Asylum--Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Although it had been less than two weeks after her dad’s funeral, Spring came over to help me make a birthday cake for Billy. He laughed at the mess we made, the flour on my black shirt, the butter Spring licked from her fingers and that Billy wiped from my cheek, the dirty dishes that piled up so quickly. I liked a man who asked if the pan needed to be floured and volunteered to do it since my hands were sticky.

After the cake cooled, I asked Spring to put in all forty-three candles. She bent to the task seriously, her forehead wrinkled in concentration. I lit every one and Spring cried, “Make a wish, hurry, hurry!” Billy paused and looked at me intently. In the dim cabin, his face brightened by the glow of the tiny flames, he looked happier than I’d ever seen him. He blew out the candles, and I reached over and tugged on his beard.

“My own furry woodsman, my bear-man.”

He dipped his chin and took my finger into his mouth and bit it gently. “I like being your bear-man,” he said.

When Billy and I hugged, Spring got in between our legs and looked up at us.

“Don’t you want me up there, too?”

We lifted her easily and squeezed her between us.

I’d bought Billy a two-person tent and together we set it up. Spring was delighted at the sight of a tent sitting in the middle of the floor—never mind that her own home was a tent-cabin made of plywood and double-walled Visqueen (a kind of clear plastic sheeting). She scrambled inside and peered out the screen window, radiating one of her million-watt smiles. I was both glad she was too young for her father’s death to have extinguished that smile and sad the Troll was not around to see it anymore.

I thought of the evening Billy and I had spent at their place the previous fall. Spring had greeted us at the door, barely able to contain her excitement that there would be a special treat for dessert—oranges! Spring’s mother, Jane—a lean, competent-looking woman known as one of the best hunters in town—told me that she and her husband first met at the Eagle post office. “When he saw me dressed in my Carhartts and bunny boots and fur hat, he knew he’d met his future wife.” The outfit later served as her wedding attire, as well.

While the rabbit stew bubbled on the stove, the Troll told the story of a grizzly that kept coming around their mining camp on the Fortymile River a couple of years ago. It was late August, when the days were getting shorter and dusk fell early. When the bear returned again, he swung into action.

“I saw its shadow on the tent wall and I stepped outside. It was almost dark and all I could see was the glint of his white teeth as it came around the corner of the tent. I didn’t have time to aim, and it was too close anyway, so I just got off one shot right in his wide-open mouth. That thing wasn’t five feet from where Spring was sleeping inside.” 

Like many incredible stories told in Eagle, this one was true, and the Troll had the bear’s skull to prove it. He opened its jaws and placed them over his face and sure enough, that the bear was large enough to take a man’s head in its mouth.

After the meal, Spring asked us if we would like to hear her sing a song. Billy and I glanced at each other and smiled as her bright voice warbled “A Bicycle Built for Two.” Rabbit stew cooked on a wood stove, five people sharing two precious oranges, a song from the 1890s—I wondered what century I was in.

Spring’s mother arrived to take her home after our little birthday party. Billy turned on a battery-powered radio and we sat together on the couch. The local station ran twenty-four hours a day without a DJ, station identification, news, or weather. In the automated playlist, composed of random tracks from CDs donated by the locals, “Mac the Knife” might be followed by “A Boy Named Sue,” or the Hawaii 5-0 theme. Someone in town had a powerful fondness for Burl Ives, I’d concluded, because his songs rotated regularly. The radio only worked with headphones, so Billy hung it from a nail in the beam overhead and we listened to the tinny sound coming as if from far away. “Lean on Me” came on, and I pulled him to his feet and said, “Let’s dance.” Bitty scrambled up Billy’s back. I was dancing with a man with a cat on his shoulder.

“Lean on me,” he sang softly in my ear. “Lean on me when you’re not strong.”

I cried, thinking of those traumatic days in San Jose when I was so scared and alone. And how Billy had saved me. If he hadn’t called the police, I’d be dead. 

