The Alaskan Laundry (40 page)

“Jump!” Newt said, hanging on to the rails on the starboard side.

She grabbed Connor's hand, and then they were sliding off the deck into the aquarium-green water and bubbles, the pain in her ankle numbed by the cold. Hands scooped beneath her arms and she was pulled over the bull rail onto the planks. She watched from her stomach, Connor coughing beside her, as the boat continued its pitch forward, water closing over the house, flooding through the stern door into the galley. The tug paused, dragging the corner of the dock down. Fritz stepped away as the harbormaster swung furiously at the line attached to the boat's cleat. With a pop the threads gave, the dock snapped back, and the boat moved quickly into the churn of water. The stern paused for a horrible moment before plunging into a froth of bubbles.

Then it was just empty space on the corner of the dock, and the ocean below. Steadily sealing up the wound until it was as if nothing had ever been there.

A RAVEN HOPS ALONG THE BULL RAIL
. Snowflakes melt on its black feathers. Gripping her crutches, she leans over the water, imagining for a moment she can see the tugboat below. “Careful,” Connor says, setting a hand on her shoulder.

The still water mirrors their reflections. There are gouges in the wood an inch deep where the lines pulled. She touches her bare neck. The medallion, now on the bottom of the ocean, had been a talisman, proof that what she was doing—coming to Alaska, working on fishing boats, buying this tugboat—made sense. Also the basil plant, so carefully pruned. Her mother's photo of the men from Aci Trezza. Fish swimming through the netting of the hammock.

A rumble from the west. Diamonds of light hover in front of the volcano, its rim wreathed in cloud. Fuselages come into view, cutting through the swirling snow.

They stand for another minute there at the outer corner of the docks, snow melting into the water, thunder from the arriving plane echoing off the mountainsides. If her mother were here she could tell her that she understands now, how where you come from braids itself, wildly, into the place you choose to build your life.

He matches her slow pace as they walk toward the work float. A new film of snow covers the docks. She centers her weight over her crutches, taking small steps, trying not to slip. He rests his hand against the back of her head. “You okay?” he asks.

She turns, glances back at their prints, the scuff of her crutch beside his steps. A sea lion surfaces, diving as a troller backs out of its stall. Again she touches her chest, feeling for the medallion.

“
Okay.
That's my word for the day.”

He smiles. “It's a start.”

Newt stands on the work float by the truck, arms folded over his chest. Green specks of fish blood dot his T-shirt. “Aren't you cold, buddy?” Connor asks. Newt slings the duffel onto the flatbed. She recognizes Fritz's rig from the bumper sticker,
CUT KILL DIG DRILL
.

“We good?” Newt asks. She nods, slipping into the jump seat, letting Keta, waiting in the back, arrange himself over her legs, just like he had on that first trip from the ferry terminal.

They curve along Pletnikoff Street. Snow beats on the windows, leaving slow trickles of water on the windshield. Long-line bait shacks, black seine nets, gillnet drums, are scattered around the gravel yards, dusted with white, each piece of gear with its own particular use, meant for its own season. The Bunkhouse. Ugh. She wouldn't miss that place.

“You guys set up?” she finally asks Newt. “The
Invictus
gonna work out?”

“We'll need to munchkin-proof it. Might send your dog off to Zachary's for a spell—boat's small for a wolf like that.”

In the back she presses Keta's head to her cheek, feeling the wetness of his eyes. He sighs, then sits up to stare ahead through the windshield. In long swipes she smoothes his fur, flicking away loose hairs, wrapping her arms around his broad chest and hugging her to him.

“When you think you'll be back?” Newt asks.

The question hangs in the air as they accelerate over the bridge. Gulls flock in front of the processor, blending in with the snowflakes. Connor leans against the headrest, staring forward.

She knew floating two hundred and twenty tons would be no small project. Salt water was corroding the engine at this moment. If she didn't do it, someone else would. By law, the boat would be theirs.

“Soon.”

Newt finds her in the rearview mirror. “Don't be worrying now. We'll keep an eye—well, three of them between us—on the dog, and the boat.”

They park and unload. Keta won't rise from her legs. He just looks at her, his brown eyes unblinking. She lifts one of the dog's ears, whispers into it, “I'll be back. Promise.”

