Adrift in the Sound (5 page)

“You don’t get squat til I get paid,” Carl hissed.

Fuzzy stumbled to the corner of the dining room like he’d taken a shaft to the gut and slumped to the floor. He sniffled and rocked, scratched himself some more. He made himself so small it looked like he was melting into the floor. Lizette watched, melded into the wooden landing, held her breathe. The Dogs nodded in and out. Fuzzy whimpered and noisily sucked snot from his sinus cavities, swallowed.

“OK. OK. You can do the cotton,” Cadillac Carl said quietly. “Come on.” He reached down with his good hand and tugged. “Just don’t want nobody thinking I’m going soft … That’s all … Sets a bad example.” Fuzzy rubbed his chin, nodded, acted wise.

Cadillac Carl prepared the spoon, added a drop of water and made like he was going to suck the moisture into the syringe, but he added some extra candy under the cotton. He dropped more water into the spoon’s bowl with the eye dropper, then cooked it, boiling away the impurities.

Lizette smelled the sulfur from the matches, watched Carl wave the flame under the spoon. He filled the syringe all the way and tied off Fuzzy’s skinny, outstretched arm, palped a scarred vein, pierced it. A spurt of blood flushed into the syringe, glowing red-orange in the glass tube. Cadillac Carl firmly pressed the plunger, smiled gently into Fuzzy’s hazy eyes. “How’s that?” Carl asked.

Fuzzy’s face softened, his eyes rolled back. “Far out. Good shit, man. Good.”

He crumpled to the floor under the piano. Lizette gasped into her scarf. Cadillac Carl looked around like he’d heard something and went and stood in the dining room archway, assessed the dozing Dogs in the living room. He watched the end of the game by himself, clapped once for a good layup. The Sonics lost. Fuzzy turned blue, stopped breathing.

Lizette studied Cadillac Carl’s dark form through the crack in the basement door, saw evil standing upright and unashamed. Her heart curled shut like a tide pool anemone protecting itself. She slipped backwards down the stairs on hands and knees, covered herself with the blankets she’d tossed there, squinched her eyes and forced herself to think about damp green forests, fairies dancing among blades of grass.

Cadillac Carl stepped outside when the game ended and lifted a case of beer from the trunk of his car, ice cold from the crisp winter air. He roused the Dogs with the cold bottles under their chins, pulled a rotten, dusty curtain from a dining room window, and rolled Fuzzy’s body into it. He signaled Bomber to help him. The Dogs watched bleary eyed as they worked the load out the front door and piled the wadded drapery into the open trunk of Cadillac Carl’s Coupe de Ville. Without a word, Bomber went back inside. The Dogs said nothing.

Lizette heard the Caddie hum to life outside and pull away. She waited a long time in the dark, waited until there were no more sounds overhead and slipped out the basement window, panted along Eastlake, took refuge in a crease where dirt met cement under the freeway. She pulled flattened cardboard boxes over her and waited until first light. She caught the bus to Anacortes, took the ferry to Orcas Island.

SEVEN

ORCAS ISLAND
emerged from the mist like a fairy world in a children’s book. Lizette watched the shoreline sharpen as the state ferry
Kalama
churned toward the landing, its decks bucking against the rolling current. The island rested before her, unchanged since the beginning of time. Trees blanketed the hills above verdant plains and spired along the dark hump of Turtleback Mountain. The foamy sea sloshed ashore in ebullient waves.

She bounced her ankle on her knee, bone striking bone, and puffed her hair, anxious to see Marian, eager to get to the ranch and her studio. Only conscious restraint kept her seated. A smile broke out on her face as she smelled the cedar and seaweed, the lush rot of the sea feeding new life. She touched her face with her fingertips, traced the stiff muscles around her mouth, surprised by a joyful stirring she hadn’t felt in years, in forever.

The engines shuddered into reverse and the ferry slowed. Passengers gathered their belongings and prepared to disembark. Those remaining for the ride to Friday Harbor and Sidney in British Columbia looked bored as they watched the jumble of bodies gather around the car ramp. The wide-bodied boat nudged the dock, bounced against the pylons, settled into its berth like a lumbering beast nestling into a safe burrow. Cars shot off the ramp and accelerated up the hill, hurrying home in the waning afternoon light.

Locals on foot trudged off the ferry, indifferent to the magic that hovered over the Salish Sea, its islands scattered carelessly across the far Western edge of America. When it rains on the mainland, the sun shines on the islands. Canada’s Vancouver Island shields the outcroppings in the straits of Juan De Fuca, Georgia and Haro further south. Sparkling light falls across the tree tops, roves the flower-dotted meadows and turns moisture to mist. Fierce winds glance off the mountains and cartwheel sea birds into a carnival of fishing and hunting. Lizette felt lighter, puffed by the wind, but at the same time more balanced. Safe.

