The Alaskan Laundry

by Brendan Jones

  She understood now why Newt had grown so frantic before a trip on the Adriatic. Jackie functioned in a perpetual state of frustration. At the same time it made Tara proud to see this small woman take on the world.

  62

  THE NEXT MORNING, after finishing her chores around the boat, Tara poured a mug of coffee and joined Teague in the wheelhouse. They worked their way up Lisianski Strait, spruce and hemlock thick along the water’s edge, cliff sides slick with rainwater. To the north she could see the front end of a glacier between the tree-covered mountains. Teague told her how fishermen had drowned in a storm here a few years back after alerting the Coast Guard that the boat was going down in Lisianski Inlet instead of Lisianski Strait.

  “Trust me. One day, when you get a boat of your own, you’ll find yourself in the shit. Something will go wrong, something you couldn’t have imagined, and you’ll have to make the right decision.”

  “Hope not,” she said.

  “Hope doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. That’s just the game we play out here.”

  They approached a silty green line separating glacier water from the blue ocean. “Watch this pod,” Teague told her, pointing out the window at the porpoises playing in the wake of the boat. When they reached the lighter water the critters broke off, turning around back toward the deep blue. “Buckos don’t like all the sediment,” Teague said. “Least that’s what I think. No one really has a clue.”

  A buoy rang mournfully in the swell. With the binoculars Tara watched sea lions piled at its base, their wire-thick whiskers twitching as they jockeyed for position. Teague mulled over the tide table, stroking his goatee, trying to decide whether to shoot South Inian Pass, a tidal bottleneck about half a mile wide and three miles long connecting Cross Sound with Icy Strait. “Hold on to that greasy hat of yours—this is a nasty-ass bite of water.”

  The scow’s twin screws churned against the ebb. They passed whirlpools and oily boils of water. He pointed to odd shapes on the depth-finder screen.

  “Sunken boats,” he said. “They all want to go home, to the ocean floor. From dust to dust, and all that.”

  She looked toward the distant mountains, snowcapped and craggy, thinking about the Chief, with its broad shoulders and horseshoe stern, slipping beneath the ocean. It wasn’t possible. Teague broke the silence to identify the Fairweather Range, chipped teeth of mountains outlined against the horizon, the summit of Mount Fairweather more than fourteen thousand feet from the water’s surface. Maybe one day, she thought, she’d power the tug through this pass. Already she could hear the bang of the engine, six cylinders pounding in line, charging against the moon’s gravity.

  They anchored off the ash-colored beaches of Homeshore and went on Channel Sixteen. Trollers appeared, poles lifting in jerks as they came closer, great birds folding their wings. “You think you can get these folks unloaded?” Teague said. “Jackie’s down in the engine room with Miles.”

  She snapped on her bibs, pulled her hair back in a high ponytail, slipped on her hat and safety glasses, then went on deck to catch trollers’ lines and pull them snug over the cleats. Teague worked the levers while Tara hopped down and grabbed the hook out of the air.

  “Lower!”

  Down it came. She pushed the straps past the catch, twirled a finger to the sky, then up went the bag, its bungees snapping free from the stainless hooks. Teague watched, steel coffee mug in one hand, as she followed the bag, leaping back to the tender.

  “You stay out from under that load, hear?” he yelled down. She released the fish into the tote and began sorting. When the skipper came out from the wheelhouse, his permit card in hand, Teague joked. “You gonna have my deckhand do all your work, or what?”

  The skipper snorted and dropped back down to his boat. “Hook attached to a lead took off the tip of my deckhand’s thumb. I guess we gotta head on back to town.”

  “Damn. You still got the thumb?”

  “Soakin’ in milk there in the hold.”

  “Milk?” Teague shouted.

  “Yeah, milk.”

  “That’s teeth, buddy. You soak broken teeth in milk. A thumb is flesh. Wrap it in a steak.”

  “Fuck that. I ain’t wasting a steak on that lazy sonofabitch.”

  “Just slice off a piece then, duct tape the thumb into it.”

