by Building Fires in the Snow- A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction
“Is that Nixon?” Cleo asked, and several people nodded, but no one spoke.
“I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter, I might not have the support of the Congress . . .”
Tierney heard a man gasp, “Oh, my God. Is this what I think it is?”
“Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.”
“About time,” another man muttered, while a woman burst into tears and began to cry noisily. “What will become of America?” she sobbed.
“Good Lord,” a bespectacled older man said. Nixon’s voice continued to drone. A young mother with a kerchief over her head began to hyperventilate, which caused her little girl, whom she was holding by the hand, to whimper. Some of the women held their hands to their faces; most of the men looked angry. Cleo was shaking her head, her lips tight. Holy shit, Tierney thought to herself. What’s happening?
Although the group remained rooted in place until the speech was concluded, Tierney found it hard to attend to anything else the president said as he rambled on, seemingly repeating himself. A few people exchanged reactions in subdued voices, apparently sharing the opinion that Nixon should have hung on and not let himself be pressured into resignation. “He’s the president,” one of them said. “He shouldn’t let anyone tell him what to do.”
But in the privacy of the store’s produce section, Cleo told Tierney flatly, “He went too far. I hope he gets all the punishment he deserves; I have no sympathy for him. None. He has really damaged this country.”
“Good riddance,” Tierney said, practically hearing her father’s voice in her ear. She said it with bravado, like she actually knew what she was talking about, but in fact she felt queasy.
“I’m just glad I live in Alaska and not in the U.S. of A.,” Cleo said.
Tierney glanced at her. “But Alaska is a state. It’s part of the US.”
“It is and it isn’t,” Cleo said. “You’ll see.”
Cleo helped Tierney get her records from the Williston School District and accompanied her to registration at West Anchorage High School, having arranged for Tierney to live with an old dancing friend in exchange for providing occasional childcare. Marie and her twin toddlers lived right around the corner from Tierney’s new school. On the day she helped her move into town, Cleo presented Tierney with an envelope containing five crisp one-hundred dollar bills.
“It’s too much!” Tierney protested.
“You earned every penny of it,” Cleo said, repeating her highest praise. “You’re a good worker.”
Tierney made friends at school more easily than she had any right to expect, perhaps because there were a lot of new kids, most of them the offspring of recent pipeline hires. She met a boy, the co-captain of the school’s winning football team, who loved to go hiking on the many nearby trails as much as she did. Noah, a kind person with an easy smile, came from a religious family.
Tierney was drawn to him instantly, and loved it that he seemed to enjoy her company as much as she enjoyed his. She’d never had a close friendship with a guy before, so in this sense he was a true boy-friend, but as time went on she began to wonder if she was ever going to feel about him the way she thought girls were supposed to feel about guys. She planned to talk to him about it when the time seemed right.
One night just before homecoming, he solemnly informed her that they could not have sex because he was “saving himself” for marriage. Tierney was struck by how nervous he was; apparently, he was afraid that she might not want to keep going out with him. She reached for his hand, relieved and happy that—at least for now—she was free to care for him as much as she did. It still scared her to think how close she’d come to going too far in her feelings for Trish that night beside Raven Creek. She decided she would just enjoy Noah’s company and focus on keeping her grades up. A counselor at school had told her that she might be eligible for a scholarship to the University of Alaska next year.
Tierney’s father flew to Anchorage over the Thanksgiving weekend for two days and nights; he met and approved of Noah, thanked Marie copiously for sheltering his daughter, and tried to give Tierney some money. “Keep it,” she said, taking pride in the fact that she was able to turn his offer down. “I’ll let you know if I need it, okay?” She and Noah took him up to Glen Alps, where they saw sixteen antlered bull moose congregating in a snowy bowl, and her dad agreed that Alaska was a pretty special place. Still, he had tears in his eyes when she kissed him goodbye at the airport.
Over their winter break, Noah and Tierney went to see a new movie, Grizzly Adams, at the Fourth Avenue Theater. By the time they had used the restrooms and purchased their popcorn and drinks, the lights had already gone down in the theater, so they stood for a moment just inside, letting their eyes adjust.
“We can sit here,” Tierney whispered, motioning to the uppermost row of seats.
“No way,” said Noah, nudging her to keep moving. “That’s where the fairies sit.” He led them toward seats on the aisle about halfway down.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Fairies. Homos. They always sit in the last row.”
