Correcting the Landscape (19 page)

“Well. That's because I am the same person, Gayle.”

“I'm trying to say something like you're fair to yourself. You don't change horses in midstream. Whatever it is, I like it. It's a saving grace.”

That wasn't so bad.

“Thank you, I'm not one hundred percent sure for what.”

“But there's another loyalty, this loyalty to friends…or to causes…I can't describe it, but it confuses me. Or frightens me.”

“Yeah?”

“I see no inherent value in it.” She lifted a heaping spoonful of honey into her tea. “I've been beating my way through that jungle a long time,” she added.

“I don't understand you,” I said earnestly. I wanted to add,
Tell me. Explain. I want to know
.

“I was so bewildered and lost when I read the paper that morning. When I read about what you guys had done. Just trying to figure that out…Oh, Gus,” she said with some passion and
looked directly at me, “isn't there something worth staying out of trouble for?”

I rubbed my face. Here was her disappointment. Here it is.

“Why did you do it?” she said.

“Not for Tad. I didn't do it for Tad. But it seems wrong, now, dead wrong, to let him take the full blame. Or credit. I did it because—there was something going on that night, and I—decided to go with it, to throw myself in that direction. Any thinking things over, it seemed, had already been done, days earlier. There was no time left to think.”

“So it had nothing to do with Tad?”

Was she asking me where my loyalties lay—was she fighting for me, fighting for her own position in my affections? So it seemed, for just a flash of time, and I wanted to savor this unexpected sensation. I looked down at the table and pretended to scratch my chin, so she wouldn't see me smile a little.

“I love him, as a friend, sure. Or I wouldn't have been there. But no. At the last minute, no, it had nothing to do with him. It was like a gap opened in front of me, it seemed like it was the very gap that was separating me from my life, from something vital. And I decided to leap out there. No one made me do it, no one put the least pressure on me. Maybe I've ridden on Tad's coattails when my own have given out, from time to time. And vice versa. But not that night.”

“When I read the paper I felt so disappointed.”

“I've been out front of things for twenty years,” I said. “My mug and my name in the public eye, a man without guile, a public servant. And yet, that bit of ‘civil disobedience' as I described it to my lawyer, or ‘stupid mischief' he called it—Gayle, that was a night when I felt the least like a fugitive in hiding that I've ever felt. Riding that Cat toward the statue—I'll tell you something I haven't told anybody. It was a raw feeling and I wouldn't trade it away.”

She laughed and I blew out the breath I'd been holding. What a relief to find a true thing to say.

“Don't expect I'll do it again, though,” I added.

She took it in, studying me.

“In fact, I know I won't.”

“Guess I don't feel so disappointed anymore,” she said.

“No?”

“What's that you said, there's a gap you just decided to jump across? I know what you mean. At the very last moment, no matter how well you figure things out, there just has to be an impulse to leap. With or without a reason. You try to build a bridge with sensible reasons in favor of one thing or another. But finally it's just you, some unreasonable but really important part of you, going to jump into space or not.”

I thought,
Would you jump into space with me, Gayle?

“I made a deposition at the prosecutor's office,” she said. “I told them about Cathy's boyfriend, all our suspicions, where he hangs out. Everything I know. I spent two hours there, and I'm going back again, whenever they want. What else can a person do?”

“Gayle, I'm so glad.”

“It means they keep the case active. And the earlier one, his other girlfriend who disappeared. They reopened that one.”

“He still around?”

“He comes and goes, from Whitehorse. He sells drugs, and also, you know, he comes back here for other reasons. The kind of stuff he does, depends on connections. All the guy's connections are here, and in Anchorage, and in Whitehorse. He'd be lost without those connections. Scum. But Cathy didn't know that. Cathy wasn't scum.” She took a deep breath. “Cathy drowned. You know that. What happened before she drowned—that's what matters now. It's a story that we might be able to piece together, for our own peace of mind, he said. No other reason but to get at the truth.”

“I remember meeting Cathy here,” I said. “Southside Cleanup Day.”

