by Langdon, L.
___
Somehow Gerri made it through the next two weeks. How the time could have dragged and raced at the same time, she couldn’t imagine, but it did. It dragged as she anticipated her trip and raced as she scurried around shopping, packing and mailing.
Thurman, to her relief, never again brought up her alleged ‘debt’ of a date with him. The others at the high school, blacks and whites alike, were constantly showing their curiosity about her trip, and a few of them expressed genuine wishes of good luck.
Her family wished her a tearful goodbye at the Florence airport. She included a note for Rich in her mother’s latest letter to him, along with a promise to write a longer letter when she settled in.
She endured a long trip across the country in the coach section in the rear of the jet on a red eye flight. She smilingly considered the analogy to the ‘rear of the bus,’ but not seriously—she knew that she was lucky to get a seat at all considering how late she had made her reservation. Being one of the last people off the plane was a small price to pay for getting there at all.
So here she was, walking down the endless concourse at SEATAC airport, looking for someone named Elaine White. Gerri had kicked herself for not asking Sven for a description, but he had been so confident that a sign with Gerri’s name on it would suffice.
As she walked, she was struck anew at the differences between here and South Carolina. There were relatively few black people, more Orientals than she was used to and, of course, mostly white people.
As she looked for her sign, she started people-watching, trying to imagine where the few black people that she saw were coming from and where they were going. There were two soldiers in uniform—going home? She hoped so, but more likely traveling to some duty station. They saw her and she could see them eyeing her hair. She had decided to put it back into an afro, swayed by the ease of care and possible difficulty in getting hair products in Juneau. And, OK, swayed a little bit by the fact the Sven seemed to prefer it that way. Her getting over him was still a work in progress.
The soldiers’ verdict to her hair was mixed. One of them frowned, but the other one smiled at her and murmured “Right on, Sister” as they passed.
There was a little girl—well, Joetta’s age, and Joetta would object to being called a little girl. Her hair was freshly pressed and she was wearing what were probably her nicest clothes. Gerri remembered her from her flight. She had been unaccompanied. Fortunately, she now had a flight attendant walking with her, so she was being taken care of. Coming home to a family, perhaps?
The only other blacks she saw as she walked were a man and a woman standing by the side on the concourse and looking anxiously back in the direction from which Gerri had come. They seemed to be in their late thirties and they were both big. The man was every bit as burly as Sven, but with a little gut. The woman was tall and buxom, but carried her weight well. As she passed them, she could hear them arguing in low voices.
“I told you we should have gotten here earlier,” the woman said.
The man muttered something indistinct. They apparently fell in behind Gerri, because she could hear the woman’s next words clearly.
“You should have asked him what she looked like.” Now Gerri pricked up her ears, wondering if possibly…
“He was in a hurry. He was about to miss his plane.”
“How long does it take to say, ‘Sven, what does Gerri look like?’”
Oops. Why did I just assume… Quickly, she turned around. “Excuse me. I’m Gerri.” She wanted to say ‘you were supposed to have a sign’ but that seemed churlish.
The man grinned. The woman stared at Gerri with astonished eyes. “You’re Gerri?” Only then did she belatedly display the sign that she had held at her side. “I’m so sorry; I got tired of holding this up. I’m Elaine White and this is my husband, Ronaldo.”
They shook hands all around with Elaine, in particular, grinning from ear to ear. Finally, she couldn’t contain herself. She turned to Ronaldo and jiggled his arm. “Sven found himself a sweet little soul sister. Isn’t that nice?”
Gerri started to correct her, but decided against it. After all, how often is it that I get called ‘little?’ She could always set her straight later.
Elaine was a talker. For most of the drive downtown, she alternated between pointing out landmarks on their route and describing the elaborate plans she had for shopping. Sven had apparently supplied Elaine with a list of items to be purchased. Most of them concerned Gerri’s comfort—coats, boots, and mittens to keep her warm and dry. “He wants you to be comfortable, honey. He wants you to like it there.” Elaine grinned at her obvious implication. Gerri debated whether to explain Elaine’s misunderstanding, but she just didn’t want to go down that path of conversation.
