Alaska (124 page)

'Seattle is a lost dream, Missy. I flew high and singed my wings.' He smiled ruefully as she listened in silence, unwilling to break the flood of thoughts she knew he needed to express. 'I'll stay here and work in one cannery after another, and always in the shadows there will be Nancy Bigears, growing more lovely every year, and finally when the years pass and there is nothing better to do, I'll ask her to marry me.'

But then he remembered Mr. Ross's harsh words that day when he had seen them kissing, and he wanted to share them with Missy: 'Do you know what Ross told me when he thought I might become involved with Nancy? ”Venn, do you think Ross & Raglan would ever bring you to headquarters in Seattle if you had an Indian wife?”and he scared me away for the moment.'

'And then his daughter scared you away from the other direction?'

'How do you know that?'

'Tom, you're like a little boy in grammar school who's kissed a girl for the first time. All the other girls in the room know.'

Smiling brightly, as if to change the subject, he asked: 'What are you and Matt going to do here in Juneau?' and she said: 'We're in no hurry. Irishmen know how to take things as they come.' And she started to leave, but as he rose to 752

escort her to the door, she touched his arm and said: 'You know you could, Tom.'

'Do what?' he asked, and she said: 'Marry a wonderful Tlingit girl. You're first-class, she's first-class. Together you could go to the stars.' And before he could respond, she was gone.

IN SUCCEEDING DAYS THINGS BEGAN TO WORK OUT AS HE

had predicted to Missy: Nancy Bigears was always present in the shadows, and almost against his will he began to drift toward her. They met far more often than he intended, and when she directed their conversation into channels which concerned her, like Tlingit rights and the advisability of outlawing alcohol in Alaska, he found that she struck dissonant but powerful chords in his own reflections: rarely did he agree with her, but he had to acknowledge that she did not waste her life on trivialities.

One afternoon he said: 'I'd like to go out to the glacier again,' and she realized that he was saying this because he wanted to see her once more in the setting where he had first become aware of her, even though she had been only fourteen at the time.

'Are there many states in America,' she asked, 'where you can leave the capital and ride out to an active glacier?' and he said: 'Not many.'

It was a beautiful January day and the Japan Current brought enough warm sea air ashore to create a near-summer atmosphere, even though a small family of icebergs huddled in the channel, so they rode with the carriage windows open. At the glacier, whose former cave had been long obliterated by ice crashing down from the face above, they walked for some time along the front, touching the monstrous snout from time to time and even leaning against it when they stopped to talk.

'Missy told me the other day, Nancy, that I was in love with you.'

'I've always been in love with you, Tom. You know that. Since that first day in there,'

and she pointed to where the blue-roofed cave had been.

'Could marriage . . . ?' He could find no words to express the careful definitions he had in mind. But she diverted his reasoning with a question which startled him: 'Did the boss's daughter in Seattle let you know she wasn't interested?'

Tom snapped his fingers: 'Did Missy tell you to ask that?' and she laughed: 'I don't need other people to tell me impor-753

tant things,' and from beneath her dark bangs she smiled so provocatively that he burst out laughing.

With Nancy he laughed quite often, and as they walked beside the glacier he thought: What I said was right. We'll drift along and one day I'll say: 'What the hell?' and we'll get married. But now she stopped and turned to face him, saying softly: 'It wouldn't work. Not in these years, anyway. Maybe later, when we all grow up ... I mean when Alaska grows up . . .' She said no more, and she resumed walking back to where the horse waited, but he remained motionless, standing close to the glacier, and he felt that like it he was moving slowly, relentlessly in an age of ice.

In due course he overtook her, and as they rode back to Juneau, night came down upon the surrounding mountains and the breath of untimely summer vanished. At the edge of town she pointed to a house lying on its side: 'Like Father warned you. Sometimes the snow comes crashing down. As if we had our own little glaciers.'

In the morning he told Sam Bigears to stop trying to find him a house in Juneau: 'I'll live in Ketchikan while we're building the new cannery. After that. . . ?'

And next day he sailed south to his new obligations.

