The Beaufort Diaries Read online

  THE BEAUFORT DIARIES

  © 2010 T Cooper

  Illustrations © 2010 Alex Petrowsky

  First Melville House printing: February 2010

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Cooper, T.

  The Beaufort diaries / T Cooper ; illustrations by Alex

  Petrowsky.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-935554-76-9

  1. Graphic novels. I. Petrowsky, Alex. II. Title.

  PN6727.C638B43 2010

  741.5′973–dc22

  2009052753

  v3.1

  To:

  Dixie & Matilda

  (but not Allison)

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter IV

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  I

  If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I came from and what my parents were like, and all that Inuit legend crap about how some of us shed our skins, walk upright, and become men. But I don’t really feel like going into any of that because it’s so boring, and if it bores me, then it sure as hell is going to bore you.

  What I will tell you is that my dad split (boo-hoo), and my mom was always rattling on about how it was because times were hard, harder than they’d ever been, blah blah blah, and that unlike back in the day, nowadays you couldn’t buy a ringed seal out there if you wanted to. “The ice is shrinking and the temperature’s rising!” She repeated it daily (even though it always seemed cold as an Eskimo’s tit to me), so my dad had to travel longer distances to bring home the blubber, and that’s why he was gone all the time—to take care of us. Whatever. I bought her story then, but looking back, it just sounds like typical mother-making-excuses-for-absentee-father B.S. to me.

  But I didn’t always feel this way, and it’s not where my story begins anyway. It starts with me, adrift on the broken sea ice in the place our family had lived for generations, the south Beaufort Sea. My mother had taken me out on a mission to demonstrate how to sniff out and sneak up on a seal (not that there were that many to be sniffed in the first place), but the next thing I knew, I heard the loudest CRAAAACK imaginable, and the ice beneath me started vibrating and shaking, and then a massive chasm gaped open between us, and the ice floe sheared free and started floating away. With me on it.

  My mother just stood there watching. I wanted to jump in and paddle back to her, but I was so hungry and tired, and she was getting so far away—I didn’t think I could make it. “Ma, why don’t you swim to me?” I think I was hollering, but I don’t know if anything came out. I could tell she was crying as she grew smaller and smaller and I drifted farther and farther …

  Soon she was gone and I was all alone for the first time in my life—the only sound coming from the icy water slapping out a faint drum-beat against the bottom of my floe.

  II

  Contrary to what certain people want you to think, there is nothing natural for me about eating fish and berries. You don’t just “adapt.” Face it: fish is fishy, and berries, well, they’re generally pretty bitter, and they taste like shit. Not to mention they don’t fill you up. Nevertheless, when my little chunk of ice landed and jarred me from sleep, I didn’t know how long I’d been floating, or where the hell I was. But the first thing I sensed were little berries pelting me from somewhere above, bouncing off my head before settling into purple stains on the ice beside me. One of the blots almost looked to be the shape of my mother. Or maybe it was a witch, I couldn’t really decide.

  “How about that?” I heard a man’s voice say. Other people mumbled to one another and gathered to stare down at me on my floe. And then I realized I had to be in Alaska, because the voice didn’t say, “How aboot that?” He said, “How about that,” like regular. So I asked him something like, “Which way is home?” but he just pointed north and laughed, his black brushy mustache twitching under a red nose. A little girl in a yellow raincoat tossed a dead fish down then, and it bounced twice before landing against my fur. I ate it. I had no choice.

  Eventually people stopped coming ‘round, so I hauled myself onto a splintery wooden dock and attempted a few wobbly steps to steady my ice legs. I was so stiff, my neck killing from the way I’d been sleeping with my head propped against a tiny crag of ice. I stumbled down what seemed to be the main street of town; there were rusty pick-up trucks with rows of shotguns in their gun-racks, a brightly-lit check-cashing joint, and a couple ragtag liquor stores. Captain Patty’s Seafood beckoned, and I pressed my nose up against the window to scout out the scene inside. It smelled inviting, but I knew “seafood” didn’t mean seal-food. I jammed my paws into my fur and turned to go. But wait, there was something in there—What the? It was a twenty-dollar American bill, rolled up with a string of seaweed. Ma?

  III

  I gobbled the pile of crab legs that Rosie the waitress set in front of me, plus some raw salmon on the side. You know how people stranded in the desert are sometimes reduced to eating sand in their delirium? That’s how I thought of fish and crab. Rosie slid me some free seconds and cooed, “You’re awful handsome,” while scratching the hair on my chin. I had four dollars left after tip.

  Back on Main Street, I passed by the window of a sporting goods store, where I spotted a red hunting cap with one of those long bills and ear flaps. It was marked $6.99, but the guy let me have it for $4. I plopped the hat on my head—seemed like the thing to do. I didn’t care if it was corny; I thought I looked good when I saw my reflection in a mirror.

