Cold Storage, Alaska

by John Straley

  A Cold Storage crowd needed more structure, but Miles didn’t have enough energy to design much of a service. He thought of a few words to say and resigned himself to letting everyone drink as much beer as they brought in for themselves.

  Now he looked around the hall. People were already starting to drink. Clive was standing in a back corner talking to Tina; she stared up into his eyes, absently reached behind her head, and pulled a strand of hair away from her neck. Clive looked up to see Miles on the other side of the room; he smiled and then went back to talking to Tina.

  Ed sat over by himself on one of the chairs set up for the service. His elbows rested on his knees, and he stared down at his shoes. A little kid ran by and clipped his knee, and he stumbled out of his reverie.

  Weasel sauntered into the cold storage wearing a light tan sports coat, and Billy Cox almost spit up his beer. Weasel shrugged and lifted the lapels with the tips of his fingers.

  “Yo, check it,” he preened. “White Elephant shop. Sitka. Last halibut trip.”

  Mrs. Cera came in carrying a large tray of smoked black cod collars with Anthony slumping in behind her. Before she had even set it on the buffet table, Weasel had a black cod collar in one hand and a sweaty bottle of beer in the other.

  Miles decided he’d better start before people got going on their second beer. He was walking up to the front of the room when he saw Lester come in. He was wearing clean work clothes, pressed and neat; his hair was tied back with a silver clip, and he wore a black silk tie and one of his own silver bracelets. He looked like a delegate from another, more dignified country.

  He nodded to Miles. “I meant to give this to her.” He took the bracelet off his own wrist and handed it to Miles. It was a thick piece of silver with a traditional salmon design carved into the surface. Before Miles could say anything, Lester softly spoke again. “I can’t stay.” He gestured around the room as if it were evident. “But come by later if you’ve got time.”

  Miles put the bracelet in his coat pocket and continued toward the front of the room. On the table by the flowers someone had put a picture in a frame, a photo of Annabelle as a girl standing at Ellie and Slip’s cabin site. She was squinting through the thick lenses of her glasses. Her pigtails were tightly braided, and behind her Ellie and Slippery Wilson sat on the second level of logs laid down and notched into their home.

  Miles had scribbled some notes about his mom’s life. But these people knew all the details. He could have said how he had enjoyed having a mom who could catch a fish in any season. Or how she could laugh at a dirty joke, eat her own cooking, and burp loudly after drinking a soda, or how she knew more facts about animals than any person he had ever known. Or how she loved his father even after death and the wild north Pacific separated them.

  But of course he said none of these things. He stood and muttered his “thanks-for-comings” and looked at his notes. He finally wiped his eyes and turned away. He wanted to be somewhere else.

  Then he felt an arm on his shoulder and heard Clive’s voice.

  “What my brother wants to say is that Annabelle was a good person. She loved her friends. She loved this place. She had two sons, one who is a good guy and likes to take care of people …” Clive gripped Miles’s shoulder and continued talking. “… and another who usually makes a mess of things. But even so, she was proud of her family. And she liked a good party; she liked to eat and drink, and she would hate for us to let this food go to waste. So, let’s get started!”

  With that, a third of the people in the room lifted their bottles into the air and said, “Annabelle,” in loud voices, unashamed and unafraid of the distance that separated them from her. Others called out, “Hear, hear.”

  BOB GLEASON, USING his walker, pushed his way up to Miles and jutted out a wobbly hand.

  “Best memorial I’ve been to in a good long while,” he said. He turned away, but before he got more than two steps away he doubled back. “Did you hear the story about her beautiful yellow bird?”

  “Of course, Bob. That was a famous story. Grandma Ellie told it all the time, about how Mom brought her cockatiel up the inside passage in the dory—”

  “And about how it flew away somewhere down south of Dixon Entrance?” Bob Gleason interrupted. “You know I think she half expected that bird to come and find her. Nearly all her life. I really think she did.”

