Gone Alaska

by Dave Barrett

  I stared down into the black green waters and, for a moment, the sound of the great trunks swaying did sound more like crying than creaking.

  “Wow... ” I heard myself saying in the same hushed whisper. “I hear it now. A second sound: like people murmuring and crying softly at a funeral.”

  I looked in towards the yellow light overflowing into the wheelhouse from the hull. Judge Peterson and Swanson’s cursing and banging-away on things rose up from the engine room as before: and I was struck how they were part of a very different world than the one Miss Sue Ann Bonnet and me were experiencing here on deck—if only for a moment.

  “Wild stuff,” I said, passing the joint to Sue Ann again. “Kind of spooky. But if all living things have feeling... and a tree is a living thing... I suppose it has as much right to cry as the rest of us.”

  Now Sue Ann was crying and laughing at the same time. She took a long hit, so the end of the joint lit up cherry red.

  “You all right?” I said. I made to get up... go to her... but remained seated when Sue Ann motioned me to remain so.

  “Yes,” she said, laughing again. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “It’s this goddamn dope. That... and you remind me of someone I knew a long time ago.”

  I began to ask her who this was, but stopped when she shook her head to signify the subject was off-limits.

  She sat beside me on the cooler.

  “Thank you,” Sue Ann said, taking hold of my hand. “I feel better now.”

  I could feel the warmth of her body next to mind and feeling this made me shiver. When she turned towards me, her eyes were still soft and wet from crying. She looked into my eyes and I into hers and—for an instant—I was sure we were going to kiss. Then, just when I thought she really would kiss me, she looked away—breaking out in a loud, but warm laugh that made me laugh unknowingly along with her.

  “Oh, Adam... ”

  When her laughter died down to a few snorting chuckles, she threw an arm over my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.

  “You’re a beautiful young man!” she said, mussing with my hair a little now. “Christ—if I was a young woman again—I wouldn’t let you out of my sight for a minute!”

  I smiled.

  Then she said something that made me stop smiling:

  “Adam, get out of this place!”

  Just like that: point blank.

  “What?”

  “This place!” she repeated, throwing her hands up and looking round us. “I know how wonderful and beautiful all this is... but, truth is, we are killing the thing we all love by fishing it so hard it can’t sustain itself. I’ve seen so many boats on Bristol Bay the night before a sockeye run that it’s lit up like a floating city. We take every salmon we can get... and then wonder why each year the fish counts get lower. The Canucks blame it on the Americans, the Americans blame it on the Canucks—, and everyone blames it on the tribes. But we are all to blame! No one is willing to step back and give Mother Earth a chance to heal herself. We take and take and take... ”

  She paused to finish tying her bandana around her hair again, and then continued:

  “When I was just a little older than you, Adam, they sent me to a ‘rehabilitation center’. They made me read this novel by this funny Russian author whose name I can’t remember or even pronounce—Dog Sty or Dog Wesky?”

  “Dostoevsky?” I asked.

  “That’s it!” Miss Sue Ann said, her large brown eyes lighting up when she smiled. “I knew you were a smart kid, Adam! Though I still can’t pronounce the damn name right!”

  I smiled back, laughing a little at Sue Ann calling the great Russian writer Dog Wesky!

  That was pretty funny!

  “Anyhow!” Sue Ann continued, serious again—her eyes scolding me. “I remember this line from the book. It said the hardest thing for a person to do is take a new step—a truly new step! And that damn Ruskie is right! Because we are all such creatures of habit!”

  She coughed lightly, covering her mouth with a fist. She paused, a look on her face like she had suddenly seen something she remembered—maybe a ghost from her past? -- and then, just as suddenly, it was gone again. She shook her head and continued:

  “But I did it, Adam. I changed my wild and wanton ways! It was the hardest thing I ever did—but I did it. And if I hadn’t... I’d have never have met a truly great guy like my husband, George! Taking this step is hard as hell, Mr. Adam Porter. But it can be done. Take it from me—a gal who knows!

  The breeze coming in from the open channel was stronger now, and crying from the trees along shore was louder than ever.

