her massaged expression and all the hyper kids in the room who were experimenting with all the shit they weren’t supposed to. It was something just behind her face. She stood there, looking older than everyone—older than seventeen, anyway—acting like a woman who had it all, who had already been to this party.
She set the pop can down. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or smiling. Everything seemed to be getting darker, even though the sun outside still refused to set. I noticed Kiana was wearing winter boots—white military boots—bunny boots. It was June.
“We haven’t met,” I said.
She slid the half-empty can of soda across the counter to me with a mix of boredom and mischievousness. She smiled. I reached past and grabbed the jug of rum.
“Cesar of Los Angeles,” she said. “Where’s Go?”
She said my name like it meant something. Cesar. Like it had purpose, and history, like it was a whole goddamned team to cheer for. Cesar. I loved it. She said my name like it had been my destiny. Like Cesar wasn’t just some of Pop’s superficial garbage he dumped on me to somehow fix his own lack of Cesar—or his own lack of Wicho—but like Cesar was me.
“He’s at work,” I said.
I didn’t tell her Go-boy’s shift was now over and that I was supposed to be there, upriver, on the tower, counting the fish in the river. I didn’t tell her he was now covering for me. And I wouldn’t tell her that at the moment I didn’t care about Go-boy.
“Good,” she said. “He needs to save money.”
“And Kiana, what about you?”
All along my plan in Unalakleet had been simple—pick up a job, a few paychecks, a plane ticket home. So right after I arrived I started looking around. But jobs weren’t available. I tried to get on with the company building the new jail, but I didn’t have construction experience, and the crews had already been filled, and something about building a jail seemed wrong. That left the grocery store and the fish-processing plant. The grocery store only had a few employees and all the positions were taken, and I didn’t want to work ankle-deep in fish guts and end each day smelling like seafood waste. So I turned to Go-boy. And just like Go-boy—supportive and helpful to a fault—he set me up with a job at the North River counting tower just a few weeks after I arrived, counting fish, making more cash than I would’ve imagined ever being possible in a place like this.
From the jump, when I moved here, when I got the tour of Unk, Go-boy had been trying to make me feel like a local. And he still was. He stopped by our house every day. He introduced me to his friends. Invited me on boat rides when he and his girlfriend, Valerie, would ride up the coast. He asked Mom if she needed anything from the store or needed help with anything around the house, and asked me if I wanted to check out a movie or ride around in his AMC. And if I did, if I jumped in the passenger seat of his car, Go would point out people to me on the streets and tell me their stories. He’d tell me who was dating, who was married, and who was part of our extended family. He’d stop and hang out with kids on BMX bikes, introduce me. They’d always ask Go when he wanted to play basketball or softball or bat again, and Go would sometimes make plans to meet them in a day or two, and other times Go would drop everything and we’d all head to the court for a game of bump or tip or three-on-three. And other times, while riding around, Go would warn me about who to avoid—who would steal my stereo, who took basketball too serious, who not to start shit with. Go knew which adults were on probation, and who was smuggling booze and drinking anyway. He even knew who was dealing. And I was grateful he was trying to look out for me and make me feel wanted, but sometimes Go disappeared. Sometimes he was sad and just wanted to be alone. He could spend an entire day or week in his room, writing his girlfriend a thirty-page letter or carving her a miniature wolf head from a caribou antler. So I was bound to hang out with somebody besides Go-boy.
One night I walked over to Go’s place in Happy Valley. It was the first—and only—time I saw Kiana before the party. When I was still about a half a block away I saw a girl come out of Go-boy’s house, jump on a four-wheeler, and take off. I didn’t get a good look. It was raining and she had her hood up. When I got inside I asked Go who the girl was, if it was his girlfriend. He was caught up in a project, trying to melt what he called gillies—sea glass—into some type of creation for his girlfriend.
“I’m making an ulu for Valerie. The handle will be glass.”
I didn’t know what that was, and I asked him.
“An ulu is an Eskimo knife,” he said.
Go pointed to a rounded steel blade—about the size and shape of the bill on a Lakers cap—that had a small handle. He made a motion with one hand, like he was dealing cards, and said, “We always cut fish like this.”
There were five or six other ulus, varying in size and shape, lying in the sink. The blade of the new ulu was cut from a Skilsaw blade, the company logo still visible, the teeth ground to a slick edge. In the center was an inscription:
The seed of God is in us.
Now
the seed of a pear tree
grows into a pear tree;
and a hazel seed
grows into a hazel tree;
a seed of God
grows into
God.
. MEISTER ECKHART.
Go said, “Great quote, ah?”
I shrugged.
“Sure always something to live by,” he said. “A seed of God grows into God.”
“Did Valerie just leave?”
“No, Kiana.”
I said, “I haven’t met her yet.”
Go had a torch and leather gloves and had his project splayed all over the kitchen, so I left to find something else to do. I walked back down Main Road, kicking rocks, sometimes picking one up and tossing it into a silver herring boat that was jacked up on pallets in someone’s yard. People in trucks passed me, waving. I thought it was odd how so many vehicles didn’t have license plates.
A couple guys pulled alongside me in a beat-up Toyota truck. I had met them playing ball with Go. The driver was a guy they called Bum One and he invited me to ride wherever they were riding to. I said okay. They had some beer in the cab and we all squeezed in and rode out of town. Bum One was wearing little earphones, and he asked me about California. About LA. I didn’t tell these guys lies like I told Go-boy. We got to a gravel pit and drank more and shot a handgun at the empty bottles. These guys were cool and they loved to just hang out and joke and tell me stories. They told me what it was like in the winter. Told me the sun only shines for a few hours. Said it was the opposite of California. And as they tried to scare me during this night and for nights to come, I wondered where Go-boy was. Bum One told me how it starts snowing in September and doesn’t stop till May. He started every sentence with Did you hear? He said, “Did you hear we get polar bears?”
“Shit!” I said, acting surprised and worried, but his exaggeration
