The Alaskan Laundry

by Brendan Jones

  “So you gonna give me a good improv line, or what?”

  “Oh, man. You give me a prompt. Two of them.”

  She squinted out the window. “Watermelon. Spanish Inquisition.”

  He thought. “Can I tell you how hard it is to burn a watermelon at the stake? It’s, like, ninety percent water. Doesn’t work.”

  “Are you kidding?” she said. “That’s really good.”

  “You think?”

  Just beyond the ferry terminal she pulled onto the gravel road by the river. The few leaves clinging to the alders waved in the fading light.

  “I kind of can’t get over it. You coming here. It’s not the Connor I remember,” she said.

  “Yeah, well.” He opened his door and looked down toward the river and the grassy estuary beyond. “People change.”

  She led him to the bank, holding back thorny branches of devil’s club. Keta darted off through the salmonberry bushes, nose near to the ground as he worked some invisible trail.

  She thought back to more than two years ago, when she stood on this same riverbank with Fritz, fish gasping in the shallows. Now she noticed the low angle of the winter light, how the sun reflected off the water and honed the lines of the trees. She knew she could walk farther into the valley, then up the side of the mountain into the muskegs and marshes, where the tufted bulrush would be turning yellow, the blueberry shrubs crimson as winter continued its dark, wet press.

  Hands on her wrists snapped her out of her thoughts. He ran his fingers over her chapped and hardened skin. She looked down, pressed the toes of her boots into the gray sand, then up again, seeing what the light did to his green eyes. He brushed a curl from her face. Stretched out in those scarred wooden beds at the Bunkhouse, building the platform with Thomas, sharpening knives with a file on Leda’s Revenge—through all this she had forgotten what it felt like to be touched.

  Keta’s white head appeared upriver. Panting, he watched them. Connor leaned over and kissed her, quiet and warm. She drew back when she felt the dog against her legs.

  “It’s okay, monkey. I know what I’m doing.”

  96

  OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS she noticed how Connor paid careful attention to the idiosyncrasies of the boat that she was just herself learning. How far to turn the butterfly valve after using the toilet so that it wouldn’t overflow the black-water tank and make the boat list to starboard. The importance of warming mugs before pouring coffee so the liquid wouldn’t go cold. How to start the wood stove with yellow cedar, then spruce, and, before bed, putting on splits of hemlock, the night wood.

  To her surprise, Connor and Newt hit it off. When the fridge handle broke, Connor took a set of deer antlers he found lying around, countersank them, and made a handle. This pleased Newt immensely. “An Alaskan brain on that guy.”

  Connor slept in the quarter berth across from the head. They hadn’t kissed since the river. He seemed to be waiting for the boat to run its hundred yards, or maybe he was waiting for something else. There was a reticence in him she recognized—but now it reassured her. She trusted it. One step at a time. Running the boat was what counted now.

  The plan was to start the engine on the docks on December twentieth, steam the hundred yards the following day, then fly out on the twenty-third.

  On the way back over the bridge, after buying tickets, he surprised her by reaching out, taking her necklace between his fingers, and examining her medallion.

  “What?” she said, reaching up to settle the chain.

  “I wanted to ask—you sure you’re okay flying on the twenty-third?”

  She rested her hand on his mouth. “I think my mother would love it.”

  “Yeah,” Connor said. “I think that’s right.”

  97

  PETREE WAS LIKE A HIGH SCHOOL ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR, pointing to this hose, that check valve, bleeding the filter at the end of the run. He sang as he went. “So we go here, and then to there, on down to you, and you . . . where do you go . . . ? Ah, here you go, da da-da . . .”

  It was just past eight in the morning on December twentieth, two days before winter solstice. The sun hadn’t yet risen. Connor came down with a box of doughnuts and coffee.

  “A simple beast,” Petree muttered, reaching for a cruller, patting the exhaust manifold, leaving powdered sugar on the paint. “If only all—”

  “If only all women were so simple,” Tara finished for him, impatient. “Should we turn her over?”