  “Well, it’s coming off his rib eye. Dumb shit. Yeah, I’m talking to you in there!” he yelled into an open sash window. “He’s gonna have to catch a rockfish if he’s hungry. His goddamn fault for losin’ the thumb in the first place. Cost me a whole goddamn trip, now I’m supposed to give up a steak.”

  They unloaded the last of the trollers, pulled anchor, bucked the tide across Icy Strait to Hoonah to take on ice, then ran with it down Chatham Strait. Through Sergius Narrows at slack tide, then back to Port Anna to unload at the processor, untying early the following morning to do it all over again.

  63

  FRITZ HAD BEEN RIGHT. Unlike most Alaskans, she hadn’t been raised with work—an understanding of how engines ran, how houses fit together, how food arrived on the table. Knead, cut, roll, brush, punch, crumble, soften—this was what her parents had taught her. So different from the gearwork of life, the origin of things: squeezing milk from a cow on an Illinois dairy farm, flaking hay from the bed of a pickup on a Wyoming ranch. Learning how to rip flitches in an Oregon woodshop.

  In her first month on the Adriatic she had watched Miles, after taking one look at a bolt, reach for the proper socket head, metric instead of inches. Her muscles lacked this knowledge, how many twists were needed to remove that bolt. She didn’t know to smear nickel on the threads before tightening it back up. And each time she thought she had mastered a skill—tying a bowline, learning how to feather an orbital sander, working the pallet jack—she was confronted with yet another mystery of the mechanical world that laid bare her ignorance.

  On the other hand, she could make cannoli. She recalled the time her father taught her. “Your mother is correct,” he began by saying. “Cold hands make the best pastry. Except with cannoli. To do that, your hands must be warm. Here. Towel off.”

  He turned the thermostat on the fryer to 350 degrees, then carefully laid squares of dough into the oil, keeping them plunged with the flat of the tongs until they turned pecan brown. “Always wait until the last minute to fill, otherwise the shells will lose their crunch.”

  She learned the correct amount of pressure to squeeze the custard of mascarpone, chocolate chips, and a few drops of amaretto into the cooled shells. When she overfilled he remained patient, waiting by her side until each cannoli was lined up neatly on the wax paper, then followed behind, watching as she slipped the metal tray into the display case.

  It made no difference if it was frying shells or working through this bag of fish to make sure no chums were mixed in with kings. Attention to detail and speed, these were the main ingredients. Maneuver the totes with the pallet jack and signal Teague so that when the tote came down its feet fit into the one beneath it. Do it well, do it quickly, and already be thinking about the next job.

  It made her cringe to remember her first weeks on Archangel Island, daydreaming in the warehouse while Fritz lay under the tank, waiting for his shim. Worse were those memories of being sprawled on the couch as Connor worked, or dragging her feet through her chores at the bakery.

  Miles didn’t speak much, except when either diesel engines or wrestling became the topic. She enjoyed sitting with him on the stern deck, protected from the wind by the house, two of them leaning back in plastic lawn chairs, boots propped up on the gunwales, watching the wash from the props. He introduced her to the thin, uneven Backwoods cigars, which they smoked while Jackie’s pressure cooker clattered in the galley. When she told him about the tug, he walked her through the basics of a direct-reversible engine, how there was no transmission or clutch, and the cylinders reversed order when the boat had to move backwards.

  “Pure power,” he said, stabbing the air wi
th his cigar. “Fuckin’ bomber.”

  He surprised her by listening carefully when she talked, and she found herself telling stories, how her nonna died with ground veal beneath her engagement ring, which she never took off, even when making meatballs. How her father was an only child because of the lead in his father’s blood. She showed him a few basic boxing combinations, and laughed when he attacked her with a double-leg takedown, dropping her on deck.

  “The hell’s up with you two,” Jackie hollered, sticking her head out the galley window. “Don’t you burn down my boat.”

  “She sneaks up on me in the engine room,” Miles said as they took their seats, and he relit his cigar. “A ghost. But she likes you. Your buddy Newt, man. She rode him hard. I blame it on her, what happened.”

