There will be a reading tomorrow night at Pima College.
Poet Bob Thompson will be reading in Building A at 8:30.
Our next reading is October 26.
Now, that's the only reading for the year
that's scheduled for a Tuesday.
Everything else is Monday--
I mean Wednesday.
But that's a Tuesday, the 26th, in this building.
And the readers will be three British poets--
Patricia Beer, Adrian Henri, and Pete Morgan.
I hope you can come to the Student Union,
the terrace lounge to meet Mr. Dobler following
tonight's reading, and have some punch and cookies.
Copies of Mr. Dobler's book, The Last Rush North,
will be available for sale, as well as publications
by Blue Moon News and the newest issue of Grilled Flowers
Magazine.
Bruce Dobler is on the creative writing faculty this year.
He was born in Chicago.
He's been a trainman on the Rock Island line and the Illinois
Central railroad, a movie projectionist in Iowa,
a writer and residence at Phillips Exeter Academy,
and a volunteer fireman in Putney, Vermont.
He's published three books--
the first, I Made It Myself with M.L. Landress.
The second, Icepick, a documentary
of a maximum security prison.
And most recently, this year, The Last Rush North,
a documentary on the building of the Alaskan pipeline,
and he will be reading to us tonight from that book.
I read the book in one sitting on Monday
because I couldn't put it down, and I
know you're going to feel the same when you
hear him read from it tonight.
Mr. Bruce Dobler.
[APPLAUSE]
That's right.
I'm going to read it to you in one sitting,
so you better get comfortable.
I suppose I should say something about why
I came to be writing this stuff called documentary fiction.
October-- no, December, 1972, Esquire Magazine,
there was an article by Tom Wolfe.
It was entitled, "Why They Aren't Writing the Great
American Novel Anymore."
He suggested that people weren't really making
a record at the time in which they lived,
the events that surrounded them.
We went through the change of the '60s,
and everybody ignored it.
There really isn't much to account
for all these fantastic things that happened.
He says the writers who despised Arthur Hailey ought
to go out and try to do the journalistic legwork,
and digging, and just hard uncovering a facts
that Hailey does, and do it well.
And try to write a better book about it.
I did, and for my efforts got called, in The New York Times,
a middlebrow Arthur Hailey.
What I'm trying to do with my fiction
is to capture honestly the spirit and the mood of a place
and a time that would be inaccessible to most people.
I suppose a war novel does the same thing.
A war novel opens somewhere in the South Pacific,
and you see the battle through the eyes
of the generals, the sergeants, the enlisted men, the enemy,
civilians, whoever.
And I'm really-- basically, you might
say that this novel about the pipeline
could be perhaps considered somewhere along the pipeline,
because it's doing the same thing, or it tries to.
The only way it seems to read a section of a novel
is to find a theme, something that runs through,
and so I've picked the story of a woman named Jill Jones.
She's a 35-year-old, short, dark-haired truck driver, who
brings home about $650 a week.
She's living in a camp on the North Slope,
or just short of the North Slope up near the Brooks Range--
a camp called Wiseman.
She's got a boyfriend who's an airplane pilot.
And I guess I'll open with a story about her--
a newspaper story.
Just a little bit of a news story anyhow.
"Jill Jones was featured on the front page
of piping hot news with a series of pictures
down the left hand column and a full five column 36 point head.
The kicker, in 18 point italics, said, Jill Jones gets her fill.
And the head beneath it was woman worker
wows Wiseman wiseguys.
Pert pretty Jill Jones stands 5 foot 5 tall,
and doesn't weigh much more than a single set
of tire chains for her WABCO dump truck,
but every day, for 11 and sometimes 12 dusty hours,
she hauls fill for the gravel road that
is nearing completion between the Yukon River
and Pump Station 1.
Although some of the men at Wiseman
made the expected jibes about women drivers and liberation,
Jill takes it all in stride.
'Most of the fellas have been real sweet
once they got over feeling strange about having me around.
I guess there's a few who think we belong in the kitchen
and not behind the wheel of a truck,
but the first time I got out and did men's work,
and found it was no harder than women's work and paid more,
I was hooked.'
Asked if she was bothered by male chauvinist
attitudes on the job, Jill tucked a curl
under her hard hat and allowed that it got to her from time
to time.
'But mostly, I don't have time to think about that.
We're in competition with the other camps
to build the most haul road.
And all day, mister, I'm in that truck and just flat boogieing.'
According to Jill, a lot of the men
who complained the most at first now
say that camp life is more pleasant with women on.
See page 4, women.
Jill circled slowly above Sukakpak Mountain
with its oddly canted side peak sticking out
in the direction of the haul road.
All day she had been working a material pit near Sukakpak,
taking on gravel from the pair of loaders
and hauling ass down to the south end
of a road near a crossing of the Koyukuk River in Middle Fork.
The article had caused her some embarrassment,
phrases taken out of context, or observations
condensed to an approximation of what she'd said.
The photographer had taken some nice pictures,
but the tape recordings he'd sent back of the interview
must have been considerably revised."
I think I'll just skip a little bit to when she and Wiggins are
on the ground back in camp.
"A half hour later, instead of engines roaring in their ears,
there was the rush of water from the shower
and the soft booming sound of the metal partition flexing
in and out, as Wiggins rhythmically pressed
Jill's buttocks for support.
She had both legs wrapped around his waist and clung
to his neck, eyes closed.
Water streaming, sometimes off his back,
sometimes on her upturned face.
She wished he didn't boom so on the wall,
but he was getting close now, and his hands tightened
spasmodically on her ass.
The shower curtain slid aside, and Jill, eyes closed,
fumbled for it, trying to pull it shut.
The fabric resisted.
She saw a close set pair of eyes under bushy dark eyebrows--
the camp manager.
Jill knew she mustn't scream.
Instead she backhanded the man across the bridge of his nose,
yanked the curtain away, and called him a bastard.
Wiggins pulled out.
Until Jill swore, he hadn't realized
that anything was wrong.
'It's that damn creep who runs this joint,' she said.
'I think I gave him a bloody nose teach.
Him to stick it where it doesn't belong.'
'Jesus,' Wiggins said, 'He'll fire me, sure as hell.'
Jill peeked out.
'He's gone now.
Maybe he didn't see who you were.
Get your clothes together.
Get upstairs to your room.'
She pushed trousers at him. 'Don't dry off.
