Ordinary Wolves (26 page)

 

 

DAWNA SLAMMED THEIR
upstairs apartment door. She'd left lights on. On a four-drawer dresser the TV stood. A green couch faced the TV. Dave pulled the switch. “I wanted to catch Letterman.”

A blue truck door lay across cement blocks. The window was rolled down, clothes heaped and hanging through the opening. No books—college textbooks or otherwise—in the room. No meat saw. No skins. To the left was a kitchen, dark paneled walls, lined linoleum. Dawna had never had time for kitchens. I wanted to escape there, to wash her dishes; it wasn't even work with water coming out hot and going somewhere by itself.

David Letterman flung a book through a good glass window.
The only book in the house.
Both Daves laughed. There was a rabbity resemblance. Maybe they were cousins, white people had them after all. The sofa was tired, the springs bony. A caribou skin would help, and smell like home. The house made self-important noises: hums, drones, whirs.

“You want pop?” Dawna leaned into the fridge. The silver bars of empty racks gleamed. A twelve-pack of 7UP lay in there, a Ziploc of
paniqtuq,
a yellow squeeze bottle of mustard. I raised my eyebrows. She tossed a can. I scrambled after it.

She grimaced.
“Adii,
I forget you always can't catch.”

The village rushed back, all the shame of not knowing how to play basketball—or anything else that mattered—and having red hands doing it, instead of brown. The clean bubbly taste of 7UP brought new memories, the jet ride with the beautiful flight attendant. My fingers played with the lock on the truck door while I kept my eyes off Dawna's body.

She sat beside me. “So how you been?”

Dave glanced over, leaned forward, turned up the volume.

“I'm working as an auto mechanic.”

“For real? Say! I'll let you fix my car.” She pulled strings and fought a curtain open. “Ever see this kind with strings?”

“Maybe Abe's nailed-up flour sacks worked better?”

“Nay! There. That's my car.”

I leaned across her. She didn't use Pert shampoo anymore. Abe slipped in with stray thoughts—what was he doing without me to shoot mice with a big rubber band? They must gnaw all night at our soap in the Darigold butter-can soapdish nailed to the wall. Iris had said on the phone that Franklin had left his igloo and moved up to stay with Abe. Would they get around to shooting enough meat?

“You gotta kick the shifter, but now that can't even—what are you dreaming?”

“I—”

Dawna and I giggled, the way we used to by the dogfood bucket, behind Janet's stove. We reached out and gripped each other's wrists. I felt myself falling into the pools of her eyes. Her thumbs sank in like Janet's, reminding me of her strength. There was no slipping away. And for me it was like pushing freezing hands into a warm basin—it felt so good but along came the agony.

Finally, I looked down. “Dawna, did Melt go to school in the States?”

She jerked out of my hands and stood. “Shuck, I dunno. Oregon someplace. Chemawa. Teachers cut his hair and beat him for speaking Iñupiaq. Indians beat him for being short. Everybody knows those parts, if you been around when he's feeling high. How come?”

“Just wondering. How about Newt Clemens? Where did he go to school?”

She shrugged.

“Is your car an automatic?”

“Our parents are inside us.” She giggled. “Have to be careful what we let out.” She stood sexy in tight jeans, hands brushing easy on her thighs. The rings on her fingers were supposed to be gold. The plating had worn through. “Dave, what's my car?”

“Chevy Shove-it.” Dave pried his gaze off the screen. “Let's cut some lines and get amped. You want to—?”

I recognized his pause, the hydrogenated version of my too-native name. Intoxicating music leaked through the floor from downstairs, a female singer, singing about the weight of a stare. Dave pried a square of newspaper out of his pocket.
Raising Dawna, right from his pocket.
He went into the bathroom, and, flexing extra, lifted the mirrored medicine cabinet off its clips. Bottles rattled inside. He laid it beside the TV. The picture on the screen flickered and cycled downward. David Letterman's feet stood above his grinning face. With his driver's license, Dave cut rows of powder. None of my Eskimo friends in Takunak had a driver's license. Outsiders, they always had licenses, and all their teeth.

