The Alaskan Laundry

by Brendan Jones

  82

  IT WAS ONLY THE ANTICIPATION of being out on the Bering Sea that kept her from taking the next plane back to Port Anna. Finally, it was upon them. They were heading out the following day.

  In preparation for the two-week opener—what Hale had described as fourteen sleepless days running from pot to pot, sorting through crabs—and because everyone seemed so “keyed up,” as he put it, King Bruce gave the crew October thirteenth off.

  From the top of the harbor that morning she dialed Wolf Street.

  “Figlia, I can’t find you on the map,” her father said.

  “I’m on the Aleutian Chain, way down at the end, a place called Unalaska.”

  “Ah. Let me see.”

  “Where are you?”

  She heard a shuffling. “In the parlor. Wait. I still don’t see.”

  The thought of his finger skating along the map, beneath the photo of her mother, crushed her. Also, it was thrilling. “Can you find Anchorage?” she asked.

  “Yes. Anchorage. I’ve found that.”

  “Now take the tip of your finger and drag it left. Keep going, right along that line of islands until you reach Unalaska.”

  “Ah. I see it here.”

  “That’s where I am.”

  “So far out, figlia. Now tell me what it’s like.”

  “Well, no trees, but it’s sunny. Mountains rise straight out from the water. Tomorrow we go on the Bering Sea.”

  There was a pause. “But it’s dangerous, no?”

  “I’m on a good boat,” she lied. “What’s up in South Philly?”

  “Oh, well, I have these new neighbors, young people. The stairs are difficult for me. Vic wants me to move, to a condo up on Broad and Washington.”

  “Out of Wolf Street?”

  “Perhaps. The neighborhood changes. Listen, figlia. I have a question for you. And I promise, I won’t ask about this again.”

  The possibility of a move rattled her. She couldn’t imagine him not being at Wolf Street.

  “When this happened, that night, your birthday. This, the last thing. Did your mother know?”

  She turned her head, considered the snow-covered peaks. Remembering the smell of peppermint oil and her mother kneading her skin. Then of her parents in front of the television. She answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

  “But you never told her?” he asked. His voice was strained, desperate, even, as if he needed an answer.

  “No. No, I didn’t. I think she knew. Maybe she was ashamed for me, you know, about what happened.”

  He coughed, swallowed. “She would never be ashamed. She loved you so much. It’s just—I have these days where all I do is think about her. And then I think about you.” After a moment, he went on. “The other day I was thinking—I have a memory of a time when you were a child. Maybe eight. Do you recall this? You were running around, and your mother . . .” He paused. “Your mother, she grew so angry, like she sometimes did. Do you remember?”

  A tremor ran through his voice. She wanted him to stop. “Pop, I don’t know . . .”

  “And I, well, I didn’t know what to do. But I put you in the freezer, you know.” His voice broke. “The walk-in at the bakery. Do you remember this?”

  Her throat seized. Silver bowls. Bricks of butter. Light of the door opening.

  “Tara, I am so sorry. I’m sorry for this, and I’m sorry for that night. When I yelled at you, for saying those words. For telling you to leave.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Never had she imagined living without the heaviness in her chest, the weight that sometimes caught fire and kicked her out of herself, made her fists fly before she knew what was happening.

  “Please, Tara,” her father said. “Please just come home.”

  It wasn’t right. That was all she could think as she walked to the post office for stamps. Here was his daughter, thousands of miles away, about to leave civilization for two weeks to search for hard-shelled spiders on the bottom of one of the world’s most dangerous oceans, and he was back in Philly waiting for her. Her father. Fat, difficult, often mean. But sorry. And she was going fishing.

  There was a sign in the window, BACK IN TEN. She stood for almost forty minutes, cursed Alaska and its mediocre employees, then returned to the phone bank by the soda machine, beneath a canopy. From the parking lot she could see the crew sitting atop the crab pots, drinking beers on the deck of the Reiver. The generators in the harbor made a collective hum.

  I don’t care, she thought. I just want to speak to him.

