"Furlough"

Author's preface:  My first story to be published in paper-and-ink print, in the seminal Mid-Western publication Sperm Meets Egg, out now.

It is a glorious feeling, finally piling out of that van in the parking lot behind the Auke Bay laundromat.  The six of us are crusty and grungy and tired, yet driven onward by the need to drink heavily and fully live up our prospective weekends.  I grab my daypack from the back, amid the other packs and greasy tools and jerry cans and the like.  The fresh sea air is wafting over the building from the marina across the street, cool and strong.  I can hear the bells and the birds and the occasional horn lowing in the distance and it excites my soul, beckoning me thence to my doom like a siren.

            Boss Nick is saying something from the driver’s seat, and I think Boss Matt is saying something else in agreement.  Not listening, so can’t be sure.  We all mumble our goodbyes and bon voyages and fuck-yous as they drive off, sling our bags over our shoulders and lope along to the corner bus stop.  The lot of us carry our daypacks except for Squat Dan, who insists on bringing all of his kit with him; a mountain of things crammed into a five-foot tall rucksack, strapped tightly to his hairy, stocky five-foot-two frame.  Quite the sight ordinarily, but this is Juneau - Auke fucking Bay!  Where the sea dredges up America’s most colorful assortment of people.

             Festival-bearded Grandpa Ray has his guitar case in hand, intending to venture off wolf-like and alone downtown in search of a badly-needed lay.  Myself, Squat Dan, Droid, White, and Baby Dave have our own plans, equally excessive and with as much a chance of some sort of lay as any.  Before I go any further with the narrative, let me clarify that the nicknames were all picked out yonks ago by Squat Dan.  Grandpa Ray is as young as any of us, Baby Dave leans toward the giant Swede side of things, and Droid is begrudgingly but fully human; Dan occasionally insists on calling me Rutabaga, though I insist he doesn’t.  All monikers aside, White is simply Neal’s last name.

            Anyway, our plan was to take the 4 bus down to the industrial stretch where we would load up on six free ponies apiece at the Alaska BrewCo.  Costco was just a stone’s throw away, so we’d use White’s membership to buy some cheap liquor for the weekend ahead.  Heading back to the bus route, we’d take the 2 back up toward Auke Bay, getting off before by the Safeway to grab some dinner with our food stamps (speaking of monikers, they’re actually just swipe cards) and head across the street to the Sand Bar.  Killing a few hours there, we would then rejoin the 2 and take it up to Mendenhall, where we would be guests at the payroll matron’s partner’s house.  There we would drink abhorrent quantities of liquor and beer, mill about in their jacuzzi, and cavort a bit with the education gals that sublet their ground floor.

            That was The Plan, essentially.  We stand around smoking cigarettes and exchanging money so as to have the right chunk of change for the bus.  Baby Dave is upset because his Bic has somehow lost itself in the lining of his coat, while Squat Dan is trying to convince us to pool up our fares in his keeping.  But somehow his math doesn’t seem to be coming out right and god but I need a drink.  The bus finally comes, we file aboard, pay our fares, take our seats - except for Dan, who has to stand at a dignified hunch with his pack.  The Juneau bus is a hell of a thing, but I suppose most public buses are.  Lots of plump Alaska Natives, a cluster of Japanese students, a couple scraggly Vietnam vets, and a handful of elderly folk at the front.  And then us, the scrofulous foul-smelling bearded trail people.

            The first kink in The Plan comes when Droid points out that the brewery closes in thirty minutes, with us still ten or so minutes out.  With a five-minute walk from the stop, that’d leave us some fifteen minutes to drink our six ponies… carry the two… I figure we would have two-and-a-half minutes per glass if we hurried.  The bus chugs along at a maddeningly even pace, past the mall, then the Fred Meyer, then the Wal-Mart and hospital.  Finally - finally! - we approach the industrial stretch and we’re nearly prying open the door before the bus rolls to a stop.  Despite ourselves we’re jogging along, jaywalking and cutting lots and leaving Dan far off behind with his mountainous belongings, cursing us ever the more distantly.

