The Alaskan Laundry

by Brendan Jones

  “’Course.”

  She reaches out to hug him. “You’re just the best. Do you know that?”

  “Don’t you go forgetting about us here.”

  He loads into the truck. She and Connor wave, keep on waving as the vehicle turns around the bend, no brake lights at the stop sign. Newt.

  The brushed metal rollers clatter as Connor pushes the duffel onto the conveyor belt. The heavyset agent, whom she recognizes as a troller from her AMSEA class, tells her not to worry about the crutches.

  “Heard about the tug. You’ll get her up again.”

  In the airport bathroom, beneath the bright white lights, she looks in the mirror and traces an index finger beneath her eye. There’s dirt under her fingernails, calluses on her palms. A saying of Newt’s finds its way into her head: “A cat always blinks before you hit it with a sledgehammer.” She never understood what this meant, until now.

  Inside the plane she uses the backs of seats to hobble down the aisle. There’s a murmur of greetings as belts click. The flight is full, and she and Connor are separated. An older man in a camouflage hat stands as she slides into the window seat. As they taxi out to the single runway, her heart begins to race.

  Outside, fronds of red seaweed and pebbles are strewn across the concrete. Waves break against shale boulders skimmed with snow. She turns to see Connor peering out the window.

  The jets power up, and the brakes release. She can make out the docks, the empty corner. Then they’re floating, white streamers whipping off the wing tip. For the first time she sees Port Anna from above—grid of downtown, harbors, roads stretching out on either side dead-ending into mountains, all of it powdered white. Higher above, ice fields, those same blue glaciers she saw so long ago from the ferry.

  The plane banks over the channel. She cranes her head to catch a glimpse of Betteryear’s cabin, thinks she sees its square shape along Salmonberry Cove before it disappears off the edge of the wing. Lights wink, houses meld into trees. And then, like that, town is gone.

  Puddles in the muskegs flash silver with the plane’s reflection. Waves split on the outer edge of the island. The plane shudders as it slips into a cloud. They’re lost in the cottony blankness, gradations of white. Again she looks back, wanting to catch Connor’s eye. His forehead, resting against the window, turns golden as the cabin grows luminous with sun, a ripple of cloud-tops beneath. There’s a chime, and the flight attendant speaks into the public address.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned off the Fasten Seat Belt sign. It is now safe to move about the cabin.”

  She looks back out the window. The volcano crater is above the blanket of clouds, the edge of the rim sharp and bright in sunlight. The man with the camouflage hat sighs, tugs at the bill, wet from snow. He is curious, perhaps, about this woman in her scarred Xtratufs and ripped wool jacket staring so intently out the window.

  They have forty minutes to Ketchikan, then two hours to Seattle, time she intends to use making up for sleep lost over the past twenty-seven months. She tilts back her seat, folds her arms over her chest, and shuts her eyes.

  Her mind works over the tug, the broken frame of her mother’s photograph, fishermen of Aci Trezza waking to find themselves on the bottom of the frigid North Pacific. The thought makes her smile. She thinks of the plane, arcing over the rest of the country, dropping out of the clouds, and, finally, the winking trouble lights of the oil refineries below. Dry docks of the navy yard on the muddy Delaware. Ribbons of row homes cutting through the Italian Market, burn barrels with gashes aflame.

  “So where you headed this eve?” the man beside her asks.

  Branches of the sugar maple scrape brick. Connor stands behind her, waiting. Like an immigrant returning to some ancestral land, she pulls open the storm door. She turns the brass knob. Her father rises slowly from the couch, his cardigan untucking as he stands. His hair is thinner, his movements stiff. She takes in his smell, lovely and so long forgotten, as he presses her head to his chest.

  She opens her eyes.

  “Home.”

  Acknowledgments

  Perhaps the finest part of this project is how it placed me—at times obnoxiously—in the path of others. People opened their homes, refrigerators, tents, trucks, hearts, and minds over the past ten years. To all involved—too many to mention here—thank you.

  Artistic residencies made the first attempts at writing this book possible. I’d like to thank in particular the Macdowell Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Island Institute for taking a chance on a lost writer with no MFA, no publications. Support was also given by the Elizabeth George Foundation, for which I am grateful.

