Feather for Hoonah Joe

by Marianne Schlegelmilch

  “I want ya ta stop worryin’ about me, Jane. Everyone’s actin’ like I’m daft or somethin’,” Sal said to Mara as the two sipped coffee.

  “Well, it’s just that we all love you, Sal, and—”

  “Look, Jane, there ain’t no need ta worry. I ain’t crazy and I ain’t feeble and I ain’t losin’ my faculties or anything like that, okay?”

  Mara gave Sal a gentle hug.

  “Jest because I forgot a coupla things fer a minute here an’ there don’t mean I’m some old geezer that needs a bunch a protection from myself, ya know. Haven’t ya ever slipped up? Huh?”

  “Okay, Sal. I’m sorry if we overreacted. Joe loves you so much and Doug and I do, too.”

  “Well, ya don’t need ta kill me with kindness or smother me with the warm fuzzies, Jane. Hell’s a blazin’, how’d ya think I made it this far in life? Do ya think someone babysat me fer the last eighty years? Well, think about that, Jane. I ain’t no helpless old broad wearin’ granny diapers, ya know.”

  “I’m sorry, Sal, but barking at me is not going to make me worry one iota less about you and the sooner you figure that out, the better we’re going to get along here.”

  Mara stifled the urge to smile. Everyone knew you didn’t talk back to Sal and certainly you didn’t laugh about it if you did.

  Sal kept her tongue as she got up and carried her empty mug back inside and placed it in the sink. Why were they all so danged worried about her anyway? Did they think she should be sitting in a rocking chair and only getting up to stir the soup and change her apron? Because if that’s what they thought—

  “Don’t worry about the dishes, Sal. I’ll take care of them later.”

  “Ya know, there’s gonna be a lotta stuff floatin’ on over here from that big tsunami they had over there in Japan. That means there’s gonna be money ta be made, Jane. I’m jest tryin’ ta figure out how I can work it for me ‘n Joe and you and yer old man.”

  “You know his name is Doug, Sal. And the debris is not necessarily coming here.”

  So this was what was on Sal’s mind.

  “Besides, they say it’s radioactive. They’re also saying we need to respect the property of the Japanese people and—”

  “Blah, blah, blah, Jane. Respect is as respect does and yakkety yak yak. I’m tellin’ ya there’s money out there. Now, I ain’t sayin’ I’m gonna snatch some poor widow’s diamond ring offa dead skeleton floatin’ on by—”

  “Sal!”

  “It’s jest a figure a speech, Jane. Don’t get all righteous on me, okay? What ya don’t know is that Bert and me made enough money on salvage ta buy both the Storm Roamer and the Driftfeather. Seiners like them don’t come cheap as ya already learned. Now if things pan out like I think they’re gonna, then the four of us stand to make a tidy sum outta the remains a that tidal wave and no one’s gonna get disrespected or hurt exceptin’ the four of us if we don’t jump on this opportunity before anyone else gets the same idea.”

  “Well, I know the Coast Guard just sank that ship off of Sitka the other day,” Mara answered, “but I hadn’t really given it much more thought.”

  “Look, the Feds is already messin’ with fishin’ quotas and things are a blastin’ mess with knowin’ how anyone’s gonna make a dime offa fishin’ anymore, so we need ta be smart and start plannin’ ahead, that’s all I’m sayin.”

  Sal grabbed a sponge and began to wipe the table.

  “Yer jest as bad as my Joey, Jane. Ain’t no entrepreneurial spirit in neither of ya.”

  Chapter Four

  Beachmoppers, Inc.

  For the next month Mara spent most of her spare time getting KonaJane’s ready for the first cruise ship of the season. It arrived in Juneau by mid-May, just as the work was finished. Doug had helped her by painting the outside of the shop, resealing all the roof vents, and repairing some of the loose planks in the deck, while she had scrubbed the walls and floors inside and completely deep cleaned the kitchen area. Together they had hauled the outdoor tables out of storage and inserted huge yellow and blue umbrellas into holes in the centers—a look that brought the dark green building to life.