Just move ass.'
Wiggins ran, clutching underwear, shirt,
and shoes in his arms.
As he rounded the corner out of sight,
the resident camp manager and the teamster steward
appeared at the other end.
Jill stepped back in the shower.
She was on good terms with the steward, a tall Italian fellow.
His name was pronounced Gallucci,
but it was spelled funny.
She never could get it right.
'She's in that one there.'
Good.
He did have a bloody nose, and was still holding it.
She might have been in there, the steward said,
but I don't know that she's in there now.
I know I'm certainly not about to pull
a shower open on a woman.
His voice was mellow, reasonable, and, as usual,
dripping with implied threats.
'Suppose she thought I was attempting to rape
or molest her.
I could get worse than a bloody nose,
and no jury would lift a finger against her.'
Jill soaped herself under the shower.
Gallucci, or whatever his name was,
had come from New York, where he managed some big nightclub.
He never said he had connections with the underworld,
but he did little to discourage such assumptions.
A timekeeper had come up to him during the lunch break
and asked how to pronounce his name.
The steward had gotten up, stared at the kid until his
clipboard began to tremble, and without a trace of a smile
said, 'With great respect.'
The RCM was running water in a sink
now and tearing paper towels off the wall.
'Ah,' he went a few times, and his voice came back to normal.
'Jones,' the resident camp manager shouted,
'is that you in there?'
Jill turned up the water and ignored him.
If there were wet footprints leading to Wiggins' room,
they'd be dry by the time he found out Bill was gone.
'Perhaps the young lady, if indeed it
is a young lady in there, can't hear you over the shower.
I suggest we wait.
Of course, this is a call out, you realize?
I get four hours pay for a call out at the end of my shift.'
'They hear us, all right," the RCM muttered.
'I knew it wasn't going to work having women in these camps.
They never should have let them in.'
'You should have told the reporter that.
It would have been an interesting aside in the story
about Jill.'
There was silence out there.
Jill washed herself thoroughly, rinsed, and then
shut off the water.
She heard the floor creak outside and pulled the curtain,
making no attempt to cover herself.
As she'd expected, the RCM made a big show
of averting his eyes.
'Hiya, Gallooch.' The Italian turned his great dark eyes
on Jill, and she found herself reaching for a towel.
Dark eyes in a man--
if a man had good eyes, she could forgive the rest.
'Hi yourself,' he said. 'Is someone in there with you I
don't see from here?'
'He's gone, obviously,' the RCM said.
'But I saw the two of them in there,
heard them down the hall.
I got a witness.
One of the guys was taking a shower.
He heard them in there going at it.'
The Italian stared at the ceiling, lost in thought.
'You could hear two people making love under a shower all
the way down the hall?'
The RCM stomped up onto the adjoining shower
and put his knee against the wall,
popping the partition in and out for demonstration.
The steward nodded. 'I always thought these shower stalls
were too damn sleazy.'
'Anyhow, this ain't a court of law.
This is my camp, and I'm the manager.
I saw the two of them in there, never mind her assaulting me.
And I want her and the guy on the next plane out.'
He stopped talking and looked at Jill,
who had slipped into a robe.
'In fact, it could have been that pilot, Wiggins,
who was in there.
Was it Wiggins?' 'I never ask their names,' Jill said.
'Beside, I had my eyes closed.
They all look alike in the dark.'
[LAUGHTER]
'You don't actually know that it was Wiggins.'
The RCM raved his arms. 'Ah, to hell with Wiggins.
Who gives a damn?
It's her that's causing the trouble.
I caught her having intercourse in the shower,
and I'm going to see she's terminated.
You're the steward.
I wanted you here as a witness.
The girl admits it.'
'The woman admits it.' 'Girl, woman, what's the difference?
You did it, didn't you?'
Jill took her cue from the Italian and shook her head
enthusiastically. 'Sure did.'
'You can pack bags, sister,' the RCM said.
'You're going down the road.'
'I'm still waiting to hear what you're going to type
in on the termination where it asks for a reason,' Gallucci
said.
'That's right,' Jill said stepping down off the shower
platform and backing the RCM up against the sink.
'You show me in any contract and union agreement where
the teamsters say they won't fuck in the showers.'
Two days later, when the business agent
backed Jill 100%, the RCM told the steward bitterly
that he should have kept the dorms separate.
'If the boys and the girls want to visit,
they can visit in the mess hall and the rec hall,
but not in each other's rooms.
Not in the showers.'
'I don't think they want to visit,' the steward told him
after much thought.
'In fact, I'm sure of it.
What they want to do is fuck, and I don't think you want them
doing that in the mess hall and the rec hall.'
The RCM was Irish, a Catholic.
At times like this, it showed in his manner and voice.
He folded his hands and looked up.
Sure and it was a sad day for the camps
when the women came into them.
It happened in prison.
It happened in the Army, and it happened in pipeline camps.
Somebody who had gone along quietly
would suddenly and thoroughly go to pieces,
and, as if to make the outer world conform to the inner,
begin breaking up his room.
Sometimes it would happen in the mess hall, the laundry,
or even on the job, but usually it
happened in the man's own room.
Wiseman's first incident occurred
during the middle of the afternoon
when the camp was almost deserted.
An oiler, Peter Larsen, a stolid melancholy Norwegian,
told his roommate he wasn't going to show.
Didn't feel like going.
Felt sick.
The roommate went to work without giving them
a second thought.
When the bull cook opened the door to Peter's room
at 2:00 to make the beds and bring in fresh towels,
he froze in the doorway, unable to make sense out
of what he was seeing.
The wall paneling had holes in it, some the size of a fist,
others two or three feet across.
The window was broken.
The drapes were stuffed in one of the larger holes,
along with the shredded remains of a pillow.
The mattresses were sprawled in one corner,
and the bed frames had been wrenched apart.
One of the side rails dangled from the ceiling,
where it had made a deep gash.
The light fixture was gone, two wires dangling in its place.
The table had been ripped from the wall.
The closets had no doors.
All of the drawers had been removed,
their contents scattered, the drawers
themselves smashed to kindling.
There was a loud shattering crash in the toilet.
The bull cook tiptoed to the center of the corridor
and peeked around the corner in time
to see Peter, his face twisted in anger,
smashed the porcelain sink torn from the wall
into a toilet bowl.
Water ran out across the floor.
