The Alaskan Laundry (15 page)

“I was thinking of heading up Crow to the lookout. Thought maybe I could take him along.”

“Take him period as far as I'm concerned,” Fritz said. He slapped the dog's hindquarters. “If it were up to me, I'd use him for crab bait. Wouldn't I, buster?”

Tara hugged the dog, who dropped his chin on her shoulder, panting in her ear.

“He's just an old grump with no one left to yell at,” she said.

As they walked through town, Keta strained against the leash, sniffing fence posts, his nubbin of a tail wagging. At the trail she let him off, and he bounded along the planks, veered into the muskeg, paws sinking into the green carpet. Loping between the trees, he really did look like a wolf, she thought, save for his floppy white ears.

The earth was soft under her boots, which had turned glassy with moisture. Streamside, she cupped a hand and drank. Keta clambered down and lowered himself into a pool, before clawing back up, shaking, spraying water, and sitting down beside her, chest heaving. His pink nose tested the air.

They continued climbing, following the wooden steps crisscrossing the side of the mountain. She thought about the herring opening, that feeling of being ready for the next step. And here she was six months later, heading into the winter with a job at the processor, and no plans to return to Philly.

Up ahead of her the dog stopped. She walked to where he stood, pausing when he gave a low, guttural
woof.
She caught a brief scent of something musky, rotten. The woods had grown quiet. The black and white hairs over Keta's shoulders quivered. She heard a branch snap. At first Tara thought it was a large man with a backpack, about fifty feet up the trail. Then she saw a flash of teeth. Keta's lips rose, a low rumble coming from his throat.

“Holy fucking shit,” Tara whispered. A heat spread over her cheeks, followed by an awful hollowness in her body, the recognition that she was at the mercy of a creature who knew no reason.

She took a step back. The bear rose on its hind legs and sniffed the air. Wind ruffled its golden chest fur. Keta growled louder. Tara tried to take another step back, but her legs wouldn't move from where she was standing. Time stopped. Then Keta let out a true bark, squaring his body in front of Tara. The bear snorted in response, snapped its jaws, and fell, its forelegs grabbing the air before they hit ground. Then it charged, its body elongating as it narrowed the distance. Keta threw out his front paws, lowering his chest and barking furiously as the bear came toward them. Tara gritted her teeth and stiffened.

The bear skidded to a stop less than ten feet away. The animal seemed to absorb the light of the woods, its small eyes peering at them. An oily, rancid scent washed over her. Ears flat against his skull, trembling, Keta continued his slow growl, his head almost on the ground, haunches high in the air. Thirty seconds? A minute passed? Finally the bear let out a huff and moved off through a break in the bushes.

Tara held still, waiting until the crunch of breaking branches eased into silence. The dog turned, jaws open. He gave her a quick look, then stared in the direction the bear had gone. When she touched his head he still didn't move. Through his fur she could feel the rush of his heart.

“You . . .” was all she could say. Words held no meaning.

They started down the mountain. Tara took the steps one at a time, the dog staying just ahead of her. Then she was running, palming tree trunks to stay upright.

At the Muskeg she tied Keta outside, slipped into a booth, and watched the line of people at the register. She felt a weight in the seat beside her, and squeezed her hands into fists. There was the smell of cooked greens, and grease. Betteryear.

“Tara?” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I was just charged by a bear.”

“This is not a good word to say aloud.”

“Bear, bear, bear,” she said angrily, her voice rising. She held her face in her hands. The stopper at the base of her throat, just above her breastbone, cinched as she started to cry.

“Come,” he said after a moment. “Let me walk you home.”

The three of them went along the water. Keta stayed by her side, close enough to brush against her leg.

“This is a trauma,” Betteryear said. “Perhaps I could help teach you some things to make you feel safer in the woods, and avoid this happening again. Have coffee with me tomorrow morning.”

She couldn't think, and just petted the dog, holding him close to her thigh. “Okay.”

