by John Straley
There was a tiny child laid out on a bright blanket. The child’s hair was pulled back and tied with a yellow ribbon. She was a big girl to be stretched out like an infant. Her expression was vacant.
“That is my angel child,” Mr. Worthington told me as he followed my eyes to the photograph. “That is Martha. The doctors told us she was to be born dead. But just at the last minute she came back to life. She is a miracle girl, you see, sir.”
Mr. Worthington could not stop the bleeding. The towel he had placed on my lap was now scarlet. He stopped trying to scrub away the blood and he reached into a trunk under his bed and took out what looked like a fruit jar of black goo. He took off the lid and knocked on the bottom of the jar, and then from seemingly nowhere he took a small propane torch, lit it with a sparker, and held the blue flame near the glass.
“Not too hot, you see, sir. Just enough to spread.” Then he took a large spoon and dolloped out some of this warm goo onto my palm. At first, the sensation was pleasant enough. Then the pain began to build, as if small fish were chewing off my hand. I tried to jerk my hand away but he held it in a viselike grip.
As I began to lose consciousness I could feel him fanning the torch over the numbed stump of where my hand had been.
I didn’t know what time it was when I woke up. I didn’t know what day it was or, in fact, what position of the sun the ship was enjoying. I did know that it was hot. I knew, too, that the room was moving and that my hand was being nibbled by a swarm of enraged fire ants.
There was a kindly looking white man sitting next to me on the bed. He was studying my hand. For some reason I was under the impression that this was a good man, maybe Santa Claus or God, although I’m not sure why. His beard was well trimmed and he was not particularly overweight. It might have had something to do with the fact that the last hornet that stuck me apparently was some kind of benevolent bee, his serum allowing my hand to go numb.
“What the devil did you put on his hand, Worthington?” the God-Santa demanded.
“Iodine and tar, sir,” said Mr. Worthington as he studied the white man’s work with the interest of a devotee.
“Well, to tell the truth, I think it did the trick. You stopped the bleeding all right, and I don’t think there is much worry of infection. But you surely made a mess of things. I doubt that even this acid solution will get it all off.”
I tried to sit up but neither the men on the bed nor the muscles in my body would let me. I recognized the God-Santa now as the man I had seen outside of the clinic. He turned and looked around to see my open but barely focusing eyes. Now, I could make out that he in fact didn’t have much of a beard but one of those fashionable several-week growths that men who were beginning to lose hair on their head seemed to be contemplating more and more. “Hold on now. If you stay still, I can get the last of it out. I’ve put in some temporary stitches and as soon as I get this hand cleaned up I’ll take them out and get something of a more permanent nature in there.” He turned back to his work. I said nothing but I think I heard him mutter, “Worthington, there is plenty of suffering in this world without you bringing me more. Don’t you think?” I didn’t hear if Mr. Worthington replied or not.
“I’m Dr. Edwards, by the way,” the bearded man said. “And you are Cecil Younger, the much talked-of private detective.”
Christ, I thought. Even unconscious down in the hold somewhere I had been made. This was not a good thing for my reputation.
“What was the Great Circle Company thinking? To hire a private detective, for crying out loud. What were they hoping to find?”
The doctor wiped his hands with a clean towel and nodded to Mr. Worthington to hand him the tray laid out on the dresser at the feet of the Virgin.
“They say you are killing some of the passengers. This, I suppose, is bad for business,” I replied as I lay staring up at the beautiful blank stare of the little girl taped to the wall. “What did you say her name was?” My voice broke up like a distant transmission.
“Martha.” Mr. Worthington smiled. The skin on his face was jet black but shivered with light.
“Martha,” I said. “The angel girl. Yes, that’s it.”
“Are you a little light-headed, Mr. Younger? I gave you a shot of Demerol and a local, too. I thought you probably had enough pain on this day.”
“Yes. Thank you,” I told the doctor. I was thinking of Rosalind and Martha the angel girl. Getting them mixed up in the slurry of my memory, I suppose. “So. Do you?” I blurted out.
