In Memory
of Hawks
And Other Stories
From Alaska
Irving Warner
(Pleasure Boat Studio)

Part II

THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
BUT NO MORE GILDING THE LILY

"Reports of Disappearances" make me feel lonely and afraid in a world I'd prefer to not visit again. Ever.

Landed at an abandoned Hudson's Bay Store, upcountry. Nearby a Caribou migration route. Alone in an abandoned hut. Once a church or a one room school house? Well-Intentioned Churchly Indian Boarding Schools. Oblat Fathers strike again? Wrought Hell with Tree of Knowledge and created havoc on all the pretty heathen children?

Once in a while, a terms-end bush plane crashes with the village kid supply on board. Empty moccasins all over the Rez. Inside the decaying structure under the glassless window was scratched Twenty three days and still no Caribou. Family winter food supply? Some uncomprehendable Cree syllabics beneath that. A poetic but mental missionary doggerel:

All God's North is dark and dreary
Hell however is warm and bright and cheery

--- (Signed)
"Rev. Allworthy"

Think three hours light and -40° frost! Just kidding ... Just kidding ... Give me a Sign?

Saw a convincing pair of antlers floating above the bush. Scratched some more. Inhaled Cutter's Ointment and sweat, black flies and small bugs. Slogged along on bog and ankle-breaking tundra. Thought Times Square. Nathan's hot dogs. Painted women. Fleshpots. The lake floor bisecting the route was knee-deep in antlers and bones. Creatures clubbed while swimming helplessly across. By Abos in bloodlust for winter cornucopia. So much for the currently touted and admired Conservation Abos. Feh. (Think watery killing ground).

§     §     §

A SMALL BOTTLE LABELED
DRINK ME

Looked up. Overhead the only flight, the daily Lufthansa contrail from Winnipeg at 35,000 feet. Thought in lust of painted women, Mädchen im tailored blue uniform. Guttural but attractive blue-eyed, slender blond Saxon Frauleins. Gazing uncomprehendingly down at my natural hell. Thought hungrily and Imagined practicing my disjointed, halting John Wayne sentences for upstairs painted women: "Take this New York Strip back. BURN it! Nicht blau! Feuer Brent. Kalt Schnapps, eis Kalt. Martini! Hein?" Folks, that --- absent Deep Greens and electroshock therapy --- is
CIVILIZATION

Down here it's surly Discontent.

§     §     §

Moving right along...

You don't want to go where we went and don't go no mo', no mo'. Flying ever-northward we landed on a sub-Arctic lake at an abandoned Abo village. Starvation here back then. Government moved 'em out. Now in residence at another far, far better? northern place. Think Meth ... booze ... horny construction workers ... social disease, glue. Frozen death. Lots of social pathology. Madness.

Small abandoned 5' X 8' stick huts here. A ten-gallon fuel container with a hole cut to heat the place in winter. A six-foot high earthen berm heaped up like a boat prow at the hut's outside northwest corner: Clever way to break the howling winters 30 MPH NNW wind at -40° of frost. Tree stumps one- to two-inches thick at the base, a hundred years old. Awful place.

Bush cut for fuel, walls and roofs. Bare for a mile around. There's the obverse of the blurry spit-lensed soft focus, gauzy Sierra Club calendar: "Lonely Places of The Earth" Hell! God save us from romantics. They'll be the death of us, those ecofriendly jerks...

Abos were flown out before they starved. You can't eat Eco like fungoid Manna, honey. Save their bodies as ordered by the now reviled government. Probably all meth heads, glue-sniffers, and sauce heads by now. Do-Gooders or Good-Do-ers?

Warner's "Reports of Disappearances" and damn near every other Warner story are icy as charity. Make your nuts tighten right up. Hide inside. Make you long for warm, homey Times Square and Nathan's all-beef hot dogs. McSorley's.

Warner's In Memory of Hawks, is a Category Ten for cold dead accuracy and true horror. (However, a Zero rating for wit and good humor.) By comparison, take John McPhee's quite wonderful Alaskan book, Into The Country, wherein U.S. Interior, Ag & Fish, Forest and Rec, Reccy and Corps, battle for the politically correct, environmentally-sensitive programs and procedures. To the death.

For boasting rights and good intentions McPhee gets a Ten for good humor too. Cruz Smith also gets a Ten for style, wit, compelling dialogue --- and really bright attractive-to-me, neurotic women. And site research in Polar Star and Gorky Park. But Warner ... Jesus. Warner wakes you at dread Three AM Horror time ...

the clock strikes in the midnight tower
and on my tongue the taste is sour
of all I ever did.
Shudder.

Warner gets a Ten+ for beautifully written and crafted icy psychological horror and site accuracy and local knowledge. Poe couldn't have done better. Warner gets a Ten Plus.

Bleak?

Enjoy.

§     §     §

OH.
THE ANSWER TO THE PHILOSOPHER KING'S
TRAVEL PREFERENCE ON
HIS OWN PASSPORT AND DIME

The answer came thickly through the smoky, smelly McSorley's fug:

"New York, Paris, London, Rome ... and MCSORLEY'S, of course. Think I'm nuts?"

We returned to uptown civilization and annoyed, sleepy wives.

Their preference of location? "Open the windows and sleep on the other side of the bed!"

Civilization and its discontented?

--- Paul Nickel