When she was a child, she sensed the fairies living in the crevices on Orcas Island, their iridescent wings folded, sheltering in tiny hideouts. When storms swept over the mountains, she used to imagine the little creatures shielding their delicate bodies from the raindrops with tiny wildflower parasols.

Now, with the rain clouds clearing and every surface refracting light, Orcas Island shimmered with faint rainbows. The island pulled with its own gravity, held life differently than on the mainland. The
Kalama
blew a goodbye horn note and Lizette turned and waved. It revved its engines and slipped slowly back from the landing. A small child in a puffy jacket and red cap waved back to her.

As the ferry plowed into the swells in the strait, she scanned the water’s surface ahead of it, looking for orca pods, their distinctive dorsal fins and sleek bodies breaching in the roiling sea. She knew the tidal energy of these waters nourished tiny crustaceans that launched a complicated food chain, provided abundant prey to nourish the ravenous appetites of these black-and-white hunters.

In the ferry slip, Lizette saw a dead gull, its legs wrapped in shredded fish netting. She could smell the creosote that oozed from the dock’s pilings, leaking poison into the water where schools of smelt made synchronized turns, flashing their silver sides. She saw these losses and sensed the everyday carnage of sea lions clubbed or shot by fishermen defending their catch and ensnared birds flapping helplessly in the surf. Lizette did not know—but she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn—that a gill net lost from a trawler in the San Juans the week before had killed a harbor seal, two white-sided dolphins, five Chinook salmon, 25 sockeye salmon, 30 ling cod, and 68 red crabs.

But, this sadness didn’t dampen the joy that now had the upper hand in her consciousness. She moved closer to comfort and safety with each step she took toward the ranch, she wanted to call out for Marian and loosen the rubber band of tension gripping her skull. Her lips made quiet kisses.

In back of the Full Moon Saloon, Lizette pulled a battered orange bicycle from behind a green dumpster. Trash spilled onto the ground, damp napkins blew on a light breeze, carrying the stink of beer and onions out across the water. A few gulls picked at morsels, unconcerned with her presence. The sweet smell of garbage mixed with the rich odor of dead fish comforted her.

The bike, one of several stowed there, was used by island residents and farm workers who traveled to the ranches in an endless shuttle. She slung herself over the bike’s heavy frame, checked the coaster brakes she hoped still worked and pushed off, pumping, standing to gain momentum, getting off to push the bike up the steep hill from the landing. On the flat road, Lizette pedaled, following childhood rules, listening for engine sounds that would warn her to pull over or stop on the narrow shoulder until it passed. With a chattering chorus of clicks and tweets yammering away in her head, she used her last bit of energy to pump, pump, pump along Horseshoe Highway.

Lizards and voles ducked for cover as she huffed along, taking deep breaths, transporting in her mind to the time when Indians used the islands as fish camps, catching salmon in reef nets around the inlets, working with the orca pods as they drove the salmon schools toward shallower water. The fishermen simply opened their nets to accept the abundance and thanked the Orca god. She thought about the legends of men who befriended orcas or transformed into them while they paddled in the sea, how they’d join the pack to feast on endless, writhing salmon banquets.

Her father had told her these stories of the first people who walked the island. He explained that later the white man came to trade and took over the sunny coves and snug harbors, feeding their hunger for land and animals, leaving behind disease. The old ones, like the parents and grandparents of Poland and Abaya, remembered the taking of their land and being pushed onto the reservation on the mainland. They went to Indian schools and worked odd jobs, hunted and fished, drank and fought among themselves. Now archaeologists and anthropologists, like her father and his students at the university, dug in the middens, trying to piece together the broken history of the Lummi from what was discarded or destroyed.

Rounding the bend, she headed down the sloping road, the old bike picking up speed. The gate to Cutler Ranch, its battered white arch with the rusted Circle-C, welcomed her. Lights in the main house cast a warm glow across the front yard in the growing darkness. She knew Marian had made it back to the ranch from Seattle ahead of her. The bike’s fat tires crunched the gravel driveway and she pushed her knees into the pedaling, reached the dooryard in a flurry.

Standing down, she felt lightheaded, nearly fell when she dismounted and her sack shifted from her shoulder. Leaning the bike under the eave of the old red barn, she crossed to the back door of the main house. The evening news blared from the TV in the living room and she caught snatches of
“Watergate”
and
“Wounded Knee.”
Through the backdoor window, she watched Marian standing at the stove, leaning over the rim of a big pot, stirring, putting the wooden spoon to her lips, blowing, biting a small amount. Her long black hair was tied in a knot on her head and she had on a big, gray flannel shirt and jeans. Lizette pushed the door open.

Marian wheeled around, broke into a big smile. “You’re just in time!” She wiped her hands on a towel, rushed to wrap Lizette in a warm hug. “I was in Seattle, at Sandy’s. I’ve been looking for you. Where’ve you been?”

