by Jodi Picoult
• • •
Trixie had gone AWOL. She couldn’t say why she felt guilty about this, especially since it wasn’t like she was really supposed to be working the Tuluksak checkpoint in the first place. She ran beside Willie in the dark, small puffs of her breath leaving a dissipating trail.
As promised, Willie had come back to the school, although Trixie hadn’t really expected him to. She had planned to leave his coat behind with one of the volunteers when she got ready to leave—whenever and toward wherever that would be. But Willie had arrived while Trixie was still babysitting Joseph. He’d knelt down on the other side of the snoring old man and shook his head. He knew Joseph—apparently everyone did in an eight-village radius, since Joseph didn’t discriminate when it came to where he’d go on a bender. The Yupiit called him Kingurauten—Too Late—Joseph because he’d promised a woman he’d return, only to turn up a week after she’d died.
Willie had come to invite Trixie to steam. She didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded heavenly after shivering for nearly two days straight. She’d followed Willie, tiptoeing past Joseph, past the sleeping Jesuit Volunteers, and out the front door of the school.
They ran. The night was spread like icing over the dome of the sky; stars kept falling at Trixie’s feet. It was hard to tell if it was the uncovered beauty of this place that took her breath away, or the seize of the cold. Willie slowed when they came to a narrow road lined with tiny homes. “Are we going to your house?” Trixie asked.
“No, my dad’s there, and when I left he was drinking. We’re going to my cousin’s. He was having a steam with some of his buddies, but they’re leaving for a city league basketball game downriver.”
Several dogs that were chained up outside houses started to bark. Willie fumbled for her hand, probably to get her to move faster, but if that was the intent it didn’t work. Everything slowed inside Trixie: her heartbeat, her breathing, her blood.
Although Janice had tried to tell her otherwise, Trixie had believed she would never want another guy to lay hands on her again. But when Willie touched her, she couldn’t really remember what it had felt like to touch Jason. It was almost as if one canceled out the other. She knew this: Willie’s skin was smoother than Jason’s. His hand was closer to hers in size. The muscles in his forearms weren’t thick, the product of a million slap shots—they were lean and ropy, almost sculpted. It made no sense, given their upbringings, but she had this weird feeling that she and Willie were equals, that neither of them was in control, because they were both so skittish in each other’s company.
They stopped behind one of the houses. Through the buttery light of the windows, Trixie could see a sparse living room, a single couch, and a few young men putting on their coats and boots. “Come on,” Willie said, and he tugged her away.
He opened the door to a wooden shack not much bigger than an outhouse. It was divided into two rooms—they had entered the larger one; the other room lay through the closed door directly ahead of Trixie. Once the sound of his cousin’s snow machine winnowed away, Willie shrugged out of his coat and boots, gesturing to Trixie to do the same. “The good news is, my cousin already did all the hard work tonight—hauling water and chopping wood. He built this maqi a few years ago.”
“What do you do in it?”
Willie grinned, and in the dark his teeth gleamed. “Sweat,” he said. “A lot. The men usually go in first, because they can handle the real heat. Women go in later.”
“Then how come we’re here together?” Trixie asked.
Willie ducked his head. She knew he was blushing, even if she couldn’t see it.
“I bet you take girls here all the time,” she said, but she was only half joking, waiting for his answer.
“I’ve never been with a girl in the steam before,” Willie said, and then he shucked off his skirt. Trixie closed her eyes, but not before she saw the bright white flash of his underwear.
He opened a door and disappeared inside the adjoining room. Trixie waited for him to come back, but he didn’t. She heard the hiss of rising steam.
She stared at the wooden door, wondering what was on the other side. Was he trying to show her how tough he was, by taking the real heat? What did he mean when he said that he hadn’t been with a girl in the steam before? Did he take them other places, or was that an invitation for her to follow? She felt like she had fallen into one of her father’s comic book universes, where what you said was not what you meant, and vice versa.