  For sharp outside reads I’d like to thank Rick Nichols, John Maxey, Nancy Szokan, Vicki Solot, David Leverenz, Daniel Sheehan, Andrew and Annette Dey, Brenda Levin, Heather Haugland, Peggy Anderson, and Meghan Rand—Meghan, who believed in this book all those years ago. It’s been a long time, but Jennifer Suhowatsky for early, unqualified love and support. To Robert Bly, who answered my letter when I was nineteen, and said yes, he would read a poem a month if I left college for the woods of Alaska. You are a great mentor. And to Jenny Pritchett: I’ve got your back, just as I know you have mine.

  For unfaltering company along this windy path, heady thanks to my coconspirator Suzanne Rindell, who has been there since ’99—or is it ’98? You would know. Will Chancellor, Katch Campbell, Katey Schultz, C. B. Bernard, Andy Kahan—in all capacities, thank you.

  Big love to the boys of the forty-ninth state—Rick Petersen, Xander Allison, Kyle Martin, Steve Gavin, and Ryan Laine, for their reads and long-winter company. Here’s to not many more years of hemlocks falling on cabins, boats sinking at the mooring buoy, scoping ourselves—and many more indeed of deer heart and onions at Fred’s Creek, waiting with whiskey for the bear to eat the honey-drenched goat. To Nick Jans for the good company along this path, and the clean boot prints in the snow. Pam Houston, for helpfulness from way back in the day, and her commitment to Sitka and its arts. And a toast to the lassies, Darcie Ziel and Sarah Newhouse, for the early reads and constant nudging. To Matt Goff for his generosity, both with his time and his intricate understanding of Sitka and its landscape. Thank you, also, for guidance, homes to stay in, insight, and helpful reads, to Nancy Lord, Dale Ziel, Peggy Shoemaker, Deb Vanasse, Vivian Faith Prescott, John Straley, Shannon Haugland, Michaela Larsen, Richard Nelson, and Tom Kizzia. To Scott Brylansky, for sharing his knowledge of wild foods. And to William Stortz, who first took me hunting, and shared his homebrew and dry wit, I promise to carry this debt of kindness, and to pass it on in your memory.

  On the waters, badass fishermen, skippers, deckhands, and close readers Sierra Golden on the F/V Challenger, Spencer Severson on the Dryas, Eric Jordan on the I Gotta, Grant Miller on the Heron, and Karl Jordan on the Saturday—and to Karl and Spence for correcting my knots, both in the book and elsewhere. Tele Adsen on the Nerka for a great read, to Marsh Skeele on the Loon for telling me about blooms of jellyfish, and Charles Medlicott for Dutch Harbor crabbing knowledge.

  And my 215 machos, Alex Auritt, Rob Sachs, Jeff Marrazzo, the true crew. And to Philly the city: I’ll always carry your big spirit in my heart, and fists. Much love to Justin Ehrenwerth for believing in this project from the first, giving who knows how many reads, sketches by the wood stove, beers when required. Hineni, brother. Always.

  I follow in the wide artistic wake of my godmother, Deborah Boldt, who has been helpful and encouraging throughout, and my aunt Denise Orenstein, whose generous reads of the manuscript have buoyed me up in tough times. I give thanks to Eavan Boland and Stanford University, and to Stegner years ’14, ’15, and ’16. To Molly Antopol and Chanan Tigay, for just being fun and hilarious and so smart and cool. And, of course, to the best carpool ever—Rachel Smith and Brenden Willey, and their partners, respectively, Kevin Fitchett and Zoe Grobart. Anything I write you will all write better. Thump thump thump.

  For guidance and friendship,
insight and wisdom, and for the deep footsteps you leave, I give thanks to Toby Wolff, Elizabeth Tal-lent, Adam Johnson, Richard Ford, and Rick Powers. For insight not only into this world of writing, but also on children, love, work, boxing—all the important things.

  To Kent Wolf, for taking a chance on a glorious mess of a manuscript, and to Jenna Johnson for believing in this so early, for lighting up this project with her razor-sharp intelligence, even if she would hate all those metaphors. To Pilar Garcia-Brown for the close read and guidance, and to Michelle Bonnano-Triant, whose love of writing and the world is infectious. And, of course, to Taryn Roeder. I’m so glad I stalked you that first year in college—one of the best decisions of my life.

  Thanks for the unfaltering love and understanding of my uncle and aunt Fred and Mary Jo, and for having the Farm, and the pickup to borrow—you were my own geography of hope as a kid. To Donna Lee and Lou DiNardo, I feel very lucky to have scored you as in-laws. To my father, Cecil Jones, who was committed to this book from its inception, and to my sister, Laura Jones, whom I love and am so proud of. To my stepfather, Joseph Lurie, thank you for your strength, your constancy, your goodness; I will always look to you.

