Chapter Seven

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“There’s no time like the pressure.” Tanjee quoted her grandmother’s made-up maxim as she rolled over and grabbed the steering wheel. She screamed. Her head throbbed and something was definitely wrong with her left arm. She pulled again, this time with only her right hand, and inched herself slowly into a sitting position. The pain and exertion left her gasping for breath. She sat for there a moment. Now, instead of lying in an uncomfortable ball she was crouching in an uncomfortable ball. She felt like a roly-poly bug sitting with its butt immersed in water. The sensation of nasty, cold water seeping into her pants disgusted her. And motivated her to keep moving.

She reached up to grab onto the center console but she couldn’t get the grip she needed. Her legs were beginning to burn from sitting all scrunched-up. Panic was making her angry. She took hold of the steering wheel with one hand and pushed up with the other on the back of her seat. She knew this was going to hurt but she clenched her teeth and heaved herself up. Screaming, pushing with both feet against the driver’s side window, she stood. Her head and shoulders cleared the broken window on the other side. She had never felt such a sense of accomplishment in her life.

Way off in the distance, a sound caught her attention. It was a vehicle approaching. Startled, she illogically yelled, “Hey!” and then muttered, “Stupid,” to herself. Not only would a car never hear her, Tanjee could not even see the road from where she was.  Horn, she thought. I’ll honk the horn. It’s worth a try. She reached with her foot and pressed on the center of the steering wheel. Nothing. She bore down with all her might and the horn gave a short little honk. She listened to see if she still heard the vehicle out there. It sounded closer. She grunted and kicked at the horn again. This time she held out one long, sustained note, a trumpet cry for help.  After about five seconds, her foot slipped and she yelped at the thought that she might fall back into the car. She was able to right herself quickly and get her foot back on the horn. She was afraid to stop to listen for the location of her would-be rescuer. She pressed down even harder. The horn continued to sound for what seemed like a comical eternity.

“Please. Oh please, please, please.” Tanjee finally picked up her foot and listened. Nothing. She realized that the car had passed. Or maybe, she reasoned, it had stopped and someone was making his way to help her right now. Even though she heard no movement in the waist-high grass, she encouraged herself. “I’d better blow the horn as a directional signal, just in case.”  She held down the horn again. After a few seconds, she stopped to listen, then resumed. She held down the horn for about thirty seconds and then stopped and listened again, straining. All she heard were bugs buzzing and some type of creature making a low croaking sound. She hoped it wasn't an alligator.

Tanjee’s ears strained for any remaining remnant, any tattered loose string of a sound wave from that long-gone vehicle. 

Tanjee thought about the time she asked her grandmother if the only stories she knew were Gwich’in stories.

“Don’t you know any fairy tales? American fairy tales? Does every story have to have a polar bear or some old hunter in it?” Tanjee was 15 and Grandmother was still telling her native stories like Two Old Women and The Baby Boy Who Went to the Moon. But Tanjee had decided that those old stories and everything about being Athabascan was second rate. She didn't like the old ways. She wanted to be American. Not Native American.

“Okee, I gotta story for you, T’Alee Ahshi’i. For some reason, when her grandmother used her Gwich’in name it was always with a slightly mocking tone. Tanjee was glad she didn't use it much. Grandmother more often used one of the thousand nicknames she had for her.

“Yeah.  I gotta good ‘Merican story, Little Crow Bird. You listen, now. You challenge me…you gonna listen.”

Her grandmother started slow and deliberate, in that spooky voice she employed to tell all her stories. Tanjee held out little hope that this story would be any different.

“Once there was a beautiful princess, all alone and very lonely. Three times she thought she had found her Prince Charming, but each one rode away on their sled, uh, I mean their big horse. She knew in her heart that this was not the way it was supposed to be. She was a princess, after all, and all the princesses in the other villages—uh, kingdoms—were very, very, happy. After the third prince rode off on his big horse, the beautiful princess went to the wisest man in the kingdom, to ask how she could be happy.


‘Sir,’ she asked, ‘how can I be happy?’


Sir replied, ‘If you want to be happy, dear Princess, you must drink deeply from the river that flows by the Mountain of Wisdom. Wisdom's waters are free, but you must make the journey to find the river. Oh, and listen to my words, dear Princess. There will be things that happen on your long, long journey. Do not leave the path. Do not give up. Do not get distracted. When you feel yourself being drawn away from your journey, take out the little piece of paper which I have placed in the velvet bag I give you now. Read the words written there, and all will be well. Start your journey as soon as the sun comes up tomorrow.’


The princess left the next day for the Mountain of Wisdom. No sooner had she left the city, than a brightly dressed ‘Merican man with a painted face called to her from the side of the road. You know how she know he was a ‘Merican man? ‘Cause he had red hair. Lots of red, red hair. He called out to the lonely princess:


‘I heard that you were making a long journey, dear Princess. Why go all the way to the Mountain of Wisdom when what you really want is The Land of Happy Happiness? Come with me and I will show you the much easier way to travel to what you seek.’


The Princess dropped everything and ran to follow the red hair man. Forsaken was the velvet bag and its words of wisdom. The little piece of paper fluttered out. On it were these words: ‘Do not run off with the first Bozo you meet.’

