Night of the Tustumena

by Arne Bue

  One disabled man this trip, he noted, with the bad legs and crutches. Anna Knight would see to his comforts, if needed. For a $10 fee people with 70 percent or more physical or mental disability could get a two-year pass for travel on Alaska Marine Highway vessels.

  Sewell took the passageway to the staterooms. The decks in the passages were spotless, the stewards had done their work, a good crew. Deluxe cabins had private bathroom facilities. Others, the sink and mirror. No cabin service of the daily makeup kind. Do your own. Want your trash collected? Need fresh linens? Ask Anna Knight, the Purser. No problem with the public showers. You want one, go ahead. Medical service was first aid only. Ship-to-shore radiotelephone service available for emergency use. Sewell would be talking with the Trooper, Henderson, about his possible, Mr. Nakano.

  He climbed the stairs from the foyer. His smoker's lungs labored as he panted his way toward the bridge. The Chief Mate, Elaine, was waiting for him in the red-lighted passage leading forward to the wheelhouse.

  "What was that meeting really about, John? What's going on?" she asked.

  "Troopers and DEA think Mr. Nakano is a possible."

  "A possible what?"

  "Drug runner. Running meth out to the Chain."

  "Anna Knight should know about this," Elaine said. "Everyone knows something's going on, but crew's not sure what to think or what to worry about. That wasn't a very informative meeting if you ask me."

  "He's harmless." Sewell was catching his breath. "No drug runner. No need for me or my crew to smear the guy."

  "But you've put us on alert."

  "That's not really an `alert,' Elaine. Just an unofficial comment. But you can let Anna know what the Troopers think."

  "Once she knows, the whole crew will find out in crew mess," Elaine said.

  "What they'll find out is the Troopers think he should be watched, and that I don't think he's suspicious at all. I don't want this to be an official snooping operation. He's to be treated pretty much the same way we treat everyone else. Just that if anyone sees anything unusual, pass the word on up. That way, they'll watch him, and report to Anna and you and I. But I'm sure he's just a sketch artist or a professor or whatever. Just a small piece of assistance I agreed to with Henderson."

  "Henderson?"

  "State Trooper. Called me at home before I flew here."

  "But you don't want to come right out and say he's a suspect."

  "Not in my book he's not. Henderson's the one all worked up over this." Elaine was giving him a look, up and down.

  "How about you and me having a quiet lunch when we get to Kodiak? We'd have time," Elaine said. Her eyes were like a stream of gold in the passage.

  Sewell's shoulders came up, the way they always did when he was thinking about his dead wife, Joyce.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mr. Nakano prided himself on his own sketches done aboard the Tustumena, and he spent half an hour at the Homer Artist's Gallery, and looked at the watercolors, in his mind and imagination comparing their work to his.

  As he left the shop, a reflection in the window moved slightly, the glint of an eye, the tilt of a head and a familiar body posture that struck at his heart. The image of his mother, Noriko, stood directly behind. He swung his head so quickly an electric pain sprang to his neck. His heart would explode, so he breathed quick, shallow breaths, closed his eyes and rubbed his neck.

  No one stood there, certainly not his mother, Noriko. She'd died shortly after his father, Etsuo, had passed away. For a brief moment, Mr. Nakano had felt totally helpless, reality falling away, but he gathered his strength, and picked his way along Pioneer, his pace quickening, and he climbed Bartlett and entered the Pratt Museum. The woman behind the counter looked up at him.

  "We close in less than an hour," she said, as though he should re-consider his visit, come back another day. But he wished to be here, to walk about and settle down, and he frowned across at the young woman and pushed the $3.00 fee over to her. Mr. Nakano took a photo of From the Seal Dance, a wood sculpture. The face of the woman and the position of the body brought to mind his mother and her suffering before her death.

  At the aquarium an octopus glided past, and a sea star crept over the edge of a rock and startled up a flounder. He concentrated on ancient fishing weights, harpoons, seal oil lamps and cutting tools. The earliest humans remained thousands of years, followed by Dena'ina Indians migrating from interior Alaska. Leaving, he looked over the museum's outdoor botanical array, in Autumnal condition, fading and withdrawing. In summer, the display had been forget-me-nots and columbine, chocolate lilies and fireweed, cranberries and Labrador tea.

