature. Snowmobiles shrieked and sputtered around him, racing up and down the street; dogs that looked like wolves—or were they wolves?—fought and snarled and careened around in packs; hooded figures trudged by in the shadows. Walter’s hand, the one that gripped the suitcase, had gone numb despite his thermal mittens, and he thought grimly that at least he didn’t have to worry about his feet. No problem there. No sir.
The wind was keen and getting keener. The hairs inside his nostrils were made of crystal and his lungs felt as if they’d been quick-frozen. He’d stumbled past three blocks of windowless shacks already, most of them with chunks of some sort of frozen meat, bloody naked ribs and whatnot, strung up on the roof out of reach of the dogs, and still no sign of a hotel, bar or restaurant. There were only three blocks more to go, and then what? He was thinking he might go on trudging up and down that icy dark forbidding street until he curled up in a ball and froze through like a side of beef, doomed like the heedless tenderfoot in the Jack London story, when finally, up on the left, he spotted an Olympia Beer sign, red neon, white script, glowing like a mirage in the desert, and below it, a hand-painted sign that read “Northern Lights Café.” Shaken, desperate, shivering so hard he thought he’d dislocate his shoulders, he fumbled in the door.
For a minute, he thought he’d found nirvana. Lights. Warmth. A Formica counter, stools, booths, people, a wedge of apple pie in a smudged glass case, a jukebox surmounted by a glowing neon rainbow. But wait a minute, what was this? The place smelled, stank like a latrine. Of vomit, superheated piss, rancid grease, stale beer. And it was filled to capacity. With Eskimos. Eskimos. He’d never seen an Eskimo in his life, except in books and on TV—or maybe that was only Anthony Quinn in mukluks on a backlot in Burbank. Well, here they were, slouching, standing, sitting, snoozing, drinking, scratching their privates, looking as if they’d been dumped out of a sack. Their eyes—wicked, black, sunk deep beneath the slits of their lids—were on him. Their hair was greasy, their teeth rotten, their faces expressionless. To a one—he couldn’t tell if they were man or woman, boy or girl—they were dressed in animal skins. Walter dropped his suitcase in the corner and shuffled up to the counter, where an electric heater glowed red.
There was no one behind the counter, but there were dirty plates and beer bottles on the tables, and a couple of the Eskimos were bent over plates of french fries and what looked like burgers. No one said a word. Walter began to feel conspicuous. Began to feel awkward. He cleared his throat. Shuffled his feet. Stared down at the floor. Once, when he was sixteen, he and Tom Crane had taken Lola’s car down to the City, to an address they didn’t know—a Hundred Thirtieth or Fortieth Street, something like that—because Tom had seen an ad for cheap jazz albums at a Hearns department store. It was the first time Walter had been in Harlem. On the street, that is. In the hour he spent there, he saw only two white faces—his own, reflected in the grimy window of the department stores, and Tom’s. It was an odd feeling, a feeling of alienation, of displacement—even, almost, of shame for his whiteness. For that hour, he wanted desperately, with all his heart, to be black. Beyond that, nothing happened. They bought their records, climbed into the car and drove back to the suburbs, where every face was white. It was a lesson, he realized that. An experience. Something everyone should go through.
Somehow, he’d never felt the need to repeat it.
How long had he been standing here—a minute, five minutes, an hour? This was worse, far worse, than Harlem. He’d never seen an Eskimo before in his life. And now he was surrounded by them. It was like being on another planet or something. He was afraid to look up. He was beginning to feel that anything was better than this—even freezing to death on the streets or being torn to pieces by the wolf dogs or run down by drunken snowmobilers, when the swinging doors to the kitchen flew open and an extravagantly blonde, heavily made-up, rail-thin woman of Lola’s age hustled into the room, six long-necked beers in one hand and a steaming plate of something in the other. “Be with you in a minute, hon,” she said, and eased past him, arms held high.
The waitress seemed to have broken the spell. She served the beers and the plate of something, and the place came back to life. A murmur of low, mumbled conversation started up. An old man, his face as dead and leathery as the face of a shrunken head Walter had once seen in a museum, pu
shed past him with a seething glare and practically fell atop the jukebox. And then a teenager—yes, he could distinguish them now—tried to catch his eye and Walter looked timidly away. But now the waitress was there, and Walter looked into her tired gray eyes and thought for just an instant he was back in Peterskill. “What’ll it be, honey?” she asked him.