She did not live happily ever after.”

Her grandmother looked at her with a satisfied expression.

“See, Muskrat, I know more than Gwich’in stories. And I know more than you think about a lot of things. Like, I know that you make giggly talk with those no good boys from Uptown. You listen to my story. Don’t settle for no Bozos. You gonna grow up and go to college and be somebody important. Marry a hardworking man. He will take you far away from this hell hole. Don’t settle for those losers. You don’t want my life, Muskrat.”

That year, winter was upon them before fall even got going good. Coal oil and wood were in high demand. The early changes had caught them all by surprise. They could all feel the familiar, bleak sadness creeping up on them before they were ready. Tanjee had written a poem about the unexpected, early cold. For some incongruous reason, standing with her head and shoulders poking out of her mangled car in a steamy, Florida field, the words of that poem blew through her mind:

It’s a helpless descent

Inescapable;

a familiar melancholy

In Autumn, the

leaves

do not fall

alone

The earth and everything in it

tilts, transitioning,   

forgetting warmth and light,

a hazy dream

Painted woods cackle

in carefree breezes
disrobing; no worry for weather

the messy forest floor, all russet and sienna 

And after,

naked and knobby trees croak out complaints

to the stone-cold silence


day follows day— 

An unrelenting ache

torments the sun-starved mind

with its need for flowers and blue sky 

And yet,

the ptarmigan and hare

anticipate the long, dead winter and

change

Inuit and Athabascan 

both know how to thrive

and sing in a frozen night

It can be done.

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Blaine wished his father had been an organized person. Big Carl had no office and did not trust anyone else to care for his “papers.” The entire house was strewn with “papers”—the remnants of 40 years of researching sermons, writing sermons, and preaching sermons. The trail started at the front door and snaked its way through all seven rooms of the little clapboard house: piles of notes, outlines and ideas jotted down in spiral notebooks and on the backs of envelopes, dusty old commentaries, faded magazines. Add to this two or three thousand cassette tapes—at least one audio cassette tape of every sermon Big Carl had ever preached—and Blaine was overwhelmed.

The books and papers and paraphernalia covered every surface. They spilled out of cardboard boxes, overflowed bureau drawers, and had infiltrated every out-of-the-way place.  Blaine knew that the particular tape he was looking for was not going to be in a box labeled “Sermons: 1980-1985.” It was going to be sandwiched about half-way down a messy stack of papers or in the back of a junk drawer or maybe in a shoebox with the words “Children’s Church” written on the lid in black Sharpie. He had run across that actual shoebox a few years ago when he was looking for his daddy’s spare eyeglasses. In that box was nothing that could be considered useful for Children’s Church. But he did find the glasses there. Oh, well, Blaine thought. Better just suck it up and get to looking.

Big Carl had a reputation as two things: a great preacher and a horrible pack rat. Blaine knew he had to search this house using some sort of system. The monumental task of finding that one cassette tape was boggling his mind. He was convinced that looking through his father’s mess was akin to peering into the bowels of deep space. Blaine took a deep breath and exhaled his favorite Henry V / Star Trek VI quote, “Once more, unto the breach!”

He started with a raggedy cardboard box sitting near the front door. As he rummaged through its contents, he had a fervent wish for a pair of surgical gloves. Thick dust and dead bugs made it obvious that this box had been undisturbed for decades. “Which is exactly where the 30-year old stuff is going to be,” he muttered, while squinting to read the faded cover of an ancient piece of sheet music. No tapes in that box. He rifled through several other similar boxes nearby. No luck.

He moved on to a set of wooden shelves that lined the left side of the room. Each shelf was cluttered with cheap ceramic figurines and a hodge-podge of novelty items. “Gewgaws, knick-knacks, and dusty, tacky bric-a-brac,” Blaine muttered absentmindedly and then brightened. “Hey! That rhymed. Did I make that up?” Suddenly self-conscious that he was talking to himself, he continued searching in silence. Not every item brought back memories. His dad’s hoarding had escalated after Blaine left home. “He was not this bad back then…” Blaine’s voice trailed off as he realized he was talking to himself again. “Who cares?” He called out into the house, loudly, “There’s nobody here but me. Am I afraid I’ll think I'm crazy?” And then even louder, “Get over it, Blaine.”

His stomach gurgled. He looked at his watch: One thirty and he hadn't eaten since early yesterday. He headed for the kitchen but paused for a moment wondering if it was okay to eat a dead man’s food. “Is there some societal taboo about this sort of thing?” He reasoned that his daddy had only been dead three days, so it was not like this was some abandoned house he just happened upon in the woods. The house still felt “lived in.”  Blaine was very aware that his thinking process was weird.

He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands. “Clean hands, clean heart,” he recited as he dried them on a decorative towel that said, “God Bless Our Home.” The towel was unused but disgustingly stiff from years of hanging in a kitchen where the preparation of every meal involved the use of hot, spattering oil. He retrieved a box of Raisin Bran from the pantry and cautiously looked it over.  It wasn't out of date so he moved on to the refrigerator. A quart of milk he found there also had a future expiration date. He smelled it just to be safe. He located a bowl and spoon and sat down at the kitchen table to eat. It made him sad that his father had lived in this mess. Alone. All these years.