Jim maintained a not unhopeful silence.
“Hell,” Mason said again. “It’s just that the bulkhead of the Kosygin is well inside the gunnel, four feet or more. If he fell from the catwalk he’d hit the deck, maybe the gunnel.”
“But not the dock?”
Mason shook his head. “Maybe in high seas, with the boat rolling back and forth. But not tied up in Bering.”
“Could he have fallen from the gunnel?”
“Could have. He even could have tripped and fallen down the gangway, except he was to one side of it instead of at the foot.”
“What makes the trooper so sure he fell from the catwalk?”
“She found something caught on the catwalk railing, a piece of clothing or something. She put it in a Ziploc and took it away. Might have been a piece of his shirt, something like that.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway. Seen lots of nutty stuff happen at sea, never mind shore.”
“I guess.”
Of course, Jim thought, if the body had been found on the deck of the boat, the boat would have been subject to search. As things stood, the scene of the accident had been removed to the dock, public property as opposed to private. Domestic territory as opposed to foreign. Convenient for the owners of the boat however you looked at it.
The road meandered around lakes and more lakes, and houses grew gradually closer together as they reached the center of town. Jim had heard that Venice, another city built on lakes, was slowly sinking into the Adriatic; he wondered where Bering would be in another decade or so. Of course, by then they would have fished out the salmon the same way they had the king crab and the halibut and it wouldn’t matter, except to the Yupik.
Mason let Jim out with a wave good-bye and drove away. Jim looked at his watch. It was three o’clock, and although the dawn was more than two hours away the sky was perceptibly lighter, having faded from mauve to a pastel shade of lavender. No stars, he thought, standing still and staring up. They disappeared from the night sky from May to August, displaced by the midnight sun.
He remembered stars in California, lying on his back in an artichoke field, next to Sally Ann Schaefer, the artichoke field’s owner’s daughter. She’d been two years older than he was, a senior to his sophomore, and in those few sweet hours he’d learned about artichokes, and about other things as well.
He imagined telling Kate Shugak that story. He imagined the sneer that would follow, the snide comment, something about how every one of his memories seemed to be tied to a roll in the hay, or in this case, artichokes. Why shouldn’t she; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t lived that life, cultivated that image, and had a great time while he was at it. He’d never intentionally hurt anyone, he’d made sure his partners were on the same page before they turned it with him, together. He had no regrets, and some great memories.
He realized his teeth were grinding together, and made a deliberate effort to relax his jaw muscles.
The town itself was quiet. A hum of activity came from the direction of the river. A lane led between two two-story buildings, one a warehouse with a Sealand sign on the side. From the other he heard the drone and clank of machinery. He walked down the lane to emerge onto a wooden dock as wide as a two-lane road, where he was nearly run over by a forklift.
“Get outta the way, dipshit!” the driver yelled.
Not anything Baird hadn’t been yelling at him all day. He dodged back a step and the forklift roared by.
The dock seemed to go on forever in both directions, curving with the northern, convex edge of the shoreline. The water was deep brown and moved slowly, almost sluggishly, bearing boats, skiffs, tankers, uprooted trees, deadheads, a loose oar, a half-submerged cardboard box, a plastic Sprite bottle, a waterlogged dory, a tangled section of meshed gear, maybe part of Mike Mason’s; all of it ever and inexorably down, down, down to the bay and the ocean beyond. It looked like something out of Mark Twain, and Jim caught himself looking for a raft with a boy and a man on board, heading down the river before one of them was sold there.
Floodlights fixed to the walls of buildings and the rigging of boats lit up the scene. Processors taller than the canneries on shore were moored to the sea wall bow to stern to bow, and occasionally side by next. The fishing boats were most of them open skiffs with only the most rudimentary of cabins, if they had cabins at all, and were rafted together three and five at a time. The area was a hive of activity, forklifts beeping, hydraulic lifts whining, lines snapping and tackle clattering, black rubber fuel hoses slithering up and down, beach crews yelling and cursing as they loaded and unloaded fish and supplies.
