Dawn maneuvered the last word. She tried to pull Pete over the center seat of the wagon to her comer in the back with, “Petey wants me to read to him, don’t you Petey?” Instead of coming gladly as usual, Pete beat her off and drew back.
“Turn out the light and everybody sleep,” snapped Jody. “It’s getting harder to see the road.”
The bridge over the Pasagshak was awash. The river usually flowed obediently under the boards. If rains continued, the mn from the mountain might flood out the road, separating them from town. With Hank at home that would have meant a vacation, but now it deepened her isolation.
When the car lights finally picked out the mossy tree trunks by the dark house, Pete, curled in a sulking ball, refused to leave the car. Let him stay until he’s ready, Jody decided as she and the others ran in bags of groceries before water sogged the paper. The rooms were damp and chilly. Jody started fires in the stoves with wood chopped the weekend before. Soon they had warmth of sorts. “All right Pete,” she said at last, wearily, and went to the wagon to fetch him. He was feverish in her arms. She gave him a Tylenol, and, until the bedrooms warmed sufficiently, tucked him under a blanket by the picture window overlooking the bay and distant Kodiak that Hank so treasured in concept. (When was he ever home to enjoy it?) “Look, honey, see if you can find your school over there,” she muttered, although little showed through the rain wall but vapor lights from the cannery piers. If she considered serious illness, she dismissed it in favor of fatigue and routine kids’ ailments. Henny and Dawn had given a full share of false alarms.
She slept poorly. The wind-driven rain, which had kept planes grounded in and out of Kodiak for two days, hissed outside as it blew through bent treetops. Around midnight she went to Pete’s bed with a flashlight. The child’s forehead seemed hotter, but after all, he was tucked under blankets.
A while later Dawn shook her. “Shame on Petey, he makes too much noise and I can’t sleep. Tell him to behave.”
The child was thrashing, but limp when she picked him up. She could feel the heat of his little body. “Come on, honey,” she said uneasily, “Give me your smile.” He merely whimpered. A thermometer showed that he had a high fever. It frightened her for the first time. She wrapped him in the blanket and held him as she dialed the hospital in town from the living room phone. Dead, lines down. Dawn trailed, watching. “Wake your brother and get dressed both of you. Quick.” She grabbed some of the children’s clothes at random and stuffed them into a knapsack as she dressed herself.
The rain now blew horizontal. It splatted against the windshield with such force that the glass blurred at once behind the wiper blades. At the Pasagshak River bridge her headlights showed ripples where the planks should have been. Nothing but to speed through. She reached the other side after rushing water spun the car over slick wood, but with brakes now too wet for traction.
At the darkened hospital she entered the emergency room with Pete draped over her shoulder, shouting for attention.
“Now, now, mother,” grumbled a sleepy intern, buttoning his white jacket. A minute later he frowned, and ordered an immediate spinal tap. The hospital room came alive with nurses and a doctor. Pete had bacterial meningitis. Neither Henny nor Dawn showed temperatures; it hadn’t spread to them. Jody phoned Marge, who said of course she’d take the kids. “Just leave ‘em at the hospital, give me time to get dressed.”
Within an hour an ambulance raced the nearly comatose child to the Coast Guard base where a helicopter pilot waited to chance the weather into Anchorage, since no commercial pilot would risk it. In the bouncing helicopter she hugged the limp, burning Pete in her arms while a nurse tended an intravenous bottle attached to the child’s arm. At the Anchorage airport an ambulance waited. Jody carried Pete while the nurse trailed with the bottle and tubes, but soon other hands took him over and the language turned surreal. “Kid’s on amp and chloro,” called the nurse. “D-5 quarter at two-thirds maintenance. Two saline boluses inflight to keep him going.”
In the emergency room, doctors and nurses eased her aside. Her arms still felt Pete’s impression as she struggled for glimpses of the little nose and forehead through moving backs. She wanted to scream but held it in, straining to hear what they said that might give some clue.
“Better we’d had him sooner,” muttered someone.