My hands gripped each other. How feeble and pathetic, me subsisting on January's trust and a flight attendant's single-serving smile when everyone else was singing, dancing, driving. Dawna's eyes watched, insolent and unblinking, unapologetic for any distance she had left me behind. I saw the wolf again, running, paying the price of a bottle; and Takunak, a speck in the wilderness, modern as microwaves, yet hissing with voices from a brand-new ten-thousand-year-old past:
Kill every animal possible, every fur. Share. Avoid taboos. Don't get ahead. Never stand out. Live now.
Takunak: generous and jealous, petty and cruel and somehow owning us; owning our decisions; calling us home to assassinate our ambitions. How strange my past, even farther back into the earth—the buried caribou-skin entrance, flickering lamplight, dreams and the conviction to hunt the land for them—and now the only thing familiar, a Wolfglove I didn't know.

I considered clubbing Dave, tossing him out on the dead lawn, and holding Dawna in my arms. It seemed as reasonable as killing a wolf for Bacardi, as reasonable as killing my brain cells scrubbing burnt bent VW lift rods in solvent to sell as new. It was the spontaneous sort of action Lumpy wouldn't have to think over. But I only
thought
about it, and thought, in Takunak, was the least-respected bodily function.

They rolled a dollar into a straw. They concentrated, then gulped 7UP. I prepared to be casual. I might sneeze and scatter dollars to dust. I wanted to ask what it did. But coke was expensive; it better not make me feel cheap. The dust tickled in my nose. Then all the way up to my brain
a pleasant pain spread in dots like the cut of fine glass. A small bitter gob crawled down my throat.

 

 

DAVE LAY PARTIALLY
on top of her on the couch, brushing her neck with his mushy lips. Dawna Wolfglove was the only person I had ever kissed. Including family. On the dresser, a tiny pair of calfskin slippers winked blue beads, Janet's as a child, later Dawna's. Some of the stitches and beadwork had broken; the old sinew thread was brittle and needed to be resewn. Dawna probably had no skin needles.

I migrated to the carpet.

Huge yellow wrestling flashed on the screen. Words stood in line in my brain, a blizzard of babble. Dawna sat up. “You ever try Pralines 'n Cream?”

I kept my mouth shut, in case it was a common narcotic, or some kind of bent-over sex everyone else had had. “I'll fix your car.” I hurried to the door and out before she could untangle herself. It was cold outside. Sitting around too much made me shiver. Or was I turning into a city person who thought cold was equivalent to bad? But no, I'd lived the scars on my hands, made all the down payments for my Eskimo future.

The Chevette was white. “Uh-oh. Bad luck on you. Get a
paint
job.” Somebody had smashed it hard. The right headlight bulged like Stevie's eye right after Melt caught him and punched him six times in Wolfgloves' outhouse. Stevie had smoked Melt's Marlboros. The last in town. I brought him snow in the outhouse for his eye. “I'll get gun and shoot him yet,” he said. I thought of Tommy Feathers's threats to me behind the church. “You're not like that,” I said. “Everybody doesn't have to be like everybody.” Stevie's eye was swelling, the lashes disappearing. His glasses cracked in his hands. I sat on the stained seat. I nicked my wrist and took some of his blood and gave him some of mine. We were best friends and blood brothers again, moonlight leaking in. Our breath froze frost feathers up under the roof. He bowed his head, let spit run out of his mouth. “That guy never tried to love nobody only himself.” He wiped
his lips. “Here I been trying.” Offshore, the river ice boomed and echoed. The world outside seemed made of interminable cold. Stevie's glasses clattered on the boards. He put his hand on my neck. It was warm. “I'm gonna die from drinking. Doesn't matter. But you better miss me, Cutuk. And if Melt never try cry you let him learn.”

But Stevie ended up getting us laughing, pointing down, pointing out the impossible diameter of one of Melt's old frozen turds. Stevie—and me—we should have cried, but we were too young that night to remember how.

Beside Dawna's car, I lit a match and checked the ground for dog shit. I slid under the bell housing. It was black with grease. I yanked wires off the neutral safety switch, bit insulation, twisted strands, then stood outside letting time wander away, wondering what the hell was I doing, wandering around this city like a loose dog swallowing crap?

Orange clouds hung overhead. Either Nancy Reagan had gotten at the nuke button or it was city night, not giving the sky any sleep. My mouth was as furry as it was an hour after eating lentils. A strip of the
paniqtuq
out of Dawna's refrigerator would taste good. Refrigerators made me think of summer, up north, my teenage years, eating fish and
igamaaqłuk
porcupine because nothing would keep for long in the
siġḷuaq.

