As a nurse, Laura Carnes Williams has seen people come into the world and leave it. As a writer, she tries to make sense of it all. Her work can be found/forthcoming in Eleventh Hour, CommuterLit, Stonecoast Review, and elsewhere. She lives between the Adirondack Mountains and the Finger Lakes in Central New York
Boon
by Laura Carnes Williams
The woman at the airplane arrival gate gave Nick an unearned look of awe as if he were a soldier, her soldier, home from war. He was last off the plane but glanced over his shoulder anyway. When she went in for a hug, he dodged.
“Sorry, lady. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“You’re not Chip?” she asked.
“Negatory.”
She assessed him head-to-toe. “I was told to look for a guy in a Mets cap wearing a black and red checkered fleece. He said he’d be the last one off the plane. How is that not you?”
“That does sound like me, but my name isn’t Chip and I didn’t tell anyone anything.”
“Are you sure? Did you have a head injury or something?”
He checked his watch. The airport bar was probably just opening. “How about I buy you a drink and we figure this out?”
She nodded. On the floor next to her was a duffle bag, the kind sold at military supply stores, similar to the one Nick had brought with him five years ago. The woman accepted his offer to carry it for her. When he hoisted the strap onto his shoulder, he felt nostalgic for the weight of a consolidated life, a new beginning.
“Welcome to Alaska,” he said as they started walking. “I’m Nick.”
“Mira.”
A sadness radiated off her, so profound Nick pictured a little raincloud over her head. She wore white Keds with no socks, a sign that perhaps she hadn’t thought things through.
The bar at Humpy’s Ale House was empty. They made themselves comfortable as the bartender approached them.
Nick ordered a breakfast stout and took out his billfold.
“I told myself I was going to stop drinking when I got here.” She ran her hands through her short black hair. “I told myself I was going to change.”
“Coffee then?”
“No. A vodka soda. Any brand. A double.” She massaged her temples. She had a bunch of gold rings on her fingers and long, glittery nails.
Nick thought about Courtney, how she said long fingernails were impractical, unhygienic, a sign of vanity and how just yesterday she’d been sitting on his lap, letting him trim them with the clippers from his Swiss army knife. There was still a spot on his coat sleeve that smelled like her perfume.
“So,” he said. “Some guy you never met asked you to meet him in Alaska? Haven’t you heard of Stranger Danger? You should know, we have the highest rate of missing persons per capita of any state.”
The bartender returned with the drinks.
Mira sipped, her eyes narrowing in on the pendant of his necklace, and said, “Chip told me he always wears a golden compass around his neck.”
Nick’s first sip swirled around in his empty stomach. “Where in Alaska does Chip live?”
“Boon.”
“Well.” He scratched his chin, feeling the bristles. “That’s where I live.”
Someone was playing him like a pawn on a board. He knew just about everyone in town. No Chips. But there were a lot of lonely men out on the frontier. Men without the means to get a woman from the airport to town.
“I see what’s going on,” said Nick. “You’re here for a headmistress position, right? On one of the homesteads? I’ve got to warn you, some of those guys are real loons.”
When she clenched her jaw, Nick noticed the crease dictating the symmetry of her chin.
“I am not a mail order bride,” she said. “Chip is just, like, a mentor. I know this looks bad, but our emails have been strictly platonic, and I trust him. He’s wise. He knows what I’m going through. He’s going to help me get a fresh start. That’s all.”
“He told you I’d be the last one off the plane?” said Nick.
“Yeah. How would he know that?”
Nick shrugged and tried to think who would know he always lingered after a flight to help passengers with their suitcases, and to thank the stewardesses and pilots personally for getting him safely back on land. Anyone, he realized. Anyone in town would know. He was a talker, especially when he got drinking, and it often shocked him what personal details had become public knowledge. In fact, last year, as part of Boon’s Bachelor Auction, all the single ladies had participated in a game called Nick Jeopardy: Nick learned to juggle with these when he was ten. What are eggs? Nick uses this to floss his teeth. What is fishing line? Nick’s term for his dogs’ turds. What are land mines?
“So, can I get a ride to Boon?” asked Mira.
“I think you should go home. This Chip situation sounds dangerous.”
Her vodka was already gone, her straw gurgling between the ice cubes. “No going back.”
