And She Was (7 page)

Aya watched them leave. She heard the questions they buried under the taste of fat meat. Some knew this whale had not drifted onto the beach. But Aya also knew that suspicion had been driven under hope, and the village women would ask no questions. She knew these things through her new awareness, a dark awareness she could touch only lightly.

She stood near the whale much of the night. The wind skidded
across the beach, making its way toward the ocean. Her black hair lifted like fingers telling tales across her face. It stuck to the whale blubber smeared on her chin and in the moisture brought from her eyes by the wind. She didn’t lift her hand to brush it away until the dark straight mask covered her face, until she could no longer see.

JULY 7, 1986

D
arlene Panov unlocked a heavy padlock on the grayed plank door. It swung into a narrow arctic entry, bare and dry. Thad and I followed her through another door into the cabana. She gave us exactly twenty seconds to look around, which was really more than we needed. I loved it.

“You want it, two hundred fifty a month.” Pricey for a place with no water, no electricity, no telephone wires.

Thad flicked several fifty-dollar bills from a roll.

I don’t know if it was the view, the smell of old sea-soaked wood, or the way Thad handled rolls of cash, but blood fell immediately to my crotch, and I wanted nothing more than a good, slow fuck on the hardened floorboards. I pressed myself against Thad, conscious of making hip contact. Darlene left without a word.

I had my doubts about whether Darlene actually owned the cabana. More likely she owned the padlock. The feel of smooth dry wood under my shoulder blades and Thad’s tense weight on me mingled with the smells of grass and ocean brought in through the open door.

Five replicas of our cabana dotted the hill below, and I could see the rotting remains of dozens more sinking into the scrub all around. The military had built these cabanas scattered in the hills after their typical barracks housing system proved, well, deadly. Up until June 1942,
most of the soldiers stationed on Unalaska were housed in long barracks, an efficient plan no doubt. But when Japanese Zeros bombed the base on two consecutive days in June, these sprawling buildings were obvious targets. Seventeen boys newly arrived from Arkansas heard the air raid siren, figured it was a call to fall out for inspection, dutifully lined up outside their barracks, and were promptly bombed. The military realized their mistake and quickly switched housing plans, scattering small cabanas all over the place.

Now these cabanas on Ski Bowl Hill were part of Unalaska’s coolest housing stock. Here, only these five had held up. I could see the rooftops above the low bush and tall grass, the smoke curling from two. Looking west, I could see the bay and the road leading to town. About half a mile from the valley floor, a track sunk off downhill, where the residents parked and a network of paths trickled off to each cabana. Thin grasses poked up from the thigh-scratching heath and rippled like wheat in the wind.

The soldiers built these retreats from rough boards carried by boat from southeast Alaska. Trees do not grow in the Aleutians, and the few that struggle near town were either planted by Russians two hundred years ago or by homesick soldiers during World War II. The tiny forests can’t propagate well and are slowly dying.

I thought sometimes of these soldiers, snatched from their cheery farmhouses and busy cities and stationed at one of the most battered, remote, and dreary bases of the war. The only assignments worse were the bases farther along the Chain. These soldiers did not choose to come here. Most of them were drafted before they’d had time to decide just what it was they were fit to do with their lives. The military offered a purpose, something large to do—fight for your country, fight for freedom. What they really fought was the weather. More planes were lost, more men died at the hands of the wind and the fog than any Japanese gun or bomb. When the war ended, these men had discovered one goal, at least—to get off this shit-hole of an island.

The cabana was a fifteen-by-thirty-foot rectangle of open space. A rung ladder dropped between the kitchen-dining area and the living area, above which a king-size loft tucked under the roof peak. Mural-like windows faced the valley. A hillside of moving grass and shrubs slammed into a small back window. Because the building had been
dug into the hill, the front deck gained height toward the edge. It was broad and solid, without railing or adornment. The view astounding. The wind whipped across it, shifting from behind to straight-on, as cool mountain air rushed down at night and up in the morning, tangling with the steady ocean wind.

The bathroom stood thirty feet behind the cabana and was built of the same grayed plank. The decorating attempts of a dozen residents lined the interior walls. Someone had stapled greeting cards, their flaps openable, on the right-hand wall. A stack of gray-ancient
Geographic
s mildewed on the board seat. The hide of a fox sagged against the back wall above the hole. Several enterprising sitters had carved a few words into the old wood. My favorite:
If you got to take a shit, there’s no better place to sit.
Nothing as odd as the lone message on the toilet paper holder. On the door hung a curling poster of Billy Idol, lips sneering, leather pants pulling tight at the crotch. The seat faced the same view as the porch. I preferred the view to Billy Idol’s stare and never closed the door.

