The Big Both Ways (31 page)

Out toward the point of the Native encampment an old woman stood with a couple of sealed buckets on each side of her. She waved to the dory and motioned them to come in to the beach. Slip thought that perhaps she had some news from the camp, and he brought the dory in close to the beach. The closer he got, the more she urged him on with her gestures. When he got close enough, she threw the buckets into the dory and jumped into the boat with surprising agility.

“Okay,” she said, and she pointed to the north.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’re headed out. We’ve been thrown
out of camp. We can’t take you anywhere,” Slip said, in a voice that was too loud.

“Okay,” the woman said, gesturing north and smiling at Annabelle. The bird whistled and cheeped. The old woman clapped her hands together and laughed when she saw the yellow bird standing on the gunwale.

“It’s okay. Just go.” Annabelle waved forward and Slip started to pull. The old woman gathered her pails together and put them in front of her feet. Then she lifted the canvas tent and put it behind her and settled comfortably into the stern of the dory. She was as dark as oiled walnut and her cheeks hung like coin purses on each side of her face. She was speaking in a language that Slip had never heard, but the tone was friendly and conversational. She pointed, laughed, and pointed some more. It became clear that she was explaining where they were going and Slip kept pulling.

At the mouth of the bay a strong current was pulling down the inlet. The rocks at the point jutted up into the current as if they were sitting in the middle of a slow-moving river, and a small wake spread out in a V from the rocks. The old woman gestured around the corner of the bay in the direction of the current. She kept talking and as she did Slip began to fear that perhaps she was feeble and didn’t know where she was. Annabelle sat in front of her and watched the old woman intently as if she could understand every word of what was being said.

“She’s talking to you,” Slip said to the girl.

“I think she’s talking to Buddy,” the girl said, and sure enough the old woman turned her head and it was possible that she was addressing the yellow bird.

It was a calm morning with high overcast that sank down over the tops of the mountains on each side of the narrow inlet. It almost seemed that the Inside Passage had been tented over so that once they came around the point, the waterway ahead seemed like a long hallway.

The old woman wore a man’s wool jacket and a long cotton
skirt. Her head was wrapped in a blue scarf that set off her dark skin. She was speaking louder now and she gestured toward the middle of the inlet. As he pulled, Slip could feel the tug of the current carrying the dory along faster than the pull of the oars. Once out in the center of the channel, she nodded and gestured straight down the middle, then she sat back and surveyed the dory and the water around her calmly, almost imperiously, as if she were being borne along by her minions. Slip pulled on the oars and she nodded and muttered a few syllables but said nothing more.

It was almost eerily calm, the surface of the water was oily, and whatever wind there was came from the stern so that the sensation of movement was muted. The boat could have been flying, carried aloft by the rhythm of the oars. A puff of breath came from the port side as a seal bobbed to the surface. The animal raised its head to watch the dory. Slip turned and watched as he rowed. The animal’s dark eyes sparkled with intelligence so that its face took on a weird kind of humanness.

“How long will it take to get to Ketchikan?” Annabelle asked. She watched the rings of water where the seal had disappeared.

“I don’t know,” Slip said. “I guess it depends on the weather and whether anybody gives us a ride.”

“There’s a section on the chart where it looks like we have to go out into the big ocean.” Annabelle was squinting down at the chart.

“We’ll skirt along the shore,” Slip said.

“That would take a heck of a lot longer, I think.”

“Well, if the weather’s good we’ll row all night if we have to. If not we’ll just go ashore and wait for the right weather to come along. We’ve got enough food, don’t you think?”

“Boy, I guess,” Annabelle said. She reached into the basket under the tarp in the middle of the boat and pulled out a cinnamon roll. “You want a piece?” She held out the roll to Slip, who shook his head no. Then Annabelle split the roll in half and held it out to
the woman in the stern of the boat. The woman took the roll, nodded, and bit into it. She smiled and chewed, holding up the piece of roll in a gesture of thanks to Annabelle.

