now!” Round two.
And last night, round three. Delighted to discover that the monthly mourning was occurring as scheduled, Gurley had surreptitiously ordered a drink. Then he smiled a huge smile, raised a glass, and shouted, “The king is dead! Long live the king!” Which no one seemed to quite understand, though their faces all made one thing clear. This would be the third and final round.
A woman began “screeching” at him, Gurley said, about being a “traitor” to his own commander in chief. Gurley took offense and sought to correct her. “I just wanted a word with her,” Gurley said. But he got much more: fists, a stein of beer, part of a chair, and from the woman herself, the heel of a shoe. It was this last blow, he added quietly, that had caused the most damage to the eye. “Ironic,” he said, “but heroic all the same, don't you think?”
I didn't answer, distracted by the discovery that the glee had gone out of Gurley's voice. He was no longer enjoying his story. I assumed that pain had now overtaken him and he was regretting this last fight, and probably the fights before. But that wasn't it at all.
“Do you know that our current military force in Alaska is less than half what it was a year ago?” he asked. “It's a month since the Germans surrendered. Almost two months since we landed on Okinawa. We're running out of time, Sergeant.” He slowly raised a hand to his eye, but he seemed unable to stomach anything more than his fingertips grazing his eyebrow.
“Let's get that looked at, sir,” I said, sitting forward. I was worried- and it wasn't as irrational as it sounds-that his eyeball was going to pop out in a spray of blood and land on the desk.
“The war is not over, Belk,” he said. “I doubt this Truman knows that. I wonder if FDR knew that. Europe is won. But the war in the Pacific, Sergeant. The ocean will run red for years to come.” He took a breath and closed his eyes with a wince. “We can only hope,” he said.
On this particular flight, however, Ronnie was not doing well at playing the role of a devout Christian. He kept opening and closing a small pouch that appeared to be full of various talismans and other tiny, carved figures. And he kept talking about murder.
As much as he took responsibility for his own drinking, he also faulted those who'd served alcohol to him. This may sound curious to those who don't live in our community, but given the rapid, ruthless way alcohol takes hold of Native Alaskans-well, Ronnie had a point.
Ronnie had accompanied me on a previous trip to Fairbanks years before. This was when he was still wrestling with alcoholic demons; this was when I still thought I could help him do so all by myself. I'd asked him along almost as an experiment. I thought he might do better if he were removed from the familiar temptations (and hidden stashes) back home. I had some business at the chancery, so I left him in God's care before a side altar in the cathedral.
I never got it straight from God what transpired next, nor from Ronnie when I later visited him in the hospital. He'd found a bar, the Bear 'n' Moose, he'd run up a tab, he hadn't (probably couldn't have) paid, he'd hurled some insults, gotten some back-I suppose God might have been involved in the end, because it's inconceivable otherwise that anyone had enough charity in their heart when it was all done to call an ambulance.
So Ronnie was now going to go back and set things right. He assured me he wouldn't go into the bar-that he wouldn't, in fact, even have to go near the place. He patted his pouch and told me he'd simply go into a shamanic trance in the cathedral (while previous bishops spun in their graves in the crypt below), fly over to the bar, invisible, and invoke a curse or two.
My miscalculation was assuming that he would simply fall asleep in the course of his trance-he'd done so more than once before, usually when he was boasting to me of his long-departed powers-and I'd discover him contentedly snoring in a pew near the statue of Joseph. But my meeting ran long, and when I returned, Ronnie was gone.
I went straight over to the Bear 'n' Moose.
I walked in right after Ronnie had fallen off the bar. He'd apparently been dancing a complicated dance that was intended-or so he'd been shouting-to render everyone within earshot impotent. That made his listeners angry enough, and his falling into their laps and spilling their drinks made them angrier. A stout older fellow who looked a lot like Santa had Ronnie in a choke hold while his companion, also old and fat, but less Santa-like, poured drink after drink from the bar over Ronnie's head.
Ronnie screamed and kicked. I hollered at the bartender to make them stop, but he only rolled his eyes. I shouted at the two Santas, which distracted them long enough for Ronnie to kick one of them where he shouldn't have, and then it was all fists and feet. The bartender began to come around the bar- slowly-while I dove into the middle of the fight. I tried to tug Ronnie free, and then somebody-it could even have been Ronnie-clouted me behind the ear. I retreated. We were all much too old.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Bear 'n' Moose was decorated as you might expect, giving an angry priest bent on smiting an array of options. I chose an incongruous harpoon. Ronnie, delighted, began ululating wildly (something he's always been quite good at). But it was a mistake. As I advanced, the Santas dropped Ronnie, knocking him out.
Police, ambulance, hospital, and the next morning, Ronnie awaking with a wide smile. “Bear 'n' Moose,” he said, uncovering the meal the nurse had brought. He stuffed a piece of toast in his mouth and looked around for a clock. “When does it open?”
IF THE BEAR ‘N’ MOOSE was open back when Gurley and I visited Fairbanks -if the business had even been established-we never got a chance to find out. We only went there once, and only stayed four hours.
Gurley's lamentation for his war, and his eye, had been interrupted by a phone call. Gurley answered with a “yes,” and then held the phone to his ear, saying nothing else. At first, I thought the line had gone dead, and that he was simply too tired (and too eager to show how tired he was) to hang up. But as his second minute of silence began, I watched his face change, his remaining eye squint and then widen with equal parts glare and alarm. He waved his free arm at me, then started scrabbling for a pen. Finally he shouted, “Yes! Yes, sir! Yes!” and dropped the handset without even hanging it up.
He was around the desk and dragging me out the door before I'd even had time to ask what had happened. “Ladd Field, Sergeant,” he said, as we staggered through the Quonset hut to the exit. He looked at his watch. “If we can make it to the airfield in three minutes, we'll catch the noon transport, be at Ladd Field in Fairbanks in time for the briefing.”
“What's happened?” I said. “Balloon?”
Gurley shook his head no, then yes, and then grabbed me by the shoulders. “Belk,” he said.
“THEY” WERE LAID out on two long metal tables, side by side in a makeshift morgue. I didn't get a very good view; Gurley and the other officers had closed in a relatively tight cordon around the two bodies, one of which was covered, the other not.
The major who'd been briefing us in an adjoining room resumed his account from behind a surgical mask. “Two males, Japanese, mid-thirties, our best guess. Age isn't particularly important, except to note that they're not kids; that is, they're not cannon fodder, so deduce what you will about the importance or sophistication of their apparent mission. No rank or insignia on their uniforms. And the ship's report says they weren't really in uniform anyway perhaps better to carry off the ruse that they were simply fishermen.” He raised his eyebrows behind his mask. “In any case, you'll have to take my word on their clothing-it's gone now;
