Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “Thanks, I will. How did you two hook up in the wilds of Toronto?”

  Chris and Nora exchange one of those looks by which longtime lovers acknowledge their shared history.

  “I went to a party,” Nora says, smiling at Chris, then turning to Mac. “It was one of those things—you’re probably a bit young to recall—but it seemed like in those days a party consisted of a bunch of people in the same room getting so wasted that they might as well have stayed home alone. The ones who were still somewhat coherent were doing their antiwar rant, which you couldn’t hear anyway because the music was so loud, and there were strobe lights and marijuana smoke so thick you could hardly breathe—just a typical seventies get-together.

  “Anyway, I was there under duress. This girlfriend had begged me to go, so she wouldn’t have to go alone, then about fifteen minutes after we got there, she disappeared into the bedroom with the host and left me standing there talking to his wife. All I could think of was how I was going to get home, because the car was my friend’s, and then all of a sudden, something happened to the stereo system. I can’t recall if it broke, or if someone tripped over the cord, or what, but the music just stopped. Everybody was standing there, looking stupid, trying to get the spark plugs in their brains firing again, and then this guy, who I hadn’t really noticed, who’d apparently been sitting by himself in a corner, stood up and sort of curled his lip into this sneer and started singing ‘Now and Then There’s a Fool Such as I.’”

  She pauses for a delighted laugh. “And looking straight at me.”

  Chris tips back his bottle of beer. “She was the most gorgeous thing I’d seen in months. Maybe years.”

  “So you’re an Elvis fan?”

  Nora’s eyes close. “Is the pope Catholic? He’ll have to show you his museum.” Chris looks ready to bolt from the table till she adds, “After dessert.”

  Dessert is a custardy, vanilla-scented rice pudding, studded with plump raisins, and a pot of strong tea. The instant he sets down his spoon, Chris pushes back from the table.

  “To the parlor?” he says.

  “Been there before,” says Nora. “You two go ahead.”

  Chris leads the way to the rear parlor, a throwback to the days when there was a gathering place for the family separate from the room where visitors were received. The room is cold, dimly lit, and lined with homemade, mismatched shelving, ugly but functional, the kind of thing you’d see in somebody’s garage.

  At one end of the room is a bank of black stereo components—receiver, turntable, two tape decks, graphic equalizer—a fairly serious audiophile’s setup. Four large speakers in the corners face a black recliner sitting center stage. On the shelves are record bins full of LPs and 45s, including various artists, but one entire bin is devoted to the recordings of Elvis. From 45s in their slip jackets, bearing the yellow Sun Records label, to the cheesy, bland LP sound tracks of forgettable movies, to the last live performance from Hawaii.

  There are books about Elvis, books about his music, books of his music. There are posters—Elvis in black leather, gold lamé, jeans, Elvis as Aztec sun god. Notebooks full of publicity stills from his movies. There are stuffed tigers and teddy bears, lunch boxes and shot glasses, salt and pepper shakers, wristwatches and handkerchiefs and hats.

  “Holy shit. When you said you were a fan, you weren’t kidding.”

  Chris extends his hands, palms up, a gesture of modesty, almost embarrassment. “I know it’s probably a little strange…I don’t know why, but I’ve always…I don’t know, is ‘love’ the right word? Admired? Or maybe I just wanted to be him.”

  He offers Mac the recliner, and he plugs in a small space heater, pulls up the desk chair. “I’ve put together my own tapes. You want to hear one?”

  “Sure.”

  From the corner of his eye, he watches, amazed and amused, as Chris lip-synchs every song, shaking his sandy-blond hair, eyes drooping half closed. His timing, expressions, and gestures are flawless, from the bluesy shout of “Jailhouse Rock” to the unctuous sincerity of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” complete with the spoken bridge.

  When the tape begins its auto-reverse, Mac signals time-out.

  “Sorry,” Chris says sheepishly. “I get carried away. I forget that not everybody’s as into the King as I am. I even went to Graceland on my honeymoon. My first honeymoon. 1970.”

  Mac laughs. “What do you mean, you went to Graceland? Where was the bride?”

