Run Cold

by Ed Ifkovic

  “What?”

  He scratched his chin. The overhead light caught a purplish scab, a trace of blood. The cigarette bobbed between his lips. His eyes focused on the red-hot end, the burning ash, waiting until the last moment to flick the ashes into an ashtray.

  “Ancient history. We’re old men now.” He held the burning cigarette toward my face. “You ain’t never killed a man, have you?”

  I started. “No.” I smiled at him. “The temptation…” Laughing, I looked at Noah.

  Seething, his voice clipped, Sam broke in, “You play games with words, lady.”

  “That I do.”

  “Stop talking, lady.”

  Silence, the old man wheezing. I waited.

  Noah’s voice was hesitant. “You looking forward to seeing Jack again? It’s been what—many decades?”

  “He owes me twenty dollars.”

  Noah burst out laughing. “He says the same thing about you.”

  He spoke over Noah’s words. “He’s a goddamn liar.” A lazy drawl, menacing. “We’ll hash that out, the two of us. A goddamn crook.”

  “But you two were wilderness buddies—winters in snowbound cabins,” I protested.

  He stared into my face but didn’t answer at first. “Brings out the worst in people, those winters.”

  “But you claim he’s your friend,” I went on.

  A half-hearted shrug. “You ain’t never been north, ma’am. Jack—he’s a darn fool most of the day, a lunatic most of the night, but when the law got a gun to your head, when some bad-ass cowboy or Yupik fool thinks he can cheat you out of a silver dollar, Jack—he got my back.”

  “Frontier justice.” I sat back, watched him.

  He rustled in his seat and pointed at Noah. “We leaving or what? This lady talks too much.” He pointed at Noah. “I remember him as a sniveling little brat, sassy mouth. Smarty ass boy, big britches. Old Nathan hovering over him like he’s the last Indian in a parade.”

  Noah snapped, “My grandfather protected me and Maria after our parents died. So young.”

  “Yeah, old Nathan, holier than thou, he done a great job.”

  Noah bristled. “Now…”

  Leaning forward, Sam snapped a gnarled finger at Noah’s chest, so quick a gesture that I jumped. “Yeah, that was before you turned into a white man.”

  “Christ,” Noah began. He half-rose from his chair, but I touched his elbow.

  Sam counted a beat. “And Maria sold her body to bums in the Row.”

  Noah tensed up, unsure of himself, but finally sat back, shaking his head and bunching his lips.

  “But you’re sleeping on Maria’s couch,” I noted.

  He watched me a long time. “You gotta sleep somewhere. Maria is…lovely, kind. She remembers that she’s an Indian from Fort Yukon.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “You wear that red parka with the Qwich’in symbols…phony. Strutting around like a cock in a henhouse. You’re playing cowboys and Indians but you wanna be a cowboy.”

  Without asking, he reached forward, pulled a cigarette from the pack in Noah’s pocket, and nodded toward the matches.

  “Are we bothering you, Mr. Pilot?” I asked.

  “No more’n than nobody else I bump into.”

  Noah was itching to leave, signaling to me, but I ignored him—Sam Pilot intrigued me.

  “Miss Ferber.”

  I looked up as Teddy leaned in, a cup of tea in his hand. “Thank you, Teddy.”

  He beamed. “It’s that hour of the night.” He placed the cup of tea on a side table, though his sidelong glance at Sam Pilot suggested he wasn’t happy with the strange man inhabiting the lounge. Sam hissed at him, which made him back up. He half-bowed, whispered a curt “You’re welcome” to my thanks, and disappeared into the small room behind the reception desk.

  “None for me?” Noah laughed.

  I took a sip of the hot brew. “The privilege of fame.”

  “I’ve been coming here nights for years, me and Clint and dozens of others. Loitering on these old chairs. No one has ever offered us a cup of tea.”

  “What can I say?” I shrugged, delighted.

  “I can’t even get a shot of booze.”

  “The tea is lovely. A mossy taste…”

  Sam Pilot had ignored the frivolous banter. Stony faced, eyes riveted to the doorway, he rustled in his seat, twisting his body left and right. A foot drummed the floorboards. Old leather boots, the laces frayed. A drumbeat, like hail on a roof.

