Trashley: Part Ten
Flash of the pan
We left the Permafrost Tunnel and drove to our next stop, Gold Daughters, which is owned by my little sisters. I was determined to make Ashley’s trip to Alaska unforgettable, and one of my favorite things to do there is find gold nuggets. We pulled into the parking lot where the employees were opening up shop.
“Your Dad was here,” said the girl behind the counter, “He bought each of you a bag of the Fairbanks Creek pay dirt.” She handed us each a two hundred dollar bag, meaning we would definitely walk away with some nice nuggets.
“I’ll teach you how to pan,” I said as I handed Ashley a gold pan. I shoveled two scoops of dirt from the communal pile, “Let’s start with regular dirt so you get the hang of it, and then we can pan the Fairbanks Creek bags.” Goldpanning takes skill and experience, and I didn’t want Ashley to lose any of her gold because that would be tragic.
“I know how to gold pan,” Ashley said, almost sounding cocky. “I panned all the time at Placarita Canyon with my family.”
This was the first time she ever mentioned anything about panning. I grew up on a gold mine and spent every summer teaching tourists to find gold. Ashley sounded pretty confident, so I watched as she started on her first pan.
“No,” I said, “You have to get all of the dirt wet first. And then give it a good shake so the gold sinks to the bottom. It’s all about the shaky-shaky, dippy-dippy,” I said while mimicking a panning motion with my arms and hips.
“I told you, I know how to pan!” Ashley said, with more defiance this time. “Worry about yourself.”
I watched in horror as Ashley worked through her first pan. It was like watching someone dressed as a Doctor perform open heart surgery without knowing which organ was which. Whatever she learned at Placarita Canyon was wrong. Ashley always said she was good at things, but when faced with it in real life, was not. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and she had it bad. Like when she told me she knew how to juggle, but when I handed her three tennis balls, she could only keep them in the air for two and a half seconds before dropping them. Even I can do that. If you tell me you know how to do something, you best come prepared to prove it.
My little sisters joined us at the trough when it was time to pan the bags our Dad had purchased. I panned first while everyone watched. I hoped Ashley was taking notes.
“Oh my god! Look!” I exclaimed. “It’s so big! Holy shit! Everybody, watch me!” I never get more excited than when I find gold. I did my first swirl, and a large flash of gold appeared at the top of my pan, along with some pretty decent-sized nuggets.
I temporarily lost my mind with gold fever, which is a real condition and is probably fatal. Finding gold nuggets gave me the same thrill as winning big on a scratcher. A wave of excitement vibrated through me as I uncovered more gold in the following swirls. I could hardly remember what life was like before I struck it rich.
Once I put my new nuggets in a vial, my sisters and I watched Ashley work her way through her pan. She’d somehow improved her skills by this point, and I was convinced she had secretly read a how-to-gold-pan post on Reddit while no one was looking. She found some nice nuggets and put them in a separate vial. My favorite part about going to Alaska is I always leave with ten times more gold than I arrived with.
Several hours and a costume change later, I took Ashley to the next stop on our Alaska tour: one of the largest Ice Age mass graveyards ever discovered, which happened to be on my parent’s property. We call it The Boneyard, and it’s where the magic happens.
Over the years, we’ve unearthed hundreds of thousands of bones from the Boneyard. Everything from Wooly Mammoths to Steppe Bison, Dire Wolves, Short-Faced Bears, Cave Lions, Sabre Tooth Tigers, Mastadons, and even Camels. The Boneyard isn’t open to the public, and it’s patrolled by several men who live off the grid and are instructed to shoot trespassers. I don’t know if she realized it, but taking Ashley to the Boneyard was a big deal: not many people get to see it in person or live to tell about it.
I thought Ashley would love the Boneyard, but she spent the entire time texting someone. For a scientist, she wasn’t very curious about the world.
I tried to get her into it and showed her a few bones I had found, but she clearly didn’t want to be there.
“Great, now my shoes are ruined,” Ashley said as she walked back to the car.
I’d warned her that Alaska would be muddy, I gave her a pair of boots which she eventually switch into, but she insisted on wearing white leather Italian shoes and her MIT shirt, which had become her primary uniform.
We left the boneyard, and I could sense that Ashley was running out of steam and probably needed food. So, I drove forty minutes north to the Chatanika Lodge to meet my Dad and brother-in-law for lunch.
I’ve been going to the Chatanika Lodge since I was a baby, and if I’m ever diagnosed with lung cancer, that’s where I got it. It’s a bar that also serves food, but only easy food like burgers and grilled cheese. One-dollar bills are stapled across the ceiling, and the same dusty old miners are still sitting at the bar from when I was a kid. I don’t think they’ve ever left. If you’re looking for a real Alaskan experience, you go there.
“So, Lauren says you’re a Physicist. That’s pretty damn cool,” my Dad said, trying to make conversation.
“Yeah, I’m just out here spending my entire life trying to save the world,” Ashley answered. This was her normal response when people learned she was a Physicist, and it was a great way to shut down a conversation. I downed a swig of my rusty nail.
“Dad, can we see my lake after this?” I asked. Growing up, my Dad named several areas of land after me and my four siblings. Jordan got a gold dredge, Ilaura got a valley, and I got a lake.
After lunch, my Dad met us at the gate leading to Lake Lauren. We grabbed some fishing poles and a tackle box out of his truck and drove in.
“And this is Lake Lauren,” I said proudly, gesturing to the body of water running along Ashley’s side of the car, as if it was my own off-spring. My lake is big; it took ten minutes to drive to the end, where we went fishing. I always forget I have a lake. Like, who do I think I am, Poseidon?
We tried to catch some trout, but the fish weren’t biting, so we drove downtown, where the city was preparing for the summer solstice.