            We save ourselves a couple of minutes as we reach the door to Alaska BrewCo’s little welcome center and gift shop.  The upper echelons of the wall are ringed with empty bottles, grouped and labeled by place of origin.  Nearly every country and every state is there; there are even a few from North Dakota, with ancient-looking labels I’d never heard of.  But I’m not much for the décor at the moment, and head straight on for the little sample bar.  The bartender is an understanding sort of salt called Tony.  He chews the fat with us a bit while we sink back our various ponies of stout and spruce tip and red.  He’s worked at the brewery some twenty years now, been sober for about eighteen of them and is getting ready to retire back to the lower forty-eight, in Iowa.  We tell him a bit about ourselves, each in turn as we wait for the next rounds to come.  Truth be told, I think in all the rush we get seven or eight free glasses apiece; not wanting to be ‘that guy,’ I buy a couple of the big thirty-twos of spruce tip and sink them into my pack.

            Bidding Tony and the BrewCo farewell we jump on up to the Costco.  Dave still can’t get at his lighter, and he’s starting to throw a bit of fit at it.  But we’re well on our way, blitzing through the discount liquor section like sailors on furlough (which we kind of nearly are, in a way).  Among us only Droid isn’t twenty-one, and has to go through the ignominious motions of giving Neal money to buy with.  I opt for a large handle of low-end Scotch whiskey, hoping to obliterate every last vestige of myself before Monday morning.  We all start to rush back to the bus stop, but timekeeper Droid informs us we’ve got another twenty minutes to kill before the 2 rolls along.  We kick up on the curb outside a vacant gravel lot and pull back from our bottles, smoking and chatting and occasionally pissing and always keeping an eye out for the roving patrols of the Juneau City Police.  I nearly laugh myself senseless when Droid pulls out a bottle of Oporto; he didn’t know what it was when he picked it up.

            “Shall we have a spot of sherry before billiards, old bean?” I ask him in my snootiest affect.

            Dan just shakes his head and we all know what he’s going to say, like expecting the rabbit when a second-rate magician paws the inside of his top hat.  “Oh, Droid… so young, so naïve.”  We laugh it up for a bit and start to head back to the bus stop, and I’m feeling nice and vague and forgetful of myself.

            “I love this place!” I shout, and I think everybody more or less agrees with me at the moment.  The bus comes, we mount up et cetera.  The ride is a pleasant blur of laughs, really uneventful like as we unload outside the Safeway.  None of us are particularly hungry though, so we skip on over across the way to the infamous Sand Bar, as wretched a hive of scum and villainy as could be found in these parts.  The place is your typical pit bar, with a couple old wooden tables and chairs mingled with the green-felt pool table and a coupla slot machines, the wood paneled walls and the enormous flatscreen t.v. mounted at the center of the bar, the whole din smelling vaguely of piss and beer and buffalo sauce.  But it’s a Friday night, and the place is crawling with fishermen and bikers, truck drivers, trail-builders and the odd and vaguely out-of-place yacht nobs.

            We recognize a few of the faces from the other work crews, who are getting their drinks paid for by a trawler bloke who’s just hauled it in good.  “I appreciate the work you guysh do for Alashka,” he tells us emphatically, drunk as all hell.  The five of us - including Droid, who is trying to play it cool and not get carded - are included in this magnanimous feeling and he offers to buy us drinks as well.  “What’ll you have?” he asks me sharply.  A Rainier, I tell him, and I guess that’s the magic word because he slaps me on the back and buys me two.  I’m double-fisting the fuckers, not necessarily adding to any conversations but nodding along and laughing, enjoying the positive hell out of myself.  One of the New Hampshire yacht nobs asks us with the faintest sneer if we’re fresh off a boat, which sort of makes my night.  It’s my first time being mistaken for a local, the culmination of a month’s worth of tent-living, labor, and personal neglect.