  Chris shakes his head. “She was only there physically. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to go to Florida or someplace, lie on the beach all day and drink those rum drinks and screw like bunnies all night.”

  “Sounds like a fairly normal honeymoon. Why Graceland?”

  The look on his face implies that the answer should be self-evident. “He was the King.”

  “Yeah, but he was still alive then. It wasn’t like you could take a tour.”

  “Kind of weird, I know.” He pushes up the sleeves of his Pacers shirt. “I had this fantasy, like she and I would be standing at those big old wrought-iron gates and he’d just kind of walk out. Not even that he’d invite us in or anything, but that he’d find out we were newlyweds and…I don’t know. Bless us or something.”

  “Bless you?”

  “Yeah, you know. Bless the marriage or something. Like the pope. Like that would make it right. I guess even then I knew the whole thing was a mistake. The marriage, I mean.”

  “So…” Mac takes a sip of the now warm beer. “What did your wife think?”

  The grin is innocently loopy. “That I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. She never got it. Never got me.”

  “Why did you guys get married?”

  “We were seventeen. I was horny as hell. She was, too, but she wanted to get married, buy some land, make some babies. We went to Graceland, and then we were supposed to drive to Florida, but…we were like this close to Tupelo…” He holds up his thumb and forefinger. “I made a quick detour to see his birthplace. Little white clapboard house with a porch swing. Then I wanted to see his school…Geez, what a sick sonofabitch.” He laughs.

  “She sat in the car with her hands in her lap and didn’t say a word till we got back to Indy. After the first night we never even had sex. Just drove around in the damn car.” He gets up and takes the cassette out of the tape deck, replacing it in its plastic case, refiles it carefully. He turns to Mac with his hands stuck down in his pockets. “Feeling alone when you’re by yourself isn’t nearly as bad as feeling alone when you’re with somebody.”

  “Particularly on a honeymoon, I’d guess. But you still stuck it out till you got drafted?”

  “Yep. We did. Both of our families would’ve croaked if we’d just come straight back from the honeymoon and gotten divorced. Hers would’ve told everybody I was queer and mine would’ve said she turned out to be not a virgin.” Chris produces a beat-up leather pouch and proceeds to roll a joint. He flips the top back on an old Zippo lighter and flicks the wheel.

  Mac stares, inhaling the sharp twangy smell of lighter fluid. The flame jumps and a long-submerged image surfaces. His father sitting on the gunwale of a small sailboat tied to a dock. A pack of Lucky Strikes, the red-circle logo clearly visible through the white shirt pocket. Smoke rings drifting up into the calm air.

  Chris takes a long toke and holds it. Then, “Now you know all about me. What have you been doing for the past twenty years?”

  “Fourteen.” Mac grins. “I didn’t graduate from high school till seventy-six.”

  “A kid. So you missed out on all that Vietnam shit.” He holds out the joint, but Mac shakes his head.

  “Yeah, I was lucky.”

  “Yeah, you were.” He knocks a piece of ash into a glass ashtray and stares for a few seconds at the glowing red tip. “Pretty much tore my family apart. My old man never forgave me. He died last year.”

  “Sorry.”

  Chris sighs. “I guess he’d’ve died happier if I’d gotten my ass blown of
f in ’Nam.” Chris takes another drag. “But what about you?”

  Mac turns the green bottle around in his hand. “Let’s see. Went to NYU for two years. Then I hitchhiked out west. Did a lot of rock climbing and skiing for a while, then I hitchhiked through New Zealand and went to Europe. Came back and started working my way west again. Six years ago I ran out of money in Seattle, got a job bartending, and I’ve been there ever since.”

  “Rock climbing? That’s pretty scary stuff.”

  Mac smiles. “That’s what most people think. Actually, it’s not climbing that’s scary. It’s climbers.”

  “Ever been married?”

  “Nope.”

  “You want to talk about scary…” Chris kills the joint and lies down on the floor, hands behind his head. “Of course, with Nora, it’s a whole different thing,” he says quickly.

  “She seems like a pretty cool lady.”

