Correcting the Landscape (17 page)

I turned left onto the plowed and sanded highway and ripped along at a higher speed toward town. As we approached the interchange under construction, a huge electric sign blinked a warning of a new traffic pattern ahead. Illumination rolled across its face, beginning with two words in three-foot-high letters,
STAY ALERT
. Here we are behind the wheel of one of the most notorious killing machines available to modern man and the D.O.T.
knows
we're on autopilot, we're daydreaming. Would you
STAY ALERT
for God's sake?
WAKE UP. NEW PATTERN AHEAD. WATCH WHERE YOU POINT THAT THING
.

“That sign here last night?” said Tad.

“Yup. For a few days now.”

“Didn't notice it. Or don't remember it. Christ.” In the same
soft voice, he continued, “What you said about the
Mercury
, Gus. We all felt that way. That's exactly how we all felt.”

As I slowed for my exit a logging truck that had been barreling up behind me swung into the left lane and roared past. Big, straight logs—white spruce. The trophy log of the interior, sixty years of sunlight in each one.

When you fly over interior Alaska, it looks like there's plenty, from the air. The forest is endless. But we were witnessing the beginning of the end of it all, Tad and Gayle and me, our generation.
STAY ALERT
.

At the Klondike he ordered a Bloody Mary. I could see where this day was going; I could be spending the whole day like some minor character in a Shakespeare play, holding my Lord's horse while he got into all kinds of trouble.

What you said about the Mercury…We all felt that way
.

This fellow sitting across from me prissily stirring a Bloody Mary with a plastic stick, before he knocked it back and poisoned himself, handed me a gift with those words. The
Mercury
was never my paper alone. Without the support of my investors there would have been no last act, there wouldn't have been these past three years. People who wanted the paper to continue took a chance. I was the fellow in line for the publisher's role, and as things turned out I couldn't work the miracle—but it was never mine alone. The times that were in it, Felix would say.

Of course I couldn't explain this to Tad, but with his words I was able to take another step in the correct direction. Even before Polly guided me onto the first stepping-stone.

“What are you staring at?” Tad asked me.

“Nothing, nothing. Just daydreaming again.”

Tad was a guy with no one to serve but himself. I mean no higher authority in his life than Tad Suliman, and at least today not at peace with his own life at all. But if it was true, if Tad and
the others really believed that the
Mercury
was a communal effort and a communal loss, and if I could entertain that belief, too, then along with the loss of my leading man status I could gain a strange kind of dispensation.

“Well, thanks,” I said.

“For what?”

I shook my head. He let it go.

W
HAT A HELL OF A DAY. AFTER THAT
late breakfast I drove Tad back to my place. I left him at Bad Molly to keep my date with Polly. We spent an hour and a half going over my records and striving for a prognosis. She was like a dentist identifying all the rotten places, with numerical calm, and when I left her office my palate ached from too much candy and my face stung from her blunt remarks. The
Mercury
was at the press, Friday was our easy day, so I started cleaning and organizing over at the office and whenever anyone came in, a columnist, a journalism student, I felt caught in the headlights. Acting like we were still going to be doing this, weeks from now.

It kept snowing. Late in the afternoon I went outside and started shoveling the fifteen feet between the parking space and the back door. Alone and sweating I felt a little better for the hour that this small job required.

I wasn't too hungry so I worked most of the evening, filing old notes, maybe rereading some old exchange of letters, and with each file that I handled I would remember the passionate feelings, the
uproar that went into each of these. The desire to get somewhere. But Christ I had been so ignorant, so blind to practicalities. A former assistant commissioner of labor down in Juneau, and I didn't even pay my own employees. Digging around in my own personal archives as the hours ticked by, I felt more and more stimulated by the emotion stored up in all these abandoned fragments of stories. This is what you call not doing yourself any favors, I thought at last. It was ten
P.M.
I could at least try to get some sleep. Tomorrow's delivery day and, oh shit, that's not going to be any fun, either.

And there's the little matter of what I am going to do with myself now. Gayle in my life. What the hell am I good at? How can I be part of her life, no job, how can I help her with Jack?

Tad's rig was still in my driveway when I got home with a fresh box of beer. I stepped over two big blue extension cords trailing up my walk to the exterior outlet. He had plugged his engine heaters into my electricity. Why two cords? I looked around and saw that one was coming from the Cat itself, the other from the truck.

He was asleep again, on my couch. I considered kicking him awake; why should he sleep through this dark night in my life? I took a beer out of the refrigerator and walked around the room, sipping it, gesturing with it, almost talking to myself.

Maybe I have a gift for sales. Didn't I convince a lot of people to believe in the
Mercury
? I could sell things—long as there's not too much paperwork involved. But what: zucchini at the farmer's market? display ads for the big daily?

