“I never bring a woman here because I have my ways. What if I fall in love with someone and you do too? What if it never works out? What if we both end up with broken hearts? I’d never do that to you, Kunak. Never. No one ever comes through the door with me. And if a heart gets broken, it’s only mine and mine is old and has been crushed over and over and over again. You don’t get used to it. You just get past it.”

“So, you’re not a castrated gay Eskimo?”

“Nope.”

“You do have a love-making dance partner?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you take her?”

“My old cabin on the other side of western ridge. The one we go to when we fish in summer. That one.”

“Does she have a name?”

“For me to know only.”

“Is she a white woman?”

“Never.”

“Why not? A lot of the people here hook up with white men and women and live happily ever after.”

“Kunak, there are too many questions in your small body, and I will not answer everything today. Our gear is at the front door and we’re heading out. Thanks for the good laugh. Castrated gay Eskimo . . .”

Grandpa Chevy wiped his old nose with the back of his wrinkled hand. For a moment, he realized, he and Kunak had been sharing the same memory.

“That’s my boy,” he whispered. He could see Kunak echo his words as he rubbed himself against the wall. Chevy was standing across 101 Avenue next to the gas pumps at the Esso station. He could not believe that he had found his boy. Chevy had been hunting and tracking his boy for the last two years. He thought about how unkempt Kunak looked. He saw how long his hair had become. Tangled. Greasy. Wearing that same red plaid jacket that Chevy had given him. It was his fishing jacket.

Chevy watched Kunak struggle to stand up. Booze, he thought. Booze got him. Chevy had hoped that booze would be the one thing that the boy would never touch. They had made a deal. No booze until Kunak’s twenty-first birthday. Look at him, Chevy thought. Look at what happens when I go away from him. He’s twenty-two and looks like he’s fifty-two. Look at what happens. Chevy watched Kunak limp along the crooked sidewalk. Chevy followed him from the opposite side of the street, watching Kunak wave his arms and speak to the maggots inside himself.

Kunak waved his arms to shoo away the thoughts inside his head. Those were not real. What was real was that he knew one thing. He knew that if he went to the fish and chips place, they would feed him. He knew that they would give him the customers’ leftovers from the battered cod. He also knew that Aviak would be there. The sidewalk in front of Fisher Joe’s was her territory. Street people map out their territory the way dogs piss on trees.