The Big Both Ways (46 page)

“You got a plan?” He fished out his smokes.

“Oh yes, I have a plan.” He looked back at the cabdriver. “Foolproof.”

It was only then that Clive noticed that the driver had brought a little dog back with him. The corgi stood now on the driver’s lap, sniffing the damp air through the open window.

“What’s your dog’s name?” Clive asked.

“Bandit,” the driver replied, and the dog wiggled up and put his whole head out the window.

“You haven’t got a plan,” the dog said.

“Excuse me?” Clive said, a little distressed, for never before had he heard an animal speak so clearly. But then again it had been a while since he had seen such a large non-human animal.

“You got a place to go?” the driver asked.

“Sort of. I’m going to pick up my dog.” Clive offered the driver the bottle of wine. “Then I’m going back to Alaska.”

“It’s a long way to Alaska,” the driver said, and took a drink from the bottle. “You’re going to need some money for that.”

“Well, that’s what the plan’s about,” Clive said. “I’ve got my money the same place where my dog is.”

Bandit sniffed the air again and shot his ears straight forward. “You don’t have a plan,” the corgi said again. Which distressed Clive all the more. The dog was telling the truth.

“I got a little travel trailer out back of my place. You can spend the night there if you want,” the driver said as he stroked the little dog’s head.

“No. I’ll be all right,” Clive insisted.

“Get in,” Bandit said, and Clive gathered his things.

T
HE JOKE WENT
like this: The doctor comes back into the waiting room and tells his patient, “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, but I have some bad news. It appears you have only eleven minutes to live.” The horrified patient beseeches him, “Please, doctor, isn’t there something you can do for me?” The doctor looks around the room and at his watch and says, “Well, I suppose I could boil you an egg.”

The joke was everywhere on the boardwalk. It seemed to Miles McCahon that it had infected the residents of Cold Storage like a flu virus. He heard it everywhere, and he was beginning to wonder why.

Maybe it was the darkness or the rain. Maybe it was the fact that almost everyone in Cold Storage was either clinically depressed or drunk most of the time. But they
loved
that joke, and Miles was beginning to take it personally.

Miles had spent most of his life in Cold Storage. There had been trips out for a few years in college and his years in the Army Rangers. When his brother had gone to jail in 1993, Miles had been in Mogadishu as a medic with his delta team and had mustered out soon after that well-publicized mess. He had told himself he was never again going to leave the quiet of Cold Storage, but now he was beginning to wonder.

Miles was the medical technician and physician’s assistant in a village without a doctor. He splinted broken bones and stopped bleeding. He stitched up severe cuts and treated people for shock. He monitored medications and researched medical issues for the 150 residents of this failing fishing village on the outer coast of southeastern Alaska. He was the closest thing to a doctor they had, and maybe it was for this reason he didn’t
get the same amount of glee from the joke as everybody else obviously did.

Miles was cooking Sunday dinner at the community center. He had used some of the money left over from a health and prevention education grant the previous PA had written. That PA had tried to hold classes on heart disease and diabetes; he had started “Healthwise” informational gatherings to which only a few people came, but none of those people were the ones who really needed the information. The principal of the school and the secretary came to the first two classes, the city administrator and her husband came to a few more, and then nobody came. The PA left town after six months.

But the money had to be spent because the administrators in Sitka could not show unspent money in their program at the end of the fiscal year. They phoned Miles and told him to do whatever he could to clear the account. The administrators had kissed a lot of ass in Washington to get these funds, and it would be an insult to leave them unspent. So Miles started hosting dinner parties on Sundays. He tried to cook reasonably healthy food, but health concerns couldn’t get in the way of turnout. This Sunday he was cooking three meat loaves, each roughly the size of a carry-on luggage bag.

“I don’t see why you can’t buy us some beer,” complained Ellen from her wheelchair next to the Jell-O molds.

“Ellen, I can’t buy alcohol with the health education and prevention money. We’ve been through this. I’m already on thin ice for the cheesecakes and heavy cream.”

“That’s just like government thinking,” the old woman wheezed. “I mean, what if—I’m saying
what if
—I’m going back to my place for a beer and I slip and break my hip? What the hell kind of health education is that?”

