by Ron Carlson
“She stayed.”
Julie looked at him. “People stay,” she said. “You come out, you don’t go back.” Julie held his arm all along the crunching snowy road and they didn’t speak further, but fell into step like the oldest of friends, and Burns let the night and the cold disappear and he imagined that she was thinking what he was thinking: that tomorrow he would see where Alec died.
At Julie’s trailer, the lights were on and two little boys sat at the kitchen table in their stocking feet drawing with crayons. “Well, hello, Timmo,” Julie said. “How are you?” Neither boy looked up, but Burns could see their eyes looking around. “Is this your cousin?”
Timmo nodded.
“Well, good. What’s he drawing?” The cousin turned his paper a bit so Julie could see the two figures on the sheet. Burns looked at the two brown smudges. The boy traced a line from one to the other. “This is you shooting a caribou, isn’t it,” Julie said. “And it is very good.” The boys smiled to each other. Julie opened the cupboard and put out a plate of graham crackers and poured two glasses of milk. “Now, Timmo,” she said, looking at her watch, “at eleven, you must go home.” She looked up at Burns. “This is Timmo and his cousin No Name.” At this the boys giggled. “Timmo is an artist who comes over some nights. His mother is in the Tahoe.” Burns stood there in his coat. He wanted one of the crackers. He wanted them all. He smiled at the beautiful native boys. What a day. He had been warm and cold and hungry. This was all so new.
Julie took her coat off and came over to him. “We’d better go to bed,” she said. “You’ve got a big day ahead, and if we don’t leave the room, they’ll never eat the crackers.”
The next afternoon, in the low white angle of sunlight, Burns walked out to Glen Batton’s place, a trailer behind the Forest Service buildings. The light was terrific, knifing at Burns, and he squinted behind his sunglasses.
In the small yard he slipped and fell, and climbing awkwardly back up, saw that he had stumbled across the hindquarters of a caribou lying in the snow. “That’s the freezer up here,” Glen Batton said from the doorway. “Fresh meat all winter. Hop in the truck, I’ll be right there.”
Batton seemed in a good mood, quite happy to show Burns all he knew about the small airplane, which was tethered—along with a dozen others—out on the frozen sea. A runway had been freshly bladed through the drifts along the waterfront, and Batton talked Burns through all the preparations he made, taking off the heavy insulated blanket over the motor, checking the oil, freeing the flaps. He had Burns help him push the plane forward a foot, cracking the icy seal between the skis and the snow-pack. He opened the passenger door and pointed out the emergency gear under the seat, the food, the cross-country skis, and then he pointed to a small orange box in the back of the small cargo space and said, “Don’t worry about that, Mr. Burns. That will start signaling on impact.”
And Glen was chatty on the way over to Kolvik, talking to Burns—over the intercom—about his work with the Forest Service. They flew up the river in the sunshine, Batton pointing out the moose and caribou. He explained that for the caribou counts he usually took one of the secretaries and that Julie didn’t like that. “Did you ever have a spat with your wife, Mr. Burns?”
“A spat?”
“You know, where she’s jealous over something you’re doing, although you’re totally innocent.”
“I guess, sometimes,” Burns said, his voice distant on the intercom, sounding small, like what it was: a lie. Helen had never fought with him, never complained. She had been a sweet, happy, confident woman who had—even in their extremity—never fought with him.
“Yeah, well, Julie …” Batton said. “That’s why she left last night and went home early with you.” Batton pointed ahead, where a small herd of caribou moved across the frozen river. “What am I going to do, land out there and screw Denise?”
A haze had come up, like bright smoke, and the plane rippled across the changing sky. Burns was concentrating, trying to see the country as Alec might have seen it.
“We take a lunch and stop for lunch,” Glen Batton went on. “But that’s lunch. People eat lunch. Right?”