“Do I what?” Dr. Edwards said softly, intent on his work.
“Do you kill your patients?”
“Am I killing you, Mr. Younger?” he said, never taking his eyes off his work.
“It doesn’t feel like it.” I dreamily took in a breath and felt a narcotic kiss in my brain.
“This is true. I am not killing you and you are not ready to die. These are two independent and true facts. I don’t want you to hurt, and, from the appearances of things, I show more concern about your bodily suffering than you do. How did you get in such a mess?” Dr. Edwards’s gray eyes looked sympathetic but tired. Behind him I could see Mr. Worthington looking grimly at me.
“It was a misunderstanding. A stupid accident. No real harm done,” I said lazily and Mr. Worthington looked down at his own hands.
The doctor cleared his throat and his voice took on more of an official tone. “I understand that you owe something special to Mr. Worthington. But you see, Mr. Worthington is a member of the ship’s crew. He reports to the chief engineer and to the captain. Nothing you can say about him would risk his status on this ship. You see, Mr. Younger, unlike you, we are not under the thumb of the Almighty Sonny Walters.” And the doctor smiled. Then just as suddenly he stopped smiling.
“Mr. Younger, someone mutilated a body while it was still under my care. I suppose you know about this?”
Here, I wobbled my head noncommittally. The doctor talked on.
“This could have been very, very bad, but I was able to at least partially rectify it. This is not a game, you see. Mr. Sonny Walters thinks it is. I imagine you do too. I have people in my care. These people have the most serious health concerns. I consider their proper care to be the most critical thing a doctor can do. I can allow nothing to interfere with my duties: no intrigue, no games, nothing. Do you understand that?” He was staring down at me with a gravity I can only recognize in looking back on it.
“Just an accident,” I repeated. The doctor took his needle and tweezers, asked Mr. Worthington to hold my fingers apart and then began to sew.
“What is it you do, Mr. Worthington, besides practice medicine?” I asked the black boatman, not wanting to engage the doctor while he sewed my hand.
“I am an oiler and the crew chief of the boiler men. I make this thing run.”
“That is literally true,” the doctor commented and he tucked and pulled on the threads.
“I’ve worked on ships for thirty-five years,” Mr. Worthington continued. “I worked on ships we fed coal into the furnace. I worked on ships with cotton sails and Manila rigging. I tell you, man. I know ships.”
“What of your family?” I stared up at the white ceiling.
“I see my family once, twice a year. I give them all my money. They build houses. They buy land. I’m a rich man, you see. You just don’t see it here.”
“And Martha the angel girl. Doesn’t she miss you?” I asked.
“Sure she does. I know she does. We save all of the spare money and someday we go to the clinic in Minnesota and we see all the doctors there. It is only such a small part of Martha’s brain that is hurt. I know that by now they can fix her. It is money, that is all.” Mr. Worthington dismissed the seriousness of his grief with a toss of his head, as if he were spitting away a drop of sweat that had worked its way to his lips.
The doctor f
inished up. He cleaned his hands and packed away his instruments into what looked like a gym bag. “You should let this breathe. Call me and I will look at that hand tomorrow. I do not want you anywhere near my clinic or near my patients. They have an absolute right to their privacy. I will not have you snooping around. Is that understood?”
He did not wait for an answer but turned to Mr. Worthington. “I’m glad you came for me. Thank you for that. I don’t know what I’m going to do about all of this . . . this spying. But as far as I’m concerned, the matter of how Mr. Younger received his wounds is closed as long as . . .” Here he paused and looked gravely at Mr. Worthington and at me. “. . . as long as nothing else happens to reopen the issue.”
I was not sure quite what was meant by that, but apparently I was being told to go and sin no more. I was about to thank him but the doctor was gone. Mr. Worthington stared down at me and smiled a great comical grin. “Cyril is a pure fool, man. But I don’t think he will try to hurt you anymore. I will put out the word if you will agree that this ends this thing.” Mr. Worthington made a gesture as if he were washing his hands and wringing them dry.