Hesitantly, Trixie pulled off her shirt. The action—and Willie’s proximity—immediately made her think about playing strip poker the night of Zephyr’s party. But nobody was watching this time; there were no rules to the game; no one was telling her what she had to do. It was entirely different, she realized, when the choice was up to her.
If she went in there in her bra and panties, that was just like wearing a bikini, wasn’t it?
She shivered only a moment before she opened the stunted door and crawled inside.
The heat slammed into her, a solid wall. It wasn’t just heat. It was a sauna and a steam room and a bonfire all rolled together, and then ratcheted up a notch. The floor beneath her bare feet was slick plywood. She couldn’t see, because of all the steam.
As the clouds drifted, she could make out a fifty-five-gallon oil drum on its side with a fire burning hot in its belly. Rocks were nestled in birdcage wire on top, and a metal container of water sat beside it. Willie was hunkered down on the plywood, his knees drawn up to his chest, his skin red and blotched.
He didn’t say anything when he saw her, and Trixie understood why—if she opened her mouth, surely her throat would burst into flame. He wasn’t wearing anything, but the region between his thighs was only a shadow, and somehow, she was the one who felt overdressed. She sat down beside him—in that small a space there wasn’t much choice—and felt him wrapping something around her head. A rag, she realized, that had been dipped in water, to cover her ears and keep them from burning. When he knotted it, the skin of his upper arm stuck to hers.
The orange light that spilled through the cracks in the stove door illuminated Willie. His silhouette glowed, lean and feline; at that moment, Trixie wouldn’t have been surprised to see him turn into a panther. Willie reached for a ladle, a wooden stick wired to a soup can. He dipped it into the bucket of water, pouring more over the rocks and causing a fresh cloud of steam to fill the chamber. When he settled down beside Trixie, his hand was so close to hers on the plywood that their pinkies touched.
It hurt, almost past the point of pain. The room had a pulse, and breathing was nearly impossible. Heat rose off Trixie’s skin in the shape of her soul. Perspiration ran down her back and between her legs: her entire body, crying.
When Trixie’s lungs were about to explode, she ran through the door into the cold room again. She sat down on the floor, warmth rolling off her in waves, just as Willie burst in with a towel wrapped around his waist. He sank down beside her and passed her a jug.
Trixie drank it without even knowing what was inside. The water cooled the lining of her throat. She passed the jug to Willie, who tipped his head back against the wall and drank deeply, the knot of his Adam’s apple following each swallow. He turned to her, grinning. “Crazy, huh?”
She found herself laughing, too. “Totally.”
Willie leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “I always kind of figured that’s what Florida’s like.”
“Florida? It’s nothing like this.”
“You’ve been to Florida?” Willie asked, intrigued.
“Yeah. It’s just, you know, another state.”
“I’d like to see an orange growing on a tree. I’d pretty much like to see anything that’s somewhere other than here.” He turned to her. “What did you do when you went to Florida?”
It was so long ago, Trixie had to think for a moment. “We went to Cape Canaveral. And Disney World.”
Willie started picking at the wooden floor. “I bet you fit in there.”
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“Because it’s so tacky?”
“Because you’re like that fairy. The one who hangs out with Peter Pan.”
Trixie burst out laughing. “Tinker Bell?”
“Yeah. My sister had that book.”
She was about to tell him he was crazy, but then she remembered that Peter Pan was about a boy who didn’t want to grow up, and she decided she didn’t mind the comparison.
“She was so pretty,” Willie said. “She had a light inside her.”
Trixie stared at him. “You think I’m pretty?”
Instead of answering, Willie got up and crawled back into the hot room. By the time she followed, he’d already poured water over the rocks. Blinded by steam, she had to find her way by touch. She drew her fingers over the rough run of the wooden floor, up the joints of the walls, and then she brushed the smooth curve of Willie’s shoulder. Before she could pull away, Willie’s hand came up to capture hers. He tugged her closer, until they were facing each other on their knees, in the heart of a cloud. “Yeah, you’re pretty,” Willie said.
