The Source of All Things

by Tracy Ross

  One hundred and seventeen hours after we left Alaska, Dad and I pulled into the parking lot of a cheap hotel in downtown Seattle. Dad went into the office, while I did some pushups on the sidewalk. A few minutes later, Dad came out of the office. “I got us a double,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

  It wasn’t okay, not really. But I didn’t say so at the time. I told myself it would be easier if I shut up and went along with Dad’s plan. We sat at the opposite ends of the two queen beds and gorged our senses on television. When it was time to eat, we walked to Pike Place Market, where Dad found some greasy fish and chips and I chose a big bunch of grapes. We ate as we walked, looking at shops, coffee drinkers, and the ocean. I felt proud and happy, as well as sad and confused.

  Because I knew, sooner or later, that I’d want to take a shower. I didn’t know how other dads and daughters felt about showering in each other’s presence, but I didn’t want my dad to be anywhere near me when I took off my clothes and stepped under the steaming water. I waited as long as possible before digging my tiny bottle of Clairol shampoo out of my stuffsack and unfolding my purple pack towel. When I couldn’t stand the stench of my own armpits any longer, I got up and stood against the door of the bathroom.

  Dad, of course, didn’t notice. He was too busy propping his eyelids open so he could watch TV.

  When I’d hedged as long as possible and dad’s eyes kept drooping, I went into the bathroom anyway. But as soon as I’d slipped out of my bra and Carhartts I put them back on. It creeped me out to think of myself naked in a hotel room with my father, even if there was a wall between us. Sliding into my Teva sandals, I stepped back into the main room and woke up Dad.

  “Um, Dad?”

  His eyes clicked open. He grabbed his glasses from a table and put them on. When he saw me standing next to the bathroom, pack towel in hand, he said, “Oh, sorry, Trace. You need to take a shower. Let me grab my wallet and I’ll head out for a walk.”

  Because I was uncomfortable with the words “you” and “shower” coming out of my dad’s mouth in the same sentence, I looked down at the carpet. “Yeah,” I muttered. “I guess I do. But … is that cool? I mean, I’m sorry, Dad. It’s just that …”

  “Don’t say it,” he said. “I’m going. Out the door. This minute.”

  When enough time had passed and I was sure he wouldn’t be returning, I went into the bathroom, took off my clothes, and placed them on the counter. Before I stepped into the steaming water, I draped my towel over the door handle even though it didn’t have a keyhole.

  18

  Rebound Man

  Less than a year later, I was back living in Alaska. I knew my wounds weren’t healed and that my destructive impulses still roiled under my surface. But I also knew that the vast, unpeopled wilderness of Alaska had the power to inspire and soothe me. So in January of 1994, I moved back and lived for a brief stint with a man named Mark, in McCarthy.

  To Mark’s chagrin, we lived more like roommates than lovers. I didn’t love him, because he reminded me too much of a grandmother: he was stout in build, with long red hair and a beard that brushed against his collarbones. His pantry held pounds of Copper River salmon he’d dip-netted under a full moon and put up in jars. Acres of dried vegetables—exotic mushrooms, leafy kale, turnips, carrots, spinach—all harvested from his garden, lined his plywood cupboards. If I’d met him ten years later, I would have loved his subsistence lifestyle and the fact that, to support himself, he wove gorgeous, intricate murals made from the hair of his huskies, which he spun into thread. He also built giant moose sculptures out of willow wands, the mooses’ main forage. But at the time, looks mattered more to me than a man’s creativity or clarity of spirit. When I wanted male attention, I’d ski to town and hole up with one local or another for an hour … or a couple of days. I knew I was taking advantage of Mark. I wanted to have it both ways. Someday I’ll beg him to forgive me, because those days in McCarthy remain some of the best days of my life.

  Throughout the winter I met people who didn’t care where I came from, how long I was staying, or when I planned to move on. My neighbors shared homemade bread, store-bought cheese, and other prized possessions. We sat in wood-fired saunas drinking green, nearly brewed beer, planning adventures, and watching the northern lights furling and unfurling in bright greens, reds, and blues from one edge of the sky to the other. I stared into the strangers’ winter-rough faces and thought I saw something I could trust.

