Correcting the Landscape

by Marjorie Kowalski Cole

  Get everything ready. I go to meet my fate. I could hear Felix singing one of his patriotic pub songs: Rody McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

  Tad walked into the room damp and steaming, red-faced, looking imprisoned inside a too-small white T-shirt. At something over six feet he carried his fat better than me, but there it was. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sank down at my table.

  “I was at it way too long yesterday,” he said. “Can’t take it anymore. It’s been a while.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d clear some land out by a cabin I have, then I got everything ready and was driving across town and seemed like I couldn’t quite find the road, and I thought, damn, I might be drunk, better go home and sleep it off, and then no, Gus’s place is closer, maybe a safer bet.”

  “I mean, why the drinking?”

  “Hell, Gus, there’s no reason.” He pushed the coffee aside. “This isn’t going down too well. You have any beer?” Without waiting for my answer he studied the inside of my refrigerator and found a few bottles of Alaskan Amber.

  “This here is your new beginning?” I said. “You gonna be all right with those or we need to swing down to Gold Hill Liquor for another box?”

  He shrugged and drank. “I’ll let you know.” He leaned forward and rubbed his fingers through his wet hair. Black mixed with gray, thinning out. I could see his scalp; we were getting up there, both of us. Topics lay on the table between us—financial collapse, love, drinking, old misery and new beginnings, a Cat in my driveway—but we avoided them.

  “How was that poetry reading? How’s our friend Felix?”

  “I hope he gets a check out of this…uh, settlement,” I said. “I mean, he could use it. Yeah, he did a good job.”

  “I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I liked his. You don’t meet a lot of poets. Least I don’t.”

  “Felix says that being a poet is hard, like being a salmon swimming upstream. But in America, it’s also lonely because, how did he put it, you look around and you’re the only salmon in the stream. He’s got a colorful way of talking.”

  “I can see that. That statue poem. Got me thinking about the one downtown, the Unknown First Family. I have a little personal gripe with that one.”

  “Funny you mention that. So did Gayle. She said, maybe we ought to do an alteration on it.”

  He chuckled. It was a nice sound, to hear the misery lift. “She did? Were you here when they unveiled that thing?”

  “I think I was in Juneau with the Department of Labor that year.”

  “Well, I tell you Gus, what a love-in the respectable people had for themselves that day. It was downright embarrassing. A regular love-in. Aren’t we the greatest people in the world for living here and having families. Shelley was big on it, you know. Right up Shelley’s street, that sort of thing, getting rid of the First Avenue bars and paving the riverbank, and putting every fucking donor’s name in bronze for all time. Every time you go down there now you have to walk around the base of that statue and those ten-thousand-dollar plaques with the contributors’ names—ha, I even found some bronze typos in the thing. Ten thousand dollars and they misspelled some words!” He drank his beer. “What did Felix say, involuntary subscription? That’s what got to me. Because it was practically that. Shelley wanted me to pony up. And all this time there are real artists around here, who could do something pretty great with ten thousand dollars.”

  I thought, staring at him, you gave that much to me.

  “So what’s Gayle’s objection to the First Family? Isn’t the goddamn obvious thing, there’s no way those Nordic giants are Athabascans?”

  “Well…”

  “Or the stupid way they are standing out there in the wind? Imagine trying to pass that thing off as representing anyone. I’d be pissed, if I was her.”

  “More that the riverbank was a gathering place,” I said. “Which of course it still is, but now it’s swathed in concrete. Like Red Square.”

  “That was the whole point. Get rid of people who loafed in the grass and hid weird stuff in the bushes.”

  “And she said rumor has it there’s a body inside the statue.”

  “No. Can’t be. Although, you know, it was in storage here in town for several weeks as I recall. If you had to dispose of a body and you could figure out how to slip into wherever it was stored…Man that thing is pretty solidly in place now. Shelley tried to get me to help with the base of it, they were hauling granite off of Pedro Dome to pave the base. I’d say that thing is in there good. You know this was your last beer. That okay?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It occurs to me,” he said, “that Gayle is speaking, you might say, metaphorically.”

