you should see what she does with them.”
I imagined this man’s mother in a floral muumuu, beating the shit out of a sea otter on the front porch.
Apparently, what she actually does is decorate the cases. Causing no small amount of pride in her son, she was recently commissioned to make one for a Jerry Falwell—like figure I should have heard of but hadn’t. At the base, she Krazy Glued a bleeding crucifix of red rhinestones and her logo: A Case of Class by Melina. He handed me her card.
“I’m Earl,” he said, stiffly shaking my hand in such close proximity to his chest, it gave the illusion of palsy.
“Sloane.” I shook back, trying on the the-less-you-talk-the-harder-you-are theory of man-speak.
“This your first time going to Alaska?”
“It is.”
“Well, she’s a beauty.”
“Is she prettier than a boat?”
Earl opened his pouch, took one look at The Amityville Horror, shrugged, and saw it as a repository for chewing gum.
“Prettier. But she has a dark side. Weird stuff goes down. I don’t think people think of Alaska like that.”
“That’s more or less exactly how they think of it,” I said, and proceeded to index every ax murder I knew of on my fingers.
“So, Earl, you can see how the stories become geographically dense and objectively creepier as you move farther north and west.”
“I guess so.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it ...”
Earl proceeded to tell me about a murder case in which a bakery owner was making brioche by day and picking up strippers at a club near the airport by night. This particular baker charmed the strippers into his prop plane and took them to one of the many secluded islands off Alaska’s coast. Once on the island, the man’s demeanor changed dramatically. He forced the strippers to get completely naked, pulled out a crossbow, and informed them that they had twenty minutes to hide, at which point he was going to hunt them down and kill them. As sure as the dough rises, that’s what he did. This man turned from baker to butcher, murdering about twenty girls in this way.
To be naked ever in Alaska is already to be inconvenienced. The place is exactly as cold as you think it is. But the most shocking part of the story was that the teller knew the subject. Earl and his mother and his mother’s BeDazzler lived down the road from him. On his way to his old logging job, Earl would get a coffee and bear claw (almond, not keratin) from him.
“He made the best jelly doughnuts I’ve ever tasted,” Earl said, in complete and total seriousness.
TOMORROW IS THE WEDDING OF JEFF, THE driver of our vehicle, and my dear friend April, the shotgun holder. Here I am referring to the term for the front seat of a car. I think we can all agree this warrants clarification, having nothing to do with killing sprees or unplanned pregnancies. The event has all the trappings of a destination wedding—jet lag, group hikes, a plane ticket for which I could exchange a month’s rent—but in fact, our little community of tourists is small. One hundred twenty out of the one hundred twenty-five guests are native Alaskans. I am one of the other five, a member of the bridal party. We are a nervous band of outsiders. We are quick to highlight our own ignorance, blurting out things like “I don’t know how to play ice hockey!” when someone casually points to a pond. We think if we surrender our pride early, the state will have mercy on us. The paranoia about wildlife is, frankly, a whole other animal. See: Is that a wolf? I thought I just saw a wolf. Oh, wait, that’s a dog. And it’s not moving. I think that’s a lawn dog.
Because Canada, the Great White North, is a very dark place, when our plane descended through the clouds, it was like landing in a secret city. I had the same feeling the first time I flew to England. After hours of ocean, I experienced an awe at the reality of the world. To have so much nothing and then something:
I imagined this man’s mother in a floral muumuu, beating the shit out of a sea otter on the front porch.
Apparently, what she actually does is decorate the cases. Causing no small amount of pride in her son, she was recently commissioned to make one for a Jerry Falwell—like figure I should have heard of but hadn’t. At the base, she Krazy Glued a bleeding crucifix of red rhinestones and her logo: A Case of Class by Melina. He handed me her card.
“I’m Earl,” he said, stiffly shaking my hand in such close proximity to his chest, it gave the illusion of palsy.
“Sloane.” I shook back, trying on the the-less-you-talk-the-harder-you-are theory of man-speak.
“This your first time going to Alaska?”
“It is.”
“Well, she’s a beauty.”
“Is she prettier than a boat?”
Earl opened his pouch, took one look at The Amityville Horror, shrugged, and saw it as a repository for chewing gum.
“Prettier. But she has a dark side. Weird stuff goes down. I don’t think people think of Alaska like that.”
“That’s more or less exactly how they think of it,” I said, and proceeded to index every ax murder I knew of on my fingers.
“So, Earl, you can see how the stories become geographically dense and objectively creepier as you move farther north and west.”
“I guess so.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it ...”
Earl proceeded to tell me about a murder case in which a bakery owner was making brioche by day and picking up strippers at a club near the airport by night. This particular baker charmed the strippers into his prop plane and took them to one of the many secluded islands off Alaska’s coast. Once on the island, the man’s demeanor changed dramatically. He forced the strippers to get completely naked, pulled out a crossbow, and informed them that they had twenty minutes to hide, at which point he was going to hunt them down and kill them. As sure as the dough rises, that’s what he did. This man turned from baker to butcher, murdering about twenty girls in this way.
To be naked ever in Alaska is already to be inconvenienced. The place is exactly as cold as you think it is. But the most shocking part of the story was that the teller knew the subject. Earl and his mother and his mother’s BeDazzler lived down the road from him. On his way to his old logging job, Earl would get a coffee and bear claw (almond, not keratin) from him.
“He made the best jelly doughnuts I’ve ever tasted,” Earl said, in complete and total seriousness.
TOMORROW IS THE WEDDING OF JEFF, THE driver of our vehicle, and my dear friend April, the shotgun holder. Here I am referring to the term for the front seat of a car. I think we can all agree this warrants clarification, having nothing to do with killing sprees or unplanned pregnancies. The event has all the trappings of a destination wedding—jet lag, group hikes, a plane ticket for which I could exchange a month’s rent—but in fact, our little community of tourists is small. One hundred twenty out of the one hundred twenty-five guests are native Alaskans. I am one of the other five, a member of the bridal party. We are a nervous band of outsiders. We are quick to highlight our own ignorance, blurting out things like “I don’t know how to play ice hockey!” when someone casually points to a pond. We think if we surrender our pride early, the state will have mercy on us. The paranoia about wildlife is, frankly, a whole other animal. See: Is that a wolf? I thought I just saw a wolf. Oh, wait, that’s a dog. And it’s not moving. I think that’s a lawn dog.
Because Canada, the Great White North, is a very dark place, when our plane descended through the clouds, it was like landing in a secret city. I had the same feeling the first time I flew to England. After hours of ocean, I experienced an awe at the reality of the world. To have so much nothing and then something:
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