Billy had a round of neighbors he visited regularly, all living within a few miles of his cabin. Many of them were old-timers who didn’t get out much, especially in winter, and Billy went to check on them to make sure they had enough food and wood. He also went, he said, just to get out of his cabin. Sometimes he would bring them a box of pilot bread or a can of beans, but he was just as likely to come home with a package of Royal Cream crackers or a half a loaf of homemade bread. They looked out for one another, these single men.

Billy said it was about time to go see Dusty, who lived at the far end of the road, three miles away. From the outside, his cabin looked more like a tool shed than a residence. It had only one window, which was blocked off to keep in the heat. Billy yelled hello, and a man, approximately in his mid-sixties, opened the door. His grey hair, stiff with grime, stood straight out about two inches all around his head, giving him the appearance of a hedgehog. I could see how he got his nickname. Dusty looked delighted to see us and said he hadn’t gotten into Eagle in two months. He quickly cleared off a plastic lawn chair for me.

“Here, young lady, you can sit here. I ain’t forgot my manners.”

He noticed me casting my eyes around the cabin and said, “It ain’t much but I got everything I need.”

Indeed, he had a bunk bed with plenty of storage above, a television, a small oil stove, and even a microwave. I noticed a camp shower in one corner. I’d seen one in a catalog Billy had at home and asked if it worked as well as they claimed.

“Don’t know. Never used it.”
“Why not?”

He explained with a wicked grin, “Ain’t got no reason. There ain’t nobody in town I’m interested in.”

Dusty was apologetic for not having any Crown Royal to share, extolling the health properties of this most excellent of whiskies. He asked me—obviously a city person who would know about such things—how hard it was to set up a computer. Surprised, I asked why he wanted one.

 “I want a computer I can talk to so it could teach me how to read. I don’t like no one around when I try to read,” he said with his lower lip thrust out. “I didn’t have no time to learn when I was a kid. I was sellin’ chicken eggs door-to-door. Makin’ thousand dollars a week by the time I was eight years old. Started smokin’ when I was five. My pappy said I had to buy my own cigarettes.”
I had the Norman Rockwellian image of a small boy standing on tiptoes at an East Texas general store, exchanging his hard-earned nickels for a pack of cigarettes.

Dusty asked me to read two letters he’d received that day, both of them official-looking. His expression as he gave them to me, both beseeching and belligerent, reflected a lifetime of humiliation at having to rely on others to read for him, as he was even unable to distinguish between a piece of junk mail (“Open immediately. Important document enclosed.) and the vital deed to his mining claim.

Dusty regaled us with stories of shooting a moose from six feet away with a handgun and hunting down a bear that stood a full fifteen feet tall. He told us about single-handedly loading up his truck with a road-killed bison near Delta Junction. He claimed to have played onstage with Hank Williams, Jr. 

“Longshorin’ ruined my hands for guitar playing,” he said, holding up his gnarled hands with an expression of genuine regret.

In his tall tales there were a great many times when he was called “a bald-faced liar,” and a great many times when he was ultimately vindicated. Dusty was one of the people Esther had accused of animal abuse when I’d met her the previous spring, claiming his dog had died of neglect. Dusty said his beloved dachshund had died of cancer. Who was I to believe in this town full of rumors and “bald-faced liars”?

After we left, carrying the two cans of peaches Dusty had given us, I asked Billy, “Did Dusty say anything the whole time that was true?”

He considered a moment. “He drinks Crown Royal.”

The next day, we went to check on old Arliss, who hailed from the mountains of northern Georgia, at his one-room A-frame cabin. We were greeted at the step by his Maine coon cat.

“That’s one tough feline,” Billy said. “It’ll take on other cats, dogs, foxes anything. Look at the size of that thing.” The gray striped long-haired cat was as large as a raccoon.

Seeing the frail man with the white beard at the door, I recognized him as the one with the willow walking stick who’d been at the store the day I’d arrived in Eagle in November. One corner of the cabin was filled with walking sticks in various stages of completion, each with a pattern of the reddish diamond shapes characteristic of diamond willow.

