Dead in the Water

by Dana Stabenow

  His face lit up. For a moment the desire to share his news with someone, anyone, warred with the awareness of who he was talking to, but eagerness won out in the end. “I was looking for Sanak and Unga.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was reading this book about the Aleutians, and there’s a story in it about a boat race back in the thirties or thereabouts. A boat race between a hundred-twenty-five-foot steamer and a kayak.”

  He beamed at her, blue eyes expectant beneath tousled blond hair, and dutifully she said, “A steamer and a kayak? No kidding? What happened?”

  “The kayak won!” The announcement was delivered with all the air of an eyewitness to the event.

  Kate expressed suitable astonishment, and he needed no further urging to disgorge the whole story. “The steamer put in at Sanak to offload cargo, see, and these four Aleut guys came up in a kayak and challenged the captain of the steamer to a race.” Andy’s lip curled. “He wouldn’t do it until they bet him a hundred dollars they could win.”

  “Easy money,” she observed. She thought she caught a glimpse of an island off to starboard, but a tardy wisp of fog obscured it almost as soon as she saw it, and she settled back in the chair, listening to Andy with half an ear.

  “That’s what he thought,” Andy said, his scorn immense and magnificent. “The steamer took off, and the kayak just sat there, and everybody onshore started hooting and laughing, but the Aleuts were waiting, counting the waves for the right wave, what they called the ninth wave. When it came along, they paddled to catch it and balanced themselves on top of it, and then they rode it, all the way to Unga! Before the trip was half over, they were out of the steamer’s sight!” The beam was back. “First surfers north of the fifty-three! God, don’t you just love Alaska!”

  “Hitchhiking on a wave,” Kate said. “I like it. Did the Starr’s skipper pay up?”

  Andy nodded vigorously. “Uh-huh. He was a good sport.”

  “Good for him. More coffee?”

  “Wait a minute.” Andy paused, mug outstretched. “Did I say the steamer’s name was the Starr?”

  “Sure you did.” The can of Carnation Evaporated Milk was empty but for a few drops. Kate sighed.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “You already knew it. You already heard that story.”

  She looked over at his accusing expression. “About a thousand times,” she admitted, a slow smile spreading across her face.

  He didn’t know whether to take offense or not, and as the decision hung in the balance Kate played her trump card. “I’m an Aleut myself, Andy. I think the first time my foster father told me that story I was four years old.”

  Andy stared at her, eyes and mouth three round, astonished O’s. “Gosh,” he breathed. “You’re an Aleut? A real live Aleut?”

  Kate kept her face straight with an effort. “A real live Aleut. Now be a good guy and go get me another can of milk for my coffee, okay? And toss the empty while you’re at it.”

  She handed the can to him. He took it automatically, his eyes still wide and fixed on her face. “Have you ever paddled a kayak?”

  “Never in my life,” she said, and took him by the shoulders to turn him around and give him a firm shove in the direction of the stairs.

  *

  They made Dutch that evening. The harbor was crowded with crabbers, and their turn to unload didn’t come until the following morning. The crew suited up in rain gear while Harry brought the Avilda around to the processor’s dock. Working both booms on the dock and with all four of the deck crew in the hold loading brailers they had the old girl emptied out in less than two hours.

  Harry shinnied up the ladder to the dock, reappearing in the galley half an hour later. “How much?” Andy said, his young voice excited. “What kind of price did we get?”

  The skipper made a show of consulting the fish ticket he held in one hand. “Buck-fifty.”

  “A dollar and fifty cents?” Andy said. “Per crab?”

  “Per pound,” Kate corrected him gently.

  Andy’s voice went up into a squeak. “Per pound? Per pound?”

  He lunged for paper and pencil. His face screwed up with concentration, the tip of his tongue protruding from one corner of his mouth. After tremendous amounts of scribbling and adding and erasing and multiplying, he produced a figure and stared down at it with disbelieving eyes. “Eighty-three hundred dollars?” he said finally. His face paled, flushed and paled again beneath its tan. Again his voice went up to a squeak. “A crew share for this one trip is eighty-three hundred dollars?”

  Kate smacked him on the back. “If it was easy, everybody’d be doing it. That’s why they pay us the big bucks, boy.”