Dogs weren't allowed at the Bunkhouse, but she didn't care. Keta settled on the laminate floor in a pile of her clothes, crossing his legs and resting his head to one side. She dragged the mattress and the wool cover to the ground and pulled the dog to her, burying her face in his fur. When she whispered thank you, he breathed a long sigh. It was probably just a reflex, she thought. But he might have meant “Yes. Always.”

THE NEXT MORNING
the temperature dropped. It rained lightly. On the way to the coffee shop, at a ramshackle house by the police station, a couple tables were set up beneath a tent. Among the clothes and board games and saucepans she found a dog-eared book on diesel boat engines. When a man with a great waterfall of a white beard came by, she pointed at a rusty rifle hiding among the dish racks and pots. “That thing work?” she asked.

He lifted the gun. “Barrel's crooked as a duck's ass. Good for bear, though. Winchester Seventy, thirty-aught-six.”

She considered telling him she had been charged the day before. “What about a license to shoot?” she asked.

He laughed. “You're not in the lower forty-eight no more, sweetheart. You can walk down Main Street with this baby strapped to your back. Hundred bucks and she's yours.”

She glared at him. “I've been here a year.”

He held up the oil-stained engine instruction booklet. “Alaska girl, I'll even throw this in. Seventy-five bucks and you got a deal.”

At the Muskeg she leaned the rifle against the wall by the children's blocks. As she waited for Betteryear, she thumbed through the diesel-splotched manual, tapping her foot to fiddle music, reading about the importance of building air for a direct-reversible to allow for as many starts and stops as possible. No spark plugs. With the tip of her finger she traced the arrows showing the path of air, how it traveled from the tanks into the steel, then copper pipes to create compression in the cylinders. Which started combustion, which turned the crankshaft, which turned the propeller to make the boat go.

Basic, yet unimaginable. She ran an oily palm through her hair, then began to fool with the rifle. Soon she had figured out the spring-loaded release for the bolt, how to empty the magazine, pull the trigger, and reset it. She was sipping from her coffee mug, pleased with this small victory when Betteryear settled in a chair across from her.

“Ah, Tara,” he said, nodding at the rifle. “What have you done?”

“I know. It's bent. I just got it at a garage sale.”

He looked back at her with something in his face, disappointment perhaps. For a moment his expression reminded her of Connor. Not quite condescending, but close.

“Before hunting you should learn to gather.”

“Gather?”

He stared her down. In the city this meant fight. Not so on the island. “Yes. Plants. Mushrooms. Berries. I've got baskets in my truck. We could go right now, if you like. It won't be dark for another few hours.”

She thought about it. Tomorrow she was scheduled back at the processor. But her body felt so worn down. She flipped the pages of the manual with her thumb. Now that the tug was gone, what did it really matter? Then again, going into the woods with a man she didn't know—a man Fritz said had a temper.

“The two of us will be fine,” Betteryear said, in a gentle voice. “Promise.”

“Okay,” she said, shouldering the rifle, starting for the door.

Flakes melted into the asphalt as they walked along the street. The cluck of chickens, a crumple of a tarp in the breeze, the smell of brown sugar and liquid smoke from fish brining on decks. Betteryear seemed to glide, his basket swinging an arc from one hand.

The faint disk of the sun hovered just above the mountains across the channel. The descent into darkness didn't worry her as it had last year—she knew what was coming. This year she watched how everything seemed to draw in closer: objects, people. As if intent on sharing heat.

They turned onto a gravel road, which dead-ended into an unfamiliar trailhead. Kiksadi River chattered between the trees. She missed having the dog by her side.

“You are nervous,” he said. “Please, relax.”

He took a couple steps off the trail, then lifted a dome-shaped mushroom from the moss. Its cap looked like a burnt loaf of bread.

“It's not only bears that can kill you in these woods.
Galerina marginata.
Poisonous. But luckily,” he said, swooping his fingers over the earth, reaping a handful of butterscotch stems, “galerinas are rare. This here is
Craterellus tubaeformis
, also called yellowfoot, or winter chanterelle. Look at the ridges on the underside. Ridges, not gills, like the poisonous variety. The winter chanterelle is your best friend.”