The rest of the flight was different from what Burns could have foreseen. He couldn’t get Glen to put down in Kolvik. They came upon the small toss of cabins which was Kolvik and Burns’s heart lifted, but then it all changed quickly. There was no strip near the small village, of course, and Glen explained that it wasn’t safe to land in the snow so soon after the recent storms. He made one pass by the clearing near where Alec’s cabin had been and laid down a pair of tracks with the skis, but then circling he explained to Burns—through the noisy intercom—that it was too soft, too dangerous. Shoulder to shoulder with Glen Batton in the front seat of the smallest plane he’d ever been in, Burns asked again if they couldn’t possibly try to land.
“No can do, Mr. Burns,” Batton said, his voice tiny through the receiver, sounding miles away. “Too deep, too soft. No one else has been out either. That’s where he lived”—Batton dipped the passenger wing steeply and pointed—“below that hill.” There was no sign of anything in the perfect snow. They made one more broad circle over the area, seeing several moose in the valley where Alec supposedly had trapped, and then they headed west toward home. Burns felt the little plane rattle in the new headwind, the door flexing against his knee more than it had for the flight out, and he felt a disappointment that replaced hunger in his gut. He’d been so close. He could have jumped from the plane and landed in the drift. From the air, the place where his son lived had looked like all the other terrain they’d seen: snowy hills grown with small pine. Alaska gave up its stories hard. He’d learned nothing.
They had flown quite low on the way out, but now Glen was taking the plane up to three and then four thousand feet. The sun was obscured in the west in a thick roseate mist. Burns was silent, mad at first, feeling cheated, and then resolved simply on what he now knew: he would ask Blazo.
“You spoke to the sheriff,” Batton said.
“I did.” Even Burns’s own voice sounded remote on the intercom. “He was a help.”
“And now you’ve been to Kolvik.”
“Not quite, Glen. I’ve flown over it.”
Batton ignored him, resetting some instruments, finally saying, “Did you ever see Russia?”
“I never have.”
Batton leveled the plane at five thousand feet and turned it slightly, squinting through the windshield. “You know, it’s funny your being here. I wouldn’t have walked across the street for my old man and here you’ve come all the way north to see where your kid died.” Burns said nothing. “There.” Glen Batton pointed at a faint solid form below the sunset. “That line. That’s Russia.”
Burns could see the landfall that Batton had indicated, dark and vague beneath the fading rosy dusk, and as the little aircraft was bumped and lifted, he could sense the curvature of the earth from this height. Flying into the lost light made him feel again the sorrow he’d lived by for so long. The little plane descended in rocky strokes, lurching and gliding through the darkening frigid night. The men did not speak, but when the lights of Kotzebue glimmered on the horizon, a settlement in the void, Glen Batton spoke to the airport and then said to Burns: “Look. I know he was your son and he was a good kid, but the end was no good. He was a pain in the ass for everybody. Nearly drove Julie crazy.”
Burns just listened. He wasn’t mad anymore. He didn’t want to argue. The lights of the village grew distinct and Batton circled out over the frozen ocean showing the town as a sweet Christmas decoration, a model, the pools of lamplight on the snowpacked streets.
“And now you’re here, starting it all up again. You ought to get the flight to Anchorage tomorrow before this next weather really hits, and let Julie get on with her life.”
Burns could see an orange bonfire on the hill at the edge of town and the dark forms of sleds descended the slope. Batton banked sharply, moving for the first time all day w
ith an undue haste, and then leveled, and as the icy runway approached Burns felt the bottom drop out. The plane dipped suddenly, wrenching him up against his seat belt, where he floated for a second before slamming down. His head hit the windscreen and the edge of the console and then he felt the plane riding hard on the ridged ice, shaking him to the spine.
Batton ran the plane to the end of the runway and then wheeled it around to the tie-downs. “Sorry about that,” he said. “It’s always a little rough, but we hit her pretty hard that time.”
Burns’s hand was in the blood on his hairline and he could feel the welt rising where his forehead was split.
“You okay?” Batton asked, turning off the plane and climbing down.
“What’d you do to him, Glen? What did you do to Alec?”
With the earphones off everything sounded flat. Batton was fastening the fixed cables to each wing. Burns opened his door and jumped down onto the ice and moved away from the plane. He was dizzy and there seemed to be blood everywhere. Head cuts were like faucets; he’d had plenty playing hockey.