The morning passed and the sunlight stabbed off the water so that Slip had to squint to keep his eyes open. The old woman gestured toward the western shore of the inlet. Slip ignored her and kept pulling on the oars. The girl and the yellow bird sat chatting at the side of the boat, and the old woman chuckled from time to time. Slip pulled and his body warmed with sweat as his muscles seemed to oil up, and he began to feel good about the day.

Then he looked to the sides of the inlet and he saw that his progress had slowed. Where once they were making a fair passage along the inlet, they were now slowing down. He had been pulling toward a rockslide to the north for some time, and when he looked over his shoulder the rockslide seemed no closer. They could have drifted backward for all he could tell. The old woman gestured to the western shore again, and she made a rowing motion with her arms. George pulled to the west, and as he came closer to shore he felt the pull of the current taking them north. The woman smiled and leaned back. She reached forward and held out her finger to the yellow bird and the feisty thing pecked at the finger. She leaned back and frowned. Then Buddy hopped onto Annabelle’s finger and the two of them laughed at the bird.

The dory rounded the northern point where the current was running nicely. They came to the mouth of another bay and the old woman stood up and picked up her buckets. Slip thought she was going to step right out of the boat. She was looking over the bow, and Slip turned around. There in the middle of the bay was a canoe with two men in it. She pointed, called out to the men in the canoe, and they waved in return. Slip rowed toward them. They had been out on the water some three hours now.

As they got closer Slip could see there was an old man with someone much younger. They were pulling line hand over hand from the sea into their canoe. Slip could see the tails of several
large fish sticking into the air. The woman called out and held up the buckets. The two men looked almost embarrassed, yet happy nonetheless.

As they pulled alongside, the young man said, “Grandma, we made a lunch. We’re fine.” The old woman crawled across the gunwales and stepped into the canoe, which was surprisingly stable for so narrow a boat.

“My grandmother worries about us. But we’re fine really,” the young man said to Slip. “She thinks we’re getting too thin.”

The old woman sat in the stern of the canoe and handed food out. Slices of dried fish wrapped in cloth and some berry cobbler in a pan. She was speaking in an animated way to the man Slip assumed was her husband. She pointed at the dory and the old man shot back his comments quickly as if he were not even considering her arguments.

“What are they saying?” Annabelle asked.

The young man was holding on to the gunwale of the dory now. He had tied off the line he had been pulling from the bottom. He turned and looked at his grandparents. “Oh, he’s saying that she shouldn’t have come. That she didn’t know anything about you. She’s saying that you got fired from the cannery for eating with the Filipinos. She said she knew that you were headed north to meet up with your friend who hurt her hand and flew out yesterday. She knew just where you were going and thought she could catch a ride.”

“We were glad to do it. I just had no idea how long she’d be with us.”

The grandson laughed. “You thought you had just inherited an old lady?”

“I didn’t know for sure.” Slip grinned, and leaned back on the seat and stretched his arms.

“What are they talking about now?” Annabelle asked.

“My grandpa is asking about your bird.”

“What is she telling him?” Annabelle looked over at Buddy.

The grandson paused, not sure how to translate, or whether to translate at all. “She’s saying that it’s some kind of white man’s bird. She’s saying that it’s a pretty thing but probably wouldn’t taste like much to eat. That it doesn’t really live anywhere but white people keep them just the same.”

“What’s he saying now?” Annabelle asked.

The grandson bowed his head. “Oh, he’s just an old man.”

“But what’s he saying?” Annabelle was looking at Buddy, strutting back and forth across the top of his cage.

“My grandpa says your bird isn’t smart enough to fly away.”

“Oh, don’t listen,” Annabelle cooed to Buddy.

“They don’t mean harm. She’s grateful for the ride.”

“That’s all right. He’s right about the bird too,” Slip said, and started to fix the oars in the locks.

“Here,” the young man said, and he spoke with his grandfather for a moment and then dug around in the bottom of the canoe. “Take this with you.” And he slung a small halibut into the dory.

“Appreciate it,” Slip said. “Can you tell me the best way to cross Dixon Entrance?”

The young man stared at Slip, then at Annabelle. “In a steamship,” he said.

“Thanks for the tip.” Slip smiled, and then he began pulling away.

