Cold Storage, Alaska Read online

After seeing pictures of the Dalai Lama smiling, Billy asked the librarian at the school in Cold Storage to find out how his name was written in the Tibetan language. She surfed around on the Internet, printed out a copy of the script, and gave it to Billy the next day; she told him the Dalai Lama’s name translated into something like “Ocean of Wisdom.” Billy painted the Tibetan symbols onto the blades of his kayak paddle and believed that each time he dipped his paddle into the sea, he was in effect saying a prayer.

  It was this new form of prayer that had been causing Billy to come to the clinic. Billy was paddling more than anyone could remember. He was off for days at a time; sometimes he would take off at the height of the worst storms of the season. When he came back to the docks in Cold Storage, he was soaked; apparently he never got out of his boat to rest.

  Miles flattened Billy’s palms to examine the ulcerated blisters that covered his hands. “Billy, why don’t you wrap your hands or wear some kind of gloves?”

  “Gloves get wet, then they rip and make it worse. I just need to toughen the skin a little more.”

  “You could at least get some better kind of seat in that thing. These sores on your tailbone aren’t healing. I’m telling you, why don’t you find another way of getting around and let your skin heal a bit? Is your shoulder still bothering you?”

  Billy shook his head; he wasn’t even listening. He really came to talk to the only person in Cold Storage who seemed interested in him.

  “I’ve decided,” said Billy. “I’m going to do it.” He rubbed some ointment into his hands.

  “Do what?” Miles was hopeful. “Give up paddling for a bit?”

  “No,” he replied. “I’m going to take my kayak to Seattle.”

  “You mean on the ferry?”

  “No.” Billy sounded serious. “I’m going to paddle to Seattle.”

  “Really?” Miles said, trying his best to keep a sarcastic tone out of his voice.

  “His Holiness is going to be there. In Seattle. He’s going to make an appearance at the Opera House or something. He’s going to give a talk, and I’m going to be there.” Billy’s eyes, wide and unwavering, looked straight into Miles’s.

  “Why do you have to paddle?” Miles motioned him up so he could look at the infected sores on his tailbone.

  “I’m going to raise money to free Tibet. You know, like a walk-a-thon or something, but paddling. I’ll get people to pledge money for each mile if I can make it all the way.”

  “You’ll get folks from Cold Storage to pledge?” He tried to hide the note of skepticism starting to sour his voice. “Christ, Billy, I don’t know …”

  “Listen, Miles, they only have to pay if I make it, right? It’s about eight hundred miles. Nobody will think I’m going to get there, right? I mean, make it in time to see the Dalai Lama in four months. They’ll sign up. I get just five or six of them to sign up and that makes a few grand to give to His Holiness.”

  Miles looked at him, trying to form an objection to this plan, but the battered young man continued. “The money’s not the main thing. I’ll be praying the entire way. By the time I get there, I’ll be ready. I’ll have some dough to give him, and I’ll probably have a shot at getting to meet him.” He stopped to breathe. “He’s a good guy, Miles. He’ll meet me if I come all that way.”

  Billy lay on the examining table, his butt in the air, and Miles cleaned the infected ulcer on his tailbone. He didn’t say one word while he washed the wound with water and alcohol and wiped the blood away from the edges of the sores.

  “What do you think, Miles?”

  “I think you ought to stick around and meet my brother.”

  MILES WASHED HIS hands and checked his watch; he had to walk from the clinic down to his mother’s house. The boardwalk ran about a quarter of a mile south along the coastline from Cold Storage; there the wooden ramp ended and a gravel trail wound through the woods to an estuary of a little stream. The school was built on the flat area to the north of the stream, and a hundred yards back to the north, just before the boardwalk ended, sat what was left of Ellie’s Bar. The tin roof was sunk down in the back corner, and the front windows were broken with a few torn tarps nailed over the openings. Even though the bar was closed, it was still the preferred residence of several of the outer coast’s most dedicated drinkers.

