Author's Note:
This is my first submission. The story is of a woman in her 20s who arrives in a small Alaskan town, to start a new job with a man who is ostensibly her husband. As they are settling in, the truth is revealed. The flashback is in strictly chronological order.
Nan and Ron - 2837 words: Today and our first time together.
We get off the big airplane at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage. I don't know if the name is an omen or not. Or, if it is an omen is it a good one or a bad one. Stevens spent 50 years in the Senate. He was driven from office by members of his own party's elite only to later have the federal prosecutors in his ethics case themselves charged with contempt, perjury and falsifying evidence. But as he was being exonerated he died in a single engine airplane crash near our destination for today. The important thing is that nearly everyone in Alaska loves Ted Stevens. They don't think that he did anything wrong.
I don't believe that what we did was wrong. But others do, and here we are starting over. Ronald and I walked across the jetbridge and retrieved four of our eight duffle bags. We carried everything down the inside staircase, out the door and across the tarmac to the stairs mounted on the back of a pickup truck. Half of Alaska's residents live in Anchorage, but shades of
'Northern Exposure,'
we had both signed a contract to spend a year in Bethel - a town with a population of 6,000 that we knew about only from the research we had done online. A 19-seat turboprop airliner would fly us there. It's an hour and 15 minutes away.
As further proof of our desperation, idiocy, or both it was just after New Year's Day, and eight degrees. The average January temperature in Bethel ranges from a low of zero to a high of 12. Well at least we would be in time for the Kuskokwim 300, according to the guidebook, "one of Alaska's premier middle distance dog sled races." After we take off, I chat a little with the pilot of our Beechcraft who is flying us to our new home. Alaska in winter time is a beautiful sight but I certainly wouldn't want to be stranded down there. Our pilot who has been on more than a few search and rescue missions says it is just something you prepare for.
"Always have a full fuel tank, and an extra can if you're able. Carry a bag or small backpack with a knife, light, fresh batteries, space blanket, lighter, matches, hard candy and a metal cup to melt snow. Let friends know where you are going, and when you plan to be back. Either wear bright clothing or bring a fluorescent vest."
We are flying over a nearly flat and mostly monochromatic white landscape. Approaching Bethel it consists of numerous frozen rivers and sloughs interspersed with lots of frozen tundra that, according to my guidebook, is a big lichen marsh in the summertime. Touching down at the airport we walk through the terminal building and catch one of the many cabs waiting at the airport. My book said that Bethel has the highest number of cabs per capita in the United States.
The chatty young man who was driving our cab was a Korean immigrant. I wondered to myself what he was running... Or starting over from. Was it poverty, lack of opportunity, or like us infamy...
He just seemed too articulate in a second language and too well educated to be a cab driver. He says that winter time in Bethel is the prettiest time of year. With the blanket of snow you can't see all of the broken wooden pallets, rusty oil drums, derelict old automobiles and peeling paint of the tiny, astronomically priced, houses. He is used to driving in snow and on ice he says. Besides he has better visibility in winter because the half of the roads that are not paved aren't dusty. Although I had been told to expect really high prices, the cab fare to the apartment on Uyaquq Circle provided me with sticker-shock.
Our home for the next year is small. But it isn't a hovel, as I was worried that it might have been. We had signed the employment contract after doing as much research as possible from Illinois. Online, speaking to people that we knew and to some people that the people that we knew knew. But without ever seeing the place. It is three rooms, a bathroom - with a sign over the toilet about low pressure water supply, a small bedroom with a tiny closet and a combination kitchen dining area living room. It is as advertised, furnished. With sturdy, albeit worn, functional pieces.
I look over at Ron. He's unpacking our bags into the bedroom closet. I wonder if he and I can create a universe for two here like fellow outcasts Howard Campbell and Helga did in war torn Berlin. They are characters in Kurt Vonnegut's
'Mother Night.'