  Rosie had mentioned an ex-fiancé who’d just been hired on a fish-processing boat that was leaving the next morning for a month at sea. She told me to ask for Joe and I’d get on the rig no problem. So I was hired as a slimer on the line, killing, gutting and sorting the catch. It was the lowliest job on the totem pole (besides chef’s helper, but they didn’t have a hair-net big enough for me).

  Thus began a seemingly endless string of solitary days filled with ten-foot swells and hazy hallucinations of my mother bobbing in the distance. Nobody would talk to me and I was so lonely, but it was the only work I could secure without papers. Eventually I moved onto a harvesting boat and worked my way up to deckhand, pulling in the catch and earning an actual percentage of the crew’s share. I saved every paycheck in full—what was there to spend it on?—because I wanted to get out of Alaska as soon as possible. Too much like home.

  You could say I grew up quick, thanks to a steady diet of surplus salmon steaks, flat, watery beer by the keg, and the same ten-year-old, dog-eared copies of Juggs magazine that got passed around the bunks. Every night I had no choice but to listen as the other guys told nonstop, torrid tales about women, purportedly trying to teach me all I’d ever need to know once I “got up on the horse” myself. (If I never hear another fishy-fingers
joke again, it’ll be too soon.) The guys sure talked a game about the ladies, but Joe had warned me on that first morning as we un-docked: “Nights get long out here, Kid. Sleep with one eye open.” And I did.

  IV

  Like most creatures, I’ve always been secretly intrigued by the palm trees and glitz of Los Angeles. After a season on the fishing rigs, working back-to-back excursions with overtime on most every shift, I figured I’d saved up enough to make my move south. Everything I owned fit in one duffel, so I threw it over a shoulder, scribbled HOLLYWOOD OR BUST on a wet piece of cardboard, and started down the state highway, turning around and walking backwards anytime a vehicle approached.

  The first semi trucker who stopped made me sit in his empty, rickety livestock trailer, but he took me all the way to the Yukon. The next driver had blood-red eyes and hovered over the wide steering wheel with a suspicious expression on his face, but he let me ride inside his cozy—and strangely meticulous—sleeper cab. He complained about his wife in violent, sporadic outbursts, almost as though he was angry with me. She apparently had an addiction to the Home Shopping Network—and a severe hoarding problem to boot. He stayed on the road as much to pay off her credit card bills as to escape his cluttered home. There was no room for him anymore, no clear surface even to sleep on. I just sat on his tidy bunk and listened quietly until we made it to Vancouver.

  Seattle and Portland were beautiful to watch flicker by from a window-seat on the Greyhound, but I always heard they’re rainy and depressing, so I kept my sights on the City of Angels. I changed buses in San Francisco, checked out the Haight and bought a massive, over-stuffed Mission burrito for the road, but then spent the bulk of the ride through Steinbeck country hovering over the toilet in the cramped restroom at the back of the bus. What the hell do they put in those things, anyway?

  That goddam burrito repeated on me all the way to L.A., but I was so excited when my paws hit Hollywood Boulevard that I didn’t care one whit. It was both everything and nothing like I’d imagined. I figured I stuck out like a penguin in the Arctic, but there were hundreds of creatures of all shapes, sizes, languages and persuasions in Hollywood. Hell, I was the one who looked normal! Padding down the boulevard with stars literally under my paws, it hit me: I’d found home.

  I had just enough dough for first, second, and last months’ rent on a room above the Frolic Palace, on Hollywood near Vine. The freezer didn’t work and the carpet smelled like clove cigarettes, but Gary Cooper’s star was right outside my building’s front door, and it seemed like a corner of heaven to me.

  V

  “Three waters on twenty-two, Beaufort!” the manager hollered. It was a constant refrain since I somehow managed to land the job at Nobu.

  I filled up three glasses—one-quarter ice and three-quarters water—and carefully wiped the condensation off the glasses like they showed me, then raced over to table twenty-two without looking like I was in a hurry.

  The three men at the table didn’t look up at me when I approached. I placed one glass in front of the curly-haired guy, then went around to the next one, but just before the glass reached the table, I felt something on the floor making me slip … It was one of those goddam Zen rocks that the customers rest the ends of their chopsticks on. The glass of water spilled all over the goateed guy’s lap.

  “What the fuh—?!” he yelled, bolting up and brushing the water off his expensive-looking jeans.

  “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” I said, but he just stood there staring at me like maybe we’d met somewhere before. His eyes were totally disarming, the hue of translucent, early-winter ice. I repeated, “I’m really sorry,” and headed toward the staging area to fetch a towel, again trying to appear calm and centered while crossing the dining room.

  “Do you know who that is?” one of the waiters asked. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me outside of barking demands in my direction.

  “Who?”

  “The guy you spilled on.”

  “I don’t know. No.”

  “You’re so fired. That’s Leo,” he spat.

  I went back to offer Mr. Leo the towel, but by the time I got to the table he was already reseated and laughing riotously with his buddies about something. The other customers in the dining room looked over, trying to look like they weren’t looking.

