Justin Herrmann

The Mouth of the Buckland River



It’s 6:00PM Friday and I’m at my desk eating expired almonds, a birthday gift from the lunch lady.

Outside my ice covered windows, I hear children jump from monkey bars onto mounds of snow and each other.

I came to the arctic eight years ago, not knowing a soul, no idea if the Chukchi Sea remained frozen year round, hadn’t learned tundra cranberries are best after first frost, or that student attendance isn’t so much a requirement for graduation, or that attendance is the only requirement for faculty. All eight years I’ve hoped for a classroom further from the playground.

The whacka-whacka-whacka sound of a trash cart echoes down the corridor. A child taps the glass. My eyes remain on my monitor. I wonder if there’s a legal reason these classrooms don’t have blinds.

Usually when I’m here late, the custodian skips this room. Tonight, the door swings open. I mute my computer, shuffle through a stack of papers, pull out a red pen.

The custodian empties the large trashcan near the door, replaces the liner. I realize something’s unusual when he goes to the sink, fills the empty towel dispenser.

This is a village of 3,000. I wouldn’t say everyone knows everyone, but we know each other’s faces. Indeed, I do know this face, but not from here. It’s been years, but it’s my brother. Not the one I like. This brother I haven’t seen since the good brother was still alive.

He picks an eraser off the tile. He fumbles through a thick set of keys for the plastic one that opens the soap dispenser, which has been empty this entire semester.

He removes the empty cartridge from the dispenser. There’s no mistaking the matching tree frog tattoo on his withered forearm, something that was my idea in a different life.

He limps from the room, returns a minute later, fills the soap dispenser. As he limps out again, I say, “Excuse me.”

He turns, comes right up to me. I stand, push my chair in. We’re face to face. As kids everyone said we looked alike. Indeed, even now it’s like looking into a mirror, except I’m looking at myself a swimming-pool full of Ten High, 10,000 cartons of Marlboros, and twenty years into the future.

“Happy birthday, brother,” he says. The teeth that remain in his head are like chipped pieces of peanut brittle. He takes something from his pocket, hands it to me. It’s a Score candy bar. I’ve never seen one here in the arctic. It was my favorite when we were kids. The skin on his knuckles is deeply cracked like the mudflats at mouth of the Buckland River where I spend summers fishing.

“There’s a trashcan under the desk, too,” I say, because the old custodian usually missed it.