Ordinary Wolves (30 page)

Why do you keep talking about flying? This is all the definition of
dysfunctional,
pretending chains and taxes don't exist.

Jerry nodded politely. He glanced out for the sun, the way Abe did when he was impatient. “So you like the city?”

“It's . . . okay. Hard to sleep at first. Houses are so loud. All the droning. Blowers and suckers and little motors. Like there's constantly travelers coming. I don't like crapping in the house. And the splash.”

January shuffled in the kitchen, muttering, “. . . still Alaska. The kid's gotta learn to fly.”

“I hate the splash,” Jerry said. “Where I rent my cabin the trees are thick and I can piss outside.”

“People don't realize how much that matters.”

“Nope. I'll come by in the morning, 'kay? See if you want to go.”

 

 

IN THE MURMUR
of the night my loyalties slipped anchor. The more I weighed the decision, in all this roar and clutter my brother was one of the quiet things that did matter. When Jerry drove away, more years would go with him, maybe all the years we had left. January wasn't flying anywhere. I felt invisible again in Anchorage without Lance and Cheryl. Even Ubaldo had graduated from mechanicing to join the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. For a couple weeks now I'd been seeing Dawna, a seen woman.
Seeing
was an expression I stole from TV, without understanding it. Like
sleeping together
—which I knew we were not doing—it somehow shaved the truth of a relationship down to an enviable lie.

But Dawna wasn't admissable in my court as a reason to stay. Dave still existed on earth. “I'm going to leave him,” Dawna had said quickly, last night when I told her about Cheryl. “I'll go back to college.” We'd sat in her car behind streaming windows in front of January's trailer. She hugged her legs, resting her jaw on her knees. Rain typed messages on the roof. “I just can't right now, I can't.” She wiped her face on her sweatshirt. The wet left dark circles on the purple cotton. I leaned under the dusty steering column, searching for more wires that might bring her signal lights to life. The word
can't
banged in my head like a cracked piston. “You can if you want to.” I arched upright and leapt out. Raindrops splashed
down. I stumbled inside to greet the light and January's hale words, while the wet night swallowed Dawna, with no signal lights and no license.

Now I stacked library books to return:
Stick and Rudder, The Art of Flying Skis, East of Eden, Ice Station Zebra, From Where the Sun Now Stands, The Right Madness on Skye.
I wondered what books Lance read. What Abe was reading. I stuffed my duffle bag. I remembered Nippy Skuq, the Washingtons and Wolfgloves—suddenly throwing mattresses and pots and guns, kids and wife on a sled, or in a boat, leaving for the hot springs or the coast. Woodrow Washington Jr. handing his infant to Janet and hopping the plane to Fairbanks. Abe called it “Eskimo exit.” It came as a surprise to realize it, too, had grown up inside me. I called John at the garage and apologized into his gray silence. Dialed Dawna. Her phone rang and rang.

I lay on the couch, then got back up and rummaged for paper. The letter I wrote to Cheryl didn't mention her plans to go to college in Cincinnati—only said I missed her, it had rained since she left, how soon after the boat was repaired would she return to Anchorage? The note to Dawna said I was leaving in the morning. Be gone a month or so. Dave, the blow-dried Safeway cottage cheese reshelfing expert, could frame it next to his employee-of-the-moment award and flick beer caps at my fall-down Iñupiaq name.

 

 

IN THE DREAM
Enuk sat on leaves and sticks on the bank above Jesus Creek. He sat skinning a white wolf, occasionally shaking his head. His face was frostbitten. Dawna hid behind him staring into an upside-down Alaska Airlines magazine. A clump of white condominiums towered over our igloo. Cheryl and Lance and I knelt on the ice, probing the water hole with beer bottles. Tourists watched from the shore and pointed video cameras.

“You ta one should gonna been drown,” Enuk commented. He tossed his knife in the air. The knife glinted, a 38,000-feet-up jet. The knife plunked into the water. Iris floated to the surface, slated with mud. Black
holes gaped where her pretty white teeth had fallen out. I pulled the rags of her shirt down over her chest. The tourists rushed to steady their cameras. Treason's Ruger Mini-14 rifle was in my hand. I clicked the safety and fired fast at the tourists, aiming for heads and hearts, like knocking down dogfood caribou for the winter. The booms lanced across the tundra, whomping into bodies. My aim was true. But they kept standing back up—more closing in behind. I shuddered awake, gasping, clutching memories of the accident in Jesus Creek. Had Iris not survived? Was Enuk alive? Had
his
remains been found? I lay on the couch in the trailer night, afraid for my families, my skin as cold as creek water.

