Norman Tuttle on the Last Frontier: A Novel in Stories Hardcover - 2004

Excerpt

To Begin With



Norman Tuttle grew up in a place called Alaska. You've probably heard of it--the Last Frontier, all that stuff. I bet you've never heard of Norman Tuttle. He was just a kid there. Kids in Alaska don't know they're growing up on the Last Frontier. It's just what they see on the license plates, and it's something tourists like to say a lot because they've never been around so many mountains and moose before.

It's not like Alaska isn't wilderness--it mostly is. But most Alaskans don't live in the wild. They live on the edge of the wild in towns with schools and cable TV and stores and dentists and roller rinks sometimes. It's just like anyplace else, only with mountains and moose. At least that's what it feels like if you grow up there like Norman Tuttle did.

Norman's dad was a fisherman and the family owned their own boat, the Francine, named after Norman's mom. The boat was wooden and usually smelled bad. Fishing boats smell that way no matter who you name them after. Fishing was a busy job. Uncle Stu and Norman's dad were gone a lot of the time from May to September chasing after salmon. Then in the fall they would change the gear on the boat from nets to longlines and they'd fish for halibut, then cod, until deep into the winter. The boat always needed something: props, rudders, engines, radar, paint and putty. It kept his dad and Uncle Stu pretty busy even when they weren't gone fishing. It seemed to Norman that his dad had a lot more time for fishing than he had for anything else.

Norman's mom did everything moms do, only probably more of it, like most women who marry fishermen. Norman helped with the housework and keeping track of the littler kids, and if anybody asked her about him, she would have to say he was a good kid.

Fishing was a pretty decent way to make a living and Norman had everything he needed and a few things he didn't, including his little brothers, Franky and Caleb, and middle sister, Jessie. Their house was a normal, square, straight-up and-down-house-type house on a dirt road on the edge of town. Norman had his own bedroom, which looked toward the bay and the mountains across it and was probably one of the most beautiful views on the planet Earth. If you were into views.

Norman's best friend, Stanley, lived just down the road. They'd spend most of their time together ranging through the fields of fireweed playing war, or jigging for flounder down in the boat harbor, or riding their bikes to the Saturday movies. It was a normal childhood for a place like that, and it's hard to say exactly when it ended.

It's like driving to Alaska from someplace else. You get to Canada first, which looks about like where you just were, only now it's called Canada. Then after a while it starts to look like something else again. There are fewer buildings, more mountains, and blue glaciers. Tundra bogs and wildflowers and big, goofy-looking moose appear alongside the road, and then pretty soon a sign comes up that says Welcome to Alaska, the Last Frontier. Where does one thing end and the next one start? Wherever they say it does.

It's the same thing with growing up. One day you're a kid going along like you always do with everything looking the same as it's been, and then something happens to you. This is what happened on the Last Frontier to a kid named Norman Tuttle.



Lost and Found



Not many things come easy when you're thirteen, but Norman didn't have much trouble falling off his dad's fishing boat. Actually, he was pretty much designed to succeed at just such a thing. Having grown over six inches since Christmas, he found that his arms and legs stretched into territory he was not entirely familiar with. In short, Norman was a klutz. He would grow out of it, his mother had assured him, but probably not before he came face to foam with the black, icy waters of southeast Alaska.

Norman had come out on deck to "answer nature's call," as some say. But he didn't just answer it. He leaped at it. He'd propped his legs against the low boat rail in the dark with his overlong shins, and his feet had simply gone out from under him. His brief few moments in midair were spent desperately trying to put himself away rather than concentrating on a graceful entry. If you've ever felt the chill of Alaskan waters, you will understand his preoccupation on the way in, and let's face it, there is no pretty way to fall off a fishing boat.

Landing face first, mouth open, is also no way to prepare for the next step--hollering for help. During what seemed like the eternity it took for Norman to clear the salt water from his throat enough to scream for help, he watched as the boat chugged steadily away in the darkness.

"Daaaad!"

"Daaaaaaad!!"

"Uncle Stu!"

The throb of the propeller still pulsed against his body.

"Daaad! Wait! Daaad, Dad, oh no, oh God."

Norman tried swimming after the boat, but he stopped once to slip out of his deck shoes, and when he looked back up he'd lost sight of the single white stern light. He could still hear the prop in the water, but it had no direction. Nothing had direction. The overcast sky was black. The water was black. The shoreline they'd been following couldn't be far off, but it could be anywhere he pointed.

There is probably no good time to be in a situation like this, but being in this situation at age thirteen has got to be the worst of them. You're too old to cry and too young to swear, and you don't even have much of a life to go flashing past. Norman was stunned, but only temporarily. There's a call for action built into people of any age that comes into play at these times. It's called panic, and Norman proceeded to do exactly that.