  He hurried along until he reached the Kachemak Bowl. About to pull open the door, he saw clearly in the window a reflection of his parents standing together, bundled against cool weather. The reflection was not of Homer, Alaska, but of Tokyo, the old neighborhood. There was a sadness in the way they stood, shoulders slumped, the way they looked away at their own feet and then up at him, as though ashamed of their son.

  Pain struck at his chest. His wind left him and he gasped for air as he faced about. Parked behind him was an Alaska State Trooper's car, no one inside.

  His mother, Noriko, how she'd loved him. He remembered when he was a boy of ten.

  She was a woman of high cheekbones and grace, but weariness had drawn the spark from her eyes. She worked in the neighborhood for a photographer, helping develop photos, assisting in the bookkeeping, acting as the receptionist, settling and positioning the children, the head just so, arms and hands resting in a family display.

  Her boss did not pay her much, though Kenso's mother said more than once the man knew the family needed money just for daily living expenses. This boss, she'd said, was ill-tempered. Kenso recalled how the man looked, his hair leaving the top of his head, built low to the ground, the stringy gray mustache, always moving about with sideways glances. Raisin flecks decorated his hands. Though gruff with Noriko, over the years she claimed he'd grown to rely on her efficiency. But when business slowed, he paid her little and sent her home. When business was brisk she worked the long hours, especially when school picture time arrived.

  She steamed fish in her cooker, and she worked her knife along her dried seaweed purchased at the market. The apartment was always clean, though quite small. Her tired eyes moved over Kenso whenever he came in from play.

  His school uniform was clean, but slightly tattered when he'd left that morning.

  She said, "Why are you dirty again?"

  "We played and I fell by the shrine," Kenso said.

  "Have you been playing with the Tatsuda brothers again?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't want you around those boys. They are no better than burakumin."

  "They are not."

  "My employer knows the family. The family does not do honorable work."

  "What do they do?"

  She did not answer. Instead, she looked at his soiled coat. She said, "Take off your pants. These are school clothes. I must wash."

  "I am sorry, Mother." The boy took off his clothes. She handed him a robe.

  "Sit here. You must work hard today on your schooling."

  Kenso's books were on the lacquered table near the flowers. His mother was proficient in ikebana, the arranging of live flowers. He began his studies, but his eyes wandered to the magazines. Noriko left travel books and periodicals in the magazine rack, and she brought home photographs her employer had taken of the countryside, ones the old man said she may have. On the table were photographs of the harbors, mountains, shrines and the temples with curving tiled roofs.

  Her boss had given her frames, old ones that did not sell. They were her bonus for the long hours and little pay. She had framed the photographs she liked best, and hung them on the wall. Kenso knew his mother kept others in an envelope. Sometimes she allowed him to look at them.

  Schoolwork was easy for him. He finished in an hour.

  Kenso opened the magazines. They described
other countries. His mother poked her head into the small den. The boy looked up. He'd been reading a book filled with photographs, the one about Alaska. His mother said nothing and returned the kitchen.

  Kenso's eyes widened. Before him were photographs of icebergs, glaciers, mountains, whales, mountain goats, the northern lights.

  Mr. Nakano looked down at Pioneer and Lake. An Alaska State Trooper was approaching and looking him up and down.

  "Everything alright, here? Need some help?"

  "No, thank you," Mr. Nakano said. "I am fine."

  "Sure? You look like you've seen a ghost."

  "I'm just a little tired."

  "Why don't you sit down at the table there?" the Trooper said. Mr. Nakano looked at the outdoor table and chairs.

  "Perhaps I will do that," Mr. Nakano said.

  Mr. Nakano felt knots in his sides cinch and his legs tighten and a small twitch along the side of his face. The officer appeared ready to help Mr. Nakano with a chair, but Nakano declined with a waving arm and seated himself. He would have smiled, but could not.

  The Trooper entered the bowling alley, and a few minutes later came out, looked Mr. Nakano over again, then got into his car and drove away. Mr. Nakano looked at the sidewalk, and the few people walking by. The vision of his mother remained, as though there in front of him. And his father, his father.