It was the morning after one of Arliss’s weekly poker game. In the middle of a round table that took up most of the room was a candelabra made of welded-together pipe fittings. Stalactites of wax hung from it, showing the game had lasted well into the wee hours of the morning. I was sure it seemed like an extravagance of candles to Billy, who carefully saved his own stock of six-inch tapers for times when he ran out of kerosene. He’d told me about visiting a hermit who lived miles from town in a windowless cabin. Throughout the long winters, his only source of light was a primitive lamp made of a cotton wick stuck in a jar of used cooking oil.

Arliss shook a cigarette out of a pack of Lucky Strikes.

“This guy lives on Lucky Strikes and Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits,” Billy said.

“Yup,” Arliss said with a laugh. “You want one—hep yourself.” He tossed the pack across the table, scattering a handful of children’s tops he’d carved from wooden spools of thread.

They got to talking about their days “fattin’ fars” together when they both worked on the Eagle fire crew. Those were the good old days—battling raging fires crowning in the treetops, beating out flames with nothing but a spruce bough or a wet gunny sack, using a “piss pump” to put out hot spots. Even ditching their chainsaws in a creek and running like all get-out uphill to reach a helicopter that would airlift them to safety. It sounded like hellish hard work, hot and hazardous, but these men were frankly nostalgic about it. 

“Best job I ever had,” Arliss said.

“Yes, sir,” Billy nodded.

Arliss was in fine fettle that morning, full of stories about “gettin’ whupped by my ma for drankin’ moonshan” when he was a kid and outwitting the durned game warden and park rangers when poaching deer and collecting ginseng in the Georgia mountains. He laughed so hard he had to lean over and hold his side. He launched into a long account of how he got kicked out of the Navy for stealing a car. The tale involved a “Norfork” bar, three Norwegian seamen, and a 1951 Oldsmobile.

 “I been in so many frickin’ jails, it’s pathetic. I been in jail in every state I’ve ever been in except this one, knock wood.” Arliss rapped his knuckles on the table and stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a miniature cast iron skillet. He sighed, “It’s gettin’ so’s a criminal ain’t got a chance in this country anymore.”

Arliss talked animatedly about living in a dirt-floored barn and delivering his daughter using his pocket knife—first boiled in the water that had been heating for coffee—to cut the umbilical cord. When his daughter became an adult, he gave her the pocket knife, which she treasured to this day. Later, his family of four had lived on nothing but ninety-six quarts of canned salmon during an unusually cold winter out at Gravel Gulch, ten miles from Eagle. Before we left, I couldn’t resist asking, “Arliss, what brought you to Alaska?”

“Gold and marijuana.” Before he could explain further, he started laughing so much it brought on a fit of coughing and he waved us out the door.

On the walk home, I asked, “What did he mean by coming to Alaska because of marijuana?”

“It used to be legal back then. It attracted a lot of folks like Arliss.”

I didn’t see how anyone could be like Arliss, but that seemed to be true about a lot of people in Eagle. Arliss was just as strange and wonderful as any of the people John McPhee had found so fascinating almost three decades ago. I was grateful there were still individuals like Arliss in the world. As even Thomas had noticed about Alaska, “Everybody is encouraged to go home to their own private mountain top to be whoever they want to be.” 

Billy needed to check his marten traps, which he did every few days. Curious about the process of trapping, I volunteered to go along. The previous year, he and the Troll had cleared a new trail up to the ridgeline on the other side of the Yukon. It was closer than the long one they’d run out the Seventymile trail, where Billy had lived in a tent. With Jane’s permission, we would borrow the Troll’s snowmachine. The only problem was that we’d have to travel on the frozen river. I’d been scared of ice—whether on ponds, lakes, or rivers—since I was a girl and had heard nightmare stories about children falling through while skating. Back in the old days before the weather changed, Liz’s father had told me, the Snake River still froze in winter, and they had to cautiously make their way across the ice to get from the ranch to the road on the other side. Venturing out onto the middle of the Yukon on a heavy snowmachine seemed like sheer madness. I knew the river ran cold and swift beneath the ice, just inches away.

“Feet,” Billy corrected me. “It’s feet thick, not inches. Sometimes it gets six feet thick.” 

I didn’t care. It still seemed incredibly risky. One weak spot and down you go. 

