From Ketchikan Creek, he’d continued up the log-blocked trails. Jumped over stumps rather than clamber through the thick bush around them. Exploded at last into a run, until he came panting out of the dark canopy into the bright scrub above the mountain’s timber line. A year ago he wouldn’t have panted: wind was steady as a rock, and no apology. He’d been a rock. Like all the buddies around him then.
“I’d never’ve let you down, any of you!” he burst out. Guys whose shoulders bumped mine, sweat to sweat. “Count on me, like I counted on you!” Until some became arms and legs on stumps that oozed, faces black with hungry bugs dug so deep you couldn’t scrape them off. And here’s me still alive, Jones Henry, spun home free and intact. Returned safe. To all this spread out below, to blue water catching the sun. And you guys—Sokovich, Chuck, Sugarmouth, Jimmy Sleeves, Callihan—you guys left under crosses no thicker than sticks. Leastwise, those parts of ’em not blown off and melted into the water and mud. You watching me? Jones Henry, who made it back with no wound that couldn’t get patched? Look at me here now, safe with not a Jap in a thousand miles and people asking me to fight my own kind for fun. He snapped sticks covered with lichens and tossed them at random. He balled snow and sucked it to liquid. He yelled.
Nobody to answer to except Jones Henry. You couldn’t beat that. He held out his left hand. One knuckle missing on the index, that’s it. He bit the ball of each remaining finger one by one. Each little pain proved he was alive. Not down in mud beneath some stick of a cross, side by side with buddies. Did the dead talk amongst themselves, keep each other company after they’d left the living abandoned and alone?
Don’t want to do that Fourth of July parade tomorrow. No, fuck, I want to. No, I don’t. Lead the parade in my Marine dress with everybody watching. If I started to tell them what really happened, they’d run away.
He felt noise scrape up from his throat. It ended with smashing heavy, dead limbs to pieces against a solid trunk while howling to cover the sobs. Then, feeling raw, he walked back down past the creek and past Creek Street with its friendly whores, back through town toward his boat.
“Hey, Jones there,” called the skinny 4-F who’d taken his photo for the paper when he’d returned home months ago. “Found you finally. I need an article on colorful war experiences, so slow down. Let me catch up.”
Jones Henry broke into a trot to avoid him. The rain began before he reached the pier, and he made no attempt to shelter himself. By the time he’d climbed down the slippery ladder and strode the couple of paces across the deck to the hatch of the tight cabin, water streaked into his eyes and down his neck. He snapped the latch behind him and fired up the stove. Rain drummed overhead on the cabin’s boards. No leaks. He’d caulked enough. Never again would he dodge splashes of water like those that slipped through a poncho stretched over a foxhole. Deep in mud. He sat with his hands clenched into fists on the table, making no attempt to remove his drenched clothes. Gradually, the stove’s heat warmed the wet against his body.
Wouldn’t feel so alone if they’d ever decommission Gus Rosvic and send him home to fish. Then there’d be somebody to talk to who understood.
“Oh my, just look, Daddy!” exclaimed Helen Henry the next day, when her son emerged from his old bedroom in full Marine Corps dress. “To think this was the scrubby little fellah I always wondered about what was next. Oh my!” She threw out her arms, but kept them spread as she kissed him. “Oh honey, you’re so neat and pretty I’m almost afraid to touch you.” Her voice caught as she said it.
In spite of himself, Jones half-enjoyed the press of her soft lips smooching his own hardened cheek. So long as she wasn’t doing it in public.
“Leave the boy be,” gruffed Roger “Buck” Henry. “I never seen his face go red like that before.”
“But I’m so proud of him! And today’s his birthday. Twenty-five and home safe from that terrible war! Now we can all forget it ever happened.”
“It’s okay, Ma,” said Jones quietly. He knew he looked good, from the reflection he had seen in the mirror while dressing. Straight shoulders, full chest, hair still kept short and bristly in Marine Corps style, expression that said “Don’t mess with me.” Not bad. The rest was a roadmap of what he’d done. Sun-scorched face tight at the cheekbones. Cool eyes surrounded by squint lines—enough to no longer be a kid’s. Nose a little bent from some fight too many. Scar down his left temple—all that was visible of the scars that ran down his back and right leg, hidden by clothes. The scars still sometimes itched and throbbed. Not a bad thing, though, lest he forget.