Peter came out of the dorm a moment later,
howled at the bull cook, and suddenly
veered off down a line of barracks.
The RCM, the bull cook, and two security men
followed a few minutes later, but Peter
had headed across the river toward a large dome of rock.
While the security man in charge called for more help,
the other three followed Peter at some distance.
A moment later they saw him emerge on the knob,
throw back his head, and scream piercingly
at the distant mountaintops.
Then he dropped to his hands and his knees,
still shouting and howling.
'Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,' the RCM breathed,
'do you suppose he's in pain?
Or is he just off his noggin?'
Peter stop scrambling, looked around,
and slunk off to one side of the knob out of sight.
Then he appeared halfway down running, waving his arms,
tearing at branches and low bushes growing
among the cracks and shelves of the dome.
Peter was a big man, 6' 3", a solid 190 pounds.
The guards, numbering eight, were equally divided
among ex-cops and those who considered their jobs
that of watchmen.
The watchmen went out.
The men would form a large circle
and observe Peter, attempting to keep him in range so he
wouldn't be lost.
Later, when the workers came back into camp,
they might find someone he'd listen to, maybe talk him down
off the knob.
In the meantime, he might tire himself out.
The medic came, conferred with the camp manager,
said he wanted no part of sticking a needle in the man
to quiet him down.
He wasn't hurting himself or anyone else
out there on the rocks.
The RCM approached the knob and called Peter's name.
Peter began biting the bushes and screaming
through his teeth.
'Poor fellow's gone daft,' the RCM said and went in the shade
to sit down.
When the men came back, it turned out
that Peter had no friends, not even the crane operator who
usually worked with him.
Some of the biggest men volunteered,
and under those circumstances, even the medic
was willing to give it a try.
A party of 20 approached the knob.
Peter watched them warily.
Another 100 or more workers stood along
the banks of the river watching, among them Jill Jones and Bill
Wiggins.
If they got Peter down, there would certainly be a medevac.
Wiggins was already turning requests down,
even though several people literally
begged him for a chance to get into Fairbanks.
He would take Jill and five strong men, maybe the medic.
Half of the men in the group approaching Peter
were doing so out of a hope for a ride with him into town.
'Peter, come on down,' one of them called.
'Hey, old buddy,' another shouted.
'How's about a nice plane ride to see the pretty country?'
The medic told them to all shut up.
Peter was bouncing up and down as the men fanned out
and surrounded the knob.
He looked in all directions.
As the medic was preparing his hypo,
Peter screamed and threw himself off the knob,
tripping on an upended slab of rock,
sprawling in the gravel at the feet of the men.
Four piled on immediately, and Peter lay so
still that, one by one, they let go,
fearing he was unconscious or worse.
Peter lay contentedly at their feet,
staring at the fingers of one hand.
The medic knelt beside him and put the needle back in his bag.
'Peter,' he said, 'I'd like you to get up and come back
to the camp, OK?"
Peter raised his eyes to the medic.
The medic extended his hand, and Peter took it,
allowing himself to be helped up and led back
across the shallow river.
An hour later, the medic called to the flight shack
and said Peter was ready to travel.
He'd taken a mild sedative and should give no trouble.
Of course, he would be strapped in at the rear of the plane.
An ambulance would meet him at the airport by the cab stand.
Wiggins shut his eyes, turning away from the crowd.
'Please,' a man pleaded, pulling at Wiggins' sleeve.
'My girlfriend's in town for the week.
I could see her for an hour or two.
I haven't seen her for three months.
I'll pay, Bill.
Anything, you name it.'
Jill stood to one side, tearing up a sheet of paper
into small pieces.
She put them in a hard hat and whistled through two fingers.
'We'll do it by lottery.
There's five pieces with an X. They go to Fairbanks.'
The men surrounded her, grabbing for numbers.
There were two extra, and Jill and folded them.
'Zeros,' she told the men. 'OK, see what you got.'" Excuse me.
"The fellow who wanted to see his girlfriend whooped loudly.
There were curses, a few cheers.
Five smiling men followed Jill to the medic's shack,
where Peter waited.
They escorted him back to the plane,
and the conversation was about what bars they might go to,
whether or not there would be time to get laid,
who they'd call.
Peter and Jill walked together.
He was docile.
She stood aside to let the others on the plane,
and Peter obediently waited at her side.
She told him to get in, and he sat down,
letting her strap him to the reclining stretcher seat.
The mood in the cabin was festive.
As they took off, the men in front cheered.
'Tommy's elbow room express,' one called out.
Three men began to sing. 'Hooray, hooray,
I'm going away with the men in the little white coats.'
Peter Larson stared quietly up at the ceiling,
lost in thought.
The plane pulled up along the side entry
at the Fairbanks airport.
When Jill opened the door, the man who wanted to call his girl
ran right on into the terminal without waiting
to unstrap Peter.
Wiggins had promised to stay on the ground for three hours,
but threatened that he'd leave anyone who wasn't back in time.
He taxied the plane alongside a small hangar
and asked Jill to meet him by the cab stand.
'I'll call a cab for us to make sure,' she shouted,
but Wiggins couldn't hear her.
'I got a friend home on R&R,' one of the escorts said
in a loud voice. 'I bet he'd come out and get us.
Maybe line us up with a chick.'
'Shit,' another said. 'I only brought 30 bucks.'
He stomped his feet in anger. 'I could have got laid,
and I forgot to bring money.'
The man next to him flashed a roll of bills,
peeling off two hundreds. 'Take this.
Give it to me payday.'
'Let's get Peter inside,' Jill urged.
'Sooner we get them in the ambulance, sooner we can go.'
The terminal lounge was crowded.
The evening ween flight from the camps was due in soon,
bringing back the men coming home on R&R. Girlfriends,
wives, parents, clustered eagerly around the reception
gate for the pipeline flight, craning
their necks at any activity out on the ramp.
The Army had brought in a large contingent of GIs
from Richardson and Anchorage, and they filled up
the center hall waiting for transportation to Wainwright.
Jill, Peter, and the four remaining escorts
moved to the cab ramp, and Jill went outside, looking all
around the parking area.
There was no ambulance.
She came back, and one of the escorts
was gone, making a phone call to his buddy.
She looked at Peter, who stood patiently next to the car
rental desk, and said she'd better call
the hospital, as well as a cab.
She went to the phone.