  “And then some.” Chris closes his eyes. “And then some. I could—” He looks over at Mac. “You still haven’t said what you’re doing up here in God’s country.”

  “I’m not really sure. I just needed to get away. Always wanted to go to Alaska…”

  Chris laughs. “What did you need to get away from? Did you rob a bank? Seduce somebody’s wife?”

  “Nothing that exciting. I just like to get by myself sometimes. It helps me think.”

  “So what are you thinking about?”

  Mac takes another swallow of beer. “Have you considered police work?”

  Chris laughs. “No, but I’m a bartender. You know how it is. I’m used to people bending my ear all the time. Then you come along and won’t tell me a damn thing. Makes me curious.”

  “Okay, here’s the truth…” He hesitates and Chris rolls over on his side, expectant. “I’m a…writer. Sort of.”

  “What kind of stuff do you sort of write?”

  “I’m working on a novel. And it wasn’t going too well.”

  “So you just hauled ass outta town. And now you’re up here, writing about all of us.” He laughs. “Sort of like a vampire. But instead of blood, you suck people’s stories. Their lives.”

  Mac shrugs. “You could say that.”

  “I guess you probably think people who aren’t writers don’t understand.” Chris is still smiling, but slightly unfocused.

  “Actually, yeah. But then I don’t understand plumbers or auto mechanics either. It doesn’t mean one is better or worse than the other.”

  The sun still hovers above the horizon just after ten P.M. and the air is thick and sweet with the smell of the river and of damp, green, growing things. His boots clomp on the wooden sidewalk in front of the Beaver Tail, which is noisy with tourists and fishermen and locals trying to make themselves heard over a Waylon Jennings song on the juke box. Two mongrel dogs lie next to the door, patiently waiting for someone. The yellow one lifts its nose for an inquisitive sniff as he hurries past.

  He cuts through the little park across the street where tall blue spikes of delphinium and larkspur, and masses of white daisies, cover the ground, and red geraniums tumble crazily out of planters, everything drunk with the excess of daylight.

  Crunching through Pearl May’s gravel yard, he heads around back to the bunkhouse. He retrieves a beer from his wire basket, slowly lowers it back down to the creek. He goes straight to the table, opens his notebook, uncaps a pen, and writes, carried on a burst of sudden energy like the plants in the park. It’s twenty minutes before he stops to open the sweating bottle.

  Dear Wyn,

  Pearl May offered me a job tending bar just for the summer, and I’ve accepted. It’s some extra money, since getting the Elky up and running again is apparently going to cost slightly more than the GNP of a third-world country. I don’t even have to stay the whole summer. If I leave in August, I can still get to Alaska and back to Seattle by September. Maybe mid-September.

  The tourists have arrived, along with the mosquitoes and black flies. I think most of them see the Yukon as something to be driven through as quickly as possible on their way to Alaska or at least to Dawson City—which Pearl May refers to as the Klondike Stampede Theme Park.

  After B.C., which is like nature on steroids, the Yukon is almost austere. Where I am is a huge golden valley ringed by low hills, and farther away, purple mountain peaks. The Yukon River is green—cold, swift, and dangerous. The sky is blue and goes on forever. The hardest thing to describe is the vastness, the emptiness. It’s the sort of place where you could disappear without so much as a ripple.

  It happens all the time here. People get lost, drown, fall, freeze to death, starve, get struck by lightning, attacked by bears, eat the wrong plants. Whole planeloads of people fall out of the sky or smash into mountains in the fog. Sometimes it seems you could simply be swallowed whole by the emptiness.

  My father is buried somewhere in the Canadian Rockies—probably. Under the frozen remains of the light plane that was taking him and a friend to hunt moose. Or was it elk? Or were they on the way back? My memory of the event is sketchy. My clearest recollection of that day is Suzanne, lying on the kitchen floor. Screaming.

  It was an eerie sound, not even a noise you’d think a human could make. I was twelve years old and scared—not scared like when I got a cramp in the ocean or when Kevin and Ted Banks threatened to beat the shit out of me if I told about their looting the collection box at church. It was a kind of scared that made me feel completely out of control. I wanted to run away. To put as much distance as possible between me and that noise.

