The Hunger of Crows, page 7
“That’s right, Carla. And so are you,” Shire says. “When was the last time you did something fun outdoors?”
Shire Kiminsky has to be the healthiest cocktail waitress in North America. All freckles and regularly flossed teeth, sun-pinked cheeks, and more energy than the big bang. She’s forty-five and could pass for the twins’ older sister. Alaska born and raised, she holds a charter captain’s license but has leased out her halibut boat so she can spend summer days with her girls. Evenings she waits tables with Carla at the Orca. And tough? If somebody needs to be eighty-sixed from the bar, Volker has Shire do it. God knows she can be a lot scarier than he ever will.
Shire. Good to her kids, hardworking as a sailor, discreet with men. It’s sickening. Carla loves her.
“Fun? Outdoors?” she moans. “What am I, a fucking chipmunk?”
The girls giggle. One of them tugs on her mother’s jacket, stage-whispers, “Carla’s swearing again, Mom.”
“And she’s almost bare-naked,” the other girl adds. “Again.”
Shire took Carla in when she first got to town. She lived with them for nearly a month before moving in with Volker. The twins know her all too well.
Now she gives the girls a mean look and hisses, “Squealers!”
They laugh.
Shire says, “Carla’s going to wash her mouth out and put some clothes on now. Aren’t you, Carla?”
“Yeah, yeah. They’re around here someplace.”
Shire picks Carla’s jeans off the floor. “You know, they have these things called hangers now.” She throws them at Carla. Carla shrugs off the sheet and climbs into the jeans.
With the door open, cool air from the small-boat harbor wafts in and makes her shiver. Beyond Shire and the girls, she can see more fishermen trooping across the parking lot. Cars and trucks towing skiffs rumble down the road to the boat launch. At the top of the ramp leading down to the marina, two young fish plant workers in blood-smudged rubber bibs lean against a dumpster, smoking under a cloud of hovering gulls. A big commercial fishing boat of some kind motors out of the harbor, rigging heavy with electronic equipment flashing in the uncommonly bright sunshine.
What a place. Not yet eight in the morning, and the sun’s already high in the sky. It will dally there for another eighteen hours. After two months, the almost constant daylight is weirding Carla out, making her feel exposed all the time. At least it’s rained most of the time since she got here. Today the unclouded brilliance of the sun feels like a searchlight trained on her.
Shire says, “What you need is a boat ride, and a nice stack of sockeye fillets to get you through next winter.”
Next winter? The idea makes Carla squirm. Where will she be by then? Will she even be alive? Not if Cosmo D’Angelo finds her.
She gropes for something else to think about, trying not to turn her agitation on Shire and the kids. “Why are my two favorite little girls playing with knives and clubs? Whatever happened to Barbie dolls and sock monkeys?”
The twins dart from their mother and prance across the gravel, hacking at each other’s life vests, squealing, “Sock monkeys!”
“And why do we have to go fishing, Shire? Your brother’s a commercial fisherman. You can’t need the fish.”
“Because the girls love it, and so do I. And everybody needs to get out and kill their own food once in a while. You are aware that salmon don’t actually live on Styrofoam trays at Safeway, right?”
“I guess.”
“Hey!” Shire picks one of Carla’s sneakers off the floor and throws it at her. “Look up there in the sky.” She points with one thumb over her shoulder. “You see that ball of light? That’s the sun.”
“I’m from Arizona. Big deal. The sun.” She pretends she has no opinion on its prominence today.
“In this part of the world, we don’t see it like this all that often. But it’s shining right now and the salmon are running. Around here, that makes people smile. Try it.” Shire throws the other sneaker at her. “Smile.”
Carla catches the shoe and pulls her lips back to show her canines.
Shire frowns. “We’ll work on that later.” She leans farther into the camper, picks up the sardine can, and curls her nose. “Jesus. It smells like a crab fisherman crawled in here and died.”
Carla flashes on the anchovies she shared with D’Angelo at his house in Phoenix. She turns away and paws through the sheets for her shirt.
Shire is on a mother-rant. “You can’t live like this. You’ve been in town two months and still haven’t got a phone or PO box. And now you’re breaking up with Volker? What are you going to do, live in this piece-of-crap camper?”
