Iceberg
by John W. Steele
part 1
There wasn’t much left of Dwight Hillis when we found him. Just half of his torso, part of his face, and what remained of his Bible. Something took a bite out of that, too. The pages lay in the mud like shreds of confetti after a parade. The prints around his body were huge, with three long toes spread wide apart and a rear pad the size of a baseball glove. Whatever took him wasn’t a bear. I’d grown up here in the Aleutian Islands, and I’d seen lots of bears. I even killed a few. But what happened to him, ’t weren’t done by a bear.
Me and Kyle found Hillis early Sunday morning on our way to the garage. I had to take a leak, and we pulled into the parking lot at the Fat-Bastard Saloon. I noticed a body behind the dumpster. Hillis lay in a gully filled with cattails; his bloody leather jacket floated in the ice-crusted muck. We couldn’t understand why nobody heard him scream. The ‘Fat’ could get rowdy, but nobody gets ripped apart like that without some kind of ruckus...nobody.
“It’s an awful shame, the way the poor man died, Stan. Ya think?” Kyle said.
I didn’t believe anything that dribbled out of Kyle Ballard’s flapper. He always knew what to say to get you talking. Kyle was Buckland’s cousin, and he was right up his ass. Roy Buckland was a god out here... he had the power. No one did anything without his okay.
I worked with Hillis in the Refuse Department here in the town of Iceberg. We had two trucks. A thirty-ton hydraulic job, and a ten-ton side-loader. Buckland made us use the smaller truck when he felt the town was getting out of line. Sometimes the trash sat for weeks.
I never learned where Hillis came from. He just showed up one day in the maintenance garage. Nobody got a job in Iceberg unless Buckland okayed it. If you want to survive in a place like this, you keep your mouth shut, and you don’t ask questions. It’s a clan thing... you dig? People go missing here all the time and strangers don’t matter.
Hillis was a quiet fellow, rail-thin, thick black beard, arms swimming in ink. He wore a small gold earring. He never said much. I liked that about him. One Friday after work, I asked him if he wanted to head down to the ‘Fat’ for a couple of beers.
He fixed me with cold gray eyes like he was reading the back of my skull. “You don’t want to know me, man. You don’t want to know anything about me.”
A lot of drifters pass through here. Most of them are running away from something. I was glad he warned me.
Hillis worked hard and never complained. On break, he’d sit in the corner of the lunchroom and read that little white New Testament KJV. I didn’t think much about it. Every man needs something out here to cling to. I had Debbie and my granddaughter, Amy, but I knew Dwight was alone.
He lived in Buckland’s rundown single-wide trailer out near that haunted stretch of timber off HUD Housing Road. We called that place Bloody Pond because they found half a dozen bodies in the swamp there years ago. They were all gutted and decapitated and they were all outsiders. When a crew of loggers got torn to shreds there a while later, they blamed it on a Kodiak, but everybody knew better. They hadn’t felled a tree in that forest in years.
* * *
During WWII, the Japanese established a garrison fort out near where Hillis lived. The rumors about what they did to the soldiers they captured made my hair stand on end. My Granddad Gokana told me about it before he died. A Senior Army Surgeon named Sato served as the commanding officer at that outpost.
I won’t say what went on behind those walls; you don’t want to know. Sato was involved in biological warfare and genetic experiments. The few men that survived claimed the doctor created a monster and set it loose on the Island. When the army rescued the prisoners, it didn’t go well. They locked them up in a VA Psych center out in Fairbanks and nothing more came of it.
Gokana claimed that the thing that lived in that remote part of the island was bound by some kind of “blood pact.” I always wondered about a blood pact with whom? He never said. I had my notions about who might be. Granddad told me the creature gutted what he called “intruders.” He swore that the natives here were off limits to this thing. The story reeked of Buckland. But I had to admit it was better them than me, or mine. The world is what it is; you cherish your own.
* * *
After they burned what was left of Hillis, Buckland sent me and Kyle and another one of his goons, a guy named Manfred, out to the trailer. Manfred looked like a gorilla in a Boiler Suit, and I knew what he was capable of. I didn’t know what we were looking for. Kyle didn’t say. When we arrived at the singlewide, the door was ajar. I felt nervous about going inside. To be honest, I was scared deep, but I couldn’t let them see it.
