The Big Both Ways

by John Straley

  The chops were on the end of long narrow ribs with not a lot of meat so they cooked up almost all of the rib cage. The fire hissed as grease sputtered down onto the flames. The bones blackened and the two of them were hungry enough to pull the meat off the fire before it was cooked. Ellie took a piece off first and tore into it, but the warm raw lamb was so rich that it turned in her stomach. She put it back over the fire, but closer to the flames this time so that the outside of the meat began to crystallize in char.

  Soon enough the chops were all blackened so they plucked them out and started gnawing on the bones. Slip burned the roof of his mouth and dropped one chop into the fire, and without thinking he reached into the flame to pluck it out.

  Grease rolled down between their fingers and they ate greedily. A small stream flowed out into the bight, and Slip filled their water jugs. They drank the cold water, and the fat congealed on their fingers. They drank more water and ate the chops, even crunching down greedily on the bones to suck out the gooey marrow.

  Slip filled the water jugs again and as he was making his way back to the boat he looked up over his shoulder and saw a horse and rider coming down a steep slope through a clearing. He didn’t run but walked quickly to the dory. Ellie kicked the fire apart. She dipped her greasy hands into the cold salt water and climbed into the dory. They pushed off, then pulled out into the main part of the channel.

  Annabelle made a sour face when the Canadian customs agent spoke with Johnny about his young niece making the trip north with him. The agent wasn’t put off by the fact that Johnny had no identification for the girl. There didn’t seem to be any reason to be suspicious. Johnny had his papers in order along with the freight bill and some letters from the manager of the cannery up the coast. All this seemed to satisfy the agent. He handed the papers back to Johnny, then with a handshake they were on their way.

  The docks of Victoria were busy with freighters and fishing vessels taking on supplies. A row of stone buildings stood in the background like bluffs above the waterfront. Annabelle agreed to walk up to the shops with Johnny as long as he promised that they would buy some food for Buddy. There were tobacconists and mercantile stores, ship’s chandleries, and down some of the long side streets Annabelle thought there must be factories because of the smoke and noise coming out into the road. They walked slowly through the crowds of people on the sidewalk. Johnny extended his hand several times but Annabelle would not take it. She said very little, but in everything she said she tried to include the plan to meet back up with the little dory.

  “I’m going to need some more food for Buddy if we’re going to row all the way to Alaska,” she said, without looking up at Johnny as she ducked through the crowd.

  “Uh-huh,” Johnny said, scanning the stores.

  They found a Chinese grocery that sold sunflower seeds and strange-looking crackers that Annabelle thought Buddy would like for sure. Johnny bought more food for the boat: tins of meat and a sack of potatoes, a box of apples and a cured ham. He also bought a large paper bag of peppermint sticks and set them on the counter in front of the old man totaling up the bill with an abacus.

  Johnny handed Annabelle a peppermint stick as the old man took down the name of the boat so he could have the groceries delivered.

  “This will be fine,” Annabelle said in a flat tone. “Ellie likes peppermint candy.”

  “Uh-huh,” Johnny said again. Then, “You left most of your clothes and things on the dory. You want to go buy some new clothes? I could get you a nice dress or something here if you like.”

  Annabelle looked down at herself. Clothes had never been important to her. She had seen the film stars in the magazines with their fancy evening clothes. She wondered for a moment if Johnny was talking about a dress like that? One that sparkled when she moved. Johnny couldn’t mean such a thing, could he? Annabelle was wearing her play pants made of tough canvas and a flannel shirt. She had her hair in braids and her glasses sat firmly on the bridge of her nose. For a moment she considered what it would be like to wear a dress like Claudette Colbert, where her legs showed to the world and helped her stop cars when she needed one. Annabelle smiled, thinking of Clark Gable.