  By the following autumn, however, I needed a new place to live. So in September of 1994 I moved to Fairbanks, coldest spot on earth. I got a job training forty Alaskan husky puppies for a competitive dog musher named Jeff Conn. Jeff worked for the Department of Agriculture and spent $30,000 a year on seventy skinny huskies that never won a single race.

  For the first time ever, I was in charge of something besides myself: four litters of pups named after things like Greek gods (Hera, Zeus, Athena, and Achilles), the space program (Sputnik, Armstrong, Buzz), and knives (Butter, Jack, Ulu). In the morning, we left the dog yard and ran a five-mile loop through the birch trees. As autumn folded into winter the sun never rose above the horizon. I fed the pups, watered them, and hooked them to a sled. They ran hard and fast with their tongues flapping against their jowls. I yelled the commands I’d learned from professional mushers, who ran the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest. When I yelled “gee!” the dogs turned right, and when I yelled “haw!” they turned left. It always amazed me that a whole team of twelve-month-old puppies would respond to the sound of one voice.

  As much as I loved the pups, though, I didn’t like Jeff. He worked me to exhaustion in exchange for room and board and a small monthly stipend which I augmented briefly by working the night shift at a Fairbanks grocery store smearing frosting on doughnuts. Needless to say, sleep deprivation made my day job all the harder, but I kept at it because of the pups. I didn’t realize it, but by training them I was also acting as their de facto executioner. Every week at Sunday dinner, Jeff would ask how they were performing on their daily runs out of the dog yard, and I’d report on their gait, their responsiveness, and their willingness to please. I had no idea of the sentencing I was giving them until the day, sometime around Christmas, when Jeff walked into the yard, rounded up all the “underachievers” and, after trying to sell them to other mushers, took them to the pound. Shortly thereafter, I started looking for another job.

  One day after I left Jeff’s place, I was drinking beer at a bar called the Captain Bartlett when a different dog musher walked in. He wore a giant down parka, tattered Carhartt coveralls, and a pair of fur-trimmed, knee-high mukluks.

  Colin James said he was from Scotland and that he’d been to base camp on Mount Everest. His next “little adventure” was to compete in the thousand mile Yukon Quest dog sled race, dubbed the “toughest race on earth.” To raise the money for such an undertaking, he guided British and Scottish tourists on dog-mushing trips north of Fairbanks. When I first met him, he seemed like a British version of Jack London. He was ruddy from the cold and missing his two front teeth, the result of a climbing accident. I liked his accent, his adventure résumé (which included sailing the North Sea in a boat he’d handcrafted, kayaking Europe’s biggest rivers, and traveling through Afghanistan with his brother as a teenager during the Russian invasion). I also welcomed the fact that he could keep me warm, outside, in a sleeping bag, even when the temperature dropped to 20 below zero.

  But before long, he began showing his true colors. And they weren’t as pretty as the alpenglow I’d imagined shimmering on the Himalayas. Just two months after our first date, he became bellicose and possessive at a Fairbanks dance club called the Crazy Loon Saloon. A friend from the University of Alaska invited me out, and I asked Colin to come with us. When we got to the club, he said he wasn’t into dancing. “I’ll nurse a beer at the bar. But you go on without me,” he said. I kissed his cheek and walked onto the dance floor.

  I guess I was having such a good time tha
t I completely forgot about Colin. Because some time after we started dancing, my friend poked me and pointed. Colin was standing on the edge of the crowd, motioning me to him.

  I smiled and waved him over. When he didn’t come, I did my flirty move when I wiggled my butt and used my pointer finger to say, “Get over here, gorgeous.” But he just looked at me and shook his head. When the lights circling the dance floor moved over him again, I saw that he was coming toward me but was frowning. He weaved between the dancers and grabbed my bicep. I thought he was going to lean in and give me a big smooch, but he yanked me off the floor and into a corner.

