Dead in the Water
Page 10
“Who taught you how to do this. Auntie?”
“My grandmother, a little. The rest I taught myself by taking some old baskets apart.”
“No one else does this anymore?”
“Very few. Many of the old weavers who were left died in the flu epidemic in 1919,” Olga said, “and of course none of them told anyone else how they did their weaving.”
“Why not?”
“Because every weaver had her own special weaving styles, and there was jealousy between the villages. Each one always wanted to be the best, so each one kept her ways secret from the others.” Olga sighed a little. “Now they are all dead, and the weaving is almost dead, too.”
“Not as long as you’re alive, Auntie,” Becky said, and the girls giggled.
“For which you should be glad,” Olga told them, “or you wouldn’t be able to buy that new Michael Jackson album. No,” Olga told Kate, “dabble your fingers in the water first. The grass must be damp to work. Not too much! Only wet down as much as you are going to use at one time. You have to wrap up what you don’t use, and it will mildew if you put it away damp.”
After straining and sweating an hour, Kate produced her first weave, a tiny circle of clumsy stitches that nevertheless was recognizable as the beginning of a basket. “Good,” Olga said. “Now keep going.”
Easy for you to say, Kate thought. “You’ve got a lot of grass here,” she said, nodding at the pile on the kitchen floor. “Looks like enough to keep you weaving until next Christmas.”
Olga shook her head and extended her arms in a circle, the tips of her fingers barely touching. “From this much grass, you get this many weavers.” She put her right forefinger and thumb around her left wrist.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” the old woman confirmed. “That’s why it’s important to pick the best grass.”
“And where is the best grass?”
“Away from the salt water. Grass on the beach is too thick. It gets brittle after curing.”
“So you pick in the hills?”
Olga nodded, her face bent over her basket, her expression absorbed as she conjured some especially intricate design out of the rim. “You learn where the good grass grows. If you keep picking in the same place the grass gets better.”
“That’s why we go back to Anua every year,” Becky interpolated.
Kate broke a spoke. “Anua?”
Her voice must have sounded as startled as she felt because Becky cast her a curious glance. “Sure. It’s where our family comes from.”
“Oh.” Kate began the arduous process of threading another spoke into the weaving, running through a mental list of questions to ask. She couldn’t afford the appearance of prying or she would lose all the confidence she had gained so far. She recognized the investigator in her superseding the fellow tribal member and was momentarily ashamed of herself. But two men were missing, and probably dead and she didn’t like Harry Gault so she said in a casual voice, “So if you’re from Anua, why do you live in Unalaska?”
“It was the war,” Becky said. “Tell her the story, Auntie.”
“It was the war,” Olga said. Her voice dropped into a rhythm, slipping into it so effortlessly and so seamlessly that Kate didn’t notice it at once. “The Japanese soldiers came.
“Then the army came.
“The army moved all of the people from the islands.
“They put them in towns and in camps in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound.
“It was too hot up there for the people.
“Many of the people died.
“After the war, the army brought us back.
“The people that were left wished they had died with the others.
“The houses were gone.
“The villages were gone.
“Even the ones where there had been no Japanese.
“The army said they destroyed them because they couldn’t leave the villages for the Japanese to use.
“We couldn’t go back.
“There weren’t enough of us.
“There was nothing to go back to.
“So now we live in a few villages instead of many.
“That’s all.”
The room was silent but for the rustle of grass. Kate kept her head bent over her basket. When she could speak, she said, “Do you ever go back to Anua?”
“Sure,” Becky said, at the same time Olga said, “No.”
The girl’s eyes widened. Olga said easily, “Only for the grass. In June or July, when it is ready to pick. But mostly we use Chinaman’s grass, raffia, that we buy from Outside. It takes too long to pick and cure the rye grass.” The old woman smiled. “And the tourists can’t tell the difference.”
Kate grinned. Before she could reply, Sasha said suddenly, “Home.”
They all looked at her, seated on the floor, her crippled leg again twisted awkwardly beneath her. She still had the ivory knife, and with it she traced a pattern on the old linoleum floor, the yellowed ivory of the old knife looking odd against the cracked paisley pattern. Her brown eyes were bright and alert, the most alive features in that blunted face. “Kayak. Men. Thunderbird. Men. Home.”
“That’s the same story she was telling on the beach this morning,” Becky told Olga. “What does it mean?”
Olga shrugged, and leaned forward to pluck the storyknife from Sasha’s now limp fingers. “I don’t know. What do any of Sasha’s stories mean?”
“But her stories always make sense. Auntie,” Becky protested. “Somehow, they always do. You just have to figure them out.”
“Thunderbird,” Sasha said clearly. “Men. Kayak. Men. Home.”
“See? She knows what we’re talking about.”
Olga looked at Becky. “The storyknife is just a toy, Becky. It makes Sasha happy to play with it. That’s all.”
Becky’s mouth closed and she bent back over her basket, a tinge of red creeping up into her cheeks.
“Tell me about the storyknife, Auntie,” Kate suggested into the uncomfortable silence that followed. “I’ve never seen one before. It’s beautiful.”