The three of them stand beneath the overhang. Newt shuffles his feet, looks down at his hands. His knuckles are swollen. Snow catches in the downy hair of his arms. She's never seen him at a loss for words.

“Hey,” she says. “You remember that day in the woods, when you stood up for me after Bailey said something stupid?”

“'Course.”

She reaches out to hug him. “You're just the best. Do you know that?”

“Don't you go forgetting about us here.”

He loads into the truck. She and Connor wave, keep on waving as the vehicle turns around the bend, no brake lights at the stop sign. Newt.

The brushed metal rollers clatter as Connor pushes the duffel onto the conveyor belt. The heavyset agent, whom she recognizes as a troller from her AMSEA class, tells her not to worry about the crutches.

“Heard about the tug. You'll get her up again.”

In the airport bathroom, beneath the bright white lights, she looks in the mirror and traces an index finger beneath her eye. There's dirt under her fingernails, calluses on her palms. A saying of Newt's finds its way into her head: “A cat always blinks before you hit it with a sledgehammer.” She never understood what this meant, until now.

Inside the plane she uses the backs of seats to hobble down the aisle. There's a murmur of greetings as belts click. The flight is full, and she and Connor are separated. An older man in a camouflage hat stands as she slides into the window seat. As they taxi out to the single runway, her heart begins to race.

Outside, fronds of red seaweed and pebbles are strewn across the concrete. Waves break against shale boulders skimmed with snow. She turns to see Connor peering out the window.

The jets power up, and the brakes release. She can make out the docks, the empty corner. Then they're floating, white streamers whipping off the wing tip. For the first time she sees Port Anna from above—grid of downtown, harbors, roads stretching out on either side dead-ending into mountains, all of it powdered white. Higher above, ice fields, those same blue glaciers she saw so long ago from the ferry.

The plane banks over the channel. She cranes her head to catch a glimpse of Betteryear's cabin, thinks she sees its square shape along Salmonberry Cove before it disappears off the edge of the wing. Lights wink, houses meld into trees. And then, like that, town is gone.

Puddles in the muskegs flash silver with the plane's reflection. Waves split on the outer edge of the island. The plane shudders as it slips into a cloud. They're lost in the cottony blankness, gradations of white. Again she looks back, wanting to catch Connor's eye. His forehead, resting against the window, turns golden as the cabin grows luminous with sun, a ripple of cloud-tops beneath. There's a chime, and the flight attendant speaks into the public address.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned off the Fasten Seat Belt sign. It is now safe to move about the cabin.”

She looks back out the window. The volcano crater is above the blanket of clouds, the edge of the rim sharp and bright in sunlight. The man with the camouflage hat sighs, tugs at the bill, wet from snow. He is curious, perhaps, about this woman in her scarred Xtratufs and ripped wool jacket staring so intently out the window.

They have forty minutes to Ketchikan, then two hours to Seattle, time she intends to use making up for sleep lost over the past twenty-seven months. She tilts back her seat, folds her arms over her chest, and shuts her eyes.

Her mind works over the tug, the broken frame of her mother's photograph, fishermen of Aci Trezza waking to find themselves on the bottom of the frigid North Pacific. The thought makes her smile. She thinks of the plane, arcing over the rest of the country, dropping out of the clouds, and, finally, the winking trouble lights of the oil refineries below. Dry docks of the navy yard on the muddy Delaware. Ribbons of row homes cutting through the Italian Market, burn barrels with gashes aflame.

“So where you headed this eve?” the man beside her asks.

Branches of the sugar maple scrape brick. Connor stands behind her, waiting. Like an immigrant returning to some ancestral land, she pulls open the storm door. She turns the brass knob. Her father rises slowly from the couch, his cardigan untucking as he stands. His hair is thinner, his movements stiff. She takes in his smell, lovely and so long forgotten, as he presses her head to his chest.

She opens her eyes.

“Home.”

Perhaps the finest part of this project is how it placed me—at times obnoxiously—in the path of others. People opened their homes, refrigerators, tents, trucks, hearts, and minds over the past ten years. To all involved—too many to mention here—thank you.

Artistic residencies made the first attempts at writing this book possible. I'd like to thank in particular the Macdowell Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Island Institute for taking a chance on a lost writer with no MFA, no publications. Support was also given by the Elizabeth George Foundation, for which I am grateful.

