Ordinary Wolves (22 page)

 

 

IN THE MORNING
I hadn't caught a cat. I dug up the
paniqtuq
and ate it loud with ice crystals. My feet tingled, numb, my back stiff, everything cold and wishing for fire. It was colder today. I packed, trading the glove
from hand to hand, thinking of Franklin. I wandered out to scary roads that left me stranded in merging lanes like a deadhead in Breakup ice; braved traffic that should have earned me medals; crossed roaring bad-lands of no clean snow. Buildings towered overhead, named after oil companies and banks. Downtown people walked. Some of the people were Eskimo, but their gazes stayed away.

Inside a glass storefront, sweating half-naked men and women raced in place. A man spread blue crystals on cement. “How's it going?” he questioned, friendly, then disappeared in a door before my answer. Oily slush coiled into grates in the street. Trees stood alone, dreary and dripping and surrounded, roots weighted under heavy stone. Stores sold breakfasts. Stores sold ivory figurines, postcards, smoked salmon in flat cardboard boxes—twelve ounces for twenty dollars. My dogs hadn't known they lived so rich. The storekeepers were not like Newt with his flat eyes and fresh gossip. “Leave your bag at the door,” a man ordered. As my bag lowered, his eyes fastened on my knife. I pulled my jacket down. Being suspected made my muscles stiffen suspiciously. He picked up a phone. I picked up my bag and hurried out. Movie-star women passed, taking my breath away and leaving perfumed air in fading trade. Tremendous metal glass skyscrapers grew like square cliffs out of the street. Great lookouts to hunt from. Glass people up there, hunting what?

 

 

IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS
I found a green mitten, right-handed. A woman was checking her mailbox. “Hi,” I said thickly. My smiling muscles felt out of shape. I thought about asking to use her phone book but couldn't find the courage. I walked on, talking in my head. In all the miles no silence lived. Inside my thoughts, I realized finally that, more than in wind or cold or Breakup, the power and absoluteness of wild earth resided in its huge uncompromising silence. Anchorage conquered silence, left not a trace—more frightening, not even a memory. Silence the dentists could not shoot and put in glass boxes. Whatever was left when humans were done, silence would come home.

My feet were soggy and peeling and staying numb now. I ached for someone to talk to. Something was not right in my mind. Thoughts carried on their own conversations. They shot across my head using only the first letters of words. It was spooky, unbalanced, a head full of acronym thoughts shouting to other thoughts. Leaving me out.
LMO.
“This is not good,” I said aloud.
TING.
“Surrounded by a quarter of a million humans, and the longest conversations you've had have been with a napkin and a ghost.”

 

 

IN AN ALLEY,
an Eskimo woman who looked like Dollie Feathers hunched eating pizza out of a flat box that would make a good dart board. She breathed on her hands to warm them. She resembled Dollie, pretty, though older and no giggles. I slopped past. Forced my mouth to open.
“Uvlaalluataq.”
Good morning. I kept going, eyes shifting.

The woman peered out of her sweatshirt hood. Her eyelids were scarred and would never again close properly. “Ha? That white boy that always can't play ball.” She spoke in a monotone.

That easy you can see my two worst flaws?

She spoke Iñupiaq, and waited.
“Kaŋiqsivich?”

“No, I don't understand.”

“You do little bit. We used to been go Takunak sometimes for Mamas and Papas Tournament. I'm from Uktu. Now I'm living in Anchorage, how long.”

Two men walked past in suits. We kept our eyes down, waiting for them to pass. “Is there a difference between a pistol and a revolver?” one was saying. “Sure,” the taller man said, “a pistol is a twenty-two.” A woman and a man followed behind them. “Do you know how debilitating that is,” she told him, “when you don't have a ball in your mouse?”

Pizza wafted into my concentration.

“Have some. They gave it to me from the back door. I won't finish it. Can't get good buzz if I eat too much.”

I raised my eyebrows,
yes,
that was true. I sat where the pavement
wasn't icy. The pizza was thick with cheese, frozen on the surface but still warm way inside, like a fox that died in the trap. Her name was Hannah Wana. We asked who each other's parents were, the way introductions went in the village; who we were wasn't as important, and meant little without that information.