  Newt and Plume were outside on the docks—they had agreed to keep an eye on the lines. If the engine ran, that meant the boat would move, and Petree wanted to be sure they didn’t break off the dock.

  “Don’t rush it, Kangaroo. I need to see it all in my head before we take her for a spin around the floor.”

  After a couple more minutes of talking to himself, he twisted a selector dial to make sure the starter was taking power from the car battery. “Okay. Let’s see if we can’t build us some air.”

  Miles walked around and gave the starter a couple thwacks with his wrench. Tara pressed the button on the generator, which shook and rumbled, hiccupped and stuttered, then roared, trembling on its mount.

  “Boy’s a good wrench,” Petree yelled to Connor. Miles loosened a nut on each injector, tightening it back up when diesel spurted out. He let the Deutz idle a few minutes before throttling, setting the rubber stopper to maintain RPMs. Tara slipped headphones over her ears and handed a pair to Connor, who looked confused when Petree pulled a lever. They were in the dark until there was a second clunk, and the lights flickered up again, dimmer now. Petree tapped the voltage dial—just over two hundred amperes—and flashed a thumbs-up.

  The needles on the twin PSI gauges rose steadily from five, to ten, to fifteen as the compressor ran and they made air. For a moment she saw Petree Bangheart before the hard winters up north, the alcohol. Fixing engines took the years away. Or maybe it was working with Miles, who checked each of Tara’s welds for droplets of water, nodding at her good work. Petree bent to lift the planking by the engine. Toes balanced on a bulwark, Miles twisted the wheel on a valve in quick, muscular motions. She knew this opened the sea chest to allow salt water into the system to cool the engine. Petree throttled down the Deutz, letting it idle for a couple of minutes before shutting off the generator.

  The silence echoed. Miles and Petree walked around, checking gauges, wiping down the brass knob for pumping oil through the lines with a rag. Petree turned a yellow gate valve above the engine. It was hard to see his eyes beneath those swollen folds of skin, but she could tell he was getting nervous. “If the cylinders go and the prop turns, I need you and your guy here checking our wash outside.”

  “Roger,” Tara said, hurt that she was given the stupid job, but so ready to have this over with.

  “Miles? We still good on air?” Petree asked.

  “All good.”

  “Here we go.”

  Using both hands, he twisted the black cast-iron wheel to AIR. The pipes whispered, and a bumping sound started in the crankcase, like a rollercoaster being pulled up an incline. Blue smoke leaked from the head of the fifth cylinder. When he went to FORWARD, the engine died. He checked the PSI gauge, then turned the wheel again. The pistons accelerated, the hull shifted forward, and then the engine fell silent.

  She began to sweat. Doing the math in her head, factoring in her plane ticket, she figured she would have about ten thousand dollars to put into the boat for repairs—a drop in the bucket. It needed to start.

  “She’s just burning off old oil,” Petree insisted. “When did she last run, Tara? Six years? These beasts are like horses—they need to stretch their legs, otherwise they go to seed. See how we do this.”

  He turned the wheel all the way to the left, then hit START. The vibrations in the bulwarks felt different now as the pistons and crankshaft changed direction. When he brought the wheel to ASTERN the engine died down, then came back up, chattering the timbers and shaking the floor planks. He ex
changed a glance with Miles, who turned the wheel on the governor, opening the valves on the cylinders, feeding fuel. The clanging fell off for a moment, loped, then accelerated.

  “More!” Petree shouted. The pistons settled into a rhythm. He turned to Tara and Connor. “Go!”

  They ducked beneath the bulkhead, sprinted through the cargo hold and up the ladder, lifted off the hatch to the deck. The boat shook. Off the stern, Irish, in a rowboat, a bottle between his legs, spun in the wash of the five-foot propeller. He gave a gummy laugh as he twirled, caught in the stew of barnacles and sea anemones.

  “The good gods favor ya, young lady!” he shouted.

  The engine rumbled to a stop. The lines slackened, then grew taut again when Petree switched directions on the crankshaft. She could see this in her head, recalling the diagrams from the instruction booklet.