Fishers never sleep. Not between May and August. Unlike the stars.
Some of the fishing boats were tied up to some of the processors and were delivering their catch direct. Other boats were tied up to spaces between the processors and were delivering to onshore buyers. Here, a buyer sorted the best-looking reds to be frozen in the round and shipped air freight to points Outside and international. There, a tote of more scarred fish was dumped onto a conveyor belt that disappeared into a cannery, destined for one-pound talls and half-pound flats beneath generic labels on Safeway shelves.
Jim dodged people and fish and made his way up the docks, passing the Kyoto Kozushima out of Edo, Japan, the Chongju out of Seoul, South Korea, the Northern Harvester out of Anacortes, Washington, the Arctic Princess out of Freeport, Oregon, until he came to the Kosygin, out of Vladivostok, Russia.
Alone among the processors, the Kosygin appeared deserted. The bridge was dark. The boom was still. The deck was bare, of fish, deckhands and beach gang. There was no one at the head of the gangway that stretched down to the dock. There wasn’t anyone at the foot of the gangway, either. The hull was rusted right down to its trim line, which was riding three feet above the water. It wasn’t exactly overloaded.
He found an overturned fiberglass tote in a corner that left his line of sight unhindered in both directions and settled in to watch. A half hour passed. The light increased, the beach gangs finished unloading half a dozen gillnetters, and knocked off for a break. Jim ambled over and got in line for coffee and enormous sugar doughnuts.
“Great morning,” a voice next to him said.
He turned to see a short, slight man, about fifty. His hair was hidden under a Greek fisherman’s cap and he wore stained brown Carhartt overalls. His chin was stubbled with three-day-old beard and he looked at Jim out of deepset dark eyes, face creased into a slight smile. “You’re new.”
Nothing to do but agree to that, so Jim said, “Yeah.”
“Thought so. I’m the foreman, so I would know.”
“Oh hell,” Jim said.
The smile widened into a grin, deepening the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. “Gene Brady.”
“Jim Churchill.” Jim stuck what was left of the doughnut in his mouth, wiped the sugar from his palm on the seat of his jeans and accepted Brady’s hand. “Sorry about this,” he mumbled around the doughnut.
“No biggee.” Brady examined him with a critical eye. “You don’t look like a bum.”
“I’m not, I’m gainfully employed.”
“Where?”
Jim made a vague gesture with his coffee cup and swallowed the rest of the doughnut in one indigestible lump. “Baird Air.”
The grin became a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You working for Baird. Anybody working for Baird.”
Jim relaxed. “Yeah, well.” He shrugged and did his best to look rueful.
“Step into my office.” Brady indicated the edge of the dock.
Since Jim had a bellyful of Brady’s doughnut and he was working his way through a cup of Brady’s coffee, he accepted the invitation.
“How’d you wind up in Bering?” Brady said.
Jim gave a fleeting thought to Gamble. “Job Service.”
“Ah.” He caught Jim’s sideways glance and grinned again. “No offense. Some of my best friends were sent out from
Job Service.”
“Yeah, right,” Jim said.
“You sticking?”
Jim shrugged again. “Long as there’s work, I guess. I don’t plan to make Bering my home.”
“You could do worse.” Brady drained his cup, and pointed at Jim’s. “Want a refill?”
“Sure.” He watched Brady take the cups to the coffee urn set up on a folding table against the wall of the cannery, wondering at Brady’s interest.
The coffee was hot and strong, the second cup as good as the first. “Good,” he said.
“Yeah,” Brady said with satisfaction. “They used to give us Folger’s until I put my foot down. Now it’s Kaladi Brothers all the way or I walk.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m the head of the beach gang. Also known as the bitch gang.” He listened with a contented smile as a chorus of disapproval rose from the employees sprawled around them on the dock, primarily young, male and Anglo. Brady eyed Jim over the rim of his cup. “They’re a good bunch. The problem is, working the hours they do and considering the overtime, they make too much money too fast, boom, they’ve got both semesters paid for, tuition, room and board, and off they go to visit their mamas before they have to go back to school.” Another chorus rose, this one half-hearted. Brady drained his cup. “If you’re working for Baird, you might maybe know how to run a forklift.”
