Seward, Alaska, 1955
We form the Boys’ Alaskan Defense to save
our town from Commies. Our .22s, 16 gauges,
.30-30s will be turned from hunting
to higher purpose.
We haul K-rations, plasma units,
army tennis shoes, other essential stuff,
from poorly padlocked civil
defense bunkers,
stash our supplies in two abandoned
cabins up a nearby valley.
We train all summer at our hideouts—
throw knives at trees,
hack stumps with pickaxes—
but are always home for dinner
on time.
My best friend, Marshall, is visiting
when my mother
lets in Tommy Roberts,
district territorial
policeman.
He wants to speak to Marshall and me,
separately.
Me, first.
(Oh, shit.
Tommy Roberts.)
He’s a hero to us all.
I begin to think of excuses.
Son, this is serious.
I nod.
Tommy reveals that a woman and her daughter,
out berry picking, found stolen gear
in a dilapidated cabin.
Something else, too:
Marshall’s red baseball cap.
Any idea how it got there?
(Christ Almighty, Marshall’s mother—she sews
name tags onto everything he wears, even each sock.)
I tell him someone swiped Marshall’s hat,
that the thief must be the same person he’s after.
Later, Marshall says he gave
the same answer.
Tommy leaves, knowing
we know
he has his men.
Then I tell Marshall I keep
detailed guerilla operation notes
on 3×5 index cards.
I like to write things down.
He just about shits
his pants.
Near a wooded stream
where we camped as Boy Scouts, fished, hunted,
we burn the evidence in a tiny fire,
sift ashes into the creek
slowly chant,
So dies the BAD
So dies the BAD
The seven of us in the BAD were 12 years old, had probably never heard of Joseph McCarthy, who’d shot his wad by 1955. Still, deep Cold War fears filtered down to us, mingled with the last of the golden baubles of our boyhood to create a heady mix of patriotism and army set fantasy. I’m thankful for law officers like old Tommy Roberts who had a finely tuned sense of the power of “a word to the wise.” It’s no longer such an innocent time.
Several years ago I visited my old friend, Marshall. At the time he still lived on the Kenai Peninsula with his wife and kids. A sometimes cop, sometimes Northern Slope security guard, he told me he went to college for a year or two, “majored in beating up Vietnam war protesters.” Nonetheless, our old connection held. We climbed a couple of thousand feet up Mt. Marathon, sat on a grassy perch looking down on Seward. Hours passed as we re-lived our late childhood and early adolescence, played out long ago on the living map below.
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