The Alaskan Laundry

by Brendan Jones

  When she reached him she wished him a happy Thanksgiving. He blinked. “A happy Thanksgiving would have been if white people had gone back to England after we fed them. It disgusts me. All of it. This whole island.”

  Lifting his tray, he began to walk toward the kitchen.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, following him.

  “They’re starting construction along the road through our graveyard.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s not you, Tara,” he said, worrying his thin lips. “I need to leave this place.”

  She watched his back, then returned to where Newt and Thomas were sitting. “Here. I got you filled up,” Newt said, tearing a bun apart.

  Thomas, unscrewing the lid of the salt shaker to dust his food, examined Tara. “Does your Indian friend take you hunting?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, studying him across the table. “Before the end of the season. He’s waiting for a good snow.”

  “Merde,” Thomas said, sawing into turkey. “You are so lucky. But don’t you think it is strange that the Indian people celebrate this day. You know? He eats here with all the white people, and it is his land.”

  “Fuck you, Frenchy,” Newt said, buttering his bun. “Don’t ruin my meal with your bad thoughts. I need the sustenance. I swear, T, this chick Jackie on the Adriatic is gonna be the death of me. She hardly gives us time to eat. Thinks she’s leading Pharaoh’s own army out there.”

  “Like you said, we’re made of the tough stuff, right?”

  “Unlike my sturdy French turd over here, playing Davy Crockett with his Frau in the woods.”

  Thomas smiled back. “You are crazy, my friend. Loco.”

  After the meal Newt and Thomas said they were heading back to the clearing before the snow started. Tara wanted to check her postbox. Which was absurd, she knew, because she was the one who owed Connor a letter after that flimsy postcard. A longer letter, one she had been putting off writing.

  Just before splitting up, Newt narrowed his eyes at her. “T, you know I’d fight tigers in the dark for you, right?”

  “I know it.”

  “So don’t get mad when I ask. You got your head on straight with that old guy?”

  “Betteryear?”

  “Yeah.”

  She considered. Even if he could be a pain in the ass, she liked spending time with him. And knowing she had a roof to sleep under, a warm fire to sit by, made a difference. Even if things did get strange.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “T, you’ve got a lot of good qualities. But knowing what you’re doing ain’t one of them.”

  45

  HALFWAY INTO THE FOLLOWING WEEK Trunk called her into his office.

  “Good Thanksgiving?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Yours?”

  “Great. My ex had the kids. Close the door,” he ordered. She pulled a chair up to his desk. “I got good news and bad news.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Last night your buddy lost an eye.”

  Her head snapped up. “Newt?”

  He nodded.

  “What do you mean, he lost an eye?”

  “He cut a line under tension. It came back at him and ruptured his eyeball. They bandaged it up, dropped him in Juneau. He’ll be back on the Rock in a couple days.”

  “Oh my god,” she said, feeling the onset of tears. She knew fishing was dangerous. But this? Just last Thursday they had shared that meal. Could he still work? Save for the Plume fund? “That bitch on the Adriatic,” Tara murmured.

  “She’s been called a lot worse, trust me. And that leads me to the good news. Bailey’s off to graze in greener pastures, he got a job on a herring crew. Which puts you next in line for the tender spot. Interested?”

  “What about Newt?”

  He stood up, and so did she. “Go pick him up from the airport, if you like. No doubt he could use the help. In the meantime, get yourself a crew license. Won’t be for a long stretch, just two days to finish up the cuke season. If Jackie doesn’t hate you maybe she’ll give you a shot at salmon next spring. You ship out December sixth, a week from today. And hey.” He looked hard at her. “You’re a good hand. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

  Her chest warmed. “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious. Keep that in mind, no matter what that viper says.”

  46

  NEWT MADE A JOKE OF IT at the airport, holding his arms out in front of him like Frankenstein as he emerged from the gate. Gauze covered the right side of his face. A sly, embarrassed grin worked over his lips.

  “Greetings from a gimp,” he said.

  She hugged him, feeling the long, taut muscles of his back. “Damn, Newt. I’m so sorry.”