After several tries, she got a dial tone,
but the hospital line was busy.
The phone wouldn't work at all after that.
She went back to where Peter and the escorts had been
and couldn't find them.
Apparently, the ambulance had come after all.
Wiggins surprised her, catching at her elbow.
'Well, sweetheart,' he said, smiling happily,
'let's go check out the action.'
'I'm not sure if the ambulance came,' she said,
still looking for the escorts.
They went outside.
There was no ambulance.
The escorts weren't around.
'Maybe they put him aboard and left.'
Just then, two of the men came outside and waved from the next
entrance. 'He get off all right?'
One shouted.
And Jill shook her head, hurrying after him.
'I left him with you,' she said. 'Didn't you put him
in the ambulance?'
The two men exchanged glances.
'I thought you said we should call for a cab.'
'No, I went to call for a cab.'
It took 15 minutes, but they eventually
located all five escorts.
None of them knew what had happened to Peter.
'He's lost.' Jill stared across the mob in the waiting room.
'We lost him.
I don't believe it.'
'My girl is coming down to pick me up.
Can I just go?'
Wiggins doubled his fists. 'You bastards lost him.
You can find him.
You leave now, you're not riding back on my plane.'
They spread out and made two passes
through the lounge, Bill explaining to the airport
cop who followed them on the second pass what
they were looking for.
The ambulance came, sitting outside the cab stand, lights
flashing.
The men went outside and began looking
while Bill explained they were having
some difficulty with a patient.
On a hunch, Jill went to the row of Army buses
and, braving the comments, boarded each bus
to look over the men.
On the third bus, still half empty,
she found Peter sitting behind the driver, who
had turned in his seat to talk.
Peter looked at the man with an intent yet blank expression,
as the driver told him loudly what he would do
if he were mayor of Fairbanks.
Jill tapped the driver on the shoulder.
Leaning forward, she explained what
was wrong, who Peter was, where they were taking him.
'I'll be damned,' the driver said as she led Peter off
the bus. 'I didn't ever figure him for a nut.
I thought he was one of us.'"
In a later scene, they're building the haul road,
and there's a ceremony, and Jill Jones
has been picked to dump the last pile of dirt
on about a 360 mile haul road that the company had to build--
just a big long and terribly expensive
gravel road that reaches from Livengood all the way
to Prudhoe Bay.
And there's a big ceremony.
Everybody is lining up for the picture,
and Jill sitting in her truck.
"'Jill,' steward, the Italian, climbed up in the truck and sat
down on the opposite side of the cab.
As high above ground as they were,
no one would see him in the picture.
'Hi, Gallucci,' Jill said in a low voice. 'Hey, why the frown?
Don't you know you're about to become a part of history?
The woman selected to finish one of the most expensive dirt
roads ever built?'
She shrugged and looked out at the cameras, reporters,
workers.
'I'm getting laid off tomorrow.
They said the road was done.
They don't need so many drivers.
I got selected for that, too.'
'Yeah, I heard, but it's not just you, you know.
We're losing eight drivers.
Laborers are dropping 10 men, operators another six.
You go back to town, you'll be out again in a week.
I guarantee it.'
He pulled a card out of his pocket,
scribbled a name and phone number on it,
and pressed it into her hand. 'Hey, I guarantee it.'
She took the card into her jeans. 'Thanks, I will.'
'Tell them hello from me.
That make it any better?'
Jill shook her head.
'Bill Wiggins took off at 2:00 this morning
to medevac the super who had the heart attack.
He hasn't got back yet.'
'Maybe the guy wasn't that sick.
Bill's waiting to fly him back up from Fairbanks.'
'I had flight call for me.
The super is in intensive care.
Bill took off about 5:00.
He never showed up.
At least he hadn't by lunchtime.'
Jill was being called by BF Young"--
he's president of the company--
"She stuck her head out the window.
When I give you the word, you drop the load.
What's going to happen is we give our talks, me last.
Then everyone gets a picture for the record.
Then dump when I say, got it?
Jill put her arm on the door and leaned out
as McLove had told her to do.
'Maybe,' the Steward said, 'maybe Bill picked up
an emergency call on the way, either from another camp
or on the emergency channel.
You never know.
Could be a hunter in trouble, somebody
else down on the plain.
It would have practically been daylight
by the time he got up here.
I could see why he'd have trouble.'
Outside, Roy Rogers"-- and this is a character--
"extolled the cooperation of state and federal agencies that
made the permit possible, the wonderful cooperation among
various crafts, the spirit of the men and women that had
built a 360 mile highway over treacherous terrain in only
five months.
The vice presidents were brief.
BR Young considered the road a tribute
to the tough frontier Americans who
had taken a first great step in taming without destroying
the great Alaskan wilderness.
McLove framed the scene in the viewfinder of his Hasselblad,
lab coat, truck D9 dozer, business suits and hard hats,
frozen smiles, necktie tossed askew
by the breeze, Cat Skinner wearing a plastic orchid
in the lapel of his striped denim jacket.
High above the others, Jill looked off into the sky.
A Canada jay or camp robber lit on the side mirror
just over Jill's head and, like her, cocked its eye at the sky.
McLove pressed the release.
The scene disappeared into the camera, history.
He rolled off two more and stepped back.
The fill lights went on.
Movie cameras began to whir.
Jill looked down just as BR Young spoke.
'Drop it, baby,' he said.
It was bad sitting on the runway waiting
for ween to take everyone out.
Most of the passengers were going
on R&R. The terminations had been staggered over three days,
and Jill was in the last bunch.
Even the men laid off were happy to see the plane circle in.
Jill had prayed it would be the Navajo,
but she knew in her heart that Wiggins was gone.
Of course, there had been a search,
and it would continue another few days.
At the same time, the RCM had suggested
they put out a possible stolen aircraft
alert to Canadian and Northwestern airports.
Jill overheard him in the mess hall.
'No, I'm not saying the poor fellow didn't, God forbid,
go down in the mountains somewhere.
I'm only saying it was clear weather.
Just a wee bit of a breeze blowing
and not a peep out of his radio after he left Fairbanks.
Crazier things have happened.
Hell's bells, if a man wanted to, he
could be in Mexico by now, someplace no one
would ask any questions.
Know what I mean?'
Turning around, Jill had thrown a full cup of coffee at him.
A dozen men swore it was an accident.
One even pointed out a smear of jelly
on the floor where she'd slipped.
