by Building Fires in the Snow- A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction
Tierney wondered where the heck one would party in Tok, the ghost town she and Robert had passed through earlier in the day with Ned.
“Anchorage!” Surfer exclaimed. “Now that’s a party town! Yessiree Bob.”
“Well, shit.” Wendell braked, bringing the car to a stop in the middle of the road. “Why didn’t you say so?” He began to turn the vehicle around. “We’re just drinkin’ and drivin’. Might as well take you to Glenallen as Tok, get something going at the Highlander.” So saying, he completed the U-turn and stepped on the accelerator, heading back the way they had come. Catching Tierney’s and Robert’s anxious looks in the rearview mirror, he explained. “There’s a cut-off.”
“Gonna get my high at the Highlander,” Surfer crooned. “Oh, yeah.”
The woman leaned her head against his shoulder. It turned out that Maggie, or “Magpie” as the men called her, was Athabascan. “Indian, not Eskimo,” she clarified. “Not the same.”
“The same but different,” Wendell added.
Maggie slapped him on the arm. “Different!”
When the first six-pack was exhausted, Surfer reached down to produce another. The three in the front seat were clearly already under the influence, Tierney thought, wondering how much longer Wendell could safely drink and drive. Fortunately, there was next to no traffic on the road, and the sky was still too bright for headlights despite the fact that it was getting late. Maggie fell asleep against Surfer while Wendell continued his uneven acceleration, often straddling the centerline.
They made it to Glenallen at nightfall, which Tierney figured must mean it was close to midnight. Despite the hour, the light seemed merely shaded rather than really dark, and she knew that the sky would soon begin to brighten again. Wendell skidded into the unlit parking lot of a plywood-clad building marked only by a hand-painted sign: “Hi-Lander here.” He turned off the ignition and for the first time turned in his seat to regard the two hitchhikers. “Party with us,” he said again, leering at Tierney with bloodshot eyes. “We need another lady. We’re tired of sharing her.”
Robert did a great job of thanking them for the ride while insisting that he and Tierney really had to get to Anchorage and were going to keep traveling through the night. He and she hurriedly removed their packs from the trunk and helped each other slip their arms through the shoulder straps.
Surfer, stretching his back outside the car, leaned in to shake Maggie, who had slumped over onto the seat. “Come on, Magpie. Wake up, dammit.”
“Just leave her,” Wendell said.
“What if she pisses herself again?”
The two men argued awhile before deciding to remove their unconscious passenger from the car. One pushing, one pulling, they extracted Maggie with difficulty and carried her awkwardly between them to a grassy strip that ran along the front of the dark building, where they arranged her on her back on the ground.
Tierney and Robert lingered to watch.
“We can’t just leave her,” Tierney whispered.
“She’s really drunk.”
“Shouldn’t we at least tell the police? There’s police in Alaska, right?”
“We should probably stay out of it,” Robert said. “I mean, it didn’t seem like they were holding her against her will or anything. It’s not too cold; I think she’ll be okay.” The two roustabouts entered the nondescript building, strains of country-western music briefly escaping the opened door. Robert tugged on Tierney’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”
Tierney walked slowly to the road, before stopping to crane her neck in an effort to locate the shadowed shape on the ground that was Maggie. “What does that even mean, they ‘share her’?” she said indignantly.
“I know; it’s gross.” Robert kept walking. “But I can’t believe he drove us all this way when they were headed to Tok. Saved us a lot of time.” He turned onto the shoulder of the highway, stopping when he realized Tierney no longer followed.
Casting a final look at Maggie, Tierney told herself it would soon be light, that someone would discover the sleeping woman and take care of her. They’d give her a place to stay, lend her clean clothes, and feed her until she was ready to return to her village. Still, Tierney turned away reluctantly. “You don’t really want to keep going, do you?” she asked Robert once she’d caught up with him.
“No,” he said. “I’m beat. But I definitely didn’t want to party with them. Did you?”