Tad's eyes were open; he was looking at me.

“Tad, what do you think? Do I have a salesman's personality?”

He shifted himself up, put both arms behind his head. “Yes and no.”

“Cars? Ads? Time-shares?”

“Face it, Gus. You're not happy without some bigger purpose.”

“Who is?”

“I am, much of the time. Well, I used to be. What time is it, anyway?”

“Eleven.”

“Want to come with me?”

“Now? Where?”

“Thought I'd get going but hell, I needed a nap, and now I need some coffee. I ought to get that rig out of here. Best to do it at night. You want to come along?”

“Are you in the best shape? You could stay here.”

He stood up slowly and stretched. “I'm tired of lying around. Gave myself a drunk and a nap and it's done all the good it's gonna do. I'm ready to move again. Time is money, Gus.” He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of beer, and poured a swig down his throat like someone pouring water into a hollow tree. He wasn't falling-down drunk but he wasn't Officer Safety material, either. He shouldn't be on the road.

“Let's talk about my next career,” I said. “Sales.”

“Gus, you can't tell a lie to save your life.”

That's not true at all, I thought. I've told thousands lately. Poured plenty of them down my own throat.

“What'll happen to you is,” he said, “customers will be selling you stuff, that's the problem. Buddy, you have a spiritual side. That's what Judy said.”

“She did?”

“She did. That's not how I'd have put it, but she did indeed.”

“How would you put it?”

“I think you give a shit. That sets you apart. You observe things, and you care. Look, make some coffee, why don't we?”

“You know, Tad, I'm a little tired of being Mr. Live and Let Live. I think you ought to wait on the rig until tomorrow. Here you are sleep deprived and guzzling more beer. Would you hire yourself for this job?”

“It's nothing. These the beans?” He shook a little brown bag of Safeway's free trade coffee beans. The sixties and seventies brought us sex and music; the eighties brought us coffee. Just the same, I didn't want a cup right now. I wanted to find something to hold on to, I wanted to find that stripe on the highway that was mine. Drive along this bold stripe and you'll be okay and Gayle will not be disappointed again, the lines of her tattoo wavering as one more man proves to be a hopeless idiot.

By God, not me.

Tad dumped the beans into the grinder. He pulled on his coveralls, leaving them unzipped and hanging from his hips. The coffee filled the place with its aroma.

“I'll make you some eggs,” I said. “Haven't eaten myself.”

“Great, no problem,” the son of a bitch responded cheerfully.

I didn't know what was going on with him: this need to get moving, was it the secret of his success, that he would reach a limit of self-pity and then just get up and shake it off like a dog climbing up out of the gravel pit? Two days brooding and drinking, then up and move?

I fixed us each a trio of eggs and poured the coffee.

“Don't have another if you're going to drive,” I said.

“Good point,” he said, and shoved my last bottle of beer unopened into the pocket of his coveralls.

“Better yet, why don't you just fall back on that couch and wait until tomorrow? Maybe I'll take away your keys,” I said. “Friends don't let friends and all that stuff.”

“Gus, I slept all day and now I'm ready to move. I don't tend to wait on things.”

“I seen you wait lots of times. You're a very patient man.”

“Just the same, Gus. I'm in the frame of mind. Truthfully this is a tedious job. I want to get it over with.”

As he ate he did seem calmer, seemed to be setting aside that
restlessness. His mind was made up. What did I know about the complications of moving heavy equipment?

I did know he played wild cards, though, from time to time. I didn't feel this particular binge was over yet. I had to get up at five myself to deliver the paper, but maybe dogsitting Tad for a bit longer was my fate tonight. Let me try one more time, come around again from a new angle.

“Look, I don't care what you do,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

Now I could see that he didn't care a lot, either. He had to get moving and nothing else mattered. Well, maybe this is how Tad made his fortune. When it's time, it's time.

“Hang on, maybe I'll come along,” I said as a stalling tactic, and then began to make a slow job of doing the dishes. Tad went outside and brought his lowboy truck to life and checked his tie-downs.

“You going to come along?” he said.

“Let me see. I have coveralls like that. Let me try to find them.” I went out and rummaged in my truck and found them stuffed behind the driver's seat, insurance in case of a breakdown at frigid temperatures. The zipper struggled to close. Such a young guy to put on weight, I observed of myself as if from across the room, as the cloth strained over my belly. Tad grinned.

“There you go, Gus! All right. Great. You'll like this.”

“You said it was a tedious job.”

“Did I? Yeah, but I'm warming to it. A great night, a beautiful machine, the streets of my town practically empty, laid out like a…Like a what, Gus, you're the writer, you tell me. Things are looking up.”