For sharp outside reads I'd like to thank Rick Nichols, John Maxey, Nancy Szokan, Vicki Solot, David Leverenz, Daniel Sheehan, Andrew and Annette Dey, Brenda Levin, Heather Haugland, Peggy Anderson, and Meghan Rand—Meghan, who believed in this book all those years ago. It's been a long time, but Jennifer Suhowatsky for early, unqualified love and support. To Robert Bly, who answered my letter when I was nineteen, and said yes, he would read a poem a month if I left college for the woods of Alaska. You are a great mentor. And to Jenny Pritchett: I've got your back, just as I know you have mine.

For unfaltering company along this windy path, heady thanks to my coconspirator Suzanne Rindell, who has been there since '99—or is it '98? You would know. Will Chancellor, Katch Campbell, Katey Schultz, C. B. Bernard, Andy Kahan—in all capacities, thank you.

Big love to the boys of the forty-ninth state—Rick Petersen, Xander Allison, Kyle Martin, Steve Gavin, and Ryan Laine, for their reads and long-winter company. Here's to not many more years of hemlocks falling on cabins, boats sinking at the mooring buoy, scoping ourselves—and many more indeed of deer heart and onions at Fred's Creek, waiting with whiskey for the bear to eat the honey-drenched goat. To Nick Jans for the good company along this path, and the clean boot prints in the snow. Pam Houston, for helpfulness from way back in the day, and her commitment to Sitka and its arts. And a toast to the lassies, Darcie Ziel and Sarah Newhouse, for the early reads and constant nudging. To Matt Goff for his generosity, both with his time and his intricate understanding of Sitka and its landscape. Thank you, also, for guidance, homes to stay in, insight, and helpful reads, to Nancy Lord, Dale Ziel, Peggy Shoemaker, Deb Vanasse, Vivian Faith Prescott, John Straley, Shannon Haugland, Michaela Larsen, Richard Nelson, and Tom Kizzia. To Scott Brylansky, for sharing his knowledge of wild foods. And to William Stortz, who first took me hunting, and shared his homebrew and dry wit, I promise to carry this debt of kindness, and to pass it on in your memory.

On the waters, badass fishermen, skippers, deckhands, and close readers Sierra Golden on the F/V
Challenger
, Spencer Severson on the
Dryas
, Eric Jordan on the
I Gotta
, Grant Miller on the
Heron
, and Karl Jordan on the
Saturday
—and to Karl and Spence for correcting my knots, both in the book and elsewhere. Tele Adsen on the
Nerka
for a great read, to Marsh Skeele on the
Loon
for telling me about blooms of jellyfish, and Charles Medlicott for Dutch Harbor crabbing knowledge.

And my 215 machos, Alex Auritt, Rob Sachs, Jeff Marrazzo, the true crew. And to Philly the city: I'll always carry your big spirit in my heart, and fists. Much love to Justin Ehrenwerth for believing in this project from the first, giving who knows how many reads, sketches by the wood stove, beers when required.
Hineni
, brother. Always.

I follow in the wide artistic wake of my godmother, Deborah Boldt, who has been helpful and encouraging throughout, and my aunt Denise Orenstein, whose generous reads of the manuscript have buoyed me up in tough times. I give thanks to Eavan Boland and Stanford University, and to Stegner years '14, '15, and '16. To Molly Antopol and Chanan Tigay, for just being fun and hilarious and so smart and cool. And, of course, to the best carpool ever—Rachel Smith and Brenden Willey, and their partners, respectively, Kevin Fitchett and Zoe Grobart. Anything I write you will all write better. Thump thump thump.

For guidance and friendship, insight and wisdom, and for the deep footsteps you leave, I give thanks to Toby Wolff, Elizabeth Tal-lent, Adam Johnson, Richard Ford, and Rick Powers. For insight not only into this world of writing, but also on children, love, work, boxing—all the important things.

To Kent Wolf, for taking a chance on a glorious mess of a manuscript, and to Jenna Johnson for believing in this so early, for lighting up this project with her razor-sharp intelligence, even if she would hate all those metaphors. To Pilar Garcia-Brown for the close read and guidance, and to Michelle Bonnano-Triant, whose love of writing and the world is infectious. And, of course, to Taryn Roeder. I'm so glad I stalked you that first year in college—one of the best decisions of my life.