Heroes of the Frontier

by Dave Eggers

  VIII.

  JOSIE WOKE TO THUMPING from the rooms above, and knew these were the sounds of Sam and the twins eating and dressing and, Josie prayed, leaving soon. She had no clock nearby and didn’t want to know the time. She wanted only for these people to vacate the house before they woke up Paul and Ana. Sam had to work in the morning, she had said, lead a group from New Jersey, and the twins would be at school, so Josie and her kids would be left alone till the afternoon.

  The front door closed with civility, then the screen door with a cannon bang, and Josie put a pillow over her head. Then the door opened again, the screen banging three, four more times. It was some kind of joke, Josie thought. But finally it was quiet, and Josie was very warm, and briefly thought she would fall asleep again, only to find, when she closed her eyes, the face of Jeremy, and his mother, and her accusatory eyes. Presented with the choice between waking up far too soon, or closing her eyes again to fight off these faces and their accusations, she threw aside the blankets and pillows and got up.

  The first floor was silent and clean. Sam and her children left no mess, no sign they had eaten or in any way inhabited these rooms just moments before. In Josie’s home, dishes were not cleaned after dinner; it seemed better to leave them until the morning, as if to clear and clean them too quickly would be to prematurely erase the memory of a fine meal. Josie walked around, and, her mind awakening slowly, thought with some small pleasure that for twenty minutes or so she might be able to explore the house without being observed or interrupted. Sam had no coffee, so Josie brewed tea and walked through the kitchen, opening cabinets and drawers.

  The organization was astounding. There was a cabinet for glasses, another for plates and bowls, and no interloping had occurred in any of them—no rogue tumblers or platters. There was a drawer for plastic bags. A cabinet for pots. The silverware drawer had silverware in it and nothing else—no carrot grater, no corn holders. Those outliers had their own drawer. In vain Josie looked for the drawer or bin or closet where all the uncategorizable things were held, or hidden during desperate cleanings, but found nothing. The refrigerator, though an older model, was clean and bright, and inside were plastic tubs of leftover pasta and garden burgers. The milk had been somehow conjured from hemp, and the orange juice had been squeezed and bottled in Homer. A half-eaten banana had been carefully entombed in plastic.

  Josie stood in the doorway to the living room, sipped her tea, and contemplated the strangeness of being in a house at all. Josie and her children had been away from home for only a few days and already this, this large house with its sturdy walls, walls so strong pictures and mirrors could be hung from them, was some foreign and unfathomable temple to solidity. Josie found herself touching the walls, leaning against them, lavishing in their strength. There was a fireplace that appeared to get use, a tidy wall of quartered logs on one side, a smaller pyramid of kindling on the other. On the mantel were some old family photos that Josie recognized, one of Sunny and Helen and Josie and Sam, an unsurprising array of the twins’ school photos and lacrosse trophies, and a large plaque that Josie passed over quickly the first time, only to realize, when she returned to it, that it had been created to commemorate Sunny’s retirement. How did Sam have that?

  From above, she heard two small feet drop to the floor, and guessed from their nimbleness that it was Ana. In the mornings Paul was slower to re-enter the world. It would be better, Josie thought, if her children had a father like Zoe and Becca’s: heroic and faraway, rather than nearby and cowardly. It was far better and Josie tried to stifle the envy that was washing through her. How did Sam afford a place like this by giving birding tours for three months a year? It was ludicrous and not fair. Why should her fatherless children be so beautiful and strong? Why should she have arrived at effortless solutions to everything while Josie’s head was in a vise?

  “Mom?” Ana called from above, having no concern for her sleeping brother.

  “Down here,” she said, and Ana tromped down the stairs.

  Ana was hungry, so Josie found yogurt and they ate a cup together. They found grapes and crackers and ate them. They found eggs and Josie made omelets. While eating her second helping, Ana noticed the play structure in the backyard and ran to it. Paul was still asleep, so Josie went back to the fridge, found chocolate kisses and ate six of eight. She opened the front door, hoping to find some answer to the question of her unhappiness that day, but found only the morning newspaper.

