Chapter 1

 

The phone rang. I knew who it was before I picked it up.

“Bronski!”

It was my boss in Anchorage. Who else? I mean, here at Howes Bluff in Western Alaska, the post office phone doesn’t ring often. From behind a sorting case, my wife, Jeanette, and her twin sister, Jean, at another case, peeked through open slots. 

I gave Jeanette a wink, laid my wire-rim glasses down, and leaned back in my chair. “Yes, sir!”

There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end.

“Bronski?”

I could understand his questioning tone. Usually I answered with a somewhat unenthusiastic “Yeah, Boss.”

Things had been going well for the past month. I was a happy camper, simply enjoying life. “Yes, sir?”

“Oh, for a minute there I thought we had a bad connection.” His voice sounded muffled. That meant he was rolling an unlit cigar around in his mouth. Poor Boss. Now even he had to go outside to smoke. What this must have done to his work habits was beyond my imagination.

“How’s it going out there?”

“Okay,” I answered, trying not to sound too happy.

“I see.” More hesitation.

I learned long ago to wait him out, mostly because it infuriated him.

“Uh, Bronski, I’ve been thinking.”

Maybe it was the serious tone of his voice or maybe it was the funny feeling in my gut, I don’t know, but to be on the safe side I motioned to Jeanette to pick up the extension.

“Yes sir?” I said, and took my feet off the desk.

“Uh, you heard about the supervisor down in Fire Bay being found dead on the beach this morning?”

“Uh . . . no, sir.”

By now I was standing, my free hand tapping a pencil on the desk. I really had heard about the supervisor, but I was playing dumb. An old friend worked in the Boss’s office, and I had no intention of the Boss finding out. 

“Well, they think she hit her head somehow and fell out of her skiff. I need somebody to take over her job and also serve as officer-in-charge until a new one can be appointed. You remember Bill, the O.I.C? Well, sorry to say, we had to ship him off for a while to detox. Bill has been having self-confidence problems. So, Leo, bottom line. I want you to go. It’s a double-duty assignment and I know you won’t be happy about it, but you’re just about all I got.”

I threw the pencil down and sat down with a thud. Go? Go to Fire Bay? I was happy here. Besides, what did “all I got” mean anyway?

“What if I said no?” I asked.

“Of course, you can say no, Bronski. But before you do, I want you to think about your Postal Service career.”

My career? I almost laughed out loud. I didn’t know I had one.

“Boss, you know I’ve been married only a little over a year. I’m not wild about leaving Jeanette, and besides, who would take over for me while I’m gone?”

The Boss’s chair squeaked. “Got that covered. Jeanette Bronski will take over your duties.”

I slumped over the desk, head in hand. I heard Jeanette walking toward the desk, coming to stand by me. I sighed. “How long do I have to think this over?”

At first, it sounded like w the Boss as trying to chuckle, but that would have been unusual. Instead, he went into one of his infamous coughing jags, the kind that lasted a minute or so. I held the phone away from my ear and rolled my eyes at Jeanette, who was standing very still, her hand cupped over the mouthpiece of the cordless phone. She did not smile. 

Finally he quieted down and spoke, trying to be cheerful. “Take an hour, Bronski. Remember your Postal Service career.” With that, he hung up.

I sat there a few seconds, my hand still gripping the phone. Chills ran up my back, not unlike those I used to get in Vietnam walking along a trail. A shoulder squeeze from Jeanette brought me back to the present. I looked up at all five feet of her, resplendent in her pin striped Postal Service shirt, took her hand and kissed it, then held it to my cheek. This was my love, my peace, and my rock. I stood up and nodded to Jeanette’s sister, Jean, across the room.

“It’s all yours, Jean. Jeanette and I are going up front and then maybe to the restaurant.”

She nodded back. Taking over was no big deal, since most everyone had already been in to check their mail.

Jeanette and I grabbed our jackets, and walked up to the front window; where I paused for a moment to look out on the street scene. Not a person or dog in sight, just a gravel road with gray, unpainted single-story houses with smoke coming out of pipe chimneys. There was a blue-sided, single-story commercial store farther up the street that handled everything from food to pots and pans to clothing. A few feet farther was the white Russian Orthodox Church with its blue spires. At the end sat a small, gray building, now a café, a great meeting place if you wanted everyone in the village—and by the way, that’s five hundred people—to know some choice piece of rumor. There were a couple of side streets with a house here and there with maybe fish drying on a rack in the front yard alongside the satellite dish. Inside the house, impassive faces might be watching “Everybody Loves Raymond” or some CNN news event, or Mom and kids might be cutting up moose meat just taken for food. On the hill above us sat the school and electric generator. At one time or another, I had been in every building in the village. It was a scene that I had come to cherish in the past year and a half. Days were getting shorter as summer wore on and there was a certain waiting tension in the air. Winter was coming and you had better damn well be ready for it.

Jeanette took my hand. “C’mon, Leo, let’s go have a cup of coffee.”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

Again, that chill worked its way down my spine and I didn’t like it one bit.

It was a cool day out on the street. The leaden sky leaked a mist just heavy enough that the gutter on the post office dripped kerplunks now and then into a rain barrel at the corner of the building. After a few steps in the mud, I began to shiver. 

“Leo, are you all right?” 

“Yeah, honey, I will be as soon as I get back inside. Must be catching a cold or something.”

“Uh, huh.” I wasn’t fooling her one iota. She knew better. It was she who had to listen to me talking in my sleep when the dreams came. Nightmares, that ranged from a former marriage, to Vietnam, and back again to the present day in this village. I patted her arm and gave her a smile. 