They walked in silence, observing the small but neatly arranged homes of the town, their interiors dark and silent at this hour. Tierney withdrew from her sweatshirt pouch the plastic bag that held the last of Ned’s jerky, and they chewed hungrily on the few remaining scraps of dried meat. Whether they wanted to go further that night or not, not a single vehicle drove by in the time it took them to walk from one end of the community to the other. They set up Robert’s tent as soon as they found a wooded spot that offered concealment from passing traffic. “It would be horrible if they picked us up again tomorrow,” Robert said, crawling into the tent.
“I know. Let’s make sure we get on the road early. While they’re sleeping off their hangovers.” Tierney followed Robert inside. Considering that she’d had scarcely any physical exercise for days, she still felt exhausted. She spread out her nylon sleeping bag and shirked her sweatshirt, bunching it into a pillow. Robert removed and carefully folded his flannel shirt, setting it where his head would rest. They both slipped into their sleeping bags dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Once they were lying side by side facing the top of the tent, pale daylight filtering through the green fabric, Tierney said. “I wish it would get dark once in a while. Enough to get a good sleep, anyway.”
Robert said nothing for a minute before facing her. “There’s something you should know.”
“What?”
“I’m thinking of turning around, going home.”
“But we just got here! You haven’t even tried to find a job.” Tierney stared at him.
“If I’m not going to work on the pipeline, what’s the point?” he said petulantly. When Tierney said nothing, Robert added, “My parents want me to go to law school.”
“I can’t believe you.” She stared at the top of the tent, waiting for him to say more, but the next sound she heard was his soft snores. She lay awake for a long time despite her fatigue, wondering if he was going to abandon her in the morning. What would she do if he did?
When she awoke sweating only a short while later, the inside of the tent was as warm and humid as a greenhouse. Robert was still sleeping beside her, but he had thrown aside his sleeping bag and removed all of his clothes except for his boxer shorts. Tierney scrambled out of her sleeping bag, as alarmed by his near-nakedness as she was by the stifling heat. Her commotion woke Robert, and he smiled at her sleepily. “You might want to take off your clothes,” he said.
“No way,” she said, gathering her sleeping bag and sweatshirt into a bundle, unzipping the tent, and pushing her things outside ahead of herself. “I can’t believe you did that!”
“Did what?”
“Took off your clothes.” She stood in her socks outside the tent, taking in the brightness of the sun. Incredibly, it was as if sunset and sunrise had occurred simultaneously and the day was already well underway.
“It’s hot!” he said, poking his head out.
Tierney picked up her sleeping bag, looking for a place to spread it on the ground. “I should have known better than to travel with you.”
After a pause, Robert said quietly, “Have I really been so awful?”
Tierney shook her head wordlessly. Now he was going to try to make her feel sorry for him. “I’m sleeping outside from now on. And I won’t be traveling with you much longer, just so you know.”
“Suit yourself,” Robert said. “I think you’re overreacting.” He zipped the tent closed behind her, the camping equivalent of slamming a door.
“I can’t believe you,” Tierney muttered again, flashing on an image of the unconscious Maggie
-Magpie, laid out on the ground beside the bar. Why did guys think they could do whatever they wanted when it came to a female, with no regard for how their actions might make her feel? Wide awake, Tierney pictured herself walking back to the Highlander to check on Maggie but shuddered when she imagined Surfer and Wendell, even drunker now than they had been earlier, figuring out that Tierney was on her own. And what did she have to offer Maggie, anyway? Suddenly, Tierney realized she was under siege by a cloud of small mosquitoes. The insects swarmed every inch of her exposed skin, probing her face, neck, arms, and hands. They found her ears and mouth, all the while emitting a relentless, high-pitched drone. Tierney hurried to pull on her sweatshirt, arranging its hood over her head, tying the drawstring so tightly that only her eyes and nostrils were exposed. Then she kicked with her stocking feet at the fallen branches, twigs, and other duff that littered the ground in order to clear a space for her sleeping bag. She spread it out quickly and crawled inside, breathing hard as she pulled the zipper all the way up. She used her fingers to swipe insects from the few square inches of her face that were still exposed, during which time the swarm went for the back of her hand. She was sweating profusely and knew her body heat would attract more bugs. She felt twitchy, itchy, and hot.