  “Metaphorically, Tad?”

  “The body inside the statue could be the body of her people, so to speak.”

  “Gayle is half Swedish.”

  “Don’t be difficult, when I’m being profound.” He looked past me, frowning. “Not a physical body but a spiritual, um, essence.” The post-Judy Tad struggled with the vagueness of this vocabulary. “A healthy body contains a healthy spirit. Or does it? I forget.”

  I suddenly began to understand. “There’s two different uses of the word body,” I said. “There’s your own body, which can go long periods of time without a spiritual life, right?”

  “No question.”

  “Then there’s the body of a people, of a community. Like the body politic and whatever. Two different meanings, and the second meaning, the body of a community—that’s a spiritual thing.”

  “Where are we going with this?”

  “I’m getting it now, Tad. I see clearly. Take the body of Christ. That’s the church, right?”

  “As I recall, dimly.”

  I hurried on, briefly grateful for our shared frame of references. “Using the word body to describe a community is the use that you mean. Maybe one human being can live through times when his spirit is dormant or crushed. Who hasn’t lived through that? But the body of a people, of a group—when that spiritual light goes out, the community ceases to exist. No more, ah, cohesiveness.”

  “Could be.”

  “Your own corpus, whatever, your flesh-and-blood reality”—I waved my hand at his—“can carry on for some time without a spiritual life. We all know that. But a community? I don’t want to say it dies, but what does happen to a community when its connection is drained away? Or goes missing, or dries up, or whatever happens to it?”

  “What does happen to it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I sat back in my chair exhausted by following my own logic. I couldn’t answer Tad’s question. He sipped his beer slowly, waking up. “Well it sounds good to me,” he said at last. “What holds people together is the question. I’m not sure how we got on this, though. What was our starting point? Because that would make a difference. Did we begin this conversation on solid ground?”

  “Sure we did. Granite from Pedro Dome.”

  “And the body of Christ, didn’t you say?”

  “That, too.”

  “Well, then. Maybe the spirit of a broken people is trapped inside that monstrosity and we ought to set it free.”

  “Maybe that’s the meaning of Felix’s poem.”

  “So maybe we ought to move that thing.” He laughed. “That’s an action I would consider. But not until I get a damn sight drunker.”

  “I’d have to be drunk myself to go further with this and I don’t drink.”

  “That’s true. Why don’t you?”

  “Tad, why the hell do you drink so much?”

  “It seems to help.”

  “Doesn’t look that way to me.”

  “Yeah, I see how you might say that. I won’t argue with you.”

  I know I come out ahead not drinking, given my propensity to go for broke, to lose it all, to hang on too long. Eighteen years in Alaska and here I am picking at the lining of my wallet. Maybe Tad was gifte
d with extra resources. I mean the stuff he was made of, the physical part; he seemed able to do a little better personally with the reality of each day. Tad was a craftsman; you didn’t often see his hands lying unemployed on the table. Maybe not an artist, exactly, but let’s say, a materials expert. Not content to live in his head.

  “Want to go eat?” he said.

  “There’s cereal here, and eggs. I have an appointment. I have to go down to the Mercury this afternoon.”

  “Let’s grab a bite first. I need to get out. And I can’t take a casual trip in that rig outside.”

  “Where would your Sorry Self wish to breakfast?”

  “Gus, you want to be polite to a guy who’s descended from sultans. How about the Klondike? Steak and eggs might put me back together.”

  “I’ll have to leave you somewhere. I have this date at noon.”

  “No problem.”

  In the truck I asked him, “How is it that a guy with your ancestry is Catholic?”