 

 

THE DRIVE NORTH
to Fairbanks took seven hours, a long time inside the vinyl-smelling glass box of a car. We talked, catching up on the years. Trees stripped by. Wind punched the car. I drove fast, exploring the limits of my learner's permit, occasionally asking Jerry if I should shift up, or down. A sign read DENALI STATE PARK. “This tundra,” I said, “it feels like home, huh?” It didn't quite. Inside a car was like watching TV. Home had wind and smells and birds arguing.

“What do you think of it down here?” he asked.

“Oh . . . it's nice how everybody doesn't stare, isn't it? I like that. A lot of stuff, it's a bunch of pretending, huh? You see the boards and good metal they throw away? Even nectarines, with one soft spot. Seems like we grew up the opposite. If something broke or got eaten, didn't it seem like that was the last one ever?”

Jerry's elbow popped and he rubbed it ruefully. “People pretend they're not animals. It makes them tired. So they pretend a whole bunch more. That makes them really tired.” He grinned and peered at his arm, equally interested in the conversation and his elbow. “The biggest heroes are the biggest pretenders. Actors. The big pretend story is it'll-all-be-better-in-the-end.” He grinned, “It's called heaven.”

“Huh. Soon as I mention the Kuguruk, people want to know how to hurry up there to hunt ‘griz' and sixty-inch moose. ‘Need to get
my
moose. Gruh, Gruh, Gruh.' All manly—and what they want is the
antlers?
If they shoot something with big antlers that means their penis gets bigger? Why do they invent that kind of nonsense?”

Jerry scratched in his ear with his little finger. He flicked the wax out from under his fingernail and didn't say anything.

“People say they wish
they
could go live in a cabin in the wilderness. Is that true? Why don't they?”

“I say I'm from Chicago,” he murmured. “It's easier.”

Motor homes were pulling over. I slowed. A large beaver hunkered in the road. It balanced itself with its tail and bared its teeth at tires.

“Fairly orange guard hairs you've got,” Jerry said. “Better stay out of the sun.”

I steered around the motor homes and sped up. “Jerry, what's a cheer leader?”

“Cheerleader. One word. That's those football players' girlfriends who bounce during the game.”

“Hey, did you know, Iris is trying to track down our mom.”

He leaned forward, flicked on the radio. “She left us, Cutuk. Or I guess you don't remember. She used to sing and give me toy trucks with little doors that opened. Then she just—just went.”

A chill trickled down my head skin. Had I inherited it from my mother—and assimilated it in Takunak—the running gene? Was that what I was doing now, running?

A rabbit streaked across the road. “Shoulda bumped him,” I croaked. “Haven't had rabbit in how long.”

“Me neither. Remember we used to dry them for dog food? We'd skin them one pull, gut them in ten seconds, then cross the legs to hang on the fish rack.” He squeezed his forehead. Abe haunted his movements and the lines on his forehead—thoughtful grooves, freckled from the sun. “The other day I was remembering our old beds along the back wall, and the all-of-ours box underneath, full of mouse turds and caribou hairs mixed with all our best magnets and paints and slide rules. 'Member going hooking for
tiktaaliq?
'Member that time we first saw a satellite?
We ran home across the ice, in the dark, not even thinking about open water. Iris said, ‘Abe, we saw a traveler star!'”

“Abe said, ‘Shut the door!'”

“Fresh rabbit out of the oven—Beth would let me cook him, too.” Jerry liked cooking. He knew when leftover soup had enough seasonings for good gravy, when a pie crust had the right amount of bear fat and ice water. He didn't measure the yeast or salt or any ingredients to make loaves of bread. “I love that girl. I'm not scared to say that word anymore.”

Suddenly I knew my brother was happy. It was like looking at a mountain peak across a valley of fog. Except my brother wasn't beside me—he was across the valley.

Road tumbled under the truck. “Every day the city is full of people I want to talk to, get to know. How do you do that?”

“Just do it. Most of them will run off. Some won't.” Jerry sounded like a boss again, his words dropping like sacks of frozen fish.

“Like caribou?”