Then she inhaled a mosquito that was drilling into her lip and imagined that others had breached her sweatshirt hood and were probing her scalp. She slithered out of the sleeping bag, swatting her face and head so hard it hurt. Goddammit. This was all Robert’s fault. “Open up,” she said. “I’m coming back in, and don’t you dare try anything.”
In the morning, he was as usual annoyingly cheerful, acting as if he’d never had a change of heart about finding work in Alaska and never letting on that he’d stripped almost naked just a few hours earlier. The mosquitoes were still thick and fierce, so they packed up in a hurry. Once they were ready to hit the road, Robert helped Tierney hoist her backpack, his hand brushing her shoulder. “Don’t touch me,” she growled, so tired she wanted nothing more than to sleep in a real bed, inside a real house with screened windows.
“Relax,” he said, adjusting his own pack and looking around to make sure they had everything. “You made your point.”
Tierney headed for the highway, clutching what was left of the bag of raisins Ned had given them. Once she reached pavement, the number of mosquitoes immediately decreased. She had already taken off her pack when Robert stepped out from the thicket. “I wonder where Magpie is,” he said.
“I can’t believe you didn’t even try to help her,” Tierney said, opening the bag of raisins.
“Neither did you,” he retorted, setting his pack alongside hers.
“Yeah, but you’re a guy. Males are supposed to protect females. Maybe they don’t teach you that at Harvard?” She watched him clench his jaw. “I think it would be best if we split up when we get to Anchorage.”
“Fine,” Robert said. “Whatever you want. Suit yourself.”
She nibbled on a few raisins, but he declined her offer to share them by shaking his head with a hurt expression. Suit yourself, she thought, cramming a fistful of them into her mouth.
The very first vehicle to come along that morning stopped for them, which Tierney interpreted as a good omen for her decision to separate from Robert. Neatly groomed Dennis, in a small Ford Pinto hatchback, wore an open-at-the-collar, button-down business shirt and was headed all the way to Anchorage. After she had clambered into the back of the compact car to huddle with their backpacks beneath the hatchback, Robert slipped into the bucket seat in the front. Dennis seemed disinclined to talk, which made it a perfect ride to Tierney’s way of thinking; she fell asleep almost immediately, awakening only as they entered the city, in time to glimpse a small airport with dozens of little planes in a variety of colors tied down around the perimeter of its airstrip. They passed used and new-car dealerships, liquor stores, bars, retail shops and restaurants—but all the business fronts without exception appeared drab and devoid of decorative touches. Tierney spotted only one enterprise whose name had any obvious connection to Alaska: The Gold Nugget, a pawnshop. She saw countless parking lots, not a single tree, and very little grass. It appeared that only a handful of buildings stood more than two or three stories tall. In short, the fabled city didn’t feel very cosmopolitan. As a matter of fact, it seemed to bear a certain utilitarian resemblance to Williston, Tierney thought. She and Robert, who had scarcely spoken all day, exchanged a glance, seemingly of like mind that Alaska’s biggest city was a big disappointment. Now that they had actually arrived in Anchorage and discovered how unattractive it was, Tierney felt a lot less confident about separating from him.
At their request, Dennis dropped them at a grocery store. Thanking him, they hoisted their packs and entered the Safeway, where they found weathered flyers taped to both the outer and inner doors. The photocopied pages featured a blurred picture of what looked like a high school yearbook photo of a girl with wavy hair: “MISSING: Karen Ann McMasters, 19 y.o. Dark-brown hair, hazel eyes. Ht. 5’2” Wt. 110 pounds. Last seen Eagle River exit, Glenn Highway, 8:00 p.m. March 30. Call with information. REWARD,” followed by the phone number for the Alaska State Troopers. Was this the lady hitchhiker that Ned had mentioned? Tierney thought Karen Ann looked younger than nineteen. Following Robert inside, where they set their packs in a corner beside an assortment of brooms and dust pans, Tierney decided not to raise the subject of their parting ways just now.
