Excerpt from Ring of Fire
By the time the three men had crossed the near thicket and waded the river to the opposite bank and picked their way through the alders on the far side and emerged into the grass beyond, the brown bear was a couple of hundred yards downriver of them, grazing at the thicket's edge.
They spent the next half hour crawling toward the bear. The grass and moss were spongy beneath them, wet from the morning's drizzle. The Prince steamed up in his raincoat and let it drop in the grass and crawled on. Waters gazed straight ahead of him, wondering that his heartbeat didn't give him away. The bear was quick and twice raised his nose to test the air and twice disappeared warily into the alders. Both times he returned and continued digging at whatever root had so bewitched him. He was a beauty. He was the bear all right. Long-necked and well-muscled and dark gold-flecked flanks and fierce-muzzled. He had that ruffle of fur at his neck and he carried a massive presence on the tundra, yet every move was gainly as he rounded and tore at the root.
The Prince was setting up for a hundred-yard shot when the bear vanished in the thicket for a third time. They waited. Minutes passed, and they waited. They heard a splashing in the river and they rose and went into the thicket after him. It sounded to Waters as though the bear was coming upriver to what was left of his kill on the far bank. The thicket was dense and the bodyguard used his shotgun to parry the switching branches. The bodyguard didn't like the situation and scowled at Waters.
The splashing in the river stopped suddenly and the three men stopped too. Over the next minute they heard a slow ominous crunching of brush loudening in their direction. Black gnats whisked around their faces. Everything felt wrong to Waters and he motioned with his head. "Let's go."
They backed slowly out of the thicket and into the wet grass at the thicket's edge, and didn't have a chance to lie flat or even squat in the grass before the bear broke out of the alders forty yards below them. He looked directly at them. His face was leaner and darker and more terrifying than before because dripping water from the river. He seemed to know all about them and trotted toward them huffing and lifting his nose sideways with that massive brown back compressing behind him, and he stopped; the Prince had dropped to his knee and lifted his rifle, and the bear wouldn't show an angle but only that defiant furred face and brown hump coming on, and then pieces of moss were churning through the air and that bear was charging and Waters felt an old faintness coming over him as he lifted his rifle and found the brown blur in his scope and still the Prince held out until the bear fifteen yards away veered thicketwards and the Prince fired.
Excerpt from "Goodbye, Anchortown"
Julie and I met one day filing papers in the Anchorage courthouse. I was twenty-three then. Julie faced a count of fourth degree theft (a bottle of Schnapps) and I faced a whole fungus of charges stemming from a drunken drive I had taken on a three-wheeler. Anyone could see that we were made to love each other. We straightened each other out and since then have not tangled with the law unless you include Julie's string of car accidents, seven of them, the last being the cause of my current problems, she having gone and rammed a little blue Pontiac Sunbird with our Lincoln.
It was not a pretty blowup that we had. I'd just come home from reading bulletins at the Job Service when I noticed the new dents in the Lincoln, the broken headlight, the scratched black paint. Inside the apartment Julie was padding around in jeans and slippers, topless, drinking a yellow drink, her sandy blonde hair swinging on her shoulders, me shaking my head about the Lincoln, I said:
"Dammit, Julie, it's like living with a daily parking ticket."
"It's not that bad."
"You're right, it's worse."
"You're just worried about the Lincoln."
Not true. Not entirely. "Honey, it's the insurance I'm worried about."
She looked surprised. "We still insured?"
"Sweet Jesus! Are we still broke? You are the reason for insurance on this planet."
"Hmph. You didn't even ask if I'm hurt."
"Are your hurt?"
"No."
"Listen, Julie, maybe you need glasses."
"So how's the job search?"
"Don't change the subject."
"Anyway, I'm packing."
"What for?"
"I'm flying to Prudhoe."
"Again?"
"Yeah, tomorrow. I got a call."
"Dammit, Julie--" I didn't want her going again. She'd only been back a week since her last trip. Lately she'd been going to Prudhoe Bay a lot, usually for two weeks at a time. Prudhoe is the place in northern Alaska where everybody works for the oil companies. No question Julie earned more there as a dispatcher than as a waitress here in Anchorage, but I meant this when I told her:
"Forget the money, Julie. Don't go this time."
"Why not?"
"I just don't want you to, that's why."
She slammed her glass down on the TV and the yellow drink splashed everywhere. "Fat chance."
Something was wrong. My Julie's a fighter, but this woman looked like a sick cobra. Her voice revved defiantly, sputtered and died.
"Honey," I said, "I'm just afraid that job's been getting between us."
"You jealous son of a bitch."
"Me? Jealous of what?"
"You know goddamn well what."
"No I don't, Julie. And please don't tell me."
She smirked. "Tell you what?"
"That maybe you're banging some Arco exec."
She laughed. "A geologist."
"Very funny. You drinking screwdrivers?"