Either do this, I realized, or lie awake for five hours thinking about Gayle and how little I had to offer. Do this or put up with those demons that come in the night with their questions. What are you going to say, how are you going to live. In the daytime I
can handle it. Even jet-lagged from roaming Fairbanks all night I'll be okay. Look after this guy one more time.

“Come on,” he said, and climbed up into the rig. I still hesitated. The snow had stopped and the clouds were ripping apart, lit in ragged patches by the stars and the moon. Here and there the snow flung back light from the fresh crystals at the tops of the drifts. Bankrupt publisher goes for ride across town, abandons self-flagellation for once. The immediacy of this offer: just keep talking to Tad, keep him awake and in his own lane, and let tomorrow take care of its own problems. Sufficient unto the day won out, for once. Tad leaned over from the driver's seat and opened the passenger door.

“What do you say?” he yelled, or something like it; I could hardly hear him for the debate in my head and the rumbling of the engine.

“Oh Christ, all right,” I shouted back. “Hold on!” I climbed up into the cab.

He made a series of expert little turns to get the lowboy pointed down Bad Molly. I remembered with some comfort his reputation as an able operator—there's a bubble between his eyes, someone told me once, meaning that Tad had a gift for keeping a machine level and balanced. He took pride in his skills. If you had to haul a Cat through Fairbanks at midnight, he was a safe bet.

Below University Hill, the bank thermometer sign heralded two degrees below zero.

“Getting warmer!” Tad said cheerfully. “We can get some work done now.”

“What work?”

“Cat'll start up nice enough.”

“You said you didn't need to move it tonight.”

“Well, we might want to.” He had the beer out of his pocket then and took a hand off the wheel to open it.

“Christ, Tad, none of that.”

“Gus, look around you.”

Not a headlight in view. Intersection deserted as we waited politely behind the red light.

“Just the same, give me that,” I said.

“My rig, my Cat, the streets of my town before me, all it wants is a beer,” said Tad.

I took it from him and drank it myself, looking nervously around, haunted by the words
open container
; I could almost see them printed below my name in the police blotter. A few sips did taste good, but there was too much of it. Up high like this, I had a good view. No state troopers were coming at us down the open road, and our three city cops were probably across town tonight, down in the flats where there's trouble to spare. I felt more and more in control. And something else—confounding. That's how I felt. As if I was confounding all expectations. I'm supposed to be home assessing my new life, walking the line; instead, my uncontrollable spirit is wandering the night. To hell with prudence and brooding.

The beer and the adventure put some distance between me and that nagging business about the unsolved death of Cathy Carew, but I remembered it as we crossed the Wendell Street Bridge and I looked downriver, toward the street where Gayle and I had walked, a little over a day earlier.

“Evidence,” I said. “Is it from lack of evidence, or lack of interest they can't solve these cases? You hear different stories.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Why don't these death and disappearance cases get solved?”

“Good question. Alibis? A completely muddied trail? Like you said, no interest?”

“Cathy Carew's boyfriend, according to Gayle, was this notorious character from the Yukon Territory. One night the cops in
Whitehorse—or was it Edmonton?—picked him up drunk, drove out of town, and dropped him off ten miles out of town, ten miles from the nearest house: a drunk guy in a thin jacket and tennis shoes. Forty below zero. He made it back.”

“I've heard of that sort of thing. The midnight taxi ride.”

“Here in Fairbanks?”

“No, I don't think they do that here—do you?”

“Never heard of it happening.” We were driving along the river now, past the steam baths, closed and dark. The streets were empty. A ghostly chain-link fence around a First Avenue construction project loomed out at us, so thickly frosted with rime and fresh snow both—dirty rime gray with car exhaust, snow piled over that—it was almost unrecognizable, like part of an abandoned movie set. All the temporary construction, abandoned for lack of funding and cold weather both, covered with snow, disoriented me. Walking here with Gayle a day earlier I hadn't felt lost. It was different looking through the truck window. I felt detached, confused.

Then Tad was driving down First Avenue, and he slowed as we came up toward the statue. He stopped the truck, turned off the ignition, killed the lights.

“I need a second,” he said, and rubbed his eyes, dug at them as if to excavate his own fatigue. “Confusing around here. Too much junk.”

“Want me to drive?”

“Maybe. Let's give it a second.”

“What are we doing here?”

“Just looking. Doesn't it get to you that nobody voted for that thing?”

Floodlights around its base lit up the Unknown First Family. With no one to admire their heroism, they still reared up, pointlessly huge. They weren't even snowcapped. The floodlights must be warm.

“Like I said, no one even voted for it. I didn't. Did you? Did you vote for any of this?”

“People gave money.”

“That's not a vote. What about the people that didn't give money? Do their votes count? Gave money! Is that how we vote around here?”

“Sounds to me like you give a shit, Tad.”

“No, I'm just angry. It's different. But we could cast our vote right now.”