I’d been in Dutch exactly two days and I had a job and a place to live. In two more days, Thad would be gone fishing and I’d be alone. Only two days left to learn how to operate a generator, refill propane tanks, start pilot lights, and ride a motorcycle. Thad bought me an old 500 to get around on the island. I would rent a truck every couple of weeks to carry in propane, gas, and groceries.

At least water wasn’t a problem. The little neighborhood had a rain-catching tank uphill with pipes flowing into each cabana. Dutch got so much rain we never worried about running dry.

The next morning we headed to town for supplies. Rudger’s Store had most everything, although few choices. You could get a white down blanket or a yellowish velour. You could browse the dish aisle and decide between the thin white plastic with little yellow daisies or a supply of paper plates. The cabana had come somewhat furnished with two worn recliners, a built-in bench under the living room window, and a Formica table with chairs. I would have stuck to the basics—bedding, pots and pans, dishes, candles, flashlights, food, liquor, boom box, music, and pot. But Thad had a hearth-and-home
bug up his ass. He picked up a couple of braided rugs, throw pillows, a set of polished wooden vases, and two framed Aleutian prints that he asked me to hold on my lap for the jarring ride home.

“Why did you get all this crap?” I asked as he hammered nails into the wall to hang the pictures. He’d already picked wildflowers to fill the vases and arranged the rugs and pillows.

He smiled. “I’ve been wanting a few of these prints since I first came here. Never had a place to hang them until now. Looks homey, doesn’t it?”

He set a sketch of a tattooed and bone-pierced Aleut woman down and circled his arms around me, swaying and singing along with a Bad Company tape we’d just bought. “Baby, when I think about you, I think about looove.”

I socked him in the gut and ducked under his arm.

When he left, I had gobs of canned food, four bottles of Baileys, three Baggies of pot, and a small notebook half full of instructions. How to mix gas and oil for the minigenerator that ran the lights and stereo. How to disconnect and reconnect propane tanks. Where the pilots for the propane stove, refrigerator, and heater were.

The motorcycle was the toughest. First of all, it was black with dingy chrome, and if you squinted it looked like a mutant spider, its gas tank a bulging abdomen. The fuel gauge was missing. Thad showed me how to whack my knuckles against the tank and listen for a minutely different tone. It all sounded the same to me. Second, it required amazing feats of foot strength to shift gears. Whenever I tried to knock the shifter with my foot, I’d lose what balance I had and wobble. I blamed the road. It had been built, like all the roads stretching into the hills, by soldiers who had big trucks and didn’t give a shit. They didn’t bother with gravel. These roads were rock—most the size of a fist, many the size of a head.

The bike was probably too big for me, and keeping it upright while rolling over fist-and-head-size rocks required more speed than I liked. In the end, I just had to forget shifting and get down the mountain onto dirt roads, where it all became relatively easy. The worst part of using a motorcycle for your main transportation is the idiotic invention
of a kick starter. I learned to throw my body onto the starter rather than just my leg weight. I learned to keep jumping on the damn thing long after it made sense. And I learned that it would often start if you said the right things in the right order.

It became an incantation. At first you talk nicely, maybe explain to the machine that the two of you are going on a nice little ride. When that fails, as it usually does if the motor hasn’t run in the last hour, you start in with the threats. Gentle at first. You remind it that you’re still shaky with the gears and may have to run it in first past 30 mph. You stomp harder. About a quarter of the time, the machine is still reticent. So you start cussing. You
must
be original and firm. Piece of junk doesn’t cut it. You must mention scrap yards, private parts, hell, heaven, sin, and fornication. Also you must slip and fall into the bushes at least once. The machine expects and waits for this. If you’ve wrestled with kick-start and pull-start engines, you know these tricks. If you haven’t, remember. Someday, somewhere, you will find that your only hope is an outboard, a snowmobile, a motorcycle, or a chain saw.

I did come to an understanding with my first motorcycle, generator, and propane appliances. But that was, of course, long after Thad was hundreds of miles away at sea. I’d been so busy jotting instructions in my notebook, I hadn’t thought much about what it would be like when he was gone, when I was alone. I’d been alone in the past, but always a temporary solitude busy with the quest of finding someone new. This time I would just be waiting.