Batton was struggling with the insulation blanket for the engine. “You bleeding?” he said. “Let me see that.”
“Were you after Julie before Alec moved?” Burns said.
Batton stopped fastening the snaps on the cover and came around to Burns. It was clear he wanted to hit him. The two men stood between the plane and the pickup on the rough sea ice. “Look,” Batton said. “You’re a smart guy. Julie said you went to Yale.”
“Glen,” Burns said, “I didn’t come up here for trouble. I came up here to see what Alec saw, something for myself. And now I want to know what you did to him.”
Glen came up to Burns and took a handful of his parka shoulder. In the icy light, Burns could see his face, angry and tight, and he felt himself being lifted. He didn’t care. He was bleeding. He didn’t care what Glen did. Burns saw Batton’s eyes flicker over the things he was going to do and then focus on him. “Get in,” Glen said finally, letting go of the coat. But Burns backed past the truck and into the dark toward the mounds of ragged plate ice between himself and the village.
Not ten minutes later, Burns found himself on a dark side street disoriented and full of the old dread. He’d just walked and something—the cold, the gash on his head, the iron hardness of the packed roadway, the glimpse of the earth growing dark—had let it all gather in his heart. For years he had thought that the weight of it, the darkest part, was his drinking. He’d wake somewhere sick and feel it around his chest like a cold hand and not be able to swallow. But after he stopped drinking, it didn’t lift. It didn’t come every day, but when it came as it had tonight, it hit with a force that left him weak.
On their holidays when he and Helen would go to St. Johns, he was drunk by noon, usually, rum was such an easy thing to drink. You could drink it in anything, coffee, juice. You could drink it in milk, for chrissake. You could take warm mouthfuls right from the bottle.
You could drink vodka and bourbon from the bottle too, but not in balmy weather. In the islands it was rum. Manhattan was gin. Airplanes were gin too, the stiff chemical push in the face. Clients were scotch, something that bit and then slid in Burns, he could drink scotch for weeks. He had done it. But his rules were his rules: Manhattan was gin; St. Johns was rum; clients were scotch; and he drank vodka and bourbon those nights when the rules began to float. It was vodka the time he tried to die.
Now Burns felt the goose egg on his forehead. The blood had stopped, but the flesh was too tender to touch. He looked around and couldn’t find a landmark. Four or five buildings, warehouses or churches, stood over him. He wasn’t sure of the way he’d come and he couldn’t tell north from south. He felt drained. He turned around searching for a clue, even a snowbank to sit on, but he could only see how much, how very much, of his own life he had missed.
Between buildings he thought he caught sight of the bonfire on the hill, and then someone took his arm. He looked down at Blazo, his grin showing the missing teeth, a man who by the wrinkles in his brown face could have been a hundred. With a firm grip on Burns’s arm, Blazo marched him to the corner, out of the shadows, and pointed at the sledding fire.
“I saw them sledding,” Burns said, but Blazo pointed again. A flare of powdery red light rose in the sky and then dissolved as a wave of yellow swelled and faded. “This place,” Burns said. He felt dizzy. “These nights. This place is something else.” He stepped away from Blazo. “Thanks,” he said. “Julie’s place is that way, right?”
Blazo nodded. He seemed to be examining Burns’s face.
Burns started down the street and then hesitated. “I need to get to Kolvik. Soon. I need to see where Alec Burns lived, where he had a trapline. South of town.”
“He was your boy,” Blazo said.
Above them, the sky was relentless, the random vast armatures of colored light wheeling up and then vanishing, sometimes printing themselves from nothing on the darkness like bright stains. “He was,” Burns whispered. The cold air cut at his nose as he breathed, and he could feel his pulse aching in his wound. “You can talk,” Burns said.
“Not really.” Blazo quickly pointed down the snowpacked lane, and Burns saw a figure trotting swiftly under the lamplight, a dog, some kind of husky, moving as with purpose. “But we’ll go out there,” Blazo said. “Tomorrow morning. It’s going to snow, but we’ll get half a day of good weather.”
The trailer was dark. Burns opened the door quietly and heard a strange sound which he then recognized as the violin. He felt the warmth and it made him catch his breath. He almost wept.
