The wind hadn’t blown. It had remained calm, had it? Yes? God answers even unasked prayers, does He?
Two huge black bears, drawn great distances through the crystal neutrality of the calm, windless air, by our poor scat, stooped to sniff where we’d squatted on either side of the airplane; then, standing upright, looked up at the machine in which we were sitting and made a face.
“Oh, Jesus,” Philip murmured. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“Surely,” I whispered, “they’ve seen airplanes before.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“They must have.”
“Sure,” Philip said, “lots of times. Maybe what interests the sons of bitches is that they ain’t never before seen one that could throw down one or two dozen razor pines, saw them up into manageable logs, knock them into a roost, then fling its shit out of the nest after it was done with it.”
“They think we’re a bird?”
“Do they think they can take us is what. Listen,” Philip said, “Jerry, I’ve heard about this. Some clowns like to hunt out of airplanes. Hang a rifle out the window and potshoot anything that moves. Wild West antics. Like standing on the observation platform and offing the buffalos. Strictly illegal, of course, and a bush pilot would lose his license if he ever got caught, but it happens.”
“Did you do this?”
“What, shoot? Hell no, I don’t even fish.”
“Fly the plane,” I said. “For the hunter.”
“Do you know what it was like up here before the pipeline? Oh, sure,” he said, “now it’s all boom town and gold rush days, but you come back in a few years, after it’s done, and they’ll have invented the Rough ’n’ Tough industry. There’ll be roustabout museums wherever you look. Nostalgia cakes. Maybe there’ll even be a Bush Pilot Hall of Fame. And except for maybe something a little less than a tiny handful of World Canned Salmon Corporate Headquarters down in Anchorage, there won’t be nothing else here. It’ll be like it was before the pipeline. Because this country won’t ever be civilized. I’ve got nothing to apologize for. I’m a bona fide pioneer. Pioneers do things. They’d do other things if they could, but they don’t always have the choice.”
This, it seemed to me, was inappropriate, improbable conversation to conduct while seated inside an airplane mounted on a heap of logs actively mistaken for a giant pterodactyl-sized bird by fierce bears in open country, but Philip, either propelled by guilt or driven by some idée fixé, had evidently hit upon his theme and was apparently content to explain himself to me at even greater length. Always while he spoke the notion never left my head that at any given moment he might become so exercised that the bears would mistake his passion for some loose atavistic theme that turned on the smell of rage and apoplexy and that then, out of simple, time-honored principles of self-defense and self-preservation, they would storm the plane and kill us. He continued.
“So don’t charge me with breaching the codes or violating the folklore. The most they can get me for is unsportsmanlike conduct. What I did they don’t even throw you in jail for. They can suspend your license, hit you up for a fine, but we’re still talking the thin end of evil. I don’t even own a rifle. Tops, I was an accessory. All I did was drive the getaway car. Do you know what it was like up here before the pipeline? Like some frozen fucking Appalachia, that’s what.”
“Hey, easy,” I said, alarmed by his excitement.
“You want a statistic? That could give you the idea? Do you? Listen to this. In the fifteen years since they’ve been keeping records, you know how much money has been made from shoveling snow up here? I’m not talking about the highway department or the department of streets. You know how much? Clearing off snow? Counting kids, counting guys out of work? None. Zip. Not a nickel. They’re an independent people. They shovel their own walks, put in their electric, their plumbing. You’d think there’d be odd jobs, that it’d be the odd-job capital of the world up here. The hell you say. Nothing doing. You got a plane, you do what they tell you. If either one of those mothers think I’m responsible that their relatives were turned into carpet or a trophy for the game room, let the record show I ain’t the only one. There’s plenty could be tarred with that brush!”
“Please,” I said, “you’re giving off frenzy. If I smell chemicals on you, what do you suppose those bears make of you?”
“I don’t care,” Philip said, “death’s death. They’re shot from a plane, they’re picked off by some mug in the snow. Tell me the difference again.
“Anyway,” he said, “I ain’t any Lucky Lindy. I ain’t no Red Baron. I couldn’t pick and choose my jobs and ways. Not everyone gets to fly the medical supplies into the village or make the dramatic drop on the pack ice, the radio equipment, the flares and toilet paper. Even if I’d been a better pilot I could never get in with the right people, the environment monkeys and wilderness teamsters that run this place. It’s enough they let you hang around to do the dirty work and odd jobs.”
“You said there weren’t any odd jobs.”
“What odd jobs there were.”
“What odd jobs were there?”
“What do you think?” he said. “I smuggled snow.”
And this conversation improbable too, yet suddenly flashed back to the halcyon days when we were cozed comrades, the sedated collegiality of those predawn hours before it was over the top. While we were still boys in the treehouse chatting up the mysteries.
“Because there really ain’t any economy,” Philip said. “Not in any ‘Hey, patch your roof for you, mister?’ sense there ain’t. Not in any ‘Who’ll take these caribou steaks off my hands for me?’ one. Not even in any underground sense — stolen goods and tips and money passed under the table. The cash crop up here is wilderness itself.”
“Tourism?”
“I’m not talking about tourism. I’m talking about climate, I’m talking about distance. It’s a cold culture. I already told you,” he said, “I smuggled snow. I was a snow smuggler.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said impatiently.
“Rabbi, the morning I picked you up, did you have breakfast at the motel?”
“Sure,” I said. “Yes.”
“Can you remember what it cost you?”
“It was expensive,” I said, “twelve or thirteen dollars.”
“What we do here,” he said, “—you, me, Alyeska, the cab drivers on their dogsleds and snowmobiles, the blue-collar help that flies in every day from the Outside, all them wilderness teamsters — is factor cost into the price of soup, jimmy profit and inflation into the price of doing business. We’re all smugglers.”
“The bears,” I said, “one of the bears …”
“Don’t make eye contact with the bastard. They see everything. They read lips. Nothing gets by them. Nobody can show them a poker face good enough. Let’s just continue our chat.”
“Tell me,” I asked nervously, “you said you’d heard about this. Has it happened before?”