The sun slipped into the water as we approached the dock out on the spit, where his 110-foot trawler, the
Seawind,
was tied. Thad pulled off onto the shoulder alongside a dock flanking the spit for hundreds of feet. An ocean wind, laced with spray, hit my face full-on as soon as the bike stopped.

I could see across the navy blue bay to Unalaska Village, and up the shadowed green valley to where our cabana was. Diesel fuel mixed with the ocean smells, and the sounds of work broke into the hard wind, metal striking metal, men yelling. A row of fishing boats lined the dock, sulking a good ten feet below on a low tide. Men on the back
decks lined up gear, numbered buoys, leaned against rust-stained railings and smoked.

“The
Seawind
’s out there,” Thad said, pointing to a series of steel rods jutting high above the dock. His hand cupped my waist and pulled me into his kiss, dry and deep. “Come on.” He slid his hand down to take mine.

I followed Thad past a series of boats, past a series of “Hey, Thad,” and “Hey, Thad, who you got there?” Thad’s oilskin spread wide behind him in the wind. His heavy boots landed solidly with each step farther out. The clouds had thickened, and now rain came in fidgeting spits.

I saw him off beside his boat. He held my face and kissed me. “Will you miss me?” he asked, brushing wind-licked hair from my eyes.

“Of course. I can’t stand being alone,” I said, grasping his neck to pull him close for another kiss.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said when I let him go. “Will you miss
me
?”

“I said I would.”

“Missing me is different from not wanting to be alone.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked at me oddly, like I had spittle in the corner of my mouth, then kissed me again, quick and hard.

I stood in the wind watching until his boat churned a wake into the open ocean as the drizzle became a rain.

On my way home, I dropped in at the museum-bookstore across from the Elbow Room. A wood-burned sign above the door announced
OLD VOYAGERS
. The two-room shack was baking warm, which felt good after the good soak I’d had riding over. The walls displayed reprinted Aleutian drawings by early explorers. Women with bone-studded faces. Families gathered in half-underground homes. Men trading with sailors under towering ships. The typical renderings of a vanquished people. Memorials to the victims. We feel pity for a split second and move on for ice cream. I recognized the two prints Thad had put up to domesticate our place. The store was empty except for the fiftyish Aleut woman who ran it.

“I’m looking for a book about the island,” I said.

Without speaking, she handed me an oversize book called simply
The Aleutians
. One of an Alaska Geographic series, full of great pictures and geared toward giving the reader an overview.

“You got anything more?”

She had already begun filling out my receipt. “More?”

“Yeah.”

She eyed me from over the top of wire-rim glasses. Her black hair was pulled back into a tight knot at the base of her skull, which descended into the fitted crew neck of her sage L.L. Bean pullover. I could hear the plop of soft-soled shoes tapping the wooden floor behind the counter. All in all she looked like a cross between a graduate student and a librarian. “Read that, then I may have
more
for you.”

I handed her twenty dollars with the distinct feel that she neither expected nor wanted me to come back. I tucked my one new book inside my coat to protect it from the rain.

As I stepped out on the tiny porch, I bumped into Marge, whose body hovered protectively over a cardboard box in her arms.

“Watch it,” she said, mounting the porch as I jumped down.

“What are you doing?”

“Basket weaving class.”

“Basket weaving class?”

“Yeah, Anna holds them in back every week.”

“Oh,” I said. I watched her trudge into the shop as the cold rain sucked my jeans to my legs again.

I had only one visitor that first week. Thad had left me in the care of Carl, who was to look out for me, check up on me, and generally come to my aid. This meant Carl stopped by twice in the first week to make sure I hadn’t blown up anything. Otherwise I was perfectly alone.

Mornings, I’d sit on the edge of my porch, the wind pressing my back, encouraging me to fly. Dangling my legs off the edge, because a deck chair just didn’t seem appropriate, I’d sip my coffee and watch the cloud shadows sweep the mountains and the ocean curling itself against the shore. I hiked up into the mountains behind the cabana a couple of times. I wasn’t a hiker sort, but all that soft summer green looked so inviting, beckoning really. At the saddle, all I could see was
more of them, cresting into the distance. I thought about going on to the next one. But where would it end? You’ve got to watch out for those inklings to see what’s next. Usually it’s just more of the same.