I slugged the white Chevette. “Daw-na!” I slugged again.
Lumpy does what he feels, loses fingers and goes to jail if that's the price.
“Nothing works! Nothing is working! People are messed up!” My hand didn't bleed. I was disappointed and hunched over it until the canvas of my jeans grew icy. My damaged feet were numb. I trudged up the stairs to beg a ride to my bicycle. The bedroom door was closed. Everywhere my eyes settled I took them away and thought of the feel of fingers on a gun stock, of shooting, smashing, shattering. Quietly, I washed the dishes, then examined Dawna's photos, hidden, pinned inside cupboard doors. They were of people and buildings, a dog crossing in front of cars, a woman running on a neon-night street. Black and white; the contrasts were harsh, the faces hard-partying. Who could say if they were art? I believed them, and didn't know much else to say that about, so maybe they were. Bubbles tinked in a 7UP can on the TV. I finished it and lay the can in the trash, wanting to swallow all sign of traveling this way.

Outside, the middle of the night was damp, tingly in my nose. Gunshots would roll away hollowly. It felt wrong, having so far to go and without a gun. The doors to Dave's Mustang were locked. Spare light glinted off the chrome. Fresh snow lay on the roof, downy and perfect for snow ice cream. Iris would be out with a spatula gathering a bucketful.

A light came on upstairs.

In the Chevette, the twisted key glinted in the ignition. I sat for a moment, breathing in and out my rage at all the humans with their wasted warmth, and love locked out of reach; examining my desire to drive engines, and wanting honesty; wondering, was that something Abe had invented to amuse himself? Maybe I only wanted honesty and kindness to be precious because they were things I'd wasted time learning—like bear tracks and algebra.

The engine heaved over, spun, and fired!

The car bucked out onto the street. The wheels spun on snow. The throttle stuck. The engine made a continuous growl, a growl that said worn-out timing gears. Soft white street blurred under the hood. Twin tracks stretched behind. In the mirrors, the Mustang's headlights swung onto the road. The wheel stiffened. I fought it. The car plowed through crew-cut bushes guarding a stranger's lawn. Dogs barked. I hunched behind the hood and lifted it a few inches. The hinges squeaked. Dave's Mustang rocketed past.

“Man, did you ever not learn to follow tracks!” Elated, I held a match under the auto choke. I pictured grabbing up a rifle, chambering a round. I had been quick at moving shots. When the rabid fox angled across the ice toward my team, rasping, out of its mind, I swung and dropped it, neck-shot.
Don't shoot rabid animals in the head; the brain is needed to verify the virus.
My teeth grated as the taillights shrank out of range.

 

 

NORTHERN LIGHTS BOULEVARD
led to ocean, gleaming, moonlit, windy gray. The engine revved and idled rough. I got out. Walked to the edge of the overlook. The breeze was chilly. I'd biked here. Tonight I wanted
to find the other edge of the city, the north edge, where houses stopped and
land
started. Ice pans drifted in the current. Open water, we called it at home. More dangerous than bears. Out in the inlet, water slapped ice. Thickets of birch lined the shore, growing close, straight and pale, like patches of giant moose hair. Behind were the lights of the airport.

Down the deserted road, I gunned, full throttle, the car shuddering like an Apollo reentry vehicle in the movies. I was driving! Driving—how was it so straightforward and logical? It must be the drivers, the places they drove, and their irreverence when they arrived that remained incomprehensible.

Before dawn I backtracked away from jet lights in the sky, toward the mountains, carefully switching lanes, watching for police, waiting for traffic lights to be green and then some. I thought about wrecking her car, plunging it into willows, or sinking it in saltwater. But the pollution, the waste of resources, the meanness—I decided to repair it. I steered in behind January's truck. The engine died, dieseled, and shook the car. My feet tingled. The streetlights had dimmed, everything gone flat and dull. The door creaked open. Cool air poured in. My head lowered against the wheel, breathing shallow.

“Are you all right?”

The girl stood on the slushy gravel, inhaling a Marlboro Light. “Are you going to be sick?” She was from the trailer next to January's. Her long hair was damp. Her shirtsleeves too long. Her eyes wide set and friendly.