Hannah stood and dusted snow off her knees. Her legs were bowed. Her throat had hole scars. My head filled with visions of the Takunak airfield, the crowd around the mail plane.
It's time to swallow your pride, Cutuk.
It was time to call the Takunak school to talk to Iris, to ask her to give me more directions.

I sat and finished the pizza.
Pizza Hut.
I'd seen it advertised on the Wolfgloves' TV. Eating made me happy and I thought of Janet. When Janet fed me
tiktaaliq
livers she said she was proud of me. Abe hadn't taught pride. Pride had to do with country music, sports, joining the military and getting dead for some devious president. Pride was cousin to bragging, and required a support group. Nothing we needed or had. Nothing for something.

Iris would have something to say, something like “Absence makes the heart swallow your marbles.”

THIRTEEN

ON THE PHONE
he believed my lie. Under the airport terminal, where suitcases went around and around, my eyes latched onto his overhanging gut. This man had shotgunned wolves from the sky,
guuq,
and taken my mother soaring away before the back of my memory. All I felt was surprise—that a ski plane could lift such a huge, tall, fat person.

The airport did not close. I'd walked here last night, after Value Village closed—Iris's idea.

“I'm not moving to another village, Iris. I'm staying.”
Until I prove I can make it.

There had been a pause while her laughter bounced off the satellite and spiraled down to the earpiece, out of a past now hard for
me
to believe.
“Value Village.
A used-clothing store, Cutuk. Just admit it—recite after me: ‘I will spend money on clothes. And a haircut!' Don't worry, I won't tell Abe! What do you want me to say to Janet? She asks about you every time.”

“Tell her I'm getting a job.”

In the airport bathroom, I'd flushed the toilet half a dozen times, stripped off my clothes, dipped the rag in, and scrubbed my naked body. The clean used jeans, shirt, and leather boots fit better than any January had ever mailed. I stuffed Janet's
mukluks
in a garbage slot. At the sink, I shampooed with free lotion soap, scraped my chin with my knife. I combed my hair back with my fingers. Abe didn't own a comb. Combing felt vain. A man in a soft leather jacket fiddled his perfect hair, stealing glances sideways. I had avoided his eyes and tried to walk innocently out the door.

January was old, not as handsome or tanned as TV elders. He wore unlaced shoepacks and an immense unzipped parka over his T-shirt. Maybe he didn't have a comb either; greasy hair clung in clumps around the back of his head like tundra grass. Fat had bridged a shortcut from his chin to his neck, and the whole mass wobbled, bristling with white stubble.

He glanced up, startled. “Ho! Goddamn!” He crunched my hand. “Cat my dogs if it ain't Tom Hawcly's grandson. Honest-to-gosh dead ringer.” I gasped, peering at people, wondering if they were religous and against swearing, and wondering how did he recognize me, and what was a “dead” ringer? I pulled my shirttail over my sheath knife.

“Broad shouldered, hell, you must be eighteen.”

“Twenty-two. How are you, Mr. Thompson?”

“Never better! Never better!”

He didn't look never better; he looked sad and sunken around the eye corners, a smile hoisted in between. “Glad you called. Ho, got your duffle already? That all you brought? Got any money? I happen to be runnin' low.” The doors opened for his commanding stomach. “You're quiet. This is Anchorage. What you think?”

He walked too fast, talked too fast. Somewhere out in the maze of the city was one more person. When I felt caught up to the present, I would hunt Dawna Wolfglove and find out what was left of the past. But I was late again. She'd have boyfriends and music.

“I expected trash. And apple trees.”

“Aw, there's trash. White trash and regular. You limping? Here's my truck. Brought a sweater if you need. Gimme a coupla' dollars, wouldya?”

I pinched off a bill and handed it to him, dubious, and careful of wind. He shoved it in his pants. A sticker on the back window read EAT MOOSE, 5000 WOLVES CAN'T BE WRONG. I smiled, pretended nonchalance, and climbed into my first car ride. The brown seat was slippery and cracked. I rested my feet gently over the area for hammers, newspapers, coffee cups, and extension cords. The engine caught with a flooded roar. We jounced away from a cloud of smoke, almost too thick and blue to disperse. Mountains rose above a line of haze, sharp and friendly on the horizon.

“Nice mountains.”

