The Alaskan Laundry (29 page)

“It gets squirrely on the water, especially in these small boats,” he told her. “I like to have a sense of who I'm working with, where they've been. That's why I put you on that safety course. So if there's anything I should know, tell me before we put gear in the water.”

She stared out the window. They were rounding the far side of the volcano. Ravines, still filled with snow, swirled off the rim. “We had a misunderstanding, and I left.”

“And you hit her.”

That was another thing about Port Anna. No secrets. “Yeah, I hit her, okay? If you had some guy getting up in your face, what are you going to do? Smile back at him?”

He drew on his cigar, exhaled out the window. “Depends on what the guy was in my face about. I also heard you were in a scrape up in Hoonah.”

“What the fuck?” she said. She felt a wetness on the back of her palm, Keta nudging her hand with his nose. “If you don't want me on the boat, drop us on the next island. We'll figure it out.”

He pulled back on the throttle. For a moment she wondered if he was actually doing it. Then she saw they were coming into a cove. Small waves looped over themselves, breaking onto a narrow strip of beach.

On the flybridge he hit the kill switch on the generator. The silence echoed off the rocks. Back inside he said, “Listen. Like I said back at the docks, honesty is boat policy. I need to know who I'm working with.”

“Should I get dinner started?” she asked.

He waited.

Fuck,
Tara thought. This was a mistake. It was always a mistake to go anywhere with a guy you didn't know. Things never ended well.

“Tara,” Zachary said. “Just be up front with me. That's all I'm asking.”

She exhaled. “Okay. In Hoonah I was on the phone with my father, trying to talk to him, and this guy kept harassing me. It was my fault. I hit him. And with Jackie it was worse. Things got really weird in Tenakee. And she deserved it.”

He picked at his beard, thinking. Finally, he gave a small nod. “Okay. Let's get dinner started.”

Cooking calmed her. She sliced potatoes and onions into browning bacon while Zachary picked up the radio station, blues of some sort, and set to repairing his glasses, one arm held to the frame with a shred of electric tape. Gray wafts of smoke rose in the still air as he soldered. He put down the glasses, fed a handful of chips into his mouth. Flakes caught in his beard. “This bruiser over here keeps a good eye on you. Watches your every move.”

She kissed Keta on his bony snout. “So how'd you end up in Port Anna?” she asked. This was the standard Alaska opening gambit, she had come to learn. She wanted to break the awkwardness. Thankfully, he went along.

“Well, I was going to a yeshiva in Kew Gardens Hills, in Queens, New York City, and I met a beautiful woman outside a synagogue. We married, everything was fine, then her parents were stabbed in a mugging. And she decided that, if we were going to raise children, we would bring them up in a place where they would feel safe. I had read about this half-baked idea in the 1920s of Roosevelt's to send ten thousand Jews a year to Southeast. So I thought, why not check it out? We hitched up to Bellingham, caught the ferry, bought a boat, and I started fishing. Thelma found a job as a dispatcher at the police station, while I learned the charts, the pinnacles.” He held his glasses away from his face, then slipped them back on, eyes large behind the lenses. He wiped his fingers with a wet cloth. “And that's my story.”

“I've got a friend, Newt—”

“Guy on the
Spanker
? One eye? Works like a demon?”

“That's him.”

“Yeah. I like that kid.”

“He has this idea that the state's on one continuous wash cycle. The Alaskan laundry, that's what he calls it. Everyone coming north to get clean of their past.”

Zachary looked toward the islands. “I've seen some folks get pretty dirty in the process. Take Newt, for example.”

She set out plates and silverware. He had a point.

“So how'd you get hooked up with King Bruce?”

“The crab guy? You know him?”

“I know
of
him. He's down an eye as well.”

“You're kidding.”

“I am not. Comes with the territory, I guess. You feel ready to work those volcanic reefs up there in the Bering Sea? That's a whole different game.”

After dealing with Fritz, living in the woods, navigating her way through Jackie, Petree, and Betteryear, she felt like she could deal with anything.

“What happened to his eye?”

“As I heard it, he was stepping into a crab pot to change out a bait jar. The boat took a wave, the door shut, and the pot went overboard with him inside. He was on his way to the bottom until he kicked open the door, swam up, and whacked his head against the hull. Knocked himself out cold. His boat circled back, and some deckhand trying to save him hooked him in the eye with a pike pole. When he woke up he was half blind.”

