by Dave Barrett
“Steady, Judge,” I said. “We got you.”
Elbows flying, Peterson shook himself loose of our grasp.
“Let me be!” he said. “I still got two good legs!”
Winking at me, Swanson asked Peterson if he wouldn’t stay for a quick one.
Peterson hesitated, his horny brow frowning over like a turtle’s; then, literally shaking himself out of it, he staunchly announced:
“Nope. Nope. Got to be going. George wants to put-out for Esther Island tonight—on account of this new closure coming up. And I promised Sue Ann I’d be back for supper an hour ago.”
As Peterson walked away, the man in the DESERT STORM cap called out:
“Be sure to give Sue Ann a big hello from me! Hey, Judge!”
He had a toothpick in the craw of his mouth now and was chewing on it as though a stick of gum. Watching Peterson balk, then shrug his shoulders and walk on, I wanted to sock the bastard. Shove his toothpick down his hole. Toss beer in his face. Something.
“No,” Swanson said, under his breath as we sat down again. “Ignore the bastard. He’s drunk... ”
“What an asshole!” I mumbled back. “Someone should teach—“
Our conversation was cut short by the loud squelch of a microphone.
‘TESTING... TESTING... ONE, TWO—“a man’s voice boomed of the P.A. system. “TESTING... ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR... SUZIE AND SALLY STETCHED OUT ON THE FLOOR... ”
I located the man with the microphone: a big Indian guy standing center-stage on a small bandstand along the rear wall. He was dressed in jeans and a black Jack Daniel’s T-shirt. The T-shirt was two sizes too small for him so his gut bulged out the bottom of it.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Sssh!” Swanson said, handing me a glass of beer from our table. “Watch!”
Men and women were jockeying for position around the railing of what appeared to be sunken dance floor below the bandstand. Some of the revelers were carrying quart-sized bottles of beer. They looped their arms over each other’s shoulders and backsides and seemed to be having as much fun jockeying for position as they were viewing the spectacle below.
Swanson and I and our whole table got up and stood at the edge of the circle growing around the dance floor. Swanson introduced me to the Rapp brothers—Tom and Hank—from Wrangell, Alaska. The one with the DESERT STORM cap and sunglasses went by the name of Waters. The fourth fisherman was Maxwell Jones, a friend of Waters whom Swanson had never met before.
“Steer clear of Waters,” Swanson warned me. “He’s way out of your league, kid. Ex-Navy Seal. Panama. Grenada. He’ll be knocking at your door. Already is. Just let him keep knocking... ”
We followed the four other fishermen forward. Behind weaving heads and shoulders came glimpses of the sunken dance floor. It had been turned into a huge mud trough. A man dressed as a clown in a referee’s outfit was leveling the red clay mud with a rake. The M.C. had climbed down from the bandstand and was whispering in the ear of one of the two women in bikini bathing suits. Along a far wall, an oilcloth banner proclaimed LADIES MUD WRESTLING NIGHT!!! I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before.
“Ever been to a wrestle before?”
I shook my head, thinking Swanson had asked the question. Turning my eyes from the woman in the thong, I saw that one of the Rapp brothers had asked the question: the younger, stouter one, Tom Rapp.
“Then you’re in for some fun tonight, young Adam!” Tom Rapp said, looping a thick forearm around my neck. “Woo wee! Mud-wrestle, Alaska-style!”
The silver casing round his left front tooth gleamed under the bandstand lights.
“Just stick by me, Adam,” he continued. “Things can get a little outta hand sometimes... but we’ll pull you through!”
“Outta hand?” I said. “Whatya’ mean a little outta hand?
Tom Rapp only laughed. Pulling a metal flask out from his back pocket, he yelled:
“Here... take a slug of this.”
I took a swallow, choking, of course.
“What the hell’s in there?” I managed to croak out.
“Wild Turkey!” he said, taking a nip himself.
The M.C. was speaking over the P.A. again. But it was impossible to make out his words above the whistling and catcalls. Tom Rapp and I moved forward with the throng. We were soon cut off from the rest of our party. I saw Water’s DESERT STORM cap bobbing above the mob, and then it too was blotted from view by the swarming patrons.