As TOM VENN HEADED FOR HIS FUTURE LIFE IN KETCHIkan, the salmon Nerka was receiving signals in the far turn of the Alaskan Gyre, warning him that it was time he started for home, and the message was so compelling that even though he was far from Lake Pleiades, he began to swim no longer in aimless circles but with undeviating direction toward his natal water. Sweeping his tail in powerful arcs with a vigor not used before, he shot through the water not at his customary ten miles a day but at a speed four or five times that fast.

In his earlier circuits of the gyre he had always been content to string along with his fellows, male or female, and rarely had he distinguished between the two, but now he took pains to avoid other males, as if he realized that with his new obligations, they had become not only his competitors but also his potential enemies.

From his accidental position in the gyre when these signals arrived he could reasonably have headed for Oregon, or Kamchatka, or the Yukon, but in obedience to the homing device implanted in him years ago, he followed his signal that wisp of a shadow of a lost echo and from one of the most isolated parts of the Pacific he launched himself precisely on a course that would lead him to Taku Inlet and 754

Lake Pleiades, where he would undertake the most important assignment of his life.

On the first of May he was still one thousand two hundred and fifty miles from home, but the signals were now so intense that he began swimming at a steady forty-nine miles a day, and as he sped through the gyre he began to feed prodigiously, consuming incredible numbers of fish, three or four times as many as ever before. Indeed, he ate ravenously even when not really hungry, as if he knew that once he left the ocean, he would never again eat as long as he lived.

In early September he entered Taku Inlet, and when he immersed himself in its fresh waters, his body began to undergo one of the most extraordinary transformations in the animal kingdom, an ugly one, as if he sought a frightening appearance to aid him in the battles he would soon be facing. Up to this moment, as he swam easily through the gyre, he had been a handsome fish, quite beautiful when he twisted in the light, but now, in obedience to internal signals, he was transformed into something grotesque. His lower jaw became ridiculously prognathous, its teeth extending so far beyond those in the upper jaw that they looked like a shark's; his snout turned inward, bending down to form a hook; and most disfiguring of all, his back developed a great hump and changed its color to a flaming red. His once svelte and streamlined body thickened, and he became in general a ferocious creature driven by urges he could riot hope to understand.

With determination he swam toward his natal lake, but his course brought him to where the trap of Totem Cannery waited with its very long jiggers, making entry to the Pleiades River impossible. Bewildered by the barrier which had not been operating when he left the lake, he stopped, reconnoitered the situation like a general, and watched as thousands of his fellows drifted supinely along the jiggers and into the trap. He felt no compassion for them, but he knew that he must not allow this unusual barrier to stop him from fighting through to his river. Every nerve along his spine, every impulse in his minute brain warned him that he must somehow circumvent the trap, and he could do so only by leaping across the lethal jigger.

Swimming as close to the right bank as he could, he was encouraged by the cold fresh water that came from the Pleiades River carrying a powerful message from the lake, but when he attempted to swim toward the source of the reassuring water, he was once more frustrated by the jigger. Bewildered, he was about to drift toward the fatal center when a sockeye somewhat larger than he came up behind, detected 755

a sagging spot in the jigger, and with a mighty sweep of his tail leaped over it, splashing heavily into the free water beyond.

As if shot from a gun, Nerka sped forward, activated his tail and fins and arched himself high in the air, only to strike the top strand of the jigger, which threw him roughly backward. For some moments he tried to fathom what had caused him to fail when the other fish had succeeded, then, with a greater effort, he tried again, and again he was repulsed by the jigger.

He lay for some minutes resting in the cool water drifting down from the Pleiades, and when he felt his strength returning he started swimming with great sweeps of his tail, and mustering all his strength, he sped like a bullet at the jigger, arched himself higher than before, and landed with a loud splash on the upstream side.

A workman from Totem Cannery, observing the remarkable leaps of these two salmon, called to his mates: 'We better add two more strands to the jigger. Those two who got across were beauties.'

It was crucial that Nerka survive to complete his mission, for of the four thousand who had been born in his generation, only six still survived, and upon them rested the fate of the Pleiades sockeye.

