Run Cold
Page 27
In Alaska it is…what? Eight p.m. in Juneau, maybe later in Fairbanks. And on the churning, muddy Yukon, it is—what? There is no time there anyway. All longitudes start to converge toward the Pole, become one, cancel one another out. Above the Arctic Circle there is no time. Just loneliness…or aloneness…
I can’t focus. I go to a drawer in my workroom, rummaging through my notes on Alaska, opening boxes of Alaska gifts—a walrus-bone carving, a caribou mask—and finally extract the small, frayed snapshot, three-by-five, the color fading. I put it close to my eyes. There he is, when he was a young man, maybe twenty or so. Noah. You can see the mighty Yukon, you can see a crude Indian fishing wheel, but standing in front, prominent, is the young man, tall and lanky, skin the color of mahogany, really, a chiseled jaw, a wide high-bridged nose, prominent cheekbones, a wash of thick black hair, the fierce black eyes staring at the photographer with a bemused look. He’s dressed in a blue wool shirt, rolled up to his elbows, wrinkled brown canvas pants, and his muscular arms cradle a magnificent king salmon, maybe two feet long, glimmering, a ruddy prize.
No one knew I stole the snapshot.
I will call you.
I wait. I have no choice. I read of bonfires in Nome on the beaches that face the Soviet Union across the Bering Strait, the forty-nine-gun salute from the 207th Infantry Battalion of the Alaska National Guard, dancing in the streets, sirens blaring, even an attempt to dye the Chena River in Fairbanks a murky gold. Eskimos hurl one another into the air, celebratory blanket tosses, while tourists applaud.
Two days, three—waiting.
Then one night, actually two in the morning, I hear the phone ring and sit up in bed, and a panicky Molly Hennesey rushes from her small room off the kitchen, switching on lights as she moves. But she is surprised to see me, fluttering in my pink nightgown, my robe half-on, one sleeve dangling, already on the phone. “Molly, go back to bed.”
I hear static, muttering, silence. “Hello.”
“Edna.”
My heart leaps, and I get dizzy. “It’s you.”
A chuckle. “I’m alive.”
“I knew that.”
”I was living with my grandfather. He’s taken ill. But better now. I’m in my cabin.” Static, hissing, beeping sounds.” The voice starts to fade. “I promised you…”
“Where are you?” Loneliness…people fall in love with…
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you all right?”
A moment of silence. “I can’t talk long. I’m using a military phone.”
“What? Who?”
Then I remember his stories of those frozen communication centers deep in the wild—the sixty-foot radar towers of the DEW Line, the almost-open White Alice Communication system then being built near Fort Yukon, the two hundred U.S. airmen protecting America from the Soviets. The Alaskan Air Command at the top of the world. I’d watched, as our plane hovered, seeing the flashing red lights of the distant towers, somewhere out there, stark against the ice and snow, out on the gray-and-mauve tundra, punctuating the sweep of land, flashing on the pinched spruce and grubby grass where the caribou migrated.
“How did you manage…?”
He’s laughing. “I’m charming.”
“Tell me. I want to know.”
“I can’t talk long. They told me one minute.”
Now I grin. “Well, I guess you’re not that charming.”
He laughs. “Somehow I knew you’d say that.”
“Tell me.”
“This call is telling you something.”
“But I…”
Static. Beeping, silence. The line suddenly goes dead.
But though I stand there in the shadowy hallway with the dead line in my hand, I am not bothered by the abrupt end. I’m smiling. And then, helpless, I’m grinning.
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