And She Was, page 23
“Just don’t smell it. Put it right in your mouth,” Bellie advised.
So, of course, I stuck my nose in the bag. I nearly vomited.
They all laughed at me. “Plug your nose,” Marge said.
As I’ve said before, I hate the idea of having some weird food right in front of me and not trying it. I figured people had been eating the stuff for eons, so it wasn’t going to do permanent damage. I plugged my nose and fumbled a small piece from the bag. Even plugged, the nose can still get a sense of what’s in the mouth. It tasted dry and salty, crisp as a communion wafer, but it definitely smelled inedible. I swallowed quickly.
I’m not going to try to describe it. But you’ll get the idea from how it’s made, as Marge explained. “They take a bunch of seal flippers, dry them out, salt them up, then bury them along with fish heads and God-knows-what in a barrel. Next spring, they dig ’em out, nice and decayed and tasting like shit.”
Not shit, I decided. Much worse.
A wind rattled the bus windows, and I jumped. Dark gray clouds had slipped under the light gray. Something tin and unsecured lifted and flew past the window. Les turned in his seat and raised up to his knees to look out.
“Shit,” he said. “It’s getting bad.”
A tarp blew off and swirled down the beach. Carl stuck another piece of lusta in his mouth and turned for the door. When he opened it, the wind blasted through and lifted loose papers and a plastic plate. I could hear him banging around outside, tying stuff down, weighting tarps. The bus shook again, and the rain started. Not just rain, but rain thrown down at angles that pelted the bus windows, washing the view, which had grown dark as night.
Marge looked out the window. “Carl’s a wanted man, you know.”
“Wanted for what?” I asked.
“Murder is what I heard, down in Mexico or somewhere. That’s why he came way out here. Figures the law won’t come looking this far out.”
“No, he’s not running from the cops,” Les said, shifting to recross his legs. “The Hell’s Angels put a contract out on him back in the seventies.”
“Well, I guess he’s running from something anyway,” Marge said. “Heard he was a Vietnam vet too. Got messed up.”
The door slid open, and we fell silent as Carl came back in, wet and loaded with driftwood. He lit a kerosene lantern and hung it on a hook in the kitchen, then filled up the woodstove. He extricated a gray folding chair from the pile of junk on the driver’s seat and crashed it open by the couches. It squeaked as he sagged wetly into it. He dripped. Four reserved puddles formed underneath him.
This was not to be a short burst of a storm that plays out and leaves you to yourself again. This was going to last.
“Did I roll up the truck windows?” Marge asked.
Les shrugged. “Who cares.”
Marge shot him an irritated look.
Bellie shifted several times.
Carl kept dripping.
I wasn’t sure what to do. “Pass the whiskey,” I said. I poured and passed to Bellie. She filled her mug, and the bottle made the rounds.
“Looks like the police gave up on them boys that jumped Les,” Marge said, breaking the long silence. “Said they couldn’t get no one to say who was involved.”
I glanced at Carl. He grunted.
Another silence.
“I know,” Les said. “Let’s tell ghost stories.”
“Shit, Les, I don’t know any fuckin’ ghost stories,” Marge said.
“I’ll start,” he said.
Les told of the Otter People. Somewhere in Southeast lay an island, uncharted, shrouded in mist. When a group of adventurous prospectors stopped there to look around, they were chased by naked creatures with the heads of otters and the bodies of men. Only one made it back to tell the story.
It was a good story, and Les had good timing. He looked around at his audience. “Creepy, huh?”
“That ain’t nothing,” Marge said, apparently inspired. “My sister bought this place on Vashon ten years ago. She’s there maybe a week when she starts hearing these funny noises.” Marge continued her sister’s tale until it ended with a new house, a dead cat, and a lingering mystery.
“I found a dead guy.” Carl’s tale began, then paused for a swig of whiskey. “I was just out there getting some baidarkas when I see something floating in with the tide. I waded out some. It was a dead guy. Been dead a long time.”
Carl fell silent. It had been the longest string of words I’d heard from him.