  “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”

  Johnny walked around the docks and went into a shop and brought out a bottle in a paper bag. A man on the sidewalk was selling windup tin toys, and he and Annabelle stopped to watch them whirr and jerk back and forth on top of the man’s traveling case. There were soldiers, stiffly high-stepping toward the edge, and tiny trains chuffing around on the sidewalk beside his feet. The barker tried to talk Johnny into buying one for the girl but Annabelle had just shook her head that she didn’t want one, even though she smiled at the little tin terrier who bobbled and sniffed at the ground.

  “I’d like to buy a pair of gloves for Mr. Wilson. He tore up his hands pretty good on that first day of rowing.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, hon, his hands will toughen up soon enough,” Johnny said. They walked back toward the waterfront where the Pacific Pride was tied up to the transient dock.

  “How’d you fall in with that character anyway?” Johnny asked.

  “Oh, he’s a friend of Ellie’s.” Annabelle walked along swinging her arms.

  “Oh,” Johnny said, and he too swung his arms to match hers. “Here’s what I’ve been thinking, girly-girl, and tell me what you think.”

  Annabelle stared up at him and squinched up her nose so that her glasses slipped. No one had ever called her girly-girl before.

  “Those people aren’t your parents.”

  “No,” Annabelle said. She started looking for the masts of the Pacific Pride sticking up in the harbor.

  “Then why don’t you and me go deliver this load of box wood to the cannery and I take you back to live with your real folks.”

  “My real folks are dead,” Annabelle said, and she took a couple of steps into the busy street. A beer truck rumbled by on the cobblestones just inches from the tips of her leather shoes.

  “You don’t have to tell stories,” Johnny said, and he pulled her back up on the sidewalk by her shoulders. Annabelle took a bite of the peppermint stick and crunched the candy between her teeth.

  “I’m not telling stories. My parents are buried in Montana. Ellie’s my aunt.”

  “Then who’s the fella?” Johnny asked.

  “He’s some man my aunt found to help us out. I don’t know.”

  “You shouldn’t be around such people,” Johnny said. “Even if we can’t find some other folks for you, you could come stay with my wife and me. We got some boys who would love to have a sister to look after.”

  “No, thank you,” Annabelle said, and she darted across the street to a mercantile store where they had leather gloves in the front window.

  Johnny didn’t know what to do. He had no intention of stealing the girl but he couldn’t bear putting her off the Pride and back into that little boat. There had to be something else he could do. But as he watched the girl with the braids skipping across the street ahead of him, his mind was blank of possibilities.

  They made it back to the boat just a few minutes before the boy from the Chinese grocery showed up with the bag of food. Annabelle jumped onboard and poured some more seeds into a little dish for Buddy, who happily remained in his cage behind the skipper’s short bunk in the wheelhouse. Annabelle slid the dirty paper liner out of the cage, then took the newspaper wrapped around the smoked ham and spread it out on the bottom of Buddy’s cage. While Johnny brought the new groceries inside, she wrapped the seeds and the Chinese crackers into her coat, then she tied the bundle closed with a piece of twine she had picked up from the dory. Then she squished her foot around in her leather shoe to make sure she could feel the money she had secreted there.

  The Chinese delivery boy was walking up the dock and Johnny was in the galley stowing the groceries when Annabelle quietly picked up Buddy’s cage, tucked the bundle under her arm, and picked up her tightly wrapped umbrella. The
n she walked over to the side door of the wheelhouse. She sat on the thick bulwark for a moment, and jumped down to the dock the boat was tied to. She stumbled once and dropped Buddy’s cage, which caused such a commotion that the delivery boy from the Chinese grocery came running back down.

  They met in the middle of the float.

  “What you want?” the boy asked.

  “Nothing, thank you,” Annabelle said, trying to push past him quickly.

  “I take. I take you. Where you go?” the boy held out his hand flat as if asking for money.

  “What you want?” the boy asked again. And just as Annabelle was about to answer she felt the grip of a large hand on her shoulders.

  “We’re fine,” Johnny said, and he flipped a nickel through the air to the boy standing on the dock, then pushed the girl back toward the Pacific Pride.

