Correcting the Landscape

by Marjorie Kowalski Cole

  “Think it over,” she said.

  She wore a silk shirt with long, loose sleeves and deep cuffs, and she folded her arms and smiled at me. People are sure able to do different things in life, with ease. Some people pull teeth, some people staple stomachs, some like to shoe horses I suppose. It was unbelievable to me that this woman wanted to sort out my finances. I put the candy in my pocket, without thinking how it looked. I might need it for later.

  We’re folding.

  Back in my truck I tried to say it out loud a few times. The words were strange, blocky, unappealing. Hard to get my tongue around them.

  Cut my losses. Bankrupt. Chapter Seven. Augustine Traynor dba Gus Traynor dba the Fairbanks Mercury hereby declares…

  One thing’s for sure, I thought, I had no right and no willingness to coax new staff aboard. They were out there, plenty of writers eager to see their words in print, eager to submit stories, until the utility company turned the power off and that pressroom foreman in his orange coveralls crooked his inky finger at me and said, “Gus…You havin’ a little trouble meetin’ the bill again.” What did he know.

  I’ve been my own Sancho Panza and this adventure was just about over.

  Polly Swisher had called my attention to the dates on several of the statements.

  “These dates are here for a reason, Gus,” she said. “Each day makes a difference. Give it a good think overnight but do make a decision.”

  One winter night years ago, out on Bad Molly Road, a big moose stepped out of the brush and into my headlights. A big old moose swung its suitcase of a rib cage right at my bumper. Nothing to do but hit the brakes and slide; and while I was skidding toward that brown hide, I shouted into the silence with the grim satisfaction of at least knowing the right words for the occasion, “Oh, SHIT.”

  I lucked out that time. The moose got a bad side-ache and disappeared into the woods, and I got a smashed hood and one thousand dollars from the insurance company. Wish I could hit another moose. About this catastrophe, there was nothing to say. No satisfaction of any kind apparent to me just yet, despite Polly’s reassurance.

  THURSDAY NIGHT LUCERNE AND JACK STOOD IN THE LIVING room and looked me over as if they were Gayle’s parents. What was that amusement in Lucerne’s face? She was always too ironic, that woman. Maybe she knew all about my visit to Polly Swisher?

  Gayle zipped herself into a midnight blue corduroy parka with a wolverine ruff around her face. The corduroy was deep and rich like fur. The parka hung to her knees. Her fluffy dark hair shone with light, and now we were going to head up to Well Street for a hot bath, and she’d shampoo it all over again. Me too, I was going to peel off and start over. Seemed like a crazy thing to do, but she seemed to want it.

  “You might think I’m overprotective,” she said in the truck. I had to think for a minute; what is she talking about? “When I was little we kids were left alone all the time. Bet you were, too. Actually I was taking care of the others at age six. My folks had eight kids, I have one. Seems like it ought to be easier for me, not harder.”

  “You do a great job with Jack, Gayle. No, I wasn’t thinking…”

  She unzipped the parka slightly and rested the hood on her shoulders. Swathed in fur next to me, like a beauty from New York City in a limousine.

  “I try to keep an eye on that kid. Lots of drug use around here these days. I go overboard, but on the right side at least.”

  “No, I’m sure you’re wise to…Kids don’t tell their parents much.”

  “We never did. Did you?”

  “It was a different world back then, wasn’t it?” As much trouble as I could get into, up to a certain ceiling. Used to lift those little lemon pies and cherry pies from the A&P. Took a Rolling Stones album out of Woolworth’s inside my jacket. Drove a friend’s dad’s Buick into the Elwha River at fifteen. That’s not what she means, though. Not what she means at all.

  “This morning I took him to school in the ice fog, let him off, watched him join the crowd of kids…and this taxi drew up. A pink Diamond taxi. And a boy got out in a T-shirt. Round face just like Jack’s. No backpack, no mittens, no lunch. And no jacket.” She stared at me. I tried to assume an appropriate expression of concern. “I thought to myself, the mom is sleeping it off. Times, this is a scary place to raise a kid.”