Nick continued working the puzzle. He always wore his Mets hat when he traveled back to Brooklyn in October. He only had one fall coat. And the golden compass around his neck was a given. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced Chip—obviously, an alias—had to be a solid acquaintance.
What baffled Nick the most: Who would attempt to life-coach a woman to the edge of civilization? And who would have the charisma to pull it off? He’d have to be literate. That narrowed it down. He’d have to be interesting and inspirational. Nick knew no such man. Not in Boon anyway.
Mira was about his age, thirty, but her years looked like they’d been hard. All the youth had leached out of her, like something left in the oven too long.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go to Boon.”
She pushed her glass away and Nick slammed his empty beer mug on the counter.
“That was a lightweight move,” she said.
“Habit.” He smiled big, trying to draw one out of her.
She rolled her eyes and looked away. “Goofball.”
At baggage, Nick’s suitcase circled the carousel by its lonesome, a metaphor if there ever was one. Another trip around the sun until he’d get to see Courtney again. He smelled his sleeve.
He carried Mira’s duffle bag and she rolled his suitcase. Outside, the air was impeccably crisp, dense, the molecules tightly packed. Nick could feel it working on his own chemistry.
“This air cures all.” He inhaled slowly, savoring it.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”
He shook his head. She was proving to be a real downer.
When they got to Nick’s silver Silverado, he threw their luggage into the bed and opened the passenger door for her. It felt good getting back behind the wheel. He’d lost track of time, but the clock on the dash said noon. Plenty of daylight left.
Soon, they were surrounded by land and sky, the best nature had to offer. Nick kept glancing over at her. He’d picked up newbies from the airport before and it always gave him satisfaction to hear their Oohs and Ahs. Mira had no reaction at all. She was looking, but not seeing.
“Unimpressed?”
“Huh?”
“I still get awestruck every time I come home.”
“I saw the mountains from the airport windows. They’re nice.”
“They’re majestic.”
Something in her was dead.
“Sorry, Nick. I feel alone and insignificant and those big fucking mountains aren’t helping.” From her purse, she removed an Altoids tin, filled with an array of pills. She selected one and swallowed it dry. “And this is it. If this doesn’t work out, I’m done.” She put the tin away and curled up against the door.
“Jesus.”
Nick pulled off the highway to get gas and when he returned from the pay station, he tossed a pack of Camel Lights onto her lap. She welled up with tears.
Chip, you a son of a bitch, he thought as he pushed the lighter in.
She tore the plastic with her glittery nails. “I was going to quit. I was going to change.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes.
When the lighter popped out, he held it up for her. She touched her cigarette tip to the red coils, breathed in slowly, and released a cloud of smoke as she rolled the window down.
“I can’t remember the last time I had to roll down a window manually, like, with an actual handle. Everything’s a robot now,” she said between drags.
“He’s an oldie, but goodie,” said Nick, patting the steering wheel.
“Your car is a dude?”
“Stanley.”
The corners of her mouth lifted.
The buffeting of air made it too loud to talk, so Nick let his thoughts drift back to his weekend with Courtney. They’d gone to Coney Island. She’d ordered a snappy griller and Nick a white hot just to mess with the guy at the concession stand. They rode bumper cars and played balloon darts, walked the beach, and at sunset Nick suggested they go back to their rented room and make love like a couple of sea otters. Groundhog’s Day, she said, simpatico, always getting his movie references.
“Why do you keep smelling your sleeve?” asked Mira, rolling her window back up.
“It’s got my lady’s scent on it.”
“Ew.”
They shared a laugh and it struck Nick: He liked her. She was going to shake things up in Boon.
She took a mason jar from her purse, unscrewed the lid, and pushed her cigarette butt and the plastic packaging inside to join a few shiny airplane snack wrappers.
“Starting a trash collection?” he asked.
“Yup.” She had a way of emphasizing a period at the end of a sentence.
The highway extended into oblivion. They were surrounded by a rising tableau, the muted colors of a quickly dying fall: yellow fields, thinning trees in various shades of brown, olive hills, navy mountains, white peaks, and the sky, a blue that only existed in Alaska.
“In the summer, this whole stretch of highway is flanked by purple fireweed,” he said.