  Mouse Miller had a small wooden troller and slept in the bar whenever he was in town. He was a tiny man, fitting for the size of boat he ran. He had a long beard and wore one shirt for most of a year. He had loved one of the last barmaids who had served drinks in Ellie’s, had loved her with an ardor that was unmatched up and down the coast. The majority of bills tacked to the dripping ceiling of the fallen bar were his.

  When he was in town, Mouse would often drink to the point of blackout. He would light candles and kerosene lanterns in the bar, and drink brandy that he’d brought up from the boat. He would drink and carry on conversations with the dead barmaid off and on for days; he would moan and bang on the bar, and he would pin more money up on the ceiling. Miles thought about Mouse and knew he should ask around town, but then he had plenty of walk-in traffic at the clinic; he didn’t have to go hunting up a drunken fisherman.

  The wind blew a squall of light rain, and the steep hill on the other side of the boardwalk moaned, sizzled as the wind pushed through the trees. Miles put up his collar and walked up the stairs toward his mother’s house.

  The faint smell of mildew and boiled cabbage filled the kitchen. In a corner sat a diesel stove, a large square metal box with chrome grillwork that could have come off a ‘49 Ford coupe. On top of the grillwork sat a copper tea kettle, and above the stove, dishtowels hung drying over metal rods hinged to the wall. The edges of the dishtowels swung slightly in the rippling heat.

  Beside the electric range, an electric percolator bubbled quietly.

  “Get yourself a cup of coffee,” Annabelle called from the other room. “Then come in here and sit with me.”

  Miles poured himself a cup, carried it into the living room.

  Annabelle lay back in a recliner. She wore a sweater over her nightgown and housecoat and heavy wool socks and strange-looking slippers that had the heads of two cartoon mice jutting out of the toes.

  “Hi, honey! What’s going on with you?” Her voice creaked.

  “Not a lot, Mom.” He took a straight-backed chair from the card table, set it close to the old woman’s feet, and sat down. He looked at the stuffed mice slippers for a long moment, caught himself staring at them, and didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve never seen you wearing mice on your feet before,” he managed.

  Annabelle wiggled them from side to side. “Oh, I know they’re ugly as sin, but they go on easy over my socks. I been feeling a little chilly in the mornings.”

  “Uh, Mom …” he started. “I really think you should go into Sitka and see the doctor. I mean, you know, it might be something simple. Might be a couple of pills. I really wish you would let me get you in to see your doctor.” He took a sip of his coffee; his tone was easy. This was as hard a sell as he was going to make.

  “Yeah, and I wish I had a million bucks. I’m not going to spend that money flying into Sitka.” She reached over and touched Miles’s hand as if to reassure him, but then her small frame shook and pumped with coughing, frighteningly deep and strong coughing, and Miles thought she could break a rib coughing this way.

  “You know, I can arrange to have the clinic pay for the flight,” he said. He put down the coffee cup and handed her a tissue from the little box with a crocheted cover standing on the nightstand next to her chair.

  Annabelle spat into the tissue, quickly covered it and threw it in a wastebasket near her feet.

  Miles reached into his pocket and felt the message from the probation department, the news about Clive getting out of prison. He knew he should tell his mother the news. He even felt his hand starting to bring the paper out of his pocket, but he stopped.

  “Mom,” he stammer
ed, “I’m sorry, but I get the idea you don’t want to go to Sitka because you are just waiting for Clive, and if that’s the case …”

  She held up her hand to stop him. “I saw the darnedest thing. Just the other day. I’m certain I saw that old bird of mine. I saw Buddy in the trees. That can’t be right, can it?”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Miles thumbed the letter in his pocket. He didn’t tell her about Clive. He was not sure why. He told himself it was to protect her, but truthfully, he wasn’t sure.

  The water continued to rattle against the sides of the pot, and he could hear the greasy flame flutter down in the oil stove. Out in the inlet, a trolling boat was working its way out toward the coast. Miles could hear the old engine labor away, and he could almost hear the gulls crying out as they wheeled over the stern. Up on the mountains, the wind wheezed through trees that had been there for eight hundred years; some had blown over and were rotting back into the ground. Everything was old up on the hillsides, but the rain was older than all of that and it was falling again, as it always had, as it always would.