  “How so?” She leaned in closer to hear him, getting a whiff of his diesel and sweat scent.

  “It was a short weekend trip, doing cucumbers. He was already going twice the speed of any normal drag-ass deckhand, which is why so many of the divers unloaded with us—he’d get them unloaded so quick. Still, she kept pushing, you know, in that way she does, like she’s pissed off at the world. Constantly busting his balls, giving him shit about his teeth, going bald, how weird he looked, whatever.” He ashed over the gunwale. “That night some new guy in the fleet had overloaded his brailer bag in the forward hold, and it got stuck when Teague tried to pull it out. Newt shoulda called for the hook, lifted the bag to take tension off. But he knew Jackie was watching, so he just slashed with his Vicky. I heard this god-awful scream, and he came up, blood pouring down his cheek.”

  It rang true—despite his testy nature, Newt was the sort who kept on pushing until he fell apart. “Thank god I know engines better than she does,” Miles said. “Anyways, this is my last season with her, even if the money is good.”

  They both glanced up at a noise. But it was only the jars in the pressure cooker, glass shaking in the hard boil.

  “Just keep your eye out,” Miles said. “That’s about all I gotta say about that.”

  64

  ON JULY FOURTH, in the middle of the king opener, they anchored off Salisbury Sound, in Kalinin Bay. The tender had been inching its way back up the line, keeping pace with the trollers working off Point Erin. Teague set a pot and brought up a couple red king crabs before pulling the hook the following morning. Jackie defrosted spot prawns and boiled up the crab for dinner. Teague melted down a brick of butter and spread newspaper over the galley table.

  “Now, this,” he said, digging out meat from a crab leg, “is how we do it in Alaska.”

  Tara rose, went into the galley, and brought over a plate of cannolis from the refrigerator. When Miles took a bite he rolled his eyes back in his head and pretended to go into shock.

  “Now, where in the Sam Hill did you learn to make these tasty little hot dogs?” Teague asked.

  “Bakery.”

  Miles laughed. She was feeling nervy, and glared up-table at Teague.

  “You playin’ around?” he asked.

  “No—I was raised in a bakery in Philly.”

  “Your mom’s a baker?”

  She just nodded. “Well, I don’t care what anyone says about you, Tara Marconi. You all right in my book.”

  The next morning Jackie found Tara in the galley as she cleaned the fry-pot she had used for the shells. She stood for a moment, watching as Tara scrubbed.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you. You’re not a natural fisherman.”

  Stunned, she stared back at her skipper. “Excuse me?”

  “But it’s okay,” Jackie said, taking a granola bar from a cabinet, peeling back the wrapper, and tearing off a bite. “You try harder than any sonofabitch I’ve ever seen. Oh—another thing. Your father’s been calling the processor. Trunk said to put an end to it. He’s not your secretary.”

  “When did you hear this?” Tara asked, shutting off the water.

  “Don’t go getting all worked up. Spoke with Trunk the other day.”

  Her heart rushed. She wondered if he was hurt, if he had fallen on the stairs. “Well—I need to call him.”

  “And that’s why I’m telling you. Tomorrow we put in at Hoonah to pick up ice and mail. You can do it then.”

  No good would come of it. He’d pick up, she’d refuse again to answer his question, and one of them would get angry.

  She wished he would just leave her alone.

  65

  AS THEY CROSSED ICY STRAIT to the small town, Jackie sent Tara into the hold to break up the last of the ice, which had frozen into a block. Each time Tara stabbed at it with the edge of the shovel, the berg threw back shards into her eyes. Finally, she stomped it with the heel of her boot, breaking it in half, before working down each chunk.

  “Now, this is what I call a job well done,” Teague said, when she came into the wheelhouse to pour a glass of water. “Not a damn tree left.”

  At first she thought he was talking about her. Then she looked out the window. The hillsides were clear-cut. “Native corporations,” Teague said. “They know how to get shit done.”

  Teague’s goofiness, originally charming, had turned strange. If her father had seen him giving her these eyes, there would be a problem.

  “You wanna go throw lines?” he said.