  My daughter, Haley Marie: you are my heart. Everything. All of it.

  And Rachel, tug dweller, eagle-eyed copy editor, rough-stock, gorgeous wife. Who knew we would even be allowed to dream such things? And I get to walk with you through this life . . . crazy luck of mine.

  Reading Group Guide

  At eighteen, Tara Marconi is stumbling into adulthood unable to anchor herself in a world without her mother, losing her connection with the people she has loved, and haunted by a dark secret. She hasn’t felt at home in a long while—her mother’s death left her unmoored and created a seemingly insurmountable rift between her and her father. Desperate to put distance between herself and her pain, she makes her way to “the Rock,” a remote island in Alaska governed by the seasons and the demands of the world of commercial fishing. In the majestic, tough boundary lands of the forty-ninth state she begins to work her way up the fishing ladder—from hatchery assistant all the way to crabber on the Bering Sea. She learned discipline from years as a young boxer in Philadelphia, but here she learns anew what it means to work hard, to do something well, to connect, and—in buying and fixing up an old tugboat—how to finally make her way toward home.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  What do you know after reading the opening scene? How did the descriptions of the landscape and of Tara’s experience on the boat bring you into the story? How is Tara affected by her surroundings, and how did the environment compare with the preconceptions you had about Alaska?

  One of the things that brings Tara to Alaska is the idea of living off the sea and being involved in the fishing world, as her mother’s Sicilian family has done for generations. Compare Tara’s experiences in Alaska to her imagined Sicily. Do you think they are more alike or more different than Tara expects?

  When Tara sets eyes on Laney’s old tugboat, the Pacific Chief, it’s love at first sight. There also seems to be an instant connection between her and Laney, even though they are very different people. “What is it with that old tug and you pie-in-the-sky girls?” the harbormaster asks Tara (p. 97). What do you think the two women have in common? What drew each of them to the tugboat?

  Though they talk about being on separate paths, Connor still has a powerful hold over Tara and influences her throughout the novel in a variety of ways. For example, it is after receiving his letter and gift of pajamas that she asks Newt to get her a job at the processor. What is it about Connor’s letters that seems to galvanize Tara? What does Connor come to symbolize for her during her time in Alaska?

  Tara and Connor often compare where they live now—Alaska, New York City—to growing up in the old Italian neighborhoods of South Philadelphia. Discuss the differences in culture between their childhood home and Alaska. What kinds of things would you put on a list defining the cultural chasm between Alaska and the lower forty-eight? What traits and preoccupations are shared across such different communities and landscapes? How do these fit into your sense of a national identity?

  Tara’s cousin Acuzio tells her of Alaska, “It’s a man’s world, shows you what you’re made of” (p. 10). But afterward, Tara’s mother contradicts him. “Your cousin, he don’t know nothing,” she says, explaining that it’s the work that makes you strong; your gender doesn’t matter. Who, in the end, do you think was correct? Discuss the various ways in which this novel explores themes of gender identity and relationships between people. How does Tara defy these stereotypes, wittingly and unwittingly? Do you think there is something about the novel’s setting that changes the usual dynamic between the sexes?

  There appear to be two defining moments that push Tara toward her decision to move to Alaska. Describe how each of these events influenced her and led her to make the decisions she did.

  Through her relationship with Betteryear, Tara gains another perspective on the conquering of the Alaskan wilderness. What meaning for her lies in the tragedy of Native peoples like the Tlingit? Why do you think Betteryear takes such a shine to her, and what do you think they are standing in for in each other’s lives?

  Tara often thinks about her father’s stubbornness and how much pain his temper has caused her over the years. Were you surprised at how things changed for them over the course of the novel?

  What does home mean to Tara? How does her idea of home evolve over the course of the novel?

  What does Alaska teach Tara about teamwork and community? How does her new community come together in the novel’s final chapters?

  The book’s title comes from Newt, who explains, “We’re all tumbling around in the Alaskan laundry out here” (p. 172). What does he mean by this metaphor? Do you find the description apt for Tara and the other characters she encounters? Why do you think the author chose The Alaskan Laundry as the novel’s title?

  About the Author

  BRENDAN JONES lives on a tugboat in Alaska and works in commercial fishing. A Stegner fellow, he studied and boxed at Oxford University. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Ploughshares, Popular Woodworking, and on NPR. He lives in Sitka, Alaska.