  She punched in Connor’s mobile number. A hurricane of noise came on the line.

  “Connor?”

  “Who’s this?” he shouted.

  “It’s me!”

  “Who’s me?”

  “Tara!”

  There was static, followed by silence.

  “Tara? Jesus. Where are you?”

  “Dutch Harbor, Alaska.”

  “Wow,” he said in a quiet voice. “Isn’t that serious?”

  She pressed on the clear plastic buttons of the soda machine. Crystal Pepsi, Mountain Dew, an obnoxious green can called Surge. She felt shy, unsure of herself. All this time, these letters, and it was still awkward on the phone. “Aren’t you supposed to be in New York, in school?” she asked.

  “Not on the weekends,” he said.

  It was what—a Saturday? The days of the week had stopped mattering.

  “Can you do something for me?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Just talk.”

  He paused. “About what?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Tell me stuff about Philly. Like in that one letter you wrote.”

  He took a breath. “Oh, I don’t know. As I said, the whole place is getting built up.”

  She knew he hated this, saying anything substantial over the phone. “I’m sorry. I just miss the city.”

  “Well,” he continued, “they’ve got new lights on the scrolling sign on the PECO building, different colors instead of the white bulbs. Oh, and a playhouse opened downtown. I actually spoke with them, they might need help with lighting and stage direction. They’re trying to clean up the Italian Market, as I said—you know, make it more tourist-friendly, even stopping John Banks. Can you believe that?”

  John Banks was the man with a cross around his neck who wheeled groceries in his cart for a small fee. His refrain, which she heard so clearly now in her head, was “Bags for sale!”

  A light breeze blew. She stared at the soda machine. One of the cans had a character from the new Star Wars movie, a young boy with straight hair. “Can You Find Your Destiny?” it read. Down on the Reiver she watched Hale push Rudy on the shoulder. An empty beer can made a tinny sound as he tossed it on deck.

  “Your father seems good. Eva’s always with him. Last time I was there I saw her coming down those back steps, from the billing office.”

  “We just spoke,” she said. Silence again. She heard the creak of a floorboard. “I miss you.”

  “When are you heading back?” he asked.

  “Christmas.”

  “To Port Anna?”

  “Oh—no, I’ll be back there in a couple weeks.”

  “Good luck on the water,” he said. “Call me when you return.”

  “Hey, Connor?” Her face flushed.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m hopeful.”

  “Good,” he said after a moment. “Me too.”

  After they hung up she stood, pressing her thumb into a button on the soda machine, trying to separate Connor’s phone self from what he really might be feeling.

  “Don’t matter how hard you push,” Hale said, coming up the ramp with a toothpick between his lips. “Red light means no more sody-poppy.”

  “Go to hell,” she said.

  He turned as he passed her. “Not to worry, darlin’. We’ll all be there together in just a few days.”

  83

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING they cut loose. King Bruce picked his
way through the boats pivoting on anchor. A storm was creeping west over the islands, and he wanted to get out ahead of it, not to mention putting some distance between them and the other 269 crabbers with permits.

  “We’re gonna be first to come back plugged, first to unload, and that’s just the way of it,” he announced to the crew.

  As they set out, the sun glowered behind the clouds. She went out on deck. As land disappeared behind them, the ocean grew into an eight-foot tide-spawned chop. Wind flattened the waves into streaks of foam. Her stomach began to sour.

  Back inside the boys sat around the galley table, sections of rubber grip rolled out to keep their playing cards from sliding. Her stomach felt filled with cement. Saliva curdled on the back of her tongue. Her teeth grew hot.

  “You wanna play?” Jethro asked.

  She picked up a magazine, knowing full well she wouldn’t be able to read, and shook her head.

  Hale chewed bacon and greasy eggs, smacked his lips over buttered toast and muffins with custard melted over the tops. Sweat spread over the lining of her hat, and her hands began to shake. Hale slapped his cards onto the table, egg whites and yolk stuck to the roof of his mouth. His knife made a scratching sound as he dragged it over his toast.

