to be rid of the burden. Some thought she figured she couldn’t win against the state so why try. Instead, she got a job waiting tables at the Roadhouse, in spite of stiff opposition from Jim Chopin, who was already spending too many duty hours breaking up brawls between Suulutaq miners and Park rats fighting over the same girl. Putting Dulcey in the Roadhouse seemed to him like rolling a nuke into a firefight. The resulting explosion was predestined and the fallout would be toxic to everyone in range for a long time.
To his surprise, indeed, to the Park’s collective surprise, Dulcey managed to suppress whatever incitements to riot she had hardwired into her DNA for the hours she was on duty. Off duty was another matter, and most of her off duty hours were spent at the Roadhouse. Hard to tell when she first started hooking up with the Balluta brothers, and no one ever did figure out if it was serially or concurrently.
Everyone remembered the fight Nathan and Boris got into that April, though. It had already been a notable evening, what with Pastor Nolan having confessed his affair with Patsy Aguilar, and his wife sitting right there at the congregational table. Then there was the group of climbers who, having summitted Big Bump, had come in for their requisite shots of Middle Finger. It was always fun to see their expressions when Bernie took down the unmarked bottle of Everclear with the forefinger floating in it.
And then the fight had erupted and spread to engulf Pastor Nolan’s parishioners, the Big Bumpers and the quilting bee in the corner, where it upset three of four Irish coffees. The aunties were pretty pissed about that. So was Dulcey when she had to clean up the mess, and it then became blindingly obvious what the fight had been about, as Nathan and Boris vied with one another to rush bar rags to the scene and then got into another fight over who was allowed to carry the dirtied rags back.
Dulcey twitched her fine behind around the bar and fixed Bernie with a fiery glance. “I didn’t start that.”
“I saw,” Bernie said, and got out the baseball bat. Fortunately Albert walked in and broke it up before Bernie had to break any heads.
Now, you’d think that would have been it, spleen vented and honor satisfied, but instead things seemed to escalate. That spring Nathan guided a couple of salmon hunters to one of the secret streams where Kanuyaq River kings of trophy size came home to spawn, and found Boris there already, tromping back and forth in hip waders, muddying the waters and scaring everything with a fin two creeks away. He was carrying a dip net. Said he was fishing for female kings so he could make his caviar. Nathan’s clients, who had had the look of very good tippers, didn’t so much as get their lines wet.
A couple of weeks later Boris was fixing to set up his fish wheel. It was a lot of work and Boris didn’t put in that kind of effort unless he was certain of a return, so he’d spent the previous week watching the river, watching the reds run, and coming up with a pretty fair estimate of when they’d hit his beach. Once the fish wheel went into action it stayed in action until he’d caught his limit, when he packed up the whole shebang and brought it and the fish back to the house.
Only this time, once he’d loaded all the parts in his pickup, driven the forty miles to the trailhead, humped all those same parts down a mile of rough and more or less vertical trail to the gravel bank, and started to assemble the wheel, he found all the bolts missing.
There were other incidents, and the queer thing was that in between them Boris and Nathan maintained an outward civility. They would show up at the Roadhouse and take turns courting Dulcey, where under Bernie’s watchful eye they were as polite as ever they could be, to each other and to everyone else.
“It’s real amusing to watch,” Bernie told Jim, “but it feels like sitting on top of an unexploded bomb.”
Jim talked to
To his surprise, indeed, to the Park’s collective surprise, Dulcey managed to suppress whatever incitements to riot she had hardwired into her DNA for the hours she was on duty. Off duty was another matter, and most of her off duty hours were spent at the Roadhouse. Hard to tell when she first started hooking up with the Balluta brothers, and no one ever did figure out if it was serially or concurrently.
Everyone remembered the fight Nathan and Boris got into that April, though. It had already been a notable evening, what with Pastor Nolan having confessed his affair with Patsy Aguilar, and his wife sitting right there at the congregational table. Then there was the group of climbers who, having summitted Big Bump, had come in for their requisite shots of Middle Finger. It was always fun to see their expressions when Bernie took down the unmarked bottle of Everclear with the forefinger floating in it.
And then the fight had erupted and spread to engulf Pastor Nolan’s parishioners, the Big Bumpers and the quilting bee in the corner, where it upset three of four Irish coffees. The aunties were pretty pissed about that. So was Dulcey when she had to clean up the mess, and it then became blindingly obvious what the fight had been about, as Nathan and Boris vied with one another to rush bar rags to the scene and then got into another fight over who was allowed to carry the dirtied rags back.
Dulcey twitched her fine behind around the bar and fixed Bernie with a fiery glance. “I didn’t start that.”
“I saw,” Bernie said, and got out the baseball bat. Fortunately Albert walked in and broke it up before Bernie had to break any heads.
Now, you’d think that would have been it, spleen vented and honor satisfied, but instead things seemed to escalate. That spring Nathan guided a couple of salmon hunters to one of the secret streams where Kanuyaq River kings of trophy size came home to spawn, and found Boris there already, tromping back and forth in hip waders, muddying the waters and scaring everything with a fin two creeks away. He was carrying a dip net. Said he was fishing for female kings so he could make his caviar. Nathan’s clients, who had had the look of very good tippers, didn’t so much as get their lines wet.
A couple of weeks later Boris was fixing to set up his fish wheel. It was a lot of work and Boris didn’t put in that kind of effort unless he was certain of a return, so he’d spent the previous week watching the river, watching the reds run, and coming up with a pretty fair estimate of when they’d hit his beach. Once the fish wheel went into action it stayed in action until he’d caught his limit, when he packed up the whole shebang and brought it and the fish back to the house.
Only this time, once he’d loaded all the parts in his pickup, driven the forty miles to the trailhead, humped all those same parts down a mile of rough and more or less vertical trail to the gravel bank, and started to assemble the wheel, he found all the bolts missing.
There were other incidents, and the queer thing was that in between them Boris and Nathan maintained an outward civility. They would show up at the Roadhouse and take turns courting Dulcey, where under Bernie’s watchful eye they were as polite as ever they could be, to each other and to everyone else.
“It’s real amusing to watch,” Bernie told Jim, “but it feels like sitting on top of an unexploded bomb.”
Jim talked to
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