  “Maybe so, Bob,” was all Miles could offer.

  “She was a fine gal. I always liked her. I always wanted to kind of steal her away from your father for a little while.”

  Miles grimaced, even though this was well-known information to him now. He tried to walk away, but Bob’s skinny claw of a hand clamped down on him.

  “And after your dad’s boat went down and she was … you know … available, well, it just never seemed right after that.”

  “Yes. I suppose that’s true, Bob.” Miles took a step away, and the old man turned again.

  “But she was a hell of a fine gal,” he said, and toddled off toward the food.

  Tina came, put her arms around Miles, and kissed him on the cheek. “She did a good job with you, Miles,” she said.

  “Thanks.” He tried to stuff his notes into his pocket, but Tina kissed him again, and he felt the strong muscles between her shoulders holding onto him and he felt the air slowly slide out of him as if he wanted to stay right there in her arms.

  But a line of people were waiting for him. Some, it was true, were simply grateful that they didn’t have to sit through a bunch of speeches, but all of them knew what Miles was feeling because speechlessness was something they recognized in themselves and each other.

  So Miles stood there, hugging people one by one. Friends and people he barely knew: drunks he’d sewn together after countless falls off the boardwalk, angry women who didn’t like the tone of his voice or the selection of magazines in the clinic, fishermen who thought he was soft and inept. All of them came with their hugs, their beery breath, sour perfume, cigarettes, and fish slime. They were hugging him because he was burying someone he loved, someone he felt responsible for, and this, too, was something they understood.

  Old Walter Williams came up and shook Clive’s hand.

  “You just got out of jail, huh?” He fixed a stern but wobbly eye on him.

  Clive stood flat-footed and stared him right back in the eye. “That’s true, Walter, and I’ve never been happier.”

  “Well, welcome home, buddy boy.” His palsied hand gestured weakly around the hall. “Hell, you know, half of us have done a jag or two, and the rest of them just never got caught. Now get me a beer, would you?” He sat down, and a young girl handed him a plate of food and kissed him on his cheek.

  Someone gave Miles a beer, and Tina brought him a plate of food. He sat down in an empty chair and let his eyes roam through the crowd, hoping Mouse Miller might wander in for some free food and beer. Other freeloaders smiled weakly and shouldered their way into the food line, but Mouse wasn’t among them.

  Clive hadn’t eaten yet. People kept shaking his hand and talking to him. The idea of shaking the hand of a man you knew as a kid and was now an ex-con apparently was just too interesting to let go of easily. Kids and old men crowded around him, and some of the younger women stood watching from a distance.

  For twenty minutes, Weasel backed Clive into a corner and tried to engage him in a discussion about the films of Harvey Keitel. The problem with Weasel’s conversational strategy was that he never paused or asked questions. He lectured. And now he lectured Clive on the subject of Harvey Keitel and America’s dark underbelly, which left little for Clive to add.

  Mrs. Cera came over to Miles and gave him a special plate of black cod collars. She said some of them “came out of the smokehouse just perfect,” and she wanted him to have them. He thanked her, and she held his face in her hands and disappeared back into the crowd.

  People who had already had enough to eat were starting to leave. But someone came in with more beer and someone e
lse plugged in a tape player and suddenly the room was full of Glenn Miller. Weasel took his sports coat off and started swing dancing with Tina. Ed undid his tie and began talking to Mrs. Cera about the subtleties of smoking black cod. Miles drank some more beer, even though he hadn’t drunk much beer since he got out of the Army.

  Now the old people were telling stories. Many were about Annabelle. Miles and Clive walked around the room, sitting on the edge of a group of two or three. They sat and listened. Old women would place their old hands over the boys and leave them there. There were stories of picnics and big salmon. There were stories of bears and long snowy winters. There were stories of unexplainable kindnesses and debts that would never be repaid. Clive and Miles went from group to group, and each group folded them into their own loving company. Glasses clinked. Laughter burbled up, and old friends and people said the names of those who had long left this stormy coast.