  “Sam,” Noah began, “we were saying…”

  A rush of loud noise as a man and a woman, laughing nonsensically, swept into the room and then back out, disappearing up the staircase, their laughter drifting down. I stared after them but was surprised to see Preston Strange and Jeremy Nunne pause in the entrance. I caught Preston’s eye, and he glared, but immediately a man in shirtsleeves stepped up to them, shook their hands, and the trio disappeared into a small meeting room behind the stairwell. The outside door slammed, someone arriving. Ty Gilley stood in the doorway, dressed like a polar bear in an oversized white parka, hood down, a massive white scarf circling his neck. Mukluks on his feet. Sealskin gloves. Shivering from the cold, he looked into the lounge and realized Noah and I were staring back at him. Eyes hooded, he offered a tentative wave, then seemed to regret it, backing up and fleeing up the stairs to his room, the white scarf unraveling and floating after him.

  “Ty has rooms here,” I told Noah.

  “I know.”

  Sam Pilot let out a low moan, a plaintive keening so raw that Teddy peered over the reception desk, question in his eyes.

  Startled, I faced Sam. “What in the world?”

  Like a mechanical toy, he moved his limbs stiffly, robotic. He sat straight up, threw back his head, and he placed an old arthritic hand on his heart. He held it there, his fingers trembling. He said a word, unintelligible to me, even to Noah whose eyes flickered.

  “What?” asked Noah.

  Sam said nothing, but stood slowly like a rusty automaton, his right hand still gripping his chest. The moaning stopped. He repeated the word, louder now.

  “We have to go,” Noah was saying, flustered.

  Sam ignored us, moving slowly between the chairs, almost baby steps, headed toward the doorway. Noah called after him, and Sam paused a second, deliberated, turned to face us. His hand still on his heart, his face frozen, he raised his left hand. A statue, a little frightening. That long white hair caught the overhead light and gleamed. The smooth glow of that old face. In the shrill light his face looked—skeletal.

  He disappeared from sight.

  “What in the world, Noah?” I asked.

  Noah’s face was pale. Not looking at me, his lips trembling, he whispered. “He spoke Gwich’in.” His eyes drifted to the empty doorway. “Gwinah’in.” Then, “Niindhat.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He saw it.” He swallowed. “Dead.”

  Chapter Six

  On a lazy Sunday afternoon, wisps of ice fog settled on Fairbanks, Sonia picked me up at the Nordale. “I was afraid you’d back out,” she said as I slid onto the passenger seat. “Not your cup of tea, I imagine.”

  “You read my mind well,” I answered. “A dreary afternoon to lie in bed with a good book.”

  On Sunday afternoons, once a month during the long winters, Hank Petrievich hosted an open house. Conceived as a pro-statehood gathering of kindred spirits, it had evolved over the years into a popular social event, an afternoon salon of sorts—and much talked about. No invitations were proffered, but woe to the disfavored soul or idle tourist or territorial government factotum who wandered in. Fairbanks society tacitly understood the boundaries, curiously as rigid as a private men’s club. This month the open house, according to Irina, was preamble to the annual Fairbanks Winter Carnival, w
ith the North American Sled Dog Championships ushering in four days of parades, floats, and ice sculpture. Schools were closed, routine meetings canceled.

  Irina had informed me that some celebrated champion dog-sledders from Anchorage were Hank’s special guests, but she’d confided, “You are the real guest this Sunday.” I’d already spotted the quartet in the lobby of my hotel, blustery, backslapping dog-sledders, men too loud and too furry for my taste. Hardly celestial charioteers of the gods, these were hard-drinking men, all four of them in identical red wool shirts with white suspenders. An itinerant barbershop quartet with sled dogs. Sweet Adeline, my foot.

  Of course, Irene had hummed, folks insisted on meeting Edna Ferber herself, the best-selling novelist who was a fierce advocate for statehood.

  “You’ll survive,” Sonia told me now.

  She reached for a clipping from a pile of papers beside her on the seat. From a rival newspaper, The News-Miner.

  “In their gossip column,” she pointed.