Olga looked down at the ivory knife she held in her hands. “My grandmother gave it to me. My great-uncle made it for her when she was a little girl. It’s a toy. A girl’s toy. We use it to draw stories in the sand, and in the snow.”
“Where did it come from? The custom, I mean?”
Olga shrugged. “Some people say it used to be a real knife. That the Eskimos used it to cut snow into blocks for igloos. All I know is I got this one from my mother. My mother got it from her mother. Other girls had them when I was a child. It was a custom.” She handed the storyknife to Kate.
Kate accepted it in reverent hands. The handle was carved with the stylized likeness of a sea otter floating on his back. In spite of the wear and tear caused by at minimum four pairs of grubby little hands, each individual whisker stood out on his tiny face. He stared up at Kate, expectant. The ivory seemed to grow heavier in her hand. Kate cleared her throat. “Are they always made from ivory?”
“No. Some are made from bone or wood.”
“It’s a beautiful thing, Auntie,” Kate said, handing it back. “And valuable. It should be in a museum.”
“And would a museum take it out and play with it?” Olga demanded, and gave a snort. “Its spirit would die, locked up in a place where it was never touched. Here the girls play with it, and it tells them stories.”
Which made it something more than just a toy, Kate thought. She looked down at the rapidly shredding beginning of her basket, and said ruefully, “I don’t seem to be doing very well at this, Auntie. I guess I’m just a cultural illiterate.”
“Nonsense,” Olga said briskly. “It takes practice, like anything else. You will take some grass with you when you leave, so you can work at it on your own.”
Wonderful, Kate thought, but said meekly, “Thank you, Auntie.”
“And now more tea? And some alodiks?”
“Al
odiks?” Kate said.
The old woman looked at her reprovingly. “You have no Aleut?”
Kate shook her head.
“Because your grandmother wanted you to?” Olga guessed shrewdly, and laughed, a loud, cackling laugh, at Kate’s expression. Kate was relieved when Olga turned to the stove, and even more relieved when alodiks proved to be nothing more than fried bread. A few minutes later Olga put a plateful of the stuff in the middle of the table, puffed up and golden brown. Everyone around the table made a concerted grab, not excepting Kate.
“There were killer whales in the bay this morning, Auntie,” one of the girls said around a mouthful of fried bread.
“Ahhhhh,” Olga said. “Killer whales in the bay.” The smile faded from her face and she shook her head gravely.
“What does it mean?”
“Killer whales in the bay?”
“Yes. Do you know what it means?”
“I know only what everyone knows.” Olga worked her next few stitches without speaking. The girls ceased their giggling and whispering, and as the silence gathered and grew, Kate had the feeling of a curtain about to go up.
When she spoke again, Olga’s voice fell again into a kind of singsong, with a full-stop pause at the end of each sentence. It was subtle but clear. It wasn’t as if Olga banged a drum on the downbeat at the end of every line, but Becky and her sister began nodding their heads slightly to the beat. Kate had noticed a similar kind of cadence to Olga’s story of the Aleuts’ exile and repatriation during and after World War II, and now consciously scanned the old woman’s words for rhythm. She found it, and repetition, and internal rhymes, and alliteration. Without moving, the girls seemed to draw tighter together in their circle, intent, absorbed, almost hypnotized, acolytes hanging on the words of their priestess.
“When killer whales come to a bay with a village,” Olga chanted, “they come hungry for someone’s spirit.
“When the killer whales come
“To a bay with a village
“Someone is going to die.
“When the killer whales come
“To a bay with a village
“The people know.
“When the killer whales come
“To a bay with a village
“It won’t be long.
“Maybe one month.
“Maybe two.
“When the killer whales come
“Someone dies in that bay.
“When the killer whales come.
“That’s all.”
As she spoke the last words, Olga looked straight at Kate. She held her gaze for a long moment, before her eyes dropped to the scar on Kate’s throat. The skin there began to itch beneath that intent gaze. Kate held perfectly still. “That was a beautiful story, Auntie,” she said. “You’re a poet.”
Olga laughed, a loud robust laugh, and the priestess was gone and her acolytes, too, on the gust of merriment. “It’s just an old legend,” she said, dropping back into prose. “I’m a good Christian missionary’s daughter, myself. I don’t believe any of that stuff.”
Kate burst out laughing, and the girls joined in again.
As she rose to leave, Kate hesitated, not wanting to trespass but the memory of those graceful, swooping sand drawings haunting her. “About Sasha.”
Olga’s face was expressionless. “What about her?”
“Has she seen a doctor? There might be—”
“There is nothing,” Olga said flatly. “Her mother drank too much.”
*
“Where does Sasha live?” Kate asked Becky outside. “With family, parents, what?” She was determined to do something, anything. Anyone who could draw like Sasha was not, could not be entirely beyond help, fetal alcohol syndrome baby or not.
She turned her head to find Becky looking at her with surprise. “What?”
Becky jerked a thumb over her shoulder, at the house behind them. “Sasha lives right here, Kate. Auntie is Sasha’s mom.”