  On the last day of May, Doug had set out on his first fishing trip of the season—he captaining the Storm Roamer, and his longtime friend and crew-member, Derrk Stanley, the Driftfeather. They had decided over the winter that Mara would work hard to get KonaJane’s profitable that summer, while Doug would become familiar with the fisheries in their area that would allow him to make a living while still returning home at least weekly.

  “When ya comin’ west, Jane?” Sal bellowed into Mara’s smartphone one afternoon in early June. “Me’n my Joe’s been out almost every day checkin’ things out and I’m tellin’ ya, it’s worse than they said.”

  Mara listened as Sal told her about the massive amounts of debris washing up on the beaches of outer islands all along the Gulf of Alaska.

  “Ya know that place where we all beached our seiners that day right before ya married yer ole man?”

  “Can’t you call him Doug?”

  “Yeah, Doug, okay? Anyway, it’s chock-full a nothin’ but driftwood covered with old insulation, pieces a broken cabinets, torn clothing, shoes . . . Ya name it, Jane, and it’s out there. Soon as my Joey saw the mess, he was all in on the deal. Finally saw the potential, jest like I said.”

  “Have you been cataloging it? Selling it? Returning it? Exactly what are you doing with what you find?” Mara asked, feigning interest in the endeavor while she made a couple of cappuccinos for some customers who had come in moments before.

  “Well, the first thing I figured out was that haulin’ it all away was gonna be a big problem,” Sal said. “I mean, haul it ta where?

  The second thing I learned was that there’s so much of it, that mosta the usual buyers are already contractin’ out to regular debris collectors.”

  “Already? One moment, Sal . . .”

  “That’ll be $5.50,” she told her customers after placing the phone on the counter. “Okay, I’m back now. You were saying.”

  “So, Joe and me, well, we had ta make a decision on jest what we was gonna do ta stay—what can I say, Jane—marketable, ya know. The answer’s gonna shock ya, so I hope yer sittin’ down.”

  “I’m not but I will, Sal—not that I can think of anything that you do that would shock me.”

  Mara smiled. It was wonderful to hear Sal sounding like her old self again with none of the forgetfulness that she had shown a few months ago now evident.

  “Very funny, Jane,” Sal said, bringing her back to the present. “Now ya gonna keep interuptin’me with drivel or ya gonna listen up?”

  “Lay it on me, Sal,” Mara laughed. “But hurry, because I see a couple of people wandering over this way.”

  “Joe and me, well, we figured there wasn’t no money in collectin’ the debris ourselves—‘specially when ya consider all the fuel costs and even the time we had to spend comin’ and goin’. Besides, we ain’t as young as we were when Bert and me was salvagin’. So, anyway,” Sal said, stopping to catch her breath, “we started up our own debris recovery business called Beachmoppers, Inc. Hired us a coupla college students, bought an old landing craft that was about to be scrapped, and set about pickin’ up contracts, while sendin’ our staff out to pick up debris.”

  “So, how’s the business doing so far, Sal?”

  “Well, let’s jest say we got us two crews and are in the process a buyin’ an old storage building in the boatyard to turn inta a sortin’ facilty,” Sal said.” Seems like these collectors is getting’ pretty persnickety about how they want their stuff brought in. Yup. T’ain’t like the old days when me ‘n Bert used ta haul everythin’ . . .”

  Sal’s voice suddenly became muffled as she began talking to someone else.

  “Love ya, too, sweet baby,” she called, before returning to her conversation with Mara. “That was my Joey.”

  “I figured,” Mara answered. “Maybe Doug and I will take one o
f our seiners over to Hoonah next week. We miss you both, you know.”

  “Yeah, back at ya, Jane. Anyways, Joey and I should be the proud owners a the old storage shed at the boatyard in Hoonah by jest about this time tomorrow.”

  “How big is it, Sal?”

  “Big enough for all the junk and with enough room to dry dock two seiners, too, if we need to do any work, ya know. It’s gonna need a coat a paint. Well, maybe I can hire us a coupla—”

  “Doug and I can help paint,” Mara interrupted.

  “Couldn’t ask that, Jane. Ya two’s got yer own thing goin’ . . .”

  “How about if we just call it our vacation and show up for the week before solstice?” Mara insisted.