Suddenly, from somewhere across the room, a laser fixed on a mirrored-ball hanging over the trough. White and green spinning dots of light were refracted around the bar—sliding off of the faces, hands and clothes of all those around so the Elbow Room seemed to be shifting on its rudder. A man—or woman?—kept stumbling into me from behind and was repeatedly excusing him—or her?—self. We were packed so tight it was next to impossible to turn around.
The wrestlers entered the trough. One was a blonde, the other a brunette. They had very shapely figures: like those women you see advertising exercise equipment on TV. Their faces were rouged and powdered; their hair tied back in ponytails. The one in the thong bathing suit—the blonde—had the Big Dipper constellation tattooed on her ass. This was the symbol of the Alaska state flag—and I learned later from Swanson—the symbol of the Alaska secession from the Union movement.
“Here we go!” Tom Rapp yelled—as we lurched forward. “Mama! Get a load of the view!”
He passed me the flask. I took a long swallow, not choking this time.
The clown in the referee garb had the women clasp hands. He blew his whistle and the match began. The women circled each other, thumping their chests, clawing the air, stamping their shanks about in the mud like mountain goats trying to find footing on a rocky precipice. Big-time wrestling stuff. Within seconds, they were in a hold. Seconds later, the first of the women’s tops came off.
The crowd was ecstatic. The wrestler with the Big Dipper tattoo paraded her opponent’s bikini top overhead like a scalp.
On cue from the M.C., the referee jumped in and called an end to round one. I had seen enough. I was feeling suffocated and wanted to leave—but the crowd was worse now than ever. Men and women were literally crawling over one another’s shoulders and heads to see into the trough. Little skirmishes were flaring up: one man holding a hand over his bleeding nose and yelling two feet from my right ear drum. Those of us who had been in the front rows were pressed against the railing now. Some of us, like Tom Rapp, were hanging at ninety-degree angles out over the trough. Others, such as me, were pushing back at the sheer wall of people pressing us forward like rugby players in a scrum.
The thing I feared most happened as round two of the mud-wrestle began. While the brunette was dragging the blonde though the mud by the hair... flaunting her mud-caked breasts... the railing finally gave way. It had been tottering for some time now and, as it busted forward, it sent half the crowd (and yours truly) toppling into the mud along with it.
Next thing I knew I was face down in the trough—choking and sputtering on a mouthful of mud. Others piled on top of me. I tried to remain calm, but soon found myself punching and kicking and screaming along with the rest of them when an unseen hand pinched fiercely on the back of my leg—refusing to let go.
Eventually, we began to untangle. Arms, legs, heads and bodies had gotten so entangled and covered in slop that it was hard to tell who’s what was connected to who’s body. Twice I felt I’d come close to suffocating. When Tom Rapp helped me up, I clung to him out of sheer gratitude.
“Was that normal?” I said, gasping for breath like a fish out of water.
The house lights were turned up to a glaring level now. The wrestlers and their ringmasters were nowhere to be seen.
“Hell, yes!” Tom Rapp said—positively beaming. “Mud-wrestle, Alaska-style!”
I smiled back in disbelief.
Not only was Tom Rapp knee deep in mud, he was completely blackfaced—dripping with the goo
p.
“Your face!” I said.
The silver casing from his left front tooth shined like the North Star under the bright lights. Tom leaned heavily against me and, winking, said,
“Take a look at your own mug, kid!”
After washing what I could out of my hair and off my skin and clothes with bar towels and paper napkins, I returned to the new site of our party thinking things couldn’t get any weirder or wilder than this.
They would.
Swanson and the others had joined up with a larger party at a cafeteria-sized table towards the front of the Elbow Room. Swanson was engaged in heated discussion with Waters at the other end of the table and had not acknowledged my hello when I sat down between Tom and Hank Rapp.