It was like he was talking to himself. He looked over, wondering if she was asleep. She had balled her purse up against the window and was using it as a pillow. Jewels, sewn into the front, cast rainbow prisms on the glove compartment. He couldn’t see her eyes.
He tried again. “You mentioned Chip is your mentor. What are you studying?”
Slowly, she sat up to engage. “How to be a better person.”
“Enlighten me on your methodology.”
“It’s a three-step process. First, is realizing you need to change. Then, you need to envision a different life for yourself. Then you come up with a plan, setting small goals each day to keep you on track to your larger goals.”
“What are your goals?”
“To subsist on as little as possible. To dilute my ego. To seek truth. To cultivate empathy. Among other things.”
She rolled down her window to smoke another cigarette.
To pass the time, he recalled more details from his weekend with Courtney. How they fed each other spaghetti, meeting in the center of a noodle like Lady and the Tramp. Breakfast at the diner, where they went through all the books they read that year, and debated whether Miranda July’s new book was a tour-de-force (him) or reckless and too profane (her). How Courtney smelled her armpit periodically saying, Sure or Unsure. How her body was leaner than it was last year because she was training for a half marathon. Would she put one of those 13.1 bumper stickers on her car? No, she would not. The conversation had prompted him to wonder if she drove a minivan with one of those stick figure family adhesives on the rear window. But he wasn’t allowed. Don’t ask, Don’t tell.
“That’s really disturbing how you keep smelling your sleeve,” said Mira, rolling up the window. She took her Mason jar out again and added the second cigarette butt.
“You wanna hear about my woman?”
“Nope.”
He ignored her. “We met back in graduate school. She was a poet, and I was a fiction writer. Once a year we get together to celebrate our unadulterated, unyielding love.”
“Ah. So, you’re scared of commitment.”
“I asked her to marry me years ago. This is her idea. She says marriage is just a division of chores, an exercise in patience, suitable for lukewarm, practical people. And she could be lukewarm and practical, just not with me. She didn’t want our passion to become contempt. Our love to be sullied by the drudgery of everyday existence. One weekend in October is all we get together. And it’s extraordinary.”
“She’s married?”
“I don’t know. We agreed not to talk about our personal lives.”
“What about you? Have you had other relationships?”
Nick thought about Cara. How they started getting close a couple years back and how he’d ultimately pushed her away.
“This is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Mira.
“It’s just unconventional. Trust me, I’m, like, the happiest guy you’ll ever meet.”
“It isn’t love.” Mira straightened in her seat and turned to him. “Love is accepting a person for all they are—including the shitty parts. You listen to them ramble. You forgive them when they act stupid. You tolerate their annoying habits and their terrible smells. And if their eyes lose passion and you’ve done all you can to get it back, sometimes love means walking away and respecting the time you had together as fleeting, but nonetheless beautiful. Things change. That’s the nature of our reality.”
“Maybe we like our freedom. Maybe our way works for us.”
“Maybe you’ve built your philosophy around someone else’s fears. Maybe your passion should be celebrated instead of put in a tiny fucking box. Maybe your woman is a phony and you’re a sucker. She probably has a guy like you in each state and some sad-sack husband who foots the bill for her alleged poetry conferences. Do you even know if she has kids?”
Don’t ask. Don’t tell. He started to feel sick.
“She’s a bullshit artist,” said Mira. “She’s keeping you from living a more fulfilling life.”
“Are you done?”
She shrugged.
They were silent for the rest of the trip. When they reached Boon, Mira told Nick to pull over on Main Street. He got out, grabbed the duffle bag from the truck bed, and set it down on the sidewalk.
“You’re a sweet guy,” she said. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Good luck finding Chip.”
He would remember the way she looked in the rear-view mirror, shouldering the strap of the duffel bag, sinking from its weight. It looked like it could hold a body, about her size.
*
Not a week later, Mira’s jeweled purse was found down by the mudflats, where people had been known to wade in and sink like quicksand. When he heard the news, Nick went to the state troopers’ office and volunteered what he knew. People come here to get lost, said one. Land of the missing, said the other. It would be so easy, Nick realized. For either one of them to be Chip. For anyone. Friends of his, even.
Out in the parking lot, Nick smelled the sleeve of his coat, fresh bar soap. He looked off at the mountains, feeling small, insignificant.
Copyright 2026 by Laura Carnes Williams