If you ever saw Buckland, you’d understand why. He was a picture of intimidation; face riddled with scars, neck like a fireplug, huge hands. He wore short-sleeve shirts even when it was freezing out. Thick burn marks ran down his meaty forearms. Kyle told me they came from when he used to play chicken at the “Bastard.” They didn’t use cigarettes to prove you had balls in them days. They did them with Havana cigars, the husky ones wrapped in tinfoil. Kyle claimed nobody ever beat Buckland, and that was back when the town was teeming with loggers. If Buckland thought you were chickenshit, he’d get rid of you. Clan or no clan, you can’t survive on welfare out here.
The problem is there’s no way out in a place like this. I love it here, but I feel trapped. Buckland owns me and because he owns me, he owns my family. It’s like living in North Korea. One step out of line and you’re screwed. I hate this damned place.
I have a warm relationship with Gayle, the bartender at the “Fat.” She likes me and I trust her. She has all the dirt. Gayle told me about what Buckland did to my granddaughter, Amy. The little girl won’t talk anymore. He’s done that to a lot of kids here in Iceberg. Cops...? The chief is Buckland’s nephew. His name is Daryll. He stands about six foot four and he knows how to keep secrets. I knew that once a monster like Buckland gets a taste of a kid like Amy, he’d never leave her alone. There was only one way out of this trap, and I’d been thinking about it for a long time.
* * *
Kyle and his sweetheart Manfred rifled through the cupboards in the kitchen. I eased my way down the hall to the single bedroom in the rear. The door was jammed tight. I butted it open with my shoulder. A stench like sawdust and horse manure slammed into my face like nerve gas. For a moment I thought I was going to hurl, but it went away.
A warped four-drawer dresser sat beneath a broken window. The makeshift curtain fluffed like a sail in the breeze. The drawers were tight, but I wiggled the top one open halfway. There wasn’t much there to scavenge: a couple of porn videos, a bag of reefer, half a pack of Newports. I reached in deep and pulled out a small leather journal. I tucked it in my underwear and walked back into the kitchen.
Kyle looked at me, and his eyes narrowed. “What’d you find in there, dude?”
“Nothing worth keeping.”
Manfred stepped forward and got in my face, his eyes like a dead mackerel. “You sure, Toady?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, I’m sure. Do you want to fondle my crotch?” I coughed a nervous laugh and smiled.
He looked and Kyle and they both chuckled. “Let’s get our asses out of here,” Kyle said.
We walked back to the truck. Manfred pulled a five-gallon gas can from the bed and went back inside. When he came out, Kyle lit a flare and tossed it through the door. The hooch exploded in flame. We climbed into the dually and drove back to the garage.
* * *
Late at night one weekend, I unlocked the drawer of my desk and removed the journal. Debbie and Amy had gone to bed. I felt comfortable that I wouldn’t have any intrusions. I rolled a fat boy with a Zig-Zag and fired it up. I put on my glasses and held the diary in the light of my desk lamp.
The pages read like Dwight’s last will and testament. He wrote about the things he’d done and how he begged God to forgive him. He claimed Buckland had contacted him by mail. He offered him a job and promised him a better life. He even included a bus ticket to Iceberg.
Hillis told about how he beat up his wife and that she ended up in the ICU. He’d been pinched several times already and did serious time. His lawyer said that if he cooperated, he might get off with fifteen years. Dwight confessed that he that couldn’t do another stint in that dark place filled with freaks, wet-rags, and nowhere men. So he jumped bail and took the bus.
Everything clicked like tiles on a Rubik’s cube. I didn’t know how Buckland found these losers, but I knew he had plenty of money and high-end connections.
* * *
Things in Iceberg died down for a while. I kept my mouth shut and my head down. We kept Amy out of school. Debbie worked the four R’s with her at the dining room table. One day the sheriff’s car pulled up in front of our doublewide. I watched Daryll climb out of the vehicle. His deputy, a skinny punk they called Bunny, got out and placed his foot on my barrel tub planter. His hand rested on his revolver.
Daryll knocked on the door and my stomach churned. I told Debbie to take Amy into the bedroom and stay there.
Copyright © 2021 by John W. Steele
