The Alaskan Laundry

by Brendan Jones

  When we park the lifeboats pulled up on the sand are familiar. He takes my hand. Wind shifts the grass sideways. Rush of the waves, and the crash. It was a beach I had visited with my mother—we had come here and she had told me about Sicily, and how one day I would visit the island. “These people will welcome you as family,” she told me. And this—it sounds awful, in light of what I am about to write—made me think of you, wishing you were on that beach with me so I could tell you about this time with my mother and her stories.

  We had just about reached the waves when he starts kissing me like he can’t wait another second. He puts my hand on him. When I push back he tackles me, pinning my shoulders. Clamps a hand over my mouth. I scratch at his necklace and he shoves me down. I mean, strong. And then I’m looking up at the purple sky, the jerk and grind in the sand. Awful.

  Why didn’t I tell anyone? Here’s why. The next morning, when I went into the bathroom I see a splotch on my neck. It hurt to walk. My mother called for me to come downstairs. I knew they were both waiting in the parlor, my father in his corner on the couch. She would yell at me for staying out after curfew, and for hanging out with these girls. And he would just watch.

  I found a penny. I had heard at school rubbing it on your skin would make a hickey go away. Just as I started the door opened. And there was Ma. She got this cloudy look on her face, then came back a few minutes later with spoons chilled in the freezer, ice, and peppermint oil. She shook drops over the splotch and kneaded them in with her fingers. There was a plasticky smell left in my nostrils, and the peppermint oil took care of that too. With her fingers she smoothed on makeup. I could swear as she worked her hands had this language of their own. She caught my eyes in the mirror. Put your words in order, Tara. These things happen to women. I know about it. We all know about it. This is what I thought she was telling me.

  When she took her fingers from my neck, the spot had disappeared. We went downstairs. What a nice birthday it had been with my new friends, I told my father. We got lost in Jersey. But no, I will not be seeing those girls again. And because she was not angry, he wasn’t either.

  And that is what happened. What led to my father taking me to Gypo to learn to box—I think he was at a loss how to deal with a 16-year-old who stopped talking. And perhaps it led to this island where I am now.

  I don’t know what writing this will change. I’m not even sure I’ll send it. I just know these words have been building inside me. And it’s time you know.

  Yours,

  T

  54

  ON HER SECOND NIGHT AT HIS CABIN, as Betteryear predicted, it snowed, the beach and trees blanketed white.

  “Would you like to hunt today?” he said over tea and berries. “You can bring your rifle.”

  She had told him about the burning platform, and stomping out of the woods like she did. It was a childish reaction, and she regretted it now. But she was done living in that clearing.

  “Yes,” she decided.

  At the trailhead she adjusted the rifle on her shoulder. The letter had been sitting on a wooden soap crate that Betteryear had set up by her cot. Stamped and addressed, its white envelope giving off some faint nuclear glow. Now she had it in her duffel, in Betteryear’s pickup.

  Her boots squeaked in the snow as she followed behind him. This was nice, enjoying the brief hours of daylight, behind this man, so quiet and intent on the trail. She liked the worn leather strap of the gun, the shift of the stock against her hip. After sitting for so long the day before, tearing that letter out of her, the movement felt good.

  After an hour all they had seen were star-shaped mink prints. As she watched Betteryear’s easy gait ahead of her, she worried her scrambled head was keeping the blacktail away. She willed herself to forget about the platform burning, the letter in the bag, even Betteryear’s sharpness when the saddle blanket caught in the door. Let it all go, she told herself.

  When he stopped in front of her, dropping to his knees, she almost ran into him. He drew a finger to his lips as she crouched by his side. “Look,” he said, running the tip of his finger along the outline of a hoof in the snow. “See how it zigzags, how he drags his hooves.” She examined the slot followed by a scrape, felt his warmth through her wool pants. “Doe move in a straight line, and their hooves are U-shaped, and don’t have this split-toed look to them. This is a buck, what we’re hunting for. Clean edges on the track. Fresh.”

  He rose and walked, slower now, heel-toeing. “If you see something,” he whispered, “you tell me. I don’t want you shooting that gun.”

  They gained elevation. Betteryear removed his glove and spread a palm in a bowl of melted snow. “Feel. This is where he bedded down. A couple minutes ago. He moved when he heard us.” She did, detecting a vague heat.

  Snow began to fall again, making a whisking sound as it sifted through the hemlock needles and fronds of yellow cedar. Their rubber boots squeaked. He shifted the rifle off his shoulder and cradled it in one arm. A movement caught the corner of her eye and she froze, looking off to the side. Just tree trunks, branches, snow. She was about to turn away when a peculiar geometry stopped her. The triangle of a leg, the line of a back, and the white fur of a neck—the shapes resolved into a deer, standing with its back to her, about fifty yards away. It hoofed the forest floor, dropped its head, and nosed away snow.

  She hissed, then clicked her tongue. Betteryear turned, glaring. With her chin she motioned to the right. He twisted, raised his rifle to his shoulder, and leaned against a tree trunk. With a thumb he pushed forward the safety, a glint of red just behind the bolt. She shifted her body for a better view of the deer. A twig snapped. The cat lifted its head, ears aimed toward them. And it ran.

