Sometimes I Write Short Stories
...and forget about them until a year later when I’m clearing up some memory on my computer. Enjoy.
October sometime | 2015
I’m barreling down a remote, pothole riddled road in an old flatbed truck with gears so sticky I have to steer with my knee just to strong arm to the next gear with both hands. I have discovered (the hard way) that the brakes are near unusable. It is dusk and I’m just now noticing the beads of sweat that have formed on my brow as I navigate the winding road to Hydaburg, a small Native town of approximately 400 people, packed down with a load of dozens of brand new shrimp pots to deliver to my friend’s boat at the local dock. There are no other humans for miles, except for my brother who was following me in our friend’s beat up Suburban but had stopped at the last gas station with the intention of catching up with me. It’s completely dark now and there’s no sign of him. When I say there are no other humans for miles, I’m talking like, 30 miles. There are no streetlights, no electricity wires, no moon even. When you’re driving a big old truck that could careen off into the ditch at any moment, there are no people around, and the sun has just gone down, naturally you start to imagine you’re in a horror movie and start forming beads of sweat on your brow. It’s just the natural reaction. My brother eventually caught up to me, which was on the one hand a relief, but on the other, terrifying since I was already pretty engulfed in my real life horror fantasy, and having a car sneak up on, and follow, me after sunset was unnerving, to say the least.
So, this was not how I envisioned my evening going. In fact, just that morning, I had driven my boyfriend to work, expecting a nice little kiss goodbye and a “See you at home for dinner!” Instead, what I got was “Would you mind picking me up from Hydaburg this evening?” The obvious thing to do was ask what in the world he would be doing in Hydaburg, a full two hours from the town we live in, and why in the world was he going to be there without a vehicle?
So I did. His answer pretty much summed up the unpredictability of our way of life up here in Alaska, or the lives of anybody living in this area. You never know what you’re going to have to do to get what you need to get done, done.
As it turns out, our friend needed to bring his 40 something foot vessel down to Hydaburg to dock it for shrimping season since there was no room left at the Craig dock. So, despite my assumption that we would have a “typical” evening at home, it surely did not surprise me that now, my boyfriend, our friend, his wife, and another buddy, would be taking the 8 hour voyage, by boat, to Hydaburg and needing not only a ride home after they arrived, but also their pots to be delivered by flatbed, all with literally 10 minutes notice. Such is life in the Southeast Alaskan world.
Fortunately, the drive was nice. A momma bear and her cub cut me off while crossing the road (Those insensitive jerks! Didn’t they know my brakes weren’t working?!).
The end.