Tierney yanked his arm. “Is that what your church teaches you?” she challenged in a loud whisper.
Taken aback, Noah stared at her in surprise. He reached to hold her food so that she could sit more easily, mumbling his apology.
By the end of the movie, which they both loved, all was forgiven, and as they made their way out of the theater, Tierney looked curiously at the remaining occupants of the highest seat row, to see if there could possibly be any truth to what Noah had said.
Only two patrons remained there, two youngish guys with long hair and beards, who both somewhat resembled Grizzly Adams. She smiled, wondering if Noah had noticed them. With a shock of recognition, Tierney realized that one of them was Robert and that the other was the same guy Robert had left the Funny Bone with that long-ago summer night. What was his name? Lance. She remembered how infatuated Trish had been with the good-looking boy, but also recalled what Cleo and Pearl had said about him. Were he and Robert homos? Even as she stared, she saw Robert reach over to brush something off Lance’s beard and heard Noah snort. Normal men didn’t touch each other like that, did they?
Lance and Robert were laughing over something one of them had said and looked to be in no hurry to leave. Tierney ducked her face behind Noah’s shoulder. For some reason, she didn’t want Robert to see her. Soon they were out on the street, walking toward Noah’s car, and after the initial flood of relief at having escaped detection, Tierney became aware of how boring and regular she and Noah looked: his crew cut and letter jacket, her own dopey outfit consisting of Shetland sweater and pressed woolen slacks.
She still didn’t know Robert’s last name. What if she never saw him again, never had a chance to thank him for traveling to Alaska with her, for his good-natured companionship over hundreds of miles? If Robert and Lance really were homosexuals, Tierney thought, and if being homosexual was such a bad thing, why did they look so happy to be in each other’s company?
“Wait!” she said to Noah, pivoting suddenly to run back to the theater. “I saw someone I know.”
“Where are you going?” Noah yelled, uncertain whether or not to follow her.
The theater was completely empty; Robert and Lance were gone. Tierney felt inexplicably desolate as she hurried back out to the street, searching the sidewalks frantically as Noah arrived and demanded to know what was going on. After concealing herself from him earlier, it now felt like a matter of life and death that she identify herself to Robert. She stepped out into the street, a car swerving to avoid hitting her, Noah exclaiming and trying to pull her back.
A few blocks down Fourth Avenue, headed east toward the mountains, she spotted two figures walking side by side. It was them. She felt so happy she hugged Noah.
“Come on,” she said to him, taking off again at a run, cupping her hands around her mouth to holler Robert’s name, watc
hing him stop and turn toward her.
WORKS CONSULTED
Carter, Steven. Outrage: The 1993 Australian Gay and Lesbian Short Story Anthology. Sydney: Designer Pub, 1994. Print.
Claycomb, Ryan. Lives in Play: Autobiography and Biography on the Feminist Stage. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. Print.
Drake, Robert, ed. The Gay Canon. New York: Anchor Books, 1998. Print. Evans, Mei Mei. “‘Nature’ and Environment Justice.” The Environmental Justice Reader. Eds. Jonie Adamonson, Mei Mei Evans, and Rachel Stein. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. 181–193. Print.
Evans, Mei Mei. “Queer(y)ing ‘Nature.’” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory 7, no. 1 (2005): 27–35. Web.
Kleinberg, Seymour, ed. The Other Persuasion: The Homosexual Theme in Fiction. London: Macmillan Publishers, 1977. Print.
Manguel, Alberto, and Craig Stephenson, eds. The Flamingo Anthology of Gay Literature: In Another Part of the Forest. London: HarperCollins, 1994. Print.
Mellor, Mary. Feminism & Ecology. Cornwall: Hartnolls, 1997. Print.
Patchett, Ann, ed. The Best American Short Stories. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Print.
Ruff, Shawn Stewart, ed. Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African-American Writers. New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1996. Print.
Timmons, Stuart. The Trouble with Harry Hay. Brooklyn, NY: White Crane Books, 2012. Print.
White, Edmund, ed. The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction. London: Faber and Faber, 1991. Print.
Williams, Amber M., and Poet on Watch, eds. G.R.I.T.S. — Girls Raised In the South: An Anthology of Southern Queer Womyns’ Voices and Their Allies. Seattle: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. Print.