Gayle nodded. “It was never going to happen that she would take good care of herself. She'd always be dependent on a nest of people. And we all, all of us, we all let her down, that's how it is. So.”

“So, now, you are taking these steps.”

“Yeah. That's it. Stop living in that crazy world. I don't want to be afraid.”

“That was a brave action, Gayle.”

She smiled. “No.”

“Why do you say no?”

“You kidding? I run away from the hard stuff myself, all the time.”

“Like taking care of your son, yourself, getting a college degree? Call that running away? I don't mean to contradict you,” I added.

“Did I ever tell you about Jack's father?”

“I think you promised to, once.”

“He had a grandparent who was one of the last three speakers of Eyak, can you believe that? A whole language, resting in only three people. I was married to Joe then, living in Chevak, practicing the old ways. And getting real worn out with it—I do that, get tired of things. Besides, a generation is supposed to learn not just from the one before but from the children, we have to let our kids bring stuff home from their world for us to exclaim over, to ooh and aah over, to say Explain this to me…But sometimes, in the villages, it's like there's grandparents and then there's kids. The generation between them, my generation, the generation of the parents—we don't have anything to say. We're lost, we've given up some credibility. I don't know how it happened. Drinking. Taking that claims settlement, all that cash. We
lost something along the way. Life is too short, it turns out. I think the way to find ourselves again, is to learn from the kids. Not the elders only, but also the kids. I mean to be open. Not closed off.”

“That's a radical idea, is it?”

“It is. I've had plenty of time to think it out on my own. But back then, what I did…I just got out. Escaped, went off with Jack's father. Ran away. Because I got bored and I was scared of facing Joe and giving him the explanation he deserved. Off we went.” She drank her tea. “That was the only time I walked out on a husband. I treated Joe badly, and he was probably the best one of the lot. But I'm tired of all that running around. The hoping for something better. I'm tired of hoping. Just done with it.”

And I could see that she wanted to tell me all this in order to fill in some blank spaces about herself. Not let me idealize or diminish her either one. Take me as I am, someone who's made decisions that still don't sit well, after all these years.

“Gayle,” I said. “It seems to me, sometimes, at the best of times—that there's an expectation that is even better than hope. Better than hoping for something from somebody. There's an expectation that's better than hope.”

We looked at each other for a few minutes. Her dark eyes, her soft hair.

“Could be,” she said.

“When I'm with you, I feel that way. Better than hope. I've really missed you.”

She smiled. “It's happening again,” she said.

“What is?”

“I'm talking too much. It goes to my head, that I'm in the driver's seat. I mean…of my own life. When I'm with you.”

“Well, I think you are, no matter where I am. When I'm out bulldozing statues.”

We looked at each other for a good minute or so. “We're getting somewhere,” I said shyly. “The two of us.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Where do you think we are?”

“I think we're at the beginning.”

“Is this a beginning?”

“It sure is.”

I leaned across to her and brushed her soft hair away from her face, off her freckled cheekbones, watching her mouth start to smile again. The darkness inside me opened right up. When I kissed her she kissed me back, no mistake, leaning across the table above the cups of tea and the jar of honey, and it was all there, the dismay and the hurt and the light, two of us finding no fault in each other but something really blameless. Desire, waiting in the wings. And let me tell you. For raw experience, loving Gayle and being loved by her is right up there with correcting the landscape.

 

SO TAD AND I HAVE SUMMER JOBS ALREADY LINED UP. WITHOUT
pay, but what else is new. I don't mind. Soon as spring came, we donned our fluorescent vests and began to pay the debt we incurred to society for that joyride. Picking up trash takes me back to Southside Cleanup Day. Oddly enough there are people in Fairbanks who do this voluntarily, people who love picking up trash. I'm taking part in an activity that's not heroic, not dangerous, not even memorable. Maybe it's not even necessary, though when I pick up something dangerous, like a syringe, I like to think I may have saved someone from serious injury.

I lost the newspaper but I could adopt the highway, make this a permanent thing.

