The Alaskan Laundry (19 page)

Without waiting for an answer, Jackie slid down the steel ladder onto the boat. Tara watched from above.

“C'mon!” Jackie shouted. “Now or never. We're pulling out.”

After hesitating, she tossed her duffel, followed by her bibs, which landed with a slap on the concrete deck.

Inside the galley Jackie poured herself a cup of coffee, then handed one to Tara. “I gotta say, I liked the look in your eyes out there. You got fire in your belly.”

Her anger evaporated as she looked around. There was a small wooden dish rack beside the stainless-steel sink, a gas stove with a griddle scoured clean, and a Hoosier cabinet filled with jars of smoked and pickled salmon and string beans. Striped linen kitchen cloths hung above the sink. After so much walking around in the harbor, dreaming about life on the tug, here she was, finally on a boat.

The hull shuddered as the engines fired. “Cut her loose, my bride!” a voice yelled. They both went out on deck. Jackie introduced Tara to Teague, her husband, who had a white goatee and wore ripped fleece pants. “You know how to remove line from a cleat?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Husband and wife watched as Tara dragged the braided rope through the water, coiling it like a snail's shell as she had seen others do. Her heart rate only slowed when Jackie flipped a thumbs-up.

Black exhaust rose from the stacks as they steamed down the channel beneath a clear sky. She stood by the gunwales, looking back toward town, like the deckhands she had watched so many times leaving the processor.

The forests and mountains that had appeared so threatening when she first arrived now insulated her, and the seven miles of road on either side of town that before had felt so constricting now were just long enough—she couldn't imagine ever being stuck in a traffic jam on the expressway, in the shadow of a tractor-trailer, again. As for her father, she knew he was waiting for her call. So it went. She'd call, when she was good and ready.

As they approached the outer harbor she saw the
Pacific Chief
tied up at the corner. The boat looked lonely, its anchor hanging down like an elephant tear. And there, on deck in her Adirondack chair, Laney, red shawl blowing in the wind.

“Hey!” Tara yelled across the water, waving with both hands. “What happened?”

“We got as far as Petersburg!” Laney shouted back.

She cupped her hands around her lips. “Is it still for sale?”

“Twenty-five!” Laney returned.

I don't care if the galley leaks,
she thought.
That's my boat.

LIFE ON THE TENDER WAS INTIMATE
, self-contained. Seldom, except when she was in her small bunk, was she alone. There were always eyes on her, making sure she worked, and worked quickly. Teague wasn't bad, just flirtatious in a jokey, harmless manner, even as he told Tara about his wife, how she had grown up in the bush, homeschooled until third grade, walking seven miles to town and back.

“Her and her brother could either take a dog or a gun with them for bear,” he said, shaking his head. “She was eighteen when she learned a toilet flushed. Imagine that.”

Teague anchored in a bay near where the divers worked, red flags raised high, yellow hose coiling around the boat as they walked the ocean floor for sea cucumbers. He got on the VHF to advertise the price per pound, encouraging folks to unload with the
Adriatic.
As the first boat motored toward them, Tara watched Jackie, her rosy windblown face, blue handkerchief holding back her blond hair. The woman had bony, birdlike shoulders, and wore a wool sweater with frayed cuffs and a darned collar. There was an invincible quality to her, Tara decided, an air of the Viking out to plunder.

“Ready? Boat coming in, starboard side. Tie her off,” the woman said as they went out on deck. She spoke in a tone that wasn't mean, but it didn't leave room for nice, either. Oblivious to her beauty, which would have turned heads in the Italian Market.

“You got a fender you can throw down?” the diver called up. He still had his hood on.

“A what?” Tara asked. He looked at her like she was stupid.

“A fender! A buoy ball.”

