The Alaskan Laundry (14 page)

Ears flattened against his skull, the dog skulked to the other side of the room. With a huff he leapt onto the couch and curled up, watching her. When he blinked the two dark orbs of his eyes disappeared. “Jesus,” she said. “Hey. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

She dropped to her stomach, crawled across the room, and patted the rug in front of her. “C'mon. Please.”

Hesitantly, he put his two paws onto the rug, then his hips, white tail nub shaking as he settled in front of her. She pulled his frame closer, resting her cheek against his shoulders, listening to the steady beat of his heart. With her hand she cupped one of his paws, rubbed the rough pads with the tips of her fingers.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

THE NEXT MORNING
, when she woke up at five thirty by the wood stove, Keta had his chin on her stomach. When she rose, he yawned, watching her. She knelt in front of him and dragged out his eye boogers, like her mother had done for her when she was a child. “You must clean away dreams,” Serena liked to say.

After letting him out to pee, she sank his pills into a spoon of peanut butter, told him to sit, and tried to get him to eat. When he refused she grew frustrated, held his mouth open, and shoved the pills to the back of his tongue. He coughed, shaking his head, trying to clear his throat.

“I'm sorry, buddy. I gotta go.”

He stood in the mudroom, watching. After closing the door she stopped, opened it again. He was still there, unmoved.

“Go lie down! I'll be back soon.”

She made it to the processor by six thirty, took her bibs and hairnet from her locker, buttoned up her jacket, and pushed through the plastic flaps into the frozen world of the brig. When she bent to slide out the first box, pain oozed down the back of her neck, unfurled over her shoulders. It felt like punishment, except this time for bigger things. For leaving Connor. Her father. Philadelphia. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered to herself. “This is fucking unreal.”

When she stood up straight a bolt shot down her left leg, worse than the day before. Her cheeks were numb, and she couldn't feel her toes. She wasn't even fifteen minutes into the morning. She thought of Keta back at the house, still sitting in the hall, wondering if she was ever coming back. Her joints ached. Her arms didn't want to bend at the elbow.

A lift pushed through the flaps. She hobbled out of the way as Bailey worked the forks under the pallet. “Staying warm?” he yelled, then honked twice and gunned the vehicle. Fucker.

Maybe people who made it in Alaska were just built of tougher stuff. Some Nordic ancestry better suited to the cold and wet and scream of machinery. Philly hadn't prepared her for this. Although Gypo told her she had grit. She had fought Golden Gloves. She just needed to calm down and put aside the cold. Pretend she was covered with Keta's thick fur.

At break her ears, despite being covered in fleece, throbbed. Her feet felt like concrete blocks. She filled a Styrofoam cup with steaming coffee and stood by the humming machine to absorb what scant warmth she could.

It was hopeless. She had never taken a knee in the ring, but another six hours in that freezer wasn't physically possible. She just wanted to be back by the fire with the dog.

“Someone looks worse for the wear.”

She turned. Newt stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

“You asshole!” She set down her cup, staggered across the room, and hugged him. “Where have you been?”

“Easy, easy,” he said, laughing. He smelled of diesel, sweat, and fish. His eyes appeared flat, lacking their usual spark. “Weeklong circuit on the tender. Captain Jackie rode me like a goddamn mutton-buster.”

“I don't think I can last the day in that freezer,” she blurted.

“That's funny, because I don't think I can last much longer on that tender. Feeling beat as a five-pound bag of smashed assholes, I am. But we'll grind it out 'cause we're made of the tough stuff. How's the Bunkhouse?”

“I'm housesitting. Looking after a dog.”

His face knotted. “I got some bad news for you. Don't get all worked up when I say it.”

“I have some bad news for you too. I'm on my way to Trunk to tell him I'm quitting.”

“T, we passed the tug on the way back into town. She's being towed south.”

She stopped. “What do you mean, she's being towed south? The boat's in the harbor.”

Newt shook his head. “Word on the street is there's gonna be a music school on her, or some similar insult to that boat's original purpose.”