  KonaJane’s would be fine with the help of the regulars she hired each summer during their college breaks. She would concentrate on building the business next year.

  “Well, okay, Jane. Okay,” Sal answered, not even pretending to try to dissuade her.

  “Gotta go, Sal. More customers. See you soon.”

  Chapter Five

  Solstice

  Despite their plans to dedicate the full summer to their own endeavors, Doug was up for the idea of spending summer solstice in Hoonah and for painting Sal’s new building—what Mara laughingly called his sense of adventure and spontaneity. By the second week of June he had already obtained enough paint and equipment to haul over on the Driftfeather.

  Meanwhile, Derrk had agreed to hire a crew to help him and his son take the Storm Roamer out for the entire month. At Doug’s insistence, Derrk had agreed to take a percentage of the profits in addition to a generous salary in return for his help in keeping his fishing enterprise going for the summer.

  “It’s only fair,” he had told his loyal friend.

  A week later, with only two days left before solstice, Doug, Mara, Joe, and Sal put the final red trim on the old boat shed they had painted gray. When the group of college students they had hired to paint the company name on the side of the shed suggested a mural instead, the four jumped at the idea, cheering the team on as they worked.

  Although the business would be known as Beachmoppers on paper, around Hoonah it readily became known as The Gallery—the place with the colorful scenes depicting beaches full of empty boxes and tsunami debris painted on the side, with the lower right hand corner of the mural illustrating Sal and Joe in their recovery vessel dragging a net full of debris up the ramp with a loader.

  Sal and Mara held an open house on the day of the summer solstice that included performances by two local bands as well as an array of community artists who were set up under canopies outside of Beachmoppers. Inside, they held a sale featuring, among other treasures, a large array of rubber floats that Sal’s crews had salvaged from the beaches. They also provided twice-daily personal tours of the new facility.

  As luck would have it, a small cruise ship had docked for the day, bringing in an eclectic array of tourists who seemed to be mostly from New York, and whose enthusiasm for all things labeled as Japanese tsunami debris sent Sal scurrying to their beached landing craft by midafternoon to look for a few more things to sell.

  When she got to the scrapyard that Joe had leased from the state, she went aboard the vessel, just to make sure everything was secure. Then she returned to her truck and drove to their adjacent lot to look for more floats.

  Initially, they had stored everything they salvaged on that lot. Now that most everything had been moved to the new facility, just a couple of trucks and trailers, and a few odds and ends that still needed to be moved remained. She made a mental note to hire someone to mow down the weeds before next week when the landing craft was due in from its next excursion and the lot would be filled again.

  From her pickup, she spotted an elderly woman with a slight build whose choice of lightweight designer summer wear immediately labeled her as a tourist.

  “Probably one of the boat people from New York,” she snickered under her breath. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the sale’s back at the big shed at the boatyard,” she said out loud.

  The elderly woman continued approaching, undeterred by Sal’s remarks.

  “Well, if I could have ever guessed where you’d been hiding all these years, it never would have been on this remote island in Alaska, Sylvia,” the woman said, displaying no sign of surprise at encountering the older sister she hadn’t seen since she was a sixteen-year-old student at boarding school and Sal was a twenty-one year old college graduate.

  Sal stepped back. Could that really be who she thought it was? She looked downward, pretending to busy herself, while she collected her thoughts. Was there nowhere on earth that a body could escape to? Even after sixty years, the pain of their separation remained as fresh as if it were yesterday, only now the hurt had been replaced with anger at having been forced out of the comfortable life from which she had been forced to flee.

  “Hidin’ I ain’t, and welcomin’ the likes a you I ain’t either, Elzianne. What ya want here anyway? Gettin’ bored with yer society friends?” Sal answered, addressing her estranged younger sister and ready with one of the quick retorts that had always marked any of their conversations—the long years having done little to dim either their recognition of, or contempt for each other.

  “Oh dear, Sylvia. Did you develop that charming folksy accent while you were at Yale, or did it just come to you from living life on the run up here in the closest place to Siberia where you could still keep your citizenship—and abide by the terms of the trust mother set up for you?”