Bob Gleason piped up, “You’re not going to break a hip. You always drink someone else’s beer.” Here he nodded toward
Miles. “Besides, you ride that frigging wheelchair everywhere you go, even though there’s not a frigging thing wrong with your legs.”

Ellen didn’t give even a hint she’d heard Bob’s comments. “Miles, you could at least buy us some beer,” she insisted, “if you were really serious about doing a good job.”

“Listen, Ellen, next week I could maybe include some non-alcoholic beer in the order.”

Ellen stared up at him with strange, squinting eyes as if he had suddenly started speaking Japanese. “Non-alcoholic beer?” she asked feebly. She reached a claw-like hand for something to hang on to, accidentally landing it in a bowl of raspberry Jell-O with bananas hovering at the top.

“Somebody better get her medication,” came a wheezing voice from over by the furnace.

“Take more than near-beer to kill her. Better men than us have tried.” Bob levered a shingle-sized slice of meat loaf onto his plate, set it next to the pond of gravy in the potatoes. “Goddamn, this looks good, Miles. Don’t have any boiled turnips, do you?” He held out his plate.

As luck would have it, Miles did, and he ladled them out quickly. Bob’s hand wavered, and hot water slopped against the side of the old man’s thumb.

“Christ, Miles, watch what you’re doing, would ya?”

“I’m sorry.” Miles handed him a napkin. “I’m just kind of in a hurry.”

“I heard.” Bob nodded knowingly, staring down at his plate of food. “There’s a cop here to talk to you.” He reached onto his plate, fingered a slice of turnip up into his mouth. “It’s about your brother.”

Miles wiped his hands on a dishcloth and took off his apron. He walked out the door without saying a word to anyone.

The police officer, Ray Brown, had sent word to Miles that he
was in town as soon as he’d gotten off the floatplane. Miles had been in the middle of getting the giant meat loaves ready and so had arranged to meet with the trooper at the clinic later in the day, just before Brown’s plane took off for Juneau. That way, he thought, he could talk with the officer and then walk him back to the hall to check on the community dinner. It might be a good thing to have a police officer with him when he returned, in case any fights broke out in his absence.

Miles wasn’t eager to show that police officer around. No matter where they were from, visitors always wanted to ask questions. They started with history: why is this place here? To this Miles would usually answer, “Fish … mostly.” He longed to tell the whole story but the truth was people didn’t really want to know.

What they really wanted to ask was, “Why in the hell would anyone live here?”

But to truly understand, it helped to know the whole story. Just walking around town you wouldn’t feel the history of the place, wouldn’t know its old jokes or see the ghosts who still roamed around in everyone’s memory.

Cold Storage, Alaska, was first settled by white men in 1934. These white men were a group of Norwegian fishermen looking for a place to ride out the storms on the outer coast. They drove a few pilings and ran a boardwalk along the edge of a steep-sided fjord. They chose it because of the good anchorage with protection from all four directions of the compass. But as one of the Norsky fishermen put it, “She’s hell for snug except when it’s coming straight down.”

Cold Storage got approximately 200 inches of rain a year; the exact number was subject to debate. That rain led to the second reason the old Norskies chose to build on this particular spot: a natural hot spring just off the beach where the thermally heated water dribbled out between the rocks. The old fishermen
cribbed up some walls and a roof and made a quite passable tub where they could lounge in the warm water while watching their wooden boats ride at anchor out in the bay.

In 1935, the town got an infusion of energy when a battered logger, a woman Wobbly, and her little girl with glasses fled the mine strike in Juneau in a leaky dory and made the place their home. The logger was named Slippery Wilson. The woman was named Ellie Hobbes. She was a pilot and a committed anarchist. The little girl with the thick glasses was Annabelle. When Slip and Ellie built the first store, the old fishermen complained that the town was growing too fast. But when Ellie turned the store into a bar a few years later, the complaining stopped.

No one in his family had been fond of the police. It wasn’t an active antagonism, it was more of a wary indifference bolstered by living in a town some ninety air miles from a police station. There had been the old man who ran the supply boat who had been some kind of detective in Seattle. But that was long ago, and he had never done any policing in Cold Storage. The old Seattle detective was dead now, and only a few of the older people remembered the stories about him.