  She looked around for agreement and found it, in a mild sort of way. Seth gave a casual nod, Ned said “uh-huh” in an absentminded tone, and Harry disappeared into his stateroom.

  A little deflated, Andy turned to Kate. “For crying out loud, you’d think they made eighty-three hundred bucks every day out there.”

  “Yes,” Kate said, “you would think that, wouldn’t you.” She picked up the piece of paper and peered at the clumsy squiggles. She made a few doodles with the pencil and totaled them up.

  “Eighty-three hundred dollars?”

  She nodded, her face wearing a rueful expression he didn’t understand but was too wrought up to question. “Yup. It’s eighty-three hundred dollars, all right. Each.” Laying pencil and paper aside, she rubbed her face with both hands, hard. “Eighty-three hundred dollars,” she repeated in a thoughtful voice. “Not bad for eight days’ work.”

  Jack Morgan might live after all.

  *

  In one of those impetuous changes of mind for which Aleutian weather is rightfully famed, the fog shifted and revealed a high, broken overcast and, if Kate was not mistaken, a pale, brief and wholly transitory gleam that might be sunshine. The resulting scene was somewhere between appalling and enthralling. Dutch Harbor was a sheltered piece of Iliuliuk Bay, nuzzled up against Amaknak Island behind a mile-long spit of sand and gravel and grass. Amaknak Island, four miles long and a mile wide, in turn lay snugly within two arms of the much larger Unalaska Island, eighty-seven miles long and thirty-seven miles wide and the second largest in the Aleutian Chain. Amaknak Island looked like a pelican facing northeast, Unalaska like a tomahawk with the blade facing north-northwest. Mount Ballyhoo formed the beak of Amaknak’s pelican, so named, Kate dimly remembered from some long-ago lesson in Mr. Kaufman’s sixth-grade geography class, by Jack London when he’d been sealing between the Aleutians and the Kuriles at the turn of the century. That voyage had formed the basis for local color in The Sea Wolf, which Mr. Kaufman had forced down the class’s collectively unwilling educational maw. All Kate could remember of the story was her conviction that though Humphrey Van Weyden might have survived Wolf Larsen, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the Park.

  Ballyhoo had been her first sight of Dutch. In fact when she saw it loom up in the window of the 727 she flew in on she had been certain it was going to be her last sight of anything at all, as the airstrip clung precariously to a very narrow strip of land between the southwestern slopes of Ballyhoo (or the back of the pelican’s head) and the Bering Sea. From the maps she knew a five-hundred-foot bridge connected Amaknak with Unalaska, and on the island of Unalaska was the village of Unalaska. Somewhere off to the northwest in the surrounding clouds was 6,680-foot Makushin Volcano, the second largest in the Chain. It was still active, as were most of the volcanoes in the Pacific’s Ring of Fire. Kate tried not to think about it.

  From nowhere on either island was there a view that did not include a vast, unending expanse of water. In the north it was the Bering Sea; in the south, the Pacific Ocean. Both bodies of water were a constant reminder of what fueled Dutch Harbor. Dutch was a boom town and looked it. Prefabricated buildings crowded up against each other along narrow strips of beach, beaches that were themselves crowded between a landscape that rose suddenly and vertically with v
ery few softening curves, and a sea that from one moment to the next varied in color from bright blue to dull green. Looking at this view was as alarming as it was invigorating, Kate now discovered, as if she were riding a roller coaster with both feet planted firmly on the ground.

  Kate always felt better when she knew exactly where she was, and having identified all the relevant topographical features, she started out down the gravel road with a will. It was sodden beneath her feet. Gulls gave raucous screams as they swooped and dived overhead. A bald eagle perched on the top of a streetlight. He looked down his beak at her in the haughty manner of his kind, and after admiring him for a moment she passed on. The road was an obstacle course of fast-moving pickup trucks and vans, each of the vans with the logo of a different taxi service painted on their sides. Another interesting fact Andy had gleaned from his book on the Aleutians was that there were thirteen cab companies in Dutch, and within the first mile of her walk Kate had narrowly missed being run over by twelve of them.