“I’ll move back in with you!” Carla grins at her and waggles her eyebrows. “I can help raise the girls!”
Shire has to laugh. “Please. I put something to eat in front of them the other day, and Irene said, ‘Fuck this shit!’ I wonder where she learned that. And I’d rather they aren’t sexually active until first grade, okay?”
“Trying to be helpful.” Carla finds her T-shirt, pulls it on.
Shire sighs, her girl-next-door face going serious. “Come on, Carla, Billy Griest is more than fifteen years younger than you. I know. I’ve carded him. What were you thinking?”
“It was an accident!” Carla grabs her sneakers, pushes Shire out of the way. She sits on the steps of the camper to put them on, wincing at the bright sunlight. “Look at me. I’m almost forty. Four-zero. My boobs are racing my ass to my ankles. It’s nice to know that I still have what men want. Okay?”
Shire scoffs. “Get in line, sister. Try having twins at your age.”
“Don’t you want to feel … you know … wanted?” Carla says. “I mean, desired?”
“Wanted? In this town?” Shire snorts. “You work in a bar full of mostly divorced guys who spend weeks at sea. All a woman has to do to feel ‘wanted’ here is fall on her back.” She pauses to check on her girls. They’re trying to creep up on a flock of crows that hop into the air and fly as the pair approaches. Shire turns back to Carla and lowers her voice. “You know, this may come as a surprise to you, but there are other ways besides sex to get the attention of men.”
“Oh, listen to Miss Good Judgment, who got knocked up with twins at forty. Something tells me there was a penis involved in that life-changing event.” Carla ties her sneakers and stands, locks the camper door. The morning sunlight licks every bumper and windshield in the parking lot. Standing out there in the open now, she’s twitchy again. “All right. Let’s go netting. But I have to run by Volker’s first. He’s gone to Anchorage on a Costco run, won’t be back until happy hour.”
Shire looks at her watch. “Make it fast. We can’t get into the cove on the low tide.”
Carla nods and fishes her keys out of her jeans. She inhales deeply, trying to offset the jumpiness the cloudless morning is causing. Along with the natural ocean scent of brine and fish, the breeze off the harbor reeks of diesel and dumpsters. Disquieting around-the-clock daylight aside, the very strangeness of this place is also reassuring. Two mature bald eagles sit atop a tall construction crane, scanning the beach for an easy meal. She’s so far from Phoenix now. It’s another world here. A safer one, she tells herself. She wishes she believed it.
She slides into the driver’s seat, rolls down the window.
Shire leans in. “Why don’t you want to smooth this over with Volker? What’s so wrong with him suddenly? I mean, yeah, he’s a bit of a dork sometimes. But he’s not mean. I’ll take dorky over mean any day.”
“He seemed very cool. You know? When I first met him. Now he’s getting all domestic. I can’t do that again. I just can’t.”
Shire keeps her eyes on her daughters. “Seeming cool to new waitresses is more or less George Volker’s life’s work.” She pats Carla on the shoulder. “Only this time, I think the goof is really gone for you.”
“He cooked me poached eggs. For breakfast.”
Shire nods, blond ponytail radiant in the sunlight. “That’s when most people eat poached eggs, hon.”
“He’s talking about getting married, making me partner in the bar.”
“What the hell is wrong with that? The Orca is a freaking gold mine.”
“I guess.” Carla wishes she could tell Shire why her name can never appear on a marriage license. Or why it already feels she’s been in one place too long. “It pisses me off, having him making plans for me like that,” she says instead.
“You’re out of your mind. But I guess it’s your life.” Shire straightens and calls out to the twins. “You girls don’t go down that ramp until I get there!”
“I don’t know how you do it, Shire,” Carla says. “I really don’t.” She’s come to love the twins, but she thanks God once again that the only child she ever attempted to raise was the one she married. She starts the truck. “I’ll go to Volker’s house, get my things, meet you down at the boat.”
“Okay. I’ll gas up. Be at the dock in an hour. I’ve got sandwiches, bug dope, and a pair of hip boots you can borrow. We’ll go kill some fish. It always cheers me up.”
