I write in Coldfoot’s TV room. I sit on a seat that belongs in a tour van. Sometimes I strap the seat-belt over my waist and pretend I’m a passenger. Coworkers enter and ask why I do this.
"Better safe than sorry," I might say.
“I am heading north,” I might say.
When sports are on, the TV room fills up quickly. Somebody drills a white board to the wall. The daily spreads are written in erasable blue marker. Coworkers cheer and lose cash and I go to the camp office, above the restaurant, in a chair with rusty springs and unhinged armrests that dangle at the sides. There, you can hear John Prine playing in the kitchen, or Mac Miller, or Earth Wind and Fire, or the breakfast cook belching--the Hobart kneading bun dough. You can hear the morning host, Duffy, tell pipeline workers he’s going to buy a truck soon, and that when he does, he’s not doing jackshit for a while.
You hear Dalton Highway truckers at the trucker table. They talk engine failure in onomatopoeia. They eat biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs mixed in. They work each other up over George Soros funding Antifa, about nose swabs in Prudhoe—about everything coming to an end.
Coworkers sit in the office also. They check email, browse the web, talk to one another. They look at things they hope to buy. Will Kuruz wants a printing press, but “shipping is mad expensive.” Rebecca needs an apartment in town because she’s “over kitchen work.” Duffy needs insulin, but nobody delivers, so he has to go to town.
‘I have to go to town,’ he’ll sometimes say to me.
‘Yeah?’
‘I gotta get insulin.’
‘Dang.’
‘I gotta get a truck, too.”
I write in the Coldfoot library. I sit in a purple chair beside the book shelves, surrounded by Christmas lights, coworker artwork, various decks of cards, and framed drawings of the mountain Sukakpak. Will’s master prints are hung up too--detailed collages of vans lit on fire, men with grocery bags over their head, people in banana suits, and frogs—lots of frogs. Sometimes I write from a giant bean bag chair beneath a bobbing, glittery, star mobile. Coworkers in Carhart overalls and bunny boots pass to get to tent village. At night they gather here and drink whiskey and spill their guts. I do this too, but not when I’m writing. When I’m writing I don’t say anything. I probably have a mean look on my face. But I’m not mad.
I write in a bathroom that has never had running water. It’s a small space, historic for past co-worker productivity. One once taught English to Chinese kids for a winter. Another wrote a poetry collection that got published. Another got her masters. Me, I sit on the toilet seat until my legs are tingly, and the walls seem to be tipping over. The shower has blue stains that orbit the drain. Before I leave, I always flush, and check myself in the mirror, and wonder if I'm handsome.
Sometimes, when cooking crew specials, I write haikus on the back of a server’s pad, or, when nobody’s looking, I post rhymes on the camp white board. In the summer, I go to an abandoned bus in the boneyard, and lie on an old raggedy mattress. I write in a spiral notebook the thoughts I have. If the mosquitoes are bad I lock myself in the driver seat of a broken down tundra tank. When it gets too hot I go to Big Tent, where there’s a stove and a homemade craps table. I sit on an old, dusty recliner and write amid the smell of campfire.
A lot of times I write leaning against my bedroom wall. It's wood-paneled and flimsy. I often hear Duffy groan in his sleep, or struggle to get up in the morning. Imagine a king sized bed and a skinny wall down the middle. That’s Duffy and me sleeping.
I write propped up on pillows, or old brown blankets, or dirty clothes. Green LED lights snake around my ceiling border. I can change the color with a remote. I can make them blink, or fade in and out.
Outside in the hall doors open and shut. Coworkers walk to the bathroom or the exit, or another room. I know who they are by their footsteps, by thud on the carpet and the space between each step. I know who is at the door before they arrive.
Sometimes I’m up really late, or really early, and I can write anywhere I want. I might grab a coffee from the restaurant and take it up to the office before the pipeline rush. Or head to the broken bathroom and pretend I am the only person alive. Maybe it’s winter and the Aurora is out. Maybe it’s summer and breezy. And so I don’t write. Instead I go outside and do things there. Like hike up a mountain, or fall into a creek, or sit somewhere with a coworker, talking. I suppose writing in Coldfoot is like writing anywhere else, so long as you are writing.
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