Adrift in the Sound (8 page)

Lizette watched the orcas’ dorsal fin cutting the water’s surface, shifting direction, relieved the little monk seal was safe. She giggled to herself at the memory of her father making lunch, tickling under her chin, thinking it would be fun to tickle the seal, feed him tuna fish. She pulled on a jacket, put the flashlight into her pocket out of habit, and headed up to the main house.

TEN

GREG SLOUCHED BAREFOOT IN A KITCHEN CHAIR
, his leg hooked over the edge of the table. Coarse ankle hair poked out around the ragged hem of his jeans. He grunted when Lizette walked in. Jimi Hendrix blasted “Purple Haze” from the stereo in the living room, the sound rocking the kitchen. He raised his head and focused on her through narrowed eyes.
Satyr
, she thought.
Half goat.
She recoiled from his smell.

“You finally up?”

She plucked energy from the pit of her stomach and stiffened her spine to deflect his disrespectful gaze. “Where’s Marian?”

“Still at the birth. Some half-breed squaw. Said it could be a while, when she called.”

He put his foot on the floor and twisted in the chair to look at Lizette, assessing her body in a way that made her cover her breasts with her arm.

“Just hope they pay her. She can’t take care of them for free. Nothin’s free, man. You know?”

“Where’s Poland?”

“How the hell should I know? He said something about helping his wife get ready for a potlatch, some kind of family reunion. Abaya’s always out digging roots and weaving baskets. We got guys walking around on the moon for chrissakes and she’s carving bones? It’s the goddamned 70s, man. You gotta wonder. Know what I mean?”

Lizette had known Poland and Abaya since she was a child. Their ways made perfect sense to her. What scared her and made the ground feel like it was shifting away from her feet was that beasts like Greg existed. She didn’t know how to speak to him, it was as if she were watching a bear at the zoo, fascinated by him in a frightened way. She twittered at him, clicked her tremoring tongue, glanced over his head to the windows that faced the front garden. She caught him smirking as she cast her gaze beyond him.

“Anyway,” Greg offered, “Poland said they’re getting ready for some big Lummi thing. You’d think the guy would do some work around here. Marian pays him enough.”

He got up and went to the refrigerator for another beer. Lizette moved aside, leaned against the sink.

“I heard him tell Marian a bunch of war canoes are paddling over from Bellingham for the party. They could save the sweat and take the ferry. He said they’re gonna do the whole thing—funeral, couple of weddings, baby christenings, dance, swap meet. A lot of food and camping out.”

Popping the cap, he tossed the bottle opener into the sink with a clatter, took a long pull on the bottle, bobbling his eyes at her as the slug of beer went down.

She watched Greg like a dangerous animal and thought about one day last fall, before she cut out for Seattle, when she’d overheard him speak rudely to Poland while they were working in the barn. Lizette was sitting in the sun, outside the door, sketching, half listening to them talk as they cleaned sheep pens. The old man ended the exchange by walking away from Greg and came to stand outside the barn near her, raking his thick silver hair, tugging on his long goatee.

“Coyote shows off to girls, juggling his eyeballs,” Poland said out loud to no one and spat. He saw her and went on, “One day he threw one so high it stuck in the sky. Now it winks first when the sun sets. It’s the light that guides drunks and lazy bones to the tavern.”

That’s how she pictured Greg now, his ice-blue eyes bobbling in their sockets. She saw coyote—yellow teeth, mangy coat, snapping jaw. Shaken by the strength of her vision, she turned away from him and opened the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of milk. Jimi Hendrix sang “All Along the Watchtower” from the living room and went into a guitar riff. She took a hunk of Jarlsberg cheese from the shelf and got a knife from the drawer.

“No bread,” Greg said, holding his arms and hands as if playing an electric guitar, leaning into the riff. “Marian says you’re gonna help make some. You could get started without her, you know? I love the smell of bread better ‘an I love the smell of pussy.”

Lizette gagged, turned her back to him, and poured milk into a glass, took big swallows, as if he might come and snatch it from her.

He worked his hands like drumsticks, keeping time to the beat, tapping an imaginary cymbal, picking up his air guitar again, smug about having bugged her.

“You know my man Rocket? Works the tow boats with me?” he needled her.

“I know him,” she said softly.

“He might come up this weekend, if he can lay off Sandy,” he said and laughed sly like. “My man likes his China white, if you dig me? Helluva jones.” Greg looked straight at her. “You holding anything or did they take your stash when they put you in the loony bin?”

Lizette clicked her tongue, pulled her head into her shoulders, trembled at the thought of Cadillac Carl. Jimi Hendrix sang “Hey Joe.” Greg looked smug and the silence under the music hardened to steel.

“Where’s Tucker?” she asked, unbending, turning to face him.

“The dog?” Lizette nodded. “How should I know? Probably chasing ewe,” he said and cackled. “Get it? Ewe?” Lizette felt sick.

A truck came scrunching up the driveway. She caught the sound first, then a flash of green from the window. Poland opened the kitchen door and scraped his boots on the mat, stepped inside. Looking up at her from under his shag of gray hair, he smiled, the creases deepening around his eyes. “You come like crocus in the spring,” he said, grabbing her hands, dancing her around, making her giggle.

“I haven’t seen any yet,” she said.

“It won’t be long. Already blue-eyed Marys and buttercups are popping up in the hot spots.”

“Where you been, chief?” Greg stretched his arms overhead, interrupting Poland. The old man veiled his eyes and squinted, as if trying to see a speck of dirt.