  They said nothing. The wind blew, and a limb kept ticking against the window.

  “You don’t know anything about him coming back, do you?” she said suddenly.

  “Who?” he said with a start.

  “Buddy,” the old woman said, and looked up at him through her thick lenses. “They can’t live that long, can they?”

  She sat forward, started coughing so hard that he leaned her even farther forward, causing her thick glasses to fall into her lap. He rubbed her back between her shoulder blades until the coughing subsided. He got her some water to drink, and after putting on her glasses, she looked up into his eyes as tired as he had ever seen her.

  “Just get me some pills,” she spat out, “or some heavy-duty cough syrup.”

  “Okay, Ma.” He stood up.

  “Do me another favor, would you, pal?” Her voice was weak.

  “I’m not going to boil you an egg, in case you are going to ask.”

  “No.” She smiled. “Pop in that movie there. I was watching it last night and fell asleep.”

  Miles wheeled the television closer to the recliner, straightened out the cords, turned on the TV, and pushed the button on the VCR. The dusty screen on the TV flickered and glowed silver. There was Bedford Falls, and there was Jimmy Stewart, madly looking for the eight thousand dollars Uncle Billy had let slip out of his hands. There was Uncle Billy’s raven hopping on the counter of the failing Building and Loan.

  Annabelle waved at her son as he walked toward the door, and he waved back; neither said anything.

  Miles walked down the boardwalk toward the clinic, thinking about his brother’s return, knowing that, despite what the probation department said, there was still less than a fifty percent chance that his brother would actually show up. At least he could always hope.

  A light rain was falling, and the sun was beginning to rise above the ridgeline to the southeast. Shafts of light cut a silver highway across the water. Gulls chattered as they sat near the pilings of the fish plant built in the 1950s on the site of what had once been the Norwegian fishermen’s bathhouse. Miles felt deep down in his bones with a kind of mortal finality that he was home from the war.

  He would open up the clinic, but nothing much would happen today. He’d call the hospital in Sitka, and a few people would come by the clinic with their simple and sociable complaints. Nothing would happen today, and nothing much would happen tomorrow. Even if his brother were to come to town, there was not enough to keep Clive busy. Clive would have to bring his own excitement to Cold Storage, which might be exactly what the trooper was concerned about.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I’M SORRY,” JAKE Shoemaker simpered in an uncommonly polite voice. “I know this must be inconvenient for you.” Oscar sat on the couch, his hands tied behind his back. “I mean, it’s more than just inconvenient; this is frightening, I’m sure.”

  Oscar’s mouth was covered with a strip of silver tape, his skin was white, his eyes wide open and red-rimmed. Spattered across his yellow polo shirt was his own blood.

  Jake didn’t like this kind of scene. He knew that when it came to violence, he was being blown forward by some old fear. It was probably as simple as a fear of failure, but he didn’t want to think about that very deeply.

  Jake’s father had been a logger in the eastern Cascades. He had wanted to leave the woods, but he never did. Sometimes after work he would gather Jake and the gear into the truck and head up to a green lake surrounded by dusty hills. The wooden rowboat they pulled up into the weeds had more than a little rot around the oarlocks. Jake would sit in the stern while his father gingerly pulled on the oars, not wanting to rip the locks out of the boat.

  Jake remembered his father wearing an oil-soaked hickory shirt opened down to show a chest burned mahogany red from the sun. He remembered his father opening a beer, making his first and only cast, leaning back and saying the exact same words every single day: “Hey boys, chow!” Jake couldn’t understand what in the hell he and his father were doing there. They never caught any fish, and it made him angry.

  When Jake thought of his old man, he remembered his smell: sweat and saw gas. It was the smell of failure, rising like steam.

  Jake was wearing a black silk shirt with no tie today, a soft leather jacket and wool slacks. He sat and picked lint off the front of his trousers while Oscar struggled on the couch.