Jackie came from behind and tossed one overboard. “C'mere. Now watch. If we do salmon it'll be more of the same. We open the hold, hook up brailer bags to the lift, twirl a finger in the air to signal Teague, and up she comes.
Sì?
”

After lowering herself into the hold, Jackie gave a whistle. The hydraulics moaned as the bag swung above the deck, oozing pink slime from the sea cucumbers, nubby creatures that resembled giant caterpillars. Jackie handed the line attached to the bottom of the bag—the “tag line,” she called it—to Tara, and she did her best to hold the sack steady as Teague read off numbers from a glow-in-the-dark LED scale. “Good,” the woman said. “About twenty more like that.”

As night came on it began to rain. The tips of her curls sticking out from her hood dripped water down her neck. Teague switched on the deck lights, flooding the deck in white. They kept at it until almost six
A.M.
, waiting for the last boat to clean cukes and unload, and still no hint of sun. When Tara began to unbutton her raingear Jackie shook her head. “Not yet,
señorita.
Need you to check levels on each of the totes, send hoses into the ones that are fullest, make sure they've got seawater to keep them fresh. Yes?”

Her hands and face were covered in cucumber slime. She just wanted to crawl into her bunk, not bother with showering. “No problem,” Tara said.

“Listen, girlfriend. You stick with me, you'll be tying knots quicker and pulling line harder than men twice your size. Yeah?” She clapped a hand on Tara's shoulder, giving a squeeze. “Doesn't get much easier than this. Trust me.”

“Thank you for giving me the shot.” But the woman was already on her way to the wheelhouse, removing her gear.

That night, brushing her teeth in the head, she thought about Jackie, growing up in her homestead with her brother, deciding between the dog and the gun. She wondered whether it might be possible to become like her one day, working so furiously, barking orders. With her toothbrush extending from one side of her mouth, she hardened her face, like she had seen her father do. Men respected Jackie, it seemed, were even afraid of her at times, handing over their permit card without any argument over weights. She'd love to see the small woman give her father hell. He wouldn't know how to handle her.

She spit in the miniature porcelain sink, washed it down. Tending bar, slinging coffee, or gaffing fish, women in Alaska carried themselves differently from women down south. As if each one of them had passed through a ring of fire before coming out the other side, flame-tested and hardened. The slag of the past burned off, cooling in the salt air, charting their own course.

WHEN THE
Adriatic
returned to port she went straight to the
Chief
to get the story on the tug. A plank had popped on the way south, Laney told her. They diverted to Petersburg, where the boat was hauled out on a railroad winch. The ordeal convinced the cellists that the boat, in the end, wasn't suitable for a music camp.

“Fairweather San Franciscans,” Laney said. “I'd include myself in that group,” she added.

They were sitting at the galley table, drinking wine. “So you still interested in the boat?”

“I am.”

“And you know you need to get the engine running, otherwise the harbormaster sinks her.”

“I understand. I'm reading up on it.”

At the bank she deposited a pile of cash. This gave her twelve thousand, including payment from the tender. Then she went to the coffee shop and selected a card of a totem pole in the woods.

December 21, 1998

Dear Connor,

Just as she began to write, a shadow fell over the page. Betteryear stood above her, a mug of tea in one hand. Without asking, he slid into the bench beside her.

“You know,” he said, slipping on his glasses, pointing at the card. “This is a Tlingit funeral pole. Here”—he tapped with a long finger—“in back of the carved raven is a hole for the ashes.”

She was in no mood for this.

“There's something wrong, Tara. I can see it in your face.”

She sighed. “I just want to get this off.”

“Are you writing to your father?” he asked.

“No. A friend.”

“From where?”

“Home,” she said.

“Home?”

“From Philly.”

“What does ‘home' mean to you, Tara?”

She did not want to have some philosophic conversation. She wanted him to go away.

“I'll leave you alone, Tara. I'm so sorry for interrupting your thoughts.”

When he finally left, she scrawled on the front, just beneath the totem pole.

I'm lonely. I love you. I'm sorry. I wish you could come here. It would be so much easier if we could touch. I need to tell you something. To just write it.

She stared at her handwriting. It looked like graffiti, barely legible. After a minute she ripped up the card, dumped it out with her coffee, and started the long walk back to the clearing.