I struggled to my feet and tried to make myself steady. “There is nothing more between Cyril and myself as far as I am concerned,” I assured Mr. Worthington and held my hand out awkwardly to take his but withdrew it as soon as I looked at the bulging Frankenstein stitches across my palm. He patted me on the arm and led me out the door.
We could have been walking through the boiler room of any old school building in turn-of-the-century New York. The pipes clattered and the metal floor underneath us rattled. There was the ever-clinging smell of cigarette smoke, sweat, and cafeteria food. Mr. Worthington led me around a labyrinth of catwalks and corridors until we came to an elevator. When the car came he reached in the doors and punched the button. I stepped inside and he smiled at me, holding his great broad hand up in a wave. The doors closed as I tried to think of something to say.
The doors opened and I stepped out into the hallway next to the Compass Room. A harpist dressed in a silver lamé evening gown played a slow Irish air on a full-sized orchestral harp. Four people were playing cards, one frowning deeply and tossing her hand into the center of the table. The others were chuckling softly. Mr. Brenner dozed with an empty brandy snifter balanced loosely in his hands. Beyond the glare of the ship’s lights, I could see the lights of a town strung out like several small necklaces in the purple summer evening.
8
Sitka
The captain let the chain run about six in the morning. The anchor nestled into the mud of Sitka Sound as I woke up in my bunk. Todd was snoring like a sucking intake valve, and Jane Marie was nowhere to be seen. Her wildlife books and her slide carousel were gone.
The ship’s newspaper Over the Horizon had been slipped under our door. There were short entries about various happenings on the ship with all of the daily scheduled events as well as the background report on our current port of call. I held the sheet in my good hand and sat on the edge of my bunk with my knees propped against the dresser, as I read about my own little town:
The setting of Sitka is spectacular. Overlooking beautiful forested islands scattered around Sitka Sound, Sitka has a charming harbor and downtown area. On a clear day, the mountains of Baranof Island, behind the town, and the volcanic cone of Mount Edgecumbe on Kruzof Island are in full view. There is a certain sophistication about Sitka, with two colleges, excellent museums, bookstores, galleries, and the National Historic Park, containing one of the largest exhibitions of Tlingit and Haida totem poles in existence.
All of this was accurate, of course. The paper went on to outline the history: how Sitka had been settled by the Russians and had in fact been the first capital of the territory. Alaska Day is celebrated here on October 18 of every year to commemorate the transfer of the territory from Russia to the United States. All of which is looked on rather caustically by the Tlingit citizens. At the time of the original transfer, the Russians had been beaten back to living in one small stockaded area where their forts and leaky cabins, which the Americans so grandly called “castles,” were located. The Tlingits were incredulous as to what all the celebration was about when the official transfer took place. After all, what harm could be done by allowing white people to trade a small square of land inside a barracks back and forth? No one with any sense could believe that the white men really thought they owned it all. This was absurd.
And of course it continues to stay absurd. I imagine the “certain sophistication” of Sitka applies to the wet T-shirt contest and the belly sliding across the barroom floors on Alaska Day, when all the white people in town get drunker than skunks and celebrate the lasting perfection of it all. They didn’t have to fight for it. They didn’t even have to buy it from the Indians, they just claimed it, in a written language no one could read. This could not be happening and yet some hundred and thirty years later it still is.
I stumbled down to the gangway where the first of the crews were putting the tenders into the water. These boats would ferry anyone who wanted to go ashore into town. I was home and I needed to get off the ship.
I shuffled into a long line of people in plastic raincoats with cameras around their necks and tote bags folded over their arms. I wore a clean sweatshirt and some pants which were not stained with blood. As I approached the open door I saw Cyril standing in the entrance of a hall. He was tall and silent. When he saw me shuffling slowly in line he locked his eyes on mine and when I kept my eyes on his, he made a low bow as if to acknowledge my presence. Very softly he said, “Good morning, sir. Have a fine day ashore.” And that was all.