“Man.”

“Coming clean exacts its price.”

“I guess.”

She scooped food onto the blue enamel plates. What would her price be? Had she already paid? The other night with Bailey? With Betteryear? The platform burning in the woods?

“One thing I can tell you,” he said, “it's no country for a
nebbish
.”

“What's a
nebbish
?”

His reached out to scratch Keta's chin. The dog seemed to smile, showing his long teeth. “Everything, as far as I can tell, that you are most definitely not.”

THE ALARM BLEATED
. She peeked off the side of her bunk: 3:44
A.M.

“Time to go fishing!” Zachary barked, rolling out of his bunk. “C'mon, doggie. Up and at 'em. Tara, wanna lower the poles?”

When she returned he had pulled the anchor and was motoring into the ocean. Keta stood by the hold, blinking as the sun broke the horizon. Even after almost two years in Alaska, it still struck her as bizarre, the sun up at such an hour. Zachary held up a bottle of corn huskers lotion. “Keeps the hands from getting too rough. Also, tape each of your fingers. When we get deep enough I'll throw in the gear. Make sure Wolfie stays away from the troll pit. I don't want him getting a bug in the eye.”

She called Keta into the galley, where he made himself comfortable in the corner that offered the best view of the wheelhouse. It worried her that she had no idea what Zachary was saying—gear, troll pit, bugs. Keeping one eye on their depth, she wrapped her fingers. Zachary came back in. “Now, this is what we're searching for,” he said, pointing at the pixelated fish finder. “Needlefish. Gear up. We're wading in bait.”

“I haven't brushed my teeth or peed.”

“Fish on!” he drawled, watching a large rubber band connected to the line stretch and contract. “C'mon! We got action. I'll show you how.”

She watched carefully as he brought in the line, unhooking each leader, arranging the flasher—a reflective, rectangular piece of plastic—neatly in front of him. When a fish came up he clubbed it, gaffed it through the gill plates, heaved it into the landing bin, freeing the hook by pulling the leader tight.

“This is a bug,” he said, holding up the fluorescent rubber lure. “What the fish bite.”

He worked one gear below frantic—club, spike, land, take out spoon, next leader. When he missed a fish, save for a short hiss of frustration, he just kept on going, confident another fish would come through soon enough.

“Give it a shot,” he said as he set out his Styrofoam float. “Start with the main.”

She turned the crimped copper knob and the wire started coming in. Clips hurtled toward her. When she tried to slow the line down she turned the knob in the wrong direction and a clip accelerated into the blocking, making a knocking sound.

“Fuck,” she said, backing off.

He came over, worked out the tangle. “Patience,” he said, wedging a spoon on the end of the cleaning knife into the clip to make sure it snapped shut. “Try again. Slow this time.”

She did, setting the leader on the clothesline strung at the back of the house, then realized there was a fish on it. She pulled in the line hand over fist, leaned over the side, raised the gaff, then brought it down toward the head. She missed, hitting the boat.

“Again,” Zachary said. “Concentrate.”

This time she brought the fish high out of the water until it spun in the light, prismatic. Focusing on its smooth head, she sank the steel point of the gaff hook through the gills, then lifted it into the landing bin.

“There it is!” Zachary shouted. “Success.”

She watched as the salmon's charcoal lips opened and closed. Its body thick and torpedo-shaped, its back rainbow with a bronze sheen.

“Jesus, they're beautiful,” Tara said.

Rollers lifted and dropped the boat as they continued to work through their lines, Zachary moving through his side twice as fast as she could. Other trollers tacked back and forth, keeping distance so the wires wouldn't tangle. At the top of the waves she could see the snowy crags of the Fairweather Range before the boat dropped back into the trough. She kept her eye out for the
Spanker
, but Zachary had said they were fishing the other end of the island.

In the wheelhouse she checked on Keta. He had his head between his paws, and didn't move when she nuzzled him with her nose. “You okay, monkey?”

The dog looked worried.

Through the windows she watched the rubber snubbers on the bow, connected to the lines in the water. The one on the left pulsed. The rigging made a ghostly buzzing sound.