  There was a bark. Keta paced along the docks, panting, watching her. Plume stood behind Newt with the baby, watching as mouse-gray smoke rose in rings against the lightening sky.

  “The thing actually works,” Newt said, picking at his fine hair. “Connor, I owe you fifty bucks.”

  Petree came up from the hold, smiling. “We’ll run her a bit, then take her offline. Pump the bilge so she’s light. Tide’s high at about noon tomorrow. We’ll back her out, loop around, burn off old oil, and that should be our hundred yards. Sound like a plan?”

  “Is it okay if I hug you?” she asked him.

  “I’ll take that over a fist to the jaw,” he said, reaching out his long arms and gripping her. “Listen, I set up a bilge pump down there. Just run the hose over the side and turn her off once she pumps down—should be around nine this eve.”

  “Got it.”

  “You call the harbormaster?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  As she went below to plug in the pump, she heard him say into the VHF handheld, “Port Anna harbormaster, this is Pacific Chief. Engine is running. We’ll be driving by tomorrow morning. Make sure your windows are shut—otherwise you’re gettin’ smoked the hell out.”

  98

  THE MORNING OF DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST. She lay in the hammock with Connor, her head on his chest, rising and falling with his breathing. Keta snored in front of the wood stove.

  The night before, he had kissed her in the galley when she had come up from shutting off the bilge pump. Except this time it wasn’t soft or quiet, but with urgency. When he asked if there was room in the hammock, she said yes. Except once they reached the top of the ladder, Keta began to whine.

  “He’s lonely,” Tara said, looking down through the cutout in the floor.

  “Well then, let’s get him up here.”

  She watched as he went about rigging up a system, threading Keta’s life vest with a blanket. The dog went limp as they pulled him up, then sprinted around the exhaust stack in the middle of the room.

  Connor held her hands to his chest as they danced to some beat in his head. His quiet nature from high school still existed. But there was a sureness in his movements, a confidence. She snuggled closer. Keta rested by the fire.

  Now she lay beside him, smelling the salt-rot of low tide: anemones, limpets, fucus drying in the morning breeze. Connor snored softly, a naked leg thrown over the side of the hammock. The harbor so quiet, the boat so still. She patted the carpet remnant for Connor’s phone—4:12 A.M.—then pulled herself up on an elbow and peered out the aft window toward the volcano in the west. A curtain of northern lights reflected radar green over the snow-covered cone.

  “Connor. Hey.” She nudged his shoulder. “Wake up.”

  Keta heard the commotion and came over, his ears pointed.

  “Oh my lord,” he said, making the hammock swing as he looked out the glass.

  She slid the door open, and they walked onto the aft deck into the salt air, her feet cupped on the asphalt roofing against the cold. The lights danced off Keta’s coat. The dog leaned against Connor’s shins, whining as the sky pulsed.

  “My friend Betteryear told me Inuits think it’s their ancestors laughing,” she said.

  He pulled her close, kissing the top of her head.

  “You’ll have to tell me about him one day.”

  All of her days, she thought. All of her days for this.

  99

  WHEN SHE WOKE AGAIN the sky was beginning to lighten. She heard a sound below. Usually Newt and Plume were up early, feeding the baby, the scent of coffee wafting topside. But when she rose, careful to not wake Connor, she went into the galley and there was no one.

  In the month she had been living and working on the tug, she had come to enjoy the tap of the cast-iron and copper skillets, hung from nails in the ceiling beams according to size. This morning, though, the pans were silent. It was as if the boat was holding its breath before the move.

  She stuffed newspaper and lint into the Monarch, dropped a match into the firebox, and listened for the whir of flames. When the water boiled she went out on deck and sat on the cedar cap rail, eating an apple, drinking her coffee, watching the blues overhead lighten by degrees.

  She loved these mornings, the mountains purple and sharp against the sky, revealing their heft. This land that had so unsettled her that first day when she arrived now filled her with such contentment. In another few hours a splinter of light would work over the rim of the volcano, the sun peeling back shadows. And this boat beneath her would move.