  “Adam?” Sue Ann said, sitting up straight on the cooler. “Can you promise one thing?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Promise you’ll consider what I’m telling you tonight. I know it’s not as simple as I’m making it—we all have bills to pay, roofs to keep, kids to feed—but there has to be a better way. We’ve got to put Mother Earth first, give her time to heal so they’ll be something for future generations. Alaska is not a whore, Adam. It’s not something to hump and dump on. We’ve got all the gold-diggers we need. If this is why you’re here... then go back, Adam Porter. Go back to wherever it is you come from and see if you can’t heal the place you’re from! Take that step! Be that change! Promise —”

  Suddenly, from the wheelhouse, came the stumbling, thudding sound of Old Judge Peterson and Philip Swanson tramping up from below. As they emerged through the wheelhouse door, Judge Peterson was leaning on Swanson with the finished fifth of Jack Daniels dangling from the crook of one finger. At the top of their lungs, the duo was singing:

  “Rye whiskey! Rye whiskey! Rye whiskey, I cry! If you don’t give me rye whiskey, I’ll lay down and die—“

  stopping mid-verse when Judge Peterson saw me and Sue Ann sitting side to side on the cooler.

  “Well, well, well!” Judge Peterson bellowed. “Aren’t you two a cozy pair?”

  We sprang to our feet.

  “It’s not what you think!” I began to explain—

  but never got to finish as the old man’s body suddenly went limp.

  Sue Ann and I came quickly to Swanson’s assistance. Peterson had passed out in Swanson’s arms. Just like that. I grabbed him by the legs while Sue Ann and Swanson got hold of his arms. We lugged is 250-plus frame to the skiff. There, we loaded him in—in much the same manner he’d been unloaded.

  “You gonna be all right on the row back to the Mighty Mert?” Swanson asked, once Miss Sue Ann Bonnet had found her position at the oars. She had to sit herself down between Peterson’s stilt-like legs, using his armpits as foot locks for her boots.

  As they shoved off the Western World with an oar, Swanson called out:

  “Hope George don’t get no ideas about you two rowing off in the moonlight like this!”

  “Don’t get my hopes up!” Sue Ann called back.

  Swanson and I watched as the skiff waddled farther and farther away, until the only way we knew the skiff was still out there was by the sound of oars still slapping the water. I thought it strange how Miss Sue Ann Bonnet hadn’t said goodbye to me, hadn’t even looked at me since Swanson and Peterson appeared.

  “What were you two up to back here?” Swanson said, jabbing me in the ribs with a stiff finger.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I thought about telling him about the trees, and then thought better of it.

  “She mentioned something about me reminding her of someone she knew a long time ago.”

  “Hmm,” Swanson said. “That’s probably it. You probably remind her of the fella’ she knew when she was a young gal. Engaged to the guy, I think. Indian—like her old man. Haida? No—Tlingit! Grew up on the Rez together. Anyway, this fella’ went out on a crab boat one summer—but never came back. First time out. Judge Peterson said she went a little ding-dong after that. Got messed up in all that 60’s hippie shit. Then on to Dutch Harbor where she worked as a stripper for a few yea
rs... until George came along and made an honest woman out of her. George treats her real nice—but I guess she still trips out from time to time.”

  “Course,” Swanson added, stiff fingering me in the ribs again. “I’ve never been with Miss Sue Ann Bonnet when she was trippin’!”

  Chapter Nine

  Pelican, U.S.A.: Part One

  It was almost ten before I arrived at the front steps of the Elbow Room in Pelican, Alaska. Because it was Saturday night, I was not the only one to think of taking a shower at Loretta’s Laundry Shower Shack. I had to wait an hour for my turn to take “the plunge”—as the fisherman in front of referred to it:

  “A buck-fifty a minute!” he said, rolling his bloodshot eyes at the cost. “And that ain’t the worst of it. That buck-fifty hot shower lasts maybe thirty seconds—forty, if you’re lucky. And, boy—when she stops, she stops ice cold. Hardly time enough to grab hold of your nuts and get out with what’s left of your manhood!”