  He watched Oscar tip onto his stomach. The old man’s cheeks puffed out against the silver tape wrapped around his thinning brown hair. His hands were shaking and turning blue from the tightness of the cords bound around them.

  “I’m just in a bad mood,” said Jake. He didn’t like watching the man on the couch so he spoke up into the air, as if addressing someone in heaven. “I know I shouldn’t take it all out on you, but this is business. This is a lot of money we’re talking about.”

  Jake hated this part of his job. He had nothing personal against Oscar, but missing from his storage unit was a large amount of money and, worse, some important business records. Even though he was certain Oscar hadn’t taken it, he was almost positive that Oscar knew who had, and, more importantly, knew where that someone was heading. This unpleasantness was just some stupid business foul-up. Jake was a writer, and this was only his day job; like most day jobs, his had its share of irritations.

  Jake had been irritated for weeks. Everywhere he went he saw the advertisement for Stealing Candy. It seemed like half the buildings in Los Angeles were plastered with billboard ads for the movie. It galled him to no end. Jake could hardly drive anywhere without eventually banging his head against his walnut steering wheel.

  Jake had written several films; two of them had been produced so far, erotic films that some people had inaccurately called soft-core porn. He had hoped viewers would have been able to see past whatever label brainless money men put on his work. Both of his films had gone directly to video release, a major disappointment. His dream had been to attend a premiere of one of his own films; the limo ride and the flashbulb walk up the roped-off carpet, standing with the stars, waving, laughing, making sly, private jokes with the director. But that was not going to happen any time soon. Stealing Candy was scheduled for its premiere, and he would not be invited. He wouldn’t even be comped a ticket to the show. It set his teeth on edge.

  Oscar struggled to speak, but the silver tape held fast. Jake stood up and threw a windbreaker over Oscar’s head. Oscar rolled onto the floor and started thrashing violently back and forth.

  “Gracious!” he said, as if calming a feverish child. “Just settle down. Nothing bad is going to happen.” He took a couple of wraps around the man’s ankles with a spare electrical cord.

  Jake had originally written both the treatment and the first draft for the movie that became Stealing Candy. Jake’s script, called Who’s Your Daddy Now?, had been well-received by a producer at Paramount; Jake had even negotiated a six-month opti
on and a development deal with Viacom. He hadn’t had a star, of course, and he’d foolishly trusted the earnest young Harvard graduate he’d hired to flesh out the script. Now everywhere he turned, he was seeing seven-story likenesses of a Cameron Diaz clone holding a bloody knife.

  Jake loved the movies. He loved the feeling inside a darkened theater: the cool air, the expectant rustle of people settling into their seats, all of them facing the same direction, all of them waiting for a new world about to shine right there in front of them. He hated the moment after the film ended, and the lights came up on the spilled sodas and sticky boxes of candy on the floor. This was too much like real life, like the smell of a dirty hickory shirt or the sound of a nagging cough. This was a life he rejected. He preferred success. He preferred the movies.

  Oscar had wet himself, and the urine was running in a slow yellow stream across the floor toward Jake’s desk.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and looked at his watch. He was supposed to be meeting a friend for lunch in thirty minutes. He picked up the nine millimeter in his desk drawer, racked a round into the chamber, and stepped over the stream to shut the door.

  “Don’t worry, Oscar,” he said, a trace of genuine sympathy in his voice. “When the bullet hits your skull, it won’t really hurt. You’re going to feel a little bit of pressure and maybe some stinging, but not for long.”

  Oscar shook off the coat covering his head. He looked up into Jake’s eyes and seemed to relax; his hands unclasped, his wrists stopped tugging against the cords cutting into him. He just lay there, waiting for the big wind to blow through his skull.

  “Wake up now, Oscar!” Jake said softly, as if he really were waking him up. “If you didn’t take the money, all you have to do is tell me who did, and we can work together to find it. You hear what I’m saying?” His voice was urgent.

  Oscar shook his head violently, nodded up and down to indicate he understood, and Jake reached down and pinched the edge of the tape.

  “This is going to hurt a bit,” he warned and jerked the tape away.