Sure it's an unskilled activity. It's a meditative sort of thing to
do, it sets up a habit of reflection. A lot of things go into making a community tolerable that no one ever notices, and no one person gets any credit for—like, for instance, something occurred to me the other day when I took my laptop down to the library, those generations of quiet mindless labor that went into the card catalog. I got to thinking this over because, of course, they've got a sign on it now, Catalog Closed, For New Books See Computer. You tend to notice things when they disappear. But it took a lot of unsung work, didn't it, to keep a card catalog? Same thing with cleaning the roadsides. Picking up diapers, pop cans, and shredded tires from roadside ditches. This work gets done and people aren't obliged to notice who does it. Next summer you do it again. We're in the stream of life. That's how it is. This is not a walk on the wild side. But it's outdoor work. There's even wildflowers out here, bluebells, yarrow, lots of wild roses, a wonderful purple weed called vetch that grows right out of cracks in the asphalt. Right on the margin where the highway is crumbling, these tough, greedy plants grab back the earth.

My soul is even as a weaned child. This is a good duty. Judge Nona Sticking, I salute you.

On the lonely stretches you might hear a porcupine rattling the shrubs. And birds doing their shopping, from one side of the road to the other, zip, zip. Sometimes I let myself think about Gayle, about something we've done the night before, about when we'll see each other again. I go over it all in my head. It's not fantasy, when you're remembering something—it's more like saying, oh thank you. Maybe she's thinking about me, at this very moment. And we've each got our day to get through. We can do it.

Thank you to writers in Fairbanks who offered valuable criticism and precious encouragement as chapters of this book came their way: Jean Anderson, Burns Cooper, John Kooistra, Susheila Khera, John Morgan, Birch Pavelsky, Carolyn Peck, and Linda Schandelmeier. Thanks also to Alan Hegarty of Limerick, Ireland. Four dear friends and magnificent writers read the entire manuscript at one go and helped me enormously: Ellen Moore of Marquette, Michigan; Linden Ontjes and Marie K. Boudreaux of Seattle; and Marion Jones of Fairbanks.

In the world of publishing, my way was eased by the professional help of Anna Bliss, Nat Sobel, Marie McCullough, and Judith Weber at the Sobel Weber Agency. Thank you all.

Andrew Proctor, formerly of HarperCollins and now at PEN, offered invaluable editorial suggestions. My editor, John Williams, at HarperCollins has been thoughtful, extremely kind, thorough, and a Godsend.

I am blessed to have known Terrence M. Cole for many years. In Alaska, where legend and exaggeration reign, scholar and author Terrence Cole and his brother, journalist Dermot Cole, believe that a writer of conscience keeps his facts straight. To witness their respect for this primary commandment of the nonfiction writer has been a treasured education for me. Gus Traynor, the fictional protagonist of this story, struggles with and against that same commandment.

For information and firsthand experience with Caterpillar tractors, thanks to three men who helped me without once asking, why do you want to know?—Ralph Mathews, Patrick B. Cole, and especially Dave Jacoby of the City of Fairbanks Public Works Department.

I will always be grateful to the stellar persons associated with the Bellwether Award: Barry Lopez, Anna Quindlen, and Terry Karten, as well as Arthur Blaustein, Frances Goldin, and most of all, Barbara Kingsolver. Thank you, for putting so much of your vital spirit into what you believe and what you value.

Like all Alaskans, I owe much to the independent publishers of such newspapers as
Jessen's Weekly
, the
Alaska Advocate
, the
Tundra Times
, and the
Pioneer All-Alaska Weekly
, to name a few.
Correcting the Landscape
is a work of fiction and all characters are imaginary. But Joe Sitton of the
Pioneer All-Alaska Weekly
really did once remark: “I won't be kept inside any building I don't want to be in.”

Extra-special thanks to my sons, Henry and Desmond Cole, for your enthusiasm, your help with details, and your honest, helpful responses to this story and these characters.

Most of all: Thank you, Pat Lambert, my dearest friend and my husband. Thank you for every step of the way.