Alaskans. Fish crazy. Every single one of them. She starts to back the truck away from the Orca, shaking her head. Shire waves for her to stop and walks back to Carla’s truck.
Carla leans out the window. “Now what?”
“Listen, you’re going to need a place to stay until you get back with George. Why don’t you use my family’s cabin on Loon Island for a while? Just until you find your own place, or come to your senses and apologize to him. I don’t want you living in this thing like a hobo. When we’re done netting, I’ll show you the cabin, give you a key. And the key to the skiff. I won’t need it for a while.”
“The skiff?” Carla is a little surprised. “You think I’m ready for that?”
Shire has been training her to handle the small boat for weeks. When the commercial salmon season opens, they’re going to crew on her brother Elrond’s seiner. Carla has surprised both Shire and herself with her natural ability at seamanship—even in fairly rough water.
“The weather is good, and it’s a short hop across the bay to Loon. And you’re a born sailor, girl,” Shire says. “You should join the fleet.”
“Couldn’t I just date them?”
Shire laughs. “Just promise to apologize to George tonight, okay? Even if you don’t go back with him, maybe he’ll let you keep the job at the Orca. The tips are the best in town.”
“Thanks, Shire.” Shire’s been good to her. Everyone here has. Even George Volker. The reality shows make it seem like Alaska is a haven for every nutjob and socially incompetent troll on the continent. A catch basin for the detritus of society. And maybe it is. But there are human beings here too. Good ones. It could be a great place to live. A safe place. Hopefully.
She puts the truck in gear and turns out of the Orca parking lot onto the spit road. It’s a three-mile drive to town from the bar and marina, but there’s very little traffic heading toward the land mass. Coming the other direction, however, a steady line of cars and pickups and RVs—the early-morning fishing crowd—streams out onto the spit toward the small-boat harbor.
She flips the visor down to block the sun and feels marginally less exposed. She tries to convince herself yet again that this place, so far from anywhere, is in fact safe.
On the right-hand side of the spit road, the interior of the bay is dead flat. A woman in a yellow top throws a Frisbee into the water for a frantic black dog. On the seaward side, soft rollers curl onto the sandy beach. Small shorebirds and much larger gulls patrol the surf line, picking out morsels. They give a wide berth to an enormous bald eagle, worrying some kind of fish carcass.
A cluster of small businesses sit on a wooden plank platform up on posts. White-sneakered tourists crowd into the doorways of halibut charter offices and coffee shops. There’s a Native Alaskan art gallery with exquisite whalebone and walrus tusk carvings. Her mother, an artist of some repute in Phoenix, would love the craftsmanship in those.
My mother. Christ. It’s a lovely day. Let’s think about something pleasant.
She passes a family wearing matching black Orca Grill hoodies posing for a photo in front of a bronze sculpture. The statue depicts a bearded mariner, monument to the men who’ve drowned fishing Alaskan waters. Behind them the bay glitters like a bowl of blue sequins. Across the bay, the Kenai Mountains tower over the heavily forested shore.
Carla does the reassuring math. She drove nearly four thousand miles to get to the town of Homer. The spit juts another four miles into the bay. Loon Island is farther yet.
It’s about as distant from Phoenix, Arizona, as you can get. But is it far enough?
She glances overhead at the small slit in the headliner. She’s had the photo for two months and still hasn’t figured out how to do anything with it that won’t get her killed. And now she’s going fishing with five-year-old girls.
Well, she has to keep up the appearance of normalcy if she’s going to survive. And around here, murdering fish is what passes for normal. She turns the radio on and drives to Volker’s house.
CHAPTER
10
SCOTT CROCKETT TIES off the bow line of the “C” Lady to the fuel dock cleat and steals a furtive glance at the office window, praying that his almost-ex-wife Trina isn’t peering out from her desk in accounts receivable. If there were any other place on Kachemak Bay he could fill the boat’s tank—any other place at all—he’d happily pay an extra five bucks a gallon to avoid her. Ten. Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to be around.
He turns to the sound of footsteps on the dock behind him.