SINCE THE NEW R&R CANNERY AT KETCHIKAN WAS being planned for a capacity half again as large as Totem, Tom was kept so busy from the middle of January on, he had little time to think about the mournful way his two conflicting love interests had collapsed.

When he reached the site, the four major buildings had already been roughed out; they were enormous, and he gasped when he realized that it was up to him to finish off the eight or ten subsidiary buildings which would be required, and then fill all of them with the needed machinery. So he spent February and March installing crating areas, canning lines and the two great essentials: the Iron Chinks and the huge steam retorts for cooking. He did not like to think what this cannery was going to cost, perhaps four hundred thousand dollars, but he did know that once it started functioning, it would have the ability to pack sixty thousand cases a year, and that was a lot of salmon. In mid-March when it became apparent that some of the bunkhouses might not be finished on time, he sent a distress signal to Juneau, and on the next trip south Sam Bigears appeared with four expert helpers. 'I still not work in buildings,'

Sam said, 'but I work on them.' One of the men, to 756

Tom's surprise, was Ah Ting, and when the local workmen saw him come onto the premises, they complained loudly that no Chinese were allowed in Alaska, but Tom explained that Ah Ting was an exception. They were not happy with the explanation, but when they saw how he could get the temperamental Iron Chinks operating when they could not, they allowed that he served a purpose.

During working hours Sam Bigears often paused to inform his friend Tom of happenings in Juneau, and certain bits of information were both pleasing and amusing: 'That crazy Siberian, what's his name, he got one of best houses in town and he and his wife have boardinghouse. He collect rent and she do all the work.' He said also that Matt and Missy had yet to find a house they wanted, but that Missy kept sticking her nose into everything: 'Call her Lady Governor, she tell everyone what to do.'

'Do they get mad at her?' Tom asked, and Sam said: 'No. They like what she say. Maybe like her interest,' and Tom said: 'She was always that way.' Sam said that she offered to work at one of the churches, but they wouldn't accept her because no one could be certain whether she was married to Murphy or not: 'But her girl go Sunday School that church.'

Tom never asked how Nancy was doing, because he could not be sure how much Sam knew about their feelings for each other, and he certainly did not want to say, but whenever Sam spoke of the girl, he listened attentively: 'She win big writing contest, which not surprise me. She good at writing, but she also win what they call oratory. That was surprise. She speak ”Tlingit Land Rights” and I think she win because Lady Missy one of judges. She like what Nancy say. Me too.*

Thanks to Tom's driving energy, and the hard work of men like Bigears and Ah Ting, Ketchikan Cannery was ready on time, and since the runs of salmon in these southern waters were even more copious than those in Taku Inlet, the big buildings were soon working to capacity and the Juneau men returned home. As Ah Ting left, some of the older workers in the Iron Chink shed told Tom: 'It's good to see that one go. No place in Alaska for a Chink,' and Tom said: 'Aren't you from Seattle?' and they said they were, and Tom surprised himself by saying: 'Then it's not your problem, is it?'

Ashamed of his curt retort, he returned to the men and said: 'You know we couldn't have had this place ready without his help,' and the matter was dropped.

His display of temper disturbed him, because on his jobs in Dawson, Nome and Juneau he had been known for his unruffled disposition, and he wondered what had caused him to change. But when he reviewed his recent behavior he came 758

sights. 'Hello, Tom!' she called out with unladylike vigor, and to her mother's surprise, as well as Tom's, she ran to him as soon as she left the gangway and planted an enthusiastic kiss on his cheek.

They spent that long day seeing what Ketchikan had to offer, and the little town of six hundred went out of its way, with a band concert, a barbecue and a parade back to the ship, which sailed at dusk.

The Rosses had provided a stateroom for Tom, but he had barely entered it when Mrs.

Ross asked him to accompany her as she walked the upper deck, and once again he was awed by the easy graciousness of this woman: 'It was Lydia's idea, this trip. She knew... well, the truth is, I gave her living hell for the way she treated you at Christmas. No, don't speak. These things happen sometimes, Tom, and we're powerless to stop them. But we can correct them. And that's what she wants to do.' She chuckled.