Ordinary Wolves (27 page)

“Can I have a puff?”

She turned the butt deftly. “There's more inside. I could get you one?”

I took it from her fingers. “I'm more addicted to sharing than nicotine.”

She pressed her sleeves against her palms and shivered. “Mom has a freight run to Bethel tonight. She flies for Markair Express. Rainy Pass is IFR. You want to come in?”

The trailer was cluttered with rubber boots at the door. Inside, calculus books splayed on a blue corduroy couch; cassette tapes were abandoned on the carpet. Something rubbery and tentacled was thawing in the stainless steel sink. Stevie Nicks's voice skated softly out of a
bedroom. A circle of plywood lay across a green plastic garbage barrel for a table, heaped. The Can't-Grows sniffed and growled at my ankles. She locked the door.

I went to the creature in the sink. Looked in its frosty eye. Its eight arms draped across plates and cups with oily tea left in them, and halfway to the floor. “Okay to touch him? It's an octopus?”

“I hope you're not disgusted. Dad caught it last summer at Naknek. I decided I better cook it before it gets freezer burn. You probably don't believe me, but the meat's excellent.”

“I believe you very much.” Something behind my eyes turned orange as a map of Asia. “W-what's freezer
burn?”

“You know, dried stale old flavor. I'm going to cut it up and simmer it in salt water. Apparently it's good pickled, too.” She ran water and handed over a glass. Her hands were smooth, her fingernails all different lengths and coated with something glossy. “I'm Cheryl.” She pulled up her sleeves.

“My name is, uh, Clayton.”

We sat on opposite ends of the couch. A yawn poured in and out of me, then another. I concentrated on trying to remember my name. She talked freely—UAA, biology, calculus, speech, parking permits. She was
naluaġmiu,
blond, captivating eyes; how could this person be talking casually to me? Was this really happening? What would be the right things to say? Suddenly I wished Stevie were here, with his Band-Aided glasses and big grin. Together maybe we could impress her with something—stories of drunken behavior, shooting, and big sheefish that tasted excellent? Her lips moved. I liked watching the fringes of them form words. My brain tried to follow but pitched into a stupor.
Jerry and Iris playing Chinese checkers with .22 bullets in a yellow plastic Remington cartridge box, the lamp flickering, beaver tail and feet simmering in the cannibal pot.

“—dental hygienist.” Her hand patted my knee. “What do you think, Clayton? Don't say ‘Stick your hands in spit all day?'”

“I'd hold them.” I stood up, blinking in dismay.

“I'm unsure what I want to do, in college, I mean.”

I caught myself, about to blurt,
You're normal and divine, and cook
octopus, what do you mean you don't know what you want to do?
“I—January's going to get me up in about fifteen minutes to look at the roof. Somehow I have to get my bike at Dimond Mall. I'd better go.” I stood at the sink, rubbing my eyes.

Her lips quirked to one side. “Your uncle owes the IRS fourteen thousand. That's what Mom told me.”

“Is she coming home soon, your mom?”

“She goes to her boyfriend's.”

“Your mom has a boyfriend?”

Through the window we saw January open his aluminum door, spit, glance around, and step out. The sky was brightening, the eaves dripping. He rubbed his lower back, walked behind his truck, peered in the window of Dawna's white Chevette, and spat again.

Cheryl murmured, “You ever wonder where he gets all that spit?”

I glanced at her. She returned my gaze, a teasing look in her blue-green eyes. Then we were laughing. We bent down, out of sight behind the counter.

“He's not my uncle. He bounty hunted, with that ski plane my dad gave him. Sometimes he sent boxes of used clothes. Do you have any ideas, how I could make him that much money?”

“Get on at Prudhoe. Or fly to Dutch, get out on a winter crabber. That's what my dad does.” She straightened up and ran new cold water over the octopus. I watched, admiring the uninhibited way she moved. She turned and shook drops of water off her fingers. “Gotta be tough for that. And brave. It's very dangerous.” She forced pans and dishes out of the way and rinsed two mugs.

“I'm not scared of things out away from people. Want me to wash your dishes?”

“Any time! I'm going to boil water, make us a strong cup of Ass-am Fag-fopi.”

It had been a long day, a longer night, way too much inside my head again. “A cup of what?” I said, resigned to being ignorant.

