SOMETIMES
WE’RE ALWAYS
REAL SAME-SAME
SOMETIMES WE’RE ALWAYS REAL SAME-SAME
MATTOX ROESCH
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Mattox Roesch
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data Roesch, Mattox, 1977–
Sometimes we’re always real same-same/Mattox Roesch.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-932961-87-4
1. Eskimos—Alaska—Fiction. 2. Cousins—Fiction.
3. Country life—Alaska—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3618.O375S66 2009
813’.6—dc22
2009017497
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Book Design by SH · CV
First Printing
The Eskimo words used in this novel are from the Unalakleet dialect. Unalakleet is the southernmost Iñupiat village, boarding the Central Yup’ik region. Although most of the Eskimo words are Iñupiaq, some are Yup’ik, and some are variations of both. The words used here are by no means authoritative, and their spelling reflets the regional pronunciation.
Dedicated to the memories of Jason Everhard and Gabriel Towarak
I am grateful for the journals that published the stories that evolved into this novel:
Narrative Magazine, “All the Way Rider”
Redivider, “The Thing in Her Thumb”
AGNI Online, “Humpies”
2007 Best American Nonrequired Reading, “Humpies”
The Missouri Review, “Go at Shaktoolik”
Indiana Review, “Burn the House Down”
The Sun, “Maluksuk”
SOMETIMES
WE’RE ALWAYS
REAL SAME-SAME
ESKIMO JESUS
I almost ended up with Go-boy’s tattoo. I lost the bet and was supposed to get this drawing of an Eskimo Jesus tattooed on my right forearm. It was the tattoo that Go-boy had inked on his own arm. The design he had created.
Our bet started when I moved from Los Angeles to Unalakleet, Alaska. I was seventeen. Mom was sick of my shit and sick of her own shit, so she gave in and moved us about as far away from LA as possible—to the place where she’d grown up, the place where she hadn’t been in twenty years. A bunch of family I’d never seen before welcomed us when we got out of the small plane. My cousin Go-boy was with them. He was tall, taller than me, and his black hair stood on end, messy, like a cloud of smoke. Go introduced me to a few people and then we split, and he gave me a tour of his small village—my new home. It was only the second time I had met Go, and I told him I was moving back to California at the end of summer, in three months, telling him this was just a temporary thing. But for some reason he didn’t believe me. He bet I’d stay.
He said, “You’ll still be here this time next year.”
I laughed at the idea right then. It was strange. I didn’t know why he thought he knew me so well or why he didn’t want me to leave his town. I’d never known anyone with such confidence—not in other people, not in me. But either way, it turned out he was right—I stayed and lost the bet. I stayed through the summer, through the manic sun of June and July, the ditches full of fireweed, the dusted car windows, the gravel-filled shoes. I stayed into the months of mud puddles and rusted bike chains, and then the forgettable fall. I stayed for my senior year in high school. I stayed for seven months of winter, seven months of blizzards, seven months of east winds and billboard-sized drifts, seven months of short and shorter days. And I stayed through the spring melt and into the next summer. I even stayed during the few times Go himself left.
But I didn’t get Go-boy’s tattoo.
ALL THE WAY RIDER
We leave the airport and Go throws my bags into his busted hatchback.
He says, “You want the Unalakleet tour? I could ride you around, show you everything.”
I assume he means drive.
As we ride, Go only talks about the village. In the village . . . In the village . . . He’s trying to sell me on this place. I’m not interested. This is the second time I’ve met Go, but the first was years earlier, back in California, and it feels like I’m meeting him all over again.
“In the village,” he says, waving to a group of kids, “everybody’s sure always waiting for their shipment.” He lists things like house paint, mattresses, rubber boots, even food.
“There’s no stores?”
“Well,” he says, “there is. But . . .”
He rides me around and we coast over washboard ripples and potholes on the gravel road. The sun is strong. Everything is dry and chalky. The colors, even—dusty beiges and light blues. The dashboard is dirty. An AM station buzzes, and Go waves at everyone he sees. He points out cousins of ours, aunts, family members who weren’t at the airport.
“That’s your mom’s uncle,” he says. “Our grandpa lived over there.”
He shows me the post office, AC Store, Native Store, Igloo, the lodge, and a bunch of other plywood buildings with tin roofs. There are no signs or advertisements, no trees or grass lawns, and the houses are crowded under empty grids of telephone poles. It’s the ugliest place I’ve ever seen.
Go calls it the real Alaska.
Go says, “In the village, there’s no such thing as a family reunion.”
As we drive I see a tattoo poking out from under his right cuff. He sees me looking and pulls up his sleeve. Go even smiles a little right then. It’s a drawing of an Eskimo Jesus, stretching hand to elbow, wrapping around and blanketing most of Go’s forearm. Thin blue strokes shape the Eskimo’s face and parka. Facial features are labeled with descriptions. The eyes are INFINITY. The ears are UNITY. And so on. I want to ask him why he drew Jesus looking that way, but instead I tell him it kind of looks like the guy on the Alaska Airlines logo. Go says it isn’t a guy. Go says the returning Jesus will be a woman.
“A Daughter. Daughter of the world.”
We pass a playground set in the middle of a dirt lot next to a school. The radio regains reception and I bounce my heel with the song. Go-boy asks if I’ve graduated. I haven’t.
“My pop and me are starting a business together back home, in the fall.”