  “It’s okay, man. Chill out,” Mr. Leo said.

  “Can you sit down for a sec?” the third, sleepy-eyed guy asked, pulling out a chair. “Let me pour you some sake.”

  I glanced back toward the reception area where the manager was scowling at me. “I can’t, I really need to—”

  “Dude, you’d be perfect for this film I’m doing,” Mr. Leo interrupted. “Are you green?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, sometimes my fur turns a little green when the algae content goes up in summer.”

  All three of them laughed some more.

  “This is Tobey, that’s Adrian. And I’m Leo.”

  “My name’s Beaufort.” We shook hands and paws.

  “Here’s my direct line.” Leo jotted a number on a chopsticks wrapper. “I’m serious. You and me, we could really make a difference.”

  I stared into his crystal eyes. They kind of killed me. “I gotta get back to work.”

  VI

  I didn’t have a telephone connected at my place yet, so I didn’t try to call Leo. Everybody at Nobu said he was probably a phony anyhow, and that I shouldn’t feel special that he gave me his personal number. But a few days after the ice-water incident, Leo’s assistant phoned me at the restaurant while I was setting up for lunch.

  When I came out to the front desk, the day manager hissed, “No personal calls!” as he tossed me the handset, and then as soon as I pressed the receiver to my ear, that mean waiter whisked by and whispered, “Fired,” while making a hand gesture that looked like he was slicing his own neck with a finger.

  “Uh, he-hello?” I stuttered like a madman into the phone.

  “Can you come in for a screen-test at four-thirty this afternoon?”

  My pelt was going to have to be dyed whiter, and I’d have to learn a ton of lines in less than a week, but that afternoon the producers offered me the role of Leo’s sidekick in his new movie Separation of Oil and State, a psychological thriller-slash-legal drama-slash-buddy flick about global warming. I was worried about giving up my job, but over a long and leisurely poolside lunch at Chateau Marmont the next day, Leo convinced me that I wouldn’t need to slave away as a busbear anymore, and promised that if for some reason I ever wanted my job back, he’d help me get it.

  “I can’t go to Alaska,” I said, taking a gulp of some bubbly water from a green bottle. It tickled my nose.

  “You don’t have to,” Leo explained. “Warner Brothers is building the Arctic on the back lot.”

  “So I don’t have to go north?”

  He shook his head vehemently and mused, “For a polar bear, you sure don’t chill very much.” Then he gestured to the waiter to bring us two more sides of calamari tempura.

  The studio put me through a me a crash-course in acting, but I was still jittery the first time we ran lines as a cast. Leo was protective like a big brother and generously helped me through some hairy spots. But after a few rounds of dialogue, all of the cast said I was a “natural” and didn’t need anybody’s help. Still, every night I’d go home early to my room and dutifully meditate on my character’s motivation, drawing heavily on my experiences in order to imbue him with the emotional authenticity and psychological realism that weren’t necessarily on the pages of the script.

  The first day we started shooting Separation of Oil and State, it was clear that Leo and I had chemistry. People started talking Oscars, but that didn’t faze us; we simply believed in what we were doing, and that made all the difference. Shooting rolled on, and I quickly ascertained that there is a lot of hurrying-up-and-waiting on a film set. In between takes we’d go back to one of our trailers and talk about life—our families,
the notion of happiness, the past. It turned out we had similar relationships to our distant fathers, and strong mothers who were there for us in leaner times. Well, until recently that is, at least where my mother’s concerned.

  “You make your own family, B,” Leo told me, and it was the first time I really appreciated the difference between the family you’re born into, and the one you create. Just before we headed out to shoot another grueling scene on the ice, I asked Leo if he might like to be a part of my new family, and he replied, “You know we’re bros,” and we sealed it with a fist-paw bump.

  VII

  They say each generation seeks to surpass the one that precedes it, but I always had some degree of ambivalence around this notion. My parents had drilled it into me: live small, take no more than what you need, and give back more than you take. Nevertheless, even I had to admit that my steadily ballooning bank account wasn’t quite congruent with my crumby, ice-cubeless, and cockroach-filled existence in that musty room above the Frolic Palace.

  So about half-way through filming Separation of Oil and State, I jumped on the opportunity to lease a house in the Hollywood Hills when the Assistant Director told me about a property opening up that would be perfect for me. Everybody said the market was “insane” but that it was also the ideal time for people like us to buy. People like us. I wondered what my mother and her scant twenty-dollar bill would think about that. If she could only see me now, I chuckled to myself, as I pressed my paw-print onto the rent-with-an-option-to-buy contract on a house in the hills.

  I decided to host the wrap party at my new place. We hired Nobu to cater, and damn if I wasn’t just a little delighted to see that one of the staffers sent over by the restaurant was the waiter who always said nasty things to me and shorted my tips at the end of every shift. I told him he was welcome to borrow some trunks and a towel and take a swim as soon as the guests were finished eating. But he could scarcely look me in the eye.