  Slip rowed through sunset and well into dark. The light wind backed around from the southwest and soon enough they put up the small sail and rigged an oar over the stern as a rudder. As they proceeded north they saw more boats crossing the main part of the channel and each cove where they considered putting in had a light in it. Some of the lights were small and clear, perched on top of an anchored boat, and some of the lights were the soft flutter of a lantern inside a cabin on shore.

  As the sun set, the rippled water turned a dark purple and the cool of night floated in off the gulf currents. Occasionally they heard geese laboring their way north and once they heard the sudden breath of some mammal rising out in the dark. Seabirds on their short wings would flutter by, making odd little squeaking sounds as they passed, and everywhere they could hear the multilayered hiss of the water against the hull, against the islands, and against the light wind that lathered just the tips of the small waves.

  The dory moved slowly, no more than a stroll, but it was easy to keep a course. A few lights blinked up ahead; some moved slowly across their bow and some remained stationary. Some were clear and some were green or red. Slip just steered the way the boat wanted to go and away from the rocks. There was a small hand compass in the trunk that had two drops of radium, one on the arrow and the other on the N along the edge. Slip selected a course before sunset and was able to hold it by keeping the relative position of the glowing dots constant. The dory rose and fell evenly when a wake from a passing boat would overtake them and no water came over the sides.

  Once, Slip found himself jerking awake and the oar cocked at an odd angle. The dory was fighting against the wind and the soggy canvas sail began to pop and flutter. Slip straightened up and Ellie came back to take the makeshift tiller.

  “This looks like something I can do,” she said.

  “You mean besides stealing sheep,” he said, and eased himself toward the bow.

  “We both know that stealing sheep is not the worst thing either of us has done,” Ellie said as gently as she could.

  Slip just grunted and tried to plump up a rolled blanket to lean against.

  By morning they were tied to a kelp bed off the point of a small island. To the north they could see the land coming together and boats funneling toward a low section of hills. They couldn’t see an opening but they assumed that about two and a half miles ahead was the entrance to Dodd Narrows. The kelp bed sat in the lee of a rock. The wind was building from the south, but this bit of flat water offered a clear view of the main channel and the point to the east where the northbound fleet came to join the gathering of boats waiting to go through the narrows. They ate the soggy crackers and chewed on the salted beef until Slip took out three cooked chops he had saved from the night before and offered one to Ellie without comment. The two of them ate slowly, chewing on the bones until they were as clean as scientific specimens.

  After they ate the lamb and salted beef, they drank fresh water and then lay back with round bellies. Ellie surprised Slip by standing up and unbuttoning her pants and saying, “You’re going to want to look somewhere else a second.” Then she proceeded to take her pants down, sat on the edge of the boat in the bow, and peed over the side.

  “You better hope those whales aren’t around,” he said after a pause, with a lamb rib cocked back in his teeth.

  “You would have to say that,” she said, and stood up quickly, tucking in her blouse and staring down into the water.

  The sun rose in the sky and the fronds of kelp lengthened on the surface as the tide went out. The clouds were stacking up from the south but not a drop of rain had fallen for several days. None of the passing boats seemed to pay them any mind. Occasionally a skipper would wave from a pilothouse and Ellie would gaily wave back as if she were a princess in a ticker tape parade.

  They agreed that one person would stay awake and keep watch for the Pacific Pride while the other dozed in the bottom of the boat. Slip lay on his back and looked up at the sky. He felt a long way from anything else in his life. His face was still bruised from the insanity in Seattle but each day he felt a bit better, and just then a fine spring sunshine streamed down on him in the bottom of the boat and he felt better than he had in some time.

  Ellie’s thin arm shot out and she said, “There … I think. There.”

  Slip sat up and he was fairly certain he saw the Pacific Pride coming around the point of the islands to the north. There was the black hull and the large white wheelhouse. The big boat rolled through the water and a small cascade of foam angled out from the bow.