The old man struggled with a quarter at the jukebox, dropped it to the floor and let out a low heartfelt curse, the gist of which Walter didn’t quite catch—a malediction involving seals, kayaks and somebody’s mother, no doubt. Or on second thought, had he said something about honkies? Honkie sons of bitches?
“Uh,” Walter fumbled, tearing frantically at the parka’s drawstring, “um, uh … coffee,” he finally squeaked.
Without ceremony the waitress turned to the nearest Eskimo, said “Charley,” and jerked her neck. Scowling, the man got up from his stool and lurched across the room, a bottle of beer in his hand.
“But, I—” Walter protested.
“Sit,” the waitress said.
Walter sat.
He was on his second cup of coffee and had begun to detect signs of life in his fingertips, when the old man at the jukebox finally managed to locate the quarter and feed it into the slot. There was a mechanical buzz, succeeded by the plop of the record dropping, and then Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas,” crooning to the grim, silent, drunken men in their animal skins, crooning to the grease, the forlorn-looking wedge of apple pie, the shacks, the ice sheet, the heaps of frozen dogshit in the streets, crooning to Walter about white Christmases he used to know …
Was this a joke? A dig? Walter was afraid to look around him.
“Refill?” the waitress asked, poised above him with a steaming Pyrex pot.
“Uh, no, no thanks,” Walter stammered, putting his hand over the cup for emphasis, “but, uh, maybe you could help me—?”
The waitress gave him a big lipsticky smile. “Yes? You looking for someone?”
“Maybe you don’t know him. I mean, maybe he doesn’t even live here any more. Truman Van Brunt?”
But for Bing Crosby, the place went quiet. The waitress’ smile was gone. “What do you want with him?”
“I’m”—he couldn’t say it, couldn’t spit out the words—“I’m his son.”
“His son? He never had a son. What are you talking about?”
Nothing could have prepared him for that moment. It hit him like a shove from behind, like something immovable along the side of the road. He was devastated. He wanted to dig a hole in the dirty linoleum at his feet and bury himself till the world slid closer to the sun and palm trees sprouted outside the window. He never had a son. For this he’d come four thousand miles.
The waitress’ mouth was a tight slash of suspicion. The Eskimos were silent, watching him, the indifference in their eyes replaced all at once by a look of cruel amusement, as if now the fun were about to begin, as if Walter—big and white and with his dirty red hair and freakish eyes and feet that didn’t work—had come to town as part of some sideshow. And Bing, Bing was going on with it, warbling about days being merry and bright—
“Hey, dude.” The young Eskimo who’d tried to catch his eye earlier was standing beside him. Walter looked up into the broad smooth face and hesitant eyes of a kid of fourteen or so. “Mr. Van Brunt, he lives up there,” jerking his thumb, “third house on the left, got a old car broke down out front.”
Numb, Walter rose to his feet, fought to tug a crumpled dollar from his pocket, and dropped it on the counter beside his cup. He was hot, burning up inside the heavy parka, and he felt lightheaded. He bent to pick up his suitcase, then turned back to the kid and ducked his head in acknowledgment. “Thanks,” he said.
“Hey, no sweat, dude,” the kid said, grinning to show off the blackened nubs of his teeth, “he’s my teacher.”
It was four in the afternoon and black as midnight. In two weeks the sun would set on Barrow for the final time—till January 23 of next year, that is. Walter had read about it in A Guide to Alaska: Last American Frontier, while he swatted mosquitoes in the lush backyard of his cottage in Van Wartville. Now he was here. On the steps of the Northern Lights Café, gazing up the dim street to where a ’49 Buick sat up on blocks in front of an unremarkable, low-roofed shack no different from any of the others, except for the dearth of caribou carcasses frozen to the roof. His father’s house. Here, in the far frozen hind end of nowhere.
Walter started across the street, the wind at his back, suitcase tugging at his arm. “Look out, asshole!” shouted a kamikaze on a snow machine as he shot past, engine screaming, treads churning up ice, and as Walter lurched out of the way he found himself in the middle of a pack of snarling dogs contending for a lump of offal frozen to the ice between his feet. Barrow. The sweat was freezing to his skin, his fingers were numb, and fourteen blood-crazed wolf dogs were tearing themselves to pieces at his feet. He’d been in town for something like half an hour and already he’d had it. In a sudden rage he struck out viciously at the dogs, swinging his suitcase like a mace and shouting curses till the wind sucked his voice away, and then he staggered up the berm of frozen garbage and dogshit that rose up like a prison wall in front of his father’s house. Fifty yards. That’s all it was from the café to his father’s doorstep, but they were the hardest fifty yards of his life. He never had a son. Four thousand miles to hear that little bulletin from the lips of a stranger, a hag in a baggy sweater and two tons of makeup. God, that hurt. Even if he was hard, soulless and free.