  She passed a crab processor, a surimi plant, another processor, another surimi plant, making her way down the gravel road that paralleled the beach and the rectangular harbor. She dodged a red Ford pickup with a SuperCab crammed with an indeterminate amount of people in bright yellow rain gear, and came upon a group of fishermen, identical in jeans, plaid shirts, shoepacs, navy-blue knit watch caps and unshaven faces. They stood in the middle of the road, oblivious to the trucks and vans rattling impatiently around them. They were all talking at once, at the tops of their voices, and punctuating their words with vociferous gesticulation. Kate paused to listen.

  The man at the center of the group shook his head adamantly and held up ten fingers.

  “Forget it!” one of the other men exclaimed. He had a dark, full beard that did little to conceal his choler. “Fifty and not a penny more!”

  Kate, craning her neck, saw that the man at the center of the group had a bundle of loose fur beneath one arm. He held it up and it resolved itself into a hat, the kind seen in illustrations of winter life in Moscow. The fur was long and deep brown, almost black in color. The man showed it around the circle, allowing the prospective buyers to finger it admiringly. There were murmurs of appreciation at its softness and shine. Kate realized the scruffy guy must be off the big Russian processor anchored in the harbor, and was in the act of trying to raise some spending money. She elbowed forward for a closer look at the fur.

  “Fifty,” the fisherman who had bid last repeated.

  The Russian, obdurate, shook his head and held up ten fingers again.

  “Goddammit!” The fisherman was frustrated. A friend standing next to him said something in a low voice and he gave his head an impatient shake. “I forgot her birthday, I’ve gotta send her something or she’ll throw all my clothes out the window like she did last time. She’s into that ethnic shit, she’ll love a Russian hat from a real Russian. Okay, sixty.” He held up six fingers.

  The Russian stood firm at a hundred. He couldn’t speak a word of English but he knew a desperate man when he saw one. He was right; the fisherman eventually peeled five grimy twenties from a roll that would have choked a hippopotamus and exchanged them for the hat. Kate waited until the men had moved on before going to stand next to the Russian fisherman. “What kind of fur was it?” she asked.

  He was counting his money, laboriously, licking his fingers between each bill. Unsatisfied with the first count, or perhaps disbelieving it, he counted a second time before looking up, his face split with an immense grin. It widened when he saw Kate, and he fired a stream of Russian in her direction.

  She spread her hands and gave him a rueful smile that he had no problem interpreting and that left him undiscouraged. He pantomimed chugalugging a drink and looked at her hopefully, a big, rumpled, enthusiastic puppy dog. “Okay?” he said, evidently the limit of his English vocabulary.

  What the hell, she thought. Might as well provide herself with some cover in case she ran into someone else off the Avilda. The prospect of meeting Jack with an enormous Russian in tow also had its appeal. “You know the Shipwreck?” she suggested out loud, and the Russian’s grin threatened to split his face in two. It appeared he knew the Shipwreck. Kate smiled, shrugged and nodded.

  Without further ado her new friend placed a massive and proprietary arm around her shoulder and urged her down the road.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, holding up both hands. He halted, his face falling ludicrously. “No, it’s okay, I’ll go with you, I’m going that way anyway. But the hat.” She demonstrated, pulling off her own, a baseball cap with the Niniltna Native Association logo stitched across the front. She pointed after the other fishermen, patted the canvas on her hat and rubbed her fingers together. “What was it made of? Your hat?”

  He hesitated, looking at her.

  “It’s all right, I’m just curious,” she assured him. “I do a little trapping myself. What was it?”

  Still he hesitated. Kate wet her lips and gave him her best smile and his reservations dissolved. He looked around to make sure no one was looking, and held one hand at his side, palm down. “Woof,” he said.

  She laughed. “That’s what I thought.” She remembered Mutt and her smile faded, but he laughed back at her and offered his arm again. She took it. He would have steered her directly for the Shipwreck if she hadn’t just as firmly steered him first to the Alyeska Trading Company, an all-purpose general store selling everything from California oranges to Stanley screwdrivers to Nikon cameras to Levi’s jeans. Kate was there to buy dental floss but her Russian admirer took one look at the crowded shelves and fell in love, and Kate spent the next thirty minutes trailing after him up one aisle and down the next. He swooned over the coffee. He agonized over the relative merits of Marlboros and unfiltered Camels. Dismissing the best Timex had to offer with a decisive shake of his head, he was investigating the workings of a Canon Sure Shot when Kate looked up and saw Harry Gault over by the meat counter, talking rapidly in a low voice to a short man with Asian features. He looked stubborn, Harry angry, and they both looked somehow furtive.