She swayed, damning remote house, remote husband, her irresponsible self. I don’t pray and haven’t believed, she said without voice. But if you’re there somewhere prove it, please, please.
The doctor summoned her into the circle. “Talk to him. Try to make him do things. Like squeeze your hand. Or open his eyes. Does the little tacker know any words?”
The small fingers gripped her thumb. But no response came further despite her urgency, and after a while the fingers slipped limp.
“Losing consciousness,” muttered someone.
“Shush,” said another. “Keep talking to him, mom.”
Hank arrived in Anchorage next day around midnight on the afternoon plane from Dutch Harbor. The pilot had held the day’s single remaining flight for two hours despite weather closing in, and this only because some influential cannery person (it turned out to be John Gains) exerted pressure. The resulting head winds made it necessary to refuel in Cold Bay.
Hank knew many of the passengers but kept to himself, not trusting speech as he agonized. They all drank bitter hours-old coffee in the Cold Bay flight shack. One suited businessman from the East Coast declared loudly and often to another that he’d missed his connecting flight to Chicago because a hick airline couldn’t keep its schedule. One of Hank’s boat friends happened to stumble and spill coffee on the man from neck to waist. It changed the subject.
Jody, so hair-strewn and haggard he didn’t recognize her from the window of the intensive care unit, gripped him silently, beat against his chest, then returned to stroking the unconscious child.
Hank rented a motel room near the hospital, forced her to bed (she had kept the vigil alone for most of two days, dozing in a chair), and started his own vigil. When she woke, her first words to him were: “I hate that house.” Hank chilled and said nothing. When he tried to hug her she eased away.
Two days later, it seemed that Jody’s half-prayer had been answered. Although Pete still spoke nothing, his eyes stayed open and followed movement around him. For one precious moment he smiled when Hank tickled him. (Hank then had to turn away, sobbing. Jody moved in quickly to reassure the child.)
Although sun shone crisply on the snowy Chugach Mountains, Kodiak, a hundred fifty miles south, still swirled with storms and zero visibility. By now, Adele Henry shared watches while she waited for Kodiak flight weather to clear, and Hank’s parents were on their way from Baltimore. Adele would open her Kodiak house to take in Henny and Dawn, and announced that the senior Crawfords were welcome also “if Jane doesn’t mind Jones’s bed and we’ll give Harry the sofa.” Jody did not inform her own parents of the emergency. “If they came,” she said, “they’d just worry over their own comfort. And can you hear my mother if I told her not to smoke in Pete’s room?”
Adele had arrived in Anchorage from San Pedro, leaving Jones at his welding business “to rustle his own meals for a change, and find out what it’s like to wipe up the mess.” Hank put his arm around her, able to joke in light of Pete’s recovery. “Got a grinder to get green fuzz off the pans?”
“Rather I’ll use the stubble he shaves only if I make him!”
Jody stayed quiet, almost grim. Yet she was the one who held them together. She assigned watches over Pete, and remained in control when Adele or Hank became emotional. She also guarded their money, collecting all that Hank had in pocket—as a successful fisherman he liked always to keep a wallet with fifties and hundreds—and she bargained with the motel manager for a lower rate.
By day five, Pete sat up propped by pillows, an IV bottle attached to his arm and a light restraint around his middle to keep him from squirming loose. He had begun to e
at and to enjoy everyone’s attention, although at times he turned listless. But no urging could get him to speak the simple words and phrases he had so enthusiastically spouted just days before. Nevertheless, the doctor said that in two weeks if all continued well they could take him home. At least that would stop the drain on their funds.
