The Alaskan Laundry (10 page)

He laughed and looked at her. “As I said, we all pay for our sins here, one way or the other. No rest for the wicked. Story of this goddamn state.”

LIFE ON THE ISLAND
seemed to grind to a halt as they dropped into the heart of winter, darkness shrouding town. People spoke in hushed tones. The middle of the day was, at best, twilit.

As work played out to a steady rhythm, she thought less of Philly. Winter had cast a spell, encapsulated her. The gloaming on the island matched her mood, allowing her mind to hibernate while her body never stopped moving.

Bizarrely, there were more solstice gatherings in Port Anna than Christmas parties. Fritz and Fran invited her to their beach for a bonfire. Newt would be there, and Laney, along with others from Thanksgiving, Fritz said.

Instead she walked down the hill, across town to the docks. The portholes on the tugboat glowed with light. On the back deck was a stump of wood with an ax sticking out. A shadow moved across the wall. She thought of Laney inside, painting on black eyeliner before going out for the big evening. Tara had planned on knocking, perhaps having a glass of wine with the woman, but, as she stood there, decided against it.

It began to rain as she went back toward town. A cold, freezing rain that made the backs of her hands ache. Rising up on her toes, she threw a couple jabs, followed by a right.

It pained her to think of her father struggling up the basement stairs with the dank-smelling boxes of Christmas decorations, his thick fingers sorting through the paper-thin glass ornaments on December twenty-third, the first anniversary of his wife's death.

That night she had been preparing for her final Golden Gloves fight. After training with Gypo she walked over to Connor's and fell asleep on the couch in his woodshop. They had just started spending time together again, and she had been stopping by his house after her workouts.

She woke to the noise of sirens, and Connor standing by the door. “Something's going on,” he said, looking down the block.

There would be hell to pay—over an hour late for the lighting of the Marconi maple tree. Even her father, she was sure, would break his usual silence and comment on her lateness.

She grabbed her gym bag and coat and pushed past Connor, running up Manton toward home. People moved to the side, making a path on Eighth Street, where red lights swabbed the brick facades. At the far end, on the corner of Eighth and Federal, a dark-haired woman was sprawled on the asphalt. She wore the same purple flowered dress her mother had put on that morning. Her father stood above the kneeling EMTs in his mustard cardigan, the cuffs bloody. An Oldsmobile idled just beyond the stop sign.

Urbano watched her as she approached, his green eyes wide and empty. Each word uttered so slowly, as if he was speaking in some foreign language. “She was out looking for you.”

Over the past year these words had played on an endless loop, always in his deep, resonant voice. If it weren't for you, my wife would still be alive. That was what he meant. Although now, as she circled the library, listening to the rhythmic sound of the ocean brushing the boulders, she heard just sadness.

At the payphones she sifted through the change in her palm. The conversation would be short—she wouldn't need more than a few quarters. Her stomach lurched when he picked up.

“Figlia?”
he said in a low voice.

“P-Pop,” she stumbled. “How'd you know it was me?”

He spoke with gathering force. “Who else calls at this hour?”

She waited. Growling, he said, “I spoke with your cousin Acuzio.” The start of his temper, that wintry slow-brew of rage. “Your mother and I, we gave you a good life. And this is how you treat us? It's disrespectful. Disgraceful. Alaska.” He made a spitting sound. “You are like an old woman with a lamp, looking for trouble. You have no idea what—”

Gently, she dropped the phone back in its cradle.

Down on the beach Fritz and Fran had already started burning stacked wooden palettes. In a daze she walked in the direction of the flames. More people had arrived, and were singing songs celebrating the sun's return, each one matched to the tune of a traditional Christmas carol.

Deck the halls with streams of sunlight . . . It's solstice time, so long to the night . . .

Huddled over lyrics, hoods making shadows over the paper, the islanders resembled monks, save for the shouts and dancing. Fritz stomped around the fire, rain pasting his thinning hair to his skull.

“Tara!” he shouted when he saw her. He held up a potent-smelling purple liquid. “
Glogg!
Island tradition. Have some.”

