Plan B for the Middle Class by Ron Carlson Read Free Book Online Page A

arms, her wristwatch, her short, unpolished fingernails, the small gold necklace, the rise of her collarbones under the fabric of her pullover.
    â€œHe can’t talk. He drank some heating fuel years ago. Blazo. He drank some Blazo and doesn’t talk, but he’s a gem. He is the mechanic to trust in this village.”
    Julie had pale green eyes and a faint spray of freckles across her nose and forehead. Burns put her at about thirty. He felt like a teenager sneaking looks at her breasts. He hadn’t seen a woman in a turtleneck sweater for twenty years. There was an angry red scar on her neck protuding from her shirt, which stunned him at first, and then he realized it was a violin mark. Alec had had one.
    Burns heard two concussions from outside and then two more, the distant snapping of gunfire. He held on to the sink and felt the wind pull at the trailer and he thought: Don’t touch her. Don’t you touch this woman.
    For dinner Julie had a white cloth on the kitchen table and Burns tried to eat slowly. “I appreciate your putting me up like this,” he said. “I’m genuinely sorry we haven’t met until now.”
    â€œTom, don’t start apologizing. I mean it. This is Alaska, there isn’t room.” Julie looked at him squarely. “I understand about the wedding and Alec did too. Believe me. And you were right not to come. It was Helen’s show really.” She sipped her bourbon, then lifted a finger from the rim and pointed at him. “I’m not kidding.”
    â€œI just want to see where he lived out there, where he … I missed so much, and now I just want to see what it’s like here.”
    â€œThis is what it’s like, dark and windy, lots of accidents.”
    â€œI spoke with Helen before I came and she simply wanted you to know that she would love to hear from you and that if you ever needed anything she would help. She was quite sincere.”
    Julie placed her glass carefully on the table. “I know. We’ve spoken about the funeral. He wasn’t my husband anymore, of course. We were only married the one year. And I hadn’t seen him for months. I tried to handle everything I could at this end, but I couldn’t go down to the states and get all involved in a world which wasn’t there anymore. You went out?”
    â€œI did,” Burns said. “I finally went to something.”
    Burns ate slowly, his hunger a fire that had him on the edge of his chair. He felt oddly alert. “Who found Alec?”
    â€œGlen reported the cabin burn on his return from a caribou count, and the Search and Rescue went out from here. You can see Lloyd tomorrow, the sheriff. It was his men.”
    They were quiet for a while, Burns eating and watching Molly, chin down on the living-room rug, watch him. All of these things had happened, Alec’s wedding, divorce, death, in half a dog’s life.
    â€œSo, you’re Thomas Burns,” Julie said, smiling again. “It is just a little weird to see you.”
    â€œThat’s the way everybody seems to be taking it.”
    â€œWell, Glen is convinced you’re a cop.” She pointed at his clean plate. “Still hungry?”
    â€œNo,” he lied. He stood and set his dishes in the sink. “Is there need for a cop?”
    She joined him at the counter and spoke softly. “No. It’s an unhappy story, but we’ve got all the cops we need.” She stopped him from clearing the table. “Come on, I’d better take you down to the Tahoe before my students get here. All visitors go to the Tahoe. The largest bar in the Arctic Circle. Even though you don’t drink, it’s a good walk, and next week in Darien, you can say you’ve seen it once, tell stories.”
    Outside in the heavy wind, Burns and Julie shuffled along the hard snowpacked roadway. The dark was gashed by several flaring arc lights above the armory and the high school,