  When the explosion came Tara yelped, clutching her ears. Betteryear pulled back the bolt, and the shell fell into the snow, sizzling before going quiet. The smell of cordite and scorched brass filled the air.

  “You scared him,” he said matter-of-factly. “Come. Let’s see.”

  The deer lay on its side, purple tongue lolled out between grass-stained teeth. Blood leaked from the chest into the snow. A few feet beyond the body was what appeared to be a small animal convulsing.

  “Gunalchéesh,” he said. “Thank you, deer, for giving your life to us, so that we may continue to live.”

  She crouched beside him. “Gunalchéesh.”

  He took the ears in his fists, lifting the head. Ears that had responded to her, to a sound she had made just moments before. He held out a bone-handled knife. “Slice the neck.”

  “What? Isn’t she dead?”

  “It’s a buck. And yes, the heart is in the snow over there.”

  She swallowed, looking over at the shape, which twitched a couple times, then went still. She had just watched a heart stop. A life gone. A halo of red-tinged slush grew around the muscle, and she felt a sadness for this creature that had looked across the woods at her. At that moment her anger at her father seemed so small.

  She dropped to her knees and began to saw.

  “You must apply pressure,” Betteryear instructed. “When males rut their necks grow thick.”

  She pressed harder. Downy fluff drifted across the snow. A jet of blood splattered her wool coat, tapered to a drizzle, and began to bead on the waxy fur. “That was an artery,” he told her. “Keep going. The windpipe and esophagus come next.”

  She gripped the deer by the back of the neck and sliced until the ribbed tube of the trachea split. Betteryear took cloth bags from his backpack and dragged the deer over to a mound of moss.

  “Stand behind here and help.”

  She held the ankles as he swiped off the scent glands on the hind legs, then made an incision along the stomach, turning his knife and dragging the gut hook, revealing the gray bulge of intestines. A musty, coffee-ground scent filled the air. The stomach slid out with a squelch, followed by ropey intestines. He went in again with the knife, making a circle, carving out the diaphragm.

  The stench of f
ish that first day had been awful, a brown sea rot. But this was something else entirely. And the purple-green glop of it—this could very well be her stomach on the forest floor, her guts spilled into the snow, the stench of her empty cavity filling the air.

  “Come. Give me your hands,” he told her. She lowered to her knees. “Both of them.”

  She crouched closer, up to her elbows inside the deer as he guided her palms into the warmth of the chest, the cuffs of her coat brushing ribs. She focused on the tree trunks in front of her.

  “There,” he said as her hand moved over what felt like a mound of hardened Jell-O. “Close your fingers. Pull.”

  She coaxed out the liver, wine-red and floppy in her hand.

  “And now the heart, which I’ve already done for you.”

  It was warm, a fist that fit into her palm. The snow around it had melted, and the bullet had shredded the ventricles. Jellied blood, the purple of grapes, clotted the valves. A muscle like this, just slightly larger, had quickened the other night when she hung up on her father. Had hammered in Avalon as that boy had done what he did. And would hammer again when she put the letter in the mail.

  Betteryear took the heart from her, peeled back a membrane, and sliced with his knife where the flesh came to a rounded point. He held the flat of his blade out to her.

  “Eat,” he said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Trust me. Your body is repulsed by what you’re seeing. But once you eat, your stomach will grow calm again.”

  Closing her eyes, she chewed, the rich taste spreading to the sides of her tongue. When she swallowed she gagged, then swallowed harder, determined.

  “Good, Tara. Remember this,” he said. “Our first blacktail. The next one will be yours to shoot.”

  He went back in, pulling out the lungs and the rest of the multicolored innards. He cracked the pelvic bone, removed the milk-white tangle of scrotum and penis. The blood in the snow reminded her of cherry water ice at John’s. Pebble-shaped droppings leaked out of the anus. He sliced around each hoof, and pulled the hide off with a rasping sound. From either side of the spine he carved the backstrap, two stoles of meat, then nicked out webbing between the ribs, dropping the shreds into a plastic bag.

  “We’ll soak that and make jerky.”

  They flipped the deer. With the tip of his knife he took the tenderloins from the backside. She held the legs wide as he arced the knife around muscle, carving away hindquarters, loosening the plate of a shoulder, which slid easily off the rib cage, then dropped them into the cloth bags she held open.

  “Have you ever tasted tongue?” he asked. She shook her head. “Hold this. Pull.”

  She felt the grit of taste buds against her fingers as she gripped the tongue. He maneuvered the blade of the knife between the chipped moss-colored teeth, prying the jaw open until it snapped. He dug at the root, tugging out the puce-colored muscle.

  “Good boiled. Tender.”

  Her stomach had settled. They spent the next twenty minutes slicing out burger meat from the neck and hindquarters, then loaded the cotton bags, soaked through and distended, into his backpack.

  “Must be a good seventy pounds of meat,” he said, giving little hops to gauge the weight of the pack. He opened the chamber of the rifle, pushed in a round, threw the bolt, and flipped on the safety. “Are you comfortable pulling the trigger if we run into a bear?”