  Sal flinched at the reference to her obviously altered speech pattern, one that she had carefully developed in her mission to divest herself of all remnants of her past.

  “What would you know about me, my citizenship, or anything else, Elzi? Get outta my life once and fer all. I spent half my adult life tryin’ ta make ya love me—sendin’ ya letters, plane tickets, leavin’ ya messages ya never returned—but ya could never put aside yer life’s mission ta envy my every move to even see any goodness in me, so ya been dead to me ever since I finally saw ya fer what ya was, and dead to me yer gonna stay.”

  “Now, Sylvia, as touched as I am by your kind reminder of our sisterly love, I’d like to interrupt the accolades to snap a photo of you to share with the rest of the family—and especially with Bert’s surviving nephew, who is firmly convinced, by the way, that his uncle’s loss at sea was no accident . . .”

  “Git offa this island, ya connivin’ wannabe,” Sal hollered. “Ya don’t know beans about me or my Bert and if yer in contact with his slimy lawyer nephew, it can only mean yer still tryin’ ta come between me and my Bert just like ya always did—and don’t think he didn’t show me all the love letters you sent under the guise of checking on me over the years. The only difference now is ya only got his memory left ta mess with, cause ya ain’t getting’ ta me anymore no matter how hard ya try.”

  “Why, Sylvia, how can you blame me like this when all I ever wanted was to be like you.”

  “Be like me or be me, Elzi? Ya always been too lazy ta even carve out yer own identity in life, and it’s more’n plain that ya been listenin’ ta—or more‘n likely creatin’—all the lies and rumors that’s been floatin’ through the ranks since Bert and I left the confines of Rhinebeck and all the love the parade a nannies hired by our mother could buy.”

  “Well, mother was good enough to look out for both of our futures. And call me naïve, Sylvia, but why would she lie about something as serious as insider trading and the pending criminal indictment about to be handed down to the then CEO of our local investment firm, your own Bert Kindle.”

  “Bert Kindle was a good and honest man, Elzianne Jeanette LaMonte—you did take your maiden name after your Hollywood leading man left you for his younger male co-star didn’t you?” Sal shot back, speaking for the first time in the succinct and perfect English that reflected her education and upbringing.

  “How did you know about—?”

  “It was right there on the fro
nt page of every scandal sheet in every super market in America—but then, you have people who shop for you, don’t you, Elzi, so you can claim you didn’t see them?”

  Sal left no time for Elzi to respond before continuing.

  “On the other hand, maybe our dear mother was the one who was, shall we say, scurrilously involved with not just the insider trading, but the man who orchestrated it, Bert’s own father, Jameson Kindle, who was too busy wooing her with his charms to stop his goons from trying to frame his own son.”

  “Ooh, Sylvia, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Elzi said, recovering her aplomb and answering with the expressionless smile and coolness born of years of speaking down to most everyone in her life. “At our age—well, we must remain civil lest we risk affecting our health and all . . . you know. Surely you realize that Jameson fired everyone of those who tried to drag Bert down, but by then, you and Bert had already left.”

  “I would like to invite you to leave—go back to whatever it is you do now,” Sal said, again speaking with perfect diction and with a restraint that surprised even her.

  Turning her back on Elzianne, she threw a couple of floats into the bed of her pickup before climbing inside just as her husband drove up.

  “Sal. What’s going on? Everyone’s looking for you back at the Gallery.” Joe Michael said, stepping down from the running board of his one-ton dualie.

  “Jest talkin’ ta one a the touri, Joey,” Sal answered. “I’m gonna follow ya back right now, matter a fact.”

  “Does the lady need a lift?” Joe asked.

  “She says she’ll be fine enough, sweet baby,” Sal called to Joe before leaning out her pickup window and hissing to Elzi, “If I so much as see a thread from your Chanel suit on this island ever again, Elzianne, you are going to rue the day you tried to bring your kind of disgusting innuendo anywhere near the people and the place that I love.”

  From his side mirror, Joe Michael watched the exchange, none the wiser when the smile on Sal’s face perfectly disguised her full-blown contempt for the sister who had spent an entire lifetime trying to bring her down.