She pushed Lizette back to look at her. “God. I’ve missed you.” She laughed and clasped Lizette to her again, pushed her away. She searched Lizette’s face, noted her stiff grin and wary eyes.

“Tell me everything.” She shooed her to the kitchen table with the towel. “Sit down.”

Lizette collapsed in a chair by the window and tucked her bag under the table. Marian saw the facial tic working under her right eye, the chipped and dirty fingernails, the broken lace on her worn boot. She saw lean thigh bones under dirty jeans. Her blond hair was broken and dull, matted from sleeping, she guessed.

The skin on her face is sallow, the color of old pearls
, Marian thought. Small purple veins in the folds beside Lizette’s nostrils told of too many nights at the tavern, too many strangers, too many days of wandering the streets without food, her Nordic beauty in tatters. Suppressing her pity, Marian put a bowl of lentils and lamb before Lizette, who looked at her, confused, as if she hadn’t ordered it.

“How long since you’ve eaten?”

Lizette looked out the kitchen window into the yard, scanning the ground along the weathered picket fence for signs of crocus.
Not spring yet
, she thought. “What month is it?”

“What did you eat today?” Marian waited, silence yawned.

“Pfeffernüsse.”

“All you’ve eaten today are cookies?”

“Just one … Only a bite. I bought it at the Swedish bakery before I got on the ferry in Anacortes.”

“Liz, you can’t do that.” Marian took short paces in front of the stove, tossing her head, loosening her hair, pulling it back into a bundle at the nape of her neck, releasing it to flow around her shoulders. “You can’t stay here if you don’t eat. I can’t be responsible. Where’ve you been? Sandy said she hasn’t seen you in weeks. Neither have the Dogs. Greg told me.”

“Sandy’s. Rocket’s. The hospital before that…. For a couple of months. I don’t know how long.”

“Well, you’re going to collapse if you don’t eat.” Marian realized she’d upset her and turned to the cupboard and pulled down a wide, flat bowl. She ladled hot lentils and tender lamb chunks into it. She brought the bowl and a board with a half loaf of fresh baked whole-wheat bread to the table. Settling into a chair, Marian fussed with a stick of butter still wrapped in paper, cutting a stiff pat into pieces on a slice of bread. She snuck a glance across the table at the thin woman she’d known since she was a girl. Their parents had been friends. They were raised nearly like sisters, dividing time between Orcas and Seattle, but now Lizette seemed like a broken stranger.

“I’ll run some bath water,” Marian said between bites. “Want to jump in?”

She nodded OK and nibbled bread. The overhead light bulb caught the blue circles under her eyes and Marian felt the painful intensity of her ordeal, whatever it was. She looked away to shield herself from Lizette’s hurt.

Marian got up and went to the bathroom, switched on the light. She’d hung her nursing degrees and midwife certificate from the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky above the toilet. She rarely thought about the arduous training, in nursing school at the University of Washington and later in the saddle, riding horseback from holler to holler in the Appalachian Mountains, attending births and doctoring poor families. These framed mementos hung above an Andy Warhol quote her father had cut out of a magazine and thumb-tacked to the wall: “
Having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art anyone could ever want to own
.” Above the light switch she’d taped a quote of her own from Gloria Steinem
: “Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.”
Like faded wallpaper, these things had long since escaped Marian’s notice.

The hot water steamed the room as it filled the claw-foot tub. Marian switched on the baseboard heater and it pinged to life. She poured rose-scented oil into the water, the beads breaking up and dispersing as the water shot from the faucet. She got baby shampoo and cocoa butter from the medicine chest above the sink and a stack of thick white towels from the linen closet in the hall. She went into the kitchen. Lizette sat slumped over her bowl. Marian took her by the elbow, grabbed the canvas bag from under the table, led her gently down the hall, toward the smell of soap and roses.

Closing the door, Marian unbuttoned Lizette’s green plaid jacket, starting under her chin, working down the row, lifting the cloth between nimble fingers, peeling it back from her shoulders, catching a whiff of wet dog fur, as she took it off. Finding a thin pink and yellow stripped sweater underneath, a dark stain on the front, she rolled the sweater from the bottom over Lizette’s head. Her small, round breasts plopped softly on her chest. Leaning in Marian kissed the top of her right nipple, licked its tip. Lizette stood indifferent.

Marian unbuttoned Lizette’s jeans and pulled them down to mid-thigh, baring her hard belly and round hip bones, v-shaped blond hair between her legs. Lizette bent her knees, slightly opening her thighs. Marian tugged down and lowered her jeans to the knees and, bending, loosened Lizette’s boots, signaled, like a farrier shoeing a horse, for Lizette to lift her foot. She slipped the shoe off, doing the same on the other side. Then she slipped her jeans off the same way, one leg at a time. Lizette stood naked in the blue-tinted light and Marian stepped back, examined her—medically, compassionately, thoroughly.