  The vessel shuddered as a wave knuckled the hull. She braced herself for a roll, her stomach heaving. Cells of her body felt spread around the kitchen, her head boiling somewhere in the engine room. Vomit rose in her throat.

  “Easy, chère,” Coon-Ass said, looking up from his cards. “You look like a goddamn ghost.”

  Out on deck she gripped the gunwales as the boat dropped down the back side of a roller. Gusts sheared off wave tops, slapping a salt spray against her cheeks. She stuck her finger down her throat, coughed, her stomach convulsing, sending breakfast into the black water. Tears arced behind her in the wind. She heaved again, a green-yellow, syrupy bile dropping from her lips.

  “There’s some leftovers in there if you want ’em.” Hale stood beside her, wiping his lips with the back of his wrist. She managed a weak “Fuck you” and heaved again, coughing from the back of her throat. She breathed through her nose, focusing, willing her stomach to settle.

  When she turned back, Hale had climbed the ladder and stood on the foredeck. The Reiver bucked over the crest of a wave, the wind throwing spray. Up came the sharp bow, and Hale crouched, then leaped skyward as the boat fell away and the bow knifed into a wave trough, leaving him suspended in the air. His tongue lolled out as he wheeled his arms, his booted legs scrambled, his feet searching for the deck as it came back up. He did it again, this time going higher as they skidded down the back side of a wave. And she could swear that she saw him, as he came back down, wink at her.

  She retreated to her quarter berth, shut the door, and bunched her fleece into a pillow. Her stomach clenched, and she tried to breathe down the nausea. Tendrils of hair were stuck to her forehead with sweat. Her body grew alternately light and heavy as the boat pushed farther out to sea. She thought of going to Six Flags as a child—this was the worst park ride in the world, and she’d be on it for the next thirteen days.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Yeah?”

  Jethro shifted his tall frame into the room, nesting strands of waxy brown hair behind his ears. From a plastic bag he produced patches, pills, a jar, and two wristbands.

  “Transderm, Bonine, Rugby, and Psi acupressure bracelets. A pinch of pickled ginger helps me. There’s also ginger gum. And most important,” he said, “don’t watch Hale when he eats.”

  84

  KING BRUCE’S VOICE BOOMED over the speakers: “We got some work ahead of us, boys.”

  White deck lights lit up the ocean around them. They had dumped forty baited pots in a straight line, what Hale called a string, and now Bruce was circling back to the front, ready to pick the first out of four hundred feet of water. She had figured out a cocktail of Bonine, ginger gum, and the acupressure bands to ease her seasickness, even though she could feel how the Bonine thinned her awareness.

  The first pot came up with a few dozen crabs. Jethro stood beside her, flipping one over to show a flap on the underbelly. “Female,” he said, flinging the creature over the side. “Those and shorts like this get tossed back. If you can’t tell”—he held up a measuring stick—“when you get good males, keep a count in your head, then report back to Hale.”

  She counted only two males, and yelled over. “Tara, you got those jars ready?” he said back.

  She had been given the job of baiting—making sure jars were filled with herring, or that whole codfish were ready to be hung in the pots. Jethro showed her how to check to see that shots of line were strong, that the two rubber floats and sea lion buoys were ready, the nylon webbing intact.

  King Bruce circled back around as Rudy changed out the bait, then tossed over the pot. Coon-Ass slung out the buoys, the yellow line unraveling on the surface as the pot sank to the bottom. It wasn’t like the herring fishery or even trolling—these were big, wide-open seas, with no other boats in sight.

  They did a few more pots, taking about fifteen minutes for each one. She snapped to attention when Hale yelled. “Hey, Tara, you can swing your fists okay—how ’bout you try tossing a buoy. Rudy, you run the grapple hook.”

  Finally, the chance to prove herself. She took hold of the line, stepped into position like she had seen Rudy do. King Bruce set them on course for the next pot, the lights illuminating the streaked ocean. Rudy tossed the treble hook, missing on their first soaker.