That afternoon the sky around Kodiak was reported cleared, and flights began leaving. Adele and Hank’s mother, friendly rivals, would go down together to take over Henny and Dawn, but everyone debated Hank’s dad’s role. For the time before he returned east to his office, should he make himself useful in Kodiak, or stay to help the kids in Anchorage? Adele solved it with a wave of her arm. “Harry, my dear man, you’d get in our way. Don’t you think Jane and I have things to do together? And girl talk? Good Lord, with Jones on his precious boat I do all the work myself anyhow.” Then, quietly, to him alone: “I don’t like it, the way Petey’s not talking. I heard one of the doctors, when Jody wasn’t around, say the child might be losing milestones whatever that means. He’s not out of danger whatever they tell her. I lost one of mine to meningitis you know. No, don’t speak. My only little girl. Two childless sons we barely see because Jones can’t—Don’t, don’t, I can’t talk about it, even now. You stick around up here. And pick up expenses when you can. Fishing’s been terrible.”
A few hours later a phone call from Kodiak confirmed safe arrival, while the stomp of feet in the background told that the children had been collected in good health. “Daddy,” said Dawn when her turn came at the phone, “you kiss Petey and tell him to behave. But keep Mommy up there. Auntie Adele and Gam-gam can take care of us just fine.”
“That means,” said his mother, amused, “that we’re being exploited for all it’s worth. I must say you have good friends. That Marge who took them in on such short notice delivered them clean, and the few clothes they had were all washed. If that’s the way people take care of each other around here it’s a nice place. However primitive.”
“Better lock the door against raiding savages, though.” He never would have expected his parents to adapt to new circumstances, willing to pack and come help on the instant. In his mind they had remained part of an East Coast culture that lived by things spelled out and no surprises.
Hank and Jody continued alternate nights dozing in a cot in the room so that Pete would not wake to strangers, while his father assumed a full share of daytime watches.
Jody lightened as things continued well. She and Dad enjoyed each other, although at times they seemed from different planets. She alone could tease him with a tart remark and receive no curt reply. “My fish boat past confuses him, even though now I’m home and a proper mom,” she told Hank during an afternoon off. They strolled the wide, empty Anchorage streets after eating tuna sandwiches made on the motel bathroom counter. (No costly lunches for the time.) “He’s such a gentleman. It’s almost cute, the look he tries to hide if I drop an unladylike word without thinking. I do try. Funny, your mom takes it better with a direct ‘oh dear.’”
“He thought he knew a woman’s place. It works with most of the ladies.”
She ignored the bait. “Your folks are decent, I mean it. But it’s like going into battle. Less with Dad. I can handle him. Did I tell you Mom hinted the other day that Dawn isn’t quite the proper name when her granddaughter comes out at the cotillions? That thank goodness the printed programs can read Danielle? She talks as if it’s decided, that the kids go back to those Baltimore finishing schools. You’re not doing anything to encourage that bullshit, are you?”
“McDonogh’s a good place. I went there. We wore scratchy uniforms. Drilled on the field. Crazy, looking back.”
“Little soldiers, Jesus! Don’t forget I’m an Army brat.”
“It wasn’t like that. It set good standards.” He grinned. “They even let girls in now.”
She turned serious. “So that’s the part of you I can’t reach. And a bucket of money for tuition, not even yet for college. I know they’d pay. But then we’re indebted forever. Cotillion! Don’t worry, I’ll keep it friendly. But they’re going to find a word called ‘no’ in my vocabulary.”
Hank wondered of fights ahead. At least she’d said nothing more of hating their beautiful new home.
Harry Crawford made a point of taking his daughter-in-law and his son separately to dinner each night—early for the one to go on watch, later for the one who was relieved—and urged on each a stiff drink followed by wine. He favored the top-floor restaurant of the hotel where he stayed: felt it his discovery, and tipped well enough that the waiters soon knew his name. It assured a table where wide windows looked directly past the low city to mountains and water. He liked to start the first shift around four in November dusk, when the snowy Chugach peaks glowed pink. This evening—the last before he returned to Baltimore “before they realize they can do without me”—he had reached a mellowing second martini when Hank joined him late. By dark a full moon etched the white ridges so strongly that the sight held its own against the inside lights reflecting against glass.
Hank stretched and tried to relax. His Scotch deadened rather than soothed. Could Seth manage the guys tightly enough to catch their share? Crabs for bills now, not glory. They’d do more if he could be there to drive and scout.