  She brought it back to the kitchen and paged through it while keeping an eye on Ana, who was busy finding weak spots in the play structure. Josie knew she would break some part of it, and knew also that Sam’s kids were far too old to play on it. With Ana, Josie did calculations daily: How likely will it be that she breaks this? What will it cost in time or money to repair it? She scanned the structure, looking for the worst Ana could do, and arrived at the conclusion that it would involve the thin chains that held the swings to the thick posts above. The chains were the structure’s weakest point and Ana knew this, and was already pulling wildly on them.

  Josie refilled her cup with tea and turned her attention to the local weekly newspaper. The cover stories concerned a city employee who had made away with twenty-five thousand dollars in quarters he’d pilfered, over three years, from parking meters. The paper was astonished, wounded, but Josie thought: that is some extraordinary planning and follow-through. That man had some talent. A few pages later, the Announcements page graphic featured two words in large letters: Births, accompanied by a rattle and bottle, and Police, with a picture of handcuffs. These two words and pictures were next to each other, tilted jauntily, and were above what was mostly a police blotter of extraordinary clarity.

  8/16

  An anonymous caller reported a semi-truck traveling down the road with a tire on fire on East End Road and Kachemak Bay Drive.

  A caller reported an aggressive dog on Beluga Court.

  A caller reported an injured otter on the beach. The Alaska SeaLife Center, consulted, said to let the otter have time to see if it would go back into the water.

  A caller reported neighbors being loud outside her window on Ben Walters Lane.

  8/17

  A caller reported he found a black lab on Baycrest Hill.

  A man on Svedlund Street reported being yelled at by his woman all the time. He stated he did not want officers there.

  A woman turned in a found purse.

  8/18

  Someone reported an overturned trailer on Ocean Drive Loop.

  A caller reported that her husband was assaulted while walking along the roadway.

  A caller reported theft of an outboard motor on Kachemak Bay Drive.

  A caller reported a man walking down the road wearing shackles.

  8/19

  A man came to the police counter and advised he thinks someone stole his golden retriever.

  A caller reported an injured sea otter.

  A woman reported a bright light filling her home.

  It was all very lucid and yet Josie had many questions. Was the man in shackles somehow involved in the assault of the husband on the roadway? Was it the same otter on 8/16 and 8/19?

  Paul came downstairs and something in his eyes echoed Josie’s own thoughts about this house: it was warm and solid and made Josie’s family’s existence in the Chateau seem utterly irresponsible and cheapened their humanity. Josie made him an omelet and poured the last of the hemp milk, while his eyes asked just what they were doing—in the RV, in Homer. Why couldn’t they live here, or like the people here? A loud whine cut through the day’s quiet and Josie looked out the window to find a man wearing some kind of jetpack attached to a vacuum cleaner. Oh no. A leaf blower. The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of all humanity is to watch, for twenty minutes, a human using a leaf blower. With this machine, the man was saying, I will murder all quiet. I will destroy the aural plane. And I will do so with a machine that performs a task far less efficiently than I could
with a rake.

  Sam had said she’d be back by three, so at two, realizing they had done nothing but eat all day, Josie knew they’d have to go grocery shopping. She dressed the kids and they made their way down the road, enjoying the new experience of being able to walk to the store. Josie was sure she’d seen a food market down that way the day before, but the store they found was half hardware store, half discount grocery, and wasn’t the one Josie had in mind. The ceilings were high and the shelves piled precariously with wholesale goods, enormous bags of rice and flour, and a remarkable variety of food for dogs. All the brands were different from any Josie had seen before, none of them recognizable. The kids were confused. The cereal aisle was indistinguishable from the aisle, next door, that sold garden supplies.