  I read: “Edna Ferber, currently visiting Fairbanks, is finishing her novel on Alaska. Supposedly it takes place in Fairbanks, and local citizens will recognize themselves in her robust pages.”

  “Hmm,” I mused out loud. “So this explains some of the looks I’ve been getting.”

  “Noah bet me that you’d skip the open house.” She laughed. “We had a lovely lunch at the Model Café today. All he did was talk about you…”

  I interrupted. “You two. My Lord. A breezy, modern couple, easy with each other. I come from a Victorian age, a different world. The world wars have redefined the word young.”

  “Those horrid wars gave us a reason to drastically invent our own futures.” A gentle tap on my sleeve, affectionate. “When I got my pilot’s license, I announced, ‘Now no one can catch me in the heavens.’ I felt free flying above the rest of Alaska.” She was grinning. “Only Noah thought it was a good idea.”

  “I love it. I grew up marveling at a passing automobile.”

  Sonia got serious. “But Noah told me about Jack’s reunion with Sam Pilot.” She glanced out the window. “How did he put it? ‘Curses, grinning over some inside joke, anger, shoving, happy, mad, bitter, silence.’” She shook her head back and forth. “A drunken ballet and a yelling match over that twenty dollars borrowed decades back, resolved when Noah gave each five silver dollars apiece. A brief meeting, maybe a half-hour. Sam hobbled off to Maria’s. Jack stumbled back into the bar.”

  “A love story.”

  “Of the worst kind. Noah said Jack kept saying, ‘Nobody writes the story of your life in the goddamn paper.’”

  “See what you started, Sonia?”

  “That reminds me. Here.” Again from the pile of papers on the seat she slid a handwritten note over to me. “The pitfalls of journalism,” she said, smiling. “The voice of the public, maybe the great unwashed.”

  I had trouble reading in the dim afternoon light, so Sonia switched on the car’s overhead light.

  It was scribbled script on wide-lined school tablet paper, the left edge jagged. Folded excessively—maybe an eight-by-ten sheet folded perhaps ten times—it was addressed to Sonia at The Gold.

  Editor Petrievich—

  I got something to say. Your articles in White Silence on the old men from the North are all offensive. I’ll tell you why. You glorify evil. You celebrate murder. Your shameful words tell us our lives here in Fairbanks are crap because we go to church, follow the laws, go to The Lacey Movies to see a movie. No, no, no—you take a man like Jack Mabie and make him, I don’t know, Paul Bunyan or Mike Fink. You like your wild stories. What about all of the folks he murdered—MURDERED—confessed years later, a smile on his face? Murder!

  And let me tell you, lady, anyone who celebrates the murder of God’s innocents they are murderers too—on the road to hell.

  Like you, lady.

  Maybe someone should murder you. Then they can make a story about you.

  Dangerous territory, lady. God is watching you.

  His words—Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Lot’s wife looking back.

  Look over your shoulder.

  An angry citizen.

  The letter trembled in my hand.

  “Good God, Sonia, how horrible.”

  Sonia dismissed it. “Comes with the territory—journalism.”

  “But never to be taken lightly. A nut, surely, and a scattered, confused man, though he does make a point—you romanticize Jack and the others, and naturally that bothers some. But what you’re not paying attention to are the threats—‘Maybe someone should murder you.’ ‘Look over your shoulder.’ Threats, Sonia, maybe maddened, maybe empty threats, but death threats nonetheless.”

  Sonia rolled her eyes. “Really, Edna, I didn’t think you’d take it so seriously.”

  Indignant, I faced her. “I’m not amused. I’m scared. Have you shown this to your father?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Or to the police chief?”

  “It’s not signed.”

  My voice rose. “I don’t care.” I counted a beat. “What about Noah?”

  Her face closed in. “Oh no, Lord no. Noah’s a lawyer and he’d feel a need to protect me, demand I hand it over to the cops. He’d bang on doors across town.”

  I sat back. “I’m not happy.”

  She looked perplexed. “I didn’t mean to worry you, Edna. Not my intent.”

  I got silent, stared out the window at the bleak, shadowy buildings.