Exulting besides, I’m finding the evening’s beers are really starting to weigh in on my bladder.  The bar’s bathrooms don’t have any doors or stalls, just being sort of open for the general public to enjoy an eyeful.  I step up and all, but feeling vaguely self-conscious about it I elect to take my piss out in the parking lot instead.  White and Baby Dave are mingling there with another crew lad, burning it up like.  Dave is still Engelbrechting it with his jacket between various pass-arounds.  Finally with a triumphant “A-HA!!” he tears the lining from his windbreaker, the lighter clattering out to the pavement.  “There,” he says amicably as he contentedly lights up, ignoring the tattered lining fluttering about from under his arm.  I join them there, breaking out my briar and the black cavendish I keep in my grandfather’s old leather pouch.

“No shit!” Crew Lad exclaims, and hitting me up for the pouch he surprisingly breaks out a briar of his own.  It’s not long before Squat Dan joins us with his pipe, and soon there’s a small group of scruffy, malodorous young men producing a fragrant and dignified blue cloud of smoke in the Sand Bar parking lot.  A biker comes out for a cigarette and spies us, and after a bit of explaining and a puff he joins along with our group.  His leathery mustachioed friend comes out after him, flabbergasted like.  “You left me to hang out with these, these kayakers!?” he spits, and once again I deflate from local to tourist in the span of ten minutes.

The Sand Bar goes on for hours, and soon Droid is frantically finding us out from the crowd.  “The last bus comes in five minutes!!”  Frantic we were, piling off pell-mell towards the roadside with our bags.  I’m about staggering at this point, beyond the pale of commonplace feelings - feeling pretty damned good, really.  We make a laughing, slurring group of six, and I have to do another headcount as I realize we’ve been joined by a random hanger-on White disdainfully calls “the meth addict sonofabitch.”  We barely make the stop in time to mount the number 2, with the last leg of our night’s journey ahead.

Like I was saying before, we’re all in fairly good spirits as we sit around on the bus toward Mendenhall.  All jokes and jollies and what.  I even have a hearty laugh as we pass the dubiously-named Swampy Acres horseflesh farm with the Purina shield on its sign, before the evening takes another odd turn of pace.  It happens from either side of me.  White was saying something to Dan when the bus driver starts raising his voice at them; meanwhile, an Alaska Native gal at the back asks Dave, Droid and I if we’re from the area and I’m sort of dividing my attentions at this point between the here and there.  We tell her we come from the lower forty-eight as I overhear the driver telling White “no cussing on the bus.”  Neal asks him what he’s “fucking talking about,” while the girl suddenly pipes up that we “don’t belong here” in Alaska.  “You can’t even bait a fish,” she says deprecatingly.

Hell hath no fury I suppose, as Baby Dave all of a sudden stands up to his full height.  “What did YOU SAY!!?  WHAT DID YOU FUCKING WELL SAY!?” he roars at the gal, and Jesus-me if we didn’t have to hold him back from outright braining her there on the bus.  Meanwhile Neal is still arguing with the bus driver in less-than-best terms.  Consequently, our bus comes to a halt.

“All of you, off my bus!” the driver commands us as the doors hiss open to the empty blackness.  We heft off Dave first - still shouting out the gal at the back - and try as best we can to grab all of our gear.  “How do you like them apples, you little shits?” the driver calls to us.  “Don’t bother boarding tomorrow, I’ll just pass you by!!”  And with another hiss the bus roars on off down the way, leaving us to ourselves and the moonless night.

“Well, hell,” I say simply, and we all start laughing as the tension drops away.  Our stop is just up ahead, the night is yet young, and with a cry of dismay Droid realizes he’s left behind his sleeping bag.  We laugh all the harder as Dan again pulls his overused rabbit from the hat.

“Wow, you guys really pissed that driver off,” Meth Addict tells us with a touch of awe as we saunter along with our bottles.  With the slightest glimmer of promise on the chilly air, I inform him the night is far from over.  We walk merrily on into the darkness, smoking and chatting and occasionally pissing and as always, keeping an eye out for those roving patrols of the Juneau City Police.