  “Ach, it’s part of the business. Our numbers all come up sooner or later.”

  “Do you have bags?” she asked.

  “Just broken ol’ me.”

  On the ride back over the bridge she stole glances at his eye patch. Little Vic had broken a leg once on his Huffy bike. Connor had told her stories of tools falling from scaffolding and knocking workers unconscious. But nothing like this.

  “Truth was, I hardly felt it,” Newt said. “Darn thing snapped back so fast. I was down in the hold cutting loose a brailer bag of cukes and bang! ’Cept now I get these goddamn headaches that are like to blow the cap of my brain off.” He grimaced. “And I gotta figure out a way to make money.” Immediately she felt bad for accepting work on the tender. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m not going back into those woods just yet. I don’t give a flying shit about that bitch of a bartender. Let’s go to the Front.”

  But when they walked into the Frontier, Cassie brought out her bat. “Dude just lost an eye on a boat, give him a beer,” a fishermen at the bar pleaded.

  “I don’t care if he lost his left testicle to a ling cod. I’ll call the police. Like the judge said, you stay the hell outta my bar.”

  Tara expected Newt to fire back, but he just turned around, head hung. They picked up a suitcase of Rainiers and headed out to the clearing, which appeared abandoned, save for quiet voices coming from behind Frauke’s canvas. Tara made a fire, and they sat drinking.

  “Who knows,” Newt said. “Maybe that bitch’ll hate Bailey more than me.”

  Tara crushed a can beneath the heel of her boot. “Trunk asked me to go,” she said. Newt looked up. “He said Bailey got a spot on a seiner.”

  “No shit.” He picked up a hatchet and balanced a piece of cedar on the stump. “Well, at least we’re keeping it in the family, right? Maybe that old she-devil will be sweet seein’ as how you’ve got a vagina.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tara said. “Should I have said no?”

  “Quit that. If I was you I’d run through my knots. Fuck if I can’t hardly chop wood,” he said, throwing aside the hatchet and sprawling by the fire. “Can’t quit this headache either. Damn noggin’s about to crack open.”

  “You want tea?” she asked, setting the kettle on the grate.

  “Hell no. This Vitamin R does me right. Truth be told, I’d rather be back in that Juneau hospital with a broken back and colon cancer than do another tour with that wack-job. Oh—almost forgot to say it. You hear word on the tug?”

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “We saw it being towed back north. Laney was out there drinking wine with a couple that looked like they walked straight outta the Patagonia catalogue. For my money they’re back tied up on the transient at this very moment.”

  “Wait,” she said, her heart pounding. “The Chief’s back? You’re sure.”

  “Hard to mix up that vessel with anything else.”

  The water started to boil. She fetched a mug from the platform. When she came back Newt was already snoring, beer in one hand about to tip. She set the can aside, draped a blanket over his legs, added wood to the fire, and watched as the flames caught, hoping it was true.

  47

  DECEMBER SIXTH—a cloudless,
wind-scoured Sunday, the temperature hovering just above freezing. With the collar of her halibut coat up, she marched out to the docks. No one answered her knock on the Chief. She left a note for Laney: Please find me.

  When she arrived at the processor to meet the Adriatic, Trunk came out of his office.

  “Someone on the phone for you,” he said.

  She assumed it was Laney, calling to say the boat was still for sale. Please, she thought. Please let it be.

  “Hello?”

  “Figlia?”

  Her legs went gummy. She heard the click of his espresso saucer as he ashed his cigar. “You are occupied?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s fine. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, yes, everything is fine. Connor told me this is where you work. And—I received your letter in the mail.”

  He cleared his throat. There was a tentativeness in his voice she hadn’t heard before.

  “The man I spoke with said you were about to go on a boat. Is this true?”

  She felt Trunk’s eyes against her back. Go away, she thought.

  “It is. For a couple days.”

  “Like your mother’s father in Sicily.”

  Even when she had been alive Urbano rarely spoke about her mother’s past. And since her death he hadn’t talked about her at all.

  Trunk waved a hand in front of her face. “Tara. It’s go-time.”

