Aurora Green
The sun’s rays poured through the bar’s open door, in a land and a season where the sun never sets. That summer, folks from the lower forty-eight swelled BJ’s bar to standing room only. Hobo Jim jumped from table top to the stage, a wooden platform not much larger than the scattered bar tables and half as high.
“Who’s feelin’ rowdy?” he asked, tipping his cowboy hat.
We all cheered. Tourists and fishermen were always the loudest and rowdiest. The barmaids lined up shots on Jim’s amplifier. He obliged us by chugging drinks between songs, and by the time he finished a song there were always at least two more drinks waiting on top of his amp. The whole bar joined in like school kids when he belted out the Coyote Song.
“Ow, ow, owooooooo,” we sang in our coyote voices.
The crowd yelled out our requests, and one voice, rising above the others asked for The Rooster Song. An ancient grey-bearded bow-legged thin man did a step dance on the floor in front of the stage. His cowboy hat and cane were adorned with battery driven Christmas lights. A few locals joined him. We couldn’t fit many on the rowboat sized dance floor. We strutted proudly, put our thumbs under our armpits and flapped our chicken wings as Jim serenaded his flock.
I poked Matt, a green-eyed Viking, and I said, “Hey Rooster, you wanna come sit with us?”
Corny, I know. The whole concept of BJ’s bar was corny, but comfortable for small town Alaskans.
I am of age now, but I’ve been a patron of BJ’s since childhood. Kids could always stay there until nine, but after that, adults only. And you couldn’t just leave the kids outside in the car on a cold Alaskan night. The barmaids checked. They knew Dad had a drinking problem, so they watched out for us. Fifteen years ago, they brought me and my little brother in from the cold, and hid us in the pantry until Dad was sober enough to drive us home, five blocks away. So now you know why I feel so comfortable here.
Matt sat with my friend and me for the rest of the evening and I gave him my phone number, not expecting a call.
Matt was a fishing guide. On his days off, he fished with friends. He called and asked if I could go fishing with him. He spent more time with me, as the summer days grew shorter. I showed him my botanical art, the lupine and fireweed colored pencil drawings.
I told him my parents conceived me under the Aurora. My father wanted a boy, but my mother wanted a gifted child. The Northern Lights were supposed to make it happen for both of them. Over time, they lost faith in their legends, and they lost faith in each other.
Matt hoped that would never happen to us. He liked my art, and he argued that my mother got her wish for a gifted child. I didn’t tell him that my father eventually got his wish too, when Mom gave birth to my little brother. I believed Matt and I were falling in love, but it was never the right time to tell him about my brother.
The end of summer came and it was time for Matt to go back to the lower forty-eight. To leave heaven and go back to real life, he said. He said he’d be back next summer. To be a full time river fishing guide, you had to go where the fishing clients were, and for some reason tourists didn’t come for the ice fishing. Oh, and by the way, he said, he had a girlfriend back home. Heather.
Get Barbaraj’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Oh. Surprise to me! I shut the door without kissing him goodbye.
If this is heaven, why would anybody want to go back to real life? Well, this is not heaven, and real life is here. Not there.
Real life is the ground freezing so hard your feet hurt. Real life is hours of darkness, interrupted only when the solar wind excites particles in the atmosphere and displays its translucent multicolored magic. Real life is the fluorescent green aurora, taking you back and making you ten years old again. And you see your little brother’s mischievous eyes just before you pick up your mother’s loaded pistol, loaded so she could protect you from your dad. No time for your brother to utter his famous little giggling scream. The shot, and then the silence is immediate. If not for the electric sound of the aurora borealis ringing in your ears, you would have thought you shot yourself. Mother takes the gun and covers your eyes.
Three days after Matt left, I miss him. I miss my little brother too, his green eyes frozen in time.
Late in the afternoon, I drive to Marathon Road, where woodland caribou graze on their favorite lichen. I pick up my colored pencils and tablet to capture the last blooms of summer before they’re gone. A field of grass and moss radiates hues of mustard and rust. Low-bush cranberry and blueberries, thick with the tiny red leaves of fall have already given up their harvest. The field is dotted with shallow puddles of fog, and islands of somber black spruce. Miles away, mountain ranges rise from the flat tundra, looking as small as crystals of a broken geode.
I pull to the side of the road, a gravel scar, sewn into the tundra. Wildflowers guard the shoulder in solidarity, daring road workers to cut any further. Without the road, these flowers would be lost in a thick mat of mossy lichen and brush. They glow, a backlit burgundy in the hour before sunset. The straight green stems have multiple shoots, spindles supporting an oval bloom the size of a small spool of thread. The flowers are so striking, they look domestic. I bend over to pick one, pulling it up by the roots, unraveling the continuity of the road’s edge. The roots reluctantly release their finger hold on the life giving soil.
Tiny mosquito warriors tirelessly defend the tundra against intruders like me. I slap one, quickly carry the plant back to the car and do a little chicken dance. Matt will come back, like the other wild birds do every spring. But he’ll bring Heather with him. Or not. I slide into the car seat, smiling at the thought. Or not.
Heather isn’t even a native plant. It’s introduced from Europe. To be honest, Vikings, like Matt were also introduced from Europe. Guns were introduced from Europe too, completing the spread of these weapons around the world, from China to Europe, and then to North America.
These amazing weapons helped my ancestors hunt. They also helped the Europeans to divide and conquer us. Yes, the tribes were already divided, but in less lethal ways. I wish the world had remained flat, so I would not have become a murderer at ten years old.
A Marathon Oil worker passes my parked car in his SUV, his tires spitting dust and fine gravel on the delicate burgundy blossoms bordering the road. The dust clings to their furry inflorescence. The caribou trot away.
A few seedpods have formed on my plant, black and spiked, like a miniature pineapple, or a medieval weapon. When the pod opens it will release thousands of seeds for me to plant in my garden. They will sprout and weave their roots into the tapestry of my other flowers. I’m good with plants. Not so much with humans.
My plant i.d. book calls it S. menziesii, the giant burnett. This particular species thrives in bogs. I sketch an outline. I start the car and I look up. A late summer sundog, the illusion of three suns, created by ice crystals catches my eye and then merges into one again.
The sunset follows me home, I pull to a stop and the sun goes down.
Years later, when Hobo Jim passed away, we put his ashes in his guitar and floated it down the river, for a burial at sea. It turned around in an eddy and floated back upstream. He didn’t want to leave the party.
