Read Plan B for the Middle Class Online
Authors: Ron Carlson
Plan B for the Middle Class (5 page)
In Kotzebue, Burns waited in the small metal terminal until a wizened, leather-faced Inuit came up to him and grinned, showing no teeth, and lifted his suitcase into the back of an orange International pickup. Burns followed the man and got into the truck. The cab was rife with the smell of bourbon and four or five bottles rolled around Burns's feet. The man smiled again, his eyes merry, and drove onto the main road of the village, where they fell behind the sheriff's white truck. There were two men in the back with rifles riding in the cold. Kotzebue was gray under old drifts but the wind had ripped the tops from some of the banks and spread new whiter fans of snow across the road. The high school was letting out and three-wheelers and snow machines cruised along the road, both sides, and cut the corners at every crossroad.
Suddenly, the two men in the sheriff's truck stood and raised their rifles, shooting into a field behind the buildings. Each shot twice and then they quickly clambered out of the vehicle as it stopped. One of the men fell to the ice and got back up and followed his partner running into the field.
“What's going on?” Burns asked, but his driver only squinted at him and shook his head slightly. Burns could see the two men standing over a dark form in the snow. He saw one of them shoot again. The man behind the wheel of the sheriff's truck lifted a hand, but Burns's driver did not wave back.
Two streets later, the orange International turned into a narrow off street and stopped in front of an ice-coated trailer. The man unloaded the suitcase and held out four fingers. The way he tapped them made Burns understand.
“Miss Munson will be back at four?”
The man nodded and reached behind Burns and opened the trailer's door. Whiskey, Burns thought, as he watched the man return to the truck and drive off. A thick drift of whiskey moved with the man. As Burns lifted his bag and turned to the iced steps, a black Newfoundland on a chain rose from a doghouse half buried in the snow, shook, and looked up expectantly. It took Burns a moment to recognize the dog, and then he knelt down and ran his hand through the fur. “Molly, you pup,” he said. “You grew up.” There was a muffled clamor from the roadway and Burns turned to see a passenger fall from a three-wheeler, slide along on his back for ten yards, then climb back on behind the driver. It had begun to snow faintly in the early afternoon, and the tiny dots of frozen snow were sparse in the gloom. Burns scratched the dog again. “Molly,” he said. “What happened to Alec?”
In the close warmth of the trailer, Burns again found himself craving food. The cold left him ravenous. In Nome after his daily walks he would fall upon his stash of chocolate like a schoolboy. And now, he barely took time to hang his gear in the small mud room and sit at the table in the kitchen before he was stuffing the candy into his mouth. It was amusing to be so aware of his body after so many years.
There was a stomping, felt more than heard, and Burns saw light in the entry as the door opened and closed. “Hello!” a man's voice called, and a large bearded man in a blue military parka came into the kitchen, pulling off his glove and extending a hand to Burns. “You picked one hell of a week,” the man said, shaking Burns' hand. “Glen Batton. I'm the Forest Service here, and,” he added in another tone, “a friend of Julie's.”
Burns said his name and Glen Batton went ahead with the weather report about a new Siberian front moving in. “If it cleared, I'd fly you out to Kolvik myself. As is, you'll be lucky to get down to the Co-op for candy.” Batton pointed to the candy wrappers on the table. “I'm sorry about your son.”
Burns nodded.
“You're from Connecticut.”
“Yes. Connecticut.”
Glen Batton put his glove back on. “Well, listen, I just wanted to introduce myself and offer my services, though that may be useless. How long are you here?”
“I'm not sure,” Burns said. “I need to get out to Kolvik.”
“Well, you won't do that,” Glen said, moving back to the door. “But have a nice visit. I'll probably see you Friday at the hospital party.”
“Why are the police shooting the dogs?”
“Strays,” Batton said. “Too many loose dogs raising hell with the teams. Count the dogs in this town sometime.” He turned to leave, but came back into the room. “Hey, listen. You may need to know a couple of things.” Batton brushed the parka hood off his long hair, “Look, what happened to Alec is a bad deal, but it happens all the time. People don't understand this country. They think they can handle it, but you can't handle it.”
“I see,” Burns said.