Instead, looking for a change of subject, she asked, “How did you two meet Sven?”
There was a pause. Ronaldo chuckled.
Elaine looked at him warningly. “Ronnie…”
He ignored her. “He beat the shit out of me. That’s how we met.”
“Sven did what?”
Elaine turned in her seat to explain, but Ronaldo cut her off. “Let me tell this part, dear. You weren’t even there.” He paused, gathering his words, as Elaine cast Gerri a worried look.
“I used to be a boxer—a pretty good one, if I do say so myself. This kid came into my gym—Sven, but I didn’t know his name then. He was doing real well against the tomato cans and everyone was raving about him. They told me to go a few rounds against him. Well, that pissed me off. I had a good record—never hit the top ten rankings, but good. I figured I was too good to be warming up some asshole white kid.”
“Ronnie. We don’t know if Gerri’s comfortable with that kind of language.” She turned to Gerri. “Ronnie only starts talking like that when he remembers his boxing days. He knows better. He’s an accountant now, and he’s one of the smartest men I know.”
Ronaldo smiled slyly as he glanced at Gerri in the rear view mirror. “Funny, but she started saying that right after I proposed to her.”
Elaine laughed and swatted him on the arm. “Be quiet! That’s not true and you know it. Now you wanted to tell the story, so tell it. And you don’t have to give all of the gory details. That’ll just get me upset.”
“Anyway, they put us in the ring. Right from the beginning, I had an attitude. I was talking some cash shit—sorry, dear—talking trash. Sven was raw, all right, but he was fast. And his punch—my God! I sparred against Ingemar Johansson once, you know who that is?” He glanced at Gerri in the mirror again.
“Toonder and Lightning?”
“Oh, you follow boxing?”
“No. I just…it’s not important. Please continue.”
“Well, if Johansson was thunder and lightning, then Sven had a couple of atom bombs hanging off the ends of his arms. I’ve never been hit so hard in my life. Within a minute, I was out on my feet. I could take a punch; I’d never been knocked down. But I was that day.” He glanced at Elaine. “OK, your turn. I don’t remember much after that.”
“They got him to the dressing room all right, but he collapsed again. Then they took him to the hospital. For a while, the doctors thought he might have permanent damage. A few days later, after he had stabilized, I went to the gym. We were going to be facing some large medical bills, and I wanted their help. I figured that there must be some insurance or something.
“Well, they didn’t give a shit—sorry, Ronnie; you’ve got me doing it. I was scared and desperate and I pitched a fit—a very loud one—right there.
“Turns out Sven was there and he heard me. They hadn’t told him about any of this. He was horrified. I wanted to hate him, but he was really a sweet, gentle boy. He got dressed and came to the hospital with me. I don’t think he ever went back to that gym.
“He stayed in touch, even after Ronnie was out of the hospital; even after he was out of rehab. He apologized over and over for not being able to help us, but he was just a kid
—he didn’t have any money.
“Months later, when his wife died… You know about that?”
Gerri nodded.
“He sent us a big chunk of the insurance money. We wanted to refuse, but he wouldn’t let us. Said that Ronnie’s injury was his doing, and he wouldn’t have any peace if he didn’t help.”
“And that’s why he quit boxing?”
“Yes, but I don’t think he told anybody. He felt ashamed for what had happened.”
“I felt sorry for him,” Ronaldo interjected, “Giving up his dreams.”
The car was silent for a moment. “I don’t think he even knew what his dreams were,” Elaine said thoughtfully, “When he came face to face with some of the possible consequences, it was more like a nightmare.”
Chapter 34
Once they got into the downtown area, Elaine was all business. “If you’re going to catch a flight tomorrow morning and still get some sleep tonight, we don’t have any time to waste, so we’re going to try to get everything in one store. It’s a big store, so I think it’ll work out.”
Big store… “Is it Frederick & Nelson?” Gerri asked hopefully.