  “Turks invaded Europe, didn’t they? Or maybe the Crusaders converted them. How would I know. Family lore, none of it amounts to much, people believe what they want to believe. Which is not a small thing, the wanting to believe. Judy…Judy would come out with her mystical new age ideas about the universe and wait for my acknowledgment, know what I mean? And I could tell, it was ninety-five percent a simple decision: did I want to believe her? If so, do it. Simple as that. The imagination or whatever it is, would do the rest, pick up the pieces and knit the whole thing together.”

  “You have a point there.”

  I drove in silence. It had snowed all night, over last night’s tire tracks. I followed faint indentations through the fresh, smooth covering on the road.

  Then I attempted the beginning of a confession. My words as faint as the tracks in front of me. I said, “I really wanted to believe in the Mercury.”

  The snow around us, concealing every hard landing, made the moment seem right. My words were weak, but I wanted to say something. Tad looked at me but didn’t respond right away.

  I turned left onto the plowed and sanded highway and ripped along at a higher speed toward town. As we approached the interchange under construction, a huge electric sign blinked a warning of a new traffic pattern ahead. Illumination rolled across its face, beginning with two words in three-foot-high letters, STAY ALERT. Here we are behind the wheel of one of the most notorious killing machines available to modern man and the D.O.T. knows we’re on autopilot, we’re daydreaming. Would you STAY ALERT for God’s sake? WAKE UP. NEW PATTERN AHEAD. WATCH WHERE YOU POINT THAT THING.

  “That sign here last night?” said Tad.

  “Yup. For a few days now.”

  “Didn’t notice it. Or don’t remember it. Christ.” In the same soft voice, he continued, “What you said about the Mercury, Gus. We all felt that way. That’s exactly how we all felt.”

  As I slowed for my exit a logging truck that had been barreling up behind me swung into the left lane and roared past. Big, straight logs—white spruce. The trophy log of the interior, sixty years of sunlight in each one.

  When you fly over interior Alaska, it looks like there’s plenty, from the air. The forest is endless. But we were witnessing the beginning of the end of it all, Tad and Gayle and me, our generation. STAY ALERT.

  At the Klondike he ordered a Bloody Mary. I could see where this day was going; I could be spending the whole day like some minor character in a Shakespeare play, holding my Lord’s horse while he got into all kinds of trouble.

  What you said about the Mercury…We all felt that way.

  This fellow sitting across from me prissily stirring a Bloody Mary with a plastic stick, before he knocked it back and poisoned himself, handed me a gift with those words. The Mercury was never my paper alone. Without the support of my investors there would have been no last act, there wouldn’t have been these past three years. People who wanted the paper to continue took a chance. I was the fellow in line for the publisher’s role, and as things turned out I couldn’t work the miracle—but it was never mine alone. The times that were in it, Felix would say.

  Of course I couldn’t explain this to Tad, but with his words I was able to take another step in the correct direction. Even before Polly guided me onto the first stepping-stone.

  “What are you staring at?” Tad asked me.

  “Nothing, nothing. Just daydreaming again.”

  Tad was a guy with no one to serve but himself. I mean no higher authority in his life than Tad Suliman, and at least today not at peace with his own life at all. But if it was true, if Tad and the others really believed that the Mercury was a communal effort and a communal loss, and if I could entertain that belief, too, then along with the loss of my leading man status I could gain a strange kind of dispensation.

  “Well, thanks,” I said.

  “For what?”

  I shook my head. He let it go.

  SEVENTEEN

  WHAT A HELL OF A DAY. AFTER THAT late breakfast I drove Tad back to my place. I left him at Bad Molly to keep my date with Polly. We spent an hour and a half going over my records and striving for a prognosis. She was like a dentist identifying all the rotten places, with numerical calm, and when I left her office my palate ached from too much candy and my face stung from her blunt remarks. The Mercury was at the press, Friday was our easy day, so I started cleaning and organizing over at the office and whenever anyone came in, a columnist, a journalism student, I felt caught in the headlights. Acting like we were still going to be doing this, weeks from now.

  It kept snowing. Late in the afternoon I went outside and started shoveling the fifteen feet between the parking space and the back door. Alone and sweating I felt a little better for the hour that this small job required.