“Winter’s coming on.”

“Yes,” she said.

The village priest, Father Markoff, dressed formally in his black robe and head cover, gave a shout from where he stood in the doorway of the church.

“Leo! Jeanette! Where you going?”

Jeanette gave him a wave.

“Where are you two off to?” he asked again.

“The café,” we answered back.

“Why don’t you come over? I’ve got a fresh pot brewing on the stove.”

I looked at Jeanette and nodded. Why not? We turned ninety degrees to the left and made for the church. I licked my lips. I had not had a drink in days, and Father Markoff was well known for the liberal portions of whiskey he added to his special coffee. I used to be a drunk. In the last year I had pretty much gone on the wagon. Something I prided myself on was that I could take a sip now and then without going overboard. Some people might say that a true alcoholic can’t take even a sip. But I like to think that’s not me.

He rubbed his hands together. “Getting cool.”

“Geese heading south,” Jeanette said.

We silently followed the good priest into the church. About halfway in I stopped and looked the place over. A church without pews was still somewhat new to me; for Jeanette, who was Yupik, it was home, and represented a large part of her culture and her belief system. It provided her a sense of security, a security I married into when I married her. Although a small church, it had various icons on the gold-colored altar with pictures of saints hanging on the white walls surrounding us. Rays of light shot through the stained glass windows to focus on the altar—whether by design or Divine Providence, I was never quite sure. 

Jeanette sighed. I looked down and saw her eyes getting misty. She too felt the power and awe. 

“C’mon, Leo,” she said quietly. 

Another tug on my arm and I was again following the Father over creaky floorboards back to his office behind the altar area.

He swung his arm, gesturing us to sit down in chairs arranged in a circle, and regarded us through those knowing blue eyes of his. He pulled at his grizzled beard and sat down. “So, how’s it going?”

Jeanette and I had come to expect this question. Every few months he would haul us in and ask, staring at us, making sure what we told him was the truth, I guess.

“Ah … pretty good,” I said.

He leaned forward and, without warning, slapped me on the knee. “What’s this? The luster of marriage wearing thin?” He was smiling.

Jeanette piped up. “Leo has been asked to take a temporary officer-in-charge position elsewhere and I have to stay here. We have one hour to make up our mind.”

Father Markoff looked back to me, his smile showing pearly white teeth. “Only one hour? My, oh my, the Postal Service moves in mysterious ways, does it not?” 

“Not if you knew my boss,” I said.

He nodded. He had heard me speak about “the Boss” before and not always in glowing terms. He stood and reached for the coffee cups. 

“Where does he want you to move?” he asked, passing out the old white mugs.

“Fire Bay,” I answered.

“Ah, Fire Bay.” There was a silence as he poured the coffee and then added a half shot of whiskey. To my surprise, Jeanette also took a share. Finished with the sharing of coffee, he leaned back in his swivel chair, his blue eyes settling on me for a moment before speaking. 

“I’ve been there, you know. It’s a big town of more than four thousand, with a movie theater and lots of restaurants and culture for such a small place. In the summer there’s charter fishing, what with the tourists and all. It has everything Anchorage has, including drugs and alcohol.”

He paused and took a sip. I took a big gulp and looked at Jeanette. Her mouth was a straight line. There was no joy there, nor help. Father Markoff cleared his throat.

He knew all about my problems.

“Are you ready . . . Leo?”

I stared down into the depths of my coffee, looking for the clouds. 

“I don’t know. But the Boss has made noises,” I added, and paused to look over to Jeanette again. Was that pity I saw? “About my postal career being in jeopardy. He’s used that line on me before. It doesn’t usually bother me.” 

I took a sip of that wonderful concoction and my shivering stopped.

“But this time it bothers you, doesn’t it?”

I looked up at him. “Yeah, it does.”

Father set his cup down. “He likes you, doesn’t he?” 

“Yeah, I guess he does, in a way.” Actually, I hadn’t thought much about it, but put to it, I guess the Boss did like me, kind of like a farmer likes his horse. A horse that never asks why, but just keeps pulling on the plow. 

“You ever stop to consider he wants to groom you to take over his job someday?”

I put my cup down, nearly spilling its contents. “Lord, no!”

Jeanette started coughing. 

Father Markoff looked down into his cup, as if studying how he was going to say his next words.

“Leo, are you happy here?”

“Of course I’m happy here,” I answered.

He looked at Jeanette, as if wondering if she was strong enough to handle his next question. “Do you think he ought to take the job offer, Jeanette?”

“I don’t want him to, but he must,” she said, her eyes misting up.

He nodded and looked over to me. “It is to be a test,” he said. “God has given you a rest, and now he wants to see what paths or forks in the road you will take. To see if you can advance to your next level.”

I cast an anxious glance at Jeanette. I was not happy about the direction of this little talk. “What do you mean, ‘advance to my next level?’ What level?”

Father Markoff shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s for God to know and you to discover.”

I sat back, stunned—and a little angry. I was happy here. And Jeanette, my soul mate, saying I should take the job? I took another big gulp of coffee, as did Jeanette, for she too had seen her share of life. A husband who had died from drinking too much of anything he could find, and her daughter, a teenaged woman-child killed from an overdose of some unnamed drug. I sensed she was surprised by her answer, like the words had been put in her mouth and she had been forced to say them. 

“I guess it’s settled then,” I said.