  But I was talking about the Yukon. I guess it stands to reason that this country where you could so easily lose yourself attracts people who are trying to get lost. The locals say that no one comes to the Yukon, they’ve all come from something or someone or somewhere else. With the exception of Pearl May, who was born and raised here, I’ve found that to be mostly true.

  Chris Moody, bartender at the Beaver Tail. Left Indiana in ’71 because he didn’t want to go to Vietnam. He ended up here with his wife, Nora, who, I suppose you could say, came to be with him, although she was definitely trying to escape Ireland when she met Chris.

  Ian says he came here to be a serious musher, but the rumor is that he had two wives…at the same time. One in Ottawa and one in Toronto.

  Rhiannon Blue of Madame Blue’s Mooseburgers and Tarot Readings. Probably not her real name. Although stranger things have happened, I suppose. And she is from Texas, after all. Lives with her half wolf/half dog Jester in an old school bus that her former boyfriend converted into a gypsy caravan/RV. Whatever she was coming from, it must have been really bad if she didn’t even want to keep her name.

  Foster. No last name. Or maybe Foster’s his last name and he has no first name. Every week he runs the same classified ad in the Beaver Tale (get it?). He’s looking for an Acme5X24 series time-transducing capacitator with built-in temporal displacement and AMD dimensional warp generator module. Object: time travel.

  And then there’s yours truly, who came to Beaverton ostensibly by accident. According to Rhiannon, who claims to be in touch with a higher authority, there are no accidents. She hasn’t read the cards for me yet, but she reads the cards for the world at large every day—sort of like those VLA listening devices aimed toward outer space to pick up any stray extraterrestrial communications. She says I’m here for a reason, although she can’t be more specific right now. I wish I had her certainty.

  The only thing I’m certain of is that I’m here. And you’re in Seattle. And there are too many miles in between.

  Mac

  thirteen

  Wyn

  When I get to work, Tyler’s dancing around outside like a manic jackrabbit.

  “Glad you could make it,” she scolds me.

  I look at my watch. “It’s just now eleven P.M. Why didn’t you let yourself in?”

  “I can’t find my key.”

  I give her an exasperated look. “Why don’t you put it on your key ring?”

&n
bsp; She returns my look and ups the ante. “Because I usually don’t need it. You’re always here before me.”

  “I wish you’d put it on anyway. I don’t like the idea of the bakery key floating around in outer space somewhere.” I unlock the door and she follows me in, practically on my heels.

  “It’s not floating around anywhere. It’s probably on my dresser or in the pocket of my other jeans.”

  She runs around turning on all the lights, then thrusts a bedraggled piece of paper under my nose. “Look. It’s my mom’s recipe for squaw bread. She always used to make it at Thanksgiving.”

  “Let me just take my jacket off. Why don’t you start pulling the dough out of the cooler.”

  She throws her jacket on the desk and heads for the storeroom while I turn off the answering machine and put on highlights from La Bohème. The paper that she left on the worktable is handwritten in that kind of penmanship young girls sometimes affect, with lots of loops and scrolls and every i dotted with a tiny circle. Not exactly the way I picture Tyler’s mother, but I guess we were all young once.

  Tyler comes out of the storeroom with a bucket of dough in each hand. “I found it when I was packing up some kitchen stuff. Isn’t it cool?”

  “Why were you packing up kitchen stuff?”

  She sets the buckets on the table. “Don’t you remember? I told you I was looking for a place to rent. We’re moving in July first—Barton and me and DeeDee and Felice.”

  “Oh, right. But I thought it was just you and Barton. Who are the other two?”

  “DeeDee got kicked out of Queen Anne the year before I graduated. She works at Tower Records. Felice isn’t from here. I met her down by Pike Place Market one night. At the movie theater. She works at one of those shops downstairs by the Hillclimb. They sell, like, South American imports. Ponchos and sandals and stuff. Me and Barton couldn’t afford anyplace good by ourselves.”