“No, it’s called R.E.I., for Recreational Equipment, Inc. It’s an outdoor type store. Camping and hiking stuff. Sven wants you to be nice and warm.” She cast Gerri a sly glance, but Gerri didn’t take the bait.
Ronaldo had to go to work, so they made arrangements to meet him later. It was indeed a big store. Gerri would have loved to have had the time to simply explore. There was everything from tiny stoves to specialized hardware apparently to allow a person to hang from a cliff. She shuddered at that idea. But she was still fascinated, even though she would never use some of these things.
They hustled through the shopping. The few times that Gerri objected about the price of an item, Elaine reminded her, patiently but insistently, that Sven wanted her to be comfortable and assured her that he knew what he was talking about. Thus, she ended up paying more for a coat—a down jacket—than she could ever have imagined. It certainly was warm—trying it on in the store convinced her that this coat would probably be uncomfortably warm even on the coldest day South Carolina had to offer. This made her wonder briefly if she knew what she was doing, but she squashed her misgivings. Sven knows best and he’s a friend even if he doesn’t have any romantic feelings toward me…
When they finished, they relaxed in a small café where Ronaldo and Elaine had arranged to meet.
“You heard our horrible story,” Elaine said, “So tell me about how you met Sven.”
Gerri gave her the thumbnail version of their initial meeting. When she finished, Elaine was laughing. “And he really believed that you were a boy? Oh, am I going to tease him about that.”
Gerri, for some reason, felt obligated to defend him. “I let my hair look nappy; I wore shapeless clothes; and I tried to keep my voice pitched low.” Elaine shrugged, unconvinced. “And Mindy—the woman that I was staying with—warned me not to smile. She said that my smile would give me away. That was hard, ‘cause every now and then Sven would start making these awful puns.”
“Yeah, he will do that,” Elaine said distractedly. “That name sounds familiar. What’s this Mindy’s last name?”
“Schumacher. She’s his ex-sister-in-law.”
Elaine looked askance. “I thought so. That sounds like trouble. You know she hates him, don’t you?”
Gerri stared at her plate. “I know. And it bothers me, ‘cause they’re my two favorite people in Juneau. When I left I asked her to reconsider her feelings. I think she’s trying to. I don’t know how that’ll turn out.”
Elaine consulted her watch. “We’ve got time. So tell me how he discovered that you weren’t a guy.”
Gerri grimaced and stared at her food as she talked. That was not a time that she felt proud of. But she bravely waded through it. Again, she found herself defending Sven. “I don’t blame him for firing me. I made him feel like a fool. And he found out in the worst possible way.”
Elaine didn’t answer immediately. When Gerri looked up, she was shaking with silent laughter. “I can’t believe that you hid your face while Sven was undressing. That’s a lot of man there.”
Gerri’s face felt like it was on fire. Only her dark complexion saved her from being beet red—which would have made Elaine laugh even harder. “It wouldn’t have been right.” She wanted to say that Elaine was absolutely correct about Sven, but that would have required divulging their affair. She wasn’t ashamed, but she wasn’t so sure about Sven—especially since he hadn’t wanted to continue said affair. He deserved her discretion. And discretion came naturally to her. She was reminded again of those girls at school who bragged about conquests—no, that wasn’t her.
Elaine’s curiosity continued unabated and the conversation moved to the night of their ‘reunion’ at the Arctic Saloon. After she had related that, she defended Sven yet again. “It scared me at the time. I didn’t actually see the fight, but it seemed so easy for him. He was so matter-of-fact and businesslike about it. But he wasn’t enjoying it, and, anyway, they left him no choice.”
Elaine looked thoughtful. “No, I’m sure he wasn’t. He’s a sensitive guy at heart. Sometimes I think he should have been a poet or something.”
Gerri grinned. Elaine was close, though Gerri couldn’t tell her that. A poet and an artist were probably kindred spirits—just a different way of expressing themselves.
“I would have loved to have seen that,” Elaine said. She saw Gerri make a face. “Not the fight—you wading out there with a bottle of champagne.” She looked at Gerri assessingly. “You’re good for him.”