  The Pelican evening was refreshingly clear. On the walk to the Elbow Room, varying shades of blue sky and bruised clouds scattering overhead reflected off the huge mirror-like puddles left after the day’s showers. I waved back at several groups of cannery workers hosing off each other’s rubber overalls at the end of their shifts. I stepped inside a telephone booth to call Brian Connelly back in Juneau, only to step back out self-consciously when I remembered I’d spent the last of my resources on a shave and shower.

  I was greeted by the smell of stale, slopped beer as I stepped up on the Elbow Room’s big front porch. Bluesy rock n’ roll music wafted through the establishment’s Western-Style swinging doors. Clusters of men and women had strayed out onto the porch to talk and take in these first and last rays of yellow sunshine. I was glad when I spotted no door guard. Since I was only eighteen, I was wondering if I’d even be able to get in.

  Maneuvering past two drunk women—I saw—or thought I saw—Miss Sue Ann Bonnet at a far end of the porch.

  “My, my, my!” the louder of the two women said, standing directly in front of me. “This one’s just out of the bath! When’d you get off the boat, sailor?”

  The women were dressed up like trick-riders at a rodeo: complete with chaps, Howdie-Doodie-style hats, even lassoes around their shoulders. They were obviously twins: same robin-egg eyes and frizzy Ronald McDonald red hair.

  Out the corner of my eye, I saw Miss Sue Ann Bonnet standing by herself along the porch railing. She was gazing towards the water, smoking a cigarette. I was sure she was Sue Ann—or Sue Ann’s twin sister: that same slender, slightly erect figure, same flowing, raven-colored hair, same fragile manner of bringing her smoke to her lips. Because her back was to me, I’d only seen her face for a half-second before another gust of wind blew her hair back across her face.

  “This one’s mine, Cheryl!” the second sister said. She’d snuck up from behind and dropped a lasso over me. Cinching the rope tight, she pulled me towards her.

  “Hear that sailor!” she continued, in a mock serious tone. “Your ass is mine!”

  Embarrassed, I laughed along with the sisters as they simultaneous kissed me on both cheeks.

  “Wow!” I said. “Guess I came to the right place!”

  Undoing the lasso, the sisters set me free: but not before I promised them a dance later on.

  “Promise,” I said.

  The giggling sisters moved away from me, setting their sights on two more young fellows climbing the porch.

  I’d lost sight of Sue Ann behind a moving wall of smiling, laughing Elbow Room patrons. I moved quickly now, feeling that I’d lost her. I wanted to speak with her here—alone—on the porch. Inside there would be all the others-- including, maybe, probably, her husband, George. I kept bumping into people and repeatedly excusing myself. Then, just when I was ready to give up the ghost, I caught another glimpse of her. My heart pounding up somewhere near my throat, I shoved my way through the crowd. I imagined I could even smell her now—through all the smoke and beer—as I remembered the lavender-like smell of her that night on the boat when she sat beside me on the cooler. When I finally made it to that spot along the railing there was a woman there, but it was not Sue Ann Bonnet.

  Actually, she was a young girl, Indian, about fourteen, maybe fifteen. She’d been absently twirling a rubber band—or hair band—something—around a finger. Apparently, my sudden appearance had either frightened or embarrassed her. Blushing, she began to walk away.

  “Wait!” I said, my own face flushing. “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else!”

  She walked on. Frozen, I watched as she made her way along the railed walkway on one side of the whitewashed building. Twice she stopped to look back at me: like a frightened doe. The last time she stopped halfway to the back beside a screen door blown open by the wind. Her hair blew across the side of her face in the same way it had when I’d first mistaken her of Miss Sue Ann Bonnet. Another wall of men and women crossed in front of me, obscuring my view. When I was able to see down that railed walkway again... there was only that same stack of red and blue plastic milk crates and a few empty beer kegs lying on their sides.

  The girl was gone.

  “Long time no see!” Philip Swanson said, grabbing hold of my elbow.

  I’d walked right by Swanson and Old Judge Peterson’s booth. The inside of the Elbow Room was a mobbed with people as the porch. When Swanson caught up to me, I was just about to walk into a restroom marked SQUAWS in glaring-red neon overhead.

  “Woops!” I said, shuffling out of the way of two women lurching between us into the restroom.

