First Avenue

by Lowen Clausen

  “Better job here,” the woman said, and then touched her cheeks to show what she meant. The onion cutters bore their tears silently.

  “Yes, better job,” Katherine agreed.

  “Olivia asks me to thank you for coming, Officer Murphy. We both appreciate that.”

  The first name spoken by Mildred Abbott sent a shiver through Katherine—reminding her of the child they had come to mourn. She looked down the table to the seated women who had stopped their work for a moment.

  “Please call me Katherine.”

  “Katherine,” Olivia Sanchez said without translation. She nodded her head and smiled as though she had said a complete sentence. Mildred Abbott smiled the same way.

  “Olivia thinks you are not from the city,” Mildred said. “I think she means that as a compliment.”

  “I grew up on a farm,” Katherine said. “I was there just yesterday.”

  Mrs. Sanchez shook her head knowingly with Mildred’s translation. “Ah,” she said—another sentence. How did she know that? Katherine wondered.

  “How did she know that?”

  “It’s in the face,” Mildred said. “It’s a good sign. You have a lovely face.”

  Katherine blushed. She was ready for the hands to begin again, to move the conversation away from her face, away from her. She looked down and made a small cut through the lettuce.

  “Si,” the old woman said. She spoke several more words of Spanish and touched her face. Then she resumed cutting the peppers.

  When they went out to the tree, another table had appeared. She and Sam sat together as instructed. Georgia took a place on the other side of the table. Mrs. Sanchez sat at one end among the women, Mr. Sanchez at the other among the men. He alone continued to wear a suit jacket.

  Katherine was not used to Mexican food, if that was what it was. The old man across from her encouraged her to try the homemade red sauce in bottles standing every few feet on the tables. A sly grin spread across his weathered face, and she knew to use the sauce sparingly. Even so it burned her tongue. She drank cold tea, refusing to choke, and held the cold liquid in her mouth until it lost its ability to cool. Then she drank more.

  “Good,” she said. “It’s very good.”

  The old man motioned her to use more. He had dirt in his fingernails, immovable dirt from the soil. Dirt had also worked into the wrinkles of his hands, into the skin itself. The hands were, however, as clean as they could be.

  “No thanks,” she said and then decided to tell him the truth, which was what he was waiting for anyway. She waved her hand in front of her mouth. “Too hot. It’s like fire.”

  “Fire,” the old man repeated, grinning openly. “It is fire. We don’t use it either.”

  It was true. She saw no one else who used the hot red sauce. It was decoration for the table, a memory of the days when their stomachs had been stronger. If so the fire in the bottles would last forever.

  Sam laughed at her adventure with the hot sauce. The old man could not persuade him to try it. The old man’s eyes darted back and forth among the three strangers. He did not address Georgia, as though she were off-limits to his humor.

  “Do you work with the orchards?” Sam asked.

  “Oh yes. We have our own orchard. Together,” he said proudly. He made a circle with his fingers that included the others. “All of us.”

  “Are those your trees?” Sam pointed over the man’s head to the orchard on the hill.

  “No,” the man said without turning around. “Our orchard is not so big. We work there, too, sometimes. Big company. We are small, but we have good apples.”

  “The best apples,” said his neighbor, whose open white collar was frayed at the edges from having rubbed too long against his rough skin.

  “Yes. Enrico is correct. We think so, anyway.”

  “You should come when we pick,” Enrico said. “You will see I tell the truth. Bring the ladies, too.”

  Enrico seemed unsure about how else to describe them, how to fix the association among the three. Katherine understood his confusion. As one of the ladies, she smiled, but a smile would not clear up Enrico’s confusion. She wondered how Georgia had responded. There was a moment when no one said anything.

  “They have work to do,” the old one said. “This man and this lady, they are police officers. They cannot come to see our apples.”

  Enrico did not appreciate the older man’s sharp voice, but he seemed to agree that someone needed to say something. He smiled meekly while Katherine let hers go.

  “What kind of apples do you grow?” Georgia asked Enrico. The old man had left her out of his sentence, and she left him out of her question.

  “Delicious,” Enrico said. “And Jonagold. It is the Jonagold that I like best.” He liked it, also, that Georgia had spoken to him.

  “Red delicious or golden?” Georgia asked.

  “Both, lady.”

  “Georgia,” Georgia said and pointed to her chest.

  “Georgia?” Enrico asked.

  “My name,” Georgia explained. “My father was from the South. He said my red hair was the same color as the dirt in Georgia. So that’s what he called me.”

  “I have heard of that dirt,” Enrico said.

  “Red dirt in America?” the old man asked.

  “It’s true,” Enrico said. “I have heard of it.”

  “It cannot be as good as our dirt.” The old man who enjoyed tricks was not sure that a trick was not being played on him.

  “What difference is the color?” Enrico asked. “It’s what comes out of the soil that matters. They raise peaches in Georgia. Good peaches. Just like here. Isn’t that right.” He looked to Georgia for confirmation.

  “That’s right.”

  “We do better with apples than peaches,” the old man said. “The climate here is better for apples.”