  I was a little concerned about the way our date was beginning, but if this is what she needed, I was all for it. “From what I’ve seen, Gayle, it must be.”

  She gave me a sidelong glance and a smile. Happy. Something she needed to clear up.

  We parked at the Well Street baths and hurried across the frigid parking lot. It was only about ten below, but it always feels colder this side of the year, going into winter; the same temperature next March and people would be out in nylon shells, bareheaded, barehanded.

  I sat in the men’s steam room, in the hot, damp fog, wrapped in a towel, and thought about Gayle next door. After a minute or SO I was ready to quit, but she had made me promise to give it ten minutes. So I did. Finally there was nothing to do but calm down. My pores opened up and my thoughts sank down into what was troubling me and then way down through my recent decisions and finally I wasn’t thinking at all anymore. No more quick and restless monkey mind, you could say. One overweight naked soon-to-be ex-publisher started to feel better.

  I’d lose a lot, but I’d still be here.

  The understanding came to me, and for a minute I was holding very still and almost at peace. But I stared too hard at that idea and like a reflection in water, it vanished. I lost it. It wouldn’t stick.

  She told me to take my time so I did; but I still finished ten minutes before she walked out of the women’s locker room, damp hair curling around her face, looking a little breathless. I thought, wow.

  “I’m a terrible show-off,” she announced.

  “Oh, I wish you would be,” I said, and put her hand through my arm as we left the building, warm now despite the cold air. She put her hood up loosely over her damp head. “But what makes you say that?”

  “Doing Tai Chi that time in the coffeehouse. Carrying on about writing fiction.”

  I tightened my arm against my side, holding her hand against me. “I like it,” I said. We walked toward the Peking Pagoda, downriver a few blocks. “You have good ideas about writing, about fiction. And telling the truth.”

  “Tad Suliman’s a friend of yours,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to say something about that. I thought that your friendship kind of influenced the way we handled the story about the trees at Dr. Leasure’s house, that time.”

  “I thought so, too,” I said. She dropped her hood back. “Truth is,” I went on, “I didn’t quite know what to do. But now, looking back—that’s one story where maybe I did make the right decision, for me, for the paper. It’s true that Tad’s made a lot of money doing things I wouldn’t. But he didn’t cut those trees without the full complicity of the way things get done in this town. It was outside the regulations but not illegal by a long shot. I agree, it was a kind of theft, like you said. Whose town is this, whose river?”

  “I said that?”

  “Yeah. And if he hadn’t been a friend I might have raised those issues. Like you started to. I didn’t. But maybe I made the best decision I could at the time, which was to look at the broader issue. We didn’t stop with that episode; we went on, we widened it. If someone else had called it different, well, that would have worked out, too. It’s funny, I see that now. You know it’s a good thing people don’t rely completely on newspapers for history, say; I can’t think of a more inaccurate source, right this minute. So much depends on a few decisions.”

  “There were complications in it for you. I didn’t have anything to lose. Maybe in your case I’d have done the same thing.”

  “Take this park we’re standing in,” I said. The Unknown First Family loomed to our right, floodlit. “This is part of the same problem. Does anybody really like this place? What
happened to the idea of a greenbelt?”

  She was silent. Finally she said, “I don’t like this place at all.”

  “You don’t?”

  “You know how they pour concrete over nuclear waste?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The poison’s still there, off you go to make more. They poured concrete over this place where people from out of town used to gather for free, watch the water, and yeah drink. But nothing has changed. People are still drinking themselves to death all around us. Who cares as long as the public doesn’t see them. Nice little favor the Native people are doing for us, drinking themselves to death.”

  She made an effort to remove her hand from my arm, but I tightened it against me, looked down at her.