  I should have known that was my cue to leave. Not just the dance, but Colin. But at twenty-four, I still inhabited a long, dark tunnel. I repeated my cycle of love and despair, my most familiar emotional rhythm.

  “You hurt me.” I said, reciting what was now beginning to feel like the theme song of my life.

  “Good,” said Colin. “If that’s what it took to get your attention.”

  It took me a second to believe what I was hearing. I was three beers deep and feeling like a comedian, so I might have stuck my fingers in my ears as if to clean them. When Colin didn’t laugh, I realized he was serious. I turned my back and started walking toward the dance floor.

  This time Colin grabbed me again, pulling me out the door and all the way to the parking lot. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. A few kids were, but they were drunk and they turned their heads, clearly embarrassed for me. Colin kept tugging until we were sitting in my car, staring out the front windshield. He blinked his eyes and rubbed them, as if he were about to start crying.

  “Colin?” I said, now wondering if I’d actually done something to hurt him. I could do that sometimes: get so caught up in the fun right in front of me that I’d forget to worry about the people I’d dragged along with me. Had I been flirting? Flaunting my body? I didn’t try to defend myself—I couldn’t understand why a thirty-two-year-old bar fighter would be so upset he was about to start crying.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you see me? I was standing at the edge of the crowd, waving at you for hours. I needed to get out of there, but you didn’t even notice. You have no idea what you just did to me, do you?”

  I tried to realize, but I didn’t.

  “Ireland,” he said. “You don’t remember? The war? The bombs? I told you what they did to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not remembering.”

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe it. You tell someone you love the most important thing about yourself and they can’t remember?” Colin yelled. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I scooted closer to the passenger window, stammering, “I’m sorry, Colin. But you’ve told me so many things. And they’re all so amazing. How can I remember everything?”

  “I don’t care about the rest of what I told you. I’m talking about the war I fought in Northern Ireland. That club is exactly like the one I went to right after a bombing. Bodies everywhere. Bloody, dismembered teenagers with their trainers still on their feet.”

  “Oh, Colin,” I said. “I really am sorry.”

  It took a long time for Colin to calm himself enough to accept my apology. I stared past him, wishing that I could resume dancing. But when someone tells you how wounded he is—partially on account of your actions—a pair of shackles materializes out of the air and binds the two of you together. I knew I’d crossed a line. I also knew there was no retracting.

  I took his hand, smiled, and pressed it against my cheek. I palmed the back of his neck, pulled him to me, and gave him a kiss.

  “It’s okay,” he finally said. “But can you promise me one thing?”

  “Sure, yes. Whatever you need.”

  “Just promise this is the last time we go dancing.”

  That night, I waited until Colin was snoring before I snuck into the living room and called my parents. It must have been four in the morning. My dad answered first, saying, “Chris? Tracy? Who is it? What’s the matter?” and then a few seconds later my mom got on the other line.

  She was out of breath, even though I knew she’d just been sleeping. “Tracy?” she said. “Oh my God. Are you alright? What is it, honey? What happened?”

  “Calm down, Mom,” I said. “Nothing happened.” But then I started crying.

  “What?” said my mom. “Are you hurt? Are you injured?”

  I tried to talk but a sob caught ahold of my words. Trying to be brave, I made myself keep talking.

  “It’s Colin,” I whispered. “He’s freaking me out. I think he can be violent.”

  “Violent!” said my mom. “What do you mean Violent? Did he hurt you? Who’s Colin anyway? Is that the dog musher you’ve been seeing? Are you okay? Are you in the hospital?”

  “No Mom!” I whispered back. It was one of those whispers that was also a shout. “Just shut up and let me finish. All I’m saying… is that tonight he did this weird thing when we were out dancing. He grabbed me. And I don’t like to be grabbed by anybody.”

  “Of course you don’t, honey,” my mom’s voice quaked. “And nobody should be grabbing you. What do you mean by grabbing anyway?”