  Kenso Nakano imagined his father in the office the only time he'd visited him there, when he was in high school. Etsuo was looking about his dingy, cluttered work cubicle for more ink. Rain drops ran down dirty windows. Soon night would visit and they would go home.

  "Sit here, Kenso," Father said. He'd found the ink, and was painting the fluid furiously into the pad.

  "Do you have much work to do?"

  "My eyes get sore. This chair, so cheap. Hurts my back."

  Father used a rubber stamp with a narrow black knob handle and an ox-blood colored base. Kenso could smell the bitter ink and hear his father strike the stamp angrily on the black pad, then on a document. The documents formed a pile. Etsuo did not bother to read what he'd stamped.

  "Does your stomach hurt today?"

  Etsuo made a small grunt and stamped more papers. The pile declined and disappeared into another growing pile. He placed this new pile in a box.

  "Tomorrow morning, reports. More and more reports to more and more supervisors," Etsuo growled. He was done. Kenso heard the ink pad cover close with a sucking sound. The cover was metal, and marred with angry black stains.

  Etsuo slipped into a worn overcoat and put on his hat with the wide, curling brim, and exited into the gray wetness. Kenso followed. Rain plunked in brown puddles. Father was finally on his way home, but he did not speak, and his head was bowed down.

  He never allowed Kenso to visit him there again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At quarter to seven, Mr. Nakano called Maggie's Cab Company, and in five minutes, the dishwater-hair woman pulled up in the minivan.

  "It's a good time to go out on the Spit," she said.

  "Why?" he asked. Perhaps he was tense, because she seemed to catch something in his voice.

  "You look a little tired," she said.

  She drove in silence to the small wooden house that served as the taxi stand, and there she retrieved his duffel bag for him and again began driving right away to their destination out on the Spit.

  "The light is good for pictures," she said, almost as though speaking to herself.

  The road had been re-paved recently, and through the windshield the black asphalt reminded Mr. Nakano of night upon the sea. Glaring road lines came up like yellow seams in a bloated body bag he'd seen in Tokyo after a killing. Mr. Nakano quickly looked away, out at the sun near the horizon among the clouds and retreated to an inner dread he could not name.

  "Yes. Pictures," Nakano said. He was not interested in the sunset or the colors breaking through the clouds or the shafts of rain off in the distance sweeping in columns against the horizon. He was thinking of From the Seal Dance, the wood sculpture, and thinking of Misako, and of his son Kano, and the dream-visitations from his mother and father, and he was thinking of despicable second cousin Ochi and boss Shige Nishimoto. And he thought of all the bank accounts he'd opened in Anchorage, Alaska.

  He whispered an affirmation: My life...I control my life and I control this route.

  He looked up. The dishwater-hair woman was watching him in the rear-view mirror with her odd blue barbarian eyes. His calf muscles hurt, and his knee ached. He looked forward to boarding, to stretching out in his bunk.

  "There she is," the dishwater woman said. "Guess she's on time, maybe even early." The Tustumena was still a thousand meters out. In the distance, Mr. Nakano saw the sun strike the white superstructure.

  He paid the taxi-driver her fare.

  A brown two-story building loomed by the causeway leading to the Homer City Pier. He left his duffel bag by the door, labored with sore legs up the stairs and entered the Alaska Marine Highway System ticketing office. He showed his ticket to the a crusty blonde woman behind the counter. He'd checked in with her on other voyages. Crystal glittered in the rims of her glasses. Something came up behind her eyes as she took his ticket and checked his name on the manifest. Mr. Nakano was certain she'd recognized him, but she said nothing. Instead, she snapped a look at three other passengers. One was sitting, two were talking and looking out the window

  Mr. Nakano studied them. One was a man with oily dark skin and hair and bloodshot eyes. The man was looking at Mr. Nakano's red sports bag and roving his eye over the 35mm Canon. The two by the window were a middle-aged couple. The woman had the misfortune of growing manly facial hair. She wore an over-sized wrinkled white cotton dress patterned with roses. Loose brown wool socks attempted to hide her muscular legs in their drape-like folds. In Mr. Nakano's estimation, they were related to the seated man, from the complexion, the height and hair color. The three were about 160-170 centimeters tall.