Gerri sighed. Elaine was back on her hobby horse, and Gerri didn’t know how to respond. She was rescued by Ronaldo, who suddenly appeared at their table.
“Are you ladies ready?” He eyed their collection of bags. “I hope so. The car will barely hold all of this anyway.”
___
This was the second time that Gerri had flown into Juneau, and it had a very different feel from the first. The weather this time was clear, brilliantly clear. She appreciated the scenery just as much as she had the first time. But rather than gazing in uncomprehending wonderment, she was also trying to match the shorelines below to her memory of the charts on the Glacier Gal. She actually had some success with that, especially as they got closer to Juneau. That was exciting and sparked some wonderful memories. And some not-so-wonderful ones—she thought she could see the location from which the Coast Guard boat had flown Sven off to the hospital.
There was a second way in which the trip was different, and this one was more ominous. As they started their descent for Juneau, Gerri could see big whitecaps—it was evidently very stormy and the water was roiled up. As she was noticing this, the plane started bucking in the air. As they got down to a few thousand feet in altitude, the turbulence got more violent. She covertly scanned the faces of the other passengers, hoping that they would all look blasé. A few did, but more of them looked as worried as Gerri felt.
It did not help when the Captain came on the loudspeaker and said, with unconvincing calm, “Notice the seatbelt sign. There’s a Taku blowing and we’re going to have some pretty rough air for the rest of the way. We should be landing in about twelve minutes. If it gets too rough, we’ll abort the landing and divert to an alternate location.”
Gerri remembered that the Taku was the local name given to the Northerly winds—frequently violent—that blew off the icecap behind Juneau. That was bad enough, but the ‘divert to an alternate location’ sounded even worse. On the other hand, the last thing she wanted was a pilot who stubbornly pushed through severe weather. She turned to her seatmate.
“Where would this alternate location be?” Mindy was supposed to meet her. She was probably waiting right now.
“I’m not sure. It depends on the weather in the other places. Let’s hope that it doesn’t happen; I’ve got a meeting tomorrow.”
“But…” Then she rem
embered: there would be no ‘drive the rest of the way;’ you couldn’t drive into Juneau. And Gerri, too, had a meeting tomorrow—the all important introductory meeting with Mrs. Kallek and the High School Principal. All she could manage was a weak nod of agreement.
On the final approach, the turbulence, if possible, was even worse. Unlike the previous trip when she worried about seeing a runway, this time she worried about hitting the runway. Finally, she felt the wheels touch down—hard—and she let out the breath that she didn’t even realize she had been holding.
Gerri’s stress was swept away when she got into the terminal. Mindy was waiting with a huge smile on her face. They squealed and hugged. Mindy looked her over quickly. “I thought you decided to get rid of your ‘fro.”
Gerri made a face. “It wasn’t so much that I decided. I was quietly told that the school back home wouldn’t hire me if I wore one. Do you think it’ll be a problem here?”
Mindy hesitated. “I hope not, but we’ll see. You’ve got a secret weapon. I’ve been invited to attend the meeting with you, Mrs. Kallek, and Mr. Cunningham.”
Mr. Cunningham was the high school principal, Gerri knew. “How’d you swing that?”
Mindy grinned mischievously. “I’ve gotten more subtle in my political work. I wangled—mostly on my willingness to spend the time—a position of outside advisor to the Future Office Workers club at the school. It’s mostly girls. They come in assuming that it’s about preparing to be a secretary, but I try to show them that they can be bosses as well. Women’s Lib on the sly.”
As they went outside to Mindy’s car, Gerri gasped as the wind hit her face. Though it was bitterly cold, her coat kept her body comfortable—but next time she would be sure to wear a scarf around her neck and lower face. Mindy saw Gerri’s startled look as the wind hit. “Sorry it couldn’t be a warmer day, but it’s supposed to get better tomorrow. I see you’re prepared, though. Sven said that he was going to make sure you got proper clothes.” She cast Gerri a sidelong glance and resurrected the slang game. “I guess he wasn’t just shuckin’ and jivin’. That coat looks real warm.”