Billy finally convinced me, and we took the snowmachine down to the river, with Smokey and Nicky running behind us. I was surprised to see and feel that the ice wasn’t smooth, like lake ice. Instead, it was rippled like the mud on the edge of a pond. It was piled up in ridges and troughs and crested in frozen waves. The snowmachine lurched over uplifted slabs of ice and down again the other side. I clutched Billy and occasionally cried out. He called back to me several times, asking if I was all right. He slowed once to show me the tracks of two wolves. He stopped at a smooth patch where the wind had blown the snow away and the clear black ice was visible. Getting off the snowmachine, he casually strolled toward a long crack.

“Billy, come back, come back!” 

He stood there with his arms wide and, to my horror, jumped up and down. I thoroughly expected to hear a giant fracturing sound and see him disappear into the depths. Instead, the ice held, and he called out, “Come here and I’ll show you how safe it is.”

Gingerly, I inched my way out to him. I realized it was not just Billy I feared for, but myself. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die! For the first time in years, I felt no urge to leave the world—especially this fairyland of ice and snow. 

Finally, I reached Billy’s side and looked down. On one side of the crack, the ice was clear; on the other side, it was semi-opaque. The difference made it easy to see that the ice was at least three feet thick. 

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Billy said, hugging me. “I just wanted to show you that we’re perfectly fine. Besides, closer to shore, it’s frozen all the way to the bottom.” 

I not only felt safe, I felt exhilarated—alive. The river stretched wide and solid on either side of us.  No wonder the Yukon Quest mushers drove their dogs day and night all the way from Canada—so they could be out here on the endless expanse of ice, striving forward against all odds.

“You okay?” Billy yelled above the noise of the idling snowmachine.

“Yes, let’s go!”

“All right,” he whooped. “Martens, here we come!”

The dogs ran up to see what all the yelling was about and they barked excitedly, chasing along behind us.

Once we reached the start of the trail at river’s edge, we proceeded on foot, with Billy in front using a hatchet to lop off tree branches that hung in our way, heavy with snow. Marten like to keep to the ridgelines, Billy explained, so much of the way we would be climbing uphill. It was a warm day—in the twenties—and with the exertion of hiking through the foot-deep snow, we soon realized we didn’t need our parkas. We took them off and stuffed them into Billy’s backpack. 

I thought of the bears that must be hibernating on the mountain and wondered how close we might pass to one of their dens. The cubs are born at this time of winter, and I imagined a mama bear resting in a hollow at the base of a fallen tree, nursing her cubs in a warmth that was dark and rank. It was reassuring to know it would be months before the bears emerged, and that we had little risk of encountering one, although a “winter bear” had terrorized Eagle some years back. Billy had told me the old cracked-tooth bear hadn’t accumulated enough fat to go into hibernation and had hung around town until December. It came close to several people’s cabins, threatening their dogs until finally Merry’s husband, Judd, killed it near their neighbor’s house. “He wasn’t too pleased,” Billy had said, speaking of the neighbor whose yard held the canoes for his summer boat rental business. “Judd’s first shot missed. You can imagine what a twelve-gauge slug does to a canoe.”

Even without my parka, I was sweating. “Can we stop for a minute?”

Billy immediately turned and said, “Of course.”

While we rested, standing in place on the trail, I asked, “Are there very many

bears shot around here?”

“A few every year. It’s usually a bear trying to get at someone’s fish rack, like that grizzly that came around my place. But some people set up a bait station and sit and wait for one for hours. I tell you, it can get pretty cold up in a tree stand in the middle of the night.”

“Is that legal?”

“As long as it’s least a mile from town.”

“A mile?” To me, that sounded right next door. “What do they use for bait?”

“Lots of stuff. Dog food soaked in old cooking oil from the restaurant. If you burn honey in a tin can, when it smokes it smells like roasting marshmallows. That really brings them in.” Billy hitched his backpack higher on his shoulders.

Shooting a bear lured in with greasy dog food didn’t sound exactly sporting, but I reminded myself that here bears were killed for food, not trophies. It was hard to comprehend I was in the midst of hundreds of miles of wilderness, where black bears and grizzlies outnumbered people.