“And I should tell you this.” Glen Batton looked quickly away and back. “Julie is a little fragile about this whole deal. Your visit a year after it all happened. We've talked about it. I don't know what your plans are, but you may want to step lightly.”
“I will.”
“If it gets tight, you can always bunk with me or at the hotel.”
“Thank you. I'll remember that,” Burns said, holding Glen's look until the bearded man turned and left. Now he wanted a drink, blood sugar or no blood sugar; Burns could feel the call in his gut, his heartbeat, the roof of his mouth. He went to the sink and drew and drank three glasses of water.
Burns heard a fuss outside and then the clatter of claws on the linoleum of the entry and the Newfoundland came bounding in and burrowed his nose into Burns's hand where it hung beside the easy chair in which he slept. He had sat down to read in the small living room and sleep had taken him like an irrefutable force. Now a woman appeared in the entrance, and that was Burns's first thought: She's not a girl. He had last seen his son Alec six years ago when he had graduated college in New Haven. Burns had expected his wife to be a girl. Julie removed her knee-length lavender parka and the white knit cap and shook her hair, smiling at him. Without meaning to, Burns stared frankly at her in her white nurse's dress. It was the first surprise he'd had since he'd been in Alaska: Julie was a woman, a tall woman with pale blond hair that fell below her shoulders. He stood and took her hand.
“What are you smiling at?” she said, and smiled. “Sit down, Tom. I'm going to call you Tom, okay? I'm glad you're here. How was your flight?” Burns felt things shifting. First all the hunger, and then the nap taking him like a kid, and now this woman in white.
“I fell asleep,” he said. “Sorry.”
“It's too warm in here.” Julie went to the thermostat. “That's the one thing about Alaska. It's too warm all the time. There's no such thing as a little cold. They keep the hospital at eighty degrees. It reminds me of Manhattan that way.” She sat on the couch and took off her shoes. “Alec talked about you quite a lot. And so did Helen, but you're quite different than I pictured.”
“Oh?”
She stood up, her dress rustling. “You want a drink?”
“Water's fine.”
“That's right. I knew that. Sorry.” Burns watched her splash some Wild Turkey into a plastic tumbler. “Okay, I'll be right back. I've got to get these stockings off. Yes, from Helen I imagined you'd be a bit wrecked or frumpy, you know, dirty overcoat, greasy hair.”
“Bottle of tokay?”
“I'm kidding, but your ex-wife can be a bit severe.”
“Helen is a woman with a memory.”
Julie went down a short hallway where Burns could see the edge of a bed. When he saw her dress fall upon the bed, he stood and moved to the kitchen sink, poured a glass of water, and tried to see out the frosted window. He felt agitated. He pressed the glass against his lip. He was deeply hungry again and he felt funny about falling asleep. Napping wasn't his custom, but the sweet closed warmth of the trailer and the wind heaving at the structure, rocking it faintly, had just taken him. He had been doing things by will for ten years now, since the first week after his forty-second birthday, and he was known as a measured man who had placed the remaining components of his life back together purposefully. He was a man who didn't feel things instantly, and now there was this person, Julie, whom he instantly felt quite wonderful about, and suddenly his mission seemed strange and he felt far from home.
She returned in a worn pair of brown corduroys and a simple white turtleneck. His room was at the other end of the trailer, and as she laid out some towels, Burns couldn't take his eyes from her.
“Blazo picked you up all right?” she said.
“The talkative soul? The whiskey person?”
As she moved about the room, showing him the bureau and the electric blanket control and the closet, he studied her long arms, her wristwatch, her short, unpolished fingernails, the small gold necklace, the rise of her collarbones under the fabric of her pullover.
“He can't talk. He drank some heating fuel years ago. Blazo. He drank some Blazo and doesn't talk, but he's a gem. He is the mechanic to trust in this village.”
Julie had pale green eyes and a faint spray of freckles across her nose and forehead. Burns put her at about thirty. He felt like a teenager sneaking looks at her breasts. He hadn't seen a woman in a turtleneck sweater for twenty years. There was an angry red scar on her neck protuding from her shirt, which stunned him at first, and then he realized it was a violin mark. Alec had had one.