  Ellie untied the dory from the tangle of kelp and Slip took the oars. Instead of trying to row directly for the boat, he followed the current and aimed for a course he hoped would bring them together. Ellie waved her arms and Slip pulled hard on the oars. Slip stared toward the pilothouse, and after a few minutes he said, “Something’s not right.”

  The big boat was closing the distance between them but was not correcting its course to come close to the dory. The Pacific Pride was heading on a course far to their port side. Slip pulled harder but there was no way he could catch up with the Pride. Johnny was not slowing down and Slip could not come close. The Pride … and Annabelle … were passing them by.

  Slip bore into the oars with so much of his weight that he felt the muscles knotting up under his shoulder blade. He wanted to lift the boat out of the water but the little dory just slid along.

  “Slip … Slip …” Ellie said, her voice rising in panic, “he’s not slowing down. Slip?” She was standing up in the dory now, waving her arms and whistling. The big boat was some fifty yards away from them now and was pulling away.

  “There. What’s that?” Slip said and pointed.

  On the back deck they saw the door to the pilothouse open. Then there was a flash of movement: Annabelle was standing on the rail with her umbrella in one hand and the birdcage in the other.

  “Don’t do it,” Slip said.

  “No … Honey …” Ellie said softly. She held her arms out helplessly as the girl jumped off the rail and into the foamy wake hissing on top of the green water.

  Slip pulled until he thought all his joints were going to give way. Ellie stripped off her shoes and was about to go over the side of the dory.

  “We’re going faster than you can swim in this water. It will only slow us down,” he yelled.

  The girl pumped her legs and flailed in the wake. She let the umbrella go and used both hands to try to support the cage. The Pride did not slow down, for Johnny was at the wheel and he assumed Annabelle was sleeping in the forward bunk where he had left her. The big boat rolled over the wake of another ship and the water was a crisscross of currents spouting up around the girl as she struggled. The cage sank into the water and the yellow bird screamed as he crowded to the top. The girl lay on her side with her mouth near the surface, trying to lift the cage up into the air, but the move only made her sink. She threw her bundle out in front of her and then she disappeared.

  “Jesus, Slip,” Ellie sobbed, and the logger pulled toward the girl.

  “Point to her. Point to her,” he wheezed, for he could not see her clearly n
ow.

  Ellie’s arms were shaking as she pointed straight over the bow. They could not see her but were watching the small garland of bubbles that appeared just under the top three inches of the birdcage that cleared the water.

  They were a hundred feet from her when Annabelle came to the surface, struggling to open the cage. She rolled on her back and, lifting the cage on her chest, reached up and opened the door.

  The bird flew out of the cage like a flutter of dry leaves, his high voice piercing the air with a shrill whistle. His yellow feathers were vivid and out of place in this gray-green world.

  Annabelle clung to the cage, then kicked ahead, retrieved her bundle and jammed it through the cage’s open door. Her breath was blasting hard from her nose and she kicked with her legs like a panicked dog. With his back to the dory’s bow Slip could hear her clearly now, her lungs loudly pumping air, each rattling breath ending with a high-pitched grunt.

  She swam toward the dory and Ellie kept both arms pointing straight at her.

  “Tell me when I’m close,” Slip said.

  Ellie said, “Thirty feet, maybe forty. Don’t stop now.”

  Slip pulled five more strokes, and when he turned to see for himself, the girl was sputtering and coughing. She had sucked cold water into her lungs and wasn’t swimming forward anymore but was flailing at the water as if she were trying to pull herself out of a hole.

  Slip turned in the boat and jumped over the side. The water was stunningly cold and all of his muscles seemed to cramp at once. He curled into a ball and could not swim.

  The world slowed down and he felt nothing but numbness and needles of pain. He rolled so that his face was barely out of the water. He knew he had something to say, but his mind had gone slushy. “Can’t do it,” was all he managed.