Sparks from the flames swirled into the darkness. She finished her cup and Fritz ladled out another. Snowflakes caught in the wool of his sweater, in his beard, which had thickened over the winter. A conga line formed, hands waving in the air. She felt palms on her waist, closed her eyes.

“Hey, girl—I saw you out on the docks tonight.” She turned. It was Laney. “When are you gonna you grow a pair and knock on my door?”

Before she could respond, the woman was off, dancing by the fire with Newt, who skipped in his Xtratuf boots, his yellow teeth shiny in the firelight. When he saw Tara he grabbed her by the wrist and twirled her, letting out a rebel yell that hurt her ears.

Later, after a few more cups of wine, masts and troll poles zigzagged in her vision as she stumbled up the beach to the sidewalk. She lost her balance and crashed into the bushes, struggled to her knees, her breath coming out in puffs. The snow had turned back to rain. Drops knocked against her coat. She let herself fall again, wheezing softly. When she opened her eyes she thought she saw her mother there beside her, just inches away, a heart-shaped face framed by dark curls, as if reflected in the thin glass of an ornament.

“Mama,” she groaned. “Mama, make it stop.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, then turned and looked again. A shiver went through her. She didn't want her mother to see her like this, caked in snow, drunk, about to vomit. Lost on some island in Alaska. She turned on her back, looked up at the sky, and whispered into the dark, “I just miss you so much.”

AFTER NEW YEAR'S
she began to grow more efficient at moving from task to task—washing incubation trays, scrubbing concrete floors with bleach, picking sticks and leaves from the fish ladder. Newt had switched over to working at the processor, where the money was better and he had a shot at getting a job on the tender. Occasionally she considered responding to Connor's letter, but at the end of each day she just wanted sleep.

“Don't get too comfy in your routine,” Fritz warned. “Things around here are gonna change pretty quick soon as they let out the wolves.”

The wolves, Newt explained, as they met up on a Friday for beers on the breakwater, were the low-riding seine boats that began, toward the end of February, steaming into town from points north and south.

At the beginning of March she took one of her walks out to the harbor to see the tug. Newt was right—the place had been transformed. Seiners were tied up on the transient float, rafted together three and four deep. When she reached the
Chief
she saw grass growing from the seams of the hull. Mussels and seaweed coated the planks beneath the waterline. Tara chewed the insides of her cheeks.

Laney's head appeared around the side of an Adirondack chair, red wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders, glass of white wine lifted. “You better scurry on up here before you get snatched by one of those hungry herring boys.”

Tara gripped the knots on the rope railing and pulled herself up the gangplank.

“Help yourself to the grigio in the galley there,” Laney said. “There's a glass above the sink.”

Slowly, as if drifting back into some favorite dream, she stepped into the house. She stood for a moment in the warmth, letting her eyes adjust, breathing in the diesel and cedar scent. Wood crackled in the cast-iron and porcelain cookstove. On top, a teapot billowed steam. Copper pans hung from the beams, their lids nearby, arranged in descending order of size. Firewood stacked on the other side of the bookshelf along the wall—all of it just as she had imagined.

She found a glass in a varnished oak cabinet, then joined Laney, who wore her same dark eyeliner, wavy hair piled with a chopstick. They clinked glasses and looked out past the breakwater toward the volcano. A sea lion exhaled, surfacing to watch them. The wine was fruity and strong, and immediately made her lightheaded. Waves washed against the wood hull. Tara resisted the urge to pick at weeds beneath her chair.

“So what's the verdict?” Laney asked.

“On what?”

“The boat, silly.”

Tara paused, thinking of the rusted anchor chain, thick as a fist. Or how the wheelhouse curved, the steel visor protecting the oak sash windows.

“I didn't really get a chance to look around. But that cookstove in the kitchen's pretty cool.”

“Don't let someone hear you say ‘kitchen' on the docks. Galley is what we call it. You ever get Newt to tell you the story?”

“He told me.”

“Dude hid right up there, behind the windlass,” she said, pointing to the bow. “Just about a year ago to the day.”

Laney rose and grew serious, pacing on deck. She wore heels. What a strange woman.