Her voice shook as it rose. “Newt, that's why I took this job. That's why I'm stacking fucking boxes in Antarctica. You lined this up, then you're not even here? And now this?”

He poured brown liquid from a flask into her coffee. “Calm down, okay? Have a drink. What is it with that tug? There's other boats.”

She took a gulp, letting the scald of the coffee and alcohol spread through her throat. “I'm not going to calm down. This whole island's fucked. No one does a goddamn thing they say they're going to do. I can't stand it.”

He took her arm. “Tara, I've got a plan. Trust me.”

She shook him off, pulling her bib over her head, knocking her hat to the concrete floor. “
Fangoul
to that freezer, and screw you, too, for leading me down this path.”

She walked out of the processor, then over to the Bunkhouse, down the hall to the payphone.

“Sorry,” Laney told her. “As I said, I would have preferred the tug to stay on the island. But it's best for the boat, best for everyone.”

“Bullshit,” Tara said, shifting the phone to her other ear, feeling the pressure of her anger building in her chest. She shut her eyes. “You knew I wanted that boat.”

“Yeah, I did, but you didn't have the money, okay? We've all got our own shit—it's not just about you, girlfriend. I'm going through something called a divorce, which, I can tell you, is no walk in Central Park.”

Tara sidestepped her words, although they rang true. She needed to get her head out of her ass. Still. “You said these new owners were starting a music school or some horseshit?”

“And what were you going to do? Transport armed troops again?” Laney shot back.

“At least get the engine running. And by the way, your friends who are buying the boat suck. I'm taking care of the dog they left behind.”

“I need to go, Tara.”

She slammed the phone down, kicking at the baseboard. Spoiled San Francisco brat, that's what she was. High-heeled bitch with her white wine and red shawl and chopsticked hair.

Back at the processor she put on her bibs and hairnet and gloves and elbowed her way between the flaps into the brig. She glanced up at Trunk, who was standing in just shirtsleeves, looking back at her.

“What?” she asked, grabbing at the first form and scanning the shelves for boxes to pull. “You got a problem too?”

He shook his head innocently, his eye bouncing around. “No problem. Just that Newt said he got the glazer working and needed a hand making boxes. But hell, someone needs to cool off by the looks of it. Maybe it's best you stay here.”

She was freezing, thought her head might split with cold if she remained another minute in the freezer. Still, she worked on stacking the pallet, finding the next box on the list.

“Tara,” Trunk said, watching her. “Hey.”

“I'll wrap this up and come out. Okay? I got it.”

He watched as she finished the stack, arranging the end of each box flush with the other. Then she followed him through the flaps, feeling close to fainting.
It has to be genetic,
she thought as he switched on a conveyor belt,
how he just doesn't notice the cold.
Across the room Newt flashed a thumbs-up, dragged over a rack from the freezer, and began slipping fish into the glazer. Frozen black cod dropped one after the other onto a revolving wheel.

“Okay. Deep breath. Good?” Trunk asked.

She stared back at him, willing herself steady.

“Remember back in our interview when I asked you about counting? Here's where it comes in handy. Your job is to measure up each fish coming down the belt, finish boxes between forty-nine point five and fifty point five pounds. Scale is already tared out at one point five, which means we've accounted for the weight of the cardboard. Watch.”

Trunk quickly put together three boxes, trading out fish only a few times. As he worked she began a reassessment of his stupidity. People out here who wouldn't understand a Philly parking sign somehow had a way of just
doing things
well.

“Got it?” he asked. “If these are seven-ups, about how many fish do you need?”

Fifty pounds. “Seven.”

“That's right. Make a box.”

She did. Then another, slapping fish onto the scale, slinging them into the box, and tying a loose knot in the plastic bag. The fish kept coming, an endless flow of frozen gray bodies emerging from Newt's glazer. Trunk walked back to his office.

After a few boxes she ran into a hitch. The red numbers on the scale flashed 44.2 pounds. Each fish she put in the box was either over or under. She grasped at tails. The wheel brimmed over with fish, and one clattered onto the cement. Newt hit a red button, stopping the belt. Trunk came out of his office. “The fuck's going on?” he yelled.