The plane pulled up in front of the crowd, and, one by one,
they filed aboard, cracking jokes
about town and old ladies, and going for a little I and I--
intercourse, and intoxication.
After too long a time, the plane picked up
and climbed out of the ring of hills and mountains
surrounding Wiseman.
The river gleamed below.
Snow was creeping down the mountainsides.
The next storm would leave traces in the lowlands.
Jill pressed her face to the window
and peered intently at the scene below,
into ravines, up cliffs, over ragged mountaintops,
and down again.
She penetrated crevices and dark shadowed valleys,
searching the corners, the hidden places, Alaska
and its secrets."
I was going to read it--
I want to shorten this other scene.
I'm going to read something a little lighter.
There's a bus trip here.
It's hauling people from Anchorage out to their camps.
The route goes a little into the interior of the country,
and then cuts on down through some towns--
Glennallen, Tonsina, down to Valdez, and the way
it goes through Thompson Pass, 2,800 feet high--
or no, higher than that, a little higher than that.
It goes through this pass where there's 70 and 80 mile an hour
winds.
It's a bad bus trip, and people are
sitting around waiting to go.
Larry's listening.
He hasn't met Jill yet.
This character Larry is the narrator of this story,
and Jill shows up again in the story
having left the camp up north.
They're sitting in this really pretty crude station.
"Larry shut his eyes and rested his head against the wall.
Being away from camp these past few weeks,
he'd forgotten already the constant discussion
of plans, dreams, expectations.
Usually, he found such talk invigorating.
There was a spirit among the workers of almost matter
of fact optimism.
The state was obviously moving into a boom that would long
outlast the pipeline construction, a future
of fat and unending paychecks.
A lot of money was wasted.
A lot of men came back from R&R as broke
as the day they hired on.
But just as many were buying land, building,
socking it away.
Out east, everyone Hope knew was talking about limits to growth,
limits to family, limits.
At her job, the talk was all of people
having babies, buying land, putting up houses, opening
new businesses.
You could see it in the women.
Hope said the confidence of a mother
pregnant with her fourth or fifth child.
Larry saw it in the maze of construction activities,
one way temporary streets, clearing of land in Anchorage,
a city that still had large areas of untouched land,
contoured and forested the way it had been from all time.
The skyline of the city in all directions
was pierced by the thin latticeworks of cranes, some
atop buildings hauling themselves up
by their own bootstraps, others reaching up impossibly
into the pale blue sky of Alaskan winter
to continue jobs than, in any other year,
would have shut down for the cold season.
Even pipeline officials, although officially
pessimistic and noncommittal, privately admitted
that a second pipeline would almost certainly
be built, as well as a trans-Alaska gas line.
Kenai was booming.
Fairbanks-- crowded, dirty, untenable at times,
practically uninhabitable.
Fairbanks was booming.
The old state capital would be moved from Juneau,
and within the decade, a new city
built somewhere between Anchorage and Fairbanks.
And that, all by itself, was a boom.
If there was a bust coming, no one
could see it in the next 20 or 30 years.
An area the size of Texas, California, and Montana
with the most magnificent country
in some of the richest resources of any state in the union
was booming.
And who could say when it would end?
The men and women in the dark, narrow, untidy room
rested on plain wooden benches, waiting
for the buses that would convey them into the camps.
And they spoke of boom times, and good times, and sad times
ahead.
It was tough, though, going back to work,
seeing the look on your kid's faces.
But where can you make this kind of money, huh?
Tell me that, it's worth it on payday.
Larry listened and thought of the pregnant women.
'We're going to have one bus for luggage.
One bus.
All luggage will be tagged, and will go on the one bus,
except for your survival gear.
You will take survival gear with you.
We report 58 below from Gunsight Lodge all the way to Tonsina,
and 60 to 80 mile an hour winds in the pass,
so you will take your survival gear in the school buses.'
'80 mile an hour winds,' the man next to Larry said softly.
'I guess we're a hell of a lot better off in a bus.
I wouldn't fly down from there, not this time of the year.
I don't care how long a bus takes.'
Larry rubbed at his eyes.
He didn't want a 10-hour bus ride.
He didn't want another ride in an airplane,
didn't want to be at camp, and couldn't imagine going home.
There was nowhere Larry wanted to be,
nowhere else he could be than doing this thing,
taking the ride, putting in another 63 days and 63 nights.
At last, it was time to leave.
Outside, at 9:00 AM, the sky was getting light.
The temperature in Anchorage stood at 22 below zero.
Traffic, as usual, was tied up along C Street
at the intersection with Northern Lights.
Larry handed the duffel bag to the baggage loader,
got on the bus for terminal, found a window seat halfway
back.
The bus filled up quickly.
Larry stared out the window already frosting up,
and when he got around to looking at the person who'd
taken the aisle seat, he was vaguely surprised
to see it was a woman.
'Hello,' she said.
It was a greeting that acknowledged his presence
and nothing more.
The woman was not bad looking, had a deep tan
as did many of the returnees who'd flown south
for a few weeks in the sun.
She wore only a heavy jacket and earmuffs,
ordinary woolen mittens.
Apparently, she had not brought her survival gear onto the bus.
Larry turned back to the window and wiped at the gathering
frost with his bare hand.
The temperature in the bus wasn't much above the parking
lot outside.
Maybe the woman figured, if they had
an accident, the gentleman around her would lend her gear,
keep her warm."
Well, long into this bus ride people
are talking about land and supplies of food,
and shooting people, and stopping
power of relative ammunition, that sort of thing--
kind of things that Alaskans like to talk about.
They're into the cold weather, and they're
entering Thompson Pass.
"At Mile 34, the warning signal was dark.
The pass was open.
A spray of snow completely obscured the windshield.
Even after it had cleared, the air in front of the bus
was a swirl of white.
Larry tensed.
A drunk broke off in mid-song.
The bus fish tailed.
Then the road lay out where it was supposed to be,
and the bus followed it.
But there was no relaxing.
A steady booming began as the bus leveled off
at the head of the pass.
From what distance it came there was no way to judge.
Larry had dreaded leaving Hope and the kids
along with the possibility of more quakes.
Suppose the 5.3 was merely a trembler preceding
another giant quake.
The booming continued.
'Step on it you bastard,' the man shouts out.
'The frigging snows coming down on us.'