  Fuck the tender, she thought.

  “There is something I need to talk to you about, figlia.”

  “What?”

  “It is something serious. Do your work, then call me when you return.”

  And he hung up.

  “That your old man?” Trunk asked as she set down the receiver. She ignored him, pushed past, and went onto the dock to allow her mind to turn over. It made no sense that he had searched her down at the processor, figured out when she would be arriving. And what could he want to talk to her about?

  She dropped her duffel on the dock and waited. Beneath her was the Adriatic, a cement-decked boat with a castle on the stern. Did it have to do with her hanging up on him? He was angry. Maybe he wanted to formalize their split. Put it in writing. Make the disowning permanent.

  A compact, muscular woman walked over, reaching back to reknot a blue handkerchief over her blond bob.

  “You lost?” she asked. The wind made it difficult to hear.

  “No, just waiting to get on the boat.”

  The woman looked toward the processor. “Trunk said they were sending a dude.”

  So this was Jackie. “Guess not. He’s in his office if you wanna ask him.”

  Gulls screeched, fighting over fish waste. Jackie paused. “You green?” she asked.

  “Green?”

  “Yeah, green. As in a greenhorn. Cheechako. I just had someone lose an eye doing something very dumb, so I’m not in the mood to have beginners on my boat.”

  “That was my friend. We worked in the cannery together.”

  “This isn’t a cannery, it’s a seafood processor. So I’ll take that as a ‘Yes, Jackie, I’m green.’ Where did you grow up?”

  It was the woman’s tone that made Tara cant her left shoulder forward, drift her weight onto the ball of her right foot, and prepare to drop this obnoxious woman who had driven Newt so hard. Loose strands of hair blew around the woman’s eyes. Tara reshouldered her duffel, pulled her hat low. This was about the last thing she needed.

  When she started to walk away the woman gripped her shoulder. “Keep your fucking hands off me,” Tara spit.

  “Okay, okay. God, you’re strung tight. Better than being some hippie. Go on, throw that bag and bibs on deck.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Jackie slid down the steel ladder onto the boat. Tara watched from above.

  “C’mon!” Jackie shouted. “Now or never. We’re pulling out.”

  After hesitating, she tossed her duffel, followed by her bibs, which landed with a slap on the concrete deck.

  Inside the galley Jackie poured herself a cup of coffee, then handed one to Tara. “I gotta say, I liked the look in your eyes out there. You got fire in your belly.”

  Her anger evaporated as she looked around. There was a small wooden dish rack beside the stainless-steel sink, a gas stove with a griddle scoured clean, and a Hoosier cabinet filled with jars of smoked and pickled salmon and string beans. Striped linen kitchen cloths hung above the sink. After so much walking around in the harbor, dreaming about life on the tug, here she was, finally on a boat.

  The hull shuddered as the engines fired. “Cut her loose, my bride!” a voice yelled. They both went out on deck. Jackie introduced Tara to Teague, her husband, who had a white goatee and wore ripped fleece pants. “You know how to remove line from a cleat?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Husband and wife watched as Tara dragged the braided rope through the water, coiling it like a snail’s shell as she had seen others do. Her heart rate only slowed when Jackie flipped a thumbs-up.

  Black exhaust rose from the stacks as they steamed down the channel beneath a clear sky. She stood by the gunwales, looking back toward town, like the deckhands she had watched so many times leaving the processor.

  The forests and mountains that had appeared so threatening when she first arrived now insulated her, and the seven miles of road on either side of town that before had felt so constricting now were just long enough—she couldn’t imagine ever being stuck in a traffic jam on the expressway, in the shadow of a tractor-trailer, again. As for her father, she knew he was waiting for her call. So it went. She’d call, when she was good and ready.

  As they approached the outer harbor she saw the Pacific Chief tied up at the corner. The boat looked lonely, its anchor hanging down like an elephant tear. And there, on deck in her Adirondack chair, Laney, red shawl blowing in the wind.

  “Hey!” Tara yelled across the water, waving with both hands. “What happened?”