“Wait for the weather,” the young man called out. “If it’s sunny like this, wait behind an island until the north wind stops blowing. Just when it starts to change, get an early start and go like hell.”

Both Slip and Annabelle thanked him, and Slip rowed north. Buddy flew up and away from the dory. Annabelle reached out to grab him but missed. He flew up in a wide arc and around the canoe three times and then settled back on top of his cage, where he could get a peek at himself in the shiny bell.

The long inlet offered few beaches or anchorages. Slip rowed for hours until his back and arms began to ache and then seize into a
spasm. They were in a section of the inlet where the current was running steadily to the north along the shore. Slip lay down in the front of the dory and Annabelle swept the oars through the water keeping the dory heading north. She sang to her yellow bird and watched the dappled sunlight along the rocky shore. As soon as the last of the fair current had turned against them, they tried to anchor but the anchor line hung straight down in the water never finding bottom. Even when they were close enough to the rock walls that Annabelle could reach out and pick a white wildflower from a patch of moss, the sixty feet of anchor line still never touched bottom. After an hour, the current began to push them backward and Slip rowed over to a tree that had fallen down a rock chute and was cantilevered over the water. Slip was able to tie to the tree with a long line for the night.

The moon rose late and even though the twilight was long, the fjord cooled off quickly. Annabelle and Slip wrapped themselves in blankets and then in the tarp. The dory rocked gently in the current as they made themselves comfortable in the boat.

“You think Ellie is going to be okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think she’s going to be fine.” Slip rolled over and the dory rocked a bit.

“You think she got to fly the airplane, even for a little bit?” the girl asked.

“She was pretty sick honey, but … I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me if she talked that guy into letting her fly a little.” Slip laughed, as he curled as deep as he could into the warmth of the blanket.

Yvette’s establishment was a sad excuse for a whorehouse. It was a sagging wood-frame house that smelled predominantly of sweat on wet wool. The flooring was soft and the walls were thin. Even before she woke up on that stinking parlor divan, she knew exactly where she was when she smelled talcum powder and mildew.

At first Yvette wasn’t about to give up a room, but when she saw Ellie’s bleeding hand drooped over the truck driver’s shoulder
she softened. When the injured girl mentioned Clyde’s name, Yvette knew she didn’t have a choice. Clyde had helped her out of a jam in Tacoma years ago. She had seen worse trouble since, but Clyde had saved her from a stint in jail and she had never paid him back.

“If she dies, we throw her out with the trash. You understand?” Yvette said to the kid, as he plopped Ellie down on the parlor divan.

“Don’t matter a goddamn to me,” the kid said. He wiped his hands down the front of his pants and took off without looking around the room.

She called herself Yvette but her real name was Carol. She wasn’t showing sympathy by letting Ellie sleep in a small back room. It was purely a business decision. If she died, there wouldn’t be much expense to that, and if she got better quickly, this girl would owe her something. Having a pretty girl in her debt was always a good thing.

The parlor was cramped and the floral pattern on the wallpaper was water-stained and splotched with mold. Wet wood hissed in the woodstove while two anemic girls with dark circles under their eyes smoked cigarettes and played cribbage next to an open window. A fisherman was passed out in an overstuffed chair. He was wearing wool pants and suspenders over his bare chest. His whiskers lay against his chest and looked to be spotted with vomit.

“Have John get him dressed and out the door. He’s bad for business, stinking up the place,” Yvette called to one of the girls, who took a drag on her cigarette and then counted out her points before even acknowledging her boss’s voice.

Then Yvette turned to Ellie. “Okay. I can make more money on this room if I let a girl work it, but I can let you have it for ten dollars a night.”

Ellie reached into her pants pocket and gave the madam a quarter. “That’s what I got right now,” she said.

“It’s a start,” Yvette said. “I’ve got a doctor who will come
and take a look at your hand. I’m assuming you don’t want to go to the hospital.”

Ellie nodded in agreement.

“I don’t blame you. I got a doctor who is pretty much sober. He looks after all my girls. I’ll add whatever his bill will be to your bill here. What you can’t pay, you work off, you understand?” She stared hard at Ellie.