“I might.”
Disappointed at this lack of encouragement, Brady said, “Yeah, well, you get tired of Baird running your ass off, you let me know.” This time the grin seemed to have grown fangs. “I’ll put you to work.”
“I bet you would,” Jim said. “You just unload the little boats?”
“I work for Half Seas Under, we unload who delivers to us. Sometimes big, sometimes little.”
“You ever have to take on one of those?” Jim hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the processors lining the dock up and down river.
“Sometimes.”
“The foreign vessels, too?”
“If the price is right.”
“I’ve never seen so many foreign-registered ships in an Alaskan port before.”
“Yeah, well, then you haven’t been on the coast much. We get ’em all, Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Polish…”
“Polish?”
“Yeah, believe it not, they’ve got a pretty big foreign fleet. Back before the fall of the Wall, Polish sailors liked to jump ship in Alaskan ports. I was working down on the Chain one time that happened.”
“They get to stay?”
“For a while they got to stay in the hospital, recovering from exposure. This was February.”
Jim winced. “Brrr.”
“I’ll say.”
Jim nodded at the Kosygin. “And I see you’ve got Russian fishers, too.”
Brady’s voice flattened. “Not hardly.”
“They don’t deliver to Half Seas Under?”
“They’re not hardly fishermen,” Brady clarified. “They don’t deliver to anyone most of the time.”
Jim was about to ask him about Burinin aka Burianovich’s death when an engine sounded right behind them, and both men looked around to see a thirty-two-foot drifter sidling up to the dock, wallowing beneath the weight of a catch that was spilling over both gunnels. The man at the wheel looked tired but content, and the two boys standing on the deck hip-deep in red salmon looked cheerfully exhausted. The drifter was moored in a smooth, three-step process that indicated long practice. The beach gang looked on with critical and not unadmiring silence. It was always a pleasure to watch work done well, especially when you weren’t required to do it yourself.
“Okay, people,” Brady said, rising to his feet. “Let’s get back to work.”
“Thanks for the coffee and the doughnut,” Jim said.
Brady waved a hand. “Anytime. Keep my offer in mind. I could use someone who isn’t just out of diapers to back me up with this bunch.”
There was another chorus of boos and whistles, and Jim stepped back to watch the team go into action. It was as efficient as the boat’s crew had been, no hesitation, no wasted motion. Two shinnied down the ladder to help the deckhands fill the brailer, one operated the hoist, another maneuvered a forklift loaded with an empty tote, two others steadied the brailer so it stayed directly over the tote before pulling the line that opened the bottom and caused the fish to cascade down in a slippery silver stream. Gene Brady was everywhere Jim looked, on the drifter pitching fish, on the dock looking over the hoist operator’s shoulder, walking behind the forklift with an eagle eye on the edge of the dock, next to the men maneuvering the brailer. It was a smooth operation, Jim decided, if a bit slimy. His respect for Brady increased.
He woke up to realize that the hoist operator looked familiar, and why. Thickset, Hispanic, his hands were very nimble on the controls. Jim wondered if they taught heavy-equipment operating at Quantico, too. Probably. Somewhere between forensics and neat, would be his guess.
Someone lurched into him. “Sorry,” a voice muttered.
“No problem,” he said, and moved out of the way of another member of the beach gang, who had exchanged the blue suit she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her for a dark red plaid shirt, yellow rainpants and steeltoed black rubber boots.
He knew now why Gamble had kept him in Anchorage for six days, and felt a slow burn that, for a change, had nothing to do with Kate Shugak.
Empty, the drifter pulled away and another swung in to take its place. The glow of the sun was evident on the northeastern horizon, and he glanced at his watch to find that it was almost four o’clock. He hadn’t had any sleep, and he had to be at work at noon.
