T. Boyle - World's End

The old man struggled with a quarter at the jukebox, dropped it to the floor and let out a low heartfelt curse, the gist of which Walter didn’t quite catch — a malediction involving seals, kayaks and somebody’s mother, no doubt. Or on second thought, had he said something about honkies? Honkie sons of bitches?

“Uh,” Walter fumbled, tearing frantically at the parka’s drawstring, “um, uh … coffee,” he finally squeaked.

Without ceremony the waitress turned to the nearest Eskimo, said “Charley,” and jerked her neck. Scowling, the man got up from his stool and lurched across the room, a bottle of beer in his hand.

“But, I—” Walter protested.

“Sit,” the waitress said.

Walter sat.

He was on his second cup of coffee and had begun to detect signs of life in his fingertips, when the old man at the jukebox finally managed to locate the quarter and feed it into the slot. There was a mechanical buzz, succeeded by the plop of the record dropping, and then Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas,” crooning to the grim, silent, drunken men in their animal skins, crooning to the grease, the forlorn-looking wedge of apple pie, the shacks, the ice sheet, the heaps of frozen dogshit in the streets, crooning to Walter about white Christmases he used to know …

Was this a joke? A dig? Walter was afraid to look around him.

“Refill?” the waitress asked, poised above him with a steaming Pyrex pot.

“Uh, no, no thanks,” Walter stammered, putting his hand over the cup for emphasis, “but, uh, maybe you could help me—?”

The waitress gave him a big lipsticky smile. “Yes? You looking for someone?”

“Maybe you don’t know him. I mean, maybe he doesn’t even live here any more. Truman Van Brunt?”

But for Bing Crosby, the place went quiet. The waitress’ smile was gone. “What do you want with him?”

“I’m”—he couldn’t say it, couldn’t spit out the words—“I’m his son.”

“His son? He never had a son. What are you talking about?”

Nothing could have prepared him for that moment. It hit him like a shove from behind, like something immovable along the side of the road. He was devastated. He wanted to dig a hole in the dirty linoleum at his feet and bury himself till the world slid closer to the sun and palm trees sprouted outside the window. He never had a son. For this he’d come four thousand miles.

The waitress’ mouth was a tight slash of suspicion. The Eskimos were silent, watching him, the indifference in their eyes replaced all at once by a look of cruel amusement, as if now the fun were about to begin, as if Walter — big and white and with his dirty red hair and freakish eyes and feet that didn’t work — had come to town as part of some sideshow. And Bing, Bing was going on with it, warbling about days being merry and bright—

“Hey, dude.” The young Eskimo who’d tried to catch his eye earlier was standing beside him. Walter looked up into the broad smooth face and hesitant eyes of a kid of fourteen or so. “Mr. Van Brunt, he lives up there,” jerking his thumb, “third house on the left, got a old car broke down out front.”

Numb, Walter rose to his feet, fought to tug a crumpled dollar from his pocket, and dropped it on the counter beside his cup. He was hot, burning up inside the heavy parka, and he felt lightheaded. He bent to pick up his suitcase, then turned back to the kid and ducked his head in acknowledgment. “Thanks,” he said.

“Hey, no sweat, dude,” the kid said, grinning to show off the blackened nubs of his teeth, “he’s my teacher.”

It was four in the afternoon and black as midnight. In two weeks the sun would set on Barrow for the final time — till January 23 of next year, that is. Walter had read about it in A Guide to Alaska: Last American Frontier, while he swatted mosquitoes in the lush backyard of his cottage in Van Wartville. Now he was here. On the steps of the Northern Lights Café, gazing up the dim street to where a ’49 Buick sat up on blocks in front of an unremarkable, low-roofed shack no different from any of the others, except for the dearth of caribou carcasses frozen to the roof. His father’s house. Here, in the far frozen hind end of nowhere.

Walter started across the street, the wind at his back, suitcase tugging at his arm. “Look out, asshole!” shouted a kamikaze on a snow machine as he shot past, engine screaming, treads churning up ice, and as Walter lurched out of the way he found himself in the middle of a pack of snarling dogs contending for a lump of offal frozen to the ice between his feet. Barrow. The sweat was freezing to his skin, his fingers were numb, and fourteen blood-crazed wolf dogs were tearing themselves to pieces at his feet. He’d been in town for something like half an hour and already he’d had it. In a sudden rage he struck out viciously at the dogs, swinging his suitcase like a mace and shouting curses till the wind sucked his voice away, and then he staggered up the berm of frozen garbage and dogshit that rose up like a prison wall in front of his father’s house. Fifty yards. That’s all it was from the café to his father’s doorstep, but they were the hardest fifty yards of his life. He never had a son. Four thousand miles to hear that little bulletin from the lips of a stranger, a hag in a baggy sweater and two tons of makeup. God, that hurt. Even if he was hard, soulless and free.

Walter hesitated on the icy doorstep. He felt like some poor abused orphan out of a Dickens story — what was he going to say? What was he going to call him, even — Dad? Father? Pater? He was weary, dejected, chilled to the marrow. The wind screamed. There was something like slush caught in the corners of his eyes. And then suddenly it didn’t matter — the son of a bitch never had a son anyway, right? — and Walter was pounding on the weather-bleached door for all he was worth. “Hey!” he bawled. “Open up! Anybody in there?” Boom, boom, boom. “Open up, goddammit!”

Nothing. No movement. No response. He might as well have been pounding on the door of his own tomb. His father didn’t want him, he wasn’t home, he didn’t exist. Walter knew then that he was going to die right there on the doorstep, frozen hard like one of the grotesque carcasses on the roof next door. That would show him, he thought bitterly. His son, his only son, the son he’d denied and deserted, frozen on his doorstep like so much meat. And then, all at once, the rage and frustration and self-pity building in him till he couldn’t help himself, he threw back his head and shrieked like an animal caught in a trap, all the trauma of a lifetime — all the ghosts and visions, the tearing of flesh and the wounds that never healed — all of it focused in the naked shattering plaint that rose from his belly to startle the wolf dogs and silence the wind: “Dad!” he sobbed. “Dad!” The wind choked him, the cold drove at him. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

It was then that the door fell back and there he was, Truman Van Brunt, blinking at the darkness, the ice, at Walter. “What?” he said. “What did you call me?”

“Dad,” Walter said, and he wanted to fling his arms around him. He wanted to. He did. As much as he’d ever wanted anything. But he couldn’t move.

Forty below. With wind. Truman stood there with the door open, still big, still vigorous, the deep red fangs of his hair shot through with dirty bolts of gray and beating furiously around his head, a look of absolute bewilderment on his face, as if he’d awakened from one dream to find himself in the midst of another. “Walter?” he said.

Inside, the place was meticulously tidy, almost monastic. Two rooms. Woodstove in the corner of the front one, bookshelves lining three walls, kitchenette against the other, a glimpse of a tightly made bed and night table in the back room, more books. The books had titles like Agrarian Conflict: Van Wart and Livingston Manors; County Records, North Riding; Under Sail on Hudson’s River; Folk Medicine of the Delaware; A History of the Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River. Up against the stove, so close it might have been kindling, was a desk piled high with papers and surmounted by the dark hump of a big black ancient typewriter. Under the desk, a case of Fleischmann’s gin. There was no running water.