  “Jesus, Mom,” I said. “Grabbing. You know, yanking. He pulled me off the dance floor in front of everybody. It’s like he wanted to show me that he owned me. I didn’t like it, that’s all.”

  “Oh, God,” my mom said again, but I was waiting for my dad to chime in. Though I knew he was on the other line, he was being strangely silent. Before, when I’d had a spat with a boyfriend, he’d puffed his chest and made a point of telling me how easily he could “go down there and show that guy a thing or two.” But for some reason, he wasn’t weighing in on this conversation.

  “What do you think she should do, Don?” said my mom. “How can we help Tracy?”

  I could almost hear my dad going over his checkbook log in his head, calculating how much spare cash he had and if it was enough to fly me home. He cleared his throat, which I’d noticed him doing a lot more often lately. Then he said, “Trace? What do you want us to do? This Colin character sounds like trouble. Do you have somewhere you can go to if he gets truly violent? You know if you need us we’re always here. If you think Colin is really going to hurt you, you know you can come home.”

  “Home?” I said. “Dad, you know Las Vegas isn’t my home. And I can’t come home anyway. Colin just bought me a plane ticket. I’m going with him to Scotland.”

  We flew to Edinburgh in June 1995, and I got a job at a water sports center called Loch Insh in a small town in the country’s Highlands. Colin knew a couple who agreed to rent us an apartment. While I worked—waiting tables, helping Loch Insh’s owner Sally Freshwater in her garden, and picking up the occasional early morning baking shift—Colin “sorted out his business.” He traveled to his home on the north coast, where he told his common-law wife that he’d met someone and we were starting a life together. She retaliated by saying she was keeping everything they owned, including his six-year-old daughter, Freya. When he returned to Aviemore, he was too despondent to find work or be patient and loving. A few days later, when I said I wanted us to go to a party with a new friend, he answered, “Your friends don’t like me.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. None of my new friends had ever expressed anything but curiosity and interest in Colin.

  “They scrutinize me.”

  “They don’t scrutinize you. They don’t even know you. How can they scrutinize you if they don’t know you?”

  “They look at my teeth. They think I’m ugly.”

  “Colin. They don’t think you’re ugly. Besides, who cares what they think? I don’t think you’re ugly.”

  “Well, I don’t want to go. I want to go climbing. Come with me.”

  “Come on,” I whined, “I don’t feel like climbing this weekend. I want to go to the party. Why don’t you call your friend Allen? You stay her
e and I’ll go to the party. That way, we can each have fun and come back ready to see each other again after the weekend.”

  If Colin had been a cartoon character, smoke would have started billowing out of his ears. He went to the closet and started packing a small, yellow duffel with rock-climbing gear and a sleeping bag. I thought for a second that maybe he was going to trust me enough to give me a little space and freedom. But I must have wanted it too badly, because he turned around and said, “Ahhh, now I see what you’re up to. I know your friend. It’s that kid from British Columbia. I know exactly what you’re trying to do. You want me to leave so you can have him over and fuck his brains out. You’ll wiggle your ass just like you did to me. I’m not stupid. Pack your gear. You’re coming with me.”

  This time, I let my parents buy me a plane ticket back to them: was there another choice?

  I’d sold my car, was living at “home,” and had lost most, if not all, of the self-confidence I’d built up before meeting Colin. So when he called, saying he’d spent several weeks rethinking our relationship and that he had come to realize how truly special I was to him, I let him back in. I was nothing but a recidivist, and the pattern was now entrenched. I asked my parents if he could come live with us, and they said yes, for a little while.

  Two weeks later, Colin was back in America. And two months after that, he was hounding me to get married. He said if we didn’t, he’d never be able to make money. If he tried to work without a visa, he’d be deported. Believing his claims that I’d “seduced” him back to the States, I agreed to marriage. I also believed I had no other options. We went to the courthouse in downtown Las Vegas on February 23, 1996, and signed our names on the dotted line of the King County marriage certificate. A date was set for two weeks later.