  “We got as far as Petersburg!” Laney shouted back.

  She cupped her hands around her lips. “Is it still for sale?”

  “Twenty-five!” Laney returned.

  I don’t care if the galley leaks, she thought. That’s my boat.

  48

  LIFE ON THE TENDER WAS INTIMATE, self-contained. Seldom, except when she was in her small bunk, was she alone. There were always eyes on her, making sure she worked, and worked quickly. Teague wasn’t bad, just flirtatious in a jokey, harmless manner, even as he told Tara about his wife, how she had grown up in the bush, homeschooled until third grade, walking seven miles to town and back.

  “Her and her brother could either take a dog or a gun with them for bear,” he said, shaking his head. “She was eighteen when she learned a toilet flushed. Imagine that.”

  Teague anchored in a bay near where the divers worked, red flags raised high, yellow hose coiling around the boat as they walked the ocean floor for sea cucumbers. He got on the VHF to advertise the price per pound, encouraging folks to unload with the Adriatic. As the first boat motored toward them, Tara watched Jackie, her rosy windblown face, blue handkerchief holding back her blond hair. The woman had bony, birdlike shoulders, and wore a wool sweater with frayed cuffs and a darned collar. There was an invincible quality to her, Tara decided, an air of the Viking out to plunder.

  “Ready? Boat coming in, starboard side. Tie her off,” the woman said as they went out on deck. She spoke in a tone that wasn’t mean, but it didn’t leave room for nice, either. Oblivious to her beauty, which would have turned heads in the Italian Market.

  “You got a fender you can throw down?” the diver called up. He still had his hood on.

  “A what?” Tara asked. He looked at her like she was stupid.

  “A fender! A buoy ball.”

  Jackie came from behind and tossed one overboard. “C’mere. Now watch. If we do salmon it’ll be more of the same. We open the hold, hook up brailer bags to the lift, twirl a finger in the air to signal Teague, and up she comes. Sì?”


  After lowering herself into the hold, Jackie gave a whistle. The hydraulics moaned as the bag swung above the deck, oozing pink slime from the sea cucumbers, nubby creatures that resembled giant caterpillars. Jackie handed the line attached to the bottom of the bag—the “tag line,” she called it—to Tara, and she did her best to hold the sack steady as Teague read off numbers from a glow-in-the-dark LED scale. “Good,” the woman said. “About twenty more like that.”

  As night came on it began to rain. The tips of her curls sticking out from her hood dripped water down her neck. Teague switched on the deck lights, flooding the deck in white. They kept at it until almost six A.M., waiting for the last boat to clean cukes and unload, and still no hint of sun. When Tara began to unbutton her raingear Jackie shook her head. “Not yet, señorita. Need you to check levels on each of the totes, send hoses into the ones that are fullest, make sure they’ve got seawater to keep them fresh. Yes?”

  Her hands and face were covered in cucumber slime. She just wanted to crawl into her bunk, not bother with showering. “No problem,” Tara said.

  “Listen, girlfriend. You stick with me, you’ll be tying knots quicker and pulling line harder than men twice your size. Yeah?” She clapped a hand on Tara’s shoulder, giving a squeeze. “Doesn’t get much easier than this. Trust me.”

  “Thank you for giving me the shot.” But the woman was already on her way to the wheelhouse, removing her gear.

  That night, brushing her teeth in the head, she thought about Jackie, growing up in her homestead with her brother, deciding between the dog and the gun. She wondered whether it might be possible to become like her one day, working so furiously, barking orders. With her toothbrush extending from one side of her mouth, she hardened her face, like she had seen her father do. Men respected Jackie, it seemed, were even afraid of her at times, handing over their permit card without any argument over weights. She’d love to see the small woman give her father hell. He wouldn’t know how to handle her.

  She spit in the miniature porcelain sink, washed it down. Tending bar, slinging coffee, or gaffing fish, women in Alaska carried themselves differently from women down south. As if each one of them had passed through a ring of fire before coming out the other side, flame-tested and hardened. The slag of the past burned off, cooling in the salt air, charting their own course.