Jones Henry noted two packages tied in ribbon, half hidden behind his dad’s easy chair stuffed to match the sofa. Still needed to go through gifts with them after the parade. Then maybe he could be off by himself again.
“Well, let’s get this marching shi—. . . stuff over with,” he said firmly. Outside, Buck looked up at the flat gray sky. “Going to dump again pretty soon.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t, Roger. Not on parade day.”
“Mark me, Helen. Blowing southeasterly still. Rained out the boxing and one of the ball games last night. Mebbe hold for the parade, mebbe not.” They walked down together, from the house four ridges up the hill, to where the parade groups formed on the wide ferry pier. His dad led proudly ahead, single file on the wooden staircase that connected the levels. Jones descended stiffly, eyes ahead and chest pushed out. From the pier rose the sounds of the Shriner band practicing “Stars and Stripes Forever.” And suddenly his mood lightened. He felt, rather than saw, the clean golden trim of his dress uniform. Careful not to grin and spoil the picture. The coat smelled of the mothballs his mom had packed them in when he’d returned as a civilian last December. He’d thought at the time it was the last he would ever wear a uniform.
A few years ago he’d have grinned enough. Kid still in his teens and already the owner of his first boat bought with the pay saved from years of fishing for the old man, hell-bent to beat other boats to harbor for the Fourth, the ol’ cock tugging against his pants for every girl he saw. Older fishermen laughing at the eighteen-horsepower Palmer he held together with wires—after the old man had made him disassemble and clean every part and renew each hose. No, Dad hadn’t changed, descending the stairs now in front of him—with the same shaggy hair and wide shoulders. His words back then still held true: “Never go short on your engine, boy. The one thing you can’t afford, you don’t risk is to let your engine die on you.”
Without warning Jones felt his eyes turn wet. He reached out and touched his father’s torn jumper, lightly enough not to draw the old man’s notice. Had promised himself never to cry again, after losing it when the Jap sniper blew a hole through his pal Jimmy’s forehead, just above the eyes. And now, almost with people watching, he had to bite his lip to hold it back.
Was that carefree kid’s time only five years ago? 1941? No, by ’41, just turned eighteen on that Fourth, he’d known the draft would soon get him; had already signed with the Marines, and waiting for their call left him both scared and excited. That summer it hadn’t been easy to pay full attention to catching pinks and cohos. It was 1940, the year before, that was the best Fourth—so long ago. Could have been twenty years instead of six.
Close now to the ferry pier, not only was there the sound of the band’s warm up but a steady buzz of voices. Clusters of people had already gathered by the storefronts. Flags and bunting flapped everywhere, riding puffs of breeze. Off to a corner, by the fishing gear store with boots in the window, they’d set up a big sandbox where little kids scrambled to find buried treats. Need to buy new hip boots, Jones noted to himself. Too many patches in the old ones to hold up any more, after years of closet rot. Even though old fishing clothes reminded him of good things.
Somebody from the pier looked up at the hillside stairs and called: “Hey, here’s our lead marcher, our marine. Hurray to Jones Henry!” Other voices joined in the cheer. A bright young woman approached immediately.
“Well, d
on’t you look good!” she exclaimed. “My name’s Adele Johnson, from the USO. Now why don’t you ever come join us there? Dancing? Eats? Well, later for that.” She took his arm firmly. “Come along now. I’m to make sure you get set up right at the head of the parade.” She tightened her grip. “Goodness, what a muscle in that arm!”
Jones felt the grin coming on again. Harder to hold it in but he did. He squared his chin and straightened his shoulders even further. But it came to him in a flash. Time to stop mourning dead buddies.
He was so full of it that Fourth of July back in 1940, with his own twenty-foot troller and not even out of high school—for whatever school mattered. Because of the big events planned in Ketchikan for the next day he’d made a short week of it; had pulled in the last of his four trolling poles a few hours early—a Wednesday was it?—aboard his Helen J, named for his mom’s maiden name, and, once he’d cleaned his cohos, stowed his gear, and had hosed down, the sun was still resting above the tops of the spruces back on the low mountains ashore. About six o’clock. He had gunned for town to deliver before the line started at the cannery pier.