“Agh! Hillside's full a rich bastards. Varnished snowshoes over their propane fireplaces. They wouldn't know how to lace the bindings. Kind a people take winter vacations to Florida an' convince the in-laws they're pioneers.”

A bungee cord kept January's passenger door closed. The pavement blurred right before it went under the truck; at that moment it wasn't road anymore but a rock waterfall. January gripped the wheel in his giant hand. The back of his thumb was hairy. The smell of his Copenhagen made my tonsils climb. A man cut in front in a black sports car. January smashed the gas pedal. The truck backfired and bucked.

“Middle a winter, look a' that joker's tan. I miss Alaska. This territory used to be a frontier, not a goddamn athletic club.”

The cars stopped, a river of red taillights. My brain felt slow, layered as a frozen onion. I needed a plan, a goal, probably a career. From what I understood, the first most important thing here was a job, then car, house, spouse, friends. Last came hunting and fishing, right beside opera or Ping-Pong.

“I need a job.” I pictured the twenty-dollar bill crumpled in January's pocket, then Melt Wolfglove,
Raised you right from my pocket!
Melt had gone Out, to boarding school. Chemawa, Oregon, down in the States. Was that where he learned to be unhappy and cruel?

“Can you do anything?”

My self-esteem came like static over his words. It seemed as if he wouldn't believe me if I said “Piss all by myself,” which here in Anchorage
was not as simple as it sounded. “I can skin animals real well. And shoot. Build dog sleds? Abe said dog racing is getting popular with city people.”

“Na! Job work.” The old man bobbed his head. “Carpentry? You ever built houses?” The huge hotels were coming toward us.

“Peeling logs and stuffing mouse holes doesn't count?”

“Nawp.”

“People ask me to fix their snowgos.”

“Fix my truck maybe? How'd
you
learn to wrench? I know a fella fixes cars. John Gordiano. Tell you the truth, I wouldn't let Gordiano ream my dog's hemorrhoids.” He fished something out of his lip and peered at it. “Snoose's gonna kill me. My wife died a cancer. I take pumpkin seeds, PABA vitamin. Prostate gland. Gotta get the PSA checked, you know?”

“Huh-uh. What? No, I-I haven't.”

He spat specks off his lips.
“Twenty-two!
You look like him. When I met Tom in Barrow I was a youngster. Abe, younger'n you. Fresh from Chicago an' already lost that finger in the winches. Tom wasn't motherly. When he get liquored up: ‘Boy don't need all his fingers if he stays on his toes.'

“That was the first time I saw Abe paint.” January's loud voice disappeared and his grammer improved. “He didn't talk for days. It was three feet high on a piece of tent canvas. I still get shivers. Just this figure standing on the ice, facing the other way, hands hanging out of his parka. Shoulders crooked with the weight of the world. All grays and whites and a finger behind him red on the ice. Your eye couldn't do anything but go right to that finger and hurt. Wheww!” January shook himself. His loud voice came back. “Don't he want you going to college?”

My mind was on the fast ice, north off Barrow. Why couldn't I have lost a finger? Why couldn't I paint? A piece torn away, a scar to forecast all this imperfection, and this scream inside, out and dried on canvas. “Abe-I-Abe doesn't care what I do. Long as I'm happy.”

January arched an eyebrow. “Well, now ain't that whitey might a him.”

“Did my sister Iris come see you?”

“Sure she did. Nice girl. Real pleasant girl. Yep, she did.” He hooked his thumb. “Lake Hood. Busiest float and ski airstrip in the world.” Between hotels stretched a snow-covered lake with trees around the
edges and steep-roofed houses across on the hills. “Recognize”—I blinked, startled; did he know I'd walked this road?—“my old Cub on the shore? That's the plane your dad give me, after Tom cracked up his other'n. Before Abe went to college in Chicago. Oh, I sent him bucks sometimes, when a bounty check come or I sold wolf pelts. You fly?”

Abe gave away an
airplane?
Dead wolves helped pay for his education?

“. . . teach you to fly, the way your granddad taught me. That would make me proud. One small hitch, though,” he chuckled wryly, “name a the I-R-S. They got me on back taxes.”

If this fat old man knew . . . how my memory had engulfed that blue and gold ski plane like a tree growing around rope.