“Errands for the wife, checked on Marian at the birth. Dropped off some fresh sword fern for the mother to chew. Abaya says it helps things along. Marian says maybe a couple more days before the baby comes. She has everybody at the house calmed down now. False alarm. She’s cooking beans and soothing the mother. They’re just kids. He works at the marina. Good with engines, but don’t know what to do about babies. It was quiet when I left.”

“Shit,” Greg said, bending to pull boots from under the table, slipping his bare feet in and tugging on the laces. He stood to leave and Lizette noticed how thin he’d become, how strung out, and flashed on Fuzzy and the Dog House.

“I didn’t come all the way out here from Seattle to sit by myself. I could’ve stayed in town with the Dogs, gotten in some hitting and fielding practice. It’s almost spring, ya know, baseball season?”

“I need a tooth brush,” Lizette said.

“Yeah. Well, don’t use mine. It’s the blue one on the back of the sink,” Greg said, heading for the back door. “Use Marian’s. It’s the yellow one in the holder.”

“OK,” she said, taking a box of baking soda from the shelf and going into the bathroom, locking the door.

“Go easy on the toilet paper, huh?” Greg yelled at her before he went out. “Septic tank’s backing up. Marian needs to get somebody out here to pump it.” The back door slammed.

Lizette took the tooth brush from the holder, shook baking soda on the bristles, and scrubbed her teeth, swished with water from her cupped hand.

She replaced Marian’s tooth brush and picked up the blue one on the back of the sink. She went to the toilet and squatted, using it to scrub the mineral ring that had accumulated at the water line in the bowl, reaching down for the brown stains at the bottom. She stood and put the tooth brush back where she’d found it.

“Do you want to come see our garden?” Poland asked as she came into the kitchen. “Abaya’s putting in lettuce and bedding flowers for the summer bouquets. Right now we’ve only got carrots and radishes, broccoli and chard for the farmer’s market. Tomorrow morning will be the first market of the year. Probably the whole island will show up to buy, if it don’t rain. Not too much is ready for market yet. Come on.”

Lizette pulled one of Marian’s old jackets off a hook on the back porch and hopped into the cab of Poland’s rusty truck, the passenger-side visor flopping loosely as they hit ruts. They bounced along, both of them scanning the woods and meadows for the tell-tale signs of spring.

“Lavender!” Lizette shouted as they rounded a curve. The slope beside them was thickly carpeted in dusty gray-green spikes that would flower purple across the hillside the moment it warmed it up.

“Abaya worked on the lavender farm last summer, helped with harvest,” Poland said, a hint of pride in his voice. “She did it for no pay, too, so she could get the boxes of soap and lotion, must have got a hundred of em.

“Why’d she want all the boxes?”

“For the potlatch. We called one to honor our sons and our family.”

“Greg told me,” she said, hating to mention his name.

“Something’s wrong with that guy.” Poland frowned. “If Hal Cutler was alive, he’d run him off. Trash. I don’t like him around the place, around Marian. She’s a good girl.”

“He’s a Dog,” Lizette started to explain, thought better of it. “He uses drugs.”

Poland didn’t comment, but Lizette could tell he’d tucked the information away, confirmed his own suspicions.

“Abaya has been working on the potlatch for a long time, making baskets, carving, weaving, beading,” he said, changing the subject. “She never stops.”

“Why’d you call a potlatch?”

“It’s been a long time since the tribe called for one.”

He gripped the steering wheel tighter and leaned forward, studying the winding road he drove every day, swerving to miss potholes. “You know we lost Johnny, our middle boy, in a logging accident a couple of years ago. That’s three sons lost to accidents, one went to Vietnam.”

Lizette looked down, bit her lip. The whole island heard what happened to their sons. She said nothing about Raven being in Seattle.

“After Johnny, that’s when Abaya wanted a potlatch,” Poland said. “She said it was time.”

“She couldn’t stand the pain anymore, you mean.” Lizette looked at him sideways to see how her comment went down.

Rounding a curve, the driveway to the Moran Mansion branched off from the road, the massive slate gray roof and white sides visible through the trees. Built around the turn of the century by the mayor of Seattle, the house was known to locals not just for its size and view of the water, but also for the famous people who came for lavish parties. Sometimes they’d drive their fancy cars and use the ferry or they’d come by boat, tying up their yachts at the harbor below the big house, causing a flutter of conversation at the hardware store the next day.

“Suzie Two Deer used to work there as a maid,” Poland said as they flew by the entrance. “Says they have an organ in there with big pipes and carved wood from ships. Old man Moran built ships in Seattle. You know?”

Lizette nodded, having heard the story of the Morans many times since she was a girl, locals never failing to mention the estate’s history. She’d seen and heard the organ because the estate had been a hotel and restaurant for as long as she knew.

“Very rich people go there,” Poland continued like she was a tourist. “The place sits on my grandfather’s old summer hunting ground.”

Lizette knew this, too.

“The deer liked to browse the grasses on the flats. But, now it’s a big hotel. Robert Redford, the movie cowboy came once.”

“Did you meet him?” She stared out the truck’s window as trees and water whizzed by, bored by the conversation.

“Naw, but me and Abaya saw one of his movies once in Bellingham.”

Lizette knew they were close to Poland’s farm when they came to a long line of split rail fence. She’d watched Poland and his sons build the weaving fence in sections over several summers. Then the white, single-story house came into view. They turned into the dirt driveway and followed the fence line to the dooryard. Smoke puffed from the chimney and Abaya stood on the front steps in a blue-flowered apron, abalone shell earrings the size of saucers hung from her stretched lobes. She held her arms out and Lizette released herself into the warmth of Abaya’s embrace.