  She brought her rifle to her shoulder, spotted through the scope, training the crosshairs on a tree trunk.

  “Yes.”

  That evening, on the beach in front of the cabin, Betteryear clamped plywood to the sawhorses. He set the meat on the board and began carving from the forelegs and hindquarters, tossing scraps in a bowl for the table-mounted meat grinder. He showed her how to shave off globules of fat, pat the cuts dry, and separate them into piles. He ran an extension cord from his generator and plugged in a vacuum sealer, and they packaged the steaks, the warble of the sealer followed by a soft zip as the plastic heated. The burger grinder made a rhythmic squeaking sound as she turned the crank.

  When she went inside with the bowls of packaged meat, she saw that he had washed her blood-splotched coat and hung it above the stove to dry. The orange cat splayed its body across the rug by the fire, turning at the hiss of droplets from the cuffs against the cast-iron, blinking its leaky eye. Betteryear dangled a cut of heart over the creature, who took the meat down in gulps.

  He cooked the liver and heart with golden chanterelles on the single burner, boiled the tongue, setting it with a bowl on a muslin cloth in front of her. Carefully, she peeled off white skin, revealing the muscle beneath. Betteryear fried the backstrap in a buttered pan, poured huckleberry wine into a canning jar, and raised it toward her. “I give thanks for your good eyes,” he said.

  The words lit her up from the inside. Flushed with the compliment, she cut the meat carefully, using the same hunting knife she had used to sever the buck’s neck, held a cube of heart on her fork, squeezing it between her teeth, letting the juice run over her gums. The backstrap was more like tuna than any sort of beef she had tasted.

  “Oh my god,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” he said. His eyes, a lazy black, were glazed with firelight. The muscles of his face, so taut over the course of the day, relaxed. He dabbed the sides of his lips with the cloth napkin, flipped the tines of his fork, and pointed toward her. “This is food from where you live, Tara. Do you know that?”

  She looked across the table at him and found herself resting her hand on his. “Thank you.”

  He took her hand. Quickly she stood and began clearing the table. Then she remembered the letter in the duffel.

  Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow she’d send it.

  55

  AFTER DROPPING THE LETTER into the mailbox, the metal door echoing with finality, Tara used Betteryear’s pickup to gather what remained of her things on the blackened and half-collapsed platform. There was the smell of gasoline and wine and wet ash as she packed jeans, a sweater, waterlogged and sooty, into a garbage bag. It started to rain, clouds crowding into the valley. She heard a sound and turned as Thomas stepped out of Frauke’s tent in a T-shirt and boxers.

  “Eh-oh,” he said, waving, appearing sheepish as he turned to the platform.

  “Hey. You seen Newt?” she said.

  Thomas shrugged, sniffing and looking up into trees. “He is working. On a boat called the Spank or something.”

  “Cool.”

  In the long twilight she walked the harbor to the tug. She considered sneaking aboard through the engine room, making a fire, sure Laney wouldn’t mind. But when she peeked in the porthole she saw buckets and tools crowding the floor. The place was a mess.

  Back out at Betteryear’s she dried her long underwear and gloves on the clothesline over the stove. The wind picked up from the southwest. Gray clouds shrouded the volcano. Betteryear hummed as he prepared a sweet-smelling soup with blue crabs and seaweed and limpets, king salmon wrapped in eelgrass and nori. Sitting by the wood stove, with a cup of hot tea in her hands, she felt a lightness in her shoulders. Warm, full, hypnotized by the promise of sleep, and good food to eat. She thought of the tug, alone out there on the corner, and felt as if she was failing the boat in some fundamental way.

  In the predawn hours, she woke on the cot to what she thought was the silence after the rain. Moonlight filtered through the windows. Outside she could hear pebbles tumbling in the waves.

  She smelled a grassy scent, then looked over to see Betteryear’s smooth, unlined face gray in the moonlight. He was crouching by her cot.

  “What the fuck?” she said, sitting up on her elbows, pulling the squares of the quilt over her chest.

  “Sorry, sorry, I—I was just checking.”

  “Checking what?”

  He shook his head and stood. She could see the whites of his eyes. Stiff-legged, he crossed the room to his corner. “Sorry,” he said again. “Just checking to make sure you are safe.”


  56

  9 February 1999

  Dear Tara,

  My god. Where to begin.

  First off let me just say—I am so sorry.

  Then unequivocally: thank you. Thank you for caring enough about me (is this a selfish thing to say?) to travel back to this. As I read I began to cry. With relief? Sorrow? It’s so hard to say. I think some part of me had been waiting to hear these words.

  I wish you felt you could have told me. Part of me is angry that you didn’t but maybe that’s for me to get over. We were so young.

  I only hope now that this rock of yours will have helped you get clean of this pain.

  So much more to say. So much more I’d like to ask.

  Soon,

  Connor

  57

  IN MARCH WORK ACCELERATED as shoals of herring spawned along the coasts of Archangel Island. She moved quickly, energized by the sun and warmth, stretching her arms high to ease her back, rolling her head as she walked along Pletnikoff Street. She felt lighter. Secrets are funny, she thought. The great weight they hold. And then—the thaw.