“I'll help you make wages, but if you expect insight into humans, you've got the wrong brother.” He turned up the music. His coarse palm rapped on the dashboard.

Abe with a beat. Abe with rhythm.

 

 

JERRY REACHED HIS HAND
down to help me out of the ditch. “Break time.” I sprang out and wiped sweat off my eyebrows, embarrassed and surprised to touch his fingers. Twelve-hour construction days left little time to practice being brothers.

“Stick to it,” Jerry advised. We walked away from the ditch. He chuckled dryly. “Here they respect time, and certification. Papers parka your career.” We rattled across gravel to the newly built back porch. He was still serious and protective, always carrying something heavy in his hand, eyeing dogs, people, cars as if they intended to bite us—as if trees
schemed to dunk snow down his neck. The cabin he rented on Wolverine Alley was dimly lit, hanging bulbs, the table stacked with books, Makita batteries, and his Nikon cameras. The shotgun leaned behind the door. Buckshot in the chamber. The safety on. Beth turned all the lights on when she came in and the air brightened with her presence.

Around the front of the construction site a murmur of voices and laughter came from the rest of the crew. The stacks of Douglas fir smelled of pitch, clean and sharp. “Jerry, don't you ever feel like you're making more houses for more people that need more roads? Helping the Everything-Wanters?”

He splashed tea out of a thermos. “You want a job or what, Abe?”

Thick stands of birch grew on the edge of the clearing, making me claustrophobic, wishing to see a caribou or a bear stroll into view—or even just to see a view. Jerry handed me sweet tea. Half a decade fell away in those moments; we were the same age.

“If I don't build houses, they're still going to be built. Only, by some Californian or Texan.” He scratched a scab off the back of his big tanned hand. “'Member those enzymes we studied? While Abe painted? Maybe I'm luckier than you. I knew some of the details Abe left out. Here in the city there's little spaces between you and all things, and for every reaction you have to put money into those spaces. Like those enzymes.”

“I know that.”

“Up home water came from the river, heat from wood, meat from animals. City people trade that in for a slot in the money system. It's efficient, Cutuk.” He bit into his sandwich. “In case you didn't know, that's why people work so hard and stress about pensions. Nobody here's slot is guaranteed. And it's against the law to step out your door and shoot something to eat, or cut down any tree. Or even piss on the tree!”

A smile crept around behind my face like a sneeze. Jerry and I were talking. We sounded like Abe. We thought we knew more. But minutes ago we'd discussed only gable ends, code, and T-111.

Men walked around the half-finished house. Jerry stood up. His face stiffened. Maybe he was relieved to get behind the aloof mask. “Com'on,” he said. “Let's go to work.” But it inked the edges of his words—for a
moment I knew he felt the same relief I did, to stumble out onto the trail toward family.

 

 

THE BACKS OF JERRY´S
tanned calves led me across the campus. He carried a crowbar; me, a bag of ice. The ice was why we'd come. My new shorts left me feeling naked from the waist down, my legs as white and anxious for cover as two yanked-out-of-the-river sheefish. Tanned university girls strolled by in halter tops and cutoffs, breathtaking, safe on the sunny side of style. I tried to picture Abe in shorts. Or Janet Wolfglove. Enuk's legs in shorts. The pictures were as laughable as Barbara Bush skinning a muskrat behind the outhouse.

We walked into the campus center. “We'll stop here a minute.” Jerry's face focused like Abe's, suddenly remembering something that interested him, forgetting the crowbar in his hand. “Some anthropologist is talking about the Kuguruk.” He led me into a lounge. A middle-aged woman stood beside large glossy photographs on a wall.

I know her face! I know that tundra!

“. . . and my Iñupiat teachers never kill a bear unless the bear attacks a hunter or berry pickers, or children.” Song Spenholt faced the crowd. In the lights she was jet-black hair, tanned face, silver dream-catcher earrings. Strangely, I remembered her hair light brown, and her face pale. “When my Iñupiat teachers did kill a bear they saved every part, and invited my family to the traditional feast. This, right”—her pointer swung to a photograph of riverbank treed with spruce and blue mountains behind—“exactly here, is an important archaeological site, four miles west of Takunak on the Kuguruk River. Soon it will be protected as a National Historic Landmark. Carbon dating placed hunting points and pottery shards and articles found here at
eleven thousand years old!”