  After making fast she found a phone outside the liquor store at the top of the ramp. A single Plexiglas booth. She stood in a line of fishermen, repeating to herself that she wouldn’t hang up on him, not matter what. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the folded arms of a man behind her. In a tan work coat with oil-splotched shearling lining. Purple tattoos on his knuckles.

  “Your turn, honey.”

  She was about to tell him to fuck himself, then recognized his sad blue eyes and thick white hair.

  “Did I stutter?” he said, pointing toward the phones. “We ain’t got all day. Go on and make your call.”

  His eyes appeared glazed, the wrinkles in his face deeper, the tone of his voice tighter. Petree, the man from the ferry. She held her tongue, stepped forward, and shoved quarters into the slot. The receiver smelled of fish oil and still held the warmth from the previous hand. She flattened her ear to the phone. Her heart knocked as she dialed. Her father picked up on the second ring. His voice sounded thin.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Pop.”

  She waited for his anger, bracing herself. “Figlia,” he breathed. “Where are you?”

  “In a small town. North of Port Anna.”

  “Where?”

  “Hoonah.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Fishing, Pop.”

  “On a fishing boat?”

  “I’m on a tender. Other boats unload their catch to us, then we bring it back to the processor, where it gets frozen and packaged.”

  His voice grew raspy. “They said they couldn’t tell me where you are. Vic said he’d get a map, and put it on the wall in the parlor here.”

  She looked for a folding door on the booth, but it was broken off at the hinges. The idea of him tracking her on a map was hard to believe.

  The man behind clicked his tongue. “Hey, daddy’s little girl, you gonna be all day explaining how to fish?” Another male voice said, “Maybe when she’s done she can give me a private lesson.” Chorus of laughter.

  “Hold on—” She cupped a hand around her mouth and turned. “One second, okay?”

  “Tara,” he pleaded. “I need to know when you’re coming home.”

  There was the old tone, the insistence. “I don’t know, Pop.”

  “C’mon!” the man from the ferry bellowed. “You got a line behind you, honey. Call your dad later.”

  “Are there other people with you?” he asked.

  “No—it’s fine—”

  “I’m having a hard time hearing, figlia.”

  Eva came on. “Tara? It’s me. Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine, yes.” She turned again. “If you just shut the fuck up I’ll be of
f. Okay?” She spoke back into the mouthpiece. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for hanging up on him. I thought he was going to be angry.”

  “He just wants to talk to you. Maybe there’s another time to call back.”

  “Okay. But tell him to stop calling the processor, please.”

  Eva took a breath. “Yes. I will tell him, Tara. Call from someplace where he can hear you. He just wants to know you are safe.”

  Carefully, she set the receiver into its cradle, then stared forward, trying to push her insides back down. He had sounded so anxious, so desperate to know where she was, what she was doing. Even—was she imagining this?—apologetic.

  “Hey,” the man behind her said. “It’s been two seconds, honey. You wanna get out of the way so the rest of us can call?”

  Like a string of lights the muscles lit up. Her left hand drew into a fist as her wrist moved through the air, her knuckles hooking into Petree’s skin, digging under his cheekbone. His bloodshot eyes wide, he made a gasping sound. Instinctively she pushed, moving out of range, but not before one of his arms seized the nape of her jacket and jerked her toward him. She was close enough to smell the damp diesel on his coat, the stink of half-digested hops and ginger on his breath. “You little fucking cunt bitch, I’ll rip your fucking throat—”

  She felt a hand on her hip. And there was Jackie, popped up between them.

  “Petree, Petree, Petree.” His Adam’s apple twitched, his eyes still fastened on her. “What did I tell you about fighting girls? You’re not careful, you’re gonna get yourself a reputation.”

  “She unloaded on me!” he said, pointing at his cheek, flushed red. He looked back at Tara. “I know you, anyways, you little shit. Where I seen you before?”

  “Let’s go,” Jackie said, guiding Tara by the waist. Petree spat at them. Tara turned. “You don’t remember, do you? You said we’d meet again, and sure enough.”