“That’s it?” Marge asked. “Who was he? What happened?”
“Don’t know. Face wasn’t all there.”
“Well, what did the police say? When was this?”
“Ten, eleven years ago. Police didn’t say nothing. Never knew about it.”
“What? You just left him there?” Les asked.
“He didn’t seem to mind. Went out with the tide. Never saw ’im again.”
“Fuck, Carl,” Les said. “You are messed up.”
Carl grunted.
“I’ve got a story.” Bellie had been strangely quiet. I knew she didn’t have any coke, and that without it she wasn’t much of a talker. But even taking cokelessness into account, she’d been withdrawn. She hadn’t curled her hair, and it hung in straight slabs over each cheek. She looked so much more deliberate, more native.
“It’s an old story. My grandmother told me when I was little.” The glow from the stove lit half of Bellie’s face a warm orange. The flames reflected in her smooth, dark hair. The bus rattled steadily, with occasional stomach-flipping gusts sending it into a shake. Bellie stared into the fire. I watched her fingers move to the birthmark unconsciously. If you hadn’t known about the mark, you would have assumed she had a headache, the way her fingers pressed and smoothed, pressed and smoothed.
“There once was a girl who was born with something living and cold in her body.” Bellie’s words and cadence were not her own. This was not my Bellie. She spoke with someone else’s voice. “People of the village turned away from her even when she smiled. A time came when the people were starving because the Outside Men, living inland, stole food from caches in the night. The thing in the girl grew colder and more alive. She told the village that she would travel into the mountains and take back the food. The people laughed at her, saying, if men stronger than you do not return, how will you do so? She replied, ‘I will not be controlled by other than my own hand.’
“The girl went to the caves and took pieces of dead-man’s fat, dripping with juice. This was forbidden, for a woman’s power was not meant to become ensnared with the darkness of the Dry Ones. But still she grew warmer with pleasure as she smeared the grease on the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands and placed it in her mouth. And with the taste in her mouth, she knew what she must do. She saw the good in it; she saw the evil. And she chose.”
All at once, something like iron fell in my stomach. I felt like I was back in the cave, reaching out to touch what I thought were roots but were actually the limbs of long-dead bodies. I must have gasped, because everyone but Bellie looked at me suddenly. When I didn’t say anything, they turned back to Bellie.
“She walked until she saw a giant man go to a creek and drink it dry. She watched him beat a drum until he yawned. He put down his drum and stretched out on his back. She threw a stone at him. When he didn’t move, she took a rock and pounded into his beating heart. Having killed him, she stretched out his intestines and walked away.
“She reached a village and entered a house filled with people. In the evening, someone came to the hatch asking, ‘You do not have a guest, do you?’ Another person replied, ‘We do have a guest.’
“The first voice said the girl should come to his home to sleep with his son. The man asked the girl if she had seen his brother, a giant man who beat a drum. The girl knew she was to be killed but followed the man to his son’s bed anyway. After she and the son had made the bed wet, she lay awake. Hearing someone outside ask if the girl was still in the bed, she lay the sleeping son in her place. Then, using a man’s voice, said, ‘Yes, she is still here.’
“The man, having come into the sleeping place, struck with a knife and cut off the son’s head and sucked the blood. Then the girl told the man he had killed his own son.
“The girl ran back to the house she had first entered. She woke the people sleeping there, and together they made a pit at the foot of the ladder, covering it with grass and piled stones. At daybreak, the man who had killed his son appeared at the hatchway and asked, ‘You don’t have a guest?’
“The people answered, ‘We do have a guest.’ The man put his foot on the ladder. The girl noticed his anklet made of the skin of a big seal with pieces added. When he entered, he got stuck by his shoulders, and the girl raised her bow and shot him behind the arm. He dropped into the pit. All the people of the house threw stones at him while the girl shot and killed him.
“Although the girl had become loose in the mind after killing, the people thanked her and loaded her with many things from neck to feet and sent her out, saying, ‘In your own hands you hold your fate tight.’