The tenders were somewhat larger than a lifeboat. They had white hulls and orange roofs with plastic windows. The “sheep” dutifully filed in and sat in wooden benches somewhat more cramped than sitting at an elementary-school desk. There was a light breeze from the southwest; the little boats rolled like tubs. There were handsome young men and women in ship windbreakers talking into radios and looking at things written on clipboards. There were passengers asking for the totem walking tour and others about the wildlife cruise. The whale watcher was confused about which boat to wait for and she bolted from her seat just as our little boat was about to cast off from the ship. The boat’s officer was Indonesian, I think, and he nodded and smiled as the woman spoke loudly to him about the whales and about the correct boat to be on. The officer nodded and smiled, then nodded once more, and gave the throttle enough push to ease the little boat back to the hull where the whale-watching woman frantically disembarked. Several of these small boats would be going back and forth to the ship all day long. Each trip took about twelve minutes, but no matter how often we were told that, there was always some mild atmosphere of hysteria about being left behind.
I had never come ashore from the sound in this way, and I had never woken up at home after falling asleep at sea. I was unhinged and started slapping my pockets looking for my tickets. My wallet. The key to my room and the little plastic credit card that would allow me back on board. I had the tickets, which it turned out I didn’t need, but I didn’t have the card, which I did. I had my wallet, but I didn’t have a coat and although the weather showed some promise, that promise could always be broken in favor of more rain. I felt scattered, as if I had my stuff thrown all over the floor of a football stadium. This looked like my hometown, but how did I get here? What time did they say the boat was leaving?
The peak of the mountain that stared down upon Sitka was visible through a hole in clouds shaped like dirty tufts of cotton. Sun cut through and landed straight on the center of town, which is where the little main street divides to go around the Russian Cathedral. I had lived here in Sitka some seventeen years and it had just occurred to me I’d never had a really good look around the cathedral. My legs were unused to solid ground. I found the steadiness of it and the openness of the spaces unnerving. On shipboard I had gotte
n used to the narrowness and the straightforward navigating of walking down halls. Now I had choices. But I didn’t know what to base these choices on. So I just followed the people in front of me. They were shipmates, after all, and they seemed to have been paying attention when I was not, and besides they were walking with such decisiveness.
So, I blundered through the day. I saw the Russian Dancers and the Tlingit Dancers. I stayed in the crowd and ate some salmon and a sourdough roll. I walked through the museum and took photos of my shipmates standing in front of the bronze statue of Lord Baranof. I didn’t see anyone I knew. I did see Rob Allen, a young guy I’d played soccer with some years ago. Rob was walking briskly around in his heavy leather coat, talking into a hand-held radio and trying to get a word in with one of the skippers of his wildlife-watching boats. I waved to Rob and he smiled and waved without recognition, as he would at any tourist, then moved on. I broke away from the crowd for a moment and walked down to my house. I had planned to check my messages, maybe get the mail, but I had forgotten my keys. There was something sad about my little house, built on pilings over the industrial beachfront of the old Indian village. The fuchsia blossoms had fallen from their pots and curled like piles of dead insects on my porch. Wet papers lay soggy like rotten leaves. I know the smell of a closed-up house. I knew what mail I had waiting for me. Fuck it. I was on vacation. I was cruising. I walked back down the street and decided to find the perfect T-shirt for Jane Marie. Maybe that would put us back in touch.
I had to assume Jane Marie was back on the ship going through her slides for her lecture on “Alaskan Mammals: From Top to Bottom.” I decided she would check the mail later. But I didn’t suppose it mattered.
The one person who recognized me in Sitka was Marilyn at the bookstore. As soon as I walked in, she reached under the counter.
“Cecil. I’m glad you’re here. You know we still have that book you ordered on Etruscan art.” She hefted the tome up on the counter with the thud of a side of beef.