  She checked Connor’s mobile, in the pocket of her flannel. 6:47. She scanned the docks for Zachary, then walked down the gangplank, at a weak angle this morning. The Spanker was already out, winter king fishing. Most of the trollers that had been tied to the bull rail were gone—the price for king was good, and folks were catching.

  She hated to look in the water around the tug. Algae bloomed on the keel. Anemones pulsed in the current. This morning, though, it was the colonies of mussels, shells agog in the ebbing tide, that annoyed her. Normally they clustered right up to the waterline. Now they were nearly a foot below.

  Fear moved up her spine. Her eyes went to the bow, searching for the stenciled white letters of Pacific Chief. The words were almost level with the bull rail.

  She sprinted up the gangway, slid off the hatch leading to the cargo hold, and peered down. Her throat constricted. Water, black with engine oil, returned her reflection. Shreds of insulation, rags, a loose section of hose, her chest freezer with its lid open, floated in the scum. From far off she heard splashing.

  She ran down the gangway and threw the breaker at the post to save the boat from being electrocuted. Using Connor’s phone she dialed 911.

  “Thelma—it’s Tara over on the docks. The Chief is sinking.”

  “What?”

  “My boat—Pacific Chief, she’s taking water. Zachary’s supposed to be by at seven. Call Fritz at the fire department. I gotta go.”

  She hung up, thought for a moment, then ran inside to wake Plume, who slept with Luis sprawled over her. “What’s going on?” the girl asked, fumbling for her glasses.

  “Just take what you need and get off the boat. Go.”

  Trailing a length of muslin blanket, Plume pushed past Tara and ran through the salon out the door. “Connor!” Tara shouted. “Wake up. Off the boat. Bring the dog.”

  “Wha?” she heard.

  “The boat’s taking water. Time to get off!”

  Not waiting for a response, she went back out, pushed the hatch cover farther aside, then lowered herself into the black water. It flooded the cuffs of her boots and saturated her fleece pants, her legs already beginning to numb. A Jerry can, the yellow plastic container for diesel that she had been using to power the generator, nudged her arm. Gasoline swirled in rainbows on the surface.

  Taking a breath, she stepped forward into the darkness. But the floor planks were gone. Ocean closed over her back, and she spit out a mouthful of salt water.

  “Connor!” she hollered.

  His face appeared above, sharp in the low s
un. “How can I help?”

  “Is the dog off?”

  “He’s on the dock with Plume.”

  “Throw me a headlamp. Hanging in the mudroom. Hurry.”

  What to do, what to do . . . where was Zachary? And Newt, of all days to leave early to fish. If Thelma called the fire department, Fritz would pick up on his radio.

  Connor dangled the headlamp. “You want me down there with you?” he asked.

  “No. Look out for Zachary. Tell him what’s happening when he gets here.”

  Tucking her chin, Tara pushed off the bottom rung of the ladder, breast-stroking in the direction of the splash. The headlight illuminated the outline of the bulkhead. She ducked under it, kicked. A Styrofoam cooler bounced off her shoulder. Her breath came in gasps, her feet throbbing with cold.

  “Stay calm, Tara,” she recited.

  The white beam flashed over the bronze “Fairbanks-Morse” plaque on the engine. Water lapped against the belly of the exhaust manifold. Her breath came in ragged gasps.

  As she swam the tip of her boot brushed a boat rib. She stood, balancing, water almost to her chest. Rafts of yellow floor planks floated around her. She gritted her teeth against the cold. And then she saw it—a flash of white in the headlamp’s beam, water gushing in around the sides of the loose through-hull.

  Right then she understood what had happened. The end of the hundred-foot hose they had used to pump out the bilge had been left in the ocean. After the bilge level dropped she had unplugged the pump. Overnight the hose had back-siphoned, gulping ocean, flooding her boat as they slept. And now there was water coming in around the seal of the through-hull, which had been put beneath the waterline by the growing weight of the boat.