  “Yes, Eduardo, but the peaches are all right, too.”

  “Sometimes, but it is better with the apples.”

  Enrico looked around the table to see what the others might think. Katherine thought he might have said more in another place, but here he smiled at Georgia, the lady named after red dirt, and reluctantly nodded in agreement with the old man.

  Katherine looked down the table where Mildred Abbott and Olivia Sanchez sat side by side—one pale and one brown. They had listened to the old man’s homily on apples and nodded their agreement like sisters. She scanned the faces of the people who sat together on the other side of the table on an assortment of chairs and benches until she came to Mr. Sanchez at the end. His plate was still full with the food he had first taken. He looked at something above them, above the table, above the tree with the abandoned swing, above the dry hills with unnatural green trees. He also nodded agreement with old Eduardo. All agreed, then, that it was better with the apples.

  Chapter 16

  When it was too late for him to come, when she had given up hope for the second day in a row, Maria saw the unmistakable blue of a police uniform at the front door. There were two uniforms and two different police officers. She was disappointed that it was not Sam Wright, but she was curious, also, to see if they were anything like him. Pierre saw them, too, and walked up to the cash register where she stood.

  “I will take care of the counter,” he said. “You go on a break now.”

  She left the counter, wondering why Pierre had replaced her, and sat down by the window without bringing with her anything to eat or drink. It had not been that long since her last break.

  The two policemen sat at the counter. Pierre poured them coffee even before they asked and stood close to them. The policemen sipped their coffee. When other men came in together for coffee, they usually tried to make some joke, to find something to laugh about. Pierre disliked their jokes and never came to the front when there were men at the counter. The policemen did not laugh or make jokes.

  The two policemen did not cause a stir as happened the morning when Sam had come. There was no one left to stir. “
No free doughnuts,” Pierre had said again that morning. “They’re all gone.” It was the same thing that he had said the previous morning, and yet he had thrown the old doughnuts away. It was his business what he did with the doughnuts, but she could see no reason to lie. Maybe they would stop coming if he told them the truth.

  They still came—those seven or eight kids. Maybe they were not kids, but they were not adults either. They were about her age. They came into the Donut Shop early in the morning, sat in the chairs, and waited.

  Everyone seemed to be waiting, including Pierre and the policemen. She, too, sat at the table with nothing to do and waited. She had not taken Sam’s suggestion to find a new job, but what good would it do to work and watch and listen in Pierre’s dirty doughnut shop if he didn’t come back? What was there to see?

  Without saying anything, the two policemen got up from the counter. Pierre watched them rise, but he did not move toward them or away. He stood still, smiled falsely, and nodded his head as if he were glad for their business. Mr. Polanski would not give his customers a smile like that. There was no part of the smile in Pierre’s eyes. She looked at the policemen when they passed her table. There were no smiles in their eyes either. They were tall men, and one was much older than the other. Both had brown sticks hanging from their gun belts.

  Once outside the older man pulled out his stick and twirled it. She thought the stick would fly off into the air. It did, but then it came back to the policeman’s hand. A string wrapped in the policeman’s fingers brought the stick back to him. Side by side the two policemen walked down First Avenue past her window in slow, practiced steps. They did not remind her at all of Sam Wright.

  Without saying anything Pierre went to the back again, leaving the two cups on the counter. He talked to Bill briefly and then walked out the front door. Like the policemen, he walked south on First Avenue. He didn’t tell her that her break was over.

  She went to the counter and picked up the two plastic cups. There was coffee in both cups, too much to throw into the garbage. She took the cups to the back and emptied the coffee into the sink. It gathered in tiny rivulets and ran down the drain. She studied the splashed residue like a fortune-teller studying tea leaves. In her mind she saw Pierre standing beside the policemen and their strange indifference. They were not like any customers who had come before.

  The absence of motion, rather than motion, reminded her she was not alone. She looked toward the front door, and in doing so, quickly passed Bill’s staring eyes. He had been watching her from the doughnut machine. She took a moment to prepare herself, then turned toward him with the same indifference she had seen in the policemen.

  “If he wants to wait on people, he could at least clean up afterward,” she said to him if he were listening.

  He was listening. Something changed in his face—a small change.

  “He does what he wants with his business,” Bill said.

  She walked back to the counter with a dishcloth and wiped it clean. They had left no money to ring into the register. She continued to wipe the counter slowly and thoroughly as though they had left behind a mess. They had left nothing behind.

  Chapter 17

  The water was exceptionally still—low tide, no wind, no ships underway to provide an artificial disturbance. Each dip of the paddle left a ghostlike print on the flat water. The kayak cut straight across Elliott Bay. The only sound Sam heard was from his paddle dipping in and out of the water. He wondered how far he would be heard if he called out.

  As he passed the checkpoint where he usually looked at his watch, the crossing of the imaginary coordinates between the Space Needle in the Denny Regrade section of downtown and the lighthouse at Alki Point across the bay, he left the time hidden on his sleeve.

  He should have gone to the funeral alone, he thought. He should have learned by now not to make things complicated. Had he forgotten the kindness he had once taken from another girl with warm brown eyes—such rare, undeserved kindness—and the mess he had made of it? He had been just a boy then, but what a mess he had made.