ON THE TWENTY-THIRD
, she pulled herself out of her sleeping bag. Newt bought beers and told her to meet him at the channel marker. On impulse she swung by Fritz and Fran's to see if Keta was there. At first the dog seemed to ignore her, hardly looking up as she pet him. Then she knelt and whispered in his ear.

“Hi, sweet you,” she said. “I'm so glad you didn't leave with those people. I thought you might have forgotten about me.”

When he didn't move she turned his head toward her, pressed her forehead against his skull, and stared into the dog's unblinking eyes
. Funny, I was thinking the same thing,
the dog seemed to say back. She switched tacks. “Hey, monkey. I'm sorry. I've been busy. Okay? But I'm here now. I promise I won't abandon you. My resolution for the year.”

After a few seconds he freed his head, gave her a quick look, then trotted out in front. When they got to the breakwater, he wouldn't go out on the rocks until she was there beside him, her fingers trailing along his back.

“Dog likes you,” Newt said as Keta picked his way among the boulders. “See how he keeps making sure you're okay?”

When they were arranged in their usual spots, Tara leaned against a steel post, calmed by the rhythmic flashing of the light, Newt handed her a beer. Keta sat on his haunches, the sun reflecting gold off his white fur. Clouds swam like fish across the sky.

“Any word from Plume?” Tara asked.

He looked up at her, veins blue beneath his pale skin. “Not a word.”

A whale exhaled toward the end of the landing strip at the airport. Keta watched the white funnel of mist come apart in the breeze.

“You know, my old man called me at the processor, just before I went out with Jackie.”

“That right?”

“He said there was something he wanted to talk about.”

They drank, watching the clouds for a couple minutes. “What's he like, your dad?” Newt asked.

She stroked Keta's silky head. “You know, today was the day she died.”

Newt said nothing. She felt her stomach heave, then took a breath.

“Right before I left, like six months after my mother was killed, I'm coming back up the stairs late at night, sandwich in one hand. And there he is, favorite mustard cardigan tucked into his sweatpants. I'm standing there holding my cheese sandwich. He asks me something, like if I was planning to start giving him a hand at the bakery anytime soon. I must have looked down for a second, because then I hear this crack, and he's got his fist through the plaster, hollering that it was my fault my mother died, that I never lifted a finger around the house, that all I did anyway was watch TV and eat his food. Spoiled good-for-nothing brat, that's what he called me.” She swallowed. “I told him he could go fuck himself, ran out of the house in my pajamas, then spent three months at Connor's. That's when I called Acuzio, who got me the job with Fritz.”

Keta whined softly. She was petting him too hard. The breeze blowing through the hemlocks along the coast made a brushing sound.

“Well, all I can tell you is—”

“I know, Newt. Do what you can, and let the rough end drag.”

“Well, that too,” he said. “But I was gonna say he sounds like a prick. Maybe he's calling with his tail between his legs.”

Tara shook her head. “Urbano Marconi doesn't do tail between his legs.”

“Well, then here's another one. We're put on this green earth to learn to love honestly and cleanly. Simple as that.”

“So?”

“So we're all tumbling around in the Alaskan laundry
out here. If you do it right you get all that dirt washed out, then turn around and start making peace with the other shit. Maybe even make a few friends along the way.” He winked at her.

“I'm trying,” she said.

“I know you are,” he said seriously. He stood and slap-boxed on the rocks with Keta, who bared his teeth and growled. “It's pretty damn obvious.”

AT THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY
the Alaskan Travelers filed out of the woods in a ragged procession, responding to whatever magnetism drew them hither and yon. With their sleep rolls and scavenged bones and unused cans of bear spray lashed to their backs, fishing rods broken down, blanks rubber-banded together. A mammoth tooth hung around a neck with dental floss, a new tattoo of the state on the underside of a wrist. Then it was just Newt, Thomas, Tara, and Frauke.

It snowed. One afternoon, walking in the half-light back home from work, she found Betteryear mounting his bicycle in front of the Muskeg. They chatted for a few minutes.