The man apparently had an ice scraper when he boarded,
and he had persistently kept a 6 inch
square of window free of ice.
'What is it?' Someone called back. 'What's happening?'
The man got up and shouted it was a slide.
He'd seen it up high, but he couldn't tell for sure
if it would hit the road.
The driver shouted back that he wasn't
about to stop and investigate.
Just as he did, the bus swerved again
and plowed through another low drift.
This time it came to a halt.
The driver cursed and tentatively fed gas.
The wheels spun.
He put it in reverse and tried again.
The rear of the bus moved sideways
toward the edge of the road.
The man who always stored food reached into his duffel bag
and began pulling out cold weather gear and chocolate
bars, which he tucked into his shirt pockets.
He looked grimly satisfied.
Larry was glad he'd brought his gear.
The best Jill could come up with was a pair of padded ski
mittens, and even though the motor
was running and the heater still working, she slipped them on.
Everyone was suddenly intent on the rise and fall of the wind
howling outside the bus.
The slide, if there had been one, had died down.
'Well,' the driver said standing up and facing his passengers,
'longer we sit here, the more that wind's going to pile snow
up on us.
If you men can push me back, I can cut left,
maybe bull my way through.'
'We could wait for the next bus,' someone suggested.
But men were already zipping up parkas
and moving toward the door.
'My business agent's going to hear about this,' the man
behind Larry muttered, getting up and tying a scarf over his
mouth and nose.
Larry struggled into his bib front insulated pants,
and Jill had to stand so he could get by.
'Hey, sweetheart,' the man with the scarf said,
'you ain't going out dressed like that, are you?'
Jill frowned at him, took her seat.
'Don't forget to save my place,' Larry called,
and was pushed along the aisle and out the door.
He found himself in snow above his knees.
The wind driven snow stung his eyes,
and Larry stumbled along, head down,
to take up a position at the front of the bus.
The driver leaned out a side window and shouted for the men
to begin.
Now he revved the engine, and the wheels spun.
Larry could feel the bus give way for a moment.
It moved perhaps half an inch, but did not rock back.
The men slacked off and tensed.
'Now,' the driver shouted.
And the men along the front of the bus
repeated it, so everyone could hear.
Larry strained, heard men around him grunt,
heard wind and the distant whine of tires.
'Dummy can't drive,' the man to Larry's right said.
The man was drunk and breathing hard already.
He wore a knit cap that was plastered white with snow.
'Ease up on a pedal, why don't you?'
He called, as the driver shouted for another push,
and the men threw themselves against the weight of the bus.
This time it moved a few inches and rocked back.
And the men did not need to be told to get in the swing of it.
The bus went backward, stopped, moved forward.
The men pushed farther this time, back, then forward.
The bus moved back five feet and stopped.
One of the passengers floundered along the edge of the road
to the rear and came back to the driver.
'Snow's already drifted behind us.
We've got to go forward, try to bust through it.'
When Larry got to the rear of the bus,
he found himself alongside Leslie Collins.
'You know,' Collins said, laying a shoulder into the bus
and bracing himself himself, 'there's a dangerous element
about all this that I find vaguely
attractive.' 'Jesus Christ,' the drunk said,
and moved on down the line to be away from the two.
[LAUGHTER]
Jill was not the only one who had
failed to bring cold weather gear along.
There were five other men still on the bus because they weren't
dressed properly, and two men still
on because they were too drunk to get off.
Jill moved to the front, trying to see through the icy
windshield, scraping clear spots that froze up almost as
soon as she moved from them.
'What are they doing now?'
She asked, standing in the door while using both hands to move
the scraper over the glass.
'In back,' the driver told her, sticking his head out
the sliding window, ducking back in, and putting the bus
in gear. 'We have to try it again.'
One of the men who had remained aboard
moved up front, followed by a kid who'd pulled a stocking
cap down over ears.
The driver eased on the gas pedal, backed off, tried again,
and the bus moved a foot and bogged down.
The kid, arms tucked down in the side pockets of his pea coat,
nudged the driver.
'Would it help if we got off?'
'You aren't dressed for it.' 'Just till they get moving.
We could stand it maybe three or four minutes.'
'Sure,' the man said, 'just keep out of the wind.
Suit yourself.' The driver opened the door.
On impulse, Jill stepped out into the snow
and hunched down inside her jacket.
At least her hands were warm.
She walked out into the full force of the wind,
backing into it all the way to the other side of the road.
She could just see the rear of the bus
through the darkness and blowing snow.
Another 20 feet up the road, she could just see the front,
not even hear the bus over the sound of the wind.
She cupped her mittens around her eyes,
and peered down the road ahead, and then
turned to look back down the pass.
A light glimmered faintly, an orange light.
She moved a few steps toward it, then saw the light again.
It blinked on and off three times.
A dull low growl sounded during a lull in the wind,
and Jill recognized it immediately-- the sound
of a big diesel engine, a road grader or a snowplow
with a blinking light.
Throwing off a sudden shiver from the cold,
Jill scuffled through the snow to where the two
men huddled out of the wind.
The tires were still spinning, but the bus
was moving slowly, moved back to where it had
been when they first got stuck.
She told the kid about the noise,
let him know she was going down the road to meet the plow.
He nodded arms, hugged around his chest.
'I'm getting back in the bus.'
Jill passed some of the men coming up on the roadside
to the front of the bus and carefully avoided
crossing directly and back, just in case
the bus should come free and roll.
In places, the snow was blown nearly down to the pavement.
And in other spots, drifts of two and three feet
suddenly appeared.
The tracks of the bus were already covered,
and she turned to look back, seeing
the tail lights glowing softly through the wind whipped snow.
Again, she cupped her eyes and peered down the road,
listening for the plow.
She took a few more steps and hesitated, not sure
if she was hearing it.
Then she saw the orange light blink again,
and it seemed measurably closer than the last time
she'd seen it.
Looking back at the bus, she could barely
make out the tail lights, and she
was hesitant to move completely out of range.
She was getting cold.
There was no telling how fast the plow was working.
In fact, it was possible it was sitting still or working
a particular patch of road, maybe a small slide.
Jill smiled at the thought of the driver
moving snow up through this desolate empty pass
and seeing a woman hitchhiking atop a snow bank.
She listened, and this time the powerful throaty roar
of the engine seemed to come from just down the road.
The snow would let up for a moment,
and she could see the orange beacon flicking on and off.
