by Dave Barrett
Our party roared at the sight of the big Indian standing up behind Waters. I noticed that he more tottered than stood: leaning forward like a tree cut to fall. He lowered his head and charged the still smiling Waters. Like a matador sidestepping a bull, Waters used the Indian’s own momentum against him. At the last instant, Waters faced his charging opponent, stepped to the left and guided him into the brick wall behind them with a little underhanded push. The Indian hit the wall full force: crumpling instantly.
It was now I joined the fight. With the Indian sprawled at his feet, Waters had placed his steel-toed boot on the man’s face and begun to press down. Shaking loose of Helen’s hold, I charged forward and blindsided Waters on his ass.
Scrambling to his feet, Waters lunged towards me, but was held back by Hank Rapp and Maxwell Jones. Tom Rapp stood between us both.
“Hold it!” Rapp shouted—above Water’s accusations I was a faggot and an ass-licking Indian lover and my accusation he was a Nazi and a coward. “Both of you! Right now! Cool it, for Christ’s sake... ”
I stepped back, my head whirling. Everything had happened so fast. Waters had worked over the big Indian like a machine on an assembly like stamping out one product amongst a thousand.
Hank Rapp and Maxwell Jones released Waters now. I braced for a charge, but Waters appeared played out. He accepted his DESERT STORM cap back from one of the women and shoved it on his head. He was still cursing and glaring at me—but definitely calmed down.
The big Indian was moving now. The right side of his face was streaked with rain, gravel and blood. He right eye was already swollen shut, the left eye on the way there. But he was moving. His friends helped him to his feet. He did not decline a swallow from the bottle of wine.
Helen, noticing my concern, stepped closer.
“See... ” she said, brushing up against my arm. “Charley’s all right. He gets in scraps like this all the time. An hour from now he’ll be telling the whole town he won the fight. Take my word for it. Tomorrow he’ll go to the village clinic, if he wants. For nothing. He’s an Indian.”
The rest of our party had already climbed the stairs to the second level. One of the women called back:
“Hurry up, Helen. Big Al says he’s gonna lock the doors if ya’ don’t hurry. Tell the kid to make up his mind.”
I shivered from the cold. I could beat it back to the boat right now. Get out of this rain. Get out of this whole mess.
“Come on, honey,” Helen said, brushing against me again. “Can’t you see it’s raining?”
I underdressed alone in the room Helen had directed me to. She would join me presently.
I trembled as I climbed out of my rain-soaked clothing: not so much from the chill of the room as from the realization I was in an actual house of prostitution. I spread my jeans over the room’s hot water radiator to dry. After spending days and nights on end in clothes—stinky itchy greasy clothes—it felt wonderful to simply be naked. The feel of the cush, rose-patterned carpet under my bare feet was almost decadent.
The rest of our party had found their way to their own rooms before Helen and I entered the lobby. The lobby consisted of two dilapidated love seats set at right angles, a scratched-up coffee table and two lamps with ruffled-lacing around their shades. The paneled walls were stripped bare: just a few shreds of old calendars still clinging to the walls’ staples. Two men I’d never seen before were seated on one of the love seats, distractedly fingering through porn magazines they’d picked out from a large stack spread across the coffee table. Both smiled at Helen—winking at her, referring to her by name. Helen had ruefully ignored them and signaled me to do likewise, whispering in my ear:
“Cannery dinks.”
She’d run the back of her hand across her lips as though having spoken the words had produced a foul scum there.
Before I’d been able to take a second look at them, Helen had shoved me on ahead: room No. 8 at the end of the long dark hallway.
The layout of the room reminded me of the one I’d seen at the Ivory Inn in Elfin Cove: the same double bed, same matching urinal and washbasin, same mirrored-ceiling over the bed. What struck me as different was the in-use quality of the place. The bed sheets were torn from their stays, tumbling towards the floor. The bed-frame was set at a crooked angle, as though having been pushed away from the wall. On the night stand beside the bed was a half-finished drink in a plastic throwaway cup (ice cubes not yet melted) and beside that, in an ashtray, the stub of a half-finished cigarette.