Many of the patrons were leaving. Those us who remained seemed bent on making up for this loss of energy by consolidating forces at this one long table. The top of it was so cluttered with beer glasses that many of us began drinking straight from the pitchers. Dollar bills and cigarettes were so scattered—and went through so many hands as one person borrowed from another and was, likewise, borrowed from—that no one seemed to mind when someone across the table slid a ten-dollar bill out from beneath their neighbor’s glass or borrowed a few cigarettes without asking. The party was in such high gear, in fact, that many of the women were already seated in the men’s laps. Within moments of taking my own seat, one was in mine.
I’d been saluting Tom and Hank Rapp with a full pint when the woman appeared.
“Grrr-owll!” the woman said, lacing arms and fingers around my neck and shoulders—actually purring into my ear like Cat-Woman in the old Batman TV series. “If you ain’t one handsome son of a bitch!”
In her enthusiasm, she’d knocked my beer glass out of my hand, spilling some on both of us. When I reached down to pick up the glass, she grabbed my wrist and placed a fresh one in my hand.
“Never mind, silly,’ she said, smiling, pouring beer into it so I had to hold it perfectly still in fear she’d dump more on us. “There’s plenty more where that came from!”
“Thanks... ”
“Helen,” she said, picking up on my cue.
I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t attracted to this woman. There was definitely something about her smoky gray eyes and the way she bit her lower lip as she looked me over.
“Look it here, Shirley,” she said to the heavy-set redhead in Hank Rapp’s lap. “Doesn’t he remind you of that actor, Jon Voight—in that movie with Jane Fonda—COMING HOME?” Running her fingertip down the length of my nose, she whispered, just to me:
“He was so goddamn sexy in that wheelchair I wanted to climb right up on that silver screen and jump his bones!”
Although I hadn’t seen the movie—had never even heard of the actor at that time—I was not so naïve to not fully understand the import of her words. Overwhelmed, I began to pour more beer into our glasses—slopping it, of course, on both our laps.
“Oh, you devil!” Helen giggled. “Now look what you’ve done!”
“Sorry!” I said. “I guess I’ve had too much—“
Stopping when, Helen, sponging my beer-soaked lap with a wad of table napkins, kissed me full on the mouth.
I did not resist.
“Whoa, there! Whoa!” I heard someone saying—their voice a long way off.
Figuring it was probably just my conscience, I went on doing what it was I was doing with Helen when I heard the voice again—this time, with my name attached.
“Adam! Heel! Down, boy! Earth calling Adam... ”
It was Hank Rapp. Straightening, I asked the older Rapp brother what was wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Hank Rapp said, winking at the redhead in his lap. “Nothing at all.”
Obviously, they were sizing Helen and me up for something. Looking to Helen for a cue, she averted eye contact by feigning interest in buttoning the top buttons of my shirt. Finally, Hank Rapp said:
“You like Helen?”
“Like Helen?” I repeated, thinking things were definitely getting weirder—by the second.
“What I’m trying to say, “Hank Rapp said, holding a finger to the side of his lips so the redhead would stop her giggling. “Is do you or don’t you like Helen? ‘Cuz if you do, we’re heading over to Roxie’s Kitchen. All of us. Me and Tom, Fred Waters and Maxwell Jones... and the girls, of course. You’re welcome to come along. I already talked to Phil about it and he says it’s all right by him if it’s all right by you... that he’ll take care of it. He said he’ll probably meet us there himself as soon as he gets back from the boat.”
“Back from the boat?” I repeated.
I glanced down the other end of the table and saw another man sitting in Swanson’s spot beneath the bladed ceiling fan.
Noticing that the whole table was watching me, it finally dawned on me. Helen was a whore. Of course—how stupid of me! How vain to think just any woman would come walking up out of nowhere and throw herself upon me! How else explain a scene like this: all these men and women in each other’s laps like something out of an episode of GUNSMOKE or THE WILD, WILD WEST? Glancing towards Tom Rapp, he raised his eyebrow as if to indicate:
“Yep. Whores... ”
“Well,” Hank Rapp said, getting a little test. “What’s it going to be, son?”
“Sure,” I heard myself saying. “If Helen doesn’t mind.”
Everyone, with the exception of Helen and me, busted out laughing.
I bristled—especially at the sound of Fred Waters repeating what I’d said at the other end of the table.
