Down the hill I can see guys pouring the concrete foundation for the new jail. It’s just a skeleton of the building’s structure, an outline, and it’s sunk into the side of this hill so it is only visible from where we are standing. You couldn’t see it from town yet.
Go-boy tells me we are on Air Force Hill. There was once an army base here, and another at the end of the road. He says the base had a missile detection system they used during the Cold War. “I don’t know what the army was so worried about. Eskimos never worry about a Russian invasion.”
I spin around and see nothing but little mountains and trees trailing off behind us. The road snakes its way through the hills and valleys, disappearing.
I say, “Maybe they were worried about nuclear bombs.”
“Nukes,” Go says. “Nukes don’t work up here, man. We’re too close to the magnetic pole. It messes with the fission or something.”
I say, “No way, those bombs work anywhere. They could blow up the moon.”
“Yeah, because the moon doesn’t have a magnetic pole,” Go says. “They don’t work in Alaska, though. Lots of stuff doesn’t work here. Cold medicine. Airbags. Condoms.”
“What?”
“Yeah, man. Why do you think people are always getting sick?”
Go sits on the hood of the car. He’s smiling a little, looking toward town. I’m not sure if he’s the type of guy to mess with me just because, or if he knows I was messing with him first, or if he believes all that.
“So what do you want to bet?” Go says.
I was hoping he’d forgot.
“Our bet,” he says, slapping at a bug on his arm. “From yesterday.”
We watch the NAC cargo plane take off again. We are three miles out of town and the jet climbs over Unalakleet, without sound, and then banks toward the interior.
“You still plan on leaving in three months?”
I nod.
“I bet you stay a year, at least. And if you stay, you have to get my tattoo.” Go hikes his sleeve to show me the drawing again. It doesn’t look as good today. Today it’s faded and some of the ink is smudged at the crease where his arm bends.
From on top of the hill—surrounded by the blur of trees and tundra and the bubble of open sky . . . with the strip of an unfamiliar village and all its machinery and junk miles below . . . with this cousin who talks about changing the world from his HUD home—I can’t even begin to think about staying in Alaska and not seeing Pop or Wicho for another year, and yet I can’t even admit to myself how dangerous it would be for me to go home, so the options are ridiculous. They seem impossible.
“By the time you lose, I’ll have the tattoo for real all right. We’ll both have it. We’ll be real same-same.”
“And when I leave before a year?”
“I dunno. Anything. I’ll bet whatever you want, man, because I know you’ll stay.”
“A car?”
He tells me he’ll buy me a house if I want. Anything. All I have to do is move in a year. But instead of a car, I think about college. Would he pay for that? And then I think about a lawyer for Wicho, one that’s not a public defender and could appeal his case and get him out of prison. Would he pay for that?
“I don’t want the tattoo.”
We’re silent for a while and the mosquitoes start swarming—big, nickel-sized mosquitoes—so Go hops off the hood and we get back in the car.
He says, “I know the plan will reveal something.”
It wasn’t until later that summer that I would understand what he was talking about—his plan. It was an idea that everything in his life was part of a world conspiracy—a good conspiracy. It was kind of crazy-sounding. But on my first day in Unalakleet Go was just starting to put these things together. He had always believed everything would work out for everyone. Now he was starting to believe everything would become perfect. Everything would join together to become heaven. Not long after I arrived he said, “People who wait for paradise don’t really want it.” Go started believing in heaven on earth, believing it was about to happen and believing it was his duty to dedicate his life to the cause. He called it his strange plan.
Go-boy was convinced that with the right perspective, anything was possible. This was always evident, even when I’d met him the first time, when we were younger, and the second time, at the airport. He said people walk around most days without feeling alive; people go every moment without paying attention to the quiet life—the life that matters—the voice that can direct a person’s destiny away from a world of shame and guilt to a world of meaning and realization. According to Go, the way to live was to listen to your heart. Intentionality, he called it. Something about how you’ve already sketched out your life—joys, sorrows, mistakes, accomplishments—before birth, and it is your conscience that reveals how to live your intended life. The goal is to experience multiple lives, experience everything.
Go drives us out of the hills and back into town, and I start lying again. I say, “Did you know Los Angeles is the religious capital of the world?”
“No,” he says. “How?”
The gravel road runs straight downhill and all we see in every direction is miles of open tundra and water. It’s strange how small the village seems compared to everything else. I’ve never been to a city that is so dominated by empty space all around, like a strong wind or wave could just wipe it away.
“LA has the most religions, or is the most religious, or something.”
Go parks his car in the middle of the concrete bridge again. This time we are facing the village.
He says, “When I think of LA, I think of Hollywood. And Hollywood projects this America where everything is a product for sale, everything is buyable material—most importantly, identity. Even spiritual identity has gone public. And man, the more we rely on external identity the more detached we become, because the only things of value are earned, and there is never enough to go around, and the travesty is that the valuable and sacred aren’t inherent. There’s no image of God. No creativity. Only image of image, only replications of replicas.”
We watch a lady in a fishing boat pull up to the shore, throw out her front and back anchors, and then hop onto the sand and walk away.
“I’ve never been to Hollywood,” I say, lying.
“LA. New York. Doesn’t matter, man. Rural is the new city.”
It’s my second day here, but it feels like I’ve already lived in Alaska for too long.
“So this is the only concrete in town?”
Go says, “No, there’s the basketball court.”
I picture every kid hogged onto that slab, shoulder to shoulder, dribbling basketballs, tre-flipping skateboards, even hopping on pogo sticks. Everyone pushing and shoving for their fair share. And the other kids who aren’t into sports sit on benches and watch.
“In the village,” Go says, “time is way less important than purpose.”
For a minute we see no vehicles. No people are out walking along the roads. No dogs are testing the lengths of their chains. No airplanes are delivering or loading supplies or people. It’s as if the village is unpopulated. I never would’ve imagined something like this being possible in the middle of the day, here or in LA or anywhere. For a minute nothing happens.
Then Go says, “I’ve got it. I’ve got the bet.”
“It won’t even matter.”
“If you