Jill took a last look at the bus and began
to jog, stumbling in the snow once or twice,
but glad to be warmed up.
She heard the engine again, but couldn't tell exactly where
it was coming from.
This time, the sound seemed to come from behind her.
Perhaps it was the bus or another plow.
The wind blew up a sudden gust, and Jill
ducked, following the road by watching for the metal
markers on each side.
The wind eased up again, and Jill stopped, puzzled
and suddenly apprehensive.
The engine sound now came from below, then
to the left of the road.
Once it quite clearly seemed to come from above.
Jill raised her head to look for the orange bubble
light on the plow and felt a wave of sick fear
pass over her.
The orange light she was following
was one of the overhead markers, a reflector mounted on a metal
pole that arched out over the road
to show drivers where the edge of the highway was.
The marker was loose, and it wobbled in the wind,
picking up the light of a single unshaded bulb that
illuminated a highway department tool shed
half buried in the snow.
Jill listened for the plow, heard
only the wind and the steady creak of the reflector
as it bobbled up and down.
Then she heard another engine sound for a split second,
faint but unmistakable--
the bus.
And then, as if taunting her, the wind
snatched sounds of a diesel engine
and blew them at her from all directions.
A violent shiver went through Jill
as she turned and began to trudge back uphill.
'What, you lose your girlfriend?'
The guy behind Larry said as the men settled into their seats.
Larry shrugged, nodding toward the back of the bus.
'I guess she found better company.'
The kid across the aisle tapped Larry on the shoulder.
'If he means the girl you're sitting with,
she caught a ride with a snowplow.'
A snowplow?
Larry looked down.
Her bag was still in the bus.
The kid shrugged. 'Well, that's what she told me.'
'So that's what that was,' his seatmate said.
'I went over to the other side of the road to take a leak.
I thought I heard a piece of heavy equipment moving.
I thought it was my imagination.'
Larry got up and went to the driver.
The bus was well over to the left side of the road
and free of the drifts.
The driver was scraping ice away from the windshield.
Two men were helping him.
'The woman that I was sitting with isn't on the bus.'
'She got a ride with a snowplow,' the driver said,
finishing a section of the scraping and putting the bus
in gear.
He moved out very slowly, testing the road surface.
Jill bit down on her tongue as if to take away the pain
she felt now in both feet.
It was difficult to run, and for an awful moment,
she thought the bus had left her.
Then she saw the tail lights, the bus
waiting for her on the road.
Jesus, she thought, how embarrassing.
They hadn't been waiting for her long, and she'd never hear
The end of it.
They were probably thinking of sending out search parties.
Live and learn.
She stumbled and fell headlong in the snow,
dragging herself upright with great effort.
This was no fooling, though.
She was cold and tired.
I wouldn't be surprised to find a few patches of mild frostbite
tomorrow morning.
She moved toward the bus and blinked
at the sudden rush of snow.
It was odd.
She had taken several steps, but hadn't
come any closer than 10 feet to the rear of the bus.
She shook her head, and lurched forward, and dumbly
watched the bus recede just the distance she had moved--
moving.
She took two quick steps and understood that the bus itself
was moving.
'This is no time for games,' she whispered,
furious at the driver.
The bus slowed.
She caught up to it, steadied herself
against the rear tail light for a moment,
and then felt the bus draw inexorably away.
Jill began to run in a slow determined dog trot.
She caught up again and pounded a fist against the rear panel--
pounded in silent dreamlike gestures
with her soft, padded, thickly insulated mitten.
'Stop,' Jill screamed, and the words were torn from her lips
by a gust of wind.
The bus slowed, as if in obedience, and Jill whipped
her mitten off, smacking the steel
of the bus with her bare palm.
She felt a sudden tug as the bus lurched forward again.
Jill stumbled after it on feet that had no more feeling,
and tried to pull free, but the hand
was frozen fast to the metal.
And then she fell, glimpsing in one moment
the imprint of her hand--
not the imprint, but the seared frozen layer of flesh
with all its intricacies and unique whorls, the love line,
the money line, the lifeline, the individual
patterns of the fingers torn loose
and mounted like a butterfly that disappeared
into the darkness and the snow.
She lay, her ruined hand outstretched in the snow,
and sobbed, listening to the sound
of a powerful diesel engine throbbing into the night.
Now close, now far away."
That would be one nasty funny scene.
That's my favorite character in this book-- is Little Nasty.
And what-- I made him out of four or five people.
I got up to Alaska.
People come up to me in the camps.
I visited Alaska a couple of weeks ago-- a week or so ago.
And people come up to me, cold foot.
Guy says, hey, I know Little Nasty.
He's so-and-so, a guy in Fairbanks.
I know Little Nasty.
He used to work in the pipe yard.
The guy's at the terminal.
Nobody got the right name, so I thought
I'd created some unique character here,
and maybe I have.
But there seemed to be a bunch of unique characters running
around in Alaska.
It's in a scene in a bar.
Little Nasty, Tiny, his friend, is 6 foot 3, weighs 300 pounds.
So remember, Little Nasty, Tiny, and Big Nasty
comes into the picture, along with Larry.
They're telling stories in the bar.
"The bar was a snug retreat for stories of cold
walks down mountains, six week camping treks
through the Brooks range living on Dall sheep
and moving with the herd.
Tales of narrow escapes in the winter,
bountiful harvests of salmon and women, good and bad.
Barney had taken a native girl to bed
with only a blanket between them and the rest of the family.
In the morning [AUDIO OUT].
So remember, Little Nasty, Tiny, and Big Nasty
comes into the picture, along with Larry.
They're telling stories in the bar.
The bar was a snug retreat for stories of cold
walks down mountains, six week camping treks
through the Brooks range living on Dall sheep
and moving with the herd.
Tales of narrow escapes in the winter,
bountiful harvests of salmon and women, good and bad.
Barney had taken a native girl to bed
with only a blanket between them and the rest of the family.
In the morning, the girl begged him to stay.
'You good man.
You make my ass come glad four or five times,' she told him
in front of her mother, fathers, uncles,
toothless ancestors in the smoky smelly room.
Larry heard a familiar laugh--
Little Nasty.
'Larry,' Nasty said quickly, 'you seen a woman in here about
5 foot 8, square shoulders, one bad eye?' 'Jesus,' Barney said.