“Atta, boy!” Hank Rapp said, slapping me hard between the shoulder blades. “Good man!”
Helen kissed me full on the mouth.
Across the table, Tom Rapp was already standing.
“To Roxie’s!” Tom Rapp shouted, thumping the bottom of his glass on the table.
“Roxie’s! Roxie’s! Roxie’s!” the others shouted back.
Chapter Ten
Pelican, U.S.A. : Part Two
ALASKA: A map of it outlined in day-glo spray paint on the big metal door at the back of Roxie’s Kitchen.
It was dark out and pouring down rain when our party from the Elbow Room stepped out. The establishment was closing as we left: one of the bartenders coming out on the porch after us to draw the storm shudders across the Elbow Room’s big bay windows. In the short time I’d been inside, an offshore storm had hit Pelican—blackening the skies. Lights around the village were either out or threatening to go out because of the winds. The windows of the closed down shacks and stores were black and speckled with rain. I saw a tugboat towing a supply barge up to one of the terminals below... the deck lights from the tug seeming a long way off because of the swirling sheets of rain.
I held Helen against my side. Our little party had bunched together, singing vulgarized versions of a half-dozen songs nobody knew all the lyrics to. Tom Rapp was telling a wild story of Alaskan brown bears in Barrow, Alaska who got so drunk on rotting fermented berries in the fall that when you roamed the downtown streets of Barrow at night you had to watch out you didn’t get in a tussle with a goddamn bear!
When we arrived at Roxie’s Kitchen, we discovered the front door was locked, and a sign in the window that the kitchen was closed. Of course, there were two stories to this brick building. Lights were on in the windows of some of the rooms above the café. Figures were moving behind the closed red curtains. The big neon sign over the front door was still on. Its red letters hissed and sputtered back at the pelts of rain. Tom Rapp had noticed that the two bulbs at the end of the sign were flickering so it read “Roxie’s Kitch—“instead of Roxie’s Kitchen. Tom found this hilarious and kept shouting:
“Roxie’s Kitch--! Roxie’s Kitch--!”
as we hurried down a narrow walkway to the back door of the building.
There, we stumbled upon some Indians, about a half-dozen of them. They’d been huddled beneath the outer stairwell (leading to the rooms above the café), p
assing around a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 wine, trying to stay dry. As we approached, they came out from their cover to panhandle for money and cigarettes.
ALASKA: A map of it spray-painted on the service door for the café directly behind the stairs. There was a caption written within the map, but I had not been able to decipher it. I could read it plain enough now:
“WHITE ALASKA SUCKS!”
The rain had slowed to a drizzle, making things oddly quiet. The alley was lit up by a single lamp at the top of the stairs. The appearance of the Indians set-off members of our party.
“The natives look restless tonight, gents!” Maxwell Jones joked.
If I had learned anything by now, it was that out here on the “fringes”, people were a little plainer with each other than in “polite” society. Moreover, no one really gave a fuck what you thought of them, because, if you had any lick of sense at all, then why the fuck were you there with them in the first place?
Hank Rapp shoved one of the panhandlers backwards into a 50-gallon grease barrel—knocking down both the barrel and panhandler. Laughter replaced the curses and sneers at the slapstick sight of the intoxicated Indian trying to stand back up with the barrel rolling into him each time he moved. All the dirty cooking grease the dishwasher poured into the barrel at closing time was streaming out across the gravel lot. Tears of laughter came when the Indian managed to stand, covered from head to foot with the grease.
In spite of this, the Indian continued to panhandle in sloth-like deliberation. I also knew enough to know if these Indians didn’t let-up... and soon... there would be trouble.
“Hey, Tonto! You and the tribe move along. This is our Holy Ground now Chief!”
It was Waters. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses now, but still had on the DESERT STORM cap and still had a toothpick in his trap. I remembered the warning Swanson had given me about Waters.
The big Indian threw the first blow: a wheelhouse left. Waters easily slipped the punch—stepping to his right and following with two quick jabs and an undercut right that dropped his opponent to the ground. Our party cheered: minus me. Waters smiled big, shaking his right hand to show that it stung a little from the punch. He still had the toothpick in his mouth.