She had been craving milk and intended to buy herself a quart, but when she found that it would cost her triple what she would have paid at home, Tierney changed her mind. In the produce section, Robert held up a puny bedraggled pineapple and said, “Guess how much?”
Tierney thought for a moment, deciding on an outlandish amount. “Three dollars.”
“Six!”
Despite their expense, Robert selected some hard salami, cheddar cheese, and three apples; he offered in a gesture of peace to share his loaf of bread and bag of carrots with her. Tierney, meanwhile, calculated that a single large jar of peanut butter would probably offer her the biggest bang for her buck. They paid for their purchases, reshouldered their packs, and made their meal at a picnic table beside a small empty playground across the street, still scarcely talking. In fact, Robert seemed uncharacteristically subdued, so once Tierney had used his Swiss Army knife to spread peanut butter on a couple pieces of bread, she grabbed a carrot and wandered off as if intent on exploring the little park.
She contemplated the cement and asphalt that paved everything, the seemingly slapped-together buildings and otherwise undistinguished architecture that might have been found almost anywhere in the USA. How could Anchorage’s residents let their hometown—the major metropolis of wild Alaska—languish as such a singularly unattractive community? Because, no two ways about it, Anchorage was butt-ugly. Tierney took a bite of the carrot and realized she had zero desire to linger, let alone to look for work here; it would defeat the whole point of leaving home for uncharted wilderness.
She nestled herself into one of the swings, nibbling on her sandwich. For the first time, she was pierced by homesickness. Strangely, she didn’t miss her dad as much as she missed her best friend, whose parents had divorced, resulting in Janice and her mom relocating to western Montana after Christmas and forcing poor Janice to change high schools mid-year. Tierney missed the waitresses at the restaurant, all of whom had always shared their tips with her. She even missed chain-smoking Milly, the crusty owner of the All-You-Can-Eat.
All you can eat, Tierney thought. Is this how it feels to bite off more than you can chew?
Where was Maggie-Magpie right now? Please, let her be safe. Tierney, who took pride in the fact that she never cried, found herself perilously close to tears and swallowed her food with difficulty. Maybe Robert was right; maybe they should both go home. As much as Alaska itself thrilled her, she had yet to meet anyone with whom she could really relate. She was sick to death of only getting rides with men, even if s
ome of them had been nice. And even though she was ready to part ways with Robert, she was afraid to hitchhike alone.
She rejoined Robert at the picnic table, where he sat scrutinizing his road map, his cheese and salami sandwich untouched. She took a seat opposite. “What would you think of going here?” he asked at last, carefully avoiding her eyes as he pushed the map toward her, his finger indicating a black dot that lay directly below the larger dot that was Anchorage and immediately alongside the vast light-blue swath that was the Gulf of Alaska. Seward. “It’s only about a hundred miles away.” Still not looking at her, he added, “I’m guessing it might be a fishing town.”
“I for sure don’t want to stay here,” Tierney said. “This is not the real Alaska.”
“I know what you mean,” Robert said, smiling for the first time and reaching for his sandwich. “Let’s go for it!”
Tierney nodded, wondering why he always had to take such big mouthfuls.
2.
It was a long hot trudge through the city to get back onto the highway. Cresting a hill, they passed a looming billboard-like structure fronted by an empty parking lot. “It’s a drive-in theater!” Tierney exclaimed.
“I wonder how that works in a place where it never gets dark,” Robert said.
They had already lost count of the number of cars and trucks that passed them; Tierney thought it possible she’d seen more vehicles in Anchorage than she’d seen the entire time she’d been traveling. But it wasn’t long after they’d stuck out their thumbs that a sleek, black Lincoln Continental, the kind of luxury car that never stops for hitchhikers, pulled over. As they jogged up to it, lugging their packs, the driver’s side window lowered automatically with a discreet mechanical whir, releasing the unmistakable odor of marijuana smoke.
A pretty African American girl with an afro, who looked barely old enough to drive, beamed at them, while from within the car Tierney could hear high-pitched female laughter. “Hi, there,” the driver said. “We’re going as far as the Funny Bone.” She tugged at the collar of her orange turtleneck, as if she were overly warm.