She rifled a cupboard, held up a tiny metallic green bag. “Ass-am Fag-fopi, that's what Dad calls his favorite blend of Upton tea. Assam tea. The
initials F-T-G-F-O-P-I stand for things in tea-fanatic lingo. Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe something-or-other.”

“Oh. Tea art?” I carefully stacked dishes aside. “Or is it tea mechanics?”

“You're funny.”

“I'm trying to be normal.”

“Really?” she said. “Why?”

“Isn't that what people do?”

SEVENTEEN

UNDER THE PLANE,
new grass and fireweed shoots grew up around the skis. The chain locked in a figure eight around the prop was heavy, and spare links had been left heaped on the ground, killing a patch of earth's chances for summer. In the bright sky, planes droned, and on the water of Lake Hood floatplanes taxied, taking off and landing every few minutes—Anchorage sportsmen seeking “sport” or “game” or whatever it was they did on their piston-driven forays out to the wilderness. January had said this was the busiest floatplane base in the world, and that seemed plausible. The padlock was square and the sign read GROUNDED BY FEDERAL SEIZURE. He might have been making payments, but not fast enough.

Lance poked at the key slot with a filed-down feeler gauge, counting the infinitesimal bump of each lock pin.

“I'm unsure what I'm doing,” I admitted, and heard Cheryl's words
resonate in my head. We laughed for some reason—Lance and I. He was my friend. I hadn't had to drink soap. I'd never had a friend you could say anything to, and that felt much stranger than drinking poison.

“Six pins!” he murmured in admiration. “Your tax dollars at work.” He dropped the feeler gauge into his toolbox, stepped down off the ski and untangled a Stanley hacksaw. “Now that's a key!” he quipped in an Australian accent. A string of cars whooshed past on Spenard. “You're not sure what you're doing? What, with Cheryl? And you really wish I'd just go out with her instead?” He grinned. His hair was messy, black horns sticking up. It was May and his arms rippled with tanned muscles. He was short and slim and looked much younger than forty-two.

“We're not ‘going out.' She wants to be friends.”

“Bummer.” He sat on his toolbox. He twisted his head until his neck made a soft pop. He pulled a grass stalk, chewed it, and stared across the water. “You better plink-plank along to fourteen grand, homes. Compound interest and entropy never sleep.”

“Entropy? Is that the force that keeps some people from getting around to emptying their slop bucket in the morning?”

He laughed, a loud laugh that ripped free like a raven's caw, irresistible; two men with fishing poles and hip boots, waiting on a pilot loading a plane with a king salmon stenciled on the fuselage, turned and grinned. More than most things in Anchorage, I wanted to learn to laugh like Lance.

A floatplane took off, the flat-pitched prop deafening. A second plane flew overhead. I glanced up warily, still not quite used to the fact that planes weren't going to poop from overhead like gulls. “I think I'm using January's plane for target practice.”

He fingered tears in the fabric of the airplane, patched with weathered duct tape. “Maintenance not Thompson's strong suit, huh?”

“Strong suit?”

“His cup of tea?”

“He doesn't drink tea.”

He laughed again.

I sat on my heels. “My jobs, making money?—that's all me
pretending. Money is everyone's connective tissue. It's their measure of success, isn't it?”

“What do you call success up north?”

“Hunting. Fat meat. And dead wolves. And winning at basketball, of course.”

He leaned forward. “So that's better?”

“Shuck. I sure don't know how to feel that way about
money!
Like I said, I'm using January's plane for practice.”

“Man, Scroat, you're way too serious. I need coffee for this conversation.” He slapped dust off his jeans, walked to his truck, and shoved his toolbox behind the seat. He came back. “You don't want money? You just want money so people who like money will like you?” He shouted laughter. “Sprout some balls!”

We climbed in and bounced onto Spenard Road. Stray wires hung like roots out of a cutbank from behind the dashboard. An electrical short in the cassette player flickered the green lights in time to the beat. The sun was warm. The pavement dry. On the other side of the glass, the city was busy with a Saturday.