Six
THE HARBOR’S DOCK SPACE was so limited that the Avilda was again third in a row of boats rafted four deep. The next morning the tide was at slack and it was a long way down to the first boat tied to the dock. There are worse things in life than hanging in the pitch-dark from a forty-foot ladder, trying to find a foothold on the icy railing of a boat being tossed up and down in the enthusiastic embrace of a spirited groundswell. Offhand, Kate couldn’t think of one.
She shut her ears to the rush of water, the smack of the swell on the bottom of a hundred hulls, the murmur of idling engines, the shout of impatient skippers. Moving one limb at a time, she felt her cautious way down to the next rung on the ladder and extended a foot in what she prayed was the general direction of the boat. A barnacle crunched beneath the foot still on the ladder, the sole of her boot slid across the rung, her balance shifted and one hand pulled free. She made a wild grab for the ladder and by a miracle caught it.
She pressed her forehead against cold metal and scratchy barnacle, her heart pounding in her ears, gasping for breath. Water rushed in among the pilings with a chuckling sound. Her mouth tightened into an unseen snarl and she swiveled on the rung, bent her knees, let go and jumped blind. For a moment she was suspended in midair, and then she hit the deck awkwardly. Instinct took over and she tucked her head and rolled forward in a somersault. Her butt hit something hard and she stopped rolling, her feet falling forward with a thump.
For a moment she just lay there, panting. She heard a noise from the boat’s cabin like someone was about to come on deck and she shot to her feet and made for the opposite railing. The rest of the journey was by comparison a piece of cake; all she had to do was straddle the tied-together railings of the two boats with one leg and swing her other leg over. Always supposing the boats were of equal size, which they often weren’t, in which case she had to either climb up or jump down or both. When she slithered onto the Avilda’s heaving deck she knew a moment of pure triumph.
She was making breakfast when Andy emerged from their stateroom, rumpled and yawning. He peered over her shoulder at the eggs scrambled with cheese and onions and green chile and bits of shredded tortilla. “Looks good. Smells great.”
“You eat eggs?” she said, eyes wide. “Eggs come from chickens. Come to think of it, eggs are chickens, before they hatch. You might be chowing down on something’s soul here, messing up their prima all to hell and gone. Maybe you should reconsider.” She gave him a big smile. “I could pour you a bowl of cereal.”
Ignoring her, he poured himself a cup of coffee. “Thought it was Ned’s turn to cook.”
“He’s not back on board yet.”
Andy looked surprised. “I thought we were taking this tide.”
“So did I.” Kate sprinkled in some garlic powder and gave the eggs a final stir before turning off the burner and removing the skillet from the stove.
“Harry’ll be pissed,” Andy said, sounding satisfied at the prospect.
“He’s not back yet, either.” The toast popped out and Kate buttered it with a lavish hand.
Andy stopped with his cup halfway to his mouth. “Seth?”
“Nope.”
There was a short silence. Into his coffee mug Andy said, “This isn’t a very well-run boat, is it, Kate?”
“Nope.”
“I mean it, I’m getting off, soon as I find something else.”
Kate shrugged. “You should have been on my last boat.” And only, she thought but didn’t say. “The skipper had a loudspeaker mounted on the foredeck and wired into a microphone on the bridge so he could talk to the crew on deck whenever he wanted to, and he wanted to all the time. Yap, yap, yap, from how to grab a buoy with a boat hook to how to chop bait to how to fill a bait jar to how to tie door ties to how to sort crab. This guy never but never shut up.” Kate ladled eggs onto a plate and paused, remembering. “He had this real high, squeaky voice that sounded ten times worse amplified. It drove everybody crazy.”
“What happened?”
Andy grinned. “How much do you know about electronics, Kate?”
Kate handed him a heaping plate. “Shut up and eat your breakfast.” She made herself a plate, scraped the remaining eggs to one side of the frying pan and stacked the rest of the toast next to them. She covered the whole thing to keep it warm and sat down to eat. She, too, wondered where the rest of the crew was, and what they were doing. If Harry old buddy and his two chosen sons were going to make this vanishing act a habit, she was going to have to figure out how to tail them through Dutch Harbor’s immense metropolitan district without getting spotted. The prospect did not delight her. She was good, but she wasn’t that good.
They were on their second cup of coffee when Harry, Ned and Seth finally showed up. Ned and Seth were carrying suitcases, one each, the shiny silver kind that photographers use to pack their lenses into.
Kate eyed the suitcases. “Been Christmas shopping?”
“You could say that,” Ned said, almost pleasantly, which made Kate wonder if there was something wrong with her hearing.
“Yep, visions of sugarplums dance in our heads,” Seth added, and the three of them burst out laughing, even Seth.
They were in a wonderful mood in an exclusive sort of way, nudging each other, exchanging winks, sharing muffled comments and chuckles. The only thing worse than this crew surly was this crew merry. Andy finished his coffee and, reassured by an expansive Harry Gault that the Avilda was staying where she was for the time being, went uptown, probably to work on sniffing out a new berth. Kate put her dishes in the dishwasher and went out on deck to coil shots and chop bait, and plot a chance to locate and find out what was inside the shiny silver suitcases brought on board that morning.