Sucktown, Alaska by Craig Dirkes

Author:Craig Dirkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 9781630790554;9781630790561;Alaska;realistic fiction;newspaper;journalist;marijuana;comedy;comic fiction;coming-of-age
Publisher: Switch Press
Published: 2017-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

DRY-LAND THERAPY

The dog team stomped toward the cloudy horizon on green tundra — extra mushy from the morning dew. The army-green hip boots I wore over my jeans kept my legs warm enough, but my yellow insulated flannel didn’t quite cut it on top. Just wait until winter, I thought. Fifty degrees in Alaska will feel like T-shirt weather.

I liked running the dogs on dry land more than on snow. Dry-land mushing was more relaxing. The dogs couldn’t run as fast because the tundra was more abrasive to the bottom of the sled. When I took a header, reclaiming the team was easier.

Just like snow mushing, dry-land mushing had become my therapy. And given what had happened with Bronco and the bear and getting my butt whooped and all that, I needed a fat dose of doggy medicine. Two weeks had passed since the incident and I still hadn’t gotten a grip. The beating left me aching and weary, but the outward signs of it hadn’t been too bad. At first my face was swollen and red, but soon the only obvious signs were a cut on my eyebrow, a faint black eye, and a gash on my lip. When anybody asked, I’d told them that I dumped the dogsled or flipped a four-wheeler.

Mostly I just wanted to avoid people. I’d been out mushing almost every day.

This time the dogs and I must have been a mile outside of Suckport. I turned toward town but couldn’t see the city limits. I wasn’t concerned about going anyplace in particular, so I let Joanie decide. She led the team west. We bounced up and down on the uneven ground, kicking up ptarmigan every couple hundred yards. Without snow, mushing trails no longer existed on the tundra.

As the team strode along, I thought about how otherworldly insane my life had become. In less than a year, I’d gone from normal suburban kid to bush-living, marijuana-dealing, murderer-dodging, broke-ass fool.

The whole caper was a vicious circle. I wanted to leave town more than ever, yet the only way I could get out was to keep doing the very thing that made my life so miserable — selling weed. It was the ultimate catch-twenty-two. I was like an alcoholic, getting drunk to forget about my drinking problem.

To compound matters, since Bronco stole the money I earned during my third delivery, I needed to sell two ounces during my fourth transaction to stay on track financially. If I got busted with two ounces, the cops could nail me for intent to distribute.

I wondered whether Bronco had anything more in store for me. He was still out there. The bear hadn’t mauled him and the others. If she had, word would have gotten out and Dalton would have made me write a front-page story about it.

But was the beat-down Bronco and his goons gave me enough to satisfy him? Even if it wasn’t, what else could he do to me? Not much, I figured. I was probably safe in Suckonia.

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