A bottle of Broker’s whiskey was on a little table beside the window. Figuring it part of the package deal, I poured myself a drink in one of the plastic cups. I peeled back the burlap curtains to get a peek at the storm. Because the window was cracked open and was directly above the red neon restaurant sign outside, I could hear the rain hiss and sputter on the bulbs below.
The truth is I was having second thoughts (that is, if a man standing buck-naked in a whorehouse is even capable of having second thoughts... let alone true ones). What the hell was I doing here? And where was this damn Helen anyway? Had she doubled-back to do a number on those “cannery dinks” in the lobby? The idea of her spreading her legs for these men and, a minute later, coming in to do the same for me was detestable.
I poured myself a second drink.
For some crazy reason, I thought of the time Peggy Alexander and I made love in the backseat of her ’69 Buick Skylark the summer before my senior year of high school. What I member most about Peggy was not so much her strawberry blonde hair and long beautiful Amazon legs but her Great Dane dog—Duchess.
Duchess was with Peggy Alexander wherever she went. Wherever. She had been there the first time Peggy and I actually made love. That summer, during intermission at the Blue-Ox Drive In, we’d traded places with the dog—shoving Duchess in the front seat while we scampered into the back seat. I’d even bought the hound a couple of hot dogs as a kind of peace offering. About ten minutes in the second feature, only moments after I’d entered Peggy Alexander for the first time—after God knows how many false starts—what happens but the dog shits herself in the front seat of the Buick. Now, of course... at the time of this discourtesy. .. Peggy and I had went right on making love... I thinking that that sound and the odor had escaped from her body... and Peggy thinking it had from mine. What a surprise we had a few minutes later when, finally looking into the front seat, we saw Duchess burying her head under the dashboard in shame.
Now that was a good old-fashioned roll in the hay! What I was scheduled for here was to take part in a stinking business transaction. Where was the abandon? the innocence? the fun?
“Fuck it... ” I heard myself say out loud.
I didn’t need this shit. I was a free man! I’d tip-toe out the exit door here at the end of the hall... or if it was locked... just march right through the lobby with head held high... just go ahead and try to stop me now. They didn’t know me from Adam. Probably wouldn’t even notice my absence. Next number please...
There were three soft taps on the door.
“Shit... ” I mumbled aloud, grabbing my jeans.
My eyes fixed on the enamel-spotted doorknob. When nothing happened—at first—I wondered if I’d only imagined this tapping. Maybe the sounds came from the rooms next door? A second later, though, the doorknob turned over and the door opened.
Expecting to see Helen, instead a maid’s cleaning cart rumbled into the room, followed by a young girl pushing the cart directly towards the bed.
Silently, I cursed at the girl. Although her back was turned to me as she fitted the first clean sheet over the bed, and though I’d only caught a glimpse of the side of her face, I had a funny feeling I’d seen her before. Hoping to dress before she spotted me, I continued to struggle into my damp jeans. Unfortunately, while keeping one eye on her slim backside and another on the jeans I was hurriedly crawling into... I suddenly noticed, with the other eye now, that I’d climbed into my jeans backwards. Feeling it would be infi
nitely more ridiculous to be caught with my pants on backwards than with no pants at all, I reversed the process with the same haste. Only now, instead of keeping one eye trained on the girl and the other on my jeans, I fixed both eyes on the task tangled around my ankles. What happened next I would never quite figure out? Whether as a result of this sudden change of focus (from a balanced one-eye up/one-eye down to the more lopsided both eyes down) or because the big toe on my left foot had caught on the fly of my jeans... next thing I knew I was face down on the floor... my jeans twisted horribly around my ankles... ass straight up in the air.
While struggling to right myself, I saw the cleaning maid slumped out on the floor beside the half-made bed. Her body was stricken with strange shakings and convulsions. Her mouth was wide open—as though to laugh—but produced low guttural choking sounds instead. Standing, I tugged my jeans to my waist and, leaving the fly undone, rushed to the girl’s assistance. Lifting her from the floor to the bed, I soon discovered that what I had feared was a seizure or stroke was, in reality, a bizarre kind of laughter.
