passed it back to Cheeon.
“Where’s your wife, Cheeon?”
“It don’t matter. Not no more.”
Marium lit another cigarette and shifted his body against the doorframe.
“I was on a raid one time, down in glacier country, outside Juneau. Before I came back up here for good, when my first marriage went to shit. A guy shot dead his wife in their hunting cabin. He wouldn’t come out. A rich city fucker. Owned a company, cell phone towers, I think. After we were out there two straight days around the cabin he finally started shooting at us, shooting like crazy. We had to burn the place. We shot back for a while and then just burned it. Both of the bodies were nothing but charcoal stains when we went in.”
“A rich fucker and his rich bitch wife, both of them dead. And the world is a better place.”
“You know what bothered me the whole time? The goddamn boredom of it. Standing out there for two whole days. I can deal with bloodshed when I have to, but boredom I just can’t stand.”
“Don’t worry,” Cheeon said. “I’ll give you the bloodshed long before the boredom.”
Marium dropped the unfinished cigarette into the snow. He zipped his coat to the neck and stretched on gloves, then pulled the wool hat over ears flush from cold. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Cheeon.”
“I’m not.”
“Think about what I offered you, please.”
“And you think about that phone call your wife will get today. Imagine her there on the line when she hears it, hand on her belly. There’s nothing on earth will stop that phone call now. You think about that, guy.”
He walked back into the heat of his cabin, leaving the door unlatched behind him.
VI
S lone entered an old mining camp that had morphed into a shadow town without name, a commune pushpinned into the base of a bluff, mostly inaccessible by road. Beyond this place lay so many miles of tundra whole states could fit on its frozen breadth.
All the day before he had crawled through wilderness, on paths beneath canopies of cottonwood and birch that held most of the snow from recent fall. Only a six-inch pad of snow on these paths, but even in four-wheel drive with tire chains he had to crawl. He could tell that others from the village had recently crossed these trails: in trucks, on snow machines, on four-wheelers. Hours after nightfall he’d parked off the path and let the engine idle through the night for warmth. He ate from the food he’d taken from home, drank melted snow and wished he’d remembered to bring whiskey. Podded in a quilt across the back seat, he pressed his boy’s T-shirt to his face and, inhaling its scent, he slept till light.
When he entered the mining camp the following day it was already near dark, the snow coming slantwise in sheets. The bluff above blocked the sinking sun and brought on early night. A memory stabbed at him then: he and his father here for a purpose he didn’t know, nor could he know if the memory was even real. He left the truck between a bulldozer and a thousand-gallon fuel tank on four squat legs like a white rhino. In the onset dark, firelight began to burn in rude cabins and wood-frame buildings.
He walked along the unplowed center road, on snow waffled by truck tires. He saw snow machines in various states of dismantle, drays with wheels deformed by rust, truck tires in a heap. Empty pallets stacked for firewood. Lynx pelts splayed on racks, a pyramid of car batteries, sleds of birch, the well house to his right. Fifty-five-gallon drums everywhere, a slouched wanigan. Across the road a Quonset hut collapsed at its center, and beside it a full-sized school bus, its morning yellow gone beige, the windows shattered, gaping like kicked-out teeth.
He found a two-story inn with steel kerosene cans piled under the porch awning next to pole wood. Inside, an inky shadow spilled through rooms. With a fingernail he tapped the door’s glass pane, then tapped again. The woman waved him in without turning to see
“Where’s your wife, Cheeon?”
“It don’t matter. Not no more.”
Marium lit another cigarette and shifted his body against the doorframe.
“I was on a raid one time, down in glacier country, outside Juneau. Before I came back up here for good, when my first marriage went to shit. A guy shot dead his wife in their hunting cabin. He wouldn’t come out. A rich city fucker. Owned a company, cell phone towers, I think. After we were out there two straight days around the cabin he finally started shooting at us, shooting like crazy. We had to burn the place. We shot back for a while and then just burned it. Both of the bodies were nothing but charcoal stains when we went in.”
“A rich fucker and his rich bitch wife, both of them dead. And the world is a better place.”
“You know what bothered me the whole time? The goddamn boredom of it. Standing out there for two whole days. I can deal with bloodshed when I have to, but boredom I just can’t stand.”
“Don’t worry,” Cheeon said. “I’ll give you the bloodshed long before the boredom.”
Marium dropped the unfinished cigarette into the snow. He zipped his coat to the neck and stretched on gloves, then pulled the wool hat over ears flush from cold. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Cheeon.”
“I’m not.”
“Think about what I offered you, please.”
“And you think about that phone call your wife will get today. Imagine her there on the line when she hears it, hand on her belly. There’s nothing on earth will stop that phone call now. You think about that, guy.”
He walked back into the heat of his cabin, leaving the door unlatched behind him.
VI
S lone entered an old mining camp that had morphed into a shadow town without name, a commune pushpinned into the base of a bluff, mostly inaccessible by road. Beyond this place lay so many miles of tundra whole states could fit on its frozen breadth.
All the day before he had crawled through wilderness, on paths beneath canopies of cottonwood and birch that held most of the snow from recent fall. Only a six-inch pad of snow on these paths, but even in four-wheel drive with tire chains he had to crawl. He could tell that others from the village had recently crossed these trails: in trucks, on snow machines, on four-wheelers. Hours after nightfall he’d parked off the path and let the engine idle through the night for warmth. He ate from the food he’d taken from home, drank melted snow and wished he’d remembered to bring whiskey. Podded in a quilt across the back seat, he pressed his boy’s T-shirt to his face and, inhaling its scent, he slept till light.
When he entered the mining camp the following day it was already near dark, the snow coming slantwise in sheets. The bluff above blocked the sinking sun and brought on early night. A memory stabbed at him then: he and his father here for a purpose he didn’t know, nor could he know if the memory was even real. He left the truck between a bulldozer and a thousand-gallon fuel tank on four squat legs like a white rhino. In the onset dark, firelight began to burn in rude cabins and wood-frame buildings.
He walked along the unplowed center road, on snow waffled by truck tires. He saw snow machines in various states of dismantle, drays with wheels deformed by rust, truck tires in a heap. Empty pallets stacked for firewood. Lynx pelts splayed on racks, a pyramid of car batteries, sleds of birch, the well house to his right. Fifty-five-gallon drums everywhere, a slouched wanigan. Across the road a Quonset hut collapsed at its center, and beside it a full-sized school bus, its morning yellow gone beige, the windows shattered, gaping like kicked-out teeth.
He found a two-story inn with steel kerosene cans piled under the porch awning next to pole wood. Inside, an inky shadow spilled through rooms. With a fingernail he tapped the door’s glass pane, then tapped again. The woman waved him in without turning to see
Similar Books