He passed his dad’s thirty-six-foot Helen H by the curve around Gravina Island and shouted over his intentions. The old man, with legs solid on deck, kept right on working his lines but called back, “Mebbe follow, mebbe not. You take care to stay by the markers. No shortcuts around Henderson Point. You hear?”
“Yes sir.” Next he passed the Susan Ray, a troller the same size as Dad’s, owned by John Rosvic and worked with his boy Gus. John was lashing in the poles and barely nodded. So they were heading in early too. Gus, just a few months younger than Jones, looked up from the gutting plank.
To Gus, Jones announced: “Be in town, all delivered and truckin’ before you even deliver.”
“With that old tub of yours? Once we get going, you’ll wipe our wake outta your eyes, man.”
Jones brushed back the hair that was flopping into his vision and throttled his Palmer Eighteen for all it was worth. The clatter had its effect. Gus’s eyes widened in envy. The engine vibrated so hard that it shook the plyboard housing right by his head and puffed gas fumes throughout the cramped wheelhouse, but he could see the satisfying wake it churned behind and that was what mattered. That engine wasn’t going to let him down after all the maintenance he had done. He kept gunning and shouting to himself above the noise.
The channel cut deep into Nichols Passage, but then there were the Walden Rocks that hid shoals at high tide if you didn’t know. No problem. Tide rising on flood, but after fishing with the old man for five summers, Jones was able to recognize the swirls that betrayed rocks just inches underwater. He knew all the waterways they fished, all the turns and cautions. Had it all in his head. “Yahoo!” he shouted.
A current just at the entrance to Nichols Passage pushed his bow and vibrated a cup against its plate in the rack above the wheel. Current flooding to north. His boat rocked to it more than Dad’s larger boat would.
“Then rock to it, baby!” he called to himself. Man with his own boat! The bow dipped, then rose under a fan of spray that splattered past the open window and onto his face. “Yahoo!” His boat creaked and groaned like a boat should, but the caulking that he’d squeezed into open seams held fast. She nosed into the water, then sprang back up spitting. Kept plowing right through. His own boat. First boat of Jones Henry, able and seaworthy.
He entered Clarence Strait singing and shouting. “Man in charge, that’s me!” After the narrow passage hemmed by hills and trees, the sky was suddenly bright and open water rippled ahead. Current going northerly. Needed to buck it down past Annette Island, then into Revillagigedo and free-ride with the current straight toward town. Who needed a chart when you knew the way? Clear through to the New England Cannery dock. Deliver, tie up, change, then stroll into Ketchikan before Dad or the Rosvics had even made it around Gravina Island. “Where you guys been?” he would ask, cool as ice cream.
Behind him, a whistle tooted, then another. There, just entering Clarence Strait, was his dad’s Helen H, followed bow-to-stern by the Rosvic’s Susan Ray. “Shoot—shoot!” Jones pushed his throttle harder, to no effect. Before long, the larger boats had caught up. On deck, Gus cheered, whistled, and waved his arms like signal flags as the Rosvic’s boat passed by, churning a wave that rocked the Helen J. Jones gripped his wheel and looked straight ahead, ignoring them.
That day, his own dad eased the Helen H to align her bow with his son’s pilothouse, then slowed to Jones’s speed, leaving the smaller boat with a few-foot lead. Together, the two negotiated the spruce-lined waterways. Long before Ketchikan itself appeared, an umbrella of smoke from the sawdust pile burning at the lumber mill appeared above the hilltop to announce the town. They waited together at the cannery dock for the Susan Ray to unload, adjusting speed to ride with the current while the tide rose. When the Rosvics moved, Buck Henry moved his boat in to throw a line around the barnacled pilings, and Jones tied rail to rail on his dad’s outboard side.
At the halfway rise of the twenty-foot tide, they still bounced far below the top of the pier. Jones, as usual, jumped lightly over the rails to his father’s deck and scrambled up the long slippery ladder. As the two men had done countless times before when they had worked aboard the same boat—sometimes shifting positions for variety—one checked the scales above and the other loaded the catch below into the cannery’s bucket. The only difference now was that they each oversaw their parts of two separate deliveries and tabulations.