“Hear that?” Zachary shouted from the troll pit. “You got a hog on your side, port main,” he said.

Beads of water detonated in bursts off the wire as she brought in the line. Twelve percent of the deck share, that's what he had promised her, which meant she was getting a good fifteen bucks a fish.

“Pay attention, Tara. It's a big one. You want me to land it? That's gotta be thirty-five, forty pounds.”

She stripped off leaders one after the other, arranging hooks on the gear-setter as she had seen him do. Through the water she could see the shape of the fish, a gray blur rising up out of the depths. When it got near the surface it shot out of the water, sun glinting off its body.

“Keep that leader tight,” Zach yelled. “Hand over fist. It's hooked in the soft part of the mouth. Gentle. You got it? He wants to run to the starboard. That's a couple hundred dollars on the line there—go easy, Tara.”

She gripped the leader harder, wrapping it around the palm of one hand and reaching for the gaff hook with the other, wishing he'd shut the fuck up. These fish were twice the size of the pinks at the hatchery. It was a boxing match, she decided, the fish bobbing and weaving, and she just needed to stay calm, focus on the eyes, like Gypo said. She brought the fish in closer, wondering if she was strong enough to lift this creature, with its heavy hooked snout and thick body, over the rail. With a twitch of her wrists she brought the head out of the water. As the body went slack she whacked the fish on the skull, just as she had done at the hatchery, feeling the quiver of the salmon through the monofilament.

“Yes!” Zachary shouted. “That's it. Can you get him?”

With a swipe she hooked the salmon through the gill plate, gripped the gaff with two hands, and hauled it into the bin, where it landed with a thud.

“Hot mama!” Zachary shrieked. She looked down at the fish, gills beating the air.

“That's gotta be a forty-pounder right there,” he said, leaning over, his shadow dulling the rainbows playing over the scales. A second tremor coursed through its body.

“Looks like you missed the gills with the gaff. You know how to bleed it?”

She shook her head. He stretched out an index finger and swiped beneath the gill flap. “Just grab and pull.”

She did, feeling the soft filaments, then the bony gill rakers. Blood spread around the fish's head.

“Let's throw it back in,” he said.

She looked up at him, confused.

“I mean, the line, silly. Get the line back in. Then dress your fish. I'm assuming Jackie taught you how.”

“Jackie never taught much,” Tara said as she sent the line back out. “She just yelled. But I learned at the processor.”

As he went forward to turn them back to where the fish had been, she cut out the accordion of gills, then reached with the knife tip to cut the membrane around the throat. With the beveled spoon on the other end of the knife she scooped out organs—liver, kidneys, tangle of intestines—opened the skein and scraped jellied blood. The heart dangled in the throat, a triangle of flesh held by a white bauble of fat. She ripped it clean and held it there, pulsing in her palm like a frightened mouse.

She whistled over the sound of the engine. Keta came on deck, looking at her expectantly.

“Here, monkey.”

She dangled the heart over his head. He chewed, then looked to her for more.

“Don't get that dog sick,” Zachary said, watching from the galley. “And I don't like him near the troll pit.”

They worked until midnight. Stabs of pain radiated down her spine, in the back of her neck, just as they had in the brig at the processor. She ignored it, gazing with bleary eyes over the water as they passed another boat, the deckhand in the pit doing the same job as her.

Zachary taught her to ice, interlocking heads to tails, filling throats and bellies with chips. By the day's end they had eighty-eight in the hold. “It'll put food on the table,” he told her. “Let's stack 'em.”

He finished winding both lines on his side, and bringing the cannonballs on board, before she did her first, and that annoyed her. He noticed. “Patience,” he repeated.

Zachary tidied the hold while she sautéed onions and cauliflower and mixed them with sausage and jarred gravy. Her mother would have been horrified. Zachary wrote “scores” from other fishermen in black marker on the glass windows. Someone out on the Fairweather grounds, pinnacles way offshore, had pulled over three hundred kings. “Thinking maybe we should make a move south, especially with this nasty bit of weather they're calling for. Wind is supposed to switch, fifty knots from the southwest. We'll be traveling against it on the way back if we go north. Then again, that's where the bite is.”