  I wasn’t too hungry so I worked most of the evening, filing old notes, maybe rereading some old exchange of letters, and with each file that I handled I would remember the passionate feelings, the uproar that went into each of these. The desire to get somewhere. But Christ I had been so ignorant, so blind to practicalities. A former assistant commissioner of labor down in Juneau, and I didn’t even pay my own employees. Digging around in my own personal archives as the hours ticked by, I felt more and more stimulated by the emotion stored up in all these abandoned fragments of stories. This is what you call not doing yourself any favors, I thought at last. It was ten P.M. I could at least try to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s delivery day and, oh shit, that’s not going to be any fun, either.

  And there’s the little matter of what I am going to do with myself now. Gayle in my life. What the hell am I good at? How can I be part of her life, no job, how can I help her with Jack?

  Tad’s rig was still in my driveway when I got home with a fresh box of beer. I stepped over two big blue extension cords trailing up my walk to the exterior outlet. He had plugged his engine heaters into my electricity. Why two cords? I looked around and saw that one was coming from the Cat itself, the other from the truck.

  He was asleep again, on my couch. I considered kicking him awake; why should he sleep through this dark night in my life? I took a beer out of the refrigerator and walked around the room, sipping it, gesturing with it, almost talking to myself.

  Maybe I have a gift for sales. Didn’t I convince a lot of people to believe in the Mercury? I could sell things—long as there’s not too much paperwork involved. But what: zucchini at the farmer’s market? display ads for the big daily?

  Tad’s eyes were open; he was looking at me.

  “Tad, what do you think? Do I have a salesman’s personality?”

  He shifted himself up, put both arms behind his head. “Yes and no.”

  “Cars? Ads? Time-shares?”

  “Face it, Gus. You’re not happy without some bigger purpose.”

  “Who is?”

  “I am, much of the time. Well, I used to be. What time is it, anyway?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Want to come with me?”

  �
�Now? Where?”

  “Thought I’d get going but hell, I needed a nap, and now I need some coffee. I ought to get that rig out of here. Best to do it at night. You want to come along?”

  “Are you in the best shape? You could stay here.”

  He stood up slowly and stretched. “I’m tired of lying around. Gave myself a drunk and a nap and it’s done all the good it’s gonna do. I’m ready to move again. Time is money, Gus.” He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of beer, and poured a swig down his throat like someone pouring water into a hollow tree. He wasn’t falling-down drunk but he wasn’t Officer Safety material, either. He shouldn’t be on the road.

  “Let’s talk about my next career,” I said. “Sales.”

  “Gus, you can’t tell a lie to save your life.”

  That’s not true at all, I thought. I’ve told thousands lately. Poured plenty of them down my own throat.

  “What’ll happen to you is,” he said, “customers will be selling you stuff, that’s the problem. Buddy, you have a spiritual side. That’s what Judy said.”

  “She did?”

  “She did. That’s not how I’d have put it, but she did indeed.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “I think you give a shit. That sets you apart. You observe things, and you care. Look, make some coffee, why don’t we?”

  “You know, Tad, I’m a little tired of being Mr. Live and Let Live. I think you ought to wait on the rig until tomorrow. Here you are sleep deprived and guzzling more beer. Would you hire yourself for this job?”

  “It’s nothing. These the beans?” He shook a little brown bag of Safeway’s free trade coffee beans. The sixties and seventies brought us sex and music; the eighties brought us coffee. Just the same, I didn’t want a cup right now. I wanted to find something to hold on to, I wanted to find that stripe on the highway that was mine. Drive along this bold stripe and you’ll be okay and Gayle will not be disappointed again, the lines of her tattoo wavering as one more man proves to be a hopeless idiot.

  By God, not me.

  Tad dumped the beans into the grinder. He pulled on his coveralls, leaving them unzipped and hanging from his hips. The coffee filled the place with its aroma.