“So the Rock being what it is, I'm sure you've heard Doug and I are filing for divorce. I should tell you that when we hauled the boat out, we sank a hundred thousand into planking beneath the waterline. There's a couple out of San Francisco, cello musicians with the philharmonic, who're talking about towing her to the Bay Area, starting a music school or some yuppie crap. I'm flying back there tomorrow.”

Tara bit her tongue. Laney seemed about as yuppie as they came, though lined with a go-to-hell Alaska attitude.

“Here's the thing. She hasn't moved since we hauled her out, and that was six years ago. If she doesn't go a hundred yards under her own power, that harbormaster tows her out to state tidelands and hires an excavator to tear her apart.” The ends of her shawl fluttered in the wind. “Still interested?”

Tara spoke slowly. “My mother grew up in a fishing village in Italy, and she loved boats. So yeah. It just makes sense to me. But I don't have thirty thousand dollars.”

Laney dismissed this with a wave of the hand. “If it's in your blood you'll find a way. Listen, I need to get packing. But quickly, I'll show you the living quarters.”

They took their wine inside. Laney pointed out the Monarch cookstove, which worked great with lint from the dryer as fire starter. Then the head, with its toilet sized for a kindergartner. Three quarter berths, small rooms with double bunk beds, were situated around the salon. “All heated by wood,” Laney said proudly, nodding toward the ax outside. “Chopped by yours truly.”

As Laney climbed a wooden ladder Tara imagined the woman in her heels, splitting wood. She had always considered her mother tough, but had trouble thinking of her living through a divorce, swinging an ax, retaining her elegance at the end of the docks like Laney.

At the top of the ladder the room opened around a bed. Books, mugs with dried tea bags at the bottom, envelopes torn open, were scattered on a slab of plywood to one side. Tara recognized the pine ceiling from looking through the rusted portholes. A hammock swung gently on the other side of the exhaust stack, which was connected to a smaller wood stove.

“And here—the
pièce de résistance.
” Laney opened the door onto the wheelhouse, a half-circle of sash windows high over the water. The boat's shiny wooden wheel was almost as tall as she was. Worn leather straps allowed the far windows on either side to slide up and down.

“The catbird seat up here,” Laney said. “Whaddya think?”

It was magnificent, sitting on the water so far above the other boats. “I love it,” Tara said.

Laney smiled. “Yeah. I knew you would.”

“
IDES OF MARCH
,” Fritz murmured, spitting chew juice into a mug, filling in the crossword folded out on his stomach. “Ain't that funny. Wonder if they did that on purpose.”

Channel 16 on the VHF chattered in the background. Fritz was waiting for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to put the seine fleet on two-hour notice. Tara made entries into the logbook, measuring the average size of the fry, the water temperature of the tanks. Fritz had forbidden anyone else to make reports, with her cursive so neat and precise.

“So I was out picking my pots the other day,” he said, “and who should come on over in his skiff to pay a visit but your pal Betteryear.”

“Who?”

“Tall old Native dude.”

She hadn't seen the man since that time in the coffee shop. Months ago. She had been avoiding the library, steering clear of the payphones.

“Oh yeah?”

Fritz leaned back in his chair and spit a stream of tobacco. “Yeah.”

She finished transferring information from her notebook to the log and stretched her arms above her head, making a squeaking sound that caused Fritz to grin. She set neoprene waders out on the workbench to patch them. Fritz adjusted the waist of his oilskin pants.

“You ever hear the story about that old guy?”

She focused on her work, squeezing silicone onto the tip of a Popsicle stick, thinking about her money saved—just over twelve hundred dollars. “I haven't.”

“July, maybe ten years ago. Guess he was steelhead fishing up north. It got hot in the sun, so he stripped down to his long underwear, no shirt, when all of a sudden a bear comes charging out of the brush. He had his thirty-aught on the gravel bar beside him, Winchester seventy, holds five zingers. Took him four to knock down that bruin, which skidded to a stop ten feet from where he stood.” Fritz spat. “And then, not two seconds later, from farther upstream comes a smaller one sprinting like all bananas through the shallows. Old man had one shot left, so he took his time, hit the bear dead in the brainpan. Ended up under the thing as it bled out. Finished putting on his pants, stropped his knife, and spent the next two days skinning and boning.”