She held the chanterelles to her nose, smelling the damp earth. She walked by his side toward the river. The chatter of the water made her anxious again, how it drowned out nearby sound.

He picked a creamy white mushroom from the base of a tree, flipped it, and ran a finger over points along the underside. “Sweet tooth. Also called hedgehog.” He smiled as if they were both in on some great secret.

“Edible?” she asked. He dipped his head, shutting his eyes. “Oh, yes. And oftentimes close by . . .” He crouched and peered beneath a tree, gave a satisfied smile. “Reach beneath the hemlock here. I think there might be a surprise.”

She dropped to her knees, ignoring the wetness, and extended her arm into the root cave.

“Farther,” he said. “Lie down on your stomach.”

The order annoyed her, but she obeyed, reaching in until her shoulder pushed against the trunk, patting the dry dirt. She didn't like this, having her right arm pinned. Her fingers touched soil, twigs, then a rubbery coldness. “Yes?” he said. The root gave with a soft tear. She brought the mushroom into the light, brushed dirt from the thick stem, and ran her fingers over the spikes along the bottom.

“Hedgehog?”

“That's right,” Betteryear said, taking the mushroom from her, nestling it into the basket. It was, by far, the largest of the bunch.

“How'd you know it was there?”

He shrugged. “I had a feeling.”

They picked until the basket could hold no more. “Now that you know how to gather, you must learn how to cook. And then one day we'll hunt with your rifle, and shoot a deer. Yes?”

The rifle had been for bear. But she wondered if she could do it, pull the trigger on a deer. She had heard stories of people hunting in upstate Pennsylvania. It would be an adventure. “I'd like that.”

She asked Betteryear to drop her at the docks. Before returning to the Bunkhouse she walked out to the transient, just to make sure the tug hadn't miraculously reappeared. It hadn't. Nothing but the sound of rigging against the masts, and the high-pitched screams of the buoy balls chafing against the bull rail.

WORK AT THE PROCESSOR
slowed down. Chum salmon were finished. Now that she wasn't clocking overtime, she felt antsy.

At the end of September, Newt took her aside in the break room and announced his plan to save money. “The woods, T. We'll live in the woods. The price is right. Free.”

“No way,” she said, looking out over the floor. “I'm not living like some bum.”

“Stop thinking like a city girl,” he said.

She bristled. “Who around here has been charged by a bear?”

“Bears won't pay us no mind.”

“Who's ‘us,' anyway?”

“Bailey. Maybe that crazy redheaded Frenchy, too.”

He meant Thomas, the lanky, fine-boned new arrival on the processor floor, who had a shock of red hair and freckles, and smoked cigarettes in the break room while squatting against the wall. He had been studying politics at a university in Paris, he told them, when he decided to travel. He ran out of cash in Alaska, found the job at the processor.

“Newt, you're not making sense. It's about to be winter.”

“What makes sense is you getting out of that shitty Bunkhouse and saving to buy a boat. And me getting Plume north. You've been through a winter here. It ain't no worse than Kentucky—just a matter of holding your breath.” He started back to his station, tacking sea cucumbers up on the plywood. “Think about it, T. It's a good one. And I think you know it.”

SHE KNEW HER FATHER WAS STEWING
, furious, but couldn't bring herself to call. On top of that she still hadn't responded to Connor's letter. It was tempting on the island to just shut off contact with the rest of the world, shove it away into a corner until she was ready to re-engage.

She had seen a card in the post office, an aerial view of Archangel Island with the volcano in the background. From above, the town appeared like a thumbnail along the coast, with ice fields and glaciers visible in the alpine. She bought it, then drew an X by the processor.

October 2, 1998

Dear Connor,

Here you can see Port Anna, and all the beauty that surrounds her. The mark is where I stay. Thank you for my early Christmas present. I sleep in them every night. They make me very happy.

More soon,

Tara

THE SUN TRACED A SHALLOW ARC
over the mountains as Tara, Newt, and Thomas walked along the gravel road by the Kiksadi River.