  Leaving you? he remembered saying. I’m not leaving you. I never came for you. The summer is over. The job is over. Don’t you understand? All right. I’ll come back. I don’t know how soon, but I’ll come back.

  It had taken a long time for him to go back—much longer than he had promised, although he had never promised when. After that summer he had things to do, a life to live. At eighteen he had not known what life he had already found, and he had not gone back—not until she was gone.

  When he went back, he had meant to get away from his mistakes, not to find them again. He intended to breathe fresh air before starting again, before resuming his ordinary life after the interruption of marriage. He intended to convince himself that it was not entirely his fault that his wife had left and had given back to him what he had given that summer years before. He had taken all his vacation and had gone fishing with his uncle again. Why not? Find out if his hands could still do an honest day’s work. Find out if they had become too soft, if his stomach could still tolerate rough water. Rough water he could tolerate, but he found the going more difficult in the smooth, calm bay within sight of the fishing village.

  The cannery was gone. The building was there, but the work was gone. Efficiency had come since he left. The fish went to floating factories instead of factories ashore. There was no longer a night-shift whistle that released young girls to waiting lovers, the smell of fish in the air like strong perfume carried with them into the waiting beds. The smell of fish was everywhere and was more pleasant than he had ever imagined. She had made no apology for that which could not be washed away, and he had not wished for one. He had given none of his own.

  She was gone, gone farther than he could ever reach. “Cancer,” said the old man who ran the grocery squeezed between the dock and the processing plant. He was some relation of hers, although exactly how it was, the young fisherman never and still did not understand. There was much in that village he had not understood. He stood in front of the old man, nodding as though he understood, wondering if he could ask anything more or should leave it as it was. As it was, it was over. Did she ever forgive the boy who knew her for a time, accepted her generosity, left her with a broken promise?

  “Cancer,” the old man repeated. “Six months ago.”

  Would it have made any difference if he had gone back sooner? What could he have done that would have made any difference?

  Odd though, that it was six months before—the same time his wife had found the poems about the Indian girl and had thrown them at him. It was not the poems. It was everything else. Why idealize what is gone and cannot be had? his wife had asked. Why not improve what is now? How can you improve what was never there, he had shouted as she walked out the last time. There had never been any ideal, he had wanted to say but did not because she was gone by then—only stupidity and shame and dishonesty.

  “Did you know her?” the old man asked.

  Yes, but not well.

  “Do you want to buy something?”

  Sam bought cigarettes, two packs, even though he didn’t smoke. He walked out of the store without asking more questions and up the street carrying the cigarettes until he came to a garbage can, always in short supply on the village road, and dropped the cigarettes onto the pile of refuse.

  Did she find happiness? Did she find someone who was not afraid to say with pleasure and hope, “Mom, Dad, this is Gloria.”

  “G-L-O-R-I-A,” he sang flatly as he paddled determinedly toward another dock. It was the only part of the old song he ever remembered. The girl, however, came back to him again and again in his dreams and in his poems—the only way he ever had the courage to face her.

  “Goddamn poems,” he muttered softly between strokes of the paddle so that finally there was another sound on the water.

  He gripped the paddle tighter, as he did when his hands became numb. They were used to cold air and cold water. Hard work would mak
e them forget the cold, but it was not cold this morning. He dug his paddle deep into the water, again and again, until his shoulders burned with exertion.

  He would be within her sight by now if she were there. If she were there, her light would find him. Over the last stretch of water he paddled toward the dock as if in a race with the waiting ferry that would demand the lane at any moment. He gulped in the crisp sea air, sent it deep into his lungs, and pushed it out again when it was all used up. Finally only yards from the dock and still in the dark, he had to stop. He stuck his paddle into the water as a brake on the left side of the kayak. The boat swung sharply toward the pier, nearly striking broadside against a piling. He extended his right hand to protect the boat. He must have won his silly race. There was no one else around.

  He walked along the water to Yesler Street, where he crossed Alaskan Way. He watched for police cars. On the hill between Second Avenue and Third Avenue, he leaned into the incline and lowered his head like a weary pilgrim. She must have had a late call.

  In the locker room he showered and put on his uniform. He sat on the bench in front of his locker, pulled out his black work shoes, and tossed his tennis shoes into the bottom of the locker. The shuffling noise of other men rose over the lockers, but he was alone in his row. As he bent over to tie his shoes, he felt tired—tired already and the shift had not begun. It was his first day back with six to go. Maybe it was not a late call that kept her away.

  It was more complicated now that the women had come. They—these men who once made up the whole show—used to talk about work and women and make fun of each other all at one time, but they talked more quietly now, more carefully, as though someone might be listening in the next row. Maybe it wasn’t the women. Maybe he just had less to say.

  He got a cup of coffee from the machine in the lunchroom and put it on the counter as he checked for mail in the roll call room. There was another report from Markowitz. He stood off to the side and read a summary of interviews from people who knew or must have known Alberta. “Vanished from the face of the earth,” Markowitz scribbled.