  “Cathy,” she said. “This park makes me think of Cathy. I hate thinking about that.” She looked at me. Couldn’t see her too well, in the darkness, except for the brightness of her eyes. “After Cathy stopped living with us…she still came by, from time to time. A couple of times the month before she died. Whenever her boyfriend hit her. But because of the drugs, and because of him—that man—and because I had Jack, I…”

  “Yeah?”

  “The last time she came by I wouldn’t let her in. I gave her money for a taxi and said go to the women’s shelter. I am so scared of people who buy and sell drugs.”

  Her eyes had filled with tears.

  “She was on drugs when she drowned?”

  “She was using. And I know her boyfriend, he was a dealer from time to time and he had connections. He was a bad person. I…I hate to remember that. Go away, I said to her, don’t you come back here, I don’t want anything to do with you! Stone cold sober and I said that to my own cousin.” Her eyes were wide and wet as though she could hardly believe it, this story she carried around that condemned her.

  We stood together. I touched her hair; the outer strands were turning crisp. “You need to put your hood up,” I said softly, and I raised it around her. “There. I don’t want you to get a cold.” I touched her cheek. I was so glad she could let it go. I wanted to say, like some kind of priest, “What else? Anything else?” I wanted to say, “You are a star performer. And human, too.”

  “A river’s a nice thing, though,” she said after a minute. “They can’t take that away. A river, at least, is bigger than the things that happen next to it. Do you think?”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said. “Yes, it is.”

  We walked on, toward the restaurant, where we were met with warm air and rich smells, a tiny woman in silk, and circular red booths. We sat next to a pool filled with resin mountains like a Chinese painting in relief. There were little paths and tiny bridges and a hut made of Popsicle sticks.

  She ordered sweet and sour pork; suddenly I wanted the same thing.

  “Would you like some beer or wine?” I said.

  She looked puzzled.

  “No, no. Tea.”

  “Me, too. Pot of hot tea,” I told the waitress. “You know how to use these?” I asked Gayle, breaking open my chopsticks. She smiled, watching my hands.

  “No. Show me.”

  “Oh, no. Can’t help you.” Suddenly, with the pool and its miniature landscape next to us, the chopsticks that we couldn’t handle, it was as though we were both much younger, completely without care, and all the footpaths around us open, uncluttered, easy. Except for one small thing, one problem like a kettle boiling away in a neglected kitchen.

  “Excuse me just a sec, Gayle,” I said. I went out to the entrance where a telephone hung on the red brocade wall and called Polly Swisher’s office. Her machine answered.

  “This is Gus Traynor,” I said. “I’m ready. Please make an appointment for us to get started as soon as possible. I can’t hold it together anymore.” I took a breath. “There is no reason to wait. If you can give me a hand with this, I’ll do it. Please let me know where we go from here.”

  A small adjustment to the evening. I didn’t tell Gayle, it wasn’t like that. She knew she was looking across the tablecloth at a nearly penniless guy, she already knew that, and she didn’t mind. Now I could admit it to myself, too. Now we were looking at each other.

  Later we stood in her arctic entryway, in the darkness, and the lights were on inside the house. But it was dark in there. I pulled her against me and we stood there so close to the edge, my mouth in her hair, gathered together.

  “Can I call you again?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will.”

  “Well I guess folks are still up inside, so I’ll say good night.”

  “Shall I poke my head in?”

  “Lucerne’s going to want all the data right away. She’ll be like a satellite dish. Zap us. What’s the scoop?”

  “What is the scoop?”

  “Private.”

  “Yeah. It is. Between us.”

  “Gus, I have to warn you, I’ve always kind of done whatever I wanted to. Some people don’t think too highly of my track record.”

  “I think you’re the greatest.”

  “I kind of run away from things.”

  I drew back and looked at her.

  “It’s true,” she said, “I stayed away, I didn’t go out with you before because I have all these bad habits, I don’t take things seriously enough, as serious as other people do, it’s because I’m scared. That’s all. I’m scared it won’t be returned. So I act like people are toys.”