  “What’s that on your face?” Swanson asked, shouting over the zoo-like chatter and metallic glare of music coming from a jukebox.

  “My face?” I said.

  Swanson turned me towards some brass paneling on the wall so I could see my reflection. Two big lipstick smudges framed my cheeks: one a classic red, the other a hot pink.

  “What the hell?”

  I licked the back of my hand and did my best to rub away the rubbery smudges.

  Swanson was doubled-up in hysterics. Grinning, I asked him what was so damn funny.

  “Look around for yourself!”

  At first, I did not notice a thing. There were so many people moving in and moving out. Then, I noticed. Young men, embarrassingly like myself, were entering through the Elbow Room’s swinging doors, alone and in pairs, with the same glaring red and day-glo pink lipstick smudges on their cheeks.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Cheryl and Jeanine Rutter,” Swanson said, his eyes still watery from laughing. “The sisters are branding every greenhorn that crosses the Elbow Room’s porch!”

  Swanson handed me a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

  “Come on!” he said. “Show’s about to start!”

  Swanson was a bobbing beacon I followed through the swirling crowd: his high-hitching shoulder and orangutan gait making his compact body swing side to side like a buoy on troubled seas. He seemed a different person amongst these strangers: a de-fanged version of his Pit Bull self. Whereas he usually tolerated my presence as one might a bothersome gnat, he was gracious, even fawning. We were sidekicks now!

  The Elbow Room was enormous. The barn-sized room was divided by a short flight of steps so the rear half rested on a plane a yard lower than the front half. Behind the long, shuffleboard shaped counter, the liquor was stacked on shelves towards the ceiling so bartenders had to climb sliding ladders to get at particular bottles. Red stained-glass light fixtures and bladed ceiling fans were hung from the vaulted, onion-domed ceiling. At one time, Swanson told me, the Elbow Room Bar and Grill had been known as Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church. Now, instead of crosses and rosaries and figurines of Madonna and child, the dark paneled walls were covered with posters of Seattle Seahawks football players and big-breasted blondes with wet T-shirts advertising beer and with taxidermies of everything from sea otters to bald eagles to King salmon—even a twenty-foot stuffed Orca
fixed on a ledge over the swinging doors at the entrance. Instead of altars and prayer stalls, there were pool tables and big screen TVs.

  The house lights dimmed as we descended a short flight of red-carpeted steps towards our booth. I’d been anxiously searching for Miss Sue Ann Bonnet: expecting her to come up and grab me any minute. Arriving at our small wooden booth, I thought I’d finally found her. I was disappointed when the shapely woman in the red T-shirt with long black hair turned out to be our cocktail waitress.

  “Hey, there, Philly!” a man at our table called out-- whistling between his fingers. “How’s it going, bub? This your new boy?”

  Four other men were at our booth besides Old Judge Peterson. I’d recognized them as fishermen the moment I saw the gnarled, tool-like quality of their hands. The tabletop was cluttered with their highball glasses, beer cans, and half-finished pitchers of beer. All four fishermen wore their flannel shirts buttoned at the wrist. The fisherman who had referred to me as “boy” was a wearing a DESERT STORM baseball cap and Ray-Ban sunglasses. The combination of the cap and the sunglasses and the man’s pearly whites made me think of a walking talking skeleton. I’d disliked this man from the moment he whistled though his fingers.

  “Yeah,” Swanson said, taking a seat beside Judge Peterson. “Adam Porter.”

  “Adam, huh?” the man said. “Where you from, Adam?”

  “Idaho,” I said, squeezing myself into the tight-fitting booth.

  “Idaho!” the man repeated. “That’s God’s country!”

  And Reverend Butler’s... I thought.

  Old Judge Peterson was getting up from his side of the booth now.

  “Going, Judge?” I asked.

  Peterson looked older, more tired than I remembered. Age spots showed on his big boney hands and face. His jaw and nose seemed more prominent: like a salmon’s during its spawning stage. When we’d arrived, he actually been dozing off, his big chin on his chest. He stumbled as he climbed out of the booth, tripping over a leg of a chair. He might have hit the floor if Swanson and I hadn’t grabbed hold of him.