“Thus the girl returned to her village, having killed those who were killing her people, and gone where many did not return from. Her wisdom grew until it touched God’s hair, hanging down the sky. This girl never died but passed from woman to woman through the generations, killing when needed. She is out there now, in caves, behind hills, in tidal pools, watching for danger, it is said.”
We were all silent after Bellie’s story. Something about the battering wind and rain, the crackling stove, drove the story deeper than an old Aleut tale passed down and remembered by a good-natured party girl. I glanced out the streaked windows, almost expecting to see a slim, dark girl darting through the storm. The bead, which I’d restrung, seemed heavy around my neck.
Bellie broke her gaze from the fire and looked at me for the first time since beginning the legend. She leaned toward me, cupping her hands around my ear. “That body he found,” she whispered, “she did it. She’s always watching you.”
Her breath stroked at my ear, and I shivered and shifted away from her.
Les broke the weird feel in the bus. “Shit, those old stories are so lame. Every one of them is about someone killing someone because someone’s freaked out about something.”
“Yeah?” Marge lit a cigarette. “Well, someone’s killing people. Since I been here, four unexplained deaths.”
“Oh, come on,” Les said. “You got the big bad ocean, man-eating gear, not to mention drink-till-you-fall-down drunks. Surprised more people aren’t dropping like flies.”
“What’s the deal with the caves and the dead-man’s fat?” I’d been dying to get their take on it but didn’t want to appear eager.
“The mummies,” Marge said.
“Mummies?”
“Yeah. The Aleuts used to dry out the really good whale hunters and stack ’em in caves. Some fool wants to hunt whales or take a dangerous trip or kill his big brother, goes up and takes a piece of the body and eats it. Supposed to give him good luck.” Marge crushed out her cigarette and lit another.
“They got some scientists out here off and on checking them out. They’ve only found a few of the caves. Say there’s probably dozens more. The bodies are preserved like in Egypt ’cause of the way the Aleuts did it, and the caves are some kind of vents with hot dry air. They got some of them mummies in the Smithsonian.”
“So people go up to the caves, get a chunk of mummy to bring them luck?”
“Power,” Bellie whispered. “The power a person has in life stays in his body if it’s treated right. It stays, waiting for someone living to come and eat from it.”
“Bet it tastes like fucking lusta,” Les said.
That night, after driving back through the tail of the storm, I could still taste the decayed seal flipper on my tongue—old, salty. Maybe it was those little belches of resurrected lusta that kept Bellie’s story nagging at me, eating at me, as I lay in bed. The Outside Man ate his own son’s blood. The Aleut girl ate from the bodies of once-glorious whale hunters.
I couldn’t help thinking about the taste. I mean, how does a mummified hunter taste? Blood, I knew. We all know blood—old metal, salt. I climbed down from the loft to brush my teeth again. But another lusta belch hit me before I’d retucked the covers around me.
What is it about the eating? Even our very own Eve eats the apple, the ovaries of a tree. The Aleut girl eats for power. Eve eats for knowledge. Knowledge and power—the two loop back on each other as parts of the same whole. I lit a cigarette, hoping the warm raw smoke would cover the lusta belches.
What does power taste like? What is the taste of knowledge? Of good or evil? Like lusta, dry and rank? Or is it sweet?
The nub of my smoked-out cigarette burned my index finger when it hit me—I already knew. That was the point of the story. The taste of power and of knowledge is the only taste we know. We are born and we die with it. It’s the taste of a suffering world the Buddhist tries to escape when he meditates. It’s the taste of Sartre’s existential angst. It’s the taste of a dilemma, of responsibility, of culpability. A curse and a gift. It’s the taste Eve knew when she opened her eyes and fell.
I knew what the old women had done. They’d gone to take dead-man’s fat. Which, unless they were just crazy, or maybe because they were plain crazy, meant they had been planning something that required power. The time frame between their visit to the cave and Nicholas’s death did not escape me.