“Trina’s gone to lunch,” Kyle, the chubby teenage dockhand, says warily. The kid has certainly been privy to whatever version of Scott’s divorce opera Trina has shared with the staff. Never mind all the screaming matches she and Scott have indulged in right here in the marina over the past few months as the marriage fermented into the bitter paste it has become. The poor kid may be thinking Scott has come looking for another smackdown.
Scott holds his hands up. “Take it easy. I just need fuel.”
Kyle reaches for the diesel hose, obviously relieved. “Going dipnetting? Everybody’s going dipnetting. I never seen nothing like it where I come from. Women, children, old grannies. Where’s your net?” Kyle glances around the boat.
“I thought I’d try catching them on a rod and reel.”
Kyle looks at the rod lying on the canvas hatch cover over the aft hold, the bright tinseled streamer knotted onto the end of the line. “That a fly pole?”
Scott kneels on the deck and unscrews the brass cover on the fuel tank.
“Flies? In the middle of the ocean?” Kyle looks at him like he’s just suggested hunting moose with a sharpened stick. “Shit.”
Scott feels his face warming, everything about fly-fishing suddenly seeming affected. What kind of a poser has he become? He’s a working guy, a journeyman carpenter, an independent contractor. He straps on a tool belt and hammers nails every day of his life. Fly-fishing? He knows a sheetrocker who took up fly-fishing, and now the guy is teaching creative writing classes at the community college up in Eagle River.
He should be fishing like a man: trolling for king salmon, or dragging herring chunks across the bottom a hundred feet down for halibut. He shouldn’t be fishing at all. He should be back on shore meeting women.
Kyle hands him the hose. He inserts the nozzle in the opening in the deck, starts the diesel flowing. Turning the conversation away from his suddenly ridiculous-sounding plans, he says, “How about you? Got your fish put away already?”
“Nah, I only been here less than a year. Not a resident yet. If I could dipnet, I sure would. How many salmon you allowed?”
“Twenty-five fish for the head of household and ten more for each additional member of the family.”
“Like a wife?” Kyle asks, a sudden slyness in his voice. “You get ten for that?”
“Yes, Kyle. I believe the Alaska Department of Fish and Game recognizes a wife as a member of a family.”
Kyle goes silent, apparently thinking about that. A moment passes. Scott closes his eyes and inhales the dizzying diesel fumes rising from the tank belowdeck. He feels the sun on his face and thinks about the next four days, in the boat, alone. No Trina. No lawyers. Peace. Quiet. Fish. The boat is big, the cabin comfortable. The galley is stocked, the fuel tanks filling now. He would stay out there the rest of his life if he could. It’s one way to avoid trying to start over again.
Kyle is asking him something. “Makes you kind of wish you stayed married to Trina, don’t it?” He glances at the office window like he isn’t sure whether Trina is there or not either. Like she might come flying out of it at them, claws out, teeth bared. “I mean, ten extra fish is a lot.”
Scott looks at him. “You work with her every day, Kyle. Would you marry Trina for ten extra salmon a year?”
Kyle thinks about it a second. “Kings?”
Scott shakes his head ruefully. “Sockeye.” He stops pumping and pulls the nozzle out and hands it over the rail to Kyle.
“Oh.” Kyle hangs the gas nozzle in its cradle, notes the number of gallons, the total price. He pulls his hat off and peers inside as if the answer to the Trina question is stitched into it. He tugs it back on his head and takes Scott’s credit card into the office.
Nearby, two large gray-and-white gulls sit on the rail of a Boston Whaler. For no apparent reason, one of the birds turns to the other, opens its fierce yellow beak, and screams into its partner’s ear. Gulls must mate for life.
Kyle comes back out onto the dock. “Ten sockeye, huh?” He hands Scott the credit card and clipboard, but he still hasn’t answered the Trina question.
“That’s what I thought,” Scott says. He signs for the fuel and pushes off.
The “C” Lady is fifty feet away from the dock, motoring toward the cut in the rock jetty enclosing the boat harbor, when Kyle yells over the clamoring gulls, “I’d marry her for ten extra lingcod! Maybe.”