  “Git in there, Mud,” Hale shouted. “C’mon, it’s all in the wrist. God knows you jerk off enough.” They came back, and he snagged the line. The four of them worked in silence, sorting crabs, males banging down the live chute, females tossed over the side. They waited for King Bruce’s call whether to reset the pots, sending them back down to soak for another round, or switch spots, which meant a brief period of rest.

  “Back down she goes,” came the speaker voice.

  With a sigh Coon-Ass threw the first shot over the pot. A wrench of the launcher as Hale hit the knob followed by a splash. Rudy tossed out the coil of line, and Tara followed with the three buoys. Except this time the yellow line, snickering across the deck, caught the toe of her boot. She was slammed onto her back, dragged by the weight of the pot, her head bumping against the planking.

  Time slowed as the rail rushed toward her. She felt a fingernail split when she dug her hand into the wet wood. She didn’t have a knife to cut herself loose, and realized she was about to be taken betwixt the devil and the Bering Sea, where no warm-blooded Anthony, saint of miracles, could save her. Just before hitting the stanchion she felt a tightening over her chest, wrists gripping her hard enough to press the wind from her lungs. She arched her foot and the boot slipped off, knocking against the top of the gunwale, hanging for a moment in the air before it disappeared into the black.

  She lay on deck, panting. There was a huffing on the back of her neck and whiskers against her skin. “Goddammit, Tara!” King Bruce yelled over the speakers. “When those lines play overboard, give ’em room! What the fuck!”

  Slowly, Hale loosened his grip. Coon-Ass and Rudy stood watching. “There’s another set of boots in the gear closet,” Hale said, releasing her. “Go grab ’em and get back out here.”

  She went inside and lay on the bench, sucking the blood from her finger where the nail had torn. The galley was quiet save for the sound of water dripping from her sock onto the floor. She heard the pop of the mechanical winch, the boys resuming their work, and pushed herself back to standing. In the gear closet she found a set of boots, duct-taped and too big. “Boys, on second thought, let’s set ’em aboard,” Bruce said. “Seems like this string might be bad luck.”

  When she went on deck, the crew was ganging up on pots and pushing them by hand, not waiting for the crane. No one said anything to her, so she just stood there, nursing her finger until the work was finished.

  “Try not
to kill us in our sleep,” King Bruce said, nodding toward his seat behind the screens. The cushion was still warm with his heat. “Rudy will be up to spell you in two hours. You good? Your back all right from that spill?”

  “I’m fine,” Tara said.

  “I got the shallow water alarm set. Watch alarm, too. When it starts blinking, just hit the button before it beeps and wakes the whole boat up. Your finger good?”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  She stuck three squares of ginger gum into her mouth and began the two hours of monkish silence, eyes making rounds between the bright green lines of the radar screen, the grainy fathometer, and the GPS. Every ten minutes she reached over to stop the red blinking light, worried about the alarm. After an hour she mixed instant coffee and hot chocolate to power her through the second half of the watch.

  She reached to reset the watch alarm, heard steps, and turned, expecting to see Rudy. “You hanging in there?” It was Jethro coming up the stairs.

  “Fine.”

  “Finger okay?”

  She held up the bandage. She felt relaxed and queenly in King Bruce’s cushy chair.

  “What about the seasickness?”

  She told him her cocktail. “Use the Rugby instead of the Bonine,” he said. “Won’t make you half as drowsy.”

  He pushed his hair behind his ears, stood over the chair. King Bruce snored in his berth behind them, on the other side of the door. Outside the water shifted in the lights. It had been two years since she had touched another person, at least in that way. She waited.

  But he didn’t move. After a couple minutes Rudy came to spell her.

  Alone in her bunk, she thought of what she might have done. Imagined hands on her ribs, leaning up to kiss him. But soon it was Connor who came to mind, his birch oil smell, and his slow movements. She slipped her hand into her underwear, but her finger throbbed, and her body was tired. Annoyed, she sat up, patting the bunk for her book.

  Dudes jerking off all around her, and she didn’t even have the energy to try.