He thought about finding a telephone and calling George Perry on his cellular phone to pass the word that Kate Shugak was found and that she was all right. He spotted a pay phone, started toward it, and hesitated.
George would want to know where she was. George would also be beating the Bush telegraph like a bongo drum the minute he hung up on Jim, beginning at Bernie’s. Auntie Vi would hear, and Auntie Joy and Auntie Belasha and all the other aunties, not to mention Billy Mike and Mandy and Chick and Bobby and Dinah and who knew who else. Jim wouldn’t put it past the whole boiling lot of them to commandeer themselves a plane and fly into Bering to see with their own eyes that their straying lamb was found. He wouldn’t have a hope in hell of maintaining his cover if that happened.
And she could have called them if she’d wanted to, if she’d cared enough to, the inconsiderate little—
He headed down the dock.
As he passed the Kosygin, he noticed again how deserted it seemed. His footsteps slowed, then stopped.
Well, what the hell. It was a Russian ship, he’d been seconded to Bering to ferret out a bunch of Russians of dubious moral and ethical character, one of whom was now dead in what could, without too much of a stretch, be called suspicious circumstances, and there wasn’t anyone around to tell him not to.
He looked around. The Half Seas Under crew had disappeared into the cannery, and everyone else was too far away to see, or were minding their own business.
He walked up the gangway and went on board.
6
…there is no time
in the summer of midnight sun.
—Crazy Dogholkoda
Kate finished loading the Herc and watched it taxi out to the runway and take off with its distinctive grumbling roar, shouldering the world into the sky. A flatbed thundered past, on its way to the Alaska Airlines terminal. Traffic in and out of the airport had slowed, but probably wouldn’t entirely stop until sometime in late September, if not October, certainly not until the last salmon had made it up the river.
And then Baird would put the seats back in the planes and begin ferrying Outside fishermen to Anchorage for their flights home, local residents to Anchorage for winter supply runs, and Natives to Anchorage for the AFN convention. In January he’d take the seats out again and start hauling dog teams to Anchorage and Fairb
anks and Whitehorse. After the last musher made it under the burlwood arch in Nome, he’d hose down the insides of his fleet and the cycle would begin all over again.
After four months, the last two filled with fourteen-to eighteen-hour days, it was all pretty much routine. When Baird had suggested splitting her job into two twelve-hour shifts and hiring a second person for the ground crew, her first instinct had been to protest. She wanted the work, she needed the work, she had to have the work to occupy her every waking moment, to keep her so busy she wouldn’t have to remember, to exhaust her enough so that she could sleep without dreams infiltrating her subconscious.
She couldn’t think of the past winter on the homestead without a shudder, without the lurking fear that the anguish of those months all alone in the middle of that enormous, echoingly empty Park would return and take her right back down to the bottom. She wasn’t sure she could pull herself out again. She wasn’t sure she would want to.
Here she was too busy to be lonely, the only people she knew were her boss and his pilots, and the only things even remotely recognizable were the makes of the various planes flying in and out. There wasn’t a relative within five hundred miles, or a mountain close enough to see, or one single fishing boat tied up at the docks named after the daughter of someone with whom she’d graduated from Niniltna High.
There was nothing here to remind her of her life, of the people in it, of the people she’d lost. She could breathe here, with care, but she could breathe. If she went home, she’d start to suffocate again, and there was still enough of an instinct for survival to get out while she still could. If she had stayed…
Against her will the memory of that day in March surfaced, when the trees and the mountains and the very sky itself seemed to close in on her, when after it was over, all she had was the wound on her arm to remind her of what had almost happened, of what would happen if she didn’t get out. She’d driven to Niniltna that evening and flown George to Anchorage that night. She’d been waiting when Job Service opened its doors the next morning, invented a name, made up a social security number, inverted the numbers on her driver’s license, lied about losing her identification, and had been on a plane to Bering that afternoon. The good old state Job Service. If you wanted away from your life and you could walk without scraping your knuckles on the floor, Job Service would take you there.
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