  They found what they could and paid some irrational sum for it all. Walking home, Josie carried four bags, and the kids each carried one, and in a steady drizzle they made their way up the hill. All was routine until Ana began splashing in the puddles, Josie unwisely allowing it. The water eventually weakened Ana’s paper bag and her groceries fell through and onto the street. The kids began retrieving them, but there were cars speeding by, and there was no sidewalk, so Josie positioned Paul and Ana on the narrow strip of grass between the road and the ditch, and arranged the stray groceries in their remaining bags, gave one soggy sack to Paul and carried the others herself, and they resumed their journey. Dignity was at an ebb.

  With the house in view, three blocks up the hill, Paul turned to Josie. “Why are you sighing?”

  “I was yawning.”

  “No, you were sighing,” he said.

  She told him she didn’t know what she’d done or why, and it was raining so they should hurry. When they turned the corner Josie saw Sam’s truck, and her heart split. She was home early, and Josie had the unmistakable feeling that she was about to be scolded.

  “Boy, you sure did some house-exploring, ha ha,” Sam said after a moment, without anything like mirth. “And eating! You guys must have been hungry!” Josie tried to recall. Had they opened drawers, left them open? Closet doors? They must have.

  “We bought food,” Josie said, holding the bags high in the air. She brought them to the kitchen, and as she began to unpack them, she realized they hadn’t done any kind of organized replenishing. She’d bought some basics, eggs and milk—regular milk; they hadn’t had the hemp variety Sam favored—some stuff she and her kids wanted, some stuff the kids put in the cart and then a fair number of items even Josie wasn’t sure they’d eat. She looked back upon herself from just an hour ago, at the store, and couldn’t fathom anything at all about that person who had done that.

  “Looks like I’m going grocery shopping, ha ha,” Sam said.

  “Just make a list,” Josie told her. “I’ll go out again.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Let me go, Sam.”

  “No, it’s okay. You’re the guest. You relax.”

  To make her point as clear as possible, and to be the biggest ass she could be, Sam got her keys and went out then and there.

  —

  An hour later Sam returned, her hands full of newer, better groceries, and a wide smile on her face. It was as if, having proven her point—Josie could not be trusted with any task—a grand benevolence had overtaken her. She seemed under the impression that she and Josie were close again, that the dressing-down she’d given Josie an hour ago was right and just and had been dutifully absorbed. Grinning like they were in pajamas and still sharing a bedroom, Sam suggested a plan for that night whereby the twins would babysit Paul and Ana, and she and Josie would go out on the town. When the kids got wind of the possibility of staying alone with Zoe and Becca, ordering pizza and watching TV, it was over.

  Soon Josie was in Sam’s truck, and they were driving to a bar Sam insisted was for locals only, as if what Josie wanted and needed more than anything in the world was to drink with locals—that drinking with or near tourists was not right.

  “This is my place,” Sam said, and Josie nodded appreciatively. It looked like a VA bar. This was Sam’s place. Sam had a place. The walls were decorated with pictures of fish and battleships. It seemed a pivotal and regrettable moment, when you had a place at all, and it was a place like this. Sam ordered margaritas not from the bartender, but from Tom. He was a large man with a pink face that seemed to be prematurely falling, like a wax figure in the midst of melting.

  “We hooked up once,” she said to Josie, loud enough to be heard by Tom and anyone else. He smiled to himself while turning a glass upside down and setting it in a mound of salt.

  “Cheers,” she said, and clinked Josie’s glass. As a teenager, Sam didn’t drink. Not through college, either—she was a puritanical young woman fueled by her sense of control, her ability to avoid all substances and temptations. Sunny couldn’t get her to take aspirin. Now Sam was this. She’d downed half her margarita and had hooked up with the bartender. When?

  Above the bar, a football game was in the middle of some celebratory moment. “Look at that,” Tom said.

  It wasn’t a touchdown, though. The players now rejoiced after every play. Whether they were winning or losing, every time they did anything, they found something to celebrate.

  “I have to pull my girls from school,” Sam said, her eyes on the TV, where an adult male in silver spandex was doing some dance involving a football and a towel. “You ever hear of girls giving boys a rainbow blowjob?”