  “Shameful,” I said.

  She giggled. I leaned into her hair, whispered into her ear. “It’s returned,” I said. “It is returned.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. She put her arms around my waist and I kissed her. One kiss. Just for a minute. There was thumping inside the house. Tomorrow was a school day. I needed that excuse, to step back in amazement, whisper good night, go back to my truck. I had been such a long time alone.

  SIXTEEN

  I DROVE HOME SO SUFFUSED WITH THE CHANGE in my life—I mean Gayle’s friendship, not the bankruptcy—that my foot kept drifting off the accelerator; I found myself going about twenty-five miles per hour on the highway, and peering through the windshield for the northern lights even though snow was falling all around me. As if their presence, like celebratory bunting in the sky, would confirm the transformation in my life. That thing Judy Finch talked about: the universe will provide, as though the universe responds to our small personal needs. But why the hell not? The thought of the Mercury’s fate made me feel sick, but Gayle was more than a thought: she was presence in my cells. A change from the inside out.

  I had admired a lot of women in the past ten, fifteen years, but I’d been busy. And they seemed to like me but to lose interest, fast; a spark was missing—but not with Gayle.

  A big, slow rig appeared in front of me, blocking my view of the dreamy, snowy ribbon of highway. A flatbed loaded with the dark shape of some heavy equipment. I was in no hurry. I fell back. In a minute the rig fell back. I noticed the driver’s speed was not steady. A heavy load, this hill, what do you expect. Good thing they move these loads at night.

  Why was he turning onto Bad Molly?

  With some curiosity I followed the rig up the road toward my own home, braked in the road, and watched from a safe distance as with dreadful slowness and care the driver brought that thing to a stop in my own driveway. A bulky man in coveralls came around the cab and inspected his parking job. Tad Suliman. Well. I hung back there in the road as he helped himself into my front door.

  It appeared to be an off night for both of us, then.

  I found enough room at the tail of his rig to get most of my own truck off the road and walked around his machine. It made my yard look unusually Alaskan. I went inside and found him supine on the couch, his pac boots and massive coveralls on the floor.

  “What the Sam Hill,” I said, giving him a nudge.

  “You Gus?” He stretched and groaned. “Lemme sleep. Got to cross town when it’s dark. Lemme know if I’m in your way. Thanks buddy.” He smelled of the Last Gravel Bar
, the cold and dirty streets of Fairbanks. He rolled over on my couch like he owned the place.

  I stared down at him for a minute and then I thought, what difference does it make? All will be made clear. I unzipped a sleeping bag and put it over him.

  POLLY SWISHER WOKE US BOTH UP, RETURNING MY CALL AT eight A.M., leaving a message on my machine. I ran out to the living room to grab the phone when I realized what was happening but she had hung up. I replayed her message. How about noon, she said. So it was going to happen. I forgot about Gayle and just felt sick. Tad, who had pushed himself up on the sofa, stared at me and fell back down.

  “I know that voice,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He pulled the sleeping bag over his head and didn’t stir, while I put on the coffee and hiked out to the newspaper box, past my new pet in the yard, a frosted D7 Caterpillar tractor sitting on a flatbed trailer. I ought to take my Christmas card photo today, if I did things like that. Season’s Greetings, you-all in the temperate zone.

  I read the paper, drank coffee, and swung at a few somnolent but noisy flies with a rolled-up magazine until Tad threw the sleeping bag off and rose to his feet.

  “Sorry about this,” he said after a number of groans, holding his head.

  “Smart of you not to drive any farther last night.”

  “Take a shower?”

  “Go on.”

  While he was running the water I called Polly back and confirmed our appointment. It made my stomach feel like I was in an elevator that was dropping fast, or a cable car or some other unnatural device hurtling me toward unknown territory. Unknown. How will people take it. That part I don’t know either.