The elder Crawford read part of Hank’s thoughts. “A full moon’s impressive in rough water. Bering Sea on your mind?”
If I asked, thought Hank, he’d lend me money to continue boat and house payments on time.
“Incidentally, I hope it won’t hurt Adele’s feelings, but her house isn’t that big. I’ve reserved a room at the inn on the hill where we stayed last time. That gives your mother freedom to come and go.”
Hank shrugged. “She’ll understand.” Adele probably wouldn’t and Jody would need to smooth it over in some way. “I really like it, that you and Mom came up so quickly.”
“We wanted grandchildren. Now we know where to find them.” His father’s guarded smile stretched the short mustache that, Hank now noticed, had turned gray. He seldom laughed out loud although his humor remained steady, a self-containment suited perpetually to the office. “Not that we wouldn’t rather have our family closer to home.”
“Baltimore’s gotten pretty distant. I’m sorry.” Silence. There had always been silences between them when they reached a point of difference.
“How’s the fishing business? I assume all’s well?”
“First rate, thanks.” Hank said it positively enough to forget payments and bills. His father’s career with an international steel company, bootstrap-successful, had always been an unspoken shadow over his own work. Given other drives his own way might have been paved. But the crab would soon be back in their old abundance. To change the subject: “Hope you didn’t chuck any great plans to come up here?”
“We’ll see how important I am. A few meetings have to go on without me.”
“Meetings. Oh. Mom wrote a while back, something about London later this year. Theater tickets and Christmas shopping at Harrod’s. When’s that?”
“It was yesterday.” Hank started to exclaim, and it was his father’s turn to avoid with an upheld hand and hasty “Don’t worry.” Dinner arrived. “My king crab looks good. Hell of a fisherman I’m with, ordering prime rib.”
“You gave up London?”
“It’s always there. Don’t you eat the crabs you catch?”
“You’ve never had them fresh from the bottom boiled in seawater. By the time they reach your table they’ve been washed, rebrined . . . whatever. I can taste their cannery smell. You can’t, I guess.” The knowledge was pallid compared to international conferences, but he kept on. “It’s still good food. I guess if I worked in a meat plant I’d taste whatever they do to the beef, so I’d order fish. Dad, we’d have understood if you’d—”
His father poured the wine. He had ordered a sturdy red. “Believe me. Any excuse suits your mom to see her grandchildren.” A self-deprecating chuckle. “We’
re both about to turn sixty. You might think it doesn’t matter. But we don’t mind excuses to see our offspring. Of course, if your mom has her way we’ll have our grandchildren enrolled back home at Bryn Mawr, and Gilman or McDonogh, in a few years. I have an education fund drawing interest.”
Hank stared through the window at the frosty moonlight on the mountains. “Dad, my moving to Alaska . . . It wasn’t trying to get away from you. I hope you know that. When I first came here I didn’t. . . But it’s our place.”
“I know. You found your own way.” A pause. “I like what you’re doing even if it wasn’t what I’d expected. We do worry about the danger, I won’t pretend that we don’t. Of course we did while you were in Vietnam too. Gotten used to it. In my own life any danger came of necessity, early, during the War, and then with a family I pursued nothing dangerous.”
“I’m sorry.”
His father’s eyes flashed a sudden blue. “I haven’t been sorry about anything in a long time. Don’t be.” He cut a piece of crab leg and chewed it. “Not bad. I’m glad I’m not such an expert. You know, when you were bom in 1944,1 was on that LST in the South Pacific wondering if I’d ever see your mom again, or you. It all turned out, of course. But you were nearly two by the time I first held you. I’ve never held an infant—a really little fellow—until up here.” Silence. “Then your mom had some problem, so we had no more children. Of course, I’ve been lucky in business . . .”
“You’ve worked hard and you know it.”
“Yes, yes. But that didn’t bring three grandchildren. You did.” His voice warmed suddenly. “That luck’s special. It’s great at any point in your life to be around your own. Here’s to ‘em. Drink up, and think about things that matter. Crab’s good. Your steak looks tough. Too bad.”
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