“Jammed nozzle on the glazer,” Newt said, holding up a wrench. “I'm on it.”

Trunk's lazy eye bounced around the room, landing on Tara. “Well, c'mon. We got fish coming up our ass.”

“Trick is to find your magic number,” Newt whispered from behind her. He shuffled through the fish, put together a box, wrapped the plastic, fit the cardboard flaps together. “Seven. Always shoot for a seven-pounder instead of just starting wherever. Make sense?”

He returned to the glazer and restarted the conveyor belt. As she began packing she wondered if there would ever be a time on this island when she was good at something, just one damn thing. Or at least content, with nothing on her mind. She thought of being on the end of the breakwater with Newt, beneath the blinking red channel marker. She needed to apologize for snapping at him. And to Laney.

Her hands accelerated as she sized up the ashy bodies. What else was there but to keep going? Fish after fish, box after box, and go home at the end of the day to fall asleep with the dog by the fire. Feed the sweet love his pill, and do this all over again. Hopefully a bit better the next time.

HER BODY
, which had rebelled so fiercely, began to accommodate itself to the rhythm of the work, the endless stream of fish along the conveyor belt. Her orange-gloved hands stretching out to take that one, sure this one would work. 49.7. Perfect. Her hands sweated, grew clammy in the rubber gloves. An hour until break. A doughnut. Slap of the red button and they were going again.

It was as if she had broken through the forest into a clearing she hadn't known existed. She could breathe easier, spend twelve, even fourteen hours a day on her feet. Just so long as she didn't have to go back into that freezer. With the tug sold, all she had was Newt, and these fish, one after the other. Like she was buying time but getting paid for it.

Her second week at the processor she clocked eighty-three hours, boxing fish and scooping guts on the fresh side when the tender arrived with its filled green totes. Calluses at the base of her fingers thickened and turned a dirty orange. Muscle rose like a plate of armor over her collarbone. When a Ukrainian kid pinched her ass, she whirled around and hooked him across the face. Stunned, the boy stared back at her, bleeding from a gash beneath his eye. “You've gone wilder than a fifth ace,” Newt said in the break room.

Nights, she showered, put on Connor's flannel pajamas, walked Keta along the spit's narrow beach, and fell asleep in a nest of pillows in front of the wood stove, the dog breathing warm beneath her. Despite the long days (which were quickly growing shorter, she noticed), her mind felt numb. She kept wanting to respond to Connor's letter, to thank him for the gift (she had kept the tag on, imagining his fingers as he examined the purple numbers), but her brain couldn't put together the words. At the end of the day she felt exquisitely exhausted, no space to reflect.

The first week of September, Fran informed her that the San Francisco couple's house had sold. Before Tara returned to the Bunkhouse, she gave Keta his pills, cleaned his eyes of sleep. The dog ran his pink tongue over his black gums. “I'll come by Fran's to take you on walks. Promise.”

As she walked down the hall of the Bunkhouse, the awful antiseptic smell burning her nostrils, she found herself crying, already missing the animal. She put on her pajamas and listened to the hum from the plant, certain that he had already forgotten about her.

TWO WEEKS INTO SEPTEMBER
—a month after Tara had started at the processor—Trunk called her into his office.

“I got a proposition. I give you a raise to eight dollars, you take a couple days off.”

She stared across the desk, confused. Trunk waited for her response, his lazy eye appearing to bounce in his head.

“You're gonna burn yourself out, friend. I've seen it happen. There's a whole island out there. Have some fun for godsakes before your time on this green earth is through.”

When she knocked on Fritz's front door, he opened up with a heavy sigh, wiping his lips.

“Aren't you supposed to be slaving away in the fish dungeon? Or—let me guess—you want your old job back?”

Behind Fritz, Keta stepped into the hall. When he saw Tara he jabbed his head between her legs, letting out a high-pitched whine.

“This is why I'm here,” Tara said, kneeling to rub the dog's cheeks. He gave her a tongue flick.

“Wow, he's stingy with his licks,” Fritz said.