  "Departure 2 a.m.?" Mr. Nakano asked.

  "There was a change. Look at your ticket. Eleven-thirty tonight," the ticket woman said. "You can head out there, if you want."

  "When can I board?"

  "Probably seven-thirty or so, long as you check with the Purser."

  Mr. Nakano worked his way along the causeway to the pier. Beams and piles smelled of creosote. He puffed under the weight of duffel and sports bags. He stopped to rest his sore knee before going on.

  The ship was making a turn toward the pier. The low sun brightened the hull and the name Tustumena, framed below by a gold stripe, above by white gunnel. The navy blue stack crouched in the white superstructure, studded by eight gold stars in the shape of the Big Dipper, Ursa Major. The raw burr of the ship's horn stretched across to him.

  Even from this distance Mr. Nakano recognized on the bridge Captain John Sewell's hulking shape. Men waited on the pier for thrown lines, and deckhands poised on the stern and the bow. The Chief Mate, the woman Elaine Miller, joined the Captain, and they looked over the side at their approach.

  Deckhands quickly assembled uprights and hand-rails of taught brown line which they affixed to the passenger gangway. Immediately a small winch hummed and lowered the gangway to the dock. Other seamen operated stern winches from a cab near the frame of four rising steel columns built into the ship s deck. Cables lifted a hinged section of aft deck, and a small hoist raised a section of stern rail. Deckhands placed the vehicle gangway from ship to dock. A platform elevator with two cars rose from below deck, and the vehicles drove off the ship to the pier, down the causeway and across the spit into fading light. It had all gone like clockwork, smooth, done thousands of times by the experienced crew.

  A dark-haired woman in a navy blue uniform talked to the men on the dock. She held a portable phone. The woman wore three gold stripes and cloverleaf epaulets. Mr. Nakano wished to board and get his stateroom without this woman snooping into his life. He needed to collect himself.

  "Excuse me," he said.
<
br />   Anna Knight wore businesslike glasses and an alert look, her complexion healthy from sea air.

  "Well, Mr. Nakano. Back with us again. I bet you're ready to go aboard, right?"

  "Yes," he said, effecting a hesitant way of speaking this simple word, as one with quite poor or nearly no command of English would do.

  The vehicle offloading was done, and a Ford Bronco began driving up the metal gangway onto the lift. Knight swung her head to watch.

  "You may board in a few minutes. I'll be up there ahead of you, get you and the others into your staterooms."

  A seaman took Mr. Nakano's duffel up the gangway. Two passengers started to board, so Mr. Nakano followed, his muffled footfalls on the gangway mixing with their shuffling steps and the water washing against the ship's hull and the piles. The smell of the tide was familiar, welcoming and somehow safe, but the sun dipped, and the suddenness of a cool draft on his face and hands made him hunch his shoulders. The man and woman ahead carried backpacks with sleeping bags and they wore expensive-looking outdoor clothing.

  "Whoa, Louie," the young woman said. Her face was chalky and narrow. Mr. Nakano believed her tongue had thickened from drink. The man waved his arms to gain balance. A seaman looked. The Bosun approached the gangway. The Chief Purser appeared by the rail.

  "Everything alright here?" Knight asked. Mr. Nakano felt the shift of the Purser's eyes.

  The couple weaved aboard. Mr. Nakano followed to the boarding area and backed into the foyer, where his duffel waited.

  This man Louie was talking to Chief Purser Anna Knight.

  "You know, this boat", Louie was saying.

  Mr. Nakano got a better look at Louie's face. A glaze seemed to come down over his swimming eyes. Louie's words did not carry well from the deck into the foyer, but he said something about my woman.

  Knight's voice was quite strong. "Well you and Donna settle down. Captain Sewell or any of us see you getting bombed, off you go."

  She glanced into the foyer at Mr. Nakano and stepped in. In the Purser's Station, she fussed behind brass bars with something in a drawer. She examined their tickets.