Letters from Alaska: The Summer I was Sixteen

The summer I was sixteen, I lived downtown. Next to the steaming,crashing, chalky green power plant on the river, the streets are set out in a grid, in a shabby little tribute to small-town America. Mossy, rotting miner's cabins sit abjectly in the corners of grassy lots, the initials of once-upon-a-time-owners on a sidewalk filling with grit. Ranch homes, with flat, tar-paper roofs, designed for the hip homeowners of the 1950's lined the streets in various stages of disrepair; originally designed as spec homes for the Southern California suburbs that were planted on top of orange groves, they were poorly suited for Alaska. I lived below one of these, in the private-entry, oxymoronic "daylight basement" , which filled with mucky brown water every fall, spring, or rainstorm.

My boyfriend, much older than me worked nights. I didn't have any friends at the time, I had chosen to spend most of my time alone, watching the river go by, or watching late-night infomercials on our stolen cable. But early in the spring, one of Tyson's old-time friends had gotten engaged. To his step-sister, Laura. Their parents had met in Alaska; Laura had been sprung from Connecticut's foster system, endowed with $40K in her father's life insurance benefits. Her mother, who'd deserted her in Boston at the age of 6, was very exited to re-unite, and convinced her to move to Fairbanks to start over. She didn't know anyone in town. Bisexual. Her tits each have their own name, and her last boyfriend was 45, and wore lizard-skin boots. Laura decided to spend most of her money on the essentials: purebred dogs, jacked up cars, and a slot machine. And drugs. Lots of those.

Laura got pregnant, and was my fiercely loyal best friend within a few weeks, and I liked her instantly. She came from a bad home life, like me, but she liked me and told me so, something I couldn't get enough of. She was tough, but sweet, and looked like a vampire. White skin, pale green eyes, and bright red curly-curly hair made her look too exotic for the small town we lived in.

We are driving down College road. Wind is flying hot and wild through her teal-blue Tracker. We laugh at everything. Turn up the music louder. She tips and flicks her cigarettes in a way that punctuates her sentences and make themmatter. We drive 80mph, out to Barb's house; she sleeps with a handgun under her pillow, is a small time dealer, mostly coke, pot, some crack, a little meth when it's around. She might have mushrooms. Do you think she can get us mescaline? Laura smiles like a wolf, cigarette lodged between lip rings and crooked teeth. Who knows?

Weaving through the colourful trailers, jaunty little flower gardens planted in tires and old boots, we get to the retro pink double-wide with white-plastic picket fencing in miniature. Barb has a big family, brother under a car, little sister dancing at the strip joint on Cushman. Barb doesn't sell much, but she talks big, keeps the company of many creepers, cookers and cabbies. She hops in the car, gun tucked into her purse, finger on the trigger like you're not supposed to.She directs us to a shady drop off spot in the industrial side of town, where Jesus, who smells like a corpse, and makes awkward small talk, sells Laura more coke, some crack and some pot, totaling the price on a dingy hand-held calculator with the authority of a Safeway clerk. He is missing his front teeth, but has nice dark, afraid eyes. I ask about mescaline, and try to seem cool. He calls some people.

Laura likes to drive, smoke, tell stories. Marlboro Wides flicking, she calls me "Girl". I sip at a big gulp cup filled with tequila and pineapple juice, giggling at her every word. Everything is shining and alive; I can hear the street lamps buzzing, casting a golden glow. Where did this chick come from? We get the call on her cell phone, loop around to a Pizza Hut parking lot, tires squealing. She eyes a University cop, and tells me to suck on pennies, and grabs a gross handful from her ashtray.

"They react with your spit, make it so you'll pass a breathalyzer. You can drink as much as you want, and the pigs can't tell."

"How? Like the copper oxidizes or something?" I had no reason to hate cops.

"Girl! I don't fucking know! Just fucking do it, so you don't get fucking arrested!"

The pennies taste like blood. I loll them against my tongue bar, my lip ring. Clink-clink-clink.

We meet Jesus again, this time at his house. Like Barb, he's the middle man of anything he can get his hands on, but is needlessly careful, maybe to feel important. We climb the stairs, more like a ladder, up to a colossal pile of garbage on a porch. Inside his baby, Sativa cries. Bob Marley posters on the wall, the smell of rotting shit, catbox, old milk and mold. His girlfriend doesn't look at any of us, but takes the baby away. Jesus pulls out two small pills, takes our money, looking soberly around his house.

"Mescaline takes awhile, remember?" He pockets our $60.

