what illness had just walked out of this winter night.
She was bent before a woodstove. “Very late in the season for travelers,” she said, and turned then to look at Slone.
She wore men’s snow boots and clothing of odd design, a project of marmot, caribou, and wolf. A storm of brittle hair to her waist, eyeglasses missing a lens. She jabbed into the flame with a brass poker. Halfway up the wall were drums of condensed milk, fifty-kilogram sacks of sugar, flour, rice, cans of apple butter and spinach in shrink-wrap. Against the opposite wall stacks of ammunition, .22- and .223-caliber, bird shot and buckshot. On a nail hung a model human skeleton from some school’s anatomy class—it wore a red Santa’s hat, a cigarette crammed between its teeth.
“I was here once,” Slone said. “As a child.”
The woman moved from the stove to the corkboard behind the front counter, a collage of photos tacked to it, most dulled sepia by the decades, some more recent with robust color.
“Well, then your picture might be here. We take every traveler’s picture who comes through. What year was it, you say?”
“I was a kid here with my father. Why were we here?”
“He might’ve had a gold or silver claim. Most all of us came for that, unless you were scientists from the college or else hunters or trappers. Them scientists have been coming steady for the past decade, I’d say, on their way north. Every week there’s something on the radio about glaciers melting and the world heating up. I told them scientists: last year it was fifty below and the year before that fifty-eight below and you can take my word, fellas, they feel the same in the lungs.”
“That’s my father,” and he pointed into the mix of photos at a bearded man whose features told of neither place nor age, his eyes with no trace of the blue Slone recalled from youth. His father had long ago left off appearing in his dreams. He’d catch himself going weeks or months without remembering the man. Without wanting or needing to.
She removed the partially concealed photo from the board. “If this is your father, then this must be you here next to him. Handsome little fella.”
She handed the photo to Slone. “That’s probably twenty-five years ago,” she said. “Judging from the film. They don’t make that kind anymore, haven’t for a while now, or at least I haven’t been able to order any of it from the catalog. I miss that kind of film.”
It had been so long since he’d looked upon his father’s face, and upon his own as a child, that the somber pair in the photo seemed holograms, ghost-town twins of themselves. His stomach tore at the top. He could make out Bailey just barely in his own boyhood stare.
“I can keep this?”
“It’s more yours than mine,” she said. “I only click a button. Your face belongs to you, fella. It’s a good-lookin’ face.”
“That one too?” He pointed to the newest photo, pinned to the far right corner of the corkboard.
“You know this one? She was just here. You missed her by a week and a half. She stayed a few nights. Strange thing is she shrieked a little when I took that picture. That was something new to me, I’d say. Who’s she to you?”
“My family.”
“That’s an odd family traveling apart this far out, if I can say so. But you’re welcome to the picture. I make duplicates. I was a photographer before I came into the country. Where’re you in from?”
“Keelut.”
“There’s no road from there to here. Not directly.”
“Not directly.”
“Been here thirty years or more and I can say there’s no easy road from there to here. My husband and me came up into this country from the lower forty-eight, to stake our claims. And here we still are. Most others are gone except for the twenty-odd of us. We like it, though. The others left for oil, when they were saying oil was the new silver and gold. Nothing quite matches precious metals, you ask me. We did mine this place bare,
She was bent before a woodstove. “Very late in the season for travelers,” she said, and turned then to look at Slone.
She wore men’s snow boots and clothing of odd design, a project of marmot, caribou, and wolf. A storm of brittle hair to her waist, eyeglasses missing a lens. She jabbed into the flame with a brass poker. Halfway up the wall were drums of condensed milk, fifty-kilogram sacks of sugar, flour, rice, cans of apple butter and spinach in shrink-wrap. Against the opposite wall stacks of ammunition, .22- and .223-caliber, bird shot and buckshot. On a nail hung a model human skeleton from some school’s anatomy class—it wore a red Santa’s hat, a cigarette crammed between its teeth.
“I was here once,” Slone said. “As a child.”
The woman moved from the stove to the corkboard behind the front counter, a collage of photos tacked to it, most dulled sepia by the decades, some more recent with robust color.
“Well, then your picture might be here. We take every traveler’s picture who comes through. What year was it, you say?”
“I was a kid here with my father. Why were we here?”
“He might’ve had a gold or silver claim. Most all of us came for that, unless you were scientists from the college or else hunters or trappers. Them scientists have been coming steady for the past decade, I’d say, on their way north. Every week there’s something on the radio about glaciers melting and the world heating up. I told them scientists: last year it was fifty below and the year before that fifty-eight below and you can take my word, fellas, they feel the same in the lungs.”
“That’s my father,” and he pointed into the mix of photos at a bearded man whose features told of neither place nor age, his eyes with no trace of the blue Slone recalled from youth. His father had long ago left off appearing in his dreams. He’d catch himself going weeks or months without remembering the man. Without wanting or needing to.
She removed the partially concealed photo from the board. “If this is your father, then this must be you here next to him. Handsome little fella.”
She handed the photo to Slone. “That’s probably twenty-five years ago,” she said. “Judging from the film. They don’t make that kind anymore, haven’t for a while now, or at least I haven’t been able to order any of it from the catalog. I miss that kind of film.”
It had been so long since he’d looked upon his father’s face, and upon his own as a child, that the somber pair in the photo seemed holograms, ghost-town twins of themselves. His stomach tore at the top. He could make out Bailey just barely in his own boyhood stare.
“I can keep this?”
“It’s more yours than mine,” she said. “I only click a button. Your face belongs to you, fella. It’s a good-lookin’ face.”
“That one too?” He pointed to the newest photo, pinned to the far right corner of the corkboard.
“You know this one? She was just here. You missed her by a week and a half. She stayed a few nights. Strange thing is she shrieked a little when I took that picture. That was something new to me, I’d say. Who’s she to you?”
“My family.”
“That’s an odd family traveling apart this far out, if I can say so. But you’re welcome to the picture. I make duplicates. I was a photographer before I came into the country. Where’re you in from?”
“Keelut.”
“There’s no road from there to here. Not directly.”
“Not directly.”
“Been here thirty years or more and I can say there’s no easy road from there to here. My husband and me came up into this country from the lower forty-eight, to stake our claims. And here we still are. Most others are gone except for the twenty-odd of us. We like it, though. The others left for oil, when they were saying oil was the new silver and gold. Nothing quite matches precious metals, you ask me. We did mine this place bare,
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