Miles stopped at the door of the clinic and put his hand on the cold metal knob. He didn’t want to go in, but as he considered going back to his meat loaf, the door jerked open, and Ray Brown stood before him in an immaculate blue state trooper uniform. He was pressed and tidy. His round, brimmed, Mountie-style hat had gold braid laid out against the blue. He was imposing, like a patriotic monument of some sort. It made Miles feel a little like Jeanette MacDonald.

“McCahon!” Brown barked, as if giving Miles permission to have the name. He jutted out his hand. “Ray Brown. How are ya?”

“I’m doing well, thanks,” Miles began. He was about to mention the fine weather for flying and maybe add something about going fishing if there was time.

“Two things,” Brown lumbered on. “First, a little bit of shop and then some personal business.”

“Personal business?” Miles walked around the big trooper to pick up the coffee pot sitting on a table in a corner of the waiting room. The coffee had been reheating for weeks as far as Miles knew. He just turned the same coffee on and off every day and evening. It didn’t matter because no one ever drank it. He kept it there only to chase people out of the clinic.

“That’s second. The first thing has to do with Harold Miller. Do you know him?”

“Coffee?” Miles held out the pot.

“No, I’m topped off.” Brown patted his flat stomach. “Harold Miller?”

“I know a Mouse Miller.” Miles put the pot back into the plastic coffee maker.

Brown unsnapped the breast pocket of his shirt, took out a small notebook and flipped through the pages. “I think that’s him. Fisherman.” Then Brown rattled off a social security number.

Miles looked for any trace of humor, any sign that the trooper was going to relax. It didn’t seem likely. “I don’t know Mouse’s Social Security number, but the date sounds like it matches his age. How can I help you, officer?” Miles sat down on a chair next to the coffee pot.

Brown remained standing, and for a second Miles worried he was going to click his heels together.

“Harold Miller has been reported missing. I’d like to get some information together.”

“I haven’t seen Mouse around. Have you been down to his boat?”

Brown had started writing in his notebook, didn’t answer the question. After a long silence, he lowered the notebook and asked, “When was the last time you think you saw him?”

“Geez … I don’t know, couple of weeks ago. I don’t know if he
even has family here in town. I think I heard he was going to fly in to Juneau for some change of scenery for his drinking.”

“Ex-wife,” Brown said to the notebook, “he had an ex-wife.”

“Really? I didn’t know Mouse was married.” And then in a bright voice, a bit curious, “Who’s his ex?”

The trooper was writing again. He looked up with a vaguely thoughtful expression on his face. “So, would you say it was two weeks ago that you saw him last?”

Miles leaned back and scanned the paint on the ceiling. “I don’t remember exactly.” If Trooper Brown had shown any trace of humor or humility, Miles might have offered to look at his calendar to see if there were any notations, but he didn’t.

“Okay.” Brown stabbed a period emphatically onto a page. “It’s just a formality. He’s probably sleeping it off somewhere.” He clicked his ballpoint pen as if unchambering a round, put the pen and notebook back into his front shirt pocket, and pulled another chair away from the wall and around to face Miles. He sat down, knee to knee with the PA. Miles sat up straight and put his coffee cup down.

“Now, two,” Brown said. “I believe you have a family member who is incarcerated?”

Miles waited, wondering if that was the final form the question was going to take. “Actually, if you include my extended family, I have several relations who might still be serving time. Maybe you could be a little bit more specific.”

“So, that’s the way it’s going to be.” Brown stared down at Miles for several long moments.

“Excuse me, Trooper Brown, is there some reason that you’re being rude?” Miles smiled and tried again to be friendly.

Trooper Brown didn’t hesitate and didn’t smile. “I don’t like drugs, and I don’t like Satan worshipers.”

Miles looked perplexed. “Wow! No. I mean, who does? Well, drugs … I assume you are not opposed to penicillin, unless you are a Christian Scientist?”

The Trooper waved him off. “Your brother worked for a major drug dealer in Seattle. I don’t want him moving his business into Alaska.”