I kicked the covers off, suddenly hot, and rolled a joint. I held the smoke deep in my lungs and let it out in a low cloud. What would it be like to care about something or someone enough to eat from a mummy? To decide to take a life? Who was really taking advantage of Eve’s gift, the one God didn’t take back, the power to know good and evil and direct yourself to whichever you chose?
I, for one, hadn’t even been paying attention, let alone choosing anything. I did choose one thing that night under my comforter with the lingering taste of decayed flipper in my mouth—I chose to be wary. I’d accidentally fucked with something that shouldn’t be fucked with. And somehow, those old women knew.
JULY 1942
War
Most history books about World War II say that American soil was never occupied by enemy forces. It is only the more obscure books that detail the battles of Attu and Kiska, the bombing of Dutch Harbor. Thousands of American and Japanese soldiers died in the cold, wind, and fog of Aleutian battlefields. At a time when bombers couldn’t make it across the Pacific without refueling, both American and Japanese commanders saw the strategic value of the Chain, only 650 miles from Japanese military bases. The Americans built bases, airfields, submarine stations. The Japanese planned their attack.
Although officials had debated evacuating the two thousand or so Aleut citizens along the Chain, so close to the enemy, not a single Aleut had been removed. For the forty-two people on the westernmost island of Attu this indecision meant years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp when enemy soldiers captured and occupied the island. Half died. For the people at Dutch Harbor, it meant watching the bombs fall.
On June 3 and 4, Japanese Zeros strafed the new military bases, killing forty-three soldiers. In the next few weeks, as fears of an invasion mounted, officials scoured the islands lining Alaska’s panhandle, looking for places to stow the Aleuts for the duration of the war.
The new homes they found—abandoned canneries and gold mining camps in Southeast Alaska—brought death for many. The water, sewers,
and food were bad. Disease rampaged. When the war ended three years later, only half of the Aleuts returned to their island villages, burned and vandalized by soldiers.
Ida noticed the trees first. Patches of late-afternoon sun burrowed through their branches, slicing the ground of Etolin Island into misshapen patterns of light and dark. She had seen pictures of these giant plants, but she’d never expected how they would make her feel. They cut her off into a small patch of space, separated from whatever lay beyond, filling her with a dread that would never leave.
Ida wondered what her mother would have thought. Her mother had spoken once of how strange the above-ground houses looked to her when she first moved to Dutch Harbor as a girl, how they seemed to mock the hills. Ida looked at the long, two-story cannery that rose like a red cliff before the green forests. It’s better that Katherine died on Unalaska, Ida decided.
She stood on the dock with 121 others, all contemplating their new home. Etolin Island was the most remote of the evacuation camps, forty-five miles by boat to Wrangell, a tiny town itself. They had been the least isolated of the Aleutian Aleuts; now they were virtually quarantined—a situation state and military officials thought wise for Unalaska Aleuts, who were known to drink too much and cause problems.
“Get your stuff from the boat and follow me,” yelled one of the Indian Service officials. “Come on. Come on.”
Ida followed a line of people, catching their bags as others threw them off. She and her husband had been allowed six, what they and their eldest child could carry. With only a day’s notice, Ida had packed and unpacked several times. When she realized that the parkas and clothing alone would fill all their allotted duffels, Ida unpacked, called the children in, and dressed them in layers, topped off with the thick coats despite the July warmth. She told each of the children to select one toy. Five-year-old Dora had picked a sealskin doll. Three-year-old Joseph chose a carved wooden boat. And Ivan, twelve, picked two books. Ida left her Samovar, her sewing machine, her best cooking pots and knives. She packed only a few needles and thread, dried salmon, and tea, which she placed in her grandmother’s basket. Marcus and the other men who owned their own fishing boats dragged them on to shore, ferreting out what they hoped would be safe stowage spots in the high grasses near the beach. In those few hours before the officials herded them onto the waiting boat, Ida and Marcus joined others at the church, boxing icons and candlesticks, carefully storing them in the attic. Ida wrapped among her clothing a few of the icons she loved best, one of the Virgin holding the tiny, manlike Christ.