As he passed through the mud room without removing his coat, he felt Molly’s nose fit into his palm in the dark. His legs were trembling. Julie was playing something sharp, full of energy and angles, it filled the space completely, and Burns saw her as he passed through the living room. She sat on the ottoman in her underwear, playing by the light of two candles. He saw the shine of sweat on her forehead and breastbone, and then he was in his room, suddenly warm himself and pulling at his coat and sweater.
There was a knock at his door, and Julie was there, tying her robe. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry about that.… What’s all this blood?”
“Nothing,” he said. He was sitting on the bed. “You play very well.”
Julie took his chin in her hand and pulled at the cut with a thumb. “Oh, yes, it’s nothing,” she said. “Looks like Glen hit you with an ax.”
“It was an accident,” Burns said quietly. On the warm bed, with his head in a woman’s hands, he felt himself letting go. Julie was standing very close. He was a serious and controlled man, and he clenched his jaw, but his eyes welled.
“I’m going to have to stitch this closed, Mr. Tom Burns, or you’ll return to the East Coast with a genuine Alaskan tattoo.” And in a moment she came back with a warm wet cloth and a small kit. “You want something to eat?”
“No,” he said. “I’m all in.” He could feel his voice unsteady. “We didn’t make it. Glen couldn’t land.”
Burns leaned back and looked at Julie and he saw her read his face. She stood beside him and put her arm around his neck. Burns held perfectly still. “What are you doing in Alaska? I’m not so sure this is a good idea for you.” She began dabbing at his forehead with the cloth.
Then Burns’s head began to ache and he could feel her working at the skin with the black thread. He was pulled into the open front of her robe where freckles rose from her cleavage in warm, vertiginous constellations inches from his face and he could smell her skin and the sweet Wild Turkey on her breath. His right ear was full of dried blood and his hearing came and went. He had both of his hands on her hips and he could feel her moving against him, the warmth and pressure of her legs.
“Are you all right,” Burns whispered.
He heard her say, “I know what I’m doing.”
He had a high hollow feeling and his mouth tasted sweet and dry the way it did before a drunk, and Julie cinched each st
itch with three short tugs and this became part of the litany, her shifting breasts, the freckles riding there, his eyes half closed in the warm room, and the steady and expected tug-tug-tug. He ran his hand inside her robe and lifted his face to kiss her. She kissed him back, pausing for a moment to move the dangling needle on its black thread out of their way. She came over onto him on the bed. “Isn’t this why you’ve come?” Her eyes fixed him as she continued to move with each word: “Isn’t it?” Burns could feel the needle riding in his ear now and Julie lifted it away. “Watch out for me. I’m not what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“You think I’m some coping person. A nurse. Something. I don’t even know anymore what they do in your world, but here we take comfort where we find it. Glen came after me like a dog in heat. It’s like that, Tom.” Julie moved against him and Burns knew she could feel that he was aroused. “I’m like that.”
“No you’re not,” he said. Even as he heard the words, he realized he didn’t know what he was saying. He’d decided who she was yesterday, standing in her kitchen. The whole journey to Alaska had seemed mad to him at first, but once he was committed, he’d decided what he would see. He had written a kind of scenario without knowing it and now it was coming undone. It was a long moment for Burns, as if he had dived into the ocean and was waiting to turn and ascend. He was airless and without will.
Julie had lifted herself and was looking into his eyes, waiting for something. She looked much older here, harder. When he didn’t move, she said, “You really don’t get it, do you.”
“What? What is it?” he said to her. “What am I missing? Did Glen hurt Alec?”
“You’re hard to believe, Tom,” Julie said, rolling off him and standing by the bed. “You’re too old to be that innocent.” She took his head in her hands once again, but she held it differently. “Yes, Glen hurt Alec. So did I. So did this place. And probably you did too. Alec went mad. He did. But when he moved out there, Glen didn’t help him. I know that. They hated each other by then, you can tell that. I knew he wouldn’t land with you. I’m trying to be honest here. What happened would have happened. Glen didn’t kill Alec.”