I also discovered, as I brushed back the hair from the girl’s smiling, tear-soaked face, that she was, in fact, the very same young girl I’d mistaken for Miss Sue Ann Bonnet earlier this evening on the Elbow Room’s porch.
“Excuse me,” I began, standing up from the bed. “But aren’t you—“
I stopped speaking as the girl became stricken with another streak of her bizarre laughter. Looking anxiously around the room for a probable cause... it wasn’t until I’d given up the search and had, matter-of-factly, gazed down at my own person that I located the source of the girl’s guffaws. My jeans had slipped down to my ankles again! Realizing how ridiculous I must have looked inquiring of her identity in so formal a fashion with my shlong dangling out there right in front of her, I was overcome with an attack of the first genuine out-and-out laughter I’d experienced since arriving in Alaska.
The girl had slid down the side of the bed again. I didn’t even bother to raise her. Instead, I placed a comradely hand on one of her shoulders while she sat sprawled at me feet. And it was while in this seemingly obvious position Helen walked in on the girl and me.
“Tell him to hold his horses!” I heard Helen say as she appeared in the doorway. “Tell him to hold it till I get there.”
Helen had been talking with someone down the hall and smiling when she first looked in on the spectacle of me and the cleaning girl and me laughing away at the foot of the unmade bed. Her smiling ceased as she entered the room.
“Well I’ll be!” Helen exclaimed, hands on her hips. “If I ain’t seen it all now!”
Helen had shed her old clothing and appeared now in a skin-tight blue leotard. Her gray eyes were smoking, and it was obvious she was just as pissed at me as she was with the girl. In spite of her 5’3” height, her thick chest and shoulders, and fiery disposition, made her surprisingly intimidating: like Jane Fonda on steroids.
While I finished buttoning my fly, Helen moved across the room in three lightning steps. Jerking the cleaning girl up off the floor, she backhanded her across the mouth so fiercely that the girl began to bleed instantly. Not allowing the girl to crumble just yet, Helen backhanded her across the other side of her face, letting her collapse this time.
“Goddamn deaf and dumb little wench! Working one of my Johns! If I ever—“
But Helen was unable to finish as I shoved her out in the hall.
“Lay off her!” I shouted. “She hasn’t done a damn thing—“
I stopped when Helen went flying down the hall, yelling for help.
Furious, I knelt beside the girl with a towel I’d grabbed from her cleaning cart. I raised her to seated position against the doorjamb, my hands shaking as I pressed the towel to her mouth. Helen had referred to her as DEAF AND DUMB. DEAF AND DUMB! That was it! That is why the girl had appeared so strange there on the Elbow Room porch and why she appeared so strange now: her child-like body convulsing again; her mouth wide open—making the same guttural choking noises—tears once again streaming from her eyes—but not from laughter this time. From pain! Pain because she’d been mistaken for doing what Helen had been about to do to me. Tears filled my own eyes. I remembered how Sue Ann had told me that Alaska was not a whore... not something to hump and dump on. And here I was, only a few days later, literally doing the very same! But—NO!—not doing so! Saved by this strange angel!
“There he is! With the little wench!” I heard Helen shriek from down the hall.
Helen and two football-player sized men stomped up the hall towards us.
Resting the girl against the jamb, I stepped out in the hall to meet them. Surprising even myself, I caught the biggest of the two—the older one with the balding crew cut Helen had referred to as “Al”—right on the chin, bringing the man to the floor with a loud thud. My luck ran out with the second bouncer. Even though half-dressed men and women were flying out of their rooms to see what all the commotion was and thereby creating more commotion... and even though I was able to knock the wind out of the second bouncer while a brave boxer-shorts clad Tom Rapp held the man’s arms back for me... I could not, would not, survive Helen:
Unbeknownst to me, Helen had tiptoed up from behind with a large porcelain vase and brought it down on top of my head.
Before completely blacking out, staring at the shards of vase around my skull, I heard the second bouncer say:
“Ah, Helen! He was a scrappy one. Why you always gotta go ruining things?”
And heard (or thought I heard) Helen reply:
“Shut up, Mac! Just get this lunk and the others he came in with outta here! We got customers to attend to!”