Trixie felt like she was falling. She had ugly chopped black hair and scars up and down her arms, and it was like he didn’t even notice. She looked down at their interlaced fingers—a weave of dark and pale skin—and she let herself pretend that maybe there could be a light inside of her.
“When the first white folks came to the tundra,” Willie said, “the people here thought they were ghosts.”
“Sometimes that’s what I think I am, too,” Trixie murmured.
They leaned toward each other, or maybe the steam pushed them closer. And just as Trixie was certain that there wasn’t any air left in the room, Willie’s mouth closed over hers and breathed for her.
Willie tasted like smoke and sugar. His hands settled on her shoulders, respectfully staying there even when she itched to have him touch her. When they drew back from each other, Willie looked down at the ground. “I’ve never done that before,” he confessed, and Trixie realized that when he’d said he’d never been with a girl in a steam, he’d meant that he’d never been with a girl.
Trixie had lost her virginity a lifetime ago, back when she thought it was a prize to give to someone like Jason. They’d had sex countless times—in the backseat of his car, in his bedroom when his parents were out, in the locker room at the hockey rink after hours. But what she had done with him compared in no way to the kiss she had just experienced with Willie; it was impossible to draw a line to connect the two. She couldn’t even say that her own participation was the common denominator, because the girl she was back then was completely different from the one here now.
Trixie leaned toward Willie, and this time, she kissed him. “Me neither,” she said, and she knew she wasn’t lying.
• • •
When Daniel was eleven, the circus had come for the first and only time to the tundra. Bethel was the last stop for the Ford Brothers Circus, on an unprecedented tour of bush Alaska. Cane and Daniel weren’t going to miss it for the world. They worked odd jobs—painting an elder’s house, putting a new roof on Cane’s uncle’s steam bath—until they each had fifteen dollars. The flyers, which had been put up in all the village schools, including Akiak, said that admission would be eight bucks, and that left plenty of money for popcorn and souvenirs.
Most of the village was planning to go. Daniel’s mother was going to hitch a ride with the principal, but at the last minute, Cane invited Daniel to go in his family’s boat. They sat in its belly, the aluminum sides cold against their backs and bottoms, and told each other elephant jokes on the way down.
Why is an elephant gray, large, and wrinkled?
Because if he was small, white, and round, he’d be an aspirin.
Why does an elephant have a trunk?
Because he’d look stupid with a glove compartment.
Six thousand people from all over the delta showed up, many coming just after midnight so that they could see the MarkAir Herc fly in at dawn with the performers and the animals. The circus was going to take place at the National Guard Armory gym, with the bathrooms converted to costume changing areas. Cane and Daniel, running ragged around the edges of the activity, even got to hold a rope as the big top was pitched.
During the show, there were trained dogs in ratty tutus, and two lions named Lulu and Strawberry. There was a leopard, which waited for its cue outside the big top, drinking from a mud puddle. There was calliope music and peanuts and cotton candy, and for the little children, an inflatable house to jump in and Shetland pony rides. When Shorty Serra came thundering out to do rope tricks with his monstrous horse, Juneau, the beast stood on his hind legs to tower over everyone, and the crowd shrieked.
A group of Yup’ik boys sitting behind Daniel and Cane cheered, too. But when Daniel leaned over to say something to Cane, one of them spit out a slur: “Look at that: I always knew kass’aqs belonged in the circus.”
Daniel turned around. “Shut the fuck up.”
One Yup’ik boy turned to another. “Did you hear something?”
“Want to feel something instead?” Daniel threatened, balling his hand into a fist.
“Ignore them,” Cane said. “They’re assholes.”
The ringmaster appeared, to the roar of applause. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid we have some disappointing news. Our elephant, Tika, is too ill for the show. But I’m delighted to introduce . . . all the way from Madagascar . . . Florence and her Amazing Waltzing Pigeons!”
A tiny woman in a flamenco skirt walked out with birds perched on each shoulder. Daniel turned to Cane. “How sick could an elephant be?”
“Yeah,” Cane said. “This sucks.”