  The room was quieting down, and most of the older folks had headed home. Clive was talking to a young woman working in the cold storage for the summer; he was eating huckleberry pie and drinking black coffee and watching her sway in her chair and hold onto her beer with both hands. Tina was sitting with Miles and listening to Weasel tell her about the John Sayles movie Matewan; she was laughing at what he said but her arm was draped over the back of Miles’s chair, and he could feel her forearm against his back.

  Billy flopped down with a cup of coffee, a bottle of brandy, and a plate of sugar doughnuts. He poured brandy into his coffee and ate one of the doughnuts; powdered sugar dusted his chin as he chewed and drank and looked at Miles but didn’t say a word.

  Tina got Miles up to dance to “Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand,” and they spun around the room, bumping into the folding chairs only once. It was dark outside when the song was over.

  The people left in the hall sat at a long table where Billy was still eating doughnuts. Miles sat down between Tina and Clive. The cold storage girl was sleeping against Clive’s shoulder.

  “Forty-nine days,” Billy blurted.

  “What?” Tina asked.

  “Forty-nine days,” Billy repeated. “She’s got forty-nine days to get a new body.”

  “Ah!” said Miles.

  Tina leaned over to explain this to Clive. “Billy’s a Tibetan Buddhist.”

  “Ah!” said Clive.

  “And he’s going to paddle his kayak to Seattle so he can meet the Dalai Lama,” Miles added.

  “I’m going to raise money to free Tibet,” Billy said with a mouthful of doughnut.

  Clive looked at him and smiled broadly. “Christ, something should be free in this life.” He reached into his pocket. “Give this to him for me,” he said, and handed Billy ten hundred dollar bills.

  “Excellent! Lemme get a picture …” Weasel stood up and wove over to the counter for the Polaroid camera kept in the supply drawer. They bunched around the table with Clive and Billy in the center of the group, and Clive handing the money to Billy as if he were a lucky sweepstakes winner. Weasel snapped the picture and waved the exposed print in the air as if he were fanning himself.

  “Billy,” he said, “you take this with you so the Dalai Lama can see who we are.” He lay the print out on the table, and they watched the images ease into being, watched the white sheen of light spread over the slightly overexposed photograph.

  Billy took it and held it gingerly in his sugared hands. “I will give this to him myself,” he said with purpose.

  Billy kept staring at the picture and at the hundred dollar bills. He grinned and put the money and the photo in his front pants pocket, finished his coffee nudge, brushed the powdered sugar off his hands. He licked one fingertip and smiled again. “Sweet,” he said.

  OUT ON THE boardwalk, rain had started to fall through the dark. Clive had helped the young girl find her feet and handed her off to Tina, who promised to get her back to the bunkhouse. Everyone said goodnight and started to go, but Tina doubled back to give Miles one last kiss, holding up the drunken fish slimer with one arm.

  “Have a good sleep, bud,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I love you so much!” blurted the drunken girl.

  “Thanks,” Miles said, and patted her on the back.

  The brothers turned to walk to their mother’s house.

  “You shouldn’t have dismissed her like that,” Clive said, and turned up the collar of his Hawaiian shirt, shrugging.

  “Like what?”

  “Like that!” Clive’s voice was affronted. “Hell, she spent the entire evening telling me about her deep longing for you.”

  Miles spun around and watched her staggering home to the bunkhouse. “I don’t know that girl,” he said. “She was probably in grade school when I went in the army.”

  “You need to pay a little better attention, brother.” He stepped around a spilled can of paint lying on the boardwalk, red drops falling through the cracks. Delicate paw prints ran through the scarlet puddle and along the boardwalk, fading into the darkness.

  “You’ve been here, what … a couple of days and already you’re critical?” Miles couldn’t keep his voice friendly anymore.

  “What do you want, Miles?” Clive asked. “You want me to leave right away?”