Burns heard two concussions from outside and then two more, the distant snapping of gunfire. He held on to the sink and felt the wind pull at the trailer and he thought: Don't touch her. Don't you touch this woman.
For dinner Julie had a white cloth on the kitchen table and Burns tried to eat slowly. “I appreciate your putting me up like this,” he said. “I'm genuinely sorry we haven't met until now.”
“Tom, don't start apologizing. I mean it. This is Alaska, there isn't room.” Julie looked at him squarely. “I understand about the wedding and Alec did too. Believe me. And you were right not to come. It was Helen's show really.” She sipped her bourbon, then lifted a finger from the rim and pointed at him. “I'm not kidding.”
“I just want to see where he lived out there, where he ⦠I missed so much, and now I just want to see what it's like here.”
“This is what it's like, dark and windy, lots of accidents.”
“I spoke with Helen before I came and she simply wanted you to know that she would love to hear from you and that if you ever needed anything she would help. She was quite sincere.”
Julie placed her glass carefully on the table. “I know. We've spoken about the funeral. He wasn't my husband anymore, of course. We were only married the one year. And I hadn't seen him for months. I tried to handle everything I could at this end, but I couldn't go down to the states and get all involved in a world which wasn't there anymore. You went out?”
“I did,” Burns said. “I finally went to something.”
Burns ate slowly, his hunger a fire that had him on the edge of his chair. He felt oddly alert. “Who found Alec?”
“Glen reported the cabin burn on his return from a caribou count, and the Search and Rescue went out from here. You can see Lloyd tomorrow, the sheriff. It was his men.”
They were quiet for a while, Burns eating and watching Molly, chin down on the living-room rug, watch him. All of these things had happened, Alec's wedding, divorce, death, in half a dog's life.
“So, you're Thomas Burns,” Julie said, smiling again. “It is just a little weird to see you.”
“That's the way everybody seems to be taking it.”
“Well, Glen is convinced you're a cop.” She pointed at his clean plate. “Still hungry?”
“No,” he lied. He stood and set his dishes in the sink. “Is there need for a cop?”
She joined him at the counter and spoke softly. “No. It's an unhappy story, but we've got all the cops we need.” She stopped him from clearing the table. “Come on, I'd better take you down to the Tahoe before my students get here. All visitors go to the Tahoe. The largest bar in the Arctic Circle. Even though you don't drink, it's a good walk, and next week in Darien, you can say you've seen it once, tell stories.”
Outside in the heavy wind, Burns and Julie shuffled along the hard snowpacked roadway. The dark was gashed by several flaring arc lights above the armory and the high school, new brick buildings built with the first oil surplus money. Several vehicles passed them at close range, snow machines and three-wheelers bulleting by, and as Burns shied from them, he bumped Julie several times, saying, “Sorry, I'm not used to this.”
“It's all right. They're not either,” she said, pointing to the way the small vehicles cut the corners at every intersection, their paths running across open yards and slicing very close to the buildings. The drivers wouldn't slow down at all around these shortcuts. Burns cringed watching them disappear. They'll be killed, he thought. They'll crash head-on with someone coming the other way and be killed. He and Julie didn't speak in the pressure of the cold. They stopped several times to pick things from the roadway: a scarf, a big leather mitten, and at the corner where they turned for the bar, a loaf of bread, still soft. He found such litter alarming, but Julie only smiled and told him simply, “Bring it along.”
The Tahoe was a large metal building which looked like a one-story warehouse. Julie led him up the iced steps and across the wide porch into the big barroom. Inside the door, in the dark, one booth was stacked high with miscellaneous gear: sweaters, hats, and gloves. Julie told him, “Put your treasures right there. It's the lost and found.” The vast room was gloomy and crowded. As Burns's eyes adjusted, he saw that the booths were full of Inuit, and though the room was warm and redolent of cigarettes and fur, few people had taken their coats off.
“What would you like?” Julie said.
“I'd like a vanilla shake,” Burns said. “This country has got me starved. But I'll take a soda water, anything really.”