One of the Yup’ik boys poked him. “So do you. And I guess you like white meat.”
All of his life, Daniel had been teased by the village kids—for not having a father, for being kass’aq, for not knowing how to do native things like fish and hunt. Cane would hang out with him, but the Yup’ik boys in school let that slide, because after all, Cane was one of them.
These boys, though, were not from his village.
Daniel saw the look on Cane’s face and felt something break loose inside of him. He stood up, intent on leaving the big top. “Hang on,” Cane said.
Daniel made his gaze as flat as possible. “I didn’t invite you,” he said, and he walked away.
It didn’t take him long to find the elephant, penned up in a makeshift fence with no one to watch over it. Daniel had never seen an elephant up close; it was the one thing that he had in common with kids who lived in normal places. The elephant was limping and throwing hay in the air with its trunk. Daniel ducked under the wire and walked up to the animal, moving slowly. He touched its skin, warm and craggy, and laid his cheek along the haunch.
The best part about his friendship with Cane was that Cane was an insider, and that made Daniel one by association. He’d never realized that it could go the other way, too, that their acquaintance might make Cane a pariah. If the only way to keep Cane from being ostracized was to stay away from him, then Daniel would.
You did what you had to, for the people you cared about.
The elephant swung its massive head toward Daniel. Its dark eye winked; the loose-lipped drip of its mouth worked soundlessly. But Daniel could hear the animal perfectly, and so he answered out loud: I don’t belong here either.
• • •
It was still dark out the next morning when the cargo plane arrived, puddle-jumping from village to village to pick up the dogs that had been dropped by mushers along the trail. They’d be flown back to Bethel where a handler could pick them up.
Willie was driving his cousin’s pickup truck to the airstrip, and Trixie was in the passenger seat. They held hands across the space between them.
In the flatbed were all of Alex Edmonds’s dogs, Juno, and Kingurauten Joseph, who was being transported back to the medical center. Willie parked the truck and then began to pass the dogs to Trixie, who walked them over to the
chain-link fence and tethered them. Every time she returned for another one, he smiled at her, and she melted as if she were back in the steam again.
Last night, after the steam had died out, Willie bathed her with a rag dipped in warm water. He’d run the makeshift sponge right over her bra and her panties. Then they’d gone back to the cold room, and he’d toweled her dry, kneeling in front of her to get the backs of her knees and between her toes before they’d dressed each other. Fastening and tucking seemed so much more intimate than unbuttoning and unzipping, as if you were privy to putting the person back together whole, instead of unraveling him. “I have to take my uncle’s coat back,” Willie had said, but then he had given her his own lined canvas jacket.
It smelled like him, every time Trixie buried her nose in the collar.
The lights on the airstrip suddenly blazed, magic. Trixie whirled around, but there was no control tower anywhere nearby. “The pilots have remotes in their planes,” Willie said, laughing, and sure enough ten minutes hadn’t passed before Trixie could hear the approach of an engine.
The plane that landed looked like the one that had flown Trixie into Bethel. The pilot—a Yup’ik boy not much older than Willie—jumped out. “Hey,” he said. “Is this all you’ve got?”
When he opened the cargo bay, Trixie could see a dozen dogs already tethered to D rings. As Willie loaded the sled dogs, she helped Joseph climb down from the back of the pickup. He leaned on her heavily as they walked to the runway, and when he stepped into the cargo bay, the animals inside started barking. “You remind me of someone I used to know,” Joseph said.
You already told me that, Trixie thought, but she just nodded at him. Maybe it wasn’t that he wanted her to hear it but only that he needed to say it again.
The pilot closed up the hatch and hopped back into his plane, accelerating down the airstrip until Trixie could not tell his landing lights apart from any given star. The airstrip blinked and went black again.
She felt Willie move closer in the dark, but before her eyes could adjust, another beacon came at them. It glinted directly into her eyes, had her shielding them from the glare with one hand. The snow machine pulled up, its engine growling before it died down completely and the driver stood up on the runners.