  Miles didn’t say anything, and they walked along the slick planks.

  “Screwy things happened after you went away.” Miles was quiet for a bit. “Pop died … and then you just left … and then it seemed like all she ever talked about was you.”

  Wind shushed through the trees, and a raven stood on a rail beside the boardwalk, scratching its beak.

  “And I was right here.” Miles’s voice was tired. “I’m tired of all the attention you got around here,” he said.

  “I haven’t even been here,” Clive said.

  “I know.” Miles turned away from his brother.

  Clive wanted to walk away. He wanted to walk back into the silence that had enfolded him in the protective segregation cell. There was no use in explaining anything to a brother who was angry with him. Who had good reason to be angry with him.

  “Jesus! You were a dope dealer,” Miles said. “While I was in Somalia!”

  “I know, Miles,” Clive said. “It’s not right. I wasn’t right. I’m going to try to be better, a better brother.”

  The raven jerked its head back and forth between the two brothers as if deciding whose side he was on. Clive watched him for a moment. He turned and walked over to the black bird. The bird looked up at Clive and said very succinctly, “Just tell him the truth.”

  “Cocaine,” Clive said finally. “I sold flake cocaine. When I was doing it, I told myself that it wasn’t crack. Pure rationalization, it’s true. I sold to a select group of rich clients. I delivered early in the morning and they left me cash, and I told myself that at least I didn’t sell to kids or people who were reckless around their kids.”

  “Do you know how you sound?”

  “I do,” Clive said. “Listen, I’m sorry for leaving you. I really am. I thought about you all the time. But … you know those people who talked about me all the time? They didn’t know who they were talking about.”

  “Just as you didn’t know the little brother you say you were thinking about.”

  “What’s it like being a hero?” Clive asked.

  “Shit,” Miles said, looking up and down the inlet. For a moment he thought of brushing his brother off with a canned answer he usually gave about training and instant response, but instead he said, “When it’s happening to you, it’s kind of a dumb surprise. You just wonder, ‘Is this it? Is this what I’ve been worried about?’ And then you see people dying and you kind of figure … yeah, this must be it. But there is no music like in the movies, and there is no time to take it all in, you just keep moving and reacting … You just go, go, go, and when you make it—if you make it—that’s when you get scared. It’s weird. You never feel like a hero, you really don’t, you just feel bad that you made it and the other guys who mus
t have done that one thing more, that one brave thing, or mistaken thing, that you didn’t. I don’t know.”

  They walked on in silence. In the distance, the wind scoured over the trees and out into the darkness. A street lamp cast a shaky pool of light onto the boardwalk.

  Miles thought of his mother’s empty house. He thought of her being forever gone, and he hunched up his shoulders to the wind.

  “I realize that there is so much I don’t know about you,” Clive said finally, “and that can be added on to the list of things that are my fault.” Then he held out his hand to Miles. “I was a criminal, but now I’m not and I’d like to get to know you.”

  “What are you now?” Miles asked, still a little shaky on his feet.

  “I’m not sure, brother.”

  “Is that money from your coat going to get us in trouble?”

  “Us?”

  “Well, you.”

  “No. I don’t think so. It’s my money. Even the guy I stole it from knows that.”

  Miles looked up at his brother. “Somehow I don’t find that very comforting.”

  “Money doesn’t really belong to any one person. That’s why they call it money. But we’re splitting hairs. Tell me the truth: have you seen my dog?” Clive smiled at his brother.

  “That is an ugly dog, Clive.”

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion of his looks,” Clive said. “Have you seen him?”

  “No.” Miles said. “No, I haven’t seen your dog.”

  They looked at each other. The wind washed up the hillside in a wave, and the trees flung their arms in the dark. Fat raindrops started falling, sounding like a gamelan hitting the tin roofs and the buckets all around town. “We can look for him tomorrow.” He stepped forward to put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Thanks for helping me out back there at the memorial,” he said, “when I froze up.”