  Suddenly her car jolted to a dizzying stop, slid on some slick ice, and edged toward a curb. In front of us an old Army Jeep had slammed on its brakes, and the driver was leaning on his horn. Behind us another car careened to the left.

  “What in the world?” I peered out.

  Through the ice fog, I saw a battered trash barrel roll across the street, rest against a lightpost, but then my eyes shot to a man flailing his arms, taking a step but faltering. The horn wailed again, and the man banged on the hood, let out a volley of damns and shits, and the driver leaned on the horn again.

  Sonia pointed. “Omar’s, the pit of hell.”

  As we watched, the door of the bar swung open, a naked light bulb hanging over the entrance, and suddenly, arms folded over his chest, Sam Pilot stood, imperious, though I noticed he wobbled, one hand bracing himself against the doorjamb.

  “Jack,” Sonia said softly.

  Because at that moment we both realized that the drunken man causing the street to be blocked was Jack, who now staggered onto the sidewalk, swayed and bobbed, as he approached a watching Sam Pilot.

  The street clear now, the Jeep sailed past, though the driver, cranking down the passenger side window, leaned over and gave an oblivious Jack the finger.

  Sam Pilot silently approached a teetering Jack.

  “Pull over,” I demanded, but Sonia already had steered the car to the curb, idling, the two of us sitting quietly, specimens in a glass exhibit, frozen, both of us focused on the Mexican standoff, the drunken tableau.

  I rolled down my window, ignored the cold air seeping into the car, and watched.

  Finally Sonia spoke. “The nightly floor show at Omar’s. Lord, Edna, living in Fairbanks you get used to street brawls, folks toppling drunk onto the sidewalk, wives slapping husbands, curses, threats. The nighttime bars spilling guys onto the streets as you walk back from dinner or the movies.”

  “Drunken fools.”

  “No.” Sonia threw me a sidelong glance. “Something else is going on here.” She pointed to the two men.

  As we watched, the men neared each other, slow motion, unsure of foot, reeling, and Jack turned to look up the street. Instinctively, I shrank back, which made Sonia smile, though he was not looking at our car. But at that moment Jack’s hand brushed his jaw, and from where I was I could see a smear of blood. He loo
ked at his fingers and bellowed. He raised his fist in the air and sputtered, “You ripped my skin.”

  Sam Pilot, in a loud, echoey voice, “I should have ripped your heart out.”

  Then Sam shoved Jack, who tottered against a parked car, and he swung wildly at Sam. But his swings missed, punching the air. Sam jabbed back, his reach stiff and feeble, missing his mark, the men’s arms dancing around each other, but the awkward, angry dance reminded me of a Buster Keaton routine, some slapstick vaudeville inanity, two clowns beating up the air. A foolish cartoon.

  A couple tourists passing by stopped, amused, one snapping photos with a Kodak, pointing and laughing, but there was nothing funny about this. Finally Sam stepped away, his back to Omar’s door, but Jack kept rushing up to him like a pesky rodent, prodding, poking, hissing at him.

  Sam, stiffening his body, stood like a flagpole, chin up, arms folded over his chest. But the more Jack jabbed at him, the more Sam grunted, chest heaving, lips set in a tight grimace. “This is not going to end well,” I said. I looked into Sonia’s face as she looked into mine. She looked sad but also a little frightened—and a little bit excited.

  Sonia said, “There’s a story here. This is a dirty secret from the old days in the North come down to Fairbanks for the final act.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe it’s just a drunken brawl outside a sleazy bar.”

  Her voice clipped. “No, it’s a chapter of my ‘White Silence.’”

  “Which obviously can’t keep its mouth shut.”

  Suddenly both men seemed to calm down, like the eye of a hurricane, it seemed, the two so close, Jack staring up into Sam’s face, his voice oddly calm but…lethal.

  Jack yelled out, “You’re a crazy old Indian, Sam. Always was.” Then, his voice high, “Maybe it ain’t him.”

  I echoed, “‘Maybe it ain’t him.’” I looked at Sonia, puzzled, and repeated, “‘Maybe it ain’t him.’ What?”

  Sam put his hand over his heart and stepped to the side.

  “What does that mean?” I said.