We nod. Sure.

I don't sleep anymore anyways.

Back at Laura's, she crushes up rocks with a lighter, snorts them. Her apartment is underground too, but it's filled with dog piss and porn. She snorts a few more lines, rests her hands on her pregnant belly. It's 3am, but the orange-juice sunlight of summer in Interior Alaska streams in every window. I look at the wood paneling around the room, unsure if the wavy patterns I see are the drugs kicking in, or my hopefulness.

Her dog, Neo, a 'purebred' husky paces, chained to the refrigerator, whimpering and constantly pissing on the carpet in the kitchen. Laura kicks him out of the way to refrigerator, retrieving cans of soda. She turns the television on, and the DVD intro of Animal House plays on repeat for longer than I can tell.

We sit on the couch for at least an hour. Laura calls some people. Darkness creeps into my field of vision, and roots are sprouting slowly over the television, the table. We are underground, I remember. I stumble to the bathroom and curl up in the shower; I needed to find a safe place that was well-lit. The fluorescent light beams a strobing green over the cracked porcelain surfaces. The cracks are spiderwebs, then pieces of eggshell. They threaten to break apart. I gasp and press my face into the cool tiles.

"Can you believe I'm due in two months?" Laura is there, in the door, White Zombie shirt hiked up and over her belly. Stretch marks glow purple, and the dark line contrasts with her otherwise ivory skin. She scratches her belly, pats it.

"Maybe you shouldn't be...doing this kind of thing?" I offer limply. We'd had the same conversation several times. I like the way my voice sounds echoing in the shower. I don't think about cocaine and umbilical cords.

"Look, babies are troopers. My mom did so many drugs when she was pregnant with me- and I'm fine. Kids are total troopers." She pulls down her shirt, and sits on the toilet. "Besides, this is my shit. Don't fucking worry about it, Girl. I can tell he's cool in there. You know? Like I have that thing where you can tell your babies thoughts." The spark and shine of a lighter, and she lights another Marlboro.

I heard the TV from the living room, and it sounds close, too close.Everything might implode, cave in, or fall apart. I fear the ground crumbling beneath me. The world is certainly growing over us, and no one will even know we existed.

"Girl?You look ill. You wanna go for a ride?" She flicks her ash into the sink, and I nod silently.

In the car, we drive out of town. Down a few industrial roads. I sit low in the seat, paranoid, mystified by the clouds overhead, zipping around as if on fast-forward. Lights blare sounds, re-verb and noise. We're speeding, I don't know how fast we are going. Music is blaring, and Laura doesn't look at me. We wait at a stop light for 15 minutes. She turns off the car, and we get out, walk around. It must be broken. I have the feeling that it might be a sign.

We drive to the end of the oldest road in Fairbanks. Out by the dikes, we get out of the car. I want an adventure,  but Laura is scared of moose.

We link arms like girls in middle school. I look down at our feet, careful to step over shit-filled diapers and ancient car parts rearing out of the mossy ground, threatening tetanus.
We walked down a trail that used to be a road; trees had moved in, moss filled the cracks in the sidewalk and pavement. A mailbox hangs askew on a post. Several burned-out house pads and basements sleep in a neat row under the cover of willows and alder. Old cars, their curvy fenders and cloth seats rotting, sat rusted out in the woods. A street sign was rusted beyond recognition, and I tried to imagine the street, 50 years ago. The colour fades out entirely and the wind is voices. I trip on old train tracks, sprouting from the dirt like they were planted there. I hear the train in the distance, forgetting where I was for a moment.

"It sucks that this shit is all abandoned." Laura says, surveying the overgrown street.

"Who do you think lived here?" I ask, imagining what kind of life Fairbanks must have offered in the 1940s. Newly paved roads, electricity. "Do you think this place is haunted?" I see shadows in the trees. Shadows in my mind's eye of old photographs, sketchy and animated. Men who have Bryllcreem-ed hair and hard eyes, their wives much older looking than they really are, all dead by now.

"How the fuck do I know? Girl, you are weird. That shit fucked you up. What the fuck are you talking about?" She giggles, fingering my hair in that maternal manner that I like. "You're standing out here seeing ghosts and shit. I don't want you getting that shit near my baby." Hand to her belly.

"Fucking possession is real shit. Let's get the fuck out of this creepy fucking ghost shit before my baby gets a fucking ghost in him. I don't like the way you're looking and this shit." She tugs on my sleeve, and I turn away.

We leave, and I don't look back.