Nasty glared at him. 'That's my wife.'
'That's Big Nasty,' Larry heard over his shoulder.
It was Tiny looking more perturbed than usual.
'That right?' 'Why do you think they call me Little Nasty?'
Little Nasty said. 'She took a room over to the White House,
but damned if I can find her here, there, or anywheres.'
He laid a hand up on the counter,
and Larry looked down at it.
'Nasty, I never noticed you had a finger missing,' Larry
blurted. 'Did that just happen?'
'Iron working's dangerous,' Tiny said,
'especially if you don't know what you're doing.'
Tiny held his hands out to show Larry
how scarred and beaten up they were.
Larry stuck out a finger. 'Timekeeping has its dangers,
too.
I once had a paper cut right there on the end of the finger.
And another time I nearly got scratched on a staple.'
Tiny grabbed Larry's hand and turned it front and back,
inspecting it.
'Look at this.' He held his hand up, disgusted.
'He's got hands like a cunt.'
Maggie turned away.
'Your face is funny, but you ain't,' Nasty told him.
'That there is the stupid slab-sided son of a bitch took
my finger off.
I seen dumber mules, but I don't recollect when.'
'Hey, get off my case, cracker.
You've been running your mouth at me all week.'
Nasty held up his hand for everyone to see.
'This clown is supposed to be a big rigger,
but he cut my damn finger off.
Big nigger, more like.
Some honcho we got pushing us out there.
You know, he paid the room clerk in camp $100 to get put in with
that pretty boy that sings here nights.'
'You're trying hard.
I told you to stay off my case, pipsqueak.'
Little Nasty hardly came up to Tiny's chest,
but he faced the man like he was about to tear into him.
'I could rig better than you with my eyes closed.'
He waved his hand, the stumpy finger, at Tiny.
'That right?
Well, you know something?
You can't weld worth a damn.
No wonder 798 threw you out.'
Everyone was laughing now as Nasty got up on his toes
trying to bull Tiny.
'Can't rig because you got your mind on that pretty boy,
ain't you?'
Tiny shook his head sadly.
Well, if I had to choose between him and your wife,
from what I've seen in the pictures, I got to say,
Big Nasty would run a close second.'
He turned suddenly and began to walk away.
Nasty moved after him, touched him on the shoulder.
Heads turned at the bar. 'Feisty little bastard,' Greenwood
said.
Tiny shrugged Nasty off and took two more steps.
'I ain't in no mood to play with you,
and I don't want to meet your wife, please.'
Little Nasty took a few scampering
steps and kicked Tiny sharply just behind the knee.
As Tiny turned, reaching down to touch his leg,
Nasty drew back and threw a hard right to Tiny's jaw.
It was early in the evening, and the bar was only half full.
Everyone in the club jumped at the sound of the fist
against skin, the sharp crack of teeth,
the unmistakable sound of another fight.
For Nasty, seeing Tiny stand there after taking a roundhouse
was worse than wasting his last bullet on a rattler.
There wasn't but one hope.
He moved in, and got the man locked fingers and went
for the tip.
And then the pounding.
For a time, the blows stopped hurting,
but Tiny was getting to him.
His ears were ringing.
Purple lights went on and off behind his eyes.
Tiny hit.
Nasty shifted and found a good bite
lower down where the man's belly flab began.
It was a lucky thing Tiny had his coat off and wore
a light polyester shirt.
Wouldn't want to be eaten no flannel starting
in through a down parka.
Tiny slowed the rhythm of his punches as nasty bit down.
He could feel the man stiffen against him as he chewed.
I'm a bulldog, Nasty repeated over and over,
trying to stay conscious.
Damn bear's going to stove in my head.
'This man's eating me up,' Tiny screamed,
his blows falling on Nasty's shoulder, the side of his head,
his neck.
Nasty burrowed in all the more, ground his teeth
into the fold of fat, chewing his way down
until he could taste blood.
He hoped it was Tiny's blood.
'Don't bite,' Tiny shouted and beat on his head.
Nasty chewed and got knocked away,
dove in for a new bite higher on the chest,
and worked his teeth from side to side,
trying to bring the cutters into play. 'You son of a bitch,
he's biting me to pieces.'
Nasty heard a shrill woman scream to one side,
but he didn't dare open his eyes.
He ground his teeth into Tiny's flesh, getting more blood,
tearing all the harder when Tiny's punches jerked his head.
Let the man's strength work against him.
That scream again, high pitched, awesome.
'She's got a bar stool,' someone shouted,
and Nasty felt a surge of hope.
It had to be Big Nasty.
He heard the blow of wood and immediately felt Tiny slump
against him, the punches weaken.
He grabbed a new hold and was clear under the shirt now,
working on bare skin.
The wooden sound again, and Tiny slumped further.
'Leave go,' the woman screamed.
And there were confused shouts. 'You bastard,
let my husband alone.'
Tiny put his hands down on Nasty's shoulders
and pushed away.
Nasty let go and fell back into the crowd.
He felt other hands pushing him upright.
His headache so bad he couldn't see straight.
Big Nasty was there suddenly, crying,
a patch over her bad eye.
And Schultz, the bouncer, was talking loudly in German.
Nasty focused.
Tiny stood in the center of the crowd, tears streaming down
his face.
He ripped his shirt off in one movement,
and the people in the bar murmured.
Tiny's chest bled in five places.
Nasty's teeth marks, angry circles, were everywhere.
'Look,' Tiny sobbed. 'Look what he done to me.
The bastard ate me up.'
He turned to show others.
Schultz stood there, not certain of what to do next.
'Get him,' Tiny told Schultz. 'He started it.
He should go to jail.'
The blood streamed down his chest. 'I'll get you for this,
Nasty.'
Nasty squeezed his eyes shut, managed to summon
enough strength to stand alone.
'You try it.
You or the big kraut.
I'll eat you both up.
Won't be nothing but bones left, either one of you.'
And then someone was wiping Tiny's chest with a towel.
Schultz was complaining he couldn't get out of the corner
because a man had pointed a gun at him.
He'd find the man.
Schultz was chewing on his fingernails
looking like he would cry at any minute.
Nasty saw Larry looking at him, and then felt
himself start to black out.
The last he remembered, the drunk police chief
had come stumbling into the club, and said over and over,
'nobody leave.
Nobody leave.'
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
So there's free cookies in there.
[APPLAUSE]