At the coffee shop we traded positions and he coached me into a parallel parking slot. Inside, he ordered cappuccino and I hot water—silver tea, Abe called it.
Something for nothing.
Chlorine flavored the water.
Nothing for everything?
He sprawled at a table. “So, the Igloo Gigoloo wants to be one of the sheep.” He talked singsongy, encompassing the coffee shop with the sweep of his arm. “‘Baaa! Is the herd going that way? Swallow inoculant? Breed? Baaa!'” Lance's laughs ripped out, bouncing against the ceiling corners. Customers glanced our way. I felt safe, and cool, canopied in his presence. Alone, I'd have been twitching, nervous and shamed, certain he and his friends were laughing at me. Laughter in Takunak, when I was present, had been that way.

I lowered my chin to my overlapped fingers, lowered my voice, trying to encourage his lower. “When we used to see a traveler coming, we'd run down on the ice. ‘Hi,' we'd say, ‘Com'on up. We've got bread! Crazy Joe brought yeast, and we had flour. We've got bread. We can make snow ice cream. You can stay as long as you want.'

“What I'm saying, Lance . . . it's confusing here. I'm trying to learn stuff without getting mean. Like my friend's dad where I grew up, this guy Melt Wolfglove. He's scary. Sometimes I even think about killing people. Well, there's so many of them”—I dropped my voice further—“environmentally, too, that seems the only conscientious career.”

“Do it.” He shrugged and sipped. “Melt Wolfglove? That's a name! ‘Howdy. Name's Melt. Melt Wolfglove. I done come for the little lady.'”

“I said I'm trying to learn stuff
without
getting mean.” I told him about Melt and the piles of clothes frozen to the walls, Dawna and the Wonder Woman poster, Nippy's rotten teeth and bumpy eyes, Newt's wrist, Enuk's wolves and his face and his leather pouch . . .

“So, what have you learned
here?
I know you don't know squat about mechanicing.”

“A couple things about tea. Engines. People's the thing. I keep getting more confused.”

Lance swung his gaze. Suddenly it was wide-eyed, hard and blue, surprisingly intimidating coming out of his small features. “You might as well accept it, this ‘stuff' can't
be
learned. It doesn't make enough sense. You have to be
fed
it!”

People were glancing over.

“How do you tell which ones are sheep?”

“You don't. You figure out who you are. Let's get the fuck outta here.”

“Who are you then?”

“I'm—” For the first time I saw him, crouching behind his shield of words. He raised an eyebrow, shrugged mockingly. “Welcome. I'm Replicant five-seven-four, your guide here on the Plastic Planet. I'm one million units of toll-free explanation. My human cover is that I was raised white trash in Seward, attended college at Evergreen, lost the brown-eyed love of my life to a Neanderthal fireman; I live alone, read books I can't comprehend, have expensive tools and a cheap Chevy. Enough? Who are you?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Actually, I think that is something you do know.” He tilted his head and I thought I saw what was next.

“There's nobody to talk to there. No friends like you. No coffee-shop conversations. Or girls.”

“Ah, those thousand ships.”

“Man, Lance, and you say
I
talk too serious?”

His glance flicked the clock on the wall. He drummed his thumbs on the edge of the table. His thumbs were coarse and grease blackened, and not equal in size. His left thumb was average, his right surprisingly wide and blunt. “Gotta go, baby. I have to go in and rebuild slave cylinders on that rusted Datsun. The jackoff-of-all-trades owner put in the wrong fucking brake fluid.”

“I have to go hang. Nine hundred and seventy knots to tie. I'm hanging another shackle of salmon net for Cheryl's dad.” I rubbed the first joint of my index finger. It was shiny and callused from three previous nets.

“Meet at January's? Around ten?”

“'Kay. That'll give me ten hours to hang.”

Lance grinned sardonically. “How apropos.”

“What?”

“You. Hanging for a living.”

 

 

BEHIND THE TRAILERS,
I strung out the first hundred feet of cork line with thirty plastic floats on it like giant white beads. Our nets at home had always had flat gray wooden floats, and caribou antler or rock-sock sinkers. Now, with a red marking pen and a strip of wood notched at eight and three-eighths inches, I marked where each knot would be tied. Then it was tie a three-hitch knot, pick up three meshes with the hanging needle, measure two fingers of slack, tie another knot, cinch it tight. Plus an extra double tie securing each float. Fifty fathoms of cork line, fifty fathoms of lead line, one hundred and five fathoms stretched of five-and-seven-eighths-inch webbing—just short of one thousand perfect knots. I wondered if I was helping the world, or just killing fish.