Correcting the Landscape by Marjorie Kowalski Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

was feeling lonely these days, stuck his head in my office, and said, “Nice editorial, Gus. What we’re paying you for.”
    His soon-to-be-ex-wife Shelley, Realtor of the Year last year and part-time director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, had her picture in the big daily several times a week, attached to classified ads in the Real Estate section. She was a gregarious woman, not bad looking, with strong features, a wide smile, and bright yellow curls. Once he showed me a picture of her in his wallet from ten years ago—they had been camping. She was thinner, wearing a loose flannel shirt and flirting with the man behind the camera. Her hair was frizzing out of long braids, coming loose after several days of camping and fishing. Her broad smile was directed at only one person. I imagine he missed that woman most of all; with the current Shelley, beaming her can-do grin at the entire city, he was snarling mad.
    I gave Felix a personal check for seventy-five dollars after his first story, which he put toward a used mountain bike, modified for winter riding. He surprised us with a well-written feature story about the bike shop where he found his bike; the owner made a specialty of replacing standard rims with locally welded wide rims on which a rider could keep going through the snow all winter long. Felix rented a twelve-by-sixteen cabin and rode his bike to and from the office. When he’d peel off his face mask, there were stripes of windburned red skin under his eyes. The bike looked like a torture machine to me, but he was exhilarated. Leaning in the hallway, piled with his gear and helmet, it gave the place life. To see the bike against the wall and Gayle Kenneally’s blue corduroy Eskimo parka on the rack delighted me; the Mercury , I’d think: what a happening place.
    Sometimes Gayle’s son, Jack, walked over after school and waited for her in the newsroom. He was a big, shy twelve-year-old in half-unlaced Sorels, usually reading a copy of Off-Road or, when Gayle scolded him, scowling line by line through his assigned paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird . He seemed tospend half an hour on each page. I couldn’t imagine what he made of Atticus and Boo and Dill. Once I walked around him where he slouched at a vacated desk behind a math book, and saw inside it a Garfield comic book. I felt for him. Who wouldn’t? She wouldn’t let him go home alone.
    â€œYou don’t trust him?” I overheard Noreen say once.
    â€œWhy should I?” Gayle said softly. “Teenagers never tell their parents anything. God knows what he’ll get into and he won’t tell me. We never talked to our parents back home. Not about what we were getting into.” She laughed at herself, a kind of snort.
    They lived downtown somewhere, and I noticed they rode the Fairbanks bus home, which meant an uncomfortable wait in the open bus shelter down the road. At thirty below it’s not that much fun. I began to feel my way toward offering them a ride.
    You feel your way, then you grab the chance like you just thought of it that second.
    â€œIf you’re going that way,” said Gayle, after a minute, in response to my offer.
    â€œAlmost always have a reason to head into town,” I said. “I’ll go start my car.”
    And of course, the Honda would not start.
    The heater had died some time ago, and in the cold, everything plastic inside had started to break and fall off in my hand. The speedometer needle was stuck at 80 mph; the dashboard was basically gutted of knobs and controls. The emergency brake was a chunk of six-by-six post, a leftover from mounting my newspaper box out on Bad Molly. I sat there alone in the frozen shoebox of my car and pounded my forehead once or twice on the steering wheel. Then I thought, It’s just as well. This would be a mighty unpleasant ride. What would they think of me, the two of them.
    â€œI spoke too soon, Gayle,” I