Chapter Eleven
Exchange at Sea
When I opened my eyes that morning... it wasn’t to the image of Miss Sue Ann Bonnet spooning chicken broth into my mouth and replacing cold compresses from my forehead... as I’d been dreaming... rather... to Philip Swanson’s upside-down face beaming down at me like Satan himself... kicking madly on the head-piece of my bed board inches from my left ear... yelling:
“Out of that bunk and up on deck! That’s it! By God... look at him, boys. The Wonder kid from Roxie’s Whorehouse! Out the night before to make it with all whorehouse employees and kick ass on every rebel-rouser and sorry son of a bitch in Pelican, U.S.A.! That’s him all right. Rested now and just a-raring to go at them lines out back!”
“All right! All right!” I protested when Swanson started to physically pull me off the bed board. “I’m getting up—damn it!”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed board. Thus, semi-seated, with my sleeping bag still wrapped around my legs, I was at least allowed to hold my head in my hands and wonder.
“What time is it? Where are we?”
There was enough light in the hull that I guessed it was somewhere around nine in the morning. I could tell by the familiar seesawing action of the floor that we were at sea, but this seesawing was more marked than usual.
Swanson had thrown together a pot of coffee and was lighting the stove’s pilot.
“You slept through half the morning,” Swanson said, extinguishing the match just before its flame reached his fingertips. Only Swanson had mastered the technique of lighting our damper less stove with a single matchstick. “After the Rapp brothers brought you down from Roxie’s I let you sleep the rest of the way out.”
I shook my head carefully. I remembered something about being carried back to the boat from the whorehouse and how Helen had dropped a vase over my head. Palming the top of my skull, I felt a bump the size of large walnut.
“Thanks... ” I said. Then, checking myself for other bruises, added: “Where are we? How come we aren’t in Pelican?”
Swanson explained that the Alaska Board of Fisheries out of Anchorage had posted an EMERGENCY THREE DAY CLOSURE coming up in three days. The bad thing about this was the dates of this closure coincided with the peak of the King Salmon Run. Each year, a day either way of a fixed
calendar date, the greatest number of migrating King salmon flooded these inlet waters on way to their natal streams. The money made during these three days often determined a good season from a bad one. It was Swanson’s opinion that the regulators had chosen to announce this closure date at the last minute to catch fishermen off guard.
This is why we’d put-out from Pelican last night for Esther Island. Esther Island was a misnomer: a kind of underwater reef that formed a shallow expanse of water salmon liked to travel over as they come off the open ocean. It was at the northern head of Chicagof Island, midway between Cross Sound and the Pacific Ocean. It was here Swanson believed we might “head-off” some of these salmon before they poured into the inlet waters from the open sea.
I remembered the conversation I’d had with Sue Ann Bonnet about decreasing fish counts and over fishing, but decided it was probably not a good idea to bring this up right now (particularly in wake of the trouble I’d caused the night before!).
“And that’s where we are right now?” I said, my aching head beginning to throb.
“You got it!” said Swanson. Then, pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee, finished:
“I’d best get back the wheel. We’re near a good-sized wash-rock ‘bout now. Feel free to mug up... splash your face... and what-have-you. But don’t be pussyfooting around. A little something’s come up and I’m in need of your services above.”
And like a bee ordered back to its hive, Swanson turned and disappeared up the 5-step ladder.
Dashing, tripping, stumbling, falling, crawling across the floor of the hull, I made it just in time to vomit into an empty herring bucket across the room. Like a dog over its dish, I held my face over the salt-rimmed bucket and continued to wretch. My skull squeezed down on my brain each time a new heave came up. In midst of this came a weird urge to pray. But to what God or image I could not think! Perhaps for the first time since I’d been out here I realized just how removed from the rest of the world I really was. No one, not even Brian Connelly back in Juneau, really knew where I was at this moment. I’d made reference in a post card that I was fishing: but as to exactly where and with whom I was fishing, nothing. As far as he or anyone else was concerned, I could be anywhere along the Alaskan coast from Ketchikan to the Bering Sea! Overwhelmed by the thought, I clawed the hardwood floor as a new wave of nausea rose up inside me.