  Kate had begun an unobtrusive drift in their direction when half a dozen of her new Russian friend’s shipmates rolled in the door and engulfed the two of them. Harry looked up at the shouts and laughter. Caught looking at him, Kate met his eyes calmly and nodded hello. His eyebrows snapped together, he scowled and ushered the Asian man down an aisle and out of sight.

  The Russians looked from Kate to their shipmate and back again and there was a considerable wagging of eyebrows and a lot of talk recognizable as ribald in any language. One of them asked her a question. Of course it meant nothing to her and she shook her head helplessly. Her newfound bosom buddy held up one finger in inspiration and poked himself in the chest. “Anatoly! Anatoly!”

  “You’re Anatoly,” she said, nodding. He pointed at her and waited. “Kate. I’m Kate.”

  He looked puzzled for a moment. “Kate?” Dawn broke. “Ekaterina!” She nodded, and jumped when the entire crew shouted her name with one voice, causing heads to turn all over the store. Anatoly, noticing her alarmed expression, grabbed her hand and hauled her over to the window. He pointed at the processor anchored in the harbor, a squat, ungraceful ship that towered over its harbor mates, looking like an immense gray gull with its head tucked beneath one wing. “Ekaterina!” He pointed from the boat to Kate and back again. “Ekaterina! Ekaterina!”

  “Ekaterina!” his shipmates yelled, beaming at her.

  A light went on over Kate’s head. “You mean your boat’s name is Ekaterina, too?”

  He nodded excitedly. “Ekaterina! Ekaterina!”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Ekaterina,” she said to the boat, “and you, too, Anatoly.” She held out her hand.

  He was at least six feet tall and seemed six feet wide, so when he put his hands on her upper arms and lifted her without seeming effort she was unsurprised, if a bit startled. He kissed her, great smacking kisses on both cheeks and mouth, befor
e setting her back down on her feet. There was a cheer from his shipmates and Kate could feel herself flushing, but she had to laugh. “Well, thank you. Nice to meet you, too. I think.”

  Eventually Anatoly decided on a Sony boombox and a selection of Top Ten cassette tapes, leaving Kate to wonder how Hammer was going to go over in Magadan. With the boombox clutched firmly beneath one arm and Kate beneath his other, Anatoly plotted a course for the door, followed by laughing, chattering shipmates similarly laden with packages. Kate felt like she was leading a parade. As they exited the store, what looked like an entire ship’s company of Japanese fishermen flooded in and headed straight for the meat counter. So that was why everything in the store was priced in yen, too, Kate thought, and wondered why the store’s owners didn’t price their products in rubles as well.

  *

  The Shipwreck Bar had been a Dutch watering hole for time immemorial, which at this longitude meant since at least before World War II. A cargo ship for Alaska Steam, she’d been conscripted by General Samuel Buckner to supply troops rushed to the Aleutians following Pearl Harbor. A gale drove her ashore during her first year of service. The SeaBees restored her to an upright position, filled her hold with concrete for ballast, reconditioned her generator and used her for a barracks during the war. Abandoned for two decades, when the crab fishing picked up in the sixties a local businessman acquired her as government surplus and remodeled her into a restaurant, hotel and bar.

  Double doors were cut into the side of the hull. Kate entered first, only to dodge back out of the way of a fisherman slow dancing with a bar stool, eyes closed and cheek to seat. Jimmy Buffet was wishing he had a pencil-thin mustache and about thirty fishermen were crowded around the jukebox, leaning up against it and each other and singing along in an enthusiastic if tuneless chorus. Grimy windows cut through the hull looked out over the docks and boats of the harbor, tables were scattered around the room with a lavish hand, the floor was filthy with spilled beer and cigarette butts, and Kate couldn’t even see the bar with all the bodies crowded up against it. Her eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, she conservatively estimated about one woman for every twelve men in the place. She further estimated that at thirty-one years of age she was by far the oldest person in the room, save perhaps the bartender. He was a wrinkled little man with an anxious expression between the creases, who seemed to be the only waiter and was in constant motion between bar and tables.