Walter hesitated on the icy doorstep. He felt like some poor abused orphan out of a Dickens story—what was he going to say? What was he going to call him, even—Dad? Father? Pater? He was weary, dejected, chilled to the marrow. The wind screamed. There was something like slush caught in the corners of his eyes. And then suddenly it didn’t matter—the son of a bitch never had a son anyway, right?—and Walter was pounding on the weather-bleached door for all he was worth. “Hey!” he bawled. “Open up! Anybody in there?” Boom, boom, boom. “Open up, goddammit!”
Nothing. No movement. No response. He might as well have been pounding on the door of his own tomb. His father didn’t want him, he wasn’t home, he didn’t exist. Walter knew then that he was going to die right there on the doorstep, frozen hard like one of the grotesque carcasses on the roof next door. That would show him, he thought bitterly. His son, his only son, the son he’d denied and deserted, frozen on his doorstep like so much meat. And then, all at once, the rage and frustration and self-pity building in him till he couldn’t help himself, he threw back his head and shrieked like an animal caught in a trap, all the trauma of a lifetime—all the ghosts and visions, the tearing of flesh and the wounds that never healed—all of it focused in the naked shattering plaint that rose from his belly to startle the wolf dogs and silence the wind: “Dad!” he sobbed. “Dad!” The wind choked him, the cold drove at him. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
It was then that the door fell back and there he was, Truman Van Brunt, blinking at the darkness, the ice, at Walter. “What?” he said. “What did you call me?”
“Dad,” Walter said, and he wanted to fling his arms around him. He wanted to. He did. As much as he’d ever wanted anything. But he couldn’t move.
Forty below. With wind. Truman stood there with the door open, still big, still vigorous, the deep red fangs of his hair shot through with dirty bolts of gray and beating furiously around his head, a look of absolute bewilderment on his face, as if he’d awakened from one dream to find himself in the midst of another. “Walter?” he said.
Inside, the place was meticulously tidy, almost monastic. Two rooms. Woodstove in the corner of the front one, bookshelves lining three walls, kitchenette against the other, a glimpse of a tightly made bed and night table in the back room, more books. The books had titles like Agrarian Conflict: Van Wart and Livingston Manors; County Records, North Riding; Under Sail on Hudson’s River; Folk Medicine of the Delaware; A History of the Indian Tr
ibes of Hudson’s River. Up against the stove, so close it might have been kindling, was a desk piled high with papers and surmounted by the dark hump of a big black ancient typewriter. Under the desk, a case of Fleischmann’s gin. There was no running water.
His father had filled two mugs with hot lemonade and gin before he could even get his parka off, and now Walter sat there in a patched easy chair, cradling the hot cup in his insensate hands and silently reading off book titles. Truman straddled a wooden chair opposite him. The stove snapped. Outside, there was the sound of the Arctic wind, persistent as static. Walter didn’t know what to say. Here he was, at long last, face to face with his father, and he didn’t know what to say.
“So you found me, huh?” Truman said finally. His voice was thick, slow with alcohol. He didn’t exactly seem overjoyed.
“Uh-huh,” Walter said after a moment, staring into his cup. “Didn’t you get my letters?”
His father grunted. “Letters? Shit, yeah—I got your letters.” He pushed himself up from the chair and lumbered into the back room, a big square-shouldered man with the sad vague air of a traveler lost in a city of strangers. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with his legs. Or feet. A moment later he thumped back into the room with a cardboard box and dropped it in Walter’s lap.
Inside were the letters: Walter’s hopeful script, the postmarks, the canceled stamps. There they were. Every one of them. And not a one had been opened.
He never had a son. Walter looked up from the box and into his father’s glassy stare. They hadn’t touched at the door, hadn’t even shaken hands.
“How’d you know where to find me?” Truman asked suddenly.
“Piet. Piet told me.”
“Pete? What do you mean ‘Pete’? Pete who?” The old man wore a full beard, red as Eric the Conqueror’s, gone gray now about the mouth. His hair was long, drawn back in a ponytail. He was scowling.
Walter felt the gin like antifreeze in his veins. “I forget his name. A little guy—you know, your friend from all those years ago, when …” He didn’t know how to put it. “Lola told me about him, about the riots and how—”