“Do you want cotton candy?” Ashley asked as we passed a food truck.
“No thanks.”
“Wow. I wish I were with someone more fun.” Ashley said in a devious tone.
“Yeah? Well, maybe find someone else then.” I snapped, “Someone who is more fun than me.” Her comment vacuumed up my good energy. Here I was, flying her to Alaska, introducing her to my family, taking her to permafrost tunnels and lining her pockets with gold.
“God, you’re so sensitive,” Ashley started, “I was just joking, no need to get an attitude.”
I wanted to put her in a box and ship her back to Bakersfield. When Ashley “joked,” she wasn’t funny. Or she said she was joking to get away with saying something rude. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking several paces ahead of her, while she shuffled like a donkey behind me.
I still had the gold nuggets I’d found at Gold Daughters, so I stopped at a jewelry shop to see if they could meld my gold nugget onto a gold band. Playing with the jewelry distracted me from Ashley’s rudeness, and I let it go. I’m a raccoon: if you put something sparkly in my line of vision, everything becomes right in the world so far as I care. Because shiny equals good.
It started raining on the way back to my parent’s house, I’d lived in LA so long that I almost forgot what rain was. Skywater. Luke Skywater? Sorry. I realized I had forgotten my Apple Watch charger, and since I need to be connected to the world at all times in as many forms as possible, I pulled into Walmart to buy a new one. I drove right in front of the entrance to avoid walking in skywater.
“Do you mind just running in? I’ll wait here,” I asked since it didn’t make sense to park and be rained on.
Ashley got out and came back with a new watch charger.
“How much was it? I’ll Venmo you.”
“You’ll Venmo me?!” Ashley scoffed, “That’s some poor people shit.”
I blinked my eyes rapidly as if I was malfunctioning, trying to comprehend what had just come out of her mouth. The black cloud forming in the car was more ominous than the ones outside.
“Poor people shit?” I repeated. “What are you talking about? That sounds like some elitist bullshit. I was offering to be nice.”
Ashley’s face reddened with rage.
“Yeah, Venmo’s for poor people. Do you know how rare it is actually to be poor and pull yourself out of poverty? I fucking did it, so yeah, I can have an elitist attitude about whatever the fuck I want. God, you sound like my brother.”
“I don’t know how you can say that and double down on it. I was literally being thoughtful because I didn’t give you money to pay for it when you ran in.” What an asshole. If she’d said this to me in LA, I would’ve told her to fuck right off. But we still had several days left in Alaska.
“You know what, take me back to get my shit and take me to the fucking airport. I’m done!” she screamed, “I’m so fucking done! You’re yelling at me! You’re so fucking mean to me!”
“Ashley, I’m not yelling. And no, I’m not taking you back to my parents’ house until you calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. Take me to your parents so they can see how badly you treat me! They’ll be on my side!”
She was delulu to think my family would ever take her side over mine, even if I were the one in the wrong. Also, there was no way I could bring her to THEIR house in this state.
“TAKE ME TO YOUR PARENTS SO I CAN GET MY SHIT!” she shrieked in an octave I didn’t know humans were capable of reaching.
“I’m not taking you there until you stop!” I said. I pulled out of the Walmart parking lot and started driving towards the University, the opposite way from my parents.
“YOU’RE KIDNAPPING ME! YOU’RE KIDNAPPING ME!” she screamed.
I would never kidnap anyone, I wouldn’t even kidnap a dog. I continued driving, hoping she’d either calm down or tire herself out like parents do when they want their toddler to take a nap. I parked at the top of the University campus, where it overlooks Denali.
“I’m not taking you anywhere until you stop,” I told her.
She called her Mom and sobbed that I was being mean to her. My head throbbed.
Her mom was eventually able to calm her down. Tears ran down her face while her Mom told her to take deep breaths in and deep breaths out. I googled flights while they talked. Once Ashley got off the phone, I told her we could pick up her things, and I would take her to the airport.
“There was a flight leaving at midnight that lands at LAX at nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you. I want you to be nice to me.” Ashley pleaded.
I didn’t want to say anything that would cause her to lose her mind, so I agreed, knowing that once we got back to California, I was out.
We went back to my parent’s house, where I would just have to pretend everything was great so no one would worry. My parents went all out for dinner, serving Alaskan King Crab legs straight from the Bering Sea. I should’ve won an Oscar for my performance as Woman in a Healthy Relationship.
We went to bed, but I woke up around two a.m. craving some La Croix. I snuck out of bed, trying not to wake the beast. In the kitchen, I found my sister Ilaura going to town on some leftover pizza.
“How’s everything going with Ashley? You seem really happy.”
“Don’t get too attached,” I said, “I think I have to break up with her, she might be lying to me about some things.”
“Ooh, like what?” Ilaura asked, intrigued.
“I’m not completely sure yet. But I just found out she had an ex-wife and a kid. She didn’t tell me that when we first started dating. And the wife found me online, and now I’m caught in some weird drama.”
Ilaura and I spoke in whispers. We kept our eyes on the stairs in case Ashley woke up and heard us talking in the kitchen.
“Damn, that’s wild. I can’t believe she wouldn’t mention that.”
“Yeah,” I said, “And she has a really bad temper. We got in this big fight today because she said Venmo is for poor people.”
“The fuck? She said that?” my sister was shocked.
“Yeah, she lost her mind at me, like she was legit scary.”
“God, that’s so crazy. Well, I have your back if you need anything.”
“I know you do. I’m still figuring out what to do.” I didn’t want to say the next part out loud because I knew once I said it, it would become real: “I’m not even sure she’s a real Physicist.”
Please post part 11. I can’t wait and it’s ruining my life.
She is not hinged at ALL. And wtf is with her family are they just a family of sociopaths, paid actors?