The two Henry boats, having made their delivery, tied alongside the Rosvic boat. Gus, waiting to take their lines, had already changed into clean dungarees and shirt.
“Hey Jones!” he yelled. “What took you so long?”
Jones Henry remembered how he’d removed from his pocket the fish ticket he’d just received and unfolded it elaborately. “Guess some of us got more business needs attending to than others.” He’d savored the respectful look that Gus had given to a man with his own fish ticket.
“My goodness, the things you must have done and seen!” exclaimed the girl on his arm—Adele. She looked up at him with an expression both serious and playful.
“Well, yeah.” He liked her spirit already, but the tone made him cautious. “Seen some things, I guess,” he allowed, hoping she wouldn’t spoil the moment by asking for war stories. She was shorter than he by almost a head—about the height a woman should be, he felt. He’d almost forgotten, after the Jap whores (who might have been short but that didn’t count the same), how nice a good American girl could look. Light skin all scrubbed, pink sort of cheeks, brown hair with a bit of curl. . . . She had escorted him past young girls practicing waving their pompoms in unison to the clapped beat of a teacher, then past boys in band uniforms tooting their trumpets and trombones. All those kids, they don’t know a thing, Jones thought. Get yourselves out now, no war left, you’ll never know a thing. If you stay lucky.
“Tell me now. Frankly.” She looked straight up at him. “Do the Japs really have slanty eyes?” It was a question he could answer.
“Yup, slanty eyes. Every one of ’em.” He considered whether to open the subject further, then added, “And I’ll tell you, slanty minds to go with it.”
“Really? And you’ve been there so you know. My goodness I’m learning a lot.”
“Just my opinion, of course.”
“I’m sure your opinion is very accurate.”
“Well . . . let’s just say, you should never turn your back on a Jap.”
“I’m not surprised. I’ll be sure to remember that. Although I’m never likely to see an actual Jap in person.”
“Just as good you don’t. My opinion, anyway.” Adele squeezed his arm in a way that Jones took to mean that she understood. They continued toward the band that would lead the parade, past the members of Buck Henry’s lodge puttering around their float. Dad had already joined the group and was standing on the truck bed with two others trying to stiffen a flopping paper pa
lm tree.
“Right there goes my son, fellahs,” Jones heard Buck say. “Marine. Back from the war after licking the Japs.”
“Got a right to be proud there, Buck. Fine boy. Fine man. He does us all proud.”
Jones tried not to puff his chest too wide, but he felt it expand against the stiff cloth of his uniform. A drop of water hit his face. Suddenly there were little cries from people all around. It had begun to rain.
“Oh my goodness,” the girl squealed. “My permanent—I just got it yesterday! And my new dress!”
Jones thought about it only for a second. Nearest cover was the pier’s warehouse. It wasn’t close and people everywhere were mobbing toward it. He clapped his white dress cap on her head, then quickly unbuttoned his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. His arm held the jacket in place as he guided her to shelter.
By the time they reached the sliding doors of the warehouse and pushed in amongst the others, the rain fell in such torrents that it splattered up from the boards and drenched their ankles.
“By golly now, der you got it,” grumbled a man with a beard like a tangled mess of netting. His shoulders bulged from a gray coat embroidered with green stripes. A sash across his chest proclaimed him a “Son of Norway.”
“Boxing rained out last night, first t’ing. Den ve play only half the double header against Prince Rupert and even that ve got to cut short with a tie. Street dancing last night? Har har! You liked hoppin’ around in wet boots, Mama?” He looked around. “Vat now, eh? No parade. No log chopping later, too, I’ll bet. Might as vell stayed fishing.”
“But you’re here with family,” said the woman beside him. Like others around her, she wore a flowered headpiece and a white dress covered with larger flowers. “Ve hardly see Papa from spring halibut to fall kings, except Fourth of July.”
A deep laugh from the man. “Ain’t vinters enough for you, I t’ink?” He gave the woman’s waist a squeeze. She jabbered something in Norwegian and squirmed away.
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