Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“Open the windows,” Josie said, and she reached over to roll down the passenger side. The smell dissipated but not by much.

They drove on, and though there was no evidence to believe it, Josie continued to believe that the smell — it had earthy tones with a certain toxic topspin — was coming from outside. She was happy, though, that Paul was in a spirit of cooperation — or at least had abandoned his posture of open hostility. The smell had united them.

They drove that way five miles, maybe ten. Looking back on it later, Josie could admit that she drove much farther than a more responsible person would.

Finally Paul said he felt sick, felt he might throw up, so Josie pulled over, this time without an adequate shoulder, such that when they stopped, the Chateau was at an angle so oblique that a strong wind would have tipped it over like some buckshot elephant.

The kids got out and Josie directed them to run down the embankment until they were standing next to a lone spruce tree, squat and bent heavily by some past storm. Josie hustled into the living area, and though she knew Paul incapable of error, she checked the stove, and confirmed it was not turned on, but the smell closer to the stove was far stronger than it had been in the front seat. She opened cabinets, thinking she might find rotting fruit or a dead animal. She found neither, but was sure, then, that dead animal was the answer to the question of this smell. She opened every drawer, looked under the cushions. She looked in the bathroom, finally, expecting the answer to be there, but though she found only the pile of dishes and towels in the shower, she discovered the smell stronger. She lifted the toilet seat, thinking that one of the kids had dropped a secret there, and found the toilet empty but the smell emerging with great assertiveness.

She left the Chateau to gag, and joined her children on the side of the road for a few moments, taking in the trash-laden highway. Someone had thrown a tampon out a car window, and in seconds, given its proximity to Ana and the way she was eyeing it, Josie knew that while she was in the Chateau, Ana had picked it up and been told, by Paul, to drop it. Ana was eyeing Josie warily, wondering if she was about to see her mother vomit for the first time, but she was also keeping the tampon in her peripheral vision — waiting for the opportunity to examine it more closely, or possibly put her mouth on it in some way.

“I found the smell,” Josie said.

But she had not quite found the smell.

She went back into the Chateau, wondering about a way to tape the bathroom shut, or wrap the toilet in plastic or some material impenetrable to fecal smells. And while making her way back to the bathroom, she saw something she had not seen before. On the wall just next to the stove was a switch, which Stan had not told her about, because Stan was a motherfucker. This switch looked like the kind of small metal switch in abundance in old airplanes, the kind of switch that provides a satisfying click to the user. Above the switch were the words Tank Heater.

Josie noted that the switch was turned on, meaning that some tank was being heated. She thought first of the gas tank, but knew better than to guess that there was a switch, between the kitchen and bathroom, that heated a tank full of highly flammable gasoline. The only tank, then, she could guess at was the tank of feces and urine that was below the toilet.

A gasp escaped from her mouth. It began to come together. The Chateau featured a tank-heating mechanism. Why? Josie deduced that in the winter owners would not want their feces being frozen, because frozen, the feces could not be drained through the sky-blue ribbed tube, and so there would be no room for new feces. The feces had to be kept warm and in liquid form, so it could be drained, and new feces could be put in the tank.

Ana had turned on the feces-heating mechanism. She had done this in August, when the feces didn’t need to be heated. So Josie and her family were driving through lower-central Alaska while not only carrying their feces but heating them. Cooking them. What would that be? Josie searched for the verb. Broiling? When the heat is coming from the interior surfaces of the oven, as opposed to gas or flame? She was sure the word was broiling.

She turned the switch off, returned to Paul and Ana by the lone spruce, and told them they should not turn any switches on, anywhere in the Chateau. She told them what had happened, about the feces and the broiling of it, and they nodded, very serious now. They believed this story without hesitation, and she marveled at this pure stage of life, when a child is first told about such things, about how to broil feces, why they shouldn’t do so in the summer.

They got in the Chateau and drove on. It was a great day to be alive.

“ ‘I AM TRYING TO CONTACT Mr. and Mrs. Wright. I have lost their first names,’ ” Paul read aloud. “ ‘There were three boys, L.J., George, and Bud Wright. There were two girls that I knew of, Anna and another whose name I have forgotten. My brother Wheeler and I worked for them in 1928 or 1929 in the wheat harvest. We also threshed some flax, the first and only flax we ever worked in or had ever seen. The Wrights lived in a sod shanty at Chaseley, North Dakota near Bowdon, North Dakota. The last I ever heard of them, George was married and lived near Scottsbluff, Nebraska. We loved those dear ones. Would like to hear from anyone who can give me any information as to their whereabouts.’ ”

The idea to have Paul read “Trails Grown Dim” to her as they drove was a brilliant one, Josie thought. They had gone about a hundred miles north of the scene of the feces-heating, with the windows open, and the air in the Chateau was reasonably better now, though they wouldn’t be the best judges — they’d been breathing human-waste fumes for so long they wouldn’t know the difference.

They passed a large parking lot, attached to an abandoned shopping center, where a firefighters’ staging ground had been set up. FUEL TRANSPORT said one sign. FIRE SHIRTS SOLD HERE said another. A half-dozen red and yellow and white fire trucks of various sizes waited for orders.

“Do another,” she said.

“Okay,” Paul said, a serious but delighted look on his face. He was sitting up front with her, and Josie was reasonably sure this was against the law, even in this renegade state, having an eight-year-old in the front seat, sitting on a stack of towels. But Josie was enjoying his company too much to let him disappear into the back.

“Here’s the last one on the page,” he said. “ ‘I am interested in finding the whereabouts of my great-uncle, Melvin H. Lahar (pronounced Liar). He was born in Washington State between 1889 and 1893, son of Charles A. Lahar and Ida Mae Gleason Sharp. He had one full sister, Nancy L. (nicknames Emma and Dottie) Lahar Farris. He was last seen in Washington just prior to World War I. No one in the family has seen or heard of him since. He was raised in Colfax, Washington in the household of his aunt, Mrs. Minnie Longstreet. There is some talk, too, about him having been a bank robber, involved in a shootout in Bend, Oregon. Any clarity or information would be appreciated.’ ”

“That’s a good one to end on,” Josie said, hoping Ana hadn’t heard the word “robber.” It would provoke a string of questions, if not keep her up all night. “Is she asleep?” she asked Paul.

He didn’t have to turn around. “No. She’s just looking out the window.” He nodded toward the ATVs. This was a new phenomenon. The main roads were paralleled by narrow dirt paths where men and women and families traveled to and from town, with groceries or anything else, on four-wheeled ATVs. These alternate paths were everywhere now, in this part of Alaska, wherever they were.