  Josie had not. Tom had stopped moving, was visibly listening, thinking so hard his forehead had sprouted twin diagonals from his temples to the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t wait to hear about the rainbow blowjobs.

  “Apparently this is done,” Sam explained. “A girl puts on red lipstick, and gives a guy a red ring on his dick. Then her friend puts on orange, another ring. Then another girl with yellow, another with green, blue. Would it be blue next?”

  Tom was nodding vigorously. Yes, blue.

  “Now I have this to think about,” Sam said, finishing her first drink and ordering another. “Will one of my girls be doing this? I mean, there’s no right way. Either I let them do whatever they want and they go and give rainbow blowjobs, or I try to control them, and to spite me, they go give rainbow blowjobs.”

  None of this seemed possible in Alaska, not with these girls. All the girls she’d seen, especially Sam’s twins, seemed of an entirely other world, another time, apart from any contemporary teenage nonsense, more likely to harness and ride a whale than want to be indoors with tiny boy-penises.

  “They’re how old?” Josie asked.

  “Thirteen. I have a friend, an older woman, who offered to take them to live with her, in the woods. Like Sunny did with us, in a way.”

  Sam spotted someone across the bar and waved. “Old friend,” she said by way of explanation. Soon he was walking over, and he was as advertised: old. Sixty. As he got closer, he seemed to be getting older. Sixty-five, seventy.

  “Old friend,” Josie said, and Sam took a second, as if deciding whether to pretend the comment was funny or pretend it was offensive. She chose to blink a few times.

  Then he was upon them, and looked seventy-five. He was a sort of Alaskan Leonard Cohen, tall and handsome but with no fedora.

  “Robert,” he declared, and shook Josie’s hand. His touch was both wrinkled and oily, like some dying fish. He looked between Sam and Josie a few times, nodding. “This is my lucky night!” he said loudly, his voice high and limp. Tom heard but did not smile. Josie felt she was in the middle of a slanted love square—love parallelogram?—but Robert was either oblivious or didn’t consider Tom a worthy part of it.

  Josie glanced back to the TV. Again the players seemed to be celebrating some minor achievement. It offended the eye at first, then Josie grew to understand it. That’s what’s missing in my life, she thought. The celebration of every single moment, like those fucking idiots on TV.

  “Jager shots for the ladies,” Robert said to Tom. Tom’s wax face tight
ened, as if struggling with this, the fact that he had no choice but to serve. He had chosen a life where he had to serve any kind of human, had to hope for a good tip from a bad man.

  Robert seemed surely a bad man. There was something about him, everything about him, that was disagreeable, untrustworthy, lecherous and leering. His shirt was open to the crease where his sunken chest met his sudden belly.

  “To sisters,” he said, saying the word sisters in a strangely lewd way. Sam winked at Josie under his raised glass. She must have kept it plain with him, telling him they were simple sisters.

  He ordered another round, but Josie hid her share of the second batch behind her elbow. He didn’t see or care.

  “Josie’s up from Ohio,” Sam said.

  “Oh yeah?” he said, now taking this geographic information as license to scan Josie, neck to knees. Arriving back at her eyes, he let loose what he would surely consider the night’s great bon mot. “I’d like to go down there sometime.”

  Sam didn’t seem to catch his meaning.

  “Okay,” Josie said, trying to yawn. “Think I’ll head home.”

  “Don’t go,” Robert said, trying to touch Josie’s hand. Josie pulled it away so quickly she hit the man behind her.

  “Sorry,” she said to him.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Robert said. “Just stay.”

  Sam wasn’t following any of this. She was two margaritas and two shots in, was now holding Robert’s hand, and seemed intent on making a night of this, of Alaskan Leonard Cohen. Tom was on the other side of the bar, looking up at the TV at what seemed an uncomfortable angle.

  “C’mon,” Sam said, “there’s so many people here you could meet.” Robert wanted a threesome, and Sam wanted to be alone with him. She scanned the bar for people she could pass Josie on to, and came up empty.