It was not an animated bar. Burns could see four school board members who were on his flight standing at the bar, talking, but they were the loudest group. The dark clusters of natives huddled around the tables and booths in the room spoke quietly if at all. Even the pool players moved with a kind of lethargy. Burns stood by the end of the bar, his stomach growling as he thawed. He'd been in lots of bars and this was possibly the largest. In the old days, after martinis at his club, he'd hit every hole in the wall on the way to Grand Central, eventually taking the last train to Connecticut, the ride as cloudy and smeared as the windows. He hadn't been a sloppy drunk; he'd been a careful drunk. The word was “serious”âfor everything he'd done, really. He was a serious young man, who had married seriously and become a serious attorney, who drank seriously and became a serious drunk. The mistakes he made were serious and now, in the Arctic Circle, he thought of himself in the Tahoe as a serious visitor on a serious mission who did not drink and took his not drinking seriously. He knew how he was perceived and it was a kind of comfort for Burns to have the word to hold on to.
“Welcome to Alaska,” Julie said, handing him a glass of sparkling water. “There are no limes.” She touched his glass with her own.
“I'd worry if there were.”
“You don't drink,” she said, sipping her whiskey. “Smart man.”
“No. Alec I'm sure told you. I got smart a little late.” He sucked on his lip and nodded at her. “I've missed a lot. I'm an
old
man.”
“Not quite.” She smiled and touched his glass again. “And it is a world of accidents, believe me. Someone just dropped the bread, right? And on the way home we'll find the peanut butter. Lots of things get dropped.” She looked at his face appraisingly. “You're still a smart man.” Julie waved a hand out over the room. “How do you like the Tahoe, the hub of culture on the frontier?”
“It's big. I spent a lot of time having stronger drinks in smaller places.”
“You're a lawyer.”
“I am. I was a good lawyer years ago. Now I'm simply highly paid: probate on the Gold Coast. Did Alec say he'd forgiven me for it?”
“Alec always spoke of you in the best terms. You taught him how to sail?”
“One summer a long time ago. I wasn't around much.”
Someone, a figure, fell out of a booth across the room and two tablemates stood and lifted the person back into place.
“Will you stay here?” Burns asked her. “In Kotzebue?”
“I'm a nurse. There's a lot of call for that here. I've got a lifeâand I've got my students.”
The walk back to the trailer again awakened in Burns a huge hunger. He had the same feeling he always had when he spoke of his past, honest and diminished, but now he mainly felt hungry. The wind was in their faces and they leaned against it, talking, while Burns felt the chocolate bar in his pocket. Julie spoke of meeting his son their year at Juilliard. “I wasn't their kind of musician,” she said, punching the words into the wind. “I was lucky. I'd been lucky with the competitions really. And I didn't really care for all the work. It was nonstop.” They could hear dogs barking out in the fields where the teams were staked. Julie took his arm and turned into the narrow, icy lane where her trailer stood. “I like to playâI teach and I still playâbut at Juilliard, well,” she faced him in the cold dark, her face luminous, “too many
artists
.”
Inside the trailer, Julie's three students plucked at violin strings tuning their instruments. She introduced them to Burns: Tara, Mercy, and Calvin, native kids all about twelve. They sat serious and straight-backed in the living room for the lesson while Julie began leading them through the half hour's exercises. Calvin's eyes kept going sideways to Burns, and Burns could see they were all self-conscious, so he stood and started for his room. Julie stopped and came to him. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you,” he said. Taking off his coat had made him impossibly tired. “I'll see you in the morning.”
As he climbed into bed he could hear the sliding harmonies of the four violins rise and fall. Alec had started the violin when he was six, the year Helen had taken him and gone back to Ohio, and years later when Alec finished Juilliard, he had gone to Alaska to teach. Burns had never contacted his son when he was studying in New York. In those days guilt had slowed everything Burns did. He had moved his practice to Connecticut by then, and three times Burns had taken the train into the city and walked by the music school, slowing enough to hear the strains of piano or French horn from a window. And then as if scolded by the music, he hurried away. He couldn't cross the street and go in. Now Burns cringed at his cowardice.
Under the heavy blankets in his room, as the wind moaned over the trailer, Burns listened to the violins. He'd eaten his chocolate and was tired to his bones. He could feel the structure moving in the weight of the gusts. It was like being aboard ship.
Later he had heard voices, their timbre, something almost angry, and then he felt the door shut, and the rushing quiet took him again.